‘An evening swim? Nice. I’m heading to Skavsta to pick up my husband and daughter.’
Malin regrets saying this at once, Slavenca Visnic lost her whole family, but her eyes show nothing but calm, warmth.
‘I’d like to show you something,’ Slavenca Visnic says. ‘Follow me.’
The next minute they’re sitting at a computer in her bedroom, the light of the screen flickering.
Slavenca Visnic has opened ten documents that look like pages of a child’s picture-book. On the pages she’s loaded the few pictures she has of her family, alongside short texts about her childhood, her children’s lives, the short lives they got to live.
Slavenca Visnic looks younger in the pictures, her face full of innocent anticipation and responsibility. The children in her arms, beautiful round faces beneath black hair that’s been allowed to grow long, her husband: a friendly, fluid face defined by a strong chin.
‘It feels good to keep busy doing this,’ Slavenca Visnic says. ‘Writing. Trying to recreate life the way it was when it was at its best, all that simple love.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Malin says.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think they can ever come back?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ and Slavenca Visnic’s question seems entirely natural to Malin, as if resurrection from the dead were possible sometimes, at least for the love itself.
‘But some day you’ll get to meet them again,’ Malin says. ‘And their love is still here in this room. I can feel it.’
Slavenca Visnic shuts down her computer and follows Malin out into the hall.
‘Drive carefully, they’d probably prefer you to get there in one piece. Your husband and daughter.’
‘We’re divorced,’ Malin says. ‘We’ve been divorced more than ten years.’
46
Wednesday, 21–Thursday, 22 July
Shimmering dusk.
The day on its way into inescapable darkness, its death throes in shifting shades of yellow, red and orange.
Forest, open fields, water, red-painted houses huddling by the tree line, cars parked in driveways, light in windows, sometimes silhouettes behind the glass, people like dark dreams, hungry, still not ready to let go of the day.
But the day itself muttering: I’ve had enough. That’ll do.
The car creeps up to one hundred and twenty. Can go much faster than that.
A metal bird high up in the atmosphere, where the summer air is too thin to breathe. Soon on its way down, the metal cocoon protecting your bodies.
Keep your eyes on the road.
Dangerously tired.
And the tarmac is a snake sliding past Norrköping, Kolmården and on into the night.
Stockholm.
The road ends up there. Sometimes she wishes she were back there, in a larger setting, with more regular cases to fire up a detective’s soul.
A case like theirs.
Threads like unexploded shells, howling as they approach the ground, and all the police officers involved wait for the explosion, waiting for the truth to burst out and take shape before their eyes. But instead just an unexploded bomb lying in the meeting room and emitting a foul stench, in the open-plan office of the police station, a whistling sound that mocks them, reminding them of their shortcomings.
The media going crazy.
Karim Akbar getting softer each day, and simultaneously worse as a media performer, but better as a police chief.
Sven Sjöman.
Malin has never seen him so physically tired as he has been over the past few days. The heat is tearing the soul from his heavy body. Just let his heart hold out, Sven’s good heart.
Per Sundsten. It’s impossible to get a grip on him, who he is, what he wants, what he thinks. A good detective ought to know that sort of thing, Malin thinks, because if you’re sure of who you are and what you want, then your intuition can fly free, can’t it?
What do I want?
Who cares?
No, actually. I have to know.
Waldemar Ekenberg is more obvious than almost everyone else, his masculinity almost comically exaggerated. God knows what he’s got up to over the past few days, how much he has allowed the ends to justify the means. At some point time will catch up even with him.
And Zeke. The way they work together is possibly simpler and clearer now than ever, no nonsense about each of them going off and doing their own thing, a wordless trust in each other. It’s as if Zeke is holding back his tendency towards violence now that Ekenberg is part of the team, as if there has to be a constant balance between violence and empathy, as if this balance is essential if they are to twist the truth out of the clues.
And me.
I know what I’m doing.
Am I learning anything?
I’m slowly getting closer to the girls, that much is clear. If I can feel and understand their fear, maybe I can understand the person who harmed them.
The immigrant lads.
Karin Johannison not yet done with her examination of the dildo. But there’s a high probability that it matches the one used in the crimes, so maybe they’ll be able to take the day off tomorrow.
The lesbian line of inquiry.
A wicked man in Finspång. Where does this woman to woman love lead?
Slavenca Visnic. The kiosks. And the water.
The water.
Tomorrow will bring with it the hypnosis of Josefin Davidsson. Malin called Viveka Crafoord on her way home from their meeting with Svea Svensson, told her that they’d have to put it off, and Viveka had sounded disappointed, saying: ‘I think I can get something out of her, get her to talk.’
The road signs with numbers saying how great the distance between grief and longing is, how far it is until the distance is wiped out and only time remains.
Nyköping thirty-two.
Seventeen.
Skavsta.
Should I have brought Markus?
It didn’t even occur to me.
And Malin parks, goes into the arrivals hall, white beams seeming to float high up under a curved ceiling, a bare room full of peculiar dreams.
The clock on the wall says quarter past ten.
The plane is due in on time.
In two and a half hours the presence of love will replace grief, longing.
She’ll soon be there, Malin, your Tove.
We were up with her and Janne just now, and they were both asleep, exhausted by the long journey, by everything they have experienced.
They were both smiling.
It was a happy moment, just like you will be experiencing soon.
And us?
Sofia and I. We’re drifting somewhere below the ceiling of the arrivals hall, watching you and thinking that maybe it would be better if you were concentrating on us, on what has happened, instead of concentrating on your own nearest and dearest.
At least that’s what we’d like.
Worrying about your own concerns doesn’t disappear where we are. But it’s different, it encompasses more, it’s as if it encompasses everything that is or has been or ever will be.
Worrying about your own concerns becomes consideration for everyone.
Sofia and I are one and the same here. We are Josefin, Tove, and you. We are all girls and all who have been girls. But we’re boys as well.
Does that sound odd?
I can understand that, Malin. It’s all very strange, actually.
Where should you start?
Start with your nearest and dearest.