‘I’ve done the expanded background check on Sture Folkman, like you asked.’
Aronsson’s face is gentle, but her unfortunately protruding top teeth make her less attractive than she would otherwise be.
‘He arrived here as a wartime evacuee from Finland. Evidently saw his whole family burned alive in Karelia. He ended up at a farm in the north of Skåne, outside Ängelholm. That’s where he took his school diploma.’
Aronsson pauses for breath before going on: ‘He divorced his second wife in 1980. They had two daughters. One of them killed herself in 1985, the investigation seems to have been fairly straightforward if you read the report, she was found hanged and had apparently been in and out of psychiatric institutions for years.’
Cold white hands under the covers.
Stop, Dad, stop, I’m your daughter.
There there, there there.
Malin forces the image from her mind. Some men should be castrated and strung up in public.
‘And the other daughter lives in Australia? That’s what Folkman implied.’
Aronsson shakes her head.
‘She lives here in the city. She’s been registered at an address in the Vasastan district for the past couple of years.’
‘Anything else on her?’
‘Her first name’s Vera. Forty-two years old. But I can’t find any other details anywhere.’
A quick, improvised meeting about the state of the case.
It is almost six o’clock, and they’re all tired from the heat, from many days’ intense hard work, and Malin wants to get home to Tove.
Sven Sjöman at the end of Malin’s desk as quiet activity goes on around them in the office. Karim Akbar has already gone home, said he had a migraine. He’s never had one before, Malin thinks.
‘So Theresa Eckeved was probably murdered at home?’
Sven’s voice slightly less tired than in previous meetings.
‘We’re not sure. But that’s where she was attacked. She may have been moved somewhere else before being buried at the beach,’ Malin says. ‘So the killer may have some connection to the house. But nothing has emerged from talking to the family and those close to them. And the parents’ alibis are watertight.’
‘Any other news?’
‘Vera Folkman. Her father, Sture, said she lives in Australia, but she’s registered here in Linköping. We’re thinking of going to see her first thing tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ Sven Sjöman says. ‘That’s just the sort of discrepancy that you have to look into to make any progress in cases like this.’
‘We know that talking to Vera Folkman is clutching at straws,’ Zeke says.
Sven turns to look at Waldemar Ekenberg and Per Sundsten, who are sitting at the other end of the desk.
‘What about you?’
‘We’re checking the last names on the list of sex offenders,’ Per says. ‘And we thought we’d talk to people close to Suliman Hajif. It doesn’t look like we’re going to get much further with Suliman.’
‘Can we get the prosecutor to hold him for a bit longer?’
‘I doubt it, I spoke to him a short while ago and the evidence is far too weak to hold him on grounds of reasonable probability.’
‘Better to let him go,’ Sven says, ‘and watch what he gets up to. What about Louise Svensson? Anything new there?’
‘We’ve been checking on her regularly. But she’s just been working on her farm,’ Malin says. ‘And I’ve got my doubts about Visnic.’
‘OK, we’ll carry on tomorrow,’ Sven says, looking at Malin with a frown.
‘Something you wanted to tell us, Malin?’
‘No. Just a feeling.’
‘So . . .’
‘It can wait,’ Malin says.
And Sven lets it go, saying: ‘And we still don’t know who called in about Josefin Davidsson. And we still don’t have any idea what happened to her bike.’
Tove isn’t answering the phone. Not her mobile, and not the landline at home.
Where is she?
Malin is sitting at her desk, feeling her anxiety get the better of her. She’s just called Markus and he said she left his house two hours ago, that they’d spent the day swimming at Tinnis.
Tove.
I told you to be careful.
Malin gets up, goes out to the car.
Malin opens the door of the flat, runs up the stairs. Calls: ‘Tove! Tove, are you home?’
Silence.
Silent rooms.
Kitchen empty.
Living room empty.
Tove’s bedroom empty.
Bathroom empty.
‘Tove! Tove!’
Malin opens the door to her bedroom. Tove, please be lying on the bed.
55
Karim Akbar takes the hot cup of espresso from the machine and looks around the kitchen. The stainless-steel draining board that was specially ordered to cover the whole area under the glassy tiles his wife had picked out from one of the international interior design magazines she usually picks up from Presstop down in Trädgårdstorget. The doors were also ordered specially, painted in a colour known as British racing green, and the table and chairs are oak, bought from Room in Stockholm.
No migraine.
Just a feeling that he had to be alone.
He thinks about the book he should be writing, but which he will probably never manage to produce.
He doesn’t even believe his thesis about integration himself.
The house in Lambohov is silent.
Is there anything more silent than a home in summer when the people who inhabit it are somewhere else?
He and his wife have been arguing more and more since the spring. About nothing, and he’s noticed that their son is getting upset, is wary in their company, reluctant to talk, and Karim feels sorry for him but doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have the energy to do anything. All the masks he has to wear, at work, in other official situations and here at home, have exhausted him beyond mere exhaustion.
Why do we argue?
Karim breathes in the smell of their home, as its nooks and crannies become visible in the dim light.
She isn’t happy. That much is clear. She finds fault everywhere and maybe she finds me offensive? No. But I irritate her and that in turn makes me irritated.
Their son.
In his formative years.
I, we, mustn’t mess him up.
And Karim thinks of his father, and how he found him hanging in the flat in Nacksta one summer’s day, almost as hot as today.
I was twelve years old.
I learned what despair was. But I refused to believe that even love has its limits.
I go too far sometimes, Waldemar Ekenberg thinks as he sprays water over the roses in the back garden of his house in Mjölby.
His wife is in the kitchen. Making a salad to go with that evening’s barbecue, the pork has been marinating since the morning, the wine open to breathe, no wine box crap here.
But do I go too far?
My colleagues have reported me, suspects have reported me, but nothing has ever come of it and I deliver the goods, more than other people, and with a case like this one? With a bastard like that on the loose, no one cares if someone suffers a bit as long as no one really gets hurt.
That’s what being human is.
Sometimes you get squeezed by circumstances, that’s just the way it is. You just have to accept it, just like most suffering.
The woman in the kitchen wanted children.
I wasn’t that fussed, Waldemar thinks. But God knows, they tried. Test tubes all over the place, wanking into little pots in dimly lit bathrooms with a cheap porn magazine in his lap.
Then she hit forty-five and all that stopped.
They share that fate with a lot of other couples.