58
‘Water, Zeke, that’s the connection in this case.’
Malin was talking fast as they headed back to the car parked outside the pool, and she explained what she meant, how all the girls were somehow connected to pools, and had been scrubbed clean with manic frenzy, and how even the smells corresponded, the bleach on all three girls, and the smell of chlorine from the swimming pools.
Malin felt almost feverish in the car park, as reality, air, buildings, cars, heat, sky all seemed to be tumbling around her, but she pulled herself together.
‘So you mean we should be looking for someone who does swimming-pool maintenance?’
Zeke more open-minded than sceptical.
‘Yes, one in particular.’
‘One in particular?’
‘Soon, Zeke. Soon.’
Zeke breathed out deeply.
‘Where do we start? Here?’
‘Why not?’
As they went back in again Malin called the number she’d been given by Sigvard Eckeved, but the neighbour wasn’t aware of any pool-maintenance woman, saying: ‘I take care of all that myself’, and now they’re sitting in a cramped, hot room with yellow tiled walls next to the café talking to the manager of the Tinnerbäck pool, a Sten Karlsson, a bundle of muscle in lifeguard’s trunks and a red vest with the pool’s logo, a sea lion with a ball.
The desk in front of them is littered with papers.
‘Paperwork isn’t my strong point,’ Sten Karlsson says apologetically. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘We’d like to know who looks after pool maintenance.’
‘Our lifeguards and our technician. The lifeguards keep things clean with nets and pool bottom cleaners, and the technician makes sure that all the technical stuff works.’
‘Are all your lifeguards employed on contracts?’ Malin asks, feeling herself getting impatient as she doesn’t get the answer she wants.
‘Yes.’
‘Is any of them in charge of the chemical side of things?’
‘No, we’ve contracted that out.’
‘So that was the woman I saw,’ Zeke says. ‘She was here about an hour ago, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right. We have a woman who looks after the chemical balance of the water.’
‘Who is she?’
The question bursts out of Malin.
‘Her name’s Elisabeth. I don’t know her surname. Her company is called, hang on . . .’
Elisabeth.
The same woman?
Is Elisabeth Vera Folkman? Acting under her dead sister’s name? And, if so, what does that actually mean? If she is Vera Folkman, what have her experiences done to her, what have they made her do?
Sten Karlsson is searching through the sheets of paper on his desk.
‘Hang on. Here it is!’
He holds up an invoice. Linköping Water Technicians Ltd.
‘Sexy name, eh?’
Malin snatches the invoice from Sten Karlsson’s hand.
Reads the address, phone number.
‘Do you know where she was going after here?’ Malin asks.
‘No idea. She’s pretty mysterious.’
Sten Karlsson points at the invoice.
‘She leaves those without a word, except for saying that she wants to be paid in cash. But I can tell you one thing. She knows her job. We’ve had her for two years, and the water in the pools has been top quality since then.’
Malin and Zeke are standing together outside Sten Karlsson’s office. Malin is holding a note containing the details of the company: name, address and company number.
‘Number 17, Johanneslundstigen,’ Zeke says. ‘I’ve never heard of a Johanneslundstigen.’
Malin reads the phone number: 013 13 02 66.
Calls the number.
An automated reply.
‘The number 013 17 02 66 is not in use . . .’
‘Fuck,’ Malin says.
‘Call directory inquiries,’ Zeke says. ‘Ask them.’
‘118 118!’
The perky operator’s voice annoys Malin.
‘That’s right, that number isn’t in use.’
‘No, there’s no Johanneslundstigen in Linköping.’
‘Of course, I’ll put you through to the tax office.’
After a long pause someone else answers. The tax office is pretty much closed on a Saturday in July. Then another long wait to be transferred. Then a new woman’s voice, formal and bureaucratic, as she might have expected. Zeke is pacing up and down beside her now, sweat on his forehead.
‘Did you say Linköping Water Technicians Ltd, registration number 5-987689?’
‘That’s right,’ Malin says.
‘There’s no company registered under that number, or that name. Sorry.’
Malin ends the call once she’s made a note of the woman’s direct number.
She feels the heat constricting her chest, her heart beating hard under her ribs. How long can you keep a false company running? One year? Two? Three? Maybe longer, if you do it properly. But who knows how long she’s been in the city. Unless she really has been in Australia, like Sture Folkman said? And came home two years ago with the very worst baggage imaginable?
‘Someone has a hell of a lot to hide,’ she says, and Zeke smiles, his whole face radiating confidence.
They drive out to the pool at Glyttinge in silence.
Slavenca’s kiosk appears to be empty, and from the front it looks as though it’s closed for good. In the car park the smell of smoke is very noticeable, the wind is coming from the north-west, blowing the charred smell towards them, particle by particle.
The owner of the Glyttinge pool.
Hakan Droumani.
A man in his fifties of Mediterranean appearance, his accent hard to pin down. He’s very cheerful, business booming in a summer like this, offering Malin and Zeke coffee in the pool’s little café, in the same building as the changing rooms with a view of the main pool.
Quick questions, answers.
‘Yes, her name’s Elisabeth. Surname? No idea. If I know anything about her? No. Her company is Water Technology, Linköping, Ltd . . . cash, always cash, that’s fine by me, of course, no account number on the invoices, but business accounts cost money so I suppose she’s trying to cut costs . . .’
By the pool stands a woman in a burka, ready to jump in.
Hakan Droumani laughs.
‘That’s the only full clothing I allow.’
‘You’ve never had any reason to call her? Like back in June, for instance, when there was a problem with the water?’
‘She called me. Health and Safety leaked it to the Correspondent before they said anything to me. But otherwise I’ve never had any reason to call her.’
Malin makes another call to directory inquiries, to the woman in the tax office: ‘doesn’t exist . . . sorry . . .’
‘Where do we go from here?’
Malin puts her mobile in her pocket and looks questioningly at Zeke. All around them in the car park outside the Glyttinge pool people are walking slowly past, on their way to or from cool relief.
‘We can try Vera Folkman’s flat again.’
Zeke’s voice full of certainty. He’s turned Malin’s theory about how things are connected into a truth, even though they don’t know that yet.
‘OK,’ Malin says. ‘If Vera Folkman is this Elisabeth.’
‘It could be a matter of urgency,’ Zeke says.
And they look at each other, two detectives made scruffy by the summer, feeling how violence is approaching, how they’re being drawn towards its core, the eye of the hurricane, the ultimate eruption of the volcano.
She feels her stomach tighten.
That isn’t fear.
But she doesn’t manage to convince herself.
Zeke puts a hand on her shoulder.
‘Relax, Malin,’ he says. But not even Zeke’s voice can reach deep enough inside her to suppress her anxiety.