Fire is everywhere.
It’s jumping from treetop to treetop, thundering as it tears everything in its path into burning fragments.
This summer is hot.
But the hell in the forest is even hotter. Slowly the fire has spread down towards Lake Hultsjön, and Janne and his colleagues have their backs to the lake, their hoses snaking through the vegetation, zigzagging through the still living soil down to the warm water of the lake, where generators are driving great pumps.
He slept on the floor of the fire engine last night, in the empty space where the hoses are usually kept, the night singing all around him, crackling and rumbling and stinking of smoke, of cremated animals and insects, of soil turned to ash.
The flames an unquiet wall some hundred metres away from them. Approaching faster and faster. Human beings against fire, fire against human beings.
He’s wet with sweat, feels like tearing off his clothes and fleeing the heat into the water of the lake.
The fire is the beast.
They stand firm, sticking their gushing knives right into its throat.
Afternoon meeting.
Karim Akbar clears his throat and looks around the meeting room with empty eyes, perhaps trying to find a dancing mote of dust in the air to focus on.
Malin has just outlined her suspicions about Vera Folkman, about the pools, about the false information about her company, a company that may not even exist. She’s explained that they haven’t been able to find her, that she’s ‘like the smoke from the forest fires, you can’t see it, but you know it’s there’.
‘We’ve got her flat under surveillance,’ Sven Sjöman says from his chair beside Zeke. The blinds are open, the playground behind them deserted, the nursery still closed for the summer. ‘Does anyone have any other ideas of how to get hold of her?’
‘We don’t even know if this Elisabeth is actually Vera Folkman,’ Karim says.
‘We’ll have to assume that she is,’ Malin says.
‘We’re keeping an eye out for white vans,’ Zeke says. ‘That’s what she drives. But there are loads of them in the city.’
‘And we’re checking to see if there are any registered companies with similar names,’ Malin says.
‘Any other ideas?’ Sven says once more. ‘We haven’t got enough to go into her flat, you know that, Malin. Even if the smell might suggest that she’s maltreating animals in there.’
Malin thinks: it’s starting to fit, Sven, the voices of this case are telling us that, aren’t they? And then the other maxim: It’s desire that kills.
Waldemar Ekenberg and Per Sundsten are silent.
Silent as only police officers who’ve caught a scent of the truth in a meeting room can be.
‘We spoke to the last sex offender on the list this morning. Nothing,’ Per says.
‘As much of a dead-end as Suliman Hajif and Louise Svensson. And Slavenca Visnic, she’s been busy with her kiosks, although apparently they lost her this morning.’
‘And she drives a white van,’ Per says. ‘So in theory Slavenca Visnic could be this Elisabeth.’
‘We saw the interior of her van in the forest,’ Malin says. ‘She didn’t have anything in there that could be connected to pool maintenance. No chemicals, nothing. And the manager at Glyttinge would have recognised her from the kiosk outside.’
‘Check again, just to make sure,’ Sven says. ‘You take that, Sundsten.’
Then Waldemar’s voice, full of scepticism: ‘Could a woman really have done this? Dildo or not? Doesn’t this go against a woman’s nature?’
‘Prejudice,’ Malin says. ‘There’s no shortage of female thugs and sex offenders in the past, and most of them were the victims of abuse themselves, just like Vera Folkman.’
‘And Slavenca Visnic,’ Per says.
‘I think we should put the squeeze on Suliman Hajif again,’ Waldemar says, but no one has the energy even to comment on his suggestion, and Malin shuts out the others’ voices, thinking about what it must be like to be Vera Folkman, thinking about synchronicity, how the pools and all the other connections in the case could be coincidence. And maybe Vera Folkman isn’t even this Elisabeth?
People who are people who are people who are one and the same person.
A desire to dissolve, to be reborn as someone else.
A person as drifting smoke, above a charred landscape. Personified as one single feeling, one single characteristic.
Love and evil.
False company names.
The desire to be invisible.
Cold white hands.
But how?
‘Come on,’ Karim pleads. ‘No ideas about Vera Folkman?’
And where are you now? Malin thinks.
Where am I?
Why is it dark, and what’s this over my eyes? My head aches and I feel sick, but that isn’t the biggest problem, there’s something worse, but what? I’m breathing, Tove thinks, and this is a dream, and she remembers the shade under the tree, the paper of the book under her fingers, but what sort of dream is this, what does it want with me? Markus, is that you, and she can feel how she’s breathing, recognises the smell of detergent and she tries to get up, but her legs are stuck.
She tries to push herself up with her arms, but they’re stuck, and Mum, Mum, Mum where are you, I can’t be dead already, is this my grave Mum? and Tove tries to scream but no sound comes out of her mouth.
Cloth in her mouth.
Why would I have cloth in my mouth if I were dead?
Or if I were dreaming?
Malin looks out across the office.
It’s just gone six o’clock.
Where has the afternoon gone?
Writing reports.
Looking through the register of companies to try to find any with names resembling Linköping Water Technicians.
Nothing.
You are out.
Waiting for one of the patrols to call in with something positive.
But that never happened.
The search for Vera Folkman and the surveillance on her flat has led nowhere, the shadow remains a shadow. And Slavenca Visnic seems to have gone up in smoke, she isn’t at any of her kiosks, and the patrol that went up to the fires couldn’t find her either.
One piece of news, though. Andersson in Forensics rang. Facebook had finally got back to him. Confirming that Lovelygirl was Louise Svensson, they’d managed to trace her IP number.
She spoke to Janne over the phone.
He called her. Said that they’d had to run from the fire down by Hultsjön, that one of their generators had been lost to the flames, that a hunting cottage had burned down and that a few idiots came close to being cut off by the fire in their attempts to save the cottage.
The Murvall brothers’ cottage, the brothers in the fire. The Bengt Andersson case.
‘I’m so damn tired, Malin.’
‘Go home and sleep.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘They need me here. And I’m filled with this anxiety that I can’t shake off.’
‘Me too.’
Janne’s restlessness.
Hultsjön. That was where everything came to a head last winter in connection with another case. That was where evil caught up with Maria Murvall.
The same evil?
No.
But who knows?
When we get hold of Vera Folkman she’ll have to provide DNA samples that can be compared with those of Maria Murvall’s attacker. Slavenca Visnic? I’ve already asked Karin to take care of that.
The clock on the computer says 18.52.
She calls home, hoping Tove will answer.
But no.
Her mobile.
Five rings, then the answering service.
Anxiety. Hardly unexpected, Malin thinks as she quickly shuts down her computer and leaves the station.
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