I’m dreaming now.
Processions of people dressed in colourful clothes, gifts in their hands, they’re on the way to the temple to honour the dead. The incense is thick and they’re singing, and their song is full of sun and light.
I dream about you, Mum.
That you’ll be there when I wake up.
That you and Dad will be there.
Now I’m running across an open field, then through a forest and I can sense that there’s something you haven’t told me, Mum, and it’s something you should say now.
The room around me from when I was last awake is in the dream.
It isn’t a nice room.
Shutters, concrete walls, cages, walls painted with flowers and fear and I want to run through a forest now, a burning forest, and the vegetation is chasing me, wants to tear me to pieces, Mum, and I want to wake up, but something’s keeping me in the dream, a tickly smell is pushing me down into dreamlessness, Mum.
The home number of the owner of the DIY store is listed by directory inquiries.
Sometimes you get lucky, Malin thinks.
Her colleagues are staring at her, the stairwell fading around them and everything is focused on Malin and her conversation.
A sleepy, thick voice on the other end.
‘Yes, Palle Torsson?’
‘This is Malin Fors from Linköping Police.’
‘Say again?’
Malin repeats her name.
‘Has the shop been broken into?’
‘No, we need some information about a customer. Linköping Water Technicians. You’ve delivered supplies to them on Sturegatan.’
The sleepiness is gone from the voice now.
‘The pool girl,’ Palle Torsson says. ‘You don’t get many words out of her. But she always pays cash.’
‘Do you know anything about her? Have you ever delivered supplies anywhere apart from Sturegatan?’
‘Not that I know of. I can check the computer in the store tomorrow.’
‘Now,’ Malin says. ‘I’ll meet you at the shop and check. If you’re not there in ten minutes I’ll personally shove a paintbrush up your arse.’
Janne wakes up as they pull up outside the store.
The clock on the dashboard says 03.20 and daylight is starting to flicker, the hint of relief from the heat offered by night has gone and it must already be thirty degrees outside the car.
‘Where are we?’ Janne asks.
‘Wait here,’ Malin says.
‘I’m not waiting anywhere.’
The DIY store is a single-storey purpose-built construction, with a loading bay beside the entrance. Malin imagines that most of its customers must be other businesses.
No owner in sight, no Palle Torsson.
‘We’re doing this together,’ Janne says and Malin looks at him, then tells him what’s happened, what they found in Vera Folkman’s flat.
‘Here he comes,’ Janne says once Malin has finished, and she sees a black Toyota SUV stop in front of them and a small, thickset man in shorts and a light-blue T-shirt jumps out.
Malin and Janne get out of the Volvo and walk up to the man who must be Palle Torsson.
Zeke joins them from his own car.
They’ve split up once more. Sundsten and Ekenberg are carrying on the search, driving around to see what they can find, Sven and Karim on their way back to the station ‘to do some thinking’.
Malin holds out her hand to Palle Torsson. He takes it, but looks cross.
‘Can I ask what the hell this is about?’
His round cheeks are bouncing with irritation.
‘You can,’ Zeke says. ‘We’re hunting the murderer you must have read about in the paper. And now the trail has led us here.’
‘How?’
‘The computer,’ Malin says. ‘We need to look at it now.’
I put you on the bunk, you’ve been lying there for a long time now, my white van is outside, and we’re going to go to heaven on earth.
Do you believe in the Father?
Or is there only one father for each person?
Faith.
Is that with the Father?
Can you suck the faith out of someone?
You’re clean now. I’ve scrubbed you and you’re clean, so clean.
The blue nothing.
Are you heavier now? I’ll soon find out. I’m going to carry you again.
The computer screen flickers before Malin’s eyes.
She and Zeke and Janne are leaning over Palle Torsson’s shoulders. Accommodating now, as he clicks his way through a sales database.
The little office is behind the counter and the walls are covered with bookcases full of files. The yellow linoleum is peeling away from the floor by the walls.
‘Let’s see,’ Palle Torsson says. ‘Vera Folkman, Linköping Water Technicians. Seventeen Sturegatan. As far as I can see, there’s no other delivery address.’
‘Any phone number?’ Zeke asks.
‘No, sorry.’
‘Try under Elisabeth Folkman,’ Malin says.
Palle Torsson taps at the keyboard.
‘Sorry.’
‘Just Elisabeth.’
More tapping.
‘Bingo,’ Palle Torsson says quietly. ‘An Elisabeth Folkedotter has ordered supplies for Linköping Pool Maintenance. The address is out in Tornby, number 11 Fabriksvägen. There are loads of industrial units out there.’
Linköping Pool Maintenance.
No company registered under that name.
Seconds.
Minutes.
Hours.
How much time do we have?
Is it already too late?
Tove.
I don’t want to become one of the living dead, Malin thinks, and runs for the car.
66
There you lie.
We’re getting closer. I can hear you rocking to and fro, don’t be worried, it’s not far now.
Theresa.
I saw her by the pool in the garden, she was like you, sister, and I felt it might work.
I followed her.
Rang on the door, said I was there to check the water in the pool. Then it went the way it went, she struggled and I chased her and she screamed but no one heard her, and I hit her over the head with a metal case and she calmed down.
Then I took her to the warehouse. Made some careful cuts with a scalpel, trimmed her wounds, so carefully and neatly, wanted to do a good job, and I washed her with bleach and she woke up, Theresa, and I didn’t have my mask on and she stared straight at me and she shouldn’t have seen me, because if she was going to be transformed then she would have to start from a state of facelessness, wouldn’t she?
But I still pushed the blue nothing into her and I had my cold white spiders’ legs to help me, thin as they are, and I thought: I’m hugging you to me, and I wrapped my hands around her neck, but she didn’t become you.
I wrapped her in plastic.
Buried her by a fairly isolated patch of water. Maybe her clean, unblemished body could turn into you down there in the ground, sister?
But that animal, the dog, found her before that happened.
God, how I miss you.
My beloved.
I’m coming to you now.
You’re coming to me now.
You shall die.
You shall be reborn.
All available cars are on their way to Tornby.
Janne beside Malin, this is a police operation but she can’t push him away again. None of her colleagues has probably given it a moment’s thought.
Janne.
All the things we haven’t done together, and now we’re sharing this.
The Berg roundabout.
The sun painting the roofs of Skäggetorp with newly woken rays, the white blocks of flats almost beautiful in their hot, abandoned stillness.
They drive down the hill.
One hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty kilometres an hour.
Zeke behind them, but Malin can’t see any other cars.