Fredrik Unning’s room is on the third floor of the house. The walls are covered in skateboarding posters. Bam Margera from
Fredrik Unning sits on the edge of the bed, focused on them this time, his previous nonchalance vanished, and gone too are his parents; his insurance broker father has taken his boutique manager wife on a little trip to Paris. ‘They go there every now and then. Mum likes shopping and Dad likes the food. It’s nice to be on my own.’
Empty pizza boxes in the kitchen, half-eaten Gorby pies, fizzy-drink bottles and an overflowing bag of rubbish in the middle of the floor.
Malin is next to Fredrik Unning on the bed, Zeke by the biggest window in the room, a dark silhouette against the light.
‘Do you know anything about Bengt Andersson that we ought to know?’
‘If I tell you anything, no one else will find out that I was the one who told you, will they?’
‘No,’ Malin says, and Zeke nods in agreement, adding, ‘This will stay between us. No one will know where the information came from.’
‘They never left him alone,’ Fredrik Unning says, staring at the curtains. ‘They were always getting at him. It was like an obsession.’
‘Getting at Bengt Andersson?’ Zeke over by the window. ‘Who was getting at him?’
And Fredrik Unning gets scared again, his body slumps, moves away from Malin and she thinks how fear has become increasingly common around her over the years, how person after person seems to have understood that silence is always safest, that every word uttered carries the potential for danger. And maybe they’re right.
‘Bengt,’ Fredrik Unning says.
‘Who? It’s okay,’ Malin says. ‘You can do it.’
And her words help Fredrik to relax.
‘Jocke and Jimmy. They were always making fun of him, Ball-Bengt.’
‘Jocke and Jimmy?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are their real names? Jocke and Jimmy?’
Fresh hesitation. Fresh fear.
‘We need to know.’
‘Joakim Svensson and Jimmy Kalmvik.’ Fredrik Unning says their names in a firm voice.
‘And who are they?’
‘They’re in year nine in my school, they’re real bastards. Big and mean.’
Shouldn’t you be at school now? Malin thinks, but she doesn’t ask.
‘What did they do to Ball-Bengt?’
‘They used to follow him, tease him, shout things at him. And I think they messed up his bike, and threw things at him, stones and stuff. I think they might even have poured some sort of sludge through his letterbox.’
‘Sludge?’ Zeke asking.
‘Flour, dirt, water, ketchup, anything, all mixed together.’
‘And how do you know this?’
‘They forced me to join in sometimes. Otherwise I’d get beaten up.’
‘Did you get beaten up?’
Shame in Fredrik Unning’s eyes, fear: ‘They won’t find out that I’ve told you, will they? The bastards torture cats as well.’
‘In what way?’
‘They catch them and stick mustard up their backsides.’
Brave lads, Malin thinks.
‘Have you seen them do that?’
‘No, but I’ve heard it from other people.’
Zeke from the window, his voice like the crack of a whip. ‘Might they have shot through his window with a rifle? Did you join in with that as well?’
Fredrik Unning shakes his head. ‘I’ve never done anything like that. Anyway, where would they get the gun from?’
Outside the clouds have thinned slightly, and through a few cracks some tentative rays of light are spreading across the greyish-white ground, making it clear and vibrant, and in her mind’s eye Malin can see what the Roxen must look like in summer from up here, in warm light, when the rays have full access to a completely blank surface. But sadly a winter like this one doesn’t make it easy to think of warmth.
‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says. ‘Those two sound pretty tough, Jocke and Jimmy. Serious hard cases.’
‘I feel sorry for Fredrik Unning,’ Malin says.
‘Sorry for him?’
‘You must have noticed how lonely he is? He must have been prepared to do anything to hang out with the tough kids.’
‘So they didn’t force him?’
‘I don’t doubt that they did. But it’s not that simple.’
‘It doesn’t sound like they come from bad backgrounds.’
Fredrik Unning’s words a short while before: ‘Jimmy’s dad works on oil platforms and his mum’s a housewife. Jocke’s dad’s dead and his mum works as a secretary.’
Malin’s phone rings. Sven Sjoman’s name on the screen.
‘Malin here.’
She tells him about their visit to the Murvalls, and about what they’d learned from Fredrik Unning.
‘We’re thinking of going to talk to Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson right away.’
‘We need to have a meeting,’ Sven says. ‘They’ll have to wait an hour or two.’
‘But-’
‘We’ve got a team meeting in thirty minutes, Malin.’
The children are defying the cold.
The playground outside the windows of the meeting room is full of sluggish little moon-figures staggering about in their padded winter overalls. Blue children, red ones and one little orange warning child: be careful with me, I’m little, I might break. The assistants shiver in grey-blue fleece trousers, their breath like thick smoke. They jump on the spot when they’re not helping some little one who’s fallen over, flapping their arms round their bodies.
If this cold doesn’t give up soon, everyone will have to learn how to live with it. Like a broken back.
Borje Svard’s report, people with links to Rickard Skoglof. Interviews with kids who seem to live out their lives in front of a computer or as characters in role-playing games. ‘Anything but real life.’
The hesitation in Borje’s body. Malin can see it, smell it. As if all of life had given him just one single lesson: don’t take anything for granted.
The results of the background checks.
Rickard Skoglof seemed to have had a normal upbringing in an ordinary working-class home in Atvidaberg; his father worked at Facit until it was shut down, then at Adelnas fruit farm, where his son had also worked during summer holidays when he was at secondary school. Two years in sixth form. Then nothing. Valkyria Karlsson grew up on a farm in Dalsland. She got two-thirds of the way through an anthropology course at Lund University after sixth form in Dals Ed.
Karim Akbar. Also hesitant, but nonetheless: ‘This ?sir angle. Keep digging, there’s something there.’
His voice a little too confident, as if he were taking on the role of the convinced, encouraging boss.
Johan Jakobsson hollow-eyed. Winter vomiting bug, long nights awake, changed sheets. New wrinkles in his brow every morning, deeper and deeper.
Malin shuts her eyes. Has no energy for this meeting. Wants to get out and work. To talk to Ljungsbro’s own teenage bullies, see what they know. Maybe they can give them some leads, maybe they got hold of a gun and are responsible for firing into Ball-Bengt’s flat, maybe their bad behaviour just got out of hand; who knows what two
