imaginative fifteen-year-olds are capable of?
Tove and Markus in her parents’ apartment.
On the bed.
Malin can see them in front of her.
‘And then we have the teenagers who made Bengt Andersson’s life a misery,’ Sven Sjoman says. ‘You and Zeke will have to question them. Get them at school after this meeting. They ought to be there at this time of day.’
Sure, Sven, sure, Malin thinks, then says, ‘If they aren’t at school we’ll find out where they live, and we’ve got their mobile numbers.’
After the two lads, she wants to bring the Murvall brothers in for questioning, bring the old woman in and put some pressure on her. Listen to the wives.
The brothers.
The looks on the women’s faces.
No friendliness, just suspicion against
What is that sort of loneliness? Where does it come from? From the repeated unkindnesses of the world around them? From the fact that they keep getting no as an answer? From everybody. Or is that sort of loneliness granted to each of us? Is it within all of us, and, if it gets the chance to grow, does it simply overwhelm us?
The awareness of loneliness. The fear.
When did I first see that loneliness, that antipathy in Tove’s face? When did I first see anything other than pure kindness and joy in her eyes?
She was maybe two and a half. Suddenly there among the innocence and charm was an element of calculation and anxiety. The child had become a human being.
Loneliness. Fear. Most people manage to hold on to some of the child’s joy, the naivety, when they encounter other people, when they feel a sense of belonging. Manage to overcome the possibly innate loneliness. Like Fredrik Unning tried to do today. Reach out a hand, as if he had realised he was worth more than being left to his own devices by his parents and forced to go along with boys who would really rather have nothing to do with him.
Happiness is possible.
Like with Tove. Like with Janne, in spite of everything. Like with myself.
But the women round the Murvall family table? Where did their unadulterated joy disappear to? Where did it go? Can it have run out for good? Could it be true, Malin thinks, as Sven summarises the state of the investigation, that there is only a finite amount of happiness free of guile, and that every time some of that sort of happiness is lost, it is gone for good and replaced instead by muteness, hardness?
And what happens if we are forced to give in to loneliness?
What sort of violence might be born then? In that point of fracture? In that final exclusion?
The child holding out its arms to its mother, to a nursery-school assistant.
‘Mum, I was thinking of staying at Dad’s tonight, is that all right?’
Tove’s message on her mobile. Malin listens to the message as she walks through the open-plan office.
Malin calls her.
‘It’s Mum.’
‘Mum, you got my message.’
‘I got it. It’s okay. How are you getting out there?’
‘I’ll go down to the station. His shift ends at six, so we can head out then.’
‘Okay, I’m probably going to be working late anyway.’
Sjoman’s words at the meeting: ‘I’ve already called them in for questioning. If the whole Murvall family doesn’t turn up here tomorrow, we can go and get them. But we haven’t got enough for a search warrant as far as the guns are concerned.’
When she ends the call to Tove, Malin calls Janne. Gets the answering service.
‘Is it right that Tove’s staying the night at yours? Just checking.’
Then she sits down behind her desk. Waits. Sees Borje Svard hesitantly twisting the ends of his moustache on the far side of the room.
32
The facade of the main building of Ljungsbro school is matt grey, the low, dark-red-tiled roofs are covered by a thin layer of snow; small swirls of frozen moments, circular patterns etched on to several of the larger surfaces.
They park by the craft rooms, aquariums for handicrafts in a row of single-storey buildings along the road leading into town.
Malin looks into the rooms, empty, with dormant saws, lathes, firing and welding equipment. They walk past what must be a technology room; pulleys and chains hanging from the ceiling, one by one, as if ready for use. When she looks in the other direction she can just make out Vretaliden care home, and in her mind’s eye she sees Gottfrid Karlsson sitting in his bed, under an orange health service blanket, quietly driving her on: ‘What happened to Bengt Andersson? Who killed him?’
Malin and Zeke walk to the main building, past what must be the school dining room. Inside the frosted windows the staff are scrubbing pans and work surfaces. Zeke pulls open the door of the main entrance, eager to escape the cold, and in the large, airy space some fifty pupils are all talking at once, their breath fogging the windows on to the school grounds.
No one pays any attention to Malin and Zeke, their attention utterly absorbed by the conversations that belong to teenage life.
Tove’s world.
This is what it looks like.
Malin notices a thin boy with long black hair and an anxious look, talking to a pretty blonde girl.
On the far side of the room a sign above a glass door announces: Head’s Office.
‘Vamos,’ Zeke says as he catches sight of the sign.
Britta Svedlund, head of Ljungsbro school, has them shown in at once, perhaps the first time the police have been to the school in her time here.
But probably not.
The school is known to be problematic, and every year several of its pupils are sent to reform school, somewhere far out in the countryside, for further education in low-level criminality.
Britta Svedlund crosses her legs, her skirt riding up her thighs, revealing an unusual amount of black nylon, and Malin notes that Zeke has trouble controlling his eyes. He surely can’t imagine that the woman in front of them is beautiful, cigarette-wrinkled, worn and grey-haired as she is.
The male curse, Malin thinks, trying to get comfortable on her chair.
The walls of the office are lined with bookcases and reproductions of Bruno Liljefors paintings. The desk is dominated by an antiquated computer.
After listening to Malin and Zeke’s explanation of why they are there, Britta Svedlund says, ‘They’re leaving this spring, Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson, Jimmy and Jocke; they’ve only got a couple of months left and it’ll be a relief to be rid of them. Every year we have a few rotten eggs, and we get to send a few of them away. Joakim and Jimmy are craftier than that. But we do what we can with them.’
Malin and Zeke must have succeeded in looking curious, because Britta Svedlund goes on: ‘They never do anything illegal, or if they have, they’ve never been caught. They come from stable backgrounds, which is more than you can say about a lot of pupils at this school. No, what they do is bully people, students and staff alike. And they’re competitive. I swear that every lamp that gets broken in this school has been kicked in by them.’
‘We’ll need their parents’ phone numbers,’ Zeke says. ‘Home addresses.’
