Britta Svedlund taps on her keyboard, then writes down their names, addresses and numbers on a piece of paper.
‘Here you are,’ she says, handing the note to Malin.
‘Thanks.’
‘And Bengt Andersson?’ Zeke asks. ‘Do you know about anything they may have done to him?’
Britta Svedlund is suddenly defensive. ‘How did you hear about this? I don’t doubt that it’s correct. But how do you know?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t tell you that,’ Malin replies.
‘To be honest, I don’t care what they get up to outside these walls. If I cared about what the students get up to in their own time, I’d go mad.’
‘So you don’t know,’ Zeke says.
‘Precisely. But what I do know is that they don’t play truant more than the exact amount that means they still get their grades, which are actually surprisingly good.’
‘Are they at school at the moment?’
Britta Svedlund taps at her keyboard.
‘You’re in luck. They’ve just started their woodwork class. They don’t usually miss that one.’
Inside the woodwork room there is a smell of fresh sawdust and scorched wood, with a background note of varnish and solvent.
When they walk into the room the teacher, a man in his sixties with a grey cardigan and matching grey beard, leaves one pupil at a lathe and comes over to meet them.
He holds out a hand covered in shavings and sawdust, then pulls it back with a smile, and Malin notices his warm blue eyes, which have evidently not lost their sparkle with age. Instead he raises his hand in a welcoming wave.
‘Well,’ he says, and Malin picks up a strong smell of coffee and nicotine on his breath, classic teacher’s breath. ‘We’ll have to greet each other like Indians. Mats Bergman, woodwork teacher. And behind me we have class 9B. I take it you’re from the police? Britta called and said you were on your way.’
‘That’s right,’ Malin says.
‘So you know who we’re looking for. Are they here?’ Zeke says.
Mats Bergman nods. ‘They’re right at the back, in the paint room. They’re working on a design for the petrol tank on a moped.’
Behind the teacher Malin can see the paint room. Squeezed into a corner, grey-green tins of paint on shelves behind shabby glass walls, two boys inside. They’re sitting down, so Malin can only see their blond hair.
‘Are they likely to be a problem?’ she wonders.
‘Not in here,’ Mats Bergman says, smiling again. ‘I know they can be rowdy outside, but they behave themselves in here.’
Malin pulls open the door to the glass-box paint room. The boys look up from their stools, their eyes dull at first, then watchful, tense and anxious, and she looks down at them with all the authority she can muster. A red skull painted on a black petrol tank.
Bullies?
Yes.
Shooters?
Possibly.
Murderers?
Who knows? She’ll have to leave that question open.
Then the boys get up; they’re both well-built, a head taller than her, both dressed in saggy hip-hop-style jeans and hooded jackets with designer logos.
Spotty teenage faces, they’re oddly similar in their puppyish look, bony cheeks, noses a bit too big, suggesting nascent lust and an excess of testosterone.
‘Who are you?’ one of them asks as he gets up.
‘Sit down,’ Zeke snarls behind her. ‘NOW!’
As if hit by a collapsing ceiling he is pressed back down on to the paint-spattered stool again. Zeke shuts the door and they leave a dramatic pause before Malin says, ‘I’m Malin Fors, from the police, and this is my colleague Zacharias.’
Malin pulls her ID from the back pocket of her jeans.
She holds it out to the boys, who are now looking even more anxious, as if they’re worried that a whole ocean of misdemeanours has caught up with them.
‘Bengt Andersson: we know you tormented him, bullied him and made fun of him. We want to know all about that, and what you were doing on the night between last Wednesday and Thursday.’
Terror in the boys’ eyes.
‘So who’s who? Jimmy?’
The one dressed in a blue hoodie nods.
‘Okay,’ Malin says. ‘Start talking.’
The other boy, Joakim Svensson, starts to make excuses. ‘What the fuck, we were just having a laugh. Cos he was so fat. Nothing wrong with that.’
Jimmy Kalmvik goes on: ‘He was, like, completely fucked up, chasing after balls every match. And he stank. Of piss.’
‘And that made it okay for you to torment him?’ Malin can’t hide the anger in her voice.
‘Sure.’ Jimmy Kalmvik grins.
‘We’ve got witnesses who say you vandalised Bengt Andersson’s home, and that you attacked him with stones and water-bombs. And now he’s been found murdered. I can take you in to the station here and now if you don’t talk,’ Malin says.
She falls silent and lets Zeke continue: ‘This is murder. Can you get that into your thick skulls?’
‘Okay, okay.’
Jimmy Kalmvik throws out his arms and looks at Joakim Svensson, who nods.
‘Attacked him? We threw stones at him, and we cut off the power to his flat, and sure, we put shit through his letterbox, but now he’s dead anyway so what does it matter?’
‘It might matter a very great deal,’ Zeke says in a calm voice. ‘What’s to say you didn’t go too far one day? That you got too close. That there was a fight. And you just happened to kill him? Try to see it from our side, boys. So what were you doing on Wednesday night?’
‘How would we have got him out there?’ Joakim Svensson says, then goes on: ‘We were at Jimmy’s, watching a DVD.’
‘Yeah, my mum was at her bloke’s. Dad’s dead so she’s got a new one. He’s all right.’
‘Can anyone confirm that?’ Malin asks.
‘Yes, we can,’ Joakim Svensson says.
‘No one else?’
‘Do you need anyone else?’
Teenage boys, Malin thinks. They switch between arrogance and fear in a matter of seconds. A dangerous mixture of overblown self-assurance and doubt. But still: Tove’s Markus seemed very different. What would Tove make of these two? They’re not exactly heroes in the Jane Austen mould.
‘You silly little sod,’ Malin says. ‘Murder. Got it? Not torturing cats. Of course we need it confirmed, you can be fucking sure of that. What did you watch?’
‘
Joakim Svensson grins.
‘And we’ve never tortured any cats, if that’s what you think.’
Malin looks over her shoulder.
Outside the lathes and sanders and saws are in action as if nothing has happened. Someone is hammering frenetically at a box-like construction as she turns to face the boys again.
‘Have you ever fired a gun at Bengt Andersson’s flat?’
