‘And when did you fire the shots?’ Malin asks.
‘Just before Christmas, a Thursday.’
‘Will we go to prison now? We’re only fifteen.’
Britta Svedlund shakes her head wearily.
‘That depends on whether you co-operate or not,’ Zeke says. ‘Tell us anything you think could be of interest to us, and I mean everything.’
‘But we don’t know anything else.’
‘We don’t know shit.’
‘So you didn’t torment Bengt after that? Things didn’t get out of hand one evening? Well?’
‘Tell us what happened,’ Malin says. ‘We need to know.’
‘But we didn’t do anything else.’
‘And the night between Wednesday and Thursday the week before last? Before Ball-Bengt was found?’
‘We’ve already told you, we were watching
‘You can go,’ Zeke says, and Malin nods in agreement.
‘Does that mean we’re free?’ Jimmy Kalmvik’s voice, naive.
‘It means,’ Zeke says, ‘that you’ll be hearing from us again in due course. You don’t fire shots through someone’s window without there being consequences.’
Britta Svedlund looks tired, seems to be longing for whisky and a cigarette, seems happy that the boys have left her office.
‘God knows, I’ve really tried with those two.’
‘Maybe they can learn from this,’ Malin says.
‘Let’s hope so. Are you close to arresting anyone for the murder?’
Zeke shakes his head.
‘We’re following several lines of inquiry,’ Malin says. ‘We have to look into every possibility, every little chance, however improbable it might be.’
Britta Svedlund looks out through the window. ‘What’s going to happen to the boys now?’
‘They’ll receive letters calling them in for questioning, if the lead detective thinks it worth while.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Britta Svedlund says. ‘They have to be made to realise that what they did was wrong.’
Back at Police Headquarters Karim Akbar meets them in reception.
Irritation like a cloud over his head.
‘What have you two been up to?’
‘We’ve-’
‘I know. You’ve been out to see Rakel Murvall and bullied her with questions about who she had sex with forty- five years ago.’
‘We didn’t bully anyone,’ Zeke says.
‘According to her you did. She called and made a formal complaint. And she’s going to ring “the paper”, as she put it.’
‘She’s no-’
‘Fors, how do you think this is going to look? She’ll come across as a defenceless little old lady, and we’ll be monsters.’
‘But-’
‘No buts. We’ve got nothing to go on there. We have to leave the Murvalls alone. If you, both of you, don’t stop, Jakobsson will have to take over.’
‘Shit,’ Malin whispers.
Karim moves closer to her. ‘One day of peace and quiet, Fors, that’s all I ask.’
‘Shit.’
‘Suspicions, Fors, aren’t good enough any more. Almost two weeks have passed now. We need something concrete. Not a load of crap about who is whose brother and the fact that we’re bullying an old woman in the absence of anything better.’
The door to the open-plan office opens. Sven Sjoman. Resigned look.
‘The evidence isn’t strong enough to hold the Murvall brothers for the break-in at the weapons store in Kvarn. We have to let them go.’
‘For God’s sake, they had hand grenades from there. Hand grenades!’
‘Yes, but who’s to say they didn’t buy them from someone in the underworld? Poaching and possession of illegal firearms isn’t enough for the court to issue formal arrest warrants. And they’ve confessed.’
Then a voice from behind the reception desk. ‘Call for you, Malin.’
She takes the call at her desk, the phone cold and heavy in her hand.
‘Fors here.’
‘This is Karin Johannison.’
‘Hi, Karin.’
‘I’ve just got an email from Birmingham. They haven’t managed to get anything from that sample of Maria Murvall’s clothes, it was evidently too messed up, but they’re running another test. Something completely new.’
‘Nothing? What can we hope to get from the new test?’
‘You sound tired. Did what we came up with from the small-bore rifle help at all?’
‘Yes, it pretty much means we can shut down that line of inquiry.’
‘And?’
‘Well, what can I say, Karin. Kids, or rather teenagers, left to their own devices. That’s never a good idea.’
60
‘Mum, Mum.’
Malin hears Tove calling her from the kitchen, presumes she’s finished with her maths homework. Mathematics, yuk. Mathematics must be the language of things, seeing as it has never been mine.
‘Mum, come here.’
The teenager.
The child.
The almost adult.
The adult.
All four in one person, with a desire to define her place in the world, a world that doesn’t wait for you, and only reluctantly lets you have standing room. Even if you get a good education, Tove, it isn’t certain you’ll get a job. Become a doctor, a teacher, something secure. But is there anything secure? Follow your heart. Become whatever you like, as long as it’s what you really want. Your response so far: I don’t know. Maybe write books. So anachronistic. Write scripts for computer games instead, Tove. Do anything, just don’t be in too much of a rush, see the world, wait a while before having children.
But somehow you already know all that. You’re more sensible than I ever was.
‘What is it, Tove?’
Malin settles on the sofa, turns down the television and the newsreader moves his lips without making a sound.
‘Did you call Grandad?’
Shit. ‘No, didn’t we say you were going to call?’
‘I thought you were going to call?’
‘I don’t know, but either way we have to do it now.’
‘I’ll call him,’ echoes Tove’s voice from the kitchen, and Malin hears her pick up the phone, dial the number and wait before saying, ‘Grandad, it’s Tove… yes, that sounds great… tickes… when?… the twenty-sixth?… well, there’s something. You see, I’ve got a boyfriend… Markus… two years older… and I… thought maybe he could come too…
