‘Nothing else?’
‘Yes,’ Ebba says. ‘She sounded scared. And hesitant. She was sort of whispering.’
Malin tries to identify the number through Yellow Pages.
Nothing.
It must be ex-directory, and not even they could get round that without a load of time-consuming paperwork.
She calls.
No answer, not even an answer-machine.
But a minute later her phone rings.
She picks up the receiver. Says, ‘Yes, this is Malin Fors.’
‘Daniel here. Have you got anything new for me about the Andersson investigation?’
She gets cross, then strangely calm, as if she had been wanting to hear his voice, but pushes the thought aside.
‘No.’
‘The harassment accusation, any comment?’
‘Have you suddenly turned stupid, Daniel?’
‘I’ve been away a few days. Aren’t you going to ask where?’
‘No.’ Wants to ask, doesn’t want to ask.
‘I was in Stockholm. At
‘Why?’ The question pops out of her mouth.
‘So you do care after all? Never do what they expect you to, Malin. Never.’
‘Goodbye, Daniel.’
She hangs up, then the phone rings again. Daniel? No. Unknown number on the display, silence at the other end of the line.
‘Fors here. Who is this?’
Breathing, hesitation. Maybe fear. Then a soft but anxious female voice, as if it knows it’s speaking words that are forbidden.
‘Well,’ the woman says, and Malin waits.
‘My name is Viveka Crafoord.’
‘Viveka, I-’
‘I work as a psychoanalyst here in Linkoping. It’s about one of my patients.’
Malin instinctively wants to tell the woman to stop, not to say anything else; she isn’t allowed to hear confidential information about a patient, just as this woman who calls herself Viveka Crafoord isn’t allowed to reveal it.
‘I’ve been reading,’ the woman says. ‘About the case you seem to be working on, the murder of Bengt Andersson.’
‘You mentioned-’
‘I think one of my patients… well, there’s something you need to know.’
‘Which patient?’
‘You’ll appreciate that I can’t say.’
‘But perhaps we can talk anyway?’
‘Not like this. But come to my practice at eleven o’clock today. It’s on Drottninggatan, number 3, opposite McDonald’s. The door-code is 9490.’
Viveka Crafoord hangs up.
Malin looks at the time on her computer screen: 7.44. Three and a quarter hours.
Martini and wine and cognac. She feels bloated.
Gets up and heads towards the stairs leading down to the gym.
How long have I been walking now?
Dawn has broken but it still isn’t day. I’m moving across the fields, but I’ve got no idea where I am.
I am an open wound, but the cold means that I can’t feel my body. I put one foot in front of the other, can’t get far enough away. Am I being hunted? Has the blackness woken up? Is it close to me?
Is that a colour, the blackness coming with its car? Is that the engine of darkness?
Turn off the light.
It’s blinding me. Be careful of my eyes.
They might be the only thing that’s left of me intact.
Eyes on the road, Johnny Axelsson thinks.
Eyes. Use them carefully and you’ll arrive safely.
Out in the patches of forest now.
The open fields are nice, but the cold and wind are making the visibility worse than usual, as if the earth were breathing and its air is turning to mist when it meets the chill atmosphere.
Eyes.
A deer?
No.
But.
But what the hell is that?
Johnny Axelsson changes down the gears and slows down, flashing his lights to scare the deer away from the verge, but hell, it isn’t a deer, it’s, it’s a…
What is it?
The car seems stuck to the road.
A what?
A person? A naked person? Oh fuck, fuck, what does she look like?
And what’s she doing here?
Out on the plain? Like this? In the morning?
Johnny Axelsson rolls past, stops, and in his rear-view mirror he sees the woman stagger past, how she doesn’t take any notice of the car, just carries on.
Wait, he thinks.
He’s in a hurry to get to work in the Ikea warehouse, but she can’t just carry on walking like that. It’s completely wrong.
He opens the car door, his body remembers how cold it is, and he hesitates, then runs after the woman.
He puts his arm on her shoulder and she stops, turns round and her cheeks, has she burned them or is it the cold, the skin on her stomach, where is it, and how can she walk on feet like that, they’re black, as black as the currants in his garden at home?
She looks past him.
Then into his eyes.
She smiles.
Light in her eyes.
And she falls into his arms.
The twelve-kilo dumbbell doesn’t want to leave the floor no matter how hard Malin tries to lift it.
Damn, that’s heavy, and I ought to manage at least ten reps.
Johan Jakobsson beside her, came down just after her and now he is driving her on, as if he wants them to drive out the bad news together.
Johan had managed to get into the last folder in Rickard Skoglof’s hard drive last night at home, once the children had gone to bed. The only thing in the folder had been more pictures, of Rickard Skoglof himself and Valkyria Karlsson in various sexual positions on a large animal skin, their bodies painted with patterns resembling tribal tattoos.
‘Come on, Malin!’
She raises the dumbbell, pushes it upwards.
‘Come on, damn it!’
