But it won’t work. She lets the weight fall to the floor.
A dull rattle.
‘I’m going to do a bit of running,’ she tells Johan.
The sweat is pouring from her brow. The alcohol from dinner last night is being forced out, step by step, on the treadmill.
Malin looks at herself in the mirror as she runs, the sweat dripping down her brow; how pale she is even if the exercise is making her cheeks red. Her face. The face of a thirty-three-year-old. Lips that look plumper than usual because of the workout.
In recent years her face seems to have found itself, as if the skin has settled into its proper place over her cheekbones at last. The girlish quality she used to have has gone for good, no trace of it left after the exertion of the past few weeks. She looks at the clock on the wall: 9.24.
Johan has just gone.
Time for her to shower and then head off to Viveka Crafoord.
The internal phone rings.
Malin sprints across the room and picks up the receiver.
Zeke on the line. Agitated.
‘We’ve just had a call from A &E. A Johnny Axelsson has brought in a woman he found naked and badly beaten up out on the plain.’
‘I’m coming.’
‘She’s in a bad way, but according to the doctor I spoke to she evidently whispered your name, Malin.’
‘What did you say?’
‘The woman whispered your name, Malin.’
69
Viveka Crafoord will have to wait.
Everyone else will have to wait.
Apart from three.
Bengt Andersson.
Maria Murvall.
And now this other woman, found in exactly the same state.
The victims run out of the black forests, out across the white fields. Where’s the source of the violence?
Zeke is driving at seventy kilometres an hour; forty too fast. The stereo is silent. Nothing but the abrupt, stressed sounds of the engine. They’ve had to take a detour, there are roadworks; a frozen pipe must have burst.
Djurgardsgatan, the trees of the Horticultural Society, grey and straggly, but still somehow sparkling. Lasarettsgatan and the pink-brick blocks of flats put up in the eighties.
Postmodernism.
Malin read the article about the architect in the
They swing up towards the hospital, the yellow facade of the main building faded by the sun, but the council’s money is needed for other things than replacing the cladding. They take a short cut over a traffic island, knowing that they really shouldn’t, that they’re supposed to drive round, a long way round, but today there just isn’t time.
And they’re in front of the entrance to the A &E department, braking as they swing round the turning circle. They park and run towards the entrance.
A nurse meets them, a short, stocky woman with close-set eyes that make her thin nose stick out from her head.
‘The doctor wants to talk to you,’ she says as she leads them down a corridor, past several empty treatment rooms.
‘Dr who?’ Zeke asks.
‘Dr Stenvinkel, he’s the surgeon who’s going to be operating on her.’
Hasse, Malin thinks, and at first she feels a resistance to meeting Markus’s dad on duty, then realises that it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
‘I know him,’ Malin whispers to Zeke as they follow in the nurse’s wake.
‘Who?’
‘The doctor. Just so you know. He’s Tove’s boyfriend’s dad.’
‘It’ll be fine, Malin.’
The nurse stops in front of a closed door. ‘You can go in. No need to knock.’
Hans Stenvinkel is a different man now compared to last night. Gone is the easy-going social individual, and instead there is a strict, sombre and focused person sitting before them. The whole of his green-clad body exudes competence, and the way he greeted her was personal but formal; subtext: we know each other, but we’ve both got important work to do.
Zeke is squirming on his chair, evidently wound up by the authority of the room. How the person in the green jacket bestows a sort of worthiness to the whitewashed textured walls, the oak-veneer bookcase and the worn wooden top of the simple desk.
This is what it used to be like, Malin thinks, when people had respect for doctors, before the Internet made it possible for everyone to be an expert in their own ailments.
‘You can see her in a moment,’ Hans says. ‘She’s conscious, but she’ll have to be anaesthetised soon so that we can take care of her injuries. She needs a skin transplant. But at least we can do that here. We’re the best place in the country for dealing with burns.’
‘Frostbite?’ Zeke asks.
‘That too. But from a medicinal point of view, they’re more like actual burns. So I dare say that she couldn’t be in better hands.’
‘Who is she?’
‘We don’t know. She just keeps saying that she wants to see you, Malin, so I expect you know who she is.’
Malin nods in agreement. ‘Then it’s probably best that she gets to see me. If she’s up to it. We really need to find out who she is.’
‘I think she could handle a short conversation.’
‘Is her condition very serious?’
‘Yes,’ Hans says. ‘She couldn’t possibly have caused those injuries herself. She’s lost a lot of blood. But we’re giving her transfusions at the moment. We’ve relieved the shock with adrenalin. Burns and frost damage, like I said, knife wounds, cuts, compression injuries, and her vagina has been seriously wounded. It’s astonishing that she didn’t lose consciousness. You can’t help but wonder what sort of monster is running loose on the plain.’
‘How long could she have been out there?’
‘I’d say all night. The frost damage is severe. But we should be able to save most of her toes and fingers.’
‘Have you documented the injuries?’
‘Yes, exactly as you want them.’
It’s obvious from Hans’s voice that he’s done this before. With Maria Murvall?
‘Good,’ Zeke says.
‘And the man who came in with her?’
‘He left his number. He works at Ikea. We tried to get him to wait but he said, “The spirit of Ingvar, old IK himself, isn’t happy if you get to work late.” We couldn’t persuade him to stay.’
Then Hans looks her in the eye. ‘I’m warning you, Malin. She looks like she’s been through the fires of hell. It’s terrifying. You have to have incredible willpower to get through what she must have suffered.’
‘People tend to have a ridiculous amount of willpower when their survival is at stake,’ Zeke says.
