Then you run through the years, further from me, but closer each time because you are leaving an impression within me.
You are twelve.
With love I creep into your room at night, stroking your cheek with my hand, breathing in the smell of your hair.
We’re on the side of the good guys, I think then.
You, I, your mum, our dreams and all the life we live together as one and the same.
The world is created through you.
You are fourteen.
Opinionated, stubborn, provocative, angry, but the embodiment of friendliness. You are the most beautiful person the world has ever seen.
I understand you, Theresa. Don’t think I don’t. I’m not stupid. I just don’t want to move too fast.
We are the same feeling, you and I.
The feeling of unending love.
8
The dark-skinned cleaner sweeps his mop back and forth over the speckled yellow linoleum floor, shadows become sunlight, which becomes shadow as his never still body moves across the sunlit window at the far end of the corridor of the hospital ward.
When the sun shines on it, parts of the floor seem to lift. A faint smell of disinfectant and sweat, the sweat emitted slowly by bodies at rest.
Ward ten.
A general ward. The seventh floor of the high-rise hospital building. Doors to some rooms stand open, pale pictures on greying, yellow-painted walls. Through the windows of the rooms Malin can see the city, sunburned and still, panting mutely, its enforced desolation.
Patients resting on their beds. Some wearing green or urine-yellow hospital gowns, others their own clothes. It isn’t hot inside the hospital, the rumbling ventilation units are obviously adequate, yet it still feels as though listlessness reigns supreme here as well, as though the sick were getting sicker, as though those who have to work through the summer can’t quite manage their allotted tasks.
A nurse materialises in a doorway.
Flowing red hair, freckles covering more than half her round face.
She looks at Malin and Zeke with big green eyes.
‘You’re from the police,’ she says. ‘It’s good that you got here so soon.’
Malin and Zeke stop in front of the nurse. Is it so obvious? Malin thinks, and says: ‘And the girl, Josefin Davidsson. Where can we find her?’
‘Room eleven. She’s in there with her parents. But first you need to talk to Doctor Sjogripe. If you go in here, she’ll be with you shortly.’
The red-haired nurse indicates the room she’s just come out of.
‘The doctor will be here in five minutes.’
The clock sticking out from the wall in the corridor says 12.25.
They should have got lunch on the way. Malin’s stomach rumbles with a gentle feeling of nausea.
They close the door behind them. Sit on wooden chairs in front of a desk, its grey laminate top covered with advertising folders and leaflets, yellow files. A window beside them looks onto a dark ventilation shaft. There are several anonymous files on the bookcase against the wall behind the desk.
Warmer in here.
Rumbling from the dusty, heart-shaped ventilation grille in the ceiling.
Five minutes, ten.
They sit in silence next to each other. Want to save their words, pull them out newly washed and clean later. For now, this silence is all that is needed. And what would they say?
What do you think about this?
We’ll have to see.
Has she been raped, or did the blood come from somewhere else? And the smell of bleach? The whiteness? The cleansed wounds?
The door opens and Doctor Sjogripe comes in, wearing a white coat.
She’s maybe fifty-five years old, cropped grey hair clinging to her head, making her cheeks, nose and mouth look sharper than they really are.
A pair of reading glasses with transparent plastic frames hangs around her neck. The cheap sort, for a pair of twinkling eyes. Intelligent, aware, self-confident, like only the eyes of someone who has had everything from the very start can be.
Both Malin and Zeke practically leap out of their chairs. Anything else was unthinkable.
Sjogripe.
The most blue-blooded family in the whole of Ostergotland. The family estate at Sjolanda outside Kisa is a significant employer, one of the largest and most profitable agricultural businesses in the country.
‘Louise Sjogripe.’
Her handshake is firm, but not hard, feminine but with a certain pressure.
Doctor Sjogripe lets them sit down before taking her own seat behind the desk.
Malin has no idea what position Louise Sjogripe occupies in the family, but can’t help wondering. Doesn’t want to wonder. Gossip, gossip, think about why we’re here instead.
‘Considering the circumstances, Josefin Davidsson is doing fairly well now,’ Louise Sjogripe says. The way she says the words makes her voice sound hoarse.
‘What can you tell us? I’m assuming you conducted the examination?’
Zeke sounds slightly irritated, but not so as most people would notice.
Louise Sjogripe smiles.
‘Yes, I examined her and documented her injuries. And I’ll tell you what I think.’
‘Thank you, we’d be grateful, I mean pleased, if you could,’ Malin says, trying to look the doctor/aristocrat in the eyes, but the self-awareness they exude makes her look towards the window instead.
‘In all likelihood she has been abused. She couldn’t have caused the wounds on her arms and legs herself, and they weren’t caused in self-defence. Those don’t usually look, how can I put it, quite so regular. It’s as if someone has inflicted the injuries with a sharp object and then washed and cleaned them carefully.’
‘What sort of object?’ Malin wonders.
‘Impossible to say. A knife? Maybe, maybe not.’
‘And the bleeding from the vagina?’
‘Her hymen was broken by penetration, and the blood vessels on the inside of the vagina were damaged. Hence the bleeding. But that’s normal with a first penetration, so it’s likely that a relatively soft object was used, with a degree of caution.’
Louise Sjogripe takes a deep breath, not because what she has just said seems to trouble her, but to emphasise what she’s about to say.
‘There are no traces of sperm inside her. But the perpetrator doesn’t seem to have used a condom, because I found no sign of any lubricant. What I did find, however, were some very small, almost microscopic traces of something resembling blue plastic, as if Josefin Davidsson was penetrated by an object of some sort rather than a male member.’
‘And . . .’
Zeke tries to ask a question, but Doctor Sjogripe waves her hand in front of her face dismissively.
‘I’ve already sent the traces to National Forensics. I know the routine. I’ve also taken blood samples from the blood on her thighs. Nothing apart from her own.
‘And you don’t have to worry. I haven’t said anything about the girl’s injuries to her parents. They’re the details of a crime, so I’ll let you deal with that. I just discuss the medical situation with them.’
