‘Supposed boyfriend?’ Sven says.
‘Yes, we can’t be too sure of that,’ Malin says. ‘These youngsters are hiding something from us. And the boyfriend’s lying.’
‘So how do you plan to find out what they’re hiding? And why he’s lying?’
Sven is suddenly authoritative, as if he wants to know the answers now, and not hear a plan for the investigation.
‘We’re working on it,’ Zeke says. ‘This heat isn’t helping.’
‘The heat’s the same for everyone.’
Then Sven softens slightly.
‘Well, so far it’s nothing but an ordinary missing person report.’
‘But she could have been missing for a week now. We really have to find more people who know Theresa and talk to them. And bring in the boyfriend, Peter Skold, for questioning,’ Malin says. ‘He’s at his parents’ place in the country, near Valdemarsvik. We’ll have to get his father to bring him in.
‘And we’ve asked for a list of calls made from Theresa’s mobile. She hasn’t taken any money out of her bank account since the day her parents set off for Paris; they’ve already checked.’
‘Did she have a computer?’
‘Forensics have got it.’
‘Good. Kids spend half their lives online these days.’
Not Tove, Malin thinks. Not so far as I know.
‘And the attack and rape of Josefin Davidsson?’ Sven says. ‘What do you make of that? That has to be our main priority at the moment.’
‘We’re going to check if any known sexual offenders in the area have been released from prison or any care facility recently, they could have become active again,’ Zeke says. ‘We’ll have to look at old cases as well, see if there are any similarities.’
‘Good. What about gang rape, is that a possibility? Even if nothing at the crime scene suggests that?’
‘We don’t even know if she was attacked in the Horticultural Society Park at all,’ Zeke says. ‘As far as we know, she could have been attacked somewhere else entirely and just dumped there, couldn’t she?’
‘True,’ Sven says. ‘I forgot to say that the lab prioritised their detailed analysis of Josefin Davidsson’s blood test. Completely normal. No sign that she’d been drugged. But there are a number of substances that disappear from the blood in a matter of hours. And the skin samples didn’t give any clear results, apart from standard bleach and washing powder. The washing powder is probably from her clothes, and the bleach was used to clean her, so presumably the perpetrator was trying to erase any possible evidence. Karin’s examining the microscopic blue fragments that Doctor Sjogripe found inside Josefin Davidsson.
‘So, gang rape, any thoughts?’
Malin knows what Sven is aiming at with all his inferences and questions.
But he doesn’t want to say anything, wants them to come up with it, because however you put it, it’s going to sound racist.
In the end Zeke says it: ‘We’ll have to talk to Ali Shakbari and Behzad Karami.’
Shakbari and Karami.
Guilty of having sex all night long with a hopelessly drunk girl. But they weren’t convicted of anything, and were released after their trial back in June.
‘She agreed to it.’
‘She wanted to, for fuck’s sake.’
On the kitchen table of a flat in Berga?
‘For fuck’s sake, she was up for it. She’s a slut.’
Impossible to prove the opposite. And when Sven takes another mouthful of his coffee Malin considers official truths, and unofficial ones. How the entire police force and media know that practically all gang rapes are committed by two or more young men from immigrant backgrounds, but no one writes or says anything stating that truth outright.
Non-truths.
Politically uncomfortable.
And then the problem isn’t there any more.
And if it isn’t there, it can’t be discussed.
Which leaves a problem that doesn’t exist and which therefore can never be solved.
And then there are girls like Josefin and Lovisa Hjelmstedt. That was her name, Shakbari and Karami’s victim.
Girls like Theresa Eckeved.
Theresa’s probably just gone off by herself somewhere.
Gone away.
Just like that.
When Malin sits down at her desk after the meeting her mobile rings.
Where is it?
There, in her bag.
‘Hi, Mum!’
‘Tove!’
Tove.
Malin can see her in front of her, the excitement in her blue eyes, her brown hair lifted by the breeze from the sea.
Are you both OK? she thinks.
I miss you even more now I hear your voice.
But at the same time, it’s good that you’re not in the city.
It must be past midnight. What are you doing up so late? You ought to be in bed.
But Malin holds back. Wants to show her trust.
‘How’s everything there, then?’
‘We went on a boat-trip today. To a little beach.’
‘Was it good?’
‘Yes, although the trip back was a bit boring, but I had a book with me. We’ve just been out to get some food.’
‘Is the food good?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Loads of things cooked on skewers?’
It’s as if the distance is making our conversation more superficial than our conversations usually are, Malin thinks. How the words can be just as trivial across the kitchen table in the morning, but they gain tone, context and meaning from the fact that she and Tove are both there. As if all the intuitive contact disappears somewhere on the way between all the transmitters, cables and satellites.
‘Which book are you reading?’
‘Several. But I didn’t like
The sound of a xylophone in the background, a band playing in the hotel dining room?
‘Is that some sort of orchestra I can hear?’
‘They’re playing in the dining room. Is it hot at home?’
‘Boiling, Tove.’
‘It’s not too bad here. Do you want to talk to Dad?’
‘Why not.’
‘Malin?’
Janne’s voice.
‘Yes. So how are you both?’
‘Fine. But it’s hot. How are things at home?’
‘Hot, unbelievably hot. I’ve never known anything like it.’
