16
Soporific paperwork and unresolved discussions about the case after the morning meeting. Malin didn’t have time to call her contacts.
They’ve come into the city-centre and now the oxygen seems to be abandoning the air altogether under the parasols covering the tables outside the Gyllenfiket cafe, but at least the light is bearable in the shade.
There are two customers apart from Malin and Zeke, an elderly couple drinking coffee and eating slices from a whole loaf of coffee-bread. It is almost half past four and the heat has culminated in needle-sharp sunlight, and the scented particles from the forest fires have found their way across the city once more.
Iced coffee.
They sip in silence, taking it in turns, and over by the windows of the Granden shopping arcade a pigeon struts to and fro in front of a branch of Intersport. Inside the windows the beach balls and blow-up mattresses look more and more deflated by the second.
‘Can you smell it?’ Zeke wonders.
‘Yes,’ Malin says.
‘Do you think they can stop it?’
‘They’re bound to.’
Zeke nods.
‘Take a look around, Malin. You could almost imagine we were on our own in the city. Just us and our prey.’
‘My head feels like it weighs a couple of thousand kilos in this heat,’ Malin says. ‘It just doesn’t seem to want to think.’
‘Does your head ever want to?’
‘Very funny, Zeke.’
‘I saw a documentary on television last night,’ Zeke says. ‘Some wildlife programme. About some bloody spider that mates with its own offspring.’
‘Sounds like a good way for a species to wipe itself out.’
‘Somehow it still led to a sort of evolution,’ Zeke says. ‘Spiders with close-set eyes.’
A young woman walks past with a St Bernard dog on a lead, the dog’s huge body swaying back and forth, looking ready to pass out.
‘Zeke, I was thinking of having a word with Nathalie Falck this evening.’
‘Why not? Just be careful.’
Malin breathes in the summer air, feeling the heat in her lungs.
They go their separate ways at Tradgardstorget, and when Zeke has disappeared from view Malin pulls out her mobile.
Senior Consultant Hans Stenvinkel sinks onto the uncomfortable chair in his hot office in ward nine of the University Hospital.
A five-hour operation just finished.
He was trying to save the leg of a motorcyclist who had crashed into a tractor outside Nassjo and been flown to Linkoping by air ambulance. Time would tell if the young man would be able to keep his leg – the damage had been extensive, the leg split open from the knee to the hip, but the vascular surgeon had done his best.
Is that sweat dripping from my brow, or water from washing after the operation? Bloody hell, Hans thinks just as the phone rings.
Malin’s number.
What does she want?
The mother of his son Markus’s girlfriend, Tove. The tense but pleasant and evidently brilliant detective inspector. The distant, troubled, but after a couple of glasses of wine relaxed woman. Hasse has often thought when in her company that it’s as if she doesn’t really like doctors.
‘Hans here.’
Her voice at the other end of the line isn’t as alert as usual and he can hear the sound of traffic in the background.
‘This is Malin. Tove’s mum.’
‘Hi, Malin. How are you coping with the heat? Haven’t melted yet?’
‘Half of me has just dissolved onto the pavement.’
Hasse chuckles. At least she’s got a sense of humour.
‘How’s Tove getting on in Bali?’
‘She’s having a great time.’
‘Markus is at our summer cottage outside Torshalla, but he’ll be home when Tove gets back.’
‘I was thinking that you might be able to help me with something, Hasse.’
‘OK. Fire away, Malin.’
‘I could do with finding out if there’s anyone in the city who has lost his penis.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Lost his . . .’
‘Sorry, I heard you, Malin.’
‘It’s to do with the rape of that girl.’
‘The one who was found in the Horticultural Society Park?’
‘Yes.’
‘The information you’re after is confidential, Malin.’
‘I know.’
‘Sorry, Malin, I can’t help you. It’s illegal to reveal the details of anyone’s medical notes.’
‘I know that too, Hasse.’
He sounded shattered, Malin thinks, tired, when I asked. Those long operations must be draining. Malin puts her mobile in the front pocket of her skirt, during the day its pale-blue fabric has gained some light brown stains and Malin wonders if you can get jeans that would be thin enough to put up with in this heat.
The pub downstairs is as tempting as ever. Crazy to live in the same building as a pub.
Sitting at the bar, alone, along with everyone else.
Getting happily, hazily melancholic.
Drink a chilled beer, its bitter, sharp coolness, the alcohol going to your head and filling its nooks and crannies with miraculous emptiness.
