to live, but out here in the country it’s different. Most people have never even met anyone that they know is homosexual. You can imagine how much fun it would be if the city got the idea you were hunting a lesbian killer.’
‘I’ve got something we should follow up.’
Zeke’s voice hoarse over the mobile.
Malin has just waved goodbye to Viktoria Solhage, who disappeared along the towpath up towards Ljungsbro, and is now cursing her stupidity. The place where she left the car is no longer in shadow, and the sun is now baking its dark-blue frame.
It must be at least a hundred degrees in there.
And the damn light is cutting right through her sunglasses and seems to have made giving her a headache its only goal.
‘What did you say?’
As she says the words a dust-cloud drifts past, making her cough.
‘I’ve got something we should look into.’
‘What?’
No answer, instead: ‘Did you get anything from Solhage?’
‘A name. We’ll have to check her out. And you?’
‘I got a text message from an anonymous sender.’
‘We get those every day.’
‘Don’t try to be funny, Malin.’
Then Zeke reads aloud from his mobile.
‘Check Paul Anderlov. A very unfortunate man.’
Silence.
So Hasse did it: ignored the law on confidentiality.
She hadn’t thought that he would.
‘Who do you think sent it?’ Malin asks.
Zeke snorts.
‘That’s something neither you nor I want to know. But I’m not stupid, Malin.’
‘So you know what it’s about?’
‘Yes. Like I said, I’m not stupid.’
The Volvo is hotter than a sauna.
A very unfortunate man.
Bloody hell, Malin thinks. Is this right? Shouldn’t he be left in peace?
One naked, wounded girl on a swing, one girl missing. Reality a grey, yellow, charred mess.
Malin is in her car on the way back to the city.
Outside the windscreen the plain is still, like a mirage conjured up by slowly smothered flames, as if a shimmering blue sky, stretched far too thin, has set fire to the fertile farmland that stretches all the way to the luminous horizon. The heat is hammering the ground with absolute confidence.
The open fields are drooping under the vault of the sky and the rye and corn are slowly burning up beneath the sun’s rays, the rape is curled towards the ground, pale yellow, whimpering as if every golden leaf were gasping for air and were just waiting to be buried with the worms.
They’re the only thing moving out here on the plain right now.
Glowing worms that have spilled out of the volcanic cracks shaken forth by evil.
Zeke is waiting in his car outside the house in Ryd. His engine idling, the air conditioning on full-blast.
The yellow-brick building near the centre is only three storeys high, yet still seems to contain the misery of the whole country in concentrated form, with its satellite dishes beside the windows, its cluttered balconies and outdoor spaces, and the general air of abandonment. The paths between the buildings are desolate, but the flats inside are teeming: refugees, drug addicts, social outcasts, the lowest status workers, people excluded from society.
But there are two worlds here.
Some of the blocks contain student flats: people with dreams, their lives ahead of them, and beyond some tall oaks Malin can just make out Herrgarden, the science students’ bar and bistro.
Malin nods to Zeke through the side window and he opens the door and gets out.
‘So this is where the unfortunate Paul Anderlov lives?’
‘This is where he lives,’ Zeke says.
‘How do we explain how we found out about him?’
‘We don’t,’ Malin replies.
20
The thing about pain is that it’s an eternal curse, because it wipes out time. It bestows an intimation of death and a stench of carrion upon a present that seems never-ending.
The physical pain disappeared long ago.
But psychological pain?
Medication.
But it doesn’t help, and nothing gets better with time, no, everything gets worse, the pain is always new and each time it is more assured, more arrogant.
I am pain, Paul Anderlov thinks as he hears the doorbell ring.
And he gets up from his armchair, turns down the volume of
Fourteen years since it happened.
But it could just as well have been yesterday.
Malin holds up her ID towards the unshaven man in the doorway, his face simultaneously sunken and swollen, his cropped hair thin on his scalp.
‘We’re from the police. We’d like to ask a few questions,’ Malin says. ‘Are you Paul Anderlov?’
The man nods.
‘Can we take it out here?’ he goes on to say. ‘It’s a mess inside, and I don’t really like inviting people in. Has there been some sort of trouble in the neighbourhood?’
‘We’d prefer to come in,’ Zeke says in a voice that doesn’t leave any room for discussion.
And Paul Anderlov backs down, showing them into a sparsely furnished living room with messy heaps of newspapers and motoring magazines. There’s a noticeable smell of smoke, vodka and spilled beer, and in the corners there are dustballs the size of sparrows.
Malin and Zeke sit down on a pair of chairs by the low coffee table.
Paul Anderlov sinks into an armchair.
‘So, what do you want?’
He’s trying to sound tough, Malin thinks, but he just sounds resigned and tired and his green eyes are uncertain, tired beyond the limits of tiredness, and he’s sad in a way that Malin has never seen anyone sad before.
‘Have you heard about the rape in the Horticultural Society Park?’
When he hears the word rape it’s as if all the air and water and blood disappear from Paul Anderlov’s body, as if he realises why they’ve come. His head sinks down towards his chest and he starts to shake and whimper. Malin looks at Zeke, who shakes his head, and they both realise that they’ve crossed a boundary, the boundary that justifies intrusions into people’s lives in the search for the truth.
Malin gets up.
