On the way to the prosecutor, one of the ones on duty over the summer, not particularly happy to be called in to the office on a Sunday afternoon. The same prosecutor who earlier rejected Sven Sjoman’s offer to relinquish legal responsibility for the preliminary investigation, saying that they would have to hold on to that responsibility themselves until they had made some progress.
Malin had spoken to Sven over the phone, and he had given them permission to proceed: ‘Search the house, but you and Zeke shouldn’t go alone, who knows what she might do if it turns out you’re right.’
Sven had also said that at long last, ‘and far too fucking holiday-late’, they had got hold of the list of calls made from Theresa’s mobile, and that she had called Nathalie Falck a lot, Peter Skold occasionally, and no one else except her parents. ‘She seems to have been a bit of a loner,’ Sven said. They hadn’t heard anything from either Yahoo! or Facebook, and Forensics were still working on identifying the dildo. A quick search on the net had come up with more than nine hundred manufacturers.
Malin thinks about Josefin Davidsson. About the hypnosis that she hasn’t had time to sort out. Must get around to doing that.
The prosecutor.
A recently appointed young man named Torben Eklund.
Malin looks through the windscreen.
But instead of the city she sees her face, her eyes, the look in them, and she wonders what happens to that look with the passage of time, and then she gets scared, feeling a chill run through every vein and capillary, an ice- cold and sharp sting of stardust. That isn’t my face in the windscreen, she thinks, it’s Theresa Eckeved’s face, and Malin knows what she wants, what her lifeless white skin, her clear, radiant, colourless eyes want.
Her mouth is moving.
What happened?
Who?
What, how?
Then the face is gone, replaced by Malin’s own familiar features. The face and features that are somehow just as they are.
Josefin Davidsson pulls the thin white sheet tighter around her body, not wanting to see the bandages and think about the wounds, but knowing that they’re there whether she likes it or not.
She notices the chemical smell of the hospital room, and the pain she can’t remember the cause of. But she realises that that memory, buried somewhere deep within her, is important.
She could have gone home on Friday. But she wanted to stay over the weekend, and they let her. The doctor understood when she said that she liked how peaceful it was here.
She’s watched television out in the dayroom. Read on the newspaper websites, the
I have to get to my memories, Josefin thinks, and the sky outside the window is growing pale, late afternoon blue and empty, just like her memory. But it’s there, they did it in biology, memories are like electricity, and a person can remember everything that’s ever happened to them under the right circumstances.
But do I want to remember?
Am I scared that he or she or they are going to come back?
No.
I’d be dead if that was what they wanted.
The hospital cotton is soft, so soft, and she shuts her eyes, drifts off to sleep even though the room is full of the brightest light and bubbling life.
‘No problem. I’ll sign a search warrant straight away.’
Torben Eklund’s voice as neutral as his office in the courthouse on Stora torget, his grey face thin but still bearing an inexplicable double chin.
‘How’s the investigation going?’ he asks.
‘Forward, slowly,’ Malin replies.
‘We have extremely limited resources over the summer,’ Torben Eklund goes on. ‘That’s why I’ve decided to leave responsibility for the preliminary investigation with the police.’
‘That suits us fine,’ Zeke says.
Lawyers, Malin thinks. What in the world would make anyone want to become one of them?
Torben Eklund is the same age as me, but already middle-aged.
A black-faced clock on an unpainted brick wall, the white hands showing 17.25.
Then it hits her.
Maybe in the eyes of young girls I’m already middle-aged. And after that comes death. Doesn’t it?
26
A blue and white police car behind them.
Evening is falling slowly over the road and the forest seems to regain some of its lost verdure, a false nuance, the colour of a blunt knife.
They’re leading the way in the Volvo, three uniforms in the car behind: two factory-farmed recent graduates, lads with bulging muscles and an attitude that suggests they can sort out all the crap society might throw at them. Malin can never understand how that sort of bloke ever gets past the admissions board, but presumably they know how to give all the right answers. She’s seen the websites for people wanting to join the police: This is what they want to hear. And sure, the answers fit and if you’re smart it can work. The third uniform is an old hand called Pettersson, now working part-time because of a bad back, and sometimes Malin can see that he’s in some discomfort, his fingers tensing as he channels the pain from his nerves out into his fingertips so that he can go on.
She can’t remember the new recruits’ names, can’t be bothered to learn them, because who knows how long they’ll be staying? They probably want a transfer to Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmo, where the real action is.
The farm in the clearing.
Has she guessed that they’re coming?
Has she cleared things up?
Away?
Zeke’s voice over the radio to the others: ‘Fors and I will go and knock, you get out and wait by the car. Understood?’
Silence. No barking.
Where are the dogs?
Then a yes from Pettersson.
‘Good,’ Zeke says as the car comes to a halt in the farmyard.
