Her father, some of his wits still about him, his whole being radiating the realisation: I’m only at the start of this nightmare.
‘Persson and Bjork in Mjolby have taken care of that,’ Waldemar Ekenberg says. ‘They’re good, they’ll do it as well as anyone could. It’s an impossible task. And they’ll be questioning Sofia’s parents about her as well. Just the essentials.’
Task.
Malin tastes the word, twists and turns it, the way it creates a professional distance in an attempt to make this most human encounter bearable.
Then a quick overview of the situation from Per Sundsten.
The latest door-to-door inquiries around the villas of Sturefors had turned up nothing, and the convicted sex offenders that he and Ekenberg had had time to check out all had watertight alibis. Ten people on the list, five checked. ‘We’ll carry on with the others today. But I don’t really expect it to give us anything.’
‘We haven’t got hold of the owner of the kiosk yet,’ Malin says. ‘Seems to be away. All three kiosks are shut, in the middle of high season.’
‘The fuss with the football team has died down,’ Karim says. ‘That’s one advantage when things move so fast, no one has time to linger over things that don’t matter. But it was clumsy of me.’
A team-building confession, a bit of rhetoric for the officers on the case. One tiny little mistake, but you’ll forgive me, respect me again. Won’t you?
I respect you, Karim. You’re a better police chief than most.
Sven speaks up.
‘Still nothing from Yahoo! or Facebook. Evidently they’re very restrictive when it comes to giving out information. Yahoo! claim they need an American court order. Facebook haven’t even replied. And Louise Svensson’s computer was completely clean. She could have cleared it out, seeing as she was expecting us to turn up.’
Sven takes a deep breath.
‘We’re still trying to identify possible manufacturers of the dildo, but so far we’ve haven’t got anything definite.’
Then he rubs a hand over his head.
‘How do you suggest we proceed?’
Sven is head of the preliminary investigation, but it feels as if responsibility for the case is fluid, snaking to and fro across the room like hot, hot tar, so hot that no one wants to burn their fingers on it.
The air-conditioning unit groans.
Shudders.
And falls silent.
‘Shit! Just when it had started working at last! Things are going to heat up again,’ Zeke says.
And they all wait for Sven to make a proposal, lead them further, and he starts to speak.
‘Sundsten and Ekenberg. You take the door-to-door around Frimis, and talk to Sofia Freden’s colleagues at the hotel. Malin and Zeke, get hold of the kiosk owner, and maybe you could check if Josefin Davidsson has remembered anything by now? Just some quick questions? And we’ll have to hope that a witness turns up, someone who saw or heard something, or that they come up with something about Sofia Freden in Mjolby that can move us on. Otherwise we’ll just have to wait for Forensics to give us something. Well, those are the lines I see ahead of us. Anyone else?’
Silence around the table.
‘Right then,’ Karim says. ‘Let’s get to work.’
‘A shadow.’
Zeke standing beside Malin’s desk. Trying out the word.
‘Something like that,’ Malin says. ‘A shadow of a person. Or a person driven towards utter transparency.’
‘Or a lack of transparency,’ Zeke says.
‘Then there are the different sorts of wounds that were inflicted on the girls,’ Malin says.
‘Seems almost like a sort of curiosity about violence,’ Zeke says.
‘Cleanliness. All that scrubbing.’
‘As if the killer wanted to purify them.’
‘Is Josefin Davidsson still in hospital?’
‘We’ll have to check. Otherwise she’s probably at home.’
Zeke waits by Malin’s desk as she rings.
Waits until she hangs up and says: ‘She’s at home.’
‘Do you think she’ll be able to remember anything now?’
‘No,’ Malin says. ‘But we’ll give it a try.’
Malin thinks of Maria Murvall, who must be able to remember being attacked in the forest, but who has squeezed her whole being into a corner, letting her consciousness act as the basis for a life that’s been stripped down, a life that’s really no better than most animals’.
Is that what evil can do to a person?
Apparently.
Then Malin’s phone rings.
Ebba in reception.
‘There’s someone who wants to talk to you, Malin. Says he wants to be anonymous, he’s got a very strong accent. Says it’s about the girls.’
‘Put him through.’
The voice, the accent, the prejudices that arise at once. He sounds, even though Malin doesn’t want to think it, stupid, speaking in scarcely intelligible Swedish: ‘You know that fucker Behzad Karami, he hasn’t got a fucking alibi, his family are just lying, he was somewhere that night, and last night too, I know. You have to check him again, they’re lying to you. He often does strange things at night, he just disappears.’
How can you know that? Malin thinks, and says: ‘What’s your name?’
No number on the display, the man, or rather the youth, is probably ringing from a public phone.
‘I don’t have a name.’
‘Hang on . . .’
Click.
Malin turns towards Zeke. A questioning look in his eyes.
‘Behzad Karami just reappeared in the case. We should check him out again.’
‘OK, but where do we start? With Behzad Karami, Slavenca Visnic or Josefin Davidsson?’
Malin throws up her hands.
‘Which one do you think would have air conditioning at home?’
‘Let’s start with Josefin,’ Zeke replies. ‘Besides, Visnic is proving rather difficult to get hold of, to put it mildly.’
35
‘Doesn’t Karim live out this way?’ Zeke asks, wiping the little beads of sweat from his upper lip. They look like tiny, burned blisters.
‘Yes, they’ve got a villa here somewhere,’ Malin replies, thinking that Josefin Davidsson was incredibly lucky to get away with her life.
They park by the school. Josefin Davidsson lives with her parents in one of the terraced houses in Lambohov.
The red-painted wooden houses are small, unassuming family dreams, clinging together in rows, with neatly tended front gardens and hedges that have grown tall over the years since the houses were built.
‘I think Karim’s son goes to school there,’ Malin says as they walk slowly towards the houses. They stop outside number twelve, go into the little garden and ring the bell, but hear nothing from inside. So Malin takes hold
