of the ring hanging from the mouth of the gilded lion adorning the green front door instead, and just as she knocks the door opens and Josefin peeps out through the gap.
‘Hello. Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’
‘We’d like to ask you some questions,’ Malin says. ‘We want to see what you remember. Or if you can remember anything else?’
‘Come in.’
Josefin opens the door.
She’s wearing a loose, pale-pink dress that hangs limply about her body, her hair wet after what Malin assumes must have been a shower. The bandages on her arms and legs are dry and clean.
She walks into the house ahead of them, leading them past a kitchen with white cupboards and on into a living room where two burgundy-coloured Chesterfield sofas sit facing one another. Outside there’s a patio with a hammock and plastic garden furniture. The room is hot and smells faintly of smoke and sweat and freshly made caramel.
Malin and Zeke sit down beside each other and Josefin settles down opposite them. You look older here at home, Malin thinks, as if the ornate furniture and cheap Wilton rugs are stealing life from you.
‘I can’t remember anything,’ Josefin says. ‘And, really, why would I want to?’
She knits her hands in her lap, they go white and she turns away to look at the garden.
‘Are your mum and dad out?’ Malin asks.
‘They’re at work.’
She looks back at them.
‘They could be here, get compassionate leave if you’d rather not be alone.’
‘Then they’d get less money. And they’d probably rather work.’
‘You don’t mind being left on your own?’
‘No, I don’t remember anything, so what would I be afraid of? That it could happen again? That’s not very likely.’
The person who hurt you, Malin thinks. I’m afraid of them, and so should you be. You should be afraid, but you’re sensible, what good would being afraid do? The chance of the perpetrator coming after you is small, and if he or she wanted you dead, then you wouldn’t be here.
‘Why did you go to the cinema on your own?’ Malin asks. ‘People usually go with a friend, don’t they?’
‘I like going on my own. Talking just spoils the experience of the film.’
‘OK. Try to remember. What did you do that evening, what happened? Try to get an image, a word, a smell, anything at all, in your head. Please, just try.’
Malin tries to sound as persuasive as she can, but there’s an undertone: Remembering is possible. And it would help us.
And Josefin shuts her eyes, concentrating, but soon opens them again and looks at Malin and Zeke with a sigh.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘What about your dreams?’ Malin asks. ‘Anything from them?’
‘I never remember my dreams,’ Josefin replies.
On the way out Malin stops in the hall, looking at her face in the mirror. Through the door on her left she sees Josefin put a saucepan of water on an old Cylinda stove.
Without knowing why, Malin goes into the kitchen and puts her hand on Josefin’s shoulder.
‘How are you going to spend the summer?’ she asks, and Josefin starts and turns around.
‘I’m going to take it easy. I was supposed to be working in the kiosk at the pool in Glyttinge, but I resigned after just three days. I’d rather have the time off instead.’
Malin stiffens.
‘So you know Slavenca Visnic?’
Josefin laughs.
‘I don’t think anyone knows that woman.’
‘She was supposed to be working for Slavenca Visnic, but resigned after just three days.’
Malin is trying not to sound too excited about the connection.
‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘And she had an idea about where Slavenca might be, didn’t think she’d gone abroad.’
‘Where, then?’
‘She might be up in the forest, at the fire. As a volunteer. Apparently she spoke of nothing but the forest fires when they started working together, said they probably needed help.’
‘I read in the
‘That would make sense. Her family died in a fire in Sarajevo. A grenade attack on the building they lived in.’
Janne.
He worked for the Swedish Rescue Services Agency in Bosnia. She knows he saw all manner of horrors down there, but he’s never really talked about it.
Silence.
Memory loss.
They’re more than just cousins.
Siblings, maybe.
The road leads into the smoke.
There are cars lined up along the edge of the forest road leading into the inferno, into the fire. The edge of the fire is just north of Lake Hultsjon, so they drive through Ljungsbro and take the Tjallmo road up through the densely grown forest, the same road they drove back on during the winter they were working on the Bengt Andersson case.
Neither of them mention this as they drive across the desiccated, tormented plain and the dust flies up across the road in thick veils.
Instead Zeke put on his beloved German choral music, deep chanting from some choir that has put new words to a Wagner opera.
High volume.
Dystopian, Malin thinks. Perfect for a bad horror film.
The noise is only turned down when she calls Sundsten and asks him to follow up on Behzad Karami.
‘We’ll sort it. We’ve finished the door-to-door around the Railway Park and Frimis. No one saw anything. But most people are asleep at that time of day.’
Then she calls Sven Sjoman and tells him about the new connection.
‘Good. At last.’
Then they are approaching the fire, veils of smoke drifting over the car, the once blue sky now grey and angry, and they can feel the heat gradually rising inside the car, a heat that makes them want to turn back and flee before their skin starts to scorch, boil, char, as their brains picture catastrophic scenarios for their bodies. The smell is getting stronger and stronger, a charred world, the stench of flesh burned alive and the plaints of trees being consumed by greedy flames.
They turn off onto the gravel road they’re now driving down, as that is where the bright red fire engine they are following turns off. Above them a helicopter is circling with a water scoop, and then it heads in over the fire, disappearing from view. People with soot-stained faces, their eyes hidden behind goggles, walking along the road.
‘What sort of car has she got?’ Zeke says, his hands firm on the wheel, the car heading slowly towards the core of the fire, burned-out trees around them, dust and ash swirling through the air.
‘A Fiat van, according to the registration office, white.’
‘Haven’t seen one like that yet.’
