Summertime Death

‘Just a gut instinct. Two girls of your age are dead, murdered, so it’s time to talk.’

‘I haven’t got anything to tell you.’

‘Yes you have,’ Malin says. ‘We both know that.’

Nathalie Falck shakes her head lightly.

‘No.’

‘OK,’ Zeke says. ‘What were you doing on the night between Monday and Tuesday?’

‘I was at home. Mum and Dad can tell you.’

‘Two girls,’ Malin says. ‘Theresa. Aren’t you upset that she’s dead?’

Nathalie Falck shrugs her shoulders, but Malin can see her eyes slowly fill with tears. Then she pulls herself together.

‘OK,’ she says.

‘OK, what?’ Zeke says, and Malin can feel him trying not to sound angry and aggressive.

‘Calm down, Zeke. Let her tell us.’

Nathalie Falck takes a few steps into the shade before sitting down on the grass by the oak tree.

‘I read in the paper that you searched Lollo Svensson’s house. But the article didn’t say everything. You ought to know that I had a thing with her, well, I went with her, just like Theresa did. I presume that’s what you want to know, if you didn’t already know.’

Malin and Zeke are staring at each other.

So maybe that was what Theresa was doing when she said she was with Peter Skold? Is that what he wouldn’t tell them?

Louise ‘Lollo’ Svensson.

So, you’re back in the case again.

And are you Lovelygirl as well?

‘Is Louise Svensson the same person as Lovelygirl on Theresa’s Facebook page?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Lollo.

A hot fog drifting into the meandering byways of the case, taking shape, disappearing, sweeping on and taking shape again.

A shadow.

‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says.

‘And it didn’t occur to you that we ought to know this?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘But you still . . .’ Malin stifles her words, swearing inwardly. All this silence they have to fight against, all this life that has to be kept secret, to elevate it somehow, as if all this damn silence were holy water.

‘But now you know,’ Nathalie Falck says with a smile. ‘I just didn’t think it was anything to do with you. It’s private.’

‘How do you mean, went with her?’

‘Had sex with her out at her farm. She’d give you money. And in case you’re wondering about Peter Skold, he’s got a boyfriend in Soderkoping. He was spending time with him whenever he said he was with Theresa. And Theresa was with me instead.’

‘Were you and Theresa a couple?’

‘No. Not my type.’

Not ‘your type’, Malin thinks.

‘We had sex a few times, every now and then,’ Nathalie Falck says. ‘But only as friends.’

Zeke’s words to Sven Sjoman: ‘Get a patrol car out to Lollo Svensson’s farm outside Rimforsa, and bring her in for questioning straight away. She had a sexual relationship with Theresa Eckeved.’

Pause.

The hot, clammy interior of the car as he opens the door in the cemetery car park.

‘I know, Sven. We can always hold her on corruption of a minor.’

Don’t be too hard on her now.

See her as the person she really is.

Lollo, there’s nothing wrong with her. Unless perhaps there is? Something wrong with her?

I remember her hands on my skin, the way she gave me money afterwards, the taste of her swollen, moist crotch, and her words, whispering: Theresa, Theresa, Theresa, and the words turned to cotton wool among the flowery sheets, to the forest outside her window, to the dark expanse of the sky adorned with hopeful stars.

And she gave in to my tongue, and I had nothing against that, because I had so much to learn about the body that I no longer have.

Angels.

Like me, like Sofia.

Are we the eternal virgins?

Is she Lovelygirl, Malin?

Or is Slavenca Lovelygirl?

You’ll have to work that out on your own.

So listen to Lollo, try to understand why she does what she does, why she is the way that she is.

I can feel your excitement, Malin.

The way you think you’ve caught a scent of the truth.

Imagining that it will help you.

That hope is driving us both, isn’t it?

43

Waldemar Ekenberg is sitting at his temporary desk in the Crime Unit’s open-plan office. His longs legs, clad in green linen, are up on the desk and he’s drumming a pen against the arm of his office chair. Opposite him Per Sundsten is randomly surfing various news websites and bringing himself up to date with what’s being written about their murders.

Expressen: City of Terror.

Aftonbladet: What the Killer is Like.

Dagens Nyheter: A Swedish Serial Killer?

The Ostgota Correspondent: The Linkoping Killer: Man or Woman?

He skims the articles, nothing new, nothing they don’t already know, interviews with people in the city, young girls swimming at Tinnis.

We’re scared. We don’t go out at night.

There’s a really weird atmosphere in the city.

I’ve got a fourteen-year-old daughter. I worry whenever she goes out.

Per lets the screensaver click in on his laptop, pictures of a beach in Thailand.

God, what wouldn’t I give to be there now? At that moment he sees Sven Sjoman heading towards their desks, from a distance it looks as though he’s shuddering as he makes his way through the office. Am I going to end up like that? Per thinks: so tired, and sort of slow? Sven’s body might be tired, but the look in his eyes is all the more alert, and Per can see that Sven has something important for them.

Two strangers, Sven thinks as he heads towards Per and Waldemar’s desks. Outsiders, even though they belong to the same force. The man of the future and the brute, the rumours that precede them both, Ekenberg a rotten egg who’s been lucky enough to get away with it.

Sven has seen a lot of men like Ekenberg during his years in the police. He’s always tried to keep away from