didn’t know.’
‘What’s he got to do with this?’
Her voice controlled now after her furious outburst at Malin’s last question.
‘The report I mentioned. Something happened when you were a child. Your dad, did he hurt you?’
‘Did he?’
Zeke trying to sound understanding, sympathetic, and he succeeds.
‘I’m not talking about that. I’ve spent my whole life trying to forget about it.’
Lollo Svensson calm now, as if she’s found a new personality somewhere inside.
‘Who can we talk to?’
‘Talk to Mum.’
Viveka Crafoord’s words, her voice:
‘And how do we get hold of her?’
A name. An address.
‘Do you have to find out?’
‘We have to look into everything.’
‘I admit to having sex with those girls. But I was nice to them. Gentle. Friendly. And I gave them money afterwards. More than they expected.’
‘You don’t expect us to believe you? How many blue dildos can there be in this city?’
Waldemar is sitting down again, after thumping Suliman Hajif’s head on the table for a second time.
On his way back to his chair he looked in the mirror, at the face that seems to be withering away, ageing away from him, a little more each day. A face wearing a mask, and whatever is behind the mask burned out long ago as a result of giving in to instinct, giving in to the most basic urges.
Violence. Sexuality. The same thing. Aren’t they?
Waldemar knows: he’s given in to violence.
And he knows that he will never have the energy to do anything about it.
He’s not suited to therapy.
‘I didn’t have anything to do with this shit.’
Suliman Hajif sniffs, holding his shirtsleeve to his nose to stop it bleeding. He sobs, and says: ‘I’m innocent.’
Waldemar leans towards the tape recorder: ‘Interview with Suliman Hajif concluded. Time 16.17.’
Malin on her own in the toilet.
She’s finished peeing, but still she sits there, feeling the clammy seat against her buttocks.
She shuts her eyes, thinking.
Suliman Hajif will be held until Forensics have finished, until the dildo has been compared to the earlier evidence. And then? Twenty years in prison, in a secure hospital? Or back home to surf for more porn?
They let Lollo Svensson go home.
She had admitted to what they knew about her, but apart from that they had no evidence against her, and, as Sven said in the passageway outside the interview room once both interviews had been concluded: ‘There are limits to how much we can subject a person to with so little evidence. But we’ll be keeping an eye on her.’
‘I want to talk to her mother,’ Malin says.
Sven dubious.
‘Do we really want to upset an elderly lady because her daughter’s name has cropped up in a murder investigation?’
‘We need to find out what happened. It might lead to something. Viveka Crafoord said . . .’
Sven.
The way his face crumpled as he gave in to her.
‘OK. Zeke and Malin. Go and talk to her mother. Straight away. We need to look under that stone while it’s still warm. Look back in time.’
Sven didn’t realise how oddly he had expressed himself.
‘What about the hypnosis?’ Malin had asked. ‘We’re supposed to be doing that at seven.’
‘Can we do it later?’
‘It’ll be too late then.’
‘Yes, it will.’
‘And I’m picking Janne and Tove up from Nykoping just after midnight.’
Sven’s face then, she would have given her year’s wages for that look, how happy he seemed on her behalf, how he seemed to understand her anxiety and the way her loss had slid over into an inexplicable sense of grief.
Malin gets up from the toilet.
Pulls down her skirt.
Looks in the mirror.
Pale, in spite of all the sun this summer.
Tove and Janne.
Soon.
Soon you’ll be home again.
45
Zeke raises the can of Coca-Cola to his mouth and drinks before taking a huge bite of his flatbread roll. The prawn salad trickles like thick magma down the outside of the bread. Down by the river beside the Scandic Hotel two black Saab limousines stop and men in black suits get out and are guided into the hotel.
Zeke and Malin are standing at the hotdog kiosk by the fire station, near the roundabout leading out to Stangebro. Eating, recharging their batteries before their interview with Lollo Svensson’s mother, and Malin before her drive to Nykoping later that evening.
‘See them over there?’
Zeke points at the men in suits.
‘Bound to be representatives from some damn company or government here to look at another weapons system.’
‘Maybe they’re here to buy JAS fighters?’
‘I doubt it. No one wants that type of plane. They cost billions, and are already obsolete.’
‘I daresay you’re right.’
The owner of the kiosk, a swarthy man in his fifties, is brushing down his grill and doesn’t seem to be listening to their conversation.
‘All that advanced stuff they do out at Saab, who knows where the hell it ends up, and what damage it does.’
‘But it does good here,’ Malin says. ‘Loads of jobs.’
The kiosk owner evidently has been listening to their conversation, his voice sharply accented: ‘Excuse me. I overheard. My wife,’ he says from behind the counter, ‘she died in a missile attack in Fallujah. No one knows who fired it. Maybe there was something from Saab in the explosion, but what difference does it make? Saab, or someone else. Everyone makes their own decisions about what job they want to do.’
Zeke throws the last of the roll in the bin by the door.
‘Would you sell hotdogs to men like that?’ he asks the kiosk owner.
‘I’ll sell hotdogs to anyone who’s prepared to pay.’
They walk past the fire station towards the block of flats.
No red fire engines outside the polished glass doors.
Janne’s workplace.
He loves the station. It’s as much his home as his house near Malmslatt.
