Drops of liquid merging into one.
Is that you or me breathing?
She shuts her eyes, then opens them and sees that Janne’s eyes are shut, as if they’re both trying to make their bodies believe that if they don’t look at each other, then this isn’t happening.
And they’re young again, far too young again, and a thin piece of rubber breaks and you are formed, Tove. Malin keeps her eyes on Janne, the lower half of her body is squirming, heating up with a pain that’s more pleasant than anything else she knows.
Awareness catches up with your body over the years.
The distance between feelings and thoughts of feelings disappears.
She lies back.
Soundlessly and heavy he follows her and her hands search his back, every square centimetre of skin a memory.
She lets go.
Becomes a woken child sleeping on its back with its arms above its head.
Come back to me now.
This is love.
Promise not to disappear again.
There you lie, dear Malin.
In the dawn light I see your lips twitch, you’re dreaming, aren’t you?
I’ve just pulled the sheet up over your body.
We won’t speak about this tomorrow, or any other day. We’ll pretend it never happened.
Goodbye, Malin.
Janne leaves the flat, but first he takes Malin’s car keys from the chest of drawers in the hall. Goes down to the street.
He opens the boot, takes out his case. Goes back upstairs and puts the keys back where he found them.
The dawn is warm, and the grey stone of the church seems to vibrate in the thin blue light of the rising sun.
A faint smell of smoke, hardly noticeable even to his trained nose.
He heads towards the station. Pulling his case behind him.
At the station he changes into his protective clothing and goes with the first engine up to the forest, to the fire, heading straight into the heat and fighting the inferno.
Daniel Hogfeldt happened to see Janne, Malin’s ex-husband, come out of the door of the building where she lives.
A particular rhythm in his walk.
Daniel was on his way to the newsroom, early. He’d woken up in the middle of the night and been unable to get back to sleep.
Now he’s sitting at his desk and thinking about the rhythm in Janne’s movements, the way they exuded a softness and, oddly enough, love.
I can never compete with that, Daniel thinks, opening a new document on his computer and tossing the heap of articles linked by the word ‘rape’ into the waste-paper basket.
Can’t be bothered to do anything with them.
Can’t be bothered even to sit here.
I have to, Daniel thinks, fumbling his way back to feeling bothered, finding it again.
And being bothered is not going to happen if he concentrates on the history of violent sexual assaults in Linkoping. Someone else can do that. Maybe you, Malin?
Last night’s dream.
A boy by her bed crying Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, help me breathe.
She cried back.
Can’t you breathe?
The boy replied.
No, help me, Mummy.
I’m not your mummy.
You are my mummy. Aren’t you?
No.
Help me breathe.
Why?
Because I’m your brother.
Can’t you breathe?
No. You have to show me how.
‘It’s so hot. Has it been like this all the time?’
Tove is drooping over a bowl of soured milk and cornflakes at the breakfast table. Malin is over by the sink, drinking her third mug of coffee, getting ready to force herself to eat a sandwich.
‘It’s been horribly hot, Tove. And they just said on television that it’s going to carry on like this.’
‘Great. Then I can go swimming.’
‘With Markus?’
‘With him, or a friend.’
‘You have to tell me who you’re going swimming with.’
‘Can’t I go swimming with who I want?’
‘Read the paper and you’ll see why I want to know what you’re doing.’
Tove leafs through the
‘Police Silent’, says one headline.
‘Nasty,’ Tove says. She doesn’t ask whether her mum is working on the case, knows that she must be. ‘Do you think it’s the bloke you’ve got locked up?’
‘This one’s really nasty, Tove,’ Malin says. ‘We’ve got one man locked up. But you have to be careful. Don’t go out alone. And let me know where you are.’
‘You mean in the evenings?’
‘All the time, Tove. I don’t even know if the person we’re trying to catch makes any distinction between day and night.’
‘Isn’t that a bit over the top?’
‘Don’t argue. If there’s one thing I know more about than you, it’s this.’
Malin can hear how disagreeable she sounds, the collected aggression of a debilitatingly hot summer, and she sees the look of surprise, fear and then sorrow on Tove’s face.
‘Sorry, Tove, I didn’t mean . . .’
‘I don’t give a damn what you meant, Mum.’
48
They’re on their way past Tjallmo, heading towards Finspang, driving past the fringes of the fires.
It is now half past nine. They skipped the morning meeting today. They can all meet up later instead.
She’s thinking about Janne.
Knows that he’s already in there, in the smoke, working and trying to fight the flames, to stop the fire spreading even further.
‘He’s there already, isn’t he?’
Zeke is holding onto the wheel of the Volvo with one hand, his eyes fixed firmly on the road as they pass a
