Summertime Death

Did I check all her nails? All the soil?

No.

I should have done. There could have been different soil under different nails.

Sloppy.

Heat-fuddled sloppiness.

I was probably rushing, wanted to get a report to Malin and the others as soon as possible, and I took it for granted that the soil was the same under all her nails.

Have to check now. As long as there’s still some soil left under the other nails.

She remembers the scrubbed clean body.

Scrubbed, but there were still traces of soil under the nails, even if they were scarcely visible. Why did the killer miss that? Unless it wasn’t there for the killer, in his or her dark tunnel.

She’s standing beside what was once me in other people’s eyes, scraping the soil from under the nails of my left middle and index fingers.

I know who the woman is, Dad.

What does she want now?

I’ve never got used to the chill of this room. The small windows up by the ceiling, the metal worktops, the stainless steel cabinets containing us, the drawer-like metal bed where I am lying now, and then there’s the smell of surgical spirit and a lack of fresh air. It’s a clean smell, clean, but heavy with sorrow and a feeling that this was how it all ended up, no more, no less.

What does she want with my fingers?

With the soil?

Must you be so methodical, efficient? That’s actually me lying there on the stainless steel, my body completely cold, scrubbed clean, the blood stiff in its veins.

But it’s still me.

Tell her, Dad.

I want her to stop treating me like an object. Do you hear, you, the one called Karin?

I want you to stroke me over the forehead, I want you to show that I am still someone as I lie there, but you’re working quietly and methodically, and that makes me even more scared.

Please.

Stroke my forehead.

Put my hair in place.

Show me that I’m still a person.

The air-conditioning unit in the lab has given up and the building’s own ventilation system can do little more than circulate the hot air from outside. For some tests, those requiring cold, this would be a disaster, and Karin has called the engineers.

But she doesn’t need cool for soil analysis and drops of sweat are beading on her forehead, she’s not wearing her white lab-coat and her pale-mauve sleeveless Ralph Lauren top is glowing under the neon lights.

The body down there just now.

She doesn’t know why, but before she pushed it back into the refrigerated cabinet she stroked the girl over the forehead. Several times. Calmly and carefully. Gently stroking her hand over Theresa’s brow. She’s never done anything like that before.

The sheet detailing the first soil analysis on the worktop.

The new sample in the microscope.

Her eye focuses.

She can see at once that they aren’t the same soil. The soil under these nails is from somewhere else. The soil under the nails of the other hand was sandy, its crystalline structure sharper.

She does other tests. This new soil is typical mineral-rich compost, the sort you buy in sacks from garden centres. This soil comes from a garden, or a park.

So, Karin thinks, she could have been moved after death, and if she were struggling to get away, scratching at the earth to get a grip and flee, she did it somewhere other than the beach. The soil from the beach could have got there as the body was pulled down the slope or put down on the ground.

But where?

Malin will probably think this is interesting, even if it doesn’t really mean anything at all.

Karin opens the curtain.

She can just make out the yellow-white facade of the hospital.

One week until her holiday.

I’ll end up getting ill if I don’t get away from here.

Karin looks around the lab. Test tubes, flasks, fume cupboards, eye-baths, all of it very sexy in an inexplicable way. She sees herself up on the worktop, her cotton skirt around her thighs, Kalle thrusting deep inside her.

As deep as he possibly can.

Markus a metre or so from Tove on the sofa in the recreation room.

Cooler down here, the indoor pool behind the glass empty for the summer.

‘In the summer you swim outside!’ Markus’s mum Biggan had said when Tove asked about it in June.

He wants her to come closer. He doesn’t need to say it, it’s obvious from his body language. But Tove doesn’t want to, wants to tell him that she has to go, but she doesn’t know where to start.

He’s going to be upset.

‘Come and sit next to me.’

His Iron Maiden T-shirt is just childish. Like all hard rock. As if he doesn’t want to grow up, even though their bodies do.

But they haven’t had sex.

Markus has wanted to, and so has she, but they still haven’t. To start with they used to lie next to each other in the recreation room, under an itchy, brightly patterned, crocheted blanket, and she would hold him in her hand, but no more than that, and he would have his fingers on her pants, but no further.

The heat, different from the sort when she just looked at him, scared her.

She doesn’t know why.

53

The conversation had been short. Just after a morning meeting during which nothing new was raised.

Karin Johannison had told Malin that Theresa’s body might have been moved, and that there was high-quality compost under her fingers, and Malin had pointed out at once that if she had been moved from somewhere then the likeliest place was her home, the beds in the garden were full of new compost. It might be worth a look.

She and Zeke met up with Karin in the car park outside the National Forensics Laboratory, best to arrive together even though Karin was driving her own car, its boot full of the equipment needed for fieldwork.

They pull up outside Theresa Eckeved’s parents’ villa.

As they drove past Malin’s childhood home she looked the other way. It was as if the house was calling inaudibly to her, as if it wanted her to go there, and try to recreate what had existed a long time ago.

‘Secrets,’ the voices seemed to cry.

‘Come, and we’ll tell you some secrets.’

‘Are you coming?’ Zeke calls to Karin, frowning, his tone aggressive rather than impatient. Malin imagines that he might just be annoyed that Karin may have missed something that turns out to be important, but how many times have they overlooked things? Like the porn shop?

But no one is faultless. Things being overlooked are part of every investigation.

‘I’m coming. Could you maybe help me with one of my bags?’

Zeke goes over to Karin, picks up one of her large black bags and they head up a white paved path, the