Summertime Death

‘Do you remember what Sture Folkman’s daughter’s name was, the one who committed suicide?’

‘Aronsson never said when we talked to her,’ Zeke says. ‘But I remember from the report. Elisabeth. The only reason I remember is that that was the name of my first girlfriend.’

Malin turns and heads quickly for the changing room, making sure that the phone number is still in her head.

It’s there.

Like an image, the number in glowing pink neon on a worn house-front in Los Angeles.

Zeke doesn’t move, looking out over the Tinnerback pool, looking at the people trying to make something good of the heatwave, with these temperatures. The children with their rubber rings the very definition of innocence.

Markus was sad at first.

Not that he cried, but Tove could see him withdraw into himself, his shoulders slumping, his eyes restless. They were sitting at the kitchen table and the sunlight was reflecting off the stainless-steel fridge freezer, making her squint. They’d had sandwiches and milk, talked about how they were going to spend the rest of the holidays. Markus had been taking it for granted that they’d spend all the time together, maybe going out to his parents’ summer cottage, and eventually Tove managed to say it, and when she did her voice didn’t sound the way she’d wanted it to.

‘I want us to break up.’

Like the crack of a whip. Far too abrupt, not remotely gentle.

The words felt brutal in their unambiguous simplicity, and Markus was shocked.

‘What did you say?’

‘I want . . .’

‘I thought . . .’

‘It just feels like I want to be free this year, and it doesn’t, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it did at the start . . . it would be better if we could be friends.’

The words out of her mouth fast, as if they were burning her.

‘I want to be able to concentrate on my schoolwork.’

Markus said nothing.

As if he were letting the words sink in, as if their meaning were gradually taking hold within him. But what could he say?

‘I missed you when you were in Bali,’ he said.

‘But I didn’t miss you.’

And with those words his sadness changed into anger, and he stood up and shouted at her: ‘Couldn’t you have said this before you went? That you wanted to break up? Now I’ve spent all summer waiting, not even looking at anyone else at parties!’

‘Stop shouting!’

‘This is my house, I’ll shout as much as I like!’

And Tove had had enough, she got up from the bench and ran out into the hall, slipping on her flip-flops and opening the door.

He called after her: ‘Come back, I didn’t mean to get cross,’ and Tove felt twenty years older, grown-up, when she heard how upset he sounded.

But she still shut the door behind her.

Heard the little sucking sound as it closed.

And then the sound of her own breathing, adrenalin coursing through her body, making her feel giddy.

Let her cycle off. Let her go.

I met your mother just now in Tinnis.

You’re a constant source of worry to her.

So just come to me.

Become an angel.

A cleansing angel of resurrection.

Innocence reborn.

She’s angry as she rushes out of the house.

Slamming the door.

Doesn’t look in my direction, doesn’t see the van parked a little way up the hill.

Peace, come and find peace.

Soon you’ll never have to be angry again.

Death is over there.

Watch out, Tove, watch out, you don’t want to be one of us.

We drift and we roar in unison in your ear, but our angels’ voices don’t reach your eardrums.

Stop, stop!

But you’re not listening.

You’re fleeing discomfort, towards a warmth that you think exists somewhere.

Hear what we’re saying.

Stop.

But you’re deaf to our voices, they’re no more than vibrations in the noise of your inner ear.

Instead you keep pedalling, cycling angrily straight into the catastrophe.

Right into the fire, down, down, into the lowest of all circles.

Who can save you there?

Not us.

Your mum?

Maybe in the end the whole thing will come down to whose love is the greatest?

58

‘Water, Zeke, that’s the connection in this case.’

Malin was talking fast as they headed back to the car parked outside the pool, and she explained what she meant, how all the girls were somehow connected to pools, and had been scrubbed clean with manic frenzy, and how even the smells corresponded, the bleach on all three girls, and the smell of chlorine from the swimming pools.

Malin felt almost feverish in the car park, as reality, air, buildings, cars, heat, sky all seemed to be tumbling around her, but she pulled herself together.

‘So you mean we should be looking for someone who does swimming-pool maintenance?’

Zeke more open-minded than sceptical.

‘Yes, one in particular.’

‘One in particular?’

‘Soon, Zeke. Soon.’

Zeke breathed out deeply.

‘Where do we start? Here?’

‘Why not?’

As they went back in again Malin called the number she’d been given by Sigvard Eckeved, but the neighbour wasn’t aware of any pool-maintenance woman, saying: ‘I take care of all that myself’, and now they’re sitting in a cramped, hot room with yellow tiled walls next to the cafe talking to the manager of the Tinnerback pool, a Sten