Only one man gets out on to the platform, carrying two big red suitcases, one in each hand.
A weather-beaten face and a body that is heavy but still muscular, and his whole being radiates familiarity with cold and privation; his blue coat isn’t even done up.
‘Goran Kalmvik?’
The man looks surprised. ‘Yes, and who are you?’
The door of the carriage closes again, and the sound of the conductor’s whistle almost drowns out Malin’s voice as she says her name and title. When the whistle has faded away and the train has left the platform, she quickly explains why she is there.
‘So you’ve been trying to get hold of me?’
‘Yes,’ Malin says. ‘For a few explanations.’
‘Then you’ll know that I wasn’t out on the rig.’
Malin nods. ‘We can talk in my car,’ she says. ‘It’s warm. I left it running in neutral.’
Goran Kalmvik inclines his head. His expression is one of relief, tinged with guilt.
A minute later he is sitting beside her in the passenger seat, and his breath smells strongly of coffee and toothpaste, and he starts talking without her having to ask.
‘I’ve had a woman in Oslo for about ten years now. I’ve been lying to Henrietta for ten years; she still thinks I work three weeks and have two off, but it’s the other way round. I spend the missing week in Oslo, with Nora and her lad. I like him, he’s more straightforward than Jimmy. I’ve never really understood that boy.’
Because you’re never at home, Malin thinks.
‘And guns? Do you have any idea where Jimmy might have got hold of a gun?’
‘No, I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing.’
‘And you don’t know what he used to do to Bengt Andersson?’
‘Sorry.’
Because you’re never at home, Malin thinks again.
‘I’ll need the number of your woman in Oslo.’
‘Does Henrietta have to find out about any of this? I don’t know what I want. I’ve tried telling her, but you know how it can be. So if she has to find out . . .’
Malin shakes her head. As an answer, as an attempt to get Goran Kalmvik to shut up, and as a reflection on the other gender’s occasionally incurable weakness.
Malin is sitting in the car, watching Goran Kalmvik’s taxi disappear off towards Ljungsbro, past the miserable brick box of the supermarket.
She is thinking.
Letting the possibilities wander freely through her head, then takes out her mobile and calls Niklas Nyren’s various numbers. But he doesn’t answer, hasn’t called back, and she wonders if he might be at Margaretha Svensson’s, clicks up her number from the list, then stops when she sees what time it is: 6.59. Saturday morning.
It can wait.
There have to be some limits, even in a murder investigation. Let the worn-out single mother sleep.
Then Malin drives home. Gets into bed after checking on Tove. And before she falls asleep the image of Valkyria Karlsson comes back to her, naked in the field, like an angel, perhaps one of the devil’s angels.
47
When does a case turn into a black waking dream?
When does the search for truth start to go in circles? When does the first doubt appear among the police officers working on the investigation, the feeling that we may not manage to solve this one, maybe this time the truth will elude us?
Malin knows.
It can happen early or late in a case, it can be there as a suspicion after a first phone-call. It can happen suddenly or build gradually, little by little. It can happen on a tired, early Saturday morning in a meeting room where five overworked officers who ought to be at home sleeping instead of drinking disgusting black coffee get to start the day with bad news.
‘We’ve just received the final report from forensics about the raid at the Murvalls’. They’ve been working round the clock on this one and what good has it done?’
Sven Sjoman looks miserable, standing at the end of the table.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing but animal blood, elk, deer, wild boar, hares. Animal hair in the workshop. Nothing else.’
Shit, Malin thinks, even if she has known deep down all along.
‘So we’re stuck,’ Johan Jakobsson says.
Zeke nods. ‘Stuck in solid concrete, I’d say.’
‘We’ve got other lines of inquiry. The ?sir lead. Borje?’ Sven asks. ‘Anything new? Did you talk to Valkyria
