‘That’s better,’ Zeke says. ‘Much better in here than out there.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ the man says, looking at Malin, his blue eyes wet with worry. ‘I shouldn’t have stopped, bloody stupid of me, I should just have kept going.’
Malin puts her hand on the man’s arm. The padding under the red fabric sinks beneath her fingers.
‘You did the right thing.’
‘You see, I’d been—’
‘It’s okay,’ Zeke says, turning towards the back seat. ‘Just take it easy. You can start by telling us your name.’
‘My name?’
‘Yep.’ Malin nods.
‘I’m having an affair—’
‘Your name.’
‘Liedbergh. Peter Liedbergh.’
‘Thank you, Peter.’
‘Now you can go on.’
‘I’m having an affair, and I’d been with her in Borensberg and was going home this way. I live in Maspelosa and it’s the quickest route from there. I’ll admit that much, but I didn’t have anything to do with this. You can check with her. Her name is—’
‘We’ll check,’ Zeke says. ‘So, you were on your way home from a night of passion?’
‘Yes, and I came this way. They keep the road clear, and then I saw something odd in the tree, and stopped, and I got out, and, I mean, fuck. Fuck. Bloody hell.’
People’s movements, Malin thinks. Headlights shining in the night, flickering points of light. Then she says, ‘There wasn’t anyone here when you arrived? Did you see anyone?’
‘Quiet as the grave.’
‘Did you pass any other cars?’
‘Not on this road. But a kilometre or so before the turning I passed an estate car, I can’t remember what make.’
‘Number?’ Zeke’s hoarse voice.
Peter Liedbergh shakes his head. ‘You can check with her. Her name’s—’
‘We’ll check.’
‘You know. First I just wanted to carry on. But then, well, I know what you’re supposed to do in this sort of situation. I swear, I had nothing to do with it.’
‘We don’t imagine that you did,’ Malin says. ‘I, I mean we, think it’s pretty unlikely that you would have phoned if you were involved.’
‘And my wife, does my wife have to know?’
‘About what?’
‘I told her I was going to work. Karlsson’s Bakery, I do nights there, but that’s in the other direction.’
‘We won’t need to say anything to her,’ Malin says. ‘But she’ll probably find out anyway.’
‘What am I going to tell her?’
‘Tell her you took the scenic route. Because you felt too awake.’
‘She’ll never believe that. I’m usually completely exhausted. And in this cold.’
Malin and Zeke exchange a glance.
‘Anything else you think might be important to us?’
Peter Liedbergh shakes his head. ‘Can I go now?’
‘No,’ Malin says. ‘The forensics team will have to check your car, and take your footprints. We need to know they’re your footprints out there and not anyone else’s. And you can give your lover’s name to our colleagues.’
‘I shouldn’t have stopped,’ Liedbergh says. ‘It would have been better to leave him hanging here. I mean, someone would have found him sooner or later.’
The wind is increasing in strength, forcing its way through the synthetic padding of Malin’s jacket, through her skin, flesh, right into the smallest molecules of her marrow. The stress hormones kick in, helping the muscles to send pain signals to the brain, and her whole body aches. Malin imagines that this must be what it’s like to freeze to death. You never die of cold, but as a result of the stress, the pain the body experiences when it can’t maintain its temperature and goes into overdrive, trying to fool itself. When you’re really cold, you feel a warmth spreading through your body. It’s a terrible bliss: your lungs can no longer oxygenate the blood and you suffocate and fall asleep simultaneously, but you feel warm; people who’ve returned from this state say that it’s as though they’d drowned, sinking down, down, only to float up again on clouds so soft and white and warm that all fear vanishes. It’s a physiological trick, that softness, Malin thinks. It’s just death caressing us so that we’ll accept it.
A car approaches in the distance.
The technical team arriving already?
