‘Bound to be. Have a look.’
Malin passes the remote to Tove, who zaps through the channels until she finds the local channel. Linkoping have beaten Modo away, and Martin Martinsson scored three goals, and there are rumours that scouts from the NHL were at the match.
‘I went round to Grandma and Grandad’s earlier today.’
Tove nods.
‘Grandad rang. He was wondering if you’d like to go and see them during half-term?’
Malin waits for a reaction, wants a smile to spread over Tove’s lips, but instead she looks worried.
‘But we can’t afford the plane ticket?’
‘They’re paying.’
Tove looks even more worried.
‘I don’t know if I want to go, Mum. Will they be upset if I say no?’
‘You can do what you want, Tove. Exactly what you want.’
‘But I don’t know.’
‘Sleep on it, darling. You don’t have to make a decision before tomorrow or Tuesday.’
‘It’s hot there, isn’t it?’
‘At least twenty degrees,’ Malin says. ‘Like summer.’
There are apples hanging in the trees and a boy, two boys, three, four boys are running around in a verdant garden. They fall and the grass colours their knees green, and then there’s just one single boy left and he falls but gets up again and runs. He runs until he reaches the edge of the forest, then hesitates for a while before summoning his courage and heading into the darkness.
He runs between the tree trunks and the sharp branches on the ground cut his feet but he doesn’t allow himself to feel any pain, he doesn’t stop to fight the monsters roaring in the deep holes left by the roots of toppled trees.
Then the boy is standing by Malin’s bed. He presses her ribcage up and down with even movements, helping her to breathe in the yellow air of the morning.
He whispers in her sleeping, dreaming ear,
53
A sullen morning mist over the city, the fields.
The investigation practically going in circles.
A weapon to examine.
Information on a hard drive to check this morning.
No wind over a desolate snow-covered field, nothing happening, just exhausted police officers sleeping or waking. Borje Svard in his bed, alone under washed-out blue-flowered covers, his two Alsatians let in from their run on either side of the bed, and in the room at the end of the landing two of the nightshift’s carers are turning his wife, and he makes an effort to fend off the sound of their activity.
Johan Jakobsson in his terraced house in Linghem, sitting, dozing on a sofa with his three-year-old daughter in his lap, a Lorenga & Masarin cartoon on the television, headphones over his daughter’s ears. When are you going to learn that sleeping is nice? The previous day had been spent talking to the other youngsters who had been out in the field for the animal sacrifice. They had alibis for the night that Bengt Andersson was killed, they were just confused in the way that young people so often are. It turned into yet another day of hard slog, another day when he had to leave his family to its own devices.
Zacharias Martinsson is sleeping snuggled up to his freezing wife, the window in the bedroom open a crack, a draught that promises a cold. Sven Sjoman on his back in bed out in his villa, snoring loudly and audibly, his wife in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in front of her on the table, absorbed in
Even Karim Akbar is asleep in bed, lying on his side, breathing in and out, then he coughs and reaches out an arm for his wife, but she isn’t there, she’s sitting on the toilet with her face in her hands, wondering how she’s going to sort everything out, what would happen if Karim knew.
Forensics expert Karin Johannison is awake, sitting astride her husband, her hair swinging back and forth, helping herself to her own body and consuming him beneath her, flesh that is more hers than his, because what else would she really want him for?
And Malin Fors is awake too. She is sitting behind the steering-wheel of her car. Focused.
The third line of inquiry in the investigation into Bengt Andersson’s murder needs pushing, needs whipping, needs to have its back flayed.
Malin is freezing.
The car never seems to be able to warm up properly on mornings like this. Through the windscreen she sees the slender stone tower of Vreta Kloster, and beyond it lies Blasvadret, and there, alone in her kitchen, sits Rakel Murvall with a cup of boiled coffee, looking out of the window and thinking that it would be good if the boys came home soon, workshops shouldn’t stand idle.
Malin parks outside Rakel Murvall’s house. The white wooden building seems more tired than last time she was
