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‘No one, not even the police, can come and see any of my residents unannounced.’
‘But—’
‘No one, Inspector Fors, no one. And that includes you.’
Sister Hermansson dragged Malin to the little nurses’ station out in the corridor, then went on the attack.
‘The residents here can appear stronger than they are, but most are weak, and at this time of year, when the cold is at its worst, we often lose several in quick succession, and then things get very anxious for my . . .’
To start with Malin got angry. Residents? Didn’t that mean that this was their home? That they could do as they liked? But then she realised that Hermansson was right, and if she didn’t make the effort to protect the old people, who else would?
Malin apologised before she left.
‘Apology accepted,’ Hermansson said, and looked visibly pleased.
‘And you should change your disinfectant,’ Malin added.
Hermansson looked at her quizzically.
‘Well, you use unperfumed. There are hypoallergenic perfumed disinfectants that smell much nicer and probably don’t cost much more.’
Hermansson thought for a moment.
‘Good idea,’ she said, and began to look through some papers as if to underline the fact that the conversation was over.
And now Malin is heading towards her car over in the car park, when her mobile rings.
She jogs back to the lobby, and, inside the chemical-scented warmth once more, pulls out her phone.
‘We were right. The Shipping Federation had it on its database.’ Johan Jakobsson sounds very pleased with himself.
‘So an M/S
‘Exactly. He wasn’t among the men rescued in lifeboats.’
‘So some of them did survive?’
‘Yes, it looks like it.’
‘Thanks, Johan. Now I really do owe you one.’
Ruins.
And a lake where the ice seems to have settled for good. Malin takes her eyes off the road for a few seconds to glance at Lake Roxen. Cars driving along a ploughed path over the metre-thick ice slip across in relative safety, and on the other side of the lake, far off in the distance, smoke is streaming from the chimneys of postage-stamp-sized cottages.
Stjarnorp Castle.
It burned down in the 1700s, was rebuilt, and to this day is still the residence of the Douglas family, and it still reeks of money.
The castle could hardly be more gloomy. It’s a grey-stucco two-storey stone building with shrunken windows, facing a practically featureless courtyard flanked by unadorned outhouses. The ruins of the old castle slumber alongside, like a permanent reminder of how badly things can turn out.
The old people’s home is on the edge of the estate, just beyond the bend where the road finally disentangles itself from the forest and opens up to the view of the lake.
The three-storey building is whitewashed, and Malin estimates that there can’t be more than thirty old people living here, and how quiet it must be, only a few random cars driving past.
She parks in front of the entrance.
What sort of Hermansson figure am I going to run into here?
Then she thinks of that evening, how Tove has invited Markus to dinner; she hopes she makes it back okay. She looks up at the building, thinking, Weine Andersson, there’s a chance there may be a problem with dinner.
Weine Andersson is sitting in a wheelchair by a window with a view straight out over Lake Roxen.
When Malin reported at reception the elderly nurse seemed pleased at her visit. The nurse didn’t seem bothered, and certainly not annoyed, by the fact that Malin was a police officer on duty. Instead she said, ‘That’ll cheer Weine up. He doesn’t get many visitors.’ Then a pause: ‘And he likes young people.’
Young people? Malin thought. Do I still qualify as that? Tove’s a young person. Not me.
‘His right side is paralysed. A stroke. It hasn’t affected his speech, but he gets upset a lot.’
Malin nodded and went in.
The bald man in front of her has sailor’s tattoos on both hands. On the lame hand, supported by a sling, someone has etched an anchor, and filled in the rough outline with ink.
His face is wrinkled and the skin covered with liver-spots, one eye is blind, but the good one seems to make up for it in brightness.
‘Yes,’ he says, his eye firmly fixed on Malin. ‘I was on board that ship. I shared a cabin with Palmkvist. It would be going a bit far to say we were friends, but we came from the same parts so it was natural that we spent a lot of
