pile.
The man behind the counter takes the note, thanks him and makes to hand him his change.
‘That’s okay,’ Karim says.
He knows that the man who runs the cleaner’s is from Iraq, and fled here with his family during Saddam’s time. Who knows what he went through? Once when Karim was leaving his suits the man wanted to talk about himself, about his engineering qualifications, about the man he could have been, but Karim pretended to be in a hurry. However much he admires the man for fighting for his family, he’s part of the problem, part of what makes him and almost everyone else of foreign extraction a second-class citizen, makes them the sort of people who run the services that the Swedes won’t touch. It ought to be forbidden for immigrants to run pizza restaurants and dry- cleaners, Karim thinks. That would get rid of the stereotype. The politically correct might object, but that’s the reality. But of course it would be impossible. What about me? I’m not the slightest bit better than him, even if I’m made out to be.
Alienation breeds exclusion.
Exclusion breeds violence.
Violence breeds . . . Yes, what?
The infinite distance between people. The Murvall family that want nothing more than to be left outside, in peace, and then there is everyone who dreams of being inside, to feel that they belong. Dreams and reality match up in far too few cases.
My dad, Karim thinks as he leaves the dry-cleaner’s. It was passive violence that drove him to his death.
But I never talk to anyone about him. Not even my wife.
The cold hits Karim when he opens the door.
His black Mercedes is glinting even in the gloomy winter light.
And then he thinks about the killers, or the killer, they’re hunting. What is it that they want? What are they trying to achieve?
Zeke pulls open the door of Police Headquarters.
Walks into reception and it smells of sweat and overworked radiators, and one of the uniformed officers standing by the steps to the basement calls out, ‘How’s it going with Martin, is he going to play the next match? Wasn’t there something to do with his knee?’
The ice-hockey player’s dad.
Is that how they see me?
‘He’s playing, as far as I know.’
Martin has had offers from NHL clubs, but nothing has worked out so far. They don’t quite seem to want to let him in yet. Zeke knows that ice hockey will make the lad rich sooner or later, rich in a way that’s hard to imagine.
But not even a hoard of pirate treasure would make him have any respect for the game itself. The padding, the tackles, the sense that it’s all make-believe.
Bengt Andersson isn’t make-believe. Nor is the evil that’s out there.
You can’t have a load of padding on, Zeke thinks, when you’re tackling the worst aspects of humanity. What we do is no game.
‘Have you seen the way I look?’
Karim Akbar is standing by the counter in the coffee room and holding up the photo of himself in the paper.
‘Couldn’t they have chosen a different one?’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Malin says. ‘It could have been worse.’
‘How? Have you seen what I look like? They’re just choosing pictures that give the impression we’re desperate.’
‘Forget it, Karim. You’ll probably be in the paper again tomorrow. Anyway, we aren’t desperate. Are we?’
‘Never desperate, Malin. Never.’
Malin opens up her email. Some of the usual administrative circulars, a bit of spam, and a message from Johan Jakobsson.
‘Nothing on the hard drive so far. Only a few more folders to check.’
And then an email marked in red.
‘CALL ME.’
From Karin Johannison.
Why couldn’t she call herself?
But Malin knows how it is. Sometimes it just seems easier to send an email.
She types a reply: ‘Have you heard anything?’
She presses send and it isn’t more than a minute before her inbox pings.
She opens the new email from Karin. ‘Can you come over?’
Answer: ‘I’ll be at the lab in ten minutes.’
