The city beyond the car windows.
The red and orange buses are idling in Tradgardstorget; inside them sit teenagers on their way home, tired, but with expectation still in their eyes.
She turns the wheel and swings into Drottninggatan, towards the river, past the windows of the Swedish Real-Estate Agency.
The dream of a home.
Of views to wake up to.
There are dreams in this city, no matter how cold it gets. No matter what happens.
What do I dream of? Malin thinks.
Of Tove. Of Janne. Daniel.
My body can dream of him.
But what do I expect of myself? What longings do I share with those teenage girls on the bus?
The door to the block of flats opens; it isn’t even locked at night.
Malin goes cautiously up the stairs, silently, not wanting to announce her presence to anyone.
She stops outside Karl Murvall’s door.
Listens.
But the night is silent, and behind the door the floor is still covered by untouched newspapers.
She knocks.
Waits.
Then she sticks the skeleton key in the lock. Twists and turns and the lock opens with a soft click.
A stale smell, musty, but warm, the radiators turned up to stop them freezing. The conscientiousness of the engineer, the defiance of a certainty that must exist somewhere inside Karl Murvall: I’ll never live here again, so what does it matter if the radiators freeze?
But he could be here. There’s a very slight chance.
Malin stands still.
Listens.
Should I draw my pistol?
No.
Put on the lights?
I have to put on the lights.
Malin presses the switch by the bathroom door and the hall lights up. Jackets and coats hanging in a neat row under the hat-rack.
Listens.
Nothing but silence.
She goes quickly from room to room, then back to the hall.
All clear, she thinks.
She looks round the hall, pulls out the drawers of the chest. Gloves, a hat, some papers.
A wage-slip.
Fifty-seven thousand kronor.
The computer fantasy. But what does a bit of money mean?
Malin goes into the kitchen. Rifles through drawers, checks the walls, empty apart from a cuckoo-clock.
The clock says almost one. Don’t be startled if the clock chimes. Which it will do in a few minutes. The living room. Drawers full of more papers: bank statements, saved adverts, nothing that could be regarded as out of the ordinary.
Then it hits Malin: there are no wardrobes, no cupboards anywhere. Not in the hall, where they usually are in a flat like this.
Malin goes back out into the hall.
Only the painted-over signs of where they had once stood.
Malin goes into the bedroom. Flicks the switch but the room stays dark. There is a table-lamp on a desk by the window. The room faces the rear courtyard, and the light from a lamp outside casts a weak grey glow over the walls.
She turns on the table-lamp.
A dim cone of light on to a desktop covered with knife marks.
She turns round.
