Midwinter Sacrifice

In the rear-view mirror the tunnel quickly becomes a shrinking black hole. She breathes in, breathes out.

Someone may have cared, but who?

I close my eyes and feel Mum’s warm hands on my three-year-old body, how she nips my bulges, how she burrows her nose into my round belly and how it tickles and feels warm and I never want her to stop.

Carry on looking, Malin, carry on looking.

17

Zeke’s eyes are cold, annoyed when he meets her at the entrance of Police Headquarters. He has a go at her as they walk the few steps to her desk in the open-plan office. Johan Jakobsson nods from his own corner, Borje Svard isn’t there.

‘Malin, you know what I think about you going off on your own. I tried to call but you had your mobile switched off the whole time.’

‘It felt urgent.’

‘Malin. It doesn’t take much longer to pick me up here than it does to find a whore on the Reeperbahn. How long would it have taken to come by here? Five minutes? Ten?’

‘A whore on the Reeperbahn? Zeke, what would the ladies in the choir say about that? Stop sulking. Sit down and listen instead. I think you’re going to like this.’

Afterwards, when Malin has told him about Bengt Andersson’s father, Cornerhouse-Kalle, and the world he created, Zeke shakes his head.

‘Human beings. Wonderful creatures, aren’t we?’

‘Have they got anywhere with the archive?’

‘No, not yet. But it’ll be easier now. They can focus on specific years. He has no criminal record, but that’s because he was only fourteen when it happened. We just need to get confirmation of what the old man said. It won’t take long now. And the death certificate was issued this morning. So I managed to get a name in social services in Ljungsbro, a Rita Santesson.’

‘Have you spoken to her?’

‘Only briefly over the phone.’

‘You didn’t go out there? Or pick me up. Now I’ll have to go back out there again.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Malin, you might go off on your own, but I don’t. We’re doing this together, aren’t we? Anyway, going out to Ljungsbro is fun.’

‘And the others?’

‘They’re following up the last of the door-to-doors, and they’re helping the domestic burglary unit after a break- in at some Saab director’s villa over the weekend. Apparently they stole a painting, some American, Harwool I think it was, worth millions.’

‘Warhol. So a theft from a director’s villa is more important than this?’

‘You know how it is, Malin. He was only a fat, lonely man on benefits. Not exactly the foreign minister.’

‘And Karim?’

‘The media have calmed down, so he’s calmed down. And a stolen Warhol might make it into Dagens Nyheter.’

‘Okay, let’s go and talk to Rita Santesson.’

Rita Santesson looks like she’s falling apart before their eyes. Her light green crocheted top is hanging off her skinny shoulders, and her legs are little more than two sticks in a pair of beige corduroy trousers. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes watery from the strip-lighting, and her hair has lost any colour it may have once had. Reproductions of Bruno Liljefors prints hang on the yellow-painted fabric wallpaper: a deer in snow, a fox attacking a crow. The blinds are pulled down, as if to keep out reality.

Rita Santesson coughs, and with unexpected force throws a black file bearing Bengt Andersson’s name and ID number on to the worn pine top of the desk.

‘That’s all I have to give you.’

‘Can we take a copy?’

‘No, but you can take notes.’

‘Can we use your office?’

‘I need it to meet a client. You can sit in the staffroom.’

‘We’ll need to talk to you afterwards as well.’

‘We can do that now. As I said, I really don’t have much to tell you.’

Rita Santesson slumps down on to her padded chair. Gestures towards the orange plastic chairs, evidently for visitors.

She coughs, from deep in her lungs.

Malin and Zeke sit down.

‘So, what do you want to know?’