The clock on the computer says 21.12. Not too late to call.
A note from Tove in the hall.
Maths? Didn’t she say geography? Filippa?
No answer anywhere; she left messages, her name and number, why she was phoning:
Theatre, cinema, a concert, evening classes, the gym. All the things people do to stop themselves getting bored.
Maria Murvall’s number was unobtainable. This number is no longer in use. Directory enquiries had no new number for her.
Half past nine.
Malin’s body is tired after her exercise; she feels the fibres of her muscles protest as they grow. How her brain is tired after the encounter at the university.
Maybe this will be a peaceful night? Nothing holds the nightmares at bay like exercise and concentration, but she can still feel the anxiety and restlessness, how impossible it is to stay inside the flat even though it is so cold outside.
She gets up, pulls on her jacket, her holster out of habit, and leaves the flat again. She walks up Hamngatan towards Filbytertorg, then carries on up towards the castle and the cemetery, where the snow-covered graves keep their owners’ secrets. Malin looks up at the memorial grove; she usually goes there to look at the flowers, trying to feel the presence of the dead and hear their voices, pretending that she can breach the dimensions, that she’s a superhero with fantastic powers.
The rustle of the wind.
The panting of the cold.
Malin stands still in the memorial grove.
The oaks are drooping. Frozen branches hang in the air like stiff black rain. A few nightlights are burning around her feet, a floral wreath makes a grey ring on the snow.
But everything is silent and empty and still.
Ball-Bengt?
And the evening is destructively hard and cold and she leaves the grove, walking the length of the cemetery wall and then along Vallavagen and down towards the old water tower and the Infection Clinic.
She walks past her parents’ apartment.
‘You won’t forget . . .’
There’s something not right. There’s a reddish light up in one of the apartment’s windows. Why is there a light in the apartment?
I never forget to turn off the lights.
20
The stairwell: she leaves the light on.
She takes out her mobile, is about to dial her parents’ number – whoever is up there will get a shock – but then she remembers that her parents had the phone disconnected.
She doesn’t use the lift.
She climbs the three flights of stairs as silently as she can in her Caterpillar boots, feeling sweat break out on her back.
The door hasn’t been broken open, there’s no visible evidence.
Light behind the glass of the door.
Malin puts her ear to the door and listens. Nothing. She looks in through the letterbox; the light seems to be coming from the kitchen.
She tries the door-handle.
Should I draw my pistol?
No.
The hinges creak as she pulls the door open, voices, muffled, from her parents’ room.
Then the voices fall silent, and instead the sound of bodies moving. Have they heard her?
Malin marches firmly across the hall, hurrying down the passageway to her parents’ bedroom.
Pulls the door open.
Tove on the green bedspread.
