‘Why not?’
‘What do you think, Mum?’
‘I don’t know, tell me, Tove.’
But Tove doesn’t answer the question. Instead she says, ‘His name’s Stenvinkel. Markus Stenvinkel.’
Then they sit in silence in the darkness.
‘Markus Stenvinkel.’ Malin laughs, eventually. ‘God, he’s pale. Do you know what his parents do?’
‘They’re doctors.’
Better folk. The thought comes to Malin against her will.
‘Nice.’
‘Don’t worry, Mum. Actually, I’m hungry,’ Tove says.
‘Pizza,’ Malin says, slapping her hands down on her knees. ‘I’ve only eaten a couple of crispbreads tonight.’
Shalom on Tradgardsgatan have the biggest pizzas in the city, the best tomato sauce, and the ugliest interior: plaster walls with amateur frescoes of nymphs; cheap, plastic patio tables.
They share a calzone.
‘Does Dad know about this?’
‘No.’
‘Okay.’
‘What do you mean?’
Malin takes a sip of her Cuba Cola.
Her mobile rings again.
Daniel Hogfeldt’s name on the small display.
She hesitates, then clicks the call away.
‘Dad?’
‘It just feels important that you haven’t told him either.’
Tove looks thoughtful. She takes a bite of the pizza before saying, ‘Weird.’
A fluorescent light flickers above their heads.
There’s competition in love, Tove, Malin thinks. There’s competition and loss in everything.
21
It is just after midnight.
Daniel Hogfeldt presses the door button on the wall and the main door to the
He looks down Hamngatan as he takes a breath of the icy air.
He called Malin. To ask about the case, and to ask about . . . yes, what was he going to ask her about?
Even though his thick jacket is done up to the neck, the cold wins in just a few seconds and forces its way through the fabric.
He heads home quickly along Linnegatan.
At St Lars Church he looks up at the darkened windows of Malin’s flat, thinks of her face and eyes, and of how little he knows about her, and what he must look like to her: a fucking irritating journalist, a male chauvinist with some sort of irresistible sex appeal and charm. A body that does the job well enough when her own body needs fulfilment.
Fucking.
Hard or soft.
But people have to fuck.
He walks past H&M and thinks about the distance in that ‘people’. Fucking isn’t something you or I do, ‘people’ do it; an alien entity separate from our bodies.
The phone-call from Stockholm today.
Flattery and coaxing, promises.
Daniel wasn’t surprised.
Am I done with this dump now?
The front page of the
