‘I don’t doubt that they did. But it’s not that simple.’
‘It doesn’t sound like they come from bad backgrounds.’
Fredrik Unning’s words a short while before: ‘Jimmy’s dad works on oil platforms and his mum’s a housewife. Jocke’s dad’s dead and his mum works as a secretary.’
Malin’s phone rings. Sven Sjoman’s name on the screen.
‘Malin here.’
She tells him about their visit to the Murvalls, and about what they’d learned from Fredrik Unning.
‘We’re thinking of going to talk to Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson right away.’
‘We need to have a meeting,’ Sven says. ‘They’ll have to wait an hour or two.’
‘But—’
‘We’ve got a team meeting in thirty minutes, Malin.’
The children are defying the cold.
The playground outside the windows of the meeting room is full of sluggish little moon-figures staggering about in their padded winter overalls. Blue children, red ones and one little orange warning child: be careful with me, I’m little, I might break. The assistants shiver in grey-blue fleece trousers, their breath like thick smoke. They jump on the spot when they’re not helping some little one who’s fallen over, flapping their arms round their bodies.
If this cold doesn’t give up soon, everyone will have to learn how to live with it. Like a broken back.
Borje Svard’s report, people with links to Rickard Skoglof. Interviews with kids who seem to live out their lives in front of a computer or as characters in role-playing games. ‘Anything but real life.’
The hesitation in Borje’s body. Malin can see it, smell it. As if all of life had given him just one single lesson: don’t take anything for granted.
The results of the background checks.
Rickard Skoglof seemed to have had a normal upbringing in an ordinary working-class home in Atvidaberg; his father worked at Facit until it was shut down, then at Adelnas fruit farm, where his son had also worked during summer holidays when he was at secondary school. Two years in sixth form. Then nothing. Valkyria Karlsson grew up on a farm in Dalsland. She got two-thirds of the way through an anthropology course at Lund University after sixth form in Dals Ed.
Karim Akbar. Also hesitant, but nonetheless: ‘This ?sir angle. Keep digging, there’s something there.’
His voice a little too confident, as if he were taking on the role of the convinced, encouraging boss.
Johan Jakobsson hollow-eyed. Winter vomiting bug, long nights awake, changed sheets. New wrinkles in his brow every morning, deeper and deeper.
Malin shuts her eyes. Has no energy for this meeting. Wants to get out and work. To talk to Ljungsbro’s own teenage bullies, see what they know. Maybe they can give them some leads, maybe they got hold of a gun and are responsible for firing into Ball-Bengt’s flat, maybe their bad behaviour just got out of hand; who knows what two imaginative fifteen-year-olds are capable of?
Tove and Markus in her parents’ apartment.
On the bed.
Malin can see them in front of her.
‘And then we have the teenagers who made Bengt Andersson’s life a misery,’ Sven Sjoman says. ‘You and Zeke will have to question them. Get them at school after this meeting. They ought to be there at this time of day.’
Sure, Sven, sure, Malin thinks, then says, ‘If they aren’t at school we’ll find out where they live, and we’ve got their mobile numbers.’
After the two lads, she wants to bring the Murvall brothers in for questioning, bring the old woman in and put some pressure on her. Listen to the wives.
The brothers.
The looks on the women’s faces.
No friendliness, just suspicion against
What is that sort of loneliness? Where does it come from? From the repeated unkindnesses of the world around them? From the fact that they keep getting no as an answer? From everybody. Or is that sort of loneliness granted to each of us? Is it within all of us, and, if it gets the chance to grow, does it simply overwhelm us?
The awareness of loneliness. The fear.
When did I first see that loneliness, that antipathy in Tove’s face? When did I first see anything other than pure kindness and joy in her eyes?
She was maybe two and a half. Suddenly there among the innocence and charm was an element of calculation and anxiety. The child had become a human being.
Loneliness. Fear. Most people manage to hold on to some of the child’s joy, the naivety, when they encounter other people, when they feel a sense of belonging. Manage to overcome the possibly innate loneliness. Like Fredrik Unning tried to do today. Reach out a hand, as if he had realised he was worth more than being left to his own devices by his parents and forced to go along with boys who would really rather have nothing to do with him.
Happiness is possible.
