Like with Tove. Like with Janne, in spite of everything. Like with myself.
But the women round the Murvall family table? Where did their unadulterated joy disappear to? Where did it go? Can it have run out for good? Could it be true, Malin thinks, as Sven summarises the state of the investigation, that there is only a finite amount of happiness free of guile, and that every time some of that sort of happiness is lost, it is gone for good and replaced instead by muteness, hardness?
And what happens if we are forced to give in to loneliness?
What sort of violence might be born then? In that point of fracture? In that final exclusion?
The child holding out its arms to its mother, to a nursery-school assistant.
‘Mum, I was thinking of staying at Dad’s tonight, is that all right?’
Tove’s message on her mobile. Malin listens to the message as she walks through the open-plan office.
Malin calls her.
‘It’s Mum.’
‘Mum, you got my message.’
‘I got it. It’s okay. How are you getting out there?’
‘I’ll go down to the station. His shift ends at six, so we can head out then.’
‘Okay, I’m probably going to be working late anyway.’
Sjoman’s words at the meeting: ‘I’ve already called them in for questioning. If the whole Murvall family doesn’t turn up here tomorrow, we can go and get them. But we haven’t got enough for a search warrant as far as the guns are concerned.’
When she ends the call to Tove, Malin calls Janne. Gets the answering service.
‘Is it right that Tove’s staying the night at yours? Just checking.’
Then she sits down behind her desk. Waits. Sees Borje Svard hesitantly twisting the ends of his moustache on the far side of the room.
32
The facade of the main building of Ljungsbro school is matt grey, the low, dark-red-tiled roofs are covered by a thin layer of snow; small swirls of frozen moments, circular patterns etched on to several of the larger surfaces.
They park by the craft rooms, aquariums for handicrafts in a row of single-storey buildings along the road leading into town.
Malin looks into the rooms, empty, with dormant saws, lathes, firing and welding equipment. They walk past what must be a technology room; pulleys and chains hanging from the ceiling, one by one, as if ready for use. When she looks in the other direction she can just make out Vretaliden care home, and in her mind’s eye she sees Gottfrid Karlsson sitting in his bed, under an orange health service blanket, quietly driving her on: ‘What happened to Bengt Andersson? Who killed him?’
Malin and Zeke walk to the main building, past what must be the school dining room. Inside the frosted windows the staff are scrubbing pans and work surfaces. Zeke pulls open the door of the main entrance, eager to escape the cold, and in the large, airy space some fifty pupils are all talking at once, their breath fogging the windows on to the school grounds.
No one pays any attention to Malin and Zeke, their attention utterly absorbed by the conversations that belong to teenage life.
Tove’s world.
This is what it looks like.
Malin notices a thin boy with long black hair and an anxious look, talking to a pretty blonde girl.
On the far side of the room a sign above a glass door announces: Head’s Office.
‘Vamos,’ Zeke says as he catches sight of the sign.
Britta Svedlund, head of Ljungsbro school, has them shown in at once, perhaps the first time the police have been to the school in her time here.
But probably not.
The school is known to be problematic, and every year several of its pupils are sent to reform school, somewhere far out in the countryside, for further education in low-level criminality.
Britta Svedlund crosses her legs, her skirt riding up her thighs, revealing an unusual amount of black nylon, and Malin notes that Zeke has trouble controlling his eyes. He surely can’t imagine that the woman in front of them is beautiful, cigarette-wrinkled, worn and grey-haired as she is.
The male curse, Malin thinks, trying to get comfortable on her chair.
The walls of the office are lined with bookcases and reproductions of Bruno Liljefors paintings. The desk is dominated by an antiquated computer.
After listening to Malin and Zeke’s explanation of why they are there, Britta Svedlund says, ‘They’re leaving this
