She holds it out to the boys, who are now looking even more anxious, as if they’re worried that a whole ocean of misdemeanours has caught up with them.
‘Bengt Andersson: we know you tormented him, bullied him and made fun of him. We want to know all about that, and what you were doing on the night between last Wednesday and Thursday.’
Terror in the boys’ eyes.
‘So who’s who? Jimmy?’
The one dressed in a blue hoodie nods.
‘Okay,’ Malin says. ‘Start talking.’
The other boy, Joakim Svensson, starts to make excuses. ‘What the fuck, we were just having a laugh. Cos he was so fat. Nothing wrong with that.’
Jimmy Kalmvik goes on: ‘He was, like, completely fucked up, chasing after balls every match. And he stank. Of piss.’
‘And that made it okay for you to torment him?’ Malin can’t hide the anger in her voice.
‘Sure.’ Jimmy Kalmvik grins.
‘We’ve got witnesses who say you vandalised Bengt Andersson’s home, and that you attacked him with stones and water-bombs. And now he’s been found murdered. I can take you in to the station here and now if you don’t talk,’ Malin says.
She falls silent and lets Zeke continue: ‘This is murder. Can you get that into your thick skulls?’
‘Okay, okay.’
Jimmy Kalmvik throws out his arms and looks at Joakim Svensson, who nods.
‘Attacked him? We threw stones at him, and we cut off the power to his flat, and sure, we put shit through his letterbox, but now he’s dead anyway so what does it matter?’
‘It might matter a very great deal,’ Zeke says in a calm voice. ‘What’s to say you didn’t go too far one day? That you got too close. That there was a fight. And you just happened to kill him? Try to see it from our side, boys. So what were you doing on Wednesday night?’
‘How would we have got him out there?’ Joakim Svensson says, then goes on: ‘We were at Jimmy’s, watching a DVD.’
‘Yeah, my mum was at her bloke’s. Dad’s dead so she’s got a new one. He’s all right.’
‘Can anyone confirm that?’ Malin asks.
‘Yes, we can,’ Joakim Svensson says.
‘No one else?’
‘Do you need anyone else?’
Teenage boys, Malin thinks. They switch between arrogance and fear in a matter of seconds. A dangerous mixture of overblown self-assurance and doubt. But still: Tove’s Markus seemed very different. What would Tove make of these two? They’re not exactly heroes in the Jane Austen mould.
‘You silly little sod,’ Malin says. ‘Murder. Got it? Not torturing cats. Of course we need it confirmed, you can be fucking sure of that. What did you watch?’
‘
Joakim Svensson grins.
‘And we’ve never tortured any cats, if that’s what you think.’
Malin looks over her shoulder.
Outside the lathes and sanders and saws are in action as if nothing has happened. Someone is hammering frenetically at a box-like construction as she turns to face the boys again.
‘Have you ever fired a gun at Bengt Andersson’s flat?’
‘Us? A gun? Where would we have got that from?’
Innocent as lambs.
‘Are you interested in the ?sir belief-system?’ Zeke asks.
And they both look nonplussed. Stupid, or guilty, impossible to tell which.
‘Interested in what?’
‘The ?sir belief-system.’
‘What the fuck’s that?’ Jimmy Kalmvik says. ‘Believing in
Full-blown chauvinist pigs, when they’re scarcely out of short trousers. Noisy, rowdy. But dangerous?
‘Torturing cats? So he blabbed, Unning,’ Jimmy Kalmvik says. ‘The little shit. He’s so fucking useless.’
Zeke leans over to him, his eyes looking like a snake’s. Malin knows what that looks like. She hears his voice, its gruffness as cold as the night approaching outside the windows.
‘If you touch Fredrik Unning I will personally see to it that you have to eat your own entrails. Shit and all. Just
