Malin sways with the wind, reaching for the broken branch, the part that is still attached to the tree, but she can’t reach, and in the gap, the space between what she wants and what she is capable of, it becomes clear to her.
This isn’t over for you, is it?
You want something, you want to have something, and this is how you show it.
What is it you want?
What can you get out of a naked body in a tree in a field tormented by winter?
What is it that is worth such longing?
Opposite the imposing yellow-brick facade of the Cloetta chocolate paradise, on the other side of a small park, is a row of houses built in the thirties, detached houses mixed with small blocks of flats, each flat with its own front door and staircase.
Niklas Nyren lives in the block at the end of the street, in the middle flat of three.
Malin rings once, twice, three times, but no one answers.
In the car on the way back from the tree she called him on both his mobile and home numbers; no answer, but she still wanted to try.
But it’s pointless. Not at home.
Margaretha Svensson said he worked as a travelling salesman, selling biscuits, for one of Cloetta’s subsidiary companies, Kakmastaren.
He’s probably out seeing customers, Malin thinks. And has his mobile switched off.
She left a message on the answering service.
‘Hello, this is Malin Fors of Linkoping Police. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Please call me on 070- 3142022 as soon as you hear this.’
On her way back to the city Malin listens to P1 on the radio.
The television personality Agneta Sjodin has written another book, about a guru in India who meant a great deal to her.
‘In his company,’ Agneta Sjodin says, ‘I became a whole person. Meeting him was like opening a door and finding myself.’
The reporter, an aggressive alpha male to judge by his voice, makes fun of Agneta without her realising.
‘And who did you find in the incense-filled room, Agneta? A life coach, maybe, India’s answer to Runar?’
Then music.
In front of her Linkoping seems to be resisting the early fall of darkness, shimmering warm lights on the horizon promising security, a safe place to raise children.
And there are worse places, worse cities, Malin thinks. It’s small enough to be as safe as you could ask for, while still being big enough, developed enough to give a scent of the outside world.
I felt that scent. Was going to stay in Stockholm. That would probably have been the right size for me in the long run. But a single mother in the police living in Stockholm? With no parents, with my daughter’s father and his parents two hundred kilometres away, no real friends?
The retail outlets clustered beside Ikea. Babyland, Car-World, BR Toys. The sign to Skaggetorp. Lights taking hold of me, lights that are reluctantly forming themselves into a sense of home.
Malin and Zeke ring on Karl Murvall’s door just after seven o’clock. Up at the station she told Johan Jakobsson and Borje Svard about her visit to the crime-scene, and how Valkyria Karlsson had been there meditating in the cold.
Then she called Tove: ‘I’m going to be late again tonight.’
‘Can Markus come over?’
‘Sure, if he’d like to.’
I don’t want to be standing here at this door, Malin thinks. I want to go home and meet my daughter’s boyfriend. Will he even dare to turn up? All he’s seen of me was in Mum and Dad’s apartment, and how friendly was I then? And maybe he’s heard Janne’s version of my personality. But what would that be like?
