But to this day I still think I did the right thing. Andreas was dead. Jasmin handicapped for life. They knew what they were doing when they got in the car, even if they were drunk. They were mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions. No one blamed me, it was written off as an accident, and accidents happen. So why ruin Jerry’s life? In other people’s eyes, you never escape something like that.’
‘You mean driving while drunk and causing the deaths of other people?’ Johan asks.
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Jonas Karlsson says, pulling the piece of toilet paper from his lip, which starts bleeding again.
41
The windscreen wipers are working frantically to keep the rain off, to keep the view clear. The clock on the dashboard says 13.35.
Through the windscreen Malin can see fields and clumps of woodland, red-painted houses, and the whole world up here seems to be covered with a dull ash.
Not so much as a single swim on Tenerife. No water for her burning body.
But she does feel a bit better now. The alcohol has cleared her blood enough for her to be able to drive from Norrkoping to Linkoping. She feels like going straight to the Folkunga School and storming into whatever lesson Tove is having and just hugging her. It’s almost a week since she fled the house after hitting Janne while she was drunk. Almost a week since the body was found in the moat.
The heat of Tenerife. The rain and cold. She’s put on the thick sweater with the Norwegian pattern that she took with her for when she got back.
But Tove will have to wait.
She’s spoken to Zeke. Got the latest updates about the case: that Fredrik Fagelsjo has been released, that Jonas Karlsson has admitted Jerry Petersson was driving, but that he had an alibi for the night and morning of the murder.
Malin has got the address of one of the parents of the boy who died that New Year’s Eve, a woman called Stina Ekstrom living in Linghem.
‘I can stop off on my way back,’ she told Zeke.
‘We could meet up there.’
‘I’ll do it on my own. Don’t worry.’
‘How was Tenerife?’
‘Hot.’
‘Your parents?’
‘Let’s talk again once I’ve spoken to Stina Ekstrom, if she’s home.’
Malin puts the radio on. As she gets closer to Linkoping she manages to find the local station.
She recognises Helen Aneman’s soft, sensual voice. It’s been years since they last met, even though they live in the same city. They talk on the phone sometimes, agree that they should meet, but nothing ever comes of it.
Acquaintances rather than friends, Malin thinks as she listens to Helen talking about a dog show taking place in the Cloetta Center at the weekend, then, as Helen’s voice disappears, music spreads through the car and Malin feels her stomach clench. Why this song, why now?
‘Soon the angels will land. . Dare I say that we have each other. .?’
Ulf Lundell’s voice.
Janne’s body close to hers. Ridiculously romantic, the way they used to dance to this song in the living room of the house after sharing a bottle of wine, with Tove sleeping on the sofa, untroubled by the music.
Linghem.
The sign scarcely visible through the rain-sodden air.
Of all human nightmares, losing a child is the worst.
I was allowed to keep you, Tove, Malin thinks.
A car rolling into a deserted, frozen winter field.
The knock on the door.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you. .’
Malin turns off towards Linghem, driving past a football pitch and a church. A solitary man in a hooded jacket is standing beside a headstone in the small, walled churchyard with a bunch of flowers in his hand, it looks as if he’s talking to himself.
The small terraced house furnished with pine furniture.
Crocheted cloths on polished wooden surfaces, and on the cloths Swarovski crystal figurines, an impressive collection, Malin thinks, as Andreas Ekstrom’s mother puts a pot of fresh coffee on the living-room table.
There are seven framed photographs on a bureau.
A toddler grinning from under his fringe in a nursery-school picture. A picture taken on a football pitch. End of school. A well-built teenager on a beach somewhere. Short hair ruffled by the wind, and a metre or so out in the water stands a man who could be Andreas Ekstrom’s dad.
‘Now you know what he looked like,’ Stina Ekstrom says, sitting down opposite Malin on a matching wine-red velvet-clad armchair.
Similar pictures of Tove at home on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.
‘He looks like a real charmer,’ Malin says.
Stina Ekstrom smiles in agreement.
How old are you? Malin thinks.
Sixty?
The woman in front of her has short fair hair, grey at the temples, and the wrinkles around her thin lips reveal years of smoking. There’s a smell of smoke, but Malin can’t see any ashtrays or cigarettes. Maybe Stina Ekstrom has succeeded in giving up? Somehow managing to hold the cravings at bay?
Black jeans.
A grey knitted sweater.
Eyes that have got used to days coming and going, that there really aren’t any surprises. It’s not tiredness I can see in her eyes, Malin thinks, it’s something else, a sort of calm? No bitterness. A sense of being at peace, can that be it?
Stina Ekstrom pours the coffee with her left hand, then gestures towards the plate of homemade buns.
‘Now, what on earth can the police want with me?’
‘Jerry Petersson.’
‘I thought as much. Well, of course I read the papers.’
‘He was there when your son died.’
The look in Stina Ekstrom’s eyes doesn’t change. Is this what grief looks like when you’ve come to terms with it?
‘He was in the passenger seat. He was wearing a seat belt and got out OK.’
Malin nods.
‘Do you think about the accident much?’
‘Not about the accident. About Andreas. Every day.’
Malin takes a sip of coffee, hears the rain pattering on the window a few metres to her left.
‘Did you live here then?’
‘Yes, we moved here when Andreas was twelve. Before that we lived over in Vreta Kloster.’
Malin waits for Stina Ekstrom to go on.
‘I was angry at first,’ Stina Ekstrom says. ‘But then, as the years passed? It was as if all the anger and grief finally gave way, that nineteen years with Andreas was still a wonderful gift, and I think it’s pointless grieving for things that never happened.’
Malin can feel her heart contract, as though squeezed by a huge fist, and how her eyes start to tear up against her will.
