‘We still saw each other. It’s a long time ago. She must have forgotten.’
‘But you weren’t at the New Year’s Eve party?’
Zeke’s voice hoarse, as rough as the rain outside.
‘No. I wasn’t invited.’
Malin leans over the kitchen table. Looks calmly at Dalstrom. He seems to be trying to hide his face with his thin black hair.
‘His death hit you hard, didn’t it? It must have been tough, losing a friend.’
‘That was when I was most involved in music. But sure, I was upset.’
‘And now? Do you have many friends now?’
‘What have my friends got to do with this? I’ve got more friends than I have time to see.’
‘What were you doing on the night between last Thursday and Friday, and on Friday morning?’ Zeke asks as he puts his coffee cup on the table.
‘I was at work. You can ask the staff nurse, I’ll give you the number.’
‘We have to check,’ Malin says. ‘It’s part of the routine.’
‘No problem,’ Dalstrom says. ‘Do whatever you have to do to get hold of whoever killed Jerry Petersson. OK, it sounds like he was a bastard, and if he was driving that night then he deserved some sort of punishment. But getting murdered? No one deserves that, not for anything.’
‘So you knew?’ Zeke says.
‘Knew what?’
‘That Petersson was driving?’
‘I had no idea. You just told me. She did.’
‘Have you got the number of the hospital where you work?’ Malin asks as she glances at Zeke and drinks the last of her water.
Darkness has fallen over Linkoping by the time Zeke drops Malin off outside her door in Agatan.
Light is streaming out of the Pull amp; Bear pub, the noise filtering out to the street, and in just a few seconds I can be standing at the bar with an oak-aged tequila in front of me.
‘Go upstairs now,’ Zeke calls before he pulls away. Standing in the doorway, Malin checks her messages on her mobile: one from Tove, saying that she’s going back to Janne’s. It’s been a week since we last saw each other, Malin thinks. How did that happen?
Malin called the staff nurse at Bjorsater old people’s home on the way back, and she confirmed Anders Dalstrom’s alibi, checking the rota to see that he had been working that night.
Malin lowers her mobile, steps out into the street and looks at the pub’s sign, radiating a soft, warm, enticing glow. Her hangover is still lingering in her body with undiminished force, and is now exacerbated by vast amounts of regret and longing and desire, but she still wants to go into the pub, to sit down at the bar and see what happens.
Then the familiar sound of her mobile ringing.
Dad’s name on the screen.
She answers.
‘Hi Dad.’
‘So you got home OK?’
‘I’m home. I’ve been working today and yesterday.’
‘You realise Mum wondered where you got to?’
‘Did you explain?’
‘I said you got a call about work and had to rush off.’
White lies.
Secrets.
So closely related.
‘How are things with Tove?’
‘She’s fine. Waiting for me up in the flat. I’m just outside at the moment. We’re about to have some supper, egg sandwiches.’
‘Send her my love,’ Dad says.
‘I will, I’ll be back with her in a minute or so. I’ve another call, I’ve got to go, bye.’
Malin puts the key in the lock.
Opens the door.
Post on the floor. Advertising leaflets from various discount warehouses.
But beneath the leaflets.
A white A4 envelope with her name written in neat capital letters in blue ink.
No stamp.
And she takes her post into the kitchen, tossing the adverts on the table, takes out a kitchen knife, opens the envelope and pulls out its contents.
Pictures.
Loads of pictures.
Black-and-white pictures, and Malin feels herself going cold, then fear gives way to anger, which soon turns back into fear again.
Dad outside their block in Tenerife.
A grainy picture of Mum on the balcony.
The two of them in the aisle of a supermarket pushing a trolley.
Dad on the beach. On a golf course.
Mum in a terrace bar, alone with a glass of wine. She looks relaxed, at ease.
Pictures that look as if they’ve been cut from a Super 8 film.
Pictures taken by someone spying, documenting, stalking.
Black, black-and-white pictures.
A message.
A greeting passed on.
Goldman, Malin thinks. You fucking bastard.
46
Sven Sjoman leans back on the wine-red leather sofa in the living room of his villa, pointing at one of the photographs that are spread out on the tiled coffee table. The grandfather clock in the corner has just struck eight, the sound echoing perfectly from the case he made himself. Hand-woven rugs on the floor, large, healthy pot plants hiding the view of the dark garden.
Sven looks at Malin, who is leaning forward in the Lamino armchair opposite him.
She called him, and he told her to come around at once.
The photographs on the table. Carefully laid out with pincers. Sven’s finger in the air.
‘He’s trying to frighten you, Malin. He just wants to scare you.’
And Malin gives in to panic: ‘Tove. What’s to say they’re not going to go for Tove?’
‘Calm down, Malin. Calm down.’
‘It can’t happen again.’
‘Think, Malin. Who do you think’s behind these pictures? What’s the logical answer?’
She takes a deep breath.
In the car she tried to think clearly, force her fear aside.
She ended up back at her first instinct: ‘Goldman.’
Sven nods.
‘This,’ he says, ‘plainly isn’t something we can ignore. But I don’t think you need to worry. It’s just Goldman playing one of those games that he obviously loves so much.’
‘You think so?’
