Savage Spring (7 page)

Malin sits down opposite Zeke.

She wants to be able to look out at the playground of the nursery school outside the windows. The children are out there, playing in the sandpit, pushing toy cars, playing with skipping ropes, clambering up the new climbing frame that was installed just a month or so ago, the solid pastel colours of which remind Malin of what it was like to have a really bad hangover.

All the police officers are sitting in silence, waiting for Sven Sjöman – who has been appointed head of the preliminary investigation – to start the first meeting in the investigation into the presumed bombing outside the SEB bank in Linköping’s main square on 10 May, an explosion in which two little girls, as yet unidentified, lost their lives, and five other people were seriously injured.

Sven stops writing on the board and turns around, and for a moment the officers hope for a miracle, that Sven has somehow solved the case at once, so that they can declare the emergency over and tell the city’s citizens the truth.

But this spring is no age of miracles in Linköping.

‘Well, the first thing I should say,’ Sven Sjöman begins, ‘is that the Security Police are on their way. We could well be dealing with a subversive act against national security. Obviously, we still have primary responsibility in formal terms, and we’ll be expected to help the Security Police with their parallel investigation, but I doubt we can expect any help from them in return.’

‘They’re quick off the fucking mark,’ Waldemar Ekenberg snarls.

‘Take it easy, Waldemar,’ Karim Akbar says. ‘I’ve just spoken to Karin Johannison. She’s done a quick analysis of the crater by the cashpoint machine: we are dealing with a bomb attack. So we need all the help we can get. It looks as if the bomb was placed outside the cash machine rather than inside it, and most of the force was directed away from it. From what we can tell so far, the charge was pretty large, equivalent to a kiloton or so. Previous attacks against cash machines used much smaller amounts, only about five per cent of that. So I think we can safely rule out any possibility that this was a straightforward attempted robbery.’

Sven points at the board.

All the officers seem to agree with him: this is no ordinary crime.

‘I’ve written up some possible lines of inquiry for us to think about,’ Sven goes on. ‘About people who could be behind something like this.’

Something like this, Malin thinks.

The cheek. The eye staring at her.

Two young children are dead.

And Sven calls it ‘something’, but that’s just his way of creating the necessary distance from the crime in order for the investigation to run as efficiently as possible.

‘What do we know about the victims?’ Malin says.

Her colleagues look at her, the looks in their eyes revealing that they have only just remembered what she was doing earlier that day, what is going on in her life at the moment.

Concern.

Sympathy.

She hates sympathy. But there’s doubt as well: Is she going to buckle under the strain? Start drinking again?

‘No need to worry about me,’ Malin says, in an effort to pre-empt the thought. ‘Besides, I’m needed here now, aren’t I?’

Johan Jakobsson nods. Karim does too, before saying: ‘We’re grateful to you for putting the victims first.’

‘So what do we know about them?’

‘Nothing so far,’ Sven says. ‘One theory is that they were the children of the woman who’s in the University Hospital at the moment with severe injuries. It looks as if she and the children were closest to the bomb when it went off. Karin has already been able to confirm that we’re talking about two young children. But they haven’t yet been identified.’

Malin nods.

‘Could the children have been the target?’ she asks.

‘In all likelihood they were innocent victims,’ Sven says, ‘who just happened to be there by some cruel twist of fate.’

Cruel twist of fate?

Malin can feel that she has taken the children’s side.

If they care, wherever they are now.

We’re here, Malin.

Close to you.

But simultaneously everywhere.

We can’t be bothered to listen to everything you say in your meeting room, talking about various factions in society.

You go on and on like that, like adults, you want to understand everything.

About the right-wing extremists who are growing in strength in the city. Could they be behind the explosion? But they love the banks, don’t they? Capitalism? Anyway, behind their noisy, sick ideas they’re pretty harmless, they’ve never caused much trouble in Linköping apart from a few demonstrations that have got out of hand.

The man called Karim is talking.

Do we have to listen to him? We want to drift off, to Mummy, and stroke her on the cheek.

But we stay, listen.

He raises the idea of terrorists.

The rest of you don’t want to think this thought, but he raises it, and maybe he knows something that you don’t.

He asks the question straight out: could Islamic extremists have been responsible? Could there have been a terrorist cell hidden away in Linköping? Could they have set off dark undercurrents among the city’s Muslim population, making some of its young unemployed members focus their energy in the wrong direction?

But Sven protests, saying that none of the city’s Muslims has ever reported that sort of extremism. That there are no greater social problems among that group than in any other group with high unemployment.

Karim persists: someone will have to talk to the local imam sooner or later. And perhaps the Security Police know something that you don’t know. Even if it’s a long shot, and even if it might look racist, we need to talk to him. Look at what happened in Örebro. That Guantanamo inmate used to go to the mosque there, then he went off to Pakistan and was accused of being a terrorist. But what did the imam in Örebro know? And what’s to say that there isn’t an active terrorist cell here in Linköping?

And we can hear what Karim’s thinking, he’s thinking: even though there are Swedish troops in Afghanistan, people still don’t seem to realise that there’s a war on. The Islamic extremists want to kill us. They want to kill our families, our wives, women, and children. It’s us or them. It’s as simple as that.

And he’s thinking about his father, Malin. Who was forced to flee nationalist Muslims in Turkey, and then committed suicide in Sundsvall. Alone, unwanted, and desperately homesick.

You think so much. Trying to make evil simple, comprehensible.

We don’t think that much. We feel. But is that any better?

You talk so much.

No, we can’t be bothered to listen to you talking about how our bodies shattered, Malin, how we were blown up, how our blood stained the beautiful spring square and the plants outside the chemist’s and made everything red and horrid. No, we’d rather watch the children playing in the nursery playground, pretend that we can still sing, go down the slide, run and jump, maybe just have some fruit as a snack.

That sort of thing’s fun.

Proper fun.

And he’s right, Sven, that is our mummy lying in hospital with tubes going in and out of her body, and breathing in a way that frightens us.

Now you’re all babbling again, even if those two, Börje and Johan, are mostly silent. But you, Malin, occasionally you say something, and Zeke has his say, while Waldemar is mostly just sceptical and looks on sullenly, we think he could do with a cigarette to help him calm down. Our daddy did that sometimes. He was kind. But he’s not here now.

You talk about activists in Linköping. Those on the left, the students who managed to shut down all the fur shops in the city, maybe they’ve started attacking the banks now. And maybe this was an attack aimed at the SEB bank, the avaricious heart of the capitalist swine.

It would be worth checking out what known activists have been up to, Sven says.

You’re wrinkling your nose, Malin, don’t you believe that? But then who would ever have believed that a bomb could go off in Linköping?

The children outside. They’re climbing high, but we’re drifting even higher.

We flying higher than everyone.

You talk of security cameras, getting hold of recordings and studying them, to see if there’s any sign of a culprit, or if there’s any sign of the bomb before it goes off.

Forensics are working on it, Sven says.

Gathering evidence, finding out more about the bomb, identifying the victims.

You need to find out if there had been any threats made against the bank.

There were no other bombs in the square, but might there be more against other banks? Here? Or elsewhere? You’re all wondering the same thing, but it’s Sven who voices the idea. Impossible to know, Karim says, but until someone claims responsibility for the bombing or makes threats about new attacks, we can hardly cordon off the whole of Linköping.

Don’t you ever stop talking, Malin? This isn’t fun at all.

Karim talks about his press conference, and outside the police station at least a hundred journalists have gathered, calmly waiting for someone to give them something new to report.

They’re bored, the journalists, but they can turn in a moment and become a horde of bloodthirsty reptiles.

So many possibilities, you think, Malin, so many paths, where to begin?

Then Sven’s phone rings.

The woman with the tubes in her stomach and neck and thighs, the woman who’s our mummy, she regained consciousness briefly, and said her name. Her name’s Hanna, Hanna Vigerö, and us, our names are Tuva and Mira, and only you can help us now, Malin, only you, and we’re relying on you.

Sven Sjöman closes his mobile.

‘We know who the woman in hospital is now. A Hanna Vigerö, forty years old. She had twin daughters, so in all likelihood the two fatalities are Tuva and Mira Vigerö, six years old, from Ekholmen.’

‘Is she awake?’ Waldemar Ekenberg asks. ‘If she makes it, then the bastard or bastards who did this will have one less life on their consciences.’

‘If they have a conscience,’ Börje Svärd adds.

‘They can’t have,’ Waldemar says.

‘She only regained consciousness briefly,’ Sven says. ‘We need to check what family she has, and let them know.’

‘I can do that,’ Johan Jakobsson says in a calm voice. ‘While I’m checking the animal rights activists and right-wing extremists.’

‘Can we talk to her?’ Malin asks.

‘Not according to her doctors. She’s got serious injuries, and is basically out of reach,’ Sven says. ‘She’s going to be having a major operation later this afternoon. We’ll have to wait and see about questioning her. Aronsson and a number of our colleagues are at the hospital interviewing the other people injured as we speak, evidently none of them was so badly hurt that they can’t be questioned. Then they’ll deal with anyone who managed to leave the square whose names we’ve still got. Malin, you and Zeke go and talk to the imam, even if you don’t think there’s any point focusing our attention in that direction at the moment.

‘Waldemar, you and Börje talk to any bank employees who weren’t there earlier today. OK? Ask about cameras. And try to find out about other cameras around the city. The council should have a register of permits, shouldn’t they?’

Börje nods, and says: ‘We’ll get onto it at once.’

‘I can smell blood,’ Waldemar says with a grin.

‘I’ll take care of the hyenas,’ Karim says. ‘The media are going to have a field day. And we’ll have to wait and see what happens when the Security Police show up.’

The whiteboard behind Sven has heavy underlining beneath the words ‘Islamic extremists’ and ‘Activists’.

Malin looks at the board.

‘Could this have been aimed at that family? Rather than at the bank, or society in general?’ she says.

Her colleagues look at her, clearly none of them has considered that.

‘It’s not very likely, Malin,’ Sven says. ‘This is something bigger, something else. They just got in the way. Anyway, if someone was after them, there are far simpler ways of going about it than placing a bomb outside a bank, aren’t there?’

Malin nods.

‘I just wanted to raise the idea.’

‘You’ll all be offered debriefing and counselling, after what happened today,’ Karim says. ‘There’ll be good people at your disposal. You just have to say the word.’

Subtext: Don’t say the word. Ideally, never say the word. Don’t be pathetic. Stay strong, do what’s expected of you, carry on without blinking, don’t give in to any weakness or vulnerability inside you. Now’s a time for action, not soppy bloody therapy.

‘Start with the imam,’ Sven says. ‘But be careful. We don’t want the papers screaming that we’re Islamophobic racists. Anyway, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to make any connection as things stand.’

‘Maybe we should hold back for a bit?’ Malin suggests. ‘Wait and see, as far as that’s concerned?’

‘Go and talk to the imam,’ Karim says. ‘That’s an order. OK, we’re going to get the bastards who did this. Those children had their whole lives ahead of them. Just like those children out there. If that means we have to tread on a few toes, then so be it. Understood?’

‘Of course we have to talk to the imam,’ Waldemar says, but she can see doubt in Zeke, Johan, and Börje’s eyes: what’s the point, so early in the investigation, when absolutely nothing points in that direction apart from a sort of general feeling among the public.

But that’s the way prejudice works.

And it influences us. Particularly when there’s an external threat that’s hard to pin down.

Malin looks out through the window. In the nursery playground two children are crawling into a dark playhouse, and she thinks that it looks as if the children are disappearing, swallowed up by a different dimension.