Summertime Death (32 page)

On the way back to the car park.

The sun like the ice-blue core of a gas flame in the sky, the sort of light that sunglasses have no effect against. The ground seems to be sweating, even though it’s so dry Malin imagines it could spontaneously combust. There’s also the smell of the forest fires, tickling her nose and making her whole being feel slightly anxious. Phrases of gratitude in the house they’ve just left.

‘Thanks. You’re doing the right thing.’

Reassurance: ‘It isn’t dangerous. It will be good for her to remember.’

Practicalities: ‘We’ll be in touch when I’ve spoken to Viveka Crafoord. Hopefully this evening. Tomorrow at the latest. We’ll be in touch, make sure we can contact you.’

And now Viveka on the other end of the line, in her house out in Svartmåla.

‘I’m just back from a dip in the lake.’

Daniel Högfeldt’s body.

The waters of Stora Rängen.

The key is in the past.

‘She’s agreed to be hypnotised. And her parents have given their consent.’

‘When?’

‘Whenever suits you.’

‘Where?’

‘Same thing.’

‘How about seven o’clock this evening in my clinic?’

‘Perfect. As long as nothing else comes up.’

Nathalie Falck is standing with a rake in her hand, its spray of teeth like a dying treetop against the blue summer sky, almost white with the heat.

They’re standing among the graves at the far end of the cemetery, from where they can see the roof of the supermarket in Valla, and hear the cars out on the main road, forcing their way through the dense air.

‘I use a grass rake for the gravel,’ Nathalie says. ‘It’s easier than using the other sort.’

‘It’s looking good,’ Malin said, gesturing at the gravel path up towards the chapel where they hold the burial services. ‘You’re very conscientious.’

‘Yes, I suppose it’s unusual to be conscientious.’

Zeke silent by Malin’s side, in the shade of an old oak, the flowers on most of the graves scorched and crisp, prematurely withered in the cruel heat.

‘I can see you looking at the flowers. But we can’t water them fast enough. Not in this heat.’

Malin nods.

‘It is hot,’ she says. Then she asks: ‘You haven’t told us everything, have you?’

‘How can you know that?’

‘Just a gut instinct. Two girls of your age are dead, murdered, so it’s time to talk.’

‘I haven’t got anything to tell you.’

‘Yes you have,’ Malin says. ‘We both know that.’

Nathalie Falck shakes her head lightly.

‘No.’

‘OK,’ Zeke says. ‘What were you doing on the night between Monday and Tuesday?’

‘I was at home. Mum and Dad can tell you.’

‘Two girls,’ Malin says. ‘Theresa. Aren’t you upset that she’s dead?’

Nathalie Falck shrugs her shoulders, but Malin can see her eyes slowly fill with tears. Then she pulls herself together.

‘OK,’ she says.

‘OK, what?’ Zeke says, and Malin can feel him trying not to sound angry and aggressive.

‘Calm down, Zeke. Let her tell us.’

Nathalie Falck takes a few steps into the shade before sitting down on the grass by the oak tree.

‘I read in the paper that you searched Lollo Svensson’s house. But the article didn’t say everything. You ought to know that I had a thing with her, well, I went with her, just like Theresa did. I presume that’s what you want to know, if you didn’t already know.’

Malin and Zeke are staring at each other.

So maybe that was what Theresa was doing when she said she was with Peter Sköld? Is that what he wouldn’t tell them?

Louise ‘Lollo’ Svensson.

So, you’re back in the case again.

And are you Lovelygirl as well?

‘Is Louise Svensson the same person as Lovelygirl on Theresa’s Facebook page?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Lollo.

A hot fog drifting into the meandering byways of the case, taking shape, disappearing, sweeping on and taking shape again.

A shadow.

‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says.

‘And it didn’t occur to you that we ought to know this?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘But you still . . .’ Malin stifles her words, swearing inwardly. All this silence they have to fight against, all this life that has to be kept secret, to elevate it somehow, as if all this damn silence were holy water.

‘But now you know,’ Nathalie Falck says with a smile. ‘I just didn’t think it was anything to do with you. It’s private.’

‘How do you mean, went with her?’

‘Had sex with her out at her farm. She’d give you money. And in case you’re wondering about Peter Sköld, he’s got a boyfriend in Söderköping. He was spending time with him whenever he said he was with Theresa. And Theresa was with me instead.’

‘Were you and Theresa a couple?’

‘No. Not my type.’

Not ‘your type’, Malin thinks.

‘We had sex a few times, every now and then,’ Nathalie Falck says. ‘But only as friends.’

Zeke’s words to Sven Sjöman: ‘Get a patrol car out to Lollo Svensson’s farm outside Rimforsa, and bring her in for questioning straight away. She had a sexual relationship with Theresa Eckeved.’

Pause.

The hot, clammy interior of the car as he opens the door in the cemetery car park.

‘I know, Sven. We can always hold her on corruption of a minor.’

Don’t be too hard on her now.

See her as the person she really is.

Lollo, there’s nothing wrong with her. Unless perhaps there is? Something wrong with her?

I remember her hands on my skin, the way she gave me money afterwards, the taste of her swollen, moist crotch, and her words, whispering: Theresa, Theresa, Theresa, and the words turned to cotton wool among the flowery sheets, to the forest outside her window, to the dark expanse of the sky adorned with hopeful stars.

And she gave in to my tongue, and I had nothing against that, because I had so much to learn about the body that I no longer have
.

Angels.

Like me, like Sofia.

Are we the eternal virgins?

Is she Lovelygirl, Malin?

Or is Slavenca Lovelygirl?

You’ll have to work that out on your own.

So listen to Lollo, try to understand why she does what she does, why she is the way that she is.

I can feel your excitement, Malin.

The way you think you’ve caught a scent of the truth.

Imagining that it will help you.

That hope is driving us both, isn’t it?

Waldemar Ekenberg is sitting at his temporary desk in the Crime Unit’s open-plan office. His longs legs, clad in green linen, are up on the desk and he’s drumming a pen against the arm of his office chair. Opposite him Per Sundsten is randomly surfing various news websites and bringing himself up to date with what’s being written about their murders.

Expressen
: City of Terror.

Aftonbladet
: What the Killer is Like.

Dagens Nyheter
: A Swedish Serial Killer?

The
Östgöta Correspondent
: The Linköping Killer: Man or Woman?

He skims the articles, nothing new, nothing they don’t already know, interviews with people in the city, young girls swimming at Tinnis.

We’re scared. We don’t go out at night.

There’s a really weird atmosphere in the city.

I’ve got a fourteen-year-old daughter. I worry whenever she goes out
.

Per lets the screensaver click in on his laptop, pictures of a beach in Thailand.

God, what wouldn’t I give to be there now? At that moment he sees Sven Sjöman heading towards their desks, from a distance it looks as though he’s shuddering as he makes his way through the office. Am I going to end up like that? Per thinks: so tired, and sort of slow? Sven’s body might be tired, but the look in his eyes is all the more alert, and Per can see that Sven has something important for them.

Two strangers, Sven thinks as he heads towards Per and Waldemar’s desks. Outsiders, even though they belong to the same force. The man of the future and the brute, the rumours that precede them both, Ekenberg a rotten egg who’s been lucky enough to get away with it.

Sven has seen a lot of men like Ekenberg during his years in the police. He’s always tried to keep away from them, or, as a senior officer, to get rid of them.

The ends do not justify the means.

Unless perhaps they do? In a case like this?

Sven recalls the girl’s body in the Railway Park. Her eyes white and blind, like a sightless deer, polished stones that have lost their shine, their beauty.

Sven stops at their desks, two pairs of eyes staring at him, one pair, Per’s, still seem to be somewhere else, but Waldemar’s exude concentration on the task at hand.

‘We’ve heard from Telia. The call has been localised to Mariavägen in Wimanshäll. There’s a Suliman Hajif living there, he cropped up alongside Karami in the gang rape case last winter, although he was never a suspect. The likelihood is that the two of them have fallen out somehow and Suliman just wants to make life difficult for Karami.’

The two outsiders have stood up.

‘We’re on our way,’ Waldemar says, and Sven sees his eyes turn black, the pupils expanding in anticipation of something that Sven would prefer not to express in words.

‘Take it easy now. Be careful.’

Per nods.

‘Who knows,’ he says. ‘We might be getting close.’

Ten minutes later they pull up on Mariavägen, outside a small, white block of flats, two storeys surrounded by a garden with unkempt apple trees.

The heat and light pounce on them as they get out of the car.

‘Sunglasses on,’ Waldemar grins.

The air conditioning just had time to get going, turned up to maximum, and now a difference in temperature of some twenty-five degrees lets the heat get a stranglehold on them, driven on by the light.

They approach the house along a gravel path almost completely covered by weeds.

‘Do you reckon he’s home?’

‘Probably,’ Waldemar says. ‘These lazy bastards usually sleep all day and do their dirty work at night.’

‘Listen, let’s take this a bit more calmly, OK?’

Waldemar doesn’t reply, pressing the buzzer for another flat, not Hajif’s.

No answer.

Four flats.

‘Do you know the postcode?’

‘Sorry, no idea. We can call in and find out.’

Flat number two, no answer, and from behind, Per sees the muscles in Waldemar’s back tense under his jacket as he takes aim at the door and slams into it with full force. The door gives in and Waldemar tumbles into the stairwell but stops himself from falling.

‘Now he knows we’re on our way.’

‘Don’t you just love bad landlords? That door should have been replaced years ago. Come on, quick.’

And they rush up the stairs to the first floor. No doors have opened to see where the noise came from.

Nothing but emptiness and silence and a grey-speckled stone floor and shabby pale-blue walls. Hajif’s front door is painted pink.

They ring the bell.

Sounds from inside the flat.

No peephole.

Steps approaching the door, then disappearing.

‘He’s on his way out,’ Waldemar says. ‘He’s going to run.’

And once again he throws himself at the door and this one too flies open without putting up much resistance, and in the narrow, messy hall stands a young man with a well-toned upper body and black hair in a ponytail. His dark eyes glare at them in surprise as he pulls on a pair of white sports underwear, his cock, pierced with a cock-ring, visible, half erect.

‘Listen, Paki, we need to talk to you. Nothing to get worked up about,’ Waldemar says, and Suliman Hajif pulls up his underwear, runs back into the flat, towards an open balcony door at the back of the building.

‘Get him!’ Waldemar yells, and Per rushes after Suliman Hajif, throwing himself at his legs just as he steps out onto the balcony, and the young man falls forward, headfirst, into the solid grey balcony railings, which give way and his body is dragged out, down, and he screams as he flails above the drop, the yellow grass four metres below.

‘You’re not going to fall,’ Per says as he fights to keep hold of Suliman Hajif on the balcony. He tries with all his strength to pull him up; he could break his neck in a fall like that, and then what good would he be?

Waldemar’s hand on one of Suliman Hajif’s feet.

They pull together, and up he comes, lying on his stomach and putting up no resistance as Waldemar cuffs him and drags him onto the white-lacquered wooden floor in the living room.

‘What the hell was that all about?’

Per is panting, catching his breath, and slaps Suliman Hajif on the back.

‘We just want to talk to you.’

‘Well, maybe not just that,’ Waldemar says.

He’s pulled open the doors of the built-in cupboards. Per turns around, sees piles of magazines, the inside walls of the cupboards covered with porn pictures, serious, hardcore stuff, women shackled to racks, women being whipped.

Sex toys neatly lined up.

Masks.

Whips.

Chastity belts.

And there, in splendid isolation on the bottom shelf of one of cupboards, a blue dildo. The paint flaking off its strangely transparent surface.

Interview Room One.

The dark-grey ceiling seems to be falling in on the even darker walls, a tape recorder on a black tabletop, Zeke and Malin on one side of the table, Lollo Svensson on the other, dressed in a white T-shirt with the words ‘Bitch Power’. Her face and the look in her eyes radiate defiance, and she hasn’t asked for a lawyer.

Malin thinks, feels, how best to open this lock, is there any way? She thinks that it’s probably impossible, before saying: ‘So, you like young girls?’

Lollo Svensson glares into Malin’s eyes, full of hatred now, but not towards me, Malin thinks, towards something else, and she thinks: if we can find the core of that hatred we can find the killer, the core of that hatred could be the core of this evil, this violence.