‘Do you know anything about Bengt Andersson that we ought to know?’
‘If I tell you anything, no one else will find out that I was the one who told you, will they?’
‘No,’ Malin says, and Zeke nods in agreement, adding, ‘This will stay between us. No one will know where the information came from.’
‘They never left him alone,’ Fredrik Unning says, staring at the curtains. ‘They were always getting at him. It was like an obsession.’
‘Getting at Bengt Andersson?’ Zeke over by the window. ‘Who was getting at him?’
And Fredrik Unning gets scared again, his body slumps, moves away from Malin and she thinks how fear has become increasingly common around her over the years, how person after person seems to have understood that silence is always safest, that every word uttered carries the potential for danger. And maybe they’re right.
‘Bengt,’ Fredrik Unning says.
‘Who? It’s okay,’ Malin says. ‘You can do it.’
And her words help Fredrik to relax.
‘Jocke and Jimmy. They were always making fun of him, Ball-Bengt.’
‘Jocke and Jimmy?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are their real names? Jocke and Jimmy?’
Fresh hesitation. Fresh fear.
‘We need to know.’
‘Joakim Svensson and Jimmy Kalmvik.’ Fredrik Unning says their names in a firm voice.
‘And who are they?’
‘They’re in year nine in my school, they’re real bastards. Big and mean.’
Shouldn’t you be at school now? Malin thinks, but she doesn’t ask.
‘What did they do to Ball-Bengt?’
‘They used to follow him, tease him, shout things at him. And I think they messed up his bike, and threw things at him, stones and stuff. I think they might even have poured some sort of sludge through his letterbox.’
‘Sludge?’ Zeke asking.
‘Flour, dirt, water, ketchup, anything, all mixed together.’
‘And how do you know this?’
‘They forced me to join in sometimes. Otherwise I’d get beaten up.’
‘Did you get beaten up?’
Shame in Fredrik Unning’s eyes, fear: ‘They won’t find out that I’ve told you, will they? The bastards torture cats as well.’
‘In what way?’
‘They catch them and stick mustard up their backsides.’
Brave lads, Malin thinks.
‘Have you seen them do that?’
‘No, but I’ve heard it from other people.’
Zeke from the window, his voice like the crack of a whip. ‘Might they have shot through his window with a rifle? Did you join in with that as well?’
Fredrik Unning shakes his head. ‘I’ve never done anything like that. Anyway, where would they get the gun from?’
Outside the clouds have thinned slightly, and through a few cracks some tentative rays of light are spreading across the greyish-white ground, making it clear and vibrant, and in her mind’s eye Malin can see what the Roxen must look like in summer from up here, in warm light, when the rays have full access to a completely blank surface. But sadly a winter like this one doesn’t make it easy to think of warmth.
‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says. ‘Those two sound pretty tough, Jocke and Jimmy. Serious hard cases.’
‘I feel sorry for Fredrik Unning,’ Malin says.
‘Sorry for him?’
‘You must have noticed how lonely he is? He must have been prepared to do anything to hang out with the tough kids.’
‘So they didn’t force him?’
‘I don’t doubt that they did. But it’s not that simple.’
‘It doesn’t sound like they come from bad backgrounds.’
Fredrik Unning’s words a short while before: ‘Jimmy’s dad works on oil platforms and his mum’s a housewife. Jocke’s dad’s dead and his mum works as a secretary.’
Malin’s phone rings. Sven Sjöman’s name on the screen.
‘Malin here.’
She tells him about their visit to the Murvalls, and about what they’d learned from Fredrik Unning.
‘We’re thinking of going to talk to Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson right away.’
‘We need to have a meeting,’ Sven says. ‘They’ll have to wait an hour or two.’
‘But—’
‘We’ve got a team meeting in thirty minutes, Malin.’
The children are defying the cold.
The playground outside the windows of the meeting room is full of sluggish little moon-figures staggering about in their padded winter overalls. Blue children, red ones and one little orange warning child: be careful with me, I’m little, I might break. The assistants shiver in grey-blue fleece trousers, their breath like thick smoke. They jump on the spot when they’re not helping some little one who’s fallen over, flapping their arms round their bodies.
If this cold doesn’t give up soon, everyone will have to learn how to live with it. Like a broken back.
Börje Svärd’s report, people with links to Rickard Skoglöf. Interviews with kids who seem to live out their lives in front of a computer or as characters in role-playing games. ‘Anything but real life.’
The hesitation in Börje’s body. Malin can see it, smell it. As if all of life had given him just one single lesson: don’t take anything for granted.
The results of the background checks.
Rickard Skoglöf seemed to have had a normal upbringing in an ordinary working-class home in Åtvidaberg; his father worked at Facit until it was shut down, then at Adelnäs fruit farm, where his son had also worked during summer holidays when he was at secondary school. Two years in sixth form. Then nothing. Valkyria Karlsson grew up on a farm in Dalsland. She got two-thirds of the way through an anthropology course at Lund University after sixth form in Dals Ed.
Karim Akbar. Also hesitant, but nonetheless: ‘This Æsir angle. Keep digging, there’s something there.’
His voice a little too confident, as if he were taking on the role of the convinced, encouraging boss.
Johan Jakobsson hollow-eyed. Winter vomiting bug, long nights awake, changed sheets. New wrinkles in his brow every morning, deeper and deeper. Daddy, where are you? Don’t want to, don’t want to.
Malin shuts her eyes. Has no energy for this meeting. Wants to get out and work. To talk to Ljungsbro’s own teenage bullies, see what they know. Maybe they can give them some leads, maybe they got hold of a gun and are responsible for firing into Ball-Bengt’s flat, maybe their bad behaviour just got out of hand; who knows what two imaginative fifteen-year-olds are capable of?
Tove and Markus in her parents’ apartment.
On the bed.
Malin can see them in front of her.
‘And then we have the teenagers who made Bengt Andersson’s life a misery,’ Sven Sjöman says. ‘You and Zeke will have to question them. Get them at school after this meeting. They ought to be there at this time of day.’
Sure, Sven, sure, Malin thinks, then says, ‘If they aren’t at school we’ll find out where they live, and we’ve got their mobile numbers.’
After the two lads, she wants to bring the Murvall brothers in for questioning, bring the old woman in and put some pressure on her. Listen to the wives.
The brothers.
The looks on the women’s faces.
No friendliness, just suspicion against the stranger. Alone, even if they stick together.
What is that sort of loneliness? Where does it come from? From the repeated unkindnesses of the world around them? From the fact that they keep getting no as an answer? From everybody. Or is that sort of loneliness granted to each of us? Is it within all of us, and, if it gets the chance to grow, does it simply overwhelm us?
The awareness of loneliness. The fear.
When did I first see that loneliness, that antipathy in Tove’s face? When did I first see anything other than pure kindness and joy in her eyes?
She was
maybe two and a half. Suddenly there among the innocence and charm was an element of calculation and anxiety. The child had become a human being.
Loneliness. Fear. Most people manage to hold on to some of the child’s joy, the naivety, when they encounter other people, when they feel a sense of belonging. Manage to overcome the possibly innate loneliness. Like Fredrik Unning tried to do today. Reach out a hand, as if he had realised he was worth more than being left to his own devices by his parents and forced to go along with boys who would really rather have nothing to do with him.
Happiness is possible.
Like with Tove. Like with Janne, in spite of everything. Like with myself.
But the women round the Murvall family table? Where did their unadulterated joy disappear to? Where did it go? Can it have run out for good? Could it be true, Malin thinks, as Sven summarises the state of the investigation, that there is only a finite amount of happiness free of guile, and that every time some of that sort of happiness is lost, it is gone for good and replaced instead by muteness, hardness?
And what happens if we are forced to give in to loneliness?
What sort of violence might be born then? In that point of fracture? In that final exclusion?
The child holding out its arms to its mother, to a nursery-school assistant.
Look after me, carry me.
Of course I’ll carry you.
I won’t just abandon you.
‘Mum, I was thinking of staying at Dad’s tonight, is that all right?’
Tove’s message on her mobile. Malin listens to the message as she walks through the open-plan office.
Malin calls her.
‘It’s Mum.’
‘Mum, you got my message.’
‘I got it. It’s okay. How are you getting out there?’
‘I’ll go down to the station. His shift ends at six, so we can head out then.’
‘Okay, I’m probably going to be working late anyway.’
Sjöman’s words at the meeting: ‘I’ve already called them in for questioning. If the whole Murvall family doesn’t turn up here tomorrow, we can go and get them. But we haven’t got enough for a search warrant as far as the guns are concerned.’
When she ends the call to Tove, Malin calls Janne. Gets the answering service.
‘Is it right that Tove’s staying the night at yours? Just checking.’
Then she sits down behind her desk. Waits. Sees Börje Svärd hesitantly twisting the ends of his moustache on the far side of the room.
32
The façade of the main building of Ljungsbro school is matt grey, the low, dark-red-tiled roofs are covered by a thin layer of snow; small swirls of frozen moments, circular patterns etched on to several of the larger surfaces.
They park by the craft rooms, aquariums for handicrafts in a row of single-storey buildings along the road leading into town.
Malin looks into the rooms, empty, with dormant saws, lathes, firing and welding equipment. They walk past what must be a technology room; pulleys and chains hanging from the ceiling, one by one, as if ready for use. When she looks in the other direction she can just make out Vretaliden care home, and in her mind’s eye she sees Gottfrid Karlsson sitting in his bed, under an orange health service blanket, quietly driving her on: ‘What happened to Bengt Andersson? Who killed him?’
Malin and Zeke walk to the main building, past what must be the school dining room. Inside the frosted windows the staff are scrubbing pans and work surfaces. Zeke pulls open the door of the main entrance, eager to escape the cold, and in the large, airy space some fifty pupils are all talking at once, their breath fogging the windows on to the school grounds.
No one pays any attention to Malin and Zeke, their attention utterly absorbed by the conversations that belong to teenage life.
Tove’s world.
This is what it looks like.
Malin notices a thin boy with long black hair and an anxious look, talking to a pretty blonde girl.
On the far side of the room a sign above a glass door announces: Head’s Office.
‘Vamos,’ Zeke says as he catches sight of the sign.
Britta Svedlund, head of Ljungsbro school, has them shown in at once, perhaps the first time the police have been to the school in her time here.
But probably not.
The school is known to be problematic, and every year several of its pupils are sent to reform school, somewhere far out in the countryside, for further education in low-level criminality.
Britta Svedlund crosses her legs, her skirt riding up her thighs, revealing an unusual amount of black nylon, and Malin notes that Zeke has trouble controlling his eyes. He surely can’t imagine that the woman in front of them is beautiful, cigarette-wrinkled, worn and grey-haired as she is.
The male curse, Malin thinks, trying to get comfortable on her chair.
The walls of the office are lined with bookcases and reproductions of Bruno Liljefors paintings. The desk is dominated by an antiquated computer.
After listening to Malin and Zeke’s explanation of why they are there, Britta Svedlund says, ‘They’re leaving this spring, Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson, Jimmy and Jocke; they’ve only got a couple of months left and it’ll be a relief to be rid of them. Every year we have a few rotten eggs, and we get to send a few of them away. Joakim and Jimmy are craftier than that. But we do what we can with them.’
Malin and Zeke must have succeeded in looking curious, because Britta Svedlund goes on: ‘They never do anything illegal, or if they have, they’ve never been caught. They come from stable backgrounds, which is more than you can say about a lot of pupils at this school. No, what they do is bully people, students and staff alike. And they’re competitive. I swear that every lamp that gets broken in this school has been kicked in by them.’
‘We’ll need their parents’ phone numbers,’ Zeke says. ‘Home addresses.’
Britta Svedlund taps on her keyboard, then writes down their names, addresses and numbers on a piece of paper.
‘Here you are,’ she says, handing the note to Malin.
‘Thanks.’
‘And Bengt Andersson?’ Zeke asks. ‘Do you know about anything they may have done to him?’
Britta Svedlund is suddenly defensive. ‘How did you hear about this? I don’t doubt that it’s correct. But how do you know?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t tell you that,’ Malin replies.
‘To be honest, I don’t care what they get up to outside these walls. If I cared about what the students get up to in their own time, I’d go mad.’
‘So you don’t know,’ Zeke says.
‘Precisely. But what I do know is that they don’t play truant more than the exact amount that means they still get their grades, which are actually surprisingly good.’
‘Are they at school at the moment?’
Britta Svedlund taps at her keyboard.
‘You’re in luck. They’ve just started their woodwork class. They don’t usually miss that one.’
Inside the woodwork room there is a smell of fresh sawdust and scorched wood, with a background note of varnish and solvent.
When they walk into the room the teacher, a man in his sixties with a grey cardigan and matching grey beard, leaves one pupil at a lathe and comes over to meet them.
He holds out a hand covered in shavings and sawdust, then pulls it back with a smile, and Malin notices his warm blue eyes, which have evidently not lost their sparkle with age. Instead he raises his hand in a welcoming wave.
‘Well,’ he says, and Malin picks up a strong smell of coffee and nicotine on his breath, classic teacher’s breath. ‘We’ll have to greet each other like Indians. Mats Bergman, woodwork teacher. And behind me we have class 9B. I take it you’re from the police? Britta called and said you were on your way.’
‘That’s right,’ Malin says.
‘So you know who we’re looking for. Are they here?’ Zeke says.
Mats Bergman nods. ‘They’re ri
ght at the back, in the paint room. They’re working on a design for the petrol tank on a moped.’
Behind the teacher Malin can see the paint room. Squeezed into a corner, grey-green tins of paint on shelves behind shabby glass walls, two boys inside. They’re sitting down, so Malin can only see their blond hair.
‘Are they likely to be a problem?’ she wonders.
‘Not in here,’ Mats Bergman says, smiling again. ‘I know they can be rowdy outside, but they behave themselves in here.’
Malin pulls open the door to the glass-box paint room. The boys look up from their stools, their eyes dull at first, then watchful, tense and anxious, and she looks down at them with all the authority she can muster. A red skull painted on a black petrol tank.
Bullies?
Yes.
Shooters?
Possibly.
Murderers?
Who knows? She’ll have to leave that question open.
Then the boys get up; they’re both well-built, a head taller than her, both dressed in saggy hip-hop-style jeans and hooded jackets with designer logos.
Spotty teenage faces, they’re oddly similar in their puppyish look, bony cheeks, noses a bit too big, suggesting nascent lust and an excess of testosterone.
‘Who are you?’ one of them asks as he gets up.
‘Sit down,’ Zeke snarls behind her. ‘NOW!’
As if hit by a collapsing ceiling he is pressed back down on to the paint-spattered stool again. Zeke shuts the door and they leave a dramatic pause before Malin says, ‘I’m Malin Fors, from the police, and this is my colleague Zacharias.’
Malin pulls her ID from the back pocket of her jeans.
She holds it out to the boys, who are now looking even more anxious, as if they’re worried that a whole ocean of misdemeanours has caught up with them.
‘Bengt Andersson: we know you tormented him, bullied him and made fun of him. We want to know all about that, and what you were doing on the night between last Wednesday and Thursday.’
Terror in the boys’ eyes.
‘So who’s who? Jimmy?’
The one dressed in a blue hoodie nods.
‘Okay,’ Malin says. ‘Start talking.’
The other boy, Joakim Svensson, starts to make excuses. ‘What the fuck, we were just having a laugh. Cos he was so fat. Nothing wrong with that.’
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