Summertime Death

by Mons Kallentoft

  The wind in my hair as I cycle past the houses, along the streets on my way to school. My feet beneath me, feet pounding the jogging track.

  This is a competition, everything is a competition.

  And one night when you thought I was asleep, when I was lying outside your door, I remember it now, only now, in this air-conditioned car, I remember what you said, you said: She must never find out. This must stay a secret.

  Mum’s sharp voice. The tone of someone who has never found her place in the world.

  Dad, what is it that I must never know?

  The boys’ football matches in the pitch behind the red-painted school-building. The red shirts of the home team.

  Bodies, warm. The floodlights on. Bankeberg SK, Ljungsbro IF, LFF, Saab. All the teams, the boys, the girls alongside, under the covers down in the cellar, what if someone comes?

  Lilac hedges. Wooden fences, stained green. Families trying to be families. Children who are children. Who go swimming, and who know that they will eventually follow in their parents’ footsteps.

  Sturefors.

  Low blocks of flats and villas situated close to the Stångån River. Most of them built in the late sixties and seventies. Some built by the families themselves, by craftsmen planning their own homes, others bought by engineers, teachers, civil servants.

  No doctors out here then.

  But there must be now.

  Doctors and engineers behind the tall, yellowing hedges, behind the fences, behind the yellow and white bricks, the red-painted wooden façades.

  Uncut lawns. Trees that are starting to bear fruit, and by every house little flowerbeds with plants that have either withered completely or are shrieking for water. Abandoning the city for the summer is an obvious choice for most people in Sturefors. Not so much for the thousands of immigrants who live in Ekholmen, the mass housing project they passed on the way out here.

  ‘You can turn off here,’ Malin says. ‘It’s the next road down.’

  ‘So you know this place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Zeke takes his eyes off the road for an instant, ignoring the sign on a white brick wall warning of children playing.

  The speedometer shows thirty-five, five above the speed limit.

  ‘How come?’

  Not even my closest colleague knows this about me, Malin thinks. And he doesn’t need to know either.

  I’ve no intention of saying that I grew up in a neighbouring street, that I lived here from the time I came home from Linköping maternity unit until I left home, in this well-to-do but increasingly insular Sturefors. I have no intention of talking about Stefan Ekdahl, and what we did in Mum and Dad’s bed four months to the day after my thirteenth birthday. I have no intention of explaining how everything can be fine but sad at the same time. And do you know, Zeke, I have no idea how that happens, how that can be the case. And I have even less idea of why it might happen in the first place.

  Janne.

  We’ve been divorced for more than ten years now, but have never managed to let go of each other. Mum and Dad have been married since prehistoric times but may well never have got close to each other.

  ‘I just know,’ she replies.

  ‘So you’re keeping secrets from me, Fors?’

  ‘Maybe that’s just as well,’ Malin says, as Zeke stops the car outside a white tile-clad house ringed by a low, white concrete wall.

  ‘Theresa Eckeved’s home. Feel free to get out, Miss.’

  A pool glitters in the background. Neatly trimmed poplar-like bushes of a variety Malin can’t name surround the pool, and it looks as if there’s fresh compost in every bed.

  Coffee and shop-bought cakes set out on a teak table, comfortable blue cushions behind their backs. In the ceiling of the conservatory, just beside the built-in open fireplace, a fan is whirring, bestowing a welcome coolness. A bucket of ice sits next to the coffee pot.

  ‘In case you’d like coffee con hielo,’ as Agneta Eckeved put it as she sat down at the table with them.

  ‘I’ll take mine hot,’ Zeke replied from his seat at the end of the table. ‘But thanks for the offer.’

  Then Sigvard Eckeved’s words, as annoyed as they were anxious.

  ‘I can’t think why she’d want to deceive us.’

  And in those words is an awareness that he no longer determines much in his daughter’s life, if anything at all.

  The cakes smell sickly sweet in the heat, the coffee is too hot on the tongue.

  Sigvard Eckeved’s voice is high, but has a deeper after-tone as he tells them what they already know: that they have been in Paris and that Theresa’s boyfriend was supposed to be here with her, but he has been at his family’s place in the country outside Valdemarsvik with his parents, that Theresa’s purse and mobile are missing, etc, etc. They let him finish, only interrupted by his wife’s short corrections and explanations; her voice considerably more worried. Do you know something? Malin wonders. Something that we ought to know?

  When Sigvard Eckeved has finished, Zeke asks: ‘Do you have any pictures of Theresa? To help us, and for us to send around to other police stations if we need to?’

  Agneta Eckeved gets up, walking away from them without a word.

  ‘She’s just run away, hasn’t she?’ Sigvard Eckeved says once his wife has disappeared inside the house. ‘She must have done? It couldn’t be anything else, could it?’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ Malin replies. ‘But she’ll turn up, you’ll see. In statistical terms, the probability of that is almost one hundred per cent.’

  Then Malin thinks: If she doesn’t turn up, what will you do then with my encouraging words? But in that case my words here and now will be the least of your problems. Yet my words do more good now than harm then.

  Agneta Eckeved comes back with a number of colourful packs of photographs in her hand.

  She puts them on the table in front of Malin and Zeke.

  ‘Have a look and take whatever pictures you want.’

  Everyone always says I’m a pretty girl.

  But how can I believe them and trust that it’s not just something they’re saying, and anyway, I don’t care about being pretty.

  Who the hell wants to be pretty?

  Pretty is for other people.

  I’m grown-up now.

  And you spoke to me in a new way that made me blush, but it was cold in the water so no one noticed anything.

  Dirt.

  Is it dirty here? And where do the pictures come from? How can I see them, I don’t understand.

  I’ve seen most of them before. They’re from this year, just a few of all the ones Mum takes so manically of us as a family. Stop taking pictures all the time, Mum.

  Just come.

  Come and get me.

  I’m scared, Dad.

  The beach in Majorca last summer.

  Winter in St Anton, sun in a blue sky, perfect snow.

  Christmas and Easter.

  How can I see the pictures and hear what you’re saying even though I’m not there? And the water? What water? And why is it so sludgy, so thick, like frozen clay when it ought to be nice and warm against my body?

  Give me the rubber ring, Mum!

  ‘She’s a very pretty girl, isn’t she?’

  And then a female voice, a bit older.

  Very pretty, don’t you think so, Reke? Reke? Who’s that?

  I’m so tired, Dad. There’s something slippery and sticky against my skin.

  Why aren’t you saying anything? I can see you at the table in the conservatory, how the sun reflected in the water of the pool throws patterns on your cheeks. But here, with me, where I am, it’s dark and cold and lonely. Damp.

  I’m not supposed to be here. I realise that much.

  I don’t want to be here. I want to be with you, I can see you but it’s like you don’t exist, as if I don’t exist.

  Don’t I exist?

  When I think about it I get scared in a way I’ve neve
r been before. When I think about you, Dad, I feel warm.

  But also afraid.

  Why don’t you come?

  Malin chooses a picture that shows Theresa Eckeved’s face clearly: small mouth, full lips, chubby teenage cheeks and lively, almost black eyes, medium-length dark hair.

  No point asking what sort of clothes she had with her. What about how she usually dresses?

  ‘Jeans. And a shirt. Never skirts, not ever. She thinks they’re stupid,’ Agneta Eckeved says.

  ‘In the pictures she looks quite girly.’

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive. She’s a bit of a tomboy,’ Sigvard Eckeved says.

  ‘You don’t have any suspicions about where she might be? Any special friends?’ Zeke asks.

  Both parents shake their heads.

  ‘She doesn’t have that many friends,’ Agneta Eckeved says. ‘I mean, she knows lots of people, but I wouldn’t say many of them are real friends.’

  ‘We’d like phone numbers for her boyfriend and any friends that you happen to have numbers for,’ Malin says. ‘And anyone else who means a lot to her. Teachers, sports coaches and so on.’

  ‘She’s never really liked sports,’ Sigvard Eckeved says. ‘But there’s a girl who used to come and swim here sometimes, some new friend who lives in the city. Do you remember her name, Agneta?’

  ‘Nathalie. But I’ve no idea what her surname might be.’

  ‘What about a phone number?’

  ‘Sorry, no. But her name is Nathalie. I’m sure about that.’

  ‘If you do remember, we’d like to know,’ Malin says.

  ‘Does Theresa have a computer?’ Zeke asks.

  ‘Yes. In her room. She doesn’t use it much.’

  ‘Can we take it with us? To check her emails and so on.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Zeke says. ‘That pool certainly looks very inviting,’ he says.

  ‘You’re welcome to have a swim,’ Sigvard Eckeved says.

  ‘We have to work.’

  ‘It does look nice,’ Malin says. ‘Cool.’

  Stop the small talk.

  Find me instead.

  I’m missing.

  I realise that now. That must be it. Otherwise you would have come, Dad. Wouldn’t you?

  Do you think I’m here of my own free will?

  You believed he was my boyfriend. How gullible can you be?

  But I want to tell you how it is.

  I’m yelling, but you still can’t hear me.

  And the ringing, from the mobiles up there.

  Stop trampling on me. Stop it.

  ‘Yes, Fors here.’

  Malin is standing on the steps of the Eckeveds’ well-kept seventies’ dream. She managed to fish the phone out of her bag and answer on the third ring. Zeke is beside her, with Theresa’s Toshiba laptop under his arm.

  ‘Sjöman here. You can go to the hospital, ward ten. The doctors have finished examining her. And she’s feeling a bit better, she’s even managed to tell them who she is.’

  ‘Josefin Davidsson?’

  The heat like a glowing net around her brain.

  ‘Who else, Fors, who else?’

  ‘What have we got?’

  ‘She’s fifteen years old, lives with her parents in Lambohov.’

  As she clicks to end the call Malin looks through the green-tinted glass beside the front door, sees Sigvard Eckeved’s silhouette pacing anxiously back and forth in the hall.

  7

  Sigvard Eckeved, over the years

  You came to us late, Theresa.

  I was forty-two, your mum forty-one.

  We did all the tests and the doctors said that there might be something wrong with you, but out you came to us one late February day, like a perfectly formed reminder of all that was good in the world.

  For me you are smell, feeling, sound, breathing in our big bed at night.

  You creep in tight and what am I to you? The same as you are to me. We are each other, Theresa.

  They say that having children is an act of handing over, showing you a way out into life. Giving you to the world, and the world to you.

  I don’t believe that for a moment.

  You’re mine.

  I am you, Theresa.

  Together we are the world.

  Children provide a step up to the emotional realisation that we human beings are one. A child is the most important bearer of that myth.

  One’s own child, the person I am.

  You’re two years old, running across the parquet floor of the living room, language is developing, you flail and point, consuming the world, we consume it together. Even if I sometimes tell you off, you come to me, searching in me for the world.

  You’re four and a half and you hit out at me in anger.

  Then you run through the years, further from me, but closer each time because you are leaving an impression within me.

  You are twelve.

  With love I creep into your room at night, stroking your cheek with my hand, breathing in the smell of your hair.

  We’re on the side of the good guys, I think then.

  You, I, your mum, our dreams and all the life we live together as one and the same.

  The world is created through you.

  You are fourteen.

  Opinionated, stubborn, provocative, angry, but the embodiment of friendliness. You are the most beautiful person the world has ever seen.

  I understand you, Theresa. Don’t think I don’t. I’m not stupid. I just don’t want to move too fast.

  We are the same feeling, you and I.

  The feeling of unending love.

  8

  The dark-skinned cleaner sweeps his mop back and forth over the speckled yellow linoleum floor, shadows become sunlight, which becomes shadow as his never still body moves across the sunlit window at the far end of the corridor of the hospital ward.

  When the sun shines on it, parts of the floor seem to lift. A faint smell of disinfectant and sweat, the sweat emitted slowly by bodies at rest.

  Ward ten.

  A general ward. The seventh floor of the high-rise hospital building. Doors to some rooms stand open, pale pictures on greying, yellow-painted walls. Through the windows of the rooms Malin can see the city, sunburned and still, panting mutely, its enforced desolation.

  Patients resting on their beds. Some wearing green or urine-yellow hospital gowns, others their own clothes. It isn’t hot inside the hospital, the rumbling ventilation units are obviously adequate, yet it still feels as though listlessness reigns supreme here as well, as though the sick were getting sicker, as though those who have to work through the summer can’t quite manage their allotted tasks.

  A nurse materialises in a doorway.

  Flowing red hair, freckles covering more than half her round face.

  She looks at Malin and Zeke with big green eyes.

  ‘You’re from the police,’ she says. ‘It’s good that you got here so soon.’

  Malin and Zeke stop in front of the nurse. Is it so obvious? Malin thinks, and says: ‘And the girl, Josefin Davidsson. Where can we find her?’

  ‘Room eleven. She’s in there with her parents. But first you need to talk to Doctor Sjögripe. If you go in here, she’ll be with you shortly.’

  The red-haired nurse indicates the room she’s just come out of.

  ‘The doctor will be here in five minutes.’

  The clock sticking out from the wall in the corridor says 12.25.

  They should have got lunch on the way. Malin’s stomach rumbles with a gentle feeling of nausea.

  They close the door behind them. Sit on wooden chairs in front of a desk, its grey laminate top covered with advertising folders and leaflets, yellow files. A window beside them looks onto a dark ventilation shaft. There are several anonymous files on the bookcase against the wall behind the desk.

  Warmer in here.

  Rumbling from the dusty, heart-shaped ventilation grille in the ceiling.


  Five minutes, ten.

  They sit in silence next to each other. Want to save their words, pull them out newly washed and clean later. For now, this silence is all that is needed. And what would they say?

  What do you think about this?

  We’ll have to see.

  Has she been raped, or did the blood come from somewhere else? And the smell of bleach? The whiteness? The cleansed wounds?

  The door opens and Doctor Sjögripe comes in, wearing a white coat.

  She’s maybe fifty-five years old, cropped grey hair clinging to her head, making her cheeks, nose and mouth look sharper than they really are.

  A pair of reading glasses with transparent plastic frames hangs around her neck. The cheap sort, for a pair of twinkling eyes. Intelligent, aware, self-confident, like only the eyes of someone who has had everything from the very start can be.

  Both Malin and Zeke practically leap out of their chairs. Anything else was unthinkable.

  Sjögripe.

  The most blue-blooded family in the whole of Östergötland. The family estate at Sjölanda outside Kisa is a significant employer, one of the largest and most profitable agricultural businesses in the country.

  ‘Louise Sjögripe.’

  Her handshake is firm, but not hard, feminine but with a certain pressure.

  Doctor Sjögripe lets them sit down before taking her own seat behind the desk.

  Malin has no idea what position Louise Sjögripe occupies in the family, but can’t help wondering. Doesn’t want to wonder. Gossip, gossip, think about why we’re here instead.

  ‘Considering the circumstances, Josefin Davidsson is doing fairly well now,’ Louise Sjögripe says. The way she says the words makes her voice sound hoarse.

  ‘What can you tell us? I’m assuming you conducted the examination?’

  Zeke sounds slightly irritated, but not so as most people would notice.

  Louise Sjögripe smiles.

  ‘Yes, I examined her and documented her injuries. And I’ll tell you what I think.’

  ‘Thank you, we’d be grateful, I mean pleased, if you could,’ Malin says, trying to look the doctor/aristocrat in the eyes, but the self-awareness they exude makes her look towards the window instead.