Summertime Death

by Mons Kallentoft

  The whole of the world’s longing for rain seems to be concentrated on this place.

  They park on the gravel in front of the farmhouse.

  Three Alsatians rush up to the car, their barks loud when the music shuts off abruptly, the dogs jumping up at the windows, baring their teeth, and Malin can see the saliva running as they protect their territory.

  Then a voice, a gruff woman’s voice through the noise of the dogs.

  ‘Easy now, easy.’

  And the dogs obey the command in the voice, backing away and Malin sees the woman, maybe one metre eighty tall, dressed in dirty green overalls and a little cap from the farmers’ union that hardly covers her cropped hair.

  Her eyes are black.

  Angry.

  How old is she? Forty-five? Fifty?

  As Malin opens the car door she thinks, life has really fucked with you, hasn’t it? And now you’re getting your own back.

  The woman in front of them in the farmyard seems to grow in the harsh light.

  Louise ‘Lollo’ Svensson, farmer, living alone out in the middle of the Rimforsa forests at Skogalund Farm, with just her dogs, a few pigs and some caged rabbits in one of the outhouses for company.

  Malin and Zeke show their ID. The dogs growl over by the porch steps, ready to attack at any moment.

  ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘Your name,’ Malin says, ‘has cropped up in an investigation and we’d like to ask you some questions.’

  Lollo Svensson steps closer to them.

  The dogs show their teeth.

  ‘What fucking investigation?’

  ‘The one concerning the girl who was found raped in the Horticultural Society Park. And this morning a girl was found murdered at the beach at Stavsätter.’

  ‘So one of my sisters has been talking, then? Talking crap about me? Doesn’t surprise me. Most cunts are no better than your average fucking dick.’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say . . .’

  ‘I get that, dear lady constable. So what do you want to ask?’

  ‘What were you doing on the night between last Thursday and Friday?’

  ‘I was here at home.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘No, I had them with me.’

  Lollo Svensson gestures towards the Alsatians. ‘But they can’t tell you what we were doing, can they?’

  ‘There’s no one else who can confirm that you were at home?’

  Lollo grins at them.

  ‘Do you know Theresa Eckeved?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know a Nathalie Falck?’

  ‘Not her either. Never heard the name before.’

  ‘Lovelygirl? Does the name Lovelygirl mean anything to you?’

  No noticeable reaction.

  ‘Lovelygirl? I don’t know any Lovelygirl.’

  ‘So you like to play rough,’ Zeke says. ‘What does that mean? Playing rough with young girls? Is that it?’

  For God’s sake, Zeke, Malin thinks, but she knows what he’s doing, lets him get on with it.

  But Lollo Svensson doesn’t let herself be provoked.

  ‘I haven’t got anything to do with any of that.’

  ‘Do you like tying people up, maybe cut them a bit, whip them? Is that the sort of thing you like, Louise?’

  ‘You should probably leave now if you haven’t got any more questions.’

  ‘And you brought a young girl back here and things went a bit wrong with the dildo, was that it? Or else she ran off when you were done, is that what happened?’

  ‘You should probably . . .’

  Lollo Svensson takes three steps back, as if to mark her withdrawal, as if to say: ‘I’ve said what I’ve got to say, now you’re on your own.’

  ‘I’ve got to see to the pigs,’ she says. ‘The pigs can’t look after themselves, they’re weak, really weak, really pathetic, actually.’

  ‘Can we take a look around the barns? Inside the house?’

  Malin waits for an answer.

  ‘You’re crazy, Inspector Fors. Like I’d let you in without a warrant? What a fucking joke.’

  ‘Do you know a girl called Josefin Davidsson? Or a Theresa Eckeved?’

  Malin’s voice dry and sharp. Her blouse is sticking to her body, and God knows how hot Lollo Svensson must be in those overalls, and suddenly her large, solid frame slumps before their eyes.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘So you had a bit of rough sex with them out here,’ Zeke says. ‘After you’d brought them out here, lured them out here. What with? Drink? The dogs? Horse riding? Have you got horses?’

  No answer.

  ‘Do you normally use dildos on your girls?’

  And when Malin hears Zeke say the word dildo she is filled with a sense that they are missing something obvious in the way they’ve been thinking about the dildo.

  But what?

  Lollo Svensson turns around and takes the dogs with her into the farmhouse, and Malin and Zeke are left standing beside the Volvo in the farmyard, inhaling the smell of summer forest and silence, of a loneliness so obvious that it makes the summer seem cool.

  25

  The car bumps unhappily along the gravel road.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Zeke’s voice calmer now, not theatrically agitated or provocative any more.

  The forest is closing in on the car, hundreds of pained shades of yellowish green, begging for rain.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Malin says. ‘I never cease to be amazed at what the forests around this city contain.’

  She recalls last winter’s excursions, in connection with the case of Bengt Andersson and the Murvall brothers, and she can still feel the debilitating cold, how it sucked the air from her lungs as she forced her way through the trees towards the sound of death and evil deep within the forests around Hultsjön.

  ‘No, they’re full of surprises.’

  ‘Have we got enough for a search warrant?’

  ‘Probably; we won’t need much considering what’s happened. It might even be enough that she refused to let us in.’

  ‘I’m curious to see what’s inside that house,’ Malin says.

  Young girls.

  Their bodies, dead and alive, floating like unfettered manatees in endlessly bubbling water.

  Get us up, help us, move us on.

  Tove far away on the other side of the world, in paradise, but one with a snake – the Islamic extremists and their violence.

  Away with the image, don’t think about her now.

  Janne.

  Running along a beach with his heart thumping in his body. Always leaving.

  ‘I want to know what’s hidden inside that house,’ Malin says.

  ‘Me too,’ Zeke says. At that moment Malin’s mobile rings.

  Karin Johannison’s name on the display.

  On the floor of Karin Johannison’s room a humidifier is fighting for decibel supremacy against a portable air-conditioning unit. The humidity is fighting an uneven battle against the cold, but together the two machines make Karin’s room the most bearable that Malin has been in for ages, even though there are no windows, and in spite of the mess of books and reports and files and journals all over the desk, the shelves and the floor.

  Malin and Zeke are sitting on the two ladder-backed chairs Karin has for visitors, while she leans back in a futuristic black designer office chair, which she almost certainly bought herself with her own money, just like the humidifier and the air conditioner.

  ‘Nice chair,’ Malin says.

  ‘Thanks,’ Karin says. ‘It’s an Oscar Niemeyer, I got it off the internet from South America, some site in Brazil.’

  ‘Did you buy those contraptions there as well?’ Zeke asks. ‘They sound like they come from the Third World.’

  Karin ignores Zeke’s insult and moves on to what they’ve come for, switching to her professional persona: ‘Theresa Eckeved had been penetrated, subjected to sexual violence. I couldn’t find any sperm, just
traces of the same paint that was found inside Josefin Davidsson. In all likelihood, we’re talking about the same perpetrator.’

  ‘But it’s good to support the poor, isn’t it?’

  Zeke couldn’t stop the words once they were on their way out of his mouth, and Malin can see in his eyes that he regrets them and is feeling foolish, and Karin continues to ignore Zeke, pretending that he hasn’t spoken.

  She goes on: ‘She’s been carefully washed, and if she was scrubbed clean it was done thoroughly. I’ve found traces of bleach on her skin. Just like Josefin Davidsson.

  ‘The wounds have been cleaned, maybe with surgical spirit, maybe bleach, and the perpetrator has tidied up the edges with an extremely sharp implement, possibly a scalpel, but it’s impossible to say for sure.’

  ‘Like Josefin Davidsson’s wounds?’ Zeke asked.

  What had been used, Malin wondered. A rough knife? A large spike? Or something brutal, like an animal’s tooth? If not these, then what?

  ‘Those were just cleaned,’ Karin says. ‘These have been trimmed at the edges.’

  ‘Trimmed?’

  ‘Yes, trimmed. The wound to her head wasn’t fatal. Nor any of the wounds to her body. She was strangled. The soil under her fingernails was identical with the soil on the beach, which suggests that she was murdered there.’

  ‘So she wasn’t moved there?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘So she could have gone there with the perpetrator?’

  ‘What do I know, Malin?’

  ‘Her mum mentioned that she used to cycle up there sometimes,’ Zeke says. ‘Maybe Theresa was just taking an evening swim?’

  ‘How long was she in the ground?’ Malin asks.

  ‘A week, I’d say. Maybe a few days more. It’s impossible to say for certain.’

  What were you doing out there? Malin thinks. It must have been late, and you were alone.

  Evil is on the loose.

  God help us.

  God help all the girls who are still in Linköping this summer.

  ‘Do you know where the traces of paint came from?’

  Zeke clear and focused now, his antipathy towards Karin set aside, stashed away somewhere inside himself.

  ‘No idea, but it’s the same object, no doubt about that. But I haven’t been able to identify the source of the paint. It’s not one of the more common ones used in Sweden. But you’re chasing the same perpetrator, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘Forensics have started looking at different makes of dildo.’

  ‘Good,’ Karin says. ‘There are any number of them. As far as I’m aware.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No traces of sperm, no hair, no skin, no strands of fabric, nothing, nothing, nothing,’ Karin says, unable to hide her dissatisfaction and annoyance that she can’t give them anything more, anything concrete to go on, anything to latch onto in their hunt for whatever is on the move out in the city.

  ‘Shit,’ Malin says.

  ‘You’ll get him,’ Karin says.

  ‘If it is a him,’ Malin says.

  The smoke from the fires in the Tjällmo forest is noticeable in the car park in front of the police station and the National Forensics Lab where Karin works.

  The forests north of Ljungsbro are burning now, and the fire is spreading. There are extra bulletins of both local television news programmes about the advance of the flames.

  Are the fires deliberate?

  Who started them?

  Why have fires broken out in so many places at the same time?

  Zeke gets into the driver’s seat of the Volvo.

  Malin pauses by the door, hears him curse the heat inside the car and closes her eyes, trying to follow the smell of the fire up above the city, seeing in her mind’s eye how the heat presses the few people left, little more than dots, towards the tarmac, and she follows herself out over the plain, the scorched fields and the blue of Lake Roxen, and she sees the fires, the way they’re eating and jumping their way through the forest, leaping recklessly from treetop to treetop in an explosive dance, destroying pretty much everything in their path, but also creating the possibility of new life.

  And Janne, wanting to be back home with the rest of his crew, wanting to put on his protective clothing and head out into the boiling, smoke-fogged darkness to save whatever can still be saved.

  ‘Malin, are you going to stand there all day?’

  Soot, Malin thinks. Dirt. How long do firefighters have to scrub their faces after a day like this?

  ‘Malin!’

  She jerks herself free of her thoughts and gets into the heat of the car.

  I’m dead.

  There’s no point fighting it.

  The plastic, in spite of its dense darkness, is like cling-film around me, it can’t hold me here any longer. It never could, really, but somehow it feels safe. I understood my freedom when I was suddenly there with you, Mum and Dad, where I could see your despair, when I wanted to tell you that I’m here, in spite of everything, and that it’s sort of OK, even if I’m still scared and worried and sad that my life ended up being as short as it was.

  But what does time matter?

  Easy for me to say.

  Mum and Dad.

  I know that time will drag for you. There’s nothing that makes time drag more than pain.

  And your pain will never pass.

  It will change colour over the years, marking your bodies and the way you’re judged by the world.

  You will become your grief, Mum, Dad, and maybe there’s some comfort in that. Because if you are your grief for me, then you are also me, and if you’re me, then we’re together. Don’t you think?

  I want to comfort you, Dad.

  Somehow I’ll find a way to let you know that I’m OK, as soon as I think I am.

  Only one person can ease my anxiety, and she knows it.

  I rise up towards the sky.

  The heat that torments you all doesn’t exist for me. The heat isn’t even a smell here.

  I drift down towards the Volvo, look into Malin Fors’s face. She doesn’t know it, but with each passing day the look in her blue eyes grows a bit more tired, but also a bit more certain.

  Only the sadness is constant.

  And the fear that she tries so vainly to hold at bay.

  On the way to the prosecutor, one of the ones on duty over the summer, not particularly happy to be called in to the office on a Sunday afternoon. The same prosecutor who earlier rejected Sven Sjöman’s offer to relinquish legal responsibility for the preliminary investigation, saying that they would have to hold on to that responsibility themselves until they had made some progress.

  Malin had spoken to Sven over the phone, and he had given them permission to proceed: ‘Search the house, but you and Zeke shouldn’t go alone, who knows what she might do if it turns out you’re right.’

  Sven had also said that at long last, ‘and far too fucking holiday-late’, they had got hold of the list of calls made from Theresa’s mobile, and that she had called Nathalie Falck a lot, Peter Sköld occasionally, and no one else except her parents. ‘She seems to have been a bit of a loner,’ Sven said. They hadn’t heard anything from either Yahoo! or Facebook, and Forensics were still working on identifying the dildo. A quick search on the net had come up with more than nine hundred manufacturers.

  Malin thinks about Josefin Davidsson. About the hypnosis that she hasn’t had time to sort out. Must get around to doing that.

  The prosecutor.

  A recently appointed young man named Torben Eklund.

  Malin looks through the windscreen.

  But instead of the city she sees her face, her eyes, the look in them, and she wonders what happens to that look with the passage of time, and then she gets scared, feeling a chill run through every vein and capillary, an ice-cold and sharp sting of stardust. That isn’t my face in the windscreen, she thinks, it’s Theresa Eckeved’s face, and Malin knows what she wants, what her lifeless whi
te skin, her clear, radiant, colourless eyes want.

  Her mouth is moving.

  What happened?

  Who?

  What, how?

  I am putting my trust in you, Malin Fors, to bring me some peace.

  Then the face is gone, replaced by Malin’s own familiar features. The face and features that are somehow just as they are.

  Josefin Davidsson pulls the thin white sheet tighter around her body, not wanting to see the bandages and think about the wounds, but knowing that they’re there whether she likes it or not.

  She notices the chemical smell of the hospital room, and the pain she can’t remember the cause of. But she realises that that memory, buried somewhere deep within her, is important.

  She could have gone home on Friday. But she wanted to stay over the weekend, and they let her. The doctor understood when she said that she liked how peaceful it was here.

  She’s watched television out in the dayroom. Read on the newspaper websites, the Correspondent and others, that they’ve found a girl’s body at a beach out near Sturefors.

  I have to get to my memories, Josefin thinks, and the sky outside the window is growing pale, late afternoon blue and empty, just like her memory. But it’s there, they did it in biology, memories are like electricity, and a person can remember everything that’s ever happened to them under the right circumstances.

  But do I want to remember?

  Am I scared that he or she or they are going to come back?

  No.

  I’d be dead if that was what they wanted.

  The hospital cotton is soft, so soft, and she shuts her eyes, drifts off to sleep even though the room is full of the brightest light and bubbling life.

  ‘No problem. I’ll sign a search warrant straight away.’