Summertime Death mf-2

by Mons Kallentoft

  ‘Probably. I took epidermal samples from her back and thighs. Those have gone off to the National Lab as well.’

  ‘So how is she now? In your opinion? Is she talking? At the crime scene she hardly said a word.’

  ‘She’s talking. Seems OK. And she genuinely doesn’t seem to remember anything about what happened.’

  ‘She doesn’t remember?’

  ‘No. Mental blocks aren’t unusual after a traumatic experience. And it’s probably just as well. Rape is one of the worst curses of our times. This spreading absence of norms. The lack of cultural respect for another person’s body, usually female. I mean, here in Linköping alone we’ve had two gang rapes in three years.’

  You sound like you’re reciting an article, Malin thinks, and asks: ‘When did she start talking?’

  ‘While I was examining her. It hurt and she said ouch and then the words were somehow back. Until then she had been silent. She said her name and looked at the clock in the room. Then she wondered what she was doing in hospital and said that her parents were probably worrying.’

  ‘Is there any way of getting her to remember what happened?’

  ‘That’s not my area, Inspector Fors. I’m a doctor, not a psychologist. A specially trained psychologist spoke to her about an hour ago, but Josefin couldn’t remember anything. She’s with her parents in room eleven. You can go and see her now. I think she can cope with a few questions.’

  Doctor Sjögripe opens a file, puts on the glasses hanging around her neck, and starts to read.

  Room eleven is the embodiment of whiteness, lit by clear, warm light. Motes of dust drift through the air, dancing gently back and forth in the single room.

  Mr and Mrs Davidsson are sitting on the edge of the bed on either side of Josefin, who is wearing a red and white flowered, knee-length summer dress with white bandages on her wounds, her skin almost as white as the bandages.

  It could have been me sitting in their place, Malin thinks.

  The three of them smile towards her and Zeke as they enter the room after knocking first. Josefin’s cheerful voice a moment before: ‘Come in!’

  ‘Malin Fors, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘Zacharias Martinsson, the same.’

  The parents stand up. Introduce themselves.

  Birgitta. Ulf. Josefin remains seated, smiling at them as though the previous night’s events hadn’t happened.

  I’ve been like you, Malin thinks. Gone out on a warm summer’s evening, all alone. But nothing bad ever happened to me.

  Fifteen.

  Only one year older than Tove.

  It could have been you on the bed, Tove. Me and Janne, your dad, beside you, distraught, me wondering what monster had done this and how I could get hold of him. Or her. Or them.

  ‘We’re looking into what happened to Josefin,’ Malin says. ‘We’ve got a number of questions that we’d like to ask.’

  Nodding parents.

  Then Ulf Davidsson speaks: ‘Well, we went to bed last night, me and Birgitta, without realising that Josefin hadn’t come home, and then this morning we assumed she was asleep in her room, and we didn’t want to wake her, and neither of us gave a thought to the fact that her bike wasn’t outside . . .’

  ‘I can’t remember anything,’ Josefin interrupts. ‘The last thing I remember is setting off from home on my bike. I was going to the cinema on my own. The late showing of X-Men 3.’

  Her father: ‘Yes, we live in Lambohov. She usually cycles into town.’

  Malin and Zeke look at each other.

  At the parents.

  Knowing which of them will do what.

  ‘Could I have a word with the two of you in the corridor while my colleague talks to your daughter?’ Zeke asks.

  The parents hesitate.

  ‘Would that be OK?’ Malin asks. ‘We need to talk to you separately. Do you mind if I talk to you, Josefin?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Birgitta Davidsson says. ‘Come on, Ulf,’ she says, heading towards the door after a long glance at her daughter.

  Malin sinks onto the bed. Josefin makes room for her, although there is no need. The same girl who was sitting on the bench that morning, on the swing, but somehow not the same.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m OK. The wounds hurt a bit. The doctor gave me some pills, so I can’t really feel it.’

  ‘And you don’t remember anything?’

  ‘No, nothing. Apart from leaving home on my bike.’

  No bicycle in the Horticultural Society Park, Malin thinks. Where’s the bike got to?

  ‘Were you going to meet anyone?’

  ‘No. I remember that, because that was before I set off.’

  ‘Did you get to the cinema?’

  Josefin shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. All that is sort of gone, until I woke up here, when the doctor was starting to examine me. That’s when I realised I was in hospital.’

  She doesn’t remember me, Malin thinks. Or the park this morning.

  ‘Can you try to remember? For my sake?’

  The girl closes her eyes.

  Frowns.

  Then she bursts out laughing.

  Opens her eyes, saying: ‘It’s like a blank piece of paper! I can sort of see that someone must have hit me, in theory, but it’s like a big white blank, and that doesn’t feel bad at all.’

  She doesn’t want to remember.

  Can’t.

  An organism protecting itself. Hiding away the images, voices, sounds in a distant corner of its consciousness, inaccessible to what we think of as thought.

  But the memories take root there, chafe, hurt, and send out tiny, unnoticed little shockwaves through the body, causing pain, stiffness, doubt and anxiety.

  ‘You don’t remember how you got these wounds? Or anyone washing you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And your bicycle, where did you leave it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘What make is it?’

  ‘A red Crescent, three gears.’

  ‘You haven’t been in touch with anyone over the internet? Anyone who seemed odd?’

  ‘I don’t do that sort of thing. MySpace? Chat rooms? Really dull.’

  Banging on the wall from the corridor. Malin has been expecting it.

  Zeke’s words just a moment before: ‘Your daughter has been attacked and a blunt instrument has been inserted into her vagina. Probably with force.’

  And Ulf Davidsson kicks the wall, clenches his fists, mutters something Zeke doesn’t understand. Birgitta Davidsson is silent beside her husband, staring into the door.

  Then her words.

  ‘But she doesn’t remember, so it’s as if it didn’t happen, isn’t it? Like it doesn’t exist?’

  Ulf Davidsson collects himself, stands still beside his wife, putting his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t exist.’

  The family on the bed in front of them.

  Questions recently asked still hanging in the air. The answers floating around them with the dust particles.

  ‘Everyone else is away for the summer, but we’re staying at home this year.’

  ‘Telephone numbers of any friends we ought to talk to?’

  ‘No, no special friends, really.’

  ‘Yes, we’re staying in the city, saving up for the winter, we’re going to Thailand.’

  ‘They don’t want to hear about . . .’

  ‘Any boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone else who could have had something to do with this?’

  ‘Not that we can think of.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘No one in your closest circle of acquaintances? Family?’

  ‘No,’ Ulf Davidsson says. ‘Our families don’t live around here. And none of them would do anything like this.’

  Two girls.

  Theresa. Josefin.

  And neither of them really seems to exist. They’re like shadows of dust in the sum
mer city, invisible and nameless, almost grown-ups, insubstantial as the smoke from the forest fires.

  Then a knock on the door.

  It opens before anyone has time to say ‘come in’.

  A sweeping mop. A huge black man in overalls that are too small for him.

  ‘Have to clean,’ he says before they can object.

  In the corridor, on the way towards the lifts, they meet a middle-aged blonde woman wearing an orange skirt that Malin guesses is from Gudrun Sjödén.

  Malin’s finger on the lift button.

  ‘That must be the psychologist,’ Zeke says. ‘Do you think she’ll get anything?’

  ‘No chance,’ Malin says, thinking that if they’re going to stand the slightest chance of solving this, Josefin Davidsson will have to remember, or else a witness will have to have seen something, or else Karin Johannison and her colleagues at the National Forensics Lab will have to come up with something really good.

  Hypnosis, Malin thinks.

  Anyone can remember anything under hypnosis, can’t they?

  9

  It’s half past one.

  Indoctrinated children all around Malin.

  The dry, cool air finds its way down her throat and out into her lungs, shocking her body, triggering its defence mechanisms even though the experience is pleasant. Harsh colours making her eyes itch: yellow, blue, green. A clown, pictures, numbers, and an artificial smell of frying.

  But it’s cool in here.

  And I’m hungry.

  The tinted windows make the crashing daylight outside bearable, and I don’t have to wear those damn sunglasses, they impose a filter on reality that I hate. But you have to wear sunglasses out there. The light today is harsh, like having an interrogation lamp aimed right into your eyes, the beams like freshly honed knives right into your soul.

  McDonald’s by the Braskens bridge, on the side of the river facing Johannelund. Malin doesn’t usually let the great Satan satisfy her hunger, but today, after their visit to the hospital, she and Zeke make an exception.

  Kids with Happy Meals.

  The walk from the hospital entrance to the car, parked in the sun on the wide-open car park, made them doubt it was actually possible to be outside at all in heat like this. Then the car, it must have been sixty degrees in its stuffy interior, hot as a sauna, with a protesting engine, a smell of hot oil and the air from the vents first hot, then cold, cold, cold.

  The restaurant half full of families with children. Overweight immigrant girls behind the counter jostling each other, giggling and directing quick glances towards them.

  ‘Isn’t there any way of tracing the person who made the call about Josefin?’

  Zeke aims the question into thin air.

  ‘Not according to Forensics. Pay-as-you-go. We’ll have to leave it as a question mark and move on. And hope whoever it was gets in touch again.’

  Malin takes another bite of her Filet-O-Fish.

  ‘And the bicycle?’

  ‘Could have been stolen. Or it’s just somewhere else. She could well have been attacked in a completely different location, and moved to the Horticultural Society Park. Impossible to know until she remembers. We’ll have to get everyone to keep an eye out for the bike.’

  Zeke nods.

  ‘Well, we can start by calling Theresa Eckeved’s boyfriend,’ Malin says once she’s taken another bite of greasy American fish.

  ‘You or me?’

  ‘I’ll call. You carry on eating.’

  ‘Thanks. Damn, this crap tastes really good when you’re hungry. Martin would go mad if he saw me eating this shit.’

  ‘Well, he can’t see you,’ Malin says, pulling the piece of paper with Theresa Eckeved’s boyfriend’s phone number from her pocket.

  He answers on the fourth ring.

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Is that Peter Sköld?’

  A gravelly teenage voice, sullen, sarcastic.

  ‘Yes, who else? To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only person with this number.’

  To the best of my knowledge?

  Do teenagers really talk like that?

  But maybe Tove would use that sort of phrase. A bit old-fashioned, affected.

  ‘My name is Malin Fors. I’m a Detective Inspector with Linköping Police. I’ve got a few questions about your girlfriend, Theresa. Have you got time to answer them?’

  Silence on the line, as if Peter Sköld is working out if he can avoid being questioned.

  ‘Can you call back later?’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  Another silence.

  ‘What about Theresa? Her parents called and asked if she was here.’

  A hint of anxiety in his voice.

  ‘They reported her missing to us, and she told her parents she was going to be with you. But presumably you already know that?’

  ‘I’ve been out in the country for a few weeks. We were going to meet up when I got back.’

  ‘But she is your girlfriend?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The answer comes too quickly. Next question, pile on a bit of pressure, Malin.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Before I left town. We had coffee in the shopping centre in Ekholmen.’

  ‘She’s very pretty, Theresa. How did you meet?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘She, I mean, we . . .’

  Peter Sköld falls silent again.

  ‘. . . met at a dance organised by both our schools.’

  ‘What school do you go to?’

  ‘Ekholmen.’

  ‘What year?’

  ‘Starting year nine soon. I’m fifteen.’

  ‘And where was the dance?’

  ‘Ekholmen. In our school hall. What is this? An interrogation?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Malin says.

  You’re lying, she thinks. But why?

  ‘So she really is your girlfriend, then?’

  ‘I said so, didn’t I?’

  ‘And Nathalie? Do you know her?’

  ‘You mean Nathalie Falck?’

  ‘I mean Theresa’s friend Nathalie.’

  ‘Falck. I know her. She’s in the same year as me, in the other class. We’re not exactly close friends, but I know her.’

  ‘And she and Theresa are good friends?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Have you got her number?’

  ‘Hang on.’

  A bleeping sound on the line.

  ‘It’s 070 315 20 23. Look, I’m supposed to be going fishing with my dad, is this going to take much longer?’

  Memorise the number.

  Then: ‘Why do you think she told her parents that she was going to be with you?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  The father’s voice on the phone now.

  Impatient. Tired.

  ‘So she’s disappeared. I see. Well, the parents did sound worried. It’s damn near impossible to keep control of kids these days. There was never any question of them spending the holidays together. We’re out in the country. We like spending time together, just the family.’

  Are they really going out with each other?

  Yes, he says they are. ‘But they never stay the night with each other and so on, that’s what kids their age do, isn’t it? But yes, they certainly spend time together, at least Peter often says so, but you know how it is, I don’t really have the time or inclination to poke about in their private lives, so what do I know? She’s been around at ours once, I think, so I can’t really say if they’re together or not.’

  Poke about, Malin thinks. Do it. Poke about as much as you can.

  Otherwise they might go missing.

  And who knows if they’ll come back?

  Secret teenage lives.

  My own.

  Tove’s.

  ‘Good luck with the fishing,’ Malin concludes.

  ‘Fishing? I never go fishing, I always buy mine from the fishmo
nger in town.’

  Noisy hamburger kids all around Malin as she calls the number she memorised a short while ago.

  ‘Can we come and talk to you?’

  ‘Sure, but I have to work.’

  Nathalie Falck. Studied nonchalance, an alert tone to her voice. Self-confident. Answered on the second ring.

  What is that voice hiding? What secret?

  Sven Sjöman’s words.

  An investigation consists of a mass of voices. Learn to listen to them, and you’ll find the truth.

  That’s what you said, isn’t it, Sven? Something like that, anyway.

  Peter Sköld’s voice. A liar’s voice? Malin wonders.

  ‘Nathalie, do you know Theresa Eckeved? Her parents have reported her missing.’

  ‘Yes, I know Theresa. So she’s missing? She’s probably just gone off somewhere for a while. She likes being by herself. And it’s not that damn easy to be left alone, is it?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At work, in the Old Cemetery.’

  Zeke takes the key out of the Volvo and Malin can feel the fish-burger in her stomach, fermenting and trying to send sour gas back up, but she holds it down, would really rather forget that they ate lunch at the great Satan.

  They get out of the car.

  The wall of the Old Cemetery could do with painting, peeling grey strips are hanging down towards the tarmac of the car park. Opposite there are blocks of red-brick housing built in the late eighties. The buildings are quiet, almost constricted and uncomfortable in the heat. A balcony door on the first floor stands open, and when Malin listens carefully she can hear the stereo inside., Tomas Ledin singing stupidly about love and sex, but even though she doesn’t usually like it she likes it now, in this oppressive heat, because the music shows that there is still life in the city, and that an invisible hydrogen bomb hasn’t wiped out everything except evil.

  Behind the wall grow tall maples, their foliage still green, but with a pale, dry nuance. Headstones in rows beyond them. Malin can’t see them, just knows they’re there.

  The graves are old, just as the name suggests.

  The cemetery shed is some hundred metres away, behind the memorial grove where Malin sometimes comes.

  Malin and Zeke are wearing their sunglasses, walking along one of the cemetery’s raked paths, towards the figure up by the memorial grove that must be Nathalie Falck. She’s short and muscular, a white vest stretched across her ample, recently developed teenage chest, as she leans on a rake. Plump teenage cheeks, a ring in her nose and short, spiked black hair.