Tied down.
Just like you, my little summer angel.
And then I used the blue nothing.
In and out and she seemed to fade away, and I screamed at her to stay, that if you were to have a chance of coming back, my dear sister, she had to be here, and I soon realised that it was pointless.
She wasn’t, and never would be you.
That simple bitch could never accommodate you, and maybe this was the wrong room?
I gave her some of the mixture.
Carried her out.
She was bleeding after the nothing.
I let her go down by Tinnerbäcken. She must have walked to the park. She hadn’t seen me and she was allowed to live, seeing as she could never be you.
But the one lying on the bunk now, with the caged rabbits and boxes of white spiders’ legs, she can be you, she can be the possibility of resurrected love.
I know how it all has to happen now.
What about us?
Why did you kill us?
Don’t kill her, let her live. She’s not supposed to drift like us, not yet, show mercy, do you hear? Let the hot lava of violence withdraw into the underworld, it’s flowed far enough now, give yourself up, show your face, who you really are, people will understand what unlove has done to you, that it’s impossible to make an empathetic person out of someone who has confronted the monster where there should have been love.
Janne in the hall of the flat, sweaty, face streaked with soot, wearing white cotton trousers and a yellow T-shirt with the words ‘Kuta Beach’.
They hugged, but failed to press away each other’s anxiety.
His question just now: ‘Have you called the police?’
And they laughed and then fell silent, fear and anxiety like molten tin solidified in the air, suffocating, destructive.
‘Call now, get the search going.’
And Malin calls the station, is put through to the duty desk, Löving, and she explains what’s happened and he says: ‘We’ll put out an alert at once, don’t worry, we’ll have everyone on this right away.’
Zeke.
Malin thinks. I ought to call Zeke, and he answers and breathes heavily down the phone, and she knows that he knows, that he feels it with his whole body, just don’t let it be too late, and Janne is standing beside her looking worried, as if he’s wondering what’s going on.
‘I’m heading out, Malin. And I’ll call the others.’
‘What others?’
‘Sundsten and Ekenberg. Sjöman. Karim.’
‘But where are you going to look?’
‘Everywhere, Malin. Everywhere. I’ll take Folkman’s flat.’
‘She’s got her.’
‘Yes. Probably. I’ll make sure everyone takes their service weapons with them.’
‘I’ll take mine.’
They hang up.
‘Come on,’ Malin says to Janne once she’s fetched her pistol from the gun cabinet in the bedroom, the holster hidden under a thin white cotton jacket.
‘We’ll go back to yours, see if she’s there.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Quarter past nine.’
‘She’d be back by now if she went to the seven o’clock showing at the cinema.’
‘Shouldn’t one of us stay here in case she comes?’
Right thinking, Janne, but wrong.
‘We’re doing this together,’ Malin says. ‘She’s our daughter.’
Then Malin writes a note and leaves it on the hall floor.
TOVE, CALL US!
Mum and Dad
64
Something’s approaching.
I’m awake, my head is thumping, enough for me to know that I’m awake. Where am I?
I’m lying on something hard and I can’t move, what’s that scratching behind me, and the smell, it stinks here and I’m not at home, where’s my book, did I fall asleep under the tree?
My whole body aches.
Tove tries to pull her arms up, but they’re tied down.
Something’s approaching.
A faceless face, a nothing face and now I’m screaming, but there’s cloth in my mouth, I can feel it.
Close.
I strain and pull.
Mum.
Dad.
Then cold against my nose, and sleep, miraculous sleep. I want to get away from here.
Because I am just falling asleep, aren’t I?
Nothing else?
The house, in a remote patch of woodland just outside Malmslätt, is smothered with scaffolding. The yellow wooden façade is being replaced, the rot has finally won, and Malin looks at the cars, one, two, three, four wrecks, God only knows what make.
Janne’s hobby.
Doing them up and selling them.
Making a bit of extra money.
The only problem is that he never sells any of the cars. There are four American cars in perfect condition sitting in the workshop and garage. He never drives them, never puts them on show, he just has them.
She never understood the cars.
Thought they were about as unsophisticated as anything could possibly be.
White trash. And it was only years later that she realised that it was her mother’s distaste for anything that could be regarded as unrefined haunting her, that she had unconsciously adopted her mother’s attitudes and that this had influenced her relationship with the only man on the planet she can categorically state that she has loved.
They lived here together.
Before the catastrophe.
Before the divorce. Before Bosnia and all the other godforsaken places Janne has been.
You keep the house, Janne.
We won’t be there when you get home.
Gathering this ‘we’ together now. This is what we do. Janne opens the front door and they call into the darkness of the house: Tove, Tove, but their shouts don’t sound very persuasive.
Janne turns on the lights.
We are here, this is where we ought to live together.
They go from room to room in this house, looking for their daughter, but she isn’t there, she isn’t anywhere.
‘What do we do now?’
Janne’s question directed at the kitchen sink, a glass of water in his hand.
‘We drive around.’
‘Shouldn’t we just wait at home to be there when she gets home?’
‘Do you really believe that’s going to work, Janne? Waiting drives me mad. We’ll drive around. Looking for her. In parks, anywhere.’
‘You don’t think she could have gone somewhere else?’
‘Not Tove, you know that as well as me, Janne.’
The kitchen lamp flickers, hesitates before there’s a small pop and it goes out.
They stand opposite each other in the darkness.
‘Fucking hell,’ Janne says, then clutches her tightly to him.
Zeke is sitting in his car on Sturegatan, outside Vera Folkman’s flat.
Dark as a bat-cave up there.
He’s been up and rung the bell.
Like the grave.
And the smell.
Cadaverous, more noticeable now.
No sign of her, no sign of Tove.
My problems with Martin and his ice hockey.
Luxury problems.
What the hell am I sitting here for? There could be something up there that could help us. Tove might even be up there.
Malin. I’m doing this for you.
And Zeke gets out of the car, crosses Sturegatan and goes into the building.
The stench from the flat is overwhelming now.
Something’s died in there.
An image in Zeke’s mind: a gutted stomach, steaming entrails pouring out.
I can blame concern about sanitation.
Then the lights go on in the stairwell, heavy breathing, someone carrying something heavy up the stairs.
Is that you coming now? Zeke wonders and creeps halfway up the next flight of steps, pressi
ng against a bare stone wall, listening to his own breathing, his heart beating faster and faster.
Janne and Malin drive past the library. The building a dark shape in Slottsparken.
This was where she was the last time I spoke to her, Malin thinks, and says: ‘She goes there a lot.’
Jane doesn’t answer, looking instead up at the park, but he doesn’t see Tove’s bicycle in the shadows against one of the trees.
‘Let’s head out to Skäggetorp,’ Malin says.
Slavenca Visnic’s flat deserted.
Janne asks: ‘Who lives here?’
‘A woman connected to the case.’
She told him about Vera Folkman on the way back from his, that she’s got a terrible feeling that the very worst has happened, or is in the process of happening.
The look of panic in Janne’s eyes.
This time he needs to save himself. No one else, and he looks tired standing there in the heat, in the light of a streetlamp in Skäggetorp, his cheeks still smeared with soot, his frame somehow diminished by lack of sleep.
‘You need to sleep,’ Malin says.
‘How could I possibly sleep now?’
‘I can drive you home.’
‘Malin, leave it. Let’s carry on.’
Waldemar Ekenberg pushes open the door of Behzad Karami’s allotment cottage and Behzad Karami leaps up from the bed when he sees who his visitor is.
Waldemar raises a hand.
‘Calm down. I just wanted to see if you were alone.’
Behzad Karami sits down again.
‘Do you want some?’
He points at the bottle of vodka on the floor.
‘Thanks,’ Waldemar says.
Behzad Karami pours out two glasses of vodka.
‘Well, cheers.’
‘I didn’t think your sort drank.’
‘I drink.’
‘The fucker’s taken the daughter of one of our colleagues now. Can you imagine?’
‘Did you come to apologise?’
Waldemar downs the vodka before putting the glass back on the floor.
‘There’s no room for apologies in this world, lad. Never forget that.’
The person carrying something heavy has stopped outside Vera Folkman’s door. Panting, trying to revert to more regular breathing.
Zeke has his pistol in his hand, the safety catch is off, he moves down, the sound of the other person’s breathing loud enough to hide his footsteps.
Wait?
Or go now?
The stairwell is dark.
Why don’t they turn the lamp on again?
The jangle of keys?
And Zeke leaps down two steps, presses the illuminated red button and the landing outside Vera Folkman’s flat is bathed in light.
Zeke holds his gun in front of him.
‘Police! Don’t move! OK, down on your knees!’
The man on the landing looks scared and surprised, and next to him is a box with the Sony logo and a picture of a flat-screen television.
Shit, Zeke thinks as he lowers his weapon.
The Horticultural Society Park is completely deserted and Janne and Malin meet a patrol car on its way into the park as they are coming out.
They called home to the flat a moment ago.
No answer.
They drive out onto Hamngatan, past McDonald’s, and Malin asks Janne if he’s hungry.
‘I couldn’t keep anything down.’
His eyelids are practically hanging on his cheeks, how much sleep has he been getting? Two hours per night? Three?
‘You said she worked on pool maintenance?’
‘Yes, at least that’s what we think,’ Malin replies.
‘Well, you’d have to buy chemicals somewhere. Wouldn’t you?’
‘And?’
‘You get them from DIY stores. In large quantities. Maybe some DIY store has delivered stuff to her? To an address you don’t know about? To that company of hers?’
They glide past St Lars church.
Malin looks up at the flat. The windows are still black.
Zeke helped the man to carry the television. He lived on the fourth floor, and now the sweat is literally pouring from Zeke’s brow.
The man, a pensioner named Lennart Thörnkvist, had never even seen his neighbour, but commented on the smell: ‘That’s what dead bodies smell like in hot weather.’
And now Zeke is standing in front of Vera Folkman’s door again.
He looks at his watch.
Just a few minutes before midnight.
He gets set.
Kicks the door as hard as he can, but it doesn’t give way, nothing happens.
He takes out his pistol again.
Aims at the lock and fires.
A deafening echo. Zeke’s ears are ringing as he pushes the door open and the stench that hits him is unbearable.
A switch. Light.
An empty hall and scratching noises from inside the kitchen and what must be the only other room of the small flat.
He heads towards the room with his weapon drawn, glancing into the kitchen where he sees three rabbit cages stacked on top of each other, living creatures behind the bars.
Inside the room.
On the walls.
A sight that Zacharias Martinsson will never forget.
65
Sunday, 25 July
I’m busy with my bag.
I’m going to kill you. You can be resurrected. I am packing up, unpacking, the blue nothing, worms, rabbits’ claws, my white spiders’ legs and all the things that are me.
Incense and painted flowers.
Sacrificial offerings in my temple.
How it started? It’s always gone on. It’s been the meaning and purpose of my life. To the far side of the planet, to the parched interior of Australia, the beaches of Bali. Looking after pools for people with money.
But there is no escape from unlove.
Then one day I was driving my van through the city, along Hamngatan, and I saw a taxi. It was only a few weeks ago, actually. And there you were, sitting in the front seat, Dad. Old, but your eyes, and the fingers against the windscreen were the same, you were probably on your way to the hospital for some sort of tests.
And when I saw you, I knew.
Wisdom and innocence swept through my body and I was forced to begin, just so that what must be conquered could be conquered.
I’ve been feeling my way.
Fumbling in the darkness for the light.
You’re sleeping again, my summer angel.
You’re a long way down now, deep down in the darkness of dreams.
You’re hanging in the bathroom, sister.
I’m the one to find you, shake you, cry over you.
I’m the one who’s going to put everything right.
And then we can ride our bikes together, we can go skinny-dipping together in water that no one else knows about.
Rabbits, splayed open, nailed to the walls, their claws pulled out, red trickles of blood dripping from the paws, some of the animals still alive, their little lungs rising and falling frenetically, whimpering, then others that have been hanging for a long time, the shreds of their rotting bodies slipping down towards the polished pine floor.
A bed in one corner, discarded white surgical gloves, a bunk in the middle of the floor, and then rows of bottles of chemicals along the walls, pots of paint that must have been used to paint the flowers on the walls. Splashes of blood on the floor, bloody scalpels and a stench that is making Zeke giddy, he lowers his gun and goes over to the window, undoes the catch and opens it wide onto the leafy inner courtyard, and breathes, breathes, breathes.
He turns back to the room.
Bloody hell.
Like a picture by what’s-his-name, Francis Bacon.
But no Vera Folkman.
No Tove.
Janne fell fast asleep just after Zeke called them. Malin could see how he was trying to stay awake on the short drive from the Abisko
roundabout to Sturegatan, but his body’s need of sleep got the better of him.
He’s asleep down in the car now.
His head leaning against the window.
What are you dreaming about now, Janne?
About when we were young?
When Tove came to us?
We’re a family. Why have we never been able to see it?
Instead we’ve rushed off in different directions. Yet still not far from each other.
They’re standing in the stairwell outside the flat, drinking coffee Per Sundsten picked up at the Statoil petrol station in Stångebro. Karin Johannison inside, searching for evidence, securing material.
Sven Sjöman’s breathing is heavy, his face furrowed with tiredness, Per and Waldemar Ekenberg are quiet, watchful, sleepy too. Karim Akbar is in the background, scratching his cheek.
It’s already three o’clock.
Soon dawn will be stroking Linköping’s rooftops, whispering: a new day is here, wake up people, come out into the heat.
Zeke tired, but still alert and keen. He is explaining for the third time: ‘I broke in. The smell was so awful that I suspected some sort of criminal activity had taken place in the flat.’
‘Don’t worry, Zeke,’ Sven repeats once more. ‘It’s fine. Those pool chemicals in there. We’re dealing with one and the same person.’
‘Now we just have to find Vera Folkman,’ Per says, and no one in the group of detectives wants to give voice to the obvious subtext: we have to find Vera Folkman, because then we’ll find Tove, Tove, our colleague Malin’s only daughter.
‘Any ideas?’
Malin shakes her head, not a no, but to shake off her drowsiness and she looks at the others, sees in their eyes how they’re screaming for rest, that none of them can think clearly, that they might miss the most obvious things, that they can’t let it all become too late just because of tiredness.
‘Anyone who wants to can get some sleep,’ Sven says. ‘We’re not being terribly constructive here.’
No one replies.
They slowly drink their coffee. Feeling valuable time slip by.
‘Fuck!’ Malin says, and Sven puts his arm around her shoulder.
‘We’ll sort this, Malin. It’s going to be OK,’ and at that moment Karin appears from inside the flat, holding up one of the chemical containers in one hand, and pointing at a label with the other.
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