Summertime Death

by Mons Kallentoft

  ‘Hockey’s for morons,’ Zeke says. ‘That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on him.’

  ‘The lad can do what he likes, but there’s no way I’m ever going to love that game.’

  The road forces its way through the forest.

  The world around them is deserted, all the animals have long since fled the flames. Fifty minutes later they reach Finspång.

  Home to the De Geer industrial empire.

  A town built up around the production of cannons.

  Neglected.

  But a good place to raise children. And a good place to hide yourself away.

  Their satnav leads them to the right place.

  The street where Sture Folkman lives is an obscure cul-de-sac just behind a run of shops right in the centre of town, and number twelve is a three-storey block of flats. The ground-floor shop is occupied by the National Federation of Disabled Persons.

  They park.

  Take it for granted that the old man is home.

  The door to the flats isn’t locked, Finspång so small that they don’t need coded locks, people free to come and go as they please all day long.

  They read his name on the grey-green list of names in movable white lettering, he lives on the third floor.

  ‘That’s the bastard,’ Zeke says.

  ‘Take it easy now,’ Malin says. ‘He’s an old man.’

  ‘OK, so he’s old. But some crimes never go away, and can never be forgiven.’

  ‘Get lost,’ says a hoarse voice through the letterbox, and it contains a meanness, a malice that is evident in a way that Malin has never experienced before, and the pink walls of the stairwell seem to turn blood-red and collapse in on them as they stand there.

  ‘I don’t want anything. Get lost.’

  ‘We’re not selling anything. We’re from the Linköping Police, and we’d like to talk to you. Open the door.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘Open up. Now. Or I’ll break the door in,’ and the man inside seems to hear that Zeke is serious and the door is unlocked and opened.

  A tall, thin man with a bent back, his body frozen by what looks like Parkinson’s.

  You didn’t do it, Malin thinks, but then they never really thought he had.

  A long nose that distracts attention from a weak chin, and Sture Folkman stares right at them, his eyes grey and cold.

  Cold as the tundra.

  Cold as the Arctic.

  Like a world without light, that’s how cold your eyes are.

  Black gabardine trousers. A white nylon shirt and a grey cardigan in spite of the heat.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  Malin looks at his hands.

  Long, white, bloodless fingers dangling towards the rag-rugs in the hall, tentacles ready to feel their way up, in.

  Green plush sofas.

  Black and white photographs of family farms long since sold off.

  Heavy red velvet curtains shutting out all the light. A bookcase with books about chemistry, and a complete set of the Duden encyclopaedia in German.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  Sture Folkman’s response when they explained why they were there.

  But Malin and Zeke still went into the living room, sitting down in a couple of armchairs, waiting.

  Sture Folkman hesitated in the hall.

  They heard him moving around in the kitchen, scrupulously clean, Malin noticed that as they went past, old-fashioned knives with Bakelite handles in a block on the draining board.

  Then he came in to them.

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘Not until you answer our questions.’

  ‘Get lost, back to Linköping. That’s where you said you were from, isn’t it? Fucking stuck-up dump. I was at your oh-so-wonderful hospital last month. Fucking shit urologist.’

  He slumped onto a ladder-backed chair beside the bookcase.

  ‘I’ve never had any dealings with the cops.’

  ‘You should have done.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You subjected Louise Svensson to sexual abuse, repeatedly. There’s no point trying to deny it, we know all about it.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘And doubtless you went on to do the same to your new family. Where are they now?’

  ‘My last wife died four years ago. A brain tumour.’

  ‘And your two daughters?’

  ‘What do you want with them?’

  ‘Answer.’

  ‘She’s a long way away. In Australia.’

  ‘Do they live there?’

  Sture Folkman doesn’t answer.

  ‘Do you know anything about the murders of young girls in Linköping?’

  ‘What would I know about that?’

  ‘Do you think Louise could have had anything to do with them?’

  Sture Folkman knits his fingers, sniffs them, then lets his hands rest on his black trousers.

  ‘Have you got any other assaults on your conscience?’

  Zeke sounds the way he always does just before he explodes, just before violence.

  ‘Well? Have you?’

  ‘Zeke.’

  Sture Folkman raises his hands towards them, his white fingers a jagged fence.

  ‘What do you really want? What do you want?’

  On the way back to the car Malin can see Zeke trembling with loathing and anger.

  He tosses the keys to her.

  ‘You drive.’

  And Malin sits behind the wheel as they leave Finspång behind them. They’re surrounded by dense forest when Zeke finally speaks.

  ‘He had a point, the old bastard. What were we doing there really?’

  ‘Following up on a line of inquiry, Zeke. That’s what we do. We look back in case it helps us move forward.’

  ‘But still. It feels so remote that it’s bordering on desperation.’

  Malin doesn’t reply.

  Instead she fixes her eyes on the road, thinking about what must happen to your soul if you get nightly visits from those white fingers throughout the years when your faith in other people assumes its final form.

  It makes you watchful.

  Scared.

  A conviction that everyone probably wants to hurt you.

  That everyone hates you.

  An inability to fit in, instead an urge to seek out anything broken, to validate what’s broken within yourself.

  Life as a lonely, aimless wanderer.

  Everything that could be defined as self-esteem fingered to destruction.

  Cracks in doors concealing a darkness into which you could tumble helplessly.

  49

  The beach outside Sturefors in the dying afternoon light. The heat is making Waldemar Ekenberg’s jacket stick to his body as he stands beneath the oak inside the cordon.

  The holstered pistol is warm against his chest, not even metal shielded by cloth and shade can resist the heat.

  Suliman Hajif is standing beside what was Theresa Eckeved’s grave, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, allowed not to wear custody clothing for this excursion. His hands are behind his back, the handcuffs fastened tight to make sure he doesn’t try anything.

  The bathers have found their way back.

  When they arrived the bathers stared in their direction from behind their sunglasses, now they’ve gone back to swimming. Presumably they think that the reason for their visit is too frightening to be allowed to blemish such a dreamy summer’s day as this: That was where they found her. It’s the police. It happened. How old was she? Fourteen. Summertime death. Over there, by that oak tree.

  Only two boys, wearing identical blue swimming trunks, are standing outside the cordon and staring up at them through blue-tinted glass. The ice cream kiosk is closed, otherwise the boys would probably each be clutching a cone.

  Inquisitive.

  ‘Off you go, now.’

  Per Sundsten tries to make his voice sound authoritative.
r />   Sven Sjöman hadn’t been convinced about their idea: taking him out to the crime scenes to get him to break down, confess.

  ‘His lawyer will have to go too.’

  ‘Sod the lawyer. We haven’t got time for that,’ Waldemar said. ‘The girls, Sjöman, think of the girls.’

  ‘OK, but take it easy. Nothing unnecessary.’

  As he sat at his desk in the open-plan office, Sven hesitated, his face wrinkling with awareness of their excesses.

  ‘Get lost.’

  And Waldemar fixes a stare on the boys until they lumber off, embarrassed, down the little beach and back into the water.

  ‘So this was where you buried her. And was this where you killed her as well?’

  Suliman Hajif shakes his head, whispering: ‘My lawyer should be here.’

  ‘We tried to get hold of him,’ Waldemar says. ‘But he wasn’t answering the phone. He doesn’t give a damn about you.’

  ‘It would make sense to confess,’ Per says. ‘You’d feel better. Anytime now we’re expecting the results from Forensics, and then we’ll know it was you, and that it was your dildo that was used on these girls.’

  Suliman Hajif shakes his head again.

  Waldemar takes a step forward, grabs him by the neck, hard, but in a way that could look almost paternal to the other people on the beach.

  ‘So you’re playing the silent game, are you?’

  A groan.

  But no words.

  ‘Let’s go to the next one,’ Waldemar says, dragging Suliman Hajif with him, back the way from which they came.

  Malin gets the call just as they’re passing the turning to Tornby.

  Karin Johannison’s voice, excited behind the formal tone.

  ‘It’s the same paint. The paint on Suliman Hajif’s dildo matches the paint on the one used in the attacks.’

  ‘So it’s the same dildo?’

  ‘It isn’t possible to say that for sure. But certainly the same sort. As to whether the fragments of paint match the pieces that are missing from Suliman Hajif’s dildo . . . Well, I’ve tried, but there isn’t a hope in hell of doing that.’

  Malin feels her stomach clench.

  All due respect to the chances of matching the fragments. But how likely is it that two different dildos of the same model would turn up in the same investigation?

  ‘Any other traces on it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any other news?’

  ‘Sorry Malin. No new evidence.’

  The same dildo.

  Synchronicity.

  Freud.

  On the way to Viveka Crafoord now for the session of hypnosis. Is that even necessary now?

  ‘Thanks, Karin. Are you going to call Sven Sjöman?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So it’s the same dildo? OK, just the same model. But then it’s sorted, isn’t it?’

  Waldemar elated behind the wheel of their blue Saab; Sundsten and Suliman Hajif in the back seat, they’ve just driven through the idyll of Sturefors. Beside them on the cycle path an elderly couple is wobbling along on a brand-new tandem.

  ‘We’ve got him here, we’re coming in. No, nothing. He hasn’t said a word.’

  Without letting go of the wheel Waldemar turns to look at the back seat, saying: ‘OK, you randy little Paki, we’ve got you now.’

  Then he turns into a side road and drives deep into the forest, and Per knows what’s going to happen now, doesn’t want it to happen, but lets it happen.

  Zeke’s reaction to the information about the dildo: ‘So we don’t have to bother with the hypnosis? It’s as good as sorted now. We must be able to get a confession out of him now.’

  ‘It’s not sorted,’ Malin says without taking her eyes from the road. ‘We’ll go through with the hypnosis as planned. Josefin Davidsson is probably already at Viveka’s office. The best we can hope for is that we get ourselves a witness, and no matter what that witness says, it will give us more information, won’t it?’

  Zeke nods.

  Knows she’s right.

  ‘I want this case to be over,’ Zeke says. ‘I want the people living in the city to be able to read in tomorrow’s Correspondent that we’ve caught the bastard and that they can let their girls play wherever they like again, that they don’t have to be worried or frightened.’

  Tove.

  Am I worried?

  No.

  Actually, yes.

  ‘It’s coming, Zeke,’ Malin says. ‘In principle, the case is cracked. Now we just have to join all the dots.’

  Waldemar Ekenberg clenches his fist and punches Suliman Hajif just under his ribs, the place that causes most pain without leaving any visible physical evidence.

  Suliman Hajif collapses.

  Per Sundsten is pretending to help, picking Suliman Hajif up, but only so he can be hit again.

  The young man is still silent.

  No words, just groaning as he lies on the ground, hands over his eyes, and the forest around the gravel road is still, the moss thick and yellow and dry on the ground, the maples have lost their chlorophyll, but life is clinging on in there, begging for rain.

  ‘You raped and murdered Theresa Eckeved and Sofia Fredén. Didn’t you? And you raped Josefin Davidsson. Didn’t you? You perverse little fucker. I’m going to kill you out here if you don’t confess.’

  He must be able to hear from Ekenberg’s voice that he’s serious.

  Suliman Hajif tries to get up, but his legs don’t want to obey, he lurches back and forth and Per can see the fear in his eyes.

  Waldemar takes his pistol from its holster.

  Crouches down beside Suliman Hajif and puts the barrel to his back.

  ‘It’s easy. We say you tried to escape and were forced to shoot to stop you. A double-murderer and rapist. No one’s going to wonder. People will thank us.’

  Per unsure.

  ‘Get up!’ Waldemar screams.

  And Suliman Hajif scrambles, tries to get up, screaming: ‘I can’t confess to something I didn’t do!’

  The pistol against his temple now.

  ‘Don’t try to escape.’

  Then Per takes a step forward, knocks the pistol from Waldemar’s hand.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘That’s enough. Get it? That’s enough.’

  A wind blows through the maples’ shrivelled branches and a thousand yellow leaves decide to let go, falling like a golden rain over the scene in the forest.

  ‘I bought the dildo from Stene at Blue Rose,’ Suliman Hajif screams. ‘He said he’d sold dozens of them, so how do you know it was mine?’

  ‘Shit,’ Waldemar whispers, and Per thinks: You’re right there, Waldemar, you’re absolutely right.

  ‘Why the hell hasn’t anyone checked which dildos are sold in the only porn shop in the city? Fucking Internet. People still buy things in shops, don’t they?’

  Per grabs Waldemar’s arm.

  ‘Calm down. This is a crazy summer. We’re under pressure from all sides. Sometimes you don’t see what’s right in front of your nose.’

  A quarter of an hour later Waldemar is standing at the counter of Blue Rose on Djurgårdsgatan, the city’s long-established porn shop.

  Stene, the owner, smiles with his puffy, stubbled face.

  ‘A blue dildo?’

  Stene goes over to a shelf at the back of the dimly lit premises. Comes back with a pink and orange package in his hand, the blue object inside the pack half-obscured by the loud, shouting lettering: ‘Hard and Horny!’

  ‘These have been selling like hot cakes. I must have sold forty or so in the last eighteen months. None in the last month or so, mind you.’

  Waldemar spits out a question: ‘Do you keep a list of your customers?’

  ‘No, are you mad? Nothing of the sort. Discretion is my watchword. And I have a bad memory for faces.’

  ‘Credit cards?’

  ‘Those bastards take seven per cent. Here it’s cash that counts.�
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  Malin pulls up in the car park of the Philadelphia Church and doesn’t bother to get a ticket from the machine. She and Zeke cross over Drottninggatan, ignoring how hungry they are and fighting the urge to stop in McDonald’s on the way.

  They press the buzzer of number twelve Drottninggatan, and Viveka Crafoord lets them in.

  In the treatment room, on the paisley-patterned chaise longue, sits Josefin Davidsson, her mother sitting nervously beside her.

  Viveka is sitting in her leather chair behind the desk, her face lit up by the light falling from the window looking onto Drottninggatan. A strange, mystical light, Malin thinks.

  ‘OK,’ Josefin says. ‘I want to know what happened.’

  You’re not the only one, Malin thinks.

  50

  The memory of violence.

  It’s somewhere inside you, Josefin.

  Synapses need to be connected to synapses, and then you’ll remember. But do you really want to remember?

  We remember. We can see what happened to us, how we disappeared, we’d rather call it that, a disappearance, then how, after a lot of loneliness, we found each other in our shapeless space.

  Sofia and I have each other.

  Perhaps we’re in the beautiful place that exists before consciousness, unconsciousness? Before everything that human beings mistake for life?

  We can just make out the people we once were, our space can assume whatever colour we like, and we can be exactly the people we want to be, wherever we like.

  We’re with you, now, Josefin, in the lady psychologist’s room.

  We need your memories.

  Because somehow we need the closure provided by the truth in order to achieve real peace, to stop being scared of the dark. Because that’s what our space is like, it can adopt a colour that makes black seem like white.

  Don’t be scared.

  It’s just memories.

  Of course. They’re your life, in one way, and we need them.

  But remember one thing, Josefin. The only thing us summer angels really have is each other.