Summertime Death (7 page)

‘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.

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.

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.

‘In all likelihood she has been abused. She couldn’t have caused the wounds on her arms and legs herself, and they weren’t caused in self-defence. Those don’t usually look, how can I put it, quite so regular. It’s as if someone has inflicted the injuries with a sharp object and then washed and cleaned them carefully.’

‘What sort of object?’ Malin wonders.

‘Impossible to say. A knife? Maybe, maybe not.’

‘And the bleeding from the vagina?’

‘Her hymen was broken by penetration, and the blood vessels on the inside of the vagina were damaged. Hence the bleeding. But that’s normal with a first penetration, so it’s likely that a relatively soft object was used, with a degree of caution.’

Louise Sjögripe takes a deep breath, not because what she has just said seems to trouble her, but to emphasise what she’s about to say.

‘There are no traces of sperm inside her. But the perpetrator doesn’t seem to have used a condom, because I found no sign of any lubricant. What I did find, however, were some very small, almost microscopic traces of something resembling blue plastic, as if Josefin Davidsson was penetrated by an object of some sort rather than a male member.’

‘And . . .’

Zeke tries to ask a question, but Doctor Sjögripe waves her hand in front of her face dismissively.

‘I’ve already sent the traces to National Forensics. I know the routine. I’ve also taken blood samples from the blood on her thighs. Nothing apart from her own.

‘And you don’t have to worry. I haven’t said anything about the girl’s injuries to her parents. They’re the details of a crime, so I’ll let you deal with that. I just discuss the medical situation with them.’

Malin and Zeke look at each other.

‘So she couldn’t have caused the injuries herself?’ Malin asks.

‘No. That would be practically impossible. The pain would be too great. The penetration? Probably not.’

‘And the blood tests?’ Malin wonders. ‘Was there anything unusual about them? Could she have been drugged?’

‘Our initial analysis didn’t show anything. But I’ve sent samples to the central lab for a more detailed examination, and that’s when we’ll find out if she had any foreign substances in her blood. But a lot of substances disappear quickly.’

‘What about the fact that she looked like she’d been scrubbed clean? She smelled of bleach.’

‘Someone’s washed her very carefully, you’re right. As if they wanted to make sure she was completely clean. There were no strands of hair or anything that could be linked in any way to the perpetrator by DNA testing, nothing on her entire body.’

‘Is it possible to isolate traces of any disinfectant that might have been used on her body?’

‘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?