Anger Mode (8 page)

C
HAPTER 7

MALIN SLOWLY OPENED her eyes. She was freezing, so much so that her teeth chattered. One knee was sore, and she lay on cold, damp grass surrounded by thick bushes. Her trousers and jacket were muddy and she found it difficult to get her bearings. The bushes were dense and stretched high above her. Even if she stood on tiptoe, she could not see over, much less through, the bushes. She could not for the life of her understand how she had ended up here.

The only thing she remembered was that Sanna and Mustafa had disappeared into the bedroom. And, of course, that bearded dealer, the guy who was so unpleasant. He was also there when they sat in Mustafa’s living room. Everything after that was obscured by darkness.

Malin became angry. She felt betrayed and abandoned by Sanna and Mustafa.

Because they had done … what? Why was she really angry? Because she had ended up here. How had she, in fact, come to this place? She suddenly realized that she perhaps had been raped. An icy feeling seized her. What if that dealer had done something to her? Laid over her, drooling and panting like some fucking animal? She checked. Her jeans were properly buttoned and she felt no pain in her crotch at least. Probably a good sign. She had to get home and shower. Everything was so fucked up.

Malin fumbled for her mobile phone and found it in her jacket pocket. She did not usually keep it there. She was going to call Sanna, but the display was as blank as her head was right now. Presumably, the battery was dead. Despite that, she tried to restart it by repeatedly pressing the button. The phone remained dead.

“Fucking hell!” she swore angrily and threw away the phone. Now everything was against her. She stood up carefully and limped out between two bushes without picking up her mobile phone. It was dark and she had difficulty seeing.

A two-storey block of flats towered in front of her, and a lamp was alight over the basement door to the building. By the side of the door, a bike stood chained fast. It looked familiar. The bike was hers.

Limping and swearing, Malin made her way around the building and in through the door at the front. There were seven steps up to the flat. She would be able to manage those, in spite of the terrible pain from her damned knee.

Mrs Ekblom’s little chihuahua barked as soon as she came into the stairwell. The dog that Malin normally loved was no longer cute. The barking and whining behind the door became an intolerable noise in Malin’s ear. She hated the disgusting little hairball that just drooled and whined. Malin spat on Mrs Ekblom’s door and swore at the dog to shut the fuck up.

At last, she was standing on the last step and reaching for the door handle, but she stopped herself when she suddenly started hearing vague voices inside her own head. Only faint whispers, but they spoke to her.

What the fuck was going on?

Suddenly, a pain started to grow deep inside her head. The whispers changed to distinct voices that talked over each other. She tried to fight it, but she was filled with an enormous rage. The angrier she became, the more the pain subsided.

Sanna is a fucking loser and Mum is a bloody whore who should leave me the fuck alone.

She tore open the flat door.

IT WAS TEN past nine in the evening when Karin heard the sound of the front door opening. She jumped up from the sofa and went out to the hallway where she met Malin, who was muddied and limping, when she stepped through the door.

Karin advanced with her hands firmly on her hips.

“Where have you been?” she began in a shrill voice.

Malin did not answer and ignored Karin’s glare. She slowly slinked towards her room, limping along the hallway wall. Her eyes were as black as coal.

“Are we
having difficulty finding an answer?” Karin shouted and grabbed Malin’s shoulder. She felt the rage spread to every muscle.

“Get off me!” yelled Malin, trying to get free from Karin’s grip.

“You’re going to tell me where you’ve been,” Karin repeated as she grabbed both of Malin’s shoulders with her hands. She wanted to throw the kid against the wall.

Malin exploded and slapped Karin’s hands away. “Get off me, you fucking whore!” she screamed. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m not going to. That’s over with now!” Karin screamed back and took fresh hold of Malin, who hit her hands away.

“Don’t touch me,” Malin said and stared hard at Karin with her coal-black eyes.

“Don’t you understand what I said, you fucking bitch? You’re nothing to do with me!”

Karin shook with rage. Tears welled up as she grappled with her daughter’s arms.

“Bloody brat. You’re not going to destroy anything anymore,” she yelled, as her rage mixed with despair and fear. Her tears blinded her.

Suddenly, Karin received a hard blow to her chin and she staggered backwards. Malin turned around and limped back towards the front door. She had now hit her mother. Some part of her registered how sick this was, but she could not quite get her head round the thought. She had not had any choice. The bitch had tried to restrain her, to imprison her with her bloody nagging. She had to get out and away from the nagging bitch and her shitty life. If only she were dead. Malin tried to think, but the pain in her head cut like a knife. She stopped and pressed her hands against her forehead.

“Can’t you just shut your mouth?” screamed Malin. “Leave me alone!”

Malin threw open the front door and was just about to start descending the stairs when Karin grabbed her jacket.

“You’re not going anywhere!” roared Karin, so that it echoed around the stairwell. She had to get the damned kid inside, to put an end to all of this now.

The echo of Karin’s voice mingled with the barking from Mrs Ekblom’s chihuahua. She tried to drag Malin through the flat door, but Malin resisted. She had a grip on the handrail and held on with all the strength she could muster.

Karin grabbed hold of Malin’s hair. She pulled so hard that a big hank of hair came loose. Malin screamed with the pain. She quickly spun around to break free from her mother’s hold on her jacket and briefly lost her grip on the handrail. In her determination to prevent Malin’s escape, Karin then hit Malin full in the face with the flat of her hand.

The blow came as a complete surprise. Instinctively, Malin covered her face, and lost her balance, falling uncontrollably backwards while desperately reaching for the handrail. A dull thud sounded when her head met the rock-hard edge of the step.

It was suddenly quiet in the stairwell. The echoes quickly died away.

The dog stopped barking behind the door.

A weak gasp escaped from the girl. Her body twitched a few times before lying completely still.

WALTER WAS JUST leaving for the evening when David Lilja came into the office. He sat down in Walter’s shabby visitor’s chair and placed his hands behind his neck. Walter looked at Lilja with some surprise, as he normally never stayed after five o’clock. Lilja was probably the person in the police station who was most eager to go home and who strictly adhered to office hours. On the other hand, he had no objections when Walter worked until midnight.

“I heard that it went well with the pimp’s alibi,” Lilja began, “and that the rookie from RSU also handled herself well.”

“Yes, she’s at home getting her beauty sleep so that she can come and play tomorrow as well.”

“Do you two get along? From what I’ve seen, she’s quite determined and very forward. That’s not exactly the perfect match for you.”

“She has perhaps a little too much confidence for her own good. But a few cold showers should bring her feet back down to earth,” Walter said.

“And naturally you will see that it happens,” said Lilja. “The first thing a person loses in your company is self-confidence.”

Walter smiled a crooked grin.

“I don’t want to get any complaints from Hildebrandt at RSU,” Lilja clarified. “We’ll have a lot of use for RSU in the future.”

“Why would you get complaints?” asked Walter.

Lilja looked at Walter in disbelief. “In any case, it seems as if you two managed to run circles around the girlfriend. The prosecutor is very satisfied with your work.”

“There’ll be no problems there,” answered Walter. “She was just as brainless as one would expect of an addict with that habit – no more, no less. If the court accepts her as a credible witness, then we might as well scrap the entire justice system.”

Lilja nodded approvingly and watched Walter as he stood up from his chair.

“Anything else?” Walter asked as he reached for his jacket.

“What do you mean?” asked Lilja.

“Well, you didn’t come here just to ask about the alibi and to gossip about the rookie. It’s almost eleven,” said Walter, checking the clock above the office door.

Lilja’s face hardened. “We have a fifteen-year-old girl who has been in an accident,” he began and then paused for effect.

“I see,” said Walter, disinterested, as he put on his jacket.

“It’s the same situation as always,” sighed Lilja. “Lack of resources, lack of manpower, lack of everything.” He shrugged.

“Well, that sounds familiar,” conceded Walter. “Are we talking overtime now?”

“As you know, Cederberg and Jonsson are assisting our colleagues from the Skåne district for a few weeks,” Lilja continued, pretending not to hear Walter’s last question. “It’s a terrible mess down there in Landskrona. Many believe that it’s becoming a lawless region. They’re taking part in a murder investigation with connections to Stockholm, but the investigation is being led by officers on the scene. Forensics is not formally involved yet, but may be. If that happens, I’ll pull Cederberg and Jonsson back home immediately.”

“Let them stay down there permanently,” Walter suggested and went towards the door. “You could never have made me go down to that Skåne dung heap. Not even if you asked me nicely.”

Lilja remained sitting in the chair.

“Forensics is already en route to the scene of the accident,” he said, switching back to the original subject. “You can call Swedberg and get the address from him. The duty shift is already busy with other tasks, so I would appreciate it if you could see your way to at least start the crime scene investigation in order that the shift can take over, once they are finished with the knife victim in Fittja.”

“Do I have a choice?” asked Walter.

“One always has a choice,” answered Lilja, standing up from his chair. “Or were you planning to take a hot bath with candlelight when you get home?”

“Better than that,” lied Walter. “In fact, I have a new bed and a date waiting for me in it.”

Lilja raised an eyebrow.

WHEN WALTER ARRIVED, the forensic technicians had already started the technical part of the crime scene investigation. He left the car on the pavement a short distance from the building, because the street was full of parked cars. There were no parking spaces nowadays, not even in the suburbs. He swore because there was little room when he opened the car door and happened to hit a lamppost that someone had coincidentally placed at that exact spot. He noticed a small dent on the taxpayer’s Volvo V70 and then continued at a slow pace towards the entrance, where ambulance crew and uniformed police officers were standing around. Only now did his thoughts begin to focus on what was waiting for him. His years as a detective had made him callous and accustomed to most things that had to do with death. Only morticians and forensic technicians were truly comfortable with it. Walter had been obliged to learn how the sweet smell from a corpse whose “best-before” date had expired could attack the nostrils. And how to scoop the remains of a human body with a soup ladle from a grinder at the coffee factory. Such things no longer bothered him. There was, however, something he could never get used to – the occasions when humanity revealed its worst and most primitive behaviour. And this was when children got hurt. Every time this happened, he questioned his choice of profession.

That a rational adult could take the life of a defenceless child never ceased to horrify him. That children died as a result of accidents on almost a daily basis was understandable. That was part of the risk of living, one could say. But that a child could be murdered in cold blood, he could not understand. Every time, he hoped to avoid having to see the corpse of a child when he came to a crime scene, but this time he had the misfortune of knowing what was going to happen.

A small group of curious bystanders had gathered at a distance and was trying to get a glimpse of what was going on in the stairwell. The police tape effectively cordoned off the area around the entrance. The technicians had also managed to erect tent walls inside the door entrance so that they could work undisturbed.

Walter showed his police badge to a uniformed police officer. The officer nodded and held up the plastic tape so that Walter could bend stiffly under it.

“What have we got here, then?” said Walter to no one in particular, as he entered the stairwell and donned the mandatory blue overalls and face mask. He searched for some of the cough drops that he had in his chest pocket while looking around him.

Swedberg, who was standing in conversation with some colleagues who were all wearing blue plastic overalls, turned around. He gave Walter a glance that then moved to the body on the stairs. The body was of medium height and was wrapped in a yellow ambulance blanket. Blood had coagulated on the floor under the body and someone had left a footprint in the red stain.