Savage Spring (8 page)

7

We’re messing about in a playhouse without walls, in a space that’s so dark and cramped that we might never find a way out.

But are we the sad ones crying?

Or is that some other children?

Who are still alive? Whom evil is getting closer to?

We can see them now, Malin. It’s a little girl, and an even younger boy, and they’re locked in, and it’s so dark and they’re scared and they’re screaming.

They’re connected to us. How, Malin? How? We have to know.

Bad people outside, or one bad person. They’re crying, they want to sleep. They’re really sad.

But we’re happy now.

Chasing each other through the white world that is ours, where endless cherry blossoms flower, showing off their beauty, their lust for life.

I chase her, she chases me, we chase each other.

We’re the cuddly toys on our beds at home.

We leave the nursery playground, the playhouse, the games we can’t join in with.

The lamps are shining in the ceiling, blinding us, but Mummy’s eyes are closed, and we don’t know if she’s ever going to look at us again, stroke our backs with her warm hands as we lie in bed in our room, trying to go to sleep.

Mummy.

The doctor’s cutting you now, but we don’t want to watch. A green sheet covers you as he lowers the scalpel and we close our eyes, and that’s nice.

Cover our eyes for us, Mummy.

Daddy. He should be here, shouldn’t he, Mummy?

But he isn’t here, at least not with us.

Mummy.

What about you?

Aren’t you coming? Coming here to be with us?

The drips falling from the operating-theatre lamp onto your cheek are our tears.

I want to be with you, children.

I can see you and hear you, but I can’t be with you yet. First these nice men and women are going to try to make me better again. But I don’t want to be better, I don’t want whatever love and happiness there might yet be in the beauty of this month of May.

I want to be with you, with Daddy, I want us to be a family again, and that means I can’t be here.

Don’t cry. Don’t be scared. I can feel your tears. I’m asleep, and it doesn’t hurt when the nice man cuts me, he’s only trying to help.

Maybe I’ll be coming soon.

But I can’t promise anything.

You don’t always get to choose. But you know that already, don’t you?

Life isn’t a lamp that you get to decide when it goes out.

The flashbulbs love me, Karim Akbar thinks, they love me and they make the adrenalin pump, coursing through my veins and making me feel full of life.

There must be a hundred journalists in this large, panelled courtroom they’ve had to use for the press conference.

Karim is standing behind a long, pale wooden table. He raises his arms, tries to get the crowd to be quiet and stop the chorus of questions. Because it needs to be managed, directed, this crowd.

He holds his hands out, tries to calm them down, get them to sit, and it works.

He thinks that if he felt insecure and weak when his wife left him, then his new love has made him stronger than ever, now he knows he can deal with anything.

What does a short period of loneliness matter? There’s always a new love for someone like me. I can afford to be a bit arrogant, can’t I?

Soon the crowd is sitting down and listening to him, the flashes die out and he tells them what they know, about the bomb, that the victims can’t be named until their family has been informed, but nothing more. Nothing about lines of inquiry, suspects, and when he stops the storm of questions breaks out again.

‘Do you think it’s terrorists?’

‘Are the Security Police involved?’

‘Could the attack have been aimed at the bank?’

‘Is there a risk of further attacks?’

‘Has anyone claimed responsibility?’

He skirts around all the questions, says that they’re keeping an open mind at the moment, that no one has claimed responsibility.

‘What about the victims, who were they? Is the woman going to survive?’

‘Out of consideration to their family . . .’

Ten, twenty more questions, then he stands up and says: ‘That’s all for the moment,’ and he leaves the room in triumph.

Daniel Högfeldt turns off his tape recorder and looks at the reinforced white door through which Karim Akbar has just vanished. The other journalists around him look unhappy, wondering how the hell they’re going to make any sense of all this. He can see the doubt in their eyes: Has this really happened? Has a bomb really gone off in a godforsaken provincial backwater in Sweden? And there’s anxiety as well: If this can happen, then anything is possible. No one is safe, ever, anywhere.

The police are closing ranks. The way they always do before they’ve made any progress.

Karim Akbar looks like a bloody politician, Daniel thinks. With a newfound self-confidence, the sort you hardly ever see, as if he’s suddenly found something inside himself that’s prepared him for a serious challenge.

Malin.

Bound to be at the centre of the investigation. Its informal leader.

A long, long time since they last saw each other. He’s only met her once since she came out of rehab, but she had been irritable and hadn’t seemed altogether there when they had slept together in his flat.

Once upon a time he had actually thought he was in love with her.

That was before he met the woman he’s seeing at the moment. Malin would probably go mad if she knew about that.

But I don’t give a damn what you think, Malin. You had your chance.

But he can’t help wondering how she is. If anything has happened in her life. He has no idea, hasn’t heard anything. But isn’t that what’s supposed to happen with failed love affairs?

And Karim Akbar.

What a stuck-up prick he’s become. For a while I thought he’d actually changed. But no one ever changes.

‘Are women allowed in here?’

It’s just after five o’clock.

Malin and Zeke are standing in the declining afternoon light outside the factory building in Ekholmen that houses the mosque serving Linköping’s Muslim population. The building is at the foot of a wooded slope, as though pressed up against silence and a meaningless darkness. Whitewashed brick walls, peeling paint, small windows under a roof of brown-stained metal sheets with rusty iron fixtures, and a metal door with even more rust on it. An altogether depressing building, Malin thinks, looking up at the slope, which is covered with wood anemones and cowslips. Nature seems to be bursting with desire right now, with the sweet smell of two people who’ve just made love. Slightly overripe, as though the best is already past. There are a number of misplaced chestnut trees around the mosque, and it occurs to Malin that the oversized candles of blossom look like mouldy, white, erect cocks.

She’s felt a longing for another body this spring.

For a seriously hard fuck, no questions asked, either before or after.

She knows she has to relieve the pressure. But with whom?

Unless I actually need something else?

Love? As if that’s likely to come my way now. And she feels her stomach clench, as a cold, black, metal hand grabs at her heart. The loneliness she feels is different to a mere lack of sex, she wants a warm embrace to curl up in, ears that listen to what she has to say, and a brain and a heart that respond, that wish her well, that like her for who she is. Malin thinks, I feel a serious longing, maybe for someone to love, but actually admitting that to myself isn’t at all pleasant.

Focus, Malin thinks. On work, on their visit to the mosque.

‘On a day like this surely any police officer can go in,’ Zeke says. ‘Even female ones.’

‘Do you think he’s here?’

Mohamed Al Kabari.

Familiar from the
Correspondent
. Familiar from local television. Usually depicted in the media as a bearded demagogue refusing to distance himself sufficiently from the 9/11 terror attacks in New York or the train bombs in Spain.

But he did condemn all forms of violence, Malin remembers that, and suddenly she feels uneasy about their visit. What are they doing here, so soon, without any evidence?

Zeke tries the door, but it’s locked. There’s an old-fashioned doorbell, black and white, below a small window.

Malin presses the button, no sound can be heard, but two minutes later the door opens and Mohamed Al Kabari’s bearded face is smiling at them.

Around fifty years old. His sharp nose emphasises his intelligent brown eyes.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he says in perfect Swedish. ‘Come in.’

Malin looks at him questioningly and he realises what she means.

‘Women,’ he says, ‘are welcome here. Just as much as men. With or without a headscarf.’

Mohamed Al Kabari moves smoothly in his long white tunic.

The mosque consists of a large main room with white walls, a small lobby with coat racks, and another door that presumably leads to toilets and a washroom. On the floor there are oriental rugs, closely woven and pleasant underfoot.

‘Take your shoes off,’ Al Kabari tells them in a fatherly voice that leaves no room for protest.

The room is larger than you’d expect from outside, with a high ceiling, yet Malin still feels boxed in. Al Kabari sits down on a carpet in a corner where there’s a patch of sun, and crosses his legs beneath the white fabric.

‘Sit down.’

Malin and Zeke sit down, and Al Kabari looks at them, waiting for them to speak.

‘We’re here because of the explosion in the main square earlier today,’ Malin says. ‘I presume you’ve heard what happened.’

Al Kabari nods and spreads his arms.

‘Terrible,’ he says.

‘Two little girls are dead,’ Zeke says.

‘I understand why you’re here,’ Al Kabari sighs, and Malin hears herself apologise, even though she never apologises during the course of an investigation, not for anything.

‘Our boss wanted us to come and talk to you. You know, bombs and Muslims. For most people in society they go together. I apologise if you feel that you’re under suspicion – either individually or as a group.’

Al Kabari looks at them sympathetically. He adjusts his tunic over his legs.

‘Your boss is a Christian Kurd, isn’t he?’ he says.

‘That’s right,’ Zeke says.

Al Kabari shakes his head.

‘So much resistance,’ he says. ‘I work to promote understanding and tolerance. For members of our community to feel they belong in this city. But it isn’t easy. When I condemned the attacks in Madrid, it wasn’t even reported in the
Correspondent
. I got the impression that it didn’t fit their world view.’

Malin looks around, feels that she’s being watched, under surveillance.

No flashing red light up in the ceiling. No camera recording this.

Of course there aren’t any cameras.

Just my paranoia.

‘Let me be blunt,’ Zeke says. ‘Have you noticed or heard anything in your community that might have something to do with this?’

Al Kabari shakes his head.

‘Why would you need to ask that question?’

Then he pauses before going on: ‘I can tell you that my community is calm. I promise you that there’s no fanaticism of that sort. There are no madmen here, no desperate kids, no crazy Taliban hiding in some tiny flat. I can pretty much guarantee that. All we have here is a group of people trying to make a decent life for themselves.’

Malin can hear the honesty in the imam’s voice. His sorrow at the state of things.

‘We’re going to have a meeting here this evening. A lot of people in the community are worried about what’s happened. I know you have to catch the person who killed those girls,’ he says. ‘I don’t know anything that can help you. But I hope that the perpetrator gets his just punishment.’

Malin hears her mobile ring as they are walking back to the car between the white blocks of flats in Ekholmen, thinks that it must be her dad or Tove. What are they doing now? I should be there with them.

She fishes her phone out and sees Sven’s name on the screen.

She stops, clicks to take the call, and beside her Zeke’s skull-like features emerge from the fading light.

‘Sven here. How did you get on at the mosque? Did you get hold of him?’

‘We’ve just come out. In all honesty, I really don’t believe this has any connection to Linköping’s Muslim community.’

‘He didn’t know anything?’

‘No, and I think he was telling the truth.’

‘You were careful about what you said, weren’t you? Was he angry that you went to see him?’

‘He wasn’t angry, Sven, he was very understanding. Is there any news?’

‘The uniforms have talked to everyone who was in the square now, the wounded in hospital, and the ones who were OK and didn’t hang around. But no one saw anything unusual. Not a thing. Then there’s the guy from the hotdogstand. We must have missed him in all the confusion. He said he recognised Hanna Vigerö, she used to come to the square some mornings with the children.’

‘Is that significant?’

‘She works in a home for adults with learning difficulties. They have a rota that means they’re sometimes off in the mornings, so there’s nothing odd about that. And she’s been off sick for a while, so she’s had plenty of opportunities to be there.’

‘What about Waldemar and Börje? They were going to the bank?’

‘Yes, they’ve asked for the recordings from the bank’s security cameras, we’ll be getting them from Stockholm tomorrow, everything is stored centrally there. They got hold of the last of the staff as well. No one seems to have noticed anything odd, or seen anyone acting suspiciously. And I got hold of the SEB’s head of security in Stockholm. According to him there haven’t been any threats at all against the bank. Obviously he questioned the idea that the bomb was directed at them specifically, and seemed to be suggesting that it was just coincidence that the explosion happened there. But they’ve closed all their branches for the foreseeable future.’