Savage Spring (17 page)

About the little six-year-old girl she once was.

17

The Ikea clock in the kitchen is ticking.

It says quarter past eight, and Tove is calmly and methodically chopping a carrot, wants to cook even though Malin is too tired and thought they could splash out and get a takeaway from the Ming Palace.

Tove is wearing a short cotton skirt. A pink blouse, far too thin, black leggings, and when Malin first saw her outfit she felt like saying something, pointing out that she was hardly dressed, but stopped herself, thinking that this is probably what a teenage girl is supposed to look like in spring this year.

‘Haven’t you got any food in the flat?’

‘I’ve got the ingredients for spaghetti bolognese, if you’d like that.’

‘We could make a big batch and freeze some,’ Tove said.

‘OK,’ and now the onion and garlic are sizzling in the large frying pan, and the water is bubbling in the saucepan.

‘Shouldn’t we call Grandad?’ Tove says. ‘He might be hungry.’

‘Don’t you think he’d be too tired?’

‘With his Spanish habits? He told me he and Grandma used to eat dinner at ten o’clock.’

‘Maybe he’d like to be left alone,’ Malin says.

‘I doubt it,’ Tove says. ‘I think you’re the one who’d like to be left alone.’

Foiled, Malin thinks.

The truth-sayer.

The precocious girl.

Where’s life going to take you, Tove?

‘I’ll call him,’ Malin says, and an hour later the three of them are sitting in Malin’s kitchen shovelling down spaghetti bolognese and cheap, freshly grated parmesan, not the expensive matured sort, and it feels good to be sitting there together, talking about nothing. When her dad asks about the case, and whether they’re getting anywhere with the bomb attack against the bank, she tells them about their various ideas, and explains that they can’t rule anything out at this stage of the investigation, or ignore any possibilities just because a new organisation has popped up in the media and claimed responsibility.

‘People are talking,’ her dad says, and Tove agrees.

‘Everyone’s frightened,’ she says. ‘Scared there’s going to be another blast. Like they said on YouTube. Everyone’s seen the film. Do you think there’s going to be another bomb?’

Malin puts her cutlery down.

Thinks how wonderful it would be to have a glass of bog-standard red wine with the pasta, but instead they’re drinking soda water, made in Malin’s recently bought Sodastream, and the bubbles in the water remind her of the enticing bubbles in an almost ice-cold lager, but in a good way, nothing unpleasant.

‘I don’t know if there’s going to be another explosion,’ Malin says. ‘But you can try to avoid it by not going near any banks.’

‘Not so easy in Linköping,’ her dad says. ‘There’s one on every square.’

‘And there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for the financial misery,’ Malin says. ‘DT Trucks! I thought that was the most stable company in the world!’

More redundancies were announced today. Just when everyone had started to hope that things might be properly looking up, that it wasn’t just the stock exchange rising, but the real economy as well. Three hundred and twenty people were going to be laid off from DT Trucks in Mjölby, a place that’s already been hit hard.

‘You can’t take it for granted that anything’s going to last forever,’ her dad says laconically.

‘And another service in the cathedral today,’ Malin says. ‘They were expecting a lot of people again. And apparently there’s going to be a memorial service at lunchtime tomorrow in the square, and a minute’s silence covering the whole district at four o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘I think all the churches are open,’ her dad says. Tove, who has been silent up to then, opens her mouth.

‘Typical. As soon as something bad happens, they all run for the churches. God, how transparent.’

‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it, Tove?’ Malin wonders.

‘Maybe. But surely not even God wants to provide comfort the whole time? She’d probably like a bit of attention when things are normal, don’t you think?’

After dinner they sit on the sofa and watch an episode of an American series about a terrorist cell in the US. About how mild-mannered men turn out to be Muslim fanatics out for revenge for injustices against them and their families.

‘This can’t be the way it works in real life,’ Malin’s dad says, and Malin doesn’t know how to respond, and says: ‘They’re probably a bit more obscure in real life. I guess. What do you think, Tove?’

Malin turns towards her daughter and sees that she’s fallen asleep, sitting there with her mouth open and her eyes closed, on her way into deep, peaceful teenage sleep.

‘I’ll carry her,’ her dad says, and Malin wants to protest, wants to carry her teenage daughter through to her childhood bed herself, but stops herself. Let Dad do it.

‘Great. She’s too heavy for me. Your back’ll be OK, won’t it?’

‘Nothing wrong with my back.’

‘I’ll go through to the bedroom first and pull the covers back.’

Malin’s dad lays Tove down carefully on the bed. They leave her jeans and top on, and stand beside each other in the darkness, watching as Tove pulls the covers over her in her sleep, rolls onto her back and stretches her arms over her head.

‘When children sleep like that, it means they feel safe,’ her dad says.

‘She’s not a child any more.’

‘You never slept that way, Malin,’ he goes on. ‘You used to curl up into a little ball. I used to think it looked as if you thought the whole world was after you. Wanted to hurt you.’

‘Did you try to reassure me while I was asleep?’

Her dad nods.

‘Every night. I used to go into your room every night, stroke your cheek, trying to persuade your dreams to stay gentle. But it didn’t help. You always curled up, as if you were trying to protect yourself.’

‘Against what, Dad? Come on, tell me now.’

Dad walks out of the bedroom.

‘Children understand and feel much more than we think,’ he says out loud as Malin hears him running some water in the kitchen.

They think I’m asleep, Tove thinks.

It’s nice, lying here and listening to them talk, listening to Grandad talk about Mum when she was little. I’ve never heard them talk like that before, and Mum doesn’t even seem annoyed or irritated, I wonder what it is that she wants him to tell her?

Now Mum leaves the room as well.

Leaving me alone in here.

Tove stretches, and it strikes her that it never even crossed her mind to tell her mum about the letter, she’ll have to do that another day, there’s no immediate rush, and her mum would never be able to say no anyway.

Or would she?

She’ll be cross.

Tove feels her stomach tighten, and realises that she has to tell her soon.

Because Mum will ask when she got the letter, and if too many days have passed she’ll get suspicious, feel like she’s being criticised and sidelined, and then she’ll get angry, and then anything could happen.

Absolutely anything.

She mustn’t start drinking again. She mustn’t.

So how to tell her?

It’s already turned into a secret now. Something that needs to be revealed. And she forged their signatures on the application.

Tove feels her thoughts wander off, and she daydreams her way into sleep, into high-ceilinged schoolrooms and benches full of people far more interesting than the bumpkins that make up most of her class at the Folkunga School.

People with style.

Like characters in a contemporary Jane Austen novel, Tove thinks, then the daydream vanishes into itself and soon she’s sleeping without any awareness that she actually exists.

They’re sitting at the kitchen table.

Sipping cups of herbal tea, and Malin can feel calmness spread through her body.

Her dad opposite her.

His familiar features look oddly different, his dark eyes full of feelings she can’t place.

He wants to talk, I can see that, Malin thinks, then he says: ‘Malin, do you want to hear something awful? Can I tell you something terrible?’

Malin feels a black, ice-cold fist hit her in the stomach, then the hand twists her gut and she feels frightened, doesn’t want to hear what’s about to come, is this the secret about to be revealed, is there even a secret? And she nods, can’t manage to make a sound, and her throat feels dry, and all she can hear is the ticking of the clock.

‘I don’t miss your mum,’ he says. ‘I feel relieved, and I’m ashamed of feeling that.’

Malin feels the pressure in her guts ease.

So this is today’s confession.

‘I don’t miss her either,’ she says. ‘And I don’t feel guilty about it.’

‘Don’t you, Malin? I can’t really believe that. I feel horribly guilty, but at the same time I still feel the way I feel.’

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dad,’ she says. ‘That doesn’t make anything better.’

‘I’m not going back to live in Tenerife again. I’m going to stay here.’

‘I thought you loved the heat?’

‘I do. But she was the one who wanted to move there. Not me.’

‘Are you going to sell the flat?’

‘She could be difficult, actually pretty awful, we both know that.’

Malin smiles.

Understatement of the year.

‘I just feel lonely sometimes. That’s all.’

‘You lived together for a long time. Maybe you’re just suppressing your grief? That happens to a lot of people.’

‘I think I’ve been grieving for a long time. For all the things that never happened,’ her dad says, then they sit in silence opposite each other, drinking the soothing tea.

‘Feelings are never wrong,’ Malin says.

Her dad looks at her for a while, then says:‘No, maybe not. What about lies, then? Aren’t lies wrong?’

‘Which lies do you mean, Dad? There are different sorts of lies, aren’t there?’

Her dad rubs his eyes.

Malin wants to ask him about her mum’s ashes. He must have got the urn by now. Where’s he going to scatter the ashes? But she can’t summon up the energy to ask.

‘I’m looking forward to getting to know Tove properly,’ her dad says. ‘I don’t think it’s too late.’

‘It isn’t,’ Malin says. ‘It’s what she’s been wanting. But those lies, Dad, which ones are they?’

‘I’m going now,’ her dad says, and he gets up, and she feels that this is the thousandth time he’s running from something which is unavoidable, and she feels like shaking him, forcing him to tell her, the same way they sometimes have to force the truth out of a suspect.

But she doesn’t move.

Hears him disappear out into the Linköping night.

What are my lovers doing?

Malin is lying naked in her bed, with her hand between her legs, but she feels tired and brittle.

Have I even got any lovers?

It’s been months since I had Daniel Högfeldt. And it’s all over with Janne, for good, and that was more than eighteen months ago, and I haven’t had anyone else since them.

She pulls her hand up, puts both hands on the covers and listens to the darkness.

Are you there, girls? she wonders. Are you the girl I once was? Am I the two of you?

She gets out of bed.

Goes over to the window and pulls the blind up and sees that the clouds have gone and that the night outside is clear and full of stars, with a pale light that seems to caress the whole planet and wish its inhabitants well.

She shuts her eyes.

Opens them again, and then she sees two girls drifting like wingless white angels outside her window.

She sees them talking, whispering, arguing, chasing each other in their own domain without noticing her.

She smiles and laughs at them, knows who they are, but doesn’t want to disturb them.

Is everyone there? Are you there, Mum, and do you want to show yourself to me? Do you want to say sorry?

Then the girls stop and turn towards Malin, and suddenly the calm is gone from their faces, their flesh somehow torn into bleeding wounds, their eyes covered in layer upon layer of soot.

Their arms are stumps.

Their legs wriggle, torn off, and the girls scream, but no sound comes out of their mouths.

They’re screaming.

I don’t want to hear your screams, Malin thinks, and shuts her eyes again, hoping the girls will be gone when she opens them again.

Eyelids open.

And there is nothing but a lonely, star-covered sky.

Malin can hear the sound of her own breathing.

A solitary person’s solitary breathing, and it’s nothing, yet simultaneously everything.

18

Wednesday, 12 May

Malin picks the newspaper up from the hall floor, the whole of the front page is devoted to their case, to the bomb that has shaken the city to its foundations.

There’s a picture of the lizard that’s been born at Kolmården in the top corner.

Malin puts the paper on the kitchen table, reading it as she puts coffee on and feels her brain waking up as she goes about her various chores.

Every last little fucker wants to have their say.

The district governor; an overweight former agriculture minister; an old right-wing hag – they all say that people have to feel safe, and want to see more police on the streets. Karim Akbar says: ‘No comment.’ Mohamed Al Kabari talks about racism, and says it’s tragic that just because a bomb has gone off, everyone is pointing at the city’s Muslim community. But Kabari is also sympathetic: considering all the things that have been done in the name of his religion, it’s understandable, but very sad. There’s a statement from the Security Police, a Superintendent Frick, about the fact that they’re conducting a parallel investigation alongside the Linköping Police, and that the collaboration is working well, in an almost exemplary fashion. The only one who hasn’t spoken up is Dick Stensson, but Daniel Högfeldt has already found out about his visit to the bank, and is openly speculating about whether the bomb was aimed at Stensson.

Nor is there any new statement from the Economic Liberation Front, just their announcement, or manifesto. Screenshots in the paper, and the fact that no one has managed to find out anything about the organisation, that it was previously unknown, and that the police are treating the Liberation Front as their main line of inquiry, but that they can’t assume that they were the people behind the blast. Karim Akbar: ‘Previous international experience has shown that people and organisations often come forward to claim responsibility for similar acts, even though they had nothing to do with them.’