THE SUN HAD been up for several hours and had dried the morning dew from the lawn.
Jeanette Kihlberg looked out of the kitchen window and realised that it was going to be a hot June day. No wind, and already ripples of heat from the roof tiles on the other side of the road.
The deliveryman with the pram full of newspapers went past at seven exactly.
Martin Thelin, she thought. Just like Jimmie Furug?rd’s, Thelin’s alibi was difficult to doubt. While Furug?rd had been on a secret mission in Sudan, Thelin had been in rehab. Six months in H?lsingland. Hurtig had double-checked the record of his absences from the clinic. Martin Thelin wasn’t involved.
It was now half past seven and she was sitting eating breakfast alone at the kitchen table.
Johan was still snoring in bed. Where ?ke was she had no idea. He’d gone out with some friend of his the previous evening. He hadn’t come home, and hadn’t answered when she’d called him half an hour before.
How the hell can he go to the pub when we haven’t got any money? she thought.
Out of the five thousand kronor she had got from her dad, she had given two to ?ke. My buddies are paying, he had said. Sure. She knew perfectly well how he behaved after a few glasses. Last of the big spenders, rounds for everyone. ?ke the generous friend. Their money. No, her money, which she’d borrowed from her dad, and which was also supposed to support Johan.
She and ?ke had hardly seen each other for several days, and she reflected on the failed evening out at the cinema and restaurant.
What was the point in trying to resuscitate a relationship that had stagnated? Why struggle to find your way back to something that may no longer even exist?
It would probably be better to move on. Go in different directions.
The thought of splitting up didn’t scare her. It mostly felt like a nuisance.
Uncomfortable, like an uninvited guest.
How different they had become.
The change hadn’t happened overnight, it had slowly crept up on them, and it was impossible to identify when. Five years ago, two years, six months? She couldn’t say.
All she knew was that she missed the way they used to communicate. Even if they had had different opinions on loads of things, they had discussed them, talked, been curious, surprised each other. The dialogue had slowly developed into two silent monologues. Work and finances were their main topics of conversation, and even then they were unable to conduct a proper dialogue, even though it ought to be so easy.
She felt like she was nagging, and that he was irritable and uninterested.
Jeanette drank the last of her coffee and cleared the table. Then she went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and got in the shower.
It was easy to communicate with the girls on the football team. Not always, but often enough for her to miss them if there was too big a gap between games or training sessions.
Ten, fifteen different individuals with different opinions, preferences and backgrounds, making up a community. Obviously they didn’t all get along with one another, but at least you could talk openly to pretty much all of them. Laughing and joking, arguing, it didn’t matter.
Two players who worked together out on the field could become friends even if they were completely different as people.
Yet she didn’t have any close friendships with any of them away from the football pitch. They had all known one another for several years, saw one another at parties, went to the pub together. But she had never asked any of them over.
She knew why. She didn’t have the energy, it was as simple as that. She needed all her energy for work, and knew that as long as she was doing this job, that had to be the priority.
Jeanette got out of the shower, dried herself and began to get dressed. She glanced at the time and realised she was on the verge of being late.
She left the bathroom, nudged the door of Johan’s room open and saw that he was still asleep. Then she went into the kitchen and wrote him a short note.
‘Good morning. Home late tonight. Dinner in the freezer, just heat it up. Have a good day. Love, Mum.’
It was almost eighty-five degrees out in the sun, and she’d much rather have been lying on a beach somewhere with Johan. But she knew it would be a while before she could think about taking a holiday.
Kronoberg – Police Headquarters
HALF AN HOUR later she was at her desk on Kungsholmen, and had already had a short, depressing run-through with Hurtig, Schwarz and ?hlund.
During the morning Jeanette had found out that she would have to continue with her investigation for the simple reason that it would look bad if it was dropped so soon.
Reading between the lines, no one cared about the three boys. Jeanette realised that the sole purpose of her work right now was to gather information that might turn out to be important if another dead boy turned up, one who was actually missed. A dead, tortured Swedish boy with a family who might go to the press and accuse the police of not doing enough.
Jeanette didn’t think that was likely to happen, because she was convinced that the perpetrator wasn’t picking victims at random. The cruelty and modus operandi were so similar that they were surely dealing with one and the same perpetrator. But she couldn’t be sure. Sometimes coincidence stepped in to confuse everything.
She had ruled out all the usual types of murder. Here they were dealing with torture and sophisticated, protracted violence in which the perpetrator had both access to and knowledge of anesthetics. The victims were young boys and their genitals had been removed. If there was such a thing as normal murders, these were the opposite.
There was a cautious knock on the door, and Hurtig came in. He sat down opposite her with a look of resignation.
‘So? What do we do?’ he asked.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ she replied. It was as if his listlessness were infectious.
‘How much time have we got? I presume this isn’t exactly the highest priority?’
‘A few weeks, nothing exact, but if we don’t find something soon we’ll have to move on.’
‘OK. I suggest we have another go with Interpol, then trawl the refugee centres again. And if that doesn’t work, we can always try the Central Bridge again. I refuse to believe that children can simply vanish without anyone missing them.’
‘I agree, but this is actually the exact opposite,’ Jeanette said, looking Hurtig in the eye.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that these children seem to have appeared rather than vanished.’
?ke called at half past two. At first she couldn’t understand what he was saying because he was so excited, but once he’d calmed down a bit she managed to grasp what had actually happened.
‘Don’t you see? I’m getting an exhibition. The gallery’s fucking brilliant, and she’s already sold three pictures for me.’