Malin’s laptop pings, and she leans over it. Taps at the keyboard a few times, then leans even closer.
We’ve been sitting here for almost two hours, going through every bit of information we have on Johannes Ahonen. Malin has followed through on all the usual threads – contacted Ahonen’s mobile phone provider, bank, and waded through various social media platforms to gather information and map out his friends and relatives.
‘The medical examiner just emailed,’ she says with a frown.
And a few seconds later:
‘It’s him. The dead man is Johannes Ahonen.’
‘I could have told you that from the beginning,’ Letit says. ‘Let’s see!’
He pulls Malin’s laptop closer and reads the email while stroking his straggly beard.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Malin mumbles and for a moment I’m transported back to our temporary office in the abandoned supermarket in Ormberg. To the cold snapping at my cheeks and a mighty spruce forest climbing up the steep slopes of Orm Mountain.
Jesus fucking Christ.
That was something Andreas always said. Maybe not so strange that Malin picked it up, now that they live together.
‘Poor Tuula Ahonen,’ Malin continues. ‘Poor, poor woman.’
The image of Johannes’s mother rocking back and forth, weeping, on the sheepskin pouffe in an apartment in Jordbro appears on my retina.
Yes, of course I’d hoped it was someone else.
You always do.
But Someone Else also has parents and friends, that’s just the way it is.
We are sitting in the small conference room facing the park. The sun is low, and the park lies in the shade. Dog owners walk by, and I catch a glimpse of a group having a picnic in the grass on a large red blanket.
Malin and I exchange a glance without a word. But Letit won’t let himself be rushed, he just continues to read the email from the medical examiner. Every now and then he hums and nods as if agreeing with something.
‘Identified with the help of dental records,’ he references. ‘The DNA analysis is expected to be completed later this week, but it will obviously say the same thing. And they’re done with the autopsy. The report arrives tomorrow, but the medical examiner says she still hasn’t been able to establish a cause of death.’
Malin sighs deeply.
‘But he was completely battered,’ she says and crosses her wiry arms over her swelling belly.
Letit hums again.
‘That’s right. Almost every bone in his body had fractures, but they could have happened post-mortem. She writes here . . . she didn’t find any bleeding in the surrounding tissues, so he must have been dead when all of his bones were crushed by something. She certainly likes to talk in riddles, our dear medical examiner.’
‘So, what does she think happened?’ Malin asks.
Letit snorts a laugh, as if Malin just said something really funny.
‘You think she wrote that in this email, do you? No, my dear. Nowadays, you’ve got to drag information out of the fine ladies and gentlemen of forensic medicine. They’re so damn scared to stick their necks out that I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if we did the autopsies ourselves right here on this desk.’
Malin’s eyes meet mine again, and she discreetly raises her brow.
‘I’ll read it out word by word for you now,’ Letit says. ‘It says here, the body was subjected to high-energy impact post-mortem. High-energy impact? What the hell does that mean? Can’t people talk like human beings anymore?’
‘High-energy impact,’ says Malin. ‘A car accident perhaps, or a boating accident, or maybe a fall from a great height.’
As soon as she says the sentence, I can see her grimace. Letit, who also picked up on her faux pas, stares down at the table and clears his throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ Malin says.
I don’t answer, but I feel sorry for them both. They are so careful, so afraid to say anything that would bring Nadja to mind.
As if that makes any fucking difference.
As if I’m not already thinking about her all the time.
‘So what now?’ Malin asks.
‘We have to wait for the final autopsy report, the DNA analysis and the forensic chemical examination,’ Letit says with a sigh. ‘The technicians aren’t finished with their report either. God, how they dawdle these days. But wait a minute! They found skin fragments under Ahonen’s nails. He may have scratched a possible killer.’
‘Bingo,’ Malin whispers and smiles broadly, as if the case were already solved. And sure, sometimes DNA technology works miracles. Sometimes you actually find a match in our register and you go pick up your suspect as easily as if you were grabbing a pizza.
‘But they don’t know if they’ll be able to extract any usable DNA,’ Letit clarifies. ‘The body was in the water for a long time. So don’t start celebrating yet, young lady.’
I turn toward Letit.
‘You mentioned earlier that Johannes Ahonen had some connection to Igor Ivanov. Is that something we should investigate further?’
Letit nods.
‘Of course. But the connection is pretty weak. When Ahonen was arrested just over three years ago, he was in possession of a large amount of cocaine. Nearly 200 grams. So clearly intended for resale. The guys at the investigative unit were pretty sure he bought the coke from a Malte Lindén, even though they had no concrete intelligence to back that up. And Malte Lindén works for Igor Ivanov. But this Igor Ivanov is in charge of most of the drug trade in southern Stockholm, so there’s not one fucking buyer or dealer out there who doesn’t have some connection to him. Therefore, we won’t pass this on to the prosecutor, because then he’ll pull our trousers down before we can say “house search”. And then we’ll end up with our arses roasted and not get anywhere.’
Letit takes off his glasses, sighs again and polishes them with his shirt.
‘And Igor Ivanov and Malte Lindén?’ Malin asks. ‘Where are they? Can we at least talk to them?’
Letit smiles crookedly, puts his glasses back on and hums.
‘Of course,’ he says curtly. ‘We can talk to them. But they won’t talk, you should be clear on that.’
Then he stands up and straightens his ill-fitting shirt. Lopes off down the hallway in the direction of the common room.
‘How the hell did he have so much success with the ladies?’ Malin sighs. ‘Honestly, he’s a real fucking arsehole.’
‘You’re probably not in his target group,’ I say with a glance at her swollen belly.
Malin smiles acerbically.
Then silence.
‘How are things going with Andreas?’ I ask.
‘Good,’ Malin says. ‘Great, actually. Though of course he’s a real country bumpkin.’
‘Like you?’
Malin laughs.
‘Exactly. I thought I was going to get out of there. Far away from Ormberg. That was the plan, anyway.’
‘Sometimes life has other plans for us,’ I note.
Malin looks at me for a long time but doesn’t say anything.
‘And what about your mother?’ I ask, as gently as I can.
Malin’s face closes and her eyes drop towards her belly.
‘We’re not in contact right now,’ she mumbles.
‘Maybe you should get in touch with her. You never know how long you will have with the people you love.’
Malin puts a hand on her belly, rubs it a bit, but says nothing.
*
When I get home, Afsaneh is sitting in the middle of the living-room floor with Nadja’s Lego box between her legs, aimlessly picking through the colourful bits of plastic. She’s in her underwear and one of my old shirts. Her hair hangs in lank curls in front of her face, and she doesn’t react when I enter the room and turn on the light.
I put my briefcase on the floor and walk over to her. I squat down and put my hands on her shoulders.
‘Afsaneh.’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Come,’ I say. ‘Let’s go make some tea.’
‘You didn’t come to the hospital today,’ she says pressing a yellow and a blue Lego together.
I sink to the floor next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. Take a deep breath.
‘I had to go to a meeting. They needed me.’
Afsaneh pulls the pieces apart again.
‘Nadja needed you.’
I don’t agree with her.
An unconscious child doesn’t need to have both parents by her bedside around the clock, that’s just the way it is. Even though I wish our presence made some difference, that it helped her heal, still I don’t truly believe that’s the case.
But of course I can’t say that to Afsaneh.
We grieve in different ways.
Afsaneh’s grief is all-consuming and physical, like a force of nature, and she seems insatiable in her need to be physically close to Nadja. She talks about Nadja non-stop as well. And apparently, she has found some kind of online forum, for parents of sick children.
Maybe she hopes their pain will alleviate hers.
Personally, I feel more shut down. Cold, that is. As if I’m dead, though I’m fairly sure I’m not.
I do dream about Nadja’s accident.
There are two types of dreams.
In the first, I run and run across the kitchen floor trying to reach her before she falls. But the floor somehow turns into a vast field. And the further I run, the more distant the window becomes, until it’s just a tiny dot on the horizon.
In the second dream, I’m agile and fast, like I’m not past fifty, don’t weigh 260 pounds and don’t have terrible knees.
I cover the short distance between the living room and kitchen window in one leap, like a leopard. Grab Nadja’s wrist and pull her in through the open window.
It’s the second dream, of course, that’s the truly cruel one, the one that hurts the most to wake up from.
All I needed was one more second, one more step.
One fucking step. You think God could have given me that.
But my child fell to the tarmac.
I stand up with difficulty. My knee aches, but I ignore the pain. Then I gently pull Afsaneh to her feet.
‘I’m so sorry I didn’t make it in time that day,’ I say, taking her face in my hands and kissing her on both cheeks.
They’re wet and taste of salt.
She nods and wraps her arms around me. Hugging me hard.
I don’t know how long we stand like that, but in the end she says:
‘Everything will be all right. It has to be all right.’
Then I follow her to bed. Give her a sleeping pill, fetch a glass of water and tuck her in as if she were a child.
I give her a kiss on the forehead too, like I always do when she’s sad. She smiles with her eyes closed, already on her way to a merciful drugged sleep.
I walk over to the chair next to the window. Unbutton my shirt and drape it over the back of the chair. Take off my trousers and put them on the seat.
My clothes look wrinkled and sort of shapeless, just like my life these days.
I open the wardrobe and let my eyes slide over the clothes.
The suits from my favourite tailor, Norton & Sons, on Savile Row in London, hang in a neat row, as if waiting for me to pull myself together and take them out into the sunlight again.
The tailor has sewn countless suits, shirts and even sportswear, for emperors, kings and presidents. Lord Carnarvon himself was in Norton & Sons when he opened Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. Whether or not he was wearing the famous tailor’s work when he died the following year in Cairo, the result of an infected mosquito bite, isn’t included in the story. But I can see him in front of me, lying on his deathbed, his face dripping with sweat, but still impeccably dressed in Harris Tweed with his moustache as perfectly groomed as usual.
I know I’m a geek, but I love all this – the history, the myths, the craftsmanship. It’s about quality, about professionalism passed down from father to son for generations. About creating garments that can be worn for a lifetime. The very opposite of the consumer hysteria and disposable fashion of our time.
I run my hand over the sleeve of a jacket.
The wool fibres catch slightly beneath my fingertips.
This particular fabric comes from a textile factory in the Outer Hebrides. The same family has run the company for four generations and the patterns have been the same since the business started – adapting the fabrics to current fashions would be distasteful.
Just knowing that makes it worth it to travel all the way to London to order a suit.
I close the wardrobe.
It shuts with a heavy sigh. The doors close on my old life like the lid of a coffin. The only things that remain are my wrinkled trousers and equally crumpled shirt hanging on the back of the chair, and the feeling that my life is slipping through my hands.