Afsaneh brushes Nadja’s tangled curls with a small pink brush. Then she settles down on the chair next to me.
‘Shouldn’t she be waking up soon?’ she asks without meeting my gaze, as if she isn’t asking me, but rather expressing a general frustration, or addressing some higher power.
‘They said it could take a long time,’ I answer.
‘But it’s been several days.’
‘It could take weeks.’
Afsaneh squirms.
‘I can’t wait weeks.’
‘Do we have any choice?’
The door opens and Dennis comes in.
Dennis is one of the doctors who has been responsible for Nadja since we got here. He is young, so young that I know Afsaneh has a hard time feeling any real confidence in him.
Personally, I have no problem with his age. In my experience the younger doctors – and police officers for that matter – are often well-educated and ambitious. Additionally, they haven’t been broken down by the system yet; haven’t had time to become cynical and indifferent to all the shit they have to deal with.
Afsaneh stands up and goes to meet him.
‘Why isn’t she waking up?’ she asks, without saying hello, or softening the question in any way.
Dennis smiles uncertainly and glances at me.
‘You’ll probably have to wait another couple of days. And there isn’t really any reason for you to be here all the time. We’ll call you as soon as there is any change to her condition.’
‘But I want to be here when she wakes up,’ Afsaneh says.
‘I understand. But we haven’t fully phased out all the sedatives yet. This will take time. We will call you when—’
‘Did you not hear me? I want to be here when my daughter wakes up. I don’t want a bunch of strangers to be the first people she sees.’
I get up, walk up to Afsaneh and put my arm around her shoulders.
‘Come, my love,’ I say. ‘Let’s go and get some coffee.’
She frees herself from my grip with a strength that surprises me.
‘I don’t want coffee,’ she says. ‘I want Nadja to wake up.’
Dennis looks helplessly at me. I think he understands that it isn’t possible to talk to Afsaneh right now, that she is in a place where words can’t reach her.
‘I want her to wake up,’ Afsaneh repeats and starts to pace back and forth in the room with her arms folded across her chest.
Neither Dennis nor I say anything.
I simply sit on the chair by Nadja’s bed again. Look at the little body resting peacefully between the hospital sheets.
Dennis leaves after a while.
Afsaneh ceases her pacing and sits next to me.
‘I don’t know how much more I can take,’ she whispers.
I meet her gaze. Her eyes are black, her face pale. Her mouth pressed hard into a bloodless line.
‘You can take it,’ I say. ‘We can take it. Because we must.’
An hour later I go to the station.
I smoke three cigarettes on my way there with the window down and silently pray Afsaneh won’t notice the smell when I get home.
She didn’t want to let me go, but Dennis and I managed to convince her I wasn’t of any use at the hospital.
Dark clouds have rolled in and the first raindrops begin to fall right as the silhouette of the hospital disappears in the rear-view mirror.
When I drive across the bridge to Kungsholmen the rain is pouring down and I can hear the low rumble of thunder in the distance. Pedestrians run past on the pavement with newspapers and jackets over their heads in fruitless attempts to stay dry.
I can’t help but feel the weather is symbolic somehow, despite knowing it is just my lizard brain searching for connections where there are none – because why would the weather have anything to do with my daughter?
And yet it creeps in, the magical thinking, the childish, naïve idea of causality.
As if the universe cared.
*
The investigative unit has expanded.
In addition to Malin and Letit two new people have joined. Next to Letit is Malik, whom I worked with during the investigation of the murders in Ormberg. He is wearing his black hair in a ponytail. Water is dripping from the wet ends and I conclude that he was not able to avoid the downpour. Malik has acquired a fashionable beard and is dressed in skinny, cuffed jeans and a plaid shirt. I would probably call him a hipster, but I am far too old to be able to discern the many fluid nuances of popular culture with any certainty.
The forensic pathologist, Samira, is standing in front of the whiteboard. She smiles and gives me a little wave, I wave back.
Malin stands up and clears her throat.
‘Samira Khan, forensic pathologist in Solna, is here to brief us on the results of the autopsy of victim number two,’ she says, and pauses.
It is unusual for the forensic pathologist to come here. Typically, we obtain his or her conclusions through a written report. My guess is that Samira has found something out of the ordinary, something that needs discussing and explaining.
‘Please,’ Malin says and nods at Samira.
Samira begins her review by showing photos of the body where it was found.
‘The victim is a man between sixteen and eighteen years of age. Healthy and in good physical shape, though somewhat underweight.’
Malin looks at me and I sense what she is thinking.
Sixteen to eighteen years old: we are talking about a child.
Samira continues to systematically go over the injuries, from head to toe. She tells us about the fractures and the contusions inflicted post-mortem and about the long nail found in the victim’s heel.
When she gets to that part Letit squirms a bit in his seat, hums and ploughs his fingers through his wild beard.
Not even the most experienced investigator can remain indifferent to what the boy has suffered.
‘Have we been able to determine the identity?’ I ask.
Samira meets my gaze.
‘We have compared the DNA profile to three possible candidates whom you found in missing persons. The victim is Victor Carlgren, seventeen years old, from Saltsjöbaden. He disappeared after a fight with his sister on May 10th.’
‘What do we know about this Victor?’ Malin asks.
Letit clears his throat and pushes his glasses further up his nose with his index finger.
‘Well-behaved. Good grades. No known issues with drugs or criminality. The parents have been informed and questioned. It would seem he took the parents’ motorboat and left. That had happened before, so they weren’t all that worried initially. But when he didn’t come back after one day they reported him missing and the coastguard initiated a search operation. They feared he had been in an accident at sea.’
‘What were he and his sister fighting about?’ Malin asks.
Letit puts one synthetic-clad leg over the other.
‘Netflix,’ he answers. ‘It seems they wanted to watch different things.’
The room falls silent as we ponder the absurdity of the situation.
The very thought that something so banal might have triggered the series of events that led to Victor Carlgren’s death is enough to make anybody uneasy.
‘Well, damn,’ Letit sighs and pushes a strand of grey hair into place on top of his head.
‘Johannes Ahonen disappeared in early March,’ Malin says quietly. ‘Victor Carlgren disappeared May 10th. Both bodies were found in the southern Stockholm archipelago. Both had been subjected to considerable violence and were wrapped in fabric and chains. Even if we can’t prove these are murders, I think we can assume that they are, and that we are dealing with the same killer.’
The room is quiet. Only the rain can be heard, which keeps tapping on the window with undiminished force, along with the swoosh of the ventilation system.
‘There is more,’ Samira says and arranges her thick black braid on her shoulder. ‘As you know we found skin particles under Johannes Ahonen’s nails. The technicians at NFC have managed to extract a DNA profile. And . . .’
Samira pauses as if she doesn’t really know how to proceed.
‘The DNA results show the skin is from Victor Carlgren,’ she says, curtly.
‘What?’ Malin says and drops her pen on the table. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t quite follow.’
Letit looks up from his notes.
‘The skin under Johannes Ahonen’s nails, victim number one, came from Victor Carlgren, victim number two,’ Samira says slowly, as if she wants the message to sink in. ‘And there are half-healed scratches on Carlgren’s lower arms that I would guess were inflicted by Ahonen. Which is to say the victims have met, and likely they were involved in some type of physical altercation just before Ahonen died. But Carlgren didn’t die until much later.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Letit whispers and strokes his synthetic-trousered legs, setting off crackles of static electricity. ‘I’ll be damned.’