Dad.

Here I come. But I should have brought Tove with me. So you could see her. The most beautiful of all beautiful things.

'He's not home this time either,' Waldemar Ekenberg says as they try ringing on the door of Jonas Karlsson's flat for the third time in a day.

'And he hasn't got a fucking mobile.'

'Where could he be?' Johan Jakobsson says.

'No idea.'

Johan looks at the door.

Solid and closed, in a way that suggests it wants to keep its secrets. They were here two hours ago, after Malin's call to Zeke, and Jonas Karlsson wasn't at home then either. Nor was he at work at the hospital.

Back at the station they've had police constables looking for the parents of the girl and boy involved in the car crash. Both couples are divorced now, but still live in the city.

Evening now. We can't disturb them this late for something this flimsy, Johan thinks. But tomorrow we'll have to.

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow, he thinks, as he turns on his heel and heads down the stairs, away from Waldemar, away from Jonas Karlsson's flat.

38.

Reluctant loss has an address.

Number 3, Calle Amerigo.

The two quick tequilas and beers have done their job.

Malin's hands rest easily on her bare legs. She's wearing a short white skirt and a pink blouse, not too creased even though they've been packed away in her case.

The clock on the dashboard of the taxi says twenty-five past seven. Dad's words over the phone: 'Come at half past seven, we're sure to be back from our round by then.'

The taxi feels its way out of Playa de las Americas along a road that follows the sea, the worst of the noise and commotion is left behind, replaced by a residential calm. Hastily constructed hotels no longer line the shore, just equally quickly built blocks of flats where the careful decor of the balconies indicates pensioners.

Mum.

They spent a long time looking for a flat by the sea, but they were too expensive.

In Los Cristianos the taxi swings off towards the mountains, where increasingly tall white-plastered blocks scramble up ochre-coloured cliffs.

I haven't seen my parents for three years.

Have I missed them?

Sometimes, maybe, when I hear Dad's voice over the phone and he asks me to come down and visit, or when he's been going on about the plants.

Mum.

I might have spoken to you ten times, and even then we only asked each other about the weather.

Have I missed you in Tove's life? You, Dad, you've asked after her, of course you have. But you haven't really cared, not properly.

That's why I was able to move to Stockholm on my own with her and attend Police Academy, because I felt that you weren't there, not for me, and not really for her.

Has Tove missed you?

Malin tried to call her a short while ago, but there was some problem with the line.

Of course Tove has missed her grandparents. Janne's mother and father are long since dead, hardened smokers that they were.

Malin is tipsy from the tequila. She feels she can be honest with herself in the taxi.

The buildings here. Storage space for people.

What's this scorched bastard volcano island got, apart from heat and a flight from responsibility?

'Come at half past seven.'

Malin shuts her eyes.

'We'll be back from the golf course by then.'

The lift stops on the fourth floor and the chipped metal doors glide apart and Malin wants to close them again, run from the house and get a taxi back to the airport and get the first plane back up to the darkness and rain and cold.

She heads towards the door in the stairwell that must lead to her parents' flat.

Warmer back home than here. The white, marble-like stone on the walls and floor of the landing seem to create a peculiar chill, a sort of cold she's never experienced before, and she's eight years old and standing outside the house in Sturefors, it's cold and it's raining and she's lost her key and she can hear Mum inside the house. Mum knows she's standing out on the steps and is freezing and crying and wants to get indoors, but she doesn't open up, angry that Malin has lost her key.

Malin standing outside the door.

The door in Tenerife.

I'm going to turn back.

Maybe they aren't home.

But she can hear the familiar voices through the door, first talking to each other in a normal conversational tone, then shouting at each other, and she's lying in her bed in the room she lived in as a girl listening to them shouting in the bedroom at the other end of the house, and there are cold autumn nights, winter nights, spring nights and summer nights, and she doesn't understand what they're saying and she's seven eight nine years old and doesn't understand the words, but she knows Mum and Dad are shouting things that change everything for ever, the sort of things that change the direction of life, whether or not anyone realises it.

And now, outside this door, Mum and Dad's words fall silent in her memory. Did they even exist, those words? She can only remember herself in the darkness. How everything was quiet and she lay there waiting for life to start.

Rattling.

Malin jumps back.

She doesn't have time to see the shadow over the peephole in the door, and Dad is suddenly standing in front of her, suntanned and jolly and happy to see her. His face is rounder and he looks well, and he pulls her to him, takes her in his arms and gives her a long hug without saying a word, and in the end Malin says: 'Dad, I'm having trouble breathing.'

And he lets go of her. Steps aside. Says: 'Let's go in and see Mum,' and Malin goes into the flat, sees the furniture and rugs they brought down from Linkoping, how badly they match the new Spanish hacienda-style furniture.

'How are you?' Dad asks as he follows her into the living room.

'Fine,' she replies, and out on a balcony with a view of the Atlantic she sees her Mum facing away from her, against the strange glow from the street lamps. Mum is sitting at a table in a pink tennis shirt, her hair still a blonde bob, and Malin wonders what her face looks like.

Wrinkled? Alert, angry, or just older?

Mum doesn't turn around and soon Malin is standing beside her on the balcony, hearing Dad's voice say: 'Here she is!' and now Mum notices her and Malin thinks that her face looks like it always has, only browner, with the same pinched expression in spite of the smile on her lips.

Mum gets up.

Air-kisses my cheeks.

'Have you been drinking, darling? You smell like you have. And you do look a bit puffy.'

And without waiting for a reply she goes on: 'It's lovely that you're here, darling. Wonderful. It's about time. We've bought the best paella from a place on the way back from Abama, oh, you should see the course there! What a course! Henry, get your daughter a glass of wine, would you? There, now sit yourself down,' and Malin sits down opposite her mother on her parents' balcony in Tenerife and she doesn't know whether to look at her mum, around the flat, or out to sea.

'So what are you really doing here?'

Mum is drinking her wine quickly and nervously and Malin is taking great gulps from the glass Dad has just put in front of her, and she wonders if this is what visiting your parents is like, when you're an only child whom they haven't seen for three years. Then Malin takes another deep gulp of wine and thinks that there aren't any rules for this sort of thing, no accepted standards of human behaviour, and she wishes Dad were here, but instead she can hear him doing something in what must be the kitchen.

Mum opposite her, with her question hanging in the air.

'A case I'm working on,' Malin replies. 'It led here. So I came down.'

And any other person would have continued to ask about the case, wondering what it was about, what the connection was that meant a detective inspector from Linkoping was prepared to take a five-and-a-half-hour flight down to Tenerife.

But Mum starts talking about the golf course.

'You see, it's in Abama, the most exclusive resort on the whole island, and it costs an absolute fortune to play even if you can actually get a tee-off time, but they held a lottery for slots at the Swedish Club and what do you know, we won! You should see the first hole, we were there with Sven and Maggan . . .'

Malin pretends to listen.

Nods.

Inside she is telling Mum about Tove, how Tove is, that she's growing up. She tells her about Janne, that they've separated and that she's very upset about it and sometimes doesn't know what to do with herself, and 'if you mis-hit the ball there it can fly out to sea, and you lose three strokes and then the whole round is ruined', and Malin tells her that she can see that she's making a mess of everything, that she wants to drink, that she's drinking too much, she drinks like a fish, and that deep down she's already admitted to herself, but only herself, that she's a fucking alcoholic, but that there's no way she's ever going to admit that to anyone else, and she nods happily when Dad pours her some more wine and suddenly plates appear on the table alongside a shop-bought paella in an aluminium tray with three langoustines perched on top of the yellow rice.

Darkness has fallen.

And Malin can hear hesitant, distant music from the pubs down by the shore, and she listens to it as Dad says: 'Help yourself, Malin.'

And she stretches out too quickly and knocks her wine over.

Damn.

'Oops,' Dad says. 'I've got it.'

'Still as clumsy as ever!' Mum says, and Malin feels like getting up and leaving, but she doesn't move.

Malin can hear her mother chattering away to one of her friends on the phone in the living room.

Dad with his calm face opposite her, he almost seems to think it's a relief that Mum's left the table.

The paella is all gone.

It was good, Malin thinks, in spite of everything.

Mum's been talking about golf, about hairdressers, about the rising price of food, about the fact that the flat may not be that big but its value has gone up, about some yoga class she's just started going to, all this and much more, and then the phone rang and she went to answer it. Now Dad asks: 'How are things with Tove?'

The wine has gone to Malin's head.

'She's starting to get grown-up.'

'Like you've been for a long time.'

You're smiling at me, Dad.

'And with Janne?'

He must know that we've separated.

'It's OK. We couldn't make it work. No point trying, really,' and just as Dad is about to respond to what she's said, Mum appears in the doorway, saying: 'That was Harry and Evy. They're coming over. They're keen to meet our clever detective inspector daughter.'

No, Malin thinks. No.

And Dad looks at her, says: 'You know what, Malin? Why don't you help me clear the table, then we can take a stroll down to the shop and get some ice cream before they get here?'

'Yes, you do that,' Mum says. 'My feet ache. We must have walked at least twenty kilometres today. How many sixty-seven-year-olds can do that?'

Malin drains her wine glass.

Makes sure she gets the last drops, but Mum doesn't seem to notice how thirsty she is.

39.