'I've been and I still am worried about you, Malin. You know that.'

Malin sighs.

'I'm OK. Everything's just a bit much at the moment. I've split up with Janne, and things haven't settled yet.'

Sven looks at her.

'And the drinking? You're drinking too much, that much is obvious just from looking at you. You-'

'It's under control.'

'That's not what I'm hearing and seeing.'

'Has someone talked to you? Gone behind my back? Who?'

'No one's said a word. I've got eyes of my own.'

'Zeke? Janne? He's perfectly capable of-'

'Be quiet, Malin. Pull yourself together.'

After Sven's stern words they sit in silence facing each other across the room, and Malin knows Sven wants to say something else, but what could he say? It's not as if I've turned up drunk at the station.

Or have I?

'Has Zeke said anything?'

'No. I've got eyes of my own.'

'So what now?'

'You carry on working. But think very carefully before you drive. Let Zeke do the driving. And try to pull yourself together. You've got to.'

'Can I go now?' Malin asks.

'If you like,' Sven says. 'If you like.'

43.

'Mum?'

'Tove? I've been trying to get hold of you.'

'I was at school.'

Shall I say I was outside? Will that make her happy? Or sad because I didn't go in?

'Are you coming tonight? Did you get my message?'

'I'm going to the cinema.'

'Don't you want to hear how it went at Grandma and Grandad's?'

'How did it go?'

'Tove, please.'

'OK.'

'Will you come round after the cinema? You've got to. I want to see you. Can't you tell?'

'It'll be late after the cinema. It's probably best that I get the bus back to Dad's.'

'I can make us some sandwiches.'

'I've got all my things out there. I mean, I do kind of live there.'

'It's up to you.'

'Maybe tomorrow evening, Mum.'

'You know you can live at mine as well. That used to work.'

Tove is silent at the other end of the line.

'Do I have to beg, Tove? Can't you come round?'

'Do you promise not to drink if I come?'

'What?' Malin says. 'I only have the occasional drink. You know that.'

'You're incredible, Mum, you know that? Completely messed up.'

And Tove clicks to end the call, and the words linger like nails on her eardrum. Malin wants to get rid of them, shake them out of her ears and hear other, warmer words instead, words that conjure up a different reality, one where she doesn't lie to her daughter as a way of lying to herself.

Then she sees the monster looming over Tove, ready to kill her, and the monster turns its masked face towards Malin and smiles, whispering: 'I'm giving you what you want, Malin.' And at that moment she knows that she drinks largely because she was given a valid excuse when Tove came close to losing her life, that she had the opportunity for an existence that justified her giving in to her greatest passion: intoxication, the soft-edged world without secrets, the world where fear isn't a feeling but a black cat that you can stroke and whose claws never rip any searing holes in your skin.

Look at me. Poor me. She wants to smash herself into pieces, but most of all she wants to down a glass of tequila.

Where am I?

I'm standing at the entrance of the police station and I'm wondering where to go, Malin thinks as she looks out into the darkness, watching the raindrops turn into grey splinters in the orange glow of the street lamps, as the old barracks change colour in the autumn darkness, turning mute grey instead of matt beige. It's just gone seven o'clock. The paperwork surrounding her trip to Tenerife kept her working late.

Malin doesn't move.

Makes a call on her mobile.

He answers on the third ring.

'Daniel Hogfeldt here.'

'Malin.'

'So I can see from the screen. It's been a while.'

'You know how it is.'

'And now you want to meet up?'

'Yes.'

The doors glide open and three uniformed officers walk past her with quick nods.

'I don't take much persuading. Can you come round in half an hour?'

'Yes.'

She can already feel him inside her as she ends the call.

And exactly thirty-five minutes later Malin is kneeling on all fours on his bed in his sparsely furnished flat on Linnegatan and holding onto the thin metal bedstead as he pumps hard and deep into her and she screams out loud and he is hot and hard and unknown and familiar all at the same time.

He's like a whip inside me, she thinks.

His hands are sharp barbed wire on my back. She wants to shout: Faster, deeper, you bastard, further in, harder, and it's as if he can hear her thoughts because he thrusts harder into her each time his body moves and he digs his nails into her neck and she can feel his sweat dripping like cold rain down through her skin and into her flesh and bones and soul.

Don't resist.

Explode instead.

Let consciousness disappear in pain and beauty, let the little snakes with their many and varied faces retreat to their darkness.

He's lying on his back beside her on the grey sheet and his toned body stands out against the closed venetian blind. He's talking, his voice is calm and clear, with all its hardness and warmth intact and she tries to understand what it is he's asking her.

'So you've split up?'

She's lying beside him and hears herself reply, with breathless, drifting words.

'It wasn't working. I ended up hitting him.'

'It never works. How could you believe it could?'

'Don't know.'

'What about the Petersson case? Are you getting anywhere? If I were you, I'd take a good look at Goldman.'

'Sod the case, Daniel.'

His hoarse laughter. And she wants to creep next to him, lay her arms around him, but it's as if he's not really there beside her, unless it's her capacity for closeness that doesn't really exist?

'Shall we go another round?' His hand on my thigh, but I can't feel it, and his neutral words seem to contain a desire to express something else, as if he had actually been waiting for me, as if he thinks it might somehow be possible to discover something together.

Wasn't that what we were just doing? Malin thinks.

Then she stands up, gets dressed, and he watches her silently.

'You're going?'

Idiotic question.

'What do you think?'

'You can stay. I can make some sandwiches if you're hungry. You look tired, maybe you could do with someone making a fuss of you for a while.'

'Don't talk crap, Daniel. I can't think of a worse suggestion.'

'Go on, then. The Hamlet's probably still open.'

'Shut up, Daniel. Just shut up.'

Zacharias Martinsson has pushed Karin Johannison's skirt high up over her stomach, he's pulled off her white nylon tights and carried her through the laboratory in the basement of the National Forensics Lab and put her down on her back on a stainless steel workbench.

She is writhing before him and he is eating her, absorbing her moisture and sweet scent and taste, and he hears her groaning, is that the tenth, the twentieth time now?

Gunilla back at home. No doubt waiting with the evening meal when he called to say he had to work late, that he probably wouldn't be home until eleven at the earliest.

He tries to bat away the image of his wife alone in the kitchen at home, but it refuses to budge.

He found a reason to pay Karin a visit once last autumn, and she made time for him, leading him down to the laboratory to show him something, and it just happened. They had both been longing for it, and she whispers: Now, come inside, come in Zacharias, and he lifts her down onto the floor, pulls down his trousers and he's hard and she's warm and soft and pliable and she looks at him, whispers, My neck's sweaty, lick the sweat from my neck.

Maria Murvall's face in front of Malin.

The photo of the bruised rape victim's face is lying on the parquet floor of the living room, and she twists and turns the image of her own obsession.

Maria.

Your secret.

Preserved within you.

Within your silently screaming body in the white room of Vadstena Mental Hospital, tomorrow I'm going to another hospital, to another mute person.