Summertime Death Read Online Free PDF

her to carry on, and some of them were upset when Malin and Ellinor Getlund helped the girl down.
    Malin explained to one of the preschool teachers that the playground was a crime scene, but that they would probably be able to use it again tomorrow. The woman didn’t ask what had happened, and seemed mainly concerned with getting the children away from there as quickly as possible.
    Zeke came running up the path from the fountain and the summerhouse. His clean-shaven head was nodding up and down and the beads of sweat in the wrinkles on his forty-five-year-old forehead became more obvious the closer he got. Light-blue shirt, light-blue jeans, beige linen jacket. Black hiking shoes, far too heavy for this weather, but very official.
    Malin couldn’t help herself snapping as he stopped beside her, breathless. She was standing beside the car, and had just given Ellinor Getlund a severe reprimand.
    ‘At a crime scene you do what the police officer in charge tells you, and I told you to stay with her.’
    Ellinor Getlund not backing down, asking instead: ‘When can we take her? She needs to get to hospital.’
    ‘When I tell you.’
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘No buts.’
    To Zeke: ‘And what took you so bloody long?’
    ‘I ran out of petrol. As luck would have it I was only a couple of hundred metres from the Statoil garage. I haven’t run out of petrol for years. It’s this damn heat.’
    ‘The heat?’
    ‘It stops your brain working.’
    ‘True enough. I hope we don’t miss too much in this investigation.’
    Malin told him what she knew, what she had seen in the summerhouse, then they went down there again together and now Zeke is standing beside her in the unwalled room, his thin face full of doubt.
    ‘We don’t know for sure if she’s been raped?’
    ‘No, but everything points towards that, don’t you think?’
    ‘Yes . . .’
    ‘And that it could have happened in those bushes.’
    Zeke nods.
    ‘Or else someone hurt her somewhere else and left her here. God, it’s hot in here. Weird.’
    ‘I’d like you to talk to her,’ Malin says. ‘See if you can get her to say anything. I’ve got a feeling that we’re only going to be able to get her to talk here, nowhere else.’
     
    The back of the ambulance is open.
    A figure wrapped in an orange blanket sitting on a stretcher, the young paramedic close, so close, as if she will never leave her. The girl has the blanket over her head, her head still bowed. The inside of the ambulance smells of hospital and disinfectant, tubes from oxygen cylinders run along the walls, and short cords with yellow corks hang down from the roof. A cardiac support machine is fixed to the internal wall.
    Have you saved many lives? Malin wonders.
    You can’t save the girl in here now.
    Can anyone?
    Zeke climbs in first. Malin just behind him, gesturing to Ellinor Getlund to get up. They sit down on either side of the girl.
    Zeke turns to face her, and asks: ‘If you feel like lifting your head and looking at me, that’s fine. If you don’t, never mind.’
    The girl sits motionless.
    ‘What happened here last night?’
    ‘Can you tell us?’
    Silence that lasts several minutes.
    ‘Did somebody attack you here last night?’
    Zeke runs a hand over his glistening scalp.
    ‘If you don’t want to say anything, you don’t have to. But it would be good if we knew your name.’
    ‘My name is Josefin Davidsson,’ the girl says.
    Then she falls silent again.
     
    The ambulance heads off towards the fountain, the brake lights hesitant as the vehicle turns towards the gate onto Linnégatan.
    Josefin Davidsson said nothing more. Just her name.
    What happened?
    What were you doing in the park?
    Your clothes. Where are they?
    Has someone washed you?
    Who are your parents?
    Where do you live?
    Who was the person who made the phone call? Who saw you first? Unless . . .
    Their voices ever more desperate. Full of questions in the face of her silence. The words tumble around inside their