The Falling Detective Read Free Page B

but changes like these are neither here nor there, because the dead man is just as dead, the snow is falling as relentlessly as before, and some nights that sort of thing is all that matters.
    â€˜Who made the emergency call?’ I ask, holding my phone in my hand.
    I don’t trust my memory anymore, and I need to summarise the conversation with the boy, but I don’t have anything to write on, apart from my phone. One of the uniformed constables is holding a notebook in one hand and a half-eaten ham-and-cheese roll in the other. His name is Fredrik Marström, a young officer from Norrland with shoulders like a weightlifter.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ he says, and flips back two leaves. ‘It was an anonymous call made from a mobile. The individual’s voice sounded strange, as though he or she was disguising it. But we don’t know. I’ve ordered a copy of the recording, which is being sent to you. The duty officer tried to get their name, but then they hung up, apparently. Fortunately they decided to send someone down anyway.
    â€˜And that was you?’
    â€˜Me and Hall,’ Markström says, taking another bite of the roll. Åsa Hall is from Gothenburg, and is essentially the complete opposite of Fredrik Markström: chatty, small in stature, and cheerful.
    â€˜Who came after you?’
    â€˜Larsson and Leifby.’
    â€˜Larsson and Leifby?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜What the hell were they doing in town?’
    Markström takes another bite.
    â€˜No idea. They said they were in the area.’
    Larsson and Leifby are beat officers out in Huddinge, and they’re the type that almost never get to represent the force on information days and at recruitment events. One is scared of heights, the other of guns — burdens that are troublesome, to put it mildly, for police officers to carry. Not only that, but they like a sensational story as much as the tabloid hacks do.
    When Markström and Hall arrived at the scene, they did everything by the book. Larsson and Leifby were charged with talking to possible witnesses. Neither is anywhere to be seen, and I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
    I head over to the big bins that line the walls of the yard. They smell sour. I kneel down in front of them, once again feeling the cold from the ground surge through my jeans and up my thighs, only this time my senses are slightly dulled and the cold is blunter, more bearable.
    Behind one of the containers, the thin dusting of snow is not intact. Someone has been standing there, taking a few steps back and forth. The shoeprints are indistinct. Boots, but well-worn — the sort you wear if you can’t afford to buy new ones every year.
    â€˜Victoria,’ I say quietly, causing Mauritzon to look up from the body. ‘I think someone has been standing here.’
    She makes a note in the notebook she keeps in the breast pocket of her overalls.
    I walk out onto the street and down the road, go past the cordon, and smoke a cigarette. The music from the club is pulsating, this time an old tune that’s been remixed, so that you can dance to it. I remember the melody from being a teenager, and for a second I wish I was fifteen years younger, that I was still in education, that the future felt a little more unwritten.
    In the inside pocket of my coat, my phone vibrates. It’s a text from Sam.
    are you asleep?
    no I’m on duty
    having a good night?
    I consider my answer, take a drag.
    it’s alright I end up writing . murder in vasastan, I go on, but then change my mind, delete it, and write how about you?
    i miss you, comes the reply, making me wish that I was somewhere else right now.
    tomorrow?
    yes, tomorrow’s good for me.
    I wonder what it means. Sam almost always cancels or postpones when we’re supposed to meet up.
    A well-dressed man with equally well-kept hair and with his unbuttoned overcoat flapping behind him walks through