The Shadow Girls by Henning Mankell

Author:Henning Mankell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2012-09-06T06:00:00+00:00

11

WHEN HUMLIN SAT up in bed he had no idea where he was. He had just had a series of disconnected dreams in which he was strangling his mother. Slowly his memory of the recent past returned. He looked at the time. It was a quarter to eleven. Tanya had left shortly after eight and he had immediately fallen asleep since he was exhausted from his long night at the police station. His head was still throbbing; sleep had not helped that. All of the events since he had arrived by bus in Gothenburg the night before seemed painfully clear. Most of all he wanted to dive back into sleep, back into the unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar apartment in Stensgården, to try to forget. But he knew it wouldn’t work.

He tiptoed out into the kitchen and drank some water. Then he walked around the apartment and tried to identify any objects that looked like they belonged to Tanya. She had claimed that she lived here, if only temporarily and in secret. He found no traces of her. In one of the kitchen cabinets that was filled with, to him, unknown spices, he saw a brand of coffee he recognised. He boiled some water, trying not to make any noise that would draw unwanted attention from the neighbours and then sat down on a chair by the window in the living room with his cup of coffee. A wet snow was falling onto the uniform rows of apartment buildings outside. In the horizon he saw an expanse of forest, then some exposed granite bluffs and the sea.

He thought back to the moment when the girls had walked into the cafe. He had got up and started walking towards them when Tanya motioned for him to stop.

‘I just wanted to say hello,’ Humlin said when Tanya pushed him back down in his chair.

‘You can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Someone who knows her might see you. And that wouldn’t be good.’

‘I was just going to say hello. That was all.’

Humlin watched as Tanya returned to Leyla. The girls sat down at a table in the corner. From time to time they looked over at him but without interrupting their conversation. Leyla was wearing a thick shawl over her head.

Humlin was confused and this irritated him. Finally Tanya returned to his table like a messenger.

‘Why did she come here if I can’t even go over and say hello to her?’

‘Leyla wanted to see with her own eyes that you were here. That you came back.’

‘Törnblom said you had all decided to cancel the whole thing.’

‘What else could we have done when you didn’t turn up? We’re used to disappointments.’

‘I just want to state for the record that the only person to disappear in this context was Tea-Bag. No one else.’

‘She must have had her reasons. It’s always best to be careful in a country like Sweden.’

‘Why Sweden?’

Tanya shook her head impatiently.

‘We want to hold another meeting tonight to make up for the missed one last night.’

Humlin thought about the phone call with Andrea.

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