Claudia’s body starts to shake and she sinks to her knees, pressing her daughter’s lifeless hand to her lips.
‘No, no,’ she sobs. ‘Oh God, dear God, not Viola. Not Viola …’
Joona is standing a few steps behind Claudia, sees her back shake with weeping, hears her voice, as her desperate sobbing gets gradually louder, then slowly dies away.
She wipes the tears from her face, but is still breathing fitfully as she gets up from the floor.
‘Can you confirm that this is her?’ The Needle says curtly. ‘Is this Viola Fernandez, your …’
His voice tails off and he clears his throat quickly and angrily.
Claudia shakes her head and gently strokes her daughter’s cheek with her fingertips.
‘Viola, Violita …’
Very shakily, she pulls her hand back, and Joona says gently:
‘I’m so very, very sorry.’
Claudia almost falls, but reaches out to the wall for support, turns away and whispers to herself:
‘We’re going to the circus on Saturday, it’s a surprise for Viola …’
They look at the dead woman, her pale lips, the veins on her neck.
‘I’ve forgotten your name,’ Claudia says helplessly, looking at Joona.
‘Joona Linna,’ he says.
‘Joona Linna,’ the woman repeats in a thick voice. ‘I’ll tell you about Viola. She’s my little girl, my youngest, my happy little …’
Claudia glances over at Viola’s white face and sways sideways. The Needle pulls up a chair, but she just shakes her head.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s just that … my elder daughter, Penelope, she went through so many terrible things in El Salvador. When I think about what they did to me in that prison, when I remember how frightened Penelope was, she cried and called out for me … hour after hour, but I couldn’t go to her, I couldn’t protect her …’
Claudia looks Joona in the eye and takes a step towards him, and he gently puts his arm round her. She leans heavily against his chest, catches her breath, then pulls away and fumbles for the back of the chair without looking at her dead daughter, and sits down.
‘My proudest achievement … was making sure that little Viola was born here in Sweden. She had a lovely room, with a pink lampshade, and lots of toys and dolls, she went to school, watched Pippi Longstocking … I don’t suppose you can understand, but I was so proud that she never had to be hungry or afraid. Not like us … like Penelope and me, who still wake up in the middle of the night, ready for someone to break in and do terrible things …’
She falls silent, then whispers:
‘Viola has known nothing but happiness and …’
Claudia leans forward and hides her face in her hands, and weeps softly. Joona very gently puts his hand on her back.
‘I’ll go now,’ she says, still crying.
‘There’s no hurry.’
She calms down, but then her face contorts into another fit of tears.
‘Have you spoken to Penelope?’ she asks.
‘We haven’t been able to get hold of her,’ Joona says quietly.
‘Tell her I want her to call me, because …’
She stops herself, the colour drains from her face again and then she looks up.
‘I just thought maybe she wasn’t answering because she saw it was me calling, because I … I was … I said a horrible thing, but I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean …’
‘We’ve started to look for Penelope and Björn Almskog with a helicopter, but …’
‘Please, tell me she’s alive,’ she whispers to Joona. ‘Tell me that much, Joona Linna.’
Joona’s jaw muscles tense as he strokes Claudia’s back, then he says:
‘I’m going to do everything I can to …’
‘She’s alive. Say it!’ Claudia interrupts. ‘She has to be alive.’
‘I’m going to find her,’ Joona says. ‘I know I’m going to find her.’
‘Say that Penelope’s alive.’
Joona hesitates, then meets Claudia’s clouded gaze, and different thoughts flash through his head, linked in fleeting combinations, and suddenly he hears himself say:
‘She’s alive.’
‘Yes,’ Claudia whispers.
Joona lowers his eyes; he can no longer grasp the thoughts that passed through his consciousness just moments before, which made him change his mind and tell Claudia that her eldest daughter is alive.
Joona goes with Claudia Fernandez to the waiting taxi, helps her in, and then waits by the turning circle until the car is out of sight before he starts to search his pockets for his phone. When he realises he must have put it down somewhere, he hurries back inside the Department of Forensic Medicine, walks straight into Nils Åhlén’s office, picks up The Needle’s phone as he sits down behind the desk, dials Erixon’s number and waits as the call goes through.
‘Let people sleep,’ Erixon says when he answers. ‘It’s actually Sunday today.’
‘Admit that you’re on the boat.’
‘I’m on the boat,’ Erixon admits.
‘So there weren’t any explosives?’ Joona says.
‘Not in the usual sense – but you were still right. It could have exploded at any moment.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The insulation on the cables is seriously damaged in one place, looks like they’ve been pinched … the metal’s not touching, because that would trip the circuit, but it’s uncovered … and when you start it up you can easily get an electrical surge … and arcing.’
‘What happens then?’
‘This arcing has a temperature of over three thousand degrees, and they could easily set light to an old cushion someone has squeezed in there,’ Erixon goes on. ‘And then the fire would find its way along the tube from the fuel tank and …’
‘Fast, then?’
‘Well … the arcing might take ten minutes or so, maybe more … but after that it’s fairly quick – fire, more fire, explosion – the boat would fill with water almost instantly and sink.’
‘So there would have been a fire and an explosion if the engine had been left running?’
‘Yes, but it hasn’t necessarily been done on purpose,’ Erixon says.
‘So the cables could have been damaged by accident? And the cushion just ended up there?’
‘Absolutely,’ he replies.
‘But you don’t believe that?’ Joona asks.
‘No.’