Free Murder in Malmö: The second Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) by Torquil MacLeod Page A

breaking in. Klara might provide a possible answer to that one. At least we’ve got a bit of breathing space. The commissioner’s getting agitated by last night’s shooting. If he’s not careful, that’ll become a political hot potato.’
    ‘Is the immigrant dead?’ asked Westermark.
    ‘No. He’ll live. Either this gunman is a lousy shot or he’s just trying to scare people. But that’s Larsson’s problem. We’ve got our own headaches.’

CHAPTER 12
    It was good to get out of Malmö. The day was bright again, and the hour-and-a-half-long drive to Simrishamn along Sweden’s southern coast would be pleasant. A night with Sandra usually cheered her up. This was a last minute decision because Lasse had emailed to say that he and Rebecka couldn’t come down for the weekend. Rebecka wasn’t feeling well. Anita assumed it was a diplomatic illness. She didn’t want to see Anita. Anita was disappointed, though not surprised. If only she could spend some quality time with Lasse alone. But there was little chance of that happening these days.
    Another reason to escape Malmö was because she felt useless and unwanted. Moberg and the team were heavily involved in the Ekman murder, and the rest of her colleagues seemed to be running around trying to catch a gunman with a grudge against immigrants. All she was doing was trying to find some art thief who had a thing about Pelle Munk paintings. Not a very satisfying state of affairs.
    The dual carriageway out of Malmö towards the coast wasn’t too busy on a Saturday morning. The countryside of Skåne always looked at its best at this time of year. The trees were out, the earth responding to the early summer sun and the bright yellow of the oil seed rape gave a rich and colourful texture to the landscape that was so missed during the winter months. It was the openness that Anita enjoyed. As a youngster, during the family’s two years in Durham in the 1970s, she had always felt constrained by the hedges and walls that divided the fields in the British countryside. She hadn’t seen them as defining boundaries, but more as barriers. The Scanian landscape was all about freedom – it’s only obstruction was the sea. And that was where the tamed and untamed met. To Anita it was a glorious union. The only thing she would have imported from England was the Lake District fells. They would add the grandeur that her beloved Skåne lacked.
    And the final reason to slip away from Malmö? Ewan Strachan. In hindsight the visit to the prison had been a mistake. She had thought that by seeing him she would be able to start afresh. That her feelings for him were nothing more than a passing fancy. That she had merely been flattered by his attention. That she had temporarily fallen for someone who hadn’t been after “one thing”. Someone who had made her laugh when life hadn’t seemed very funny. The experience had also rekindled memories of the happiest time in her childhood when her family had been a family. If they had stayed in Durham, her parents might not have divorced. Maybe that was fanciful. She had been too young, or too busy making new friends, to notice the cracks that must have been there. Yet it was in Durham that Ewan and Mick Roslyn had become friends, where enmities had started that would lead to three deaths - and her meeting the man she was now trying to convince herself that she never really loved. Far from being able to dismiss him from her mind, she found herself worrying about him. She had found out that he had been placed in solitary confinement for his own protection. She could see the evidence of the fight he had been in. Next to being a paedophile, killing a national icon – and a sexy one at that – was guaranteed to make him the target for every macho maniac in the prison. And she knew that he suffered from claustrophobia. Solitary would be playing havoc with his mind. She couldn’t begin to image the mental torture he was going through. But he was a