[Rape?]

[Didn’t seem like it. No one saw or heard anything?]

[A man in a hoodie and dark clothes, maybe a leather jacket or something. Sitting on top of a woman hitting her. No one saw or heard anything? Someone must’ve been near there around 10 at night.]

There was an answer from Nothingtolooose.

[How do you know all that? Were you the one doing the assaulting r wat?]

[No. But someone must’ve seen something.]

Donotdo wrote:

[Must have been your typical love quarrel. Silly to make such a big thing out of it.]

[What “big thing”?] Robin wrote. [If you think it’s normal to get beat up, I have to wonder what your relationships have been like.]

Donotdo: [I’m of the belief that there isn’t a single woman who is completely innocent. She must have provoked him in some way that meant she deserved it.]

Nothingtolooose: [Are you crazy r wat? Since when does a woman deserve to be beaten up, regardless of whether she provoked her man? If a man doesn’t have big enough balls NOT to hit his woman, he should be locked up for good.]

Donotdo: [I sense you’re a woman?]

Nothingtolooose: [Whatever.]

Robin wrote: [He ran away.]

Nothingtolooose: [Weak bastard.]

Redflag: [If we were to give a percentage of possible suspects, we could divide them into two piles. 1. Unknown suspect. 2. Suspect with connection to the victim. I hope the woman recovers and that the idiot that did this ends up behind bars.]

Redflag: [I’d put a twenty on it being an ex-boyfriend that beat her.]

Golddigger: [Not finding any info. Nothing in the media. Smells fishy.]

Nothingtolooose: [Talk about a troll.]

[No.] Robin wrote. [It’s true.]

Redflag: [Bullshit. Stuff like this has been made up before and the story actually sounds really unlikely, but never say never, I wasn’t downtown tonight so actually have no idea.]

[But I was there. I saw everything.] Robin wrote.

Redflag: [You saw everything go down?]

Robin: [Yes.]

Redflag: [Tell us more details then.]

Henrik looked up at Ola, who was still standing in the room. He sat like that for a moment, looking at Ola’s face, his gray knit cap with hair sticking out around his ears, waiting for Mia to finish reading.

“He didn’t write any more?” she asked.

“No,” Ola said. “But he obviously saw something that bothered him.”

“Have we gotten a report on this?” Henrik asked, waving the papers.

“No,” Ola said. “I checked, but no one filed a report.”

“Okay,” Henrik said.

“And that’s too bad,” Ola said, “because it would have been better if Robin had spent his time coming to us with this information rather than wasting time asking around on a forum like this.”

“But wait, maybe he did,” Henrik said, flinging the papers onto his desk as he got up and walked toward Anneli’s office.

* * *