“We found all of this behind the bakehouse. Eighteen meters from it. You said you were there that morning. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone in the forest?”

  “I was so busy with everything. Do you mean there was someone there?”

  Bosse Ring leaned forward over the table. He had been sitting quietly so far. It had been his idea for Eira to start the interview. He thought it might be easier for Mejan to open up to another woman, to lower her guard. Eira had her doubts. She often found that men had a fairly naive attitude towards women, thought they were made of softer stuff.

  Mejan Nydalen’s voice was steady; she didn’t hesitate as she took them through their preparations ahead of the grandchildren’s arrival again. There was actually a note of criticism in her voice, as though she didn’t think they really understood just how much work there was to do.

  Eira thought she recognized something in her, something of the women around her while she was growing up—her grandmother and mother, various old ladies with stern voices and knowledge that couldn’t be questioned.

  No, she had never seen anyone digging in the forest.

  “You think she’s lying?” Bosse Ring asked once they were back on the top floor of the police station. Through the window they watched Mejan climb into her car and reverse out of the parking bay.

  “She’s lying,” said Eira. “She just might not realize that she’s lying.”

  Chapter 32

  “How much shit can there be in one family?” GG asked when he learned who was behind the agitation against Olof Hagström.

  “Go to Stockholm,” he said a little later. “Let dear Sofi know that we know. Show her the wreck of the house—why not show her a picture of the poor bastard’s foot sticking out from under the tree, too. So it’s etched on the inside of her skull the next time she even thinks about sharing her every thought on Facebook. Let Sofi Nydalen know that we’re watching her, that we’ll see if she posts as much as a picture of her dinner. And get it all on tape.”

  GG himself planned to have a chat with the prosecutor, once the custody hearing was over and they had time.

  “Hey,” he added, “be nice. I want to know what’s hiding in this family, what they whisper about in the bedroom.”

  Eira closed her eyes as the train pulled out of Kramfors, let herself drift away. There was something about the movement of the train, about being between one place and another, powerless to influence anything. She hadn’t had to clash swords with the home help or call a neighbor; Magnus had replied to her message. He would look in on their mother, maybe even stay over.

  The scent of freedom, it was intoxicating.

  Eira was in the quiet carriage, her phone switched to silent, but she felt the buzz of a text message come through. Tryggve Nydalen had been remanded in custody, GG wrote.

  Her phone vibrated again just north of Gävle, with the seventh message from Sofi Nydalen.

  Maybe better to meet outside somewhere instead?

  Sure, Eira wrote back. Where do you suggest?

  It was the third time she had wanted to change the location of their meeting, suggesting fear, nerves, possibly even guilt.

  The original plan had been to meet at the Nydalens’ house, in a residential area on the outskirts of town. Then she had wanted to meet at a popular patisserie in central Stockholm, both to save Eira the trip out on the commuter train and because they had incredible prawn sandwiches. Now she thought it would be better to meet at a waterfront café on Norr Mälarstrand, since the weather’s so nice.

  OK, see you there.

  Sofi sent a thumbs-up and a smiley face in reply, as though the two women were friends planning coffee and cake together in the sun.

  The train arrived on time at 2:38 p.m.

  Eira had almost forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by so many people. The cacophony of sounds mixing and echoing beneath the arched roof in Stockholm Central, the aroma of sweat and freshly baked cinnamon buns, Asian noodle dishes from kiosks that had popped up since she had last been there.

  She walked to the café, which was on a floating pontoon. Eira could make out at least seven languages being spoken around her as she waited. She felt the gentle rocking of the waves caused by the boats in Riddarfjärden, the anonymity of being in a place where the majority of people were simply passing through and didn’t know a soul. There had been moments when she loved living in the big city, even if her rented apartment was pretty far from the center.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Sofi Nydalen, arriving just as Eira had started to doubt she would ever show up. Wearing thin wide-legged trousers and a floaty blouse, both white. “I had to find somewhere to leave the kids. Patrik went back to work early. He doesn’t cope well without anything to do. What you have to understand is that it’s been an incredibly stressful time. I’ll just have a bottle of water. Sparkling. With lemon, if possible.”

  A stubborn gull had landed where Eira was sitting when she returned with Sofi’s water and a fourth refill of coffee for herself. Sofi ducked as it flapped over to the next table.

  “The whole thing is so awful,” she said. “It’s like watching a film, only you’re in it somehow, if you know what I mean. Patrik told me what his dad did to that girl, but he hasn’t wanted to talk about it since. Tryggve has never done anything to me. No advances or anything like that. Do you really think he’s guilty?”

  Eira had been vague over the phone, giving the impression that she wanted to talk about the family in very general terms.

  “What do you think?”

  Sofi pushed back the hair that had blown into her face and shifted on the low sofa.

  “It makes my skin crawl,” she said. “What he did when he was younger. I keep picturing his old body—he walks about in nothing but his underwear sometimes. How can you let someone take you in like that? It really could be anyone.” She gestured discreetly to the people around them, slumped on the other sofas. Eira thought she could see several couples who weren’t quite couples; the way they were talking seemed a little too strained, and they were smiling a little too often, aware of themselves in the way only people on a first date are.

  Sofi Nydalen had always thought of her father-in-law as kind, if a little evasive. Not someone you could really get close to. He wasn’t particularly open, but she had just assumed that that was what men from Norrland were like.

  “It was harder with Mejan, I was almost scared of her at first. She can be really bossy. In the end I got Patrik to say that we needed the house to ourselves, otherwise I wouldn’t come. There are more exciting things to do on holiday, you know? I guess it’s the classic mother- and daughter-in-law thing. Like I’m not good enough because I don’t scrub the floors with soap or make soup from goutweed and nettles. If you google those things, it says they’re weeds—makes you wonder how healthy they really are.”

  Sofi glanced down at the phone on the table, voice recorder running. Eira couldn’t tell whether she was concerned or pleased that her words were being saved. The wind was probably so loud that their conversation would be barely audible.

  “And then there’s the fact I’m from Stockholm, that I’ve got a good job and earn decent money, all that stuff. You start to wonder if she’s got a slight inferiority complex or something, but it’s actually the other way around—she’s the one who looks down on me. She assumes I think I’m remarkable or something. Isn’t that just another kind of racism?”

  Eira didn’t reply. She had taken out her iPad, switched it on, and brought up the right page, all without Sofi Nydalen noticing a thing.

  “It’s happened again,” she read aloud. “The police have let yet another sexual predator go. He’s raped and murdered once, and now he’s back on the streets again.”

  “What?”

  “Did you write this?”

  “God, I can’t remember.”

  Eira placed the iPad in front of her, a screenshot of Sofi’s own Facebook page with the very first post she made.

  The flighty side of her seemed to disappear. “Have you been on my private Facebook account?”

  “Your page is public.”

  “You’ve got no right to do that.”

  “What you wrote has been shared over two thousand times. One of the people it reached was my colleague, via his girlfriend. In what way do you think that’s private?”

  Sofi Nydalen gazed out across Riddarfjärden, towards Södermalm and its jagged cliffs rising up on the other side of the water. She put on her sunglasses, which had been perched on top of her head. Her profile wasn’t protected in any way. Anyone who viewed it could see what she wrote, presumably because she also used it to advertise the interior design company where she worked—perhaps she had even been told to. There were plenty of companies that required their employees to use their private social media accounts to boost the brand.

  “I have the right to write whatever I want,” she said. “We have freedom of speech in this country.”

  “What did you think when the house burnt down?”

  “It was horrible when I smelled the smoke. I was worried the fire would spread.”

  “You weren’t concerned that someone might have burnt to death in there?”

  “Do you have children?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  Sofi Nydalen lifted her sunglasses and studied Eira’s reaction. “Thought not,” she said. “If you did, you’d understand. It’s a parent’s job to protect their kids.”

  “In what way was Olof Hagström threatening your children?”

  “You were there that morning, when he was arrested. And then you let him go without even telling us. You didn’t stop to think how that would feel.”

  “I understand that you might have found it unpleasant,” said Eira, remembering what GG had said about being nice.

  “Unpleasant?” Sofi Nydalen swung her foot at the gull, which was still hopping around in its hunt for crumbs. It flapped away and turned its attention elsewhere. “He raped and murdered a girl—or one that we know about, anyway. I thought I was going to die when I saw him in the house where the old man had just died. I asked Patrik to do something about it, to tell him he couldn’t stay there, but Patrik said there was nothing we could do, that it’s his house. Private property. He said he’d come with me if I wanted to go swimming or anywhere else, but that kind of thing drives me crazy, having to take my husband with me just to go out. It’s like living in Afghanistan or something. Why should a person like that be allowed to move freely and not me?”

  “We’ve caught the people who burnt down the house,” said Eira. “They’d read the threads you started.”

  “Are you saying it’s my fault?”

  “No,” she said with some effort. “But I thought you should know. In case it comes up in court.”

  “I just wrote the truth. Is that a crime? I told it like it is—no one’s going to protect us if we don’t do it ourselves.”

  “Olof Hagström is in a coma,” said Eira. “The doctors don’t know if he’ll make it.”

  “If I’d known you were going to start accusing me of things, I never would have come to meet you. I didn’t even tell Patrik. He thinks you lot are harassing us. You should be offering us support right now.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just asking questions.”

  Sofi Nydalen glanced at her watch. A big rose gold thing. “I’m sorry, but I have to go and pick up the kids now.”

  Chapter 33

  The hotel Eira had booked was in the old town. Her room was spartan and minimal, the kind of place permitted under police budget rules. The only window looked out onto a dark alleyway, but the recess itself was so deep that there was room for her to sit in it. The warm, damp air seeped into the room, the murmur of the hordes of tourists. Eira scrolled through the numbers of the three or four friends she could call; maybe they could meet for a drink and a debrief on how their love lives and careers and everything else was going. For some reason the prospect made her feel more weary than excited. They had drifted apart since she’d moved back home, and she still hadn’t been in touch with any of her old friends there, which meant that her social life was stuck in a kind of limbo between then and now.

  Wasn’t there something about the phrase itself that felt a bit much like hard work? “Social life” sounded like something that wasn’t quite a life, something that had to be constructed, built up, worked on.

  She peeled off her sweaty shirt and lay down on the bed instead, opened the dating app on her phone. The system automatically searched for singles in a specific radius—the very reason Eira had quickly turned it off after she moved back home. Within the space of just a few hours, three old acquaintances from school had popped up on there, along with a suspect she had helped arrest and the man who serviced the computers at the station.

  From time to time, when she found herself in Umeå or Stockholm, she would reactivate the app and anonymously swipe through the pictures of men her age—plus or minus five years. She might meet up with someone who didn’t need to know she was a police officer.

  For one night only, so she didn’t have time to confuse her feelings for love.

  Twenty or so faces flashed by. A few looked nice. Two got in touch, but she chose not to reply.

  Instead she dialed the number for Olof Hagström’s sister.

  Ingela Berg Haider answered on the second ring. “I’m in a meeting,” she whispered.

  “Maybe you could call me back?”

  “No, just hang on a second.” The sounds in the background changed as the woman stepped out, away from the others, closed a door.

  “I saw that you had someone in custody,” she said. “Did he do it?”

  “He hasn’t been charged yet,” said Eira. “The investigation is still ongoing. That’s all I can say.”

  “So why did you ring, if you can’t tell me anything?”

  There was no good way to say what she had to say, nothing gentle or dignified enough.

  “The medical examiner released your father’s body yesterday.”

  “What does that mean? Do I have to pick it up? Him. I can’t.”

  “No, no, I just meant that they’ve finished their investigation. So the family can start planning the funeral.”

  “Family? What do you mean family?” Ingela Berg Haider had raised her voice; Eira could hear her stress levels rocketing. “I don’t even know what kind of funeral he wanted. I don’t think he went to church, he wasn’t religious . . . And who’s even going to come?”

  “There’s no rush,” said Eira. “If you get in touch with a funeral director they can help you with everything.”

  Ingela didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Olof’s landlady has been calling me practically every day, too. Saying she’ll take his stuff to the dump if I don’t go and pick it up, that she’ll send me the bill. Where am I supposed to put it? I don’t even have a bloody car. And imagine if he wakes up and all his things are gone—who do you think he’ll blame then?”

  Ingela’s breathing was rapid. She was probably pacing back and forth in the corridor. Soft carpets. Eira couldn’t hear any footsteps.

  “I don’t get why Olof didn’t just clear off. Why did he stay there, in a place where everyone hates him?”

  “We were planning to go over and interview him again, but we didn’t have time. I don’t know why he stayed.”

  “You keep being drawn back,” said Ingela. “You try to leave, but it’s impossible. You move five hundred kilometers away and make a life for yourself—a good life. I’ve got a job, a kid; everything just works. I took my mum’s maiden name, that’s the Berg, married a Haider, erased all that crap. Just like that. Or so I thought. But here I am with a funeral to plan and a burnt-out house. My brother’s in a coma in Umeå and everyone keeps pestering me, the insurance company wants paperwork and his things are going to be taken to the dump, and I can’t believe my dad is actually dead, it just won’t sink in. I hardly ever thought about him while he was still alive.”

  Eira closed the app as it flashed up with another match.

  “I’m in Stockholm,” she said. “I can rent a car, drive you out there.”

  Ingela Berg Haider was waiting in the car park outside the Sveriges Television building. Eira never would have recognized her if they hadn’t arranged to meet, yet there was definitely still something of the seventeen-year-old she had spied on as a child in there.

  Her hair was dyed black and cut in a short, blunt style. She was wearing a man’s jacket, cinched in at the waist with an orange belt, and had a pair of small guitar earrings hanging from her ears.

  “I still don’t know where I’m going to put everything,” she told Eira. “We live in a flat, we have two square meters of space in the storeroom. I don’t have room for all this.”

  “We’ll take a look,” said Eira, typing Olof Hagström’s address—or former address—into the GPS in the rental car. “We’ll make an assessment. Maybe we’ll be able to persuade the landlady to take it easy.”

  “I haven’t seen him since he was fourteen. Most people don’t even know I have a brother.”

  They pulled out onto Valhallavägen and drove towards the motorway heading north, inching forward in the busy rush-hour traffic. The radio had been pretuned to a station playing bluegrass from the American South. Before she left the hotel, Eira had splashed her face and pulled on the same shirt as earlier. She had forgotten all about any possible dates.

  The traffic came to a standstill just after Norrtull. The sun set faster here, farther south, glittering on the endless line of cars. Eira told Ingela about Olof’s condition, what the doctors had said, the uncertainty. They had managed to remove the blood from his lungs and around his liver, but he still wasn’t reacting to pain.

  They crept forward at a snail’s pace.

  “What does Olof actually do?” asked Ingela. “Or what did he do, before all this?”

  “For work, you mean?”

  “I don’t know anything about him. Dad declined all contact, but Mum started writing to him once they got divorced. Olof never replied. I dug out his address when she was ill, but he didn’t reply then either. Didn’t even come to her funeral.”

 

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