We know you remember, p.31
We Know You Remember, page 31
August was one of them.
She wished she could put on her uniform, making everything feel clear, but she wasn’t working, was free to go home.
It wasn’t OK. She had failed both to protect her brother and to give a stable impression, to keep her professional life separate from her private life the way everyone said you had to.
She had never understood how. You took all your personal qualities to work with you, and the work followed you home. It was still the same brain, it kept ticking over; sleep knew no such boundaries.
She wondered whether August was able to keep his professional life separate from his private life.
When he came home to his girlfriend.
She wondered whether he had driven her around the area, possibly stopping off at the monument in Lunde, googling the shooting in Ådalen in 1931.
Johanna, that was her name. Eira studied her profile picture on the page she had saved. She seemed chilly, with long glossy hair and white teeth.
An agent for a line of skincare products.
August’s girlfriend had been one of the first people to share the hate-filled posts about Olof Hagström, number three in the chain that started with Sofi Nydalen. Maybe the two women used the same skincare line.
Hated the same things.
Eira was meant only to be gathering the material she had and sending it over to GG, but she found herself getting sucked into the thread again. This Johanna wasn’t just cool and beautiful, there was another side to her, one that shouted about cutting the dicks off men like that. Yet again we see a rapist walk free while no one listens to the girls. She supported the idea of publishing their names and pictures online, locking them up for life, and even gave a thumbs-up to the prospect of their being gang-raped in prison.
Eira wondered how August dealt with that side of her, though they likely didn’t talk about the rule of law in the bedroom. As she read on, more comments emerged, each one sharper than the last, as though it was spotlit.
You’re such sheep . . . Have none of you read The Scapegoat? No, sorry, thought not.
Do you even know how to read, you fucking retards?
Eira recognized that post. She and August had noticed it because it stood out, didn’t follow the current in the same direction as the others.
There were likely thousands of people who used that phrase—people who refused to stop using offensive language.
Simone, that was the poster’s name.
Eira scanned through the rest of the thread to see if she popped up anywhere else. She did, on one occasion.
He was such a loser, he really only had himself to blame.
She read the two posts over and over again, until she thought she could almost hear the girl’s voice. She couldn’t see her face. Simone had Daphne Duck as her profile picture. It wasn’t uncommon for people to use strange images like that on Facebook; not all people wanted to show their real face.
He was such a loser.
That made it sound like the poster had known Olof Hagström back in the day. Plenty of people had, of course. Scores of classmates. It simply suggested that Simone came from the area.
You’re such sheep . . . Have none of you read The Scapegoat?
Something else Elvis had said came back to her: that Lina read fancy French books, or pretended to—whichever it was. Eira brought up an online bookshop and searched for the title. Found a couple of thrillers and a book by a writer with a French-sounding name.
Expulsion and victims are a way of stabilizing society, in which violence is channeled through sacred rituals . . .
Eira returned to the thread. Aside from one man who thought political action was required to transform the justice system rather than hanging people out to dry, Simone seemed to be the only person going against the flow.
Do you even know how to read, you fucking retards?
Eira couldn’t make sense of her argument. Was she defending Olof Hagström? It sounded like Simone thought she was smarter than everyone else, that she knew something no one else knew.
Since it was only a screenshot, she couldn’t click through to her page, so Eira logged in to her own account instead—a profile without a photograph that she only ever used for work. August’s girlfriend’s page was private. Eira searched for Simone and found herself staring at a list of countless users, clicking through thirty or so of them until she spotted the picture of Daphne Duck.
Private.
She got up, opened the window for some fresh air. Looked out over the rooftops, to the mountains in the distance, the expanse of sky.
Air, reality, balance.
A boat coming ashore by Sprängsviken. Kenneth Isaksson, who wanted to live free in the wilderness. Lina, who wanted to get away.
Freedom.
To leave and never return.
She shut down her computer and went through to Anja Larionova’s office.
“Do you still have those old reports to hand?”
The local investigator took off her glasses, letting them swing from the cord around her neck.
“If you mean the stolen boats from 1996, then yes.”
“Do you think you could check whether anyone reported a motorcycle missing in July that year?”
Anja Larionova studied her closely. Her icy blue eyes matched her hair perfectly, not faltering at anything. Eira steeled herself, determined not to explain. Doing so would force her colleague to say no—unless she was willing to cross the line herself.
“A whole month of motorcycles, in the middle of the summer?” said Anja. “Come on.”
“A blue one,” said Eira. “Lightweight. A Suzuki.” She debated whether or not to mention the owner, but decided it would be simpler not to.
“Sure,” said Anja Larionova.
“Thanks.”
Eira then tracked down August. He was sitting alone in the lunchroom with a buffet salad from the supermarket.
“Oh, hey, I thought you were off today.” He smiled, still fiddling with his phone, then looked down at the plastic tub again. Eira had experienced this before: a slight shift, once the breeziness was gone.
“I need to talk to your girlfriend,” she said.
Chapter 59
The name of the café had changed since Eira had last been there, though on the other hand she didn’t go out for coffee in central Kramfors particularly often. It had been taken over by a Thai woman who had moved to the area for love.
Johanna was shorter than Eira had imagined. Cuter, and not quite so chilly.
If anything, she was chirpy.
“It’s great to meet you, August has told me so much about you. It’s so beautiful round here.” Johanna glanced out of the window, across the square in the very heart of Kramfors. It was a textbook example of the kind of Swedish town center that had sprung up following the wave of demolitions in the sixties. “Well, maybe not right here . . .”
Eira wondered what August had said about her, about them, but had no intention of finding out.
“Do you know what this is about?” she asked instead.
“Look, I’m really sorry I shared all that stuff, but there’s so much activity across my feeds that I don’t always have time to think first.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” said Eira.
“No, why would you?” The green smoothie Johanna had ordered arrived. It reminded Eira of water that had been standing for a little too long in a shallow brook. “Everyone’s got the right to an opinion, don’t they?”
Eira took a bite of her Kramfors cake, chocolate with glazed frosting.
“It’s to do with one of your friends,” she explained.
“On Facebook? It’s just . . . I’ve got a load of friends on there that I don’t actually know; I use my profile for marketing quite a lot.” Johanna took unusually small sips of her drink, like she was simply wetting her lips. “I work in skincare,” she added, “but I’m sure August must have told you that. I do the marketing for a brand. It’s not mine, but I’m their agent in Sweden. You have to let me do an analysis of your skin type.”
“Maybe later.”
Eira had asked August whether his girlfriend knew they were having sex. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he had replied, as though it were a stupid question, a nonissue.
“It’s about a girl called Simone,” she continued. “I need to get hold of her.”
“OK . . .” Johanna picked up her phone, which had been buzzing on the table. “God, I’ve got so many followers, I can’t remember all of them. What did you say she was called?”
Eira repeated the name.
“Yeah, here she is, she doesn’t even have a profile picture. Why do people do that—are they ashamed of the way they look? I think it’s all so superficial, this obsession with looks on social media; surely the main thing is that you feel good on the inside, that’s real beauty. Hold on, let me check our mutual friends, that might jog my memory . . .”
Eira excused herself and went to the toilet. She splashed her face with cold water afterwards, in an attempt to keep her mind clear. She really didn’t have anything against the concept of free love, it was a beautiful thought, but she just couldn’t understand what August saw in Johanna that he also saw in her—two such different people. Or maybe that was the point, finding someone for the various sides of himself, because no one person could be everything.
She had never even considered that her skin might be a little dry.
“It’s just come to me,” Johanna yelled across half the café. “Come here, let me show you.”
She moved her chair closer until their shoulders and upper arms, one knee, were touching. It was too intimate, but Eira couldn’t bring herself to pull away. She became very aware of Johanna’s body. There was something strangely arousing about August’s absence between them, allowing them to get so close.
She swallowed and leaned in over the phone as Johanna tried to show her how her network overlapped with Simone’s.
“She was dating a guy I know from my last job. We met in the restaurant he owns, sometime last spring.”
“And then you became friends?”
“Well, friends and friends,” said Johanna. “Since I’m self-employed I have to do a lot of networking, and she’s not exactly the youngest, she’s at the age where it starts getting really urgent.”
“And when is that?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Aha, OK, well Simone is probably a bit older, somewhere around forty. I’d have a better idea if I’d analyzed her skin. That’s how you can really tell a person’s age.”
She smiled at Eira and gently stroked two fingers down her cheek.
“You’ve got really great skin, for your age.”
Chapter 60
The minute Olof closed his eyes, images from the house came flooding back to him. The flames and the smoke. It felt like so long ago, yet also so recent. Sometimes he saw his family there, when he closed his eyes, and then he saw his father in the bathroom.
The branches hitting his face as he ran.
“I didn’t have any shoes on,” he said. “I ran out of the house in my socks. Then I don’t know.”
“It’s OK,” said the physiotherapist who was sitting on the edge of his bed. She was massaging his hand, encouraging him to move his fingers, and spoke in a soft voice. “You don’t need to put pressure on yourself.”
Olof had said that he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but then the physiotherapist had come into his room.
He thought she was pretty.
“Your memory will come back little by little,” she said. “It’s OK. You’re getting better every day.”
Every stupid little thing he remembered made her happy. If he bent a finger or wiggled his toes, his big fat toes that peeped out whenever she folded back the blanket. She was always saying that things were getting better, but Olof knew she was wrong.
Things would get worse, because if they got better like she said they would discharge him, and then he would no longer be tucked up in a bed with fresh sheets every five minutes, eating good food—double portions if he wanted them—and gazing out at the sky. His room at the university hospital in Umeå was so high up that the sky was all he could see. Clouds sailing by, the occasional flock of birds, turning sharply as one. He tried to work out which of the birds was in charge, but they were gone again in the blink of an eye.
The earth, the ground, the people down below: he didn’t have to see any of that.
“You’ve had a nasty shock,” said the physiotherapist. “And you sustained some injuries, but there’s nothing to say that you won’t make a complete recovery and get back to your old life again.”
“I don’t think I can remember anything else,” said Olof. “It’s just black. My head hurts. I can’t think anymore.”
“It’ll come,” said the woman. “It’s nothing you need to rush. I’ll tell the nurse to bring you some painkillers.”
She patted Olof’s hand as she left. The hand he had first regained all feeling in. If he lay perfectly still he could feel her hands touching him, massaging him, for a long time after she left.
Like hell am I going to remember any more, he thought.
Chapter 61
It was madness to catch a train to Stockholm to hunt for ghosts that probably didn’t even exist, of course it was. Though on the other hand it was only a five-hour journey, a little more, providing you didn’t have to wait too long between trains in Sundsvall.
Her boss had been almost worryingly understanding.
“No problem, we’ll cover it, the Stockholm kid has been gagging for more shifts. Of course you can have a few days off.”
Eira bought a half bottle of wine from the buffet car then returned to her seat.
Let the flat landscape rush by outside, the endless man-made forests.
She scribbled down a number of possible scenarios on the back of a flyer. Eira knew she was on the very edge of probability here, yet it all added up.
Everything that hadn’t made sense fell into place.
The fact that they had never found Lina’s body. The boat, which had drifted a little too far.
Magnus, who had kept quiet all these years.
He was then in his second day of custody now. The prosecutor had until the next day to decide whether to retain him or not, if their suspicions remained.
Eira had gone through every imaginable explanation, but that hadn’t helped. All that remained now was the unimaginable.
Was it possible for a person to disappear, to become someone else, to live on despite being declared dead?
By the time Eira left the train at Stockholm Central, she felt slightly tipsy from the wine. But more from the thought that Lina Stavred might still be alive.
For some reason she had been expecting a grand restaurant in the inner city, the kind of place she assumed August’s girlfriend would like. But instead the address led her, via the metro, to the southern suburbs.
An Italian deli with a salad bar and seven types of coffee on the menu. The owner, the man Simone had been dating, was called Ivan Wendel. He wasn’t there. Eira had chosen not to get in touch in advance. According to the girl at the till, he had been off sick all week.
After waving her ID around, Eira left with his address. Two buses later, she found herself in a different suburb. Standing outside a villa with an apple tree in the garden. The man who opened the door looked to be just shy of fifty, with a shaved head and a pair of trendy glasses, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms.
“Simone?” He peered out at the road behind Eira with an anxious look on his face. “No . . . She doesn’t live here anymore. What is this about?”
“Could I come in?”
“We can talk here.”
Ivan Wendel remained in the doorway. Eira could make out a bright home behind him, all white walls and airy furniture.
“Do you know how I can get hold of Simone?” she asked.
“I haven’t seen her in over a week.” He craned his neck, trying to see over the hedge. “Has something happened?”
Eira explained that she was with the police and held up her ID. She knew she shouldn’t keep waving it around while she wasn’t on duty.
“I just want to talk to her,” she said. “It’s to do with a case involving a missing girl.”
The man studied her closely. “Did Simone give the police this address? I find that hard to believe.”
“What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t trust the cops, doesn’t trust the authorities in general. She’s never had any help from them.”
“Help with what?”
“The bloke she had to hide from. I told Simone she should report him, but she said she’d tried that, that the police didn’t do anything. Seems like he’s pretty powerful up in Norrland—that’s where she’s from—that he has contacts. It’s a bloody outrage you lot don’t do anything about people like him.”
Eira looked at him, at the apple trees in the garden, the leafy villa setting.
“Where in Norrland?” she asked.
“No idea, I’ve never been any farther north than Uppsala. Simone didn’t want to talk about it, and I guess that’s understandable.”
“Could we sit down on the steps a moment?” asked Eira.
“I don’t understand what you want,” said Ivan Wendel.
“Does the name Lina Stavred mean anything to you?”
“Lina who? I know a couple of Linas, it’s a common . . .” He trailed off, staring at her. “Why are you asking me this? What does it have to do with Simone?”
Eira pulled out her phone. She didn’t know whether this was something she should be doing, but at this stage she couldn’t come up with a single reason not to, so she brought up the school photograph of Lina that one of the papers had recently republished.
“Do you think this could be Simone when she was younger?”
Ivan Wendel peered down at the image. Zoomed in.
“How old . . . ?”
