We know you remember, p.33
We Know You Remember, page 33
“OK?”
“I think Magnus lent her his motorbike,” Eira continued. “And he rowed the boat back himself. We live in Lunde, we grew up there. I’ve played by the river ever since I was a little kid who wasn’t allowed to go down to the water. If he pushed the boat back out once he came ashore, that’s probably where it would’ve ended up, in Sprängsviken. Then he gave her a few days to disappear before reporting his bike stolen.”
She didn’t say a word about the dragonfly nymphs, about her brother valuing freedom so highly that he let them go before they got their wings.
“So you’re trying to say what, exactly . . . ?”
Eira reached for the bottle of wine, not because she wanted it but because she needed it. In order to lift the weight off herself and ignore what he thought.
“Has it ever occurred to you that Lina Stavred might actually be alive?”
“If I was investigating the case,” GG said carefully, “then that might be something that crossed my mind. But like I said, I’m not.”
“Just listen to me, give me a minute.”
In the end, it took almost twenty. By the time she finished, she had told him all about Simone and why it had first occurred to her that she could be Lina, how much of a coincidence it would be for Eira to have stumbled over a woman who made such an effort to remain anonymous.
“Twenty-three years,” said GG, looking up at the sky, at the soft white clouds. “That’s a long time. Would it even be possible to live like that for twenty-three years?”
“There are plenty of people who live under the radar, we know that—people without documentation, criminals, people living under threat . . .”
“Yeah, of course, but I mean from a human point of view, knowing that you’d hurt your parents like that . . .”
“Lina was planning to run off with Kenneth Isaksson,” said Eira. “Maybe she really didn’t want to go home again. From what I’ve heard about Lina Stavred, she always put herself first. She only became the sweet girl once she went missing.”
“Or maybe she always was, in her parents’ eyes.”
“If I’m right, there should be DNA to . . .”
“No.” GG put his hand on hers, only for a brief moment. It wasn’t an invitation, nothing like that; it was simply meant to keep her grounded.
Telling her to calm down.
To pull herself together.
“She was with Ivan Wendel for almost a year,” said Eira. “There must be traces of her, clothes she left behind, maybe even a hairbrush . . .”
“I’m serious,” said GG. “You have to drop this.”
He got up and patted her on the shoulder, headed inside to the bathroom. Eira heard the spatter of liquid, realized he wasn’t the kind of person who closed the door in his own home.
Then he was behind her again.
“You know there has to be a strong justification,” he said. “A suspicion of wrongdoing, a decision from the prosecutor. We don’t just collect DNA because we feel like it.”
“I know,” said Eira, getting up.
“And even if you’re right,” he continued, “it’s not a crime to go into hiding. It’s hardly illegal to live.”
Eira left her half-empty glass on the table and excused herself by saying she needed to catch the next train to Kramfors.
“How’s it going, by the way?” she asked as they stood in the hallway, where a couple of moving boxes were jostling for space with bin bags.
“What?”
“You talked about having kids, or not.”
“Ah, no, it didn’t work out in the end.”
“Sorry, it’s none of my business.”
GG passed her the shoehorn. “You like to think you’re immortal,” he said. “But then a few months pass and nothing happens, and in the end you have to face up to your responsibilities. Go to the doctor, find out who the problem is with.” He gestured to his tall body, making Eira think thoughts she didn’t want to think. “And then she didn’t feel it was so urgent anymore, finding an apartment together. It turned out she’d never deleted her Tinder account.”
“You’re right,” said Eira. “I think I need a holiday.”
GG took her hand, warm and lingering.
“I meant what I said before,” he said. “In case a job opens up this autumn.”
Chapter 64
There was another woman sitting in the chair by his bed now. With two small guitars dangling from her ears.
They swung as she leaned forward.
“I didn’t realize you were awake,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
Olof didn’t know what to tell her. He never said much to the nurses, only slightly more to the physiotherapist. It would be good to know which group this woman belonged to. The cleaners were the easiest; they didn’t speak much Swedish.
“I only just got here,” said the woman. “You were sleeping. They told me you’re doing much better.”
He thought he recognized her. There were far more people working in a hospital than he could keep track of. He hadn’t spoken to so many women in years. Ever, as far as he could remember.
Olof flinched as she took his hand.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should have been there for you.”
With those words, the memories started coming back to him. He wanted more morphine, but they had started phasing it out. A door slamming shut. Someone shouting at him.
You sick bastard. Get out of my room.
“Ingela?”
“God, it’s been so long. I don’t know what to . . .”
His sister started laughing. No, maybe she was crying. Both. How was he meant to deal with this? Olof pulled his hand away. He had regained a lot of movement in it by then, thanks to the exercises and the massages.
“You didn’t do it, Olof. I know you didn’t do anything to that girl. It wasn’t you. Dad should never have sent you away. I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”
Now that he knew she was his sister, he saw her differently. At first she had just been a woman, one who looked pretty different. Nice, somehow. Colorful glasses. He liked the little guitars. Those were fun.
And then Ingela was there, in this strange woman’s face. She was barefoot and small, his big sister, bounding away from him.
Come on, Olof. Come and see what I found.
You can’t catch me, you can’t catch me.
He reached for a tissue from the bedside table and blew his nose. Christ, that was loud. There was half a mug of cordial on the table, and he gulped it down.
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“I took the train. We don’t have a car.”
“From which station?”
“Stockholm. That’s where I live now. I’ve got a daughter. You’re an uncle, Olof. Do you want to see?”
He saw a picture of a child, an image on her phone.
“Dad . . .” Olof began. He felt like he had to say it.
That word. It settled like a boulder on his chest, making it hard to breathe.
“It’s lucky you showed up,” said Ingela. “So you found him. Has anyone told you what actually happened?”
“It was the neighbor woman.”
He had felt a sense of relief when he first found out. An emptiness. They weren’t going to lock him up again.
“Do you think you can manage to talk about the funeral?”
Olof nodded, but it was Ingela who did most of the talking. About the fact that Sven had reserved a plot in the cemetery in Bjärtrå, but that he probably didn’t want a priest. Olof thought about his mother’s funeral, how he had decided not to go. He had read the card detailing the time and place, the instruction to wear bright clothing, and had tried to imagine what would happen if he showed up and all those strange faces turned to him, faces he might also recognize.
His sister said something about the letters she had found among his things and he felt himself growing angry that she had been there, snooping about.
“Why didn’t you reply to Mum’s letters?” she asked.
“I’m no good at writing,” said Olof. The room fell silent.
The words inside him seemed to clump together, making it impossible for him to get them out. How he had read the letters she wrote, saying that Olof was still her son, that she was still his mother, despite what he had done.
I believe you, Olof. She hadn’t written that.
“The house is gone,” he eventually said. “All Sven’s things burnt. Sorry.”
It was easier to say his name than the word “Dad.”
“Olof,” said Ingela. “You don’t need to apologize because a couple of idiots set fire to the house. It wasn’t your fault.”
“The police told me what happened. They did it because I was there.”
His sister was crying now. That won’t help, Olof wanted to tell her. They can get to you if you cry. He wondered whether the train to Stockholm left soon.
“I spoke to a police officer I know a little,” she managed to tell him, once he had started to wonder whether he needed to pass her a tissue or something. “You’ve actually met her too, Eira Sjödin. I called her to ask how you were doing and she told me that you didn’t kill Lina. You didn’t do it, Olof.”
The evil in his head came flooding back now. All the heavy things, dragging him down and making him think he would never be able to get out of bed, even though the lovely physiotherapist got him up every day, even though he had started walking to her room on his own.
“They don’t have enough evidence to prove it,” Ingela continued, “but Lina was alive when you walked out of the forest. It can’t have been you. This officer, she wanted us both to know.”
Olof turned away so that he didn’t have to meet her eye. He might start crying otherwise. He stared at the button instead, the red one he was meant to press whenever he needed more medicine or to go to the toilet or something.
“The dog,” he said, clearing his throat.
“What was that?”
“Sven had a dog. A black one. I don’t know what breed it is.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Can you stop talking about that stuff?”
“But you’re innocent, Olof, you should be able to claim redress or something. I work for Sveriges Television, not as a journalist or anything, but I can talk to our reporters, I’m sure someone will want to take on your case.”
“Quiet,” he said, pressing the alarm button.
He remembered that it had always been this way. Ingela had to make the decisions: come here, Olof; go and fetch this, don’t do that.
“But . . .”
His head was falling apart. He remembered too much. He saw himself following Lina, catching up with her and killing her in the forest, or was it down by the water? There were so many different images of it in his mind, yet she was also the one who pushed him, who knocked him to the ground before walking away. Shouting at him, disappearing among the trees, gone. His memories shattered. It didn’t make sense. Olof didn’t know what was right, because everything was wrong; no matter what he thought or believed, someone always told him it was wrong, that it hadn’t happened like that.
“You have to go there,” he said.
“Where?”
“To the pound. I don’t want it to be there.”
“I’m sorry, Olof, but I can’t look after a dog, I live in an apartment and my daughter is allergic . . .”
An assistant nurse appeared, asked what he needed. The room felt cramped with so many people in it.
“It’s lovely to see you’ve got a visitor,” she said.
“I’m in pain,” he told her. “I think I need more morphine.”
The nurse smiled sweetly, the way they always did, and gave him two paracetamol. As though that were enough.
“Let’s check your blood pressure, too.”
Ingela got up. The train was probably leaving soon.
“I’ll go down to the kiosk,” she said. “I can get you an ice cream or something.”
“OK.”
His sister paused in the doorway.
“A cone,” she said. “You used to like those, didn’t you?”
Chapter 65
There was someone sitting on the porch steps when Eira got home. The car headlights briefly illuminated his face, so fleeting that she could have been mistaken.
She climbed out of the car.
“Hey, Sis.”
It really was him.
“So they let you go,” she said.
“Cells were full,” said Magnus, pulling a face that might have been a smile. Eira wanted to stroke his hair, let him rest his head in her lap.
“Is Mum asleep?” she asked.
“You were right,” said Magnus. “She thought I still worked at the sawmill in Bollsta.”
“That was fifteen years ago.”
“I know.”
Eira went inside to get something to drink. Magnus was already nursing a beer. She would force him to stay over, couldn’t let him out on the road again.
She found a bottle of raspberry soda that had been in the pantry for an eternity. Alcohol was something she could drink in other people’s company, not his.
“You missed the meeting with the support officer,” said Eira, taking a seat beside him on the steps. From where they were sitting they could see the gravel driveway and the withered lilacs, the rhubarb that seemed to survive everything.
“Sorry,” said Magnus. “I got held up.”
Eira actually managed to laugh. “It’s OK, I pushed it back to next week.”
Magnus took the bottle from her and prized off the cap with his lighter, passed it back.
“They didn’t think I was a flight risk,” he said. “Guess that’s another thing. And because I confessed. The lawyer thinks I’m looking at the minimum sentence for manslaughter.”
“Six years.”
“I’ll be out after four if I behave.”
Eira swatted away the blackflies. Sipped the sweet juice. Scratched a bite. If she left it to Magnus, they could easily sit there in silence all night, for another twenty-three years.
“So what really happened that evening?” she asked. “And don’t just tell me what you told the police who interviewed you, about Lina not being there when you got to Lockne.”
“You’re police too.”
“And a little brat no one tells anything.”
“I need another beer.”
Eira felt his hands on her shoulders when he returned, as though he wanted to give her a massage.
“You’re not miked up or anything?”
“Come off it.”
Magnus sat down beside her. Rolled the cold bottle across his forehead before opening it. The cap flew away, landing somewhere.
“I’ll only say this once, and only to you,” he said.
Now and never again.
That evening. When he rode his motorbike over to Lockne because he knew Lina would be meeting someone there.
“She saved my life,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Can you just shut up for once and let me talk?”
Eira covered her mouth with her hand, she shut up.
“Lina told me they were meeting there, that she was going to run away with that guy, and I was just so fucking jealous.” Magnus spoke without looking at Eira. They were both staring straight ahead, past each other. “I was going to take her back with me, either that or punch the guy, I didn’t know what I was doing there. Maybe I just wanted to see them so I could finally get it into my thick head that it was over, really finished, that I’d lost her for good. But then I saw them inside. She was naked, and . . . Fuck, I thought he was raping her, there were all these chains and things.”
Magnus had stormed in. Wanted to grab Lina, protect her, punch the guy in the face, but suddenly the guy was on top of him, he hadn’t known his full name until recently, back then he was just Kenny, that was what Lina kept screaming, so loud that it echoed around the old forge; Kenny, who went completely crazy and got Magnus in a judo grip, slamming him down to the stone floor. Next thing he knew there was a chain around his throat, and everything went black.
When Magnus finally managed to breathe again, Kenny was lying flat out on top of him like a sandbag. There was blood everywhere. And Lina . . . Lina was standing there with an iron rod in her hand.
It was only once he pushed the body off him that he realized the guy was dead.
“Just lying there, staring straight into fucking nothingness.”
“So it was her,” said Eira. “It wasn’t you.”
“I told her I’d take the blame, but Lina refused. She started screaming at me, saying her life would be over if I snitched, that they’d send her away and lock her up. She was jumpy, obviously high on something, shouting that it was all my fault, that we’d both get locked up for years and that she’d rather kill herself.”
Magnus sniffed and wiped his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Eira couldn’t quite tell in the dim light, but she thought he might be crying.
“It was true,” he said. “She never would’ve survived. Lina wasn’t the kind of person you could lock up, she always had seven different thoughts swirling round her head, at least half of them dark; I think she drank to get away from herself. Her parents tried to keep her in, but she’d climb out through the attic if she had to. And she was so good at playing all saintly, lying about what she got up to—they definitely didn’t know she was having sex, and she wore long sleeves at home so they wouldn’t see her tattoo.”
“What tattoo?” Eira had read through the description of Lina again before she caught the train to Stockholm. “There was nothing about a tattoo in the missing-person report.”
“No, exactly. It was her parents who gave the description, and there was a lot they didn’t know. I was with her when she got it.”
Magnus ran a hand over his own left arm. He had filled it with a number of classic designs at some point during his twenties, the kind sailors often had.
“A heart and a couple of birds. I convinced myself it was a symbol of me, of our love. What a fucking idiot.”
He kept talking, returning to that night when they had struggled to drag the body down to the river from the forge, but Eira barely heard a word he said.
