After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  They have a point.

  Ormberg isn’t exactly welcoming to strangers, and I know this village inside and out, know everyone who lives there. The few that are left, that is. Since the TrikåKungen factory and Brogrens Mechanical plant closed, most people have moved away. All that’s left are the people who own summer homes, the old folks, and the unemployed.

  And the refugees, of course.

  I wonder who came up with the brilliant idea of putting hundreds of asylum seekers into a depopulated small town in Södermanland. It’s not the first time, either. When the Balkan refugees came in the early nineties the old TrikåKungen building also served as a refugee camp.

  Manfred’s big German SUV swings into the parking lot, and I head toward him.

  He parks the car, and his solid, hunched figure begins to trudge in my direction. The wind grabs hold of his reddish blond hair and blows it up and back so it forms a halo around his head.

  He’s dressed elegantly, as usual, wearing an expensive coat and a red scarf of thin, slightly wrinkled wool. He’s wrapped it around his neck with studied nonchalance. He has a briefcase in cognac leather tucked under his left arm, and his steps are hurried.

  “Hello,” I say, and jog to keep up with him.

  He nods reservedly toward me as we enter the hospital.

  “Is Andreas coming, too?” I ask.

  “No,” says Manfred, running his hand through his hair, trying to force it back into place. “Apparently he’s at his mother’s place in Örebro. We’ll have to brief him tomorrow.”

  “And Peter—have you heard anything?”

  It takes a moment for Manfred to answer.

  “No. His phone seems to be turned off. And Hanne doesn’t remember anything. I’ve filed a missing person report. The police and the military will start searching the forest tomorrow morning.”

  I don’t know how close Peter and Manfred are, but you can tell they’ve worked together for years. They seem to agree about most things and communicate with very few words. A look or a short nod seems to be all that’s required.

  Manfred must be worried.

  No one’s heard from Peter since Friday, when he and Hanne left our temporary office in Ormberg at half past four.

  As far as we know, I’m the last person who saw them.

  When they left they seemed more animated than usual, as if they were headed for something fun. I asked where they were off to, and they said they were thinking about going to Katrineholm for dinner—they were tired of food that tasted like cardboard, something to that effect. After that, neither of us heard from Hanne or Peter—which wasn’t so strange, since it was a weekend, and we’d decided to take a few days off.

  We enter, go to the front desk, and get directions to her room. The bright hospital lights shine off the linoleum floors of the corridor. Manfred looks tired, his eyes bloodshot and his lips pale and chapped. But he often looks tired. I suppose the combination of his stressful job and the demands of being a fifty-year-old father to a young child must be quite draining.

  * * *

  —

  Hanne is sitting on the edge of her bed when we enter. She has on a hospital gown and an orange blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape. Her hair hangs down over her shoulders in damp wisps, as if she’s just showered. Her hands are covered with small scratches, and her feet are bandaged. There’s an IV stand next to her, and a tube runs from the dropping-bottle to her hand. Her eyes are glassy, her face expressionless.

  Manfred goes over to her and gives her a clumsy hug.

  “Manfred,” she murmurs in a raspy voice.

  Then she turns her eyes to me, tilts her head a little, and stares uncomprehendingly.

  It takes a few seconds for me to realize she doesn’t recognize me, even though we’ve been working together for more than a week.

  The realization chills me.

  “Hi, Hanne,” I say, touching her arm gently, suddenly afraid my touch might rip her like a paper doll—she seems so desperately frail.

  “It’s me, Malin, we work together,” I continue, trying to keep my voice steady. “Do you recognize me?”

  Hanne blinks several times and meets my gaze. Her eyes are watery and bloodshot.

  “Yes, of course,” she says, but I’m sure she’s lying because her expression is one of tormented concentration, as if trying to solve a difficult equation.

  I grab a stool and sit across from her. Manfred sinks down on the bed and puts his arm around her narrow shoulders.

  Hanne seems so tiny and thin next to him, almost childlike.

  Manfred clears his throat.

  “Do you remember what happened in the woods, Hanne?”

  Hanne’s face crumbles. She wrinkles her forehead and shakes her head slowly.

  “I don’t remember,” she says, burying her face in her hands.

  For a moment, she seems embarrassed, as if she’d like to push this whole situation away.

  Manfred catches my eye.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says, squeezing her shoulders, and then continues in a steady voice:

  “You were in the woods south of Orm Mountain last night.”

  Hanne nods, straightens her back, and puts her hands on her knees.

  “Do you remember that?” I ask.

  She shakes her head and scratches absently at the surgical tape holding her IV needle in place. Her nails are cracked and black-rimmed.

  “You were found by a young woman driving through the forest,” Manfred says. “And apparently you were with another young woman. She was wearing a cardigan and some kind of glittery dress. Do you remember?”

  “No, sorry. I’m so sorry, but…”

  Hanne’s voice breaks and tears start running down her cheeks.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Manfred says. “It’s okay, Hanne. We’ll find out what happened. Do you remember if Peter was with you in the woods?”

  Hanne buries her face in her hands again.

  “No. Forgive me!”

  Manfred looks distressed. Gives me a pleading look.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” I try.

  At first I don’t think she’s going to answer. Her shoulders are rising up and down violently, and every breath seems like it takes great effort.

  “Ilulissat,” she says, with her face still buried in her hands.

  Manfred meets my eyes and mouths: “Greenland.”

  Hanne and Peter came here straight from Greenland to participate in the investigation. They’d been on a two-month-long trip of a lifetime, which they took after solving a very complicated murder case.

  “Okay,” I say. “And then you came to Ormberg to work on the investigation of the skeleton in the cairn. Do you remember that?”

  Hanne trembles and sobs.

  “Do you remember anything from Ormberg?” Manfred asks quietly.

  “Nothing,” Hanne says. “I remember nothing.”

  Manfred takes her thin hand and seems to ponder something. Then he stiffens, turns her palm upward, and stares intently at it.

  At first I don’t understand, but then I see something’s been written on Hanne’s hand. Sprawling numbers in ink, pierced by small wounds, visible on her pale skin. I’m able to make out “363,” but then the text becomes blurry and impossible to decipher, as if it were scrubbed away along with the forest dirt.

  “What’s this?” Manfred asks. “What do these numbers mean?”

  Hanne stares at her hand uncomprehendingly, as if she’d never seen it before. As if it were a wild animal that’s snuck into the hospital and settled there on her knee.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t got a clue.”

  * * *

  —

  We’re sitting in the lunchroom with a doctor named Maja, who seems to be my
age. Her long blond hair falls in soft curls on her white coat. She reminds me of the kind of woman I wanted to be when I was younger: tiny, curvy, and sweet—everything I’ve never been. She’s wearing jeans, and a pink T-shirt peeks out from under her lab coat. A blue pin with the word “Doctor” written on it sits on her chest, and a few pencils stick out of her pocket.

  The room isn’t large. It contains a couple of refrigerators, a dishwasher, and a round table with four birch-veneer chairs. There’s a poinsettia sitting in a plastic pot in the middle of the table. A thank-you card filled out in wobbly handwriting is stuck between its leaves.

  Two nurses enter, grab something from one of the refrigerators, and then head back out to the corridor again without saying a word.

  “She was suffering from extreme hypothermia and dehydration when she arrived,” Maja says, pouring a splash of milk into her coffee. “And, she was found wearing nothing but a thin blouse and pair of pants, even though it was freezing out.”

  “No coat?” Manfred asks. Maja shakes her head.

  “No coat, no shoes.”

  “Was she able to tell you anything about what had happened?” I ask.

  Maja gathers her long, light hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her perfectly shaped lips form a small pout. She sighs, and shakes her head.

  “She couldn’t remember anything. We call it anterograde amnesia. That’s when you’re unable to form new memories after a certain point in time. At first we thought she might have suffered head trauma. But there’s no evidence of that. She has no external damage and the head X-ray revealed no bleeding or swelling. But, of course, we might have missed something. You need to do an X-ray within six hours of a head trauma in order to be sure you catch any bleeding. And we don’t know how long she was out there in the woods.”

  “Could she have suffered something so terrifying that she’s repressed it?” I ask.

  Maja shrugs slightly and takes a sip of her coffee. Then grimaces and slams the cup down onto the table.

  “Sorry! The coffee around here tastes like shit. You mean could she have suffered psychological trauma so intense that it caused the memory loss? Perhaps; that’s not my area of specialty. But we’re beginning to think she might have some underlying form of dementia. Perhaps it’s become more acute as a result of what she experienced. Her short-term memory is severely impaired, but she remembers everything that happened until a month ago quite clearly.”

  “Could we check her medical records?” I ask.

  “You mean her medical records in Stockholm?” Maja asks. “Hanne has given us her permission, which we require legally. But we don’t know where she’s been receiving treatment, and she doesn’t remember. Records are often kept by the health care providers themselves.”

  Manfred clears his throat, seems to be hesitating. Strokes his beard.

  “Hanne did have some trouble with her memory,” he says quietly.

  “What?” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Manfred squirms and looks embarrassed.

  “I didn’t think it was very serious. Peter mentioned it, but I got the feeling she was more scatterbrained, not that it was…well, not that she was suffering from dementia, in the clinical sense.”

  He falls silent, starts fiddling with his expensive Swiss wristwatch. His confession astonishes me. Could he seriously mean that Hanne was allowed to work on a murder investigation even though she was ill? That a person suffering from dementia had been entrusted with matters of life and death?

  “We still don’t know why her short-term memory is so impaired,” Maja inserts diplomatically. “It could be due to underlying dementia, but she also could have experienced some form of trauma, either physically or psychologically.”

  “What happens to her now?” Manfred asks.

  “I don’t really know. Apparently, social services is trying to find a temporary placement for her, because the rest homes are full. But she’s not sick enough to stay at the hospital. Not if you ask me, anyway. She’s having problems with her short-term memory, but everything else is fine.”

  “Could her memory come back?” I ask. “Could it be temporary?”

  Maja smiles sadly and tilts her head. She lays her small hands on the table and folds them.

  “Who knows. Stranger things have happened.”

  Jake

  On the school bus ride home, I sit down next to Saga. No one else wants to, but I like sitting with her.

  I like Saga.

  She looks different, and she is different. It’s like she’s made from a completely different material than everyone else. Something tougher and softer at the same time.

  “Hi,” she says, and pushes a strand of her pink hair away from her face. The ring in her nose sparkles in the dim evening light.

  We ride through seemingly endless fields. Black, plowed, lying there waiting for winter. We start to pass by some woods, then we’ll go by the gas station near the exit to the big highway, and after that it’s pretty much forests all the way to Ormberg.

  Ormberg itself is basically a forest. And then there’s Orm Mountain, of course, and its Stone Age ruins. We’ve taken field trips there, but there’s not much to see, just some rocks in a circle on the top of a hill. I remember feeling disappointed. I was expecting runes or bronze jewelry or something.

  Saga grabs my wrist. Her touch sends a shock through my body, and my cheeks burn.

  “Can I see,” she says, turning my palm upward to reveal words written in ink.

  Proposition

  Bouillon

  Conjunction

  I collected them from my classes in social studies, home ec, and Swedish.

  “I’m planning to google them later,” I explain.

  “Sweet,” Saga says, then closes her eyes as if lost in thought.

  When she does, I see her shiny, pink eye shadow. It looks like crushed jewels have been gently brushed onto her eyelids. I’d like to say something, comment on it. Or maybe run my finger over it.

  But, of course, I don’t.

  And that’s when Vincent Hahn throws himself on my knee. The smell of cigarette smoke and mint gum slams into me, and my breath is knocked out. His face is so close to mine, I see the sparse hair of his beard, the whiteheads of his pimples, and his downy mustache. His Adam’s apple juts out from his neck, as if he’s just swallowed a whole egg. His eyes are full of hate—and I don’t know where it comes from.

  I’ve never done anything to him, but he loves hating me. In fact, there’s nothing he likes more.

  I’m his favorite person to hate.

  Vincent holds my hand in his iron grip.

  “What the fuck, look what the fag wrote on his hand!” he screams. “Conjunc…Conjunction. What the hell does that mean? Is that when you fuck somebody in the ass?”

  Vincent grinds his pelvis and sneers. Scattered laughter comes from behind us. As for me, I don’t say a word—that’s the best strategy. Sooner or later he’ll stop.

  Vincent drops my wrist and stands next to me, grabs my neck and pushes my head slowly toward the seat in front of me.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  It hurts my forehead, and his grip on my neck stings.

  There are two options: Either he gets bored and goes back to his friends at the back of the bus or it get worse. Much worse.

  “Leave him alone, you freak,” Saga says.

  Vincent stiffens.

  “Did you say something, whore?”

  His voice is sharp and mean, but his grip on my neck slackens and the thumping stops.

  “I told you to leave him alone. Are you deaf? It’s pathetic to pick on somebody smaller than you.”

  Vincent releases me, and I glance at Saga from where I’m sitting with my head bent forward. I know she’s deliberately putting me down to make him stop.

&n
bsp; That’s fine by me.

  I’m used to putting myself down. Making myself as small and uninteresting and cooperative as I can so it stops being fun to spit on me, or hit me, or mess with me.

  I’m very good at it.

  A few seconds later Vincent loses interest and returns to his place at the back of the bus. The skin on my neck burns like it was touched by fire.

  “Fuck him,” Saga says. “He’s so fucking twisted. Are you okay?”

  I run my hand over the skin on the back of my neck, trying to massage the evil away.

  “That was definitely not nice.”

  Saga close her eyes and leans against me.

  “When he does stuff like that, you should just imagine him taking a shit.”

  “What?”

  Saga giggles and seems pleased with herself.

  “That’s what my mom always says. If somebody’s being an asshole at work, or if they think they’re so fucking important, just think about them while they’re taking a shit. It’s hard to be afraid of them after that.”

  I consider it for a moment.

  “You’re right,” I say. “It works.”

  Saga smiles, and I feel butterflies return to my stomach.

  “You coming over tonight?” she asks. “I downloaded some new horror films.”

  “Probably. But I have something I need to do first.”

  * * *

  —

  Everything’s quiet when I get home. Except for the forest: the whisper of swaying treetops, a snap and a creak from the invisible creatures that lurk in the darkness. The air is thick with the scent of spruce, rotting leaves, and the wet charcoal in the grill that stands in front of the house.

  Dad’s old navy blue Volvo is parked diagonally across the driveway, as if he were in a hurry when he got home.

  I unlock the door and go inside. Throw my school bag under the coat rack and kick off my shoes.

  Light flickers from inside the living room: The television is on, but the sound is off. Dad’s asleep on the couch, snoring soundly and with one foot on the floor, as if he fell asleep just as he was about to stand up. Empty beer cans litter the coffee table.