After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  Then Andreas looks at me, leans back a little on his chair and smiles.

  “Malin,” he says, as if he’s just thought of something important.

  “Yes?”

  “How about we go to Vingåker and get a beer tonight?”

  My temples burn, and I can feel my annoyance spring to life again, just when I was almost starting to like him.

  “I can’t tonight.”

  I hesitate for a moment, but then go on:

  “Besides, I’m engaged, and I’m moving to Stockholm in five months.”

  “And?”

  Andreas’s smile grows wider. He drops the pen on the table and slowly runs a hand over his stubble, then takes the tobacco out of his mouth with his thumb and index finger and puts it into its container.

  He disgusts me.

  Everything about him disgusts me: his self-satisfied smile, the tobacco, and his arrogant way of ignoring my refusal. As if our conversation were just a game, just studied and elaborate foreplay.

  “You think you’re irresistible, huh?”

  Andreas doesn’t look away while he answers:

  “No, but I think you are.”

  That stumps me.

  Before I’m able to formulate a devastating comeback, I hear the door open and heavy steps approaching from the other room.

  Andreas doesn’t react. Instead, he continues smiling at me, as if I were some kind of animal on display. A cat with five legs or a calf with two heads.

  It infuriates me.

  Manfred enters, and I force myself to push down my rage. I’ve seen his sharp look when Andreas and I squabbled in the past. That look made it clear he wouldn’t put up with any fights.

  Manfred stands in the middle of the floor, slowly unbuttoning his coat, and observing us in silence. His pants are dripping. Then he sits down on one of the chairs, leans forward and looks at Andreas and then at me a second later.

  “Our colleagues have found a body at the cairn,” he says.

  “Peter?” I whisper, and feel my stomach cramp up.

  Manfred shakes his head and looks at me with an empty, somber expression.

  “No. A woman.”

  “But…?”

  I have no words when I realized the significance of what he’s saying.

  “But?” I say again.

  “We’re headed there now,” Manfred says.

  Jake

  The school bus drops us off near downtown Ormberg.

  Saga and I stop outside the old grocery store, and the other kids head off in various directions.

  Dad says the best thing about Ormberg is the nature around here. It’s the most beautiful place in Sweden. And hunting, of course; there’s plenty of deer, moose, and wild boar. I don’t agree—I think the best thing about this place is all the empty old houses you can hang out in. Until just a few months ago, Saga and I used to hang out in the grocery store after school, but then somebody put a huge padlock on the door.

  And now the building is full of cops.

  Saga pokes her foot at the snow, pushes her pink hair out of her face, and stares in through the big, dirty shop windows.

  There are some lamps on in the back—warm light spills out over the floor of the shop room and I can just make out a portable heater on the floor. Somebody cleaned up inside as well: All the old beer cans and newspapers are gone.

  “Do you think they’ll find him?” Saga asks.

  I stare at the cars parked outside and think of P, Hanne’s boyfriend, who disappeared in the woods. And I think of all those people looking for him: the national guard and those weird organizations who search for missing people.

  Dad says it’s only a matter of time before they find him frozen to death. He says nobody could survive that many nights in the forest at this time of year, especially not some city slicker with no equipment or experience.

  “What if somebody murdered him,” Saga says, leaning toward the window, holding her hands on either side of her face while peeking in.

  Then she seems to lose interest in the store, pushes her hands into her coat pockets, and turns to me again.

  “What if a murderer lives in Ormberg?” she continues quietly, as if she’s afraid someone might hear her. “What if it’s the same guy who killed that little girl by the cairn?”

  “A murderer? Here? Are you kidding me? Besides, it’s been forever since that little girl died.”

  Saga seems a bit self-conscious, shrugs.

  “Why not? Mom says Gunnar would kill a person without blinking.”

  “Gunnar Sten? Isn’t he, like, a hundred?”

  “That’s what I mean. He’s old enough to have killed that girl twenty-odd years ago. And he’s a mean bastard. Apparently, he almost beat a boy to death by the lake when he was young. Whacked him on the head with a stone until he was unconscious.”

  “Really?”

  Saga nods earnestly, and her gaze meets mine. In the dusk her eyes are almost green.

  “Well?” she asks. “Who do you think it could have been?”

  I ponder the question for a moment. I can’t think of anybody in Ormberg who could kill someone. All the people who live around here are so incredibly normal and boring. Sure there are a few crazy old ladies and men. But most are just regular people. Except for the refugees, of course. I don’t know them, the ones who live in the old TrikåKungen factory. We never go there.

  “The Skog family?” she suggests.

  I nod slowly.

  The Skog family lives in the old manor house by the lake. They’re from Stockholm, raise horses, and never hang out with people from the village. Dad says they’re “too fancy” for that. I don’t really know what that means—I don’t get what’s fancy about spending your time in horse stalls mucking up shit all day.

  Obviously, they’re nuts.

  But are they murderers?

  I shake my head.

  “I know,” Saga says. “Ragnhild Sahlén!”

  “Oh, come on. That old shrew?”

  But Saga tugs on my sleeve enthusiastically and continues:

  “You know she killed her brother.”

  “Didn’t he cut his own leg off with a chain saw?”

  Saga’s grip on my arm tightens, and she drags me closer, then whispers:

  “Well, that’s because Ragnhild was standing next to him nagging his head off. And apparently she used his ashes as fertilizer for her raspberry bushes. Then she made jam from the berries and gave it to his girlfriend.”

  “You must be kidding?”

  Saga shakes her head.

  “I swear to God. Or, it could be René Stillman,” she says, smiling conspiratorially and narrowing her eyes a bit.

  “And why would she kill a cop?”

  “She’s earned a lot of money on those dog clothes. Millions. She’s even gonna build a pool this spring.”

  “Yes, but why would that mean she’s a murderer?”

  Saga shrugs, a bit offended. Wraps her coat tighter around her body and stands with her back to the ice-cold wind.

  “I don’t know. Do you have any better suggestions?”

  I don’t.

  Ormberg is the opposite of exciting. I can’t imagine a murderer hiding in one of those red cottages scattered around in the woods. Or that anyone I’ve known forever could be capable of taking a person’s life.

  “One of the refugees, maybe?” I suggest.

  Saga shakes her head.

  “They just got here. The little girl died a looong time ago.”

  She’s right. It’s unlikely it would be one of the refugees.

  The door to the old grocery store swings open with a creak, and a man around Dad’s age comes out. He’s large and stout and dressed like the stockbrokers in the TV show I started watching yesterday. His brown
coat stretches across his stomach as he turns to us.

  Behind him come a younger, dark-haired man and Malin, who’s a cop now and thinks she’s so damn special just because she works in Katrineholm.

  Or that’s what Dad says.

  They jog over to a large black SUV parked nearby.

  “Shit, why are they in such a hurry,” Saga says.

  “Maybe something happened.”

  We turn around and start walking.

  Saga tosses her schoolbag onto her shoulder.

  “I can go over to your house for a while,” she says. “Mom’s not home yet—she’s meeting Björn.”

  Björn Falk is Saga’s mother’s new boyfriend. He’s a jerk, wears a baseball cap year-round, and drives a fancy car he bought with his inheritance, which won’t last long.

  “Should I?” Saga says. “Hang out at your house, I mean.”

  I think about Dad, the stacks of beer cans and the mountain of trash in the kitchen. Or the couch in the living room, which he’s turned into a bed, and the checkered blanket he always has around his shoulders.

  “Maybe. I have to talk to Dad first. I’ll text you.”

  Saga nods and hunches over against the wind.

  “Talk later?”

  “Sure.”

  She disappears in the direction of the church. Her shoulders bob up and down as she hurries home.

  * * *

  —

  Dad is indeed asleep on the couch when I get home. I can hear him snoring from the front hall. It sounds like there’s a big cat lying in the darkness, growling as I enter the room. The scent of sweat, warm beer, and old food permeate the air. The checkered blanket has slid down onto the floor and lies in a heap near his feet.

  When I bend down to pick it up, I see something peeking out from under the couch. I sink down, stretch my hand, and my fingers meet a cold cylindrical metal object.

  It takes a moment for me to realize it’s the barrel of a hunting rifle.

  Why is there a rifle under the couch?

  Dad doesn’t have a gun license, but now and then he borrows a rifle from Olle and goes hunting anyway. But surely he hasn’t been out hunting lately?

  As I gently push the rifle back under the sofa until the barrel is no longer visible, it scrapes against the wood floor. Dad moves a little and mumbles something in his sleep.

  Melinda enters the room with her hand raised, as if she wants to signal to me to be quiet.

  “Don’t wake him up,” she whispers. “He was in a really shitty mood, but I made him some food, and he finally went to sleep.”

  When she says this it occurs to me that we talk about Dad like he’s a little kid. As if Melinda and I were his parents.

  We go back to the hall again.

  “Did something happen?”

  “What do you mean?” Melinda asks.

  “I mean since he was in such a bad mood.”

  “Oh. I don’t really know. He didn’t want to talk about it. But he did that thing, you know, that he does when he doesn’t feel good. Where he paces around the living room.”

  Something cold spreads through my chest. I don’t want Dad to feel bad, especially not when he has a rifle under the couch. But I convince myself there must be a perfectly natural explanation for why a gun is lying there. Maybe he was planning to go hunting with Olle.

  “He ate all the food, by the way,” Melinda says, and heads up the stairs. “But check the fridge. I think there are coconut balls.”

  I enter the kitchen and open the refrigerator. Reach for a pack of coconut balls, take out three, and pour myself a glass of Coke. Then I pound on the built-in ice machine until a few pieces come out.

  I hurry up to my room—all day I’ve been wondering how things were going to turn out for Hanne. I almost couldn’t wait to get home so I could keep reading her story.

  I take out the diary and sit down in bed. Flip to the page I dog-eared, and push a coconut ball into my mouth.

  Morning.

  The worst has happened!

  I was so terribly tired when the clock rang. Didn’t wake up. When I finally opened my eyes, P was sitting naked in the small chair by the window.

  He was reading the diary!

  I screamed. Jumped out of bed. Ran over to P and tore the diary out of his hands.

  P didn’t try to stop me, he just looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and fear. It took me a moment to realize he truly was afraid. Terrified. Perhaps that’s not so strange—I’ve always been the emotionally stronger one of the two of us. Calm & reliable.

  What will happen when I’m not strong anymore? How will P manage?

  Who will be his rock when I’m not here anymore?

  We just had breakfast. P squeezed my hand tight. Told me he loved me, and nothing would ever change that.

  That made me happy, of course, but at the same time I felt caught in the act, and so humiliated. As if I’d stolen money from his wallet, even though he was the one who read MY diary.

  Isn’t it strange that illness comes with such shame!

  At the office.

  We just had a meeting. We continued reviewing the case: the medical examiner’s reports, the forensic investigation, the interviews.

  Manfred spoke with the former head of the investigation, a retired prosecutor. He said he’d “never bought the traffic accident theory.” He believed it was a pedophile.

  I’m a bit skeptical of that hypothesis. Either way: Our important task at the moment is to identify the girl.

  We have a meeting booked with the medical examiner to learn more about the Ormberg Girl. Manfred is especially interested in an old injury on her wrist. He thinks it might help us identify her. Apparently, it wasn’t looked into during the original investigation. Manfred was upset about that. Called the old investigative group a “an aggravating collection of incompetent sluggards.”

  Maybe he’s right.

  I HOPE he’s right. Otherwise, we don’t have much to go on.

  Malin

  We park at the back of a line of cars on the side of a country road.

  It’s almost completely dark now. It must be colder, too, because the chill hurts my cheeks. The snow crunches beneath our feet as we make our way toward the edge of the woods.

  Manfred points his big flashlight at the trees and steps over the small ditch that separates the country road from the woods.

  The cairn.

  I think of all the times we came out here as teenagers. Not just that fateful evening when we found the Ormberg Girl, but all the other times. Foggy spring days when the frost still held the ground captive in its cold jaws. Warm, starry August nights when my friends and I tried to conjure up the spirits we thought lived out here. I remember how we moved a drinking glass from one letter to another on a wrinkled sheet of paper with the help of a single finger, under the light of candle, while the mosquitoes ate us alive.

  Where did the story of the Ghost Child come from anyway? And when did it start? I have to ask Mom about it.

  “What do we know about the dead woman?” Andreas asks. “Could it be the woman in the sequin dress?”

  “We don’t know shit,” Manfred says, trudging through the snow in his shiny dress shoes.

  He really doesn’t fit in here—you can’t lumber around in the snow wearing hand-sewn Italian shoes without looking like a complete ass. Besides, you’ll freeze your toes off.

  Even a Stockholmer should know that.

  The spruce branches bend under the weight of the snow. It’s as beautiful as a postcard and completely silent, as if the forest itself were asleep.

  Manfred makes his way with surprising ease over the terrain. His long legs stride smoothly over the snowy stumps and stones.

  Andreas turns back toward me.

  I meet his eyes. My
foot sinks through the snow, down into a small hole.

  Andreas stops and offers me a hand.

  I nod a thank-you, just as a branch snaps into my face and powdery new snow falls down the back of my neck. I push my hands deep into my pockets, trying my best to warm them up. I forgot my gloves in the car.

  Then the woods thin out, and I see some lights shining between the spruces. Soon we’re at the edge of a clearing that’s bathed in light. The silhouette of Orm Mountain rises in front of us, its peak towering up into the night sky. It’s impossible to say where the mountain ends and the darkness begins.

  As if Orm Mountain were connected to the sky.

  The cairn stands in front of us under a layer of snow. Large portable floodlights have been placed at the edge of the clearing, and three people in white coveralls and surgical masks are hunched down near them. One of them is holding a large camera, and I see a big bag in the snow a few meters away.

  Forensic technicians.

  Our colleagues from the local police are already in place and blue-and-white barricade tape flutters in the wind. The flash of the camera blinks again and again.

  Manfred turns to me and Andreas. His face reveals nothing of what he feels, but I can see him clenching and unclenching his fists as if he’s squeezing a ball.

  Of course, we’re infinitely grateful it’s not Peter who’s been found dead in the snow. But at the same time the situation feels absurd: Hundreds of people have searched through these woods for him for two days. And when they finally find a body, it’s somebody else.

  We head toward Svante.

  He raises his hand when he sees us.

  Svante is wearing the same colorful homemade stocking cap as before. His beard is frosted, and I’m reminded once again of Santa. A real, old-fashioned Santa Claus who arrives with sacks full of gifts, who lets all the children sit in his lap.

  I notice Svante glancing at Manfred’s expensive coat. At the pocket handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket like a thirsty exotic plant.

  “What the hell is going on?” Manfred asks, nodding at the body at the edge of the woods, running a hand over his beard, which makes a scraping sound against his glove.