After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  He continues:

  “We’re searching for a missing colleague, and find a woman who’s been shot instead.”

  Svante nods. “Yep. And all I can do is agree. It’s damn weird. I’ll brief you on it in a moment. But there’s something else. We found something after I called you.”

  Manfred wrinkles his forehead and arches his back so that his coat stretches across his stomach.

  “What?”

  Svante waves for us to follow and heads for something that looks like a big suitcase in black plastic. It stands in the snow next to one of the floodlights.

  He bends forward and takes out a transparent plastic bag. Then he hands it to Manfred and turns the flashlight toward the bag so we can see.

  Manfred examines the contents. Inside is a blue sneaker, covered with big brown stains. Clumps of partially melted snow lie next to the shoe.

  I gasp.

  “That’s Hanne’s shoe,” I say.

  Manfred nods.

  “Hanne?” Svante says. “The one who lost her memory?”

  “Yes,” Manfred says. “Where did you find it?”

  “About twenty meters from the body. Just inside the woods. We never would have found it under the snow if it hadn’t been for Rocky. Our dog.”

  Manfred meets my eyes, then shakes his head in disbelief as if he’s having a hard time accepting it’s actually Hanne’s shoe.

  “How the hell did it get here?” Manfred says, and hands it back to Svante.

  And then:

  “We’re gonna go talk to Hanne again when we’re done here. It’s worth a try.”

  Manfred is quiet for a moment, as if working through something, his eyes turned toward Orm Mountain. A lonely snowflake sticks to his beard. He brushes it away and continues:

  “Can you sum up what we know so far?”

  “A K9 unit found her at two-oh-five in the afternoon,” Svante says, and nods toward the dead woman under the bright shine of the floodlights. “The medical examiner believes she’s been dead for at least three days, maybe four. The temperatures dropped on Sunday, so if she’d been out here longer the body would be in worse shape. And if she’d been here for a shorter time, the snow cover on her would have been thinner. Only one of her feet stuck out from under the tree, but it was covered in snow.”

  Manfred looks thoughtful.

  “Didn’t they search this area yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Svante says. “But they must have missed her. Probably because she was hidden.”

  Manfred falls silent. He eyes sweep across the scene, and he nods curtly.

  “You say she’s been here three to four days? That means she must have died on Friday or Saturday.”

  Andreas clears his throat.

  “That’s exactly when…”

  His words trail off, and he looks over at the floodlight-bathed bundle in the snow.

  “When Peter disappeared,” Manfred says quietly. “It can’t be a coincidence that Hanne’s shoe was here. What do we know about the victim?”

  “Not much,” Svante says. “Female. Around fifty years old. Barefoot, thinly dressed. Shot in the chest and blunt force trauma to the head.”

  “Shot and beaten?”

  Manfred seems surprised.

  “Correct,” Svante says. “Shall we go take a look at her, and I’ll tell you more?”

  There’s a flash as the technician takes another photo. Manfred’s face looks swollen and tired in that intense light.

  Andreas stares down at the snow-covered stones and then turns his eyes up toward the sky.

  “What is it about this fucking place?” he says, and nods to the mound of stones.

  Nobody answers, because what is there to say? The feeling that Ormberg’s evil is centered in this cairn is hard to shake.

  I think of the Ormberg Girl, and memories flood over me with surprising force. When I close my eyes, I can almost feel Kenny’s warm hand in mine, hear the quiet clink of the beer cans in his plastic bag. I remember the ferns’ small, divided leaves tickling my thigh as I squatted down to pee, and how my fingers brushed against something white and smooth between the stones.

  And now this.

  It all seems to be centered here, at an ancient cairn in a clearing in the woods.

  It has to mean something, but what?

  Svante takes off his gloves and puts his hands on his bright red cheeks, trying to warm them.

  “Let’s go,” Manfred says, and walks ahead of us toward the woods.

  We take turns approaching the body, because there isn’t enough room on the plastic disks the technicians have placed on the snow. Svante goes first, stands next to the body and waves to me and Manfred.

  The plastic bends under our weight.

  When we get there we each stand on our own plastic disk and crouch down.

  Branches have been cut from the bottom of the tree in order to get to the body. They lie in a pile just a few meters away, next to a tarp with sawdust on it, which I suppose they used to protect the body when they were sawing off the branches.

  There she lies, beneath what’s left of the tree, with her face turned away from us. Her hands are folded across her chest.

  Ice crystals cover her clothes and the very pale skin of her throat, hands, and feet, making it shimmer under the bright lights.

  The woman is wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a jean shirt that’s way too big for her. A large, dark spot spreads out across her chest. She’s barefoot, and her thin gray hair is long, probably waist-length.

  When I see the bloody, formless flesh that was once her face, I feel my knees start to buckle.

  Just like Kenny.

  Near her head lies a rock, also bloody.

  I turn away, a wave of nausea washing over me.

  “You said the medical examiner’s been here?” Manfred says, apparently unaffected.

  “Right,” Svante says.

  “And?”

  “Shot and killed, and then received blunt force trauma to the head.”

  “In that order?” Manfred asks.

  “Yes. Otherwise, there would have been significantly more bleeding from the wounds on the head. But we’ll see what the autopsy shows.”

  “Hmmm,” Manfred says. “And we have no idea who she is?”

  “Not the faintest.”

  Manfred turns to me.

  “Anyone you recognize from Ormberg?”

  I force myself to look at the woman again. At the hair flowing out into the snow. Push away the memory of Kenny.

  The woman doesn’t look the least bit familiar.

  Even though her face is destroyed beyond recognition, I’m sure she’s not from Ormberg. I would have recognized her.

  “She’s not from here,” I say, considering the unimaginable coincidence of two murder victims found in the same place, eight years apart.

  “Any ballistic findings?” Manfred asks, turning to Svante again.

  “The gunshot wound in the chest comes from a rifle, that much we know. But we haven’t found any cartridges or cases.”

  “Could the shooting be hunting-related?” Manfred asks.

  “It’s not very likely that somebody would accidentally shoot a woman wandering around barefoot in the woods, is it?”

  Svante laughs a little at his own comment, but Manfred doesn’t seem to be amused.

  “Are there a lot of guns around here? Do a lot of people hunt?”

  Svante laughs even louder now, and I know why. Manfred’s comment reveals just how little he knows about Ormberg.

  “Lord. If I had a penny for every rifle hidden in a house out here…”

  Manfred nods. Then he cocks his head and leans in toward the body on the ground.

  “The face is pretty badly damaged.”


  I force myself to look at the woman’s face again. It’s a formless red mass of crushed tissue. Her eyes are two wells of frozen blood.

  I sway and almost fall off the plastic disk. The forest spins around me, and my mouth goes dry.

  Manfred grabs my shoulders.

  “If you’re going to puke, please do it elsewhere,” he says drily.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  I’m not okay, but I can’t exactly say that to Manfred. This is exactly what I wanted: hunting down real criminals, working on the worst crimes.

  And now I’ve gotten far more than I wished for.

  It’s one thing to see dead people in a picture, or even on an autopsy table—the clinical environment takes the edge off of the horror.

  But this.

  I glance at the woman’s face again. At the fleshy, bloody hollows in her face. A tiny piece of bark sticks out of one cavity.

  The thought of Kenny pops into my head again and the nausea returns.

  “A horrible way to die,” Svante mutters.

  Neither Manfred nor I answer, but I think he’s absolutely right.

  It’s so wrong, so unfair, so against nature.

  The woman on the ground isn’t old. She could have lived for many more years if someone hadn’t believed they had the right to take her life.

  She was someone’s daughter, maybe even someone’s mother or sister.

  Now she’s nothing, just a pile of frozen meat under a mutilated spruce.

  The snow has started to fall again. The wind catches the flakes, and they dance around us where we squat.

  The flash of a camera lights up the scene.

  “Can you walk me through what we know about what happened?” Manfred asks, rising with some effort.

  For a moment, I think the plastic disk might break under his weight.

  Svante and I rise, too.

  “Probably shot first and then placed here, under the tree. Then the face was beaten. We believe that stone was used.”

  We look over at the bloody stone—the size of a grapefruit—lying next to the head of the woman.

  Another flash lights up the glade.

  “Interesting,” Manfred says, looking at the body in the snow and cocking his head to the side.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, but the outlines of the dead woman are burned into my retina by the flash. The holes that were once her eyes stare back at me.

  “Any footprints? Can we see which direction the victim or perpetrator came from?”

  Svante shakes his head, making the tassel on his stocking cap bounce from side to side.

  “There was no snow this weekend, so…”

  Manfred nods.

  “Of course. Damn, I didn’t think of that.”

  The forest starts to spin again, and I grab Manfred’s shoulder.

  Another flash.

  I close my eyes, feel the nausea coming. Sob and turn around. Make my way over the plastic disks as fast as I can, jogging toward Andreas, who’s still standing next to the floodlights.

  “You okay?” he asks as I squeeze by him.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  I take one more step. Heaving again.

  More flashes.

  Even though my eyes are closed, I can’t turn off the image of that scene.

  “I told you I’m fine.”

  “Malin. The technicians need to swab us.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s routine. We may have contaminated the crime scene. They save our DNA in the elimination register.”

  “Whatever,” I say, and open my mouth as the young woman in white clothes comes over.

  She puts the Q-tip into my mouth and rubs it against the inside of my cheek.

  Andreas is approaching behind me. The snow crunches under his steps.

  “Are you done?” I ask the technician.

  “Yes, thank you,” she says, sticking the Q-tip into a small bag.

  I nod, turn around, and vomit into the snow.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t stop shaking until I’m in bed in my childhood bedroom with a down-filled blanket pulled up to my nose.

  Mom’s hand rests heavily on my shoulder as she scrutinizes me worriedly.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea?”

  “Yes. I just want to sleep. But thanks anyway.”

  Mom nods. Bends down, gives me a light kiss on my cheek, and strokes my nose with her finger, just like she always used to when I was little.

  I feel the warmth of her hand radiating against my cheek and inhale the familiar, comforting smell of soap and cooking that is her. Part of me wants to reach for her and keep her here, as if I were still a little child and she were my only real security.

  But instead I lie still, watch her leave the room and close the door gently behind her.

  Outside, the darkness presses against the window like a big black animal, and for a moment I’m afraid that the panes might break under its weight, and the winter night might flow like cold water into a sinking ship.

  I knew it would be like this—that this investigation would drag up so much shit I’ve spent years trying to forget.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and moments later I see him in front of me.

  Kenny.

  The sandy, somewhat stringy hair. The slanted green eyes and high cheekbones. Hands that were hard and lips that were soft. Arms pocked with mosquito bites, and his back slick with sweat as we made love.

  That night, when we found the skeleton, we’d just started dating. I don’t even remember if we’d had sex yet.

  We were together for two years—a long time for anyone but an eternity at that age. We weren’t that compatible, and yet I was so in love with him I almost peed my pants every time I saw him.

  I don’t want to, but no matter how hard I struggle to suppress it, I can’t help thinking about that autumn evening when it all went to hell.

  We’d been partying at the old mill. Me, Kenny, Anders, and two other girls. Kenny had brought along two bottles of moonshine he’d nicked from his dad, and everyone was trashed.

  Everyone except Anders, who was taking some kind of antibiotics for tonsillitis, which absolutely couldn’t be mixed with alcohol.

  As I remember it, we had quite a bit of fun, at least until one of the girls vomited into Kenny’s hair and he had to wash it out in the ice-cold water of the creek.

  After that, the party was over.

  Anders, who’d just gotten a driver’s license, was assigned to drive Kenny’s dad’s old Renault home.

  I remember the mood started getting better as soon as we got into the car, as if the warmth of that cramped compartment reawakened our desire to party.

  Kenny, who sat in the passenger seat in the front, turned the radio up all the way, rolled down the windows to blast the music out, and shouted that he wanted a beer.

  I found some beer cans on the floor, picked one up and handed it to him from my place right behind him, and then…

  It was just some stupid whim. A terrible and bizarre event that would have a huge impact on the next few years of my life.

  For some reason, Kenny got the idea that we should lean out the front and back passenger-side windows and I should hand the beer to him that way. So he unbuckled his seatbelt, got up on his wobbly legs, and hunched over so as not to hit the ceiling. Then he stuck his head and his upper body out the window.

  I did the same from the back, then opened a beer can and stretched it toward Kenny.

  I remember we both shouted loudly and toasted, our hair flapping in the wind, rain whipping against our faces.

  We were just some drunk kids in the middle of nowhere who had no idea our youth was about to end in less than a minute.


  The road in front of us was a blur of darkness and rain that autumn evening. Kenny’s upper body was still sticking outside the window when I sensed something next to the road, maybe a hundred meters in front of us. I shouted at Kenny to watch out and got back down into my seat. But instead of doing the same, Kenny turned and stared forward, in the direction we were driving.

  That was it.

  A bunch of overgrown children. An idiotic game.

  Then came the thud.

  Maybe the weather made it impossible for Anders to see, or maybe he was distracted by what was happening inside the car. Whatever it was, he didn’t notice the timber trailer that someone had parked next to the road while we were partying.

  We didn’t crash into the trailer, we just passed very close by it. Close enough for Kenny to be hit in the face by one of the logs.

  Afterward he looked like the woman at the cairn.

  Afterward his face was gone.

  Jake

  “So freakin’ cool!”

  Saga leans over the Eiffel Tower, examining the middle section and smiling widely. Her pink hair is almost luminous in the light of the desk lamp. Outside it’s dark. Neither the forest nor the creek is visible, only a blackness that turns the window into a mirror.

  I never texted Saga—I forgot after I found Dad’s rifle under the couch. But she came anyway; she just showed up.

  Because Saga doesn’t ask for permission.

  She does what she wants, and if you want to hang out with her, you have to accept that.

  “Thank you,” I say, looking at the Eiffel Tower.

  “And you only used beer cans?”

  “And some glue and wire.”

  “So cool. You are a genius! You know that, right?”

  She gives me a quick hug, and then our eyes meet.

  Something knots inside my stomach. I don’t know what to say. That happens pretty often with Saga: that I sort of lose my train of thought. Either because what she says is so crazy, or because she stands close to me and looks at me. It’s not uncomfortable, but it feels like I’ve got a mouthful of rocks and my legs get warm and soft, like cooked spaghetti.

  Saga bounds across the room, jumps onto the bed, and sits cross-legged. Then she says:

  “You’re definitely gonna get an A for that. Sweet!”