After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  We continue through the corridor into a small office, and each sit down in an armchair.

  The decorations are sparse, but it still feels cozy. Perhaps because of the colorful pillows in the armchairs.

  Gunnel explains she has only twenty minutes for us, then a representative is coming from the county. They have to discuss fire safety routines and “other bureaucratic bullshit.”

  Her laughter rumbles through the room as she says the last bit.

  Andreas takes out his notebook and explains why we’re here.

  “On Tuesday, a woman was found dead in the forest, less than two kilometers from here,” he says, flipping through his notebook. “She was—”

  Gunnel raises her hand. Her bracelets clatter.

  “She’s not from here.”

  Andreas opens his mouth as if to say something, but no words come.

  “How do you know?” I ask. “We haven’t even—”

  “I’ve already heard about her,” Gunnel says. “In her fifties. Long gray hair?”

  Andreas catches my eyes, his expression uncertain.

  “Where did you hear that?” I ask.

  Her face doesn’t change.

  “Ormberg is a very small town. And I keep an eye on all of our residents. No one is missing. If someone had disappeared, I’d know about it.”

  “Okay,” Andreas says. “Very well. Then I have just a few more questions before we go. If we go back a week, to last Friday…December first.”

  Andreas glances down at his notebook.

  “Was that when she was murdered?” Gunnel asks.

  An awkward silence sets in.

  Andreas clears his throat.

  “I can’t discuss that. The preliminary investigation is confidential. But I’d like to know if anything unusual happened that evening.”

  Gunnel’s eyes wander over to the window. Then she slowly shakes her head.

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “We received a tip that you were burning something here.”

  Gunnel blinks and looks uncomprehendingly at Andreas.

  “Burning something? Well, perhaps we did. Yes, a few of the guys tried to, anyway. Until the fire got out of hand. Why? Is that not allowed?”

  “Absolutely. I just wanted to verify that information. We also have a witness who claims that a rolled rug was carried into the refugee camp that evening. A rug that was big enough to hold a body.”

  Gunnel crosses her arms over her chest and looks at us sternly.

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Andreas clears his throat and looks down at his shoes.

  “We have to follow up on every tip,” I explain.

  Gunnel shakes her head.

  “If someone had brought a corpse in here we would have noticed it. And we usually grill lamb sausages and marshmallows, not body parts.”

  Gunnel stands up and starts to pace around the little room. She stops in front of the window. Stares out at the gray day.

  “What’s wrong with people?” she says, more to herself. “There’s so much hate. So many project their anger onto the refugees. Why attack the weakest, people who are already down? Explain that to me?”

  Neither of us says anything. Andreas looks like he’d like to sink into the ground. I’m torn. Of course hatred and violence are terrible, but there’s something annoyingly priggish about Gunnel and her politically correct comments on xenophobia.

  Gunnel continues:

  “And yesterday, that lunatic was here. Ragnhild…”

  “Ragnhild Sahlén?” I say.

  “That’s the one. She was rambling on about a bike she thought one of our residents had stolen. And she threatened to have us shut down.”

  Gunnel walks back to her chair. Sits down again. Andreas meets my eyes.

  “She said that?” he asks.

  Gunnel nods.

  “Did you work here in the early nineties?” I ask in an attempt to change the subject, because even though Ragnhild’s behavior is noteworthy, I find it hard to imagine she had anything to do with the woman in the cairn.

  Gunnel nods and straightens up a bit.

  “Yes, I worked here for a while during the Yugoslavian war. It was the same thing then. People were so freaking upset that the refugees were here. I remember we literally had to sleep in the garden holding a fire extinguisher some nights. Somebody kept setting fire to the bushes in the courtyard. We reported it to the police; they came here several times, but never found out who did it.”

  “Do you remember a five-year-old girl named Nermina Malkoc?” I ask. “She lived here with her mother, Azra Malkoc. They left in December 1993.”

  Gunnel wrinkles her eyebrows and absently fingers the large pendant hanging from her necklace.

  “No. Unfortunately. But I’m not good with names.”

  Andreas takes out a picture of Nermina and hands it to Gunnel. She examines the photo in silence, and then shakes her head.

  “I’m sorry. You should talk to Rut Sten, who was the director here back then. She’s retired now. Or you can try Tony; he was the caretaker.”

  “We talked to Rut,” Andreas says. “She remembered Azra and Nermina, but didn’t know where they went after they left Ormberg.”

  There’s a knock on the door and a young man with a ponytail sticks his head inside.

  “They’re here,” he says. “We’re sitting in the manager’s villa. You coming?”

  Gunnel nods.

  * * *

  —

  “Well?” Andreas says once we’re settled in the car on our way to Gnesta to meet Esma, Azra Malkoc’s sister.

  We’re hoping for some clue that might help us find Nermina’s mother.

  “Well, what?” I ask.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it.”

  “You need to fucking drop this,” I say. “How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a racist?”

  I think of our argument in front of Manfred yesterday. About what Andreas said, that it could have been me who had to flee from war and starvation. Such a cheap shot. Andreas isn’t just an egocentric male chauvinist pig, he obviously wants to prove he’s morally superior at my expense.

  Manfred must think I’m the worst kind of racist at this point, thanks to Andreas’s bullshit.

  We sit in silence for the rest of the drive to Gnesta. Dusk falls outside. The snow starts to fall just as we reach Gnesta’s central square.

  Andreas parks the car outside the gray three-story apartment building Esma Hadzic lives in.

  I wrap my coat tighter around my body as we jog the last bit from the parking lot to the entrance. The snow that swirls around us in the darkness absorbs all sound, so the only thing we can hear is the crunch of our boots on the thin crust of the snow.

  Esma opens the door after two buzzes. She’s tall and dark, with finely drawn features. Her hair is cut in a short bob. She looks to be around fifty, but her face has something childish, almost doll-like about it, as if the wrinkles were just a mask that could be pulled off to reveal a girl’s face.

  Only when I take her hand do I notice she’s leaning on a crutch, and that her fingers are gnarled like old tree branches.

  She notices my look.

  “Rheumatism,” she says curtly. “I’ve been on disability for more than twenty years.”

  Then she heads toward the kitchen, leaning on her crutch and gesturing to us to follow.

  We take off our boots and coats and head after her.

  The apartment is small, clinically clean, and painted in bright colors. The floors in the hall and the living room are covered with drab oriental rugs, but the walls are as bare as a monastery. The kitchen feels Spartan, too. A table and four chairs stand in the middle of the linoleum floor. There are no curtains, flowers, or decorations.r />
  We sit down and Esma serves us coffee and gingerbread cookies. I immediately feel guilty seeing her struggle to hand us cups with her stiff hands.

  “Can I help?” I ask.

  “No,” she says firmly, and sets a cup in front of me.

  She pours a coffee for herself, and then sits down very slowly next to Andreas.

  “Is it Nermina?” she asks in a steady, but weak voice.

  Her Swedish is perfect, but I detect a slight accent. Andreas clears his throat, and I can see his look wander to Esma’s disfigured hands.

  “As our colleague explained when he called, we’re not completely sure yet. We need to confirm her identity with a DNA sample from a relative. But there are several things that indicate it could be Nermina who was found near Ormberg in 2009. There were metal plates in the radial bone of one of her forearms, probably put there during a wrist operation. And if we understand correctly, Nermina broke her wrist in the winter of 1993.”

  Esma’s eyes move up to the kitchen light. Her eyes are shiny, and she blinks fast a few times.

  “It was in the middle of November. She fell down from a tree at the refugee camp and landed on her hand when she fell. They operated on her in Katrineholm. She came home that same day, but had to go back three days later because of a high fever. She was in hospital for several days before coming home again. Azra was so worried. This…skeleton they found. The girl in the cairn. Do you know when she died?”

  “The medical examiner believes she died just a few months after the wrist surgery, because the injury hadn’t completely healed. If it is Nermina, that means that she died sometime in early 1994. But the body was only found eight years ago. They failed to make an identification at the time, so the case was abandoned until we started working on it at the end of November.”

  Esma nods.

  “And how did this girl…who might be Nermina…die?”

  “Blunt force trauma,” Andreas says. “It could have been either an accident or an assault. Would you like to know the details?”

  Esma takes a deep breath, then nods so that some of her dark hair falls onto her face. She pushes it away with her bent fingers.

  “Yes. I want to know. Virtually my whole family died in the war, and I had to identify almost every single one. I’ve held pieces of my husband’s leg in Tuzla. I buried my brothers in Srebrenica. I visited the mass graves in Kamenica and the football field in Nova Kasaba where thousands of boys and men were held before execution. You just need to know; that’s how it works. After everything else has been taken away, knowledge is the one thing that helps you move on. Do you understand?”

  Andreas nods silently. Fumbles with the papers in his bag, takes out a map of Ormberg and some postcards of the cairn. He lays them carefully in front of Esma. Then he tells her about the cairn and the skeleton found there in 2009. Explains how the investigation hit a dead end, but that the police are now making an investment in cold cases. He concludes by explaining how the medical examiner was able to identify the body.

  I sigh with relief that he doesn’t mention I was the one who found Nermina.

  Esma stiffens when Andreas shows her the picture of the cairn. She sits immobile for a few seconds, then whimpers loudly, and puts her hands on the paper. Strokes her swollen, gnarled hands over the trees and rocks.

  “Nermina,” she says. “Nermina, my love. Were you lying under those stones?”

  Then she buries her face in her hands and sobs.

  Andreas reaches for a roll of paper towels with hearts on it and tears off a piece. Hands it to Esma, who thanks him and wipes her nose.

  She sits immobile for a few seconds, then seems to collect herself. Crumples up the paper towel with difficulty and lays it on the table.

  “It’s not certain it’s Nermina,” I say quietly, though I know the likelihood that it’s anyone else is quite small.

  “Of course it’s her,” Esma says brusquely. “Besides. I already knew they were dead. But still, it hurts.”

  “What do you mean?” Andreas asks. “How could you know they were dead?”

  Esma raises an eyebrow.

  “Azra was my little sister. It’s been almost twenty-five years since she and Nermina disappeared from the refugee camp in Ormberg. The only reasonable explanation for why she hasn’t contacted me is that she’s dead.”

  “You say she disappeared. But the former director at the camp said that she and Nermina left,” I point out.

  Esma smiles sadly, brings her cup to her mouth and takes a sip of hot coffee.

  “Disappeared, left. Azra believed their applications for a residence permit were going to be rejected. She was going to try to get to Stockholm.”

  “I thought all Bosnians were allowed to stay during the war,” Andreas says.

  Esma shakes her head.

  “In the summer of 1993, the parliament issued permanent residence permits to fifty thousand Bosnians in Sweden. But at the same time, a visa requirement was introduced for Bosnia. Not because the situation had stabilized, but because they wanted to reduce the flow of refugees.”

  Esma snorts a bit when she says the last bit. Then she continues:

  “Azra and Nermina were in Croatia at that time. They managed to get Croatian passports and were able to enter Sweden despite the visa requirement. But that meant they had problems getting the residence permit. Even though they could prove they were actually Bosnians.”

  “So they went underground?” Andreas asked.

  Esma nods.

  “Azra didn’t think they’d be allowed to stay. And there was no future for them there, not in Croatia or in Bosnia.”

  “Do you remember the day they disappeared?” Andreas asks.

  Esma nods.

  “The fifth of December.”

  Andreas records the date in his notebook.

  “Do you know where in Stockholm they were planning to go?” he asks.

  “No. I’m sorry. I have no idea. I just know they knew someone who was going to help them get to Stockholm, but I don’t know where they were planning to go or who that person was. I do think Azra had friends in Stockholm. Other Bosnians, who’d arrived earlier.”

  “You mentioned to our colleague that Azra was pregnant when she disappeared,” I say. “Is that right?”

  Esma blinks a few times.

  “Yes. She told me that.”

  “How far along was she?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. But she wasn’t showing yet. I think she got pregnant in the summer, just before going to Sweden. But, of course, Azra was skinny as a rail for most of her first pregnancy, so I can’t be sure.”

  “How did she feel?”

  Esma shrugs. “She felt good.”

  “Psychologically as well?”

  Esma looks at me. There’s a subtle caution in her eyes.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “We need to know,” I say without any further explanation.

  “Psychologically she was doing great,” Esma says sharply.

  Andreas clears his throat.

  “Her husband?” he asks.

  “Dead,” Esma says matter-of-factly. “They never found him. He returned to Bosnia from Croatia, and nobody knows what happened after that. He’s probably buried in one of the mass graves. They’ll never find everyone who disappeared.”

  Andreas carefully gathers up the pictures, puts them into the folder, and returns them to his bag.

  “Nermina’s body was found in 2009,” he said. “Did you know about that? A little girl was found dead in Ormberg? It was covered pretty extensively in the newspapers.”

  Esma shakes her head and pokes the little ball of paper towel.

  “No. Or, I don’t know. Not that I remember anyway. If I heard about it on the news, I certainly didn’t connect it to Nermina. And why would I? It had b
een so long. And I thought she was with Azra.”

  Her voice dies out.

  “You said you knew that Azra and Nermina were dead,” I say. “You don’t think Azra could be in hiding? That someone killed Nermina, but Azra survived? She might live in Stockholm or—”

  Esma interrupts me.

  “Are you serious?”

  Esma’s beautiful, lined face turns hard, and she stretches a bit. Catches my eye, and squeezes her cup so hard her knuckles turn white.

  “She would have contacted me if she could,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t that important to her to be in Sweden. She wouldn’t stay in hiding for over twenty years. Sweden’s not exactly worth it.”

  Esma stares out the black window. A few snowflakes swirl by, almost hovering in the light of the kitchen lamp.

  Her comment provokes something in me, irritation perhaps. I guess I’m surprised she’s not more grateful that she found a refuge here. Or that she was allowed to stay, despite the end of the war. Some might argue there’s no logical reason why Esma should be allowed to live on a Swedish disability pension year after year when she could just as well return to her own country. And I can see their point.

  “Could she have returned to Bosnia?” Andreas asks.

  Esma shrugs.

  “You mean would she have returned after the war? Yes, I suppose it’s possible. I actually thought she and Nermina had gone to Bosnia when I didn’t hear from them. But even if she had, she would have contacted me. We were very close, Azra and I, even though I’m seven years older. I was almost like a mother to her. No. I don’t believe she’s alive.”

  * * *

  —

  We stay just a little longer at Esma’s. Andreas swabs the inside of her cheek so the technicians can compare her DNA to what we think belongs to Nermina. He puts the swab in a small plastic bag and stuffs it into a brown envelope.

  Then Esma brews another pot of coffee and shows us pictures from Bosnia. The photo album is bound in green leather and embossed in gold. It’s so old the pages stick together. Even though the Polaroids are faded, I’m struck by the dazzling green of the Bosnian hills.