”You were right,” Andreas says, looking down at the medallion resting in his hand.
“I wish I’d been wrong. We can probably rule out that Peter suffered some accident now.”
“Hanne and Peter must have been on the trail. They must have gone somewhere on Friday and then…”
He leaves the sentence unfinished.
“But why didn’t they tell anyone else?”
Neither of us says anything. Even though we just made a crucial discovery, I feel no joy. There is so much that feels hopeless: the realization that something terrible probably happened to Peter, Hanne’s tangible confusion in Berit’s kitchen, and the memory of Nermina Malkoc’s skull between the heavy, moss-covered stones of the cairn.
And then the woman without a face; she looked just like…
Before I even think his name, my temples start to sweat and my pulse races.
Why did I say yes to this fucking assignment anyway? I should have stayed in Katrineholm, continued with the bicycle thefts, the drunken fights, and the never-ending paperwork.
Andreas drums his fingers on the medallion, as if lost in thought. A moment later it clicks open in his hand, like a clam. And I suddenly remember what Esma said, that the medallion could be opened and that Azra kept a photo of Nermina inside.
“Turn on the light!” Andreas says, and I do. Fumble for the ceiling lamp, which floods the car with a light so bright I have to squint.
Andreas looks disgusted.
“What in the hell is that?”
I look down at the medallion and see a photo, but I see something else, too. At first I think it’s just a dark piece of fluff on top of the picture. I run a trembling finger over its downy, silk softness.
I catch my breath.
“Hair,” I say. “It’s hair.”
* * *
—
It’s ten o’clock by the time we pull up outside our temporary headquarters, having decided to drive by and drop off the medallion. Tomorrow, we’ll send it to the forensic technicians. I need to pick up my car, too. It’s parked, or rather snowed in, outside the old store.
The cold wind sneaks in under my coat as we push our way toward the door through a new layer of snow.
It whines and whistles around the corner of the building.
A man comes running out of a red Audi parked not far away. Seconds later, another car door opens.
“The fourth estate is in place,” Andreas says, and starts to hurry.
I too increase my pace to escape the journalists.
And I glance into the store window.
To my surprise I see a light coming from the back office, which casts a ghostly shine across the floor of the old store.
“Why’s the light on?” I ask.
It’s Friday night, and even if Andreas and I are planning to work the whole weekend, Manfred had decided to go home to his family in Stockholm. He should have left several hours ago.
“Maybe he forgot to turn it off,” Andreas suggests as he pulls open the door.
We enter without paying any heed to the journalist shouting behind us. Then stomp the snow off our boots.
The heater is running, too. Its dull drone fills the room—like hundreds of insects flying around in the half-darkness.
Manfred is sitting at the table when we enter the office.
His laptop is closed and his papers stand in a neat pile next to his briefcase, as if he were about to leave. His phone lies on top of the papers.
“You’re still here?” I ask.
Manfred doesn’t answer. In fact, he doesn’t even look at us where we stand with snow melting off of our coats.
“We met with Esma,” Andreas begins. “Hanne has a piece of jewelry in her possession that we think belonged to Azra Malkoc.”
Manfred nods quickly, as if his thoughts are elsewhere. His eyes are focused on an invisible point on the wall next to me.
“A lot has happened,” he says.
We wait for him to continue, but he just shakes his head slowly. In the end he clears his throat and continues:
“First of all, we got a tip from some seventeen-year-olds from Vingåker. They claim they saw a dark Volvo station wagon, an older model, parked on the road between the cairn and the old mill, the night Peter disappeared and the woman was murdered.”
“Is it credible?” Andreas asks. “Why didn’t they inform us earlier?”
Manfred looks down at his large chapped hands. Pokes at a cuticle with one thumb.
“They claimed they were driving mopeds from Vingåker.”
Andreas shakes his head uncomprehendingly.
“And?”
I give Andreas a discreet poke in the side.
“They were driving a car,” I say. “But they don’t have a license. That’s why they didn’t tell us earlier, isn’t it?”
Manfred nods, and continues.
“Seems likely. They saw a dark Volvo. There was a bald man sitting in the car.”
I catch my breath.
“Stefan Birgersson,” I say. “The description fits. And he has a dark blue Volvo.”
“We’ll pick him up tomorrow,” Manfred says. “I’m calling the prosecutor soon, but I’m pretty sure we have enough for an arrest.”
Manfred rises slowly. Goes to the wall and stands in front of the image of the faceless woman in the snow. Lifts his hand, pushes his index finger against the glossy paper, and says:
“But there’s something else. The medical examiner called. The DNA analysis of the murdered woman is complete.”
“Already?” Andreas says. “It usually takes—”
“It’s a high-priority case,” Manfred interrupts him. “They put everything else aside.”
“And?” I say.
Manfred shakes his head slowly.
“Her DNA profile is suspiciously similar to Nermina Malkoc’s.”
“What does that mean?” Andreas says.
It takes a few seconds before I make the connection.
The room starts to spin, and the dull buzz of the heater gets louder, as if those insects had multiplied, had become a gigantic black swarm of blowflies with shiny green bodies and compound eyes and were about to attack us in our little office.
I slide down into one of the chairs and grab the edge of the table, suddenly afraid I might fall over; it feels like the floor is heading up toward me.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “It’s her mother, isn’t it? The woman in the cairn is Azra Malkoc, isn’t she?”
“Very closely related,” Manfred says. “That’s all they can say with certainty right now. But yes. The guy I talked to admitted it’s most likely Azra Malkoc.”
Jake
Saturday morning is silent and gray.
Cold leaks in through the window, and I crawl farther down under the covers in search of a warmth that isn’t there.
I am so angry with Hanne. Maybe I’m disappointed, too, I don’t really know.
Can you even be angry and disappointed with a person you’ve never met?
Hanne doesn’t like Ormberg. Or my family, or our house. And she thinks Melinda is pudgy and cheap.
As if Hanne is so freaking great.
I think Hanne’s being unfair—I don’t agree that Dad smells bad or that the extensions on our house look like cancerous tumors.
Cancer makes me think of Mom: of her soft hands and long, narrow nose. Of her hair, which was light on top and dark underneath, and of her voice, which was almost always kind. Of the English romances about love “against all odds,” which she read when she was at the hospital in Örebro.
Her scent changed when she got sick.
Before, she always smelled good, as if she’d just showered. But then, after she started taking all those medications, her smell turned chemical in some
way, as if they were pumping something poisonous into her. And that was exactly what they did. Chemotherapy is poison, explained the doctor, who came from Iran and whose name was Hadiya, and who had nice breasts and good makeup.
The poisons made Mom tired.
She lost her hair and nails and vomited into a plastic bucket. And still she was always happy. Happy and so interested in what I was doing in school.
She promised she’d get better, but she lied.
Adults do that.
I know it’s to protect their children, but I wish she had been honest, because I was so unprepared for the day her body decided it couldn’t go on. I was even angry, though of course she couldn’t help getting cancer and dying.
It was nobody’s fault, Dad said, but I blamed God, because He seemed to make mistakes about as often as He did the right thing.
Everything changed after Mom was gone.
Dad seemed to deflate, like a popped balloon. As if he got smaller for real, and he didn’t have the energy to do anything. Melinda, on the other hand, seemed to get bigger and stronger. Instead of sitting in her bedroom listening to music or making out with her boyfriend, she started doing the cooking and shopping and everything else that Mom used to do.
I guess I changed, too, I just don’t know how. Something inside me must have been rearranged, even if I looked the same on the outside. Just like when I kissed Saga.
Dad never talks about how he changed. He only talks about other things, like Arabs or Melinda’s skirts, which are way too short.
Dad and Olle have begun talking about starting some kind of citizens guard. Dad says the murder of the woman in the forest was “the straw” and that it’s their duty to protect the women of Ormberg, even if it means “giving a few Arabs hell.”
I asked how he could be sure the Arabs were dangerous, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he hit the door of the fridge so hard ice cubes rolled out of the icemaker and onto the floor.
I can’t imagine Olle and Dad standing guard here in Ormberg. Where would they even go—there’s just woods. Would they tramp around randomly through the snow hunting Arabs?
And where would they keep their beers while they were on duty?
I pick up the diary from the floor and weigh it in my hand.
Last night, I actually considered throwing it away, but the more I think about it, the more I’m sure I have to finish reading it. Especially now, when Dad’s involved.
We felt quite low when we left the Birgersson family.
The misery isn’t isolated to them.
Ormberg breathes decay and dejection: abandoned factories, closed stores, crumbling houses.
The suspicion toward the refugees isn’t so strange in that context.
That’s how it works, isn’t it?
The brain looks for causal relationships. It’s easy to blame the refugees for your misfortunes. To believe that unemployment, depopulation, and decline of public resources are their fault.
And when you stand there, deprived of your livelihood and dignity, it’s very tempting to point the finger at someone else.
Immigrants, for example.
I think of Nermina. Her bones in the photos: white, weathered. Long dead.
She’s resting now under a headstone that bears no name.
I have to help her!
Afternoon.
P & I met with Margareta Brundin (Malin’s aunt). She lives with her adult son Magnus south of Orm Mountain.
Magnus & Margareta’s relationship seems symbiotic, on the verge of unhealthy. I was immediately curious and wanted to find out more. (I’m going to ask Malin at the earliest opportunity.)
Margareta said she hadn’t had any contact with anyone at the refugee camp—not in the nineties and not now—and that she and Magnus steer clear of that place.
I asked why.
She explained that she had no “business” there and neither did her son. Then she said she didn’t believe the killer had come from Ormberg.
I asked how she could know that.
Her answer was what I expected: Everyone knows each other in Ormberg. It had to be an outsider.
Very strange—everyone says the same thing: There are no murderers in Ormberg. The perpetrator must come from the refugee camp / Katrineholm / Stockholm / Germany.
It’s almost like they had a public meeting in the village to go through their talking points!
We went back to the office without learning a thing.
Evening again.
P’s out and jogging (in the dark, with a headlamp—why would anyone do such a thing?). I think he’s having a midlife crisis. He’s become so silent and withdrawn. He’s started running more than usual. Examines his body critically in the mirror.
Poor P: It’s not enough that he has to deal with my aging, he must be wrestling with his own mortality, too.
No! I don’t feel sorry for him at all!
He’s never had to take care of me, not until now. I’ve just loved him. Never made any demands. Never extracted any promises about our future.
I have been so damn accommodating, like a worn-out, shapeless bra.
I’ll admit one thing: I’m extremely angry. Bitter about the life that gave me this disease. And yes, I’m angry at P sometimes, too, because I know he’ll leave me when I get worse. I think I’m taking my anger out in advance. Because I KNOW it will happen!
P is like a bent little tree on the side of a mountain: He bends with the wind, adapts, follows the path of least resistance.
You might even call him spineless.
He said it didn’t matter that I was sick when we got together, he’d love me no matter what happened.
I don’t know if it was a conscious lie or wishful thinking on his part, but I knew even then it wasn’t true.
Maybe I’m the real villain in this drama: cold, egocentric, and driven by urges. Because I knew all this, but wanted him anyway.
It was like eating pastries even after you know you should stop. I wanted to have that wonderful, indulgent time: the trip to Greenland, the passion. The slight sense of irresponsibility & closeness in the middle of all that was bad.
A drug.
P has been a drug for me. A wonderful drug I absolutely do not want to quit.
So who am I to blame him now?
I look out the window. Get a glimpse of a light. It bobs up and down, approaching slowly.
P is on his way back.
The doorbell rings—I hear it clearly, even though my bedroom door is closed.
At first, I think it’s Saga—we didn’t make any plans today, but she pops in when she wants to—but then I realize it’s way too early for that. Saga sleeps in late on weekends.
I sneak out of bed, open the door a bit, and hear unknown voices in the hall.
A man and a woman are talking to Dad. It is impossible to make out everything they’re saying, but I hear the man introduce himself as Manfred. After a minute, they come inside and go to the kitchen with Dad.
I go down the stairs, at first hesitantly, but then my curiosity gets the better of me, and I hurry to the kitchen door.
It’s cold, and I’m in a T-shirt and underwear. My skin is covered in gooseflesh, and I shiver as I peek in through the crack in the door.
Dad is sitting with his back to me. He has the checkered blanket around his shoulders, and his neck is shiny, as if from sweat.
Opposite Dad sits Malin Brundin and the fat cop who dresses like a stockbroker—the one Saga and I saw come out of the old grocery store. That must be Manfred.
I suppose that’s the same one Hanne writes about in the book. The man who likes to eat buns.
Malin leans forward and stares at Dad. There’s something about her body language that makes me uneasy. It almost looks like she wants to
jump onto Dad and eat him up.
“And so that’s why we’d like to ask you where you were on Friday.”
Dad runs his hand over his head as if trying to fix the hair that’s no longer there.
“Friday? Hmmm, well. It’s been a few days. So, nope. Don’t really remember.”
“It’s only been a week,” the fat cop says, and crosses his arms over his suit jacket.
“Yes, yes,” Dad says, then falls silent for a while.
Then he stretches a bit and continues:
“Oh right. I was with my buddy Olle. In Högsjö.”
“Are you sure about that?” Malin asks.
Her voice is sharp, and I don’t like it. I’m afraid of what they’re going to do to Dad. He’s not at all sharp and, besides, he seems totally unaware of the danger. I want to scream at him not to trust her, but I can’t. Instead, I stand there stiff and silent behind the door, with the lump in my throat growing ever larger.
“Yes, goddamnit,” Dad says. “I’m sure of it.”
“Because he says you weren’t with him on Friday,” Malin says. “He says you were together on Saturday, which you already told us. Apparently…”
Malin looks down at her notebook and then goes on:
“Apparently you were playing Counter-Strike.”
Malin smiles a bit when she says the last bit, but it’s not a nice smile.
“That may be right,” Dad says. “Maybe that was Saturday. Yes, we played Counter-Strike.”
“So what did you do Friday?” Manfred asks.
“No fucking clue,” Dad says, throwing his arms wide.
“So why did you say you visited Olle on Friday?” Malin asks.
I turn cold inside. They’re trying to set Dad up, that much is obvious. Just like in the police shows on TV. They’re two and Dad is one, and they’re trying to lure him into a trap. Even though he’s just confused and mixing up the days.
“I remembered wrong. Is that illegal?”
Dad’s voice is shrill now.
Neither Malin nor Manfred answer immediately. Then Malin stands up.
“Can I use your toilet?”
“Sure,” Dad says, pointing to the door on the other side of the kitchen.
After She's Gone Page 18