After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  “So what do we do now?” Suzette says to her nails.

  “We need to address four main questions,” Manfred says. “First of all, I want to know everything I can about Stefan Birgersson. Background, what he was up to on Friday, which boards he nailed together at the refugee camp, who he’s fucking, and how the hell he likes his eggs cooked.”

  Manfred writes “Stefan Birgersson” on the board.

  “I think he mostly drinks beer,” Andreas says.

  Suzette suppresses a laugh.

  Manfred continues as if he didn’t hear:

  “And if Hanne dropped a single hair on his property I want it found during that search, understood? Then we need to map out exactly who worked and lived at the refugee camp in the beginning of the nineties. Azra and Nermina didn’t have much contact with the people outside. The probability that the perpetrator lived there, or visited it at some point, is high. In addition, Esma said someone was helping them get to Stockholm. Who was it? Could it have been Stefan Birgersson? And be sure to look up that old caretaker the director mentioned, Tony.”

  Manfred writes “the refugee camp” on the whiteboard in big red letters.

  “Thirdly,” he continues. “Thirdly, we need to find out where Azra Malkoc went after her daughter’s death. Nobody disappears for twenty years without leaving a trace. We have to double-check with the Swedish and Bosnian authorities, make sure we haven’t missed anything. And we have to contact all of Azra’s relatives. There has to be somebody left, even if they bombed the shit out of each other during the war. Contact all the delivery clinics as well. Check if Azra, or any anonymous woman who may have been Azra, gave birth to a child in 1994.”

  Manfred writes “Azra” on the board.

  “And the fourth?” Andreas asks.

  “And fourthly,” Manfred says, and puts his marker to the board again.

  It squeaks as he writes the words “Peter & Hanne.”

  “We have to find Peter, figure out what happened that night,” he says quietly. “They knew something. There are several threads we can pull on here: We can continue knocking on doors, say we have to find Peter’s car. And it would be a damn good thing if we could get ahold of Hanne’s diary, too, because I’m convinced she wrote down every step they took.”

  I bend forward and meet Manfred’s eyes.

  “We’ve searched everywhere for that book. It’s not in their hotel and not in our office. I think she had it with her when she disappeared, so it could be in Peter’s car or in—”

  “Just find the damn book,” Manfred growls.

  I nod without a word.

  “I thought of something else,” Andreas says. “The cairn. Why were both Azra and Nermina found there?”

  “It may be a coincidence,” I suggest.

  Manfred stands up, readjusts his jacket, and goes over to the map of Ormberg that hangs on the wall. The contour lines around the Orm Mountain make it look like a huge, open eye, staring at us from the wall.

  Manfred stands there with his back to us, swaying a little. Then he takes a pen from his jacket pocket and says quietly:

  “Nermina. Azra. Hanne’s bloody shoe.”

  He draws a ring around the cairn.

  A thick red ring.

  And then one more and one more. The pen scratches against the paper as the blood red circles grow.

  Someone knocks on the door, but nobody moves or says anything—everyone is hypnotized, their eyes glued to the map.

  Manfred turns around and meets my eyes. Slowly puts the pen back into his pocket.

  “Does this look like a coincidence?” he asks rhetorically.

  And at that very moment there’s another knock on the door, and it opens gently and a young, dark-haired woman, whom I recognize vaguely, enters.

  “Gunnel Engsäll called from the refugee camp in Ormberg,” she says. “She wants to talk to one of you.”

  Manfred crosses his arms over his chest.

  “Tell her we’ll be in touch Monday.”

  The woman in the doorway hesitates. Switching her weight from one foot to another.

  “It was apparently important.”

  “Did you hear me,” Manfred says with exaggerated slowness. “We’ll take it on Monday.”

  “But,” says the woman in the doorway, whose cheeks are now blossoming red. “Apparently, they found a huge pool of blood behind the residency.”

  * * *

  —

  Gunnel Engsäll meets us at the door when we arrive. In the windows I catch a glimpse of worried faces, and I see children pushing their curious faces against the glass. A woman pulls a little girl from the window and holds her protectively close.

  Manfred, Andreas, Malik, and I have driven here to investigate the discovery.

  The others went home.

  It is after all Saturday night, and the likelihood that the bloodstain found here has anything to do with the murders is unlikely.

  Gunnel is wearing a thick puffy coat with reflective stripes on it. Underneath it, I notice the big beetle pendant of her necklace.

  She starts to walk in front of us along the side of the building. She’s holding a flashlight in her hand.

  “It was one of the children, a little girl named Nabila, who found the blood. But I have no idea how long it’s been there. At least since…”

  Gunnel seems to hesitate a little.

  She steps over a fallen branch, clears her throat, and goes on:

  “Yes, in view of everything that’s been happening, I figured it was best if I contacted you right away.”

  “It was very good that you called,” I say.

  We walk around the corner of the building.

  I sense the silhouettes of trees against a black sky.

  Gunnel stops and directs the flashlight at the ground, maybe one and a half meters from the trunk of the nearest tree.

  A big reddish black spot can be seen in the snow. It’s probably fifty centimeters in diameter and seems frozen.

  Malik puts down his large bag and takes out a flashlight. Directs it toward the stain and takes a few steps closer.

  Then he squats down.

  “Looks like blood,” he states matter-of-factly. “And there are traces of drops around the larger spot.”

  Malik points to a few smaller spots surrounding the large puddle of frozen blood.

  “And there’s a long trail of drops running from the tree trunk to this stain.”

  Malik makes a sweeping gesture with his hand.

  “As if an injured person walked from the tree to here,” Andreas says, pointing to the spot.

  “Hmmm,” Malik says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “There are just two problems,” Malik says, and cocks his head to the side so that his long hair rests against his shoulder. “First of all, the blood is lying on top of the snow, like…a glaze. Fresh blood is warm. It should have melted holes in the snow.”

  Gunnel turns her head away, but I can see her disgusted expression.

  Malik continues:

  “And secondly…”

  “There are no footsteps,” Manfred fills in, and nods to the spot in the snow. “If an injured person had walked by here, there would have been tracks in the snow.”

  “Precisely,” Malik says. “There are no footprints between the tree and the bloodstain. But there are many tracks around the tree itself.”

  “Maybe it spattered or gushed over here,” Andreas suggests.

  Malik shakes his head.

  “No. Gushing looks quite different. These are classic drops. The only force that has affected the blood here is the gravity, which has dropped straight into the snow from…”

  Malik stands up, leans his head back, and directs his flashlight upward, toward the branches of the tree.

&nbs
p; And there, maybe four meters above our heads, hangs a bloody, shapeless lump, attached to a rope that’s wrapped around a mighty branch and then goes all the way down the tree trunk.

  Malik follows the rope with the beam of the flashlight. It’s tied to a branch maybe one and a half meters off the ground.

  Then he points the light to the object hanging from the tree again. I see something that looks like pale skin under all that blood.

  “What the fuck,” Manfred mutters.

  Jake

  I’ve been lying in bed almost all day, trying to understand what happened, that the police were actually here this morning, and that they took Dad.

  I keep telling myself everything will be okay.

  Of course the police won’t hurt him, I know that; we don’t live in, well, Africa. But what if they don’t believe him, and decide to keep him in jail in Örebro.

  There’s another fear, too, a fear that’s much deeper and almost impossible to open the door to. It’s so awful I won’t even let myself think it, let alone speak it. It’s like every monster and beast and natural catastrophe combined.

  What if Dad is involved.

  What if they put him in prison, and he disappears, just like Mom.

  When I think about it, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach and something burns behind my eyelids.

  I can’t imagine Dad killing somebody. That’s truly impossible. He’s far too kind and confused. He can’t even cook pancakes or go to parent-teacher conferences—how could he kill somebody? But I can’t stop thinking about the rifle and the bloody, torn shirt behind the basket in the laundry room.

  Plus he’s been acting strange lately. More tired than usual, and surly.

  When I think of all that, I feel like my head might explode, like it might burst into a thousand little pieces, crushed just like my Eiffel Tower.

  I sit up in bed and rock slowly back and forth.

  It’s dark outside again.

  A whole day has gone by without me doing anything.

  I slowly get up and go into Melinda’s room. It’s dark and smells like cigarette smoke. She texted and said she’d be home around six, and she’d bring some food with her.

  I go to the closet and grab the handle—a glittery plastic shell.

  As soon as I open the door, I feel calmer, as if all the clothes inside whisper to me that everything will be fine. That Dad will come home soon, and it will all be normal again.

  I take off my T-shirt and pull on a tight black dress.

  In the dim red light of the bedside lamp, my skin looks like baked ham.

  Melinda’s clothes fit better than Mom’s. They’re smaller and more formfitting, though they still hang a little loose.

  I grab a lipstick from the desk and paint my mouth red. It’s hard to make it look good. I suppose girls have to practice a long time before they get good at it. That it takes years of single-minded practice to get it perfect.

  But I plan to get good at it.

  I’m going to practice and practice until the eyeliner is straight and evenly applied and the red on my mouth is symmetrical. Until the rouge sits on top of my cheekbones and the mascara doesn’t clump under my eyes.

  I’m going to practice until I’m as beautiful as Melinda.

  I put the lipstick back and examine my face in the magnifying mirror on her desk. Two disgusting thick strands of hair protrude from the skin of my upper lip.

  I root around in Melinda’s makeup bag, find the tweezers she uses to pluck her eyebrows, and pull out the hairs by the root. It hurts so much I want to cry, but afterward it feels better. I stand in front of the full-length mirror. Tuck my hair behind my ears and stretch my back up.

  I smile provocatively and the girl in the mirror smiles back, as if we share a secret.

  One day, I think, one day I’ll be you for real.

  It’s a wonderful thought, as liberating as sunshine on bare skin after a long winter, and as exciting as Saga’s soft lips against mine.

  Still, I know it’s wrong.

  I’m a guy, and I can never, ever let anyone see me like this. It’s sick, disgusting, and wrong. It’s against God and nature and all of the unwritten rules of Ormberg.

  Like pissing on a Bible.

  Aberrant: a word I learned yesterday and realized it fits me perfectly. When I googled I found it meant: against nature, abnormal, filthy, distorted, perverted, morbid, unhealthy, and corrupt.

  I am aberrant.

  So why does this feel so good?

  I will become a man one day and no matter what I do, I can’t change that.

  It’s in the genes, in the Y chromosome. And one day, when my body decides it’s time, the fucking Y chromosome will send out his orders to my body to produce the human hormones that will turn me into a monster. A hairy, disgusting monster with swelling muscles and a mind that thinks only about getting what it wants.

  Like the Muslims at the refugee camp. Like Vincent, Albin, and Muhammad. Like every man who ever lived.

  Like Dad.

  We read about it in biology class. I know how it works, and I know it’s inevitable.

  When I think about it, I just want to cry.

  I leave Melinda’s room and go to mine, still wearing the dress. I climb into bed and take out Hanne’s diary. Weigh it in my hands and turn to the page I dog-eared last. The spindly, forward-slanted handwriting is no longer difficult to read; it almost feels like I’ve written it myself.

  A thought occurs to me, a pretty crazy thought, but still. The more I consider it, the more sure I become.

  I’m still angry at Hanne, but still, I think she’d understand me.

  I don’t think Hanne would think I’m aberrant.

  Back to the office. A short briefing.

  Our only suspect right now is Stefan Birgersson, and all we have against him is lying.

  We survey him in detail now.

  He has no criminal past, except he was a suspect in a fire at the old sawmill next to the creek when he was fourteen years old; but he was never proven guilty. He seems to have lived a relatively normal life: wife, two children, worked at Brogrens Mechanical until he was fired for showing up drunk on several occasions. Then things seem to have gone downhill fast: His wife died, his alcohol problems increased.

  I bite my lip so hard I can feel the taste of blood mix with lipstick in my mouth.

  The old sawmill—skinheads from Katrineholm burned that down, that’s what Dad told me so many times. Of course he didn’t burn it down.

  Why would he?

  And he lost his job at Brogrens because the factory shut down.

  Right?

  My stomach feels queasy, as if I’m standing on a precipice staring down into the abyss. But at the same time I’m angry. Mostly I’m angry with Hanne, who accuses Dad of a bunch of things that she doesn’t know shit about. Just when I was starting to forgive her she goes and writes all that bullshit about our family.

  That sinking feeling in my stomach again, and suddenly I know what it is.

  It’s the feeling of not being able to trust anyone.

  It’s the feeling of being completely alone in the world.

  I squeeze the diary tight and keep reading.

  Evening and DARKNESS. In both senses of the word.

  P is out running again. I take the opportunity to write down a few lines.

  A moment ago, I made P sit on the bed so we could talk.

  (There’s only one chair in the room, we have to sit in bed to talk.)

  He seemed surprised and maybe a bit hesitant, but still sat at the edge of the bed, his arms crossed.

  I explained that he seems angry and grumpy. That he doesn’t look at me anymore and treats me like a ghost at work.

  P said I was overreacting. Said he loved me. He leaned over and gave
me an awkward hug.

  And then. BANG!

  I slapped him! I don’t know how it happened—I’m not the violent type. I don’t think I’ve ever hit anyone, not even when I was a child—I was shy, overweight, wore glasses, and was obsessed with Eskimos.

  I became very upset. I apologized over and over again.

  P said it wasn’t me, it was the “disease.” Then he went out running.

  I’m sitting alone writing now. The north wind has started to howl outside our window. It’s really not the weather for a run. I would have worried about him if we hadn’t fought. Been afraid he’d fall down in the dark, get hit by a car.

  But I have no room for any more emotions. I’m filled with emptiness, a horrific and infinite darkness.

  Perhaps Ormberg has finally moved inside me.

  I am interrupted in my reading when Melinda enters my room. When she sees me on the bed she freezes and the smile disappears from her face. And I’m so absorbed by Hanne’s story that I don’t understand why. For a second, I think it’s because the police picked up Dad.

  Then it hits me as hard as one of Vincent’s icy snowballs.

  I’m wearing Melinda’s dress.

  I’m sitting in bed, in a tight black dress, my mouth painted red.

  This must be what dying feels like, I think, just before Melinda rushes out and slams my door behind her.

  Malin

  “Will you ever be ready?”

  Manfred is impatiently watching Malik, who’s spent the last half hour photographing, measuring, and collecting samples.

  “Yep. You can loosen the rope now.”

  Manfred unties the rough rope from the branch and starts to cautiously lower the object from high up in the tree. The branch it’s looped around creaks ominously.

  Andreas points a flashlight at the shapeless, bloody bundle as it approaches.

  It looks like organic matter, yet not quite human. A bit like an unidentifiable, mutilated body part.

  “Jesus!”

  Manfred stumbles, shouts, and loses his grip on the rope, which flies through his bare hands with a whoosh. The object falls into the snow with a muted thump. The snow swirls up around it where it landed.