I wonder what Hanne is doing right now, there in Berit’s little cottage behind the church. And Dad: Have the police let him go?
Melinda and Saga I don’t even want to think about.
I take out my phone, put on the flashlight, and balance it on a huge screw that sticks out from the body of the machine.
Just a few pages left now.
I saw P enter his code into his phone: 3636.
I had no paper nearby, so I wrote it down on my hand so I wouldn’t forget.
I’m gathering my courage now: I intend to check his phone at the soonest opportunity. I suppose I shouldn’t, it’s not what you’re supposed to do: sneak into other people’s phones or diaries. But I need to know.
Half past four.
We told Malin we were making an early night of it. Might go to Katrineholm. Eat something good, something that didn’t taste like cardboard.
She said she was going to work a while longer.
But P didn’t drive to Katrineholm. Instead, he drove far out into the woods to a house I’ve never been to before. Parked behind a tree. Told me to wait in the car and asked me to call him if anybody showed up.
Then he left.
I was prepared to keep watch, but soon discovered that P had forgotten his phone on the driver’s seat, so now I’m sitting here, and I don’t know if I should stay or not.
It’s stormy outside, and the rain lashes against the windshield.
I’m freezing but don’t want to start the car, even though the keys are in the ignition. I don’t dare bother Peter inside the house.
A quarter to five. P has been inside for fifteen minutes now.
My guess is that the owner of the brown van lives here. From here I can just make out part of the house and the garden behind the trees. On the lawn stand some sort of weird wooden figures—two gnomes, a giant mushroom with a red cap, a lamb, and a pair of hugging bears.
Strange: The windows are dark, but I just saw a cone of light moving inside the house.
It must be P!
Why use a flashlight?
Was no one at home? Did P go inside to snoop anyway?
Sounds like him.
Ten ’til five. I’ll wait a little longer. Then go get P if he doesn’t come back.
I’m not going to sit here freezing forever! My toes have turned to ice cubes.
P’s phone is lying on the passenger seat. The code is written on my palm.
Do I dare?
I can’t stand it anymore.
I don’t want to. Life hurts too much.
I checked P’s phone and found a text message to my doctor.
P wrote that I’m worse and doing everything I can to hide it. Said I have terrible, angry outbursts and that he’s afraid I might hurt him or myself. He loves me very much, but doesn’t know if he can take care of me anymore. He asked if it sounded like I was still able to live at home or if there was “another solution.”
The doctor replied that she couldn’t decide anything without seeing me.
I started to cry.
Haven’t I suffered through ENOUGH!
But I feel so ashamed too: I accused him of being cold and distant when really he’s worried about me.
I understood something else when I read their conversation: P is afraid. He’s afraid of being alone. And he’s afraid of not being able to handle the fear.
I’m so embarrassed! And I feel so helpless.
Like when I was nine years old and saw my puppy Ajax fall through the ice.
I stood there watching him struggle. Saw his paws trying to grab onto the ice. Heard his whimpering, until finally he disappeared beneath the water.
This feels the same.
Except now I’m the one who’s drowning.
I’m going to burn this diary when this is all over. Erase the last two weeks of my life. Forget Ormberg and all that happened here. Until we got here life was perfect, despite the disease.
Dear God, I ask of you only this: Help me forget!
P was just here.
He didn’t notice I’d been crying.
He was excited. Said the person he wanted to talk to wasn’t home, but that he’d “nosed around a little in the house” and discovered something important.
He’d measured the kitchen and the room next to it. They should be the same length (sitting wall to wall with the hallway, facing the short side of the house), but the kitchen was missing a meter.
In front of the “missing” space in the kitchen, he found a hidden door, covered by the shelves at the room’s short end with a small lock at the bottom.
Why build a hidden door?
P plans to open it. He wants his phone with him to take pictures. I gave it to him.
He didn’t notice it was unlocked.
I told him to call for reinforcements before going back in. P doesn’t want to.
He also gave me a necklace, a gold chain with a medallion on it. It was apparently firmly wedged on the floor below the hidden door. P asked me to take care of it, said it might be important.
I had no idea where to put it. Was so afraid to forget it somewhere so I put it around my neck.
P is inside again.
I’m waiting in the car.
Shivering from the cold.
The storm is raging outside: leaves, branches—everything is flying around.
It feels like I’m sitting in a tumble dryer.
Something must have happened. Something is very wrong.
P hasn’t come back.
Should I wait or stay?
I’ll g
The words stop.
I flip to the next page, but it’s empty. I flip farther. Freeze when I see big, brown, stiff spots on the paper.
Blood—it has to be blood.
In a few places, there are bloody thumbprints.
Cautiously, I brush my own fingers over the prints. It almost feels like I’m touching her. As if I’ve opened a hole through time, and I’m there with Hanne, can feel her despair and sadness.
Something must have happened in that house with the wooden gnomes outside. A house I’ve been to many times.
Yes, that’s it.
The solution must be there—the answer to what happened to that cop. And to who killed the girl and the woman in the cairn.
The answer that will save Dad.
Malin
It’s as dark as a grave in Ormberg, and the tiny cluster of houses so misleadingly called the downtown lies silent and deserted. Even the journalists who hounded us earlier this week are gone.
Everyone’s at home on this Sunday evening, eating buns and watching TV.
Manfred’s gaze is almost frantic, the corner of his eye twitching as he takes off his coat and sits down at the table. He takes out the little plastic bag with Peter’s phone inside it, gently places it on the table, and opens his laptop.
“The technicians are coming by to retrieve it soon,” he says, nodding to the phone.
His big hands move rapidly across the keyboard, clicking as he writes.
“Have you transferred it over?” Andreas asks.
Manfred slowly turns the computer so we can all see the screen.
And there it is—the picture from Peter’s phone. Manfred emailed it to himself so we could look at it on the computer screen and enlarge it.
We examine the blurry image silently—the forms are distorted, difficult to interpret, the color scale going from sepia to a dark graphite gray.
“Definitely Peter,” I say, pointing to the face seen in the profile on the left.
Manfred zooms in farther and focuses on the person squatting in the right-hand corner. The contours of a skinny arm become visible. The head is bent forward, but the hair is gray and
very long.
“It’s her,” I say. “It’s Azra Malkoc.”
Something shines in her hand.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the object.
“A knife?” Andreas suggests.
“It could be anything reflective,” Manfred says. “A mirror, a metal object.”
“But what if it is a knife,” I say. “What if Azra was dangerous. What if she was the one who murdered Nermina, and maybe even hurt Peter.”
No one says anything.
“And what’s that over there,” I say, pointing to the right of Peter.
It looks like…
“It could be books piled up,” I say.
And as soon as I say it, I know I’m right, the pieces fall into place, my brain interprets the picture correctly, and I’m able to distinguish the objects stacked on top of each other.
“Yes,” Manfred says. “Yes! Hanne said she remembered English books lying on a dirty floor.”
“She must have been there,” I say. “But where are they?”
“Impossible to say,” Andreas says. “We’ll have to see what the image analysts say, but I doubt they’ll find much more.”
“Look at the other picture,” I say. “Of the stairs.”
Manfred clicks forward to that image. It’s much sharper and shows a staircase, which seems to lead into a basement. At the bottom you can see clothes hung neatly on the wall. Dishware sits on a tray on the floor.
No people in sight.
“This must be a basement,” Manfred says. “We’ll check out which nearby properties have basements. The land survey may contain that data, or the city architectural office. I’ll call Svante as soon as we’re done. They can help us. I have to catch a few hours’ sleep tonight.”
“Who took the picture of Peter and Azra?” Andreas asks. “Peter is in the picture, so someone else must have taken it.”
“Hanne,” I say. “Maybe she had Peter’s phone. Maybe that’s why she had the code written on her hand. She may have been the one who left it at the ironworks, too. We can’t know if Peter was ever there.”
Manfred rubs his temples.
“Suppose they were on the trail and ran into Azra Malkoc. We know their phones were in Ormberg. So they found Azra somewhere in the area. I’d guess something went to hell after that. Azra was murdered. Hanne fled or got lost. And Peter…”
He leaves the sentence unfinished. The picture of Peter appears in my mind once more. I glance at the shelf where we put his and Hanne’s things. It took a week before we moved them off the table. It felt so final to clear them away completely, so we placed them on the shelf instead.
Manfred continues:
“Peter may be alive, Peter may be dead. He’s like Schrödinger’s fucking cat. And it’s driving me mad.”
He pauses, his eyes wandering toward the old store, where the floor heater stands humming. Then he shakes his head and continues:
“Why didn’t Peter and Hanne tell me they’d found something new? Why did they keep the rest of us in the dark?”
“Maybe there was no new trail,” I say. “They might have gone to meet someone who was already a suspect and stumbled into Azra Malkoc.”
“Like who?” Manfred leans forward and fastens his eyes on me. I feel how, against my will, my cheeks get hot.
“Stefan Birgersson?” I suggest. “Björn Falk? Or the pedophile, Henrik Hahn? Or maybe they met a witness who turned out to be more than just an innocent messenger. One of the employees at the refugee camp, for example.”
Manfred leans back in his chair. He doesn’t seem entirely convinced.
“Hmmm,” he says.
The door slams and steps approach.
Malik appears in the doorway. He has snow on his shoulders and hat.
“Knock, knock,” he says.
“Howdy,” Andreas says, and raises a hand in greeting. “Are you visiting Ormberg?”
“I’m headed to the ironworks with the technicians. Thought I’d pick up that phone as well.”
Manfred nods to Peter’s phone, in the plastic bag on the table.
Malik stamps the snow off his boots, doffs his hat, runs a hand through his black hair, and gathers it into a bun on top of his head. He fastens it with a black hair tie from around his wrist.
“How did the search go at Stefan Birgersson’s?” Manfred asks him.
“Good. Other than that the daughter was hysterical. We found a torn, bloody shirt in the laundry room. Otherwise, we didn’t find anything remarkable. We’ll see what the technicians say when they’re done. Oh, one thing: There was a sequined dress hanging in the dead mother’s closet. Gold, size thirty-six. I don’t know if it’s important—Stefan Birgersson could hardly have worn it—but we brought it in anyway.”
“Hmmm,” Manfred says again. “Anything else?”
Malik shakes his head.
“Not from the search. However, we did get ahold of Tony.”
“Tony?” Manfred asks.
“I thought Svante had called you,” Malik says, with surprise in his voice. “Suzette talked to a guy named Tony. He worked as a caretaker at the refugee camp in the early nineties. Stefan Birgersson got the boot. He wasn’t employed really, but he was booted after they caught him sneaking around in the garden late one night. He was spying on a resident. And guess what? This was autumn 1993.”
“Azra and Nermina,” I whisper.
Malik reaches for Peter’s phone.
“Exactly. We’re interrogating Stefan Birgersson at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, if you want to join.”
Manfred nods.
“We wouldn’t miss it. And as for these pictures, we probably can’t do much more tonight. Shall we meet at seven-thirty tomorrow morning instead?”
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, Andreas and I are alone—Malik and Manfred have gone.
I go out to the store, turn off the heater, and make sure the bucket is positioned right under the ceiling leak.
Andreas looks at me when I come back. Then he smiles a little. It’s not one of his usual self-confident grins, but more a friendly, almost considerate smile.
“Do you want to come home with me?” he asks.
I stop in mid-movement. I almost deliver one of the caustic remarks I have prepared for these sorts of occasions. But then I look at him, meet his serious expression, and think of everything that’s gone to hell—that bloody pig head, Nermina’s bones, Azra’s faceless body on the autopsy table, and Peter, who’s apparently become Schrödinger’s cat. I think of Kenny who never made it home, of Max who may never come back, and of Mom who lies awake—probably unnecessarily—puzzling over how the wedding can be held as cheaply as possible.
I think of all of it, but more than anything I think of how desperately short life is. A mouse turd in eternity before the darkness comes and extinguishes us all.
I think of something else too: the picture of Hanne in bed with the cover up to her chin. The laughter in her eyes and the love that vibrated off the photo.
Why has it never been like that between Max and me? Have I deliberately chosen to keep love out of my life? Is it because of Kenny?
“Okay,” I say.
Andrea’s face is expressionless, but his eyes widen a bit in surprise.
He hadn’t expected that answer.
“You mean…?”
“Shall we leave before I change my mind?” I say.
We drive through the woods in silence. The spruces have a thick layer of new snow on their branches. A few flakes swirl by in the headlights.
Ormberg is particularly beautiful in the winter. As beautiful as it is dark and deserted.
I don’t know how far we drive—twenty kilometers, maybe thirty. Andreas doesn’t say a word and neither do I. Soon the forest en
ds and is replaced by wide, snow-covered fields. He turns off onto a smaller road, drives past a gas station still lit up. After a bit we come to a small neighborhood of row houses built in the seventies.
We park the car in front of one of the identical, miserably ugly boxy houses and get out. Andreas wrestles a key out of his pocket and unlocks the door. Turns on the light and leads me into the warmth.
“Well, this is where I live.”
The house could have been in Ormberg.
It looks like the houses of my childhood: furnished with a mix of old and new that don’t go together. Ugly leather sofas and imitation oriental rugs in front of a big TV with oversized speakers. A bookshelf with no books. Dumbbells on the floor and a pile of car magazines next to the sofa.
Next to the TV there stand a couple of empty Coke cans and a bowl with a few chips. Exercise clothing hangs over an armchair.
This is exactly what I’ve been running from, I think.
Ormberg, the countryside, the dreary predictability of the future, the vast fields and the quiet forests. Nights in front of the TV with chips and wine and trips to the nearest superstore to stock up.
The bitter darkness of the winter nights and summer’s ruthless clarity.
The feeling that everything’s over when it’s hardly even begun.
I remember what it said in the police report about Mom. That she was found on Orm Mountain, drunk, sad, and injured three years ago.
Poor little Mom.
I think of everything she could have done if she hadn’t stayed in Ormberg. Of the jobs she could have had, the people she could have met, and the places she could have seen.
But for her Ormberg was the beginning and end of it all: a completely satisfactory existence. A universe that contained all she needed and wished for and didn’t feel at all limiting to her.
Why isn’t it like that for me?
What was it that Mom said, exactly?
If you run from something, make sure it’s not yourself you’re running from.
“Do you want something to eat?” Andreas asks. “I’m not sure I have much around here, but…”
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