A Nearly Normal Family(13)

“I know you’re feeling scared and sad.”

“Those aren’t words I would use.”

Above all, I was angry. It might sound strange, at least in retrospect, but I was probably in the midst of the “shock” stage. I’d put fear and sorrow on hold and was focusing on my survival, on my family’s survival. I would get us out of this.

“What is it you’re looking for?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how you’re searching our house. All the police who are going through our belongings this very minute.”

Chief Inspector Thelin nodded.

“We’re looking for forensic evidence, which can be lots of different things. It’s possible that we’ll find something that’s to Stella’s advantage, something that corroborates her story. Or we might find nothing at all. We’re trying to figure out what happened.”

“Stella has nothing to do with this,” I said.

Agnes Thelin nodded.

“We’ll take it one step at a time. Can you start by telling us what you did last Friday?”

“I was at church almost all day.”

“At church?”

She made it sound like the last place on earth she would visit.

“I’m a pastor,” I explained.

Agnes Thelin gaped at me for a moment, then came to her senses and busied herself with paging through her documents.

“So you were … working?”

“I had a funeral that afternoon.”

“A funeral, okay.” She scribbled a note. “What time did you return home?”

“Around six, I should think.”

I told her that I had showered and prepared a pork casserole, then ate it with Ulrika. After the meal we played a game of Trivial Pursuit on the sofa and then went to bed. Stella worked until quarter past seven and had been planning to meet a friend in town afterwards.

Agnes Thelin asked if I’d been in contact with Stella that evening and I told her that I had sent a text, but I didn’t remember what she responded, or even whether she responded at all.

“Is it typical for Stella not to answer texts?”

I shrugged. “You have teenagers.”

“But we’re talking about Stella right now.”

I explained that it wasn’t unusual at all. She often answered sooner or later, but later was common. Sometimes much later. Nor was it unusual for the response, when it arrived, to consist solely of a smiley face or a thumbs-up.

“Who was the friend?”

I had to swallow.

“What do you mean?”

“Who was the friend Stella was planning to meet? The one she was going out with?”

I stared down at the table.

“Stella had told my wife she was going to meet up with her friend Amina. But we’ve asked Amina, and they didn’t see each other on Friday.”

“Why do you think Stella was lying?”

Her choice of words was infuriating.

“She wasn’t lying. Amina told us they had been planning to meet up, but plans changed.”

“What do you think she did instead?”

I didn’t answer. Why would I speculate? Surely my thoughts didn’t mean much.

“Do you know what she did instead?” Agnes Thelin asked.

That was a more reasonable question.

“No.”

Agnes Thelin flipped through her papers again in silence. It probably only took a few seconds, really, but it was enough for the silence to seem meaningful, somehow.

“What kind of phone does Stella have?” the chief inspector asked.

I explained it was an iPhone, but that I always get the models mixed up. It was white, in any case, I could tell her that much.

“Does she have more than one of them?” Agnes Thelin asked.

“More than one? No.”

Obviously the police would find her phone in our house, and take it into evidence. For a moment I wondered if I should mention to Thelin that Stella had forgotten her phone at home, but I decided not to. It sounded strange for an eighteen-year-old to forget her phone. As if it meant something was wrong.

“Do you know if Stella has access to pepper spray?”

“Pepper spray? The kind the police use?”

“Exactly. Does Stella have a spray bottle like that?”

“Of course not. Is that even legal?”

I felt nauseated.

“What time was it when you went to bed on Friday?” Agnes Thelin asked.

“Eleven, maybe a little after.”

“Did you fall asleep right away?”

“No, I couldn’t sleep.”

“So you lay awake for a long time?”

I drew a breath. My mind was whirling. Fuzzy images of Stella as a little girl, a proud teenager, a grown woman. My little girl. Our family: Ulrika, Stella, and me. The photograph on the windowsill.

“I lay awake, waiting for Stella. I suppose it doesn’t matter how old your child gets, you never stop worrying about them.”

Agnes Thelin nodded. I think she understood.

What happened next is hard to explain.

I hadn’t planned it. I had come to the interrogation with every intention of sharing what I knew. Not once had I considered deviating in the least from the truth.