We Know You Remember (103)

She swallowed and leaned in over the phone as Johanna tried to show her how her network overlapped with Simone’s.

“She was dating a guy I know from my last job. We met in the restaurant he owns, sometime last spring.”

“And then you became friends?”

“Well, friends and friends,” said Johanna. “Since I’m self-employed I have to do a lot of networking, and she’s not exactly the youngest, she’s at the age where it starts getting really urgent.”

“And when is that?”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Aha, OK, well Simone is probably a bit older, somewhere around forty. I’d have a better idea if I’d analyzed her skin. That’s how you can really tell a person’s age.”

She smiled at Eira and gently stroked two fingers down her cheek.

“You’ve got really great skin, for your age.”





Chapter 60





The minute Olof closed his eyes, images from the house came flooding back to him. The flames and the smoke. It felt like so long ago, yet also so recent. Sometimes he saw his family there, when he closed his eyes, and then he saw his father in the bathroom.

The branches hitting his face as he ran.

“I didn’t have any shoes on,” he said. “I ran out of the house in my socks. Then I don’t know.”

“It’s OK,” said the physiotherapist who was sitting on the edge of his bed. She was massaging his hand, encouraging him to move his fingers, and spoke in a soft voice. “You don’t need to put pressure on yourself.”

Olof had said that he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but then the physiotherapist had come into his room.

He thought she was pretty.

“Your memory will come back little by little,” she said. “It’s OK. You’re getting better every day.”

Every stupid little thing he remembered made her happy. If he bent a finger or wiggled his toes, his big fat toes that peeped out whenever she folded back the blanket. She was always saying that things were getting better, but Olof knew she was wrong.

Things would get worse, because if they got better like she said they would discharge him, and then he would no longer be tucked up in a bed with fresh sheets every five minutes, eating good food—double portions if he wanted them—and gazing out at the sky. His room at the university hospital in Ume? was so high up that the sky was all he could see. Clouds sailing by, the occasional flock of birds, turning sharply as one. He tried to work out which of the birds was in charge, but they were gone again in the blink of an eye.

The earth, the ground, the people down below: he didn’t have to see any of that.

“You’ve had a nasty shock,” said the physiotherapist. “And you sustained some injuries, but there’s nothing to say that you won’t make a complete recovery and get back to your old life again.”

“I don’t think I can remember anything else,” said Olof. “It’s just black. My head hurts. I can’t think anymore.”

“It’ll come,” said the woman. “It’s nothing you need to rush. I’ll tell the nurse to bring you some painkillers.”

She patted Olof’s hand as she left. The hand he had first regained all feeling in. If he lay perfectly still he could feel her hands touching him, massaging him, for a long time after she left.

Like hell am I going to remember any more, he thought.





Chapter 61





It was madness to catch a train to Stockholm to hunt for ghosts that probably didn’t even exist, of course it was. Though on the other hand it was only a five-hour journey, a little more, providing you didn’t have to wait too long between trains in Sundsvall.

Her boss had been almost worryingly understanding.

“No problem, we’ll cover it, the Stockholm kid has been gagging for more shifts. Of course you can have a few days off.”

Eira bought a half bottle of wine from the buffet car then returned to her seat.

Let the flat landscape rush by outside, the endless man-made forests.

She scribbled down a number of possible scenarios on the back of a flyer. Eira knew she was on the very edge of probability here, yet it all added up.

Everything that hadn’t made sense fell into place.

The fact that they had never found Lina’s body. The boat, which had drifted a little too far.

Magnus, who had kept quiet all these years.

He was then in his second day of custody now. The prosecutor had until the next day to decide whether to retain him or not, if their suspicions remained.

Eira had gone through every imaginable explanation, but that hadn’t helped. All that remained now was the unimaginable.

Was it possible for a person to disappear, to become someone else, to live on despite being declared dead?

By the time Eira left the train at Stockholm Central, she felt slightly tipsy from the wine. But more from the thought that Lina Stavred might still be alive.



For some reason she had been expecting a grand restaurant in the inner city, the kind of place she assumed August’s girlfriend would like. But instead the address led her, via the metro, to the southern suburbs.

An Italian deli with a salad bar and seven types of coffee on the menu. The owner, the man Simone had been dating, was called Ivan Wendel. He wasn’t there. Eira had chosen not to get in touch in advance. According to the girl at the till, he had been off sick all week.