We Know You Remember (104)

After waving her ID around, Eira left with his address. Two buses later, she found herself in a different suburb. Standing outside a villa with an apple tree in the garden. The man who opened the door looked to be just shy of fifty, with a shaved head and a pair of trendy glasses, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms.

“Simone?” He peered out at the road behind Eira with an anxious look on his face. “No . . . She doesn’t live here anymore. What is this about?”

“Could I come in?”

“We can talk here.”

Ivan Wendel remained in the doorway. Eira could make out a bright home behind him, all white walls and airy furniture.

“Do you know how I can get hold of Simone?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen her in over a week.” He craned his neck, trying to see over the hedge. “Has something happened?”

Eira explained that she was with the police and held up her ID. She knew she shouldn’t keep waving it around while she wasn’t on duty.

“I just want to talk to her,” she said. “It’s to do with a case involving a missing girl.”

The man studied her closely. “Did Simone give the police this address? I find that hard to believe.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t trust the cops, doesn’t trust the authorities in general. She’s never had any help from them.”

“Help with what?”

“The bloke she had to hide from. I told Simone she should report him, but she said she’d tried that, that the police didn’t do anything. Seems like he’s pretty powerful up in Norrland—that’s where she’s from—that he has contacts. It’s a bloody outrage you lot don’t do anything about people like him.”

Eira looked at him, at the apple trees in the garden, the leafy villa setting.

“Where in Norrland?” she asked.

“No idea, I’ve never been any farther north than Uppsala. Simone didn’t want to talk about it, and I guess that’s understandable.”

“Could we sit down on the steps a moment?” asked Eira.

“I don’t understand what you want,” said Ivan Wendel.

“Does the name Lina Stavred mean anything to you?”

“Lina who? I know a couple of Linas, it’s a common . . .” He trailed off, staring at her. “Why are you asking me this? What does it have to do with Simone?”

Eira pulled out her phone. She didn’t know whether this was something she should be doing, but at this stage she couldn’t come up with a single reason not to, so she brought up the school photograph of Lina that one of the papers had recently republished.

“Do you think this could be Simone when she was younger?”

Ivan Wendel peered down at the image. Zoomed in.

“How old . . . ?”

“Sixteen.”

“I don’t know. They all look kind of alike at that age somehow, and I don’t mean that in any chauvinist sense, I’ve got a grown daughter myself. Simone has blue eyes like her, but her hair’s darker.”

“Hair can be changed.”

“But it must’ve been . . . How long?”

“Twenty-three years.”

He handed the phone back to her. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because this girl was assumed to have been murdered. A young man was arrested for it. And that’s a bit unfortunate if it turns out she’s actually still alive.”

“Is this a bad joke or something?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Ivan tugged at his pajama bottoms, which had slipped so low on his hips that the top of his underwear was visible. He turned and stepped into the house, leaving the door open. Eira wondered whether it was an invitation to follow him in, but he was soon back, with a pack of cigarettes in one hand. He closed the door behind him, shook out a cigarette.

“What the hell is it with women?” he muttered. “One day we’re talking about getting married, and the next she’s gone. Packed up all her stuff while I was out. Not a word.”

“When was this?”

She knew the minute he said it. A little more than a week ago, nine or ten days, that was when they had found the remains in Lockne. The same day the news broke.

“And you haven’t heard from her since?”

Ivan Wendel sat down at a safe distance.

“I haven’t been able to talk to a single fucking person about any of this. I even lied to my own staff, told them I’d had some dodgy results from a medical, just to get away from it. My mind keeps racing, you know? Feels like I’m going crazy.”

His first thought was that Simone’s ex must have tracked her down, making her flee. But it wasn’t like he could call the police; he had promised her he would never reveal anything, never tell anyone where she lived. She used a prepaid phone and couldn’t even get her own credit card, always worked off the books, lived a life in the shadows—despite walking about like anyone else.

Simone wasn’t even her real name.

“This has been going on for years. There were even periods where she lived on the street, as I understand it. She’s a pretty broken person, though she hides it well. Maybe that’s what I fell for, what was hiding underneath.”