We Know You Remember (110)

“You have to go there,” he said.

“Where?”

“To the pound. I don’t want it to be there.”

“I’m sorry, Olof, but I can’t look after a dog, I live in an apartment and my daughter is allergic . . .”

An assistant nurse appeared, asked what he needed. The room felt cramped with so many people in it.

“It’s lovely to see you’ve got a visitor,” she said.

“I’m in pain,” he told her. “I think I need more morphine.”

The nurse smiled sweetly, the way they always did, and gave him two paracetamol. As though that were enough.

“Let’s check your blood pressure, too.”

Ingela got up. The train was probably leaving soon.

“I’ll go down to the kiosk,” she said. “I can get you an ice cream or something.”

“OK.”

His sister paused in the doorway.

“A cone,” she said. “You used to like those, didn’t you?”





Chapter 65





There was someone sitting on the porch steps when Eira got home. The car headlights briefly illuminated his face, so fleeting that she could have been mistaken.

She climbed out of the car.

“Hey, Sis.”

It really was him.

“So they let you go,” she said.

“Cells were full,” said Magnus, pulling a face that might have been a smile. Eira wanted to stroke his hair, let him rest his head in her lap.

“Is Mum asleep?” she asked.

“You were right,” said Magnus. “She thought I still worked at the sawmill in Bollsta.”

“That was fifteen years ago.”

“I know.”

Eira went inside to get something to drink. Magnus was already nursing a beer. She would force him to stay over, couldn’t let him out on the road again.

She found a bottle of raspberry soda that had been in the pantry for an eternity. Alcohol was something she could drink in other people’s company, not his.

“You missed the meeting with the support officer,” said Eira, taking a seat beside him on the steps. From where they were sitting they could see the gravel driveway and the withered lilacs, the rhubarb that seemed to survive everything.

“Sorry,” said Magnus. “I got held up.”

Eira actually managed to laugh. “It’s OK, I pushed it back to next week.”

Magnus took the bottle from her and prized off the cap with his lighter, passed it back.

“They didn’t think I was a flight risk,” he said. “Guess that’s another thing. And because I confessed. The lawyer thinks I’m looking at the minimum sentence for manslaughter.”

“Six years.”

“I’ll be out after four if I behave.”

Eira swatted away the blackflies. Sipped the sweet juice. Scratched a bite. If she left it to Magnus, they could easily sit there in silence all night, for another twenty-three years.

“So what really happened that evening?” she asked. “And don’t just tell me what you told the police who interviewed you, about Lina not being there when you got to Lockne.”

“You’re police too.”

“And a little brat no one tells anything.”

“I need another beer.”

Eira felt his hands on her shoulders when he returned, as though he wanted to give her a massage.

“You’re not miked up or anything?”

“Come off it.”

Magnus sat down beside her. Rolled the cold bottle across his forehead before opening it. The cap flew away, landing somewhere.

“I’ll only say this once, and only to you,” he said.

Now and never again.

That evening. When he rode his motorbike over to Lockne because he knew Lina would be meeting someone there.

“She saved my life,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Can you just shut up for once and let me talk?”

Eira covered her mouth with her hand, she shut up.

“Lina told me they were meeting there, that she was going to run away with that guy, and I was just so fucking jealous.” Magnus spoke without looking at Eira. They were both staring straight ahead, past each other. “I was going to take her back with me, either that or punch the guy, I didn’t know what I was doing there. Maybe I just wanted to see them so I could finally get it into my thick head that it was over, really finished, that I’d lost her for good. But then I saw them inside. She was naked, and . . . Fuck, I thought he was raping her, there were all these chains and things.”

Magnus had stormed in. Wanted to grab Lina, protect her, punch the guy in the face, but suddenly the guy was on top of him, he hadn’t known his full name until recently, back then he was just Kenny, that was what Lina kept screaming, so loud that it echoed around the old forge; Kenny, who went completely crazy and got Magnus in a judo grip, slamming him down to the stone floor. Next thing he knew there was a chain around his throat, and everything went black.

When Magnus finally managed to breathe again, Kenny was lying flat out on top of him like a sandbag. There was blood everywhere. And Lina . . . Lina was standing there with an iron rod in her hand.

It was only once he pushed the body off him that he realized the guy was dead.