We Know You Remember (14)

“They,” said GG.

“Sorry?”

“You don’t need to say ‘he or she’ all the time.”

“No, sorry,” said Eira, getting lost in her notes, her thoughts, the pattern she was trying to discern.

GG peered up the forest track, which disappeared around the bend.

“A son who’s killed before, returning home. It’s all a bit too much of a coincidence if you ask me.”

“Do you want to go and talk to him?”

They had been circling around the area all morning, out of sight, sticking to the edges. Olof Hagstr?m had returned to his father’s house. He had been spotted at the supermarket in Nyland, seen washing down by the beach one evening, in the window as people walked by—and they were the ones who had let him go. Several of the neighbors had pointed out as much, with vocal disapproval, fear, even anger.

“Not yet,” said GG. “We need to close in on him, crack his alibi; we’ll check the traffic cameras on some of the other roads and call in on the other houses until we find someone who saw him here on Monday, someone who’ll testify that the father felt threatened, anything.”

GG even had people out and about in Stockholm, talking to Hagstr?m’s neighbors there. They might have seen him leave, noticed he was gone. Someone had always seen something.

“We can talk to him once we’ve got more,” said Georgsson.

“If he’s still here then.”

“If not, we’ll track him down wherever he is.”

There was one possible explanation. One of the other members of the investigation team had brought it up at the morning meeting, in which several people had joined by video link from Sundsvall.

Olof Hagstr?m could have left his phone at home.

Traveled up on the Sunday night, killed his father and then driven home, only to take the train north again two days later with his phone switched on this time, making it look like he had found his old man by chance.

Circumstantial, yes, but it would explain why the house—after twenty-three years’ absence—was full of Olof Hagstr?m’s fingerprints.

GG stubbed out his cigarette on his heel. He was trying to quit, that was what he’d said when he lit his first one several hours earlier. That was what he had promised his new girlfriend.

“Is there anywhere to get a decent lunch round here?”



They had just sat down in the restaurant at the High Coast Whisky distillery, with beautiful views out over the river and the distant blue mountains, when Eira’s phone rang. She went out onto the terrace to answer. Strictly speaking, the new whisky distillery wasn’t anywhere near the coast, but the name High Coast conjured up images of dramatic nature and world heritage. The ?dalen river valley was often associated with strikes in the past; Communists, and soldiers shooting at workers more than anything, and that was far less appealing.

Even the airport was called High Coast, though again, you couldn’t see the coast from it.

There was a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, deep yet slightly hesitant. She introduced herself as Ingela Berg Haider.

“I’m glad you called again,” said Eira. She had tried to reach her several times the day before.

“I need to know what happens with the funeral in a case like this.” The woman sounded absent. In shock, Eira thought, speaking slowly. She knew what it was like to lose a father. The weightlessness, the sense of falling.

Ingela Berg Haider was Sven Hagstr?m’s daughter, Olof’s sister, three years his senior. She was the girl who had been sunbathing on the lawn, back when she still went by the name Ingela Hagstr?m and Eira still crept through bushes. Ingela had been in her late teens at the time, with breasts and headphones and a leopard-print bikini; she had short hair, she was tough—everything a nine-year-old girl wanted to be. Minus the part about being a killer’s sister.

Eira explained that her father’s body was still with the forensic examiner in Ume?, that it would perhaps take another few days, possibly even weeks.

“I just want to do things right,” said Ingela Berg Haider.

“How much do you know about what happened?”

“An officer called to say that my dad was dead, and I read the papers. Someone else called me at work, but I lost their number, and when I looked on the website I thought I recognized your name. Didn’t you have a brother?”

The new terrace smelled like linseed oil, rising above the ground below like the sundeck on a boat. The old brick power station nearby now housed the distillery.

According to her records, Ingela Berg Haider was forty years old and worked as a director at Sveriges Television, the national broadcaster. Married, with a twelve-year-old daughter, living on Swedenborgsgatan in S?dermalm. Eira associated that part of Stockholm with stone buildings from the turn of the last century, a sought-after neighborhood close to Mariatorget. She pictured a front door with two surnames on it, Berg and Haider. Neither was Hagstr?m.

“When did you last speak to your father?”

“I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Have you had any contact with your brother?”

“Would you have? If he was your brother?”

Eira felt a few drops of rain. The river had turned pale, shifting to silvery-gray. She stepped beneath the overhanging roof.

“We need to get a clearer picture of your father’s life lately,” she said. “Do you know anyone he might have been close to?”