We Know You Remember (20)

They had a red Passat back then, and there was something about the smell of this car that reminded him of it. Olof had left the Pontiac at the house when he went to pick up the dog, taking his father’s car from the garage instead.

It was like he was invisible as he drove to the kennels in Fr?n?. No one paid any notice to a 2007 Toyota Corolla. The dog had licked his face when it saw him, and Olof had left with a sense of having liberated it from captivity—which, of course, he had.

He reached out and scratched its head. The dog was sitting in the passenger seat, ears pricked. It barked at a cow, jumped excitedly as a couple of horses bounded across a field. It didn’t feel right to give it a name when it must already have had one, so he simply called it Dog.

“You probably want to get out and run around, don’t you?” he said, turning off towards Marieberg.

He didn’t think about where he was heading. There were the little wooden houses lining the bay, the beachside meadows thick with fireweed. If he turned around, he would have been able to see his childhood home up on the hill. He wondered how long it would be before they gave up and left him in peace. Twice earlier he had heard the sound of an engine, someone knocking on the door, but he had hidden and kept quiet.

They couldn’t call him, at the very least. His phone was switched off. He had listened to the messages from his boss once he got it back from the police, heard him ranting and raving about having a buyer lined up for the Pontiac, how Olof would pay for this.

He reached for the fifth of the ten burgers he had bought in Kramfors. It was stone cold by then, but that didn’t matter. The food served as a blanket over his anxiety. He gave the sixth to the dog, not caring that it slobbered mayonnaise all over the seat. It wasn’t like his father was going to need the car again.

The road sloped upwards, one of the longest and toughest hills to cycle in the entire universe. The old co-op was at the top. He pulled over to the edge of the road and came to a halt. He opened the door for the dog, which raced off among the trees.

“See you by the old co-op,” they used to say, though no one could actually remember it ever having been a shop. The building had stood empty for a long time, which was why his gang used to hang out there sometimes. Someone had got hold of some hash, that was probably why. Or did the others know? That Lina would walk by, bag slung over one shoulder, the skirt of her dress fluttering around her legs, just a thin cardigan on top, the fabric as yellow as a dandelion, like the sun, dazzling.

Why did she go straight into the forest, along that narrow track, if she didn’t want someone to follow her?

That was what Olof thought as he saw it all happen again: that she wasn’t dressed for the forest. He felt himself break out in a sweat. Maybe he needed to throw up. If he went a little deeper among the trees, no one would be able to see him. The dog darted around him, immediately sniffing out his vomit among the ferns and rocks.

Olof shooed it away. He found what he thought was wood sorrel, and chewed on the leaf to get rid of the disgusting taste in his mouth.

The trail snaked away, upwards at first, before turning sharply down towards the old sawmill. It was over there somewhere, beyond the grand old house that loomed like a manor over the area, in among the trees where no one could see them. That was where she had stopped, waited for him.

What do you want? Are you following me?

Her laugh, reserved for him.

Olof had the sense that no one had walked along the trail since. The police had, of course; they had scoured the entire forest and the area round about, sent out dogs to look for her. And later, the reconstruction. When they brought him out there and told him to point. There was a glade, a fallen tree. He couldn’t see either now. The birches were so much taller, the trail so much narrower, eventually disappearing completely. Overgrown, of course, hidden beneath the bilberry bushes and nettles. He could taste soil.

What did you do to her, Olof?

And then, down by the river, behind the brick shed known as Meken. At the edge of the beach where the remains of the old timber quay still rose up out of the water like rotten piles. That was where they had found her things.

Was this where you threw her in? Or was it farther down?

Past the huge metal warehouse that had started to rust, between the concrete pillars in the deepwater harbor.

Sometimes we don’t want to remember, they had told him; the brain represses awful things.

That was why they had returned to the place, to help him remember.

You want to remember, don’t you, Olof?

It’s right there inside you, everything you’ve ever done and experienced.

Was it here? Was she still alive when you threw her in? Did you toss her over the edge, did you know that the water is thirty meters deep here?

You remember, Olof. We know you remember.





Chapter 10





Out of sheer habit, Eira took a detour on her way to the library. It meant she could avoid the blustery open square where everything was visible, the benches around the fountain where she might run into her brother.

She wasn’t in uniform, which was good because it made her less noticeable, but it was also bad. It increased the risk of him being overly familiar. Wanting to borrow money. Asking how their mother was.

It was worth the longer walk around the block.

GG had gone back to Sundsvall, and she had spent a few hours making routine calls to addiction treatment centers in neighboring districts, trying to find out who might have been released recently.