We Know You Remember (25)

“Didn’t even have any money in the house,” said the man known as Hacke, his face full of graying beard. “Sven went all in on the V75 at the end of May, and I don’t remember him having much luck since. Often happens in phases, that kind of thing.”

“You sure he didn’t do it himself?” asked a man called Gustav something. Eira narrowed down his accent to somewhere inland, and she gestured for August to make a note of his name. It would be difficult to keep their attention once the next odds came up. Not because the men didn’t care—they were all emotionally, angrily engaged, gathering closer and closer around the officers—but because it was in their muscle memory to turn towards the sound of approaching hooves.

“Why would anyone want to hurt him?”

“There was nothing wrong with the bloke.”

“Bit quiet and grumpy, but who isn’t with age? You can see the way the country’s going yourself.”

“You going to catch the bastard, then? Or is Sven just going to end up in a filing cabinet somewhere? It’s a bloody outrage that the hospitals are being moved to the coast. He might have made it otherwise.”

“He was dead when they found him.”

“Yeah, but still.” Gustav leaned in closer, and Eira resisted the urge to back away from the stench of alcohol and poor personal hygiene. “He probably should’ve got some help back then. You know, with all that.” Gustav was holding a plastic glass of beer in one hand, a half-eaten hot dog in the other. He waved the sausage towards his head to clarify what he thought Sven Hagstr?m should have been given help with.

“What do you mean?”

He bit off a chunk of hot dog and gave her an inquisitive, possibly intrusive glance. There was a fine line between the two.

“You got kids?”

“Not yet.”

“You want the best for them,” the man continued. “You’ll see that one day. And if they fall, you have to stay strong. If you can’t handle that, if they fall between your hands, if your own child hits rock bottom, this is all you’ve got to turn to.” The beer slopped over the edge of his glass as he gestured. “Who are you if you can’t even save your own kid?”

“He was an alcoholic?”

“He got into some heavy stuff.”

“Sven Hagstr?m?”

“No, no, are you crazy? My lad. He’s not with us anymore. I reckon that’s why I could see it in him. In Svenne, I mean. The emptiness it leaves behind.”

“Did you ever talk about it?”

“I don’t know if you could call it talking, he always avoided the subject, the way people do when it’s too painful.” Gustav whipped around as the speaker called the start and the horses set off, hooves drumming the ground, breathless. The crowd was entranced by the possibility that Hallsta Bamse would take the lead with the incredible odds of 639:1. Eira didn’t notice that August Engelhardt was standing right behind her, hadn’t seen him in a while.

“You’re going to want to hear this,” he said.

“Hold on.”

On the final bend, Hallsta Bamse faltered under the pressure and began to gallop, the voice over the loudspeaker reaching a falsetto as F?rtrollad took a clear lead. The sensation they had all been hoping for, dreading, failed to pass, and a movement rippled through the spectators, a collective exhalation.

“Guess where it seems like a rapist has been hiding out.” August was standing so close to her ear that he brushed up against it, she felt the heat of his breath.

“Where?”

He nodded over to the group of men. “I followed one of them inside to collect his winnings after the last race. A thousand, in fact. Got to hear a few things.”

“Tell me.”

August Engelhardt seemed almost unbearably cocky as he smiled. This might be his first-ever breakthrough at work, Eira thought, glancing at her watch. No one would be leaving for a while yet.

“I’ll treat you to something in the restaurant,” she said.

“Fried meat and potatoes?”

“I’m sure they’ve got a few lettuce leaves, too.”

The vegetarian revolution hadn’t quite reached Norrland’s racetracks, so August ordered a bland mixed salad and a cheese sandwich, Eira meatballs with mash and lingonberry sauce.

They managed to find the table with the worst views out onto the track, the only one still free. August leaned forward to overpower the clatter of cutlery and the murmur of voices, the irritating music played before the start of each race—a poor cover of the seventies hit “Popcorn.”

The man August had followed to collect his winnings was Kurt Ullberg, the same one who had once owned horses himself. August read from his somewhat messy notes.

“Sometime in spring, early May he thought it was, he heard from a cousin whose brother-in-law lives next door to this woman, or maybe it was the neighbor who was his brother-in-law . . . She’d recognized the man in Nylands J?rn, that’s an ironmonger’s . . .”

“I know it’s an ironmonger’s.”

“There was something about the way he spoke, his voice, even though it was forty years since she’d last heard it.”

“Recognized who?”

He flicked through his pad. “Adam Vide.”

Eira racked her memory, but she couldn’t remember the name from the investigation or anywhere else.