We Know You Remember (31)

“I attended a bit of the first trial, but I couldn’t handle any more than that. I switched to another school farther south so I wouldn’t bump into them on the street once they were released. They only got a year. I have no idea what she’s up to now, whether she’s even alive. Whether she could have kids. Maybe that’s the real reason I left: so I wouldn’t have to see Anette anymore. I’ve occasionally looked for her on Facebook, trying to find out whether she’s OK, whether she managed to make a life for herself, but I’ve never found her. I guess she probably changed her name too.”

“Your husband is right,” said Silje. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s the perpetrators who should be ashamed.”

The woman turned away. Eira got the sense that she used the expensive clothes as a costume: slightly anonymous, appropriate in every context.

“Seeing him trying to decide between drills as though nothing had happened . . . Afterwards, I found myself thinking that I’d had all kinds of heavy objects around me, dangerous things. I could’ve hit him on the head with a spade or a brush cutter, anything, but I did nothing, I just stood there and watched him leave.”

The three women jumped as a flash of lightning lit up the sky outside. The storm clouds were the same shade of bluish black as bruised skin after a serious assault, but the rain still hadn’t started falling. Elsebeth Franck got up to close the window, and paused. The clap of thunder came ten seconds later, meaning the storm was around three kilometers away.

“I haven’t been to Nyland since,” said Elsebeth. “I’d rather go to Sollefte?, even though it’s much farther away. My husband and I often take the canoes out on the river, but now I tell him not downstream, not that way.”

“How do you know that this man lives in Kungsg?rden?”

“Someone spoke to him on his way out. I was hiding behind the shelves, but I could still hear them: ‘How are things in Kungsg?rden? You got fiber broadband there yet?’ They didn’t. Have fiber, I mean. He complained about how long it was taking.”

It was only once the man had left the shop that she dared go over to the till. She had to say something. Wasn’t that Adam Vide? she asked.

No, that’s not his name.

“You didn’t ask who he was?”

“No, I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

Silje asked her to describe the man. Tall, taller than average, probably somewhere around six two, in fairly good shape for someone pushing sixty, a fact that angered Elsebeth. She would rather have stood face-to-face with a cripple, anything that suggested he wasn’t just living his life. He still had a full head of hair, too, though it was now gray.

Eira exchanged a glance with the investigator. That ruled out Sven Hagstr?m. He was over seventy, and much shorter.

“It’s been a long time,” said Silje.

“Thirty-eight years in two weeks.” Elsebeth Franck studied each of them in turn. “It was the way he moved, too. And his voice. Why else would he have turned around when I said that name? He didn’t even buy the drill, the one he thought was so good-looking.”

She had paid for her light bulbs that day, but forgot all about the wine—her husband had to go back and collect it later. That was why she ultimately had to tell him what happened, later that afternoon, just before their guests arrived. He could see straight through her, the family’s collective memory, their project manager, usually so on top of everything. Elsebeth had tried to act like her usual self—they were having a party, after all—but she managed to burn the pies and drop a glass, breaking down in tears over it.

It was the first her husband had ever heard about what happened that summer in J?vredal.

“I keep looking for a sign that something has changed in him, but it hasn’t. Can you believe that? That he still loves me? Sometimes it makes me so angry. I feel like he must be stupid if he hasn’t managed to grasp the full scope of who I am. He loves someone he thinks he understands, but who isn’t me.”

Towards the end of the party, once only a few of their closest friends were left, he had wanted Elsebeth to tell them, so they would understand why the atmosphere was so strange. They were among friends, after all. Relatives, people who loved her. He thought it would do her good.

To finally rid herself of it, to be free.

She let him talk, on condition that they didn’t tell anyone else.

Elsebeth had gone to bed.

“But I suppose someone must have blabbed anyway, and that person must’ve told someone else. No one can keep another person’s secret.”

The storm was getting closer. Her husband came downstairs and pulled out the plugs so that it wouldn’t trip the TV box or anything.

“I’m only talking about this today,” said Elsebeth, “because it seems like you want to get him for something.”

Her husband took up a protective position behind her as they said their goodbyes in the hallway.

“I really hope this is important,” he said.

“We don’t know,” said Eira. “This tip came up as part of an investigation into something else; we’re just exploring every angle.”

“A rape?”

“A murder. It might be important, but it might not be linked.”

Elsebeth Franck’s hand was cold and limp as she said goodbye.