We Know You Remember (44)

Flourishing, well tended, touching in the obvious care paid to it.

There are people who really choose to live here, thought Eira. Of all the places on earth. People who don’t just end up here by chance, who happen to be born here or wind up staying put for various reasons.

Two young boys stood to attention in the hallway, solemnly greeting the officers before their father sent them off to do something else.

Coffee, always more coffee.

“We didn’t think anything of it at the time,” said Erik Ollikainen, pushing a pouch of snus tobacco beneath his lip. He was around thirty, with the beginnings of a paunch, and was wearing a T-shirt printed with an ad for a plumber. “I mean, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”

“Anything unusual, that’s what we look out for, things that catch our eye, if you get what I mean,” his older neighbor filled in. His name was B?rje St?l. He lived on the other side of the road, he said, pointing over there, in the white house on the edge of the forest. The two men had set out together that night. “So you’ll have to pin the blame on the both of us.”

The terrible thunderstorm had trumped anything else that night, what with the lack of rain. A sign, perhaps, that the weather was changing.

Ominous.

“We’re lucky to live this high up, in any case,” said Ollikainen. “With the sea levels rising.”

The two men had raised the alarm about the lightning strike up by Saltsj?n, seen the smoke above the trees. They’d had their hands full for a few hours after that, waiting for the fire engines and directing them down the right narrow forest roads. Sometime around midnight, once they had done their usual loop of the community, they had headed back up there again and saw that the fire was under control. Then they pulled over to the side of the road to drink coffee from their thermoses; they needed the energy boost for the last few hours. They shared some food and had music on the radio. It felt like a moment of calm after the violent outburst of the storm. That was when the roads got a bit livelier again.

“We recognized the vehicles. These lads drive around most evenings and sometimes during the night. We did the same when I was that age, from the day you got your first EPA tractor—you know the type, the reconfigured pickups you’re allowed to drive from fifteen.”

“It’s not something we ever report,” the older man added. “We didn’t even pay them any notice.”

“So what made you change your minds?”

“When we heard what happened, we thought, you know . . . We work with the police. We don’t want anyone to claim we’re not doing that. Even if it’s nothing. That’s how it’s meant to work. We report things, you decide what measures to take—that’s what we’ve been told over and over again.”

“What did you see?”

The two men exchanged a glance. One nodded to the other, who continued: “There were three vehicles. One Volvo and two EPA tractors. They were heading towards Kungsg?rden. Or in that direction anyway. Could’ve been going to Sollefte? too, of course, or over the Hammar Bridge towards Nyland, we have no idea.”

“When was this?”

“Just after midnight. We didn’t write it up in the logbook, like I said, but we were scanning for radio stations at the time. We always listen to that P3 radio show until midnight, so it must’ve been after that.”

“I said that those lads could do with jobs to get up for in the morning, remember?”

“You chat about all sorts when you’re out there like that.”

“Did you get the registration numbers for these vehicles?”

“No need,” said Ollikainen.

They knew their names, where they lived. One of them was the grandson of B?rje St?l’s cousin. He said that with his eyes lowered towards his coffee cup, slowly stirring the liquid.

“They’re not bad boys, they just carry on a bit. Like all kids when they’ve got nothing else to do. They don’t have a bad bone in them.”

His neighbor looked up but didn’t speak. A long silence followed. There was more, that was obvious, hesitation and anguish, waiting to see who would speak first.

Erik Ollikainen hooked the tobacco from beneath his lip and crushed it between his fingers.

“And then they came back,” he said quietly, lowering the pouch to his saucer. “At a hell of a pace, way faster than permitted for those reconfigured cars, but that’s nothing new. People are always changing parts, souping up the engines, no one says a word.”

“How much time do you think had passed?”

“Half an hour. Or more. Maybe less. God knows. You get tired by the small hours, start feeling a bit sluggish.”

“We were just about to do one last lap,” said B?rje St?l, “when we saw the smoke and the flames over in Kungsg?rden. Called 112 straightaway, but someone else had already raised the alarm.”

“That damned weather, what a bloody night.” Erik Ollikainen turned the snus box between his fingers. “You sure it wasn’t just the lightning?”





Chapter 24





Eira would always associate the feeling of having saved up for her first EPA tractor with freedom. It was a converted Volvo Amazon with the back seats removed, and it wasn’t officially allowed to go any faster than thirty kilometers an hour. Still, it looked just like a real car, and the main thing was that it allowed her to drive before she turned eighteen. The government had tried to introduce a ban during the seventies, but the public outcry in the provinces meant that the EPA tractors had been saved.