We Know You Remember (48)

“Don’t bring that up now,” said Magnus. “You know Eira can’t talk cop stuff.”

Ricken sat down in the grass. The insects seemed to hush, and everything went quiet. Eira saw a rowing boat glide out into the bay. Her brother had never found out about their relationship, the whole thing had played out in secret.

“I’m sure you lot have already made your minds up,” Ricken continued, ignoring Magnus. “Once a person’s done one thing, that means they must be guilty of another. That’s the way you think.”

“You don’t need to tell her how she thinks,” said Magnus.

“Those idiots have been bragging all over the place about burning down that house, so I know you’ll get them for it, they’re too dumb to keep their mouths shut, but they weren’t trying to kill him. I know the dad of two them. They’re just little brats.”

“If you really have something to tell me,” said Eira, “then it’d be better if I came back with a colleague. Either that or you should call the station.”

“We haven’t forgotten what Olof did to Lina Stavred,” said Ricken. “So if a couple of little kids want to save ?dalen from the guy, I don’t have anything against it. But fair is fair.”

“Cut it out.” Magnus threw the half-empty can at him. It missed his friend’s head but showered him with beer all the same. “When she’s sitting here, Eira isn’t a cop; she’s my sister.”

Ricken threw the can back at him, missing too. Fooled about trying to lick the beer off himself.

Eira laughed. She liked that Magnus was taking her side and emphasizing that she was his sister, that Ricken wanted to tell her something. The whole thing made her feel warm inside, made her long to share a beer with them and remember the old times, to laugh at stupid jokes and lean back in the rickety damned chair that almost collapsed when she finally managed to get up.

“OK, I have to go,” she said, lowering her cup to the grass. It tipped over, and the dregs of the coffee spilled out onto her shoe.

“I’ll look in on Mum tomorrow,” Magnus called after her. “Or the day after. I swear, I’ll do better.”





Chapter 27





“Let’s go over everything we’ve got,” said GG, standing with his back to the window, the sky and the coastal city. The buildings behind him had eight, nine stories, stepped blocks of flats climbing up the hillside.

For some reason their meeting was in Sundsvall that day. GG hadn’t explained why and Eira hadn’t asked.

She just got in her car and drove down.

“Everything we’ve got on what?” asked Bosse Ring. “Are you talking about the murder or the arson and attempted murder?”

“All of it. Every bloody case that so much as mentions the name Hagstr?m. We should probably put our hands together and pray we’re not dealing with two murders soon.”

“Is it looking bad?” Silje Andersson looked up from her laptop.

“What?”

“Olof Hagstr?m’s condition.”

“No change there. He’s still hooked up to tubes and machines, the whole shebang. One of our colleagues in Ume? swung by this morning.”

“What are they saying?”

“Want me to translate?”

“From doctor’s speak? Please.”

Olof Hagstr?m was sedated and on a respirator following his operation. The bleed in the membranes surrounding his brain had clotted slightly during his time in the forest, but they had managed to remove the worst of it, ditto the blood in his lungs. They had also discovered a small hemorrhage in his liver. The doctors couldn’t say how serious the damage would be. Nor whether he would wake up.

“The boys deny chasing him into the forest,” GG continued. “They claim they got scared when the fire took hold. They saw him run out of the house and then they cleared off.”

“But they did take care of the dog,” said Bosse Ring. “Don’t forget that.”

The dog had come bounding out of nowhere. It went crazy when it saw the fire, but two of the boys had managed to catch it. One had wounds on his arm, bite marks, and had pulled back the dressing to show them—not without a certain amount of pride.

“‘We couldn’t just let it run off,’” Bosse Ring read from the interview transcript. “‘It could’ve been run over or something.’”

“How considerate,” said Silje.

One of the boys had made an anonymous call to the emergency services when he got home. He hadn’t told his friends. When it came to which of them had thrown the burning bottles through the windows, their stories diverged wildly. Other than the thirteen-year-old, who claimed it was him, the others all blamed one another.

“He’s probably been watching YouTube videos about how real gangster kids behave,” said Silje. “Taking the blame to keep his older friends out of prison.”

“Maybe he wants to impress his brother,” Eira mumbled.

She had been to the station in Sundsvall many times before, but never in this role, as part of the team. As she stepped into the building, she had a vision of herself staying there. Applying for a position with Violent Crimes. It was only an hour away by car, easily commutable until she sorted things out with her mother.