We Know You Remember (50)

“The DNA analysis isn’t finished yet, but what we can say is that the blood isn’t human.”

“Is it elk?” asked GG, rocking back in his chair. “Or has he felled a bear? Don’t tell me you’ve managed to date it back to September last year?” That was when elk hunting season got underway in that part of the country, an occasion more important than Christmas to many people.

“We’ll know soon.”

“And is it possible that these traces of . . . nonhuman blood could still be there even if you’ve used the knife since, and cleaned it thoroughly?”

“It depends what you mean by thoroughly.”

“Why would someone lock the murder weapon in their own gun cabinet?” asked Silje.

“So no one notices it’s missing,” said Bosse. “Round here, a person without a hunting knife is more suspicious than one with.”

The room fell silent. Someone ate the last of the cheese sandwiches. The phrase “murder weapon” had gained particular significance in the Swedish language since the murder of Olof Palme. The ongoing investigation, stretching across decades. Every single police officer, and the majority of ordinary citizens, knew that the murder could have been solved if they had just managed to find the murder weapon. It was a lingering trauma, proof that Sweden had changed. A country where you could get away with shooting the prime minister, where security no longer really existed.

“So what did he do with the knife?” asked GG. “Did he throw it in the river? Bury it?”

“If we hadn’t caught those kids,” said Bosse Ring, “I would’ve said that Nydalen started the fire to get rid of the evidence. It bothers me that it burnt down that night, just before we arrested him.”

“Maybe he knew one of them? Have we checked where they got the idea?”

“Facebook, they said.”

“Worth looking into?”

“That kind of thinking is everywhere out there. People have been getting worked up on various threads ever since we released Olof Hagstr?m.”

“Who knew we were on to Nydalen?”

GG turned to Eira. She thought for a moment, feeling a deep sense of unease. Had she blabbed to someone? No, she couldn’t remember doing anything like that. The only person she had mentioned the name to was her old colleague, who was hunkered down in his cabin, pretending to enjoy his retirement.

“It’s a pretty long way down to the river,” she eventually said. “I doubt he would’ve chosen to dump the knife there.”

“It’s a bloody thicket,” Bosse Ring agreed. “And he was in a hurry—a weekday morning, he could’ve bumped into anyone. Plus his wife was at home. She’s still backing him to the hilt, by the way.”

“Their accounts of what they were doing that morning differ slightly,” said Eira. “But they were also in separate buildings. Tryggve could easily have snuck off for a while and come back without her noticing—assuming he didn’t walk right past the bakehouse.”

“Can we see a map?” asked GG.

Someone found one and brought it up on the big screen. The image kept jumping around, taking them up to J?mtland for a moment before zooming in on the area around Kungsg?rden.

Eira compared the map with her memories of the terrain. The Nydalen homestead was slightly higher than the Hagstr?m house, and there was little other than forest in between. Spruce trees, the odd pine, quite a few aspen. Bilberry and lingonberry bushes. It was rocky in places, the earth couldn’t be particularly deep. Other than the road, which it seemed logical to rule out, there was a snowmobile trail, plus a couple of half-overgrown paths that weren’t visible in the satellite images.

“OK,” said GG. “I’ll try to get as many people as I can on a forest stroll with metal detectors.”





Chapter 28





Bosse Ring would be joining Eira in Kramfors, but they drove north in separate cars. It meant she could stop off in Lunde on the way. Take something out of the freezer for dinner, enabling her to work late.

There was a bunch of roses on the table. A supermarket bouquet, with the cellophane still around them.

“Have you had a visitor, Mum?”

Kerstin’s face lit up.

“Magnus was here. He’s doing so well, starting a new job and everything. I told him he’d have to bring the little ones over someday.” Her eyes drifted to the framed photographs on the walls, the grandchildren. The pictures had been taken at nursery, back when the boys still lived in Kramfors, before his ex-girlfriend got a job in Gothenburg and moved away.

There were a couple of more recent shots on the fridge; perhaps the kids’ mother had sent them.

Eira picked up the roses and unwrapped the cellophane, pulled off a few withered petals. Magnus had kept his word, at least. He had looked in on his mother.

She found a dish of lasagna and defrosted it in the microwave. Rejected a call from someone she didn’t know and sat down for a moment. Maybe their living situation wasn’t so pressing after all, maybe they could make it work a while longer, if they did it together.

“Have you seen the lovely flowers Magnus brought?”

Kerstin straightened them in the vase and repeated herself several times during the brief period they were sitting down, before Eira had to get going. As she got into the car she realized it had been a long time since she had last seen her mother look so happy.