We Know You Remember (55)

“The whole thing is so awful,” she said. “It’s like watching a film, only you’re in it somehow, if you know what I mean. Patrik told me what his dad did to that girl, but he hasn’t wanted to talk about it since. Tryggve has never done anything to me. No advances or anything like that. Do you really think he’s guilty?”

Eira had been vague over the phone, giving the impression that she wanted to talk about the family in very general terms.

“What do you think?”

Sofi pushed back the hair that had blown into her face and shifted on the low sofa.

“It makes my skin crawl,” she said. “What he did when he was younger. I keep picturing his old body—he walks about in nothing but his underwear sometimes. How can you let someone take you in like that? It really could be anyone.” She gestured discreetly to the people around them, slumped on the other sofas. Eira thought she could see several couples who weren’t quite couples; the way they were talking seemed a little too strained, and they were smiling a little too often, aware of themselves in the way only people on a first date are.

Sofi Nydalen had always thought of her father-in-law as kind, if a little evasive. Not someone you could really get close to. He wasn’t particularly open, but she had just assumed that that was what men from Norrland were like.

“It was harder with Mejan, I was almost scared of her at first. She can be really bossy. In the end I got Patrik to say that we needed the house to ourselves, otherwise I wouldn’t come. There are more exciting things to do on holiday, you know? I guess it’s the classic mother-and daughter-in-law thing. Like I’m not good enough because I don’t scrub the floors with soap or make soup from goutweed and nettles. If you google those things, it says they’re weeds—makes you wonder how healthy they really are.”

Sofi glanced down at the phone on the table, voice recorder running. Eira couldn’t tell whether she was concerned or pleased that her words were being saved. The wind was probably so loud that their conversation would be barely audible.

“And then there’s the fact I’m from Stockholm, that I’ve got a good job and earn decent money, all that stuff. You start to wonder if she’s got a slight inferiority complex or something, but it’s actually the other way around—she’s the one who looks down on me. She assumes I think I’m remarkable or something. Isn’t that just another kind of racism?”

Eira didn’t reply. She had taken out her iPad, switched it on, and brought up the right page, all without Sofi Nydalen noticing a thing.

“It’s happened again,” she read aloud. “The police have let yet another sexual predator go. He’s raped and murdered once, and now he’s back on the streets again.”

“What?”

“Did you write this?”

“God, I can’t remember.”

Eira placed the iPad in front of her, a screenshot of Sofi’s own Facebook page with the very first post she made.

The flighty side of her seemed to disappear. “Have you been on my private Facebook account?”

“Your page is public.”

“You’ve got no right to do that.”

“What you wrote has been shared over two thousand times. One of the people it reached was my colleague, via his girlfriend. In what way do you think that’s private?”

Sofi Nydalen gazed out across Riddarfj?rden, towards S?dermalm and its jagged cliffs rising up on the other side of the water. She put on her sunglasses, which had been perched on top of her head. Her profile wasn’t protected in any way. Anyone who viewed it could see what she wrote, presumably because she also used it to advertise the interior design company where she worked—perhaps she had even been told to. There were plenty of companies that required their employees to use their private social media accounts to boost the brand.

“I have the right to write whatever I want,” she said. “We have freedom of speech in this country.”

“What did you think when the house burnt down?”

“It was horrible when I smelled the smoke. I was worried the fire would spread.”

“You weren’t concerned that someone might have burnt to death in there?”

“Do you have children?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

Sofi Nydalen lifted her sunglasses and studied Eira’s reaction. “Thought not,” she said. “If you did, you’d understand. It’s a parent’s job to protect their kids.”

“In what way was Olof Hagstr?m threatening your children?”

“You were there that morning, when he was arrested. And then you let him go without even telling us. You didn’t stop to think how that would feel.”

“I understand that you might have found it unpleasant,” said Eira, remembering what GG had said about being nice.

“Unpleasant?” Sofi Nydalen swung her foot at the gull, which was still hopping around in its hunt for crumbs. It flapped away and turned its attention elsewhere. “He raped and murdered a girl—or one that we know about, anyway. I thought I was going to die when I saw him in the house where the old man had just died. I asked Patrik to do something about it, to tell him he couldn’t stay there, but Patrik said there was nothing we could do, that it’s his house. Private property. He said he’d come with me if I wanted to go swimming or anywhere else, but that kind of thing drives me crazy, having to take my husband with me just to go out. It’s like living in Afghanistan or something. Why should a person like that be allowed to move freely and not me?”