We Know You Remember (56)

“We’ve caught the people who burnt down the house,” said Eira. “They’d read the threads you started.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault?”

“No,” she said with some effort. “But I thought you should know. In case it comes up in court.”

“I just wrote the truth. Is that a crime? I told it like it is—no one’s going to protect us if we don’t do it ourselves.”

“Olof Hagstr?m is in a coma,” said Eira. “The doctors don’t know if he’ll make it.”

“If I’d known you were going to start accusing me of things, I never would have come to meet you. I didn’t even tell Patrik. He thinks you lot are harassing us. You should be offering us support right now.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just asking questions.”

Sofi Nydalen glanced at her watch. A big rose gold thing. “I’m sorry, but I have to go and pick up the kids now.”





Chapter 33





The hotel Eira had booked was in the old town. Her room was spartan and minimal, the kind of place permitted under police budget rules. The only window looked out onto a dark alleyway, but the recess itself was so deep that there was room for her to sit in it. The warm, damp air seeped into the room, the murmur of the hordes of tourists. Eira scrolled through the numbers of the three or four friends she could call; maybe they could meet for a drink and a debrief on how their love lives and careers and everything else was going. For some reason the prospect made her feel more weary than excited. They had drifted apart since she’d moved back home, and she still hadn’t been in touch with any of her old friends there, which meant that her social life was stuck in a kind of limbo between then and now.

Wasn’t there something about the phrase itself that felt a bit much like hard work? “Social life” sounded like something that wasn’t quite a life, something that had to be constructed, built up, worked on.

She peeled off her sweaty shirt and lay down on the bed instead, opened the dating app on her phone. The system automatically searched for singles in a specific radius—the very reason Eira had quickly turned it off after she moved back home. Within the space of just a few hours, three old acquaintances from school had popped up on there, along with a suspect she had helped arrest and the man who serviced the computers at the station.

From time to time, when she found herself in Ume? or Stockholm, she would reactivate the app and anonymously swipe through the pictures of men her age—plus or minus five years. She might meet up with someone who didn’t need to know she was a police officer.

For one night only, so she didn’t have time to confuse her feelings for love.

Twenty or so faces flashed by. A few looked nice. Two got in touch, but she chose not to reply.

Instead she dialed the number for Olof Hagstr?m’s sister.

Ingela Berg Haider answered on the second ring. “I’m in a meeting,” she whispered.

“Maybe you could call me back?”

“No, just hang on a second.” The sounds in the background changed as the woman stepped out, away from the others, closed a door.

“I saw that you had someone in custody,” she said. “Did he do it?”

“He hasn’t been charged yet,” said Eira. “The investigation is still ongoing. That’s all I can say.”

“So why did you ring, if you can’t tell me anything?”

There was no good way to say what she had to say, nothing gentle or dignified enough.

“The medical examiner released your father’s body yesterday.”

“What does that mean? Do I have to pick it up? Him. I can’t.”

“No, no, I just meant that they’ve finished their investigation. So the family can start planning the funeral.”

“Family? What do you mean family?” Ingela Berg Haider had raised her voice; Eira could hear her stress levels rocketing. “I don’t even know what kind of funeral he wanted. I don’t think he went to church, he wasn’t religious . . . And who’s even going to come?”

“There’s no rush,” said Eira. “If you get in touch with a funeral director they can help you with everything.”

Ingela didn’t seem to be listening.

“Olof’s landlady has been calling me practically every day, too. Saying she’ll take his stuff to the dump if I don’t go and pick it up, that she’ll send me the bill. Where am I supposed to put it? I don’t even have a bloody car. And imagine if he wakes up and all his things are gone—who do you think he’ll blame then?”

Ingela’s breathing was rapid. She was probably pacing back and forth in the corridor. Soft carpets. Eira couldn’t hear any footsteps.

“I don’t get why Olof didn’t just clear off. Why did he stay there, in a place where everyone hates him?”

“We were planning to go over and interview him again, but we didn’t have time. I don’t know why he stayed.”

“You keep being drawn back,” said Ingela. “You try to leave, but it’s impossible. You move five hundred kilometers away and make a life for yourself—a good life. I’ve got a job, a kid; everything just works. I took my mum’s maiden name, that’s the Berg, married a Haider, erased all that crap. Just like that. Or so I thought. But here I am with a funeral to plan and a burnt-out house. My brother’s in a coma in Ume? and everyone keeps pestering me, the insurance company wants paperwork and his things are going to be taken to the dump, and I can’t believe my dad is actually dead, it just won’t sink in. I hardly ever thought about him while he was still alive.”