We Know You Remember (64)

GG stroked his bristly chin.

“Weren’t you just checking to see whether Nydalen’s name came up?”

“It’s in there,” said Eira. “In the notes from the door knocking.”

She told him what she had found, that the Nydalens had relatives over that evening, that Tryggve had taken the kids out fishing.

“But they didn’t ask any follow-up questions, they just noted down what he said.”

“It wasn’t him,” said GG.

“I’m not saying it was, but don’t you think it would be worth asking those questions? They didn’t know he was a convicted sex offender, and his family are the only ones who gave him an alibi. There are huge gaps in the investigation.”

“Tryggve Nydalen is innocent. He didn’t kill Sven Hagstr?m.”

“What?”

“The overalls aren’t his. We got the results a few hours ago. He never had those rubber gloves on. The blood is Sven Hagstr?m’s, loads of it, but there’s not a single molecule that points to Tryggve Nydalen. That said, the overalls are covered in someone else’s prints and DNA, the gloves too . . .”

“Whose?”

“They’re not in the database.”

Eira slumped into one of the armchairs in the corner of the room. The sky had clouded over outside. Rain, maybe they would finally get a little rain.

She forced herself to focus on the current investigation, away from the past.

The murder of Sven Hagstr?m. It had all seemed so clear cut, the motive so strong. A man who hid his identity, whose life would fall apart if people found out who he was, the group assault in his past.

The knife, identical to the other one.

“Is his wife in the database?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“One of the knives is hers.”

“I know.”

Eira thought about Mejan Nydalen, the powerful yet compliant sides of her, the desire to take charge and smooth over. She thought about their marriage, how intertwined they were, like a fortress against the world around them; she thought about the shame. The wife of a rapist, who had known and yet kept quiet.

“Mejan had just as much to lose. She’s been protecting his secret just as much as he has.”

“The thought did occur to me,” said GG. “We’ve got a car heading over there now.”

Eira couldn’t think of anything else to say, and was making her way out of the room when he called her back.

“Don’t forget this,” he said, holding out the folder. He held on to it for a second too long after she gripped it.

“Do you feel responsible?” he asked.

“For what?”

“Olof Hagstr?m. Could we have prevented what happened? Should we have warned him? We knew people were getting riled up online; you’re the one who told me about it.”

Eira looked down at the document in her hand.

“We were in the middle of a murder investigation,” she said.

“Well, if we missed anything,” said GG, “it’s on me.”





Chapter 36





It had been only a month since they were last done, but Mejan had cleaned all the windows. There were always fly droppings and seed casings getting caught in the breeze and sticking to the glass.

She had also dusted and scrubbed the floors, naturally. Paying particular attention to the kitchen and living room, plus the bedroom she had shared with her husband for almost thirty years.

Tryggve’s snoring, which sometimes kept her awake. The bright, shimmering nights in spring and the dark quiet of autumn, the pale winter moonlight reflected in the snow.

All those nights.

The hours that made them up.

She had washed the bedding and stretched the sheets as best she could on her own, trapping one end in a drawer. After all, Tryggve wasn’t there to help her like usual, pulling the sheet taut and then folding it in the middle, walking towards each other and continuing the fold, meaning the sheet was a neat little parcel as they came together—just as she had been taught by her grandmother, with whom she had occasionally gone to stay when things got difficult at home.

It started with a fleck of dirt in one corner, she had been told, and quickly went downhill from there.

A dust bunny, a stain, an unmade bed or one that simply looked messy, with the duvet thrown on top, as Patrik had in his teens.

As Tryggve had when they first met. Mejan remembered his room in Norway, the place where they first slept together, clothes ending up in a pile on the floor, dirty dishes for her to wash.

Tryggve had very little idea about what went on in other people’s heads. He didn’t know a thing about jealousy or what happens when a petty old bastard sets his mind on something.

Sometimes she wondered whether he even knew his own son.

Tell Patrik? Was he out of his mind?

Their son, their beautiful boy, who carried so much anger inside him. “I hate that fucking bastard,” he had shouted across the yard before he left.

“That’s no way to talk about your father!” Mejan had snapped back.

“You knew. How could you sleep in the same bed as him, how could you . . .”

His voice left deep wounds.

You have no idea how handsome he was, she had wanted to say, to stroke her son’s hair and explain. Who else would have stuck with me all these years, been there for me while I was pregnant, once you arrived? What do you know about not having anyone at all?