We Know You Remember (67)

Chapter 38





“She’s confessed.”

The call was from GG. He was in the car on the way up from Sundsvall. Eira could hear Springsteen singing in the background.

Mejan Nydalen had been prepared to confess during the very first interview, and they had had to stop her while they waited for the lawyer. No one should confess to premeditated murder without legal representation.

“We’re on the home straight now,” said GG. “We’re on the home bloody straight.”

Eira was in the stairwell at the police station when he called, climbing the stairs two at a time. She sat down at a free computer and logged in using the password she had been given when she joined the investigation group.



Interview with Marianne Nydalen

MN: I protected my family. That’s what I did. Someone had to put up a fight. I suppose you could say I’m the stronger of the two of us.

Eira had spoken to the woman often enough to be able to clearly hear her voice, at once warm and stern.

MN: But my husband had nothing to do with this. It was me, I did it on my own. You should leave him in peace now. He’s suffered enough.

MN: The only thing I regret is letting Tryggve sit in custody for so long. I honestly never thought you’d keep an innocent man locked up; I spent every waking hour waiting for him to come home. Would you tell him that, please?

There was a sense of calm to the entire confession. The woman took her time without ever falling silent or trying to wriggle out of anything. Suspects usually wanted to get away from the interrogation room as fast as they could, but Mejan actually seemed pleased to be able to speak at last.

Tryggve had come home visibly shaken one day in late April. That was the start of the nightmare, hearing a woman say his real name at the ironmonger in Nyland.

No, not real, that wasn’t quite right.

His old name.

Adam Vide had left their lives years ago. He was a nonexisting person. The name he had taken, that was who he was now.

Mejan had told him it was probably nothing to worry about, but deep down she knew that they had to expect the worst.

Like dark clouds gathering over the mountains, like cancer after feeling that first lump.

The kind of gossip that petered out and died a natural death simply didn’t exist, and never had. She had grown up with it, knew what it was like to be seen as someone inferior.

It was barely a month or so before her husband came home agitated again, early one morning when Mejan had only just had her coffee.

Tryggve had heard terrible things when he went down to the letter box. From Sven Hagstr?m of all people.

“Your missus know what you got up to in the past? That the kind of thing you tell the wife?”

Tryggve had tried to ignore him, but that was probably the wrong approach.

Things only got worse.

“I never would’ve believed you were such a filthy perve, Nydalen. I wonder what people would think if they found out? What does your remarkable son make of all this? And his Stockholm girl? You have told the lad, haven’t you? Does he know what a dirty dog his old man is?”

Tryggve had probably tried talking to him, being friendly and everything else, but it didn’t stop. Hagstr?m just got bolder and bolder. Stood outside, staring at their house. He even threw it right in Mejan’s face one day when she went out to weed the nettles between the red currant bushes.

“Has he done it to you too? What about your daughter? Is that why she cleared off to Australia?”

The summer holidays were fast approaching. The lilacs bloomed far too early that spring. Patrik and the children would soon be there. Tryggve withdrew cash, several thousand, and went over to convince Hagstr?m to keep quiet.

“Nope, you won’t get away with it that easily. Right is right, even is even. People like you think you can buy everything. Well, try to buy your family back—just you try it once they’ve gone.”

I’ll have to tell Patrik, that was what Tryggve had said that day. He needs to hear it from his dad, not from someone else.

Mejan convinced him to wait until Patrik had arrived, to do it face-to-face. She knew she would have to solve the problem before then.

But she had put it off, day after day.

Hoping, as people do, for a miracle.

A heart attack or something.

Yet Sven Hagstr?m just kept on living. Spewing his bile.

In the days leading up to Patrik’s arrival, she had got up at night and snuck over there. Stood outside, gazing at the calm, quiet house, thinking about how it might play out. How everything would fall apart if she couldn’t find the nerve. She simply had to find the strength to do what she had to do.

She took the knife with her on the last night, walked right up to the house and tried the door. It was locked. The dog started barking, so she hurried away and didn’t sleep another wink.

She knew that Hagstr?m went out to fetch the paper every morning.

Surely no one locked the door after that, particularly not during the summer when you’d soon be out and about again.

She took out a piece of meat meant for a stew. There wasn’t a dog on earth that could resist a titbit like that.

Mejan had dragged Tryggve out of bed early that morning, reminding him just how much there was to do. She came up with the bed leg and the drain to keep him busy inside while she snuck off.

She peered in through the window when she got to Hagstr?m’s house, but she couldn’t see him. What she did see was the steam on the bathroom window. She forced herself to move closer, heard the water in the pipes. The dog managed to yelp once before she served it a nice piece of elk, just tossed the lump of meat into the kitchen and that was that.