We Know You Remember (7)

“Olof Hagstr?m?”

She held her ID at eye level. EIRA SJ?DIN, POLICE ASSISTANT. KRAMFORS, SOUTHERN ?NGERMANLAND DISTRICT.

His arm seemed heavy as he wound down the window.

“Could you tell me what happened?” she said.

“He was just sitting there.”

“In the shower?”

“Mmm.” Olof Hagstr?m looked down at the dog, which was rooting around in a torn burger bag on the floor. Eira had to make a real effort to hear what he mumbled. That he had wanted to call an ambulance. Poor signal. He wasn’t trying to run away, he just wanted to go down to the road.

“Did your father live alone?”

“I don’t know. He had the dog.”

Maybe it was the smell that made her feel nauseated, the odor of someone who hadn’t showered in a long time, the filthy dog nosing around in the leftover food on the floor. Or maybe it was the thought that beneath all the years and the rolls of fat was a man who had raped a sixteen-year-old girl, strangling her with a sallow branch before throwing her body into the river.

To be carried by the current, out into the expanse and the oblivion of the Bothnian Sea.

Eira straightened up, made a few notes.

“When did you last see him?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Was he ill in any way?”

“We haven’t spoken . . . I don’t know anything.”

His eyes were small and deep set in his round face. When he looked up at her, his gaze seemed to hover somewhere below her chin. It bothered her that she suddenly became aware of her breasts.

“We need to go into the house,” she said. “Is the door unlocked?”

She took a quick step back as the car door swung open. Her colleague noticed the movement and was by her side in an instant, but Olof Hagstr?m didn’t climb out of the car. He just leaned out slightly, so that he could point.

A round stone by the porch, distinct from all the others. Eira pulled on a pair of gloves. That was about as bad as a flowerpot on the porch, or hiding it in a broken clog. People must think that thieves were complete idiots, which was also often the case.

“What do you think?” her colleague asked quietly.

“I don’t think anything yet,” Eira replied, unlocking the door.

“Jesus Christ.” August covered his mouth with his hand as they stepped inside. The air stunk of dog shit. No abnormal amount of flies, just an awful lot of junk in the hallway, continuing through to the kitchen. Bags of newspapers and empty bottles, brush cutters and weed whackers and metal tubs and other rubbish. Eira breathed through her mouth. She had seen worse. Once, a body had been lying for six months.

The violence was something she had expected when she became a police officer, but not the loneliness. It cut deep. Homes like this, where life ended and no one came.

She took a few steps into the kitchen, taking care where she put her feet. The dog had been running around in its own excrement. Torn packs of food, full of teeth marks.

Eira wished she were the type of police officer who instinctively knew what had happened with a single glance, but she wasn’t. She got by on being thorough. Observing, documenting, putting the pieces together one by one.

The dregs of his coffee had dried in the bottom of his mug. An empty plate, crumbs from a sandwich. The newspaper lying open on the table was from Monday. Four days earlier. The last thing Sven Hagstr?m had read was an article about burglaries in the area. The thieves were likely a couple of local addicts who were out after a brief spell inside, she knew that, just as she knew the stolen goods were likely being stashed in a barn in Lo, but the press continued to speculate about criminal gangs from the other side of the Baltic.

August Engelhardt followed her as they continued through to the bathroom. You get used to it, Eira thought. It happens quicker than you might think.

A small lake had formed in front of the open door.

There was something unbearably sad about the sight that met them. The man looked so defenseless, hunched over and naked. His white skin reminded her of marble.

Before Eira moved back to ?dalen the previous winter, she had seen a body that had been lying in the bathtub for two weeks, in an apartment in Blackeberg. The skin had come loose when the technicians touched it.

“Aren’t we going to wait for forensics?” August asked behind her.

She didn’t bother to answer. What do you think? If we were going to wait, if it wasn’t our job to be taking in whatever happened here, why would I be standing with my nose right up close to someone who died four days ago? Feeling the steam that has started to rise, the rot that set in as soon as the water stopped running.

Eira carefully turned the chair. It was the kind used in hospital showers, for those at risk of falling, made from plastic and steel. The man’s backside had pushed through the open seat.

She half-crouched in front of the body so that his abdomen and chest were visible. There was no blood, but the wound was deep. A horizontal gash across the top of his belly. She could make out the edges of the wound and some of the tissue within.

A pang of dizziness as she stood up.

“What do you reckon?” her colleague asked.

“A single wound,” said Eira. “As far as I could see.”

“So it’s professional, you mean?”

“Possibly.”

Eira studied the door. There was no sign of forced entry.