We Know You Remember (74)

“I can just picture it.”

“But then, once I realized she was missing and they took Magnus in for questioning, I started talking anyway. Not that I called the cops or anything, certain people wouldn’t have liked that . . .”

“The people you bought the hash from?”

“Mmm. But I talked to some friends anyway, and that obviously got back to the cops somehow.”

“Because you wanted to draw their attention to someone else?”

“Not just that.”

Eira sat down beside him. She wanted to talk about something else, about the weather or how his parents were doing, she wanted the silence to last, for the questions to be forgotten, as though she had never asked them. Her thoughts drifted to Ingela, Olof’s sister, who had snapped up the rumor and taken it home with her, set everything in motion.

“It obviously wasn’t Magnus,” said Ricken. “I never thought it was. You get that, right? But he was a complete mess—first Lina was gone, then the cops came after him. I guess I thought they might as well question someone else instead.”

“A fourteen-year-old?”

Eira glanced at her old boyfriend, at his familiar profile. It had become more accentuated over time, more finely tuned. His jaw was tense, his hands clutching the grass. Even after all these years, she still thought she could tell what he was thinking, as though the boundaries between two people didn’t exist. No skin, no secrets. As though it was her job to carry his pain, his love, his inability, whatever the hell it was.

“We made Olof do it,” said Ricken, his voice muted. “That’s another reason I didn’t want anyone to talk to the cops. I was the one who was always coming up with stuff to do, the others just did what I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was taunting him, and the others joined in—all, ‘Come on, aren’t you gonna follow her? Have you ever fucked anyone? Do you even know what to do with a girl?’ The kind of meaningless stuff we used to say. I was pissed off with Lina, too. Said some horrible stuff about her. But then he actually did it, he followed her into the forest. I never thought Olof would try it on, he wasn’t the type . . . I didn’t believe it when he came back out either, even though he was dirty, his face all red. I knew what Lina was like, so goddamn self-centered, she would never . . .”

“So what type was Olof?”

“Insecure and cocky. Big for his age, but immature. Not that I really knew him, but . . .”

“I read parts of your interview. You didn’t seem to have any doubts back then.”

“I guess it was all that stuff . . . with Magnus . . . The cops were all over him . . .”

“So you sounded more sure than you were?”

“I just said what we saw. And no matter what Olof did or didn’t do, I knew Magnus was innocent.”

“Because?”

“Because he was at home.”

“Was he?”

“Come on, he’s your brother. I’ve known him all my life.”

Eira looked out at the water, the steady flow of the current. It’s always someone’s brother, she thought, though she couldn’t bring herself to say it. That would mean following the thought to its conclusion, getting into an argument. Ricken would defend Magnus until the last, she knew that; he had broken up with her to avoid ruining their friendship, or at least that was what he had told her at the time. Maybe he just hadn’t loved her, but still. Their brotherhood came first.

“If this witness is telling the truth,” she said softly. “If he saw what he thinks he saw, that means Lina was alive when Olof came out of the woods.”

“So where’s she supposed to have gone?”

“Out in a boat,” said Eira. “Two girls rowed past this witness over by K?ja, in towards the island, where they turned off.”

“This way?” said Ricken. “Into the bay?”

The very same one they were looking out at then. Strinnefj?rden was its name, at least if you lived on this side of the water. Eira had heard that those on the other side called it Lockneviken. It was all a matter of perspective.

“Where were they going?” asked Eira. “What was out here twenty-three years ago?”

“Nothing. Houses. That’s pretty much it.” Ricken squinted across the river, as though he might spot something else. “You might come out here to visit someone, I don’t know what other reason you could have.”

Eira moved closer to the water’s edge and heard him follow her. Soft footsteps in the grass.

“What’s on the other side?” she asked.

“Farmers,” Ricken said to the back of her head. “A few nice old places from the sawmill years, the manor in Lockne. Horse paddocks. I don’t know whether there are any horses now, but there might’ve been back then.”

“And there?”

Eira pointed to a cluster of poles sticking up out of the water. The beach was overgrown, the trees spilling out into the river. There was a beaver’s dam, a sliver of roof visible beyond the greenery. Farther back, the landscape rose steeply, dramatic rocks rising up out of the water.

“Lorelei,” said Ricken.

“What?”

“People call it the Lorelei rock.” His eyes were fixed in the distance, on the steep gray slope. “You know, after the woman who sat on top of a huge rock by the Rhine, singing and combing her golden hair. She bewitched the sailors, made them forget to keep watch for dangerous reefs.”