We Know You Remember (75)

“I mean there,” said Eira. “By the old quay.”

“Ah, the mill,” said Ricken. “Some of it’s still there, but it’s been falling apart for decades; that place shut down back in the forties.”

Eira thought about the places he had taken her. The oil cistern wasn’t the only one. They had gone to empty houses and the abandoned ruins of factories, the kind of thing ?dalen was full of. Places where no one would see them. She would never be able to find her way back to most of them, had been focused on everything other than the geography.

“Did you and I ever go over there?” she asked.

“Nah, damn, must’ve missed that one.” He was laughing, she was sure of that. Or smiling at the very least. “But it’s not too late.”

She gently stroked his arm before she left.

“Thanks for telling me.”





Chapter 41





There were seven tips about a boat on the river. Several could be dismissed out of hand, but three were a fit for both the time and the location.

Just outside Nyhamn, an elderly couple who were sitting on their veranda. They had almost certainly passed away. Nyhamn was midway between Marieberg and Strinnefj?rden. They thought it had been around ten o’clock, just after the late shipping news on the radio.

Over by K?ja, a few teenagers who were drinking beer on a jetty. They weren’t sure of the time. Only one of them actually remembered the boat, she had waved because she thought it was someone she knew inside, but she had been mistaken.

The third tip came from a fisherman who had been somewhere downstream of Litan?n and thought he saw someone row into Strinnefj?rden. It caught his eye because the person was so terrible at rowing; he’d probably reacted more to the sound of the oars than anything. He didn’t have his glasses with him in the boat—could fish perfectly well without them—and couldn’t be sure whether it was the girl or not, but he had heard laughter carrying across the water, and it was from a young lady.

All of the witnesses had been contacted, their statements taken down, but Eira couldn’t find any further action after that.

Sheer routine.

“There was one more thing,” she said.

“What?”

GG seemed annoyed, replying curtly to everything she said. They were no longer a team, to the extent they ever had been. It had been days since she last saw Bosse Ring. He was probably on another case, or possibly on leave. Silje Andersson, too. Still, Mejan Nydalen had confessed and been remanded in custody, the forensic evidence was solid, so why else would GG have driven the one hundred kilometers to Kramfors?

For coffee?

He knows, thought Eira. He either feels or suspects that there really is something in this. For the first time, she saw something of herself in him. A stubbornness, something niggling away inside.

“It was more a complaint than a real tip,” she continued. “But no one seems to have looked into it or even called back. There wasn’t anything to directly connect it to Lina.”

“But?”

“A widow, in Lockne. She said she was calling for the third time.”

Eira read aloud from the transcript of her phone call. They had taken such care with that kind of thing twenty-three years ago, making sure nothing fell between the cracks. Everything had been documented and filed away. She felt an urge to slip into the woman’s ?ngermanland accent, a blending of several old dialects you rarely heard anymore; she associated them with her grandparents, with a bygone world. Instead, she translated for GG:

“There are people in the sawmill again. God knows what they’re up to, but the police haven’t been over yet.”

“Sorry, but where are you talking about?”

“Over here, in Lockne. The door’s wide open, so anyone and their mother can walk straight in. Doesn’t feel good not knowing what kind of folk are running around. And now with everything with that girl. Nasty business.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Don’t dare go down there with those types hanging about.”

The person who took the call then said “if this isn’t about the missing girl, Lina Stavred, I’d advise you to call on a different line . . .” and the woman launched into a general rant about the authorities turning their backs on the community just because it wasn’t on the coast.

GG had taken a seat and was drumming his pen on the edge of the desk.

“I’m not quite sure I follow,” he said. “How is this interesting?”

Eira put down her iPad and brought up a map.

“It’s just a thought,” she said. “But if you look at the area here . . .” The narrow inlet was five kilometers long, like a tributary with no destination. She pointed out the old sawmill in Lockne, halfway in.

“Why would they row up here?” she asked. “If they were going to visit someone, shouldn’t that person have come forward . . . ?” Neither vocalized the thought that followed, but she could see it in his eyes: unless that person was the killer.

“Who could the other person in the boat have been?” GG asked instead. “Surely they can’t have failed to notice another missing girl?”

Eira enlarged the satellite image. Blurry greenery and spots that could be roofs were all that was visible of the area beyond the poles in the water by Lockne.