We Know You Remember (82)

“Do you remember what you were doing that evening?”

“I went down to the sauna. Swam naked in the river. This was earlier in the evening mind you, but I couldn’t stop thinking that it could’ve been me. Before they found out who he was, obviously. A fourteen-year-old would hardly have tried anything with me.”

Unni rubbed her lips together, pouted, and smiled.

“And Mum,” said Eira. “Did she tell you what she was doing?”

“Yes . . . I think so . . . She was at home, wasn’t she?”

Her eyes were wandering again. The musicians had started playing, quiet, traditional jazz. The murmur in the bar died down, everyone focused on the stage.

“And Magnus?”

Unni raised a finger to her lips, gestured to the musicians. Eira lowered her voice.

“Mum has always taken his side, no matter what he’s done. She still does. Even at his worst, it was never Magnus’s fault. If he’d said he was ill or feeling down or something, I might have believed it, but my brother was never just at home. And don’t tell me I was too young—I know. I know that I missed him all the time.”

A trumpet solo came and went.

“Let’s go further back so we’re not disturbing anyone.” Unni carried the glasses to the other end of the room, out of sight of the stage. Eira grabbed a glass of water from the bar on the way.

They sat down in a couple of low leather armchairs.

“I promised her,” said Unni. “I swore I’d never tell either of you.”

“It was a murder inquiry,” said Eira.

“But they caught him, the boy who did it. You have no idea how relieved Kerstin was when she found out. I remember her crying for days.”

“I thought she was upset.”

“You don’t know how much pressure she was under.”

“I meet plenty of people who lie to the police,” said Eira. “They always think they’ve got a good reason.”

“I don’t want to say that Kerstin lied,” said Unni. “She just didn’t know what to tell them when they asked.”

“Was Magnus at home or wasn’t he?”

“Shh.”

Eira hadn’t noticed that she had raised her voice. A few members of the audience hushed her, several glancing angrily in her direction.

Unni leaned in.

“Kerstin didn’t know. She just repeated what Magnus had told them, to avoid any more questions.”

“You’ve lost me now.”

“She wasn’t at home the night Lina Stavred went missing. Once you’d gone to sleep, around nine I suppose, she snuck out. She was gone a few hours. She couldn’t exactly tell anyone—well, except me, but this was afterwards.”

“Snuck out where?”

Unni closed her eyes as though she were enjoying the music, but she was also fidgeting nervously with her bracelets, several on each arm.

“You mustn’t judge your mum too harshly.”

“I really need to know.”

“OK.”

The crowd clapped, the musicians announced an interval. A deep woman’s voice drifted from the speakers, a familiar song about lonely lovers meeting under a blue moon.

Unni reached for the second glass, which Eira still hadn’t touched.

“Your dad was almost never home,” she said. “Veine was constantly out on the road. Things weren’t great between your parents, hadn’t been for years.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Please, just let me talk.”

It had been going on for some time, several months if Unni remembered correctly. In secret, of course; they were both married. It was possible that Unni was the only person Kerstin dared confide in.

They lived in such a small community that something as simple as a wink could spark gossip, and even worse than that: meetings late at night, a walk along the river, a car ride under the pretense of buying milk, a windbreak somewhere in the forest . . .

This time it was Eira who closed her eyes, blocking out the world for at least a few seconds. Her brother could have been anywhere that evening. Her mother had lied to the police. She had snuck out while Eira slept.

“Who was he?”

“Does the name Lars-?ke mean anything to you?”

Eira shook her head.

“He lived nearby,” said Unni. “I never met him, but she pointed out his house once, down towards the river, by the beach near the old customs house, you know, where some of the events happened in 1931 . . .”

“Do you remember if it was blue?”

“What?”

“The house, was it blue with white corners?”

Unni nodded and Eira saw it clearly, as though caught in a camera flash: the empty house where a couple of neighbors had found her mother one night in the recent past.

A confused old woman losing her way? Not quite. She had just forgotten that her lover no longer lived there.

“When I moved in with you back then,” Unni continued, “Kerstin was beside herself with worry. It was only once they caught the boy who did it that she broke down, told me she hadn’t been honest with the police. She was ashamed, of course she was—for leaving you alone, too. But you were sleeping, and it’s not like you were a baby. If she’d changed her story, things would’ve been even worse for Magnus. If he said he was at home, she believed him, she had to. And in the end it made no difference: they caught the person who did it.”