We Know You Remember (83)

Unni tensed and straightened up.

“Why exactly are you asking about all this?”





Chapter 46





Eira chose not to drive straight home that evening, and continued into Kramfors. Parked up in her usual spot outside the police station.

It was only a short walk from there, along the edge of the small river. H?llgumsgatan wasn’t exactly idyllic, but it was somewhere you could find an empty apartment ready to move into the very next day. Kramfors’s own version of a social housing program had been planned during the sixties, back when the authorities were confident the area would continue to need large numbers of workers. Until the very recent past, when the borders closed, the three-story blocks had been used to house asylum seekers. The local restaurant, Tr?ffen, still served ?evap?i?i following the previous wave of refugees.

Now every other window was dark and empty again, without any flowers on the balconies.

Eira didn’t send a message to see whether he was still awake until she was already outside his door, once it felt too late to change her mind.

August came down to let her in, barefoot.

“Sorry for bothering you so late,” she said.

“You’re not,” he said. “I was actually thinking about calling you . . .”

“Were you?”

Eira didn’t give him time to answer. He was wearing nothing but an open shirt and a pair of boxers, and she peeled off his shirt the minute they stepped into his flat. They got no farther than the hallway, a suitably placed chest of drawers. Her arms got tangled up in his as they tried to pull off her clothes. The newly fledged police assistant may have tried to say something, but she kissed away the damn words, she ate him up.

Take my thoughts away, take me away.

It was only later that he managed to speak, as they lay sprawled in his hot, sparsely furnished room, still sticky—they had done it again in his bed. He had an Ikea sofa, a TV; it was an apartment for people on the run, passing through. Anonymous, with no memories.

Eira would have preferred to lie in silence. Staring up at the ceiling, exhausted, her mind blank.

“I thought you didn’t want to do this anymore,” August said with a laugh.

“Do you always know what you want?”

“Absolutely.”

He laughed again. Eira threw back the duvet. It was too hot. Thanks to the sixties’ vogue for light and air, the buildings were set back from one another, meaning she could stand naked by the open balcony door on the third floor without anyone seeing her.

No one but him, the boy from Stockholm, who couldn’t understand the most basic things about silence.

“I was thinking about calling you tonight, like I said, but then it got late and I thought you might want . . .”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” said Eira.

“OK. Sure.”

Mirrored in the glass, she saw him sit up on the edge of the bed, pull a sheet around his shoulders. The air outside felt slightly raw, almost chilly. She liked it. The feeling of moisture on her skin.

“I just thought you might want to know . . .” he continued.

“Why do we always have to know? Can’t things just be sometimes?”

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I need to learn not to take my work home with me—and into the bedroom at that, it’s pretty messed up. Your approach is far better. Switching off. It’s healthy.”

Eira turned around. “What are you talking about?”

“The body, obviously,” said August. “The one you found in Lockne. I heard just before I left, and then I thought about you. I don’t know how involved you are now—they said you’d be back with us next week, which is good. For me, I mean.”

“Is that what you were trying to tell me?” Eira felt like an idiot. She was an idiot. Thinking he wanted to call her to . . . “What did you hear?”

“That it’s not her, the body they found.”

“What?”

“It’s not Lina Stavred.”

Eira stared at August. Tried to understand.

“But they can’t have the DNA results already, it’s only been one day . . .”

“They found the skull.”

The skull. The simplest way to determine the sex of a skeleton. The eye sockets, the jaw, the curve of the back of the head . . . Eira suddenly felt so defenseless. Like one of those dreams in which she accidentally went to school naked. She grabbed the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around herself.

“Is it a man?” she asked.

August nodded.

“And the timeframe?”

“The timeframe?”

“Yeah, is the body recent or . . .”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

It struck Eira that she had two missed calls. Unknown number. She had forgotten to switch her phone off silent after the jazz club, and had only realized as she was standing outside, sending a text with a pounding heart. Which pocket was her phone in, trousers or jacket? She rummaged through the clothes scattered across the floor.

August’s voice behind her:

“But they were talking about opening a preliminary investigation, so I guess that means it’s not from the Middle Ages.”





Chapter 47