We Know You Remember (86)

“That he was young?”

“I’ve got a pair, you know,” said GG.

“Of Doc Martens?”

“Mmm. Bought them last autumn after I decided I needed to reinvent myself, but I’ve barely even worn them. They’re stiff as hell, terrible for walking in.”

“There probably weren’t many older men walking about in Doc Martens back then . . .”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean grown men, in the prime of their life.”

“Thank you,” GG said with a smile.

Eira felt a flicker of sadness, a melancholy at no longer being able to work with him.

“Like Shirin said, they were mostly a youth culture thing, a kind of rebellion . . .” A sudden thought came to her, not because she really knew—to her, the nineties belonged to the Spice Girls—but because she did know something about longing for the kinds of things you saw only in magazines and on TV, someplace else.

“There probably weren’t many kids in them either,” she continued. “Not here, not in the nineties. Maybe in H?rn?sand they had the kind of guy who walked around in vintage coats and played in bands, but in Kramfors? In the villages round about? People didn’t have that kind of money. I think a pair of Doc Martens would’ve stuck out.”

“See, I told you,” GG said with a sigh. “Local knowledge.”





Chapter 48





Not much was happening in the southern ?ngermanland police district on the day Eira returned to the beat.

An assault in Bollsta, at an address familiar to the team; a breakin at the kiosk by the swimming area in Lo. The perpetrator had made off with the stock of sweets and emptied the ice cream freezer. A local tragedy, but there wasn’t much for the police to do other than show the local residents’ association and a handful of upset children that they were taking it seriously.

“I’ve got an interview next week,” August announced as they drove away with the windows rolled down. “For a post with Stockholm V?sterort.”

“Congratulations,” said Eira. “Good luck. I hope you get it, really.”

“That’s if I want it.”

“Because it’s not inner city?” She felt herself getting annoyed. Fresh out of training, but the jobs that were out there still weren’t good enough for him.

“I could also stay here,” said August. “If a job opens up.”

“You’re kidding.”

August was quiet. He wasn’t laughing. Sought out her free hand, grazed her thigh. That was how far they had come.

“No one wants to stay here,” said Eira. “People stay because they’ve got family up here, roots, memories; because they can’t do without the hunting and fishing and the river and the forest, because they’ve started a family and want their kids to be able to run free. But not because of a job. You could spend thirty years as a police assistant up here. Management positions only come up every fifteen years, if you want to make a career.”

“Maybe I like it up here.”

“You’d go crazy.”

“There’s a calmness up here that I’ve never felt anywhere else. Being so close to nature, feeling like you’re really breathing clean air. And this light . . .”

“You’ve never been here in November. You don’t know just how dark it gets then. You’ve never been stuck in a freezing car that won’t start in January.”

“Can always huddle up,” he said with a laugh, squeezing her thigh.

“And what would your girlfriend make of that?”

“I told you, we don’t own each other.”

Eira turned on the radio to avoid getting dragged into that discussion. They were playing a summer hit with a reggae beat from a few years earlier and August sang along, drumming his fingers in the open window.

There was nothing wrong with his voice. It was the happy-go-lucky, carefree side of him that made her uncomfortable, the way he seemed to exist entirely in the moment. Blurting out things like that, things he didn’t mean anything by.

She slowed down and turned off onto a narrow track that rose sharply over a ridge.

“Aren’t we meant to be heading back to Kramfors?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Eira. “But this won’t take long, it’s not a big detour.”

On the other side of the ridge, a lush valley took over. Eira had always liked that it reminded her of an alpine landscape, with rolling meadows and grazing cows, scattered farms.

A straight gravel track led up to a house at the edge of the wood. The lawn was neat, but otherwise the place bore every sign of having been abandoned. With a fence that was bowing in several places, paint that had been worn down by the elements. She thought she could see a birds’ nest in the chimney pot.

“Are you buying a house?” asked August. “Or do you just want to make out?”

Eira turned off the engine and climbed out of the car.

“Honestly,” he said, standing behind her as he surveyed the decay. “Doesn’t it need a bit much work?”

“This is where she lived,” said Eira.

August was quiet for a moment, a fact she appreciated. It was a place that demanded reverence, to bow down to the sorrow it bore.