We Know You Remember (88)

“Looks like they’ve identified the body in Lockne.”

“Oh shit.”

Her phone beeped again with two other images. The same face, slightly younger in one of the shots; the same long hair, but in a green-and-white Hammarby football jersey this time. A Stockholm team. As Eira pulled into the Nydalens’ yard, she realized she had been right: he was from elsewhere.

There were two cars parked outside the garage, one gleaming and new, from a rental company. A young woman came out onto the porch. She was wearing a pair of rolled-up jeans, and put down a black rubbish bag.

“That’s our daughter Jenny, she came home,” Tryggve explained as he walked towards them, hesitant, suspicious. “From Australia. Do you really have to cause a fuss with her too?”

“I just wanted to ask you to take a look at a couple of pictures,” said Eira.

“Will this never end?”

Eira brought up the first image and held out her phone.

“Could this be the person you saw on the river the night Lina Stavred went missing?”

Tryggve patted his pockets and excused himself, heading into the house to fetch his glasses. The young woman slammed the lid of the bin and came towards them, stopping at a safe distance. She looked younger than her twenty-seven years.

“What do you want?” she asked, shoving her hands into her pockets, defiantly hunching her shoulders.

“It’s to do with another case.”

“Right.”

Jenny lingered, as though she was expecting questions.

“It must’ve come as a real shock to you,” said Eira, hearing just how pathetic the words sounded. What were you supposed to say to someone whose mother had confessed to murder? Who had just found out that her father wasn’t who she thought he was?

“I came back to go through my stuff,” she said. “I only took a backpack when I left. I thought there might be something from my childhood that I wanted to keep, before Dad sells up, but what would that be? Memories of what?”

“Is he going to sell?”

“He can do what he wants as far as I’m concerned.” She looked over to the house. Her father had just reemerged, glasses in one hand. “Looks nice on the outside, huh?” she said. “God, they worked so hard on the house and the garden, trying to make everything perfect.”

Eira wanted to ask more, but that wasn’t why they were there. She was no longer investigating the murder of Sven Hagstr?m. Not everything could be explained. They had the confession, the murder weapon, and a motive. The evidence against Mejan was strong; there was no reason for the police to delve into her psyche or her background. That was the defense team’s problem now, if they chose to pursue that angle. Or the court’s, once it handed down its verdict.

Jenny turned and walked away as her father approached, kicking a football into one of the lovingly planned flower beds. She turned her head as they passed.

Tryggve watched his daughter for a moment before putting on his glasses and taking Eira’s phone.

“Who is this?” he asked, studying the image.

“You said the person rowing the boat had dark hair hanging over their face . . . ?”

“Yes . . . I remember the hair, it was down to her shoulders like that, and I remember she was a useless rower. Women in boats, you know?” He laughed, hoping for August to join in, then lowered his eyes when he got no response.

“But you think it could’ve been him?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” He paused on the photograph with the football shirt. “He does look a bit like a girl. Skinny, not much of a bloke . . .”

“I know it must be hard to tell this long after the event,” said Eira.

Tryggve handed back her phone.

“Yeah,” he said, his intonation betraying his northern roots. Eira found herself wondering if that was where he would go now, whether those towns and villages had the ability to forget. “It could’ve been someone else, but it also could’ve been him.”





Chapter 49





It was thanks to his teeth that they had been able to identify him so quickly.

Kenneth Emanuel Isaksson.

“We found him in the missing-persons database,” said Silje, who was temporarily back in Kramfors. She turned her laptop for Eira to see.

Born 1976 in H?gersten Parish, Stockholm. Kenneth had just turned twenty when he was reported missing in early June 1996.

Eira counted forward and back. That was less than a month before Lina vanished, not even four weeks—twenty-six days, to be precise.

“He ran away from the Hassela Collective in northern H?lsingland,” said Silje.

“Is that place still open?” Eira recalled a treatment home for young addicts 150 or so kilometers south, on the other side of the county line.

“There’s something else there now, but back when our guy was there, their comradely support in the spirit of Marxism was still in full swing.”

“I remember the place was pretty controversial.”

“Collective child-rearing,” said Silje. “They achieved quite a lot, but they also got a load of criticism—for encouraging the kids to inform on one another, among other things.”

Silje scrolled through the material, a summary of the police investigation into Kenneth Isaksson’s disappearance in 1996.