We Know You Remember (89)

“They thought he’d run off to Stockholm. He’d done it a few times before, but the police always found him in the city in one or the other usual places.”

“Have you managed to speak to any of his relatives?”

“His dad is dead and his mum broke off all contact with him the year before he vanished. Kenneth stole pretty much everything he could sell from their house.”

“So what was he doing in ?dalen?”

“Hiding? Maybe he didn’t want to get caught again. Or reported.”

“He could’ve been making his way somewhere else,” said Eira. “To Norway or Finland . . . He could get hold of drugs pretty much anywhere.”

“The people at Hassela said he’d been clean for a while.”

“And no one knew where he was going?”

“Apparently not,” said Silje. “I guess he’d kept his mouth shut around his friends this time.”

Eira read through the relatively short text again.

“If it was him out on the river with Lina Stavred,” she said, “then it can’t have been the first time they met. She hardly walked down to the river on a whim; they must have agreed to meet.”

“Hmm,” said Silje. “Some would say it’s too early to be drawing conclusions like that.”

Eira turned back to the image of Kenneth Isaksson. His messy hair, the elusive look in his eyes.

“If you were sixteen or seventeen,” she said, “would you have been into this guy?”

Silje looked into the boy’s piercing eyes.

“I would have liked the fact he was on the run, or maybe it would’ve scared me. God knows which would’ve won out. I guess I’d have thought he looked like a rock star.”

“Lina walked all the way down to Marieberg,” said Eira. “That’s over a kilometer from her house, almost two. She was dressed up, didn’t want to get dirty . . .” Eira was now back in the woods, among the nettles, on the trail leading down to the water. She pictured the boy in the boat. Where had he got hold of it? Stolen, of course. Dozens of rowing boats could go missing in a single season. The beach, that was where the last sign of Lina had been found.

“The makeup brush,” she said.

“What?”

“It was found in the sand. Lina put on makeup before he arrived.”





Chapter 50





The air was thick with acetone and perfume. Calling it a salon was probably a bit of a stretch—it was in the basement of an ordinary residential building—but Elvira Sj?gren had done her very best to make it look like one.

Posters of French landscapes on the walls, mirrors with golden frames, candles on every free surface. Sandalwood and rosemary.

“My God, woman,” she said, studying Eira’s hands. “When did you last have your nails done?”

“I just want something simple,” said Eira.

“You don’t want to treat yourself? I think you deserve it.”

The woman known as Elvis dug out some boxes of artificial nails painted in every color under the sun, long and pointed, rounded and shapely, as Eira debated how honest to be. As a police officer, she was walking a fine line—assuming she hadn’t already crossed it—but no one could hold it against her for wanting to look nice.

She pointed to a near-white shade with a hint of pearlescent shimmer.

“And we’ll build them up a bit, too,” said Elvis, gently rubbing Eira’s fingers between her own.

“Not too much,” said Eira. “Having long nails is no good in my job.” That wasn’t strictly true; plenty of her fellow officers wore bright pink fake nails to compensate for the masculine uniform.

“God, that’s a shame, what do you do?”

“Police.”

“Ooh, that sounds exciting, you must see so much.”

“Just keep it very simple, like I said,” Eira told her. Elvira gave her a sad smile, as though she pitied her for not thinking she was worthy of more.

She was led over to a chair, and Elvira started filing and moisturizing, talking about different ways to strengthen her nails or build them up using some kind of gel-like material.

“I think I recognize you,” Eira said after a round of chitchat about the weather and holidays. “Weren’t you friends with Lina, the girl who went missing?”

“I was. She was my best friend.”

Forty minutes, Eira thought. That was how long it would take to do ten nails. Thirty-five to go.

“It must’ve been awful—for you too, I mean.”

Elvis adjusted the bright lamp above the table.

“You just want to forget, but you can’t. The whole thing actually came up again recently, when the papers started saying they might have found her body . . . You start thinking, OK, so there’ll be a funeral. They only had a memorial back then, but it was still nice, they played her favorite music and talked about what a great person she was and could have been . . .”

Working on Eira’s nails, the woman had no choice but to look down, though perhaps she would have avoided making eye contact anyway. There was a certain weightlessness to words that weren’t deeply rooted.

“I didn’t know her myself,” said Eira. “I was too young. But my brother did. They were dating, actually.”