We Know You Remember (9)

“Yes, yes, I’m not completely senile, even if you seem to think I am. She moved away, when was it? Met a jazz musician in Sundsvall. Some women just can’t handle being on their own.”

Kerstin tested one of the potatoes with a skewer. It was perfect, soft but not yet falling apart, as though she had an inbuilt timer. There are still moments like this, Eira thought, still so much of her left.

“The fourteen-year-old,” she continued. “You know, the boy who did it, he’s back in Kungsg?rden. I met him yesterday.”

“Uff.” Her mother mashed butter into a potato and mixed it with the soured cream, taking far too big a mouthful. Eating the herring and salmon together, wolfing down everything much too quickly. It was part of her illness, this desire for food. Maybe she had forgotten that she ate just a few hours earlier, or maybe she was afraid she might not be given any more food, afraid of losing control of her own survival. “I can’t understand how they can let someone like that out.”

“Do you know Sven Hagstr?m?”

A moment of silence followed. Chewing.

“Who did you say?”

“Olof Hagstr?m’s dad. The father of Lina’s killer. Seems like he stayed put in Kungsg?rden all these years.”

Her mother pushed back her chair and got to her feet, searching for something in the fridge.

“I know I put a bottle in here, but now I can’t find it.”

“Mum.” Eira waved the bottle that had been standing on the counter, a wormwood schnapps. They had already had a small glass each, but she poured another.

“Hej tomtegubbar,” Kerstin quoted an old Christmas song, knocking back her glass.

It was as though the color of her eyes had changed with the progression of her illness. The more she lost her grip of time, the paler they became, flashing brightly whenever she managed to find a foothold. In that moment, they seemed deep blue.

“Sven Hagstr?m was found dead yesterday,” said Eira. “I want to know what kind of person he was. What something like that does to a man. When your son . . .”

“Was he related to Emil Hagstr?m?”

“I don’t know, who’s that?”

“The poet!” Her eyes showed a flash of brilliant blue again, and for a moment Kerstin Sj?din was as gruff and confident as ever. “Surely even you must have heard of him—not that you ever read anything.”

She reached for the bottle and poured herself another schnapps. Eira covered her own glass and was tempted to say that of course she read, or that she listened to books at the very least, sometimes while she was out running, and ideally at a slightly faster pace, to stop them from being so damned boring.

“Sven Hagstr?m,” she repeated instead, reminding herself of the basic facts they had established the day before, while they were waiting for the on-duty commanding officer to arrive. “He was born in nineteen forty-five, just like Dad. Moved to Kungsg?rden with his parents in the fifties, so it seems pretty likely that your paths must have crossed at some point. He worked at the sorting yard in Sandsl?n before they stopped the log driving, and he actually played on the bandy team for a season or two . . .”

“No, I don’t know the man.” Kerstin knocked back her entire glass again, coughing and dabbing her mouth with her napkin. A wandering look of anxiety in her eye. “And your dad didn’t either. Neither of us did.”

“I was in his house,” Eira continued without any real idea of why she was pushing such a hopeless and, professionally speaking, dubious line of inquiry. Maybe it was irritation, over the fact that she wasn’t being given any answers yet again. Or maybe it was revenge for everything they had kept quiet, whispered about, when she was younger. Besides, if she slipped up in her duty of confidentiality here, it would soon be forgotten.

“I saw he had a lot of books, almost an entire wall full. Maybe he used to borrow from the book bus? You could always remember everyone, you knew exactly what they liked reading—you found books for them and brought what they were looking for when you loaded the bus. Or maybe you knew Gunnel Hagstr?m, his wife? They got divorced. After Lina was killed, after Olof was sent away . . .”

The shrill sound of the phone interrupted her. It was work calling, finally. She picked up her mobile and went out through the kitchen door. Eira had fought the urge to check in while she was preparing lunch. The first twenty-four hours had passed, the limit for detaining someone. Olof Hagstr?m could be a free man now. Or not.

“Hey,” said August Engelhardt. “I thought you might want an update. Assuming you don’t value your free time too highly.”

“Is he being held?”

“Yup, I just heard. So we’ve got seventy-two hours.”

“We?” she blurted out. Murder investigations never stayed in their laps for long; they had a tendency to blow straight down to Sundsvall and the Violent Crimes Unit there. They always called in all the resources they could at first: the on-duty investigator, local officers, civilian investigators—even trainees could be assigned overtime shifts to secure the most pressing evidence. But the vast majority of the important work would be done one hundred kilometers to the south, in the city by the coast. She had hesitated for a moment too long that morning, phone in hand. Was just about to volunteer for overtime when a timer went off in the kitchen, and she had to drop her phone to take the V?sterbotten cheese pie out of the oven. Then she had seen the bouquet of flowers her mother had picked, and hadn’t been able to bring herself to push back their Midsummer celebrations again.