We Know You Remember (94)

“Aha, and why’s that?”

Eilert Granlund stopped laughing.

“Right, right,” he continued before she had time to reply. “It’s to do with the murder of Hagstr?m’s old man, you called me about it, asking if that other bloke’s name cropped up in the files. I’ve been thinking about it, whether we might have missed anything. It was such a big case, probably the biggest one I worked during my time on the force.”

He rubbed his chin, shook his head, himself.

“But we solved it in the end. We did, even though it was bloody hard work. Such a young perpetrator, and the girl—having to talk to her parents . . . What you have to cling to is the knowledge that you did your job, however many sleepless nights it cost you. I don’t think my wife’s ever come so close to leaving me as she did then.”

Everything Eira wasn’t going to say was swirling round and round in her mind. About the interviews that had gone on for hours on end, the words that were put into Olof’s mouth, the fact that Lina might not have been dumped in the river after all.

She wasn’t there to question him, she had to remember that. She sipped her coffee and tore off pieces of cinnamon bun as he talked. Lina’s parents had made a real impression on him, possibly because he saw himself in her father. Like so many others, they came from families that had been torn apart by drinking, but Stavred had chosen the life of sobriety. Both he and her mother were active in the temperance movement, and were worried about what their daughter got up to; time and time again she kept slipping through the net they had wound so tightly. Her older brothers had already moved out, so it was just Lina left, Lina and the concerns they had for her.

“You interviewed someone else . . .” said Eira.

“Yes, there were a lot, like I said. My memory never usually fails me. Crosswords, that’s what the wife says, never stop doing the crossword. But I hate them, they don’t go anywhere.”

“Magnus Sj?din.”

“I must’ve interviewed thousands of people over the years . . .”

“He was Lina’s boyfriend. You brought him in for several interviews.”

“Ah, yes, now I remember . . . Sj?din, you said? He a relative of yours?”

“My brother,” said Eira. Sj?din wasn’t the most unusual name in the area, so it wasn’t surprising that it hadn’t been his first thought.

“Ah, I had no idea.” Eilert squinted towards the sun, which was still peeping up beyond the mountains. His porch had been angled so that he wouldn’t miss a moment of the spectacular sunsets. A few gulls screeched as they flew overhead.

“I remember him, now that you mention it. You remember the context, the questions and answers, the faces. The impression you had of the person in the room and their relationship to the crime, the thoughts you had. It’s just the names that mess around with you, slipping away as your brain gets clogged up.”

“Do you remember what you thought while you were interviewing him?”

“Why are you asking about this?” Eilert squinted at her, his eyes as piercing as ever.

“There are eight years between us,” said Eira. “I was too young, and then we sort of drifted apart. I need to know who my brother really is.”

She desperately hoped that Magnus wouldn’t be headline fodder the next day or the day after. Though if he was, she would have bigger problems than Eilert Granlund feeling like she had duped him.

“Did you ever think it was him?” she asked.

“No, we became convinced it was Olof Hagstr?m pretty early on. There was evidence, witnesses . . . It was crystal clear.”

“I mean before that, during the first few days, do you remember what you thought then?”

“Hmm. I think I’ll have a whisky, that usually helps.”

As he disappeared into the house Eira realized that she had noticed the smell as soon as she arrived. That he had seemed a little unsteady on his feet. She checked her phone. Three missed calls from August, no messages.

“Ah, you’re driving, poor sod,” Eilert told her once he returned with a glass and a bottle of single malt from the High Coast Distillery, pouring one for himself. Gripping the table as he sat down.

A soft groan, an ache he was trying to ignore.

“We focused on the boyfriend, of course we did, that’s just where you look—as well as all the others, known criminals and that kind of thing . . . There was some talk among her friends about him being jealous. Lina had tried to break things off a few times, but he kept hanging on. It’s a pattern we’d seen before. He had an alibi, I don’t remember what it was, but it was flimsy. For a day or two the boyfriend was our prime suspect, but if you ask me . . .”

“I’m asking you.”

“He didn’t have it in him. That was my gut feeling. He was . . . how should I put it . . . adaptable. Some of the others thought he was lying because he was guilty, but I wasn’t so sure . . . I thought it was more that he didn’t want to make a mistake. Tiptoeing around, thinking for a second too long before he answered, that kind of thing. I thought maybe he was lying for someone else. We toyed with that idea for a while, that there could be someone else involved.”

“Like who?”

“No one. I was wrong. Magnus Sj?din didn’t know Olof Hagstr?m, he wouldn’t have risked anything for him.” Eilert Granlund knocked back his second whisky, or whatever number it was, and poured another.