by Isa Hansen
Well, texting terms. They had texted back and forth, but she hadn’t seen him since she spent the night with him. Although nothing happened; even though they seemed fine, the night had been a charged one in some respects and she wanted to make sure they were still good.
So in school a few days after she’d stayed over, she climbed the bridge that crossed Liljeån to get to the carpentry quarters. Just that day the weather had turned back from damp and wet to skin-prickling cold. The river below was frozen into a streaky, sharp-textured mass of ice. Dusk was setting in even though it was only three in the afternoon. The moon hung low and large and glaring against the vanishing daylight.
She caught sight of Oskar hanging out with a group of his friends outside their workshop. When she was at the bridge’s highest point, he looked up and saw her and smiled.
That smile took away some of the cold, right there.
Her pocket buzzed.
She reached for her phone, pulled off her glove with her teeth so she could navigate the screen.
There was a new email from an address she didn’t recognize.
She stopped dead. By the time she’d finished reading her glove had dropped to the ground.
Dear Liv,
I still think about you. I think about us, together. You were wearing that pretty dress. The white one with the navy blue stripes. Remember? It was warm out. Oddly warm for October. You were lovely, that day, your last day on earth. I’m glad you’re back. Now we can play again.
xo Nattvakten
-
The message slowly came into focus, like letters unscrambling to form words. Celia stared at the screen, her mind battling confusion and disarray. Her vision blurred and her ears rushed with the quickening of her breath.
She bent down to pick up her glove.
From her viewpoint on the bridge she scanned the school grounds. Everything around her was chillingly calm. A few kids walking to class. Teachers standing in a group speaking in dampened tones.
A hand on her shoulder.
She whisked around. Oskar stood behind her.
He took a quick step back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you… What’s wrong?”
She handed her phone to him.
He read the message, his face turning tense. “Who is this from?”
“You know as much as I do.”
“This is sick.” Oskar’s eyes flicked back and forth between Celia and the screen.
“Yeah.”
“No, I mean, this is really serious. We need to go to the police with this.”
“Don’t think so,” Celia said, taking her phone back. “They’re corrupt over there.” She tapped the phone against her side. “And what would I say, anyway? There was this girl who looked like me. She was murdered 30 years ago and now her killer is stalking me. They’d laugh me out of the station.”
Oskar was shaking his head. “We can’t just let this go.”
But Celia had already made up her mind. She’d made a snap decision—the determination came with a surge of anger rising from within. She wasn’t going to be intimidated.
She’d played all the other parts already: the scared one, the victim, the crying damsel, the one who had to be saved by her friends. She was done with all that. Whoever sent her this message wanted her to be scared, and she wasn’t about to give them that satisfaction.
Instead she clung to her fury.
Anger was a much more useful emotion and she was ready to harness it.
“Celia?” Oskar said, his voice strained, “This is different from what’s happened before. This is a direct threat. It’s personal.”
“Yeah,” Celia said. “But I’m not sure it’s as serious as it sounds. I need to go. Need to figure this out, OK?”
Oskar didn’t immediately respond. He stood with his bag slung over braced shoulders, a troubled furrow between his brows. He looked like he wanted to argue but didn’t. Just like she didn’t reach up and give him a reassuring kiss before taking off. Instead she reached out and hugged his hand.
“Talk later?”
He nodded, the furrow deepening. “Keep me informed. Yes?”
“I will,” she assured.
Walking home, Celia pushed back the panic that was pressing at her and forced her mind into strategic mode.
Someone had emailed her. Most likely it was someone she knew. The email was sent from [email protected].
1984 was presumably a reference; that was the year Liv died. And then there was nattvakten that translated from Swedish to night watchman or night guard. Celia had no idea what ‘night guard’ was in reference to. Sick psycho would have seemed more appropriate.
The premise of the message—that Liv had been killed by a stalker and now the killer was after her—wasn’t one that Celia was buying into.
No, this felt more like a scare tactic.
Or like someone messing with her.
The thought of Alex arose in her mind. The fish in her locker wasn’t Nicole. So could that have been Alex? Could all of this be Alex? But then, was Alex really that warped?
The thing that bugged her was that there were specific details in the message. The dress, the weather. Although those details could be completely fabricated.
She decided it was time for her to do something that had been on her mind: check out Björkby’s local newspaper for old articles and news reports. She needed to know more specifically what happened to Liv—she needed the details.
When she got home, she called Björkby Kuriren. She asked the receptionist if it was possible to come in and read old newspapers.
She was told that Björkby Kuriren was currently in the process of uploading their old newspaper articles to their e-readership program. It was a project that was expected to continue for the next few years. In the meantime, old newspapers could be found on microfilm at the city library.
Celia thanked the receptionist and hung up.
She checked the time and the library hours. The library would close in 30 minutes. She’d have to wait until tomorrow.
***
By the time she got out of school it was pitch dark.
They were a few days into December and all throughout Björkby little candles were on display. Celia’s parents had that type of Swedish Christmas candolier at home—seven electric candles perched in an arched wooden base. Those candles were now glowing in windows everywhere, creating little flickers of hope along the dark city streets.
The lights had a calming effect on Celia as she stepped toward the city center.
Downtown Björkby was lit up like an idyllic winter town in a snow globe. Little white lights twinkled on trees, wreaths hung on doors, and just off the main square in Old Town, a grand Christmas tree glistened in shimmers of yellow and gold.
The bleak and dreary landscape had been completely transformed over the past week. It was a mood enhancement that was sorely needed after the miserable month of November.
After passing through the city square, she arrived at Stadsbiblioteket. The library sat in a three-story building in gray brick and was beautifully preserved, the interior contoured by high ceilings and vaulted windows.
The microfilm machines were in the corner of the reading room on the main floor. Behind the machines, several rows of tables spread out.
A librarian with a buzz cut and neck tattoo helped Celia set up the microfilm reader. The microfilm rolls each held six months of newspapers; she asked to borrow the roll from July to December of 1984.
The librarian showed her how to spool the microfilm into the holder, how to use the scroll button to move back and forth between newspaper pages, and how to zoom in and out of the content.
As soon as she was alone at the computer, she began her search. She attempted to scroll to the month of October but went too far and ended up in December. She then scrolled backwards, a little slower, so she could see the content as it whizzed by. She made an abrupt stop when her image flashed before her eyes.
It wasn’t her of course,
but she never did get used to seeing photographs of teenaged Liv. Celia zoomed in to view the page.
The article was published in late October. The enlarged photo looked like a school portrait with Liv in that typical school photo pose. Hair down, head tilted, small smile, something secret in the eyes.
She read the text that wrapped around the photograph, retaining the most vital parts:
Liv had left school after lunch on October 1 and didn’t return to school that day. Her body was found the next day by her friend and classmate Charlotta Svensson. Liv’s body had washed up on the shore of Björnsjön. She had drowned the afternoon of October 2 after suffering from a cramp. The article speculated that the unseasonably warm weather may have caused Liv to underestimate the temperature of the water. The article went on to discuss Liv being well-liked in school. She was respected by teachers and peers, and her death was considered a tragic loss.
Celia read the section again about Liv being found at Bear Lake by Charlotta Svensson. That was Lottis’s full name. She pondered that for a second before she kept scrolling.
There was another article published right after Liv’s death. This was a shorter article. There was a photograph of Liv standing with two other girls. Celia recognized them: Lottis and Katja.
Katja stood tall in a model-like pose, Lottis held a shy coil to her posture—wedged between them was Liv.
Underneath the photo was a caption: At Björkby gymnasium’s harvest festival, Liv Sörensson together with her friends Charlotta Svensson and Katja Nordell on October first.
Celia brought her focus back to the photo. She looked closer.
Her heart stalled when she saw it.
The photo was grainy; she zoomed in on the details.
Liv’s dress.
She couldn’t peg down the exact shades, but the dress was light colored, and those were definitely stripes.
Celia steadied herself against her chair. She tried to reassure herself that in some offbeat sort of way this was actually good news.
The photo of Liv in the striped dress was taken the day she disappeared.
This meant she was correct in her thinking: Nattvakten didn’t have to be the killer. If she was able to find out what Liv was wearing the day she disappeared by viewing public records, then anyone could.
The article stated that Liv hadn’t died until the 2nd, although she had disappeared on the first of the month. That brought her back to the question that Hans had pointed to when they spoke: what had she been doing in between?
She thought about how Liv’s death record at the city archives appeared to have been altered. Had Liv actually died sooner?
Or had she spent that whole last day with a predator?
Celia pictured Liv’s dress, crisp and clean and dry on the day she disappeared, turning more dirty and torn for every additional hour that she spent in the hands of her deranged killer.
Even though she didn’t want to think about it, she knew she had to consider the possibility: Liv’s killer and her Nattvakten could be one and the same.
The back of her neck prickled.
She glanced over her shoulder to the tables behind her. A group of nerdy-looking university students were studying together, and a scattering of other folks were bowed over books or laptop computers.
No one was paying attention to her.
No one ever seemed to be, and yet someone who remained just out of sight was keeping very careful tabs on her. Of that she was certain.
CHAPTER 33
Celia stayed at the library longer than she cared to. She continued her search for anything that could be relevant. But other than an obituary and a funeral notice for Liv, she saw nothing else of relevance. Her thoughts circled back to Lottis.
Lottis had found Liv’s body.
That was another Vi fem connection.
There was too much there for her to ignore: Petter’s warning at the police station, Hans’s sketchy behavior, Katja’s insincerity, and the group sharing dark secrets from the past.
That prompted Celia to go back to the month of August, to the time of the fire at Lindhultsskolan. She came across a few articles about the fire. One of them was the article she found stuck in Liv’s book at the cottage. She also found reports highlighting a crime wave in Björkby that started over the summer with the fire at the school and continued into early autumn with robberies and vandalism. The articles wrote that local youths were suspected.
Then there was a smaller notice about the investigation of the fire. According to the article, the police had a lead via an eye witness: a counselor who worked at Lindhultsskolan. The night of the fire she had parked close to the school to visit a friend. Returning to her car, she’d seen young people leaving the scene. According to the report, she later claimed that she hadn’t caught enough detail to give testimony and withdrew her statement.
Celia reflected over that notice as she packed up and left the library.
The witness. The school counselor.
Why had she backed out?
Because someone intimidated her?
Someone like Petter Blom?
Celia decided it was worth looking into.
***
It wasn’t too difficult to track down the former school counselor. Celia called the administrative office at Ebba and Oskar’s old junior high school, the one that replaced Lindhultsskolan, and was connected to someone who could give her a name. Astrid Eliasson was the school counselor in August of 1984. She was then able to find Astrid in the online directory.
Now Ebba and Celia were on their way to her home, the headlights of Ebba’s Volvo lighting up the dark country road before them.
“What did you give as an excuse for us to come visit her?” Ebba asked, glancing over at Celia from the driver’s seat.
“I didn’t actually give one,” Celia said. “We just started talking. She didn’t even ask why we wanted to come over. She sounded old and lonely on the phone.”
“Old and lonely people love young people,” Ebba said. “We must remind them of their former selves; of how life used to be for them.”
The headlights lit up a road sign: Sagovägen.
“This is it,” Celia said, scanning the GPS on her phone to confirm. “We turn here.”
They drove down the road moving past a horse barn, a pasture, and a scatter of houses between orchards until they hit the end of the road.
Apparently Astrid lived on an old farm. The driveway led them between a farmhouse and an abandoned looking barn. An automatic light turned on when Ebba’s car rolled past the house. Ebba parked on a gravel spot beyond the barn, next to a yellow Volvo station wagon—similar in make and model to Ebba’s own car.
Before Celia and Ebba reached the house, the front door opened and a white-haired head peeked out. Up closer, Celia assessed that the neatly pinned-up hairdo belonged to a woman in her 80s or 90s.
“Come, come, girls,” the woman said, her voice hoarse and friendly. “It’s no good staying out in the cold.”
She ushered them into the house. They settled into a kitchen that—judging by the dated parquet floor and the color blend of oranges, yellows and greens—hadn’t been updated since the 1960s.
They took off their coats, swinging them over the backs of their chairs.
Astrid served them saft, a traditional Swedish juice drink, that she proudly announced was made from raspberries and elderflower from her own garden.
They spent a considerable amount of time talking about the weather, what Ebba and Celia were studying in school, and how keeping up the garden was difficult for Astrid after her husband passed away. They talked as though it was the most natural thing in the world that they dropped by for no apparent reason.
It wasn’t until a good half hour later that Astrid quieted and peered curiously at Celia, signaling that it was time for her to state her reason for being there.
Celia chose to be truthful. After describing the notice that she read at the library, she said, “I was confused by that
article. Did you actually see who set fire to the school?”
“I did,” Astrid confirmed without any further prodding from Celia. “I did see them.”
“A group of kids, boys and girls?”
Astrid observed Celia with a steady gaze. “Why do you want to know about this, dear child?”
When Celia didn’t immediately answer, Astrid said, “This was so long before your time.”
“I know,” Celia said, looking Astrid in the eye. “But I’m related to one of the children, and I want to know what happened to them.”
Astrid deliberated, slowly nodding.
“Yes,” she said, after a while. “A group of boys and girls. I won’t tell you any names, I’m afraid.”
“Were you threatened to not tell?” Ebba asked.
“Oh no,” Astrid said. “Not at all. More saft?”
Celia responded with a shake of her head and a polite smile. “But if you knew that they were behind the fire at the school, then why didn’t you say anything?”
Astrid hobbled up for the pitcher on the kitchen counter. She topped up Ebba’s glass, then Celia’s.
“The school let our children down. It didn’t seem fair for me to also go after them,” Astrid replied.
“What do you mean?” Celia asked.
“I saw them climbing down the roof of the gym; a fire had been started there. The fire seemed to be spreading quickly. I rushed for the nearest payphone to call the fire department.” Astrid set down the pitcher on the table and returned to her chair, easing herself into it. “My first inclination was to tell the police what I’d seen. I called in that night and told the officer on duty that I would come in and give my statement the next day. But it soon dawned on me that I knew who at least one of the children was. I didn’t recognize them at first.” Astrid stopped her line of thought and stared out the window. “It’s so peaceful this time of year, so calm. One can hear one’s own thoughts almost too well, don’t you find?”
