‘Why did you let the dog out?’
Meja hadn’t seen Silje sitting in a camping chair against the wall. She was smoking a cigarette and wearing a flannel shirt Meja didn’t recognize. Her hair was like a lion’s mane around her head and it was plain from her eyes that she hadn’t slept.
‘I didn’t mean to, he slunk past.’
‘It’s a bitch,’ Silje said. ‘Her name’s Jolly.’
‘Jolly?’
‘Uh-huh.’
The dog reacted when it heard its name and was soon back on the veranda. It lay down on the dark wood with its tongue out like a tie and gazed at them. Silje held out the packet of cigarettes and Meja noticed she had red marks round her neck.
‘What have you got there?’
Silje gave a lopsided smile.
‘Don’t pretend to be stupid.’
Meja took a cigarette, although she would have preferred food. She hoped Silje would spare her the details and squinted towards the forest. She thought something was moving about among the trees. There was no chance she would ever set foot there. She drew on the cigarette and felt that suffocating feeling again, like being locked in and surrounded.
‘Are we really going to live here?’
Silje dangled one leg over the armrest, showing her black underwear. She jiggled her foot impatiently.
‘We’ve got to give it a chance.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we haven’t got a choice.’
Silje wasn’t looking at her now. The shrillness and euphoria in her voice had gone, her eyes were matt, but her voice was determined.
‘Torbjörn’s got money. He’s got a house and land, a steady job. We can live well here without worrying about next month’s rent.’
‘A run-down shack in the middle of nowhere isn’t what I call living well.’
Red streaks flared up on Silje’s neck and she put a hand over her collarbone as if to control them.
‘I can’t cope any more,’ she said. ‘I’m sick and tired of being poor. I need a man to look after us and Torbjörn is willing to do just that.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘What?’
‘That he’s willing?’
Silje grinned.
‘I’ll make sure he’s willing, don’t you worry.’
Meja crushed the half-smoked cigarette under her shoe.
‘Is there anything to eat?’
Silje inhaled deeply and smiled as if she meant it.
‘There’s more food in this old shack than you’ve seen in your entire life.’
Lelle was woken by his mobile vibrating in his pocket. He was sitting in a sunlounger beside the lilac bushes and he could feel his body aching as he put the phone to his ear.
‘Lelle? Were you asleep?’
‘Shit, no,’ Lelle lied. ‘I’m out here working in the garden.’
‘Are there any strawberries yet?’
Lelle threw a glance at the overgrown patch.
‘No, but they’re well on their way.’
Anette’s breathing was loud on the other end, as if she were trying to compose herself. ‘I’ve put the information on the Facebook page,’ she said. ‘About the memorial service on Sunday.’
‘Memorial…?’
‘For the third anniversary. You can’t have forgotten.’
The chair creaked as he stood up. A wave of dizziness made him reach for the veranda railing.
‘Of course I haven’t bloody forgotten!’
‘Thomas and I have bought candles and Mum’s sewing group have had some T-shirts printed. We thought we’d start at the church and walk together to the bus shelter. Perhaps you can prepare something, in case you want to say a few words?’
‘I don’t need to prepare. Everything I want to say is here inside my head.’
Anette sounded weary as she replied: ‘It would be good if we could show a united front, for Lina’s sake.’
Lelle massaged his temples.
‘Are we going to hold hands, too? You, me and Thomas?’
A deep sigh reverberated against his ear drum.
‘I’ll see you Sunday. And Lelle?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re not out driving at night again, are you?’
He rolled his eyes up to the sky, where the sun was hiding behind the clouds.
‘See you Sunday,’ he said and rang off.
It was 11.30. He’d had four hours’ sleep outside in the sunlounger. That was more than he usually got. He scratched the back of his head and saw blood under his fingernails from the mosquito bites. Inside, he put on some coffee and rinsed his face in the sink. He dried himself with the fine linen tea towel and could almost hear Anette’s protest break the silence. Tea towels were for china and glass, not unshaven human skin. And it was the police who should be looking for Lina, not her obsessed father. Anette had slapped him full in the face and screamed that it was his fault; he was the one who should have made sure she got on the bus; he was the one who had taken her daughter away from her. She had hit and clawed at him before he managed to grab her arms and hold her as hard as he could until her muscles relaxed and she crumpled under him. The day Lina disappeared was the last time they touched each other.
Anette looked for answers outside, turned to friends and psychologists and newspaper reporters. To Thomas, the occupational therapist who stood ready and waiting with open arms and a throbbing erection. A man who was willing both to listen and screw away the problem. Anette self-medicated with sleeping tablets and sedatives, which took the focus from her eyes and made her talk too much. She created a Facebook page dedicated to Lina’s disappearance, organized meetings and gave interviews that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. The most intimate details of their life together. Details about Lina that he hadn’t wanted anyone to know.
As for him, he spoke to nobody. He didn’t have time. He had to find Lina. Searching was the only thing that mattered. The trips along the Silver Road began that summer. He lifted the lid of every rubbish bin and dug his way through skips and marshes and disused mines with his bare hands. He sat at home with his computer, reading long threads on internet forums where total strangers discussed their theories about Lina. A long, sickening tangle of suggestions: she had run away, been murdered, kidnapped, dismembered, lost her way, drowned, run over, forced into prostitution, and a whole catalogue of other nightmare scenarios he could hardly bear to think about, but made himself read anyway. On an almost daily basis he rang the police and yelled at them to do their job. He didn’t eat or sleep. He would come home after long days and nights on the Silver Road with his clothes dirty and scratches on his face that he couldn’t explain. Anette stopped asking. Maybe he was relieved she had left him for Thomas, so that he could devote himself to the search. The search was all he had.
Lelle took his coffee to the computer. Lina smiled at him from the screen saver. The air in the room was heavy and stale. The blinds were down and dust whirled in the light that seeped in between the slats. A half-dead pot plant drooped on the windowsill. Everywhere sorrowful reminders of his decline, of what he had become. He logged into Facebook and saw the post about Lina’s memorial service. One hundred and three people had liked it and sixty-four had registered to attend. Lina, we miss you and will never give up hope, one of her friends had written, followed by exclamation marks and crying emojis. Fifty-three people liked this comment. Anette Gustafsson was one of them. Lelle wondered if she was ever going to change her surname. He went on clicking, past poems and photos and angry comments. Someone knows what happened to Lina, time you stepped forward and told the truth! Angry, red-cheeked emojis. Ninety-three likes. Twenty comments. He logged out. Facebook only made him depressed.
‘Why can’t you get involved on social media?’ Anette used to nag him.
‘Get involved in what? A virtual pity-party?’
‘It actually concerns Lina.’
‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but my focus is on finding Lina, not gri
eving for her.’
Lelle sipped his coffee and logged into Flashback. Nothing new had been added to the thread about Lina’s disappearance. The last entry was dated December the previous year and was from a user with the name ‘truth seeker’.
The police need to check out the HGV drivers using the Silver Road that morning. Everyone knows it’s a serial killer’s favourite job, just take a look at Canada and the USA. People disappear every day on the highways over there.
All one thousand and twenty-four contributors to the Flashback forum seemed touchingly unanimous in their belief that Lina had been picked up and abducted by someone driving a vehicle before the bus arrived. The same theory as the police, in other words. Lelle had phoned round couriers and haulage companies, asking which drivers had passed through the area at the time of Lina’s disappearance. He’d even met some of them for coffee, searched their vehicles and given their names to the investigation team. But none of them seemed to be a suspect and no one had seen anything. The police didn’t like his persistence. This was Norrland, not America. The Silver Road wasn’t a state highway. No serial killers lurked there.
He got up and began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. It reeked of smoke. He stood facing the map of northern Sweden and peered at the cluster of pins blooming across the interior. He took another pin from the desk drawer and punctured the map yet again, to mark the place where he had been the night before. He wouldn’t give up until every millimetre was covered, until every strip of road and dead-end track and despoiled forest clearing was turned inside out.
He moved a blood-stained fingernail over the map, hunting for the next obscure track to investigate. He saved the coordinates on his mobile and reached for his keys. He had wasted enough time already.
Silje’s eyes had that glint of mania, as if all of a sudden everything was possible, as if a run-down house in a forest was the answer to her prayers. Her voice rose a couple of octaves, becoming clear and melodious. Words tumbled out of her, as if there wasn’t enough time to say everything that needed saying. Torbjörn seemed to be enjoying it. He sat in contented silence as Silje raved on, saying how happy she was with him and his family home, how she loved everything from the patterned vinyl flooring to the huge floral design of the curtains. Not to mention nature, the way they were surrounded by it. Just what she’d dreamed of all these years. She made a big show of getting out her easel and paintbrushes, swore she would do her best work, thanks to the exceptional light of the summer nights. It was here in the fresh air that her soul would find rest, it was here she could really be creative. This new ecstasy made her overly demonstrative. Her frenzied outbursts had to be emphasized with kisses and strokes and long hugs, all of which sent fear surging down Meja’s backbone. This mania was always the beginning of some fresh new hell.
On the second evening the medication went in the bin. Half-empty blister packs stared up at Meja through the potato peelings and coffee grounds. Powerful tablets in harmless pastel shades. Small chemical miracles which could ward off both the insanity and the darkness, and keep a person alive.
‘Why have you binned your medication?’
‘Because I don’t need it any longer.’
‘Who says you don’t need it? Have you talked to your doctor?’
‘I don’t have to talk to a doctor. I know myself that I don’t need it any more. Out here I’m in my element. Now, finally, I can be who I really am. The darkness can’t reach me here.’
‘Can you hear yourself?’
Silje gave a peal of laughter.
‘You worry too much. You should learn to relax, Meja.’
Through the long, luminous nights Meja lay staring at her backpack, which was still full of all her things. She could steal some money and get the train back south, stay with friends while she looked for work. Go to social services for help if it came to that. They knew what Silje was like, how destructive she could be. But she knew she wouldn’t do it. She had to keep an eye on Silje, who had become full of platitudes.
I’ve never breathed such fresh air before!
Isn’t this silence wonderful?
But Meja didn’t experience any silence. Quite the reverse: the forest was full of sounds that drowned out everything else. Night time was worst, with the whining mosquitoes and twittering birds, and the wind rushing and howling, making the spruces curtsey. Not to mention the sounds from downstairs. Shrieking and panting and phony voices. Mostly Silje, naturally. Torbjörn was a more reserved kind of person. Not until they had gone quiet did Meja dare go down to the kitchen, when only the sound of Torbjörn’s snoring echoed through the room, to drink up the dregs of Silje’s wine. The wine was the only thing that helped against the light.
Lelle didn’t sleep in the summertime. Not any more. He blamed the light, the sun that never set, that filtered through the black weave of the roller blind. He blamed the birds that chirped all night long and the solitary mosquitoes that buzzed above him as soon as his head hit the pillow. He blamed everything apart from what was really keeping him awake.
His neighbours were seated on their patio, laughing, their cutlery clinking. He ducked to avoid them seeing him as he walked towards the car. He rolled down the driveway as far as he could before turning on the engine, just so they wouldn’t hear. But he was pretty sure the neighbours knew that he disappeared in the evenings, that they saw his Volvo glide over the gravel at the very quietest time of night. The whole village was quiet as he passed, houses silent and glowing in the midnight sun. He passed the school where he worked, although he’d been on leave so much in the past few years he could barely call himself a teacher any more. As he came closer to the bus shelter his pulse began to pound in his temples. There was a hopeful little devil inside him that expected to see Lina there, arms crossed, waiting, exactly as when he had left her. Three years had passed, but that damned bus shelter still haunted him.
The police had a theory that someone who was travelling the Silver Road had pulled up at the bus stop and abducted Lina. Either the person had offered her a lift or forced her into the vehicle. There were no witnesses to support that theory, but it was the only explanation. How otherwise could she have disappeared so fast and without trace? Lelle had dropped Lina off at about 5.50. The bus had arrived fifteen minutes later, according to the bus driver and the passengers, and by then Lina wasn’t there. It was a fifteen-minute window. No more than that.
They had gone through the whole of Glimmersträsk with a fine-tooth comb. Everyone had joined in the search. They had dragged every lake and river and formed human chains that walked for miles in every direction. Dogs and helicopters and volunteers from the whole county had helped in the search. But no Lina. They never found her.
He refused to believe she was dead. For him she was just as much alive now as she was that morning at the bus stop. Sometimes he was asked questions by scavenging reporters or tactless strangers.
Do you think your daughter is alive?
Yes, I do.
Lelle had time to smoke three cigarettes during the thirty-minute drive up to Arvidsjaur. The petrol station was closing as he walked in. Kippen was mopping the floor, facing the other way. His bald head shone under the fluorescent lights. Lelle tiptoed to the coffee machine and filled a disposable mug to the brim.
‘I was just wondering where you’d got to.’
Kippen leaned the heavy bulk of his body on the mop.
‘I made fresh coffee especially for you.’
‘Cheers,’ said Lelle. ‘How’s it going?’
‘You know, can’t complain. You?’
‘Still breathing.’
Kippen took the money for the cigarettes. He didn’t charge Lelle for the coffee and handed him a day-old cinnamon bun in a bag. Lelle broke off a dry corner, which he dunked in his coffee as Kippen returned to his mopping.
‘You’re out driving tonight, I see.’
‘Yep, I’m out driving.’
Kippen nodded and looked sad.
‘The annive
rsary is almost here.’
Lelle looked down at the wet floor.
‘Three years. Sometimes it feels like it was yesterday, and sometimes it feels like a whole lifetime has passed.’
‘And what are the police doing?’
‘I wish I bloody knew.’
‘Surely they haven’t given up?’
‘Nothing much happens, but I’m keeping the pressure up.’
‘That’s good. I’m here if ever you need any help.’
Kippen dipped the mop into his bucket and wrung it out. Lelle balanced the bun on his coffee mug, shoved the cigarettes into his pocket and patted Kippen’s shoulder with his free hand on the way out.
Kippen had been there from the beginning. In the days after the disappearance he had gone through the petrol station’s CCTV footage, covering the hours before and afterwards to see if there was any trace of Lina. If she had been given a lift or been snatched by someone there was a possibility the person had stopped to fill up. They hadn’t found anything, but Lelle had the feeling that Kippen never stopped checking, even after all this time. He was a rare friend, someone to treasure.
Lelle sat behind the wheel again and dipped the last piece of his bun in the coffee, studying the desolate pumps as he ate. He had calculated how far Lina’s abductor could have driven if he’d had a full tank when she was taken from Glimmersträsk. Depending on the car, they could have driven further into the mountains, maybe all the way to the Norwegian border. If they’d stayed on the Silver Road, that is. It was also possible they had turned off on to smaller, rarely used roads without traffic or houses. They hadn’t realized until the evening that she was missing, of course. That was more than twelve hours later. So the kidnapper or kidnappers had been given a good head start. He wiped his hands on his jeans, lit a cigarette and turned the key in the ignition. He left Arvidsjaur behind and was alone with the forest and the road, winding down the window so he could breathe the smell of the pines. If trees could speak, there would have been thousands of witnesses.
The Silver Road Page 2
