The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  ‘So where’s your other admirer?’ I asked. ‘I thought she was always hanging around here.’

  ‘You mean Sylvie? I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning.’

  We both fell silent, his words hanging in the air.

  Yesterday morning. That was when he found Salif dead on the steps of the building.

  But it wasn’t Salif that I pictured in my mind right now. It was Sylvie. And an idea was slowly taking shape. Something I’d missed among all the puzzle pieces floating around.

  The girl with the cropped hair and torn jeans who kept on popping up wherever Arnaud was. Who was so filled with jealousy.

  What the hell? Could that be the connection?

  I went over to the place where she normally sat, making my way past boxes of posters and other junk. I tried to remember what she’d said. She’d talked to me about Josef K and said that Arnaud knew the young men who had died in the fire. Nothing remarkable about that, and yet my suspicions were growing.

  Several flyers were scattered on the desk. There were no dirty cups or personal possessions, no photos, no letters or anything with her name. Not so much as a calendar. Arnaud had said she was new to the struggle. I picked up a stack of newspapers and the usual books: Che Guevara and Malcolm X.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Arnaud from his desk. I glanced up and noted that from here I could see everything he did. It was also easy to hear whatever he said, even if he wasn’t speaking very loudly. Further away a guy with a ponytail was playing a computer game. The space and the brick walls amplified every sound.

  ‘What do you really know about Sylvie?’ I pulled out the desk drawers. They were empty.

  ‘I think she got scared by what happened to Salif,’ said Arnaud. ‘Otherwise she’s always here.’

  ‘Or else she felt she’d completed her assignment,’ I said.

  ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘It’s going to take generations before the world is a just place and every human life has value.’

  I went back and perched on his desk again. I remembered how she’d sneaked up behind my back when we were talking about Josef K.

  ‘Do you know who she is? Where she lives? What she did before she came here?’

  ‘What are you getting at? We don’t actually check up on people who work here.’ His voice took on a harder edge. ‘We’re fucking grateful for all the idealists we can find.’

  ‘In other words, it would be very easy to plant somebody here,’ I said quietly. ‘If someone wanted to know what you’re doing. Who you’re hiding and where they are, for instance.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He reached up to touch his scarf, unwinding it and then wrapping it around his neck again as he stared at me. ‘Sylvie is a little annoying, but you’re crazy if you’re accusing her of—’

  I interrupted him. ‘How did they find out where Salif was staying?’ I asked. ‘Who leaked the information that Nedjma was hiding Josef K?’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’ He stood up so fast that his chair rolled back and rammed into the wall. He went over to Sylvie’s workstation and began tearing open desk drawers, turning over piles of newspapers. He stopped and looked at me, a hint of desperation in his eyes. ‘Shit. I thought she was just—’

  ‘In love with you?’ I said. ‘Well, one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other.’

  Arnaud ran his hand through his hair, looking unhappy. I glanced at my watch. There was still plenty of time before I had to go out to the airport.

  ‘Did you tell her that Salif was alive?’

  He shook his head.

  One by one the puzzle pieces fell into place.

  ‘Maybe they did think he was dead. Until the other day when I phoned you and demanded to know what had happened,’ I said. ‘Sylvie was eavesdropping, of course, and even if you didn’t spell it out for her, she realized it had something to do with Salif.’

  Arnaud sank back onto his chair.

  ‘And then they managed to track him down,’ he said. His face seemed to collapse, losing all force. ‘I don’t remember what I said to her. We’d always talk—’

  ‘Do you think you might have mentioned that Nedjma was hiding Josef K?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arnaud, his voice on the verge of breaking. ‘Maybe. Not specifically. I can’t remember.’ He buried his face in his hands, and I could hear the instant he recalled something. He began groaning, and I turned away, not wanting to see him fall apart.

  ‘No,’ he whimpered. ‘No, no …’

  It took several minutes before he managed to say anything coherent.

  ‘She helped me take food over there,’ he stammered. ‘Sylvie knew I was hiding them at the hotel.’

  ‘But there’s one thing she didn’t know,’ I said. ‘She couldn’t have known where Josef K was hiding, because Nedjma hadn’t told you. Right?’

  He didn’t look up. He was lost in his own feelings of guilt and regret. It didn’t matter. I could figure out the rest for myself.

  They had used Patrick to find Josef K. Paid off a guy at the market who then put him on the trail. Like buying purses, I thought. Everything can be bought.

  But that wasn’t true. Patrick had never allowed himself to be bought. Nor had they managed to scare him off. He’d kept on pestering Alain Thery, like an annoying fly that refuses to leave. He wasn’t about to let them get away.

  A French phrase popped into my head.

  Faire d’une pierre deux coups. I was forced to grab hold of the banister when I stepped into the gloom of the stairwell. Another variant of the phrase was ‘to kill two flies with one blow’. The saying existed in different forms in different languages, but they all meant the same thing. Two for the price of one.

  Josef K, who was going to testify against his old cohorts.

  Patrick, who was going to expose them in his report, who knew too much.

  Daylight washed over me when I came out into the courtyard. A wave of sunshine. And I remembered that I’d seen a version of that phrase somewhere, in both English and French. On the Lugus website. To kill two birds with one stone is our motto in all situations.

  Without thinking I ran out to the street and then along the much busier rue Bretagne, where I could easily find a cab.

  As if there were some faster way for me to get to Lisbon.

  Chapter 11

  Tarifa

  Monday, 29 September

  They were playing reggae music in the Blue Heaven Bar, just like they’d done on that night.

  Terese heard the music as she came around the corner and saw the sign further down in the narrow lane. Her skin felt hot from the sun and the anticipation. Her whole body was on fire at the thought that he might be there.

  Dear God, let him please be there tonight.

  It was her last night in Tarifa. Tomorrow they would go back home to Stockholm, and she’d never see him again. Alex from Ipswich.

  If only she’d have a chance to see him one more time.

  She stumbled and had to pay attention in order not to fall on the cobblestones. Her new shoes had high heels. They were a present from her father. Bought during one of their excursions, in a big department store in Puerto Banus, along with the yellow dress that made her look so slim and showed off her suntan. The whole outfit had cost 140 euros, but that was nothing compared to what clothes cost in the shops down by the harbour. Donna Karan and Versace. She’d never in her life seen so much luxury. And her father wanted her to have something nice. He would do anything to make her happy.

  Terese felt almost beautiful as she stepped inside the Blue Heaven Bar. The place was cramped and hot, just as she remembered, and it smelled of pizza and suntan lotion and smoke. A faint scent of hash wafted towards her from one corner.

  She stopped just inside the door, swaying a bit to the music and trying for a casual look. The bar in the middle of the room was packed with surfer dudes in baggy shorts or cut-off jeans, and girls wearing loose trousers and tops that left their midriffs bare. A fe
w had on long skirts and rings in their navels. A bleached-blonde waitress with a lizard tattooed on her shoulder swept past, carrying a tray of red and turquoise cocktails. Terese craned her neck to look at the sofas in the far corner.

  She didn’t see him anywhere.

  ‘Could I have a beer, please,’ she said to the waitress behind the bar who had beads plaited into her hair. Her fringe was cut at a sharp angle.

  The first few days after that horrible experience, all Terese had wanted to do was hide, to disappear from the face of the earth. Do as her mother had told her on the phone: get on the first plane back to Sweden, crawl into her old bed at home, have a good cry, and drink hot cocoa. But her father didn’t think that was a good way to cope with a crisis, as he’d said.

  Running away was not the solution. The world was a cruel place, but life had to go on. So he rented a car and took her out on excursions. They’d driven to Gibraltar, and to an old town way up in the mountains called Ronda. At night she’d cried a lot and thought about the two men: Alex who had left her on the beach, and the dead man in the water. In her dreams they would sometimes merge into one and the same person.

  The past few days she had started thinking that the whole thing with Alex was a misunderstanding. There could be all sorts of explanations for what had happened. For instance, maybe Alex had woken up in the night and felt ill, and he didn’t want her to see him throwing up. Maybe he’d been so drunk that he couldn’t remember what he’d done. Or he had another girlfriend, and felt guilty because he’d taken up with Terese before ending the other relationship.

  The past few nights she’d fantasized that he was looking for her. He didn’t have her phone number, nor did he know where she was staying, or even what her last name was. So night after night he went to the Blue Heaven, hoping to find her there.

  Terese leaned her back against the bar and looked up at the TV screens hanging from the ceiling. They were showing films from beaches around the world — kitesurfers and windsurfers and ordinary surfers who were all world-class champions, riding the waves and flying through the air. It made her feel motion-sick. The waitress brought her beer. It was easier to stand there when she had something in her hand. She remembered that Alex had been drinking beer that night.

  She’d felt a fluttering in her stomach and heat flooding through her body when he’d leaned towards her. They had been standing in exactly this spot. Alex from Ipswich. With tousled hair. Worldly and suntanned.

  ‘Once you’ve experienced being lifted up by the wind, you’ll never want to come down to earth again,’ he’d said. ‘Out there it’s just you and the sea and the winds. No thoughts at all. You have to try it, Tess. It’s total freedom. Can I call you Tess?’

  She pictured his eyes. They were neither blue nor green. Like the sea, she’d thought. He was like the sea. So free. All summer long he’d hung about Tarifa and gone kitesurfing.

  ‘In the winter I always go to Australia. I follow the winds. It’s a whole lifestyle. But not to Sydney. The west coast, outside Perth. That’s where the best winds are.’

  ‘Ipswips,’ she’d slurred later as they were sitting on one of the low sofas against the wall. She was very drunk by then. ‘Isn’t that where the serial killer was from?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not me,’ Alex said, pretending to strangle her, but then leaving his hand on the back of her neck. Caressing her skin. She shivered at the memory. She felt a warm throbbing between her legs.

  ‘Did you know the aboriginals never worked more than four hours a day?’ he’d said, a big smile lighting up his face. His eyes sparkled. ‘Then they’d sing and fuck and tell stories. And you know why?’

  ‘No,’ said Terese, feeling stupid. She had just told him she wanted to be a hair stylist. How ordinary and boring.

  ‘Nobody ever told them they needed to have a house and two cars,’ said Alex, leaning closer, whispering into her ear. ‘And because it’s more fun to do it under the stars.’

  Now she sipped her beer, keeping her eyes fixed on the door so as not to miss him. A new bunch of people came in. Terese sucked in her stomach, tensing her abdominal muscles to make it look flatter. But he wasn’t among them. She exhaled. Two Swedish girls had taken up position right next to her. One of them was wearing bright green harem trousers and a ring in her lip. The Blue Heaven Bar was filled with those sorts of supremely confident girls. ‘And so they wash up onto the beaches, right in the middle of the charter tourist season. Isn’t that awful? But everyone just closes their eyes.’ The bartender brought the girls their drinks. ‘I didn’t know they’d started bringing in charters here,’ said the girl with the lip ring. ‘I think we should go to Portugal tomorrow. This place is getting too overrun.’ Her friend nodded. ‘North of Lisbon there are still some genuine villages left.’

  Terese headed for the toilet. She’d felt an urge to tell them that she was the one who had found the dead man on the beach, but she didn’t want to risk standing next to two Swedish girls who were prettier than she was.

  Just as she was passing the entrance, Alex came in. At precisely that moment. Terese quickly stepped away so she was hidden behind a pillar. He had on cotton trousers with the cuffs rolled up, a rope for a belt, and a turquoise T-shirt. Her heart was pounding. He was just as good-looking as she’d remembered. He paused at one of the tables to talk to a couple of guys. The waitress with the lizard tattoo walked past. Alex gave her a kiss on the forehead and ordered something. For a second Terese panicked. Maybe he’d found somebody new. She shouldn’t have waited so long to come back here.

  Terese was looking at his hair from the back, and her hands remembered what it felt like to touch his coarse locks, to grab his hair with her fists when he gave her the first real kiss, in a doorway along the main road in the middle of the night after the others had gone inside the Vampire.

  It had meant something. It had to mean something.

  She wondered what would be best. To go over to the bar and pretend to catch sight of him as she walked past, or to slip out from behind the pillar and let him see her first. At that instant he turned around. Terese pulled in her stomach and smiled, raising her glass of beer to him. Alex barely glanced at her. He turned back to his friend and said something. Terese felt her face flush. Her hand was shaking so hard that it made the beer slosh in her glass. Then he came over to her, grabbing a glass of beer from the lizard girl’s tray in passing.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘So you’re still here?’

  ‘I leave tomorrow,’ said Terese.

  ‘Then it’s your last night to party.’ Alex laughed and tossed his head. There was something about guys with tousled hair. She always fell for them.

  Terese pressed her glass against her chest to stop her hand from shaking. And so he’d notice her breasts.

  ‘What about you?’ she said lightly. ‘When do you leave for Australia?’

  ‘Soon. Unless the wind changes. This bloody poniente has been lingering for weeks now.’ He shifted from one foot to the other. Terese realized that her presence was making him nervous.

  ‘I’m getting tired of waiting for the levante,’ he said, glancing around.

  ‘Sure. Of course,’ said Terese. ‘It’s been blowing really hard.’

  He rolled his eyes and laughed a bit, glancing at someone standing nearby.

  ‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is that the poniente just blows inland, coming straight from the west, with the Atlantic at its back. It brings big waves with it, but it lacks finesse. The levante is a whole different story.’

  He took a swig of beer, his gaze roaming. Several other people were listening.

  ‘What we need is a high pressure area from Africa. When it collides with the low pressure over Andalusia, strong air currents are created that push down through the straits of Gibraltar and generate big waves that are higher than anywhere else.’ He used his hands to demonstrate the high pressure and low pressure flying through the air and being forced through the straits. ‘The levante is said to drive p
eople mad.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said the guy standing next to him. ‘That’s only a myth.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever felt it? That dry, hot wind? It does something to people when it stays around for week after week, sometimes even for months during the summer. People kill themselves. More people commit suicide here on the Costa de la Luz than anywhere else in Spain. The number of schizophrenics is abnormally high in Tarifa. It’s the levante that does it. It pushes people over the edge.’

  Alex craned his neck and waved to someone standing behind Terese. She turned around. A bunch of people were sitting on the sofas.

  ‘Are those your friends?’ she asked.

  ‘I know almost everybody here,’ said Alex, raising his glass to them and signalling that he’d be right over.

  ‘I found a dead man on the beach,’ said Terese.

  Alex turned to look at her again. ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘That night. You know.’

  ‘What night? Oh, right! You mean when you and I …?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘When was that, exactly?’ He glanced up at the TV screen where a surfer did a triple somersault and landed on his board at the very top of the giant wave. ‘I mean, I don’t really know what happened. I was really loaded that night.’

  ‘I know,’ said Terese. She saw the colour shift in his gleaming eyes. Eyes she could drown in. He laughed.

  ‘I hope I wasn’t too drunk to …’ He wiggled his hand.

  ‘Not at all.’ Terese leaned forward and ran her fingers lightly over his hip. ‘It was great.’

  Alex took a long swig of his beer and took a step back, leaving her hand dangling in the air.

  ‘So what about this dead man?’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me it was that same bloody night. I heard they’d found one. Was that you?’

  Terese nodded. ‘It was horrible. He was lying in the water. I was just going over to rinse off my face.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Jesus H Christ.’

  He turned towards a guy who was standing a few metres behind Terese and raised his voice. ‘Hey, Ben, did you hear that? This girl was the one who found him. That dead migrant in the water last week.’