For the Missing

by Lina Bengtsdotter

  And then: Don’t forget I saved your life. If not for me, you would have sunk. Don’t you ever say I didn’t save you, Alice.

  Alice moves in closer to Rosa’s body and thinks how lucky she is, that from now on, life is going to get better.

  9

  The man who greeted them in the motel restaurant looked familiar, but it wasn’t until he introduced himself as Erik From that Charlie realised he was the son of the man who had run the place when she lived in town. Back then, he had been awkward and nervous, but now his handshake was firm and his gaze steady.

  ‘So you’re the constables from Stockholm,’ he said when they had introduced themselves.

  Charlie had to smile at his choice of words. Yes, they were the constables from Stockholm.

  ‘Olof, our local copper, came around earlier, telling me there would be specialists arriving from Stockholm today. I hope you catch the bastard who took her.’

  ‘Do you know the family?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I suppose in a town this size everyone knows everyone to some extent; it’s not like Stockholm. And when things like this happen … well, it’s only natural to want to help as best you can, isn’t it? The trouble is we can’t help out with the search like we’d want to, the wife and I, because the whole place is booked solid with police, journalists and people who have come to join the search.’

  A young man wearing a yellow vest and a headset entered the room. He was talking loudly about which areas had been searched and which ones were left to cover.

  ‘Missing People,’ Erik said, nodding at the man. ‘That one’s the leader of the whole operation. They arrived yesterday. Before you.’ He paused as if he were expecting them to comment. ‘I just hope you can find her now,’ he then went on.

  ‘We will,’ Charlie said.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ a woman’s voice said from the kitchen.

  ‘My mother,’ Erik said, pointing to the flushed woman coming through the swinging doors behind the bar. ‘This is my mother Margareta, who misses nothing.’

  ‘I could hardly help overhearing you when I was standing right behind there,’ Margareta said. She came up and shook their hands. First Anders’s, then Charlie’s.

  Was it just her imagination, or did the woman’s eyes linger on her for a second? Margareta who missed nothing, did she also forget nothing?’

  ‘We’re all glad you’ve come,’ she said. ‘The whole town is shaken up. Poor Nora and Fredrik, that’s all I have to say. We’ve sent flowers and food and … If someone hurt her … if someone hurt that girl … I just hope you catch them.’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘We’ll do everything we can.’

  ‘At least you can rest assured,’ Margareta said, ‘that no one, no one, in town wanted to harm Annabelle, that whoever this madman was, he had to have come from outside.’ She stared at them intently for a long moment. Then she threw a tea towel over her shoulder and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  ‘Jonas,’ she said to someone in there. ‘Just because I leave doesn’t mean you have to get your phone out. You’re paid to work.’

  ‘I’ll ask Jonas to see to your bags,’ Erik said. ‘Jonas,’ he called in the direction of the kitchen, ‘you’re all right to take the bags up to their room later, right?’

  ‘Their room?’ Anders said. ‘I hope you meant rooms.’

  ‘Separate rooms?’ Erik walked over to the bar, consulted a ledger and heaved a loud sigh. ‘Jonas,’ he called again. ‘Come out here.’

  The young man called Jonas came out, looking confused.

  ‘These people,’ Erik said, pointing at Charlie and Anders, ‘are police officers from Stockholm. They’re here to find Annabelle, not to get married, if that’s what you were thinking.’

  ‘Why would I think that?’ Jonas said.

  ‘Then why on earth did you put them in the honeymoon suite?’

  ‘I did?’ Jonas said.

  ‘Yes, you reserved room 3.’ Erik turned to Charlie and Anders. ‘After working here for a full year you’d think he’d know what he was doing.’

  ‘I must have misunderstood,’ Jonas said. ‘There’s not a lot of rooms free. People keep calling, journalists and …’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Charlie said, because Jonas had gone ashen and looked like he was about to collapse any moment. ‘It’s just a booking error.’

  But then she realised from Anders’s expression that he considered it more of a problem than she did.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse him,’ Erik said, as though Jonas wasn’t standing right there next to them. ‘I guess we’re all a bit shocked by this … disappearance. We’ll get you another room as soon as we can.’

  ‘Tonight?’ Anders asked.

  ‘As soon as we can.’

  ‘How hard can it be?’ Anders said as they walked to the car to drive to their first meeting at the police station.

  ‘Weren’t you listening? It’s a small town and everyone’s upset and they’re not exactly used to having so many people travel in at once.’

  ‘But still.’

  ‘I’m not going to throw myself at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’ Charlie said, even though she knew very well what the problem was. It was obviously about Maria. Anders’s wife had an uncanny ability of sniffing things out. Charlie liked to crack jokes about it, that she would make an excellent detective, that they should recruit her immediately if she ever decided to change careers.

  ‘Has she become … ?’ Charlie didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Worse? More controlling?

  ‘It’s more now since Sam was born. And I understand her. Of course it’s hard being on your own so much with a baby. They can be pretty … demanding.’

  ‘What would she do if she knew?’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That we’re sharing a room?’

  ‘Then we would both be dead presently.’

  ‘Being married sounds dangerous.’

  ‘And you’re saying being single is harmless?’ Anders pointed to the cut on her forehead.

  ‘Given the statistics on women and murder,’ Charlie said, ‘single life seems preferable.’

  Anders started laughing. Okay, okay, she had him there.

  10

  Four days since Annabelle disappeared, but to Fredrik it felt like an eternity. He really had done his best to stay strong, to tell himself that she was staying away of her own free will. It had happened once before. It was only a few months since the night Annabelle didn’t come home after a party. Nora had called the police then too, stood there shouting down the line and gone berserk when the police explained that they were not in the habit of opening a missing person case whenever a seventeen-year-old was a few hours late. Taking matters into her own hands, Nora had gone around to every single person Annabelle might be friends with and had finally found her at a classmate’s house.

  Fredrik lit his pipe. He didn’t usually smoke indoors. He didn’t usually smoke at all, but this time, he didn’t even bother turning on the fan. He looked out at the driveway. He was still hoping to see Annabelle come walking up the gravel path, dishevelled, tired and cold. She would cry, ask for forgiveness, swear never to do it again and he would just hold her, not yell, not scold, just stroke her hair, warm her up and tell he she was home now, that nothing else mattered. For two days, he had been telling himself that was how this story was going to end, not with newspaper headlines, not with maps tracing Annabelle’s last known movements. And then … He thought about all the yellow vests in town, all the people who had come to join the search. At first, he had gone out with them, but it had almost driven him insane to walk with the search party in this heat. It was as though he saw Annabelle everywhere, saw her sprawled on the moss in Nora’s dress, saw her red hair under the carpet of spruce needles. In the end, a police officer had told him it might be better if he went home to be with his wife.
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  Nora neither ate nor slept. She mostly paced around and cried. Find my daughter! she would tell the officers who came to ask questions, you have to get me my daughter!

  And Fredrik said that Annabelle would be back. Over and over again he said it. But the truth was he no longer believed it himself. Increasingly, his impression was that people had stopped looking for a living girl.

  11

  The police station in Gullspång was housed in a handful of rooms on the ground floor of a block of flats on the high street. Big windows looked out onto the town square. Charlie had been in it once before, when Betty was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

  What about it is so bloody disorderly? Betty had shouted. What the fuck do you mean ‘disorderly’? And then she had kicked a chair and a police officer had restrained her and explained that if Betty didn’t calm down, she would not be allowed to take her daughter home with her. It was actually not particularly appropriate, he felt, for someone in Betty’s state to be in charge of a child. They had spent hours at the station that time, because the officer was in no hurry to get home and he was determined to hold off until Betty sobered up. He was not about to send a little girl home with an inebriated and agitated mother.

  The man who met them at reception was in uniform. He looked very grave when he shook their hands and introduced himself as Olof Jansson. He had worked at the station for sixteen years and had never handled a case of a missing minor before. In these parts, everyone kept an eye on everyone, he explained.

  They found two more officers in a conference room, smoking. Anders shot Charlie a look that said, Talk about time warp.

  ‘Maybe I should introduce myself,’ the younger of the two said. ‘Adnan Noor.’ He shook Charlie’s hand. ‘I thought we were expecting two men,’ he continued, ‘just on account of the name; I figured …’

  ‘I hope you’re not disappointed,’ Charlie said.

  No, he wasn’t, Adnan assured her. Why would he be?

  His colleague cut them off and introduced himself. His name was Micke Andersson and he had worked in Gullspång since … Charlie couldn’t bring herself to listen to his professional back story. She was just relieved she didn’t recognise any of them and that no one had seemed to react to her surname. Lager … there used to be a Lager family in town back in the day. The one thing she wanted was to get started on the case. Olof began talking about his previous experience. He had worked homicide in Gothenburg in the nineties and had no problems staying on as lead investigator. He obviously knew the area as well, so maybe that was the most logical way to proceed.

  ‘Because I’m assuming one of you will take on the role of lead interrogator?’ He looked at Charlie.

  She nodded. That suited her fine.

  ‘I’m happy to assist Charlie in that role,’ Anders said.

  Someone had drawn a timeline on a whiteboard. Above it was a picture of Annabelle and below it, photographs and names of the places she had been seen during the hours before her disappearance. First at her best friend Rebecka Gahm’s house, then at the party and then … not a trace.

  The coffee was served black. There was no milk, Olof informed them. And no soya milk either. But they had sugar, both cubed and the diabetes kind.

  ‘No thanks,’ Anders said. ‘No sugar.’

  ‘You’re definitely from Stockholm, no mistake,’ Micke said.

  Anders asked what he meant by that. Micke smiled and said all Stockholmers had trouble adapting, conforming to local custom.

  ‘Surely not all Stockholmers are alike?’ Anders protested.

  And Micke laughed and said they certainly were, at least the ones he had met.

  ‘Maybe you haven’t met that many.’

  ‘I’ve met enough,’ Micke said and put three sugars in his cup.

  When everyone had been served, Olof ran through the sequence of events. Annabelle Roos had been to a party at Vall’s, the village shop.

  ‘Is that an organised event?’ Anders said.

  Micke snorted.

  ‘What?’ Anders turned to him. ‘Did I say something funny?’

  Micke shook his head. It was just his choice of words, he said, organised event, in the same breath as Vall’s village shop.

  ‘I’m trying to build a clearer picture, if you don’t mind.’

  Olof continued his run-through without acknowledging the verbal sparring. There had been fifteen teenagers there in all. They had all said roughly the same thing, that Annabelle had been very drunk and that she had quarrelled with several of them. She had been louder than usual and drunk more than she normally would. When her dad came to look for his daughter there were six people still in the building. Olof pointed them out on the whiteboard: Svante Linder, Jonas Landell, Noel Karlsson, William Stark, Rebecka Gahm and Sara Larsson. None of them had been able to say with any certainty at what time Annabelle had left the party, but it had likely been somewhere between midnight and one. Noel Karlsson, by his own and other people’s account, had passed out soon after Annabelle and Rebecka arrived, so he could more or less be excluded from inquiry, both as a potential perpetrator and as a witness.

  ‘Jonas Landell,’ Charlie said. ‘He works at the motel.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Micke. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Nothing, I just recognised him.’

  Olof cracked his fingers. Then he went through the technicians’ findings from the scene. Blood had been discovered on the table in the kitchen. No significant quantities, but they had sent it off for analysis anyway. And no, of course there was no word from the lab yet. Then they had found the remnants of a cannabis plantation in a locked room on the top floor as well. So there was reason, Olof felt, to assume that the teenagers who partied in the derelict shop had things to hide, though that didn’t necessarily mean they had anything to do with Annabelle’s disappearance.

  ‘Have you requested her phone records?’ Charlie said.

  Olof nodded. There was a recurring number linked to a pay-as-you-go sim card. They had checked with the other teenagers at the party and many others who were known to move in Annabelle’s inner circle, and they were all on pay-monthly contracts. No one had admitted recognising the number in question.

  And yes, of course they had tried to call the phone, but the phone was turned off.

  ‘And the messages? The texts?’ Charlie clarified when no one said anything.

  ‘We made a mistake,’ Olof said. ‘We contacted the service provider too late, we …’

  ‘They couldn’t restore the messages?’

  ‘No, the phone had been dead for too long. We didn’t think … we were just focused on finding her. We thought she’d show up any minute.’

  ‘These things happen,’ Anders said.

  ‘That her friends have contract phones doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s possible to own two phones. That’s usually the way of it if … if you have things to hide. And considering the cannabis in the village shop …’

  ‘The thought obviously occurred to us too,’ Olof said. ‘Either way, there’s not a lot we can do about it at the moment. The point is that Annabelle called and was called from this prepaid phone several times over the last few months. And there was an outgoing call registered on the day she disappeared.’

  ‘We need to find that person,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Yeah, don’t you think we know that,’ Micke said. ‘The question is how.’

  ‘Talk to her friends again,’ Charlie said. ‘Ask them if they know if someone happens to own two phones instead of one.’

  ‘We already did,’ Micke retorted.

  Charlie didn’t bother replying. She looked at the photos of the people who had been at the party in the village shop that night. They all looked very young. ‘The quarrels,’ she said, turning to Olof. ‘What were they about?’

  ‘According to what we were told, there was an element of jealousy. William Stark, the ex-boyfriend,’ Olof said, pointing to a picture of a dark-haired boy with a crooked smi
le. ‘He was dumped by Annabelle a few months back and is apparently now seeing Rebecka Gahm, Annabelle’s best friend.’ Olof moved his hand to a picture of a blonde girl. ‘They had a minor dispute about it that Friday at school, and before they got to the party. Annabelle had been a bit upset, but Rebecka says it was nothing serious, that Annabelle was just being a belligerent drunk, so it doesn’t seem as though the quarrelling had anything to do with the disappearance.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I said seem as though. It’s not been our impression that it has anything to do with the fight or her break-up with William.’

  Charlie resisted the impulse to inform him about what the statistics said about murdered women and their ex-boyfriends.

  ‘Tell us more,’ Anders said. ‘How long had they been seeing each other?’

  ‘According to William Stark, it was a matter of months,’ Olof said, ‘but the parents, Annabelle’s parents, didn’t even know they were going out.’

  ‘How come?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Well, we don’t know. Annabelle has apparently never brought a boy home. The mother is a bit …’ Olof scratched his forehead. ‘Well, she’s a bit special, if you’ll pardon the expression. She had called us once before to report her daughter missing, but that time Annabelle was simply spending the night at a friend’s house. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take this entirely seriously at first.’

  ‘What does she do for a living?’ Charlie said. ‘The mother?’