For the Missing

by Lina Bengtsdotter

  ‘And then?’ Anders said.

  ‘Then I drove around everywhere, looking. I called Nora and she phoned the police straight away, but they didn’t really seem to take it all that seriously. They told us to wait and see.’

  ‘Had you or your wife noticed anything different about Annabelle in the days before she went missing?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Nothing comes to mind.’

  ‘How was her mood?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe she was a bit … no, never mind, I don’t know.’

  ‘What?’ Charlie pressed.

  ‘A bit blue, or maybe tired would be more accurate.’

  ‘Did you ask why?’

  ‘No, I’ve only really realised it since I’ve been trying to think back. It’s probably more of a feeling.’

  ‘Has Annabelle ever been depressed?’

  ‘Why would you ask that? You don’t think she could have …’

  ‘I just want to know if she’s been depressed.’

  Fredrik sighed and shook his head. Annabelle had never been depressed, not as far as he was aware anyway, but she was not one of those girls who are always happy …

  ‘Continue,’ Charlie urged when he fell silent.

  Fredrik wondered what she meant; Charlie told him to carry on describing his daughter.

  He was quiet for a moment, then swallowed hard and started talking. Annabelle was very special, well, yes, he supposed all parents felt that way about their children, but Annabelle … they had always been told that, that she was special. He had sensed it when she was born. She had screamed before she was even fully out. How many children do that? Fredrik looked from Charlie to Anders and back, as though he thought they might have relevant statistics to hand. ‘She loves to read,’ he continued, ‘goes through several books a week. It’s pure curiosity, Annabelle has always been curious and … a searcher, kind of. It’s been everything from Buddhism to …’ He cleared his throat as though he was trying to remember what else it had been. ‘But now it’s all about church.’

  ‘Are you and Nora active in the church?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Neither one of us; we’re both atheists. Nora says this God thing is just Annabelle’s way of rebelling.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Against us. She even got confirmed. Maybe it was because almost all her classmates did. Either way, those Bible studies that seem to bore everyone else her age … Annabelle enjoyed them. She even said they were interesting, and after a while she started attending services and doing … Christian things like joining a Bible group. I guess we were a bit relieved. Church is better than hanging out up at Vall’s. But, then again, she kept going there too.’

  Fredrik stood up and walked back over to the window. His back was hunched. Charlie thought he moved like a person who has given up, who has lost all hope.

  ‘If she comes home, I won’t yell at her,’ he said. ‘I would just … we would just hug her. Just hold her close …’

  He broke off when Anders handed him a tissue. It annoyed Charlie, because she felt Fredrik had been on the verge of saying something important.

  Fredrik looked at the tissue in his hand as though he wasn’t aware of the tears dripping onto his T-shirt.

  ‘She was our only child,’ he said.

  Is, Charlie wanted to tell him. She is your only child.

  Fredrik sat back down. Charlie noticed his hands shaking when he raised his cup to his mouth. What he had told them didn’t help to give a more cohesive picture of Annabelle: quite the contrary. A person of extremes, she thought, a complex young woman.

  ‘That day,’ Charlie said. ‘Did anything out of the ordinary happen on the day Annabelle went missing?’

  Fredrik shook his head. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Did you have a fight, for example?’

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ Fredrik said. ‘I left around six and didn’t come back until just before seven. I work at Bäckhammar. The paper mill,’ he added. ‘One of the machines was on the blink. I had to stay late. Annabelle had just left when I got back.’

  ‘And Nora?’

  ‘Well, yes, she was home, so they saw each other both before and after school.’

  ‘Do you know what things were like between the two of them?’

  ‘Nora said they argued a little about curfews, but nothing serious. They always argue about that when Annabelle wants to go out.’

  ‘And at other times? Do they fight about other things as well?’

  ‘Usually only about things related to rules and boundaries.’

  Charlie swallowed and decided to ask the difficult question.

  ‘Have you or your wife ever used violence against Annabelle?’

  ‘What kind of question is that?’ Fredrik turned to her.

  ‘The routine kind,’ Charlie replied. ‘There’s no need to take it personally.’

  ‘No, we haven’t. We’re not the kind of people who beat children. And of course I take it personally, being treated as a suspect on top of everything.’

  ‘You are not under suspicion,’ Anders said. ‘As Charlie says, they’re just questions we have to ask.’

  Charlie gave him a look that said that we can discuss what is and isn’t a routine question later.

  ‘Can you tell us about Annabelle’s relationship with William Stark?’ she said.

  Fredrik shook his head. He hadn’t even known they were seeing each other. The police had told him as much a few days ago. Well, he obviously knew she had been dating, what seventeen-year-old girl doesn’t. But that she was in a relationship … she hadn’t said a word about it, to him or Nora.

  ‘Annabelle has been in frequent contact with someone calling from a pay-as-you-go phone.’ Charlie showed Fredrik the number. ‘Do you recognise it?’

  Fredrik shook his head.

  ‘I just thought it might be a relative or some such, someone we could eliminate from our investigation.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Fredrik said. ‘But I can hold onto it and look into it more.’ He took the note.

  They sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Charlie cleared her throat and asked if they could have a look at Annabelle’s room.

  Fredrik said Olof had already been there, that he hadn’t found anything of value.

  ‘Even so, I’d like to take a look.’

  ‘Nora is probably in bed,’ Fredrik said. ‘If she’s asleep … I would like her to be left in peace for a while.’

  ‘We can come back another day,’ Anders said. ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.’ He stood up.

  ‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ Fredrik said. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m exhausted too.’

  They went back out into the hallway. As they passed the stairs, Charlie thought she caught a glimpse of Nora out of the corner of her eye, standing by the banister upstairs.

  ‘Was there something else on your mind?’ Charlie asked Fredrik after they shut the front door behind them.

  ‘I’m concerned about Nora. I want her to get … help. She’s barely slept at all since … Not sleeping makes her very peculiar.’

  ‘Has she not been given sleeping pills?’ Anders asked.

  ‘Yes, but they’re not helping.’

  ‘Does she have a history of insomnia?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  She could feel his guard coming up.

  ‘Because you said sleep deprivation makes her peculiar, as though it were a recurring problem.’

  ‘She’s had bad periods before. She’s been ill.’

  ‘In what way?’ Anders asked.

  ‘Nerves,’ Fredrik said and looked down at the ground. Then he turned to look up at the house as though he wanted to make sure all the windows were closed. ‘There have been periods of nervous illness.’

  ‘Depressed?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘It’s more than that. It’s almost like she’s … I suppose you could say she goes crazy.’

  ‘Psychotic?’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘So she’s been sectioned?’

  Fredrik nodded. It had happened a few times and now, with all this pressure, he was afraid it would happen again.

  ‘I can understand that,’ Charlie said. ‘I can really understand that.’

  ‘I would like for us to get some help.’

  ‘We will arrange for someone to come over,’ Anders said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A psychologist, or a counsellor, someone to talk to.’

  ‘Do we even have those around here?’

  Anders said he would make sure support was provided as soon as possible.

  Charlie hoped that wasn’t promising too much.

  14

  Fredrik cleared away the cups in the sitting room. There was a sound from upstairs. So Nora was awake after all. He thought about Sunnyside, the empty-eyed patients, the untouched board games in the common room. It wouldn’t be long before Nora was back there. On a bed in a white room, completely unresponsive.

  He thought about the first time she was sectioned. Annabelle had just turned one. He had taken her out of her crib when she cried at night, placed her warm little body next to his and slept that way every single night until Nora came home and demanded that Annabelle sleep in her own bed. On account of the crushing hazard, she claimed. Did he not see that he could unintentionally suffocate her if she slept in their bed? And he had given way to her and put Annabelle back in her crib. The first few nights, she had cried so heart-rendingly, he had felt like he was breaking into a thousand pieces. Why had he not stood up to Nora? Why had he let his daughter cry herself to sleep when he could have just picked her up and held her? And what was the point, he thought to himself as he put the cups in the dishwasher, of thinking about things like that now?

  15

  Charlie was breathing heavily when they got back into the car. There was something about people in crisis that made her airways constrict. She thought about the mother, Nora: her fluttering hands, the panic in her eyes, the fury.

  ‘Nervous illness?’ Anders said after reversing out of Nora and Fredrik’s driveway. ‘People still use terms like nervous illness?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Charlie said. She thought it was fastidious to get hung up on vocabulary in a situation like this. To have sick nerves, wasn’t that what it was?

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The mother? She seems fairly … unstable.’

  Charlie turned to him. ‘Who wouldn’t be when their child has gone missing?’

  ‘I was thinking more about her mental health issues; you’re well aware of what psychotic people are capable of.’

  ‘Most psychotic people are completely harmless.’

  ‘Yes, and then there are the dangerous ones.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Charlie said, ‘and then there are people who are considered perfectly healthy but are in fact heinously evil.’

  ‘All right. Why are you getting so upset?’

  ‘I’m not upset, I’m just so sick of people thinking anyone with a mental illness is a danger to society.’

  ‘I don’t think that.’

  She sighed and thought about how ignorant most people were about the human psyche. She had always been interested in the subject. It had started in middle school when she was trying to figure out why Betty wasn’t like other mothers. Why she would end up in bed for days without speaking. Why she never packed gym bags, baked bread or bought presents for birthday parties.

  ‘This business about them being violent,’ Anders said. ‘Did you really think it was the right time to ask him that?’

  ‘The question needed to be asked,’ Charlie said. She took out her phone and googled psychologist, Gullspång municipality, but the only thing that came up was a tourist information website with various activities for families with children. She sighed and thought about everything Gullspång didn’t have: psychologists, crisis teams, specialists. Then she googled priest, Gullspång instead, hoping the insincere old vicar who had presided over Betty’s funeral had retired. A name and a number came up. When Charlie called, it went straight to voicemail, where a young man’s voice introduced himself as Hannes Palmgren and apologised for not being able to take the call, but if you left a message he would get back to you as soon as possible. She left a message and redid the google search, thinking there might be more than one priest, but the only thing she found was a list of on-call priests in the region.

  ‘So call one of those, then,’ Anders said when she cursed.

  ‘But I want it to be someone who can go over there, obviously. What good is a phone call in this situation?’ Then she fell silent, thinking that in this situation, what good was anything, other than finding Annabelle, finding her fast and alive.

  ‘He said they’re not Christian,’ Anders said. ‘Maybe it’s not such a good idea to send a priest over.’

  ‘There’s a crisis; everyone’s Christian in a crisis. And what other choice do we have anyway, seeing how there’s no one else?’

  ‘That said, the priest seems hard to reach, too,’ Anders retorted.

  ‘We’re going to have to try again if he doesn’t get back to us soon.’

  They started talking about what they had found out about Annabelle. The Bible studies, her reading, her exemplary grades.

  ‘It’s contradictory,’ Anders said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You don’t think? A girl who likes partying and flirting, but who also reads a lot, is active in the church and does well in school.’

  ‘Why would those things be mutually exclusive?’ Charlie said. ‘And don’t put too much store on the flirting thing. It’s just a rumour. It doesn’t take a lot to get chins wagging in places like this.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience,’ Anders said.

  Charlie didn’t reply. She had neither the time nor the inclination to open up about herself or her experience.

  ‘I recognised her,’ she said, to change the subject. ‘I’ve met Nora before, but I don’t know in what context.’

  ‘I suppose you must have met quite a lot of the people in this place before.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I must have,’ Charlie replied.

  ‘Still, it’s odd,’ Anders said and turned out onto the bigger road, ‘them not having any relatives over.’

  ‘I’m guessing inviting guests isn’t their top priority right now.’

  ‘I suppose I meant their near and dear ones.’

  ‘Not everyone has near and dear ones,’ Charlie said and looked out of the window.

  16

  Olof picked up after the first ring when Charlie called. ‘How did it go?’ he asked without saying hello. ‘Didn’t get a lot out of them, huh?’

  ‘Did you know Nora has a history of depression? That she has been sectioned several times?’

  ‘No one told us. But I’m not surprised. That woman has always seemed … anxious, somehow.’

  ‘Fredrik’s worried she’s going to have a breakdown. Is there a psychologist we could call?’

  ‘No, no psychologist. All we have is Hannes, the vicar. I’ll give him a call.’

  ‘I already did. He’s not picking up. But we can head over and see if he’s in. That’ll give us a chance to talk to him about the Bible group Annabelle was a member of as well. Or have you already looked into that?’

  ‘No. We’ve had our hands full with the partygoers.’

  Charlie hung up.

  ‘Are we going to see the vicar now?’ Anders asked.

  ‘Yes. We might as well talk to him now if we’re planning on contacting him about Nora anyway. What’s so wrong about that?’ Charlie continued when she noticed Anders’s sceptical look. ‘No one has interviewed him yet.’

  ‘You think we’re going to get anything out of a priest?’

  ‘He can at least answer general questions. Not everything is covered by absolute confidentiality.’

  Anders countered that the whole point of absolute
confidentiality was that it was … absolute.

  ‘At the very least, we have to find out who the other members of the Bible group are.’

  ‘Look up his address then,’ Anders said.

  Charlie said she didn’t need to; presumably he lived in the vicarage and she knew where that was.

  I might as well just go over there, she thought. After all, there would be no occasion to go to the cemetery, to find the grave, to think about the decomposing body. She was here to solve a missing person case. Nothing else.

  She thought about how she had ridden her bike to the church when she was little. She used to walk up and down the aisles between the headstones, reading titles, names and dates. For some strange reason, it made her feel calm to think about all the dead people under her feet. One time, when Betty had turned up to an end-of-the-school-year ceremony for once, she had shown her the most beautiful of the stones. But Betty hadn’t been impressed.

  I don’t want one of those ridiculous pecking doves on my grave. You know I’ve never liked birds. And besides, you’re going to spread me over Lake Skagern anyway. Yes, I know it’s not allowed, but who’s going to stop you? Just bring the urn one night and row out there.

  Betty thought it was madness for Charlie to spend so much time in the cemetery, but she wasn’t going to forbid her from hanging out with dead people all day if it made her happy. She wasn’t the type of person who prevented people from doing things they liked.

  Sometimes, Charlie had wished that Betty would be stricter, that she would have rules like everyone else’s parents and demand to know where Charlie was and when she was going to be back. But Betty was not the anxious type and later on, after Mattias moved in, Charlie had fewer restrictions than ever.

  He’s not my dad, Charlie would object when Betty yelled at her for being rude to Mattias. But how was it Charlie’s fault that she hated listening to Mattias’s stories about the little boy he had lost? It was as though he couldn’t wrap his head around why social services had granted the mother full custody. Betty and Mattias would talk about the boy, about trying to get him back, about being a family of four. When Charlie heard them talking like that, she would go to her room and pray to the God she didn’t believe in not to let it happen. She prayed Betty’s relationship with Mattias would end and become something they could laugh about, she and Betty. But when it came to Mattias, Betty never laughed. Because he was the exception that proved the rule.