For the Missing

by Lina Bengtsdotter

  ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘And what does your crazy wife have to say about that, Mr Rochester? Or have you locked her in the attic?’ Annabelle burst out laughing.

  ‘Is it true?’ Isak said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, what do you think … the message you sent, the picture. Why are you laughing? What are you on? And what did you do to your hand?’

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ Annabelle said when he took her hand. ‘You’re never touching me again.’

  ‘We have to talk, Bella, I can help you. I mean … with …’

  ‘With getting rid of, right?’ Annabelle staggered towards him, moving in close. ‘And if I don’t want to? If I want to keep it?’

  ‘Think about your future,’ Isak said. ‘Think about all the things you dream of doing.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’ She shoved him in the chest. Isak grabbed her arms and held her still.

  ‘And now what?’ Annabelle laughed. ‘What were you planning to do with me now?’

  53

  On their way back to Lyckebo, Charlie started feeling cold. Johan took off his jumper and demanded she put it on.

  ‘As I said before, I think we need to talk to your colleagues about what we read about Nora.’

  ‘We don’t,’ Charlie said, ‘I do.’

  She regretted having read any of it, regretted not obeying Challe’s order to stay clear of the investigation, regretted having come to Gullspång at all.

  ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ Johan said when they reached the house.

  Charlie shook her head. Right now, all she needed was sleep.

  ‘Keep the jumper,’ Johan said. ‘We’ll sort it out some other time.’

  When she got inside, she took two Imovane that Susanne had given her. Then she got in her bed and hoped the pills would plunge her into a sleep too deep for dreams.

  The first thing she did when she woke up the next morning was call Anders.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she said.

  Anders made an awkward attempt at explaining that he couldn’t tell her anything.

  ‘The fact that you can’t tell me is ludicrous.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s how it usually goes,’ Anders said, ‘when a person gets suspended from an investigation.’

  ‘I gave you Isak,’ Charlie said, ‘I …’

  ‘But you’re still suspended.’

  ‘Was it him? Was it Isak?’

  ‘You just don’t give up, do you?’ Anders said. ‘Isak has admitted to being in a relationship with Annabelle, saying he ended it and then found out she was pregnant. He says he saw her that night and tried to talk to her, but that she was sad, angry and hurt. And when he tried to help her get back home, she just shouted at him to leave her alone.’

  ‘Is he credible?’ Charlie said.

  ‘He’s saying he kept it to himself for his family’s sake. That either way, he didn’t know more than anyone else. Annabelle had already been spotted on the road by the village shop, and the fact that he had seen her too wouldn’t have changed anything. For what it’s worth, he did seem genuinely sad.’

  ‘And his wife,’ Charlie said. ‘How’s Susanne doing?’

  ‘We’ve interviewed her. She told us about her meeting with Annabelle that day, about the phone and the message about the pregnancy. We’re obviously going to conduct more interviews, but unless the post-mortem reveals more than drowning and traces of the rape, I don’t think we’re going to be able to tie anyone to this.’

  Charlie said nothing.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I call you back later?’

  ‘Sure.’ Charlie hung up. She had planned to tell Anders about her recent discoveries, but why should she? It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the investigation. It was bad enough that she knew.

  54

  The next day brought rain. For the first time in a long time, Charlie woke up and felt properly rested. She lay listening to the soothing sound of the rain pattering against the roof above her. Today, she thought, I’ll go and see Betty.

  The cemetery was completely deserted. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The air felt clear and fresh. Charlie walked along the well-tended gravel paths, reading the headstones. She remembered the graves that had interested her as a child. The small, white children’s crosses by the south wall of the church, the family grave with the Nils Ferlin poem.

  Not even a little grey sparrow

  that sings in the greenwood tree

  exists over there, on the other side, and how sad such a place must be.

  Charlie couldn’t stop herself from scraping off a piece of grey moss that concealed the last word of the poem. But now she was on her way to the chestnut tree by the wall, the place where Betty Lager was buried.

  She studied the pecking dove on the headstone for a while. It was covered in white bird shit. Betty hadn’t wanted a dove, or a headstone; no words about missing her. She was supposed to be scattered ‘at sea’. And yet there it all was: the stone, the dove and birth and death dates, under the inscription, Betty Lager, loved, missed. Who had actually seen to the funeral arrangements? Charlie couldn’t remember. She remembered almost nothing from the time right after Betty died.

  There were no flowers or candles in front of the headstone, just a green, shrub-like plant, the same kind that seemed to have been planted on all graves that were not actively looked after by loved ones. Charlie climbed over the cemetery wall and picked a large bouquet of pink and purple lupins. Then she walked over to the tap and filled a pointed vase designed to be planted into the ground. Having set up the vase, she sat down next to the grave, tracing the ornate letters of Betty’s name with her index finger. Betty Lager, she thought. You should have told me the truth. Maybe I would have understood you better if you had just told me. Then she realised that wasn’t true, because if Betty had told her the truth, it would probably have made things worse. Because how was she, a child herself, supposed to be able to handle the knowledge that her mother had killed a child? It was impossible to fathom even as an adult.

  Who were you, Betty Lager? Who were you really, Rosa Manner? She pondered the revenge angle. Was that enough to explain it? One of the newspaper articles had talked about the young perpetrators’ tragic backgrounds, about substance abuse, prostitution and illness, society’s neglect. But it was all too simplistic, Charlie mused. Millions of children were let down by their parents and society and didn’t end up murderers. There must have been some intrinsic darkness in Betty. Is it in me too, she couldn’t help asking herself. Am I like Betty?

  No, she thought, no, no, no. I’m not Betty Lager. I’m not like her.

  Charlie got back to Lyckebo a few hours later to find Johan on the patio. He was sitting by the wall, eyes closed in the sun. He hadn’t heard her coming. She stood still for a moment, watching him. His tanned legs in those shorts, his curly hair. He looked relaxed, like it was his house, his wild, flowering garden and patio. She moved closer. Johan opened his eyes, looked at her and smiled.

  ‘Stopping by uninvited seems to be your thing,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that this place … it makes me feel calm somehow.’

  Charlie sat down on the chair next to him.

  ‘What happens now?’ Johan said.

  Charlie shrugged, because she wasn’t sure what he was referring to.

  ‘Maybe we could meet up,’ he went on. ‘I mean, when we’re back in Stockholm, just for a coffee or something.’

  ‘Sure,’ Charlie said. ‘Maybe we can, like the siblings we should have been.’

  ‘I’m glad we’re not siblings.’

  Charlie smiled at him and thought she should say something similar back, but felt that might be a bit too … predictable.

  55

  Their work in Gullspång was done. Charlie had thought she’d be relieved to be leaving, but something inside her had changed. I’ll be
back, she thought. This goodbye is only temporary.

  ‘My God, you’re driving like a maniac.’ Anders said.

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ Charlie replied.

  ‘Of what? Because I don’t drive like a teenage boy with a death wish?’

  ‘Because you’re too scared to overtake, because you’re always thinking better safe than sorry, because you can’t keep a steady pace and …’

  ‘You’re still angry with me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not with you,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m mostly angry at myself.’

  ‘Forgive yourself,’ Anders said.

  ‘Gardell?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you just said, forgive yourself. That used to be my mantra when I was younger, to calm my nerves when I … felt like a bad person: For all the things you hate about yourself – forgive yourself. I think Jonas Gardell wrote it.’

  ‘I didn’t know he wrote things, I thought he was just a comedian.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Charlie said.

  ‘So, did it help, the motto?’ Anders smiled at her.

  ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I’ve always had a hard time forgiving.’

  ‘Yourself or others?’

  ‘Both.’

  There was a meow from the back seat.

  ‘Challe’s not going to like the cat thing,’ Anders said. ‘You do realise he has a pet allergy?’

  ‘I wasn’t planning on taking it to his house.’

  ‘But if he drives this car, he’ll get sick.’

  ‘I suppose I’m going to have to clean it, then,’ Charlie said. She called to the cat, who joined them in the front and lay down on her lap.

  ‘It really doesn’t look like it’s doing too well. It looks more dead than alive.’

  ‘It’ll get better,’ Charlie said.

  Anders’s phone rang.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, we’re on our way. Two hours maybe, yes, but we probably have to stop for a bit of something along the way. No, but I’m hungry now.’

  ‘Did you just hang up?’ Charlie looked at him.

  ‘Well, yes, she can’t bloody well be in charge of whether I eat or not.’

  ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me,’ Charlie said. ‘I completely agree.’

  They stopped at a fast food restaurant. Anders ordered a whole burger menu. They ate in silence.

  Charlie’s thoughts wandered back to what the papers had written about Betty and Nora. Everyone seemed to have disagreed about what had really happened. The work of two little psychopaths? A game gone awry? A natural consequence of what can happen when children are forced to live on the margins of society? Charlie thought about the baby her grandmother had lost, Betty’s sister, her aunt. She wished the journalists had known about that. Maybe that would have mitigated the image of her mother as a cold-blooded murderer, created an ounce of understanding for the tragedy. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. A two-year-old boy had been killed, abducted, strangled and hidden.

  Charlie thought about her grandmother. Cecilia Manner. Who had she been? A junkie prostitute, if what she’d read about her was to be believed, a woman who had driven her own child to ruin. But Betty had never said a bad word about her mother. And even if Cecilia had been the worst person in the world, who was to say the blame started and ended with her?

  One of the papers had said there were no perpetrators in the case of the dead little boy, that everyone involved was a victim.

  That’s true, Charlie thought. In this story, there are only victims.

  That night

  Annabelle heard Isak calling behind her.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to go fuck yourself?’ she shouted without turning around. ‘Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?’

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ Isak shouted back. ‘I think you should go home.’

  ‘I’m not going home. Go away.’

  And yet she hoped he would follow her, that he would grab her again, say he loved her, that everything was going to be okay, but when she turned around, he was gone.

  She stood motionless for a long time, pondering what to do next. Going home wasn’t an option. So instead of continuing down the gravel road, she turned off towards the bridge. Halfway across, she stepped up to the railing and gazed into the black current.

  The inlet gates must be wide open, she realised, because the water was swirling and churning violently beneath her. She suddenly felt an urge to climb over the railing. She hiked up her dress and then she was suddenly on the other side. The wind snatched at her hair; her head was spinning. If you’re dizzy, her dad always said, if you’re dizzy, you should find a single point to look at. She looked down, tried to find a fixed point among the eddies. But everything was moving.

  When she attempted to climb back, she fell, just a small slip and then … she was soaring through the air.

  Am I flying, she had time to think before her body broke the surface and she was pulled under.

  About the author

  Lina Bengtsdotter grew up in Gullspång, Sweden. She is a teacher in Swedish and Psychology and has published a number of short stories in various newspapers and magazines in Sweden and the Nordic countries. She has lived in the UK and in Italy and today resides outside of Stockholm with her three children. For the Missing is her debut novel.

  Agnes Broomé is a literary translator and Preceptor in Scandinavian at Harvard University. With a PhD in Translation Studies, her translations include August Prize winner The Expedition by Bea Uusma.

  Copyright

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Orion Books

  Ebook first published in 2018 by Orion Books

  Copyright © Lina Bengtsdotter 2017

  First published as Annabelle by Bokförlaget Forum, Sweden in 2017

  Published by agreement with Bonnier Rights, Sweden

  The right of Lina Bengtsdotter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with he Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior

  permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of

  binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition,

  including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ‘Annabelle’, lyrics and music by Gillian Welch

  ‘That’s What Friends Are For’, lyrics and music by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 4091 7936 8

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

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