by Hans Koppel
‘Shh, no more about the past. You’re going to pay back your debt. Let’s look to the future now.’
The woman turned, sweeping out her arm.
‘This is your world,’ she said. ‘You can use whatever is in this room. You might not think that it’s much, that you might as well have nothing. But you’re wrong. There’s a lot that you take for granted, privileges you can’t see.
The woman got down off the bed.
‘I’ll show you what we expect of you. When you hear us coming in, stand so that we can see you through the peephole. When we knock on the door, stand so that you are visible with your hands on your head, where we can see them. Do you understand?’
Ylva stared at her.
‘You’ll be given easy household chores such as laundry and ironing, but first and foremost you will always be available. My husband will use you whenever he feels like it, so that you never forget the reason why you are here. You will perform your tasks willingly and with conviction. There are various hygiene products in the bathroom and we expect you to use them. Do you understand?’
Ylva looked at the woman. The man was standing more or less behind her.
‘You’re crazy, both of you,’ she said. ‘Totally fucking insane. That was twenty years ago. Do you think Annika would be proud of you now? Do you think she’d feel she’s been avenged?’
The woman slapped her hard across the face.
‘I don’t want to hear Annika’s name pass your filthy lips.’
Ylva made an attempt to throw herself over the woman and wrestle her to the ground. The man came between them and twisted Ylva’s arm up behind her back, forcing her to her knees. The woman hunkered down close to Ylva.
‘If you try to escape again, my husband will dislocate your feet. So, in short, your life from now will be like One Thousand and One Nights. Minus all the tiresome stories. You will stay alive as long as it suits us.’
Someone called Karlsson from the police phoned just after eight on Monday morning. Mike replied that they still hadn’t heard anything from Ylva and that he hadn’t got any clues from anywhere else of where she might be.
Mike said with some irritation that he’d already spoken to the police about ten times on the Sunday. And on his own initiative had contacted the papers, who’d put in a notice under local news. Even though they hadn’t mentioned Ylva by name or published a photograph.
‘It’s not necessarily as bad as you think,’ Karlsson said. ‘A couple of hundred people are reported missing every day in this country. Six to seven thousand a year. And only around a dozen or so of those disappear for ever. Generally due to drowning or something like that. My colleague, Gerda, and I were thinking about dropping by. Will you be at home for the next couple of hours?’
Gerda was, like Karlsson, a man. His surname was Gerdin, Karlsson explained, but as there weren’t many women in the section, his colleagues had decided to rechristen him in the name of gender equality.
Mike’s initial impression was that Gerda was the nicer of the two, only because Karlsson was the one who asked the questions. Both appeared to be incompetent, or, rather, resigned. As if they’d already decided that there was nothing they could do other than try to calm down hysterical family members and then wait and see.
‘And you have a daughter together?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Sanna. My mother just took her to school.’
‘Up there, in the yellow brick building?’
Karlsson pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
‘Laröd school, yes. Thought it was best if we kept things as normal as possible. I don’t know what else to do.’
He looked at the policemen, hoping they’d agree. Gerda nodded and shifted his weight.
‘How old is your daughter?’ he asked.
‘Sanna’s seven. Turns eight in a fortnight. She’s in Class Two.’
‘Tell us in your own words what happened,’ Karlsson said.
Mike sent him an irritated look. In his own words? Whose words would he use otherwise?
‘She didn’t come home,’ he said. ‘I collected Sanna from after-school club at about half past four. We went to the shops to buy food and then came home. Ylva had said that she might go out for a drink after work.’
‘With her colleagues?’
‘Yes, they were putting a magazine to bed and—’
‘Putting to bed?’
‘She works for an agency that produces company magazines. Putting a magazine to bed means they have to make the final changes before sending it off to print. It can take a while.’
‘And did it?’
‘No, not really. They were done just after six.’
‘And you know that because …?’
‘As I’ve already told several of your colleagues by now, the first person I called was Nour, my wife’s colleague and friend. She said that Ylva said goodbye to them on the street at quarter past six. Nour and the others went to a restaurant, Ylva said she was going home.’
Karlsson nodded thoughtfully.
‘So, she said to you that she was going out for a drink with her colleagues, and she said to her colleagues that she was going home to you?’
‘She said that she might go out for a drink with them. It wasn’t decided.’
Karlsson cocked his head and he was bloody smiling too. Mike was close to thumping him.
‘Look, I don’t give a damn what you think. You want it to be something that it’s not. Okay?’
Karlsson shrugged. ‘I just thought it was a bit odd, to give out a double message like that. She says one thing to you, and something else to her colleagues. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?’
‘My wife has disappeared. She wasn’t depressed, or suicidal, and to my knowledge has never been threatened in any way. And if she did happen to have a passionate lover stowed away somewhere, she’d at least phone her fucking daughter.’
‘What makes you think she has a passionate lover?’
Mike glared at the policemen, from one to the other. Karlsson smiled at him.
‘This is crazy,’ Mike said. ‘You’re both crazy. Do you think it’s funny? My wife has disappeared – don’t you understand how serious that is?’
‘We just wondered whether there was perhaps an explanation.’
25
The man and the woman took the mattress, the covers, the pillow and then turned off the electricity supply.
Ylva lay curled up on the floor with a towel over her body. She didn’t know how long she lay there. She lay under the towel and cried, only getting up to drink and pee. When the power was finally switched on again, it was as if life had returned. The light on the ceiling came on and the TV screen flickered. It was daytime outside, afternoon, in fact, judging by the light and the lack of activity. The car wasn’t in the driveway. Ylva wondered if Mike was managing to do the housework, what he was doing to find her. If he had followed her route home, put up posters with photographs of her. Had anyone seen her get in the car? She didn’t think so.
What would she have done if she were Mike? Apart from all the obvious things like calling friends and the police and the hospital. She would put a notice in the paper, talk to any bus drivers who were working at that time. She would knock on every door between the bus stop and their house, ask if anyone had seen her passing, paper the town with photographs and missing person posters.
Then it struck her.
Mike might even knock on the door of the house where she was being held. He would introduce himself to the new couple and briefly explain what had happened. Then he’d show them a picture. The man and the woman would play interested, look closely at the picture, and then shake their heads in sympathy. The woman would put her hand to her heart and look distraught, the man would show concern and try to be helpful, suggest things, because men always do, seriously believing that they can solve all problems.
And Ylva wouldn’t be able to make herself heard, she understood that now. Was there any other way she could attract att
ention?
Mrs Halonen was the first one to appear on the screen. She went past with her Alsatian, turned into Bäckavägen. She glanced surreptitiously over at Ylva and Mike’s house, almost guiltily. Ylva realised that she’d heard. And if Mrs Halonen knew, then everybody knew. She was way down the information chain.
Ylva tried to imagine the gossip, comforted herself with the conversations that were happening around town.
Did you hear that Ylva’s disappeared?
Who?
Mike’s wife, the girl from Stockholm.
What?
She didn’t come home. Left work and never came home.
Has she run off?
Don’t know.
She hasn’t been in touch?
No, she’s vanished. Mike’s looking for her. He’s reported it to the police and all that.
But I don’t understand, she just didn’t come home?
Nope.
But that’s crazy. Has she left him?
I don’t know.
What about the girl, she wouldn’t just leave the girl, surely?
Either she’s run away or something’s happened.
Like what?
How should I know?
But she wasn’t depressed, was she?
Things are not always as they seem. My dad had a friend who …
No matter what happened, things always blew over. Became part of life’s great charade. Hundreds of passengers killed in a plane crash? Months later it would be forgotten, and only the anniversary would be marked. Thousands killed in a natural catastrophe? A week of grim news reports and then it turned into something you looked up on Wikipedia. The tsunami, what year was that? That’s right, of course.
No one would save her, she had to escape.
Everyone went quiet when Mike entered Ylva’s workplace. Nour got up and went over to meet him.
‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘We’ll go into the kitchen.’ Mike immediately started to cry. For the simple reason that a friendly person had seen his impotence and offered comfort.
‘Fuzzy,’ he said, when she asked how he was. ‘It’s like that protective plastic on new mobile phones or watches; if only someone could pull the bugger off, I’d see clearly.’
Nour nodded, wiped away a tear from his cheek with her thumb and handed him some water.
‘Drink.’
Mike did as he was told, looked over her shoulder to check that the door was closed and waved his hand around nervously.
‘Do you think she’s met someone else?’
He looked at her with a mixture of fear and helplessness.
‘Not that I know of,’ she said, in the end.
‘I don’t see what else can have happened.’ He shook his head and continued: ‘She would have got in touch. She wouldn’t just forget Sanna, would she?’
‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Nour said.
‘So what’s happened then? Has she had an accident? Been run over, or met the wrong guy? I don’t get it. Three nights, it’s three nights now. I don’t even know if I want her back, can you understand that?’
‘I understand.’
Mike gulped down some air. Nour handed him a tissue and he blew his nose like a child, with no force.
‘Mike, listen to me. You have to be strong. If nothing else, for Sanna’s sake. She’s a child, you’re an adult. Do you hear what I’m saying, Mike? You’re an adult.’
His telephone rang. Mike wiped his nose and looked at the display. He held it up for Nour to see and turned around.
‘It’s Mike,’ he said.
‘Karlsson here. I wondered if you could come by the station? There’s something we’d like to show you.’
‘Have you found her?’
‘No, sorry. But we’ve got a list of the calls made to and from her phone. And a sound file of her voicemail.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Mike hung up and turned to Nour.
‘The police,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a list of her phone calls.’
Mike was nervous as he drove over. Tense and hopeful, frightened and resigned. He felt as if he was sitting a driving test. He parked outside the police station, just by the slip road to the motorway, and went in.
The woman at reception phoned Karlsson.
‘They’re expecting you,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Third floor, second door on the right.’
She could easily have been working in an advertising agency.
Karlsson was standing waiting in the corridor when Mike came out of the lift. He waved him over.
‘Glad you could come,’ he said, and led him into his office, where Gerda was already parked on a chair. ‘Take a seat.’
Karlsson went round the desk to his computer.
‘You said earlier that you called Nour first? Surely you must have tried your wife before then?’
‘Of course.’
‘And when did you call her the first time? Just so we know where it fits.’ Karlsson pointed at the list in front of him.
‘Don’t remember,’ Mike said. ‘I thought about calling earlier to see if she was coming home for supper, but didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t want her to feel guilty. I thought that she should be allowed to go out and enjoy herself on her own for a change.’
‘So when did you call?’
Mike shrugged in exasperation.
‘Before I went to bed,’ he said. ‘Around midnight?’
Gerda waved his hands around in the air, as if preparing himself to ask a difficult question, against his will.
‘And, um, how do you get on, I mean, as man and wife?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, get real.’
Karlsson held up his hand in defence.
‘Let’s just listen to this,’ he said, moving the mouse to the right sound file on the screen and clicking.
Mike heard his own voice and was struck by how feeble he sounded, subservient and uncertain.
Hi, it’s me. Your husband. Just thought I’d see how you’re getting on. I assume you’re out with people from work. Anyway, I’m off to bed now. Take a taxi home, please. I’ve had a drink and can’t drive. Sanna’s in bed. Big hug.
Another, more mechanical, woman’s voice said: Received at zero zero fourteen.
Karlsson stopped the recording and turned to Mike.
‘First of all, do you usually introduce yourself as “your husband” when you call?’
‘No, I was trying to be funny.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I. But do you know what I think it sounds like? I think it sounds like you’re really pissed off, but scared to show it. I think it sounds like a pathetic reminder. You’re not going to jump into bed with anyone else, are you? Remember that you’re married. To me.’
Mike stared at him. Karlsson didn’t bat an eyelid. As if he had just been declared the stupidest man in the universe and was proud of it.
Gerda flapped his hands around nervously.
‘I wonder why you asked if she was out with people from work when you knew that’s who she was out with. As if you thought she might be somewhere else.’
Just as bloody stupid.
‘You sound nervous,’ Karlsson continued. ‘Are you?’
Mike looked at them.
‘Is that the reason why you asked me to come?’
Karlsson pressed his fingers together under his chin. He reminded Mike of that executive guy on the old racist Mastermind box. The strategist, the thinker.
Karlsson leaned back and exchanged glances with Gerda. As if this was the piece of the puzzle they had expected to find. A soap opera of jealousy and passion that had gone off the rails.
Mike snorted with laughter. A cynical confirmation more than anything else.
‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘That’s all you’ve come up with? That’s the reason you asked me to come?’
Still no answer.
‘Is this some kind of
questioning technique, just sitting there in silence? Do you actually suspect me, is that what it is? You think I’ve kidnapped my wife, or killed her and dumped the body? Is that it?’
‘We just wondered if your wife had a lover.’
Gerda tried to make it sound trivial. Like a fact, like the colour of a house or the make of a car.
‘No, my wife does not have a lover. She had an affair with a pretty awful bloke who, for obvious reasons, I don’t have much time for. Let me put it this way, if Bill Åkerman disappears without a trace one day, I suggest you look me up and find out where I’ve been keeping myself. It was over a year ago and, no, I have no reason to believe that it’s still going on. And in any case, Nour phoned him on Saturday, just to make sure. And no, Ylva wasn’t with him.’
Mike stood up.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll go over the road to the newspaper and ask them to publish a photograph of my wife. Someone must have seen her. She can’t just have vanished in a puff of smoke.’
26
‘What was carried out with tremendous zeal? You’re holding back information.’
Jörgen Petersson sounded annoyed. Calle Collin sighed.
‘You don’t want to know,’ he said.
‘Of course I want to know,’ Jörgen persisted.
‘Believe me,’ Calle said, ‘you don’t.’
‘You’re like one of those phoney conscientious newsreaders who warn viewers about disturbing pictures knowing that’s the best way to make people watch. You’re just trying to pique my interest, like a circus ringmaster introducing a new act.’
‘I’ve actually had problems sleeping.’
‘Well, I’ve never had that problem. I sleep just like all the beautiful people in the adverts.’
Calle gave another deep sigh.
‘Well, don’t complain later then,’ he said.
‘Why would I complain?’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘I don’t intend to complain.’
‘Okay,’ Calle said. ‘Someone smashed Anders’ head in with a hammer, pounded the hammer into his brain as if it were a butter churn, and then left the shaft standing up out of his skull like a dead flower in a pot.’
