She's Never Coming Back

by Hans Koppel

Calle sat down again. He could never live outside the capital.

  ‘We should talk to the bastard,’ Gerda said.

  ‘Why?’ Karlsson wanted to know.

  Gerda shrugged.

  ‘He might be ready to tell us what actually happened.’

  ‘Big risk,’ Karlsson said. ‘He’s fallen in love and has a daughter to look after. Why are there never any pastries? Only those God-awful biscuits that are so dry that you have to drink something just to be able to swallow them.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t do it,’ Gerda suggested.

  ‘Who? What?’

  ‘That upper class twat. He could be innocent.’

  Karlsson laughed.

  ‘Yeah, right. A regular Snow White. What was it she said?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That actress?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You know,’ Karlsson continued. ‘The blonde one who sounded like a transvestite. Old black-and-white films.’

  ‘Rita Hayworth?’

  ‘She didn’t sound like a tranny. Before that. Hands on her hips, crude as hell.’

  ‘Marilyn Monroe?’

  ‘No, not Marilyn Monroe. I said earlier. The first talkies, around then.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Mae West.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She said it.’

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” Bloody brilliant.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Gerda ventured.

  ‘I used to be Snow White, but … okay, she’s not any more.’

  ‘I used to …?’

  ‘… be Snow White, but I drifted.’

  ‘What does she mean, “drifted”?’

  ‘I know what it means, I just don’t know how else to put it.’

  Gerda nodded. ‘Okay.’

  Calle got off the bus. The first thing he saw was two girls, early teens, riding slowly past on their ponies. Then a single car crept up the hill. He could see Öresund and the Danish coastline through the gaps between the houses.

  Calle read the road names: Sperlingsvägen, Sundsliden. He took out the map he had printed off from the Internet and tried to work out where he was. An elderly woman was raking the gravel in her driveway. Calle nodded to her.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ she asked, in a Stockholm dialect.

  ‘No, thank you. I think I know where I’m going.’

  Calle raised a hand in thanks. Stockholmers were good people, he thought to himself. The woman smiled at him again, and it seemed to Calle that she was familiar in some way. But friendly faces often are.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘Gröntevägen,’ Calle told her.

  ‘It’s just over there, on the other side of the grass. Are you looking for someone in particular?’

  ‘Michael Zetterberg,’ Calle said.

  ‘He lives in the big white house with a black roof.’

  The woman pointed in the general direction.

  ‘Thank you,’ Calle said, and started to walk.

  He was about to turn round and ask if they’d maybe met before, but, given what the managing editor of Family Journal had just told him, he wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

  Ylva had disappeared nearly a year and a half ago. Three of the four were dead, and the fourth was missing. What did it all mean? Was there a connection? Or was it just coincidence?

  Calle walked along the road, resisting the temptation to cut across the grass. It was bound to be wet, and he had put his best shoes on in honour of the meeting, even though they were actually a bit thin for the cold autumn weather.

  The Zetterbergs’ house was big, and the garden looked well tended. When Calle got closer he noticed a trampoline that had obviously been left out over winter, a forgotten football and a kick-sledge that had been abandoned by the terrace door.

  Good, Calle thought to himself. You had to watch out for people who were too fussy. He had written enough articles for interior design magazines to know that the coolest houses and apartments smelled of chlorine and divorce.

  The driveway was empty.

  Calle went up to the door and rang the bell. No one at home. In a way, he felt relieved. He had no idea what he would say to Ylva’s husband.

  Calle looked at his watch, quarter past five. He had booked a ticket for the last flight, precisely so he could interview Ylva. Contrary to what he’d told the managing editor at Family Journal, he had of course thought of using the material. A young and beautiful woman who’d lost three of her closest friends from school – that was just the kind of thing readers wanted.

  But now, she wasn’t available. So Calle wanted to talk to her husband instead.

  About what?

  He felt uneasy. Was he really just a parasite, feeding on other people’s misfortune? He decided to go for a walk in the neighbourhood to clear his mind.

  There were houses everywhere. Lots of old villas, and some new builds with huge glass fronts.

  He headed towards the water, noted a vast, forbidding house on the hill to the left, and the smell of seaweed. When he got to the shore, he decided that fibre-cement roofing didn’t look so bad after all, before turning right in the direction of two jetties. He felt compelled to go out on to one.

  He stood at the end of the jetty. To his right lay the Kattegatt, straight ahead the Danish coastline, and to his left the ferry lane between Helsingborg and Helsingör. And beyond that, he could see the island of Ven.

  No more than an hour ago, he’d sworn that he would never move out of central Stockholm, but now he found himself wondering whether he should revise that decision. The sky was endless and full of promise. Calle understood why people who had grown up here might find it hard to leave the place. A seagull sailed deftly past on the wind and seemed to mock him with laughter. Calle turned and retraced his steps.

  He carried on north along the water and then up a long slope. He eventually managed to find his way back to Gröntevägen where a car was now parked in the driveway.

  Calle hesitated. What was he going to ask?

  A man who was grieving for his missing wife. She went out to buy a newspaper and never came back …

  Dot, dot, dot.

  It was a story, no doubt about it.

  But a delicate situation: the woman had disappeared, which automatically made the husband a suspect. The man was always the villain.

  How was he going to approach this?

  The Gang of Four, obviously. Only he wouldn’t call them that in front of the husband.

  Calle swept his thoughts to one side. He didn’t need a plan, he was a reporter, a journalist for a weekly, you couldn’t get more hard-boiled. Just a shame that the rest of the world didn’t understand that.

  He rang the bell and heard the light footsteps of a child hurrying. A girl opened the door and looked up at him, face full of expectation.

  ‘Hi, is your dad home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned and ran towards the kitchen.

  ‘Daddy!’

  Mike had an apron on and was drying his hands on a dishcloth. He looked questioningly at Calle, who held out his hand and flashed him what in his mind was an irresistible smile.

  ‘Calle Collin. Hello.’

  ‘Hi,’ Mike said, cautiously.

  He wasn’t sure who he had in front of him. A Jehovah’s Witness?

  His daughter looked on with interest.

  ‘I went to Brevik School on Lidingö,’ Calle said. ‘I was there at the same time as Ylva. I heard that she was missing and I wondered if I could come for a chat.’

  Mike cleared his mind. He hesitated for a moment or two, then shook it off.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  46

  Ylva saw that Mike and Sanna had come home for the evening and switched to a TV channel. Gösta had connected her only a few months ago. The TV was her greatest luxury and she often left it on. For some company an
d noise, if nothing else.

  At this time in the afternoon, they showed old sitcoms. Ylva loved the studio laughter, it made her feel all warm.

  She had ironed the day’s laundry and had even managed to polish a couple of candlesticks – in other words, she’d accomplished quite a bit.

  It was well into autumn now, and Ylva had long since laid her plans to escape on hold. She was undeniably an idiot, just as Gösta said. He was happy enough with her sexual performance, though; he even said she was a natural talent, born to it.

  ‘But you get a lot of practice, too.’

  She thanked him, mustered the courage to ask if they might let her clean the house, after all. She promised she’d do a good job.

  He said he’d think about it. Ylva felt certain that sooner or later she’d be given the chance. He had been generous recently, spoiling her with food and books.

  There wasn’t any reason, really, to risk it all by trying to escape.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait.’ Mike held his hands up in front of him.

  Calle Collin stopped talking. He’d told Mike the background, that his original intention had been to interview Ylva about the fact that three of her classmates had died so young, but then the managing editor for Family Journal, who lived locally, had told him that Ylva had been missing for more than a year.

  ‘So you’re a journalist,’ Mike said, and looked very disapproving.

  ‘For the weeklies,’ Calle said. ‘I’m not a news reporter.’

  ‘And you want to write about dead people?’

  ‘Well, yes … no. But …’

  ‘But what?’ Mike said. His face was bright red and his daughter looked at him with a worried expression.

  ‘I just think it all seems a bit odd,’ Calle said.

  ‘What?’ Mike barked.

  ‘That three out of four are dead and the fourth is missing.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Three out of four? Three out of four what?’

  ‘The Gang of Four,’ Calle said, and looked down at the table, embarrassed.

  ‘The Gang of Four?’ Mike repeated, shaking his head.

  Calle met his eyes. It was now or never.

  ‘Ylva used to hang out with these three guys: Johan Lind, Morgan Norberg and Anders Egerbladh. The four of them terrorised the school. Morgan died of cancer. Anders was murdered in Stockholm. Johan died in a motorbike accident in Africa. I wondered if there might be a connection. With your wife’s disappearance.’

  The girl turned to her father, looked at him in suspense.

  The veins on Mike’s forehead were throbbing, his chest was heaving, his lips were tight. When he spoke, it was in a very low voice, almost a whisper.

  ‘I have never heard anything about the individuals you’ve just mentioned, so I assume that they can’t have made much of an impression on my wife. And if you don’t leave people alone to grieve in peace, I’ll have something to say to your boss at Family Journal. In fact, I think I will anyway. And now I want you to stand up and get out of my house and never show your face here again.’

  ‘But, but, I just—’

  ‘Now.’

  Calle got up and left.

  47

  Calle Collin rested his forehead on the window of the airplane, felt the cold plastic against his skin. The plane accelerated down the runway and he was pushed back into his seat. He wasn’t a frequent flyer and by this point in the flight his mind would usually be racing through scenarios where the plane would crash, killing everyone on board. Most of these had the plane breaking in two in mid-air, and the passengers being sucked out into the dark, cold air, where they floated helplessly just long enough to reflect on their sins, before plummeting to the ground.

  But this time, Calle’s head was full of other scenes. He imagined Michael Zetterberg contacting the managing editor of Family Journal. Maybe he’d call her, or just bump into her on a Sunday walk. And then he would tell her what had happened. That some crazy reporter from Stockholm had looked him up, wanting to talk about Ylva’s disappearance. He’d implied that Ylva hadn’t been the nicest of girls and then he’d mentioned a bunch of dead classmates and generally been rather unpleasant.

  What’s more, this individual said that he was working for Family Journal. Was that true?

  Calle could just imagine the managing editor listening carefully, her anger rising, and then saying that she did in fact know who Ylva’s husband was talking about, and that it was totally out of order and she promised, promised, to contact the reporter immediately and put a stop to all this nonsense.

  The next scene that filled Calle’s mind was the telephone conversation that would ensue: the bollocking he’d get, his contract terminated. Then the gossip.

  That Calle Collin, what happened to him? He used to be a really good journalist and a decent guy. Evidently he’s lost it completely now.

  His third thought, and by this time the plane had landed and was taxiing towards the gate at Arlanda, was Jörgen. That terrible man with his pockets so full of money that he had nothing better to do than to cultivate the self-invented myth that he was an interesting eccentric.

  It was his fault. Everything. Even if he wasn’t exactly behind it all.

  Instead of waiting for the bus, Calle hopped into a taxi.

  ‘Lidingö, please.’

  He turned on his mobile and called Jörgen.

  ‘I’m on my way over,’ Calle said. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘There was someone here today,’ Marianne said.

  ‘Here?’ Gösta asked.

  ‘Here, on the street. He asked where Gröntevägen was. He was going to see Mike. Called him Michael.’

  ‘Right.’

  Gösta sounded vaguely interested, but carried on looking through the paper.

  ‘Gay,’ Marianne said. ‘He was their age, spoke with a Stockholm dialect.’

  ‘A poof from Stockholm, stop the press.’

  Marianne sighed, tired of her husband.

  ‘There was something about him,’ she said. ‘It was almost like he recognised me.’

  ‘Did he introduce himself?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then.’

  Marianne got to her feet, annoyed, and started to load the dishwasher. Gösta carried on reading the newspaper without paying her much attention. She slammed the door shut in irritation. Gösta looked up.

  ‘We can’t carry on like this for ever,’ she said. ‘We’re almost done, there’s only Ylva left. We have to finish it and we have to do it now.’

  48

  Calle Collin paid the taxi driver, went to the gate and rang the bell. He looked up at the camera. The intercom crackled.

  ‘Come in,’ Jörgen said, and the lock clicked.

  Calle pushed open the gate and made his way to the house. Jörgen had opened the front door before he even got there.

  ‘To what do I owe the honour?’

  Calle looked at his old school friend intently.

  ‘Is the family home?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jörgen said.

  ‘Then I suggest we take a walk.’

  Jörgen didn’t know why, but he nodded.

  ‘I’ll just get a jacket,’ he said.

  As soon as they were through the gate, Calle grabbed hold of Jörgen’s collar and pushed him up against the well-trimmed hedge.

  ‘What the hell have you done? Have you killed them all?’

  Jörgen looked shocked. He blinked rapidly and his lower lip trembled.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, let me go. What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’ve killed them,’ Calle yelled. ‘All of them.’

  ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

  Jörgen was on the verge of tears. Calle held on to him.

  ‘Do you think I don’t realise? You’ve got so much money that you think you have the power to decide who lives and who dies. Who are you going to bump off next? Am I safe? O
r maybe you want to kill me too?’

  ‘Shut up, Calle. I haven’t done anything. What are you going on about?’

  Calle was shaking, his body so tense that he felt he would explode. Jörgen was gasping for air and crying openly, the snot running from his nose. Calle pushed him further back into the hedge.

  ‘I’ll go to the police, you can be bloody certain of that,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell the police.’

  ‘I h-haven’t done anything,’ Jörgen stammered.

  Calle pushed him away and started to walk. He’d gone no more than five metres when he stopped and turned back. He stretched out a hand and helped his friend to his feet and then hugged him, the tears streaming. They walked to the house arm in arm.

  ‘Are you playing Brokeback Mountain?’ asked Jörgen’s wife.

  Calle laughed. ‘No, I’ve still got some standards.’

  Jörgen’s wife pulled in her chin. ‘Unlike me, you mean?’

  Jörgen kissed her carefully on the cheek.

  ‘Calle’s just jealous,’ he said.

  They went upstairs and sat in the kitchen. Calle told Jörgen about his day in northwest Skåne, and about Ylva having disappeared without a trace nearly eighteen months ago.

  ‘But she can’t just have vanished?’ Jörgen said.

  ‘Her husband must have killed her,’ his wife chipped in.

  Calle shook his head.

  ‘If he was guilty, he wouldn’t have thrown me out. He would have welcomed anything that pointed the finger at someone else.’

  Jörgen’s wife got up with a sigh.

  ‘You two sound like real numpties. There’s no connection between any of the dead people other than that they went to school together.’

  ‘The Gang of Four,’ Jörgen said.

  His wife rapped him on the head.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘You’ve got Calle going. Now listen here, both of you. You can’t carry on like this. You need to get a hobby, have an affair or something.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll have to think of something to do,’ Calle said. ‘Because I won’t be getting any more work, that’s for sure.’

  There was a knock and Ylva stood where she was visible with her hands on her head. The door opened. It was Marianne. Ylva knew it. Her window on the world showed that it was daytime, not much going on. Gösta was at work.