After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  I wonder what Afsaneh thinks about that.

  Manfred doesn’t apologize for calling late. He’s not the type to apologize for anything. Instead, he says:

  “The technicians called.”

  “And?”

  “The blood on Hanne’s sneakers…”

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t hers. The DNA test isn’t ready yet, but they checked the blood type to see if it matched Hanne’s. Which the technicians and medical examiners do before the DNA test comes. The blood on Hanne’s shoes was type O positive. Hanne has B positive.”

  “Could it be Peter’s blood?”

  “No. He has AB negative, a very unusual blood type. Only one percent of Sweden’s population has it.”

  “So what you’re saying is…”

  My voice dies away as I think of that thin woman in the snow. Of the face, which is no longer a face, and the long, thin gray hair.

  “It just so happens that the murdered woman’s blood type is O positive, like thirty-two percent of the population, so I’d bet the blood on Hanne’s shoes comes from the murder victim. There’s no other logical explanation. Hanne must have been there when she died, Malin. I can’t prove it yet, but I know it’s true.”

  Jake

  The class had a half-day field trip to the indoor pool in Vingåker, but I decided to skip it. I hate sports, probably because I’m so small and always come in last when we compete. Melinda says I’ll grow, that I’ll run faster and swim faster than all the others as soon as I get a little bigger. But I measured myself yesterday, and I’m still at the same blue line on the doorway to the kitchen that we drew last summer.

  And when we change clothes for gym, I’m still the smallest. Even if I get up on my toes, I can barely reach Vincent’s shoulder.

  Not that I’m standing next to him, and definitely not in the locker room—if I did I’d end up with my head in the toilet.

  Anyway. Swimming: To be honest, it’s not the only reason I skipped the field trip. I barely slept last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about that pale face with its empty eyes outside Berit’s window.

  I should have found out who it was, but I was too scared.

  By the time the sun rose, I’d convinced myself that it was all my imagination. I mean, who would spy on Berit and Hanne in the dark?

  And why?

  Anyhow. I’ve thought a lot about Hanne.

  She’s super old, but also strong and smart.

  And she only does interesting things, like traveling to Greenland and hunting down a murderer. She never lies around on a couch drinking beer or watching TV or does things like check in at the unemployment office.

  I wish my life were that exciting, but nothing happens in Ormberg. There aren’t even any murderers. Except for whoever killed the woman by the cairn, of course, but surely he’s not from here.

  I heard Dad and Melinda talking about it. Dad said it must have been an immigrant, a Muslim. They have a different view on the “value” of human life and on women.

  “They’ll kill you if they don’t get what they want.”

  I wondered what he meant by “what they want,” even though I suspected he meant sex. I wrote it on my hand to remind myself to ask Melinda later, but I forgot.

  Men and women seem to want different things.

  Men always want something from women. Their bodies, for example. It’s as if men have dangerous urges inside them, which women have to be careful about.

  It makes me feel sad and confused.

  Don’t women want anything from men, or do only men get what they want?

  Does that mean when I grow up I’ll become the kind of person who’s willing to do anything to get what I want? The kind of person girls have to watch out for? Will I lose control of myself when I grow up? Is that what it means to become a man?

  If so, I don’t want to be a man.

  I think of Saga, how soft her lips were when they touched mine. Of the scent of her pink hair and the warmth of her body. That explosion in my chest when she kissed me, how that moment felt more important than anything else that had ever happened to me before. As if somehow it divided my life cleanly into a before and after, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Like when Mom died, but in a good way.

  Saga didn’t seem scared of me. Saga actually seemed like she wanted to kiss me.

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Maybe only Muslims are dangerous to girls. Maybe because of the book they read, the Quran, where it says you have to make war and be unfaithful. I’ve seen the pictures on TV of masked men and black flags with Arabic text. They blow things up, drive trucks into people, cut the throats of their prisoners, and are trying to create a worldwide caliphate. Sometimes I’m afraid they’ll come here to Ormberg, but I don’t really think they want a caliphate here.

  Fucking Ormberg is too boring, even for those crazy ISIS fighters.

  The Bible says you should love your neighbor like yourself. Our teacher says that means you’re not supposed to hurt or kill another person. But Saga says the Christians have killed more people in the name of God than the Muslims. She claims it’s religion itself that’s dangerous—that religion turns you into a slave.

  I don’t know what I believe in.

  Not God, because if he exists he let my mother die of cancer, and I don’t want anything to do with him after that.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve packed my Eiffel Tower into a cardboard box and put it on the back of Melinda’s moped. We have to turn in our assignments this afternoon. The diary lies in my backpack as I drive to Brogrens Mechanical.

  I’m not supposed to be driving—I’m not fifteen yet. But everyone in Ormberg does it anyway, because it’s the only way to get around. Dad doesn’t want us to use the moped when there’s snow, but he’s still asleep, and besides, I drive very carefully.

  The wheels skid as I turn toward a big red building of corrugated sheet metal. The sky is dark gray with streaks of purple, ominous in some way. Crows are circling above the building as I park. I remove the box with the Eiffel Tower inside, and enter the broken door with a yellow sign on it: “Access Prohibited for Unauthorized Persons.”

  The huge machine hall is quiet and empty.

  Concrete pillars of different colors hold up a high ceiling and a pale light filters in through the dirty skylights. Enormous machines made of gears and knobs still stand along the walls. There are rollers and lathes and other machines for sheet metal processing, which I don’t know the names of. Chains with hooks extend from the beams, and a huge crane the length of the hall is held in place by gigantic bolted steel construction. Large folded hoses hang down from the machines, like giant vacuum cleaners. There are shelves along the walls as well, with many empty compartments. The whole place smells vaguely of oil.

  Dad’s the one who told me about the machines.

  He worked here, until production was moved to Asia and the factory was shut down.

  I pass by the monstrous machine that once squeezed enormous sheets of metal into tiny cubes, and try to imagine what it was like working here. Dad says it wasn’t so bad, that it was full of light and clean back then, that the pay was good and his colleagues were nice. He says the politicians betrayed Ormberg, that his life would have been so different if they hadn’t moved production abroad.

  I wonder what exactly would have been different. Wouldn’t Mom still have got cancer? But maybe Dad wouldn’t drink so much beer if he didn’t have to check in with that bitch at the unemployment office.

  When Dad talks about Brogrens he always looks sad, and I do my best to make him feel better. Try to explain that there are positive things about not having a job there anymore, like all the time he has to work on the house. He never would have built that huge deck if he worked, for example.

  Then he
laughs, grabs me around the waist, lifts me, and says I’m damn right. To hell with those idiots at the unemployment office, and Brogrens, too.

  I like when he does that.

  At the far end of the machine hall sits the foreman’s desk. It’s empty, of course, but on the floor next to it are old phone books. It was very complicated in the old days: If you wanted to talk to someone you had to look up their number in these encyclopedia-size books.

  Sometimes I flip through them. All the names and numbers of all the people who lived here and all the companies are still in there. The paper is thin and puckered from moisture and it rips if you touch it too roughly.

  On the floor next to the desk there’s an old dirty mattress and next to it some candles. Beer cans and cigarette butts cover the floor—I’m not the only one who comes here.

  I carefully place the Eiffel Tower’s box onto the concrete floor, sit down on the damp mattress, and open my backpack. Take out the diary and a Coke that I brought from home, go to the page I dog-eared, and start reading.

  Something strange just happened: P went into the bathroom. A moment later I went in to get some hand cream.

  P was standing in the corner with his pants around his knees texting someone when I entered.

  I asked him why he was texting in the bathroom. P got angry and told me to stop spying on him.

  Why would you text in the bathroom?

  Why?

  ORMBERG, NOVEMBER 27

  We just had a meeting.

  Major progress!

  Andreas got a bite from our inquiries at the hospitals. Kullbergska Hospital in Katrineholm operated on the wrist of a 5-year-old girl in November 1993. The girl suffered a serious infection afterward and was treated with intravenous antibiotics for three days before being sent home. The medical examiner has compared the X-rays and the hospital records to the autopsy report, and they’re “99 percent” sure it’s her!

  The girl’s name was Nermina Malkoc. She was born in Sarajevo on New Year’s Eve 1988. Arrived as a refugee in the summer of 1993 with her mother, Azra Malkoc, born in 1967 in Sarajevo.

  Bingo! Malin said when Manfred told her. She sounded so happy, so sure. Victorious.

  I looked at the pictures of the dead girl’s skeleton. At the skull and its long wisps of hair. It felt so surreal, so shameful. Here we sat, eating buns, cheering about having identified her.

  Her death. Our happiness. The cinnamon buns.

  All of us snug in our filthy little office.

  Nermina and her mother Azra lived at the refugee camp in Ormberg—in the old TrikåKungen factory. It was used as housing for asylum seekers in the early nineties, when there were a lot of refugees coming from the former Yugoslavia.

  Apparently, Azra and Nermina were denied a residency permit in early December 1993. After that there’s no more information about them.

  But: Azra’s big sister, Esma Hadzic, also lived in the refugee camp here. And she still lives in Sweden.

  In Gnesta of all places.

  It’s only an hour drive from here. Apparently, she’s on vacation in Gran Canaria right now, but Manfred talked to her on the phone. She said she hadn’t heard from Azra or Nermina since they disappeared from the refugee camp. She also said Azra was pregnant at the time.

  Andreas & Malin will interview Esma and gather a DNA sample as soon as she gets home.

  We started working right away with the new information.

  Manfred contacted the Swedish Migration Agency. Malin and Andreas started researching the asylum seekers’ housing: Who was employed there in the early nineties? Did anything happen that could be linked to Azra & Nermina?

  P reviewed the list of convicted criminals in the area and contacted the prosecutor.

  We also discussed the possibility that Azra killed her own daughter. When a child is murdered, the perpetrator is often a parent or stepparent. The fact that Azra disappeared after Nermina’s death certainly points to that. Maybe she went underground.

  We’ll dig into Azra’s past, try to find out if she had any psychological problems or a history of violence.

  A sound interrupts my reading. A bang from the other side of the machine hall, like the slamming of a door.

  I quickly put the diary into my backpack and focus on listening.

  Steps echo in the silence.

  I look up from behind the desk and can just make out the silhouette of someone approaching in the dim light. A second or two later I realize it’s Saga. My stomach flips, and I start to feel warm inside.

  She’s wearing striped tights, heavy boots, and a puffy jacket, and she’s swinging her backpack back and forth in her right hand. Her pink hair is in a knot on top of her head.

  I raise my hand in greeting, and she starts jogging toward me.

  “Hi,” she says, sounding breathless. “I knew you’d be here.”

  “Hi,” I say. “You didn’t go swimming?”

  “No. I hate pools. Do you know how many chemicals they use? To kill the bacteria in the water?”

  “No idea.”

  “Exactly. It’s not something anyone wants to think about.”

  “Why do they have to kill the bacteria?”

  Saga drops her backpack near the mattress and sits down next to me. The shoulders of her coat are wet, and I realize I must have been sitting here a long time, and it’s probably started snowing again.

  “People piss in the water. It’s disgusting!”

  “And then they have to pour in chemicals?”

  “Exactly. Though I think the chemicals are more dangerous than a little piss.”

  Saga glances up at the ceiling, as if pondering something. Then she says:

  “But still. You don’t want to drink too much of that water. It’s probably more poisonous than, like, radioactive waste. And much more disgusting.”

  I can’t help laughing.

  Saga falls silent for a moment, pulls a feather from a small hole in her coat, then another. And another. They fall on the floor like the snowflakes outside.

  “Jake,” she says slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “Are we together now?”

  “Yes,” I answer.

  * * *

  —

  We sit for a while on the old seedy mattress. It feels good and not at all strange, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that we’re together now.

  As if it doesn’t change anything, even though everything is different.

  Then Saga grabs her backpack and takes out a bag. She takes something out of the bag that’s around half the size of a milk carton.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “My special assignment. It’s a pyramid made of used matches.”

  “Very nice.”

  Saga smiles indulgently.

  “Not particularly. But anyway. It’s the Pyramid of Giza.”

  She strokes her hand over the matches, gently. Her chipped black nail polish gleams under the dim light of the skylights. Somewhere, water drips onto the concrete floor.

  “They’re not glued? How do they stay together?”

  “I tied them together with used dental floss. I wanted everything to be recycled.”

  “Wow!”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever used so much floss as I have this week. My gums bleed if you barely touch them now. But if I’d used new floss it would be cheating. Right?”

  I nod.

  A muffled bang interrupts us, and I hear voices rising and falling in the distance. Laughter, then a shrill howl, and then steps approaching.

  We instinctively duck behind the old desktop, but it’s too late. They’ve seen us.

  Vincent, Muhammad, and Albin set their sights on us, like bloodhounds on the scent. Vincent goes first. He always goes first—he’
s the undisputed leader.

  Ormberg’s King of Assholes.

  When he gets to us he spits out his tobacco with surprising power—it’s like a brown projectile—and crosses his arms over his chest. He clears his throat, leans his head back, and stares down on us.

  “Well, what do you know, Jaaakey, did you get yourself a girl?”

  Muhammad and Albin laugh loudly, and Albin lights a cigarette. Takes a drag, holds it in his mouth for a few seconds, and then blows it toward the ceiling.

  They come closer, and Saga presses against me. I suddenly feel hyperaware of everything: the raw cold pressing in under my coat, the smell of mold, the sound of Saga’s breath, the faint scent of Albin’s cigarette as he takes a drag.

  “Are you together with the retard?” Vincent asks, and nods toward Saga. “If so, I’d like to thank you. None of us would fuck her if she begged us to. So you’re doing us all a favor.”

  Vincent smiles widely and then goes on without pausing:

  “Fuck. What a couple. The retard and the faggot. It’s like a fairy tale.”

  Loud laughter. Muhammad grins widely. Albin takes another drag and looks uncertain.

  “We’re leaving,” Saga says, gathering her things.

  Her puffy coat rustles as she stands up. There are red spots on her cheeks, and her hands are trembling.

  “Why?” Vincent says. “We just got here.”

  He reaches for Saga’s pyramid, which is standing on the desk, holds it in front of him and wrinkles his forehead as if trying to solve a difficult math problem.

  Like two plus two.

  “What the hell is this?”

  He twists and turns the little match building. Holds it up to the light and peers at it. Then he shakes it as if to see if there’s anything inside.

  “Give it to me!” Saga says, and reaches for the pyramid.

  “Only if you tell me what it is.”

  Then Vincent notices the box with the Eiffel Tower standing on the floor next to the mattress and drops the pyramid. It lands with a crash, and matches spread out over the damp concrete.