After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

  It makes a tiny click.

  Andreas opens his eyes and looks at me without saying a word. Then he takes my wrist and pulls me closer. Hard.

  I lie on his arm and rub the hairline under his navel.

  I don’t know how long we stay like that—maybe a few minutes—but then the alarm rings.

  * * *

  —

  We arrive in Örebro around seven in the morning. The snow’s just starting to fall over the still dark city as we park the car outside the police station.

  Manfred is already here. He looks hollow-eyed, and I suspect he hasn’t slept. His face is pale and his hair is plastered to his head, as if he just took off his hat.

  “Hello,” I say.

  He nods without answering.

  Only then do I think of the pictures in Peter’s phone. I feel a twinge of guilt that I was able to forget about the investigation for so long, and that I spent the night in Andreas’s bed instead of keeping Manfred company.

  The others arrive ten minutes later, and we head down to the interrogation room.

  Svante and Suzette-who’s-damn-tough will conduct the interrogation. Suzette’s nails are vomit green today and have small sparkling stones on their tips.

  Manfred, Andreas, and I will sit in an adjacent room and watch through a one-way window. To everyone’s surprise, Stefan, after being informed of our suspicions, has declared he won’t need a lawyer present at his interrogation because he’s “one hundred percent innocent.”

  The atmosphere is tense but expectant—today’s the day it’s going to happen: Today we’ll find Azra and Nermina’s murderer.

  Stefan Birgersson looks confused as he enters the room. He glances around, his eyes fastening on the one-way window, and even though I know he can’t see us, it makes me uneasy.

  He’s wearing black track pants with white stripes and a jean shirt that’s buttoned wrong; one side hangs down over his groin. He holds his hands in front of his eyes when Svante turns on the light.

  Svante and Suzette enter soon after. Suzette walks hunched over, and I wonder if maybe she has a problem with her back, or maybe her stomach.

  They sit down. Svante starts recording and rattles off the formalities.

  Stefan sits with his head bent forward and his hands clasped on his lap. His eyes are focused on the tabletop.

  “And that’s why we want to talk to you today,” Svante says. “To get to the bottom of what happened at the refugee camp in 1993 and 1994.”

  “Oh,” Stefan says, and rubs his eyes. “So you put me in prison so you can talk to me about a contracting job?”

  Svante ignores Stefan’s comment, but Suzette smiles softly and says:

  “Jail, not prison.”

  “Whatever. I told you I forgot I worked for them. I already explained that. Damn. This is fucking crazy. Don’t you understand what you’re doing to me and my family? Don’t you get…”

  Stefan’s voice dies away mid-sentence.

  Svante leans back, clasps his hands on his chest, and examines Stefan. Then he says, slowly:

  “Why did you stop working there?”

  Stefan stiffens and looks up. Then shrugs his shoulders.

  “Didn’t need me anymore.”

  Suzette leans forward and cocks her head a little.

  “Listen, Stefan. It’ll be much easier if you work with us. We don’t want to hurt you or your family, we just want to find out what happened that winter.”

  “Nothing. Happened. I worked there for a while, and then I stopped.”

  “What did you think about the refugees?” Svante asks.

  “What do you mean, think? I didn’t think anything much.”

  “Did you think it was a good thing that the refugees were in Ormberg?” Svante asks, leaning forward.

  Stefan shakes his head.

  “I see you shaking your head,” Suzette says. “But we’re going to need you to put your answer into words.”

  She nods to the microphone hanging from a cord in the ceiling.

  “Nah. Not really,” Stefan says. “Obviously I didn’t like it. But I had nothing against any of them. Not personally, that is. It was more, well, you know. I don’t know. I thought they should probably live somewhere else.”

  Svante scratches his big beard.

  “Weren’t you actually a little fond of two of them—Azra and Nermina Malkoc, for example?”

  Stefan shakes his head vehemently.

  “Answer the question with words,” Suzette reminds him.

  “No, damn it. I didn’t know anyone at that place.”

  “Why were you spying on the refugees?” Svante asks.

  His tone is delicate, and the question comes casually, as if in passing, like it’s not particularly important, just something Svante’s a bit curious about, in general.

  “I didn’t.”

  Stefan buries his face in his hands and sniffles again.

  “Fuck,” he mumbles. “You’re ruining my life. Do you understand that?”

  Suzette leans forward again and puts a steady hand on Stefan’s arm, as if trying to see how much of the good-cop act she can get away with.

  But Stefan doesn’t react.

  “Stefan,” she says soothingly, as if she were speaking to a puppy. “We talked to the people who worked there that winter. They told us you were found in the garden one evening, in the autumn of 1993. You have a rifle at home even though you don’t have a gun license. You and your car were seen near the murder site. And we found a bloody garment in your basement yesterday, a torn shirt. You have to understand that all of this makes you a suspect.”

  Stefan buries his head in his hands and starts to shake.

  Manfred bounds out of his chair. Nods at the window and whispers:

  “We got him!”

  Stefan is sobbing uncontrollably. His whole body shakes, and he lets out a low-pitched howl like an injured animal.

  Suzette pushes a box of Kleenex toward him, but Stefan doesn’t seem to notice it.

  “Stefan,” Suzette says. “Help us understand. Tell us what happened!”

  Stefan seems to pull himself together a little. He sits up a bit straighter, nods, and blows his nose into a tissue.

  “It was me,” he says, and starts sobbing again.

  Suzette freezes, and Svante straightens up. They exchange a quick glance.

  The moment is here—what everyone has been waiting for.

  I hold my breath and look at Manfred, who is sitting completely still next to me.

  “It was meee,” Stefan howls.

  Suzette leans forward and puts her hand on his arm. The green nails look almost luminous.

  Stefan sniffs. Sobs again and then meets Suzette’s gaze. She nods to him to continue.

  “I burned those bushes outside the refugee housing,” Stefan continues, and sobs again. “That’s why I was there in the garden in the autumn of 1993. And the blood on the shirt you found. It…it was from a pig’s head that Olle and I strung up in a tree outside the residency. But we weren’t trying to hurt anyone, we just wanted to, you know. Make an impression.”

  He falls silent, but continues after a few seconds:

  “And we were pretty drunk, too. I don’t really remember. But I don’t want my kids to know. I don’t want them to think I’m a bad person. I really don’t. Please, please don’t tell Jake and Melinda.”

  Stefan’s voice cracks.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” he finishes, then sobs again.

  Suzette and Svante look at each other. I see the shock and confusion on their faces.

  “What the hell,” Manfred mumbles, and sinks back in his chair.

  Suzette is the first to regain her composure. She throws an unsure look in our direction and clears her throat.

 
“Stefan, you lied to us before. How do we know that this isn’t a lie, too?”

  “Ask Olle,” Stefan sobs. “He was with me; he burned those bushes, too.”

  “Olle Eriksson, your friend in Högsjö?”

  “Yes. And the rifle is his. I borrowed it. We were gonna start patrolling Ormberg in the evenings. Protect the young people. The women, that is. You never know what the hell those Arabs will do.”

  Manfred holds his hands in front of his face, as if trying to close the whole scene out. Mumbles:

  “Damn, damn, damn…”

  The door opens, and Malik sticks his head inside.

  Manfred sits up.

  “Track that fucking Olle down as fast as you can,” Manfred hisses.

  “Already on it,” Malik says. “But there’s something else. We checked which properties near the cairn have a basement, and according to the information we got, it’s the following: Berit Sund’s, Rut and Gunnar Sten’s, and Margareta Brundin’s.”

  “Berit,” I whisper.

  “What?” Manfred asks.

  “Berit worked at the refugee camp in the early nineties. And she had some unexplained lacerations on her arm when we visited her. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  “Hmmm,” Manfred says. “Berit doesn’t fit Hanne’s description of the perpetrator.”

  “What about the others?” Malik asks.

  “Rut Sten was the director of the refugee camp in the early nineties,” I say. “So there’s that connection. And her husband was supposedly violent when he was young. In addition, they have no alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “Hmmm,” Manfred says again.

  “And Margareta Brundin?” Malik says.

  “She doesn’t have a basement,” I say. “I’ve been there a hundred times, and she and Magnus don’t have a basement. Plus they have an alibi for the evening of Azra’s murder. They were in Katrineholm, right?”

  “Margareta has an alibi,” Manfred corrects me. “She was able to show some receipts from a couple of stores and a restaurant. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Magnus was with her.”

  “Either way,” I say. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Magnus Brundin is completely harmless.”

  Jake

  I peer out through the narrow gap. It’s no more than a centimeter wide, but I see the kitchen clearly.

  Ballsack-Magnus is standing next to the kitchen table with his legs wide.

  He’s holding a cell phone in one hand and scratching his crotch with the other. His dark, thin hair is messy. His sweatpants hang off his hips beneath a big, pale belly. His eyes are on the window.

  A bluish light trickles in through the windows.

  My head hurts so much I feel like it might explode. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on breathing silently, releasing air as slowly as I can and only through my mouth, but I still feel like panting. And my heart is pounding so hard it surely must be audible in the kitchen.

  Ballsack-Magnus. The fool. The village idiot.

  I think of those small lines on the wall down there, so painstakingly carved into the damp concrete. Of the long gray hair in the brush and of P lying in the freezer next to a tub of ice cream.

  Everyone knows Ballsack-Magnus is a freak. When I was younger, my friends and I used to hide around the driveway here and throw stones at him when he arrived.

  Dad used to call Ballsack-Magnus an “imbecile,” but that made Mom mad. She said he couldn’t help it that he was “slow,” and that she’d give me and Melinda a thrashing if she ever found out we were mistreating him.

  Did he hold a woman prisoner in his basement?

  Did he murder people?

  It’s hard to understand anyone doing something like that, least of all Magnus, who’s never had a job, can’t drive a car, and according to Melinda can’t even read and write.

  If he did it, someone must have helped him; he’s so weak and dumb.

  And yet: The basement speaks for itself. Plus there’s something else that gnaws at me: the cairn.

  I think I know why both Nermina and that woman with long gray hair were found there.

  If you run straight into the woods from Margareta and Magnus’s house, you end up with the creek on your left and Orm Mountain on your right. The path gets narrower and narrower, until you reach the clearing and the cairn. It’s almost like a net you’d use to catch a fish.

  It’s possible to get to the cairn from a lot of different places, but it’s only possible to get away from Margareta and Magnus’s house through the cairn.

  If you don’t want to take the highway, that is. Which you wouldn’t if you were running from a crazy murderer.

  And, of course, Magnus knew that.

  He must have waited for Nermina and that woman at the cairn, like a hunter waiting for his prey. Shooting that woman was probably the only way to stop her. Magnus is too slow and clumsy to run down an adult.

  My thoughts grind on, and bit by bit the puzzle pieces fall into place.

  Magnus kept that woman captive in the basement. When Hanne and Peter came, they opened the door and let her out. Magnus discovered them and killed Peter. Maybe he planned to keep him in the freezer until spring, when the ground thawed and he could bury the body.

  But the woman with the long hair managed to escape. That’s why she didn’t have any shoes on. She probably just rushed outside. Into the woods and straight for the cairn, where Magnus shot her.

  And Hanne?

  She must have escaped, but then got lost.

  I look at Magnus again.

  He’s sauntering back and forth across the kitchen with the phone in his hand. His steps are careful, as if he’s walking on thin, slippery ice. He hems and haws into the cell phone, listens for a while, and then says in a drawling voice:

  “Did you read that in Malin’s paperwork?”

  Magnus sighs deeply.

  “But Berit’s there,” he says, pulling out one of the chairs and sitting down with his back to me.

  And a few seconds later:

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  He falls silent again, drums his free hand a little on the seat of his chair.

  “I still don’t want to.”

  Then he sighs again.

  “But, Mom, she’s gonna forget everything again. She’s really old.”

  He falls silent for a long time.

  I think for a moment.

  Magnus is talking to Margareta, his mother. And they’re talking about Hanne. My stomach knots up, and I clench my hands so hard my nails pierce my palms.

  “Do I have to?”

  Magnus’s voice is pleading. He sounds like a child who’s been told to clean his room, but doesn’t feel like it. He sounds like Saga when her mom forces her to do her math homework, or like Melinda when Dad says she has to put on a real sweater, one that won’t show “half her fucking belly to the Arabs.”

  The refrigerator starts to hum with a sigh.

  Suddenly, I become very aware of the stifling stench of mold coming from the basement. I imagine how it must be oozing out through the door gap and spreading through the kitchen.

  Can Magnus smell it? Can he sniff out the fact that the door is open, like a bloodhound?

  “Can’t we do it another day?” Magnus asks. “I’m really, really tired.”

  And a few seconds later:

  “But it’s gonna snow more later this week. Do we have to do it today?”

  Magnus is quiet for a long time. Scratches his neck with his huge hand.

  “Okay,” he says at last, but still he sounds doubtful. “But I have to get dressed and eat, so not right away, but…”

  A short pause.

  “Yes. That works. At the cairn. Should I bring the gun?”

  Magnus sinks deeper into his chair
and stares up at the ceiling. Turns his head a bit so that I see him in profile, and yawns.

  “A stone? But. Why?”

  My heart leaps in my chest when I realize what they’re talking about. It never occurred to me that Hanne could be in danger, even though she works for the police, and even after I saw that pale, hollow-eyed face in the window outside Berit’s house.

  That must have been Margareta.

  She must have stood out there in the dark spying on Hanne and Berit. It’s clear Margareta is afraid Hanne will remember what happened to P.

  Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

  This is all my fault.

  If I could have resisted The Sickness, none of this would have happened.

  “Okay, okay,” Magnus says, sounding tired. “Love you.”

  Then he stands up. Groans a little. Puts his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants and stretches so that his T-shirt rises to reveal his big, hairy belly. He walks over to the fridge, opens it, and seems to root around for something inside. Moves things and rustles some papers.

  My legs have fallen asleep, feel like logs.

  I take a few steps in place trying to wake them up, but stumble a little. As I fumble for the wall, trying to regain my balance, I accidentally nudge the door. Not hard, but there’s a slight knock and the door glides up a few centimeters.

  I close my eyes and say a silent prayer, even though I don’t like God, or even believe in Him.

  Dear God, help me! Don’t let Magnus find me!

  When I open my eyes he’s looking straight at me. Blinking and licking his thick red lips.

  My body is as stiff as a statue. Just like people in horror movies when they meet zombies, aliens, or slimy ghosts. The only difference is that this monster is real. I’m not sitting on Saga’s sofa eating chips. Not holding her sweaty hand in mine. There’s no button to pause, and no adult to call for help.

  I’m in an actual murderer’s house, and he’s looking straight at me.

  But Ballsack-Magnus yawns again. Turns back to the fridge, takes out a yogurt, and drinks straight from the container.

  I take a deep breath. And then another.

  He hasn’t seen me.

  Even though I’m standing right in front of him, he hasn’t seen me.