After She's Gone

by Camilla Grebe

What does that say about me?

  Not just as a cop, but as a human being. There must have been clues, cracks in the façade that could have told me something was wrong. Could people truly be such monsters without showing it? Surely your own family, the people you trust and build your life around, couldn’t dupe you so completely?

  What hurts most is that Magnus was involved. I’ve always felt so protective of him, despite his obvious problems, or maybe because of them. My whole life I’ve defended him from the kids in the village—verbally, but also physically when the need arose.

  And all that time, I thought he was the victim.

  Mom picks up her tissue and blows her nose.

  “Shall we leave?” I ask.

  Margareta is in intensive care, and the doctor made it clear that we needed to get there as soon as possible.

  He said it was just a matter of time.

  Mom sobs, and fidgets with the little ball of tissue. A thin strip of paper falls onto the tablecloth, like a wilted flower petal.

  “We have to talk first,” she says with her eyes on her tissue.

  “The doctor said we needed to hurry—”

  “I know,” Mom interrupts me. “But we have to talk. First.”

  “Yes?”

  I look at the clock and then back at Mom. I find it hard to understand what could be so urgent, what couldn’t be handled in the car on the way to the hospital.

  “About what?” I ask.

  Mom blinks several times, then wipes a tear off her cheek.

  “This is so hard,” she says.

  “She might make it.”

  Mom shakes her head and laughs. It’s a short, dry laugh that makes me uncomfortable. It feels inappropriate: There’s nothing to laugh about.

  “No. Sweetheart. It’s not Margareta I’m talking about. We have to talk about us.”

  “About us?”

  I start to feel a creeping uneasiness that I can’t quite put my finger on. As if I know what’s coming can’t be good.

  Not good at all.

  The red felt Christmas Star I made in middle school is hanging in the window. The glitter and sequins have come loose and hang by strands of dry glue.

  “You know that I love you more than anything in the world? Nobody means more to me than you.”

  “Yes,” I say, wondering where she’s going with this.

  The minutes are ticking by, and Margareta is dying in intensive care. Even if she is a monster, she and Magnus are the only relatives we have.

  I’m sure Mom would want to see her one last time.

  “We had such a hard time having a baby,” Mom says. “We tried for so many years, your dad and me. I don’t know how many miscarriages I had. It was so horrible; it ate us up from the inside, like a cancer. And you should know that I never knew anything about how it happened. How he kept her in that basement. How could a person do something like that? Magnus, who’s so nice. And Margareta—can you believe she protected him this whole time? Even if he is her son, I don’t understand it.”

  “Wait a second. I’m not following you.”

  Mom starts sobbing uncontrollably. Tears flow down her cheeks. She unfolds the snotty tissue and blows again. Then she takes a deep breath and continues:

  “We just wanted to help. We thought we were doing the right thing.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘doing the right thing’?”

  Mom sobs again; her words are choked by it.

  “That woman, the refugee that Magnus took care of—well, that’s how Margareta explained it to us anyway. She was pregnant. But she either couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of the child.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “And me and your dad, we longed for one. And we had a good home and could take care of a child.”

  Something cold and sticky spreads inside as I realize what it is she’s trying to say.

  “No,” I say. “You can’t…mean…”

  My voice fades away. The only sound is Mom’s sobbing and the old fridge droning in the corner. A sparrow lands on the windowsill and pecks at the tallow ball Mom’s put there.

  “We thought we were helping her,” she whispers. “And Margareta took care of all the details. She’d done a lot of home deliveries before, since she’s a registered midwife, and she was able to arrange the whole thing: the birth certificate, the paperwork that had to be sent to the Swedish Tax Agency. She took care of it all. And we loved you from the first moment, Malin. We loved you as our own child. You were ours. Our beloved baby.”

  “No! Stop!”

  I stand up so quickly my chair falls back on the floor. It lands with a crash.

  But Mom, who’s sitting shrunken up in front of me, doesn’t react. She doesn’t even move. All she does is pull tiny pieces of paper off her tissue.

  And suddenly I understand.

  The pieces fall inexorably into place, one by one. I remember how Margareta mumbled “Sorry” to me as she lay in the snow beneath Ättestupan with a bone sticking out of her old snow pants. Then I think of Magnus, who has never been able to look me in the eyes. Who always looked down at the ground when we met, as if he were afraid of me, or ashamed.

  And finally: the conversation from Manfred. How he called and asked about Azra’s medallion. “Did you touch it? The hair, that is. I got a call from the technicians…”

  The room is spinning.

  I don’t want to follow that thought to its conclusion, but I force myself to do it anyway: Azra had a lock of hair inside that medallion. Manfred probably asked if I’d touched it because the technicians found my DNA there—the technicians swabbed me when we found Azra’s body, and my DNA would have then been put into the Elimination Register, to ensure that we hadn’t contaminated the evidence.

  They must have made a match with me.

  But the reason the hair contained my DNA was not that I’d touched it, or that the test was “a snafu,” as Manfred put it, but because the hair was mine.

  The room spins faster, and my heart races. I open and close my mouth several times without getting out a word.

  Mom looks up at me.

  In her face is a despair so deep it terrifies me. A desperation as intense as the one I remember from the day Dad died on his way to the barn with a washing machine in his arms.

  Little Mom.

  So different from me. Short where I’m tall. Blond where my hair is dark. Calm where I’m impulsive and emotional.

  We are so different you might think they found me in the woods, with the trolls.

  And she’s heavyset—so it’s quite possible people around here thought she was pregnant even though she wasn’t.

  I have to grab on to the table in order not to fall over.

  “You stole a child?” I whisper.

  “No,” Mom screams. “No! We thought we were helping her, we thought she didn’t want you. I thought I was giving you a home, I thought you had nowhere to go, and I loved you so much.”

  She buries her head in her hands and sniffs. Then she stiffens, lifts her head, and meets my eyes.

  The expression on her face is imploring.

  “Malin,” she says quietly. “Nobody needs to know about this. It won’t help anyone. And Magnus won’t tell, Margareta saw to that. It’s up to you now.”

  I turn around and stumble into the hall, open the front door, and let in the bitingly cold wind. Squint at the sun where it hangs above the treetops, as if the world hadn’t just ended.

  As if I weren’t the daughter of a murdered Bosnian Muslim woman with no face. As if the skeleton I found in the cairn weren’t my sister. As if Esma with her broken hands and faded Polaroid pictures of a family that no longer exists were not my aunt.

  Maybe Sump-Ivar was right: Maybe he did see a naked infant at the cai
rn—and that infant was me.

  And the hair.

  The nausea rolls over me when I think about it: how that soft, brittle hair in the medallion felt against my fingertips. Azra must have cut a lock from her newborn daughter and put it in the medallion before Margareta stole her child.

  Before she stole the baby, who was me.

  I fall and fall, and it never ends.

  I fall through the earth and into hell and then I keep falling, because there’s no longer anyone left to catch me.

  Tears run down my cheeks to my lips. Filling my mouth with the salty taste of a false past.

  Malin

  One week later

  “Please,” I say. “I need to know. I can’t handle it otherwise. I…”

  The words die out, get stuck in my throat, even though I’m doing everything I can to push down the sadness and despair sitting in my chest.

  Outside, the snow is falling. Heavy, wet flakes float quickly to the ground and melt immediately on the black asphalt.

  I’ve been paralyzed since Margareta died. All I’ve been able to think about is what Mom told me, that I’m the daughter of Azra Malkoc.

  I’ve been forced to rethink everything I thought I knew about myself, about my family, and I don’t know where that process will end. But one thing I am sure of: I need to know what happened that winter when my biological mother and sister disappeared from the refugee camp.

  I have to understand.

  And then I have to decide: Should I tell Manfred what Mom said? Should I crush what little family I have left, to seek out justice for Azra and Nermina, or will I keep that terrible secret buried forever?

  I think of Mom—I haven’t even spoken to her since Margareta died, though she’s tried to contact me every day.

  I’ve wanted to call her, but I can’t.

  I’ve told myself she’s the woman who took care of me, raised me as her own, and loved me every moment of it.

  I’ve tried to convince myself that Margareta persuaded her and Dad to take care of me. That she had no idea Magnus was holding my biological mother prisoner in his basement.

  That she just wanted to help.

  I’ve really tried.

  But it’s impossible.

  All I feel is a despair and a hate so intense and bottomless, it terrifies me. Every time I think of Mom, I remember that faceless, bloody body in the snow at the cairn…the woman who was robbed of both her children and her life.

  I wish there were someone I could talk to about this, but there isn’t. Everyone I’m close to is either gone or touched by the evil that’s been sprouting in Ormberg.

  Max, I don’t want back. And what I want from Andreas I don’t even have the energy to think about yet.

  “Please!” I repeat.

  Manfred rubs his temples and shakes his head slowly.

  “I can’t. I can’t share the details with anyone outside of the investigation, and you’ve been reassigned. I’m sorry, I can’t even imagine how this must feel for you, but I can’t do it.”

  Manfred falls silent. Clears his throat and then continues in a softer tone of voice:

  “Listen. Malin. I know I’m not always the easiest person to work with. Tough to please, reluctant to praise. Et cetera, et cetera. If it’s any comfort, I want you to know you’re a damned fine cop. I would gladly work with you again.”

  I lean forward.

  “I have to know,” I say.

  Manfred sighs and rolls his eyes.

  On the floor next to the wall stands a black overnight bag and a briefcase. I guess he’s on his way home to Stockholm: to his wife and his tiny daughter, who no longer has ear infections all the time. To a life that will go on as usual, which has nothing to do with the evil in Ormberg.

  “Please!”

  My voice is a whisper that almost drowns in the air coming through the vents of the police station.

  Manfred slaps his hands on his knees.

  “Damn it!”

  And then:

  “Do you know how much shit I’ll get if this comes out?”

  I don’t respond.

  He opens his laptop, turns it to face me, and meets my eyes. Then he shakes his head and pushes the computer toward me.

  “I have to go take care of a few things. It will take me a half hour. Do you understand? A half hour.”

  I nod silently.

  He stands up, smooths down his perfectly tailored suit, and runs a hand through his reddish brown hair. Then he leaves the room without looking at me.

  With trembling hands, I pull the laptop closer. On the screen, I see Magnus, in a chair. Opposite him, Svante sits with his arms crossed and his head leaning so that his beard rests against his chest. A microphone hangs from a cord above a table.

  The recording must have been made at the interrogation room here at the police station.

  I press Play, and Svante and Magnus come to life.

  “Where did you first meet Azra and Nermina Malkoc?” Svante asks.

  Magnus rocks back and forth a little in his chair.

  “At the refugee camp. With Mom.”

  “And what were you two doing there?” Svante asks.

  Magnus’s eyes roll up toward the ceiling.

  “Mom wanted to talk to somebody who was in charge of the snowplowing. She wanted the boss to sign a list. And then we met Assa and started to talk.”

  “You mean Azra?”

  “I called her Assa.”

  “But she had a name. And that name was Azra, not Assa.”

  Magnus falls silent, stares down at the table. Shrugs his shoulders.

  “What happened then?” Svante asks.

  Magnus stretches a bit.

  “We…we met Assa more times. She told me about herself and Nermina. They probably wouldn’t get to stay in Sweden, she said. I said they could live in my basement.”

  “And what did your mother say to that?”

  Magnus pushes his lower lip out defiantly. Everything about him—his body language, gestures, way of speaking—remind me of a giant child.

  “Mom got super mad.”

  “Why?”

  “Cuz. She said we had enough of our own problems. That we couldn’t have immigrants living in the basement. You can’t have immigrants in the basement just because you have a basement. She said.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  Magnus sucks in his lower lip, seems to be chewing on it.

  “Said I’d move. To Katrineholm. Like Lill-Leffe.”

  Svante makes a few notes, then waits for Magnus to meet his eyes.

  “What did your mother say when you said you were going to move?”

  Magnus looks to the side, toward the wall. The tendons in his neck are stretched taut, and his cheeks are spotted red.

  “That I couldn’t. She always said I couldn’t when I wanted to move. She got super super mad.”

  Svante scribbles something in his notebook before meeting Magnus’s eyes again.

  “And what did you say then?”

  Magnus squirms a little.

  “That I was gonna move this time. For real.”

  The room is silent for a moment.

  “And?” Svante says. “What happened then?”

  Magnus slowly rocks back and forth in his chair.

  “She changed her mind. Said they could stay there for a little while. Until they went to Stockholm. So. They moved in. But even though we did everything we could to make them comfortable, they just wanted to leave all the time. Even though Mom bought them ice cream and chips and…They weren’t at all grateful. They just wanted to leave, even though they’d just moved in. One night, Nermina disappeared. I’d forgotten to lock the door, and she just disappeared.”

  “She escaped?”

&nbs
p; “Escaped?”

  Magnus looks confused, as if he hadn’t ever considered that he was holding them captive. In the end, he nods, acknowledging Svante’s description.

  “And what did you do then?” Svante asks.

  Magnus looks confused. His eyes flit; he licks his lips.

  “I followed her. Into the woods.”

  Then silence.

  “Did you find her?” Svante asks quietly.

  Magnus nods.

  “At the cairn. She was standing in the clearing. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. Hurt her.”

  “What happened?”

  Magnus mumbles something inaudible, and even though I know he’s a monster, I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. In many ways, he’s a child. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Margareta is the one morally responsible for what happened.

  I’ve thought a lot about why she did it. Why she allowed Magnus to keep Azra and Nermina locked up in the basement.

  I know Margareta had a hard life. Her first child died before he turned one, and Lill-Leffe left her when she was pregnant with Magnus. I think that’s why she protected him, because she had no one else, because she was so deeply afraid he’d move and leave her all alone.

  I would guess that Magnus will be evaluated to determine if he’s suffering from a serious mental disorder. And if he is, he’ll be sentenced to legal psychiatric care.

  “What happened?” Svante asks again.

  “I was just trying to catch her, but she struggled so much that she fell back and hit her head on one of the rocks. And I sort of…fell on top of her. And when I got up, she wasn’t breathing anymore.”

  Magnus stares down at his round stomach.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he continues. “I’m just so big and clumsy. I didn’t want to hurt her. It was different with Assa. I couldn’t catch up with her. I had to shoot her. But I just wanted to catch Nermina. I couldn’t let her tell…”

  “What?” Svante asks.

  Magnus looks down at the table and shrugs a little.

  “Then everyone would think we’d kidnapped them.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Well. What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you kidnap them?”

  “No. We were just…trying to help them.”