We Know You Remember (5)

“I’ve got a girlfriend down there, too,” he explained as they turned off through Nyland. Eira saw the clocks on the tower above the former courthouse which had stopped at different times, each one facing a different direction. At least it was right four times a day.

“We bought a flat, but I want to work in the inner city,” August continued. “So I can cycle to work and that kind of thing. And avoid having someone slam a rock into my head when I get out of the car. I thought I might as well come out here to work for a while, until a position opens up.”

“And take it easy, you mean?”

“Yeah, why not?”

He hadn’t noticed the sarcasm in her voice. Eira had worked in Stockholm for four years after graduation, and had a rose-tinted memory of constantly being surrounded by colleagues. If you called for backup, they were there within minutes.

She took the Hammar Bridge over the river, turning downstream towards Kungsg?rden. This side of the river was home to the ?dalen river valley’s farmland. Eira unconsciously found herself searching for the hill with the stick rising from the top of it.

Her father had once pointed it out, the site of the most northerly royal estate in the fourteenth century, back when the sea levels were six meters higher and the hills all around them were small islands. She occasionally managed to catch a glimpse of the stick before it merged with the rest of the landscape. This was how far Swedish royal power had stretched back then, no farther.

But to the north, wilderness and freedom reigned.

The story was on the tip of Eira’s tongue, but she managed to stop herself in time. It was bad enough that she was always the older officer at the age of just thirty-two; she didn’t need to become the person who told stories about every stick and rock they passed, too.

The letter boxes appeared on the side of the road, and Eira turned abruptly, braking in the gravel.

There was something about this place, an immediate feeling of familiarity. A forest road like hundreds of others, with weeds poking up in the middle. Rough tire tracks in the compressed clay, studded with gravel laid years earlier, flattened pine cones, and last year’s leaves. An unremarkable house hidden from the road, the remains of an old barn at the edge of the trees.

Eira had a strong sense of having cycled here with one of her friends, probably Stina. She hadn’t thought about her in years, but suddenly it felt like she was right by her side. The tense silence as they pedaled up to the tangled forest, the breathlessness, something forbidden.

“I don’t think I caught the name,” she said. “What’s he called?”

“Patrik Nydalen.” August peered down at his phone, searching the report. “That’s who called it in. The dead man is Sven Hagstr?m.”

Right there, behind those first few trees: that was where they had hidden their bikes. Tall, powerful spruces, an area of forest that had never been cleared. A suspense she almost couldn’t bear, heart in her throat.

“And the son?” she asked, breathless. “The one who was trying to leave?”

“Yeah, what was his name? It’s here somewhere . . . actually, no it’s not.”

Eira hit the wheel. Once, twice.

“Why didn’t anyone notice? Doesn’t anyone bloody remember anything?”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me. What am I supposed to have noticed?”

“Not you. I know you don’t know anything.” Eira let the car roll forward again, unbearably slowly, the forest creeping closer, a deep and ancient darkness. The kid beside her had probably been crawling around in nappies when it happened. Every blue-light case in Norrland went through the regional control center in Ume? these days, and had done so for the past few years. She couldn’t expect them to remember a twenty-year-old case from ?ngermanland at the drop of a hat.

Particularly not since his name had never been made public.

“It might not be anything,” she said.

“What? What might?”

Eira glanced among the trees. Rocks covered in moss, bilberry bushes, they had crept through here, she and Stina, bent double, along the game trails leading up to the house. Ducking beneath branches to get a glimpse of it. To see where someone like that could live.

The years rattled through her head, quick calculations. Twenty-three years had passed. Olof Hagstr?m was now thirty-seven, and waiting somewhere at the top of this hill—assuming the report was correct.

Eira swerved to avoid a pothole, hit a rock instead.

“Olof Hagstr?m committed a serious crime a long time ago,” she said. “He confessed to rape and murder.”

“Oh wow,” said August Engelhardt. “So has he served his sentence now? I agree, they should’ve picked up on that at control.”

“It’s not on his record, he was never convicted. It didn’t even go to trial. His name was never published anywhere; the press didn’t do that kind of thing back then.”

“And when was this, the Stone Age?”

“He was a minor,” Eira explained. “He was only fourteen.”

The case had been closed and the record sealed, but everyone knew whose boy it was—right across ?dalen, from the High Coast to a good way up to Sollefte?, in all likelihood. “The fourteen-year-old,” as the press had called him. It had been investigated and solved; it was over. The kids were allowed to play outside on their own again. He had been sent away, which meant they were free to duck beneath branches and spy on the house where he had once lived. See his sister sunbathing in the garden, the bike with the crossbar that must have been his, a killer’s bedroom window. Everything that could have gone on inside.