see them. Do you understand?’
Ylva stared at her.
‘You’ll be given easy household chores such as laundry and ironing, but first and foremost you will always be available. My husband will use you whenever he feels like it, so that you never forget the reason why you are here. You will perform your tasks willingly and with conviction. There are various hygiene products in the bathroom and we expect you to use them. Do you understand?’
Ylva looked at the woman. The man was standing more or less behind her.
‘You’re crazy, both of you,’ she said. ‘Totally fucking insane. That was twenty years ago. Do you think Annika would be proud of you now? Do you think she’d feel she’s been avenged?’
The woman slapped her hard across the face.
‘I don’t want to hear Annika’s name pass your filthy lips.’
Ylva made an attempt to throw herself over the woman and wrestle her to the ground. The man came between them and twisted Ylva’s arm up behind her back, forcing her to her knees. The woman hunkered down close to Ylva.
‘If you try to escape again, my husband will dislocate your feet. So, in short, your life from now will be like
Someone called Karlsson from the police phoned just after eight on Monday morning. Mike replied that they still hadn’t heard anything from Ylva and that he hadn’t got any clues from anywhere else of where she might be.
Mike said with some irritation that he’d already spoken to the police about ten times on the Sunday. And on his own initiative had contacted the papers, who’d put in a notice under local news. Even though they hadn’t mentioned Ylva by name or published a photograph.
‘It’s not necessarily as bad as you think,’ Karlsson said. ‘A couple of hundred people are reported missing every day in this country. Six to seven thousand a year. And only around a dozen or so of those disappear for ever. Generally due to drowning or something like that. My colleague, Gerda, and I were thinking about dropping by. Will you be at home for the next couple of hours?’
Gerda was, like Karlsson, a man. His surname was Gerdin, Karlsson explained, but as there weren’t many women in the section, his colleagues had decided to rechristen him in the name of gender equality.
Mike’s initial impression was that Gerda was the nicer of the two, only because Karlsson was the one who asked the questions. Both appeared to be incompetent, or, rather, resigned. As if they’d already decided that there was nothing they could do other than try to calm down hysterical family members and then wait and see.
‘And you have a daughter together?’ Karlsson asked.
‘Sanna. My mother just took her to school.’
‘Up there, in the yellow brick building?’
Karlsson pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
‘Larod school, yes. Thought it was best if we kept things as normal as possible. I don’t know what else to do.’
He looked at the policemen, hoping they’d agree. Gerda nodded and shifted his weight.
‘How old is your daughter?’ he asked.
‘Sanna’s seven. Turns eight in a fortnight. She’s in Class Two.’
‘Tell us in your own words what happened,’ Karlsson said.
Mike sent him an irritated look. In his own words? Whose words would he use otherwise?
‘She didn’t come home,’ he said. ‘I collected Sanna from after-school club at about half past four. We went to the shops to buy food and then came home. Ylva had said that she might go out for a drink after work.’
‘With her colleagues?’
‘Yes, they were putting a magazine to bed and—’
‘Putting to bed?’
‘She works for an agency that produces company magazines. Putting a magazine to bed means they have to make the final changes before sending it off to print. It can take a while.’
‘And did it?’
‘No, not really. They were done just after six.’
‘And you know that because …?’
‘As I’ve already told several of your colleagues by now, the first person I called was Nour, my wife’s colleague and friend. She said that Ylva said goodbye to them on the street at quarter past six. Nour and the others went to a restaurant, Ylva said she was going home.’
Karlsson nodded thoughtfully.
‘So, she said to you that she was going out for a drink with her colleagues, and she said to her colleagues that she was going home to you?’
‘She said that she might go out for a drink with them. It wasn’t decided.’
Karlsson cocked his head and he was bloody smiling too. Mike was close to thumping him.
‘Look, I don’t give a damn what you think. You want it to be something that it’s not. Okay?’
Karlsson shrugged. ‘I just thought it was a bit odd, to give out a double message like that. She says one thing to you, and something else to her colleagues. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?’
‘My wife has disappeared. She wasn’t depressed, or suicidal, and to my knowledge has never been threatened in any way. And if she did happen to have a passionate lover stowed away somewhere, she’d at least phone her fucking daughter.’
‘What makes you think she has a passionate lover?’
Mike glared at the policemen, from one to the other. Karlsson smiled at him.
‘This is crazy,’ Mike said. ‘You’re both crazy. Do you think it’s funny? My wife has disappeared – don’t you understand how serious that is?’
‘We just wondered whether there was perhaps an explanation.’
25
The man and the woman took the mattress, the covers, the pillow and then turned off the electricity supply.
Ylva lay curled up on the floor with a towel over her body. She didn’t know how long she lay there. She lay under the towel and cried, only getting up to drink and pee. When the power was finally switched on again, it was as if life had returned. The light on the ceiling came on and the TV screen flickered. It was daytime outside, afternoon, in fact, judging by the light and the lack of activity. The car wasn’t in the driveway. Ylva wondered if Mike was managing to do the housework, what he was doing to find her. If he had followed her route home, put up posters with photographs of her. Had anyone seen her get in the car? She didn’t think so.
What would she have done if she were Mike? Apart from all the obvious things like calling friends and the police and the hospital. She would put a notice in the paper, talk to any bus drivers who were working at that time. She would knock on every door between the bus stop and their house, ask if anyone had seen her passing, paper the town with photographs and missing person posters.
Then it struck her.
Mike might even knock on the door of the house where she was being held. He would introduce himself to the new couple and briefly explain what had happened. Then he’d show them a picture. The man and the woman would play interested, look closely at the picture, and then shake their heads in sympathy. The woman would put her hand to her heart and look distraught, the man would show concern and try to be helpful, suggest things, because men always do, seriously believing that they can solve all problems.
