his observations from a rental car, but it seemed a qualified guess.
The man had been in Zimbabwe for six days now and wanted to accomplish what he had set out to do as soon as possible. He had learned the following: Johan Lind worked as a foreman on a construction site in central Harare. He lived with his family in Avondale, a nice suburb to the northwest of the city. Every working day was the same.
The man was waiting for the right moment. Which came the next day.
Johan Lind had decided that, as it was Friday, he would take his motorbike to work. It was a mean machine with high suspension and erratic acceleration. The man saw him pull out from his house and speed up on the bend as if he was still a death-defying twenty-something-year-old.
More than just a bit pathetic, the man thought, as he followed him at a distance to his workplace in town.
When Johan Lind, true to habit, stopped at the bar on the way home from work, the man decided it was time.
He waited further down the road. When Johan Lind drove past a few hours later at a more leisurely pace than normal, his speed reduced slightly to compensate for his alcohol consumption, the man turned the key in the ignition of his rental car and pulled out after him.
It was dark and there weren’t many cars around.
The man held back until they came to a stretch of road without houses. Then he overtook and swung the car across the road in front of the motorbike. Johan Lind lost control and toppled over. The bike spun away from him and he lay there on the asphalt. The man parked up by the side of the road and hurried back to him.
‘You idiot – you fucking drove me off the road!’ Johan screamed.
The man went up to him, looked hastily around. Johan Lind tried to blink away the pain.
‘Are you all right?’ the man asked.
Johan Lind was startled when he heard his mother tongue. He looked up in surprise at the reckless driver who had so nearly cost him his life. He seemed familiar.
‘Let me help you,’ the man said. ‘I’m a doctor.’
He placed his arm under Johan’s neck and took a firm grip.
‘Do you remember Annika?’ he said, and then broke his fellow countryman’s neck.
‘In other words, you’ve got nothing?’
The public prosecutor glanced up from the papers he had demonstratively continued to read while Karlsson and Gerda rattled through the information they had gathered in connection with Ylva Zetterberg’s disappearance three months earlier.
They had concentrated on the missing woman’s affair, her conflicting messages about where she was going that Friday evening and, finally, her alleged liking for a bit of rough in the sack.
Karlsson and Gerda looked at one another, each hoping that the other would come up with a neat paraphrase that would lend authority to the thin and, in practice, useless report.
The public prosecutor continued to sort his papers, a clear indication of how little he valued their work.
‘No body, no witnesses, no inexplicable bank withdrawals, no mysterious emails or phone calls – in short, nothing.’
He looked at them for a response. Neither Karlsson nor Gerda said anything.
‘Then the case is closed,’ the public prosecutor said, and returned to his papers without paying any more attention to the two policemen.
‘That is all,’ he added in a quiet voice.
33
There was such a thing as the professional mourner, someone who went to funerals where they had no reason to be, who cocked their head and nodded sympathetically with a pained expression. They turned out in numbers. But most people withdrew. The vast majority were nonplussed by other people’s grief, they didn’t know what to do or say. They were afraid of being intrusive, of being a reminder and adding to the pain. They were also frightened that some of the heaviness and sadness might spill into their own lives.
Those who had experienced grief and loss and had been confronted with the uncertainty of those around them often said afterwards that it didn’t matter so much how those around them responded, what was important was that they did. In whatever form that took.
In Mike’s case, there was nothing to grieve, only uncertainty and questions.
‘And she’s just disappeared?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, she’s run off?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Did something happen then?’
‘I don’t know. She’s missing. She left work and never came home.’
‘What do the police say?’
‘Nothing really. They said that it happens, people just disappear.’
‘She must be somewhere. I don’t understand …’
Mike’s friends and colleagues couldn’t offer their condolences. To do so would signal that they’d given up hope. After a while, they started to keep their distance. There was nothing more to say. Ylva’s disappearance was a mystery.
When she’d been gone five months, the local paper did a long article in conjunction with the TV programme,
Most of them were men, more than half of whom were feared lost at sea. Some of them had been seen in the days after they’d disappeared, but the witness reports were conflicting and vague.
In his capacity as investigating officer, Karlsson made statements, rattling off statistics and possible scenarios.
‘In cases where we suspect that the missing person may have been killed, we concentrate on those closest to them. That’s usually where we find the culprit.’
The statement didn’t name Mike directly, but the article was illustrated with a photograph of Ylva, which the paper had been allowed to borrow in connection with her disappearance.
Karlsson couldn’t have pointed his finger more clearly, without the risk of libel.
Mike spent the greater part of the following week refuting the accusations.
He phoned Karlsson, who claimed that he had been misquoted and misunderstood. He had been talking in general terms and not specifically about Ylva’s disappearance.
The public prosecutor said that it was a matter for the Swedish Press Council.
‘And if you read it correctly, then—’
Mike threw down the phone and called the newspaper.
‘My daughter was crying when I picked her up from school today. And guess what the other children had said?’
The managing editor was apologetic and understanding and said he was willing to publish a correction, which he did. A small notice on the front page, which stated that neither the police nor the public prosecution authority had named any suspects from Ylva’s closest family and friends.
As with most denials, this just made matters worse.
