Snowdrift
The front door slowly opened a fraction of an inch. After a while, a head cautiously peeped out. Everything seemed quiet, and a man stepped onto the small porch. Taking his time, he tucked a gun into the waistband of his pants, and slipped a cell phone into his pocket. Then he zipped his leather jacket, adjusted his night-vision glasses, and pulled up the hood of the sweatshirt he was wearing under his jacket.
Large fields extended on both sides of the house. This was an advantage; there was no one nearby to see or hear him. But just to be safe, he reached around the doorframe and turned off the external light. He also removed the key from the inside, pushed the door shut with his hip, and locked it. Then he turned around and, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed the key into the darkness. Carefully he made his way down the slippery steps and was swallowed up by the night in seconds.
The blizzard came sweeping in from the west. The strong wind whipped up the snow that had fallen earlier in the week, and, within minutes, visibility was virtually down to zero.
The floor no longer felt solid, and her feet sank deeper with each step. She mustn’t stop or she would get stuck. Keep going, keep going! There was no time to waste! I’m coming, Lollo! The light got closer, and she thought she could hear voices through the pounding in her ears. She could just make out three large shadows up ahead. They were bending over a small curled-up figure; she knew it was Lollo. Please, God, don’t let it be too late! I promise I’ll never . . . If you just help us, God! She tried to call out, but nothing passed her lips; they merely moved in silence.
One of the shadows suddenly turned toward her, and she realized she’d been spotted. At first she froze in fear, then she tried to run. But that moment of hesitation had been enough. Her feet were stuck. The menacing shadow was approaching, but she couldn’t move. He reached her and she felt him grasp her by the throat.
“If you say a word to anyone, you’re dead! We know who you are and where you live,” he hissed.
Somehow she managed to speak: “Lollo, Lol . . .”
“Forget her!”
He pushed her to the floor. The walls around her collapsed, and she sank into the ice-cold sludge; it filled her nostrils and her mouth. Breathe . . . she couldn’t breathe! Beneath her the ground began to shake.
Embla woke to find herself sitting bolt upright in bed, terrified and gasping for air as sweat trickled between her breasts. Her T-shirt stuck to her back. It was usually the same when she had the recurring nightmare: she woke up because she couldn’t breathe. But this time something was different. The ground was shaking. Why was the ground shaking? And where was she?
Slowly she began to gather her wits and realized the bed was moving.
Uncle Nisse’s guest room was small, but there was just enough space for a camp bed at the foot of hers. That was where the movement was coming from. A halo of tousled brown hair appeared with a pair of wide-awake eyes sparkling beneath the curls. Elliot was impatiently shaking the rail at the bottom of Embla’s bed.
“Come on, Embla—we’re going hunting today!”
He leaped up and onto her bedspread.
“Hunting! Hunting! Hunting!”
He warbled away happily as he bounced up and down; Embla couldn’t help laughing. He was always full of energy, but right now the dial was turned up to maximum.
“Okay—off you go to the bathroom, then put on the clothes I’ve left on the chair in the hallw . . .”
She didn’t get any further; he was already on his way to the tiny en suite bathroom.
Elliot was the best thing to come out of Embla’s relationship with Jason Abbot, a jazz musician. They’d split up almost five years ago after a series of excoriating rows about Jason’s inability to remain faithful, but a deep bond had grown between Embla and Jason’s son, Elliot, which his father had sensibly chosen to nurture. Needless to say, he had seen the value of having an adult around who was willing to help out. Elliot’s mother had died before he was one year old, and the boy’s only close relations in Sweden were a divorced maternal aunt and her three children, but she already had her hands full.
Embla stayed under the covers for a little longer, trying to shake off the fear that still sat in the middle of her chest like a hard knot. Over the past week, the nightmare had haunted her every night. The reason was obvious. Her childhood best friend, Louise, who went by Lollo and had disappeared fourteen and a half years ago, had suddenly gotten in touch.
Late on Friday night—eight days ago—Embla’s phone had trilled the opening bars of the original 1977 Star Wars soundtrack. She’d been annoyed, because she’d just broken up with Nadir and assumed it was him calling. Warily she’d answered: “Embla Nyström.”
No one said anything, but she could hear shallow breathing and a faint rushing in the background as if the person on the other end was far away, or standing by the sea.
“Hello? Who is this?”
There was a sharp intake of breath, then a female voice whispered, “Å . . . Åsa? Is that Åsa?”
The hairs on the back of her neck had stood on end. Nobody had called her Åsa in years. Everyone called her Embla these days, which was her given name, but when she was little she’d hated it because it was so unusual, and she had persuaded all her friends and teachers to use her middle name, Åsa. As an adult she’d started to prefer Embla and had switched back. But someone who hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager couldn’t possibly know that. And the person on the other end of the phone hadn’t seen her for fourteen and a half years. She was certain of that because she recognized the voice.
“Lo . . . Lollo!” she managed eventually.
There was a gasp, and the connection was broken.
Her initial reaction had been shock, but after a while she had pulled herself together and began to process the realization that her friend was still alive. So many questions whirled around in her mind: Where was Lollo? Was she in danger? Would she get in touch again? Why had she called?
Embla had decided to finally tell someone everything she knew about that night. There was only one person she could bring herself to share her trauma with: her former boss, Superintendent Göran Krantz, head of the technical department at Police HQ in Gothenburg. She’d called him and told him the whole story. Her best friend had disappeared one night when they were both fourteen years old. Embla had gotten seriously drunk for the first—and only—time. The only thing she remembered was the scene that constantly replayed in her nightmare: the three men bending over Lollo. The grip on her throat. The death threat. The sense of impotence. The guilt.
As Embla and Elliot planned to travel to Dalsland the following morning for the school break, she and Göran had agreed to meet up as soon as she returned to Gothenburg. While she was away, he would try to take a closer look at the case notes surrounding Louise’s disappearance if time allowed. If Louise got in touch again, Embla was to contact Göran right away, and he would do his best to trace the call.