Håkan gave an account of what happened the night Mia disappeared. His explanation goes like this:
They’d quarrelled.
She’d been upset.
She’d waited until the household was asleep, packed two bags, and disappeared in the middle of the night, gone with no goodbye and no note.
That’s what we were told. That’s what the town was told and that’s what the town believed.
Stellan the detective, Håkan’s closest friend, arrived at his farm. I happened to be in the fields at the time. I saw his car in Håkan’s drive. I timed them. After seventeen minutes Stellan the detective left, the men shaking hands, an investigation seventeen minutes long concluded with a pat on the back.
Håkan stopped at our farm the next day, explaining that the police had been notified in the major cities – Malmö, Gothenburg, Stockholm. They were looking for Mia. However, there was a limit to what they could do. She wasn’t a child, chasing runaways was a difficult process. Repeating this information, Håkan dropped his head to indicate that he was lost for words, consumed with grief, or so we’re supposed to believe. Chris comforted him, stating that he was sure Mia would come back, that this kind of behaviour was typical of teenagers. Their conversation wasn’t real! It was an act – the two of them performing for me, Håkan playing the part of the heartbroken father, Chris feeding him cues. Except it was more than a performance, they were testing me. Would I walk up to Håkan and put my arm around his shoulder? I couldn’t do it. I remained in the corner of the room as far from him as possible. If I’d been political and shrewd I would’ve embraced him, shed false tears for his false grief, but I don’t possess his gift for deceit, so instead I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t believe him, a brazen statement of defiant opposition. Looking back, I realise what a miscalculation that was. From that moment on I was in danger.
• • •
RETURNING TO HER SATCHEL, my mum took out a poster. She unfolded it across the coffee table and sat back down beside me.
These weren’t produced on Håkan’s computer. He employed a professional printing company, using the highest-quality paper. Even the layout is stylish, more like a supplement pulled from the pages of Vanity Fair or Vogue magazine – the world’s most extravagant missing person poster. They were everywhere. I spent a day spotting them and counted over thirty, wrapped around tree trunks, on a notice board on the beach, in the church and the shop windows along the promenade. The positioning was troubling to me because Mia wasn’t going to be hiding in any of these places. If she’d run away, she’d be in one of the cities. If she’d run away, she was going to be far, far away, not here, not a mile from home. And if she’d run, she’d never have told a soul, because that information would’ve reached Håkan in a second, so these posters served no useful purpose except as a grand gesture that Håkan had done the right thing, that he was playing the part expected of him.
Look at the bottom of the poster—
A rich reward for useful leads and that isn’t a misprint: one hundred thousand Swedish krona, ten thousand pounds! He might as well have offered a million dollars, or a chest of pirate gold; he knew it would provide no new information. It was a crass statement about him:
‘Look at how much money I’m prepared to pay! My love for Mia has a number attached to it and it’s greater than any number you’ve ever seen on a missing person poster before!’
From your expression, you’ve interpreted these posters as evidence of his innocence just as you were intended to do.
• • •
I SHOOK MY HEAD AT MY MUM’S presumption that she always knew what I was thinking.
‘I don’t believe these posters prove he’s innocent. They don’t prove anything. You can argue posters both ways. If he spent no money, if he put up no posters, or if he only put up one tatty poster, you could accuse him of being callous. Or too riddled with guilt—’
‘But I can’t make a judgment about something that he didn’t do.’
‘My point is—’
You don’t accept it as evidence. Fine. We won’t accept it. We don’t need it. You shouldn’t doubt his innocence because I say so. You shouldn’t doubt it because of these posters. Doubt it because Håkan’s account of the night Mia disappeared doesn’t make any sense. She supposedly fled the farm on 1 July. What did this sixteen-year-old girl allegedly do? Mia didn’t own a car, no taxi was called, how did she leave a farm in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night? She wasn’t at the train station in the morning. Her bicycle was still on the farm. She didn’t walk – there was nowhere to walk to, the distances were too great. I’ve escaped from a remote farm. Let me tell you, from personal experience, you need a plan. According to Håkan there was a gap of ten hours in which she could’ve disappeared, but those ten hours were a time when everything was shut down. For many miles in every direction the world turned dark, a population asleep, no shops open, no public transport. Mia just vanished. That’s what we were supposed to believe.
It was my duty to talk to the police and I approached them without discussing with Chris, wanting to discover how seriously they were taking the matter. I cycled through the centre of town. The shops were busy. The promenade was crowded. In the coffee shop where I’d eaten cake with Mia only a few weeks ago other people were sitting, drinking, laughing. Where was the grief for this lost girl? The pursuit of comfort is one of the great evils of our time. Håkan understood that perfectly, he understood that as long as there was no body, no evidence of a crime, no one would mind. Everyone would much rather believe that Mia had run off rather than consider the possibility that she’d been murdered.
The local police station was quieter than a library. It was preposterously clean, as if they did nothing but polish the floor and wipe the windows. Self-evidently these officers had never encountered any crime to speak of. These were novices. In Stockholm I might have had a chance, there might have been an ally, someone with experience of the darkness in men’s hearts. Not here, these were steady, safe job-seekers, men and women who understood how to play the politics of a small town.
At the front desk I demanded to speak to Stellan the detective. I’d expected a long wait, several hours, but I’d barely read more than a page or two of my notes when Stellan called my name, ushering me into his office. Maybe it was because he looked so much like Håkan that he seemed so out of place in an office, with pens and paper clips. He gestured for me to sit down, towering over me, asking how he could help. I asked why they hadn’t spoken to me about Mia’s disappearance. He asked bluntly if I knew where Mia was. I said no, I didn’t know, of course I didn’t know, but that I thought that there was more to this than merely a girl running away. I didn’t have the courage to spell out my hypothesis in the police station, not yet, not without enough evidence. What was interesting was that Stellan didn’t stare at me like I was mad, or as though I was speaking nonsense. He stared at me like this—
• • •
MY MUM GAVE ME A LOOK that could have meant she was sad, or that she was listening carefully, or that she was bored.
Like I was a threat! He was assessing how much of a problem I was going to be. This police station and its most senior officer had no intention of unearthing the truth. It was an institution working to conceal the truth. This case required someone who was sceptical – it required an outsider. I hadn’t wanted to be one. But it was the role I was forced to play. I thanked Stellan for his time, deciding that the next course of action, the only logical course of action, in the absence of a functioning police force, in the absence of a search warrant, was to break into Håkan’s farm.
• • •
AS I SAT, TROUBLED by the notion of my mum breaking into a house, her hands disappeared into the deepest pocket of the satchel. I couldn’t see what she was doing until she slowly lifted them. She was wearing two red mittens, gravely stretched out for my inspection as if they were as conclusive as blood-soaked gloves. There was an absurdity about the moment, the disju
nction between my mum’s earnestness and the novelty mittens, yet I felt no urge to smile.
To avoid leaving fingerprints! These were the only gloves in my possession, thick Christmas mittens. I started carrying them in my pocket during the height of summer, waiting for my chance to break in. As you can testify, I’ve never done anything like this before. I wasn’t going to sneak into Håkan’s farm in the middle of the night as a professional thief might do. I’d be opportunistic, seizing a moment when both Elise and Håkan were out. Remember, this is rural Sweden, no one locks their door, there are no alarms. However, Elise’s behaviour had changed since Mia’s disappearance. She wasn’t working. She sat on the veranda, lost in thought. Earlier I described her as always busy. Not any more—Before you interrupt again, I agree, it could be argued in many ways. Regardless of how you interpret the change in her character, it made it difficult to break in because she was at home much more.
One day I caught sight of Elise and Håkan leaving together. I didn’t know where they were going or for how long, maybe they’d be gone for minutes, maybe hours, but this was my only chance and I took it, abandoning my work on the vegetable garden, running through the fields, and knocking on their door just to make sure that the house was empty. There was no reply and I knocked again, asking myself, as I slipped on these thick mittens, whether I had the courage to open this door and walk into their house. As with all sensible people, I’ll break the law if need be. However, that doesn’t mean I find the process easy.
Try the mittens on.
Pick up that glass.
You see?
They have no grip. They’re impractical. No professional burglar would ever choose them. Standing in front of their house I became flustered because I was wearing Christmas mittens in the middle of the summer, trying to break into someone’s farm, and I couldn’t even open the door. The smooth round steel handle didn’t turn easily. I tried many times. In the end I had to clasp the handle with both hands.
Those first few metres inside, from the front door to the bottom of the stairs, were some of the most daunting steps I’ve ever taken. So ingrained were my Swedish customs and sense of household etiquette that I even took off my shoes, an idiotic thing for an intruder to do, depositing my clogs on the bottom step, announcing my presence to anyone who might return home.
I’d never been upstairs in that house before. What did I discover? Fetch a brochure for any mid-range furniture store and I could show you Håkan’s bedroom. It was neat and proper with a pine bed, pine wardrobes, immaculately clean, no clutter on the bedside tables, no pills, no books, no piles of dirty clothes. The decorative touches were few and inoffensive, as if decided by a committee, acceptable local artists framed on the wall. It was a furniture showroom, not a real bedroom, and I say my next remark carefully, not as a criticism, but as an observation from someone married for forty years – I was quite sure, standing in the middle of this bedroom, next to a vase filled with painted wooden tulips, that no one was having sex in here. It was a sexless space, and yes, you’re right, I don’t have evidence for that, but a person can tell a lot from a room, and it’s my unsubstantiated observation that Håkan was looking elsewhere for his sexual needs. Elise must have surrendered to that fact, and for the first time I felt pity for her, loyal Elise, a prisoner of that pine bedroom. I’m quite sure the inelegant solution of sleeping around wasn’t open to her. She was his. He was not hers.
By deduction the last room on the landing belonged to Mia. I peered inside, certain there was some mistake – this couldn’t be Mia’s room. The furniture was identical to the previous room, the same pine wardrobe, even the same pine bed as her parents. Mia hadn’t personalised the room except for an elaborate mirror. There were no posters, no postcards and no photographs. It was a room unlike the room of any teenager I’ve ever seen. What a lonely room it was, not a space where Mia had been given freedom, no, it was decorated and cleaned according to Elise’s standards. The room felt like an order – a command, she should become one of them. Mia might have slept in that room but it didn’t belong to her, it didn’t speak of her personality. It was no different from a comfortable guest room. Then it struck me – the smell! The room had been professionally cleaned, the bed had been made, the sheets were fresh and pressed, they were new, they hadn’t been slept in, the room vacuumed – it smelled of lavender. Sure enough, in the plug socket was an automated air-freshening device turned to its highest setting. If forensics were called in to make an examination I was sure that they wouldn’t find even the smallest particle of Mia’s skin. This was cleanliness to a sinister degree.
I checked the wardrobe. It was full. I checked the drawers. They were full. According to Håkan she’d packed two bags. With what? I asked myself. Nothing much was missing. I can’t say how many clothes were in the wardrobe before she left, so can’t compare, but this didn’t feel like a room that had been ransacked by a girl on the run. There was a Bible on the bedside table – Mia was a Christian. I have no idea if she believed in God or not; certainly she hadn’t taken the Bible with her. I checked the pages: there were no notes, no pages ripped out. I turned to the verse from Ephesians that Anne-Marie had stitched in the days before she killed herself. It was unmarked. Underneath the Bible was a diary. Glancing through, there were events listed, there were homework assignments, no references to sex, no boyfriends, girlfriends, no frustrations. No teenager in the world keeps a diary like this. Mia must have known that her room was being searched. She was writing this diary in the knowledge it was being read – this was the diary she wanted Elise and Håkan to read. The diary was a trick, a diversion to pacify a snooping parent, and what kind of teenager produces such a clever decoy document except someone with a great deal to hide?
I’d vowed to stay for no more than thirty minutes, but thirty minutes goes quickly and I’d found no evidence. I couldn’t leave empty-handed. I decided to stay until I found something, no matter the risk! It occurred to me that I’d overlooked the mirror. It stood out as different, not an antique, not from a furniture store, but a piece of craftsmanship, handmade and ambitious – shaped like a magic mirror, wood swirled around oval-shaped glass. Standing close, I noticed that the glass hadn’t been glued to the frame: there were steel clips at the top and bottom. They turned, like keys, and the glass fell cleanly from the frame. I jolted forward to catch it and prevent it smashing on the floor. Behind the mirror, carved into the wood, was a deep space. The person who’d crafted this unusual mirror had an ulterior motive. They’d created a hiding space, custom-made for Mia. This is what I found inside.
• • •
MY MUM HANDED ME the ragged remains of a small diary. There was a front and back cover but the inside pages had been torn out. For the first time I experienced a powerful emotional response to my mum’s evidence, as though this object retained some undeniable trace of violence.
Imagine the perpetrator in action, their powerful hands ripping the pages, the air full of words. Fire would have been a surer way to destroy this evidence, or tossing it into the depths of Elk River. This wasn’t a rational attempt at concealment. It was a savage response to thoughts written in these pages, an expression of hatred carrying with it the implication of a crime to come, or a crime already committed.
Examine it for yourself.
Almost nothing remains, none of the written entries, only jagged fragments along the spine, paper teeth spotted with partial words. I’ve counted exactly fifty-five scattered letters and only three complete words.
Hans, the Swedish word for ‘his’.
Rök, the Swedish for ‘smoke’, and please consider who smokes, and who doesn’t.
Räd, not a complete word, caught on the rip, and there’s no such Swedish word as räd, I believe the second ‘d’ was torn off, it should have been rädd – the Swedish for ‘scared’.
The diary was too important to put back. But stealing the remains of Mia’s journal was a provocation, an unmistakable signal of my intention to pursue the cul
prit and do whatever was necessary to discover the truth. When Håkan returned and found it missing, the most suggestive piece of evidence that Mia hadn’t run away from home, he’d sweep through his farm burning incriminating clues. Logically, this had become not my first but my only chance of collecting evidence. I couldn’t leave. Standing in Mia’s bedroom, wondering where to search next, I stared out across the fields, seeing the bump in the land, the underground shelter where Håkan carved those obscene trolls, the location of the second padlocked door. Tomorrow the shed might be emptied or razed to the ground. I had to act now.
With the remains of Mia’s journal in my pocket, I found a hand-carved key cupboard on the hallway wall. On farms there are always a vast number of keys, for various barns and tractors. I was going through them one by one, none of them were marked, it would take hours to try them all, so I ran to the toolshed, right next to the farm, stealing Håkan’s bolt cutters. Still wearing my red mittens, leaving no fingerprints, I hurried to the underground shelter, cutting the first padlock and opening the door, fumbling for the light cord. The sight awaiting me was so disturbing I had to fight against my urge to run away.
In the corner of the shelter was a stack of trolls, piled up like a heap of bodies, horrifically disfigured, cut in half, eyes gouged out, decapitated, smashed and splintered. It took a few seconds for me to muster the willpower to walk past the mound of trolls, trampling on the woodchips, arriving at the next door, secured with a second padlock. It was a different kind of lock to the one on the external door, a far tougher brand. Finally, after a great effort, the blades sliced through the steel, I gripped the second door and pulled it open.