For the Lost

Book 3: Detective Charlie Lager

by Lina Bengtsdotter

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A MISSING CHILD
In Karlstad, nine-month-old Beatrice is missing from her pram. Her parents are in shock and the media is in a frenzy.

A PERSONAL STRUGGLE
DI Charlie Lager is struggling with her own demons when she's called to investigate, forced to push them aside as the case intensifies.

A CLOCK RUNNING DOWN
As lead after lead goes nowhere, Charlie starts to feel like nobody actually wants the truth to come out about Beatrice as reluctant locals shut down in the face of her questions. And with each passing hour, the chance of finding Beatrice alive becomes less and less likely...

************

Praise for Lina Bengtsdotter:

'A thriller that lingers in the memory' - SUNDAY TIMES
'Atmospheric, evocative...a first-class procedural...an excellent thriller' - CRIME TIME
'Dark Nordic noir' - THE i
'Takes crime fiction to a disturbingly personal, high level' - SHOTS
'Intelligent and arresting' - MORNING STAR
'A brilliant, dense crime novel' - DAGENS NYHETER

Release date: March 31, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

The decibel level in the bar had risen. Charlie’s head was spinning. She should have gone home hours ago, but then a man in a suit with no ring on his finger had sat down next to her, giving her hope the evening might still end the way she wanted.

They’d been talking for a while when the man, whose name was Jack, asked her where she was from.

‘Stockholm,’ Charlie replied.

‘I meant originally. Isn’t that a hint of dialect I detect?’

‘It’s been a long time since anyone commented on my dialect,’ Charlie said. ‘I thought it was gone.’

‘It’s not. Are you from Östergötland?’

‘No, I grew up right on the border between Västergötland and Värmland.’

‘In which town?’

‘It’s a tiny place. You don’t know it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Gullspång.’

Jack frowned. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know it. Sorry.’

‘No need to apologise.’

‘So, tell me about it, then,’ Jack said. ‘Tell me about Gullspång.’

Charlie was just about to say there was nothing to tell, but with four pints in her, she was feeling unexpectedly talkative.

‘I lived in a small cottage pretty far outside the town proper.’ She paused and took a sip of her beer. ‘There was a cherry grove and a woodshed and a sparkling lake.’

Jack smiled and said it sounded like a fairy tale.

‘Lyckebo,’ Charlie said.

‘Pardon?’

‘That was its name, the house I grew up in. Lyckebo.’

‘Were you happy there?’

‘I was,’ Charlie replied. ‘I really was.’

She’d read somewhere it was never too late to have had a happy childhood. Maybe this was how you made it happen. By exaggerating the good and erasing the bad, by lying and beautifying until you believed it yourself.

Jack asked if she had any siblings and Charlie thought about the boy’s room that was never completed, about the cars Betty had painted on the walls, the bed that was going to be a bespoke built-in.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A brother. We are very close.’

Were, she corrected herself inwardly. We are nothing anymore. She pictured Johan’s face, the worry in his eyes when suspicions had surfaced about them being related by blood.

I really hope I’m not your brother.

And her response: I thought you’d always wished for a family.

Johan. For a while after he died, she’d been unable to turn off the slideshow of images playing on a loop in her head: his eyes when she came out of the lake with no clothes on, the motel bed, the cherry wine in Lyckebo. And then: all the things that never came to be.

‘I have a sister,’ Jack said, ‘but I hardly ever see her. We didn’t even play together as children, despite being only two years apart. Maybe because we didn’t like doing the same things.’

‘For me and Johan, it was the opposite. We always liked doing the same things. We built forts in the woods behind our house and played down by the lake.’

‘Your house was on a lake?’

Charlie nodded. It was practically true. ‘We used to row out on the lake in our own little boat,’ she went on, ‘and we had a pet fox. It was as tame as a dog.’

‘Is that even possible?’ Jack said. ‘Taming a fox?’

Charlie thought about the bloodbath in the chicken coop, about Betty telling her you can’t take the wildness out of a wild animal: They may seem as tame as anything, but sooner or later, their animal instincts will take over. And later, when the disaster was a fact: I told you so. Didn’t I tell you it would end badly? Now look what happened.

‘It is,’ Charlie said. ‘Our fox was as meek as a lamb.’

Jack leaned closer. ‘It sounds idyllic.’

‘It was idyllic. A proper fairy-tale existence. Want another?’ She nodded towards his empty pint glass.

‘I’ll get it,’ he said, stood up, and began to push his way towards the bar.

Charlie watched him walk away. He was tall and nicely built, but that wasn’t what had caught her interest. There was something about the confident way he walked, the way he looked at her like he was curious about her, the balance between possibility and resistance.

‘Now you tell me a bit about you,’ she said when he came back with fresh pints. ‘Tell me about your job.’ She’d already forgotten what he did for a living.

‘There’s not much to say,’ Jack replied. ‘Being an economist isn’t particularly exciting. I actually wanted to be an actor. But my parents said that wasn’t a real job, so … And I suppose I might not have made it, but …’

‘But what?’

‘Sometimes I wish I’d given it a go. I mean, what’s the harm in trying? Now, I’ll never know if it might have been for me.’

‘It’s never too late, though, is it?’ Charlie said, thinking she was probably full of it, that it probably was exactly that, too late.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Jack said and raised his glass. ‘Here’s to it never being too late.’

‘It just makes me sad,’ Charlie added. ‘Parents limiting their children.’

‘Did yours?’

‘Definitely not. My mum always said I could be anything I wanted – anything except a dancer.’

‘So, what did you become?’ Jack asked.

‘A dancer,’ Charlie replied. ‘I became a dancer.’

It was quarter to one. The place was about to close.

‘What do we do now?’ Charlie asked.

‘I’m … married,’ Jack said. ‘I’m sorry if I—’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Charlie replied, trying to hide her disappointment. She felt duped. Why didn’t he wear a ring? If he wasn’t going to let the women he sat down next to by his volition pick him up, he should at least have the decency of wearing a ring.

‘Wait,’ Jack said when she got up. ‘I mean, can’t we—’

‘I have to go home,’ Charlie said. ‘I have work tomorrow.’

‘Dancing?’

‘What?’

‘I was asking if you’re dancing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I walk you part of the way?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘I’d like to walk with you, though, if that’s OK?’

She shrugged. Her flat was less than five hundred yards away and she didn’t mind him walking along if it was that important to him.

It was mid-April. The smell of gravel and dry asphalt made Charlie feel free, happy, and sad all at once. She wished time would stop when spring came, that she wouldn’t have to listen to her colleagues go on and on about their summer holiday plans and then face the feeling of emptiness that always overwhelmed her whenever she had time off work.

‘This is me,’ she said when they reached her building. ‘This is where I live. Thanks for a lovely evening.’

‘Thank you,’ Jack replied. ‘You’re interesting to talk to. You’re … different.’

But I hope you aren’t, Charlie thought when he seemed to struggle with himself.

‘I wouldn’t mind coming upstairs with you for a bit …’ he continued. ‘I’m … not really the type to do something like this, but …’

I know, Charlie thought as they walked up the stairs. No one thinks they’re that type, and yet there are so bloody many of you.

She missed the keyhole and made a small dent in the door. Soon enough, it would look like the one to her last flat, like someone had tried to hack their way in.

‘Nice place,’ Jack said as they entered. He looked up at the ceiling as if trying to gauge how high it was.

Charlie had used part of the inheritance from her father to buy the flat on Östermalm. At first, she had refused to take even so much as a penny from Rikard Mild, but a stubborn lawyer had counselled her to swallow her pride, or it would all go to his other children and his widow. That had made Charlie consider her half-sister’s enormous villa in one of Stockholm’s poshest suburbs and decide to accept what she had a legal right to.

Anders had been the one who convinced her to invest in a new home. Charlie had put up a fight at first. There was nothing wrong with where she lived. And Anders had explained that he hadn’t meant to imply there was, but that maybe she should plan for the future, just a little. Even if she didn’t care for her own sake, it might come in handy if she ever wanted to start a family.

I won’t, Charlie had replied.

But then she had started going with Anders to open houses because he was looking for a place to move after his divorce. And there was something about this loft conversion she’d fallen for. Maybe it was the fireplace and the beamed ceiling, or the big balcony that made her stomach flip when she looked down from it. It was out there she’d heard one prospective buyer whisper to another that the previous owner had hanged himself in the flat. Afterwards, Anders said that was probably just a trick to turn off other buyers. Some people were willing to go to pretty sick lengths to keep prices down.

For Charlie, the effect was the opposite. She didn’t believe in signs, but something about the alleged hanging had made her more emotionally invested in the property. She’d thought about what Betty used to tell her about Lyckebo, about how she’d been able to buy it cheaply on account of the previous owner’s suicide. One man’s trash is another’s treasure …

A week later, she’d won the bidding war and the flat on Grev Turegatan was hers.

‘What a painting!’ Jack exclaimed, pointing to the big artwork in the butler’s pantry. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘Susanne,’ Charlie said. ‘Susanne Sander. She’s a friend. She’s … unknown.’

‘She shouldn’t be,’ Jack said. He walked closer to the painting. ‘I love the details.’

Charlie nodded and thought about how happy it had made her when Susanne gave her the painting. She loved everything about it: the swirling black water, the flowering cherry grove, and the old red house, the woman in a dress and clogs on the porch, the girl in her arms, a mother with her daughter. Betty and her.

‘She’s really talented,’ Jack went on. ‘I like the contrasts. Darkness and light, depth and surface. It’s two different seasons.’ He pointed to the corners of the painting, done in more muted colours. ‘They’re dressed warmer,’ he said, referring to the two backs that belonged to a grown man and a little boy. Mattias and Johan.

Charlie thought to herself that Jack had missed the saddest part of the painting: the little children to the left of the house, a baby girl and a slightly older boy, both with their eyes closed. She hadn’t noticed them herself at first, because their clothes were the same colours as the flowers and grass around them; you had to look really closely to make out their bodies and faces.

‘Want a beer?’ Charlie asked, turning to Jack.

Jack nodded.

‘I didn’t realise dancing was so … lucrative,’ he said when they stepped into the spacious, newly renovated kitchen.

Charlie made no reply. She just stopped, turned around, pulled off her top in one smooth motion, and kissed him.

‘How do you want me?’ he whispered as she pulled him into the living room.

They stumbled and ended up on the plush rug.

‘Do you like this?’ he said, after they’d pulled off all their clothes and he was kissing the inside of her thigh.

It tickled, but Charlie still whispered yes and hoped he would cut to the chase soon. She dug her fingers into his hair and slid down to hurry things along.

‘Wow, so you’re keen,’ he mumbled. ‘You’re the keen type.’

When they were done, Charlie wriggled out of Jack’s embrace. As much as she had yearned for closeness thirty minutes ago, she now wanted nothing more than for him to leave. But Jack wasn’t the perspicacious type, she thought as he put his arm back around her.

‘You haven’t lived here long, have you?’ he asked.

‘No, why?’

‘I was just thinking you don’t have curtains, or a lot of stuff in general, really.’

‘I don’t like curtains or stuff,’ she said, and thought about what Betty had always said.

No heavy baggage for me. I travel light.

But in the end, Betty’s baggage had grown too heavy after all, and it had pulled her under.

‘Would you mind … going home now?’ Charlie said, pushing his arm off her chest.

‘Are you having me on?’ Jack sat up.

‘No. I have work tomorrow and aren’t you … married?’

‘My wife’s out of town. I’m not in a hurry. But sure. I’ll leave if that’s what you want.’

‘It’s OK,’ Charlie said. ‘You can sleep on the sofa.’

‘Are you serious?’

Charlie thought to herself that this was the problem with bringing men home; you had no control of how long they stayed.

‘I just prefer to sleep alone,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing personal.’

‘It feels bloody personal.’

Jack got up and started gathering up his clothes with quick, hostile movements.

‘You want to know what I think?’ he said once he was fully dressed.

Charlie figured she was about to find out whether she wanted to or not.

‘I don’t think your childhood was as amazing as you make out. You’re … You seem kind of damaged.’

‘Isn’t that a bit of a leap, just because I like to sleep alone?’ She sat up.

‘It’s not just that. It’s something else, too. Something’s off with you. I can feel it.’

Charlie lay back down and closed her eyes. It was just her luck that the man she brought home was a thin-skinned ­amateur psychologist. She had never given much thought to the fact that she couldn’t bear to sleep with another person. The few short periods when she’d been in any kind of relationship, she’d avoided overnights as much as possible because the inevitable lack of sleep left her exhausted.

Charlie thought about the parties in Lyckebo, about Betty falling asleep anywhere but her bed and being impossible to rouse, the feeling of waking up in her room with stinky alcohol breath all over her. Are you asleep? Are you asleep, sweetheart?

‘You’re wrong,’ Charlie called after Jack as he walked towards the front door. ‘I’m no more damaged than anyone else.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, adding before he slammed the door behind him, ‘and I don’t believe for a second that you’re a dancer, either.’

‘I don’t understand why I have to go to this place,’ I said, turning to Rita. She was sitting far too close to the steering wheel and revved the engine every time she shifted gears.

‘That’s scary to me,’ Rita said. ‘That you don’t understand why. Don’t you know what you’ve been like this past year?’

I said nothing.

‘You’ve been acting like a crazy person,’ Rita went on, ‘like a mental patient. I don’t know why you’re smiling. I’ve barely had the energy to do my job, what with all the phone calls and rules around you. I have a life, too, you know, a family to look after. Do you understand?’

I nodded, even though I didn’t understand, because all Rita had was a weird boyfriend she didn’t live with and never seemed to see. We were each other’s closest living relatives and it sucked that after everything that had happened, she would still say such awful things to me, her own niece. Which one of us was the mental patient?

‘It’s not all my fault,’ I said.

‘Stop blaming others,’ Rita replied. ‘You’ve put yourself in this situation. No?’ she went on when I rolled my eyes.

I thought to myself that most aspects of my situation were outside of my control. It wasn’t my fault Dad was dead, or that Mum hadn’t come back, or that Rita hadn’t offered to let me stay with her.

‘Open the glovebox,’ Rita said.

I opened the glovebox.

‘Take out the cigarettes.’

I dug around old first-aid kits and manuals but couldn’t find any cigarettes.

‘Damn it,’ Rita said. ‘That prick took my smokes again. That’s why I can’t live with him. He doesn’t understand the difference between yours and mine.’

‘I have some,’ I said.

We pulled over at a rest stop.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ Rita asked, nodding towards my top, which showed half my midriff. She had tried to persuade me to put something else on, anything that didn’t make me look like a streetwalker, but they were going to have to take me as I was at this place. ‘This isn’t a summer holiday you’re going on, you know,’ Rita added.

I said I did know that. But her words made me think of Dad and all his holiday plans. He used to talk about taking me to white beaches and palm trees, to coconuts and crystal-clear water. I quickly learnt not to believe him, but I’d still loved to listen to him talking about it. He described places so vividly I almost felt I’d been there. You and me under a palm tree. I’m drinking a cold beer and you … something else. White sand and turquoise water and not a soul as far as the eye can see.

‘I’m selling the house,’ Rita said and ground her cigarette out. ‘Look, there’s no reason to keep it. And I can probably find some German or Norwegian who’s willing to pay far too much for it. But I need to clean it out first and that’s going to take a while, what with all the rubbish he collected.’

I pictured Rita and her friends emptying out our house. How they would laugh at the old Christmas curtains that had hung in the windows for years, be revolted by the smell of urine in the bathroom, roll their eyes at all the rubbish Dad had refused to get rid of. How do people live like this? The thought made me seethe with rage.

‘He was almost like one of those hoarders at the end,’ Rita commented.

‘He just had a hard time throwing things out,’ I said and thought about the jars full of bottle caps, broken lighters, and old coins.

‘Exactly,’ Rita said. ‘And now all of it is my problem.’

‘I’m sorry his death is so inconvenient for you.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Rita said.

I told her I just wanted to go back home, that I wanted to take care of myself. But that wasn’t possible, Rita said. I couldn’t keep living like some Pippi Longstocking. Someone had to look after me.

Why?

For two reasons. One: I was destructive. Two: I didn’t own a suitcase full of gold coins.

Charlie woke up before her alarm. She was lying naked on the sofa with just a thin blanket over her. Her throat was dry and her airways tight. She got up, pulled a shirt she found on the floor over her head and went to the kitchen.

Her breathalyser was sitting on the shelf above the fan. She blew into it and felt relieved to see the 0.0 on the screen. A few months ago, she had been pulled over the morning after a night out and been lucky to avoid trouble. She was done taking chances.

She took down the jar of sertraline and washed down four pills with a big gulp of water. A year and a half ago, she had doubled her dose from one to two hundred milligrams and the world had retreated even further. She was on the maximum dose now, the doctor who’d written the prescription had informed her. If this didn’t help …

She hadn’t asked, then what? Because she already knew what the methods of last resort were.

The side effects had been exacerbated by the increased dosage. She now perspired excessively, suffered from in­somnia, and had trouble remembering things, but she didn’t mind, so long as it took the edge off the anxiety.

She forced herself to down a drinking yoghurt she found in the fridge, to settle her stomach. It wasn’t until she noticed the strange aftertaste that she thought to check the expiration date and realised it was almost a week past it.

Fifteen minutes later, she went down to the garage, thinking about how much easier life is when you have money. She no longer had to look for a parking spot on crowded city streets or scrape ice off windows in the winter. The satisfaction of having more than just the necessities was really all in the details.

‘Charline?’

Damn it, Charlie thought when she heard the whiny voice. She turned to her neighbour. Dorothea was, despite the spring weather, dressed in a fur coat that reached all the way to her feet.

‘If this is about the paper things I put outside my door, I’ve removed them,’ Charlie said.

‘It’s not about that.’

‘OK. Do you mind if we talk about whatever it is some other time?’ Charlie said. ‘I’m on my way to work.’

‘This habit you have of … bringing strange men home late at night,’ Dorothea ploughed on. ‘A lot of people in the building think it’s a problem.’

Charlie turned cold, then hot. She was Betty. It didn’t matter that the setting was different. She was Betty and Dorothea was the lookouts in town, the home visits by the school staff, the screeching of women with adulterous husbands.

We don’t care about them, sweetheart. We don’t see them, don’t hear them. Chin up and look straight ahead.

‘In what way?’ Charlie asked, levelly meeting Dorothea’s eyes. ‘In what way is it a problem?’

‘W. . .