For the Missing

Book 1: Detective Charlie Lager

by Lina Bengtsdotter

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

The missing

Nora's daughter, Annabelle, has disappeared, last seen on her way home from a party.

The lost

Gullspång's inexperienced police are wilting under the national media spotlight — and its residents desperate for answers.

The clock is ticking....

Stockholm DI Charlie Lager must return home to find Annabelle and then get out of town as soon as she can. Before everyone discovers the truth about her....

Release date: December 13, 2018

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

1

It was early June and the nights were never truly dark. Fredrik Roos was sitting in his car, gazing out across the misty meadows. He knew Annabelle often cut across them, that she had tramped her own paths through the tall grass. Naturally, Nora had told her she wasn’t allowed to walk there at night, but Fredrik knew she did it anyway and he could see why. With Nora’s miserly curfews, every minute was precious. He hoped he would see his daughter walking through the tall grass any second now, wearing the thin, blue dress that was apparently missing from Nora’s wardrobe. Nora had flown off the handle when she noticed. He thought about his wife for a while, about her fiery temper and anxiety. She had always been unstable, a worrier. When they first met, he had found it somehow fascinating: the way she had been able to build nightmare scenarios out of regular, everyday events. As the years went by, his fascination had been replaced by exasperation. And now, as he sat in the car, sent out by Nora yet again to bring Annabelle home, he realised he was reaching the end of his tether.

You can’t protect them against everything, he would tell her, even though he knew nothing irked Nora more. The fact that it was impossible to protect them from everything was not an argument, obviously, for not protecting them whenever you could. The only problem was that they disagreed on where to draw that line. As far as Fredrik was concerned, Annabelle should be allowed to walk home from her friends’ houses on her own, even if it was the middle of the night. And he didn’t like it that she had to call and tell them where she was if her plans changed. When he was growing up, he had come and gone as he pleased. He would have kicked off big time if someone had tried to control him the way Nora did with Annabelle. No wonder Annabelle had started breaking the rules. Too much free rein is not the issue here, Fredrik mused: it’s Nora’s enormous need for control that is causing problems.



The building that had once been a village shop was on the other side of town. It had been empty for years and was a long-standing venue for parties thrown by the local youth. Fredrik knew many townspeople wanted the house torn down. He had signed one of the petitions about it himself, but mostly for appearance’s sake. He knew very well that tearing the building down would only mean the young people took their partying elsewhere, probably even further from the town centre.

He parked in front of the main entrance. Decades-old yellowed newspaper placards still clung to the big glass window. A deep bassline could be heard all the way to his car. Fredrik picked up his phone to call Nora and ask if Annabelle had come home yet. He wasn’t going to crash a teenage party if he didn’t have to. Just as he was about to dial, Nora rang. Was he there yet?

‘I just pulled up.’

‘Is she there?’

‘I just stepped out of the car.’

‘So go in then.’

‘I was just on my way.’

The overgrown flowerbeds along the building’s facade were littered with beer cans, cigarette butts and bottles. Entering through the main door, he stepped straight into the large space that had once housed the shop. A smell of dereliction hit his nostrils and for a moment he paused to survey the filthy floor, the counter with the old cash register and the long, empty shelves lining the walls. The music was pumping above his head. He walked towards the door he knew led up to the flat above the shop. Locked. He went back outside and around the corner to try the back entrance. A young man was asleep on the veranda with his hand down his trousers. Fredrik had to step over him to reach the door.

A sweet smell hit him in the hallway. He followed the music up a long, winding staircase.

They were in the kitchen, three boys, around a dark wooden table buried under ashtrays, bottles, cans and tobacco pouches. One of them was compulsively stabbing at the table top with a small knife. Their faces looked familiar, but Fredrik couldn’t remember their names. They must be a slightly older than Annabelle, otherwise he would have known. None of them noticed him until he was standing right in front of them.

‘Hi there!’ yelled the one with the knife.

And now Fredrik realised it was that one, the plywood factory owner’s son. Wasn’t his name Svante, or possibly Dante?

‘Have a seat, and a drink!’ he bellowed. ‘Hey, no need to look so glum,’ he continued. ‘It’s a party. Everyone else pussied out but we’re going to keep going till the sun comes up.’

‘It’s already up, Svante,’ the boy next to him laughed. He tapped on the dirty kitchen window. ‘In fact, I don’t think it ever fucking set.’

‘Is Annabelle here?’ Fredrik asked.

‘Annabelle?’ The young men looked at one another.

‘Annabelle,’ Fredrik repeated.

Svante shot him a smile and said he knew Annabelle liked older gents, but that there were limits. ‘You’re old enough to be her bloody father, mate.’

‘I am her father,’ Fredrik said. He took a few steps towards the table. He suddenly had a violent impulse to wipe the stupid grin off this boy’s face.

All three of them stared at him.

‘Shit, that’s right,’ Svante said. ‘You actually are.’ He kicked at an unoccupied chair and apologised profusely. He hadn’t meant … he didn’t mean … he just hadn’t recognised him. They’d had a few too many. ‘And with this heat as well, anyone could be excused for feeling parched, no? Get the man a drink, Jonas,’ Svante said, nodding to the boy across the table. ‘Go mix up something proper fucking strong. Go on then, get up.’

‘I don’t want a drink,’ Fredrik said. ‘I just want to know where my daughter is. Have you seen her?’

‘There was quite a crowd here earlier,’ Svante said. ‘Things went a bit mental, if you know what I mean. We were already going at seven, that’s why everyone’s fucked off already. But yeah, she was here, though I think she left. But some people are still upstairs,’ he said, pointing at the ceiling. ‘If it were me, I’d go have a look. There’s several floors,’ he called as Fredrik made his way to the stairs. ‘Check all of them because people will lie down anywhere.’

Fredrik climbed a flight of stairs. The music grew louder with every step. There was a big landing on the next floor up. There was an aquarium against one wall. When he moved closer, he discovered a turtle bobbing around in water full of cigarette butts. What are people like, he thought, putting cigarettes out in an aquarium?

Beyond the landing was a living room with ripped, green plush sofas. A girl with tangled hair was sprawled on one of them. At first, Fredrik thought she was asleep, but on closer inspection he realised her eyes were wide open and staring.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Wonderful,’ the girl whispered. ‘Thanks for asking.’ Then she started giggling and waving her hands about. Fredrik figured she had enjoyed something other than just plain alcohol, that maybe he should find out her name and give her a ride home to her parents. He would, he decided, as soon as he had located Annabelle.

The stereo was in the next room. The music was ear-splitting. It took Fredrik a while to find the volume and turn it down. Then he walked on through the house, opening one door after another, but the rest of the rooms on that floor were empty. He ended up in a small hallway with yet another staircase. How many floors are there in this house? he wondered. Does it go on forever? At the top, there were two doors. The left one was locked, but the door on the right opened when Fredrik pushed the handle down.

A window was open in the room; a white curtain billowed in and out on the wind. In a bed sitting in the middle of the room, something was moving rhythmically under a duvet.

‘Annabelle?’ Fredrik said. ‘Is that you?’

‘What the fuck!’ A boy peered out from under the duvet at the foot of the bed. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Are you some kind of pervert, or what? Get the fuck out!’

‘I’m looking for my daughter. I just want to know if Annabelle is here.’ Fredrik watched for a reaction to the name.

‘No. I have no idea where she is.’

‘So who’s under the duvet then?’

‘Rebecka,’ the boy said. ‘Show him it’s you.’

‘It’s me,’ Rebecka said from under the duvet. ‘I don’t know where Annabelle is. She said she was going home.’

‘I thought she was at yours,’ Fredrik said. ‘Nora told me you were going to be at your house, watching a film.’

‘We were,’ Rebecka replied, ‘but then some stuff came up.’

‘When did she leave?’

‘I’m not sure. We had a bit too much to drink and Annabelle … she was … she was pretty drunk. I’m sorry!’ Rebecka called out as Fredrik was leaving the room. ‘I would have walked her home, but …’

‘She wasn’t up there, was she?’ Suddenly Svante was standing right behind him.

‘No. Rebecka just told me.’

‘Like she’d know.’

‘What’s behind this door?’ Fredrik said, pointing.

‘She’s not in there. That much I can promise you.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because,’ Svante said, ‘I’m the only one with a key to that door.’

‘Then maybe you could open it for me?’

‘I’d be happy to. Except I’ve lost the key. I lost it yesterday. That’s how I know no one’s in there. Do you need help looking for her, by the way? We have a moped downstairs, it’s souped up like nothing you’ve ever seen, we could head out and …’

Fredrik looked into Svante’s big eyes. There was something strange about them. He thought to himself that this was not a person he wanted out on the roads looking for Annabelle; that in this state he would in fact constitute a clear danger to the public.

‘Of course we’re going to help you look,’ Svante pressed on, ‘I mean … I’ve heard she has to be home pretty early and …’

Fredrik studied the young face and thought to himself it was true what he had heard them say: the factory owner’s son was an unpleasant sort.



When Fredrik returned to the car, he had three missed calls from Nora. He called her back, hoping she just wanted to tell him Annabelle had showed up, but he could instantly tell from her voice that wasn’t the case.

‘Are you still at the shop?’ she asked. And before he could reply: ‘Was she there?’

‘No,’ Fredrik said. ‘She’s not here.’

‘Well then, where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go by Rebecka’s.’

‘Rebecka is here,’ Fredrik said. ‘Calm down,’ he continued, as Nora burst into tears. ‘I’m sure she’s on her way home. I’ll look for her on the way.’

‘Just get her home,’ Nora said. ‘You bloody well get her home right now, Fredrik.’









2



Charlie woke up at seven. She never slept well after a night of drinking, particularly not in a strange bed. She looked over at the man next to her. Martin, was that his name? And what had she told him her name was? Maria? Magdalena? She always lied about her name when she picked up men in bars – her name and her profession. Mostly so they wouldn’t try to look her up, but also because nothing was a bigger turn-off than jokes about handcuffs and women in uniform. Being easily bored was one of her many problems.

Anyway, this Martin bloke had come up to her to ask why she was sitting alone at the bar, then without waiting for a reply he had bought her a drink, and then another; and when the place closed they had moved on to his house. Martin was not the type to go home with someone on the first date; he had told her so while fumbling with his front door lock. And Charlie had replied that she was. Martin had laughed and said he really liked women with a sense of humour and Charlie hadn’t had the heart to tell him she wasn’t kidding.

She got up quietly. Her head was pounding. I need to get home, she thought. I need to find my clothes and then get home.

Her dress was on the floor in the kitchen, she didn’t bother looking for her knickers. She had almost made it out when she accidentally stepped on a toy that started playing a loud tune, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’. ‘Fuck,’ she whispered. ‘Goddamnit.’ She could hear Martin moving in the bedroom. She quickly found her way to the front door, grabbed her shoes, opened the door and ran down the stairs.



She was unprepared for the light that hit her as she stepped out onto the street; it took her a moment to sort through her sensory impressions and pin down exactly where she was. Östermalm, Skeppargatan. A taxi would get her home in five minutes. She looked around, but there were no taxis in sight, so she started walking.

When she had walked three blocks, Challe called.

‘Out running?’ he said.

‘Sure, it’s important to stay healthy. Are you at work?’

‘Yep. After all, if you’re going to be up at the crack of dawn, you might as well make yourself useful.’

Charlie smiled. In terms of work ethics, she and her boss were peas in a pod. In other respects there were many differences, but unlike some of the older men on the force Challe didn’t seem ever to doubt her professional abilities, at least not privately. It bothered her no end that he wouldn’t stand up for her when she took abuse for being young or a woman, but at the same time she couldn’t help but find it flattering that, behind closed doors, he called her his star detective.

Charlie had started at the NOD two years earlier. It had been tough at first. During her police training, she had heard horror stories about how the old guard were all chauvinists, but she had never fully realised just how pervasive the sexism really was. The jargon, the jokes, the PMS insinuations whenever she didn’t agree about something. Most of her colleagues at the National Operations Department were middle-aged men who had been looking out for each other for decades. That much had been clear on the very first day; they were far from pleased at having a little girl for a colleague, at least in the job Charlie had. One of them had even told her to her face that the only time he accepted a woman on top was in bed. It made no difference that Charlie was a rising star, that she had completed a BA in psychology before she even started her police training. How had she had the time to do that, one of the men on her team had asked her when she first started. How had she managed to squeeze in a three-year degree, if she was only twenty when she enrolled at the Police Academy?

And Charlie had told him the truth, that she had skipped a grade in school, completed school at seventeen and gone straight to university. Her colleague had frowned and said something about how it wasn’t a good idea to go straight from school to university, that it was better to get some life experience, travel and grow as a person. Charlie had almost retorted that she didn’t see the point of travelling around, wasting time, just for the sake of it. And as far as life experience went, studying had given her plenty. It’s not like life stood still just because you were at university. Her colleague had given her a superior smile as though she was too young and foolish to understand what he meant.

For a long time, Charlie had hoped their disappointing attitude would improve over time, but it was as though their jealousy and suspicion only intensified as she rose through the hierarchy. When she was new, she had defended herself, argued, left the break room in protest and written angry emails to her managers. But then she had done what most of the women who had made it within the police profession had done: lowered her voice and stopped smiling. And after that, she had had more time and energy to dedicate to what she was paid to do. Lazy, she berated herself sometimes: cowardly and selfish. But if she hadn’t done it, she wouldn’t have been able to stay, develop, climb – and that drove her more than her desire to fight meatheads who didn’t know any better.

Not all men on the force were the same, of course. There were some exceptions, and one of those exceptions was called Anders Bratt and was her closest colleague. He was only a few years older than her, and she had liked him from the first. They came from completely different backgrounds. Anders was a typical upper-class bloke, the kind of person who had enjoyed a stable and well-to-do childhood, sailing camp in the summer and skiing in the Alps in the winter. He could be smug, condescending and annoying, but Charlie forgave him everything because he had the three qualities she appreciated in a person: a good heart, a sense of humour and self-awareness.

Anders would often joke about how much he had enjoyed her joining the group, stirring shit up. There had been talk about her name. On the first day, someone had asked her if she would be okay with being called Charline, just to make things easier, otherwise they would have to add surnames every time they referred to her or the boss. And Charlie had said that she wasn’t okay with it. She wanted to be called Charlie and nothing else.

Later on, Anders had told her that everyone had laughed at that, at how the boss had been forced to change his name when she started. How many people could make their boss change their name, just like that?

Charlie missed a step and let out a curse.

‘What’s happening?’ Challe said.

‘Nothing.’

‘Could you stop by later?’ Challe said.

Charlie’s chest went cold. Was she on today? Challe telling her to take the day off – had that been a dream?

‘I know you’re supposed to be off,’ Challe continued, ‘and I know there’s a heatwave and all that, but something’s come up. Have you seen the headlines?’

‘Headlines?’ Charlie realised she hadn’t checked the news on her phone.

‘A seventeen-year-old girl is missing in Västergötland.’

‘Since when?’

‘Friday. The hicks down there reckoned at first that she’d run away, so they didn’t file a report. But since then things have come to light that suggest suspicious circumstances.’

‘Like what?’

‘The usual: her phone hasn’t been used and her bank account hasn’t been touched.’

‘Where in Västergötland?’ Charlie asked.

‘In Gullspång.’

Charlie froze mid-step. Challe carried on talking about the case, but she had stopped listening. The only thing ringing in her ears was the name of the place. Gullspång.

‘Charlie?’ Challe said. She could hear him lighting a cigarette. ‘You still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sending you and Anders. It might do you good,’ he continued, ‘to get away for a bit.’

Charlie couldn’t help retorting that if that were true it would be equally good for Hugo to get away. Besides, she had her hands full with other things. But Challe told her he was going to reassign the case she was working on, since the investigation was in its early stages anyway, and, well, of course he could send Hugo just as easily, but Charlie shouldn’t think of it as a punishment but rather as a …

This is it, Charlie thought. This is the time to tell him I can’t go.

‘Charlie?’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’ Is the old police station even still there, she wanted to ask. But instead she heard herself say she would be there in an hour.

After they hung up, she went into the nearest 7-Eleven. Under the headline Missing, a big-eyed, strawberry-blonde girl started at her from the newspaper placards. She opened her news app and read. The girl was seventeen-year-old Annabelle Roos. The surname sounded familiar, but Charlie couldn’t place it. How was she supposed to remember all the families in that place? She hadn’t been back for … she counted the years. Had it really been nineteen years?









3



Charlie was still several blocks from her flat. No taxis had turned up and she never took the underground. There was something about being underground that made her struggle to breathe. Her feet ached in her high-heeled shoes. She stopped and took her shoes off. The asphalt was warm against the soles of her feet. If people saw me now, she mused, they’d be hard-pressed to guess my profession.

When she entered her flat and caught sight of her face in the hallway mirror, she cursed loudly. A cut just above her left eyebrow glowed angrily against her pale skin. She touched the thick scab and realised she wouldn’t be able to magic it away with make-up. How the fuck had she cut her forehead? Then it suddenly came back to her: the shower, how she and that Martin bloke had been lathering each other up and how she had slipped and hit … the shower head? She didn’t even know what she had hit.

I’m like a caricature of a detective, she thought to herself, this lonely loser who drinks too much. But then she told herself it was only a periodic thing. Everything always got more dire when summer was approaching or when life messed her about.

She almost regretted not having a man for her colleagues to focus their suspicions on. Now everyone would assume the cut was … actually, what would they assume? Given their most recent office party, over-indulgence in alcohol would probably be high on the list. Challe would tell her she needed help and she would say she was doing fine, that everything was under control.

But did she even believe that herself?

Self-medication? an earnest therapist had once asked her when she had reluctantly told her about her relationship with alcohol. Do you drink to reduce your anxiety?

Charlie had told her it wasn’t about that.

So what was it about then?

It was about being able to relax, about calming her nerves, silencing her thoughts; sometimes she just needed a glass or two to feel good.

The therapist had given her a stern look and told her that was the very definition of self-medication.



Charlie went into the living room. Beer cans and an ashtray littered the coffee table. Good work on the smoking, she thought to herself as she went to fetch a plastic bag to put it all in. When she had cleared the worst of it, she sat down on the sofa and looked at her flat: the surfaces, the high ceilings, the wooden floors. It might have been beautiful if not for the dying plants, the piles of clothes and the windows that hadn’t been washed in years. Everything pointed to it. . .