The Couples Trip

by Ulf Kvensler

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

**Swedish Academy of Crime Writers' Award Best Debut of the Year**
**Shortlisted for the Crimetime Award 2022**

Two couples set out together on a hiking trip that goes terrifyingly wrong in this addictive psychological thriller for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley.

Anna, Henrik and Milena's annual hiking trip is just around the corner. This year, however, Anna and Henrik have a hard time saying no when Milena asks if her boyfriend, Jacob, can tag along. The hike soon spirals into mayhem when the three friends come to realize that taking Jacob was a decision that could change their lives forever.

From the austere mountaintops of northern Sweden, this highly anticipated thriller traverses through the unexplored wilderness—here, there's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Release date: June 6, 2023

Publisher: Hanover Square Press

Print pages: 413

Sample

STOCKHOLM, JULY 2019

I love Stockholm in the middle of July. The residents escape to Gotland, Båstad or the French Riviera, the place sinks into a summer trance. You can kind of have her to yourself.

It was a Saturday evening, the end of a very hot day. It became significantly cooler when the sun no longer reached down into the streets of the built-up city center. I had been in my office since seven in the morning, and decided to walk home in order to get some fresh air. The farther I went, the fewer tourists I saw and heard.

Vasastan was practically deserted. In a few hours, when darkness fell, the drunken, noisy weekend revelers would head for Odenplan—but by then I would be safely tucked up in bed.

I stopped and laid the palm of my hand on the ochre-colored facade of an apartment block. It was as warm as a radiator.

I thought I would pick up some food on the way, and called Henrik to ask if he wanted something. He did, so I ordered a poke bowl with salmon for him, and an eleven-piece for myself from the local Japanese place. When I picked up the dishes the man behind the counter gave me a cheerful nod, and so he should; we went there at least twice a week.

I carried on to our block and took the lift up to the fifth floor. I opened the front door and called out to Henrik.

“Hello!”

“Hi,” came the muted response from the living room. I could hear the sound of the television.

In the kitchen I was confronted with a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, and a messy table. Henrik’s coffee cup was still there, along with bits of kitchen paper. Crumbs everywhere.

I could have wept.

It was Saturday and I’d worked for more than twelve hours, as I had virtually every day throughout the summer. I’d called Henrik and asked what he wanted to eat, I’d ordered the food and picked it up, and he hadn’t even bothered to drag himself off the sofa to tidy up after himself—let alone get out the glasses and something to drink.

He was on holiday, and spent all his time in the apartment.

This massive fucking kitchen with a table that seats ten. What’s the point? We’re pathetic.

The TV fell silent, and he shambled into the kitchen.

“I’m sick and tired of...” I began, my voice shaking with anger. “I’ve sorted the food, couldn’t you at least clean up after yourself? Do you expect me to do that as well?”

Henrik said nothing, but he put his coffee cup in the sink, threw away the kitchen paper, fetched the dishcloth and began to wipe down the table. Judging by his body language, this required an almost superhuman effort.

***

I sighed, took a bottle of sparkling water out of the fridge and poured myself a large glass.

“I think we’re going to have to postpone our trip.”

Henrik looked up but said nothing. He simply carried on wiping the table. “I can’t be away for a week right now,” I went on.

“I see.”

“The beginning of September works better for me.”

“We’ll have to check with Milena.”

“Obviously. I’ll call her.”

---

I was too angry and upset to sit down and eat with him, so I went and took a long shower instead. The stream of hot water washed away some of my frustration, and soon I was regretting my harsh words. I was tired and had overreacted.

We made up later on. Henrik managed a wan smile when I apologized and gave him a hug. We drank a glass of wine and watched an episode of a series on HBO, cuddled up on the sofa. I fell asleep halfway through, woke up as the credits rolled at the end. I kissed Henrik and went to bed. He stayed where he was, staring blankly at the screen.

How did we end up here? Do I even know who Henrik is anymore?

Interview with Anna Samuelsson 880216-3382, September 16, 2019, Gällivare hospital, conducted by Detective Inspector Anders Suhonen.

“So... I’m recording now. Hi, Anna, my name is Anders.”

“Hi.”

“I’m very pleased that you’re willing to talk to me—I realize you’re tired and in pain, but it’s good to tackle these things as soon as possible.”

“Yes.”

“If you start to feel too tired or in too much pain, we can take a break or stop for today and carry on tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”

“Yes.”

“You promise you’ll tell me?”

“Yes.”

“Your pain is manageable now?”

“It’s fine.”

“In that case I’ll just go through the formalities first... What is your full name?”

“Anna Signe Samuelsson.”

“ID number?”

“880216-3382.”

“Where do you live?”

“Stockholm.”

“What’s your profession?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Marital status?”

Silence.

“Anna? Are you married, single...?”

“Engaged.”

“To...?”

“Henrik Ljungman.”

“Was he with you on the trip?”

Silence.

“Did Henrik travel into Sarek with you?”

“Yes.”

“Henrik Ljungman... Do you happen to know his ID number?”

“820302-7141.”

“Thank you. So we’ve got...”

“Have you found Milena?”

“Milena? Who’s Milena?”

“Tankovic. She’s... She was... When... What day is it today?”

“Monday September 16th.”

“Yesterday... I think... We split up...”

Silence.

“Milena Tankovic. Was she alive when you last saw her?”

Silence. Sobbing.

“Anna? Do you know if Milena was alive when you last saw her?”

Sobbing.

“No... But you have to find her...”

“She wasn’t alive?”

“No...”

Sobbing.

“Was Milena with you from the start of the trip?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know her ID number?”

“No.”

“Where did you leave her?”

Silence. Sobbing.

“I can’t...”

“Did you... You were alone when you were found near Aktse. Can you tell me how long you’d been walking on your own?”

Silence. Sobbing.

“Do you think we might find Milena in the same area?”

“I don’t know...”

“Okay... I’m going to go and fetch a map, see if you can give me an idea of where Milena could be. And Henrik. Is that okay with you?”

Silence.

“It was the three of you, right? You, Henrik and Milena?”

Inaudible.

“What did you say?”

“There was someone else.”

1

I know exactly where and when I heard his name for the first time.

It was Friday August 30th, Milena and I were having lunch at Miss Clara on Sveavägen. It was warm and sunny but with a new freshness in the air, the sunlight was a little paler somehow, you could feel that autumn was on the way. We had met up in Naturkompaniet at twelve to update our equipment—a new supply of liquefied petroleum gas for the stove, fine woolen socks, anti-mosquito lotion and spray, and a supply of freeze-dried meals.

I’d booked a table for twelve forty-five, and by one thirty we had finished eating and were each enjoying an espresso. The bill had been paid and I really needed to head back to the office; a long lunch like this would mean working late, even though it was Friday. However Milena and I hadn’t seen each other for a while and she had agreed, at very short notice, to postpone our trip until September. I didn’t want to appear too stressed.

She sipped her coffee, took a deep breath. “So...there was something I wanted to ask you.”

“Oh?”

I could see that whatever she was going to say was making her nervous. Milena had always blushed easily, and the color rose in her pale cheeks. She had changed her hairstyle: the dark blond hair was still shoulder-length, but she had allowed her bangs to grow out, and her face was framed by soft strands. It made her look more feminine, and still as sweet and kind as ever. As so often over the years, I felt like giving her a hug.

“The thing is...” She smiled, almost reluctantly. “I’ve met someone.”

“Fantastic!”

“Yes, it is...fantastic.” She smiled again, took another deep breath. “So who is he?”

“His name is Jacob. We met online.”

“That’s brilliant, Milena!” I reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “How long have you been together?”

“Just over a month, so it’s still pretty new.”

“Tell me all about him! What does he do?”

“Well, at least he’s not a lawyer, which is nice.”

“Sounds like a catch.”

“He’s a bit older than me...”

“How much older?”

“He’s thirty-eight.”

“You’re practically the same age,” I said. Which wasn’t true of course. Milena was thirty-two. I was thirty-one. But I have colleagues who are only a little older than me and who have started to panic, or realized that they’re going to panic in a few years, and have got together with men in their fifties, newly divorced with kids. A guaranteed recipe for a complicated life. Jacob was the same age as Henrik.

“He’s into climbing, kitesurfing, all kinds of extreme sports,” Milena went on. “The two of you have something in common there.”

I began to wonder if he might be someone I’d met.

“What’s his surname?”

“Tessin.”

“Jacob Tessin...”

“And he’s spent a lot of time in the mountains, both walking and climbing. So when he heard we were going up to Abisko, he...he asked if he could join us.”

The question took me by surprise; I didn’t know what to say. “Right,” I managed eventually.

“I know this is very last minute, so I understand if it’s not okay.”

“It’s just...this kind of trip can be pretty intense, and Henrik and I have never even met him...”

“No, it’s fine, I understand.”

“Do you want him to come?”

“Of course—he’s my boyfriend.” Milena smiled. I smiled back.

“I’ll have to ask Henrik.”

“Of course.”

“It’s just over a week until we leave—will he be able to get the time off work at such short notice?”

“He says it’s not a problem.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a consultant wit

h a company called BCG.”

“I’ve heard of them... Sorry, but I’m really curious now—have you got a photo?”

“No,” Milena said, half-heartedly digging out her phone. “It’s weird, but I haven’t.”

She fiddled with her phone as if some forgotten image of Jacob might suddenly appear.

“It’s fine, I was just thinking that if he’s a climber, I might know him from somewhere.”

“Sorry, no, I haven’t got...” She fell silent. I smiled again.

“I’ll have a chat with Henrik and give you a call. I’m so pleased you’ve met someone, Milena—I really am.”

“Thank you.”

“And I can’t wait to meet him. It’s just... We need to give it some thought.”

“I understand—and if you and Henrik aren’t cool with the idea, then tell me. It’s not an issue.”

“No. Great.”

We left the restaurant and said our goodbyes on the pavement outside with a hug and a promise to speak on the weekend.

On the way back to the office my curiosity got the better of me. I opened up BCG’s home page and searched for “Jacob Tessin.” Boston Consulting Group is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious consultancies. Admittedly its reputation in Sweden is somewhat tarnished due to its involvement in the New Karolinska building project, but even so. Many sought posts there, but few were chosen. Their salaries and working hours were similar to ours as corporate lawyers. Eighty-hour weeks were nothing unusual, nor was an annual salary similar to that of a company director.

However I couldn’t find a Jacob Tessin. Or Jakob Tessin, or any of the other spelling variations I came up with. This didn’t strike me as particularly strange; many home pages have ineffective search functions, although you might think a firm like BCG would have the ability to construct a fully operational website. Maybe Jacob wasn’t based in the Stockholm office; I knew that consultants at that level were often loaned to projects in other countries.

I tried Facebook instead, and there he was.

Jacob Tessin. Tall and slim, athletic, with a muscular build that I recognized from other climbers and endurance sportsmen and women. Muscles for a specific purpose, not created in front of the mirror at the gym. His dark brown hair was cut short, and his skin was tanned; there was a warmth to his coloring. He looked like one of those fortunate people who never burn in the sun.

Almost every picture showed him in various sporting contexts: in the mountains, in a kayak riding the rapids, kitted out ready to go kitesurfing on a beach. Three guys in a forest in mountain bike gear, arms around one another’s shoulders, Jacob in the middle, all three muddy and happy as little boys.

The only thing I couldn’t see was his eyes. He was always wearing sporty sunglasses that wrapped tightly around his head, reflecting the world in all the colors of the rainbow.

But then I found a

group of photographs that differed from the rest: Jacob and two male friends on holiday in some Mediterranean country, possibly Spain or Portugal. Surfing and sunbathing of course, plus a few taken in an ancient, crumbling town center, with narrow alleyways and shops that obviously catered to tourists. There were also several pictures from an evening at a taverna. Jacob and his friends were sitting at an outside table with the street clearly visible behind them. Colored lanterns and a warm glow from other restaurants and bars, plenty of people around. I could almost sense the warm breeze on my skin, feel the pleasant buzz of intoxication after a couple of glasses of wine, the joy of life. I longed to be there.

And Jacob had pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead. He was smiling at the camera, his brown eyes sparkling.

Interview with Anna Samuelsson 880216-3382, September 16, 2019, Gällivare hospital, conducted by Detective Inspector Anders Suhonen.

“Okay, let’s see... Could you try to show me on the map roughly where you think we should look for Henrik and Milena? And Jacob.”

“I don’t know...”

“Let’s just try, Anna. It doesn’t have to be exact. Sarek is huge, so if we can just reduce the search area a little that would be very helpful. This is where we found you.”

Silence.

“I’m guessing that you’d come from the interior of the park? So you were heading east, like this?”

“Mm.”

“Did you walk along this river? Do you remember? Was the river on your right?”

Silence.

“I think so.”

“And you were alone? Or were any of the others with you?”

“Milena... She was with me for a while.”

“So you and Milena walked together for some of the time?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Do you remember where you came from? Did the two of you pass Rovdjurstorget?”

Silence.

“Anna? Can you remember anything about the route you took?”

Silence. Sobbing.

“Well, at least we have something to go on as far as Milena is concerned, which is great. We’ll leave it there for today. Get some rest, and we’ll try again tomorrow if you feel up to it.”

Silence.

“And you can tell your story in whatever order you like, at your own speed. I’ll be listening.”

2

“It’s very late to come up with this now,” Henrik said, squeezing lime juice into a bowl to make a dressing. “We leave in a week.”

It was Friday evening, a few hours after I’d met up with Milena. Henrik and I were in the kitchen preparing dinner. We were expecting guests. I’d had to work late after my extended lunch break and had only just got home, but fortunately Henrik had made a start without me. He liked cooking, and the prospect of a sociable gathering seemed to have given him a burst of energy, which was much needed. He’d been back at work in Uppsala for a few weeks now, but he couldn’t shake off the listlessness, the constant grayness in his attitude and appearance.

Now however a salmon on a bed of salt was baking in the oven, new potatoes with dill were bubbling away in a cast iron pan and dessert was already in the fridge—individual portions of panna cotta, along with a bowl of blueberries in lime juice and muscovado sugar. I was chopping coriander to go with the cod ceviche starter. Two bottles of Sancerre stood open and ready on the table with several more waiting in the wine cooler.

I’d told Henrik that Milena had a new boyfriend, and asked if he could join us on our trip to the mountains. I’d given the matter a lot of thought during the afternoon, and was leaning toward letting Jacob come along.

“Absolutely,” I said, “but they’ve only just got together, which is why she didn’t mention it earlier.” I put the coriander leaves in a glass and snipped them into tiny pieces.

Henrik didn’t reply; there was a brooding quality to his silence. He shook some pink peppercorns into the electronic mill and ground them over the dressing.

---

When we sold our respective flats in order to move in together, we found this four-room 120-square-meter apartment, which was unusual in that it hadn’t been renovated for twenty-five years. We stripped out the whole place. I acted as project manager—except for the kitchen, which was Henrik’s domain. We kept as much of the original charm as possible: the wainscoting, the stucco ceilings, the old wooden floors. And then we filled it with modern Scandinavian design. Not particularly original, but attractive and functional and not excessively personal, in case we wanted to sell up and buy a house in a few years’ time.

We knocked down a wall in order to make the kitchen bigger and allow for a generous dining area. Oven, fridge, freezer, microwave, espresso machine, food processor—everything was stylish and high tech. One of the things Henrik liked most about cooking was the ability to acquire various gadgets. He used a thermometer to ensure that the eggs boiled at precisely sixty-three degrees. He loved making crème brûlée so that he could use his ridiculously oversized blowtorch, a professional tool that he’d seen the chefs wielding in a trendy concept restaurant. He was able to adjust the temperature of the oven from his mobile, wherever he might be in the apartment, while another app controlled the music that poured from tiny hidden speakers. I once counted: in the kitchen alone four different digital displays showed the exact time.

It’s not that I’m unhappy in our apartment, but I have sometimes wondered whether my yearning for nature and the mountains is heightened by a need to escape from digital numbers and buttons and menus and things that beep and efficient little electric motors that hum away discreetly. I have to get back to something primordial, something that has always been there and will always be there. In some strange way, feeling small and insignificant brings me a deep sense of calm.

The mountains don’t care about you. Nor do they ask anything of you.

---

Henrik clearly had nothing more to add, but I kept going. “I just think it’s hard to say no.”

“Why?”

“Milena’s never objected to you coming along.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?” 

“She knows me. She knew me before you did, in fact. We haven’t a clue who this new guy is.”

I got Henrik’s point of course. The three of us had been on many trips over the years, following well-established patterns, each with our own role to play. It was one of the few times of the year when I felt completely relaxed. No pressure to achieve anything. Letting someone we didn’t know come along, even if he was really nice, would mean that none of us would be able to switch off in the same way as usual.

And if he was weird, or unpleasant, our week in the mountains might be very hard work.

“She agreed when we wanted to postpone the trip from July to September,” I pointed out.

“When you wanted to postpone the trip.”

“Okay, okay. Whatever. It just seems a bit mean if we say no now. She’s never asked to bring anyone before. She must have thought about how he’d fit in. And even if he’s not the nicest guy in the world, surely we can put up with him for a week. For Milena’s sake.”

Once again, Henrik didn’t say a word. He concentrated on mixing his dressing. I sliced the fresh cod into neat little pieces, and eventually I looked at him.

“Don’t you think? Henrik?”

“Fine,” he said eventually. He sounded tired.

I glanced at the clock on the microwave. Our guests were due very soon. The cooker beeped to tell us that the potatoes were ready. Henrik slid the pan off the hot plate, which glowed orange beneath the ceramic hob.

Neither of us spoke again until the doorbell rang a few minutes later. It felt as if the first guests to arrive were saving us from each other.

Interview with Anna Samuelsson 880216-3382, September 17, 2019, Gällivare hospital, conducted by Detective Inspector Anders Suhonen.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Okay.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Not very well.”

“Were you in pain?”

“Mm.”

“And now?”

“No pain, but I’m tired.”

“I can understand that. We’ll have a little chat, Anna, and as soon as you feel it’s too much, you tell me. Is that okay with you?”

“Mm.”

“I just want to check that I’ve got this right: you and Henrik Ljungman are engaged?”

“Yes.”

“And Milena Tankovic and Jacob Tessin—are they also a couple?”

“Yes.”

“And how did you all know one another?”

“Milena and I are friends from university. We both studied Law at Uppsala. Milena knows Henrik from Uppsala too. He was a lecturer in the Law Department.”

“So the three of you have known one another for a long time.”

“Yes. And we’ve spent a week in the mountains every year for ages.”

“Where did you go?”

“The usual places. The Jämtland Triangle. Kungsleden from Abisko, up Kebnekaise. Norway once. Borgafjäll.”

“Did you stay in cabins?”

“Usually, yes, but we always take tents so that we can spend a couple of nights out on the mountain.”

“I understand. The reason I’m asking is that Sarek is a little tougher—as you’ve discovered. And in September...the weather can be pretty bad then.”

“We always go in July, but I was working all summer so we had to postpone until September.”

“I see.”

“And we weren’t planning to go to Sarek. We were going to follow Kungsleden again, from Abisko to Kebnekaise.”

“But you changed your minds?”

“It was Jacob’s idea.”