You Will Never Be Found

Book 2: High Coast Series

by Tove Alsterdal

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

He was locked inside an abandoned house. But he's not the only one . . . When a dead man is found locked in the basement of an abandoned house, deep in the woods, there is no evidence of what happened beyond his name - scratched into the wall before he died. The regional police can't find anyone who knew him. But no-one knows the locals like Detective Eira Sjöden. When her expert knowledge of her home town is again called in, she knows one of them must have seen something. Before she can uncover the truth, though, someone shockingly close to her disappears. Has he fallen victim to the same criminal they've been chasing? And can Eira put the pieces together in time to save him? PRAISE FOR WE KNOW YOU REMEMBER 'Intensely gripping.' CHRIS WHITAKER 'Strong characters, a great sense of place and plot twists galore.' SUNDAY TIMES CRIME CLUB 'A terrific twisting rollercoaster of a thriller.' PETER JAMES 'A police procedural with panache.' O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE 'Atmospheric, immersive and utterly compelling.' M. W. CRAVEN WHAT READERS THINK 'Breathtaking!' 5* review 'There are twists and turns and dead ends galore!' 5* review 'A brilliant story with a very likeable police detective.' 5* review 'Really loved this Scandi crime story. Had me guessing to the end!' 5* review **WE KNOW YOU REMEMBER, the first in this unmissable, prize-winning series, is out now**

Release date: January 10, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 448

Sample

Ådalen—October

Eira Sjödin was busy wrapping coffee cups in towels when her mother started unpacking the first box.

“What are you doing, Mum?”

“Oh, there’s no need for any of this.”

“But you said you wanted to take your books with you?”

Kerstin pushed a few of the books onto the shelf, in the gaps left behind by the ones they had picked out.

“It’ll probably never happen,” she said. “It’s all just so unnecessary, the whole lot. I can live so cheaply here. Two thousand kronor a month.”

Eira slumped onto a chair. She was exhausted. They had been at it for over a week now, the painful procedure of whittling down a lifetime’s worth of objects and trying to make them fit into eighteen square meters.

She had managed to convince her mother that she really did need to move into the care home, thirty times, if not more, only for Kerstin to have forgotten by morning—sometimes only a few minutes later. Eira made a mental note of everything her mother had unpacked so that she could repack it that evening, once Kerstin was asleep.

“Which of the pictures do you like best?”

The frames had hung on the walls for so long that they left pale marks behind. The black-and-white etching of the river, from the days when the logs used to pile up in a jam; a framed drawing Eira’s brother had done before she was even born. Mother, father, and child, the sun shining down on them with its thick golden rays.

And the curtains. From a home spread over two floors to a room with a single window. Her clothes, too. The municipal care budget probably didn’t stretch to ironing pretty blouses, Eira thought when she saw what Kerstin was unpacking from her suitcases, the neatly folded fruits of yesterday’s efforts, they were now going back onto their hangers. Kerstin was still young when the dementia took hold, just over seventy. Eira had seen how old the other residents were, and she wondered how long it would be before her lovely mother adjusted to a life in sweatpants, the occasional skirt with an elasticized waistband when she had visitors.

They only had one week for her to move in, otherwise the place would go to someone else, but Eira picked up when her phone rang anyway. She still couldn’t say no.

“How’re things?” August Engelhardt asked when she got into the patrol car fifteen minutes later.

“All good,” said Eira.

He glanced over to her as he slowed for the turnoff, giving her a smile that was more than just collegial.

“Did I mention that it’s good to be back?” he said.

August Engelhardt was five years younger than Eira, a fresh-faced police assistant who was back in Kramfors after a lengthy posting down in Trollhättan. Trying out different areas of the country to see what they had to offer, no doubt.

“What have we been called out to?” she asked.

“Missing person. A middle-aged man from Nyland, no criminal record as far as they could see.”

“Who reported it?”

“His ex-wife. Their daughter’s a student in Luleå, but she called her mum to say she was worried. It’s been three weeks.”

Eira closed her eyes. She could see the road even with them shut, her mind on the old chest of drawers that had been passed down through the generations, was that one piece of furniture too many? They might have to navigate the room with a wheelchair before long, it could all happen so damn fast.

 

The missing man lived in an apartment just behind the supermarket in Nyland. They pulled up by a cluster of two-story buildings that looked like countless others across the country, well tended but anonymous. The property manager who was supposed to be letting them in was running late, but the man’s ex-wife was already waiting outside. Wearing a blazer and a pair of trendy white glasses, not a single strand of her short hair out of place.

“No one’s heard from him in three weeks,” said Cecilia Runne. “Hasse can be a real shit sometimes, but he’s always gone to work.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s an actor, technically, but he does a bit of everything to stay afloat—you have to, living up here. Simple building jobs, maybe even the odd shift for home help, I don’t really know. Our daughter said he was meant to be filming a part in Umeå last week. Hasse’s useless with money, but he’d never let a job pass him by. Not after last year, when he didn’t have anything for seven months.”

The virus that had struck the globe, the cultural world, and the elderly with such force. It had also pushed back Kerstin’s move into care, until the situation at home became unsustainable.

August jotted down everything the ex-wife said.

When was Hans Runne last heard from, who did he hang around with, did he have any history of mental illness, a drinking problem?

“Is there a new partner in the picture?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Cecilia Runne replied, possibly a little too quickly. “Not that I know of, anyway.” Her eyes darted around the yard, to the leaf-covered lawn, a walking frame outside a doorway.

It wasn’t a priority case—an adult male who hadn’t turned up to work and wasn’t answering his phone—barely even a matter for the police, but they would take the report, help her into his apartment. Worst-case scenario, they would find him dead up there.

That was the most likely explanation. A heart attack, a stroke, something like that. Suicide. Or maybe he had succumbed to a midlife crisis and gone wandering in the mountains—which also wasn’t a crime.

“I just hope he’s not lying dead in there,” said the woman, the fear in her voice now palpable. “There’s been so much of that lately, people who’ve been left like that for weeks. It happened to an acquaintance and several others I’ve read about. I don’t know if Paloma could live with that.”

“Paloma?”

“Our daughter. She’s been calling and calling, she was going to come down from Luleå, even though she’s got exams right now. I told her I’d take care of it. I promised her an explanation.”

The property manager arrived to let them inside. Hans Runne lived on the first floor. They stepped over bills and junk mail, the air ripe with old rubbish or possibly something else. The hallway led straight into the kitchen. A few cups and glasses in the sink, wine bottles on the counter. The smell was coming from the rubbish bag beneath the countertop.

“He might drink a bit much,” the ex-wife said behind them. “It could’ve gotten worse since we split up, I don’t know.”

There was no sign of Hans Runne in the living room. A few more glasses and bottles, an enormous TV. The bedroom door was closed.

“It might be best if you wait in the hallway,” said Eira.

The woman raised a hand to her mouth and backed away from them with a terrified look in her eyes. August pushed the door open.

He and Eira both breathed a sigh of relief.

The bed was unmade, a tangle of bedding and pillows, but there was no one inside. They ducked down and checked beneath the bed. No sign of anything out of the ordinary, just a man who didn’t make his bed. Who read before going to sleep, a thick volume of Ulf Lundell’s diaries. And who, judging by the tooth guard in an open plastic case, ground his teeth in his sleep. The air smelled like it could have been standing still for three weeks, give or take. Stuffy but not exactly unpleasant.

Cecilia Runne had slumped down into a chair when they got back to the kitchen.

“He can’t do this, disappearing on his daughter. Leaving me to take care of everything. It’s so fucking typical of Hasse. He’s all talk, but when it comes to actually taking responsibility for other people . . .”

“How long have the two of you been divorced?” asked Eira, opening the fridge. She heard the woman say something about three years, that she was the one who had left.

Milk that had gone out of date a week ago, a ham sandwich that had hardened at the edges. If Hans Runne’s disappearance was voluntary, it definitely didn’t seem like it had been planned.

Cecilia Runne began to cry, calm and composed.

“I’ve been so angry with him,” she said. “And now it’s too late.”

Eira saw August studying the free newspapers in the hallway, the dates.

“We don’t know that,” she said. “It’s too early to say anything.”

 

Fanom and Skadom and Undrom. There were villages with strange, incomprehensible names like that dotted throughout the forests around Sollefteå. Tone Elvin slowed down to thirty as she drove into Arlum och Stöndar. The village really did have two names on the map, as though two smaller communities had come together to form one. She had no idea why, it was the first time she had ever come out this way; she knew nothing about the people in Arlum och Stöndar. She just drove slowly through. A few houses on either side of a narrow road, that was all. One or two seemed to be empty, but none were dilapidated enough to catch her eye. She continued towards the old ironworks, her heart skipping a beat as she passed Offer.

It sounded so ominous, naming a hamlet after the Swedish word for victim, yet somehow it was also beautiful.

Tone was looking for the places people had forgotten. Roads that had been used some fifty or a hundred years ago, then abandoned to their fate.

Spotting an overgrown forest track, she pulled over and hung her camera, an old Leica, around her neck.

The forest seemed to close in around her. The September air smelled earthy, ripe, the scent of death that follows life, bringing resurrection. A raven flapped up and soared high above her, soon joined by a second. She had read that they tracked bears, and her heart started racing again. What were you supposed to do if you came across a bear, meet its eye or not?

Bright autumn colors replaced the uniform darkness of the spruce trees. There was a glade up ahead, a neglected garden full of deciduous trees and bushes, a real abandoned house. Tone took a deep breath. It was incredible, exactly what she had been looking for. The paint had flaked away, and the facade was an expanse of gray. She raised her camera and waded through the tall grass. Caught the past through her viewfinder, the sorrow of what once was. The sunlight danced between the leaves, making the spiderwebs shimmer.

The ravens landed in front of her.

It was almost too much. The black birds were like omens of death among the beautiful greenery, against the backdrop of the weather-beaten house. One of them hopped along the cracked foundation, another had landed on a branch. Tone backed away with her camera raised. She shouted to make them lift off again, to capture their black wingbeats.

She loaded a new roll of film, fumbling and stressed. She needed to capture everything before the daylight faded. Oblivion, that was what she would call the exhibition. Either that or Loss. Her psychologist friend had told her to face up to her grief, to the fact that she was all alone in the world, but she would do more than that. She would document it in black and white, in all its grayness, her very own project that would take her back to what she loved most: photography.

No more home-help shifts to pay the rent.

The porch outside the front door was rotten, weeds poking up through the boards. She used tight, tight framing to capture the grain and the detail, the pale remnants of paint and the different layers of the aged wood. All the years, all the lives that had passed through.

Tone tried the door handle, forged from iron. It wasn’t locked, and the door swung open.

Silence. The sunlight filtering in through the dusty windowpanes filled the room with slanting rays of gold, light that would have made Rembrandt jealous. There were a couple of broken chairs in one corner, and Tone dragged one of them into the middle of the floor. Oddly enough, it stayed upright, despite missing a leg. She photographed it from various angles, adding a broken stool. Suddenly she had drama, a fight from years ago, someone who left, someone who stayed. She turned the chair and the atmosphere changed. The light dipped slightly with each frame. Evening was approaching. Tone peered through to the next room.

An old iron bedframe. A ripped, disgusting horsehair mattress. She shot a few frames that made her feel uneasy. The room was north facing, which meant there were no shadows, just gloom. She stepped on a floorboard that creaked loudly beneath her, and her mind turned to the dead, she saw images of something violent. Outside, one of the ravens screeched. The house was on its guard, groaning and sighing and driving her away.

It’s all in your mind, she told herself once she was back outside. The sun had dipped behind the trees, and the cool air felt rawer. That’s just the sound old buildings make, she thought. Maybe there were swallows living in the roof, there were almost certainly mice in the walls.

Her art required her to delve into her own fears, touching upon the things she found painful. That was what she had to convey in her images.

Just not right now, she thought, making her way through the aspen and birch trees in what she thought was the direction of the trail. She could no longer see it.

 

Just like that, everything was in place. The chest of drawers and the bookcase and all the rest of it, shabby and old against the pale walls and the metal bedframe, an adjustable hospital model. Eira would have to get going to work soon, but she still took the time to hang the curtains. She couldn’t leave her mother with this mess; everything had to be nice and cozy, it had to feel like home.

Or an illusion of it, anyway.

“I’ll come back and help you with the books tomorrow,” she said, unpacking the last few glasses. Four of each, in hope of visitors. The only cupboard was getting full.

“No, no, I can manage that myself,” said Kerstin. “You don’t know how to organize them anyway.”

The librarian in her was the last part to disappear.

Time was different in the care home. Slower. It felt wrong to hurry her, possibly inhumane, but Eira had no choice.

“You’ll be happy here.”

She hugged her mother as she left. Something they rarely did.

“Mmm, I don’t know,” said Kerstin.

The autumn air, crisp and clear. Eira paused for a moment to catch her breath. There was a path down to the river, outdoor furniture that hadn’t yet been brought in. The forecast kept talking about a warm spell. Everything would be OK, wouldn’t it?

She drove to the station in the rented van, would just have to pay for another day.

A young woman was standing by the main doors. She seemed lost.

“Are you looking for someone?” Eira asked as she held her card to the reader and entered her code.

“Yes, but . . .”

Eira paused midstep on her way into the building.

“Do you want to report something?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come.” The young woman’s voice was as delicate as a dragonfly wing, her hair bleached. A ring in her lower lip.

“I’m a police assistant, you can talk to me. Has something happened?”

“It’s not about me.” The young woman ran a hand through her hair, neither smoothing it nor messing it up. “It’s my dad. We’ve already reported him missing and Mum says there’s nothing else we can do, but surely there has to be something?”

“Would you like to come in?”

It was only after Eira had showed her over to one of the vinyl sofas in what had once been the reception area, back when the station actually had opening hours, that she asked her name.

Paloma Runne.

That wasn’t the kind of name you forgot. It brought back melodies, a cheesy song from the past. Una paloma blanca . . .

“I was there when we went into your father’s apartment last week,” said Eira.

“Oh, that’s lucky. I wanted to talk to one of you, because over the phone they just said they couldn’t tell me anything, blah, blah, blah.”

“Would you like a coffee? Water?”

Paloma nodded, giving Eira a chance to get away, up the stairs, waiting as the machine ground the beans. She needed time to think.

Hans Runne.

Had they made any progress? She had used her time off in lieu to help her mother move and hadn’t given the missing man a single thought in days.

Healthy, some would say. Being able to forget about work and focus on what really mattered in life: our nearest and dearest. But Eira thought there was something suffocating about that approach, as though it implied that our nearest and dearest would be neglected otherwise.

She spotted August as she was heading back down with the two coffees.

“What’s the latest on the missing man in Nyland?” she asked.

“Don’t know, I guess he’s still missing?”

“His daughter is downstairs.”

August got a vague look in his eye and half turned to his computer. The call records from the man’s network provider had come in a few days earlier, as had his bank statements. Since there hadn’t been any indication of a crime, requesting them hadn’t been the natural next step, but they had done it anyway. Eira remembered how she had felt on leaving the apartment: ...