Missing (23 page)

T
he lock whirred, even before she had time to take her finger off the bell. She wondered if he always stood next to the buzzer. Just like the last time, he was waiting by his open front door when she reached his landing. Neither of them spoke before she'd stepped inside and he'd pulled the door shut behind them.

‘You've done well – from notorious serial killer to popular heroine in just one week. It's impressive, no other word for it.'

She walked into the room, straight to his computer. This time he did not stop her.

‘Did you find him?'

He nodded.

‘How much did you say you wanted this time? Five grand?'

He smiled. She put her hand in her jacket pocket, found the notes and put them down on the keyboard. He pulled a white envelope out of the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to her.

‘Your kid, is he?'

She just looked at him, took the envelope and
walked away from him, in the direction of the hall. He followed her.

‘Can't help being curious.'

She didn't reply, just went out on the landing and closed his front door behind her. This was the first time that she allowed herself to think about it and give way to her feelings. She was shaking all over. To calm herself, she walked down one floor. Only then could she contemplate even looking at the envelope. She sat down on a step, her heart beating hard.

The white envelope contained the answer to fourteen years of anxious speculation.

Who was he? Where did he live? What kind of person was he?

Now she would know.

The bus was leaving in two hours' time. The documents had been signed and exchanged, the cheque was on the table. They had arranged for Gunvor Strömberg to meet her in the bus terminal to hand over the keys.

Peace and quiet. Rest for a troubled soul.

In this white envelope was the name of the one who had always been missed.

She would always miss him. She had lost him fourteen years ago and now, everything she could do was too late – far too late.

Why was she doing this? For his sake? Or for her own sake?

She stopped walking downstairs, struck by her own unexpected insight into his rights, as opposed to hers.

So, by which right would she come marching into his life, fourteen years after his birth? What did he have to gain? She would get the reward of knowing, of her search having come to an end. Did he owe her that?

He was free from grief. Why should she drag him along to share hers?

If she still owed him anything, it was to bear her sense of loss on her own.

She had arrived on a landing. On the wall in front of her was the lid to a rubbish chute. People stopped there to throw their bags of waste into the basement bin. A useful place to shed your past. Her heart pounding in her chest, she opened the lid. She did not feel anxious. Her mind was filled with the liberating knowledge of doing the right thing.

If the bus service stuck to the timetable, she would be home in time to hear her neighbour's trumpet play a greeting to the setting sun.

Missing

KARIN ALVTEGEN was born in Jönköping, Sweden, in 1965 and had a varied career, including work in set design for film and stage, before she started to write. She won Sweden's most prestigious crime novel award, the Glass Key, in 2000 with her novel,
Missing
, and further acclaim with her next two novels,
Betrayal
and
Shame
. She is the great-niece of Astrid Lindgren (author of the Pippi Longstocking stories), and lives in Stockholm.

ANNA PATERSON has worked as a literary translator from the Germanic languages for over a decade. She won the prestigious Bernard Shaw Prize for Literary Translation in 2000.

Betrayal
Shame