Vanished (39 page)

The strains died out. A man in a dark grey suit, the officiating clergyman, went over and stood in front of the coffin. He spoke about life and death: platitudes. After a few minutes Annika closed her eyes, hearing his words fall and letting them wash over her like the music: ‘Twilight is the most beautiful hour’, ‘All the love that heaven affords’, the lyrics promised. When the pop song ‘I’m most at home where I’m free to roam’ began, she felt annoyed again.

‘Free to roam’: what in God’s name was this? Aida had been free to roam Sergelstorg – had she felt at home there? What fool had picked the music?

Angrily, Annika dashed the tears from her eyes. Everyone seemed to be crying. She looked at the clergyman, bowing his head in a routine show of respect as he sat in the front row.
What did you know about Aida?
He didn’t have a single solitary personal thing to say about her, he had never met her.

Annika closed her eyes, tried to conjure up Aida and saw her in her mind’s eye: ill, frightened, hunted.

Who were you?
Annika wondered.
Why did you die?

The man in the suit started talking again, rhythmically, reading a poem by Edith Södergran. One of the women in the first pew went up to the altar and sang
a cappella
, in a beautiful soaring voice. The words were Serbo-Croat, so Annika couldn’t understand them. The notes soared upwards, swirling under the chapel dome, expanding vibrantly, and suddenly the grief rising in the chapel was genuine, piercing,
why, why, why?

Annika sobbed into her hands, grief like a heavy lump in her chest, tangible, loaded with guilt.

We’re all doing this for our own sakes
, she thought,
not for Aida. It makes no difference to her.

Another hymn, a familiar one, one that had been played at Gran’s funeral. Annika mouthed the words: ‘What glory there is on Earth, what glory there is in Heaven, singing praises we will enter Paradise’.

She bowed her head and pursed her lips.

A silence filled the air. She couldn’t breathe. The bells began to toll again and it was over, Aida was on her way to oblivion, she would vanish for ever. She wanted to protest, to stop the men who lifted up Aida’s coffin and carried it down the aisle, past her, a mere metre away,
I’m not ready to let her go, I need to know why!
Feeling nauseated, Annika got to her feet and waited until the rest of the funeral party filed past her, noticing how they looked at her. She was the last person to leave.

The cold air hit her. It was crisp and pure and the snow sparkled in the sun. The men put the casket down on a bier. She saw the rest of the funeral party gather on the steps and along the paths. They blew their noses and murmured to each other.

They all knew Aida. They all had some kind of relationship to her. Every last one of them knew her better than I did.

Annika slowly walked up to a woman who was standing a few steps below her.

‘Excuse me if I’m intruding,’ Annika said and introduced herself. ‘I don’t know many people here. How did you come to know Aida?’

The woman gave her a friendly smile and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

‘I’m the superintendent at the refugee camp that Aida was sent to when she came to Sweden.’

They shook hands. Both women took a deep breath and smiled in embarrassment.

‘I’m a journalist,’ Annika said. ‘I came because I thought Aida was all alone in the world.’

The woman nodded.

‘She
was
all alone. Many people tried to approach her, but it was very hard to reach her. I believe she chose to be alone.’

Annika swallowed. It was certainly damned convenient to blame Aida herself, even in death.

‘What about the others?’ Annika asked. ‘If she didn’t have any friends, then who are they?’

The woman shot her a startled look.

‘They’re refugees too – they met Aida at the camp. She used to come and visit. I also see a neighbour of hers from Vaxholm and then there are the representatives from the Bosnian Cultural Association. One of them was the woman who sang, wasn’t it beautiful?’

‘Wasn’t there anyone who could help Aida?’ Annika asked. ‘Didn’t she have anyone to turn to?’

The camp supervisor looked sadly at Annika.

‘You didn’t know her very well, did you?’

The men had placed Aida’s coffin on a wheeled bier and now the slow journey to the grave began. The woman Annika had been talking to joined the others and she followed suit.

‘It’s true,’ Annika said in a low voice, ‘I didn’t know her very well. I met her a few times before she died, that’s all. When did she come to Sweden?’

The camp supervisor looked over Annika’s shoulder and hesitated before answering.

‘In the final days of the war,’ she finally whispered. ‘She had several gunshot wounds, shrapnel all over her body – it was a terrible sight. Flashbacks, the shakes, breaking into sweats, a poor perception of reality. She drank a great deal. We really did everything we could to help her: doctors, counsellors, psychologists. I don’t think it made much of a difference. Aida had devastating demons.’

Annika opened her eyes wide.

‘What do you mean?’

Another woman came up to the supervisor and whispered something to her and they went over to one of the refugees who was crying so hard she was about to break down. Annika looked around in confusion, slipped on a patch of ice and almost fell. She felt sick and the bier creaked in the cold. The coffin moved along the path and was obscured from view by the trees, the shadows, and then it was out of reach. She fought the impulse to run after it, to bang on the lid.

Tell me about your demons! What did they do to you?

The grave inspired dread, a study in darkness and cold.
Why do they have to be so deep?
Carefully, Annika bent over it, looked down, saw her own shadow vanish in its depths and quickly backed away.

The coffin was resting next to the grave, propped up on a few beams. The mourners gathered around the plot. Everyone’s eyes were red. The officiating clergyman said a few more words. Annika was shivering with cold and wanted to leave. Aida wasn’t in that coffin, Aida wasn’t there at all, Aida had already slipped away along with her demons and her secrets.

Out of the corner of her eye Annika could see someone approaching: two large black cars with dark-toned windows and blue licence plates. They braked, came to a standstill and their engines were switched off. Annika regarded them with surprise.

Suddenly all the car doors flew open at once: five, six, seven men got out. The clergyman stopped talking and the members of the funeral party looked at each other in confusion. The men in the cars were wearing grey coats. They looked around, watching the funeral party with grim expressions on their faces.

An old man stepped forward. Her mouth half-open, Annika stared at him: he was a military man who walked stiffly and his expression was stern – he had no eyes for anything but the coffin. His uniform was richly decorated, he held a small paper bag in his hand and everyone backed away as he approached the grave. Annika was standing on the other side of the hole in the ground and, to her amazement, saw the old man fall to his knees, doff his hat and start to murmur a stream of unintelligible words. His hair was sparse and grey, the pate shining through it. He was on his knees praying for quite some time, breathing heavily.

Annika couldn’t help staring at him and listening intently to his ravaged voice.

Then he got up again, with a lot of effort, picked up the bag and pulled out a handful of something that he sprinkled on the coffin: soil. A handful of soil!

His murmuring increased in volume. Transfixed, Annika listened as another handful of soil rained on the casket. More words: sad, heavy, pregnant with meaning. A third handful and then the murmuring died away. The man put the bag back in his pocket and brushed off his hands.

You know all about Aida,
she thought.
You’re familiar with her demons.

Annika rushed around the grave. The man was leaving, going back to the cars and the other men. She grabbed him by the sleeve.

‘Please, sir!’

Surprised, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at her.

‘Who are you?’ she asked in English. ‘How do you know Aida?’

The man stared at her and tried to shake off her hand.

‘I’m a journalist,’ Annika said. ‘I met Aida a few days before she died. Who are you?’

Suddenly, the men in grey coats were everywhere. They placed themselves between the man and herself; they appeared to be upset and asked the man something, repeating the same word several times. The old man dismissed them with a wave, then turned his back on her while the group began to move towards their cars, a grey mass. They got in, started the cars’ engines and rode off among the trees.

Sweaty and pale, Annika stared at them.

She had been able to catch one of the words that the man had uttered by the graveside, one single word. He had repeated it several times, she was sure of it.

Bijelina.

One by one the women stepped up to the graveside, said a few words and put flowers on the coffin. Annika felt panicky: she hadn’t brought any flowers, she didn’t have anything to say, only that she was sorry, sorry to have let Aida down, sorry to have brought about her death.

She turned away, tripped, had to get out of there, couldn’t stay.

Aida and the old man must have been close – he might even be her father.

The thought struck Annika:
What if he knows what I’ve done?

I was only trying to help,
she protested silently.
I didn’t mean any harm.

She started walking in the direction of the bus stop, shame and guilt making her unsteady on her feet. She felt sick and wanted to throw up.

Once she had got through the hole in the fence and had walked a few metres, someone put a hand over her mouth.

Her first thought was that the men in the grey coats had come back for her. That the old man wanted to settle the score.

‘I’ve got a gun pointed at your spine,’ the man hissed. ‘Keep moving.’

Annika couldn’t move. She was frozen to the sidewalk, Ratko towering behind her.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back.

‘Get moving!’

I’m going to die,
she thought.
I’m going to die.

‘Move it, bitch!’

Breathless with fear, she closed her eyes and slowly started to stumble down the street. The man was breathing down her neck. He smelled bad. After some ten metres or so, he stopped.

‘Get in the car,’ he said.

Annika looked around, her neck stiff, her scalp burning.
Which car?

He struck her in the face. She felt something warm trickle from her lip and was suddenly fully alert. Violence was familiar, she was used to beatings, she could deal with this.

‘And if I don’t?’ she said, her lip already beginning to puff up.

The man hit her again.

‘Then I’ll kill you here and now,’ he said.

She looked at his face, florid from the cold, shadowed by fatigue. She felt her own breathing rate increase and turn shallow. Her field of vision began to flicker – she didn’t have the strength for this, didn’t want this.

‘Go ahead,’ she said.

The words set the man off; he grabbed a rope, pushed Annika up against the car next to them, a blue compact, twisted her arms behind her back and tied her up. Then he pressed a cold gun muzzle against her neck.

‘You know what happened to Aida.’

She closed her eyes and her defence mechanisms came into play. She didn’t feel a thing, turning inward, tuning out.

Must do as he says.

‘Get in, damn you!’

Ratko yanked the door of the blue car open. Petrified, Annika tumbled into the back seat and saw the man walk around to the other side, get in, start the car and drive off. She stared at his neck: it was chapped and red and there was dandruff on his dark collar. She felt cut off from reality, as though there was a sheet of plexiglass separating her from the rest of the world. A blur of buildings rushed past, but there were no people in sight, no one who cared.

‘My gun’s in my lap,’ Ratko said. ‘Try anything, and I’ll shoot you.’

The sun was setting, the day was red and cold. The Blues whirled past, Solnavägen, cars, people, no one she could shout to, no one who could help her. She was stuck in the back seat of a dirty little car, sitting on her bound hands, and they hurt. She tried to ease the pressure on them by shifting position.

The man behind the wheel swerved and threw a quick glance at her over his shoulder.

‘Sit still, damn it!’

Annika froze in mid-motion.

‘This is extremely uncomfortable.’

‘Shut up!’

The northbound route to Norrtull, Sveaplan and Cedersdalsgatan. Surrounded by traffic, thousands of people on the move, but still she was so alone, always alone.

She closed her eyes and pictured Aida’s coffin, the man’s bowed head and the words he murmured.

Maybe it’s my turn now.

They got caught in traffic right before they reached Roslagstull and she could see straight into another small car, this one carrying a mother and her small child. She stared at the woman, trying to attract her attention. Finally the other woman sensed her stare and their gazes met. Annika opened her eyes very wide and mouthed a message in an exaggerated fashion.

‘Help,’ she said soundlessly. ‘Help me!’

The woman quickly turned away.

No
, Annika thought.
Look at me! Help me!

‘Help,’ she yelled, banging her head against the window. ‘Help me! Help me!’

The blows echoed in her head and she got all dizzy. The glass was hard and cold.

Ratko stiffened but didn’t move, just kept on driving slowly towards Roslagsvägen.

Annika screamed with all her might.

‘He’s kidnapped me!’ she screamed. ‘Help me! Help!’

The cars slipped past her one by one, only a metre away from her, yet somehow thousands of years distant, isolated. She yelled, screamed, arched up at the ceiling, got all sweaty, dizzy and hoarse. She flung herself at the window, howling, banging her head against the window. A man in a new Volvo looked her in the eye and looked concerned, Ratko turned to face the man, shrugged his shoulders and smiled. The man smiled back at Ratko.