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Chapters (65)
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  65. Acknowledgements

‘Talk of youths out drinking and reckless, maybe some home-brew alcohol involved, or the liquorice liquor made by the stamper at the factory. “Old evil”, she calls it. Almost lethal, or so I heard. But you know small towns as well as I do. Thing like that can be covered up real fast by the driver’s father if he has more blind love for his boy than respect for justice. Maybe the car gets crushed over Utgard forest way at the scrapyard, some cash changes hands for a no-questions-asked service, I know those Snake River boys have done similar in the past. Maybe false alibis are provided or whatnot. Police found nothing useful and old Ragnar aged about ten years in one week. His beard turned white real fast, and the words in the Tidningen started to get more and more depressing. He focused on accidents and heart attacks and so forth. Didn’t cover so many stories up at the Gymnasium school as he used to. Not with his daughter’s friends still studying there. Couldn’t face them, I expect. Couldn’t see them still living and breathing. Young men and women with futures ahead of them. He couldn’t write them stories much no more and that hit the paper pretty hard. People started moving over to the Gavrik Posten.’

I see Ragnar’s office on the shady side of the square. The newspaper stuck inside the whitewashed shopfront. The lights off. The, ‘No Cash Left on The Premises’ sign taped to the door. The, ‘For All Enquiries Call Lena Adeola at the Gavrik Posten’ sign right underneath. His beard went white like Mum’s hair did after Dad died. You might think things like that are myth and legend, exaggerations made by those left behind. But it can happen. Mum’s hair turned white so fast. Started falling out in clumps as well. So our neighbour – the kind dinner lady who eventually fed me home-cooked meals and let me watch movies in her flat – bought Mum a silk pillowcase. Apparently they can help reduce the hair loss. Less friction, so she said. Mum never even took it out of the wrapping paper. She slept on Dad’s old pillow instead. His pillowcase. She never washed it ever again. His tears and his sweat and his saliva in the cotton. His scent. The last of him for her to hold each night as she lay there awake trying to make sense of it all. The remnants of her husband. Of her love.

36

I work from my Hilux and research Johanna Falk’s death. Thank God for Google.

It happened in 1994.

October 24.