“We don’t like them.”

“We? I don’t understand, how . . .”

Now I see what he’s holding in his hand. A weapon. A gun. Pointed straight at me.

“Why are you asking questions? Why are you calling yourself Lilaj?”

I want to hide behind my aunt. My aunt, who is shaking. My aunt, who is silent.

And for the first time I wish I really was Hannah Ohlsson.

“Answer me—why!”

I don’t know much about guns. Except what you see in the movies.

“Because he . . .”

But I know when a gun makes that sound, it’s being cocked, and it’s ready.

To shoot.

“. . . was my father.”

And it’s surreal.

How I take it all in.

His index finger squeezes the trigger. His eyes, which seemed so soft when we talked and laughed, now so hard.

I even hear it when the shot is fired.

PART
5

Chapter 37

Of course the asphalt wasn’t one whit warmer in Stockholm than in Söderköping—the heat had blanketed the whole of Sweden since the beginning of June—but it felt warmer as he dropped off the cadets, parked on the south side of the Kronoberg station, and stepped out onto the sidewalk of Bergs Street. So Ewert Grens couldn’t help himself, he sank down—despite his bad knee begging him not to—and placed his palms against the ground. No. He wasn’t imagining it. Everything was pulsating. It was impossible to stand still. There was no greater uneasiness than an unbridled, throbbing inner city, choking at every attempt to breathe.

“I want you to do one more thing. Before you go home for the day.”

He couldn’t shake her off. The girl who had been renamed Hannah Ohlsson, who no longer seemed to exist. Not in person or in any pictures. She must have known that when she tore them to pieces, burned them. How she would disappear without a trace. Maybe even die. But that it was better than not seeking out her past.

“I want you two to turn the investigation after the missing person’s report filed by her adoptive parents upside down and inside out, find out what was done. Or more importantly—what wasn’t done.”

Lucas and Amelia were halfway up the steps that led to the entrance of the police station, but they stopped and waited as he struggled to his feet.

“What do you mean, Superintendent?”

“I mean I want you to go through every missing person report in Sweden made the year she disappeared. Every report in every police district. People who were gone a few days or much longer or who never came back again. Then go through every Jane Doe who’s been found since then. Include records from Oslo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. People can disappear in one place and pop up somewhere else.”

“But if . . .”

“But what?”

Lucas.

The cadet who spoke without thinking.