Page 121 of The Living and the Dead

“Just up into the forest. I slept in abandoned houses for a few nights. Then I came to a farm up north a ways. They had a Help Wanted sign. So I took the chance.”

“And you didn’t come back?”

“I was terrified that the police would arrest me the minute they saw me. And they probably would have. They thought I did it. Everyone did.”

“Not me.”

Killian smiled sadly and looked like he wanted to touch Sander. “But everyone else did. Except maybe Felicia.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

Killian took a deep breath.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to see you. You’re all I have left, or whatever.” He cast his gaze down, looking pensively at his hand around the beer can, and tapped it with the tip of his finger. “It’s strange, really, something that occurred to me as we were driving out here and I saw the traffic, the parking spots outside the stores, people eating ice cream outside Mack Inn. All these people who have to go to work, all the stuff they have to get through at their jobs. Then they sit in traffic on the way home and once they get there they have to deal with everything around the house too. Kids, relationships, bills, all sorts of stuff. It’s like, I don’t understand it. And still I’m always thinking about what it would have been like to live that way. I don’t get it, but I still miss it. Maybe that’s the craziest thing of all, longing for something you don’t even understand.”

Sander leaned toward him.

“But you didn’t do anything wrong. I know it. Maybe it’s like you say, maybe it would have been pointless to try back then, but now? There has to be a way. You know, I’m heading back to Kivik. You can borrow my house for the night. If you want.”

“That’s okay.” Killian smiled, took a drink from his beer, and stood up. “I don’t know where I’ll go, exactly, but I’ll be fine. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years now. What about you?”

“What? Like I said, I’m—”

Killian interrupted him impatiently. “No, I mean, did you do anything wrong that time? Do you have any regrets?”

Sander took in the year on the gravestone. 1999. “I have quite a few regrets.”

“Just wondering. You know, Sander, the stories I could tell, the life I’ve lived…”

“Do you want to tell me? So I understand?”

He looked down. “I’m not sure it would make any difference.”

Killian was so much his old self, yet changed too. Both of them had undergone transformations that made their situation a lot murkier; it would take a long time to be able to see throughit.

He who can move on from his past gets to live twice.

91

Siri had personally been to the scene of the accident, had witnessed the wreck and seen Killian Persson’s fire-ravaged body behind the wheel. But after her visit to the farmer in Mjäla, after seeing the harvesttime photograph, doubt had begun to gnaw at her. She didn’t mention it to anyone. What would she have said? That Killian had risen from his grave and walked off? They would have looked at her like she had a screw loose.

“Which,” she confided in Vidar, “might have been true. I wasn’t doing so hot.”

She was starting to reach her limits.

“But you looked into it?”

“His identity notwithstanding, I had received information about an unidentified man who left one farm and never arrived at his expected destination. That meant yet another possible disappearance. But also,” she added, her voice full of regret, “I started to take a look at our investigation of the accident. If you can call it an investigation. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

Vidar understood what she was getting at. It wasn’t immediately noticeable; everything was in its proper place and procedures had been followed to the letter. But what had been done was flimsy. It was understandable: it had been Christmas, all the stations in the county were understaffed, people were enjoying time off. And what’s more,the incident had not been remarkable, not from a law-enforcement perspective. A fatal crash on a deserted county road. Happens all the time. There was no reason to investigate any scenario besides the obvious one. Besides, the landslide in Skavböke happened less than twenty-four hours later. All resources were diverted to dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.

Vidar realized he probably would have done exactly what they did, prioritized the same things.

All that was left of the body in the car was bone and sinew; the fire had consumed the rest. DNA testing was still in its infancy back then. And even if they could have taken a sample from the remains, there wouldn’t have been anything to compare it to, besides the small amount of blood that had been collected from the car in Skavböke, the blood believed to have come from Killian Persson. In this case, the use of dental records—a common method of identifying the deceased—had been made considerably more difficult because the driver hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. The crash resulted in a fractured jaw and the loss of several teeth, many of which were never recovered. Accordingly, the results were based more on what was logical and probable than what was discovered during analysis. Vidar found this reasonable as well.

As he related these thoughts to Siri, she looked grim. They had stopped next to a bench along one of the park’s gravel paths, protected under one of the big old trees. It smelled sharp and fresh, ancient.

“Right,” she said. “But that doesn’t actually change anything.”