Page 27 of The Living and the Dead

“What about it?”

“The tech asked if we had checked on it. Have we? To see if any calls were made during the party?”

“We haven’t had time,” Gerd said, without looking up from her notes. “You can put a request in tomorrow.”

“We need to track down those cameras too. I know there were disposable cameras around.”

It took about half an hour to walk from the party house to Skavböke. Mikael had been there, and so had his brother, Filip; Jakob; Sander; Killian; and about two dozen others. Filip had taken off first, in the company of Elina Jönsson. Elina was in Filip’s class; she lived nearby and he claimed he had spent a few hours with her. Gerd had called the girl, who immediately corroborated this information.

Mikael went on his way soon after, and Jakob left soon after that. Then a few more people took off, with Sander and Killian among the last to go. All of them, except for Filip of course, claimed to have gone straight home and to bed, just like after any other party.

Which really left only two alternatives.

“Either our guy wasn’t at the party…” Gerd said.

“Or someone is lying,” Siri said, her eyes going to Sander’s and Killian’s names in her notepad.

Gerd didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Maybe there’s a third option as well, but I hope not.”

“What’s that?”

Gerd suddenly looked exhausted. “They’re all lying.”

20

Sander lay awake, paging through the course catalog Ardelius had given him. It smelled like it looked, like the future; it was a portal that almost transported him there.Stockholm University, it read on the front, next to a lovely seal: a torch wrapped in an olive branch, with three crowns alongside. This felt important somehow. He paged through the catalog, reading about majors and courses, but more than anything else he was drawn to the pictures.

There was nothing remarkable about them, really; they depicted students around tables full of books, paper, and pens; students strolling side by side across a lawn and laughing; students socializing over coffee in a big café; young people who looked a lot like him but in a packed auditorium the size of the main stage at the theater in Halmstad. Photographs of the university library captured shelves upon shelves of books, infinite books.

He turned the page. In less than a year he could be sitting right there, at that same table, living that very same life.

Sander would be going away.Away,that was the word for all of this.

No point wasting time on them, on Mikael and Felicia, Jakob and Felicia. Felicia. Who did she like, really? Maybe none of them, probably that was the case. But she had kissed Sander. Did that mean anything?

Probably not. Girls were unfathomable; there was no understanding them.

Away.

Sander found the section of the catalog about the major in legal studies:The law school at Stockholm University is the largest legal studies program in the country, both in terms of researchers and students.

The phone on the nightstand rang. When Sander answered, there was only silence on the other end.

“Hello?” Sander said, sitting up straight, his heart racing. “Killian?”

It wasn’t perfect silence. No one spoke, but he heard movement.

“No,” a voice began. “This is Jakob. Hi. How are things at your place?”

“Fine.” Sander changed his mind. “Or, you know…we’re okay. You?”

“Mom and Dad are out of town, I mentioned that yesterday, didn’t I? So they keep calling to check on me. I can’t even deal with picking up the phone anymore. But I’m okay too. Or, you know, I don’t know, that’s why I was calling. You were there yesterday, when we were on the sofa chatting. Remember how I said Dad withdrew our money?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay. Because I…Fuck, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, I know this is peanuts given everything else, really, compared with Mikael. But it’s not good.” He lowered his voice. “The thing is, someone was here. I’m sure of it.”

“What? When?”