She's Never Coming Back Read Free Page B

man reached over for Ylva’s handbag, opened it and poked around for her mobile. He took the battery out and put it in his inner pocket.
    Ylva registered the car accelerating past the bus stop. The man kept the stun gun at the ready.
    ‘The paralysis is temporary,’ he explained. ‘You’ll soon be able to move and talk as normal again.’
    He gave her a comforting pat.
    ‘Everything will be all right, you’ll see. Everything will be all right.’

5
    Worth quarter of a billion and what was he doing? Standing in his briefs in the cellar, rummaging through until now unopened boxes, looking for his old school yearbooks. One way of passing the time.
    Jörgen Petersson managed to open and go through about half of the boxes before he found what he was looking for. Considering that the treasure was normally hidden in the last chest, he reckoned he’d been lucky.
    He flicked through the book, glancing at the class photos, looking for names. Of course, yes. Him. And him. Wasn’t she the sister of …? The teacher’s daughter wholooked like she wanted the ground to swallow her up in her picture. The boy who set fire to the playground. The girl who committed suicide. And that poor sod who had to look after his siblings and always slept through the classes.
    Madeleine moment after madeleine moment, à la Proust.
    Finally, the whole class. Jörgen got a shock. They were just kids, their hairstyles and clothes bore witness to the passing of time. Yet the black-and-white photograph still made him uncomfortable.
    He looked at the picture, scanned row after row.
    His classmates stared back at him. Jörgen could almost hear the clamour from the corridor: the comments, the shouts, the jostling and laughter. The power struggle, that’s all it was. Maintaining your position on the ladder. The girls were self-regulatory, the boys more forceful.
    The four loudest at the back. Arms folded and staring confidently straight at the camera, radiating world domination. Judging by their smug faces, they couldn’t possibly imagine a reality other than their own.
    One of them, Morgan, had died of cancer a year ago. Jörgen wondered whether anyone missed him. He certainly didn’t.
    He carried on through the rows of names. He’d forgottensome of them and was forced to look up at the photograph to pull any information from his mental archives. Of course, yes.
    But he still didn’t recognise two or three of his classmates. The faces and names were not enough. They were erased from his brain, just like the blank faces on Lasse Åberg’s picture.
    Jörgen looked at himself, squashed into the front row, barely visible and with an expression that was just begging to get out of there.
    Calle Collin looked happy. A bit detached, not worried about being an outsider, strong enough in himself.
    The teacher, jeez, the old bird was younger in the photo than Jörgen was now.
    He put all the removal boxes back and took the yearbook with him up into the house. He was going to look at the photos until they no longer frightened him.
    Jörgen went into the kitchen and rang his friend.
    ‘D’you want to go for a beer?’
    ‘Just the one?’ Calle Collin asked.
    ‘Two, three. As many as you like,’ Jörgen said. ‘I’ve dug out some of our old yearbooks, I’ll bring them with me.’
    ‘What the hell for?’

6
    Mike Zetterberg picked his daughter up from the after-school club at half past four. She was sitting at a table at the back of the room, engrossed in an old magic box. When she caught sight of her father, her face lit up as it hadn’t done since he picked her up when she first started nursery.
    ‘Daddy, come.’
    Sanna was sitting with an egg cup in front of her. A three-piece egg cup with a plastic top. Mike realised that her pleasure at seeing him had something to do with him playing captive audience.
    ‘Hey, sweetie.’
    He kissed her on the forehead.
    ‘Look,’ she said, and lifted the top off the egg cup. ‘There’s an egg here.’
    ‘I