Tove Alsterdal - The Forgotten Dead - A dark, twisted, unputdownable thriller

I need to think clearly. I need to remember.

Had she been barefoot as she ran across the sand with him holding her hand, urging her down towards the sea, both of them laughing loudly into the wind, wondering if their laughter would be blown away?

She pictured his tousled, sun-bleached hair, his eyes gleaming as he looked at her. His arms were hard and sinewy, muscles taut from working out. His shirt fluttered open so she could see his brown abdomen, not a scrap of fat anywhere. She couldn’t believe she was the one he’d taken by the hand as they closed up the Blue Heaven Bar. He’d whispered in her ear that they should move on to someplace else. ‘You can’t go home yet,’ he’d said. ‘Not when I’ve just found you.’

Terese ran her hand lightly over the sand next to her. It was cold. Was there a slight indentation, an impression that his body had left behind, a trace of warmth? But that might simply be her imagination, because the wind blew more steadily in Tarifa than anywhere else on earth, wiping away all tracks in an instant.

No one needs to know what happened, she thought. Nothing did happen. Not if I don’t tell anyone.

She drew her cardigan tighter around her. Sand chafed inside her knickers. She felt sticky down there.

‘But what if someone’s here?’ she’d said as he urged her towards the sea. ‘What if someone’s here, watching us?’

‘You’re thinking about the wrong things,’ he said, kissing her, pressing his tongue deep inside her mouth. And his hands were everywhere, under her camisole and inside her knickers all at once. Then he unbuttoned her tight capris and slid them down and they tumbled onto the sand together. And she thought she might fall in love with him. She thought he was the most gorgeous guy she’d ever been with.

If only her friends could see her now!

You can’t go to Tarifa without having sex on the beach, he’d told her. It would be like not seeing the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Then she’d felt the sand against her skin as he pressed her down. Grains of sand rose up between her buttocks and pushed between her legs as he guided his cock with his hand, not finding his way at once, rooting around. All she felt was a scraping as he seemed to pump her full of sand.

She shouldn’t have fallen asleep afterwards. It had happened so fast.

From up in the mountains came the endless rumbling of the wind turbines, turning counter-clockwise. She had thought they looked like electric eggbeaters, whipping the air into cream. He laughed when she said that. Terese bit down on her fingertips to keep herself from crying.

He must have thought I was no good. Worthless. Otherwise he would have stayed and made love to me again and again.

Nausea rose up into her throat. She might have had two or three Cosmopolitans, and then a few Mojitos after that.

The whole beach swayed as she stood up. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees and stayed like that until things stopped moving, swallowing over and over to keep herself from throwing up and having to smell everything that spewed out of her. She couldn’t bear to be so disgusting. That was why she staggered down to the water. It wasn’t far, maybe twenty metres.

She moved slowly, setting her feet down carefully, so as not to step on anything unpleasant. The sand felt cold under her feet, and she was surprised when the first wave reached her. The water was almost lukewarm and silky smooth. She waded out a few steps to meet the next wave. When it broke, she caught the foamy water in her hands and splashed it over her face. It was refreshing and made her think a little more clearly.

To her left a low, black ridge rose from the sea, a jetty of large rocks that extended at least ten metres out into the water. It looked like a big prehistoric animal resting on the shoreline, the spine of a slumbering brontosaurus. She waded towards it, thinking that she would climb up and sit on the rocks at the very end. Let the sea wash over her wrists for a while. That usually helped against nausea. If she did throw up, the vomit would vanish into the water in seconds and be forgotten.

The water surged over her ankles. The wind from the sea picked up force. She’d thought the jetty would be hard and sharp, but when she set her foot on the first rock to clamber up, it felt soft and slippery and slid away.

She shrieked and fell forwards onto the rocks, striking her shoulder. She hauled herself up onto the jetty, quickly drawing her feet out of the water. Then she leaned forward and peered down. She had to find out what sort of revolting fish she’d stepped on.

The waves receded and the sea prepared to send in the next onslaught. Terese stared, the roaring sound growing inside her head.

It wasn’t a fish. A hand was sticking up out of the water, attached to an arm below the surface. For a long moment she stared at the place where the arm transitioned into a shoulder and then became an entire body. A person was lying there, wedged between the rocks. A black person.

She whimpered when she realized that was where she’d placed her foot. She’d stepped on a corpse. On the chest or stomach. She didn’t want to know where. She sobbed and stammered and slid backwards up onto the ridge, scraping her soles hard against the rough surface, trying to get rid of that soft and slippery feeling on the bottom of her foot.

But she couldn’t resist taking another look. It was a man lying down there. That much she could clearly see. His skin was black and shiny with water. Like a fish, an eel, something slimy that lived in the sea. He was naked. She thought she could make out an animal creeping along his shoulder, and against her better judgement, she leaned forward. The next wave struck the rocks and the shore, spraying up into her face and then receded, the water foaming and roiling around the body. It looked as if it were moving. For an instant she thought the black man would rise up, grab hold of her ankle, and pull her down into the water. What if he was alive?

At that moment the first traces of morning light appeared beyond the mountains, and the colour of the sea changed to green. She was looking directly into the face of the dead man. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was wide open, as if uttering an inaudible drowned scream, his teeth gleaming white and swaying under the water.

Dear God in heaven, thought Terese. Papa, please help me. I’m all alone here.

Then her stomach heaved, and she pressed her hand to her mouth as she made her way across the rocks and tumbled down the other side. She was still throwing up as she ran, staggering, away from the scene.

New York

Monday, 22 September

According to the charts, I was probably in my seventh week. I’d put off taking a pregnancy test for as long as possible, hoping in my heart that Patrick would come home. Then we could have done it together. Not the actual peeing on the test stick, of course. There had to be a limit. But the waiting for the stripe to appear.

My pulse quickened as I took my cell phone out of my jacket pocket. I might have missed a call because of all the traffic noise.

I hadn’t. The display was blank.

There had to be some perfectly natural explanation, I told myself. For Patrick, his work was everything, and it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d become so immersed in some ugly and complicated story that he forgot about everything else. He wouldn’t give up until he’d turned over every last stone. Once, three years ago, before we were married, I didn’t hear from him for a whole week, and I was sure that he’d got cold feet and left me. It turned out that he’d latched onto some small-time gangsters in DC and had ended up sitting in jail down there, wanting to do in-depth research from the inside. He’d come home with a broken rib and a report that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.