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

He scratched his hand, which was chapped from all the washing of delicate fabrics.

‘Although actually we might say “for God’s sake”, or “what the hell is going on”. What’s this all about?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘This has something to do with Patrick. Am I right?’ Benji squatted down so he was looking me right in the eye as I sat at the desk. He put his hand on my knee. ‘Has something happened? You can tell me. Come on, Ally. It’s me. Benji.’

‘Benedict,’ I said, getting up.

Benji made a face.

‘If he was my husband and I hadn’t heard from him, I’d go find him in Paris,’ he said. ‘I’d walk through the streets and put up signs on the lamp posts all over town, searching for him.’

I pushed past him and went out into the hall.

‘I know, I know,’ said Benji. ‘I don’t have a husband.’

Gramercy was a bland district on the east side of Manhattan.

When we took our first walks together, Patrick had tried to make it seem more interesting than it was. He pointed out where Uma Thurman lived, in a corner building by Gramercy Park. He’d once run into her ex, Ethan Hawke, and the guy had actually said hello to him. Humphrey Bogart had been married in the nearby hotel, and Paulina Porizkova lived somewhere in the neighbourhood, but that was all. There was nothing more to brag about, no matter how much he wanted to impress me. Gramercy was mostly the home of office workers, doctors, and employees of the hospitals that were scattered about. It was an anonymous district without soul, and I thought of it as a blank slate.

The doorman was dozing as I came in, just past eleven p.m. The rehearsals had gone on late at the theatre.

‘That husband of yours isn’t home yet?’ he said inquisitively, leaning over the counter so he could watch me walk past.

‘Not yet,’ I replied.

‘Still in Europe?’

Patrick always talked with the doormen. He was on a first-name basis with all of the nine men who took turns working the shifts in the building. After three years of living there, I still wasn’t used to the fact that somebody always noticed when I came and went.

‘Goodnight,’ I said, and slipped inside the elevator.

I didn’t breathe easy until it passed the twelfth floor and then stopped at the fourteenth. There was no thirteenth floor. I was glad the builders were superstitious, because it meant one less floor, and the ride in the enclosed space was a few seconds shorter.

I unlocked the door and stepped into silence. In my fourteenth-floor apartment, there was no time and no reality. It was a void floating high above 23rd Street. Through the window I looked down at the cars racing past like bright little toys far below. To the north I could glimpse the top of the Chrysler Building lit up in white.

There were no windows facing south. Otherwise, I would have been able to see the Lower East Side, or Lo-i-saida, as the Puerto Rican kids had called it when I was growing up. It was only ten blocks away, but it was another world. That was where Mama and I had lived when I was nine years old, in our first rented one-room apartment in Alphabet City, where all the streets were letters instead of numbers. I learned to fight and to swear in Spanish before I could even speak English properly. Seven years later Mama thought she had realized the American dream when she was able to move across the street into a tiny, rundown, two-room place on First Avenue. Over there the baker was Polish and she had neighbours with whom she could speak Czech. By then I’d forgotten the language, or maybe I just didn’t want to speak it. I don’t know. When she died I took over the apartment and stayed there until I met Patrick.

My email was flashing when I sat down at my desk.

Eleven messages in the inbox. None of them from Patrick.

Instead I logged onto the website of our Internet bank. Richard Evans’s words had been echoing in my head all night.

We haven’t paid him any advance.

We had two joint accounts. That was Patrick’s idea, in order to keep track of our finances. Personally I was used to living hand-to-mouth. I’d never shared a bank account with any man before. It almost seemed more intimate than sharing a bed.

There was a total of $240 in the account we used for daily expenses. Neither of us had deposited any money yet for the next month’s bills. Everything was as it should be.

Then I looked at our joint savings account.

The baby money.

He was the one who had dubbed it that. I called it our savings capital. We regularly deposited funds, and Patrick’s parents contributed at Christmas and on birthdays. At the moment we were up to just over $16,000. We hadn’t touched the money, not even last autumn when Patrick had posted a negative income from the story he’d written about the new losers in the current economy.

I stared at the numbers that were dancing in the grey glow on the screen.

The total in the savings account was $6,282. On 17 August, a withdrawal of $10,000 had been posted. Transferred to Patrick’s personal account.

I dropped the mouse and grabbed the armrest of my chair, rolling backward to create a distance of two metres between me and the screen. An air pocket. As if the deception wouldn’t be able to reach me there.

I thought back to the day when he had packed for his trip. Six weeks ago, in the middle of the summer’s worst heatwave, when the air was motionless and scorching, and the asphalt was melting outside. I had been lying on the sofa, wearing only a long, thin tank-top. ‘It might take a little longer,’ he’d said after closing up his laptop. ‘We want to run the article as the cover story in October, so I need to be done in mid-September, or at least no later than the end of the month.’ He gave me a light kiss on the cheek as he slipped past to go into the bedroom.

‘Do you have money for the bills next month?’ I’d called after him. I wish I’d said something more loving, but I knew he was having a hard time making ends meet financially. He’d had so few assignments, and the pay was worse than before. Paris sounded like an expensive expedition. I was annoyed that he was so enthusiastic about leaving me behind.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I got an advance from the magazine so I have enough for the next two months.’ Another kiss. ‘This story is going to turn everything around. I promise.’

I spun in my chair and looked at Patrick’s corner of the workroom. His desk was dark and neat. Against the wall was the external keyboard, looking lonely and neglected with the cord dangling idly in the air.

What else had he lied about? Was he even in Paris at all?

He could just as well have gone to Palm Beach with a lover. I pictured our savings being frittered away on champagne. But I quickly dismissed such a stupid idea.

He had in fact sent me an envelope postmarked Paris. And he had written that he loved me.

I placed my hand on my stomach, thinking I could feel it growing inside. Only a tiny sausage, a worm, a growth. So far.

Of course he was in Paris.