She's Never Coming Back Read Online Free PDF Page A

to fulfil. Mike had just started at the pharmaceutical company in Stockholm. Ylva worked in the marketing department and had been asked to interview him for the company’s internal magazine.
    Neither of them fell head over heels, but they were attracted to each other, and had a good time together. Mike’s childhood had been happy compared to Ylva’s. Unlike him, she’d never met her biological father, and her mother was a heavy drug user. When she was six, Ylva was placed with foster parents and, following some very stormy years in her teens, she decided to leave home. She hadn’t been in touch with them since.
    Mike wanted to explore the Stockholm archipelago that his dad had always spoken about with such enthusiasm, so he bought a six-metre sailing boat and they spent the next three summers on it. Mike read the navigation charts. Ylva held the rudder. They had sex in every natural harbour between Furusund and Nynäshamn.
    When Ylva got pregnant, they promised each other that, no matter what, things would be just the same as before. Nothing would stop them, certainly not a small child that they could easily take with them.
    By the time Sanna was six months old, the boat had been sold and the money invested in a flat.
    A year later, Mike was offered a better job in his home town and, to his mother’s delight, moved down to Skåne with his family.
    Having a small child meant change, a significant transition to a new phase in life. From public transport to a car, from evenings out to dinners with friends, from a mattress on the floor to a double bed and no time to lie in it. The porn films that they’d enjoyed so much were cleared out after Ylva, half asleep, had helped Sanna, then three, to put in a DVD and instead of Gummi Bear cartoons, they ended up in the middle of a blow job.
    Ylva had lurched forward and turned off the TV.
    ‘What was that?’ she’d asked, embarrassed.
    ‘Ice-cream!’ Sanna suggested, an obvious association.
    It was another life, very different from the summers on the sailing boat. But it was a good life.

8
    ‘No, no, no, it’s Morgan who’s dead,’ Jörgen Petersson said. ‘I remember because I was ashamed of how glad I felt when I read the notice. Cancer of the pancreas, dead within a couple of months.’
    Calle Collin nodded.
    ‘Quite possibly,’ he said, ‘but Anders is dead now, as well.’
    ‘How did he die?’
    ‘He was murdered.’
    ‘Cool.’
    ‘No, I’m serious. The hammer murder up at Fjällgatan. The papers were full of it. That was Anders.’
    ‘The hammer murder?’ Jörgen repeated, while he searched his memory in vain.
    Calle nodded.
    ‘Never heard about it,’ Jörgen said. ‘When did it happen?’
    ‘About six months ago.’
    ‘You mean murdered, as in killed on purpose?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Who by?’
    Calle shrugged. ‘Don’t think it’s been solved.’
    ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
    ‘I didn’t know it was him until a few days ago.’
    ‘Was it a fight or something like that?’
    ‘No idea.’
    Jörgen was silent for a moment. ‘Jesus.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    Jörgen let out a long breath. ‘I can’t say that I’m sorry.’
    Calle turned his face away and held a hand up to his friend. ‘That’s pushing it.’
    Jörgen took a drink of beer and then put the glass down.
    ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to admit, it couldn’t have happened to a bigger bastard.’
    ‘You don’t know that,’ Calle said. ‘People change.’
    ‘Do they?’
    Calle didn’t answer. Jörgen looked at the class photograph, nodded to himself.
    ‘Morgan and Anders, dead,’ he said. ‘Then there’s only Johan and Ylva left. The Gang of Four reduced to a dynamic duo.’
    ‘The Gang of Four?’ Calle snorted. ‘Johan lives in Africa,’ he continued.
    ‘Africa?’ Jörgen exclaimed. ‘What’s he doing there?’
    ‘What the fuck do I know? What do Westerners do in the Third World? No doubt he’s wandering around in weird clothes and half-cut most