Dark Pines Read online

  ‘Morning,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks for driving this in, and thanks for last night.’

  ‘Hannes drove actually, asked me to pass the keys to you and tell you he’s very impressed with your truck. You get home okay?’

  I almost tell her everything but I’m too hungover to face it all again. I just nod and then she smiles and reaches into my truck and passes me a tray of four coffees.

  ‘Wow,’ I say, staring at the McDonald’s coffees in their little McDonald’s takeout cups. ‘You didn’t need to do this.’

  ‘I felt bad,’ she says. ‘We should never have given you all that wine. And then you had the cost of the taxi. Hope this makes amends.’

  She passes me a paper bag.

  ‘Muffins,’ she says. ‘Not home-made I’m afraid, just McDonald’s. I got two different flavours for you and your co-workers in there.’

  ‘Thanks, they’ll love you for ever.’

  She waves that off.

  ‘I’d better go, Hannes is picking me up from ICA in an hour and I’ve got lots of food to buy.’

  She hands me my truck keys, plastic fob jangling nicely, and walks away. I go inside and the bell rings above my head. Lars and Nils look suspicious when I hand them each a coffee and muffin.

  ‘What I do?’ asks Nils, an XXL ice-hockey jersey pulled over his shirt in honour of tonight’s big game.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’ asks Lars, his glasses on the end of his nose.

  But Lena takes hers like she’s been given coffee and muffins by reporters her entire life and I realise that she probably has, just not by us. Nils is called in by her as I step back out to my desk.

  I load up the stories I organised yesterday. Six distinct articles with one gaping hole. I need to talk to Rikard Spritzik’s family. I pop two more paracetamols as my head starts to thicken and then I switch off my aids and get to work.

  Three hours. I write some good copy, pasting in quotes and information snippets and focussing on local issues and the town’s police. I’ve completed four of my six pieces by lunch. The first five pages will be the murders – the timeline, the similarities between the two, the similarities between these and Medusa, the local perspective with quotes from various townspeople, and a shaded column headed ‘What We Know’. The things I can’t write about yet: the niggling thoughts I have about Viggo and Hannes, about the strip club being central to the crimes, about people being scared or just unwilling to talk, throb in my head like a parallel hangover. At least the writing’s cathartic, it’s pulling me back to centre, to who I was before I arrived here in Toytown, and also to who I’ll be when there’s nothing left keeping me here and I get to move away to the biggest goddam city that’ll have me.

  Lena opens her door and says something I can’t hear and gestures for me to come into her office.

  My fingers find the little buttons behind my ears and then the audible world returns. First, a jingle specific to the hearing-aid manufacturer, then whirs and whistles and the sound of Lars photocopying in the corner. Hurts my head a little. I walk through and sit in front of Lena’s desk.

  ‘How much have you written?’

  ‘Almost there.’

  ‘I’ve had a few calls, Tuva. Last night and then again this morning. Local people, local businesspeople and councillors who have asked me for a favour.’

  I frown and lick my lips. They’re dry and my lip balm’s still in my truck.

  ‘Now, I’ve had this before, not exactly this, but similar. We have a responsibility to tell the truth and to report the news so that our readership can follow what’s happening. These locals, they would like us to do so in as positive a light as possible. They don’t want Gavrik to come out looking like a den of violence or a place which is dangerous to visit. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Well, it is pretty dangerous right now, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘We have three major advertisers threatening to pull their contracts if we don’t run the stories sensitively. I’ve given this a lot of thought. It makes me sick to the stomach, but I think we can walk a line where we’re professional and accurate but still, well, still patriotic to the community.’

  ‘I’m not paid to be patriotic to the community,’ I say. My headache is coming back, tightening my forehead. I rub the bridge of my nose and push the skin between my eyebrows. There’s no fucking way I’m writing anything other than the truth. I’ve seen the damage caused by inaccuracies and bias: collapsed court cases and broken families. ‘What about freedom of the press, what about journalistic integrity?’

  ‘Yeah, I think I’ve heard about those things too, but this isn’t a Wikileaks exclusive, it’s crimes affecting local people. And you are, in a way, paid to be mindful of the community, they’re the ones who pay our salaries, the readers and the advertisers. We don’t have some rich benefactor or multinational parent company, Tuva. It’s just us four.’

  ‘Who’s complaining?’

  ‘It’s not important who’s complaining. I want you––’

  ‘I’ll be sensitive if you tell me who complained. Otherwise you can write your own damn stories.’

  She closes her eyes and inhales and scrunches up her face for a minute like a child.

  ‘Benny Björnmossen, he’s head of the local hunting association.’

  I nod.

  ‘The woman who owns the caravan park down by the reservoir, the one with the water-ski contests each summer. Can’t remember her name, Petra something, cousin of Chief Björn? Anyway, she’s worried sick about next year’s season, about cancelled bookings. Talked about hiring herself a lawyer.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Hannes Carlsson.’

  Shit.

  ‘He called yesterday. He was pretty reasonable, understands our responsibilities, blah, blah, blah. But he talked a lot of high and mighty about the common man’s right to hunt his own land, and how we don’t need outsiders from big cities poking their noses in. Talked about his people taking care of the problem themselves.’

  I rub my eyebrows the wrong way, each one towards the centre of my forehead to ease the tension in my sinuses.

  ‘I’ve written four and I’ve got two left,’ I say. ‘I’ll get them to you ASAP, then you can see what you think.’

  ‘Smart,’ Lena says. ‘Smart of you to think long-term. Lars is calling for you.’

  I turn and find Lars standing at his desk with a phone in his hand, his moist palm cupping the receiver like the damn thing doesn’t have a mute function.

  ‘Got a Savanah for you, she didn’t give a last name. I’ll put her through to your desk.’

  28

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Savanah’s whispering down the line but I can just about hear her, she has good diction.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Of course, I’m listening.’

  ‘Can we meet somewhere? I want to . . .’ I hear a muffling sound like she’s covering her phone with her sleeve or something. I wait. I can’t hear music exactly but I think I can make out a beat, a baseline.

  ‘You still there?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m here. You say where and when and I’ll be there. I’m working on a story up at the mill later so I’ll need to be in your area anyway.’

  ‘The gas station,’ she says. ‘The Q8 gas station, north of the club, it’s on the way to the mill. Meet you there at twelve-thirty.’

  My dash reads ten degrees as I drive up the E16, sun reflecting in my rear-view mirror. Värmland looks good on days like this, bright skies with clouds drifting by like swans on a lake. The sky’s a shade of blue unlike I’ve seen anyplace else in the world.

  Clear road, so I push up to one forty and turn on the radio. Chart music and traffic updates. No breaking news, though, nothing major. Court date for David Holmqvist’s preliminary hearing. He’s held under ‘reasonable suspicion’ rather than ‘probable cause’ so they need to move fast. The gossip and rumours have moved away from broadcast news to social media. Some of the stories make
me laugh they’re so ridiculous. Someone tweeted that David Holmqvist used to kill cats as a child, and that he used to shoot them with an air rifle and then cook them and eat them. But I checked with Thord and there have never been any records of feline torture in Gavrik or in any of the surrounding towns. A cat was stolen once in the ’80s, part of a divorce case gone sour, but no harm was done. Nils mentioned there was gossip back in the day that Holmqvist and Bengt Gustavsson, and one of the victims, were all lovers. He reckons our friendly neighbourhood hoarder and writer are both locked in the closet and don’t want anyone knowing it. And then there was a rumour that Holmqvist was a world authority on the occult, that he wrote on the subject using pseudonyms and the book sales had earned him a fortune. Well, I’ve been inside his house and his research is eclectic to say the least, but I saw nothing on black magic or the dark arts. But then I didn’t have time to look in that second guest bedroom, did I? I’ve checked Holmqvist’s tax records and he’s earned pretty well over the years, well above the national average, ten times more than the wood-carving sisters, but nothing extraordinary, nothing like Hannes Carlsson.

  I drive past the strip club and see its heavy front door propped open with a bucket and mop. I call Thord and sync the phone to my hearing aid and I tell him what happened last night in that taxi. Not easy to explain how unnerving it was. I can hear the words as they leave my mouth and it sounds like Viggo pulled over and switched off the engine and then he hesitated to let me out and then he let me out. Thord tells me he takes this very seriously and he’ll contact Viggo immediately and I say thanks.

  Thirty kilometres further north, I turn off the E16 and into the petrol station. These places are mini-worlds of their own this far north. They are vital. With just one gas station, I can survive. I can fill my thirsty pickup and I can buy headache pills and I can pick up firewood and I can buy tampons and I can get basic foodstuffs – and I can meet a source for a chat and a cup of coffee.

  There are no other cars around. I pull up to the pumps and fill up and move my truck away from the forecourt, and go in to pay.

  Savanah’s ten minutes late. She pulls up next to the truck in her old Saab and there’s a stalemate for a moment as we both look at each other, both eager for the other person to make the transition into unknown territory. I open my door and get out and then I climb into the passenger side of her Saab. It smells like fake tan and those cardboard air fresheners in the shape of spruce trees. Pines. Can’t get away from them.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ she says.

  ‘No problem. Thanks for talking with me. You want to go inside and get a coffee?’

  ‘Let’s chat here.’

  I nod and look around her car. There’s a rip in the back-seat upholstery and a heavy book’s lodged in the tear. Beside the book is a laptop and a heap of exercise books.

  ‘You studying?’

  ‘Part-time. At the university in Karlstad. Law and Psychology. I just started my second year.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘What do you mean, wow? Because I’m a dancer?’

  ‘No, just that your course sounds kind of heavy. I did media studies and that was hard enough.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What do you want to talk about? Mind if I record?’

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s looking forward now, her eyes glazed.

  ‘It’s Daisy,’ she says. ‘Well, it’s everything, really. I’m starting to get scared. There’s something happening, and somehow we’re all involved in it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Daisy’s getting paid more now, she told us. Well, she told Candy and me. Daisy’s getting paid by Hannes not to dance for any other clients, not even to talk to any. It’s like she’s his personal property now, like he’s in charge of her because he pays her more.’

  ‘So she’s not at the club any more?’

  ‘No, she is. That’s what he wants. He wants her at the club at her usual times, for when he drops in, but he doesn’t want her flirting or dancing or even on stage when he’s not there. He told her he has eyes on the inside and she reckons he means the guy working the bar. So she’s earning double what we earn now – and she earned the most even before – and for less work.’

  ‘What does your boss say?’

  ‘She doesn’t care two hoots. As long as we pay her our nightly fee to work, she’s happy. She’s a Madam of the old school and she likes things the way they used to be.’

  ‘Like in the cathouse?’

  ‘She was a genius Madam, so they say. She ran the place like it was Microsoft or something, and she was connected to all the important local people. She’d send out girls to private events, all sorts of weird stuff, big money, S&M games, dares, erotic asphyxiation. Sex with guns, crazy, nasty stuff. That was back when the mill had guys crawling all over it, before the big machines and computers came in. She was getting fully booked most nights, girls came from all over to work there. And then . . .’

  She pauses and looks at me. Her eyes are shiny and her lips are almost blue without their lipgloss.

  ‘And then business dried up because men started getting killed off by that ghostwriter and he was only eighteen years old at the time. They say he came into the cathouse one night looking to lose his virginity, and the mill men stared at him and then laughed at him, jeering and rubbing his hair and asking if he was there for a job and how much did he cost and would he do this thing to them and would he do that thing. So he ran out. Then the bodies started showing up in those woods; bodies with no eyes. They lost some of their best clients. They were either dead or else they stopped coming because it was too dangerous.’

  ‘So she knocked it down and built the Enigma.’

  ‘Well, she moved to Spain, you know that, right? She moved to Spain for years but still owned the land where the cathouse used to be. Came back a few years ago and built the club when she realised her money was gonna run out sooner than expected. There was three killings back when the cathouse was open. Then it shut and there was no more killings. Then the club opens up and we get two new killings. So, what I’m trying to tell you is the place is still cursed. The ground it’s built on, not the building, it’s bad ground.’

  ‘Did David Holmqvist ever try to get into the club?’

  ‘Thank God, no. Not that I’ve seen anyway. I would have heard about it if he had. But me and the girls have seen something. Well, I say seen, really we’ve felt something, someone sniffing around behind the club fence, past the end of the car park, you know. It’s the edge of the woods there really. We reckon, well, we’ve all felt it, someone’s out there watching the club, someone’s spying on us.’

  ‘How does Hannes Carlsson treat Daisy?’

  Savanah snorts and clicks off her seatbelt.

  ‘Real nice. He pays her double, you heard me say that, right? Double money, and he’s not been rough, not done nothing she didn’t want to do. He tried it a few times – some weird nasty shit with his poker buddies, she said. Some fucked-up game in one of them hunting towers, but she said no. I reckon he goes to someone else for all that, but I don’t know for sure. He’s one of them controlling types, like my ex. He’s jealous as hell and he can’t stand seeing her with anyone, not even for a chat. One night I saw Hannes come into the club and Daisy was talking to this lad at the bar. He was just a kid, some stag party from Hicksville-by-the-Bog. But the kid was cute, one of those tanned guys that works out and uses all the creams, he was a real cutie. Hannes went nuts. He grabbed the guy and threw him out the club, straight out the front door and into the snow. Daisy went after him, tears spraying out of her eyeballs like fire sprinklers, and Hannes was trying to drag him over to the motorway, probably to kill him or something. Daisy pulled him back and nothing else happened, but I saw he could be a nasty piece of work if he feels outranked or outmanned. Maybe he’s got a needle dick but I wouldn’t know because Daisy won’t tell me.’

  29

  I drive north through open farmland dotted with clumps
of leafless birch trees and piles of boulders. Birds circle overhead. The fields are waterlogged and the farms are small and marginal. I know because I’ve interviewed some of the local farmers and most of them this far north make their real money from winter snowploughing and gritting and salting, all paid for by the Kommun.

  I turn off onto the mill access road. I want to see Hannes in his professional habitat, ask him some carefully worded questions about Daisy in front of his colleagues, just to see how he reacts. The barriers are down where the train tracks cross the road. I’m the only vehicle on either side of the railway. Thankfully there’s no piercing sound, just flashing lights and a horizontal bar. A train comes from my left. Each carriage is loaded with hundreds of pine trunks. The trees have been stripped of their outer shells and stacked like pencils in a tin. Steel prongs hold the timber in place as it rattles north to the mill to be turned into toilet rolls and newspapers and banknotes. The train is long. Carriages of recently cut spruce, a dead forest moving from left to right as if on a showreel.

  The barrier lifts. I drive over the uneven surface of the tracks and my phone rings. Private number.

  ‘Tuva Moodyson.’

  ‘Hello Tuva, it’s Kent here from SPT Mills.’

  ‘Hi, I’m on my way to you now. I’m about ten minutes away.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Tuva, because I have some disappointing news. You see, management have called a last-minute meeting that I will need to attend. It’ll be in progress all afternoon so we’ll have to rain-check your tour of the new bleach processers I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s okay, I just need five minutes.’

  ‘Why don’t I email you later and we can talk dates then. My diary’s pretty full.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ I say. ‘Can we walk and talk?’

  ‘No can do. But happy to reschedule. Now, I’ve got to go.’

  The mill’s chimney smoke is visible in the distance as I make a U-turn. There are piles of lumber stacked near the plant, and they’re longer and taller than cruise ships. Kent’s been badgering me for weeks to get exposure in the paper for his new machines and the local jobs they’ll create. Is Hannes avoiding me? Is this cancellation his idea?