Dark Pines Page 8

  I bite the inside of my mouth.

  ‘Now someone comes into my woods and starts killing my hunters. And he’s killed four so far. But I don’t want you to worry, my team are going to flush him out.’

  ‘Who’s in your hunting team?’ I take out my phone. ‘Mind if I record this?’

  He thinks for a long moment, staring at my phone before looking up at me. Behind him I can see maps of the world and engraved sporting cups and shields. Then I see a smile and a shake of his head.

  ‘I don’t mind you taping this, but I won’t give you all the names, it’d take too long. I have important local people in my team, it’s the best elk forest in the Kommun, you can ask anyone. I have local politicians from the Kommun, shop owners, the boss of the factory, police, two firemen, owner of the local hotel, all the key individuals. If you hunt and you live around here, then you’ll want to be in my team.’

  ‘What about the other villagers?’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t fit. I reckon Viggo can shoot pretty good, he’s the fella that drives the taxi and lives down the hill. But hunting, there’s a code, it’s hard to explain, it’s a social thing, too. It’s the only time some of us friends get to see each other, so we keep it tight. It’s a good group so we keep it how we like it.’

  ‘So you know a lot of the people around here?’

  He scrunches his nose and sniffs.

  ‘Do you know the man who owns the strip club on the E16? He in your team?’

  He smiles. ‘I’ve driven past that place, but no.’

  On his desk, next to a box of man-size tissues, sits his phone. It’s flashing and vibrating. He points his finger up in the air and takes the call, spinning in his executive chair to face the painting immediately behind him. It’s a painting of a thick pine forest.

  I look around the room. On the far side is a wall full of trophies. I don’t mean diving competitions or soccer medals, these are corpses. There’s a bearskin next to the sofa, an antelope head mounted over the fireplace, and an elephant leg in the corner with a heavy, crystal ashtray poised on top of it like the most hideous thing in the whole world.

  He spins back round and ends the call and smiles.

  ‘Where were we?’

  ‘Hunting,’ I say, pointing up to the antelope. ‘You didn’t shoot that in Utgard.’

  He smiles and I see that his teeth are sharp and they’ve been whitened. They’re gleaming at me.

  ‘Africa is my heart,’ he says with as much asshole pretension as he can muster. ‘The big five. Every year I go big-game hunting, have done since I was thirty. These are a sample of my souvenirs. I always bring back a little keepsake from my kills, a memento. Something to get me through the rest of the year until the next hunt.’

  I hear a knock at the door and it opens. Frida is standing there looking radiant with the kind of glowing skin you can only get through sweating. She has a towel wrapped around her hair and she’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt.

  ‘Tuva, tea?’

  I smile, stand up, and follow her out, thanking Hannes for his time.

  She leads me to a conservatory. It’s blocky and ugly, a lean-to extension at the back of the house. There are two short bookcases crammed with romance novels and we sit on wicker furniture and Frida pours from a real pot.

  ‘You think I should check out Holmqvist? Do you have any new information the police should know about?’

  She shrugs and shakes her head.

  I stir my tea with a silver spoon and I take a sip and fuck me it tastes good. Smooth and mild, made in bone china with love. Not love, obviously, Frida doesn’t love me, but with care.

  ‘I don’t have information,’ she says. ‘I just get a vibe, quite honestly. Don’t you?’

  I don’t think anyone could not get a vibe from David Holmqvist.

  ‘He says he doesn’t own a gun.’

  ‘Oh, well in that case . . .’

  I finish my cup and Frida refills it.

  ‘You know, where we’re sitting right now, it’s at least twenty kilometres in any direction until we get out of Utgard forest,’ she says. ‘And twenty may as well be two hundred, with the woods so thick. The pine harvest is long overdue. And I have to live right next to that creepy ghostwriter. I feel fine, honestly, when Hannes is here. When Hannes is with me I always feel safe, I’ve never met a man that would worry Hannes. But when I’m on my own up here, I don’t know, I just wish he’d left Mossen village after the arrest back in the ’90s, instead of changing his name and staying put.’

  I excuse myself to use the toilet. It smells of rose water and there’s a trio of hand creams in the lace basket as well as the miniature soaps I saw last time. I stare at the romance novels on the shelf, and squirt lily-of-the-valley nail cream into the creases of my palm and work it into my cuticles. It smells like Mum a long time ago, that early version of Mum, the real Mum, the original Mum who I miss so much it makes my bones ache.

  Frida drives me back to my truck. I get out of her car and she passes me a round tin from her back seat.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I did a big bake last night for the elderly I tend to. Made a few too many. Take it home, it’s a sponge and it’s sunk a little in the middle but the flavour should be okay.’

  I take it and promise to return the polka-dot tin. I climb into my truck and turn the key in the ignition and the headlights come on and I love them. It’s two degrees. Light drizzle. The wipers squeak as they get going and I reverse out of Holmqvist’s driveway and head down the track towards the top of the hill. As I turn to start the descent, I feel something bang in the back of the truck, in the open bay. I frown, trying to remember if I left anything in there. I look back through my rear-view mirror but it is dark and the rear windscreen’s dotted with raindrops. I click on the rear wiper and that’s when I see him.

  13

  He’s trying to crouch down under the window, but I guess he’s also trying to hold on to something, on to the metal bar above the rear windscreen. I can’t see much. He’s about an arm’s length away from me, just a piece of glass and a row of seats in between us. I start to breathe too fast. The wiper blades. I can’t see who it is but it’s not a kid. Too big to be a kid. I drive faster. It’s a full-grown man. Must be.

  But then my breathing slows a little as I realise that I’m the one in control. He can’t get me. As long as I don’t stop then he cannot get to me. I’ll call the police and then I’ll lock the doors and then I’ll park up right outside the station. I’m in here and he’s staying out there.

  I’m at the base of the hill when he starts thumping the rear windscreen. I can feel it and I can hear it, fists smashing against the glass. He’s trying to break through to the back seats.

  I accelerate hard and swerve around the track. The knocking stops and I hear him falling about, rolling around in the back of the truck. I feel it too, the subtle change in handling as the weight swings from side to side. My heart’s racing. I pass Taxi’s house doing seventy and finding every single pothole I possibly can. The truck lurches up and down and feels completely solid, like it wants me to push it harder, like it’s taunting me for driving around on asphalt all this time. I pass Hoarder’s caravan and see the dim light and carry on. Still can’t make out who’s in the back, he must be flat out back there. The road widens and I push up towards one hundred. Then I slow down and indicate and bounce up onto the main road and out of Utgard forest. I hear a bang and look in my mirror and see someone jump from the back of my truck. The figure lands on the track and rolls over and then he gets up and dashes into the trees. It’s twilight, the time the locals call ‘elk o’clock’. I don’t get a good look at him. Could have been anyone.

  I pick up my phone and accelerate to a hundred and ten. My tongue’s dry. I look at my phone screen and then up at the road, then back to it. It’s shaking. I’m shaking. I drive towards the police station and under the E16 and my pulse is starting to slow. I see Tammy’s van in the distance. I call.

&
nbsp; ‘Thai green, hot to trot, double rice, crackers, ten mins. Got it.’

  ‘No,’ I yelp. ‘Not that, don’t put down the phone.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You still have that gun in your truck?’

  ‘The starter pistol? Yeah, ’course. Why?’

  ‘Can I borrow it? I’ll be at your van in five minutes. You’ll need to shutter up for a while.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She is the one person I can rely upon to say ‘okay’ and not ask questions. I approach the town and head past ICA and park close to her takeout van and breathe. I’m sweaty. I check the rear-view mirror and there’s nobody there. I’m fine. But then I check it again.

  Tam’s standing with her hand in her jacket like a Chicago gangster in a movie. I unlock my door and fall out to her.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks.

  I pull my head up from her shoulder and breathe deeply and peek into the back of my truck and tell her.

  ‘What piece of ratshit would do that? asks Tammy.

  My right hearing aid crackles. It’s getting wet in the rain. I cup both hands and raise them over my ears as guards.

  ‘Did he leave anything in the pickup? Any evidence?’

  Tammy stands up on the wheel arch of my truck and shines the torch of her phone into the open rear. Nothing there. No evidence. And then she reaches in and picks something up and shows it to me.

  It’s a gold-coloured paperclip.

  ‘You going to the cop shop?’ she says. ‘I can close up for the night and come with you if you want.’

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ I say, my hands still over my ears. ‘Can I borrow your pistol just for tonight, though?’

  ‘You know it just goes bang, right?’

  ‘It would make me feel a whole lot better,’ I say.

  She passes me her starter pistol and the paperclip, and my fingers are still trembling as I take them from her. I look at the gun. I’m getting close, I can feel it. Why else would someone hide in my damn truck? I’m getting close and somebody out there just gave me a warning.

  14

  I wake from a shallow, fitful sleep. Tammy wanted me to stay at her place but I couldn’t, I had to get my hearing aids into desiccant immediately, had to dry them out.

  I didn’t open my one, sealed, pristine bottle of rum last night. I came close but I did not open it. There are whole weekends I don’t remember from my London days and I will not allow myself to go back to that.

  My phone says 7:13am and I switch off the 7:15 alarm and get up and walk through the flat to my front door. I push the chest of drawers away from the door and look through the fish-eye security lens. Nobody there.

  Back in the bedroom, I take out my aids and pick up the starter pistol I left on the bedside table last night. I take it into the bathroom and set it down on the toilet seat lid. I shower and the hot water feels good. I let it pummel the back of my neck, my head leaning forward, the heat accumulating under my skin. Water dribbles down my chin, around my shoulders, off the tip of my nose, not a tip really, more of a nub, a rounded part-Saami nose inherited from Mum.

  I’ve missed laundry day. The slot allocated to my flat, to Flat 4, is Thursdays, and I missed it. I won’t be able to do laundry till next week now. Someone climbed into my truck last night and scared the crap out of me, and today I’m worrying about laundry.

  I sniff the armpits of a grey sweater on the sofa and slip it on along with other cleaner items. The microwave pings and I add a spoonful of lingonberry jam to the porridge and eat it pacing from the living room to the bedroom and back again and back again. I’m tired from last night’s encounter with David Ghostwriter Holmqvist, or whoever it was. Gavrik’s a small town nestled between a river to the south and a range of hills to the east and Utgard forest to the west and another forest to the north. It doesn’t need a hunter hunting people. Doesn’t fucking need it.

  I head to work and the town feels livelier than usual but it’s not TV crews or tabloid reporters, it’s hunters. It’s men, some women, but mostly men, off from work for a few days, stocking up on ammunition and gear. Buying and talking and gossiping. You might think that Swedes are tight-lipped and stoic and you’d be about right but we also gossip like hell.

  The office is as it always is except that the stack of newspapers on the front counter is twice as tall as usual. I go in and make coffee. Nils is on the phone to a potential client, trying to sell him a half-page near the obituaries and birthdays, prime real estate in the paper, lots of eyeballs on those pages, lots of ‘community investment’ in that section.

  Lars coughs to get my attention.

  ‘Bet you’ll be happy not to visit Mossen village again after this has all blown over,’ he says, his spectacles resting on his bald patch.

  ‘True,’ I say. ‘Each time I get back from that place I just want to stand on top of a mountain and look out. I want a long-distance view where I can see whatever’s coming.’

  Lars smiles and makes a little noise, then slips his bifocals back down onto his nose.

  ‘Do you know what a tête de veau is, Lars? I know you cook. Have you ever heard of it?’

  ‘Can’t say that I have,’ he says. ‘Veau is veal, maybe one of the cheaper cuts like shoulder or shin?’

  I google it and the results are in French so I click on Google Images and oh my God.

  ‘Lars,’ I say.

  He pushes his glasses up onto his head again.

  ‘It’s a calf’s head, brain and all.’

  ‘Vive la France,’ he says, going back to his work.

  I stare at the grid of images, all pale-pink glutinous fibres and jellified ears and eyes. I click on videos and play the first YouTube clip because I can’t not.

  Oh God, David Holmqvist actually did this and he was doing it the moment I arrived at his house.

  I stop the video and call the police station. Thord picks up.

  ‘You busy?’ I ask.

  ‘Medium,’ he says. ‘It’s the Coroner who’s busy now. Post-mortem results should come in later this afternoon. That why you’re calling?’

  ‘I want to see you,’ I say. ‘Right now.’

  No reply.

  ‘Thord?’

  ‘What? Listen, I’m tied up for a bit. It’ll have to be later.’

  ‘Lunch?’ I suggest, pleadingly. ‘Hotel’s open today. I need to talk. Meet you there at noon?’

  ‘You really want to eat there? What about a burger?’

  ‘No, I need some veg,’ I say, almost throwing up. ‘I’m gonna get scurvy or rickets if I don’t get some food that’s been grown in the ground. I’ll pay.’

  ‘Noon,’ he says. ‘See you then.’

  Murder’s not how I imagined it would be. I thought the whole town would swing into action somehow, that there’d be midnight searches and TV crews and ‘do not cross’ tape everywhere. But it’s not like that. There has been no floodlit manhunt. People talk a little more but the town’s almost as quiet as it ever was. There’s a killer out there, maybe two killers, and people are still getting their hair cut and their fishing rods mended and their recycling done.

  I need some structure to the story so I switch both aids off and focus on my screen and on my notes. I download my digital Dictaphone recordings and my phone voice memos and order them. I split what I have into stories and then rearrange them to try to get the local perspective, the think-piece, the effect on the community. Lars is right, my job is to reflect how this event affects our readers. I’ll need to talk to someone at the school, maybe the headmaster, maybe some parents, and I’d like a statement from the local hunting association and maybe one from someone who investigated, or was close to, the ’90s Medusa cases.

  My notes are a mess so I tidy them up and print them out. I need to visit the strip club on the E16. And the taxi driver in Mossen. I search the internet for his phone number.

  ‘Hi, this is Tuva Moodyson from the Posten.’

  No answer. But then I realise my aids are
off, so switch them both on.

  ‘You there?’ I hear him say.

  ‘Yes, I’m here, sorry, bad connection.’

  ‘You need a taxi?’

  ‘No, Mr Svensson. I’d like to have a chat with you please about the murder in Utgard forest, I’m writing a piece for the paper.’

  ‘I know. You’ve been talking to the whole village. I heard.’

  ‘Can we meet, maybe in town? Can I buy you a coffee this afternoon? Say, McDonald’s at three?’

  ‘No can do,’ he says. ‘That’s my busiest time, so to say. I’m ferrying kids all over the Kommun from different schools, and taking them all home.’

  ‘What about after that? What time do you normally finish?’

  ‘After that I’ve got my own son to deal with. I’m sorry, I’m too busy for this.’

  He wants to put down the phone.

  ‘Well, listen, I’m great with kids, in fact I used to work in a kindergarten when I was younger. Maybe I could pop by for half an hour when your son gets home and help you out a little and we could chat then?’

  He coughs and then I don’t hear anything.

  ‘Mr Svensson?’

  ‘You like kids?’ he says.

  ‘What time should I come by?’

  ‘Come at six,’ he says. ‘Not sure what I can tell you that the others haven’t, but I want this scum caught so whatever I can do to help. See you at six sharp.’

  I trawl old reports of the Medusa murders and print out a map of the locations where the bodies were found. Then I add Freddy Malmström to the map. The bodies are well spread out, they weren’t found close to any particular house or feature. I catch a faint whiff of sweat from my jumper and reach down into my drawer and take out my perfume and spray, as discreetly as I can, onto the bobbly wool under my armpits.

  ‘No sprays in the office,’ Lars says without looking up. ‘You know the rules by now. This is a newspaper not a beauty parlour. No nail varnish, no nail clipping, no scent.’