by Will Dean
I see Lena in my mirrors. She turns and follows me.
I park outside Tam’s building and look up at her window.
Nothing.
I try the external door code and it hasn’t changed since I left town in February. I go in and sprint up the stairs to her floor.
‘Tam?’ I yell, banging on her door with my fist. ‘Tammy, you in there? Tammy?’
A door across the corridor opens and a young guy with a sunburnt face steps out in his robe.
‘You got any idea what time it is? It’s not even breakfast time.’
‘Have you seen Tammy Yamnim?’
‘Who?’
‘Your closest neighbour,’ I say. ‘Twenty-two, black hair, runs the food van near ICA.’
‘I just moved here,’ he says, adjusting his robe.
I pass him my card. ‘If you see anyone come into this apartment or you hear anything at all, you call me on that number.’
He rubs his eyes.
‘You have to keep the noise down, it’s the building rules.’
‘You hear of anything. You see anyone suspicious, you email, text or call me right away. Okay?’
‘I’ll be talking to the head of the association about this.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘The chairman. Of this building. About the noise.’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘You do that, mate.’
Sunburnt shithead.
I try her door one more time and then walk back downstairs. Lena’s waiting outside.
‘Anything?’ she asks.
‘Locked,’ I say. ‘One guy who hasn’t seen anything. Let’s go.’
We drive in convoy up Storrgatan, past Benny Björnmossen’s gun store, past my old office, past the liquorice factory. Shallow sunbeams make St Olov’s church ruin look almost normal. We head back down the other side of the hill towards the cross-country ski trails. Fancy suburb this side of town. Well-kept houses. We park up outside Lena’s two bedroom detached house. White clapboards, neat garden, robot mower.
‘If you need a place to sleep,’ she points to the friggebod hut in the garden. It’s basically a shed with insulation. They’re so small they don’t need planning permission and so most Swedes stick one in their garden as guest accommodation.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘But I need to work out what happened. I know the cops are relaxed but I have a bad feeling. Small town like this, good light, everyone summer-extroverted, someone must know. And if they don’t, then I’ll find her myself…’
‘I believe you,’ Lena cuts in. ‘But the offer stands if you need it. Come inside.’
She opens her front door and I take a deep breath to calm myself. The house is spotlessly clean, it always is, but with this kind of summer light any house looks dusty. The light’s too clinical and it shows things, dead skin and old fluff, floating in mid-air.
‘Use the bathroom if you need to freshen up. I’ll make coffee.’
I use her bathroom. I spent time in this very house after Mum died. I spent days in this home being looked after by Lena, even though we’ve never really spoken about it – not then, not since. She just took me in like an injured sparrow, and she kept me alive for a while.
When I get back to the pine kitchen table there’s a thermos of coffee, rye bread in a basket, slices of cucumber and pepper, and a slab of Västerbotten cheese. I’m starving-hungry so I eat. Ten minutes. A refuelling stop. The cheese is the good kind with actual salt crystals that melt on your tongue, and the coffee is strong and smooth. My body gets the jolt it needs.
‘A strategy,’ says Lena, draining the last of her coffee.
‘You ever done this before?’ I ask.
She shakes her head. Then she pulls a pad of paper and a pen from next to her landline, and it occurs to me that I’ve never had a phone attached to a wall.
‘Top ten places to look first,’ she says.
‘I’m going to talk to Thord again,’ I say. ‘I’m meeting him at McDonald’s after his shift.’
‘Good,’ she says.
‘After that, there’s the reservoir. Tam goes there when she needs headspace, when a guy’s been a dick, when her mum’s difficult to contact on account of her backpacking around Mozambique or Colorado or someplace.’
‘Big reservoir,’ says Lena. ‘You’ll need help to search it all.’
I nod and get a battery warning in my left hearing aid.
‘Apart from that, there’s the university,’ I say. ‘But why would she leave her food van, cash in the till, door unlocked; leave her bag, leave her car and go there? Go anywhere?’
‘I have no idea,’ says Lena.
I rub my eyes and pour us both more coffee.
‘Was she dating anyone?’ asks Lena.
I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure.’ How can I not know this? What kind of friend am I? For a moment I despise myself. I’ve been selfish and shut off for months now. Cocooned. Not drinking. Focusing on my new job. On myself. Impressing Anders, my new editor. But Tam’s always been guarded, even with me. She dates via apps and websites. I only get a filtered version of events and, stupidly, I never push for more. ‘I’ll ask around,’ I add quietly.
‘Town this size and knowing you, you’ll find out by lunch,’ she says, a hopeful look in her eyes.
Not if I know Gavrik. People here cover for each other, they lie and deceive and watch each other’s backs. Families are interconnected and grudges run deep down into the Toytown bedrock. There have always been rumours here and in the surrounding towns. Urban myths. Young women going missing. Gone ‘travelling’ or ‘moved to the USA’ or ‘just upped and left.’
Too much wilderness this far north. Too much space. Too many hiding places.
‘I’d better get off to meet Thord,’ I say. ‘Is Johan upstairs?’
‘Some hydroelectric conference up in Östersund,’ she says. ‘I’m home alone.’
‘Lock your door behind me,’ I say after a pause.
Lena’s eyes widen.
McDonald’s looks like lunch not breakfast. The sun’s already beaming down hard. Light bouncing off car roofs and cooking the interiors to the point where you could fry a McEgg on any one of them.
‘Long time no see,’ says Thord as I walk in. He’s still in uniform, short sleeves this time of year, and he looks tired.
We hug, an awkward half-hug, by the drinks dispenser. His gun’s right there on his hip. I order coffee and he orders a McMuffin with tea, and we sit down away from the window.
‘Tell me everything,’ I say.
‘Thought I already did on the phone,’ he says.
‘It’s not normal for Tammy to leave cash in her till, her bag, her car, or leave the van unlocked. She wouldn’t do it. It’s totally out of character. She’s never done anything like this.’
‘People do strange things this time of year,’ he says. ‘Insomnia. Stress or money problems. People sometimes up and leave. I seen it a dozen times before.’
‘You don’t think she was kidnapped? Abducted?’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘We can’t rule that out but it’d be mighty unusual for a full-grown woman to get kidnapped.’
‘But you do think something is off, otherwise you wouldn’t have put police tape around the van.’
He chews his McMuffin and swallows and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. He sighs and then he moves closer.
‘It probably ain’t nothing, and we haven’t gone public with this yet.’
I bend forward to be closer to him and he recoils a little.
‘Don’t get worried, it probably ain’t connected.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Chief Björn found some blood splatter on the ground near them onions.’
I put my hands to my neck.
‘No.’
‘I said don’t get worried, Tuvs. It could be someone else’s blood, it could be nothing. Just a few drops. Maybe a bleeding customer, or Tammy cut herself on a knife and a customer took her to the hospital, something like that.’
>
‘Have you checked the hospitals?’ I ask.
He nods.
I raise my eyebrows.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Not yet, anyways. We’ll keep checking.’
‘You have any leads? Any witnesses? Any fingerprints?’
‘Blood’s getting tested. We got people checking all the traffic cams but there aren’t too many in Gavrik town. CCTV from ICA doesn’t reach to the far side of the van. Doesn’t cover that exit of the car park. Only leads we got are that scream and some gossip about her dating history.’
‘And?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me, fill in the gaps.’
‘Sure,’ I say, taking a gulp of lukewarm coffee. ‘Tell me what you know and I’ll fill in the gaps.’
‘Rumour was she was having an affair with a married man, some kind of dam designer. A married engineer. No proof, mind. Rumour was she was head over heels in love and wanted him to leave his wife but he wasn’t having any of it. Ring any bells?’
‘Nope,’ I say. ‘Not her style.’
‘Then there’s the fella up at Snake River Salvage, up at the big junkyard. I never did like that place. Word is they’ve been dating on and off.’
‘His name Karl-Otto, by any chance?’ I ask.
‘That’s him. Karl-Otto Sandberg’s a big shot eBay trader so they say. Car parts. Good economy. So she mentioned Karl-Otto to you?’
‘A little,’ I say. ‘Just in passing. Who else?’
‘Kid who works in the shoe shop.’
‘Freddy Bom?’ I ask. ‘Young-looking guy?’
Thord snort-smiles. ‘That’s the one. Looks like he still needs a bottle-feed but they tell me he’s well over thirty.’
‘Tam never mentioned him,’ I say.
‘Tinder dot com,’ he says. ‘Just saying what I heard.’
‘I’ll talk to them both.’
‘Don’t go breaking laws or stirring up no hornets’ nests,’ he says. ‘You hear anything or you sense something ain’t right, you call the station right away, you hear?’
‘I’ll be careful,’ I say. ‘Snake River’s just past Utgard forest, right?’
‘On the far side,’ says Thord. ‘Practically merge into one another at some points. Used to be called Black River in my granddaddy’s day. Unusual people out there, so you be real careful. Watch your back, Tuva. Them Snake River folk don’t like the government much, otherwise I’d go with you. And that Freddy Bom might look like a harmless kid but my ex-girlfriend went to him for a fitting once and she reckons he got overfamiliar with her arches, too much touching her toes, reckons she won’t ever set foot in that shoe shop again.’
‘Okay.’
‘Thing with summer,’ says Thord, rolling his McMuffin wrapper into a tight ball, ‘is that people don’t see the threats. It’s like they’re tricked by it every year. Midsommar looks nice from the outside, but folk are drinking too much and you get people driving under the influence. There’s a hundred-thousand elk calves born right around now in Sweden and that means there’s a lot of hormonal, protective half-ton mothers out there in the woods. Just cos there’s no night-time don’t mean there’s no darkness. I have people falling off their scaffolding when they’re re-painting their houses, had others drowning to death in the reservoir. And then there’s the poor old folks dehydrated in their own homes. Silent killers. People let their guard down cos they think nothing bad can happen in summertime. In truth, it’s my busiest time of the whole damn year.’
4
I climb into my truck and open the window to let out some heat. I’ve never been to Snake River Salvage before so I google it on my phone. In map mode it looks like a big field next to the dark, county-sized mass of Utgard forest. But in satellite-photo mode it looks like what it is. A junkyard. Biggest in the Kommun. Thousands of cars, trucks, boats and caravans. Wrecks. Imagine a clock sitting between two horizontal lines. The top line is the snake river itself and the bottom line is the country road that passes by south of Utgard forest. The clock face is the salvage yard. At nine o’clock is the entrance track. The track bends round to twelve o’clock where there’s a riverside house. Then round to three o’clock where there’s some kind of large industrial warehouse butting up against the Utgard pines. There’s another house at six o’clock, some kind of L-shaped thing, and then the track continues its circle back to the nine o’clock entrance. In the centre of the circular track is the biggest car park you’ve ever seen. Dead cars, all of them.
I smell bad but that’ll have to wait. I drive past smug early-morning joggers – who the hell jogs on a hot summer day? – and head to the underpass under the E16. There are wildflowers bursting out from the ditches and a farmer’s at work drilling seed into his marginal field, a flock of greedy white birds following him wherever he goes.
Utgard forest is overwhelming. Bigger than ever. Dark and summer-full; undergrowth exploding outward and upward, brambles and nettles creeping out from the forest fringes. I drive for fifteen minutes and Utgard forest is the constant shade on the right-hand side of the road. I pass the narrow entrance to Mossen village – nothing good’s ever come out of that place – and I drive on. Eventually Utgard thins and I see the Snake River site. Nearest the road, nearest that six o’clock area, are stacks and stacks of shipping containers. Like a cargo terminal after an earthquake. I turn right off the road and bump along a dry gravel track. There’s a ‘Welcome To Snake River Salvage’ sign on metal poles but the words ‘River’ and ‘Salvage’ have either peeled off or else been tampered with so now it just says ‘Welcome To Snake’.
There’s a car wreck halfway down a shallow dry ditch and its electric cables look like the veins and arteries of some disembowelled beast; some unfortunate victim that’s dragged itself off the road to go die in peace in the shade.
I enter the main site and I have never seen so many half-rusted vehicles. Endless decay. Chaos. The sun’s rising in the sky and reflecting off windscreens and steel corpses and I have to squint to stay on the gravel. The smell of bonfires drifts through my Hilux vents but it’s more acrid. Like someone’s been burning plastic or tyres or diseased animals. Hell’s own parking lot. I drive slowly, taking the place in, keeping an eye out for clues, anything to connect all this with Tammy.
The first house, the one at twelve o’clock, is a big semi-derelict wooden shack with a wraparound deck. Most of the windows are boarded over. I drive on past a firepit, some kind of oversize bonfire area that I guess is at about the two o’clock mark. Then there’s the big warehouse. It’s grey with a shallow roof like a huge agricultural barn with doors tall enough to let tractors in and out. Utgard forest looms behind like it’s making a threat. After that there’s a big rusting machine with green rope dangling down from it to the dirt. Maybe a car crusher? I keep driving past nettles and marsh thistles and then I see the L-shaped house. It’s four shipping containers arranged like kid’s building blocks. But these have windows and doors and window boxes stuffed with blood-red geraniums. I keep driving around, past more containers and past neat rows of rotting motorhomes until I return to the ‘Welcome to Snake’ sign at nine o’clock. I drive round again and there’s a woman at the twelve o’clock shack, the one with the big deck. I park and get out.
‘Good morning, friend,’ she says.
‘Good morning,’ I say. ‘I’m Tuva Moodyson.’
She’s sitting on a swing seat. It’s a double swing seat but she fills the whole thing. Her toenails and thumbnails are painted bright red and she’s wearing ICA Maxi jeans and a white T-shirt.
‘How can I help?’ she asks.
I walk over and my heart’s beating hard from too much caffeine.
The window behind her is boarded over with horizontal planks.
‘Mind if I step up?’ I say.
She beckons me over with her hand. And those two red thumbnails.
‘I’m looking for my missing friend, Tammy Yamnim.’ I show her Tam’s photo on my phone. ‘Have you seen anything out of the ord
inary around here recently? Anyone strange?’
She takes two miniature teabag-like sacks of snus tobacco from her pocket and stuffs them under her upper lip.
‘No,’ she says. I have to focus more to understand her words with the snus under her lip. ‘But I ain’t gonna lie, we don’t see too much out here, ordinary or not.’
Her hair is thick and silvery, the plait running down her back as substantial as a rope tethering an ocean liner.
‘You haven’t seen anyone you don’t recognise?’
She adjusts the snus tobacco under her upper lip and then moves a vaping e-cigarette to her lips.
‘You from the police, friend?’
Steam pours from her nostrils.
‘No, I’m a journalist.’
‘We don’t want no trouble here,’ she says. ‘My husband Sven, he built all this,’ she fans her arm to take in the entire junkyard. ‘We ain’t had no trouble since big Sven passed in 2009.’
‘The reason I’m here…’ I say, edging closer to her. ‘Is that someone told me Tammy was dating Karl-Otto Sandberg.’
She leaps up off her swing seat. She has only four toenails on each foot – her little toes are almost non-existent.
‘Karl-Otto’s my boy, my only child,’ she says, her frown deepening. ‘He’s a good son, a kind soul. Be mindful what you say about Karl-Otto around me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, grateful to be getting somewhere. ‘Mind if I sit down, I drove all night to get here and I haven’t slept a wink.’
She points to a white plastic patio chair and we both sit down.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I say. ‘I’m just trying to find my friend.’
‘Karl-Otto ain’t home, he’s off delivering an engine block to Munkfors. They gotta pay extra for that.’
I stare at her fingernails. Not the red thumbnails, the other eight.
‘Wow,’ I say, trying to relate to her, to build trust. ‘I love your nails. Who do you go to? Paradise Spa in town?’
She looks down at her fingers and smiles.
‘Do ’em right here, friend. Shed snakeskin ain’t strong enough to do much, but it works magic for nails. Base coat, snakeskin, trim to fit, top coat. You like it, really?’