by Will Dean
I look out for Tammy. I see T-shirts and I see backs of heads that could be her but they’re not. Not even a strong resemblance; just my sleep-deprived mind desperate to find hope where there is none.
There’s a strawberry stall in the lay-by outside McDonald’s. Two girls who can’t be older than fifteen wearing cotton dresses and bored faces, two girls sitting on fold-up camp chairs behind a fold-up decorator’s table, two girls selling overpriced Swedish strawberries to Swedes who crave them and will pay almost anything to get them. Swedes buy Swedish. The table is red and the girls are dressed in white and the sky behind is a powder blue. The whole thing looks like the horizontal block-stripes of an artist; the kind some swear is a philistine and others laud as a genius.
I go to park in my usual space but there’s a BMW sitting there. My replacement. I pull into a guest space – there’s plenty of guest parking in Gavrik, ever-hopeful – and get hit by unseasonal heat as I step down. It’s this hot in August but not in June. This is a freak heatwave.
The bell above the door tinkles as I step into Gavrik Posten. Lars isn’t in, which is to be expected. Sebastian Cheekbones is sitting behind my desk with a mini-fan blowing his perfect blond hair like some cut-price MTV video.
‘Hej!’ he says, leaping out of his chair, his smile broad and bright.
‘Hej,’ I say.
He stretches over and offers me a fist-bump. What the fuck is wrong with this kid? I leave him hanging and say, ‘You heard about Tammy?’
He retracts his closed fist and says, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. But the Chief reckons she’ll show up in the next few days, he says Midsommar madness hits all of us at some point.’
‘Midsommar madness?’ I say, grit in my voice.
‘You know,’ he says. ‘Insomnia from the incessant birdsong and the light, our body clocks not adjusting to the early mornings. And he says it’s even harder for people not of Swedish heritage.’
‘What did you just say?’
‘Because Tammy’s Thai, I think he meant.’
Sebastian’s looking like a puppy who just peed on a rug and knows what’s coming.
‘Tammy was born here,’ I say. ‘Not that it should matter, but she’s as Swedish as you or me or the acorn-dick chief of police over there. He really said that?’
Cheekbones fiddles with some tiny plastic toy no bigger than a toe, the kind of action figure you get free with a Happy Meal or a chocolate egg.
‘I was at a barbecue with him,’ says Sebastian. ‘Smokiest barbecue I’ve ever seen in my life. I think he was trying to be optimistic, you know, saying she’s gone off to a summer cabin or something.’
Am I being too harsh on this kid? But I’m not in professional-journalist mode anymore. I am in furious, terrified best-friend mode. I’ll be as harsh as I need to be.
‘Lena in?’ I ask, curtly.
He nods and throws the plastic toy in the bin.
I knock and step into her office.
‘Anything from Snake River?’ she asks.
‘I’ll need to go back, still haven’t talked with Karl-Otto, the guy she dated.’
‘Take this,’ says Lena, passing me a plastic A4 zip-up case.
I frown and take it.
‘Free night-pack the airline gave me,’ she says. ‘T-shirt, joggers, toothpaste, just the basics. More use to you than me.’
I smile at her and take the toothbrush out and thank her.
The downstairs toilet hasn’t changed much since I left. New pine-scented air freshener but the same budget ICA hand soap. I brush my teeth and feel about a hundred times better. Strange how toothpaste can lift your mood. I made an effort to brush Mum’s teeth right up until the end. Softly. Hardly any pressure at all. Her lips were dark by then and they were sore. Her gums were prone to bleeding. But the toothpaste perked her up a little each time. That’s mint for you. And it was one tiny thing I could do for her. Not medical, just a simple everyday human routine. One of my hands supporting the back of her head, the other brushing as gently as I could manage. Me and her. Mother and child.
I change my T-shirt for the airline one, it’s thin and unfitted but it’s clean, and then I use the miniature deodorant.
‘Thanks,’ I say, heading back into Lena’s office.
‘I came up with a plan of sorts,’ she says. ‘Tell me what you think.’
I take the paper from her. It has five bullet points. First, a flyer campaign using a recent photo of Tammy and listing a phone number.
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Let’s do something on social media as well. A Facebook account or a hashtag.’
She nods and makes a note.
Second bullet point is ‘press conference.’
‘Police press conference?’ I ask.
‘They won’t do one yet,’ she says. ‘We can try to get some journalists up here, pull in some favours, and do something ourselves.’
Lena is the best person in the whole damn world.
Third bullet point is ‘search party’.
‘How do we organise a search party?’ I ask.
‘No idea,’ she says. ‘But I guess we announce something at the press conference and then signal boost on social media. We can group together at a meeting point and fan out from there.’
Fourth bullet point is ‘reward for information.’
‘Reward?’ I ask.
‘I’m working on it,’ she says, tapping her nose. ‘Won’t be anything big but it might help.’
Final bullet point is ‘talk to everyone in Tammy’s life.’
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I’ll track down Karl-Otto and I’ll talk to Freddy Bom from the shoe shop. And I’ll call Thai food wholesalers, some regular clients I know of, her friend who works the tills in ICA.’
‘We still haven’t got hold of her mum, you know,’ says Lena. ‘She’s in Central America. We’ve left messages every way we know how.’
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘And she hasn’t spoken to her dad for years. Not since he ran off with a Barbie lookalike. She wouldn’t want him getting involved, I don’t think.’
‘That makes you next of kin, unofficially,’ she says.
Yep. Just like she is to me.
I look at the clock.
‘Can I leave you with organising things while I talk to Thord? I need to push him to do a proper police press conference, it’s the only way we can get this on TV.’ I’m not the town reporter any more. No need for me to hold back so I don’t burn bridges. The bridges are already on fire. I’ll force him if I need to.
‘Go,’ she says.
I step out into blinding sunlight and the people of Toytown are going about their business as usual. They’re shopping and sweating and cycling and shading their eyes from the sun and taking their toddlers to the park. And somewhere my friend is tied up or injured or being forced to do awful things or being held against her will. In this same sunshine she is lost.
‘Such a beautiful day,’ says a tanned young woman walking her rat-dog. ‘June is for angels,’ says her friend. ‘Best time of the year.’
A red-haired woman with a bleeding forehead sprints past me and into the police station.
7
The police station’s empty save for the bleeding red-haired woman. Chief Björn takes the woman through to a room and I overhear her say something about wasps. About a nest. The reception falls quiet. I take a ticket and ring the bell. Thord walks out after a while sneezing and hollering like I don’t know what.
‘Summer cold?’ I ask.
‘The hay fever,’ he says. ‘Damn wildflowers make me want to stick my head in a bucket of ice water and leave it there till hunt season. I’m only back here to cover the Chief for his break.’
‘Thord, why aren’t you holding a press conference about Tammy? I mean, it’d help the search efforts a lot.’
He blows his nose into a dark blue handkerchief. ‘It’s complicated,’ he says. ‘We got protocols.’
‘She’s missing out there.’
He sniffs and says, ‘It�
�s different with children, you see. With children we can act right away, news conference with the parents, maybe a sibling. We can swing into action real fast.’
‘That’s exactly what we need,’ I say. ‘Right now it’s me in my truck and Lena over there designing flyers.’
‘Adults can go missing if they want to,’ says Thord. ‘No law against it. Now, we’ve done the risk assessment and this ain’t no open and shut thing either way. On the one hand we have the fact she left her van and her car and she left cash in the till. That is a riddle, I do admit. But on the other hand she doesn’t seem to have any obvious enemies, any stalkers, any boyfriend with a record, nothing of that sort.’
‘What about the blood,’ I say.
He cringes. ‘Well, we don’t even know that it’s her blood yet. And between you and me that may have been the Chief being a tad,’ he leans in closer to me over the counter, ‘over-CSI, if you know what I mean. He binged too much Netflix last winter and he thinks he’s picked up one or two things, so he reckons.’
‘How much,’ my voice breaks a little. ‘How much blood was there?’
‘Couple of drops. More like a cut finger than a neck wound.’
I can’t think of her bleeding, injured. I don’t want to picture it.
‘We’ve been talking to her customers, the people who called us when they found her van abandoned. We’ve been to see her neighbours, traced her last steps and the last customers she spoke to. Us police don’t just sit about you know. One sec,’ he says as he heads back into the rear room through the key-code door.
I stand there, a singular office fan moving hot air around the place, the vertical strip blinds dancing in an artificial breeze.
‘Want a strawberry?’ he asks. ‘Chief’s wife brought them in earlier. They’re Swedish.’
I take one because I’m hungry and because they look good. He takes one as well. We both eat. And we both have the same dumb pleasure face as the sun-warm strawberry bursts its dayglow pink juice inside our mouths, the natural sugars racing to pump our blood full of joy. We both have the same stupid expression, eyes part-closed, two awkward sex faces opposite each other in the Gavrik cop shop on a summer afternoon.
‘Good?’ he says.
I just nod.
‘We haven’t located Tammy’s phone yet,’ he says, his horse teeth pink with juice. ‘We’re hoping that could be the missing link here.’
‘Can you trace it?’ I ask.
‘Tech guys in Karlstad are working hard. As soon as someone switches it on they’ll triangulate the signal. Might not even need the SIM card in, so they tell me.’
‘Good,’ I say.
He eats another strawberry from the cardboard punnet.
‘When do you get the blood results? When will we know if that’s Tammy’s blood?’
‘Should be later today but you know what it’s like. Crazy summertime with people taking vacation here, there and everyplace. My cousin, the one married to Bertil’s eldest daughter – you know, Bertil the bee man – my cousin works up at the pulp mill and he’s having a house built, they’re doing it in a factory down in Småland. Well, the foundations are done, drinking-well drilled, all that, and now the guys building the wood frame in Småland take the whole of July off and he has to wait around twiddling his thumbs over summer. Some people tell me it’s the twenty-first century but I’m not so sure.’
‘We’re going to search old buildings,’ I say. ‘Farm outbuildings, go door-to-door asking about Tammy. You want to join us? Can your colleagues spare some sniffer dogs or something?’
He looks apologetic.
‘You know, Tuvs, over seven thousand people go missing each year in Sweden. I learnt about it on a course last year. Over seven thousand. And pretty much all of them either turn up safe and sound or else they wanted to go missing.’
‘Pretty much all,’ I say.
‘Almost all,’ he says.
‘When’s Constable Noora back?’ I ask.
He looks almost bashful. Is he actually blushing right now or is it the hay fever?
‘Back at work week on Monday. Back here in Gavrik town a bit earlier, end of next week I reckon.’
I want her. Because I miss her and I need some comfort right now, someone to lean on, but also I need a woman police officer. Thord’s a decent guy all round but only a woman can understand what kind of threat Tammy might be facing this very second. Only a woman knows that fear, that primal live-or-die risk. When I walk behind another woman down a dark street they usually bring out their keys. They are on high alert until they realise I’m not a guy. Maybe they make a fist with one key sticking through their fingers. Maybe they cross over. Always vigilant for escape routes or where they could run to. Hyper-aware – that survival instinct honed over millennia, from caves to dirt tracks to paved roads. I need Noora’s help. I want her here now.
‘You go on a search expedition,’ he says, eating another strawberry and offering me one, ‘I don’t want no vigilante justice if you find something.’ He stands up a little taller like he’s just remembered he’s a cop. ‘You discover anything, anyone, you call it in to the station. Do not put yourself in danger, do not touch anything, do not move anything, you understand?’
‘Sure. Listen, what needs to happen for us to get a police press conference? I can get a dozen good journalists up here if you organise it. What do you need?’
He sneezes and wipes his nose on his wrist.
‘Bad news,’ he says, his voice an octave lower. ‘Some kind of bad news, a piece of evidence, a confession, an eyewitness. Careful what you wish for.’
I feel unsteady on my feet. Because of his words but also his tone. Piece of evidence? My heart pulls itself apart just thinking what that could be. A scrap of clothing? A smashed phone? CCTV footage of Tam being dragged away? More blood? A body? I grip the counter and turn a shade paler.
‘You want to sit down?’ he says.
I shake my head.
‘Flyers are a good idea,’ he says, some pity in his voice, some look of ‘give her hope’ in his bloodshot eyes. ‘Flyers can work.’
‘I’m going to see Freddy Bom the shoe-shop guy,’ I say. ‘Tam dated him on and off, he might know something.’
‘You meeting in public?’ he asks.
‘At the shop,’ I say.
‘Well, alright then,’ he says. ‘I heard some people call him Freddy Feet, because of his profession. He’s the Chief’s second cousin, you know that? Chief doesn’t talk of him very often on account of Freddy being the strangest kid in the whole town,’ he grimaces. ‘I know I shouldn’t call Freddy a kid, but you just gotta look at him. Gives my old mum the heebie-jeebies every time she buys a new pair of insoles.’
8
I leave the cop shop and the sky’s clouding over, moisture blowing up from Lake Vänern and rolling on past Gavrik town, gliding over and leaving us behind.
Benny Björnmossen’s locking up his gun store as I skip past. He’s holding a multipack of kid’s chocolate and a puzzle book. He doesn’t see me. I walk past the newsagent and the optician and stop outside Storrgatan 18b: half shoe shop, half health-food shop. I guess they didn’t have the budget to partition the room so the two just melt into one another: gingko biloba bottles sitting beside kid’s summer sandals, lactose pills stacked beside hiking boots.
Freddy Bom’s serving a man with a small child. Spiderman boots. He boxes up the boots, much to the kid’s annoyance, and I notice Freddy’s hands. I’m pretty sure I bought a pair of shoes from this guy years ago but I never noticed back then. His fingers. They’re a little too long and a little too skinny. Each hand looks like a spider crab. It’s as if he’s wearing finger extensions. The man and the kid leave with their box.
‘Freddy Bom. Hi, we met a few years back. I’m Tuva Moodyson.’
‘Moodyson,’ he says. ‘We’re closing. Sorry about that.’
You can see why locals gossip about this guy. He’s taller than average but his head looks like a giant toddler
head, smooth plump skin, a soft-looking nose, the kind of clear white eyes I haven’t had since I was a kid. His hair is straw yellow and it’s curly, almost in ringlets and maybe it’s because he’s so fair, but I can’t see any stubble on his face, his cheeks and chin are smoother than mine.
‘That’s okay,’ I say. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Tammy Yamnim.’
I judge his face for a reaction.
‘Tammy? People say she’s gone off to Stockholm again.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
‘Haven’t seen her.’ He turns to the woman at the health-food counter opposite. ‘You closing up tonight, Sara?’
She nods to him.
‘It’s home time,’ he says to me. ‘I’m going home now.’
‘You driving or walking?’
He frowns but there are no lines on his forehead. His face is a smooth ball of white chocolate; he has no moles or freckles at all.
‘I ride,’ he says.
I follow him outside expecting to find a motorbike or a Vespa but he unlocks his BMX from the railing on Storrgatan and he shields his code lock with one spider-crab hand while he fixes the combination.
‘Can we walk together for a while?’ I ask. ‘Tammy’s my best friend and I’m a bit desperate for help. Can we talk about her for a few minutes?’
He turns his head to look up at me, his blond ringlets falling around his eyes, and all of a sudden he looks almost handsome. In some angles he’s preposterously childlike, but then he catches you off guard and I see why Tam might have fancied him.
‘Can we talk a while?’ he says, a hint of a grin on his face. ‘Sure.’
He pushes his bike and I walk beside him. People cycling down Storrgatan nod their heads to me and one woman, Dr Stina from the local Vårdcentral surgery, she rings her bell and I wave.
‘I worked there straight out of high school,’ says Freddy, pointing to the Paradise Spa beauty parlour next to the cross-country ski store. His finger looks more like a curved claw. Good for tying up shoelaces I guess. ‘I studied metalwork,’ he adds. ‘Wanted to be a welder like my pappa, but then I discovered spas and treatments.’