Black River

by Will Dean

  An older woman walks up to us. She used to own Gavrik’s only stationery store.

  ‘They took them down last night, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Who did?’ I ask.

  ‘About twenty of them, so my middle nephew told me,’ she sniffs. ‘Rumour is the Chinese girl was doing all the speed-dating websites, you know the ones. Been seeing some ambulance man; well that ruffled some feathers let me tell you.’ She sniffs again.

  ‘Tammy is Swedish,’ I say with more venom than one of Sally Sandberg’s snakes. ‘Her parents are Thai. She was born here. She’s Swedish.’

  ‘If you say so, dear.’

  ‘What else are people saying?’ asks Lena, and this is why I still have a lot to learn from her. I’d have spat on this woman’s shoes and bid her farewell but Lena swallows it down, takes a breath, and then she taps the gossip fountain like any pro journalist should.

  ‘What else?’ says the stationery store woman. ‘Well, I’m not one for rumour-spreading, but Mrs Björkèn who has the haberdashery store, she has new wool in if you weren’t already aware – it’s Swedish wool, too, clean, not imported, no chemicals – anyway, she heard from a man in a superior position with the Kommun, she heard the young lady may have faked her own…’ she lowers her voice and looks around then back to us, ‘death.’

  ‘People are saying that?’ I ask.

  She nods an earnest nod and then she says ‘insurance fiddle.’

  ‘Tam doesn’t even have life insurance,’ I say.

  ‘Anything else?’ asks Lena. ‘You know everyone round here. Tell me, what are people thinking?’

  ‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘Course, people are asking questions as well. Some are asking where she’s really from, if she’s legal, if she has a work permit. Paperwork. You know, the usual.’

  ‘She’s Swedish,’ I say again.

  The woman looks at me like ‘whatever you tell yourself, honey.’

  ‘You know where Tammy could be?’ I ask. ‘Any personal theories of your own?’

  She thinks about that.

  ‘Well, she met a gentleman on one of the sex dot com websites. Nobody courts anymore do they? Not properly. She went on a date with the young fella from the shoe shop, Fredrik his name is. They went on some dates. Now, I used to know Fredrik’s mother a little, we belonged to the same choir for years, and that boy has not been the same since she passed on. He’s disturbed. You know how many cats he lives with? I’d start right there with him. Looks like a marshmallow on legs, that boy.’

  I start to ask her another question when a guy runs over from the direction of ICA Maxi. I recognise him. He’s one of the twin brothers who cleans the factory canteen. He’s panicked. Running right at me.

  ‘Hej,’ I say. ‘What’s wrong.’

  Stationery store woman is angling her neck, she wants every piece of information the twin has.

  ‘It’s Lisa,’ he says, ‘My sister’s neighbour.’ He’s talking about the pretty check-out girl, Viggo Svensson’s niece, the ex-model. ‘It’s Lisa,’ he says again, out of breath. ‘Trolley guy found her sunglasses this morning. In the ICA car park. Smashed to pieces. She’s missing. Lisa’s gone missing.’

  12

  ‘Tell me what you know,’ I say.

  The twin is out of breath, bent double, holding his chest, one palm out as if to say ‘just gimme a sec.’

  ‘Lisa worked till ten last night,’ he pants. ‘Was due to visit her friend this morning, they were supposed to be having breakfast at her place then going up Snake River to find spare parts. Her daddy’s a raggare, got himself a sweet ’70s Volvo, and I think they were going to find him a present on pick-your-own day. She never turned up. Friend called and went over to her place. Not there. Doesn’t look like she ever made it home last night. Her neighbour’s Benny, the fella that runs the gun store. He was having a barbecue. Said he didn’t see her come home, said Lisa would have said hi, maybe stayed for a beer, she was friendly like that.’

  ‘Shit,’ I say.

  ‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘I’m off to the police precinct to tell the constables all I just told you. Not good two women going missing in this town on the same weekend. Never happened before, not one time.’

  He walks up Storrgatan, his cargo shorts flapping around his skinny, pale legs.

  ‘She might not be missing,’ says Lena. ‘This could be unrelated. She might be at a boyfriend’s place. Might be at a party still.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ I say. ‘But I don’t like it. Tam and her are the same age, same height, they work at roughly the same place.’

  Worried-looking people start to emerge from their apartments. The news is already out. Tweets and text messages and Facebook posts. News spreads faster than it ever has before. Men in robes and women wearing jogging pants and loose T-shirts step out onto Storrgatan, like a community of carnivorous scavenger beetles appearing from beneath rocks as they start to smell the unmoving flesh of some unfortunate being that’s just ceased to be.

  ‘Look,’ I say as I peer around. ‘Now people care.’ I point at the gossiping locals. ‘A blonde’s gone missing. Now they take notice.’

  Lena says, ‘Lars is printing more flyers. We’ll have another four hundred for today.’

  An old guy limps over to us. His collar is frayed and his shoes look like they’ve been resoled a dozen times.

  ‘Hej Bertil,’ says Lena.

  It’s Bertil Hendersson, the bee man.

  ‘I heard,’ he says. ‘Everyone’s talking about it. Two missing. I’ll help in any way I can.’

  I look at this grizzly old bee collector and I want to hug him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  He smells of woodsmoke. There’s a bandaged cut on his hand.

  ‘Got thirteen children of my own, all moved out now. I’ll help, just tell me how.’

  Lena takes him to tape new flyers to the posts where the old ones were ripped away. She tells me she’ll head to the Lutheran church and the Evangelical church, speak to the priests, and then hand out flyers to any passers-by.

  I walk to the cop shop. A kid nudges past me with his dad, he’s dressed for a birthday party. He’s carrying two balloons, one blue and one yellow, and he’s dressed like a miniature investment banker: dark suit, well-fitted, shiny polished shoes, slicked-back hair with a side parting. He passes me and looks back. Someone’s drawn on a pencil moustache. The kid looks serious, like he’s in character already. He’s carrying a toy revolver.

  The police station is a hive of activity. If this were any other morning it’d be Thord or Chief Björn or Noora on their own out back eating a sandwich in peace and most likely reading a copy of the Posten. No major crimes, gentle workload, some paperwork, some driving offences to write up. Today there are seven locals in here already, all talking over each other.

  Chief Björn walks out and stands behind the pine counter. He just stands there. No talking, no looking at anyone in particular. Arms crossed. Just waiting.

  It works.

  The men and women in the room hush. They all turn to the Chief.

  ‘Alright then,’ he says. ‘Do any of you good people have a crime to report or any specific information? If so, take a numbered ticket and I’ll be with you shortly. If you have questions about the possible disappearance of either Tammy Yamnim or Lisa Svensson, not information, just if you have questions for me, then please stand over there.’ He points to a wall and crosses his arms again and waits.

  Every single person moves over to the ‘questions’ wall apart from me.

  ‘Well, okay,’ he says. ‘I can tell you I will be holding a press conference later today that a whole range of reporters and radio folks will be attending. That is the forum where questions will be addressed in an orderly fashion. Please check your radio or the police website for all the details. Now, if that’s all, I’ll ask you to kindly exit my station.’

  They leave. They’re Swedes and they just leave.

  Chief Björn turns to me and clears th
e corners of his eyes.

  ‘You’re back, I see.’

  ‘My best friend’s missing, Chief. Of course I’m back.’

  He rubs at his jaw and I walk over to him.

  ‘I’ll make sure you have your old place at the press conference later,’ he says. ‘Front and centre – so you can hear, but also with it being your friend and all.’

  I’m getting kindness from the Chief and I don’t know how to compute it.

  ‘Do you have any more information? Off the record? Anything connecting Tammy and Lisa?’

  ‘We don’t know much about Lisa yet, we’ll know more by the time of the conference. She has a lot of family in this town, lots of friends and colleagues. I reckon we’ll know a lot more this afternoon.’

  ‘The tests you did. The blood by Tammy’s food van. Does the DNA match?’

  He looks up at the ceiling and I see he’s wearing his gold tie-pin. I’ve only seen him wear it once or twice before. For the Medusa press conference. He is taking this seriously. He is aware the media’s eyes will be on him.

  ‘You’ll find out more at fourteen hundred hours – that’s the time of the press conference.’

  ‘I need to know now,’ I say, holding up a flyer so he can see Tam’s face. ‘Is it her blood? Her DNA?’

  The Chief sniffs and says, ‘We don’t have no DNA from Tammy Yamnim on file, we can’t test it against anything. And the clinic doesn’t work that fast even if we did have her on record. Especially not over Midsommar. But I can tell you, and I’m trusting you here, I’m trusting you’ll keep this to yourself until two. Am I right to trust you?’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, alright then. The blood we found, and remember it was just a drop, could have just been a nose bleed. But the blood group of that sample does match your friend’s.’

  My shoulders slump and I shake my head from side to side.

  ‘It’s a pretty common blood group, over 30%. I can’t say more, we got privacy rules to abide by. Possible it’s her blood but it’s not conclusive. Not even close.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me? Do you have any leads?’

  ‘We have some,’ he says. ‘We’re working through them now. You’ll find out more at the conference. Now, listen to me. Your friend hasn’t been gone that long; feels long to you but it isn’t. Most likely she’ll turn up. Don’t fret unnecessarily. We’re doing everything we can.’

  Two uniform cops from another town step in and the door bleeps and Björn gestures with his gnarly face for me to leave.

  I drive out along Storrgatan and I have never seen so many people out on these streets. Gavrik residents talking to each other, sharing gossip, checking Facebook for updates on the two missing women, or most likely just Lisa Svensson. If this was January it would not turn out this way. And if this was Midsommar, which it will be in two days’ time, then there would hardly be anyone in town to gossip with. You see, people leave for the country over Midsommar. As a small kid we’d always head off to a friend’s summerhouse on the Stockholm archipelago for garden games and strawberry cake, for raising the Midsommar pole, for dancing the frog dance. But after I reached fourteen we’d stay put. After that awful watershed night, Dad’s crash, the elk collision that changed everything, it would just be Mum and me. In our Stockholm apartment. The streets would be tumbleweed-empty, the only people left in town were the forgotten and the misfits and the housebound. In a way Mum and I were all three.

  I drive out towards ICA. It’s open for business and people are gathering outside by the swooshing doors. They’re standing there in the sun, some with trolleys, others without, and they’re shaking their heads. Some are hugging. And then I notice it. Just behind the crowd. There are strands of ribbons tied to the trolley house. There are plastic-wrapped bunches of carnations and Q8 gas-station mixed-bouquets resting against the wooden walls of the trolley house. Like a shrine. A memorial. I turn and drive back towards McDonald’s. Tam’s food van looks all alone at the edge of the car park. There’s nobody standing outside it fretting. There are no ribbons or flowers or teddies there. Just an empty taped-up van and a single dry spot of my best friend’s blood staining the asphalt.

  I drive through the underpass beneath the E16 and on towards Utgard forest. There’s not much past this point: just Snake River and then a lot of empty wild nature and old Spindleberg prison, and then there’s Norway.

  Utgard is a whole other realm on my right side. An underworld. On the periphery of the outer pines I can see clouds of insects lingering like a million microscopic vultures: waiting, hungry, patient.

  I turn off right to Snake River and pass another pickup on its way out. Some kind of large plastic gravel bin strapped down in the flatbed. Windscreen sticker says ‘I cut pine, I look fine, so get in line’. The truck is covered with branches and the wheels are muddy even though it’s been dry for weeks. I pass the damaged ‘Welcome to Snake’ sign and turn left towards the twelve-noon mark. Sally’s out on her deck sitting in her swing seat. She waves her hand up and down like a traffic cop and I obey her. I pull up and wind down my window and she stays seated in her swing seat.

  ‘Hej, friend,’ she says.

  I can see a white bucket on the deck between me and her, a white bucket with a snake coiled inside it.

  ‘Dead,’ she says, following my gaze. ‘It’s not alive no more. You hear about the supermarket girl?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You seen her?’

  She starts swinging gently on her seat and it squeaks with every backward and forward motion. The bucket reeks of industrial-strength bleach.

  ‘Nope,’ she says. ‘You here to talk with my boy again?’

  ‘The cousins,’ I say. ‘Axel and Alexandra.’

  She smiles and stands up and walks over to me.

  ‘Cousins?’ she says, a smirk on her pretty tanned face. ‘Watch yourself over there with them two. I knew they wasn’t normal when they arrived from Östersund and my son let them a piece of land for all them boat containers. You watch yourself, friend.’

  I wave and drive off and she drags the white bucket – it looks as heavy as an overstuffed suitcase – she drags it inside her snake shack.

  There are people here looking for spare parts. I can see rough homemade signs that say ‘Saab’ and ‘Volkswagen’ and ‘Ford’ and ‘Volvo’. It’s difficult to judge how many people are hunting steering wheels and radiators and backseats because how can I tell which are their cars? There might be fifty people parked here and there might be none. In amongst thousands of cars it’s impossible to tell.

  I pass Karl-Otto’s warehouse, last night’s bonfire still smouldering next to it.

  The cousins’ place looks neat but unnerving. The fact that there are no soft angles, just four big containers bolted together and dozens more all around. It feels like a theatre set or some half-finished section of a Soviet-era fairground.

  I park and get out of my truck.

  They’re both there.

  Standing outside the door to their cuboidal container home.

  Axel and Alexandra.

  Cousins.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, walking towards them.

  They say nothing.

  Axel is a black man. Alexandra is a white woman. But they look extraordinarily similar. They’re the exact same height, a little shorter than me. They’re both sinewy and strong. She’s wearing navy denim worker-overalls and a white T-shirt underneath. Axel’s wearing navy denim jeans and a white T-shirt with a sleeveless navy sweater. If you squint the outfits look the same. They both have close-cropped hair and attractive, symmetrical faces. The unsettling thing for me is that they are standing with the exact same upright posture and they are standing so close together, their arms by their sides, that their fingers look like they’re touching in the middle, almost conjoined, connected at the knuckle.

  They both smile.

  I hear a crow caw in the distance, from over by the tarp-covered boat wrecks. Two more screeching caws.

&nb
sp; Alexandra and Axel both hold out their left hands.

  The crow caws again.

  ‘Hi,’ they say in unison.

  13

  ‘You the one that’s been talking to my boy, Viktor?’ says Alexandra, wiping sweat from her forehead, then shaking my hand.

  ‘My name’s Tuva Moodyson. I’m a reporter and I’m searching for my friend, Tammy Yamnim. She’s missing.’

  ‘There’s two missing, now,’ says Axel, his voice low.

  ‘Two of them,’ says Alexandra.

  Axel holds up two fingers.

  ‘Do you have any ideas where they could be? Have you seen anyone strange recently? Anyone out of place?’

  They turn to look at each other and they’re standing so close the tips of their noses almost touch. Then they look back at me.

  ‘Not me,’ says Alexandra.

  ‘Nor me,’ says Axel.

  ‘Apart from The Breeder over by the riverbank,’ says Alexandra. ‘Some might say Sally would be out of place anywhere in Sweden.’

  ‘Some would say that,’ says Axel. ‘I know I would.’

  The patch of grass close to their container home is wild, clover flowers tangled with creeping jenny and ryegrass.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I say. ‘Anything concrete you can tell me? Tell the police?’

  They both frown at me. They look like twins apart from their skin colour. They have the same cheekbones, jawlines. They have the same intense brown eyes.

  ‘You seen how she makes her living?’ asks Alexandra.

  ‘The Breeder,’ says Axel. ‘She makes quite a living.’

  ‘Snakes?’ I say.

  ‘Breeding,’ says Alexandra, her face knotted in disgust. ‘Bloodlines. Chromosomes and family trees. The woman’s obsessed. Sure, she’ll tell you she’s an ethical breeder, all well fed and well looked after.’

  ‘Too well fed,’ says Axel glancing over at Sally’s house.

  ‘Some of them are,’ says Alexandra. ‘But if they’re born and they don’t look just right, if they don’t look “pure blood” as she puts it, they get killed before they’re a day old. Claims those ones are stillborn. And I know she doesn’t waste any bits and she’s so proud of herself, so superior, but what she makes, some of those exotic items.’