by Will Dean
Someone thinks they find a knife but it’s just the sliced side of a Pepsi can.
By the time we get back to the reservoir my back is soaked with sweat and I have a fresh sting under my eyelid. The mists have thickened and lowered so now there’s only a thin layer of clear air between the water and the fog. It’s disorientating. Some kind of fever dream. People have lit a large bonfire close to the Midsommar pole and the smoke from the flames is rising up to meet the storm cloud above us. The joining of our mortal domain to the furious heavens. Flames rising up into an electrical cloud. Can’t be a good thing.
Most of the hunt dogs with us look well trained. But one hound that keeps getting too close to me looks crazed in the dense fog. Like it’s hallucinating. The dog races around in a tight circle, its sagging gums spraying froth this way and that, trying to catch up with itself.
Someone screams.
From the dark place between the makeshift open-air church and the Midsommar pole, there is a scream like a mother has had her infant child ripped from her arms. Everyone runs. All of us. We stampede, women and men and dogs. The earth shakes with our boots.
Another scream.
This one more animal.
More panicked.
‘It’s Margit,’ yells the screaming woman. ‘Margit’s gone!’
32
The mist’s so thick I can hardly see, I’m just aware more people are arriving from the fire and the Midsommar pole. These are not the usual searchers, these are old men who have abandoned their violins, and young men who have left their caravans and their card games. Scared faces emerge then disappear in these ground-level clouds, and I’m losing my bearings.
‘Margit!’ people shout, ‘Margit, where are you?’
Margit? The girl from McDonald’s with the asshole dad? God, I hope she’s okay.
I can see back to the fire and the pole, that way’s more clear, but around the reservoir itself I can barely make out anything. Headlamps flash on and off and people run through the mists and I find one woman down on the dew-slicked grass, fear in her eyes, knocked over in the panic to find this latest missing person.
Woman number three? I hope not.
I have my arms outstretched in front of me as if in a dark room even though this is twilight, dinner time, moose o’clock. But it’s not darkness hindering me. It’s mist. I tread on something with my whole weight and it bursts. I think it’s a toad. It could be a hard-boiled egg, God, I hope it is, but I think it’s a toad. Or a frog. I do not look down. I walk on.
‘Margit!’ I shout.
Dogs are barking and growling and people are running past me like they know where she is. Then the mists clear a little, they rise or they thin, and I see a statuesque woman with layered black hair and an ankle-length white cotton dress. A tunic. Her shoulders are broad and she is not rushing. She is composed. The woman steps up onto a boulder and she lifts her head and she starts to sing. Not sing, more like some kind of prehistoric wailing. Like a wounded animal but melodic. I stop dead. The woman’s like a spell in front of my eyes. A vision. A man stands next to me, equally spellbound. How could he not be? He says, Kulning, to me. He says, ‘The ancient herding call, to round up livestock. Her voice will carry further than any loudhailer.’
I believe it. Her volume is immense. She does not sing ‘Margit’ or ‘where are you’. She sings, with her dark feathered hair down to her waist, she wails like she’s giving birth out here in the nature, and her wails are chillingly beautiful.
I can hear a commotion towards the water. There are dogs barking and men yelling but I cannot make out their words, not in this light, not out here. I walk towards the bustle and the kullning herder-woman in white disappears back into the murk.
A man puts his hands up to his face and the whites of his eyes reflect back at me.
They pull something up from the reed beds.
Someone.
They’ve found Margit.
The looks on people’s faces. The relief. Collective. I walk on the wet grass, something stuck under the sole of my boot, something sticky, and there she is. A girl of fourteen or so wearing a blue T-shirt and white skirt. Muddy. It’s the girl from before, the girl from McDonald’s. People hugging her and kissing the top of her head. One woman, must be her mother, wagging her finger, tears rolling down her plump, tanned cheeks.
As I walk back towards the pole and the fire I feel wrong. I’m happy for Margit and her family, of course I am, but why couldn’t Tam be found that quickly? Or Lisa? I am walking alone beside clusters of people, small nuclei of couples and families, all walking together more tightly than they normally would. And I am here on my own.
The main fire flares up towards the storm clouds as two women drop huge pine logs onto the flames. The pole stands erect like it’s pulling us all closer.
Lanterns and buzzing mosquito-traps hang from caravans and from the entrances to tents. I walk over snakes of extension cables and I see twenty or more barbecues being lit or else poked, their flames surging higher. The solstice atmosphere is subdued. Relief and hunger mixed with strong liquor.
Doc Stina sees me walk past her caravan patch on the way back to my Hilux and she calls me to come closer.
‘So good they found the girl,’ she says. ‘They’ll do the same with Tammy and Lisa. You’ll see.’
I smile at her for that. For remembering. For taking the effort to tell me when really she’s busy hosting her family on this most important day of the year.
‘Want some grilled mackerel?’ she says. ‘Some sausage?’
Stina ushers me to the seat next to Per-Ola’s, his white hair glowing in the candlelight. He’s slumped now through tiredness or schnapps or age. All three.
The air smells of burnt fish skin and coconut sun cream. If I were in journalist mode I’d be making a mental note of the scene but I am not in journalist mode. I’m in best-friend mode. The crowd has been quiet since the search for Margit ended but now a distant group start singing their drinking song, determined to get their Midsommar back on track. The voices carry and they set off other groups, people toasting with their small schnapps glasses and looking each other in the eyes, then singing some irreverent misremembered drinking song. All around us. Grills sizzle and drunk men drink more and then they sing even louder. The main fire burns and it lights up the few white sections of the flagpole not covered with birch leaf. What are we? Some throwback to an ancient time? A herd of mammals gathering at the watering hole to thank the sun for what exactly?
I get passed a paper plate full of charred mackerel flesh. I take potatoes from a bowl and they are shiny with butter and flecked with dill. The candles and lanterns around us bathe this artificial family of mine in soft light and I feel warmth for them, for letting me be here, for feeding me. Even Per-Ola. The mackerel is doused in lemon juice and it is delicious. Rich with crispy skin and moist, soft flesh and a hint of charcoal from the fire. I take salad and a sausage.
‘Elk,’ says Per-Ola.
‘Sorry?’
‘Cow of about nine years, if I remember. Shot her myself last November in Utgard forest. Clean lung shot. Good meat.’
I nod and he says, ‘Schnapps?’
‘No, thanks.’
He takes my water glass and says, ‘Water, then?’
I nod and turn away to reach for salt and pepper. The food is delicious. Hot and smoky. For some reason food always tastes better outdoors.
‘You take a bath today?’ asks Per-Ola.
‘In the reservoir?’ I say. ‘No. You?’
‘Early this morning,’ he says. ‘Before breakfast. Just like my grandma taught me.’
He expects me to show some kind of awe at this but I just eat the elk sausage.
‘Happy Midsommar,’ he says, raising his schnapps glass.
Everyone around the table lifts their shot-sized schnapps glasses and I lift my water glass. We don’t drink. We sing. Fourteen Swedes singing something only two or three know the words to. The rest of us just hum. Th
en we drink. My eyes bulge as I realise what Per-Ola has done. I spit out my mouthful of involuntary 80% proof schnapps, half on him, half on the ground. People stare and gasp and I look at Per-Ola and I say, ‘You don’t do that.’
‘Oh, I was just playing,’ he says.
I think about pouring water over his head or salt all over his food but I don’t. The liquor burns my throat and it feels good. I want more. The whole bottle. I’m not sure if my relationship with drink is genetic or chemical or behavioural or what. But the hit to my system is immediate. My brain rushes with something pleasant and I loosen up. I spat most of it out and I despise the prick sat next to me but I feel more loose in my shoulders than I have for three months.
People pass ice-cold beers around to each other, careful to bypass me. The bottles have peeling labels because they’ve been submerged in garden buckets full of frogspawn reservoir water and ice cubes. The curved green glass of the bottles is mesmerising in this light, the reflections from verbena anti-bug candles rolling and wrapping themselves around the contours of the glass.
‘Tell me, Per-Ola,’ I say. ‘Have you lived in Gavrik for long?’
I may as well take the bull by the horns, or the hamster by the gonads, whatever. I may as well get some information from him.
‘Sixty-seven years, all my life,’ he says, some pride in his tone like it’s an achievement.
‘So you know a lot of people?’
He takes another shot of schnapps and says, ‘You could say that.’ ‘You have any theories about where the two missing women could be?’
Per-Ola eats a slice of elk sausage and then says, ‘Some of the mill boys say it could be them two lumberjacks working Utgard. Been other girls go missing in other towns. When that pair’s been clearing old pine. Forest towns up north. Out-of-towners, both of them. Contract work.’
‘You agree?’
Per-Ola frowns at me and says, ‘Could be, I guess. Hell of a place to hide a body or two, and it’s been done before. There was this…’
I cut him off because I know more about the Medusa murders than he does.
‘What about the Snake River Salvage site?’ I say.
‘Sally’s place?’ he says. ‘No, no. Sally Sandberg was my daddy’s second cousin once removed. No, no.’
There’s a howl from the distant woods and it’s probably just kids fooling around. Or perhaps it’s a wolf on the fringes of the pines looking at us. Waiting for a weakling, a youngling to step away from the pack. Just biding its time.
‘What about Sally’s son, Karl-Otto?’ I say.
‘Shame he closed down his daddy’s business, not closed it, but he let go about fifteen good men, my old neighbour Bertil included. Poor old Bertil, not easy for a man with his past to get another job, has to support himself selling honey these days. Shame to let go that many people after all them years. Karl-Otto’s daddy, big Sven we called him, he was a fair man. Gave people a chance when they had no right to one.’
‘Karl-Otto still has the cars though, still sells parts.’
‘He’s just playing at it,’ says Per-Ola, refilling his own schnapps glass and ignoring all the other empty glasses around him. ‘When he ain’t playing around with other things. Saw him fighting with some girl one time, thought he was going to knock her sideways. His mamma stepped in, she’s good like that. Looks out for Karl-Otto. He makes most of his money through the photographs these days. Got a nice little enterprise going, a real enterprise.’
‘Who was the girl he was fighting with?’
‘What?’ says Per-Ola.
‘Is this her?’ I show him the photo of Tam on my lock screen.
‘Nope. Someone said she worked at a gas station local but I ain’t seen her since. Q8 I think it was. Dark-haired girl. Moved away. Emigrated, I suppose. Karl-Otto’s always known lots of girls because of his photos.’
‘Photos for eBay?’ I say.
He looks at me and grins a grin that is too animal for my liking. Too fox. Saliva pools at his gums and one thread falls down towards the table then springs up again and back into his mouth.
Per-Ola visits the grill to take more elk sausage and I look out at this place. The reservoir is liquid metal now, the silhouettes of teenagers solid against the falling sun.
A kid appears at my side and she must be eight or nine years old, hair shaven at the sides of her head, brown curls on top. It’s a good look. Suits her. She stares at me.
‘Hi,’ I say.
She smiles and bites her lip, then says, ‘You write the newspaper?’
‘I do.’
‘I write stories, too.’
‘What kind of stories?’
Her eyes widen like most people don’t ask her questions back. ‘All sorts,’ she says. ‘About dogs and horses and dead people. About space rockets and Australia. Every kind. I write all kinds of stories and then my pappa ties them with string to make real books.’
That’s a good pappa. I smile at her and say, ‘Never stop.’
‘Where do your moles go?’ she asks.
‘Sorry?’
‘When you die, where do all your moles go?’
Per-Ola comes back with a warping paper plate laden with sausage and chicken and burnt pork chops. He removes the child and sits down.
‘My wife, she’s the one over there with the apron. Well, she can’t eat pork like this no more.’
I don’t say a word.
‘You wanna know why not? I’ll tell you why not. Poor woman suffered with the haemorrhoids something chronic. Years of discomfort. Anyways, the doctors fixed her, they lasered them, burnt them right off her rump. My wife thinks this is fantastic. A medical miracle. But the smell of that procedure. Well, it’s a shame she can’t eat barbecue pork chops no more.’
I look at him like why the hell would you choose to tell me this? What part of your feeble brain decided this was appropriate Midsommar dinner chat?
‘Eating your porridge later?’ he asks, opening another beer.
‘What?’
He smacks his own forehead and then inspects the mangled corpse on his palm.
‘Salted porridge. Over-salted. You don’t know? You call yourself a local?
‘No, actually. I don’t.’
‘When you get home make yourself some salted porridge. Then add more salt, lots more. Been done for centuries. You’ll dream of your future husband and you’ll dream he’ll arrive with water to quench your thirst. You can thank me later.’
‘Might dream of my future wife,’ I say.
He chews a sausage and looks at me then looks away and then he looks at me again.
He says, ‘Takes all sorts…’ And then he starts coughing and choking and turning red and the woman on the other side of him hits his back and some chicken skin shoots out of his mouth. He swigs his beer and looks at me and says, ‘Takes all sorts to make a world.’
‘Yes,’ I say, standing, up. ‘Yes, it does.’
I thank Doc Stina and walk back to my Hilux feeling lonelier than I have ever felt in my life. Back here in Toytown with no Tammy. No family. No apartment. I step over twisted extension cords and kids lying on the grass playing games on their phones. When I reach my truck two men are stood too close to it facing away from each other pissing into long grass. What is it about men and summer? Why do they need to start pissing all over the goddam place?
I start my engine and reverse a little just to get my message across, and then I drive away, the pole and the big fire bright in my rear-view mirror.
At Lena’s I stop in her front garden and sniff the honeysuckle. Its scent is strongest at night-time. I pick one of the flowers. For a second I think I see Johan’s face at an upstairs window, his eyes, but there’s no one there, I’m just tired. I pick six more flowers, not wild ones, just whatever I can find. Then I step into my friggebod shed and bolt my new black security bolts. I place the flowers under my pillow and climb into bed and I think about Noora.
33
I shower and eat breakfast with L
ena in her kitchen. She’s wearing Johan’s XL ‘I love Ko Samui’ sweatshirt. The day is subdued, and the sky is the colour of curdled milk.
When I go back up to the bathroom to clean my teeth I can smell air-freshener in the corridor. Like there’s a hundred Wunderbaum pine-tree shaped fresheners hanging in a clothes cupboard somewhere up here.
We drive to the office in convoy. There are Midsommar poles erect in peoples’ gardens, most of them vertical, some of them bent as if drunk. There are wildflowers, dry and wilting, amputated from their own root systems, blowing down the suburban roads. There are no people out mowing their lawns or blowing away their grass clippings. The place is quiet. Hungover.
I make coffee and then I check the Tammy Yamnim Missing Facebook page and all the regional newspapers – they get delivered here each week. We’re becoming old news. There are stories of sightings and renewed efforts, but most of the stories are Midsommar poles and beautiful pictures of Lake Vänern and upbeat close-ups of impossibly red Swedish strawberries. I call the cop shop but nobody answers so I walk over the road. There’s a chill in the air and it’s laced with aniseed again. The Grimberg Liquorice factory is back to normal.
Lumpy vomit on the streets. Uneven sheets of the stuff. Baking dry in the post-Midsommar sunshine.
I open the door to Gavrik police and there is nobody here. Pictures of Tam and Lisa on the wall alongside public information posters: do not drink and drive, do not paint your house using unsecured ladders, it is illegal in Sweden to hit your children, do not drive when tired.
The number on the queue screen reads one.
I guess they reset the machine because Midsommar is one of those days. It’s a watershed event like Christmas or New Year’s Day. From now on the days will contract. From now on we’re on a collision course with the cold dark months, the hunting months, the silent hibernation months.
I ring the bell and Chief Björn sticks his head out the door and nods and then the door closes. A minute later Thord steps out with a mug of coffee in his hand. The mug shows a confused cop standing next to a broken toilet and the caption reads ‘police have got nothing to go on.’