by Will Dean
‘Tuvs.’
‘Morning.’
‘We’ve had some developments, that why you’re here? Who told you? Noora?’
‘Developments?’
‘Statements going out at nine fifteen. All media.’
‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘I won’t say anything before nine fifteen.’
Thord coughs and looks back at the door to the station, and then looks into his mug and says, ‘Decaf. They tell me it’s healthy.’
I open my palms to the air and he leans against the counter.
‘Nothing on Tammy or Lisa, I’m sorry to say. Nothing new. And don’t go worrying about Sally Sandberg. Ain’t relevant that she’s a gun owner. Cast-iron alibi, local medic, we checked it already. But the woman in the tree, we’ll be releasing her ID at nine fifteen.’
‘Who?’
‘Hear me out, Tuvs, before you go jumping to conclusions. The woman in the hollow tree was called Linda Svensson.’
‘Any relation to Lisa?’
‘Not by blood. Linda Svensson, the dead woman in the tree, she was Viggo Svensson’s wife. The cab driver in Utgard forest.’
I say ‘Fuck’ under my breath.
Thord says, ‘Now, wait a minute.’
‘Is Viggo in custody?’ I ask, thinking back to his taxi that night and the candle, the music, the locked doors.
‘Listen,’ says Thord. ‘Forensics came back with the positive ID from her dental records. But we also found other physical evidence at the tree location. We found a medication jar, empty, and we found a bottle of Russian vodka, also empty. There was a handwritten note stuck in each bottle. Sealed inside.’
‘So it really was suicide?’ I ask.
‘I’m afraid it was,’ he says. ‘Explains in the note that she had to get out. I can’t tell you any specifics yet. We talked to Viggo Svensson most of yesterday, he was pretty shocked, I can tell you. I’ve been wearing this uniform long enough, I can tell he was genuine.’
‘What else did the note say?’ I ask.
‘Just that she couldn’t carry on. That she loved her husband and young Mikey, who was just ten months old at the time.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘You’re right about that,’ he says, taking a swig of his decaf. ‘Noora reckons it could have been post-partum depression. She says it wasn’t picked up on or treated so quickly eight years back. Things have improved on that front, thank God.’
‘Little Mikey,’ I say. ‘That poor kid. Have you spoken to him?’
Thord shakes his head and a flake of his sunburnt skin falls off and lands on the counter. ‘No, not my speciality, wouldn’t even know where to start. But he has a big extended family. Think Bertil the beekeeper is an uncle or somesuch, and Bertil is a wise man. Flirts too much, there were complaints back in the day, misunderstandings. But he’s wise, a kind of town elder, and the rumours died down eventually. Svensson’s got lots of cousins although most of them are busy searching for Lisa.’ He looks at me. ‘And for Tammy, of course.’
‘Pills and vodka?’ I ask. ‘You’re sure she wrote the note? You’re sure it’s not murder made to look like suicide?’
‘We’ve had the experts from Karlstad Homicide check everything. Forensics ran analysis from the bones of the deceased and found traces of the drugs. The bottle still had the prescription label although it was pretty damaged. We checked with the Vårdcentral surgery. They were her pills. The handwriting was hers. I reckon she just wanted to disappear. Can you imagine what pain she must have been in to make that decision with a little one at home, I can’t even begin.’
I shake my head and clear my throat.
‘Thanks for telling me. Is there anything new on Tammy? Anything at all?’
‘We’ve got two drones out there today over Utgard and we’re following every lead, every call. And we’re still looking for any connections to the Östersund body. You keep positive, you hear me?’
I leave and I feel empty inside. A woman walked to that hollow beech tree, leaving her baby and her life behind, and she climbed inside that trunk and she drank and she swallowed pills and she died. Alone. If only she’d reached out to someone for help. It’s too sad. The loneliness of her final hours. The nature all around waiting for her to pass on. And then what happened over the next weeks and months. Too horrific to think about.
There’s some traffic on Storrgatan and I can see Freddy Bom walking along the other side of the street up towards St Olov’s ruin, carrying a shoe box in his hands. It looks too small, like it might contain a pair of children’s shoes: a pair of miniature Converse or some patent-leather tap shoes. Or perhaps it just looks that way because his fingers are so unnaturally long. A spider crab with its claws clamped tight around a cardboard box.
I update Lena with what Thord told me and then I get in my truck and drive. First to ICA to pick up some food and hearing-aid batteries. Then on towards the E16. Part of me wants to make the turn and drive up and onto the motorway, head south to Karlstad for the day, or maybe even on further, to Stockholm. Someplace with a tapas bar I can sit outside of, or a Japanese restaurant with conveyor-belt sushi and delicious hibachi dishes I can’t pronounce properly. But I don’t. I drive through the underpass.
The clouds are dense and they are lined with grey. Not silver, dark grey. They look like they’re ten miles high. A hundred miles. Like they reach from the tips of the Utgard pines all the way up to the cold edge of space. A million gallons of fresh water stored right above our heads. A thunderstorm just waiting to happen.
The wall of trees rustles in the wind and I pass them and pass the Mossen track opening and drive on.
Up in front of me is a secure prison van driving off towards the Spindelberg facility near the Norwegian border. They don’t have many prisoners so bulletproof security vans are rare in these parts.
I take the turn past the Snake River site, the turn Noora and I made to find that water-filled, doll-filled wheelie bin. I drive up past a ruined wall. There’s one rock with a tall sprout of green ferns bursting up like the tail feathers of a peacock. I park as close as I can to the Snake River perimeter. I take my binoculars and my stun gun and my unopened wine gums.
If I had a drone of my own I’d be flying it over Snake River and over that lumberjack caravan. I’d be filming and zooming. But I do not have a drone. And even if I did I reckon Sally or Alexandra or Karl-Otto would shoot it out the sky within about one minute flat. I’ve seen their guns. They keep them close at hand.
The brush is thick and I do not like it. Dead grasses and live brambles. Old branches dried to tinder. Branches hiding snakes. Vipers. Bog snakes, Sally calls them.
The gleaming Snake River car wrecks are my compass point, they are what I am walking towards. From this distance it could be a long-term discount airport car park, some entrepreneurial farmer letting travellers park in his field for half the price of a tarmacked secure competitor. But I know it’s not a car park. These are wrecks where people got maimed or worse. They are cars that stopped working or stopped being worthwhile to fix.
I see an elk-hunting tower up ahead, close to the boundary. It looks like as good a place as any. A better place. I get to it and even though I do not have good history with elk-hunting towers, no good memories whatsoever, I climb up. The rough pine ladder creaks as my boots press down and the camouflage webbing all around me swooshes my face as I move higher. When I get to the top I’m not impressed. It’s just a pallet up here and it’s not reinforced. Some of the wood is rotten. I can piggle it with my fingernails. There are spider webs, and when the wind picks up the whole place creaks and the camouflage webbing emits a low whistle.
I look out.
Spying.
The Leica binoculars I bought last year at Benny Björnmossen’s store are excellent. They cost as much as a week’s holiday, but they are good. I adjust the focus and stare out at Snake River like a hunter with a scope.
Sally’s closest to me and she’s tending to her tub-sized acid buckets. She’s wea
ring thick rubber gloves that extend all the way up to her elbows and she’s picking bones out of one bucket and placing them inside a clear plastic bag. These are not snake bones. Dog, maybe? Wolf? She gets unusual taxidermy orders, she told me that much. But the bone in her hand looks like a human femur and I have to look away.
The air smells like fields that have recently been sprayed with liquid manure. A cloying scent of decay and bovine faecal matter. But it also smells of wild mint. An ungodly combination.
I scan across.
Karl-Otto’s warehouse is locked up and I can’t see any activity over in that direction. The fire-pit is smoking. There’s nobody there. I focus on the shipping containers and from this distance they look like God’s own Lego bricks. Spirals of flypaper hang limp by the entrance to the cousins’ container home. Speckled with victims. I can see more containers than I’ve been able to see before. There are twenty or thirty, some stacked on their ends, most with windows, some just with holes, and I can tell which one is Axel’s swimming pool container from the reflections on the metal. I can’t see the water but I know it’s there.
A car. Dark exhaust fumes.
No, it’s a truck, an EPA truck. Black. Red triangle in the rear window. I watch as it drives around past Sally’s place and on towards Karl-Otto’s warehouse, thick smoke belching from its rear end. Then it slows. I zoom in. The doors of the warehouse open. The doors of the truck open. Young Viktor steps out. Two women follow him. I adjust the focus. The women both look a little like Tammy. Viktor points inside the warehouse.
The women walk inside.
One of them is limping.
The other hangs her head low as if in defeat.
Through the binoculars I see Viktor check left and right, and then follow the two women inside.
The large hangar-like doors slam shut behind them.
34
I need to check Karl-Otto’s warehouse. I need to find a way inside to check the two women are okay.
Dust clouds around my Hilux as I speed up the Snake River track.
Broad daylight. I’ll be fine. A fully-charged phone, a knife and a stun gun.
The trees fringing Utgard stand tall and resolute behind Karl-Otto’s warehouse. They look down on us all as their sibling pines are cut from their roots all around them.
I had an urge to call the police back at the elk-hunting tower but what would I say? Two women who both look a little like Tammy have gone into Karl-Otto Sandberg’s warehouse, best bring the riot squad.
I realise it’s down to me. I need to find something concrete I can take to Thord and Noora and Chief Björn. It’s been days since Tam went missing and I have to find the clue that will lead us to her, that will bring her home.
Sally’s shack is quiet. No snakeskins hanging from the dirty corrugated plastic roof covering the deck, none stretched over the drying rack. No sign of her except for an empty ginger-ale bottle.
I park by the firepit and get out.
Fresh ashes.
I rake through the remnants of burnt fish skin and incinerated garbage, deformed cardboard milk cartons and egg boxes. Some kind of GoPro camera device half melted in the ashes. Nobody to be seen or heard – just the whooshing of treetops and the distant on-off hum of chainsaws.
Something white by my boot.
I crouch down and pick up a tooth and then Karl-Otto appears in my peripheral vision and says, ‘Looking for something?’ and I drop it into the ashes.
‘Yep,’ I say, picking the tooth back up.
He walks closer and his stubble really does grow all the way up to his eye sockets. If he ever grew a beard he’d be mistaken for a young brown bear migrating south.
‘What you get?’ he asks, pointing to my closed fist.
I open my fist and display the molar with its long roots and its rough biting edge.
‘Hog tooth,’ says Karl-Otto. ‘Probably another dozen in this ash pile, you mind me asking what you’re doing here? I thought you had a real good nose around the place but now I see you’re back.’
‘They’ve identified the body in the tree,’ I say. It’s after nine fifteen. It’ll be public information by now. ‘Viggo Svensson, the taxi driver from Mossen Village. It’s his wife.’
Karl-Otto takes his cap off and reveals the flat plateau of his head. It’s his bones that are made this way but the flattening of his hair exacerbates the effect. Looks like he’s been hit by a cartoon anvil.
‘I remember her,’ he says. ‘Shit. He getting locked up for it?’
‘Suicide,’ I say.
‘Viggo gone killed himself?’ says Karl-Otto.
‘No, the wife, Linda, she committed suicide inside the tree. Police aren’t looking for anyone else.’
Karl-Otto takes a deep breath and turns and looks into the swaying pines. There’s a raised red bite on the centre of the back of his neck like he might have a charging port.
‘That hollow tree isn’t more than a mile from where we’re standing,’ he says, scratching the flat hair on his flat head. ‘Linda Svensson’s been there for eight whole years.’
I need to check on the two women. Need to get inside.
‘Can’t do anything for her now,’ I say. ‘But we can still find Tammy, it’s not too late. Were you at the reservoir search last night? Saw your mum and her paramedic friend. Didn’t see you.’
‘I gotta get back to work,’ says Karl-Otto, walking away.
I run to intercept him at the warehouse doors.
‘Move, I’m working,’ he says, heaving open the aircraft hangar style door. I can hear music coming from inside. Some kind of pop music I don’t recognise.
‘Can I come in, just to ask you a few more questions. I won’t get in the way of your work.’
I want to look. I want to check the two women are okay.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Ain’t convenient.’
‘Shame,’ I say. ‘I reckon the police coming down here, if they were to get an anonymous call, that’d be even less convenient.’
He uses his fingertips to clear the corners of his eyes, and then he lets me pass him to get inside.
‘Let’s take a break,’ yells Karl-Otto with a booming voice that echoes around the inside of the warehouse, off the gleaming engine blocks and crates of spare parts.
‘You got two minutes,’ he says. ‘You won’t get another chance.’
I walk back towards the curtained-off photo studio. He joins me and I ask, ‘Have you seen anyone acting suspicious in town this past week?’
‘Yeah,’ says Karl-Otto. ‘I seen you.’
I pull the curtain and the two women are standing in front of the roll-out paper screen, each one wearing a small towel.
‘Am I interrupting something?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘You are.’
‘Hi,’ I say, ignoring him, walking towards the women, holding out my hand. ‘I’m Tuva Moodyson. I’m a journalist.’
They both nod and smile and shake my hand. Next to the tripod there’s a small mirror and a rolled-up 500 kronor note.
‘You done?’ asks Karl-Otto. He’s standing next to two cameras. One’s a video recorder and the other’s a vintage-looking SLR camera.
‘What is this?’ I ask.
‘What’s it look like? Professional photo shoot, it’s what I do aside from my eBay store. I’m taking shots for these women. They’re about to start looking for work and they needed a portfolio.’
‘A portfolio?’ I ask.
‘He’s the best in the area,’ says the taller of the two women. ‘Personal recommendation, no funny business and his Photoshop skills are the best in Värmland.’
I turn to her and say, ‘Okay, I’m glad to hear that.’
‘Now are we done?’ asks Karl-Otto.
‘Yeah,’ I say, stepping to the curtain. I say bye to the women and then I walk off and the music starts up again. I let myself out. There’s a layer of sawdust on the floor of the warehouse I haven’t seen before, and there’s a bin full of car spray
cans and lighter fluid bottles.
I drive on to the cousins’ place.
My neck is slick with sweat and the bites on my arms and legs are starting to itch again. The four shipping containers that make up their house, if you can even call it a house, are shining in the sun.
I park and walk to the front door. I’m flanked by long spirals of flypaper, each one covered with a thousand dead or dying insects. There’s a hip-height Midsommar pole in the garden. A cross. It’s the smallest example I have ever seen and it’s shrouded with froths of wilting cow parsley and dead dandelions, their seeds ready to blow. No colour. This is a ghost of a pole and the size of the thing resembles the resting place of a once beloved pet.
Nobody around.
The chainsaws of the forest, of that reptilian harvester tractor buzz away in the distance. I think I can hear trunks cracking but it’s possible it’s all in my head.
I walk around the house to the other containers: storage units and half-completed homes. There’s a dark blue container further away than the others so I walk to it. Something on the grass. A fine layer of gravel. I bend to pick up a grain and it is cat litter, loose granules sparkling in the sunlight like someone walked this way carrying a damaged sack. We had a cat briefly in our Bethnal Green flat. The pet of my flatmate. It died soon after I arrived. Killed by a car and then deposited outside our building without so much as a note. Just a poor flattened cat with a collar.
The metal door with its vertical locking bars is ajar. Silence. Nobody here. I creep inside and the walls of the unit are covered with guitars and books of sheet music. Can I hear voices? Or is that my aids playing tricks? There’s an electronic drum kit in one corner, the type where you can plug in headphones. And there’s a leather sofa and hundreds if not thousands of CDs and vinyl records.
Then I see him.
Axel.
Through the glass. At first glance I thought it was a large flat-screen TV hung on the far wall, but it’s not. It’s a rectangular window. Axel’s in the far end of the container separated by a wall with a large window. There are egg cartons or something similar, soundproofing, all over the walls of his small room. And he is singing his heart out into a professional-looking microphone. There’s recording equipment in there with him. A keyboard. Amplifiers and Auto-Tune gadgets. He hasn’t noticed me here staring at him like a voyeur because he is enthralled by his song. Axel is wearing a hat at a jaunty angle, like a crooner’s hat. A trilby or a fedora. Looks like he’s miming silently. I don’t think it’s my deafness, I think his recording studio is completely soundproof.