by Will Dean
I move to see what he’s staring at. It’s a monitor with scrolling text. Karaoke? I read along and he is singing ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis. It’s a good song. A great song. He’s singing and then he catches sight of me out the corner of his eye and he jumps out of his skin. He screams but I cannot hear it. Panic in his eyes. He throws his hat at the window separating us and I sense it shake. Then he opens the door.
The music hits me.
‘What are you playing at?’ he yells, his face sweaty, his brow lined with anger.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I did knock, I did announce my presence but I guess you couldn’t hear me.’
Elvis’s voice is still there in the background.
He wipes his face on his sleeve and says, ‘Could give a man a heart attack sneaking up like that. Almost scared me to an early grave, you did.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Elvis trails off.
He takes a sip of water and then looks at me and says, ‘No, I’m sorry. I overreacted. My nerves are a little jumpy.’
We walk out of the container into the sun.
‘I’m here because of the police statement. As you’re the closest neighbours to the Utgard residents in Mossen village.’
‘We don’t consider ourselves their neighbours,’ says Axel. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves, you see. Keep out of trouble.’
‘So you’ve heard about the body. About Linda Svensson.’
He looks sad. ‘Alexandra and I didn’t know her but it’s a bad way to go. Alone under an old tree. No way to die.’
‘Inside the tree,’ I say.
‘I don’t know the details,’ he says.
‘Can I ask you? Yesterday somebody mentioned your cousin, Alexandra. They said she doesn’t like Tammy. Said there was bad history there.’
Axel offers me a bottle of mineral water and I accept. We both drink, the sun beating down on our heads, leafcutter bees buzzing around us as if drunk.
The water tastes off. Bitter.
‘Not bad history,’ he says. ‘All in the past.’
I look at him and say nothing. One of Lena’s tricks.
‘Happened a few years back. Alexandra wanted to open her own business, this is before our swimming pools and homes started selling, you see. She wanted to open a food business a little like your friend’s. But Chinese food, because Alexandra likes Chinese food. She’s a good cook. Anyway, she converted her own half-size container and talked to the Kommun and they were delighted someone else would be offering hot cooked food in Gavrik; there aren’t many choices, you know. So she converted it with a water reservoir and gas tanks for the stoves and whatnot. She had access to electricity and she had a pretty good location quite close to Tammy’s van, a little further down the street.’
‘I vaguely remember hearing about it,’ I say. ‘It closed down a few months before I moved here. Jade Garden or something?’
‘Jade Dragon,’ says Axel. ‘And Alexandra tried everything. She sold at a loss, she tried new dishes out, lots of discount coupons for the workers at ICA and the factory, put them in the Gavrik Posten newspaper, even tried deliveries.’
I stop drinking the water. It really doesn’t taste right.
‘Didn’t work?’ I say.
‘She never even broke even. Everyone went to Tammy’s, you see. And don’t ever tell Alexandra I said this but I can’t really blame them. Alexandra is good but nothing like your friend. So Alexandra went over to Tammy’s van late one night and asked her, in good faith, for some tips.’
‘Okay.’
Axel drinks some more of his water. ‘Your friend Tammy told her, she said, “now why would I give you tips seein’ as we’re in direct competition?” She said to Alexandra, she said, “no offence, I’m sure you’re a decent person, but this is my livelihood, she told her, I’m not Gordon Ramsey, I’m not here to save your food business.”’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah,’ says Axel, ‘My cousin has a temper on her, and she’d had a bad day and sold hardly any food, so she said to Tammy, “No need to be a bitch about it”.’
‘Oh dear,’ I say.
‘Yeah, so Tammy says to Alexandra, she says, “Okay here’s a tip, little Miss Martha Stewart, you could try this, how about you go to China one time in your whole goddam life and actually learn how to cook the food, how about that? Or maybe learn something about the culture or the history of the cuisine, about the ingredients, what do you think about that?”’
‘Sounds like Tammy.’
‘Alexandra closed down Jade Dragon the next week and brought her container back here and that was the end of it.’ ‘Alexandra should have done what you do,’ I say.
‘How’s that?’ he says.
‘I was told you visit Thailand multiple times every year. To enjoy the special culture.’
He tries to hide his anger but his face looks like it did back in the music studio. His temples throb and he looks at me and says, ‘I need to finish my recording.’
I walk away. Thord and Noora will hear about all of this later today. I don’t care that nothing’s concrete, it’s all I have, and I will insist on more searches. Dog teams, the lot.
I climb into my truck and start the engine and turn on the air-con. Then they appear in front of me, in front of my bumper. Alexandra and Axel, standing side by side, him with headphones loose around his neck, her with ear protectors loose around hers.
I open my door but stay inside the Hilux.
‘All okay?’ I say.
They don’t move and they don’t say anything so I climb out and face them.
‘What?’ I say.
‘It’s that shoe-shop boy you should be probing,’ says Alexandra. Her forearms are covered in scratches and her fingertips are touching Axel’s fingertips. Their nails are grazing. Alexandra’s are yellow. She has smoker’s fingertips.
‘Shoe-shop kid,’ says Axel. ‘Used to work up at Paradise Spa.’
‘What kind of grown man wants to cut people’s toenails?’ says Alexandra.
‘What kind of man?’ says Axel, shaking his head in disgust.
I can see a roll of silver insulation-tape bulging from Alexandra’s work trousers.
‘How about you leave us in peace and you go question Freddy?’ she says.
‘Talk to him instead of bothering us,’ he says.
I drive away. I’m about to turn off towards the main road when I see smoke rising from Sally’s shack. I keep on driving around until I can see her barbecue and the cool sparkling water of Snake River in the background.
‘You drive round here like a Norwegian lost on a roundabout,’ she says, grinning.
‘You said that one already,’ I say.
I walk over to her and she’s cooking fish on her grill. She doesn’t have her hair in a plait today.
‘Hungry?’ she says.
Actually I am. And as I want to dedicate as much time as possible to searching rather than eating in McDonald’s, I say, ‘I am. That cod fish?’
‘Close enough,’ she says. ‘But it tastes more like chicken.’
I look closer.
‘Is it snake, Sally?’
She points to a bucket next to the grill. I step closer. There’s a snake head in the bucket and it’s still twisting and its jaws are opening and closing like it hasn’t quite given up the fight just yet.
‘Don’t touch that head,’ she says, like it’s a thing that even needs to be said. ‘Don’t you go near it. That there’s a diamondback rattler and it’ll still bite you an hour after it’s been declared legally dead, you know what I mean.’
‘You really do eat the snake meat?’
‘It’s ethical,’ she says. ‘It’s also economical and delicious. You still want to try a bite?’
I watch her pick up a pair of grill tongs and move the fillets of snake around over the glowing embers. It looks a bit like chicken or cod, I stand by that. The only difference is that this rattlesnake’s been cut into four chunks and each chunk is still moving. I
t’s cooking and it’s still flexing on the grill.
‘You mind if I pass?’ I say. ‘Would that be rude?’
She laughs so hard she doubles up. ‘That’s just fine,’ she says. ‘More for me.’
‘Can I ask a favour?’
She nods.
‘I had a nightmare last night, a recurring nightmare,’ I lie. ‘That Tam is running away from something, a man or an elk or a bear. And she hides inside one of your python cells or whatever you call them. And she gets locked in by accident.’
Sally shivers. ‘That would be a night terror, right enough.’
‘Mind if I look inside a few more rooms, just to clear my head? I really need to start sleeping better.’
She moves her hair out of her eyes and takes the snake meat off the heat and places it on a warming rack.
‘Come on then.’
She takes her set of keys and opens the door to a room and says, ‘Boa. Big boa. Real big.’
I look inside. The room doesn’t smell bad but there is something sour, something vinegary in the air. Warm and humid. At first I think I’m looking at ten snakes but it is one. The body of this thing must be as long as a house, or a bus, or a light aircraft. It coils and folds over itself and its fattest part has the girth of a birch tree. I back out.
‘Ain’t venomous,’ says Sally. She smells of fresh mint with a hint of grill smoke.
‘Next,’ says Sally, leading me further into the corridor.
I look inside.
‘Don’t go in, don’t make no sudden moves.’
It looks like a worm in comparison. Like a garden worm. But then it raises its head off the floor.
‘Cobra,’ she says. ‘It’ll kill you stone cold dead before you can say hiss.’
She locks the door, double-locks it, and leads me deeper into the corridor. It gets darker. Cooler. Then she turns left. I didn’t even realise there was a left turn back here. She opens a steel door. No lights. That vinegary tone in the warm air.
A single drop of snake blood on the floorboard.
A screech from one of the other rooms.
We step to the threshold.
Then Sally pushes me through and slams the door shut behind me.
35
I scream and bang the steel door with my fist.
Something moves behind me.
‘Let me out. Now!’
I hear a hiss and then another screech from somewhere in the building. Somewhere close.
‘Let me out!’
My hearing aid beeps a battery warning.
I daren’t turn around.
I bang on the door again.
The door rattles. Sally saying something but I cannot hear her words.
More hissing behind me.
‘What?’ I yell.
I hear crazed laughter. Cackling.
Then another scream.
‘Help me!’
The door opens.
‘Don’t go hollering, I was just yanking your chain; Jesus on the cross, the way you screamed you’d think I pushed you into a pit full of mambas.’
I look around, my arms shaking, the hairs on my skin standing to attention. I take a deep breath. There is no snake in this room. Well, there is, a bloody enormous one, but it’s behind another layer of glass. There’s a camera set up similar to Karl-Otto’s camera in his warehouse. On a tripod. This one’s trained on the snake behind the glass screen.
‘Really, I was just pulling your leg,’ says Sally with an apologetic face. ‘Didn’t mean to make you jump.’
I just stare at her. ‘Don’t do that to people.’
She shows me her palms, a silent and unsatisfactory plea for forgiveness.
‘New mother,’ she says, pointing to the snake through the glass. ‘Another boa, this one a little smaller than Saint Hulda IV, the snake you just seen. This one gave birth last night, she’s tired the poor old worm. Just look at those babes.’
The snake, it’s as long as flag pole is high, is coiled around a clutch of newborn boa constrictors. They look like slow worms, like harmless little garden serpents, and I suppose they are at this size.
‘How do boas catch their prey?’ I ask.
Sally grabs my forearm with both her hands and she starts squeezing and twisting the skin and I pull away.
‘They constrict. Clue’s in the name, friend. They squeeze the life right out of you, then eat you whole, one long gulp. Out in the wilds they been known to eat a baby hippo, can you even visualise such a thing?’
I don’t really want to.
‘Been live-streaming audio-visual thirty-six hours straight. Pay-per-view. Decent amount of viewers if I’m honest.’
‘Live streaming?’
‘Four babes didn’t make it, but I don’t want to take them away from her just yet, doesn’t feel right. That logic don’t make much sense with a cold-blooded reptile, but I’m a big softie, I suppose. I’ll leave them another night then take the dead ones and feed them to the bog snakes down by the riverbank.’ She looks at me. ‘Circle of life. You wanna see any more locked rooms, do you?’
I shake my head and she says, ‘Didn’t think so.’
‘Can you predict what the babies will look like before they’re born? Are they bred to order? For their skins?’
‘Or as pets to sell,’ she says. ‘I know to a certain extent and the rest is up to God and the Devil, that’s what my Sven used to say, may he rest in peace. Mark my words: family is the most important thing there is. The right bloodlines. When my boy Karl-Otto gives me grandkiddies one day I surely hope they’ll look just like my late husband. I’ve been without big Sven nine years this coming elk hunt, and I hope for a grandson or a granddaughter soon.’ She takes her vape cigarette out. ‘I don’t mind which as long as they look like true-blood Sandbergs.’
It strikes me that if Tammy and Karl-Otto had got together, had stayed together, their children may not have looked like Sandbergs. Personally, I think they’d look a darn sight better, but that’s just me talking.
‘Do you like Tammy?’ I ask.
‘Never knew her well enough to say one way or the opposite,’ says Sally, vaping and ushering me back into the dark pine-clad corridor of her shack. ‘She never harmed me, friend.’
‘But were you happy with Karl-Otto dating her? She’d not have given you grandkids the way you’d like.’
Sally blows mint-scented steam from her nostrils and says, ‘They was never serious. Karl-Otto was just fooling around, he likes the oriental girls, lots of boys do.’
I look clear into her eyes to judge her, to read her.
‘Would you have been happy for them to get married, Sally?’
‘Didn’t you hear me? I said it wasn’t nothing. Games is all. Casual internet stuff. Karl-Otto will marry a local girl just like his daddy and his granddaddy.’
‘But Tammy Yamnim is local,’ I say.
Sally blows more steam from her mouth and sucks it up through her nose.
‘I wouldn’t know about that, friend. Now, if you’re done talking, I got some fresh meat going cold.’
I drive away, the dead rattlesnake head still twitching and gurning in the bucket next to the grill. My Hilux is hot so I use full air-con plus drive with all four windows open. Feels good. The cold air but also getting away from Snake River, leaving those people behind in my mirrors.
I need to talk to the lumberjacks next. Check inside their caravan. Look underneath it. Ask some difficult questions. I’d rather not search locations based on rumour, I’d rather do it based on facts. But that’s not a luxury I can afford right now. Police work off evidence but I can be more flexible. Journalist’s privilege. If people are gossiping then I need to follow up.
When I turn off the main road left onto the Mossen forest track my headlights automatically switch on; 2pm in June and Utgard forest shuts out the light like it never belonged here.
I slow for the hoarder’s house. It was derelict before but now it looks even more desperate, unoccupied as it is. The v
egetable garden, once the owner’s pride and joy, is now a tangle of suffocating bindweed and hostile thistles as tall as grizzly bears. My headlights illuminate the pollen-crusted windows of the house and shine back at me. The rooms inside are still full of things. Tons and tons of stuff. Food containers never disposed of. Multiple collections never parted with. It’s sad. I feel sorry for old Bengt, I really do. The vast personal collection of a man now gone. Belongings and archives never ordered. Took a team of police officers two hours just to get through to the upstairs last year during the Medusa hunt. Like caving. Or mining. Two whole hours.
I drive on and the bugs are clouding around the Hilux like they’ve sensed it is slow, like they’ve identified it as a wounded member of some herd, the runt, today’s prey.
A man on the track.
His shoulders slumped.
Viggo Svensson. What do I do now? If this was a normal street I’d drive by at 40kph and that would be that. Not here in Utgard forest. My speedometer says 12 and his grey sullen eyes are pleading with me to stop and talk.
I bring the truck to a halt.
‘I have an appointment with the lumberjacks,’ I say.
‘Plundering our woods,’ says Viggo, his Top Gun shades on top of his head. ‘Those two and their machines. Looks like a nuclear bomb went off up the hill, the state the forest’s in up there.’
Little Mikey runs to his father.
What do I say to this pair? About the wife? The mother? Linda Svensson. Here in this very wood?
‘I suppose you heard,’ says Viggo.
I would stop my engine, but not with him here, I just can’t do it. Partly because of his lame-ass attempt at a date in the back of his Volvo taxi last year, partly because how can I know the police are right? How can I know he didn’t kill his own wife?