Black River

by Will Dean

  ‘Never did approve of them fake cousins as tenants. Police found much?’ asks Sally beside me. She smells of cigarettes and freshly-crushed mint leaves.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  Then Thord moves to another container, this one locked by twin padlocks. I try to read their lips but it’s not easy. Alexandra says she doesn’t have keys for it so Thord removes some kind of bolt-cutter thing from his Volvo boot. It takes him and one other guy to ping them unlocked.

  The door swings open.

  ‘Shit,’ I say.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Sally.

  There’s a horizontal table with thick leather loops at each corner and a hole in the centre. There’s a stainless steel chair on the left with chains hung over the back of it. Integrated built-in phallus. A camera bolted to the wall on a pivoting arm. On the far wall is a rack of whips and riding crops all neat in a row like a gardener might store her rakes and hoes.

  ‘It’s…’ I pause. ‘Some kind of sex room. A dungeon.’

  ‘A sex what?’ she says, snatching the binoculars from me.

  ‘Hey, now…’ I say.

  ‘Holy shitting mother of a godless age,’ says Sally. ‘What kind of perversions…’

  I see more cops enter the dungeon.

  There’s a wooden box in the other corner.

  I grab back the binoculars.

  A box with air holes and sharpened metal studs sticking out at all angles.

  A dog growls and strains at its leash.

  Thord runs to the box.

  43

  The police Alsatian sniffs around the corners of the container.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket.

  I don’t want to look away.

  Thord and one other uniform prise open the box. I zoom in to try to see what’s inside but all I can see is Thord’s face. His expression.

  Disgust.

  My phone buzzes again. I want to ignore it but I can’t help glancing down. A message from Sebastian Cheekbones: Have I seen Benny Björnmossen today?

  I look back to the container.

  ‘They inside that box?’ asks Sally.

  Thord pulls out a black rubber mask with some kind of gag attached to it, some kind of glossy ball. He raises his latex gloved hand to his eyes then drops the mask back into the box.

  A car drives around past Sally’s place, past Karl-Otto’s warehouse. It comes up behind us and parks next to the police cars.

  It’s Axel.

  ‘This just got interesting,’ says Sally. ‘Genetic cousins are they?’

  Axel climbs out of his car. I can’t hear him but through the binoculars I can read his lips. ‘Nothing illegal’ and ‘I’ll call my lawyer’ and ‘this is private property – a bespoke conversion.’ I tell Sally what he said.

  ‘Bespoke,’ says Sally beside me. ‘That what they’re calling it these days? Who in their right mind needs a sex container? I mean, what in all the holy hells. You want a water? I’m drier than a scorpion’s elbow crack.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, distracted, my eyes still focused on the container. And the ones still to be unlocked. Sally retreats back to her shack, sashaying in that way she has, almost gliding, and I wonder if the police should have surrounded all three properties before they started? Not enough manpower. Too much land. But surely this gives her, or Karl-Otto, or both of them, the opportunity to hide things. Warn people.

  Alexandra calms Axel and they stand together with a cop in a suit. No more yelling. The cousins are standing so close to each other. Same height. Same posture. They look like they were cast from the same mould.

  Afternoon turns into evening and the night air cools on my skin. Bugs appear from nowhere, flying insects that arrive with the darkness. I text Lisa’s brother with an update and he tells me there’s been a sighting in Visberg, the next town over, the sinister place up the hill. And another near a cabin on the Norwegian border. They’re going to check them out.

  My arms ache from looking through binoculars for hours, I need one of the tripods Karl-Otto keeps his studio cameras mounted on. From my right I see young Viktor drive noisily onto the site in his EPA tractor. He gestures something to his mum and then he drives away again.

  This wreck of a truck leans to one side and the smell of fresh mint returns. Sally hands me a glass bottle of water, cold to the touch.

  ‘Opener?’ I ask.

  ‘Teeth,’ she says.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Not your teeth.’

  She hands me something and it feels too big to be an opener and it feels too light.

  I open my palm.

  ‘What the hell?’ I throw it back at her.

  She holds the snake head up, its jaws permanently ajar now, the back of its head attached to a standard bottle opener. ‘You could have broke it,’ she says. The curved fangs of this creature look more like bone that tooth. ‘It’s dead,’ she says, taking back the bottle she just gave me and using the snake head to pop off the top.

  I drink the water.

  ‘I’ll stay a little longer,’ says Sally, pulling a pack of Park Lane cigarettes from her pocket and checking the contents. Four cigarettes and what looks like a rusty key. ‘Then I need to fix supper for my friend. His shift will be done soon.’

  She means her paramedic Viking lover.

  We watch the containers. About half have been either voluntarily unlocked or else broken into by the police. The Alsatian is drinking water from a bowl and the Chief is talking on his phone a little way apart from everyone else.

  ‘Don’t you move,’ says Sally, a sternness in her voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do not move one muscle.’

  Has she got a gun? Is this a trap?

  ‘Close your eyes,’ she says.

  ‘What…’

  ‘Flying tick on your ear,’ she says.

  ‘Let me.’

  ‘Get it off.’

  ‘Wait.’

  She brings her snakeskin-covered fingernails to my face and squeezes them together and pinches something from the skin of my ear and then she uses the glass base of her water bottle to crush the tick and grind its corpse into the truck roof.

  ‘Gone,’ she says. ‘Hadn’t hardly started to dig. Got him good and early.’

  I touch my ear. A small raised bump.

  ‘I hate ticks,’ I say.

  ‘We all hate them, friend. And what with them two woodcutter boys in Utgard woods we’re seeing more than our fair share this summer. Air’s filled with them. Flying ticks. They land on you thinking you’re a tasty mamma roe deer and then they burrow head first, greedy little tykes. They burrow and as soon as their head’s under your skin they discard their wings. No need for them anymore is there? They got their last meal right there. Protein.’

  The police dog starts to bark and I raise my binoculars to my eyes once again.

  A container painted scarlet red. A cop with her ear pressed to the container wall.

  I see police run into the metal unit.

  The dog barks louder, I can hear police calling for something. Backup maybe? An ambulance? I want to run down but then I won’t see anything. I stand up on the roof of the wrecked truck and Sally says, ‘Careful, friend.’

  My bottle of water rolls down the roof and smashes against a rock on the ground.

  I look down, then over to Sally. She points out to the forest edge behind Karl-Otto’s warehouse. Fog is pumping out through the pine trunks and filling Snake River Salvage with thin wisps of floating mist. Like dry ice in a nightclub. Like the wrecks are all floating in mid-air.

  ‘The elves are dancing tonight,’ she says.

  Swedish expression. Mum used to say the exact same thing.

  I scope the units and someone’s using an angle-grinder to open a lock or a door that I cannot see. Sparks fly and the Chief jogs over to the red container with the window.

  I have never seen Chief Björn jog.

  I scurry down off the roof of the truck, into the flatbed, and down to t
he ground. I run towards the container. Men are yelling. I can’t make out the words but there is urgency. Alarm.

  ‘Nope,’ says an out-of-town uniform holding his arms out. ‘No entry at present.’

  ‘It’s my best friend,’ I say, trying to dodge his reach.

  He catches me and holds me at arm’s length and he says, ‘I will arrest you unless you step back. You cannot be here.’

  ‘Let me through.’

  He reaches for the cuffs on his belt and I back off.

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  I walk back. Two or three wrecked cars deep.

  Sirens.

  What does that mean? Is that good or bad? Tammy?

  I move around a wrecked raggare car, something with more rust than chrome, an elk window sticker peeling away from its windscreen, and then an ambulance drives into Snake River Salvage and its blue lights flash off the car wrecks. It reminds me of that ice-cream van with the broken devil music. It speeds under and through the mists spreading out from Utgard, and it pulls up close to the red container with the window.

  I look back and Sally The Breeder is nowhere to be seen. Lost to the mists.

  More yelling.

  The police dog barks and growls and then the voices quieten.

  Flashing ambulance lights. Mist. The toot of a distant owl.

  Oh, god. No. Please, no.

  I look up to the sky. A plea to Dad.

  Another owl toot.

  Thord walks out from the red container.

  He’s got Tammy. She’s clinging to him like a child clinging to a parent. Her hair is matted and her eyes are haunted.

  There’s blood all over her shirt.

  44

  My best friend is alive.

  The ambulance reverses close to the red container. Its rear doors open. I start to run.

  My heart aches to hold her.

  ‘Tammy!’ I shout, and she turns towards me and she raises her hand to shield her squinting eyes from the light, little that there is. Thord ushers her to the rear of the ambulance and I keep on running. Two uniforms I don’t recognise move to intercept me but Noora gets to me first and holds her arms out wide.

  ‘No, Tuva. Not yet.’

  She half catches me but I duck and surge towards Tam and my friend stretches out her arm.

  A filthy shirt, shining with grease and old sweat. The blood is old and dry. Brown.

  A clean hand with dirty untrimmed nails.

  A dark red gash on her thumb. Healing. Scabbing over.

  Our fingertips almost touch and I smile at her and she looks back with large eyes as if to say I am alive but nothing will ever be the same again.

  She’s pulled into the ambulance and the doors close behind her.

  No sirens, it just pulls away and drives off with a police car following behind.

  Other police are talking in a huddle. I hear Viktor’s name mentioned. And Freddy’s. Something about a shop.

  ‘Where are they taking her?’ I say.

  ‘Doctors need to check her over,’ says Noora. ‘Then when she’s up to it she’ll give us a statement.’

  ‘I need to see her,’ I plead.

  ‘No sign of Lisa Svensson,’ shouts a cop in jeans and a sweater. ‘Open up the next container.’

  Noora says to me, ‘We have to find Lisa now. You go back to town and wait for Tammy, she’s going to need you when she’s ready. We have more work to do. This is a crime scene.’

  My soul is twisted in different directions. I am swelling up with the happiness of finding Tam. She seems well? No serious injuries? No physical ones, anyway. But I can’t see her yet. Not properly. I can’t talk to her. And Lisa’s still here somewhere.

  I drive back to town.

  Numb.

  Exhausted.

  The relief of it all starting to sink in.

  ‘She’s okay,’ I say out loud like I need to reinforce this news. ‘She’s alive. She will be okay.’

  I’m smiling but my stomach’s uneasy. Is she really okay? What has she been through this past week? How can I help her deal with this?

  I pass the blackened pole with the faces of Tam and Lisa and I wonder how Lisa Svensson’s family will react to this news. Her ICA colleagues. Will this help them? First, the Kinder messages, none from Lisa, and now we find Tammy alive. My eyes fill with tears just thinking about it. Her dirty hands. She is free from that red container. It wasn’t the end it was just a pause.

  Two captors? That’s what Tammy’s message said. Alexandra and Axel? Viktor? Or one of them with an accomplice? Could be anyone. Small town like this, everyone related, could be anybody. And now, if it’s not Alexandra or Axel, the captor is running scared. Desperate. More dangerous than ever. Will they try to negotiate using Lisa Svensson as a bargaining chip?

  I park at the office and run inside and tell Lena.

  ‘I saw on the news,’ she says. ‘They just broke it on SVT.’

  I look back at the microwave-size TV mounted on the wall. Camera crew next to the broken Snake River Salvage sign. Police tape in the background sealing off the site.

  ‘She’s okay,’ I tell Lena.

  Lena puts her arms around me and kisses the top of my head.

  ‘Any sign of Lisa?’ she asks.

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘They’ll find her,’ says Lena.

  Will they? Alive? Or is there a body concealed somewhere in Toytown?

  I run across to Ronnie’s bar and yell out, ‘They found Tammy, she’s okay!’ and I’d expect a roar from the Sunday drinkers but I just get a sombre round of applause and Benny Björnmossen raises his glass at me and winks. Ronnie says, ‘Next beer’s on the house,’ and I smile at him and he gestures for me to come get my beer but I wave and mouth ‘Later’ and walk out onto the street.

  No cars.

  A blond man walking away down Storrgatan wearing a hoodie and carrying a toy gun. I think it’s the Viking paramedic. Sally’s boyfriend.

  I want to plaster the town with ‘we found her’ flyers. I feel a powerful urge to celebrate this, to acknowledge her being back with us.

  A cop car approaches with its headlights on. It slows when it reaches me. The window comes down.

  ‘I’m off duty in five minutes,’ says Noora. ‘And I need a drink before I can sleep. Wait for me?’

  ‘Lisa?’ I ask.

  ‘Not yet,’ she says. ‘Soon.’

  The street is empty but the flyers are still on the lamp posts. Mostly showing Lisa Svensson’s pretty face, and I don’t begrudge that imbalance anymore; now I wish there were more of her and less of Tam. I look into the window of Freddy Bom’s shoe shop and see my own face looking back at me and I pledge to help find Lisa. I cannot discriminate like the rest of the town surely did. I will not stop until both women are safe.

  Noora walks to me in her jeans and pale pink T-shirt. I couldn’t wear that colour, it’d wash me right out so you might think, ‘why’s that old mannequin wearing a T-shirt’. But Noora makes it look good.

  ‘I’m so relieved,’ she says when she meets me. ‘Chief tells me Tammy’s in good shape, considering. Infected cut. Doc gave her antibiotics. She’s eating well and she’s sharing what she knows. She says to tell you she’s fine and to thank you.’

  I choke up.

  ‘I want to see her now,’ I say. ‘I want to talk to her.’

  ‘I know,’ says Noora. ‘But you can’t, not yet anyway. Right now she’s being interviewed, checked, swabs are being taken, every item of clothing is being bagged and tagged. It takes time. The perpetrators are still unknown to us. Be patient. She’ll be out soon.’

  My tongue feels too big in my throat and I bite down on my lower lip and Noora wraps one arm around me and says, ‘That drink.’

  We step into Ronnie’s.

  The atmosphere is good more on account of the free beer than the free woman. People stare at us. A cop and a newly-returned hack. They see an out-of-towner who came to their town and then left and then came back again.r />
  ‘Two rum and Cokes, please, Ronnie,’ says Noora. ‘Singles, we’re both driving.’

  There is so much to unpick in that statement. I want the rum so bad I don’t have the energy reserves to say no. This will be a blip, a worthy exception. To celebrate Tam being free. What wouldn’t that justify? A one-off. Just single measures.

  Ronnie places the drinks down on paper coasters and whispers, ‘On me,’ so the rest of the place doesn’t hear spirits are going free now too.

  I take my drink in my palm.

  Exhausted.

  The relief-tears have dried on my cheeks into sticky clear lines.

  Noora lifts her glass. I can still back out, say I’ll have a soft drink, but actually, you know what, I can’t.

  I lift mine and the fizz from the rum-laced Coke works its way through the ice cubes and it bursts under my nose like the smallest sugar fireworks ever conceived. I can taste it and I’m not even drinking yet.

  ‘To Tammy,’ she says.

  ‘To Tammy.’

  I take a sip.

  The cold liquid coats my tongue and I let it pool there and then slowly slip down my throat and hit my stomach. Hit my blood.

  My shoulders loosen on my frame. It’s just to celebrate. I need to mark this moment.

  ‘That’s good,’ says Noora.

  We’ve never spoken about my relationship with drink. It’s too complex a thing to bring up casually. Too difficult. There is no label for what I have done in the past; it’s too nuanced for that, at least that’s what I tell myself. I stopped for months, didn’t I? All by myself. I’m still stopped, this is a pause. A one-drink hiatus.

  ‘Saw young Sebastian earlier,’ says Ronnie, polishing a glass. ‘He was burning something in an oil drum out Utgard way.

  ‘Not the kind of law breaking I’m focused on,’ says Noora.

  ‘Should be,’ says Ronnie, inspecting the glass for smudges. ‘Too dry out for fires.’

  Noora turns away from Ronnie and from the other punters and she comes close to my face, so close I can smell her, so close I want to touch her lip with the tip of my finger.

  ‘Just between you and me, not even to use at the Posten or your new paper.’