by Will Dean
I shake my head and take a sip of orange juice.
‘Well, I’ve only been there once,’ says Lena. ‘Didn’t like that big hill one bit. You think Gavrik is isolated, you should see Visberg: 50km drive to the north east. Hill people.’
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘They have a newspaper.’
‘The Visberg Tidning,’ I say. ‘I’ve read it. It’s reasonable.’
‘It’s closing down,’ she says.
I raise my eyebrows and take a bite of white-fluff toast and melted butter and hazelnut-chocolate goodness.
‘Owners are retiring. I, well, we,’ she looks at Johan. ‘We’re thinking of buying it. Merging it with the Gavrik Posten.’
‘Good idea,’ I say.
‘We’ll need more staff,’ she says.
I shake my head and swallow. ‘Don’t look at me. I just moved south. Just got my apartment the way I like it.’
Lena smiles. ‘Might be an Assistant Editor post,’ she says. ‘Might be. It’d be senior to Lars and Nils and Sebastian. And maybe we’ll need another ad person. Nothing concrete, but I’ll know in the next week or so if this is a goer. Have to check the books first.’
I drink more juice and take a deep breath and say, ‘Thanks for thinking of me, but…’
‘We’re thinking of a few people,’ says Lena. ‘It’s not just––’
Johan interrupts and says, ‘Nothing to decide on one way or another yet. And we’re sorry to drop this on you after what you’ve been through. Lena can call you in a few days. Forget we said anything. Now, can I invite you both to a grand unveiling?’
Lena squeals with delight. I have never seen her do that.
‘A what?’ I ask.
‘Come on,’ he says.
I place down my toast and we follow him up the stairs to the room he’s kept locked up. He unlocks the padlock and opens the door.
Lena puts her hands to her mouth.
The walls are covered with photos of Lena from years gone by. Photos of Lena with her schoolfriends in Lagos, photos of Lena in New York with her colleagues and with her first husband. Cut-outs of Lena from other papers, photos of her accepting prizes, photos of her and Johan building the friggebod guest cottage I slept in this past week. And in the centre of the room is an easel and a stack of canvasses. A range of pallets and brushes and oil paints.
She kisses his cheek.
‘It’s okay?’ he says.
‘It’s more than okay.’
I walk downstairs to let them explore the room together. It’s a small space and I need more air. More square metres. I know I just witnessed a beautiful thing. Someone giving a loved one a special gift. That generosity. Unconditional. Personal. Almost makes me dizzy.
Noora explained last night how Alexandra and Axel are real cousins. Simple as that. It’s just that up here people expect both cousins to be white. Sally certainly does. Up here people see the world through a narrow Gavrik lens.
I step outside into the June sunshine and someone drives past in an EPA tractor. The cops told me that Viktor’s in serious trouble, grown-up trouble, but Mikey’s under the legal age for criminal responsibility. I was told, guaranteed, he’ll get lots of psychiatric help. Proper support. Supervision. Apparently Viktor’s been baby-sitting Mikey more and more this past year. Mikey talked Viktor into the whole idea, using the truck, using the containers, although Noora has her doubts. She wants to get to the bottom of their friendship – work out who was leading who. Mikey’s been obsessed with contained creatures for some time, so say his teachers. They found a mouse trapped inside a jam jar, half-suffocated. He likes to look at contained things. Maybe he has control issues? From his traumatic upbringing? God knows why it manifested this way. Nature or nurture? Both, I guess.
Viggo’s in custody.
I walk back to the friggebod, careful not to place too much weight on my bad ankle.
There’s a fist-size mound of soil next to a rose bush. Below the friggebod window. It’s the bird. No more blood, no more fighting with its own reflection. Just a quiet grave. Rest in peace, little one.
A car pulls up to the house and stops.
A small Peugeot.
My heart lifts in my chest and I freeze.
I can’t breathe.
She runs to me.
‘Tam,’ I say, and she flings her arms around me and we hold on tight. She doesn’t cry, she just squeezes. I sob into her hair. Ugly crying. So much happiness. She smells like Tammy, like my best friend. Peaches and good shampoo. We rock back and forth. She pulls back from me.
‘Let me look at you,’ she says, smiling, her eyes wet, and then she knocks her forehead gently onto mine and we stay like that for a while, grinning like fools, staring at each other.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask her.
She nods and her nod pushes my head back and forth with her own.
‘Scariest week of my whole life,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘That robot voice, I hated it. But the boys didn’t hurt me. I’ll be okay.’ And then she cups her palm around my wet cheek and she says, ‘You looked for me. You drove all the way back up here to find me.’
‘I found you,’ I say.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘I didn’t think I could do it.’
She closes her eyes and smiles.
Her thumb is bandaged.
I see Freddy Bom ride behind her on his BMX, his blond ringlets bouncing in the breeze. He rings his bell and rides on.
‘Viktor and Mikey,’ she says. ‘Two junior ratshits and a kiddie tractor. Viktor’s been babysitting Mikey for extra cash and Mikey talked him into it, so Thord reckons. Impressionable kid, Viktor. Problems at school. I’ve seen him around Karl-Otto’s place but he always seemed harmless.’ She shakes her head. ‘Mikey always used to stare at me when Viggo picked up their food. Like he was studying me. He and Viktor didn’t even have a gun, just a short piece of metal piping. Held it to my neck. I’m such an idiot. Can you believe kids could do such a thing?’
Yes, I can.
‘Noora wants to see you later,’ says Tam. ‘McDonald’s at 7pm if you can make it.’
‘You wanna join us?’ I ask.
‘Hang out with you two losers? Nope, I’m gonna spend some time with Mum when her flight gets in. She’ll be jet-lagged and lithiumed up to her eyeballs so she’ll need some help.’
‘Tell her hi,’ I say.
She nods and curves her palm around the back of my neck and pulls me close. She puts her cheek against mine.
I breathe out. Feels like I’ve been holding my breath for days.
She puts her mouth close to my earlobe and whispers, ‘Next of kin. Thord told me.’
I screw my eyes tight.
‘Missed you these past months,’ she says. ‘Was pissed off you didn’t call. Just left and shut yourself away down south.’
We release.
‘Needed to sort myself out,’ I say.
She looks at me like ‘are you okay now?’
‘Might be a new reporter job up here,’ I say, tears in my eyes.
Tammy frowns.
‘Maybe,’ I say.
Acknowledgements
To my literary agent Kate Burke, and the team at Blake Friedmann: thank you.
To my TV agent James Carroll, and the team at Northbank Talent: thank you.
To my editor Jenny Parrott, and the team at Oneworld: thank you.
To my international publishers, editors, translators: thank you.
To Maya Lindh (the voice of Tuva): thank you.
To all the bloggers and booksellers and reviewers and early supporters and tweeters and fellow authors: thank you. Readers benefit so much from your recommendations and enthusiasm. I am one of them. Special thanks to Liz Barnsley, Nina Pottell, Leilah Skelton, Sam Baker, India Knight, Marian Keyes, Sam Missingham, Isabelle Broom, Ali Karim, Mike Stotter, Abby (Crime by the book), Candice Sawchuk, Mart, Kate (Quiet Knitter), Gemma Wiles, Ellen Devonport (and Bibliophile BC), Tracy Fenton (and all o
f TBC), Helen Boyce, Tripfiction, Mary Picken, Janet Emson, Jen Lucas, The Booktrail, Noelle Holten, Ayo Onatade, John Fish, Anne Cater, Abby Slater, Craig Sisterson, Dan Stubbings, Jacob Collins, Jo Robertson, Sharon Bairden, Miriam Owen, Ronnie Turner, Rae Reads, Don Jimmy, Beverley Has Read, Sara WIMM, and every single reader who takes the time to leave a review somewhere online. Those reviews help readers to find books. Thank you.
To Hayley Webster, Bethany Rutter, Alice Slater: thank you.
To @DeafGirly: thank you again for your help and support. In many ways your opinion matters to me more than anyone else’s. I continue to be very grateful.
To the Zoe Ball Book Club and Amanda Ross: thank you.
To Val McDermid: thanks for choosing me as part of your New Blood panel at Harrogate. It was one of the best experiences of my life.
To Sweden: thanks for welcoming me in. I’m a fan.
To my family, and especially my parents: once again, thank you for letting me play alone for hours as a child. Thank you for taking me to libraries. Thank you for letting me read and draw and daydream and scribble down strange stories. Thanks for not censoring my book choices (too much). Thank you for allowing me to be bored. It was a special gift.
To my friends: thanks for your ongoing support (and patience, and love).
Special thanks to my late granddad for teaching me some valuable lessons. He taught me to treat everyone equally, and with respect. To give the benefit of the doubt. To listen to advice even if you don’t then follow it. To take pleasure from the small things in life. To read widely. To never judge or look down on anyone. To be kind. To spend time with loved ones. To keep the kid inside you alive.
To my friend, Annika: thank you for reading Dark Pines and for sending me photos of highlighted passages and for telling me it helped you enjoy reading again after a ten year pause. That meant the world to me.
To my wife and son: thank you. Love you. Always.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. He was a bookish, daydreaming kid who found comfort in stories and nature (and he still does). After studying Law at the LSE, and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden. He built a wooden house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. He is the bestselling author of Dark Pines and Red Snow.
Will loves to hear from readers. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @willrdean, as well as speaking regularly about reading and writing on YouTube under the name Will Dean – Forest Author.
A Point Blank Book
First published in Great Britain, Australia and the Republic of Ireland by Point Blank,
an imprint of Oneworld Publications, 2020
This ebook edition published 2020
Copyright © Will Dean 2020
The moral right of Will Dean to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78607-711-0
eISBN 978-1-78607-712-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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