The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  “I could do that. But your English is so good, I’m sure you’d do a great job.”

  “Thank you. But it should be professional, and writing in English is harder than speaking.”

  “Well, I’m happy to help.” Sort of.

  He scooted his chair over to her desk and showed her how to log in to the database as an admin, his shoulder against hers. With a heavy heart, she listened, made notes, and watched as the information scrolled down the screen in front of her. This was the reality of why she was here.

  When he turned to her and asked if it was all okay, she answered automatically, half her mind in some other place, with a Swedish ja instead of an English yes.

  He smiled. “Very clever.”

  She had to laugh. Maybe Greta was right, and they’d make her a Swede yet. She loved the coffee, she was getting used to the climate…and it hadn’t taken any time at all to embrace their infamous permissiveness. But then, she’d had extreme provocation—tempted by this complicated, compelling man.

  Unfortunately, there were only twelve nights left before she’d be removed from that temptation. The thought made her want to break into a tantrum like a baby losing its blankie. But in this reality there was no time for tantrums, temptation, or even truth. She could only hope to get out with enough information to please The Shark without compromising the wolves, and without Jakob uncovering her lie.

  And without leaving an iceberg-sized chunk of her heart behind.

  Twenty-Three

  At the sound of a snowmobile passing the cabin, Zoe looked up from her spot on the sofa. She’d made a good start on proofreading the database reports, and found nothing of note so far. After a few hours, she’d gone to get herself a late lunch, empty the dishwasher in the guesthouse kitchen, and change the bedding that they’d so thoroughly messed up the night before. With no appetite after the morning’s bad news, Jakob had gone out on the snowmobile to check for anything suspicious in the surrounding area.

  After finishing at the guesthouse, she’d come back to the cabin, planning to have a nap—the energetic nights were catching up with her. (Not that she was complaining.) But in the end, her mind was too busy to sleep, so she got back up and checked her email. There was a message from Paul, saying that Sarah was holding steady, and had even started to say a few words. With that small glimmer of light the best part of her day so far, she’d decided to do a bit more searching for Claire. Well, after she forced herself to send The Shark an update, saying that she had access to the database, and would let her know if anything showed up.

  She’d hit ‘send’ with a decidedly queasy feeling.

  Now, with a stab of shock, she saw through the French doors that Jakob was towing the sled, heading for the forest on his side of the clearing. That could only mean one thing—another wolf down.

  She slapped the laptop closed and ran out the front door in her socks, but he was already heading into the trees. Damn it. Well, he’d have to come back this way—and she’d be ready for him.

  She pulled on her boots and grabbed her coat from the hook by the door. As she lifted the hood over her head, the faux fur trim in her hands gave her a flashback to Brynjar’s rescue. She’d never been so close to a wild animal, and ever since then the experience had been replaying in her mind. The wolf’s vulnerability and trust in them, Jakob’s calm strength, and the surreal, unreal sense of connection with an animal from the furthest reaches of human myth and imagination.

  The word ‘feral’ had always seemed to have a negative connotation. Not any more.

  She waited on the porch, bouncing on her toes in the cold until she heard the snowmobile’s engine again, then ran out to meet it. Jakob stopped just long enough for her to get on behind him, then set off again.

  She looked over her shoulder, and her heart clenched. On the sled, a dark grey wolf lay under a woollen blanket, its eyes closed. This one was wearing a collar too—it must be another one of the animals being tracked by the government programme. It looked much worse than Brynjar had when they found him. She turned to face the front again, and pressed her forehead against Jakob’s back. Please let it be okay…

  Back at the garages, they swung into action, getting the unresponsive wolf into the four-wheel drive and setting off for the vet clinic one more time. It felt like a very long drive, the road flanked with endless trees, the sky steadily darkening. She turned back frequently to check on the wolf, but it showed no signs of life.

  “Is it bad?” she asked at one point.

  Jakob only nodded, his mouth set in a hard line. She bit her lip, and hoped.

  When they arrived at the clinic, Jakob immediately got the wolf out of the vehicle, while Zoe went to the door. Like the first time, he had phoned ahead, so Emil and Vera were expecting them, and the door opened before she had a chance to knock.

  “Again?” Vera looked at her as though the whole thing was her fault.

  Jakob came up the steps, bearing the wolf, and glared at Vera. She stepped aside for him to go through, and Zoe followed. Inside, Emil held the treatment room door open for Jakob to bring the wolf through, asking quick-fire questions as they went. Vera went in too, and then the door closed behind them.

  Once again, Zoe was left in the waiting room. This time, she knew what was at stake. Hopefully, now that they knew what it was, Emil would be able to start exactly the right treatment straight away. But how long had the wolf been sick in the forest?

  She waited impatiently, alternately pacing the floor between a shelf of specialist cat food and a rack of squeaky dog toys, and perching anxiously on the window seat. When they finally came back into the waiting room, she leapt to her feet.

  “Is he okay? Or she?”

  “He.” Emil pulled off his latex gloves. “We have to wait. It’s not very good, but I will do everything I can.”

  Vera shook her head, and looked at Zoe. “It’s strange how this all started when you arrived.”

  Zoe felt her cheeks instantly flare with heat at the unspoken but obvious implication. Jakob said something sharply to Vera, in Swedish, and she visibly backed off. But Zoe wanted to say something in her own defence.

  “It’s horrible,” she said. “I know I’m new here, but I want to stop this just as much as you do.”

  Emil nodded. “Good. If you see anything unusual, please tell us.”

  Then he turned to Jakob, reverting to Swedish as he continued speaking. Vera swept her eyes over Zoe, and went back into the treatment room, letting the door swing closed behind her.

  Stunned by the insinuation, Zoe sat back on the window seat while the men remained deep in conversation. If Vera was saying that here, right to Zoe’s face, who else was she saying it to? Suddenly her lack of Swedish felt like a huge disadvantage—how could she defend herself when she had no idea what people were saying? On the other hand, maybe it was just Vera having a bitchy moment. She hoped so.

  This time, Jakob didn’t suggest they stay over. There was no snow falling, and although it was dark, the drive back was easy. Before they left, Emil had promised to keep them updated, and the whole way back she was half expecting Jakob’s phone to beep with bad news. She was also quietly fuming over Vera’s pointed comment. Finally, she had to say something.

  “Vera seemed to think this has something to do with me.”

  He let out a disparaging pfft. “Ignore it. She doesn’t know anything about you.”

  She looked out the car window. Neither did he. But it was good to hear him dismiss it. Hopefully anyone else would too.

  They pulled into the garage, and Jakob turned the engine off. The headlights reflected back against the rear wall, throwing a glow over them. She hesitated. The day’s events—one wolf lost, another in grave danger—had turned everything on its head, and the sweet, hot fun they’d had only the night before seemed a long time ago.

  Suddenly she was overtaken by a yawn, holding her hand over her mouth.

  “We should get some sleep tonight,” he said, watching her.


  She tried not to look disappointed. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  He opened his door, and the lights went out.

  * * *

  When she went up to the volunteer office the next morning, Jakob was already there, and the aroma of strong coffee filled the air.

  “I checked the nest already,” he told her, before she even said good morning. “Nothing to see.”

  “Oh…thank you.” She poured a generous serving of coffee into her mug, and stirred in far too much sugar. Privately, she’d decided the eagles weren’t coming this year, but Greta was so ecstatic about them, she didn’t like to say so. “You must have been up early.”

  “Yes.”

  He turned back to the email he was writing, clearly not in a conversational state of mind. Well, fair enough. But there was one thing she had to ask.

  “Have you heard anything about the wolf?”

  He stopped typing, but didn’t turn to look at her.

  “He died.”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no.” She reached out, laying a tentative hand on his shoulder. Under her fingers, she felt him tense for a moment, but then he went back to typing, the keystrokes hard and bitter.

  She took her hand back. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes. I am too.”

  “What will happen now?”

  “An autopsy,” he said, and the very word made her flinch. “For him and Brynjar. And we have to tell the conservation department.”

  She thought back to the radio collar around the wolf’s neck.

  “Did he have a name? Can we look up where he’d been? I’d love to know where he came from, where he travelled.”

  He shrugged. “If you want to. The details are in Emil’s email.”

  Clearly, she was back to having surly Jakob for company. She couldn’t blame him—it was enough to make anyone despair, let alone a wildlife ecologist whose life’s work so far was with the wolves. She decided to look it up after he’d gone.

  In the meantime, while he worked, she continued with the database. As she read, she could see by the report count that more entries had been made in the last few days. Hopefully she could get through it all before she went back to London. Maybe there was something in there that could be given to Alcina…something that looked significant, but was vague enough to be of no practical use.

  Eventually, Jakob packed up and left, saying he was going out on the snowmobile. She knew enough about him now to understand that out in the natural world was the best place to make him feel better.

  The other place—in bed with her—didn’t seem to be an option right now.

  Once he was gone, she logged into the project email account, and noted down the wolf’s number. Then she went to the map that tracked the wolves’ movements. Where had the sooty wolf been, before he met his sad end? Increasingly, she felt a sort of affinity with all the wolves—travellers, on the move with their family, or without. It was the life she’d had, and rejected, but for them, it was everything.

  She entered the wolf’s number, and found that his name was Sten. A quick Google search showed that it meant ‘stone’—maybe he was named for the colour of his fur. She looked at the convoluted trail he’d left around northern Sweden. Wow. He’d been captured and collared way up north, by the Finnish border. Over the next few years, he’d made his way south and west, roaming in a squiggly line through forests and counties, until he arrived in this area. She clicked in closer, wondering if she could see exactly where he’d been near them. Combined with Google Earth, the system gave an amazingly detailed record of where he’d been. She clicked in…and in…closer…and closer.

  Oh.

  There was the lodge, and their clearing, with the two little cabins. And there was the red line of the wolf’s route, passing right through. Just a day or two ago, he had been right outside her window, probably while she slept. He’d had no idea that inside lay a person who was working to eliminate his cousins from the Scottish Highlands.

  She frowned. Her white lie was becoming blacker with every day that passed.

  Twenty-Four

  Sometimes you just need to get away for a few hours to clear your head.

  Zoe found a parking space in the square, and made a beeline for Lillavik’s best café, where they’d had prinsesstårta after ice skating that day. Well, there were only two cafes. But Lena said the cakes were better in this one, and when it came to cake, Zoe was wise enough to rely on the word of a six-year-old girl. With Greta and Bengt not back until tomorrow night, and the lodge spick and span, she had time to think. God knows she needed it.

  The café door set off an old-fashioned bell as she entered, and every person in the place turned to look at her. It felt like she was making an entrance into an old-time saloon, except that the cowboys were blonde and gorgeous instead of grubby and lawless, and they weren’t cowboys, but models from an H&M catalogue. She smiled weakly, and went over to the counter, feeling self-conscious with her mousy-reddish hair and her not-flawless complexion. A childhood under various latitudes of sun had left her with enough freckles to trace out a constellation on each cheek. Oh well.

  She said hej to the girl at the counter, who immediately replied with a hello. Was her pronunciation so incredibly crap that no one trusted her with a word of Swedish in reply? Admittedly, any more than a word would leave her lost, but still. She sighed, and decided to be grateful for the good manners that compelled every Swede to instantly switch to English at the sight of her.

  With a lunch of hot soup and crusty bread rolls in front of her (and a cupcake for afterwards), she settled in to eat. Her phone whistled, and she read the text from Denise, and laughed. She missed that crazy girl. They texted backwards and forwards as she ate, a silly round of jokes and innuendo, with Denise still on her ‘get a Swede drunk and see what happens’ track. Zoe gave as good as she got, but stopped short of revealing her fling with Jakob. If that was what it was. Which of course it was. Of course. What else was he thinking—she was only here for three weeks, and what guy wouldn’t be up for a no-strings, limited-time, good time? And how many other volunteers had done the same thing? She wouldn’t blame them either.

  Well, now she’d depressed herself all over again.

  Denise sent a final text full of hearts and cheeky faces, finished off with a whale and a poo—her secret code for Alcina, in the absence of a shark emoji. Good luck, Zoe texted back, with an assortment of encouraging symbols. Somehow, they never got old.

  She ordered a coffee from the girl who came to clear the table, then opened the book she’d been reading on her phone. While Jakob escaped into the wilderness, her own best escape was into a story. It worked every time. She picked at the edge of the cupcake while she read and waited for the coffee to cool.

  After some time, she became aware of someone standing by her table, and looked up. “Oh! I didn’t see you there.”

  Fredrik grinned. “I saw you.”

  So that wasn’t stalkerish or anything. She pasted on a smile. “How are you?”

  “Good, thank you,” he replied. Then he glanced over his shoulder.

  She looked in the same direction, and saw Alvar Lundberg coming towards them. Oh great, the more the merrier. Thank God Jakob wasn’t here now—all the negative energy would surely trigger some kind of spontaneous combustion.

  “Zoe, you remember Alvar,” Fredrik said, by way of introduction.

  “I remember,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”

  Funny how complete and utter lies could pass as good manners.

  He nodded. “Sober this time,” he commented.

  She stared at him. Really? “Yes. Now I’ve been sober fifty per cent of the times we’ve met.”

  He regarded her with a level stare, and she met it. What a prick, as Jakob would say.

  “Well,” Fredrik said. “We’ll join you, if that’s okay.”

  What could she say? He was already sitting down.

  Alvar sat down too. With one of them on each side, sh
e felt like the filling in an extremely hard to digest sandwich.

  “How are things with the Nilssons?” Fredrik asked.

  “Good,” she said cautiously. “Bengt and Greta have been away for a couple of days.” She wanted to mention him coming the night before last, but if she did, it would be obvious that she’d seen his car, but not come out to see him. She waited to see if he’d bring it up, but he didn’t.

  “Yes, I heard they were having a break.”

  Alvar took a few sugar cubes from the bowl on the table, and dropped them into his coffee. “Very bad news about the wolves.”

  “Yes, it’s terrible,” she agreed.

  He and Alvar looked at each other, then Fredrik came right out with it.

  “Do you know anything about the poison?”

  She felt her cheeks go red, despite herself. “No, I don’t.”

  Her voice may have been slightly too loud—the couple at the next table looked over at her, then away, and whispered to each other in Swedish. Well, shit. Let them talk. She had nothing to hide.

  Fredrik said something in Swedish to Alvar, then turned back to Zoe. “We heard a rumour, but I knew it wouldn’t be true.”

  “What kind of rumour?” She was going to make him say it.

  “That you are poisoning the wolves.”

  Thanks a lot, Vera. Not just a bitchy moment after all. She worked to keep a lid on her temper, and her voice even. “What possible reason would I have for poisoning the wolves?”

  “I don’t know.” Fredrik shrugged. “That’s what everyone is trying to figure out.”

  “Everyone?” Bloody hell.

  “Oh, well, not everyone, I’m sure.” He gave her his best ABBA smile, white and wholesome. “Of course I don’t believe it.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She looked at Alvar. “What about you—do you believe it?”