The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  “In the office, I think,” he replied, passing a bag to its owner.

  “Okay, thanks.” She hesitated. “Has Jakob talked to you about the car?”

  He nodded. “We’ll get it later.”

  “I’m really sorry. I hope it isn’t damaged.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, seemingly untroubled. “It’s not your fault. And we have insurance.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he said, uncoupling the sled. “Just a shame we won’t have elk for dinner.” He winked, and she had to laugh.

  Relieved—about the car at least—she went inside. Jakob mustn’t have told him anything about her secret. Leaving her coat hanging in the entranceway, she took the camera down to the office. Greta was sitting at her tidy desk, talking on the phone, so she waited by the door. Even though she didn’t know what the conversation was about, the rollercoaster sound of the language was becoming familiar now, and every now and then, she thought she recognised a word. She wouldn’t hear much of that back in London…or wherever she ended up.

  Greta ended her call, and turned around.

  “Zoe,” she said. “You are okay.”

  “I’m fine. I feel bad about the car though.”

  She waved a hand. “It’s not the first time for Bengt to pull a car from the snow. I told you the elk are dangerous.”

  “You did. He was handsome though.”

  “Oh, yes. They all are.” She noticed the camera in Zoe’s hand. “Have you been out?”

  Zoe passed it to her. “Look.”

  She turned it on. At the first image, her face lit up, and she looked at Zoe. “Today?”

  “Yes. Two of them.”

  She scrolled through the photos, oohing and aahing and exclaiming. Then she looked at Zoe. “How wonderful!”

  “Yes. I’m glad I got to see them.”

  She hesitated. Showing Greta the photos should have been such a fun moment—if she was a real volunteer. She couldn’t put it off any longer.

  “Greta. There’s something else I need to talk to you about. It’s about me…about my job.”

  She sighed. “Jakob told me already.”

  Already? She felt the heat in her cheeks. “I’m sorry for misleading you all.”

  Greta shook her head. “We have to talk. Come on.”

  They went into the kitchen and Greta made coffee, while Zoe fidgeted at the long table. “Does Bengt know?” she asked, picking wax drips from the side of a candle.

  “Yes,” Greta said. “He knows.”

  “Really? I just talked to him outside, and he didn’t say anything.”

  Greta set two mugs down on the table. “He knows that you and I will talk.”

  “Oh.” She looked down into her coffee. The liquid slowly settled and stilled, but her stomach kept churning.

  “So let’s talk,” she said. “You start.”

  “Um…okay.”

  She tried to explain how it had happened—her frustration at work, and how she ended up being the one sent on this assignment. The more she talked, the less convinced she felt about it herself.

  “Work is…I don’t know. It was a chance to prove something to them. I never expected to get here and find all of you.”

  “And Jakob?”

  “No. I never expected to find him.” Out the kitchen window, she could see treetops and winter sky. He was out there somewhere, mad at her. “He’s so angry. You said once that if anything happened to his wolves, that would be the thing to set him on fire. You were right.”

  Greta nodded. “I thought so.”

  “But I’m not giving any information to the company. I’m going to resign. They’ll have nothing from his research.” She squished the wax between her fingers. “I know it won’t make any difference to what he thinks of me though.”

  “Maybe,” Greta said slowly. “But Jakob is not just on fire about the wolves. We have never seen him like this before. The way he looked at you.”

  Zoe wanted to cry. “He doesn’t look at me like that any more. You should have seen his face.” Then she paused. “I thought you’d be angry too.”

  Greta gave a wry smile. “When you get to this age, you know that life is always more complicated than it seems.”

  That much was definitely true. “And Malin says it was Fredrik who poisoned the wolves. What do you think?”

  “Well, we knew that it couldn’t be you hurting them. When you saved Ebba, we could see who you really were.”

  “Why couldn’t Jakob see it then?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Maybe he could.”

  Zoe thought back to the way he’d put her in the bath, his arms around her, his heart beating against her back. Maybe he’d still wanted to believe in her then—but after that, discovering her volunteer deceit was too much for him.

  “I don’t know about that.” She looked at Greta. “I suppose…I should still go though.”

  She nodded. “I think that would be the best thing.”

  Even though she’d been preparing herself, hearing Greta’s words sent a pang of finality through her heart. “Okay.”

  “There’s only one train a day,” Greta continued, putting her mug in the dishwasher. “Malin is coming with the girls again this afternoon, but Bengt can take you to the station.”

  “What time?”

  “You’ll have to leave here at about two o’clock.”

  Zoe nodded. Only a few hours away. She wouldn’t try to see Jakob again. But she did want to say goodbye to Stina, when she came this afternoon, and the little ones of course. She still had mixed feelings about Malin.

  As she tipped her undrunk coffee in the sink, she remembered something else. “Greta…there was one other reason I agreed to come.”

  “What is it?”

  “Remember how I said my parents moved around a lot for work, so I went to live with family friends?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Their daughter Claire left home as a teenager, and basically disappeared. And now her mum is sick, and she needs to know.”

  “How awful.”

  “Yes. And her dad thought she came here years ago, so he asked me to try to find her.”

  “She came here?” Her voice was cautious.

  “She did. It was Claire Evans.”

  At that, her face seemed to zip up. “Well. You do have a lot of secrets.”

  “Apparently. But that’s not a bad one, is it?”

  She just pursed her lips, so Zoe continued.

  “I found out that she and Oscar went to Australia…but you’re not really in contact?”

  “No.” She put the milk back in the fridge, shutting the door with a resounding thump. “We’re not.”

  “Do you—”

  “I need to go back to work,” she said firmly. “And you need to pack.” Then her voice softened. “You’ll be able to say goodbye to the girls before you go.”

  “All right.”

  But she was speaking to Greta’s departing back. Whatever had happened with Oscar and Claire, she wasn’t telling.

  Well, Zoe herself knew that Claire didn’t do family especially well. Mind you, neither did she. She still hadn’t had that Skype with her parents in Singapore…but maybe sometimes a bit of distance was the best thing anyway.

  As she went off to pack, she tried not to think about the thousand or so miles of distance that would shortly be between her and Jakob.

  Thirty-Three

  This bloody suitcase would never close.

  Cursing, she rearranged things, shoving rolled-up t-shirts and scrunched knickers into whatever spaces she could find. It was all the same damn stuff that she’d squashed in for the trip over—why wouldn’t it fit now? She finally managed to close the zip, and sat back with her hair on end and her mood black.

  She looked at her watch. Still a couple of hours until two o’clock. What to do? She was getting hungry, but it didn’t seem appropriate to go up the guesthouse. Plus, she didn’t think she could bear t
o see Jakob. So she made herself a coffee and ate the last of the breakfast things—probably the last filmjölk she’d ever have in her life.

  Then she sat on the sofa with her phone and checked her messages. There was an email from Alcina, still waiting for news of something juicy that would advance their client’s cause. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She deleted a bunch of newsletters she’d subscribed to but never read. Then she found a Facebook message from Claire.

  I talked to Dad. Sounds like Mum is hanging in there. She always was a stubborn cow. Even if she could talk, I have nothing to say to her. She never had anything to say to me. Btw, how did you track me down?

  Wow. That was truly heartless. She thought for a moment, then typed a reply.

  I’m volunteering at the Nilssons’ lodge in Lillavik. Think you were here? Put two and two together and guessed about you and Oscar.

  She sent the message, then checked the time in Australia. Ten hours ahead. It was late there, so she might not see it straight away. But the ‘seen’ notification came up, and soon after that a reply arrived.

  Well that is a small fucking world. Don’t stay there too long. If the cold doesn’t kill you, the locals will drive you insane. I got the only good one.

  Hmm. She paused, her fingers hovering over the keys. Should she ask? Yeah, she would. Claire wouldn’t hold back, so why should she?

  What happened here? Seems like no one wants to talk about you.

  She hit return, and waited.

  And waited.

  Maybe that not holding back thing didn’t go both ways after all.

  But then Claire was typing, and the message arrived.

  I worked for Defrost Digital for a while, but I got in an accident. That was when the owner’s trucking company was still funding DD—startups soak up money, even when they look successful from the outside. And his son ran into me with one of the trucks, fucking idiot. We found out that it didn’t even have winter tyres on. My car was wrecked. I could have been killed, but luckily I got away with bangs and scrapes—sprained wrist, whiplash, bruises.

  Zoe’s heart was pounding as she read on. Maybe Claire had survived almost unscathed, but she didn’t mention—and obviously didn’t care—that Jakob had been injured.

  Oscar wanted to bring in the police, but in the end we came to an arrangement with Alvar (the owner). And then it was better to just go. Small town politics. You know.

  The implications of Claire’s story jostled in Zoe’s head. That was Jakob’s accident. No wonder Fredrik had been so determined to mention Claire’s name over and over again that day, when Jakob had brought her the skates. Jakob had never asked her anything about it, though. She needed to know more, but she couldn’t let her shock show now.

  How awful, she typed. Nothing there to imply that she thought it was awful for Jakob too, even though she did. What kind of arrangement was it?

  How much would Claire reveal? She crossed her fingers. Then she remembered, and held her thumbs instead. But Claire, unaware of Zoe’s entanglements in Lillavik, seemed to be on a confessional roll.

  Don’t know if you’ve met Fredrik? Later that night he saw Alvar putting winter tyres on the truck, trying to cover himself. If the police had found out, it would’ve been curtains for the trucking company, probably. And the funding for DD. Oscar and I wanted some seed money for a project we’d been working on, and Alvar was able to help us with that. Oh and Fredrik wanted a piece of DD, so that worked out well.

  Zoe realised that her mouth was literally hanging open. With breathtaking casualness, Claire had pretty much admitted to blackmailing Alvar. Claire and Oscar, and Fredrik. Now things were starting to make sense.

  And it seemed like Jakob didn’t have any idea.

  Careful to remain neutral, she typed a reply.

  And how did your project go?

  A thumbs-up emoticon appeared.

  Really well. We had worked on it at DD, so we got it up and running pretty fast. You might have heard of it—Kaleidoscoop. We’ve released a few more since then, but that’s still our biggest.

  She hadn’t heard of it, but that wasn’t saying anything. She wasn’t a gamer. But she did know that taking a project developed as employees at DD and selling it themselves was probably not ethical, and maybe illegal. Before she had a chance to reply, another message came through.

  Have to go, going out with Oscar. Oh and for God’s sake don’t tell his parents you know me. Not the favourite daughter-in-law, haha. TTYL.

  And that was that.

  Zoe leaned back against the pillows. No wonder Alvar was putting up with the unbearable Fredrik. How much of this did Greta and Bengt know? Enough, obviously. And what about Jakob?

  She had to tell him what she knew.

  * * *

  Up at the house, a flashy black beast of a four-wheel-drive sat in the driveway next to Malin’s VW Golf, with an American flag on the rear window. She looked at the badge—GMC. That could only be Fredrik’s. What the hell was he doing here? Well, okay. Maybe he could answer some of her questions.

  There was no one at the house, so she went over to the guesthouse. At the back door, she hesitated. She didn’t feel like one of the team any more. She wasn’t one of the team any more. In truth, she never had been. She stopped herself from knocking, and went in.

  The first person she saw was Malin, coming out of the bathroom. Seeing Zoe, she stopped, and her face changed. Obviously, she knew.

  “Hej,” Zoe said.

  “Uh…hej,” she replied. She looked over her shoulder, as though she didn’t want to be caught. “So…you’re going?”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t have time to tiptoe around. “Is Jakob here? He wasn’t in his cabin.”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “What about Greta?”

  “She’s in the office.”

  “Thanks.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “I’d like to say goodbye to the girls, if that’s okay.”

  Malin’s face softened. “Yes, that’s okay. Fredrik was watching them while I came to the bathroom. We don’t leave them alone in here any more.”

  A red flag went up in Zoe’s mind. “Really? Do you trust him with the girls, if you think he poisoned the wolves? The other day, you said he’s not right.”

  Her cheeks went pink. “He wouldn’t hurt his own nieces.”

  They went down the corridor and through the big entrance hall.

  “Why is he even here?” Zoe asked.

  “I suppose he wanted to see you before you left.”

  That seemed doubtful. Or maybe he wanted to gloat over his victory. Well, she had some information on him that she was ready to share before she left. He may have won their skirmish at Defrost Digital, but he wouldn’t win the war. Neither of them would—but it would be a kind of triumph for her anyway.

  In the great room, it was quiet.

  “They must have gone to see Greta,” Malin said. “They can’t leave her alone. They asked her to take them skating on the lake again—even after Ebba fell in the pond, can you believe it?” She sighed. “I’m the mean mother, always saying no.”

  They went back through the entrance and along the corridor on the other side, past the kitchen to Greta’s office. She looked up when she saw them.

  “It’s too early,” she told Zoe. “Bengt has taken the guests out on the snowmobiles, but he’ll be back in time to take you to the train.”

  Malin was frowning. “Where are the girls?”

  “With Fredrik,” Greta said.

  “Okay. Where is Fredrik?”

  For a moment they looked at each other, then Malin turned and sped down the corridor, with Greta and Zoe right behind. “Lena!” she called, the underlying fear in her voice obvious. “Ebba!”

  “Go and look outside,” Greta told Zoe. “I’ll send Malin to look upstairs.”

  Zoe followed her instructions, but there was no sign of them anywhere outside. To be sure, she ran a circuit around the guesthouse, stumbling where the
snow sat more deeply off the path. As she went around the side, she noticed that every single snowmobile was gone—including the one she usually used. Dread clenched in her stomach as a horrible thought occurred to her. Surely he wouldn’t.

  Back inside, a tearful Malin was on the phone. “She’s trying to call Fredrik,” Greta said.

  But Malin shook her head. “Voicemail.”

  This wasn’t good. “Um…should all the snowmobiles be gone from outside?” she asked.

  Instantly, Malin burst into a stream of Swedish. Even with her limited vocab, Zoe knew the words weren’t pretty. Greta nodded as she replied, obviously trying to reassure her. Then she switched back to English.

  “We have spare machines in the barn,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  “Are we going to the lake?” Zoe asked as they raced out to the barn, Greta and Malin doing up their coats as they went.

  “Yes.” Greta maintained a positive expression. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  Inside, amongst the hay bales and assorted vehicles and tools, Zoe followed her lead.

  “Of course. Men are just thoughtless idiots sometimes.” She pulled the tarpaulin off the snowmobile Greta pointed her to. “I bet they’re just having fun.”

  She started it without too much difficulty as Greta’s machine roared into life too.

  “It will not be fun for Fredrik when I kill him,” Malin said, over the sound of the engines.

  And I’d be happy to help, Zoe thought as they headed off, with Malin sitting behind Greta. Now that would be something to report back to Claire.

  Thirty-Four

  They stopped by the boathouse where Jakob had showed her Brigitta’s sleigh. Zoe’s snowmobile was parked there, next to another older one. Out on the ice, there were four figures—Fredrik and the girls, and a frail-looking old man Zoe didn’t know. But he was holding a fishing rod, and nearby was a little tent with a sled base. It must be Hakon Halvarsson. He and Fredrik were talking, but looked over when they heard the snowmobiles approach.

  “There they are,” Greta said. “Everything is fine.”