by Will Dean
‘Mother,’ says Karin Grimberg, her voice calm and firm. ‘I think it’s canine.’ She stays in the doorway and I try to look beyond her and inside; to take a peek at the Grand Room, but I can’t at this angle. There’s a dark red curtain in the way. Karin ignores me completely. ‘It’s dog.’
Anna-Britta rubs her palms up and down her face and I notice that her fancy Swiss rectangular watch isn’t working, it’s telling the wrong time; it’s stopped. She looks unhinged sitting there on a grey upholstered ottoman.
‘Karin.’ Anna-Britta’s voice is brittle and too high. ‘Come in, please. Close that door.’
The figure in black, pretty in a kind of first-year-of-university-trying-a-little-too-hard way, steps over.
‘I saw you at the funeral,’ she says to me, a wooden box clutched tight in her hand.
Anna-Britta locks the door to the family residence.
‘Are you working for us now?’ Karin asks. ‘Did you see the cadaver?’
Anna-Britta looks horrified. ‘Tuva’s helping with the book,’ she says. ‘She’s going to be interviewing us, for the family history.’
Karin places the box down on a desk and I notice that her beauty spot isn’t a spot. It’s a spider. Well it is a spot, a mole I think, but she’s painted it black and there are eight tiny legs, mascara strokes or something, four on each side.
‘This might help with finding out who slaughtered Per Gunnarsson,’ says Karin. ‘The police won’t let me into the old factory to check things, but Andersson showed me a photo of what was lodged in Gunnarsson’s neck.’
He took a photo? Why didn’t he mention that to me?
Anna-Britta looks like she might pass out. ‘Do the police know Andersson took a photo?’
Karin shakes her head. ‘He said it was accidental, he was trying to switch the torch function on. He took dozens of pictures. And I’m pretty sure it’s canine’, she says, opening her box. ‘These are from my cabinet.’
She holds out a small box, like a jeweller might use to display a range of rings or precious stones; little sockets cut into black velvet. Inside each socket is a tooth with a Latin inscription.
‘These are the closest to what Andersson photographed: a fox and a badger and,’ she points to a larger tooth, ‘that one’s a wolf. The one found in the cadaver’s neck was a dog’s tooth, a large dog. I’d say it came from a German shepherd.’
14
‘A German shepherd?’ I say.
‘Judging by the size of it,’ says Karin. ‘Look, compare it to the wolf canines here, they’re not that dissimilar. Could be a Doberman but I’d say it’s German shepherd.’
All I can think of is David Holmqvist’s dog, the one ‘adopted’ by a farm out in Rednecksville.
‘You sure?’ I ask. ‘Are you studying veterinary science?’
‘Sculpture and fine art,’ Anna-Britta answers for her. ‘But last year Karin completed an online course in taxonomy. And another in pathology. Karin, why don’t you wait in my office while Tuva and—’
‘I quit my sculpture course, mother,’ says Karin looking at Anna-Britta and then slowly turning her head to face me. ‘I’m needed here.’
Her mother looks uncomfortable like she has about a hundred things she wants to scream right now and it’s damn inconvenient me being here.
A knock at the staircase door and then a face peering around it. Rosy cheeks. Thin ’80s hair. It’s Agnetha Hellbom, the office manager and wife of Gavrik’s only expensive lawyer.
‘Mrs Grimberg,’ the woman says, her voice as thin as her hair.
‘What is it?’
‘The police chief needs a word.’
‘On my way,’ says Anna-Britta, and then she adds, ‘we must help Gunnarsson’s family in any way we can, and we must offer the workers counselling.’ She’s speaking with the kind of fake gravitas any new CEO has to cultivate, and she’s looking at me from the corner of her eye, like she wants me to hear this too. ‘Can I leave that to you, Agnetha?’
Agnetha scowl-nods and licks her lips and walks back through to the offices.
‘Blood-sucking parasitic leach,’ says Karin, and all of a sudden I like this young Grimberg. She’s a younger version of me. She’s weird and she’s lost her father and doesn’t care for shitty people. I like her a lot.
Anna-Britta glowers at her daughter and I notice how pink-raw her cuticles are. Tiny open wounds around each fingernail like miniscule fragments of raw chicken flesh.
‘Tuva, I need to give the police my statement, why don’t you eat down in the canteen? Half the site’s locked down and will be for some time, but we’re allowed to keep the rear factory and canteen open. Chief Bjorn’s been very understanding, what with how vital we are to the town.’
I walk downstairs. Is the killer still here in the building? In the attics or a secret store room? In the residence? And when was Gunnarsson murdered? I don’t want to be here but I need to find out what’s going on. Who killed this man in this way? Why?
The carpet is threadbare and thin, the photos on the walls unnerving because they’re all black-and-white and the faces look too pale and the eyes look too dark. I swing a right into the canteen.
I reckon there are a hundred people in here. Whispering. Is the killer in this room? Hiding in plain sight? I take a wet plastic tray with chipped edges and slide it along the steel rails toward the food. A row of stainless steel knives stick to a magnetic rail behind the servers. I look at the blades and then down to the food. Lasagne or salmon. I point to the lasagne and a sodden slab gets deposited on a plate and handed to me, the server not looking me in the eye.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
Nothing.
I move along and take some bread, the fluffy sugar-loaded polar bread that looks like a circular pin cushion, and then I pick up a glass tumbler.
This is school again. My Stockholm high school was pretty good actually; quiet suburb, good mix of people, interesting kids – but as a deaf twelve-year-old the school lunch part was always tricky. By default, some weird survival technique I seemingly haven’t shaken off, I sit with the most awkward-looking people. I’m a thousand miles away from my twelve-year-old self, happy to hold my own in court or in a press conference scrum, but here I’m an ultra-aware deaf kid again, just struggling to hear what’s being said in a big room where the mouths are full and the volume’s too high.
I sit down and nobody looks up from their food. I guess they’re in shock. Or they don’t know what to say on a day like this. Or they’re afraid for their jobs. For their livelihoods. For their lives.
I pour water from the oversize enamel jug on the table and say hi to the woman next to me and she just grunts and keeps on shovelling.
The lasagne is a trade descriptions breach but I eat it. Let’s just say Dr Atkins would not approve of the ratio of pasta, overcooked to the point of mixing seamlessly with the béchamel sauce, to meat. I keep my aids on but I don’t pick up much. People aren’t talking, they’re just munching, and that background noise is difficult to hear through.
A hand on my shoulder.
‘Sit with us,’ says the red-haired stamper who gave me the coin earlier. I almost retch at the memory of Gunnarsson’s throat, at the mass of coins lodged in his gaping mouth.
I stand up and the women on my table look amazed, like I just got picked as a goddam cheerleader or something. I go sit with the stampers.
‘You here cos of Gunnarsson?’ asks Red.
‘No, no, just doing some research for a book, a history of the liquorice business.’ It’s kind of true.
Red frowns at me and eats her salmon. She has large features and clear skin. She’s niche beautiful. Red points to a woman collecting her apple pie at the counter.
‘Great White,’ she says.
‘Sorry?’ I say.
I wait for Red to finish another mouthful of her salmon.
‘Psst,’ says Red to the woman she calls Great White, loud enough for half the room to hear and turn and look at us. Red w
inks at Great White and Great White smiles a sad, hesitant smile back, and her teeth are sharp and they’re bigger than Constable Thord’s and that’s saying something.
‘Great White,’ says Red. ‘She used to go to school with Gunnarsson. Most people here did and most people here got harassed by him at some point.’
Red eats more salmon and I move my tepid lasagne around on my plate.
‘Screw-ins,’ says Red, pushing her plate toward the centre of the table. ‘Paid for by Gustav Grimberg cos she’s a taster. Twelve years she’s been tasting so she’s got no teeth of her own left, they all went black as liquorice and just as soft.’
Red and I each take a bowl of apple pie with a squirt of canister cream. The room watches us sit back down.
‘Gunnarsson had his throat cut from ear to ear,’ says Red, her fingertip scraping across her own neck. ‘Head almost came off.’
I don’t correct her.
‘You’ve always been a stamper?’
‘I’m the fastest here, ninety a minute, maybe ninety-five. Old man Grimberg used to say I was the fastest stamper they’ve had since my ma back in the day.’ She sniffs.
‘Old man Grimberg that just died? Gustav?’
‘His dad,’ she says. ‘Ludvig his name was. He was a letch.’ She shakes her head and her eyes darken. ‘In that family tree like a fungus, that’s what ma says.’
‘What is?’
‘You know what I mean.’ She points up and raises her hand above her head and then she curves her finger and points down and lowers her hand so her finger hits the table with a thud. She mouths the words ‘they’re letches and they don’t mind taking the easy way out if you know what I mean.’ She looks up at me. ‘You met Pissy Knickers yet?’
Oh, come on.
‘Works in the office and earns about three times what I earn just for moving papers about. Hair like candyfloss in a rainstorm.’
‘Agnetha Hellbom?’
‘That’s it. Pissy Knickers wants to get her claws into this place, into the money, greediest person in all of Gavrik, so keep your eyes out for her.’
‘Why do you call her that?’
‘Cos she looks like she just wet her panties, that’s why. Greedy cow, you’d think her and her Ken doll husband might have enough cash by now. You know who he is, do you?’
I can feel the rest of the table listening to every word of this but I reckon they already know the answer. Just like I do.
‘Henrik Hellbom,’ she says. ‘The lawyer with the polished face and that big Mercedes jeep. He bought the Grimberg’s lake house, you know that? That in your story cos it should be.’
‘I’ll be comprehensive,’ I say.
‘Advokat Hellbom and Gustav Grimberg were at school together. Well, Hellbom never had a dad growing up. And he had about as much money as my family did which is to say none.’ She scoops up the last of the squirty cream from her plate with her finger and sucks it. ‘Poor,’ she says. ‘Dirt poor, and Hellbom hated Gustav something dreadful. He wanted everything he had.’
I thank Red for the information and give her my business card and take my tray over to the rack and walk out.
I linger at each photograph as I walk back up to the first floor. There’s one with a grey sheet over it so I lift one corner of the sheet and it’s not a photo underneath but a mirror. I keep walking. I get to the top and step into the Receiving Room. The kakelugn stove, the tiled cylindrical fireplace in the corner of the room, is cold to the touch. On the thin mantelpiece above sits an acorn and a small bowl of sea salt.
I make notes from my day: witness names and police details – more for the paper than the book. I check my phone and the hashtags #GavrikKiller and #Ferryman and #LiquoriceMurder are starting to trend. A man died in this building earlier today and it’s obscene that the place is still open for business. It’s not right.
The window shows a frosty Gavrik with the typical amount of Sunday February traffic which is pretty much zero. I see Storgatan and the back of Hotel Gavrik and the secure car park of the cop shop, and then down the street I can see my office and the cross-country ski store and Björnmossen’s gun shop. And then onto the larger lots out of town: ICA Maxi and McDonald’s and the ice rink up the hill. I can see apartment blocks built in the seventies: towers like toadstools pushing up through the mulch to stand erect. They might be hideous but at least they’re warm and dry, at least my one is, not like this place.
Anna-Britta walks in.
‘The pulley hook?’ she says.
I look at the hook.
She joins me at the window, pointing to the big, steel joist protruding from the façade with a hook at its end.
‘The raw product. We use refined liquorice now, but back then we bought raw roots, the idea was that they could be stored up here. There used to be an identical joist and hook one-storey higher, and that was used to elevate the bales so they could be hauled into this very window. The hook you’re looking at weighed the root bales as they came in.’
‘The roots weren’t stored here?’
‘The atmospheric conditions weren’t suitable. We’re on granite but there’s an aquifer, something to do with the water pressure. The root bales were stored down in the root barns.’
Karin walks in with her veil over her eyes and carrying a tray covered with a tea towel.
‘Can you deal with those while I talk to Tuva?’ Anna-Britta asks her.
Karin nods and I strain to see what’s on the tray. Looks like two saucers of milk and a bowl of salt and a pine cone and a feather dipped in something red.
‘I meant to ask you,’ Anna-Britta says, her voice slightly louder and clearer. ‘Can you hear me alright?’ She’s making odd hand gestures like someone trying to mime in charades. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do sign language.’
Yeah, I can see that.
‘Neither can I,’ I say. ‘Not very well, anyway.’
She clears her throat.
‘Could we talk through there?’ I ask, pointing to the door to the residence.
‘No,’ says Anna-Britta.
‘Okay.’
‘The police have advised me not to discuss what happened today. But I’ll bring you old newspaper clippings that Gustav . . .’ her voice breaks and she clears her throat and apologises. ‘That my late husband kept, and also some samples of early order forms and invoices. For the book. We have some interesting customs forms from the 1800s, all sorts of stamps from countries that no longer exist.’
‘Fascinating,’ I say. ‘But David did urge me to focus on the human side of the business, on your family itself, the history of key individuals and so on, their role in the community.’
‘I find it difficult to work with . . .’ she trails off.
Karin, arranging the pine cone close to the tiled stove, snorts when she hears this.
‘You can work with me now,’ I say, still thinking about the dog tooth in Gunnarsson’s neck. But it can’t be connected to Holmqvist, half the Kommun have German shepherds and we don’t even know it’s from a German shepherd. ‘David’s not the monster that people make him out to be.’
‘I don’t wish to discuss him.’
Here we go.
‘David’s just different,’ I say.
‘Well, Karin and I are relieved we’re dealing with you now, aren’t we dear?’
Karin nods and places a saucer of salt under the chaise longue and I can see there’s some kind of pointed sculptor’s chisel already under there.
‘Especially with what happened today,’ says Anna-Britta. ‘I wouldn’t feel secure with that man here every day.’
‘Can I just ask, what’s with the salt and the pine cone?’
‘Precautions,’ says Anna-Britta, and then the wind picks up outside because the window rattles in its frame and the chandelier bulbs flicker on and off. We all look out and the sky’s turned as dark as lead, and then there’s a deep grumble of thunder with no appreciable lightning. Snow starts to fall. ‘This is a factory but it’s also our
home,’ adds Anna-Britta. ‘Evil visited us today inside our own home. Old evil. Unwelcome evil. We need all the precautions we can get.’
15
It’s getting dark outside. The temperature’s dropped and the one-eyed cat I saw on lilla Ludo’s grave hisses at me as I exit through the factory gates.
An ambulance pulls up. No flashing lights. Three people in forensic suits step out from under the factory arch and uniform cops remove the police tape. A body bag is brought out and placed inside the ambulance. Sleet-snow falls in broad wet flakes and the whole scene is hushed. There are church bells ringing somewhere close by, but it’s half-hearted and they finish soon after they start. Too cold to ring bells in February. I pass one TV news reporter, a woman from Stockholm, trying to film in bad light with a golf umbrella held over her head. I can hear ‘suspicious circumstances’ and ‘police won’t comment further at this time’.
I pack my stuff into the truck and, because I have about two microwave ping meals and no drink whatsoever, I head over to Ronnie’s. Another deep growl of thunder. I need a drink, anyone would. In London, four years ago, I’d have bought a bottle of something at a corner shop or supermarket. Here the state-owned alcohol shop, Systembolaget, is closed completely on Sundays. The whole damn day. The state think we’ll drink ourselves to death on Sundays and I’d say they’re just about right.
Ronnie’s has two outdoor candles flanking the entrance and the snow’s been scraped clear and the pavement’s gritted. It looks welcoming. The blue neon sign above the entrance buzzes. I open the door and get blasted with warm moist air and a seventies rock ballad I don’t know the name of. Something Midwest American.
The floor’s soaking wet with meltwater and the coat racks are bulging with heavy goose-stuffed jackets and fleeces of every colour. Hook failures are not uncommon in this part of the world. The coats, when wet, weigh too much. There must be thirty or forty locals in here and the place has the kind of calm 6pm Sunday vibe you might expect in early February except people are chatting about neck wounds and curfews.
I sit at the bar.