by Will Dean
‘Tuvs,’ says Ronnie. ‘What can I get you?’
I love him for asking a normal question. He knows all the crime scene details by now, if anyone does then he does. But he also, as an experienced barman, knows I need a drink.
‘Malibu and Coke, please. Strong.’
He pours the drink and stands watching the TV on the wall, some ice hockey game I’ll probably need to write about for next week’s issue.
‘You heard anything more . . .’ says Ronnie, and I try to hear him in this place and read him through his blonde-grey beard but I can’t.
I finish my gulp. My veins dilate and my forehead smooths and my tight mouth slackens with relief.
‘What?’ I ask.
He looks at me but someone at the other side of the bar raises his hand so Ronnie serves the other guy.
I like this place a great deal. It smells of beer and sweaty long johns, but the lighting is such that you can hide down here and forget you’re in Toytown. I text Tammy to invite her down and she tells me she’s working another hour and then she’ll shut the van up and meet me. I send three kisses.
I’m in my element: drink in hand, quietly observing the human condition. My specimens are loosened from their mighty Nordic inhibitions by vodka and cold Danish beer. They are talking and playing pool and gossiping like hell. One guy points to his own eyes and then to his throat. I’m watching, but more important than that, I’m reading.
The chats are fascinating. I can’t pick it all up of course, sometimes very little, but I can fill in the gaps by scanning their eyes or the way they’re standing.
The cashier from ICA Maxi is here, the pretty one. She’s with three guys who look like they have a much better skincare regime than me. There’s some kind of complex four-way flirt going on and I can’t make out the dynamics exactly but one guy is clearly in the lead. He’s the trainee mechanic who changes my tyres twice a year.
Nils is in the far corner nursing a beer and a brandy but I don’t want to talk to him and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s with one of his maximum bore ice hockey mates and they’re wearing matching XXL jerseys and Nils’s gelled hair is shining in the lamplight from the pool table.
Closest to me, at the table next to the bar, is a guy who went bankrupt a few years back and a woman who used to work in McDonald’s but now helps run the summer water-sports place at the reservoir outside town, the one with the caravans. I sip my drink and hear them talk about the body and the fact that Gunnarsson was mauled to death by a crazed dog, apparently, but they quickly move on to discuss snow and how it compares to last year and what the forecast is for next week. The guy says he’s getting low on firewood and the woman says she is as well. They agree they’ll both double their stores for next winter. Can’t get caught out in February. Literally a death sentence. He says he’ll keep his kids home from school tomorrow on account of the bloodthirsty rabid dog. Rabid dog? He goes on to tell her about his chest infection and she sympathises but not for long and then she starts talking about her seasonal affective disorder and about the vitamin D drops she’s taking and how they aren’t helping much. He says he has something in his walls and I don’t make it out at first, but then I realise he’s got mice living in his walls, and she says, ‘Who hasn’t?’ I finish my drink and order another.
‘Sorry we got interrupted,’ Ronnie says, scratching his chin whiskers. ‘You heard any more about . . .’ and then he points in the direction of the liquorice factory.
‘Not much,’ I lie. ‘You?’
He shrugs and glances at the hockey match on the TV.
‘Drugs is the rumour,’ he says. ‘Gunnarsson was mixed up with some people over in Munkfors.’ He looks at me. ‘The eyes thing was a message.’
‘What kind of message?’
‘Also heard Gunnarsson had been hanging around Gustav,’ he says, ignoring the question. ‘Maybe pushed him into the jump somehow, kinda bullied him to end it all; that’s what’s being said.’
‘Not sure you can persuade someone to kill themselves, Ronnie.’
He looks at me and ponders. ‘Maybe you’re right and maybe you’re not. But now we’ve got a murder scene. Maybe two. I have to think to myself: what if the killer’s sitting at my bar or playing pool on my table.’ Someone at the other side of the bar wants to order food so he wipes the spill from my glass and goes to take their order. I look at the laminated menu stapled to the pine bar. Toasties. Hot dogs. Nachos. Burgers. Ronnie’s carefully curated range of microwaved delights. All one hundred kronor which back in my London university days would have been about ten pounds and would have bought all four items.
I settle back and lip-read two guys comparing the relative merits of various porn websites. My phone vibrates. It’s Tammy saying she’ll be ten minutes late. And then the new cop walks in.
‘What can I get you?’ Ronnie asks her.
‘Two gin-and-tonics please, doubles, one with ice.’
‘Alright then,’ he says.
I’m right next to her and this is where I introduce myself and ask her something smart about the murder case. But I can’t. I freeze. She doesn’t say hi and neither do I. It gets awkward. I can’t say hello now, not after all this time. She smells of honey, but also somehow warm, a spice scent like nutmeg, or maybe sandalwood, faint and soothing. And then she steps away with some guy I recognise from the mill, some junior supervisor clown with biceps popping out of his T-shirt. She walks away and smiles back and I reciprocate but I do it too late and I think she missed it and now she’s gone.
Tammy, get here now.
I try to act all nonchalant at the bar all on my own in my jeans and fleece and unwashed hair but really I’m discreetly inching my barstool over to where she was standing. I’m breathing in the air to try to detect her scent once more and I manage it, but it’s oh-so diluted now, just a ghost of a beautiful smell.
I down my rum and Coke and order a shot of vodka.
One of the two porn-website-debate guys is blocking my view of the new cop so I’m forced to listen-read him and he’s now moved on to talk about his grandmother who slipped on the ice outside her building and broke her hip. He plans to visit her every day until she gets out, especially if there’s a deranged killer on the loose, to give her some peace of mind. I feel empty inside and pathetic for not visiting Mum more when she was alive – however awful those visits always were, however cold – and now for not visiting her grave. Porn-website guy can manage it but I can’t? There are long-lasting cemetery candles, the ones you buy from ICA Maxi, two for ninety-nine kronor. Dozens if not hundreds of these candles are flickering in every graveyard in the country right now but Mum doesn’t have a single one.
I’m slouched on my stool when Tammy hugs me from behind and kisses my cheek and drops a bag of prawn crackers down on the bar.
‘Ronnie,’ she says. ‘I know, I know. I’m bringing these in from outside and yes it is officially against your policy but it’s been a shitty day and these are so gooood.’
Ronnie shrugs. ‘Only if I get to share.’
Tammy tears open the bag and Ronnie hands her a low alcohol beer and we finish the crackers in about three minutes flat, me and Ronnie taking most of them.
‘How are you?’ I ask.
‘On the one hand: eighty per cent of my target and, considering the fact that most of my customers are scared, and what with the electrical storm out there, I’ll take that. One ratshit customer returning his red curry because it was too spicy for his lame-ass pale taste buds. Well, he did have a point. Overheard him call a girl a whore one time last year. So I spiced up his red curry so much I thought his micro cheese doodle dick might fall off in shock.’ She takes a long swig of her beer. ‘Perhaps it did. Anyway, hit eighty per cent of my target. On the other hand: there’s a psychopath on the loose and I work alone at night in a food van on the edge of the world.’ She gestures with a nod over to the new cop. ‘Who’s the new girl?’
‘New cop.’
‘We could do w
ith her. How long the last one manage?’
‘Six weeks,’ I say. ‘Not sure she liked the community.’
Tammy laughs.
‘Pool?’ she asks.
‘Sure. You rack them up while I pee.’
I head to the toilets at the back and there’s a queue even on a quiet Sunday night. This is partly because there are only two cubicles and it’s partly because of the extra time people need to pull off long johns and thermal one-piece merino-wool undergarments but also it’s the time they need to improve their hat-hair and their February lizard skin. All those minutes add up. I get to the front of the queue and go in. Is the person in the next cubicle a normal person or a throat-slicer?
Tammy’s waiting by the table when I get out. The light above it, one of those low-hanging pool-table things, is sponsored on one side by SPT Mills and on the other side by some Norrland brewery. She breaks.
‘Did you see them bring the body out?’ she asks.
‘Tam, me and the janitor found him.’
She drops her cue on the table and steps closer.
She mouths, ‘the body?’
I nod.
She places her hand on my shoulder. ‘Shit, you okay?’
I nod.
‘Why were you in there?’ she asks.
‘I’m doing book research for David Holmqvist. I was checking out the old factory.’
‘Ghostwriter Holmqvist?’
I nod and miss a ball, an easy corner shot I could have made with no adrenaline or alcohol in my blood.
‘What book?’
‘It’s about the Grimbergs.’
‘What’s left of them,’ Tammy says, leaning down to take her shot. ‘It’s just the three witches left now, right? Course, I haven’t ever met any of them because millionaires don’t fancy traipsing down to my van for the best food in Shitsville.’ She looks at me and lowers her voice. ‘You actually see the body? People saying it was a drugs thing.’
‘The body,’ I whisper, ‘had liquorice coins on its eyes and in its mouth, and a dog tooth lodged in the neck wound.’
She misses the white ball and almost rips the green cloth on the table. She steps closer again.
‘What the fuck?’
‘I’m just glad I wasn’t alone when I found him. I know Gustav Grimberg was suicide, but still, two bodies in one place, it doesn’t feel right.’
‘Ain’t right,’ she says. ‘You think it has anything to do with Grimberg money? People say that place is crammed full of Picassos and marble furniture and grand pianos and all sorts, like a palace or whatever. And the jewellery, they got it all insured for over a hundred million, so they say.’
‘I’d say two hundred.’
She looks at me. ‘You’re shitting me, right?’
I nod and line up my cue and pot a ball.
‘I can’t eat their liquorice, too salty for me,’ she says.
I miss a tricky shot thinking of that coagulated liquorice mass lodged in Gunnarsson’s mouth.
A hand comes down hard on the back of my cue and it is purple raw with cold and the fingernails are painted white and they’re chipped.
‘Verbal warning,’ says the red-haired stamper. ‘From Anna-Britta Grimberg herself. For breaking protocol.’
‘Sorry?’ I say, and I can see Tammy approaching to stand behind me.
‘Next time keep away from me when I’m working.’ Red has a wine box under her arm, but she’s ripped open the cardboard and the internal foil bag is sticking out like the bowels of some unfortunate mammal. ‘And keep your mouth shut if someone gives you something for free. You want them to do to me what they did to Ma? Want that on your conscience?’ Her eyes are bloodshot and she’s spitting her words out. ‘Ain’t got nothing else to say to you.’ She lifts her chin and scratches her neck. ‘You show your face on the factory floor again and . . .’ she picks up the black eight ball from the table and drops it down a corner pocket and walks out.
16
I wake up with a mouth like an armpit. My head’s ruined and that’s a bad way to start a brand new week. I reach over for my phone and try to look at it but my lashes are stuck together. I rub and rub and eventually my phone’s lock screen comes into focus and it is 8:10A.M. and I’ve slept in.
I never do this. Never. I scramble out of bed, my stomach empty and bloated at the same time. Snippets of last night play back to me like short videos. I throw cold water on my face and then I shower and use whatever exfoliants I have left to scrub myself raw.
Breakfast is half a bottle of lemon Fanta with a Berocca vitamin tablet still fizzing away at the bottom like some neon primordial life-force, and two strips of Marabou milk chocolate straight from the fridge.
The whole front section of my skull is throbbing.
I park up and I’m only about ten minutes late but I feel guilty like a truant school kid. There are two photographers working outside the factory. I open the door to Gavrik Posten and the bell above it rings. Luckily I can’t hear it because my aids are still in my pocket. Benefits of being deaf include not bothering with jarring noises when you’re hungover as fuck.
Lena’s back in her office and Nils is back in his office slash kitchen and Lars isn’t in until later. I take off all my gear and get behind my desk and slip my aids on but keep the volume low. My heart’s racing at a pretty unhealthy level and I promise myself to join some kind of iron man open-air beach-gym place when I move down to Malmö; live on spinach juice and organic smug-grass smoothies.
I scroll Twitter and the newsfeeds. The liquorice killer is everywhere, except somehow overnight all the hashtags have merged into one. Or rather one has overtaken the others: hashtag Ferryman. The old myth. The coins on the eyes. Quotes and stolen snippets and locals being interviewed. Nobody knows much. Gunnarsson was a loner with no family and no close friends. My focus will be on the investigation, the case, but I also need to make time for his obituary. I need the records to show that he was a real person before his jugular vein was slit open.
There’s one non-Ferryman headline. An elderly couple were found frozen to death in their car an hour’s drive north from here. The piece doesn’t get much real estate on account of the murder, but on any other day it’d be the biggest story for weeks.
An email arrives in my inbox from a retired schoolteacher who sends me random things. Yesterday she found a deer frozen to death in the centre of a small lake past Utgard forest. She’s attached three photos and it looks like a sinister ice sculpture: half a white deer hovering silently above the ice with the other half entombed in solid water, and it’ll likely stay that way until the big thaw. I can make out a bird perched on its antler like it may as well be just another tree. Maybe it was being circled by a wolf? Maybe a predator can push an innocent into making a fatal decision? Is that what happened with Gustav? Was a wolf nearby? I have a message from Anna-Britta, and seven emails from David Holmqvist. Anna-Britta suggests I take that guided drive with her oldest delivery driver. He knows everything there is to know about the factory, apparently. I’ll do it. He might be helpful. Holmqvist’s clarifying the rules of engagement for his book research: what I should delve into and what I can avoid. He’s very specific and he wants me to include more information on the Ferryman killer.
I leave Gustav Grimberg’s full-length obituary because I don’t have time for it right now, and focus on Per Gunnarsson instead. He lived off Eriksgatan in an apartment, I can find that online. He was thirty-seven years old. He was single. He had a terrible credit record. From trawling social media and our own article archives I can tell he was a keen amateur genealogist and that he’s been arrested several times over the years, all for alcohol-related misdemeanours.
I sip hot coffee and check in with Thord. He tells me he’s busy.
Lars comes in on time. He gets through the door and it tinkles and he takes about twenty minutes to pull off his big grey coat with its faux-fur hood and his ICA Maxi zip-up moon boots. I get restless and itchy just watching. He mumbles ‘morning’
to me but apart from that, this is a silent movie happening in front of me right now, a movie screening at half-speed. He lumbers over to the window of the office, right by the big stack of Postens for sale to people who drop in, there will be dozens of them, and then he checks the temperature on the thermometer like he does every day.
‘Cold?’ I ask.
‘Medium,’ he says, and then he lumbers back to his desk in front of Lena’s door and notes down the temperature in his little black notebook. Gonna miss this place.
I pull my coat back on and open the door to the street and they’re all there lined up on the other side of the road. It’s like a vision from ten-thousand years ago, pagan ancients drawn out of their caves by the sun deity, opticians and hairdressers standing, thermoses in hand, necks bent, faces warming in the morning rays. They’re not talking to each other. They’re thawing, their thoughts loosening, their skin healing, their hopes returning. I pass between them and buy two Danish pastries and a bottle of Coke from the newsagent. I leave it all on my desk and start walking toward the police station but then I stop, my boots stationary in the grey pavement-slush, and realise that the new cop might be there. I take my phone from my pocket and switch on the camera and look at myself on the screen and grin to check my teeth and then I primp my hair and pinch my big pore cheeks.
Cop shop’s empty. Nobody at the desk, nobody waiting. The ticket-queue machine thing reads sixteen and the screen above the counter reads sixteen so I take a ticket and ring the bell.
Chief Björn walks out and sees me and says nothing and turns back.
‘Thord,’ he says. ‘Visitor for you.’
The door closes then opens and I just make out the expensively tailored silhouette of Henrik Hellbom. Judging by the volume of chat there must be seven or eight people with him.
‘What’s Hellbom doing back there?’ I whisper.
Thord’s standing with a burnt piece of toast covered in what looks like slices of boiled egg and squeezey-tube Kalles cod roe.
‘Morning Tuvs,’ he says, then takes a bite.
I gesture for him to answer my question but he just shakes his head and says, ‘Doing his job. Taking care of his client.’