by Will Dean
Back in the office I check in with Lena and Lars. Lena wants me to start writing my old stories as well as covering Holmqvist, now that the court hearing’s been announced. She wants me to split it fifty-fifty with Lars so he can get back to working part-time. I agree but I have so much more I need to write about Medusa, so I’ll just have to work nights. I’ve been in Toytown for three years and I’m going to get one prize-winning story out of it, or at least one piece that will get me noticed. The big city dailies might have better paper quality, their hacks might be household names, but nobody writes the victims’ angle better than I do.
Lars barely looks at me. I draft a couple of quick slice-of-life articles about a new cycle path and the refurbishment of Ronnie’s bar, and I feel nothing as I write the words. I used to take pride in these stories. The locals need to know so I need to write them, but now they seem pointless. I write them brainlessly and then I look up Rikard Spritzik’s wife’s contact details. Her name’s Stina Johansson; she’s kept her family name. And I know her, or of her, she’s a doctor in the local vårdcentral surgery. She’s never treated me when I’ve had an ear infection or complications with my aids, but I recognise her name. I find her home address and leave the office and get in my truck.
She lives in a smart neighbourhood, behind the liquorice factory, overlooking a wooded valley. It’s close to Lena’s place. Well-maintained little gardens and apple trees. I park on the street and knock on her front door. No reply. The lights are on so I knock again, and then I hear a dog barking and a girl with plaits in her hair comes to the door.
‘Hi, your mamma home?’
‘She’s at work.’
At work? Same week as her husband’s murder and she goes to work?
‘Thanks, honey. Bye.’
I walk away from her and I’m frowning. Why did I call her honey? I never call anyone honey. I hate that kind of baby talk. And she was no baby, she was a teen, maybe fourteen.
But she is the exact same age as I was when Dad died. Her mum’s left her to fend for herself just like mine did. Nobody to comfort her, nobody to explain. She’s dealing with losing her dad and she’s all on her own like I was. Like I am.
I drive to the vårdcentral surgery. I walk inside and take a pair of plastic blue shoe covers – there are hundreds of them stuffed inside a basket by the front door – and I slip them over my boots. I take a numbered ticket and sit down. I’m registered here so this should be the easiest way to meet Stina Johansson.
My number’s called and I walk up to the reception and give my personal ID number and get told by a guy about my age to go to Dr Khan’s room. I shake my head. I’ve prepared for this. I point to my ears and tell him I have an infection related to my aids and I want to see Dr Johansson. He fumbles and coughs and rattles though his notes like a newsreader with a broken autocue. He tells me to take a seat and he’ll call me when Dr Johansson is free.
I wait for ten minutes before I’m called. I recognise her from the police press conference. Dr Johansson is kind-looking but her face is gaunt and her eyes are tired. I walk in and sit down.
‘What can I do for you, Tuva?’
I sit down.
‘I’m so sorry about your husband, Dr Johanson.’
She nods at me like she’s heard this twenty times already today. ‘Thanks. What can I help you with today?’
‘I’m here to check that you’re okay, actually.’
She frowns and looks uncomfortable. She’s prettier than I remember from the cop show, weathered and wrinkled, but attractive.
‘Me? Oh, I’m okay, considering. Now, I just have a ten-minute slot until my next patient. Please, what can I do for you?’
‘I’m investigating whether David Holmqvist was working alone. Will you let me ask you a few quick questions?’
Johansson stiffens.
‘Absolutely not.’ She crosses her arms and her legs. ‘How dare you come in here under false pretences? If there’s nothing wrong with you, Tuva, then I must ask you to leave.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, trying to claw this back. ‘I lost my dad as a teenager and I want to report this story in all its detail so that justice can be served and so that nobody else has to suffer and no more kids have to grow up without a father.’
‘No.’ She stands up and ushers me to the wide door of her office. ‘Don’t ever do this again. Leave us alone.’
I walk out towards the piles of magazines in reception. Her mobile rings. I hear her gasp and then I turn to see her lean against the frame of her wheelchair-accessible door. She’s asking ‘Why?’ over and over again. I walk slowly back to her doorway, stepping softly and holding out my hands in a gesture of charity, of help. She looks at me, her eyes half-closed, and ends the call.
‘Are you okay?’ I place my hand on her arm. She’s shaking. The receptionist guy and two patients peer around to look at us and I hold up my palm as if to say, ‘it’s okay, I’ve got this’ and reverse into her room and close the door. She steps away and turns her back on me and takes three deep breaths. Then she turns to me, her skin pale, her face suddenly older than before.
‘Just . . . Can you just leave me alone now, please.’
‘Can I do anything to help?’
She looks at me like she’s making a decision.
‘That was my lawyer. The police just told her . . .’ she takes another slow, deep breath. ‘They’ll probably have to let him go free.’
‘Holmqvist?’
‘They’ve got a little more time and then they’ll have to let him go. My lawyer says they don’t have enough evidence to charge him. I cannot believe this is happening.’
She looks around the walls of the office, at the filing cabinet and the wall-mounted defibrillator and the curtained-off bed.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ve got to get home,’ she says, gathering her handbag and her cycle helmet from under her desk. ‘My daughter doesn’t know yet, my lawyer says nobody knows yet, I have to get home to her.’
‘Can I give you a lift?’
She looks at me and then looks at her cycling helmet.
‘Okay. Thanks.’
We walk out to my truck, Stina whispering something to the receptionist as she passes him. We drive past ICA and I can see a white taxi parked close to Tammy’s truck. It’s a Volvo. My stomach tightens and I drive on. Within five minutes I’m back in the suburb I just came from.
‘I want to help find the truth,’ I say, looking forward at the road and choosing my words carefully. ‘The bastard who did this needs to be caught, and I might be able to help. I want to write about it from every angle so maybe someone will come forward. There has to be someone around here who knows something and isn’t saying.’
Stina looks at me.
‘Two of my patients went missing in the ’90s, both in October. One was found in Utgard forest, just like Rikard was.’
I glance over and see her touching a man’s watch loosely strapped to her wrist.
‘The other one was never found. They were both family men. The one they never found was recorded as missing. People think maybe he left the country.’
‘Do the police know?’
‘I told them all this already,’ she says, running her fingers along the leather strap of the watch. ‘But you know they’re all related, right? That’s half the bloody problem. Everybody here is related to one another. The anti-hunt guy in Mossen village, the one with the house full of junk, he’s related to a judge in Karlstad. Björn, the police chief, he’s the cousin of Hannes Carlsson, who runs the mill and the hunt and most other things around here. The troll carvers, they’re both related to the priest at the church, and also to one of your colleagues, the old guy who used to do your job. But you probably knew that already. So, that’s what you’re up against here. It’s like the Freemasons only worse. If you can do any better finding Rikard’s killer, you do it, and I’ll help in any way I can. GPs know a little bit about a lot of people.’
‘I was wondering
. . .’ I say, ‘about your dog. How did it find its way back to you?’
‘Police asked the exact same thing,’ she says. ‘Cab driver brought him to my house in the back of his Volvo. Picked him up near that digger storage yard outside town. Thank God he had his address on his collar, otherwise––’
I bite the inside of my mouth. ‘What was the taxi driver’s name?’
‘No idea.’
I think back to that candlelit taxi. ‘What did he look like?’ ‘Like a cab driver.’
I see the daughter with the plaits open Stina’s front door with a confused expression as I pull up to her house again in my truck, this time straight into the paved driveway, this time with her mum next to me.
Stina hands me a card with her mobile number written on it.
‘Find something. You can do this, you’re from outside.’
30
We go to press tonight. Lena’s rewriting one piece for me and I’m fixing the rest. As I work, I realise that this is the first elk hunt season where more than one murder has taken place. Or at least the first season where the police have found more than one body. It’s what Lars calls ‘escalation’.
I switch off my aids and bin the remainder of my lunch, and then I unscrew the cap and break the seal on a bottle of Coke. I sip and write, incorporating details from the latest police statement into my work. The police have found a boot print. This is new information. A full print close to the body of Rikard Spritzik in Badger Hollow, and also a partial print near the body of Freddy Malmström. Both with the same tread design, both a size 42. Same size as Holmqvist, but he doesn’t own the matching boots. Unfortunately, half of Gavrik Kommun does. It was the bestselling outdoor boot sold in ICA Maxi last season and I’m wearing a pair right now.
I’m three-quarters through my Coke when I notice Lena walk in and point to the TV. I switch my aids back on. It’s Björn, but there’s no press conference, just him with his snap-together glasses, and Dr Stina Johansson, and the Karlstad homicide cop with the Bluetooth thing clipped to his ear. Appeal for information. No detail too small. Very much an active investigation. Urge anyone to come forward. Then Lena and Lars run past me to the front door of the office and Lena opens it and they both run out to the street. I follow them out but I can’t make out what’s being shouted.
It’s David Holmqvist. He’s being escorted from the police station to a private car, his lawyer’s hand planted on his shoulder. I run to the pack of waiting journalists and cameramen but I’ve got no camera or Dictaphone with me. David’s head hangs low and his shoulders are slumped and rounded. I watch the car drive away, snapping with my phone as the lawyer’s Range Rover disappears down the street towards the liquorice factory. I look back at Thord and his face is as expressionless as a pebble and then I realise that I am being shut out.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Lena. ‘Every other journalist knew he was being released now.’
I look around at Slick-back and Fake Tan and Short Trousers, they’re all there.
Lena, pointing towards the cop shop, says, ‘Nobody told you, did they?’
Thord goes back into the police station and locks the door. I march back to my office and Lena goes back to work and I sit down and look at Lars.
‘Why are they excluding me?’ I ask.
He sits down behind his desk and pulls his glasses back down to rest on the indented bridge of his nose.
‘I don’t think they’re excluding you, they’re just not prioritising you any more. Chief Andersson’s been running this town for decades. You come in, young hotshot from out of town, and you write in a way nobody in this town has ever seen before. Sure, they’ve seen that kind of reporting in the nationals, but not the Posten. I never wrote like that, not even close. Folks are worried about the town getting a bad name, some have said to me they think you’re stirring up trouble as much as reporting it. Gavrik’s not a wealthy town, people are just getting by and they don’t want to see any more local firms going out of business.’
‘Okay.’
‘The articles you wrote last week, the ones linking Medusa to these deaths, asking all sorts of open-ended questions about how many more people will die, about when will the authorities bring in experts from outside, about how come the ’90s murders were never solved – all that stirred up resentment. Björn’s pissed.’
‘I write the truth,’ I say.
Lars picks up a box of Grimberg salt liquorice from his desk. It’s the size of a matchbox and he opens the lid and pops a lozenge into his mouth.
‘All kinds of truth out there.’
‘Like the fact that you’re related to the wood-carving sisters, Alice and Cornelia Sørlie? You didn’t think to tell me?’
‘We’re not related,’ he says. ‘Not really. If we’d been blood relatives, you’d have known about it. Small town like this, you’d have known all about it. They’re cousins of my brother’s wife, that’s all. I’ve met them at weddings, at funerals, at christenings. Seem all right to me, but if I find out one’s been hunting down men in the woods I’ll be sure to drop you an email.’
‘You know why they left Norway? I’ve heard—’
‘No idea,’ he says, cutting me off and getting back to his typing.
That’s the problem with a two-man office. When one person goes back to work in the middle of an argument, what the hell is the other one supposed to do? So I thump the keys of my computer and write gibberish for a while. I’m hot. I kick off my boots and leave them by the bin under my desk. I’m an outsider here. The police have stopped telling me what they’d usually tell me and now I have an urge to jump into my truck and drive to Stockholm and look out at the sea and at the open skies and order hot Sichuan food and listen to traffic. Just the thought of it calms me.
A journo from outside walks in and ignores the counter, just lifts the barrier and strolls towards Lena’s office.
‘Can I help you?’ I ask.
He points to her door and then knocks on it and walks inside. I hear laughter and through the crack in the door I see them hug for a moment.
‘Svenska Dagbladet,’ Lars whispers to me.
I nod but I don’t smile.
I watch the journo as he sits down in front of her desk. I can’t hear what’s said but I stare at the back of his head. I stare at his short grey hair and his pale blue collar and his navy jacket. He has an attractive back, groomed, a strip of tanned neck, broad shoulders tapering to a smooth waist, his tailored jacket skirting his torso. He’s mid-fifties, I’d say. I can’t hear the words but his voice is deep and he keeps his sentences short. Then he stands up and walks towards me and smiles and leaves the office.
Lena comes to her doorway.
‘Police are looking for the barman at that strip club on the E16. Apparently he got the job with a false name. Connections to money lenders and unlicensed gambling, but they still don’t have a genuine ID. Look into it.’
She closes her door. I email her everything I’ve written so far and step out for air. I’ve got a new lead, the scarred barman, and I’m happy about that. It’s cloudy but dry and the air’s laced with sugar. I walk a block to Mrs Björkén’s haberdashery store and I go inside and the bell over the door tinkles. Nobody appears, but that’s normal. I browse the buttons and the threads. This is my place, the place I come to when I need a moment to compose myself. I look at yarn of different colours and thicknesses and wool textures. I squeeze the springy balls and caress samples of felt. The needles and crochet hooks are displayed in size order, as are the pin cushions and safety pins. The shop, pine-clad, smells of my grandmother’s apartment, all dust and tea and pressed petticoats.
‘Can I help you, my dear?’
Jowls. Pretty smile. Long velvet skirt.
‘Just browsing, Mrs Björkén, thank you. Working out what to buy for my next project.’
‘Oh, do tell.’
‘Just a scarf for my mother, nothing too complicated, something to keep the chill out this winter.’
; ‘Very wise, my dear. She’s a lucky one to have you.’
My innards pull tight inside my chest.
I thumb through some ribbon spools and thread bobbins. My heart rate slowing as I inhale the stale odours of the place.
‘Thanks,’ I say, opening the door. The bell tinkles. ‘I’ll be back again soon.’
I walk back to the office and sit at my desk. I type my password onto my screen and then a man walks into the reception area wearing a dark green cap and carrying a rifle.
31
I stare at the man. I can feel Lars staring at him and at the rifle pointing up at the ceiling.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not loaded,’ the man says with no hint of a smile.
‘You can’t bring that in here,’ Lars says. ‘Against the rules.’
The man cracks open the gun and places it on top of the counter and then he crosses his arms over his chest. Everything in the office suddenly feels lightweight and trivial next to that gun and its owner.
‘My name is Martin Larsson. My brother was one of them that got killed twenty years ago in the woods nearby. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.’
‘That’ll be me,’ I say. What am I doing? ‘You have information for the paper?’
‘You’re in charge?’
He wants to talk somewhere private so I lead him out into the street to my truck. He looks at me suspiciously; doubly so once he spots my hearing aids. I tell him to leave his rifle in the office and he tells me he will not.
‘You got ear problems?’
‘I’m deaf. But don’t worry, with these in I can hear every word you say.’
We get into my truck. It’s parked facing the rear wall of the newspaper office like always. I grab the unopened bag of wine gums from the passenger seat and stuff it into the glove box. The man places his rifle down on the back seat of the Hilux like it’s a sleeping toddler and he looks more relaxed now we’re in the truck. I’m not worried being in here with him. Partly because it’s my truck and partly because he gives off a gentle vibe and partly because Lars knows I’m here.