by Mark, David
And then it started to rain.
‘You do realize we’re prisoners here don’t you?’ Ulrika looked up at Ash, his face glowing in the light, concern set in her eyes. She reached out, placing a hand on his arm. ‘What did you really know about that painting?’
Ash got up and took the candle, walking back he placed it on the floor next to them. ‘It was Justin’s. We only translated the runes.’ He stared at her. ‘They were willing to trade you for it. The question is why?’
For a moment she felt trapped, the familiar feeling of fear creeping back into her body. She glanced towards the door. ‘I don’t know Ash. Maybe Bok’s part of it.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Ash disagreed.
She thought briefly of the chain of events this past year that had led her into this predicament, of Bo Johanneson’s five year old lead to the painting, the same painting she’d see in an art journal, of a lost roll of film taken in the Tived area. Of her visits in advance of making contact, and not least, of arranging the meeting with Denisen. ‘I’m scared.’ She’d been scared ever since they had arrived back at the homestead.
Taking that ride had been the biggest mistake of her life.
‘Maybe he’s the big bad wolf.’
Bok was a different wolf than the ones she had to deal with.
Ash leaned closer, ‘That’s why he’s got such big teeth.’ He gnashed his teeth, repeatedly, sucking in his breath loudly as he did so.
‘Listen,’ she pulled at his arm. ‘I, –’ she was going to tell him then, poised. But what could she tell him? That more people had died? It was best he didn’t know. ‘What do you know about it?’ She leaned closer, eyes like nails.
Ash regarded her for a moment. ‘Almquist sent me an old clipping from a newspaper. I think he was trying to tell me it belonged to an group of archaeologists...’
The painter, Agard, he’d been an archaeologist, she recalled Chivers saying... Chivers that fat good-for-nothing bloated toad of an Englishman. He’d known something about why it had been painted and she’d never had the time to probe him about it.
He looked across. ‘We’d been into shit, me and Dan last year; it’s a long story. Digging some fancy Count’s place, all sorts of weird shit going on.’
She sat upright, hanging on his every word. ‘Anything to do with Conrad?’
Ash laughed, ‘No. Everything to do with rain and mud, posh prats and wanker lawyers. We don’t work for Conrad. The painting, we have no idea where it came from; we needed to know more for ourselves. I never knew it would come to this...’
She leaned forwards. ‘Why archaeologists Ash?’ She looked into him with such intensity at that moment, desperate to know more.
‘Shit had been going on at the place we’d been digging...’ he sighed. ‘I thought coming here would get us away from it all. Now everyone who knows is dead Ulrika.’
She was confused. ‘Knows what?’
Ash turned to her tight-lipped. ‘I wish the hell I knew.’ He raised a hand and rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. ‘Like I said, a long story.’ Then he clenched his hand into a fist. ‘Someone wants it back, and I think Bok knows who they are.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. And why were you on the road?’
The question obviously came as a surprise to Ulrika, one she made no effort to conceal, ‘I was lost,’ she replied.
He looked at her and shook his head, turning to his side as if to make the nightmare go away. All sorts of weird shit going on... Ash saw a face of porcelain from a dark place he never wanted to see ever again and shuddered inwardly, wanting to forget. He’d seen things he never wanted to see again. This was supposed to have been a break away from all of that. ‘I think Conrad was a prop,’ he said. ‘A stage for the main act.’ He looked at her. ‘You still haven’t said why you were on the road?’
Then she leaned into him and moved closer, placing an arm around his neck. ‘I was investigating a story Ash. I’m too tired... I’ll tell you all about it.’ They looked in each other, each a holder, each a vessel of secrets, neither daring to let the other one in. She took a deep breath, holding it for a moment, her voice but a whisper. ‘I don’t think it had anything to do with your painting...’ She went quiet, looking fragile and stroked his neck as her eyes filled with tears as she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it does,’ he insisted.
She shook her head. ‘I said it wasn’t important. The first time I came here I just wanted to connect the story with the park, the land around here... take a few pictures.’
‘So you’ve been here before?’
She nodded.
‘At Æsahult?’
She nodded then she bit her lip. ‘I was checking out another story. There were some old pamphlets that had belonged to the old Pastor. It didn’t make much sense.’
Ash grabbed her by the forearms, lowering his head. ‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’
She shook her head, tears swelling in her eyes. ‘There’s nothing more to tell. It was nothing really...’
He sensed she had more to tell. Then she looked up and he found his defenses crumbling, his mouth having found hers, sharing her warmth, her breath, her salty wetness. And he found her need as strong as his, it required no word or gesture on his part to receive what he craved, it being offered to him without asking for it. He found himself clinging to her in a tight embrace, reciprocated by her, two arms holding, staying like that for a long time that was a moment and an eternity, expressing themselves in that embrace.
‘We have to get out of here.’ He reached forwards, stroking her.
‘He has a gun Ash.’
Ash nodded and raised a finger to his lips, glancing again towards the heavy arched wooden door. He felt something lighten and leave him. He pulled back and she looked up. ‘I should have been there. To help you.’ She looked into him and he knew she found him laid bare. ‘I wanted to, couldn’t, do anything.’ He shook his head, eyes locked into hers, his voice low, restricted. ‘They would have killed you. I thought you were dead...’
She shook her head, slowly, then raising her hand, touched the tip of his nose and he felt a rare feeling they called happiness.
Opening her eyes, Vikland realized she’d be getting no more sleep tonight. She swung her legs over the side of the sofa and returned to her computer, moving the mouse to wake it from it’s own slumber. She waited for the machine to waken then tapped the down key, browsing through the lists of files copied from Hasse’s computer until she came to journal records and hit the enter button. The cursor blinked as the computer accessed the files. A list appeared.
She scanned the lists and entries until she saw the entry that changed everything: Pastor visited by what he said was a reporter. Some weeks ago... Ulrika. Chivers knows more than he’s telling. Leave key for Elin.
The final entry made her start. Key... what key?
She reminded herself he knew he was going to be replaced... that he might even have suspected he was going to be arrested himself. Ulrika. He hadn’t left her any key. Troubled, she sat upright looking past the computer screen. Something that concerned Gotfridsgaarden?
Chivers had known more than he was telling.
The first computer journal was made only three years previous, when the Department had been allocated their first computers. Elin looked at the file open at the screen, then back to the clock on her desk. 03:35. She made a decision and reached forwards, turning off the computer. She felt awake but could see no discernible pattern. If there had been a pattern, then the last murder being a male. That broke the pattern. It only made sense if she removed Denisen from the list.
It didn’t make any sense he’d still kept his job, however.
She read Hasse’s notes again. Hasse had interviewed Gustav Kron and taped his interview before the time of the second killing. She sat back placing her hands together. Because of what he found out, he had been given the case as junior detective.<
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She thought about his pattern of behavior, the events leading to his death. Where he had been, what he had said. Pushing any thought of rest to the side she grabbed her car keys and headed for the door.
Ash had managed to snatch a few hour’s rest, a single candle rendering the cabin in a delicate, fragile light that did little to allay their insecurity. He opened his eyes and turned his head and sniffed her hair. She opened her eyes at the light touch and moved her head forward to rest against his and they lay there for a while, she looking at him, he looking at her, neither of them saying anything, just looking, sharing a moment. Then he kissed her forehead and pulled the heavy blanket to the side and raised his head to look around. Sitting up, raising his legs over the low curve of the side of the bed, standing up. He was still tired.
It was cold.
He walked to the stove; warming hands, a view of an arched doorway shrouded in shifting shadows. Ash turned, trying not to make a sound and turned towards the door, raising the latch with a light wooden click, and all the time he couldn’t stop thinking about what more it was Ulrika had left to tell.
Ash walked out onto the gallery in Bok’s thick woolen socks. The night had finally fallen quiet but deeply cold, the wind still fresh though the storm had passed. He found his host sitting shrouded in his chair, his head bowed slightly, so his bearded chin rested on the top of his dark green wool jacket and thick gray blanket. He looked up and nodded with a tired smile.
Ash sat down next to him under the awning of the gallery. He looked out into the black of gently swaying spruce and pine, folding his arms around himself to keep in his heat and sat back in the simple wooden chair. He looked down at the smaller outhouse cabin, drawn to the shadows of the forest beyond. They listened to the sound of a thousand swaying trees, air laden with the faint smell of damp earth and pine needles and all around, a million droplets kissing the earth.
Bok nodded towards a blanket. Ash rose and walked over to the outer log wall of the cabin, taking it from a hook. He sat back down and pulled it tightly around himself, the only light the luminous gloom that can only come from moisture-laden air over dark ground. Bok looked across in quiet expectation, then looked up at the sky, clouds swift, edges light and bodies brooding. Occasionally a gap appeared, allowing a glimpse of heavens above, a solitary star, two, both of them brighter than the rest.
‘Where’s Fabian?’ Ash stopped looking, lowering his head and leaning back. ‘I never thanked her.’
Bok looked sideways without answering, seeming to think for a while.
‘You know about the painting, don’t you?’
‘Not as much as you think I do.’
It was too good an answer to ask about it.
Bok looked across. ‘I want you to tell me what you know about it.’
Ash shrugged. ‘We focused on the inscriptions on the frame. Some cryptic reference to Æsahult, as Hörgerlund; a link with Odin as the subject, hanging himself on Yggdrasil, the tree of knowledge as we discovered from Chivers.’
‘So he knew about it?’
‘Yeah, he did,’ the fat fuck... ‘we knew the painting and frame are heavy in symbolism. Now,’ Ash said, voice turning sombre. ‘Now tell me what you know about Ikim Agar.’ He looked across. ‘The guy who painted it.’
‘I cannot tell things that cannot be understood.’
Ash sniffed the air, pouted and nodded. ‘Judgmental, aren’t you?’ When he didn’t receive an answer he rested his hands on his lap and fell silent, leaving the impressions of the night to fill the space between them.
‘Ikim Agar dedicated his life to study, to learning,’ Bok said eventually.
‘Did you know him?’
Bok chuckled. ‘I am not old enough to have known him. Gustav knew him, he knew him well. He did not mention him often. When he did, it was always with respect. They were friends, in the true meaning of the word.’
Ash hadn’t had a friend in a long time.
‘You knew Gustav Kron?’
Bok took his time. ‘He told me once, the painter’s life was a story to share, for everyone. Except he never told me much about it. I think that is a tragedy.’
‘What kind of story?’
‘He said it was a tale for everyone, no matter which part of the world we live in or what we believe in. I think it was about going places, taking the human spirit on a journey.’
That was news to Ash. ‘After we are dead?’
‘We all die.’ Bok turned his mighty head to look at the man next to him. ‘Have you ever wondered why?’
Ash shrugged. He never given death much thought. ‘Dead is dead.’
Bok seemed to weigh Ash’s words. ‘There is a Greek text, a very ancient text, Kore Kosmou. It translates as Virgin of the Cosmos. It is written by... I suppose he was a god to many. The author mentions in this book the four elements: Fire, water, air and...’
‘Earth.’
Bok nodded as he folded his arms, drawing the blanket in closer around him. ‘It starts with Isis posing a question to her son, the falcon god Horus. She tells him how important it is, to have greater mysteries to which we are but a part.’ The man that looked like a bear smiled then, resting his head back and saying no more.
‘Is that it then?’ Ash said. He laughed. ‘I thought you were about to make some amazing revelation or something.’ His comment only made Bok smile more.
‘The order of the celestial world is greater than order on earth. So we must make do with what the elements decree, this is what the book says. Our myths aren’t just made up stories; they are ancient,’ he nodded, in agreement with himself, ‘but they also tell us something about who we are.’ He looked across. ‘Where we are. They are joined see?’
Bok looked across, looking at Ash as if gauging him. As if he was being submitted to some kind of scrutiny as a professor scrutinizes a pupil who had yet to prove himself. ‘Gustav said Agar understood how the world is made of other realities. He had many followers in the Middle East.’
‘I thought he was Swedish?’
‘He was,’ Bok agreed. ‘You asked of the painting. I know only that it was painted in Constantinople and that it was lost in a town near Damascus.’
‘So how did it get here then?’
‘Ikim Agar was going to bring it back here. Why it is here now,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Ash could almost hear his sense of irony.
‘The question is, where is it now?’ Bok said.
It was such a simple question.
What had happened to that old man hanging from a tree? He heard an echo of gunshots though the forest was silent around them, out there in the wind and in the near-dark. ‘Chivers will take it to some dealer. He will sell it.’
‘Who is this Chivers?’
‘The man who took it from me.’ He looked across. ‘A greedy git who needs his teeth knocking out.’
‘He has it?’
Ash nodded. ‘He was in the car with me and Justin.’
The great bear looked out into the night, his face turning to stone. ‘This is not good news.’ He stared for a while, the trees once again gathering between them.
Bok leaned forward, raising an unseen pipe to his lips. He lit it with a lighter, the small flame lighting up his rugged features, as much a part of the landscape as the rock and the stream. He pulled once, twice, lighting the tobacco within, the red glow illuminating the coarse hair of his beard. When he spoke, fragrant smoke drifted above him. ‘Váfa virgilná at gengr ok mælir við mik. The runes around the frame. A hanging corpse in a noose, that walks and talks with me. You knew that?’
Ash nodded. ‘Yes. We translated them.’
He spoke in slow, deep voice. ‘But did you know from where they come from?’ He looked across.
Ash couldn’t see his eyes, eye sockets lost in shadow.
The runes are what make it interesting no? Runes do not just reveal themselves to anyone, only those who have already proved themselves.’
‘Meani
ng?’
‘Agar used Odin as an example for others... perhaps it was a self-portrait. Or like the bait for a fish yes? I refer to the Hávamál.’
‘Hávamál?’
‘It is a passage from the Hávamál. The sayings of the high one.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Bok replaced his pipe to his lips and pulled again; the inevitable passage of time filling the cold space between them, caught in the comfort of scented tobacco smoke. ‘We must retrieve it,’ he said, in a quiet voice. ‘The painting does not belong to him.’
Ash laughed, a small dry laugh that didn’t repeat itself. ‘Be my bloody guest. If you know where to find him.’ He turned to Bok. ‘Do you?’
Bok shook his head. ‘No.’ He stood up and placed a hand on Ash’s shoulder. ‘I will find him.’
Örrebro Police station 04:08
Empty footsteps in a crowded mind, Vikland entered the police station. She waved to the duty sergeant, continuing into an institutional corridor smelling of cleaning fluid, then progressed towards the central stairwell, walking up to the first floor. She entered the operations room. Something was different. The board had been cleared.
She looked around at empty desks. She glanced up at the clock. She frowned, continuing to Almquist’s office. His name tag had been removed. She entered and turned the light on, sitting down in the chair she had so often sat in before. Was it really business over? In a crime investigation with no arrests?
She reached forwards, pushing the little red button on his desktop computer and looked around the office full of memories ebbing and flowing like a tide on a winter beach, hoping his password was still valid. When it had booted up she entered it.