The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Susanne Jansson

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Rachel Willson-Broyles

  Cover design by Elizabeth Connor

  Photo of bog © Trevor Payne / Arcangel

  Photo of stain © Kathy Collins / Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

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  Originally published in 2017 as Offermossen, in Swedish, by WahlstrÖm & Widstrand

  First U.S. Edition: September 2018

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  The quotes on p. vii are from Att umgås med spöken (Walking with Ghosts) by Göran Dahlberg, Ruin, 2014, and djupa kärlek ingen (deep love no one) by Ann Jäderlund, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2016.

  The quote on p. 88 is from Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson.

  The quote on p. 89 is from Som en gång varit äng by Ann Jäderlund, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1988.

  The quotes on p. 132 are from Ways of Seeing by John Berger, Penguin Modern Classics, 2008.

  The quote on p. 223 is from On Photography by Susan Sontag, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Jansson, Susanne author. | Willson-Broyles, Rachel translator.

  Title: The forbidden place / Susanne Jansson ; translated By Rachel Willson-Broyles.

  Other titles: Offermossen.

  Description: First U.S. edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018003369| ISBN 9781538713051 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781538713013 (audio download) | ISBN 9781538713037 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women scientists—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction

  Classification: LCC PT9877.2.A67 O4413 2018 | DDC 839.73/8—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003369

  ISBN: 978-1-5387-1305-1 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-1303-7 (ebook)

  E3-20180714-JV-NF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Three weeks earlier

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Newsletters

  To Alma and Edvard

  It’s said that every living person is carrying around ten dead souls. The weight gets on your nerves.

  —FROM ATT UMGÅS MED SPÖKEN (WALKING WITH GHOSTS) BY GÖRAN DAHLBERG

  What doesn’t exist

  Creeps in everywhere

  And takes up space

  —FROM DJUPA KÄRLEK INGEN (DEEP LOVE NO ONE) BY ANN JÄDERLUND

  It would be wrong to say that no one saw or heard anything. There were, naturally, many witnesses as the shots echoed out that night, and as a figure suddenly fled from the house and into the waiting car.

  Perhaps the witnesses went on their way afterward, or maybe they also watched what happened when the police arrived and the bodies were carried out. But they didn’t speak. They darted around in the bushes, rested in the trees, or soared over the ground. They were one with nature, often unseen by people. Perhaps all of them were animals—large or small, quick or slow, sharp-eyed or half-blind.

  In any case, the true story of what really happened in that house soon scattered and disappeared.

  Just as so many things so often do.

  PROLOGUE

  As evening approached, the wind started to pick up. It blew lightly across the treetops at first, but then it began to gust harder and harder until it was tearing at everything it could reach. Darkness would fall in just over half an hour.

  In the car park outside the manor house, Johannes climbed off his bicycle and leaned it against a lamppost. He pulled a band around his dark hair and fastened it in a knot at the nape of his neck. This weather was truly awful. Not the sort of weather any normal person would go for a run in.

  Fine then, he wasn’t normal.

  As he locked up his bike, he cast a glance over at Nathalie’s cottage. The light of the kerosene lamp flickered in one of the windows, and he could see her moving around inside. Shadows danced across the walls, slow and evasive.

  Like her.

  She had slept over a few nights before. But when he woke up in the morning, she was gone. The bed was empty.

  Sure, she’d said she had to get up early the next day, but that didn’t stop him from feeling disappointed. They’d had a nice evening—and then she just left without a word, or even a note.

  It could probably be chalked up to the usual reason: fear of intimacy, he thought as he stretched; she suddenly felt vulnerable and so she retreated. A plausible explanation if you wanted to play psychologist.

  The rain was coming down harder now, and the urge to ditch his run was getting stronger. He wasn’t dressed properly, he knew, but then again he hardly ever was. He’d never been the type to pay attention to weather reports—at most he would glance out the window—which was probably because his mother was the exact opposite. A different article of clothing for each degree on the thermometer; a special outfit for every occasion. His entire childhood had been full of fiddling and adjusting and changing clothes to make sure not a single drop of rain or chilly gust of wind could penetrate any of the layers.

  Now, as an adult, he sometimes felt exhilarated if he accidentally got wet or cold.

  He started running toward the path and took a right, away from Nathalie’s cottage. The forest was on one side; the other side gave way to a peat bog, a view he had become quite attached to: that wide-open desolation; that squat, gray vegetation; it looked even more uncompromising and remarkable as the rain fell and the wind picked up.

  He remembered the sight of the white frost on the peat moss out there in the wintertime. There had been something unearthly about it, so fragile and seductive; he had never seen anything like it.

  At one point a large moose showed up out of nowhere, swaying its way over the frozen pools, which rang out, crashing and tinkling like sorrowful chimes. Today the monotonous pounding of his own steps sounded like heavy blows, as if he were hammering his way forward, persistently, mechanically.

  After the first section, the winding path tu
rned into a long straight as it headed toward the old peat quarry. He could still glimpse the road here and there as it ran parallel, and soon he could see the car park for the bog. It was empty. He seldom saw anyone out here, but on this particular evening, with the rain whipping at his face, it felt extra deserted.

  Here and there, narrow wooden walkways led into the bog. For a moment he thought about cutting across and taking a shorter route, but the boards looked slippery. It seemed too risky. You’d only have to lose your balance, and—

  “Ouch!”

  He had stepped awkwardly on a rock, even though he’d gone running here so many times that he knew every last root, every single rise like the back of his hand. The pain vibrated through his leg, then suddenly retreated in a flash, only to return in full force a minute later.

  Damn it!

  He hopped on one leg and tried to find something to steady himself against, but at last he collapsed on the path.

  It really hurt. The wind and the rain tore and whipped at his clothes as he tried to stand, but he couldn’t put any weight on his foot at all.

  He waited a little longer to see if the pain would subside. Meanwhile, he cursed himself for leaving his phone at home. How would he manage to get back to the manor house on one leg?

  There was plenty of brush along the path, and it occurred to him that he might be able to break off some of the sturdier branches and improvise a pair of crutches. It seemed like a good idea, but after a while he had to give up—the branches he found weren’t strong enough.

  Once he had made it some distance down the path by alternately hopping and dragging himself along, he looked out over the bog. That was when it struck him. It had stopped raining—and the wind had died down too, for that matter. It was perfectly still.

  How strange.

  The moon sailed out from behind the clouds in the dark sky. It illuminated tendrils of fog as they slowly swept across the damp ground.

  He thought he heard a noise. Was it the wind? Or an animal? It almost sounded like a wail. Like faint cries.

  Then he saw a glow coming down the path.

  A flashlight. Someone was coming!

  “Hello!” he called.

  No response.

  “I need help,” he went on. “I hurt myself…”

  The glow came closer. And closer. At last it blinded him and he had to shield his eyes with his hand.

  “Hello?”

  Then the flashlight pointed in a different direction and his vision cleared.

  He had time to think, What is happening?

  Then everything went black.

  ONE

  Three weeks earlier

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Nathalie woke up with a start. She pressed her fingers to her temples to make the knocking in her head go away.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  A glance at her alarm clock told her that there were two hours left before it was time to get up. Pretty much the same as usual, in other words. No point in trying to go back to sleep.

  There never was any point.

  She sat up on the edge of the bed and wondered instead whether there was anything she had left to do. No. The apartment was clean and most of her belongings had been stored away. The suitcases that weren’t already in the car were packed and in the hallway. Everything was ready.

  She showered and ate breakfast standing up, trying to leave as few traces behind as possible. She wrote a note for the people who would be staying in the apartment while she was gone and placed it on the kitchen table.

  I left a few things in the fridge; maybe you can use them. The account number for the rent is in an email I sent yesterday.

  Hope you enjoy your stay.

  Best,

  Nathalie

  The street outside was empty and quiet, typical for a Sunday. She placed the last of her luggage in the trunk, got behind the wheel, and drove off.

  She headed north out of Gothenburg on the E45 highway before the city could wake up. It felt like she was sneaking away after a one-night stand.

  She stopped at a service station after a little while to get gas, buy a cup of coffee and pick up a few things to help her get through the first couple of days. Then she pressed on. And soon the landscape changed. Darkening, deepening.

  Just imagine—it only took a few hours to travel so many years back in time. To this land of lakes and forest. To the place where she actually belonged.

  She had always felt like a stranger in the big city by the sea. The rollicking, volatile, unreliable sea. She had never fitted in among the people who were always out sailing, who liked bare rock cliffs and the horizon, who worshipped the sun and wanted the weather to be as persistently warm as possible. It was as if they expected the same from her, some inner kind of get-up-and-go she’d never had access to but had, to some extent, learned to fake.

  Each summer when she set her feet to the warm granite of Bohuslän and waded into the water for a swim, it felt like the sea wanted to spit her right back out again, out of sheer reflex. As if it knew she didn’t belong to its natural domain.

  A September rain had started to fall against the windscreen. Hesitant, quiet. As though autumn were tiptoeing in, as though it didn’t want to disturb or upset.

  Come, she thought. Just come.

  Just fall.

  We’ll do it together.

  She passed the Åmål exits and turned off at Fengerskog. She felt a wave of unreality wash over her, as sudden as it was overwhelming, and she asked herself what she was about to do. What she was about to set in motion. At the same time, she realized she was almost there, and that it was way too late to turn back.

  She slowed down by the art school and the old factory; she knew that nowadays it was a space for studios, galleries and workshops. At the crossroads, where once there had been only a small grocer’s, there were now also a bakery and a café, and she could see young people with canvas totes drinking their morning lattes or tea out of tall glasses. Then the buildings gave way to forest; after a while, the road turned into a birch-lined avenue that led up to the manor house.

  A couple of cars were parked in the gravel drive. She stepped out, leaving her luggage in the car, and crossed the gravel to the front entrance.

  It was a stately building with four towers, a white plaster façade, a tin roof the green shade of linden blossoms, and large windows looking out on its surroundings. It had been built on a small rise, as manor houses often were. Frequently they also look out over a beautiful landscape—a pretty lake or rolling hills.

  This manor house was different. It gazed out over modest, quiet scenery. A vast landscape of fading colors, squatty pines and sinking ground. It was a landscape the sun seemed not to reach, a landscape that never dried out. The ground was always weeping, always wallowing.

  And now she had returned of her own accord.

  “Are you the one who’s renting the little cottage?”

  The woman, who introduced herself as Agneta, was the manager of the manor. She wore a kaftan-like beige dress with wide bands of embroidered edging, which made her imposing body look like a pillar. Her dark blonde hair was cut to hang straight down over her shoulders, with a blunt fringe at the front.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Her husband was right behind her, a head shorter and dressed in a dark suit, his eyes nervously sweeping the room.

  Gustav, Nathalie thought. Like a bodyguard. They’re just as I remember them.

  “Then I’d like to welcome you to Mossmarken and Quagmire Manor. I hope you’re aware that the building you’re renting is a simple cottage. It is mostly used during the summer months.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it won’t be a problem. It does have heat, doesn’t it?”

  “Two fireplaces and a gas fridge. But that’s all. You can fetch water from the cellar here, and you can charge phones and computers and such in our office. There’s a shower and toilet in the hall upstairs. And of course there’s
an outhouse behind the cottage too. What else…” she said, apparently thinking it over. “Oh right, the bike. There’s an old bike you can borrow if you want to. Where are you from, by the way?”

  “I live in Gothenburg.”

  She noticed the old portraits on the wall of the foyer—elegant ladies in voluminous dresses and proud gentlemen in military get-ups. She had been captivated by them as a child, and by one of the paintings in particular: the one of Sofia Hansdotter, wife of a landowner who lived at the manor in the late nineteenth century. She remembered Sofia’s pea-green dress and melancholy gaze.

  It was said that she had lost seven of her eight children. That she had been crazy. That she had smothered the children in secret and then begged her husband to let her bury them in the bog near the manor. Because she wanted to keep them close, she said. Her husband had complied to avoid causing even more damage to her broken heart. Until one day, when the eighth child had just been born, in a moment of sudden clarity, he realized how all the children had died and decided to take the newborn from its mother. It was said that Sofia then walked down to the place where she had buried her children, stepped right out into the mire, and vanished. No one had done anything to save her.

  The eighth child grew up to be a strong, healthy man who later took over the manor. He was the great-grandfather of the current owner, Gustav.

  “Gustav and I have run this place as a guest house for over thirty-five years; before that it was kept by his parents,” Agneta went on, with a presence that suggested that this wasn’t the first time she’d told the story of the manor. “The estate has been in Gustav’s family since the 1600s. You can see all the old ancestors on the paintings around us.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand.

  At that instant, a woman came down the stairs.

  “Here comes our cook, Jelena, who makes the best smoked whitefish this side of Lake Vänern—if you’d like to eat up here some time.”

  Jelena was pale and thin, as far from the clichéd image of the plump matron as a person could get.