The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  “Who’s that?”

  “Göran’s own wife. And she’s been living in Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere like that, for decades now. She had explicitly told her friends that she couldn’t stand him any longer. You have to understand, Maya, that all this malarkey started with the Lingonberry Girl. We’d hardly ever heard of Mossmarken before the Larssons dug her up. But it was like a dam broke.”

  Maya pulled on a pair of thin gloves.

  “You are planning to talk to Göran Dahlberg, though, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “You’ve never met him, Maya, he’s a… how should I put it? An original. There’s a lot going on in that head of his. Just like…” He gestured toward the manor house.

  “But I still don’t get it,” said Maya. “Now that we’ve found Stefan Wiik, that has to bring all this to a new level, doesn’t it? Stefan vanished from Brålanda four years ago and now he pops up here. You have to admit that’s a little odd.”

  Leif gazed out at the bog. “Sure, but let’s take a look at the connection between Stefan and Johannes before we dig our way back through the malarkey again.”

  “Okay,” Maya said, “but did you get a chance to look at the pictures I sent? Of the crouching figure?”

  “Yes.” Leif rubbed his hands over his arms as if to get warm. “I agree with you. It really does look like someone trying to hide, or spying on you. But like you said, it’s hard to make out any details.”

  “Yeah, I tried to enlarge it,” Maya said, “but it only got blurry.”

  “I’ll have to assign someone to ask around about it,” Leif said.

  Maya shrugged. “I can do it; I was planning on going around and taking some pictures for my own use anyway. I can say I want to take pictures of people who live around here or something, as an excuse, so we don’t have to send your people all the way out here.”

  “You’re not a police officer, Maya.”

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “But you’re employed by the police. You can’t just do whatever you want.”

  She shrugged. “This much,” she said, holding her fingers a centimeter apart. “I’m only employed a tiny bit. I won’t mingle with any suspects, I promise.”

  Leif smiled. “I’m not going to sanction anything like that. But whatever you do, be careful. And most importantly,” he said, looking at her with a stern gaze, “only tell me stuff I want to know.”

  Maya put her hand over her heart.

  “I promise.”

  The summer before that last summer, Nathalie and Julia created a secret club, the Ghost-hunters’ Society, and decided to build a secret hut out on the bog. There was a lot of construction material at Julia’s house, and it seemed unlikely that anyone would miss it; her dad was a big collector and although he was good at sorting all his scrap materials, they assumed it was impossible for him to keep track of every nail and board.

  One day, Julia and Nathalie were all alone at Julia’s house. Their parents had gone to Åmål and would be away all day. They were going to do homework and watch movies. At least, that’s what they said. Instead they went straight to the workshop and the storage sheds, where there were stacks of construction materials, piles of electronics, mountains of appliances and shelves of odds and ends.

  “Check this out,” Julia said, gathering up some nearby boards. She tied a rope around them so they would be easier to transport. She made three more identical carryable loads so they could each take two.

  “And here’s a hammer!” Nathalie raised the tool. “There are at least ten more, so we might not even have to put it back.”

  She kept browsing, gathering nails of all sizes in a box, which she put in her backpack.

  They exchanged pleased looks and set out. But the material was too heavy.

  “Hold on, I know,” Julia said. She found a wagon to load everything into, and together they pulled it into the bog. They had packed a bag with juice and chocolate bars in case they got hungry, so they could spend all afternoon in the bog.

  “Let’s start by putting up a wall here, okay, comrade Ghost-hunter?” Julia said when they arrived at the site they’d selected, a grove of low pines. She held up a board to show what she meant.

  “Looks good, comrade Ghost-hunter,” Nathalie said, and they started hammering. It echoed across the landscape.

  A few hours later, their little hut had walls and a roof. They considered their handiwork.

  “I guess I’d imagined it would be a little bigger,” Nathalie said.

  “Me too,” said Julia, looking up at the roof. “And it’s not watertight; the rain will get in.”

  Then they heard a voice behind them.

  “I can help you, if you want.”

  Nathalie and Julia were startled. It was Göran. They hadn’t heard him approach.

  “You’re doing a nice job.” He knocked on one wall and raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

  Julia shot Nathalie a frightened look. “We… we have to go home now.”

  “I’ll take care of the last little bit. Just tell me how you want it,” he said.

  The next time they visited their hut, it was perfect. Exactly as they’d imagined. It was just the right size, with stable walls and a watertight roof. On the floor they spread a cow hide that had been stashed away in one of the sheds at Julia’s house. They put up a clothesline for wet socks and arranged baskets of paper, pens, food and games into a small cabinet Göran had built in one corner.

  They peered through binoculars; they discussed their observations; they kept a log of suspected ghost activity.

  6.40 p.m. A cold wind, four minutes. Believed to be a malicious spirit.

  And they read from the book Göran had given her.

  It was so innocent, so harmless. Until all hell broke loose the next summer. When it did, Nathalie had the feeling it was all their fault. That they had tempted the spirits, woken them up.

  FOUR

  The gravel road that led past the houses curved around the north edge of the bog. Maya had driven a few slow passes of it earlier, hunched over the wheel, her eyes on the surroundings like the flitting beam of a flashlight.

  Several of the houses were empty; their occupants seemed to have suddenly abandoned them to the forest and the vegetation. Letterboxes were open at the side of the road, stuffed with circulars and newspapers that had swelled in the rain. In her world, homes were of great value; here they seemed like something you should be happy to have escaped.

  She was only a ten-minute drive from Fengerskog with its bulgur salads and spirulina smoothies served by the baristas at the café, and yet these were two wildly different worlds.

  She had done some research. Four of the houses along this road were supposedly still inhabited. She had a decent idea about two of them: Göran Dahlberg’s house at the far end, by the turning circle; and the Larssons’ near the start of the road.

  The other two houses were owned by a moonlighting farmer in his fifties and a family who raised beef cattle, respectively; those two houses weren’t visible from the road. She intended to visit each house and farm, including the abandoned ones, and decided to start with the Larssons’.

  The house was pretty if past its prime, set on a small rise with a view of the bog. At the edge of the road was a white metal sign that said “Larsson’s Peat” in worn letters. The property sloped down to the large peat barn: a decaying monstrosity of graying wood with a small railroad track that ran up a steep slope on one side. That was where the turf had once been carried in to be unloaded, she assumed.

  The gravel drive up to the house was edged with statuary of dogs and gnomes. A window was open on the first floor.

  Maya parked the car in the middle of the yard. She stepped out and approached a big storage shed; its door was ajar. She could hear sounds coming from inside, someone hammering.

  “Hello?” she called.

  No response.

  She walked in and looked around. There were tools and gadgets from floor to ceiling,
in quantities she couldn’t recall ever having seen before. The sound seemed to be emanating from a room behind a door on the other side of the shed. Her eyes roamed the walls and piles of stuff; she was having a hard time taking in the sheer volume.

  Someone in this family was clearly a thing-finder or a junk collector, or both. In one spot, several bathtubs were stacked on top of one another. Bicycle tubes and chains hung one after the next from the ceiling; it was hard to imagine how anyone could ever find a use for them all. Refrigerators, ancient ovens, boxes, tins, jars, barrels. It was almost disturbing.

  “Are you looking for someone?”

  She hadn’t realized that the noise had stopped.

  A man in overalls was standing in the doorway and watching her with reserved suspicion. He had a lightweight hat and a neat beard.

  “Hi,” she said, hurrying over to introduce herself. “Apologies for intruding. I called out, but maybe you didn’t hear me.”

  “Oh. Sure, sure.”

  “My name is Maya and I’m from Fengerskog; I’m an artist. I’m working on a series of photographs in the area, and I wanted to start by just introducing myself. In case you were wondering what kind of shady person was sneaking around.”

  “Photographs? You’re saying there’re things to take pictures of out here?”

  “It’s a very beautiful place. In its own special way. It’s peaceful and a little mystical,” Maya attempted.

  He didn’t appear to agree. “Peaceful isn’t the word I would use. Does this have something to do with all the devilry that’s been going on out here recently?”

  “You mean—”

  “One person beaten and another found buried,” he interrupted. “It’s not exactly fun to be living in the middle of it. Who knows what might happen next? So you’re not a journalist?”

  “Definitely not,” Maya said.

  “Good. Because I’ve had enough of those.” He considered her. “An artist, you say?”

  “Yes. A photographer.”

  The light of the fluorescent tubes painted his face in chilly tones.

  “You harvest peat here?” Maya said, steering the conversation in a different direction.

  “A long time ago. This area became a nature reserve, so we had to stop. We have the forest instead. We work with that.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “I see.” She looked around. “This is an impressive collection of stuff you have.”

  “Forty years,” he said, raising his eyebrows and coming close to a smile. “Without cleaning it out even once. And before that, my parents—they were also good at collecting. You can find just about anything, if you don’t mind looking around for a while.”

  “I can believe that,” Maya said, gazing at all the junk.

  A brief pause.

  “Listen,” she went on. “I was thinking of taking some portraits for this project too. Of people who live around the bog.”

  “Portraits?”

  “Yes. Pictures of the people who live here.”

  “Really? What would be interesting about that? It’s just us. Those of us who’re left. Me and Yvonne here; Göran, Texas. And Laila and her family. We’re not very interesting.”

  Maya smiled. “People always say that. But it’s almost never true.”

  “So it’s not for some newspaper article?” he said, still suspicious about journalists.

  “No, what I’m working on is a photography project, you could say.”

  He grinned. “So you want to take pictures of me, you’re saying?”

  “I’d love to. What’s your name, by the way? If I may ask?”

  “Peder. Now?”

  “Not necessarily. I could come back another day if that’s better for you.”

  He bent down, picked up an empty soft drink can, and tossed it into a pile of other glasses and cans. “No, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m…” He paused for a moment. “Do you have your camera with you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Did you want me to go and get my wife too, or…?”

  “That would be great.”

  Peder’s wife, Yvonne, was a stout woman with a steady gaze and a firm handshake. Maya quickly told her about her photography project and, if anything, Yvonne seemed flattered.

  It never ceased to amaze Maya that the people she wanted to photograph often took such a benevolent view of her. They almost always wanted to participate and they seldom had any demands or objections, even though they didn’t know her and had no real idea of what she planned to do with the pictures.

  What’s more—and perhaps this was the strangest part of all—it was extremely rare for anyone to refuse to sign the release form she’d drawn up to give herself free rein to publish the images or show them at an exhibition.

  “Is this okay?” she asked, holding out the paper. “I have a few books in the car, if you want to get an idea of things I’ve done in the past, before you sign.”

  “No problem,” they both said. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  When the formalities were over, she asked them to stand in the center of the storage shed and she selected a wide-angle lens to capture as much of the interior as possible. It really was a beautiful mess, a liberating chaos yet with a hint of order. That collection of bathtub taps was sorted by type, after all, even though they were buried in a pile of carburetors and bike pedals.

  When she was finished in the shed, she wanted to take some pictures outside, with the peat barn and the bog in the background.

  “Can we see the pictures later?” Yvonne asked, putting her chubby hands on her hips.

  “Of course. I’ll even come by and drop off a copy of the best one,” Maya said.

  “That’ll be nice,” Yvonne said, glancing at her husband. “Maybe we can make it into a Christmas card and send it around to our friends.”

  “Definitely,” Maya said. “It might not be all that Christmassy, but it would still be fun.”

  Afterward they followed her to her car.

  “I’m also interested in the history of this area,” Maya said. “From what I hear, Peder, you were the one who found the old bog body here?”

  “Oh, yes…” Peder looked at the ground. “There was such a damn fuss after that.”

  Maya’s hand was on the car door.

  “I can imagine,” she said. “By the way, I met someone you know around here the other day. Nathalie. She was best friends with your daughter Julia, wasn’t she?”

  They looked at her as if they thought they had misheard.

  “You met Nathalie Nordström? She’s here?” Yvonne asked.

  “She’s renting over at the manor for a few months while she finishes a dissertation in biology. Otherwise she lives in Gothenburg.”

  “Is that so? Well, we did wonder how everything turned out for her,” Yvonne said. “She just disappeared. Everything happened so fast. Oh, I’m sure you know about all that… what happened to her parents and so on?”

  Maya nodded. “Yes, I lived in Åmål at the time and there was a lot of talk.”

  “Okay, well, I need to get back to work,” Peder said, heading back for the shed.

  “Just one more thing,” Maya said. “Did you happen to be out in the bog last Thursday, near where the unconscious guy was found? Over there.” She pointed.

  “On the bog? No, not that I recall,” Peder said. “Right, Yvonne? Why do you ask?”

  “I was taking pictures out there and I accidentally caught someone in the frame; I just wanted to know who it was, and I thought you might—”

  “We seldom have any reason to be over there. We mostly stay along this edge,” Peder said. “So, if that was all…?”

  “Okay. Thanks,” Maya said, smiling.

  “He gets so pouty when he can’t potter around in there,” Yvonne said once Peder had left. “Anyway, what was I going to say… right, are you planning to take pictures of the bog itself too?”

  “Yes, I was planning on it.”

  “Then you have to
be careful. We had a daughter, Tracy, I’m sure you’ve heard about it. She drowned in the bog. There are some parts of it that aren’t safe. Keep to the walkways, is my advice.”

  Maya was taken aback by her frankness. “I remember that,” she said. “That was also such a terrible thing.”

  “Yes,” Yvonne said, looking tired. “And now they found a man buried there. And the guy you mentioned, the one who was found unconscious. You start to wonder what sort of place you’re living in. Who will want to buy our farm now? No one.”

  She looked up at the house.

  “Then again, no one wanted to before either. We’ve put it on the market three times. It won’t sell. We’ll never get away from here.”

  Up at the house, two girls were peering out of the front door. One was about five; the other was maybe eight.

  “Those are Julia’s girls,” Yvonne said, smiling at them. “Say hello to the lady out here, you two,” she called.

  “Hi!” the girls called in unison.

  Maya said hello back. “Are you babysitting?” she asked.

  “Babysitting?”

  Yvonne didn’t seem to understand at first, and Maya nodded toward the two girls.

  “Oh, that’s what you meant. No, they live with us, to all intents and purposes. Almost all the time. Julia has… she works at the bank in Åmål and… she has enough to deal with on her own. And their dad isn’t much help. He’s not exactly the dependable type.”

  Maya couldn’t stop herself. She realized that she was taking advantage of Yvonne’s willingness to get personal, to share intimate information.

  “I told her from the start,” Yvonne went on, shaking her head. “You should stay away from that type. It will only bring problems. He did hash and… I’m afraid he beat her too. But he won’t be able to get at the children. We’ve made sure of that.”

  “Do you have custody of them?”

  “No, not really. But neither Julia nor their father can even take care of themselves, so they know that Nova and Lilly will do best here. Peder spends most of his time working, of course, but I have plenty of time. It would almost seem too empty around here if there were no kids to take care of.”