Dark Pines

by Will Dean

  ‘How’s your mamma?’ she asks.

  ‘Same,’ I say. ‘They’re managing the pain but there’s no new treatment. The last round of chemo didn’t work. She’s coping, I guess.’ I feel my stomach hardening, my guts tight and twisted. ‘I’m going down there this weekend.’

  Tammy nods and pulls out the gherkins from her second hamburger and wipes her fingers on a paper napkin.

  ‘A good daughter would be there twice a week mopping her brow but Mum makes it so damn hard. I just . . . She’s impenetrable. Has been for ever.’

  ‘What do the docs say?’

  ‘They say they’re doing what they can. They say she’s comfortable. But their eyes tell me everything I need to know. I look at their eyes and they say prepare yourself, be strong for her.’

  Tammy puts her hand on mine.

  ‘I feel like time’s running out and the closer we get to it, the harder it is for me to visit her. I’m terrified she’ll have changed. Or gone, just an empty bed. I should be there more than ever and I’m too scared to go.’

  ‘I’ll go with you. Anytime. I’ll wait outside if you like, but you’ll know I’m there. Don’t say yes or no, just think about it.’

  I squeeze her hand and change the subject. ‘What do you think about the shooting?’

  She cringes and folds a long, limp fry into her mouth.

  ‘You know everyone in Toytown,’ I tell her. ‘What’s your theory, Holmes?’

  ‘I got two,’ she says. ‘One: it’s the same crazy dude as in the ’90s. Two: we’ve got ourselves a copycat killer. Number one’s scary cos it means he’s been here all along, ordering my food and shopping in ICA and walking down Storgatan. Number two’s scary cos how can we have two crazies like that in little old Shitsville? So, either way, I don’t plan to start foraging in the woods again anytime soon. I got customers who reckon this one’s a hunting accident but that’s bullshit. Doesn’t happen.’ She looks up at me. ‘Were Freddy Malmström’s eyes gone? Like the Medusa bodies?’

  ‘I don’t know, the police haven’t said. Gunshot wound, that’s all I know. I’m meeting Esther, Freddy’s sister, in the morning. Not looking forward to that one bit.’

  ‘I heard,’ Tammy says, leaning in closer to me over the Formica table. ‘I heard Hannes Carlsson and his buddies are going out in Utgard forest. I heard they’re taking it in shifts to hunt the killer down. Cops have told them to stay out of the area where Freddy was found but do you reckon for one minute that Hannes Carlsson will listen to that? The man’s treated like a king around here.’

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘It’s not like the killer will be wandering around the forest with a sign and a pocketful of eyeballs is it? Could even be one of Hannes’s team for all he knows.’

  Tammy wipes her mouth with a paper napkin.

  ‘You ever hear anything about a poker club in this town?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘That stuff’s all online these days,’ she says, screwing her hamburger wrappers into a ball. ‘Rumour is – Nils’s sister told me this earlier when she picked up her panang curry – that they’re stationed in all the Utgard elk towers with walkie-talkies, to get him. Freddy’s been in Hannes’s hunting team for a good few years now. Anyone not in the team will be warned, and then, well, y’know . . .’

  I tear off the end of my furnace-hot apple pie. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’

  I drive Tammy back to her flat, kiss her goodbye and head back home. I remove my hearing aids, take a shower, pull on a robe, and fall onto the bed with my iPad. I research the ’90s killings, the ‘Medusa’ murders, and dig deeper into the articles and speculation around the killer’s identity. I scan forums and chatrooms. He killed three men in four years, all in elk-hunting season, all by rifle shot to the back or chest. There were rumours that at least one of the victims was gay and that the killer was either a homophobic maniac or else a jilted lover. Sweden is one of the most liberal countries on planet earth but browsing some of these chatrooms you wouldn’t think so. Up here the white hetero caveman still thrives in his natural habitat. I read that the eyes were removed neatly and cleanly on all three corpses, prompting the police back then to question surgeons and nurses and butchers registered in the Kommun.

  They never found any good tracks. The police chief twenty years ago was Thord’s late father. He was Björn’s boss back then and he reckoned the killer was a woodsman because he used the rocks and the trees and the ditches so that no boot prints could be traced back to any particular car or house. He was smart. The killer probably moved around in circles, concentric circles of increasing radius, before finding the direction that suited him. He was very familiar with Utgard forest. Thord’s father suspected the killer had an accomplice, someone actively helping him to evade police. No fingerprints or hair fibres were ever found.

  It’s almost 2am. I switch on my PlayStation 3. I just need fifteen minutes of Grand Theft Auto to get serial killers out of my head before I can fall asleep. Just fifteen minutes.

  At 4:15am I turn it off and go to sleep.

  10

  My pillow alarm shakes at 7am. I stare at my face in the mirror and it’s a puffy mess. Eye drops. The bottle says one to two drops in each eye but I use half the bottle.

  Breakfast is five digestive biscuits and a mug of tea. I need to go shopping. I shower and clean my aids and dress and then plug in my aids and grab my bag. I slam the door shut on my way out.

  I googled Freddy’s sister’s address yesterday. Even in a small town of 9,000 people, I don’t know every street yet, not like the locals do. I drive past identical semi-detached wooden houses with small, well-maintained gardens. Number 43.

  A woman answers the door and I know it’s her before she even opens her mouth. Her make-up is on and it’s pretty good but it can’t hide her eyes or the effort it takes for her to smile. She looks like she’s been punched in the stomach a hundred times.

  ‘Tuva, come in, I’m Esther Malmström.’

  We step inside. Shoes off.

  The house is quiet and there are too many flowers. I can see she’s run out of vases. Some of the bouquets are identical because there’s only one proper florist in Gavrik town. Bunches of lilies sit in buckets, and by the stairs there are long-stemmed white roses leaning unceremoniously in a deep saucepan.

  ‘Please, let’s sit in here. Thanks for coming to talk to me.’

  She leads me into the living room. Ikea sofa, big wall-mounted TV, log-burner, monochrome wallpaper on one feature wall.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I say. ‘I’ll try to keep this brief.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘I want to talk to you. I want them to find the bastard who did this. Small town like Gavrik, we have to pull together and find out who did this to Freddy.’ Her smile cracks. ‘I’m ready and I want to help.’

  ‘Okay, I appreciate it. Esther . . . did your brother ever mention to you that he was afraid or that someone had threatened him?’

  ‘Cops already asked that,’ she says, stroking her palm against the arm of the sofa. ‘Not that I know of. He was a friendly guy, a school teacher. Everyone liked Freddy. He was a saint, really. I was always the bad one.’

  I frown.

  ‘When we were kids, I mean. Freddy was a goody-two-shoes.’

  ‘Has he ever been attacked before? Any fights that you know of?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘People are linking this murder with the ’90s killings. Do you think they’re connected?’

  ‘Are you serious? Of course they’re connected. You think there are two freaks out there who take people’s eyes out? Cops didn’t find the killer back then and now he’s come out again and,’ she looks up at the ceiling and lowers her voice, ‘of course it’s the same guy.’

  I’m quiet for a second.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘I had to identify him, didn’t I. Thought it’d be a curtain pulled back and all, thought I’d be able to say goodb
ye to him properly.’ She sniffs. ‘But it was just a photo. And they’d covered up his eyes so I think that tells you everything you need to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  I pause.

  ‘Esther, did Freddy have any friends that you considered to be dangerous? Anyone you didn’t like?’

  She stops stroking her palm against the armrest and looks at it. Then she looks at me.

  ‘Well.’ She goes back to staring at her palm as if waiting for it to take over. ‘Perhaps.’

  My stomach rumbles and I squirm in the armchair to try to stifle the sound, but it carries on. It’s a preposterous noise and obscene in the circumstances.

  She rubs her eyes, and with her hands covering much of her face, continues to talk. I can’t get the words. No lips to read, no clear speech.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m deaf and I didn’t quite catch your last words.’

  ‘You’re deaf?’ she says, eyebrows high on her forehead. ‘But, you can hear me?’

  I point to my ears.

  ‘I can hear pretty good with hearing aids, and I lip-read as well, as a back up.’

  ‘You talk really well for a deaf person.’

  She says this with kindness but my gut tightens anyway. It’s like saying to a man with a prosthetic leg, ‘Hey, you walk pretty well for a cripple.’ It’s not a compliment. It’s just not.

  ‘You were talking about Freddy’s friends, maybe one that you didn’t like or trust?’

  ‘Can you sign?’ she asks.

  I shake my head.

  ‘What’s it like?’

  I sniff. ‘You mean, being deaf?’

  She nods and moves forward slightly on her sofa.

  ‘It’s like being you, but not being able to hear. It’s no big deal, I’ve been deaf since I was a little kid.’

  ‘Why? I mean, how did it happen?’

  ‘Meningitis.’ I have flashbacks to the things I remember hearing: a birthday party, an ice-cream van, the sound of Dad laughing. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude, but I really want to write a good story for you, so we can have people call us or write in with information about Freddy. Can you tell me about his friends, please?’

  She sits back in the sofa and slides one hand down between the cushions.

  ‘Freddy and I were always very close, we told each other everything. There were two of his friends I didn’t like and he knew it. One was Hannes, his hunting buddy.’

  ‘Hannes Carlsson from Utgard forest?’

  ‘Yeah, he owns most of it. Him and his wife have a very good economy.’

  There’s that phrase again.

  ‘They’re some of the richest in the Kommun,’ she continues. ‘But, he’s a bully and he bullied my friend’s husband when he worked up at the pulp mill. I reckon, he’s the hunt leader you know, I reckon he bullies his whole team.’

  ‘Do you think he’s responsible for Freddy’s death?’

  She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I told the cops to talk to him, to check his guns, but you know . . . they’re all real good mates with Hannes. He’s the big fish and they all want to be friends with the big fish and hunt his woods. I told them but I don’t know.’

  ‘Who is the second person you were unsure of?’

  ‘Don’t know her name, not her real name. “Candy” is what she goes by, works up at the strip club on the E16, you know the one stuck out in the middle of nowhere, little way south of the SPT pulp mill. That place used to be a brothel, did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, you do now and I reckon it still might be some kind of brothel . . . unofficially somehow. You know what strippers are like.’

  Actually, I don’t.

  ‘Fred and Candy were . . .’ I pause and look down at my Dictaphone for a split second, ‘friends?’

  ‘They weren’t friends, no. He was paying her. They were not friends. He told me he couldn’t afford it, but he couldn’t stop going either. Reckoned he was in love with her. I told him he was being a drip, falling in love with a goddam stripper but that was what happened. He spent two, maybe three nights a week up at that dive, drinking Diet Cokes and watching her dance.’ She wipes a tear from her eye, or it could have been an eyelash. ‘Not much of a life was it, really.’

  I chew on my lip and look around the room. Photos in white wooden frames, a low bookshelf half-filled with board games and jigsaw puzzles.

  ‘Must be hard being a divorced man in his fifties in this town,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘His boy’s upstairs, you know. He’s upstairs playing his damn computer games right now. Won’t come down. Doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘How old is your nephew?’

  ‘He’s fourteen going on twenty-one. Won’t let anybody in, won’t talk to no one. I have to leave his food outside his door like he’s a monk or a prisoner or something. His mum’s in Florida and he’s heading off there at Christmas time. I think that should do him some good, although he don’t like her much.’ She looks up to the ceiling and lowers her voice. ‘I can’t blame him for that.’

  ‘If you want, I can try to talk to your nephew? I’m only twelve years older than him after all and I know all about video games.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  I say nothing. One of Lena’s many tricks.

  ‘Well, I guess you could try,’ she says. ‘Can’t do any harm, just for a minute.’

  She leads me upstairs and knocks on the boy’s door.

  ‘You decent, Martin?’ she says.

  No response.

  ‘You decent in there, Martin?’

  ‘No,’ he shouts back.

  ‘Okay, he’s decent. I’ll be out here.’

  I push the bedroom door open and see a lanky kid lying on the floor playing Call of Duty on his PlayStation. I glance at him but then focus solely on the screen.

  ‘You wanna upgrade to the RPG,’ I tell him. ‘And you wanna watch your back.’

  He looks up at me for a moment, console in hand, then turns back to the TV. His eyes are red. I’m not sure if that’s from tears or gaming.

  ‘You a journalist?’

  ‘I’m Tuva . . . Watch your back, I get ambushed just here every fucking time.’

  He looks at me and sniffs and then he pauses the game.

  ‘You gonna write about my pappa?’

  I nod.

  He swallows hard. ‘You know they scooped out his eyes. And his eyes looked just like my eyes, too. Blue-grey. Mum says we have the same eyes. Exactly the same. That’s what she says. None of this feels right, it’s like he might come back home anytime, just walk back in. But that’s bullshit, I know that. And I’ve got the same eyes as him. The exact same colour. I might be next.’

  He points to his eyes.

  ‘No,’ I say, louder than I’d intended. ‘No, that’s not going to happen, Martin. You’ll be safe here.’

  ‘Mum’s not here and Dad’s gone,’ he says. ‘All my mates think that writer did it.’

  ‘Which writer?’

  ‘Freak who lives in the woods. My mate’s big sister works in ICA. Freak comes in every week, same day, same time. Freak always comes to her till, she reckons he fancies her. Freak always buys a load of the weirdest stuff. He doesn’t get nachos and potatoes and ham and normal shit. This writer freak buys pigs’ feet. He buys the tails too, even the ears. Who buys pigs’ ears?’

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘I’m sure the police will be talking to everyone in the village so they’ll be speaking to him. But some people do cook offal and the cheap cuts. Not me, but it’s not as uncommon as you might think.’

  ‘He’s a freak,’ he says. ‘Put that in your paper.’

  Esther Malmström steps to the doorframe.

  ‘You hungry, Martin? Want me to fix you a sandwich?’

  He nods at her.

  ‘Thanks for talking to me, Martin,’ I say, and I feel like the policewoman that spoke to me on the night Dad died. ‘I’m going to
finish my chat with your aunty now. I’m sorry about your pappa, I really am. I want to help get to the bottom of this. I promise you I’ll do whatever I can.’

  He unpauses the game and I close the door.

  Esther leans in towards me at the bottom of the stairs and talks softly into my hearing aid.

  ‘He can’t talk about it with his mates because they’re all fourteen years old,’ she says. ‘And he can’t talk about it with me or any other grown-up because he’s fourteen years old. You think he’s got a point about that writer?’

  The smell of lilies hangs in the air. Do we have one killer in this town or a copycat? Why the hell is there a twenty-year pause?

  ‘I don’t know if he’s got a point. But I’ve been assigned to write about this and it’s the only thing I’m working on. I’ll try to help find out who did this so you can all get some justice and some closure. What Martin said, well, kids say some weird things, but I’ll certainly check it out. I’m heading over to Mossen village this afternoon.’

  11

  After my sandwich, a cling-filmed margarine crime from the newsagent’s fridge, I check in with Lena.

  ‘It’s post-mortem day,’ she says. ‘Bumped into Chief Björn out on the street. His people have been tracing the last movements of Malmström, checking if anyone noticed anything unusual.’ She leans back in her chair. ‘Reckons the forensics guys found very little in Utgard, what with the rain and all the boot prints from police and paramedics. It was a muddy mess.’

  ‘Any physical evidence? Fibres?’

  ‘Björn wouldn’t say but I could tell by his face it’s not looking good. If Freddy was shot by a hunting rifle, the killer could have been hundreds of metres away. They’ll do the bullet analysis, try to fix the direction it came from, but it’s not like a city-centre murder with CCTV and witnesses, nothing like that.’

  She looks up at me.

  ‘I got some good material from the sister and a list of rumours as long as my arm.’

  She nods. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And two more houses to visit in Mossen.’

  She nods again and I leave.

  On the drive to Utgard forest, I notice a few features that I missed before. In the underpass beneath the E16 motorway, someone’s hung a piece of knotted string, threaded through CDs. Some kind of scarecrow, I guess. Orange plastic poles are dotted along each side of the road to mark the edge of the ditch for when the winter snows come. I pass dozens of them. And then I turn right and I’m in Mossen.