Dark Pines

by Will Dean

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She smiles at me. I can’t tell if the water on her cheeks now is sleet or tears but she looks gaunt of a sudden.

  ‘Where is he? What did Peter do?’

  ‘Oh,’ Frida says. ‘He was an engineer, had real promise, but he left us a few years after college. Gambling problems. Ran off with some girl from Karlstad and now they live in Spain, or did last time I heard anything. Your mum’s lucky to still have you around.’

  I swallow hard.

  Frida wrestles with the misshapen umbrella, cold slush turning her hands red.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse the mousetraps, Tuva, it’s the only way we can deal with them.’

  I assume she’s talking about the chocolate trap but then I follow her index finger and see a glue trap under a workbench. There’s a mouse in the centre of the trap, which looks like a paper plate, and it’s trying desperately to escape. It’s glued to the spot and exhausted and it looks like it’ll pull its front half away from its back half if it can get any traction.

  The storm outside is intensifying, the metal loops rattling where the flag meets the pole. I look at a stack of Gavrik Posten copies, with last week’s issue on top. There must be thirty of them. The mousetrap with the chocolate bait goes snap and we both jump. Then the lights all go off.

  42

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Frida.

  But it’s not okay at all. I reach out for objects in the room but I can’t remember where things are clearly, I just got in here. I need to see. I need to be able to see things because seeing’s what I’ve got.

  There’s no light at all. Nothing.

  ‘Wait one second,’ Frida says. ‘There’s a torch on the wall.’

  I move like a zombie, arms outstretched, and bump into the chest freezer with my hip bone. I hold on to it like it’s a raft. There’s a draught at my neck. The wind is inside now.

  Frida knocks something over and then clicks on the torch.

  ‘Come on, let’s get back to the house before Hannes comes out.’

  Frida points the torch at the ground so I can see where I’m walking and we jog holding each other. The forest, I can see it in my peripheral vision, is black as black and it feels too close to us. I think about that poor sticky mouse. We get to the front door and Frida opens it and pushes me inside.

  The house is dark but ‘Be My Baby’ is playing and it sounds louder than it did before the power cut.

  Be my little baby.

  ‘Oh, the stereo’s battery-powered,’ says Frida, like that makes it all fine now.

  Everything is blackness. I’m in the bullseye of a fucking murder forest and there are no lights on anywhere.

  ‘I’ll get off home now,’ I say. ‘I need to go. I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

  But I can’t hear my own voice properly. My aids got wet during the dash over to the house, the sleet must have got in. I pull them both out and blow on them.

  ‘Hannes,’ Frida shouts, I can read her lips clearly in the torchlight. ‘Hannes.’

  I put my aids back in my ears and one’s stopped working altogether. The other one’s better now, some interference like a badly tuned radio station.

  ‘I need to go,’ I say, icy water dripping down the back of my neck.

  ‘Shhh,’ says Frida. She switches her torch off. ‘Listen.’ We’re standing about an arm-length apart where the hall meets the living room and there’s no light and ‘Be My Baby’ finishes and then it starts over again from the beginning.

  I hear a knock at the front door and Frida throws herself at me and clings to me.

  ‘Frida. Let me in, woman.’

  She apologises and moves away from me. She switches on her torch and unlocks the door and there’s Hannes, rain dripping down his face.

  ‘Damn electric company, why don’t you write about them in your paper? Cutting corners, not maintaining the cables. This is what we get for living at the end of the line. Power cuts all the bloody time.’

  ‘How’s your migraine?’ I ask him.

  ‘What did you say?’ he looks big in the torchlight, not tall especially but almost as broad as the door. And he’s blocking my exit.

  ‘Frida said you weren’t feeling well.’

  He looks over at her with a disappointed expression.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Frida glances at me and her eyes say, ‘indulge him.’

  ‘No toilets, now,’ she says, standing close to me. ‘We can light a fire, we have plenty of wood, but the well pump’s electric. No toilets, no showers, no dishwasher, no laundry. Oh,’ she covers her mouth with the palm of her hand, her diamond wedding ring twinkling in the torchlight. ‘Your cardigan, the cycle won’t have finished yet.’

  ‘I’ll get it some other time. Thanks for the dinner, Frida. I think I’d better head home.’

  ‘Don’t fancy it out here in the woods with no creature comforts, do you?’ Hannes says.

  ‘Not especially, no.’

  ‘Thought as much.’

  He stands aside and I see the door.

  ‘Thanks again, I’ll see you soon.’ I touch Frida’s arm and make a move for the exit but Hannes gets to the handle before me and makes some kind of chivalrous exhibition, holding it and bowing slightly and pushing it open.

  ‘Mind yourself,’ he says. ‘Nothing good out there tonight.’

  I run as fast as I can to my truck. I get in and breathe and my aids are both malfunctioning now so I can’t hear anything. I pull them out and place them on the passenger seat. They’ll need to be in desiccant all night to fix this. Maybe that won’t be enough. I turn my key in the ignition, my fingers shaking from cold. Nothing. I start to pant, strands of my hair plastered over my eyes, my hands slippery on the wheel. I turn the key and nothing happens. Everything is dark and completely quiet. I peer down at the ignition on the side of the steering column and lick the sleet off my upper lip and focus. The gearstick. I left it in drive, not park. But I never do this, I’ve not done this for five years at least, not since I started driving automatics. I stare at it, at the illuminated ‘D’ symbol. I pull it to park and turn the key and the engine starts. My lights come on and bathe the wall of the grey hut in sleet-speckled light. I’m exhausted. I reverse and turn and drive away from the dark house that I can no longer see.

  I want to be somewhere in a big city right now, in midtown New York or central Madrid or anywhere. I want lights and cars and people and shops and late-night comedy clubs, right now, everywhere around me; I want noise and hubbub and electricity.

  I drive slowly, remembering that baby deer. Unlike me, it won’t be spooked by a power cut. That deer won’t give a shit. I drive through the twists and come up by David Holmqvist’s place. No dog, but I can see his house, the mirrored windows reflecting my headlights. There are puddles on the track as big as paddling pools now, and potholes filled with ice-slush and mud. The sisters aren’t in their workshop but the log-burner’s still smoking. The whole fucking village is dark. Down the hill and I can see nothing but pines. I can’t see houses and I can’t see the sky.

  Viggo’s home is filled with candles, little tea lights and candlesticks on the kitchen window sills. Bengt’s caravan looks like it normally does. I get out of the woods and breathe. My seat’s warm and it feels like my clothes are steaming from the inside. The truck shakes in the wind and I grab a handful of wine gums from the passenger seat and stuff them into my mouth. There are no other cars on the roads. None.

  Then I see lights. The motorway has a few trucks on it, their long wipers scraping back sleet as they push forward to make their deliveries on time. The town’s lit up, there’s no power cut here. On my left, behind McDonald’s, are Saturday night hordes of teenagers: beautiful girls and boys who will all kick themselves in later life for a thousand different reasons. Then there’s the hockey rink. Floodlights. I’ve always liked floodlit matches. Sport at night, whatever the weather, illuminated to the max. I can’t see the rink itself from the road but I can se
e the lights beaming down through the weather from their steel struts. The sponsor’s logo is lit up on one side of the stand. Hannes Carlsson’s employer, SPT pulp mills.

  He seemed on edge tonight, spooked, desperate. I didn’t get a chance to search his hut properly but at least now I know where Frida hides the key.

  43

  I wake up and take my aids from the desiccant jar and shake them and hook them over my ears and then I switch them on and open my bedroom window. Icing-sugar snow on the ground. I feel good, warm feet and cold cheeks. The air smells of liquorice. I watch a drunk-looking wasp buzz around the closed part of the window searching for a way in. It seems weary. I half turn the window latch and then I hear a sharp scream from the street below. I look down and see an old lady on the ground clutching an ICA Maxi shopping bag. Four red apples roll away before settling in the fine snow. Then someone helps her up.

  I can’t remember my dreams but I know I’ve been thinking about Mossen village and the dead hunters. It’s like my thoughts have been reorganised for me, highlighted and ordered and filed in the correct places, like the research archives in David Holmqvist’s spare room, the one I saw. I shower and put on long-johns for the first time since Easter. And then I get too hot and look out of the window and the snow’s gone. I can see just a few patches of white left in the shadows of hedges and walls and cars. I pull off the long-johns and feel a static crackle as the material brushes past the fine hairs on my autumn legs. I make a portion of microwave porridge and take a swig of Coke.

  It feels like a Sunday. I can hear church bells ringing and the town’s shut for business apart from the liquorice factory, which only closes on Christmas Eve and Midsummer.

  I’ll spend some quality time with Mum today, some real ‘her and me’ time. I bought her a cashmere blanket for Christmas, a supersoft thing with a herringbone weave. Risky to wait. I’m going to give it to her today.

  I mumble my little speech to myself as I walk from my apartment building to the police station. The door’s locked so I buzz and Thord walks through with a mug in his hand. He holds up his splayed fingers and mouths ‘five’ to me and walks back to the rear office.

  My hands are cold. The air’s thick with moisture, brief glimpses of sunshine through cloud like the day hasn’t decided what it will be yet. Storgatan’s deserted so I walk towards Hotel Gavrik with its off-centre sign. A candle sits either side of the front entrance but they’re not the usual garden candles the hotel and Tammy use to show they’re open for business. They’re graveyard candles, little white things with rain guards designed to burn for twenty-four hours. They’re expensive. I guess they ran out of the usual ones.

  I turn and head back to the police station. The door’s unlocked now. I walk in and the ticket machine reads 21 and I pull out the paper ticket and hold it in my hand.

  ‘Hi Tuva. I don’t have long – you’ve caught us at a busy time.’

  I smile and look around the empty waiting area.

  ‘Back in the office, I mean. We’re very busy today. What is it?’

  I put my hands on the counter.

  ‘Can I speak with you and the Chief at the same time, please?’

  He laughs. ‘No chance. You got me and you got me for about one more minute.’

  He’s looking at his watch as I start talking.

  ‘You need to visit Hannes Carlsson. Did you know he has gun cabinets in that hut next to his house and they’re hidden behind shelves? You haven’t found the murder weapon yet, I’d say that’s the place to start looking. His eyes are failing him, he won’t be able to hunt much longer, he’s getting desperate. Now, if you and the Chief don’t get over there and check out what I just told you, I’ll have to call in the Stockholm police. I’ve got a few contacts down there.’

  He smiles.

  ‘You done?’ he says, still looking at his watch.

  I nod and he looks up at me.

  ‘Chief knows all about Carlsson’s eye problem. Who do you think authorised his last permit? You don’t think we know much about much, do you? And he has licences for three firearms, as I remember: two rifles and a shotgun. Either way, ain’t a law forbidding gun cabinet ownership, in fact I wish more people around here would store the weapons responsibly. Now, I’ll give you a tip-off, an exclusive for your newspaper. The TV appeals worked. Back in there, we’re meeting to discuss it all. Fresh info. We now have a prime suspect.’

  I raise my eyebrows.

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see like all the others.’

  A plug-in air freshener wheezes artificial pine scent at me from the wall behind him.

  ‘You can’t follow up on two leads?’

  ‘You’re not in possession of all the facts, Tuvs. Now, if the suspect we’re looking into isn’t our man, we’ll talk to Hannes Carlsson. You have my word. I gotta go.’

  I didn’t quite hear the last few words, my aids are still playing up from last night. The desiccant removed most of the moisture but I’m still getting interference. Luckily for me, Thord has a big old horse mouth and I can lip-read him from the next street.

  He types in the key code to his door and walks back to the office. I see Björn standing there, and three or four others. As the door closes Björn turns to look at me and he rubs his nose with his hand and I see the tattoo again. A ‘K’ and a heart. All red. And then I get an image in my head and it is not the face of his wife.

  It’s a playing card.

  My heart rate accelerates. I step out into the cold, my mind whirring, a riddle solving itself, and then I walk around to the police car park. I count seven cars, four of them unmarked or civilian.

  I march down Storgatan, my hands tucked into the ends of my coat sleeves. Need to think this through and I need to get some supplies, especially now it’s turning wintry. Maybe a miniature rose in a pot for Mum. I’ll plan my next move in the supermarket cafe although God knows it is the most depressing place this side of the crematorium. Black plastic seats and a TV screen for betting on horse racing, and cling-wrapped sandwiches that were soggy well before they got chucked behind the glass counter.

  I walk up to my office building and the lights are off. A white taxi drives past me and I see its reflection in the office door. I push my face against the glass. Locked, but I think Lena’s in, her door’s open a little. I knock three times and she comes out.

  ‘You working on a Sunday?’ I ask her. ‘Why aren’t you home?’

  ‘What are you, my mother? Jesus.’

  I walk in and take off my boots and hang up my coat. The office is nice when it’s empty; it has the familiar stuffiness of a well-loved university room. It’s warm and it smells of coffee and printer ink.

  ‘Had an argument with Johan,’ she says, holding up a hand. ‘Don’t ask.’

  We walk into her office. She’s reading The New York Times from last weekend because I think someone there still sends it to her.

  ‘Nothing as exciting as here,’ she says, pointing down to the front page.

  I clear my throat. ‘Tell me more about that gambling ring.’

  She frowns.

  ‘The poker club. You said the rumour was that a council official was a member.’

  She sniffs. ‘Years back, talk of a four-player club, high stakes, kinda thing you imagine in a gangster movie. Lots of liquor and girls, macho bullshit, some weird code, maybe some shady real estate deals. People around here called it “the game”.’

  ‘Any ideas about who was in it?’

  ‘The council guy people gossiped about died in the ’90s. I haven’t heard it mentioned for years.’

  ‘I think maybe it still exists and I think Björn is a member.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And Hannes, too.’

  She frowns at me. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I don’t know. Could be that Hannes is Medusa and Björn’s protecting him. Hannes’s eyes are failing and this is his last year of hunting and it was drilled into him and every other boy around here that if they can’t kill and
butcher then they aren’t men and they won’t be able to support their families through a tough winter. He has a son who moved away, and a wife, Frida, well I don’t think they’re really together, I think they live separate lives in the same house. It’s a front. And he’s a great shot, Benny Björnmossen told me, one of the best he’s seen.’

  ‘Any actual evidence?’

  ‘Or it could be that “the game” itself is Medusa, I’ve heard about S&M stuff, high-risk bets with huge stakes.’

  ‘This is what the stripper told you.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? Listen, we all went after the ghost-writer bogeyman, but I think the respectable, rich guy at the end of the road maybe did it out of frustration. Or envy. Maybe with his poker mates, or maybe they just helped him to never get caught. Hannes had everything and yet the only things that mattered to him have left or are leaving.’

  ‘Interesting theory. Now, tell me, how much do you know about Holmqvist’s parents?’

  ‘Just that they’re both dead. Why?’

  Lena scratches her cheek. ‘They died with David at the wheel. It was the day he passed his driving test, and he took them out for a drive in good weather and managed to crash into a tree. They were both killed instantly and he walked away from the accident. He was unscathed.’

  ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘Well, now you do. He was the only one in the car wearing a seatbelt. It’s likely not relevant, but I thought you should know. Just because the cops don’t have evidence doesn’t mean Holmqvist isn’t Medusa. You’ve told Thord or one of the Karlstad cops about your Hannes research?’

  ‘Thord’s busy on a lead and won’t even consider Hannes as Medusa. It’s as if Gavrik is standing together like a human wall guarding him.’

  ‘He’s well liked.’

  I raise my eyebrows.

  ‘So, what’s your plan? There might be something to your story, but so far it’s all conjecture and about as libellous as can be.’

  ‘I’ll get you copy and something concrete and I’ll follow up on the poker thing. Might need to liaise with police from another force once I’ve worked it all out. But right now I have to head down to Karlstad.’