Dark Pines

by Will Dean

  ‘Let’s have that hot chocolate now, shall we?’ Frida says.

  ‘Let’s fucking not.’

  ‘Suit yourself. You know, I can’t help thinking that if you’d let go of those big city ways, if you’d let that silly phase pass and you’d settled down with a nice man, you wouldn’t be here right now. It’s a shame, really.’

  And then I remember the King of Hearts.

  ‘What about the poker club?’

  ‘What?’ she says. ‘Just a silly game, so-called men playing like boys. It’s not as bad as mixing with vermin and whores.’

  She picks her rifle up from the base of my tree and clicks something. I think she’s taking the safety catch off.

  ‘What are you doing? You said you wouldn’t kill me, you said I wasn’t like them.’

  Frida bites her bottom lip again and looks apologetic.

  ‘But you screamed, Tuva, and that changed everything, didn’t it? That’s not my fault. I’d rather you didn’t try to blame other people for your own actions.’

  She walks behind me with the rifle.

  ‘No. Frida, wait. Please, wait.’

  She reappears. First, her scent, and then her face comes close to mine. I can feel her breath against my wet skin.

  ‘I’ll tell them it was all an accident, I promise, I swear.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, sweetie, it’s too late for all that now. We’re leaving together and I promise, you won’t feel a thing. This had to come to a head. Two little clicks and we’ll both be off to a better place, I’m going to take care of it.’

  ‘Take care of it?’

  She reaches close to me and pulls a single hair from my mouth. The hair pulls tight against my lip like a strand of dental floss.

  ‘I’m going to do this the correct way, Tuva. There’s a strict code we follow in Norrland, you know. We never cull the cow elk before the calf. It’ll save you the trauma. We never shoot the mother before the child. I’ll take care of it.’

  51

  I look up through the tangle of branches and I see sky. She’s behind my back somewhere but above me there are a million stars and a million more for every minute I stare. I can’t see her and I don’t know where she is or if her rifle is loaded. My head’s cocked back and fine drizzle is wafting across my face. All is silent. I can’t feel the cold any more. I look up at the droplets of rain caught on the tips of my eyelashes, like the ones above me hanging off the tips of pine needles. And my heart gains mass and it sinks deep into my chest and it grows hard as I look up for Dad.

  ‘Hot chocolate?’ I say, almost laughing now. ‘Last request, Frida.’ I swing my head around but I still can’t see her. ‘I’ll share that hot chocolate with you before, you know . . .’

  And she’s at my face again, her breath warm at my temple.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think we deserve it.’

  The muscles in my arms and legs loosen and I slouch and let the ropes take the strain of my body for a moment. The rough cord bites at my wrists and almost pulls my arms from their sockets. Why did I do that? Why did I delay the inevitable? I want to live, of course I do, but I did it for the story. I did it because I can’t write the complete piece with what I have, not properly, not well enough. And whether I write it with Dad somewhere else, or with Lena in Toytown, I need to write this story or else what’s the point.

  She unscrews the lid of the thermos and I watch steam rise into the grey air.

  ‘No cups, I’m afraid,’ her lips say. ‘Wasn’t expecting company, sorry.’

  She fills the lid with thick brown liquid and holds it up to my mouth. I look at her as she tips it towards me. I stare at her blue eyes and she’s looking down at my mouth to make sure that it doesn’t spill. The chocolate fills my mouth with heat. My tongue’s covered in silk and my gums are coated with sweetness. Then I swallow and my empty stomach fills from the very bottom. My body warms and my spirits rise absurdly and my blood loosens and my organs feel like they’ve been jolted into action. I’m coming back. My thoughts are clearing and ordering themselves. Frida takes a sip and wipes away a brown smudge from her painted lips.

  ‘More?’

  I nod and smile and she feeds me more. I’m like a baby lamb being fed from a bottle. I feel warm with cocoa and I’m right next to a gun and a demon and a dead eyeless man. And a thousand acres of dark and wild. The police are in the same forest; well it’s officially the same forest, but they may as well be in Gothenburg or London. A kilometre anywhere else is a thousand kilometres here.

  I drink it up and leave the last gulp in my mouth, tasting it properly before I swallow. I want to savour it, not because it’s my last mouthful of anything, but because it tastes so damn good. Maybe because I’m tired and thirsty or maybe because it really is just delicious. Frida knows how to care through food. And then I think of Hannes behind me and what state he must be in right now with his eyes in her pocket in that neat little bag with that bright green clip. He deserved divorce papers and a slap, not all this.

  ‘That’s the last of it,’ Frida says, sipping down the last chocolatey drips. ‘Seventy per cent cocoa, and I mix in a little cream and a sprinkle of fresh nutmeg, that’s the secret.’

  ‘It was lovely,’ I say. ‘Tell me about Norrland, Frida, about your real home.’ I need time. Please keep talking. ‘Did it look like this?’

  ‘Ha,’ she says, screwing the lid back onto the thermos. ‘This is a kid’s petting zoo compared to Norrland. This is nothing compared to up there. Back home, things are bigger, colder, darker, and much further apart. My dad – this here is his old rifle – he didn’t have any whores or lap dancers within a hundred kilometres of him. There were no temptations whatsoever. He and Mum still held hands and kissed on the lips till the very end. They were a couple till the very end, till death do us part. Up there in Norrland, I don’t know, it’s just cleaner and purer. The water and the air, the people, all of it. Thought my Hannes would be like that, too.’

  She’s looking behind me at her lifeless husband. Her smile fades and she’s tight-lipped.

  ‘First year of our marriage, he changed. He was cold, not interested. Sure, I was presentable at corporate events and I fitted the bill, but that was all it was. It got worse when that stinking cathouse opened. All he wanted was his stupid poker games and his rancid whores and his hunting. I don’t know. At least our courtship was lovely.’ She turns to me and smiles now, her eyes glazed. ‘Dinner dances and midnight walks, drives to the lake, and sparks every time our fingers touched.’

  Just keep her talking. More time.

  ‘Mamma and Pappa set me up with him, they thought he’d be perfect. Not their fault, though, they didn’t know. He was perfect until that first year of our marriage. He was my Rhett Butler and my Robby Redford and my Paul Newman all rolled into one, and he did save me from that hot dog place. I looked at him through my veil in the church and I saw my parents’ life ahead of me; only it would be acted out by me and him. I saw a long stretch of affection and romance and happily-ever-afters. He had a good job, too: apprentice engineer at the mill near here. It was brand new back then. So we moved down, only needed a car for our stuff, and most of that was wedding presents. We had our own place straight off, a little house in Gavrik near the Grimberg factory. And then one night he decided he’d sleep in the spare room.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows what motivates slugs and whores, sweetie? You and I will never understand them. I could tolerate it all because I had the eyes to visit whenever I needed but I could never tolerate him leaving me for a slut, no way.’

  I look to my right and see blackness. Some grey, some moon on the pine trunks and puddles, but really it’s all as black as a nightmare. I’ve had enough of listening to her disappointments so I zone out. I can’t read her lips looking this way but I know she’s still talking because I can feel her breath.

  I think about the last time I went snorkelling. I was in Greece when I swam out to sea with my mask facing down into the
water. It was beautiful, all turquoise and shells. Then the sea deepened. It went from light blue to navy to black in seconds. The water cooled and the seabed just fell away. I was still where I was before, on the surface, nothing had changed for me at all. Except everything had changed because there was nothing underneath me any more, just bottomless dark. Anything could have been down there. My aids were out because I can’t swim with them, so it was just like this really. Like now. Cold and wet and dark. I had the exact same feeling because it wasn’t my environment. Back then I swam like hell back to the beach but now I’m tied to a fucking tree with a tick boring into my wrist and a lily-of-the-valley-scented killer talking to me about her marriage problems.

  I snap my head back to face her. ‘Why didn’t the police ever question you?’

  ‘Me? Why in the world would they question someone like me?’ she says, like she’s shocked at the question. ‘They talked to the strippers and the losers and the homo hermits in the village, that’s who they spoke to. Björn and me were having lunch one time at the hotel in Gavrik, and I told him about my food deliveries to the oldies and about the lids. I’m not like your little Chinese friend cooking from her dirty caravan, Tuva. My food’s all home-cooked from fresh ingredients. I don’t have any of that sodium glutamate in my food, no way. So I told Björn I was making deliveries to the oldies with their frozen lasagnes and fish pies with mashed potato; proper food that’s good for them. And I always write on the lid with a sharpie: the date and time I made it, the cooking time and temperature, and the name of the dish, and the date and time I deliver it. I’ve always done that. That was my so-called alibi, right there. I planned it all out. They could check the food and they’d see I was delivering. Doing my good deed. But then I never actually needed it because, of course, they never asked me. Why would they?’

  I look up at the tree and can’t think of another question to ask. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like trying to interview a toddler. I look up towards the sky. I should be with Mum right now in Karlstad. I should be with my own mother right now who needs me and who’s a fucking grade A saint next to Frida.

  ‘How did you find out who was visiting the strip club and the cathouse?’ I ask. ‘How did you know which men to kill?’

  ‘So-called men,’ she corrects me. ‘I’ve always kept in pretty good shape, Tuva, you know that. I’ve always taken care of myself because I think a wife has a duty to do that. So I would park up somewhere convenient and walk. Simple. I’d walk with Nordic walking sticks sometimes and without sticks sometimes.’ She glances at the pedometer watch strapped to her wrist. ‘Had some real good workouts. In wintertime, I’d ski, and in summertime, I’d jog. You would not believe the so-called men I saw stepping out of that cathouse and then later on from that whore strip club. All sorts of so-called men who should’ve known better, and who were lying to their wives and their children and their holy vows. The books get it right on this, the Bible and the romance novels. It’s a man and woman for life, that’s just what it is.’

  She is out of her mind.

  I watch as a mosquito lands on my left hand and plunges its stinger into a raised bump. It’s double-dipping from a wound and sucking my blood out a second time. I watch it and I can’t feel a thing and I can’t hear Frida because I’m not looking at her lips.

  ‘There were twelve eyes,’ I say, turning to her again. ‘Six pairs. Where’s the other body?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ she says, holding up the plastic bag and I accidentally see the eyes, I didn’t mean to. I see them and look away and crush the mosquito feeding from my hand against the tree. I look at Frida’s lips and nowhere else.

  ‘He was a millworker. Hannes introduced him to that pigsty cathouse back in the ’90s,’ Frida says. ‘A loser with a family, he had everything going for him. I won’t allow home-wreckers to go unpunished, I will not allow it. So I left him close to the stack, that old torp with just the chimney left. He must still be lying there. Suppose he’ll be found now, but maybe not.’

  I remember the stack and the rusty single bed.

  ‘Tell me about—’

  But she pushes her finger to my mouth and the cold tip tickles my top lip.

  ‘No more telling, sweetie,’ she says, lifting the rifle from the ground. ‘I’m gonna take care of us now.’

  ‘Wait,’ I say, my voice breaking. ‘Wait, I want to know about your boy, your son, tell me about him.’

  I scan up and down and to the right, desperately looking for something, thinking about screaming again, my chest pressed tight against the tree.

  She taps me on the shoulder and I turn to face her.

  ‘I said,’ her lips say. ‘That I just told you all about him.’

  I look at her, at one eye, then the other.

  ‘He’s down by the stack, the old chimney on its own.’

  I look up at the grey branches and feel faint and then I look back to her.

  ‘He took after his daddy.’

  I turn right and see a glint. My sweat’s stinging my eyes. I squint and strain to look through the murk. It’s metal. I can see a figure, no, two figures, both squat. No.

  I turn back to Frida.

  ‘Wait, please.’

  ‘I’m going to take care of us now because I’ve got to.’

  I turn my head to the right. I’m stuck between Frida and the wood-carving sisters and one of the sisters has a rifle pointed right at my head. I glare at them and suddenly Frida’s not so scary any more and the forest just got a whole lot worse. There’s a troll locked in my basement and one of its creators is waving her arm at me and mouthing something. What?

  ‘Your,’ she’s saying. Fuck, I can’t make it out. I strain to see her mouth.

  ‘Move . . . Your . . . Head . . . Girl.’

  ‘I’ve got a lash in my eye,’ I say to Frida, my voice trembling. ‘Lift it out for me before you take care of us both, please. I can’t do it myself.’

  I see her finger come closer towards my eye. I see her pale finger-print with its lines and valleys. I take a sharp breath and jerk my head back away from the tree, pushing at it with every muscle I’ve got, and arching back. I strain against my ropes and feel the gun fire, and I can hear it a little too, it’s that loud. The air in front of my face moves and it’s hot and I feel a spray of something wet on my forehead.

  Frida falls.

  I hold the tree, something rooted to keep me upright, something safe. I cling to it, shaking, shivering, my fingernails digging into the bark. It smells sweet like pencil shavings.

  There’s a hand tapping my shoulder and I spin around, horrified, expecting Frida to be back upright up but it’s Cornelia, the talking sister.

  ‘I’ll cut you down.’

  She takes her knife and slashes at the ropes and I fall away from the tree and stumble and she steadies me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  The quiet sister’s crouching down with her fingers pressed to Frida’s neck.

  ‘Dead?’ asks Cornelia.

  I look at Alice’s face, not at Frida, although I can see blood in my peripheral vision, I can see the wound, but I focus on Alice, just Alice.

  ‘Dead,’ she says, her lips hardly moving.

  I check my phone and my hands are shaking so much I can hardly see the screen. 2% battery, no reception.

  ‘Best wait here till the policemen come over,’ says Cornelia.

  ‘Yep,’ says Alice, removing her heavy waxed jacket. She places it slowly, carefully, over Frida’s upper torso and head. Cornelia takes off her coat and walks over to Hannes. My God, don’t look at his face. And then she covers him over.

  52

  I’m driving down the E16 in my truck, except I’m not the one driving. The heater’s on full and I’m looking out of the window at the forest fringes as they scroll by. I’m curled up with Tammy’s sweater tucked over my knees. My wrists are bandaged and my arms are bruised and my aids are working pretty well now considering.

  ‘You’ve got that police appo
intment at four, so we have plenty of time, no rush. You need to take it easy.’

  I hear Tammy’s voice but I’m still dozy from the sleeping pill. I can taste rum on my tongue. My thoughts are separating into headlines and I’m making order from the chaos with margins and quotes and typeface. Tomorrow, I’ll write it all up, ready for the next print. It’s what I need right now, a string of hours alone with my memories and a keyboard to put them all straight. I can’t think about what happened at the tree. Not yet. Lena’s already told me she’s tripling the print run and I’ve got an email from my old sub-editor at The Guardian. She’s offering me a job. A real job, my dream job, but I can’t. Not just yet. And I’ve had a message from Lena to call a prestigious bi-weekly periodical based in southern Sweden.

  So, I need to write this story.

  ‘Still can’t believe those carpenter sisters saved you. I just can’t believe it was them.’

  ‘David Holmqvist, too,’ I say, my voice quiet and calm. ‘The sisters shot her but Holmqvist found us all. He gave me his coat and had his dog stand guard until the police tracked us.’

  Tammy shakes her head and sighs and checks the rear-view mirror. ‘And they made that troll, too,’ she says. ‘And then they went and found you and saved you.’

  ‘There were two trolls, they made them both,’ I say, the seatbelt digging into my bruises. ‘Last night I asked them about it before the police came with their dogs and their lights. The one you saw was a special order paid for by Frida months ago. But the one with the dick was re-carved, Frida customised it herself. They told me they don’t make that kind of filth no matter what price people would pay for it.’

  Tammy shakes her head again and overtakes a white Volvo taxi and a truck full of rough lumber.

  ‘All three of them gave up their coats,’ I say, and it sounds stupid when I hear myself say it out loud but last night it felt important. ‘The sisters placed their coats over Hannes and Frida, and David gave his to me. Everyone thought Holmqvist was some evil monster, all those years he lived with the rumours, the sniggering and the looks.’