by Karin Nordin
Stenar smiled. ‘I like the way Sara makes them.’
‘How does Sara make them?’ Hanna asked.
Kjeld ruffled through a pile of papers beside the bread box. ‘Sara said there was a list here with instructions.’
The cawing of the ravens in the barn began to increase and Stenar’s attention was once again drawn out the window.
Hanna walked over to the counter, leafing through the pages that Sara left while Kjeld wet a rag in the sink to clean the floor with.
‘Wow,’ Hanna said, skimming over the checklist. ‘Someone is organised.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ Kjeld groaned, wiping up the last of the egg that Stenar had dragged across the floor. He’d deal with the slippers later.
‘Over easy! I knew it. It’s like a sixth sense I have.’
‘A sixth sense about eggs?’ Kjeld scoffed.
‘You tell me, Mister Hard-Boiled.’ Hanna smirked.
‘Stick to the egg fortune telling. Your yolks need a little work.’
Hanna winced at Kjeld’s bad play-on-words and then blew him a mocking kiss before taking the butter dish out of the refrigerator and setting it on the counter. Then she sat down at the table beside Stenar.
‘I need to feed the birds,’ Stenar said.
‘I heard a bunch of birds when I was in the bathroom. They sounded kind of agitated,’ Hanna said.
‘They’re always agitated.’ Kjeld set a plate of crisp bread on the table.
Hanna immediately proceeded to dip a knife into the butter dish and spread it across a piece of crisp bread for Stenar.
Kjeld cracked two eggs into the pan. He idly recalled that Bengt and his mother had both been able to crack an egg with one hand. He’d never managed to learn how to do that.
The eggs sputtered and sizzled in the melted butter and Kjeld turned down the heat.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ Hanna asked Stenar.
Stenar’s empty gaze didn’t drift from the window.
When he didn’t hear a response, Kjeld turned his head. ‘Dad? Coffee?’
‘There’s someone in the barn,’ Stenar replied.
‘What?’ Kjeld stepped over to the window and stared out towards the barn.
‘He’s right,’ Hanna said. ‘I think I see something.’
At first he didn’t see anything. Nothing but an unmarred stretch of fresh snow and the shadow of the birch trees reaching out over the old red building that housed the rookery and years of collected junk. Then the shadows changed. The door was open.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Kjeld muttered.
‘What if they let out the birds?’ Stenar stood on shaky legs. ‘They’re not fit to be let out.’
Kjeld rushed to the door, slipped on his boots, and headed out into the yard.
* * *
The biting chill of the air stung his face and Kjeld immediately regretted not grabbing his dad’s heavy work coat on his way out the door. His boots crunched against the snow, which had partially frozen over, leaving a thin tier of ice crystals between his tread and the hard ground underneath. He pulled his hood over his head and wrapped his arms around his chest as he crossed the stretch of land between the house and the barn. He could feel the expectant eyes of Hanna and his father watching from the kitchen window, boring holes into the back of his head.
He reached his hand out to the barn door, preparing to fling it wide open, when someone from the inside shoved their entire body against it. The door slammed into Kjeld’s face and pushed him into the outside wall, momentarily disorientating him and blocking his view of the figure who then raced out into the woods.
Kjeld scrambled around the door and followed suit.
When he was a boy, he used to know those woods like the back of his hand. He could have mapped out every stone, rabbit hole, fallen branch, and thorny bramble. But Kjeld was beginning to realise that not everything in his past was as he remembered it. And the overgrown tract of forest behind the property was no exception.
The figure darted through the trees. They weren’t moving quickly, but they manoeuvred the array of birch and pine better than Kjeld. They’d been here before.
Less than a few metres into the woods Kjeld tripped over a tree root that had snaked itself above ground, sending him stumbling into the snow and brush. He picked himself up and cut across a patch of less dense foliage to catch up.
‘Stop! Police!’ Kjeld yelled. His chest burned from the combination of physical exertion and cold air. He felt like he was breathing in ice cubes that numbed the back of his throat when they melted. He pushed on harder, dodging low-hanging branches and jumping fallen logs, but the ache only increased his rate of inhalation and made it worse.
The figure ahead of him began to tire, but their familiarity with the woods continued to give them the advantage in the chase. Kjeld tried to catch a glimpse of their face as they weaved to the left, but all he could see was their dark-coloured back as they zigzagged through the trees. The figure continued on towards higher ground, grasping at birch trunks to help propel their weight forward.
Kjeld followed despite the stabbing pain in his chest. He really needed to stop smoking.
Kjeld slowed down in order to avoid the rocky ground made all the less manoeuvrable by the blanket of slippery snow. The wind picked up and white flakes began to fall from the sky. Then the flakes thickened. Within a minute he could barely see a few metres in front of him and the dark outline of the suspect blurred into the swirling snowfall.
Kjeld quickened his pace, skidding over the slick ground and shielding his gaze with his arm. He no longer knew which direction he was running in and his fingers were beginning to stiffen from the cold. Still he forged on, wincing against the whirling snow until he had to stop running for fear that his lungs might shatter.
He fell against a birch tree. The sharp papery bark jabbed into his back as he coughed up a chunky mouthful of phlegm. The hairs in his nostrils became uncomfortably hard and the mucus that ran down his front lips tasted acrid. He wiped the snot on his sleeve. His body throbbed, more from the cold than the sudden exercise, and he was about to give up the chase when a heavy crack of branches echoed through the quiet forest.
Kjeld broke into a straight run with no regard for what the snow might have been covering on the ground. When he caught sight of the footprints it kicked him into gear and he increased the length of his strides. He winced, his vision obscured by the falling snow. To compensate he stretched his arms out in front of him to prevent inadvertently going headfirst into a tree. He was getting closer. He could hear the laboured breaths of the suspect, heavy and gasping, and Kjeld knew that he’d be on them by the time he reached the crest of the next hill.
Faster and faster. He couldn’t feel his fingers and his face stiffened. Sweat stuck to his chest and back, covering the skin beneath his sweatshirt with a clammy dampness. Just a few more strides. Almost within reach.
The trees began to open up. A light peered through the dense ground cover. Kjeld knew there must be a clearing not too far ahead.
His calves ached. The muscles in his legs cramped. A little further. That’s all he needed. He could practically feel the presence of the other person in front of him. He stretched out his arm and his fingertips brushed against fabric.
I’ve got you now, he thought.
They reached the top of the incline and Kjeld leaped forwards. In his mind the figure was directly in front of him. There was no way he could miss them. His body lengthened like a diver executing a swan dive and he passed through the tree line into an open clearing. But the figure wasn’t there. And he didn’t hit the ground when he should have. Instead he was in a free fall. Right off the edge of a newly excavated mining pit.
And his last thought before he hit the bottom was that it hadn’t been there when he was a boy.
Chapter 11
Kjeld rounded along the edge of the yard from a separate path that curved out from the forest along the eastern side of the property. The trek
back through the woods took three times longer than it had during the chase. Not just because of the build-up of snow, which was slick atop the brambly ground, but because of the shooting pain in his right leg. His hip felt bruised. Nothing appeared to be broken or sprained, but the cold stiffened the injured muscle, making his walk rigid and off balance. His free fall had landed him in a newly dug quarry. Thankfully, however, he’d fallen onto one of the inclined paths carved out on the side of the pit to allow gravel trucks access to the bottom. The distance was little more than his own height. If the dirt road had been built into the other side of the quarry then he would have met a much more permanent end almost fifty metres below.
When he hobbled out of the woods and into the clearing of his father’s yard, Kjeld could barely feel his face. The snow lessened to a gentle downfall of flakes, adding to the earlier accumulation on the ground like a half-hearted afterthought. His nose burned from the run-off of hot sweat and snot against the chilly air. His hands, stiff and bruised from bracing his fall, were shoved into the front pocket of his sweatshirt, but they found little warmth there.
Hanna, now dressed in one of Stenar’s oversized down parkas and work pants, hitched around her thin waist with a man’s belt, rushed out into the yard to meet him.
‘My God, Kjeld! We’ve been so worried!’ She wrapped her arms around him. The coat smelled like it had spent years in a stuffy closet full of mothballs.
‘Did they come back this way?’ Kjeld asked.
Hanna shook her head. ‘We haven’t seen anyone. I hiked around the edge of the yard to see if I could find out where you went, but the wind was too hard. God, you’re freezing. You need to get in the house.’
Kjeld pulled out of her embrace and tried to give a smile, but the sting in his cheeks turned it into more of a grimace. ‘Did they take anything?’
‘Take anything?’
‘From the barn. Did it look like anything was missing?’
‘I haven’t been in the barn,’ Hanna said, pulling off the thick work gloves from her hands. ‘Here, put on these gloves before you get frostbite.’
Kjeld glanced around the yard. The slow walk back had lowered his heartbeat. The throbbing in his ears ceased and he was struck by the quietness around them. It was unnerving how silent it was. There was something missing from the air.
‘They’ve stopped crowing,’ Kjeld said.
‘What?’
‘Where’s my father?’
Hanna followed Kjeld’s gaze around the yard and then back to the house. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.’
Kjeld turned and headed towards the barn, his pace quickened by a sudden sense of urgency. Hanna followed after him.
The first thing Kjeld noticed when he walked through the barn door was the stillness. Stenar stood beside the rookery in his slippers, bracing himself against one of the wooden beams that Kjeld’s great-grandfather had installed. The chicken-wire door was wide open. Empty. Kjeld craned his gaze upwards and saw the ravens perched in the rafters, peering down at the scene with hard unblinking stares.
‘Someone was in the barn,’ Stenar said. ‘I told them I saw someone in the barn.’
Kjeld stepped closer to the rookery until he was standing beside his father. A mound of dirt reaching his knee had been unearthed inside the rookery. Kjeld leaned forward, looking through the chicken-wire grating and down at the hole that someone had hastily dug out beneath the rows of pegs and nests.
Hanna crept up behind Kjeld and followed his gaze.
‘What is that?’ she asked, fingers clenching at the gloves in her hands.
‘I told them,’ Stenar repeated.
One of the ravens flapped its wings overhead and Kjeld felt a shiver go up his spine, but not from the cold. At the centre of the hole was a smooth curve of yellowed bone that dipped into a dirt-filled eye socket.
‘It’s a body,’ Kjeld said. ‘And someone tried to move it.’
* * *
It was almost noon by the time Gunnar Ek and his lacklustre forensic team showed up at the house. By then the sun was already beginning its descent, welcoming the extra hours of darkness that came with the oncoming winter.
Kjeld sat on the back stoop watching as the police ran tape along the property, cordoning off the barn from the rest of the yard, and began placing numbered evidence markers around the footprints in the snow for the photographer. He had chain-smoked his fourth cigarette and was beginning to feel a numbness at the back of his throat where he’d inhaled too deeply. He thought of that body in the dirt, its face partially excavated. Decomposition had set in a long time ago, but it still had remnants of skin, dried and pulled taut against the skull. Kjeld reasoned it couldn’t have been more than a few years old. Then again, the ground this far north was cold practically the entire year round. He could recall digging trenches in the woods with his friends during the height of the summer as a young boy and being amazed by the coolness of the dirt just a few inches from the surface. That might have been enough to preserve a body longer than expected.
The back door creaked open and Kjeld could smell the lingering scent of Hanna’s perfume, still as strong as it was the night before. He exhaled a circular puff of smoke and for an instant it froze in the chilly air before dissipating into a thousand invisible particles.
‘Your dad’s calmed down a bit,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, almost apologetic, but she was shaking. Her initial reaction had been to ignore what they’d discovered in the barn, but the shock was starting to kick in. ‘He’s upstairs trying to sleep.’
Kjeld only half heard her. His expression was taut. And while his focus seemed to be on Gunnar’s crew, combing through the yard for evidence, his thoughts were a million miles away.
‘My God, Kjeld.’ Hanna wrapped her arms around her chest, less against the cold than the realisation of what was out in the frigid air. ‘There was a body out there. A body buried in your dad’s barn.’
But hearing it spoken out loud only made it seem more unreal to Kjeld. Someone had buried a body in his father’s barn. His father had witnessed it. He’d said as much from the beginning. But who had he seen? Whose body was that partially decomposed in the icy ground? And, more importantly, was his father involved?
‘I didn’t believe him,’ Kjeld said. Across the lawn, Gunnar was yelling into his mobile phone. His words, muted by the distance, reminded Kjeld of the yapping of a small dog. Ankle-biters as his dad used to call them.
‘You should come inside. It’s freezing out here. I made some sandwiches. I know it’s not much, but—’ She hesitated. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I do that kind of thing when I get nervous.’
‘Make sandwiches?’
‘Keep busy.’
Kjeld smudged the cigarette out on the concrete step and stood up. ‘You don’t have to worry about it. I’m sure this wasn’t exactly what you were expecting.’
‘Expecting?’
‘From a one-night stand,’ Kjeld said, immediately regretting his choice of words.
Hanna remained quiet. She was still wearing his father’s baggy work pants, but she’d replaced the oversized parka with a sweatshirt that Kjeld recognised as his own. Varsundpojkarna FF was printed across the chest in faded letters. Kjeld nodded to it.
‘That’s from another lifetime.’
Hanna glanced down at the sweatshirt and shrugged. ‘Found it in the closet. You weren’t that bad back then.’
‘I never should have been a keeper.’
‘But your arse looked good when you dived for the ball.’
Kjeld snorted.
‘They let girls play on the team now,’ Hanna said, turning her attention back out to the yard.
Kjeld could sense that she was trying to distract herself from what they’d discovered in the barn. He couldn’t blame her. For most people, football was an easier topic of conversation than murder.
Kjeld shook his head, less in disappointment than in not knowing what else to do. ‘Women’s teams were always
better anyway. The women’s national team has at least placed in the last decade.’
‘You guys just take longer to mature,’ Hanna joked.
‘Well it’s good they put girls on the team. We could have used them back when we were still in school.’
Hanna crossed her arms over her chest. ‘It’s because there’s not enough boys.’
Kjeld frowned his confusion.
‘There’s been a sharp decline in children at the Varsund secondary schools. Lots of families are moving south. Or, at least, the wives and kids are. Like I said, the schools are better down there.’
‘So is the weather.’
‘That, too.’
Another silence fell between them, less awkward than the first. Kjeld was picturing his father’s face when they found the body. Reluctant but relieved. Kjeld had recognised a kind of acceptance in his father’s face. An expectation that this would eventually come to light, clouded by the confusion of a man who wasn’t completely in control of his faculties. On any other person Kjeld would attribute that kind of uncomfortable solace with guilt, but in this case he wasn’t so certain. What bothered him more, however, was that he couldn’t decide if his uncertainty came from his father’s mental deterioration or Kjeld’s own complicated history with the man.
‘Who was it?’ Hanna asked, cutting through Kjeld’s thoughts.
Kjeld shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Do you think your father—?’
‘I didn’t believe him. He said he saw something. He called me up for the first time in I don’t even know how many years and I thought he was doing it to rile me. I thought he was just trying to stir up all that old shit again. I thought he just wanted to get my attention.’
Hanna paused. ‘Well, he did. You came up here, didn’t you?’
A camera flash shined through the cracks in the barn panelling, followed by an outburst of agitated cawing.
‘Yeah, I guess,’ Kjeld said.
He gave one last fleeting glance out towards the woods where he’d chased away the suspect.