Where Ravens Roost

by Karin Nordin

  The receptionist left, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Good God. I guess Norberg always was an ugly son of a bitch.’

  David waved a hand to the leather chair across from the desk and Kjeld sat down. He felt a little guilty using his badge to get into the building. It was a blatant misuse of his power. First of all, he had no jurisdiction in Jämtland. Secondly, he was on suspension and technically should have turned his badge in before he left Gothenburg. But that was the least of his wrongdoings over the last few weeks. He doubted that would be the straw to break the camel’s back.

  Kjeld looked at the brass-coloured name plate on the man’s desk. ‘David Lindqvist?’

  ‘Roland is my father,’ David said, slumping down in the chair behind the desk. He shook his head at the photograph and laughed. ‘Seeing this has made it worth coming into work today. Can you believe people used to actually dress like this? God, sometimes I wish I could go back in time just to see the ridiculous things people thought were cool.’

  ‘Hip,’ Kjeld said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What they thought was hip at the time. You know, groovy.’

  David looked at Kjeld’s deadpan expression as though he were uncertain if he was making a joke or being serious.

  David snorted. ‘Proof that my dad always looked like an arsehole.’

  ‘Which one is he again?’ Kjeld asked.

  David set the photograph on the table and pointed to the man to the right of Kjeld’s mother. The one with the leering grin.

  David’s phone jingled, one of his social media apps alerting him that someone in his “Close Friends” network had added a new post. He opened it in full view of Kjeld’s gaze. The image was a brightly coloured photo showing a woman’s outstretched legs, toenails freshly painted a coral hue, in front of an open ocean. David scoffed, annoyed. ‘My sister. Probably the most filtered person on the internet. I wish these damn things gave you the option to dislike a post. What about you?’

  ‘I don’t filter,’ Kjeld said flatly.

  ‘What did you say this was about again? Gothenburg police? I think you might have taken a wrong turn somewhere.’

  Again David’s tone irked Kjeld. It was haughty. Flippant. And it reminded Kjeld of his early days as a beat officer in the big city when his colleagues persistently picked on his northern accent and small-town roots.

  ‘I’m helping out the local police on an investigation,’ Kjeld lied.

  ‘You know, you look awfully familiar,’ David said. ‘Are you a local?’

  ‘I grew up in Varsund, but I haven’t been back for quite some time.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ David leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other at the knee. ‘Place is a shithole.’

  ‘It does leave something to be desired,’ Kjeld said. He tapped the centre of the photo. ‘Do you recognise this woman?’

  David craned his neck and then shook his head. ‘Never seen her before.’

  ‘So, as far as you’re aware, she didn’t work for Norrmalm?’

  ‘When was this picture taken?’

  Kjeld flipped the photograph over to display the date.

  ‘In ’78? That’s way before my time. I couldn’t tell you. She might have been a secretary or something. Or somebody’s date.’

  ‘This man’s date, perhaps?’ Kjeld asked, motioning towards the man on his mother’s left.

  ‘Uncle Peter?’ David laughed. ‘Hardly. No way. Absolutely not.’

  ‘How can you be sure? Like you said, it was before your time.’

  ‘Uncle Peter never brought dates to company shindigs. Once his wife died he went on the straight and narrow as far as women were concerned. Everything was about work for him. Norrmalm or nothing.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘He went on sabbatical a few years back. More like an early retirement though, if you ask me. Haven’t really kept in touch.’

  Kjeld removed another photo from his pocket. The one of Stenar and Peter from their military days. ‘What about this man? Do you recognise him?’

  David’s face hardened and for a second Kjeld thought he saw something in the man’s eyes that looked like recognition, but David shook his head. ‘What did you say your name was again?’

  ‘Kjeld Nygaard.’

  ‘Nygaard who used to be a local boy.’ David clicked his tongue. ‘Are you sure we haven’t met?’

  Kjeld felt his patience dwindling. ‘I think I would remember if we had.’

  David shook his head. ‘No. Sorry. I don’t recognise that man.’

  Kjeld slipped the photos into his jacket pocket and stood up. ‘I’m sorry to have taken up your time.’

  ‘If you have any more photos of Norberg with hair then you’re welcome to as much of my time as you want. Anything to wipe that smug look off his face. The guy is an arse. Thinks he’s better than everyone, but he’s not. He’s from Ödeshög.’ David said it like it was a crime. As if Varsund was any better.

  ‘Do you think your father will be available to speak with me today?’

  David shrugged. ‘Hard to say. He’s in the middle of a merger. Contract negotiations. You know how it is.’

  David, like so many people Kjeld had crossed paths with over the last few days, riled his patience. Even the comments that weren’t meant to be glib provoked him. But while Kjeld didn’t feel any closer to understanding why his parents were in a photograph with Varsund’s most well-established family, David had at least confirmed some of what Hanna had told him. Still, he sensed he would have to speak to Roland to get more information. Or better yet, Peter. ‘Perhaps you could let him know that I’d appreciate him making time in his schedule to speak with me.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ David smiled, but Kjeld wasn’t convinced that there was any sincerity in it.

  ‘Thank you for your time.’

  ‘Anything to help the law. Best of luck on your investigation, Officer.’

  ‘Detective,’ Kjeld corrected and left.

  Chapter 24

  Stenar was in the front yard pulling frost-covered weeds with his bare hands when Kjeld returned from his impromptu meeting with David Lindqvist.

  Kjeld sighed, still mulling over the businessman’s peculiar reaction to the photograph, as he climbed out of his car and went up the overgrown walk to his father.

  Stenar tossed another handful of weeds into a broken wheelbarrow full of unused tiles, probably from when his father planned to remodel the kitchen almost twenty years ago, and looked up with a grin. ‘Good! You’re here. You can help.’

  ‘Dad, it’s freezing outside. And these weeds are all dead anyway. There’s no point in pulling them,’ Kjeld said. Then he saw his father’s hands, red from the cold and cut up across the palms. ‘For God’s sake, you’re not even wearing any gloves.’

  ‘If you don’t get them out, roots and all, then they’ll just grow back even stronger.’ Stenar stretched down for another prickly stem, but his left knee still wouldn’t bend fully and the weed was just out of reach. ‘Could you give me a hand here?’

  Kjeld stepped around the wheelbarrow, wrapped his hand around the thick weed near the base of the stem, and tugged. A large clump of dirt came up along with the roots, leaving a noticeable hole in the ground. He tossed the weeds in the barrow.

  Stenar nodded as though he were pleased with the results. ‘That’s how you do it. Glad to see you didn’t forget everything I taught you.’

  ‘It’s a weed, Dad. It’s not rocket science.’ Kjeld wiped the dirt from his hands on his jeans. ‘Come on. Let’s go inside and get something to eat.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  Kjeld took his father by the arm and helped him around to the front of the house. Once they were inside, where thankfully his father hadn’t gotten it into his mind to turn off the heat as a means for conserving electricity as he had been apt to do when Kjeld was a teenager, Kjeld ran a dishrag under the kitchen tap and washed off both
of their hands. Then he dumped a few cupfuls of ground coffee into the filter of the coffee pot and set the water to boil.

  He pulled back his mother’s floral curtains and gazed out into the yard. It was early afternoon, but the sun was already past its zenith and the overcast skies turned the world a dreary shade of ash grey. It tricked Kjeld’s mind into thinking it was much later. Again he felt that sensation of being watched. And he narrowed his vision, half expecting to see movement between the trees.

  Nothing.

  Even the ravens were quiet.

  ‘I feel like there’s someone out there,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no one out there,’ Stenar replied, sitting down at the kitchen table in the chair that used to be reserved for his mother.

  His father was probably right. He was probably just paranoid. All of the suspicious, gossiping eyes were in town. Out here there was nothing more than miles and miles of wilderness.

  Except there had been at least one person out in those woods. The one Kjeld had chased through the snow. And while he might have imagined the chatter around town, he hadn’t imagined that.

  Kjeld opened the refrigerator and groaned. ‘There’s nothing to eat but—’

  ‘Herring.’

  Life was a cruel joke.

  ‘I refuse to smell like pickled fish for the rest of the day.’ Kjeld pulled out a triangular block of hard cheese and a bag of soft wheat polar bread from the cooling drawer. Someone with better foresight than himself must have put it in there so it wouldn’t go bad. ‘Besides, you shouldn’t eat fish every day. It’ll give you mercury poisoning or something.’

  ‘The levels of mercury found in herring are negligible.’

  ‘But they’re still there,’ Kjeld replied. He grabbed the cheese slicer and set two plates on the table beside the bread and cheese.

  ‘Herring is such a small fish. You’d have to eat an unfathomable amount of herring in order to experience the effects of mercury poisoning.’ Stenar took a slice of round bread from the bag and dropped it on his plate. ‘Butter?’

  Kjeld went back to the fridge and returned with the butter and a wooden spreading knife. ‘Everything in moderation, I suppose.’

  ‘Shark, swordfish, and king mackerel are the biggest mercury culprits. Or basically anything out of the Gulf of Mexico,’ Stenar said, sweeping the butter knife across the bread in well-practised repetition.

  Kjeld was reminded of how the body’s muscle memory was always the last to go. He didn’t want to think about what everyday motion his body would remember when the rest of his mind was gone.

  ‘I guess we’re fortunate enough to get most of our fish from Norway then. But you still shouldn’t eat herring every day.’

  ‘It won’t kill me.’

  ‘No, but your breath might kill me.’

  Stenar stopped spreading the butter to stare at Kjeld. Then his face broke into a smile. A real smile. Perhaps the first one Kjeld had seen since he arrived. ‘That’s a good joke.’

  ‘I do my best.’

  Kjeld sliced off a few strips of cheese for the both of them and they ate their sandwiches in silence. Outside the snow started coming down in thick fluffy flakes, covering the ground in a soft layer of white. It looked like dandelion seedheads. A breeze kicked up through the trees and Kjeld watched as one of the cordon tapes snapped off the barn door and began flapping against the wooden planks.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday.’

  Stenar looked up from his sandwich. ‘What about yesterday?’

  ‘About the things I said.’ Kjeld sliced off another piece of cheese and ate it plain. ‘I was out of line and angry. I didn’t mean it. Not really.’

  Except he had. He’d meant it in the moment. Just as he was certain that his father had meant the things he’d said. But had circumstances been different, had they both been in control of their emotions, neither of them would have said anything.

  Stenar stared at Kjeld, but didn’t say a word.

  The coffee pot gurgled that it was finished and Kjeld got up to pour two mugs. ‘I just want to understand all of this. And I don’t, Dad. I really don’t get any of it. Milk?’

  ‘Black.’

  Kjeld sat back down. He took one sip from the mug and cringed. He’d overdone it on the coffee grounds. It was strong enough to float an egg.

  Stenar drank it like it was water.

  ‘Who was it, Dad?’

  ‘Who was who?’

  ‘In the barn. Who was the body we found?’

  As if on cue Stenar turned his attention back to the window, staring off in the distance with vacant eyes.

  ‘You called me,’ Kjeld said. ‘You called me and said you saw something. I thought you were just rambling. Even after Sara told me what you’d seen I didn’t believe you and I apologise for that. You were right. There was a murder. But who was it? You say you saw it. What did you see?’

  ‘They were arguing.’ Stenar’s voice cracked.

  ‘Who was arguing?’

  ‘I saw them arguing. I can’t remember what it was about, but I knew it was something they weren’t supposed to know.’

  Kjeld frowned. ‘Something who wasn’t supposed to know?’

  ‘I made a promise. I promised I would never talk about it. And I didn’t. I didn’t talk about it with anyone.’

  ‘But who was it? Who did we find out there?’

  Stenar’s lower lip quivered and Kjeld noticed he was clenching the butter knife like a dagger. Then a tear fell from Stenar’s cheek and plummeted into his coffee.

  ‘My friend,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘My best friend.’

  * * *

  Kjeld handed the old military photograph to Stenar. They’d moved to the living room so Stenar could relax more comfortably in his chair. Sitting at the kitchen table, with a direct view of the barn, kept his father distracted and Kjeld wanted to be certain he had as much of his attention as he could get.

  ‘Was this your friend?’

  Kjeld was conflicted by his father’s admission. He knew that if the body out in the barn truly was that of Peter Lindqvist then it wouldn’t bode well for his father. Not only because of the Lindqvists’ power in the community, but because if Peter and his father had been friends then the circumstances looked even more suspicious. It wouldn’t take a leap of judgement to consider that his father might be responsible for Peter’s death in some way. Friendships did fall apart, after all. Sometimes violently.

  Kjeld knew that all too well.

  But to entertain the possibility that his father was capable of murder? Kjeld had spent years thinking ill of the man, but his father wasn’t a killer. He couldn’t be.

  Stenar gave the photograph little more than a cursory glance and then handed it back to Kjeld. Looking at the image seemed to cause him physical pain.

  ‘That’s Peter,’ Stenar said, nestling back into his chair and holding the coffee mug close to his chest.

  ‘Peter Lindqvist?’ Kjeld asked.

  Stenar nodded. ‘This was up in Norrbotten during our conscription service. You don’t know what real cold is until you’re lying on your stomach in a self-made ice hut during winter training while the wind sweeps over the gulf from Finland. My nose hairs were frozen for six weeks straight.’

  ‘The regiment at Boden?’

  ‘That’s where the garrison was, but we had terrain exercises all over the northern regions. Spent a lot of time in Lapland. In that desolate space above Kiruna. But most of the training exercises were in Norrbotten. Especially near the border. Got a taste for Finnish squeaky cheese made from reindeer milk. That’s the only thing up there, after all. Reindeer, cloudberries, and cold.’

  ‘Tell me about Peter.’

  Stenar sipped his coffee. ‘He was excited about serving. It was something of a tradition in his family to stay in and enlist after conscription. Not make a career out of it, mind you, but at least go through the formal training and serve a respectable number of years. Then go home and take on the family b
usiness. Peter didn’t stay in though. He broke his leg on one of the training exercises just before the end of our service and it never healed properly. He couldn’t run anymore. Not for any extended periods of time. Even walking was sometimes a struggle for him.’

  ‘He broke his leg?’ Kjeld remembered the injury the pathologist pointed out on the cadaver and the muscles in his shoulders tensed.

  ‘He walked with a cane afterwards.’

  Kjeld listened to his father and tried to put the pieces together in his mind, but it was still difficult to get past the fact that his father had such sudden moments of clarity. Moments where even Kjeld forgot that he was suffering from irreparable mental deterioration. Stenar spoke of this time, which must have been more than fifty years ago, as though it were yesterday. And yet sometimes he looked at Kjeld, his own son, and didn’t recognise him.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Stenar rubbed the side of his face. ‘I need a shave. What day is it? Sara always gives me a shave on Sunday.’

  ‘It’s Tuesday. She must have forgotten. I’ll help you shave later.’ Kjeld sat forward on the couch. ‘What happened to Peter Lindqvist, Dad?’

  ‘What do you mean what happened to him? He went home. He took over the family business. He made a lot of money.’

  ‘You mean Norrmalm Industries?’

  Stenar pulled on the short white hairs that were growing on his chin. ‘Peter never had to work hard for anything in his life. Everything just came to him naturally. I used to think it was because he was rich, but he just had one of those personalities that you couldn’t ignore. He was elegant and charming. People couldn’t say no to him. You didn’t want to. You know what I mean?’

  Kjeld did. Nils had been like that. Back before Nils went off the deep end and started murdering government officials, that is. Nils was a real sweet talker. Everyone loved him. He was the exact opposite of Kjeld. Kjeld had always been the least alluring of the two of them. Not because Kjeld couldn’t be charismatic and friendly, but because Kjeld was rougher around the edges. Nils had always managed to come off as an open book, never mind the fact that it was a book of lies. People were drawn to him because of that openness. If people were drawn to Kjeld it was only because they wanted to understand what it was that made a man so broken and impassable. That’s how Bengt had always described him. Broken and impassable. Like he was some kind of unpaved mountain road blocked by fallen trees.