The Farm

by Tom Rob Smith

  Inside there was a plastic table. On top of the table was a plastic case. Inside the case was a digital video camera. I checked to see if there was anything on the memory. It had been wiped. I was too late. The answers were gone. In their place were just more questions. The room was fitted with power sockets – five in a row. What for? The walls were covered with soundproofing foam. What for? The floor was spotlessly clean. Why, when next door was a mess? Before I could examine any further, I heard Håkan’s voice calling out urgently across the farm.

  I put the camera back and hurried to the outer door, opening it slightly and peering out. The shelter was visible from the farm. I was trapped. There were no trees nearby, no shrubs, and nowhere to hide. I could see Håkan at the toolshed. Foolishly I’d left the door open and he was examining the premises, no doubt wondering if he’d been robbed. He’d quickly notice his bolt cutters were missing. He’d call the police. There was very little time. As soon as Håkan’s back was turned I ran towards the fields, as fast as I could. Reaching the edge of the wheat, I threw myself down to the ground, waiting among the crops, catching my breath until I found the courage to look up. Håkan was walking towards the shelter, only a hundred metres away. When he entered the shelter I took my chance and crawled away, flat on my stomach, using my elbows to pull me along.

  Reaching the edge of our land, I realised that for some reason I’d kept both padlocks, so I buried them deep in the soil, took off my mittens, stuffed them into my pocket on top of the diary, and walked back, brushing myself down. I picked up the basket I’d left by the vegetable patch ready filled with potatoes, and entered my farm, saying aloud that I’d picked some fine-looking potatoes for dinner! Except Chris wasn’t at home, so my alibi – they’d used a salmon as an alibi, why shouldn’t I use a potato? – was wasted. I set about washing and peeling the potatoes, a huge number, trying to finish as many as possible so I could explain what I’d been doing this morning should I be asked.

  An hour or so later, with a mountainous heap of potatoes beside me, enough for ten hungry farmers, I heard Chris at the door and turned to tell him the innocent story of my morning, only to see the tall solemn figure of Stellan the detective standing at the entrance.

  • • •

  MY MUM WASN’T DONE with the mittens. She picked them up, pushing them into her jeans pocket so that part of the material was poking out.

  The detective wanted to question me and the mittens were still in my pocket.

  Like this!

  With one bright red fingertip hanging over the lip, and underneath them was Mia’s stolen diary. I’d buried the padlocks but forgotten about the mittens, and it was the middle of summer, so there was no reason to have them in my pocket. If they saw them I’d be caught because the mittens would lead to the diary. If they asked me to empty my pockets I’d be going to jail.

  Stellan didn’t speak much English. In this instance he needed to communicate in Swedish to be absolutely confident of what he was saying and what he was being told, so I asked Chris to hold off while we spoke. I’d translate at the end. I sat at the kitchen table with Stellan seated opposite me and Chris standing. Somehow it had taken on the appearance of an interrogation, these two men against me. Chris wasn’t by my side, but next to the detective. I asked if this was regarding Mia. The detective said no, it wasn’t about Mia – he was categorical about that, describing the break-in on Håkan’s farm. Some one had cut his locks to the troll shed. I must have said something like, ‘That’s terrible,’ before asking what had been taken, and he told me nothing had been taken, the locks had been cut but nothing was missing except the padlocks. I said that was curious, very curious, maybe the thieves were looking for something specific, angling Stellan towards a discussion of that second room, as sinisterly clean as Mia’s bedroom, but he didn’t take the bait. Instead, Stellan the detective leaned forward and told me that they didn’t have theft in this part of Sweden. Incidents such as this were exceptionally rare. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. There was accusation and aggression. I didn’t like the reference to ‘this part of Sweden’, talking about it as though he were a guardian of this realm and I was an outsider to be mistrusted, as though I’d brought crime into this area by the very fact of my foreignness, even though I’m Swedish born! I wasn’t going to be intimidated by him, no matter his physical size or status, and so I mirrored his posture, also leaning forward, feeling the dense clump of mittens press against my upper leg, asking how he could be sure a crime had been committed when nothing had been taken. Stellan said that clearly there’d been an intruder since two padlocks were missing. And I retorted, pleased with my logic, that something being missing isn’t proof of a crime. A young girl was missing – a beautiful young girl, Mia, was missing – but they didn’t believe a crime had been committed. Why should this be any different? Why should they take the disappearance of two padlocks more seriously than a missing girl? Why was the case of the missing padlocks definitively and absolutely a serious crime the likes of which had never been seen around here? And the other, a girl gone in the middle of the night, with no trace of her, that was a family matter requiring only a few minutes of their investigative time? I didn’t understand, two replaceable padlocks, which could be bought anywhere, two worthless padlocks no one loved, and they were acting as though we should be scared in our homes because a padlock had never gone missing before in these parts. Perhaps that was true, perhaps this was the safest place in the world for padlocks, but I couldn’t help them with the mystery of the missing padlocks, as serious as the case might be. If they wanted my advice, I told them to dredge Elk River or dig up the land, search the forests, we had no missing padlocks here.

  What were they going to do? Arrest me?

  • • •

  I WATCHED MY MUM DELICATELY remove a matchbox from the smallest pocket of the satchel. She balanced it carefully in the palm of her hand. With a push of her finger she opened one side. I saw a golden chanterelle mushroom cradled on a bed of cotton wool:

  ‘A mushroom?’

  ‘It’s only one half of the evidence.’

  My mum sat beside me, and it was one of the few occasions when I could see her struggling with how best to introduce her evidence.

  You and I often went hunting for chanterelles when you were a child. We were a formidable team. You were so quick among the trees, with an eye for where they grew. We’d forage for the entire day, returning home only when our baskets were brimming. But you always hated the taste even when I did no more than fry them and serve them on buttered toast. Once, you even cried because you were so disappointed that you couldn’t join me in saying how delicious they were. You felt sure that you’d let me down. Of all the people in the world you can testify to my abilities: I’ve never picked a mushroom that was dangerous.

  • • •

  I NODDED MY AGREEMENT:

  ‘I’ve never known you to.’

  My mum pushed for more:

  ‘You find it hard to believe I could make such a mistake?’

  ‘I find it hard to believe.’

  After the police officer departed, Chris suggested I’d been under too much stress trying to prepare our barns for paying guests. I was working fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. He claimed I’d lost weight and that I needed to enjoy life in Sweden more. As though the idea were off the top of his head he suggested that we should go into the forests for a relaxing day foraging for mushrooms. I wasn’t sure whether his proposal was genuine. He’d framed it so cleverly I had no reason for refusing. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, of course I did.

  The next day it was raining outside. Chris said it didn’t matter – keen not to cancel our plans. Since I didn’t mind about a little rain, we cycled north, to the forests, the same forest where Teardrop Island was located. I tried not to think about the island, or Chris’s visits there. Turning off the road, we cycled up a dirt track. The easily accessible areas were no good. We needed to go deeper, off the paths, into parts of th
e forest that hadn’t been touched, the remoter spots. We left our bikes together under the cover of a tree next to Elk River. We took our cycle baskets, padded with newspaper to stop the bottom layer of mushrooms being crushed and destroyed. After a while we reached a slope of giant rocks, boulders the size of cars. Some were completely covered in moss. I couldn’t imagine many people climbing the slope in order to find mushrooms, so I pointed to the top, saying that I was going to forage up there. Without waiting for a reply I began to climb, clambering over the stone, my feet slipping on the moss. At the top there was a view over a hundred thousand trees – firs, pines and silver birches as far as the eye could see, no roads, no people, no houses, no power lines, just the forests as they had been when I was a child and always would be, long after I’m dead. Chris joined me at the top, breathlessly admiring the view.

  Chris has never taken foraging as seriously as me, or as you. He’s half-hearted in his efforts. He likes to break and smoke and chat. I didn’t want to be burdened by him. We agreed to meet back at the bikes, setting a time towards the end of the day. I quickly left him behind, and before long I’d found my first chanterelles, a tiny cluster of young mushrooms. I cut them with my special knife rather than ripping them out, so that they’d grow back. Within a few minutes I’d found a rhythm, hardly ever straightening my back as I swooped between the damp shady nooks where they pushed out of the soil. Then, tucked under the exposed root of an ancient tree, a golden treasure trove, twenty or thirty together, enough to make me exclaim with gratitude, as if the forests themselves had made me a gift. Without a pause for lunch, I stopped only when my basket was full, a satisfying heap, like the kind we’d always collected together. You would’ve been proud of me.

  At the end of the day it was a long walk back. I was tired and happy – the happiest I’d been for some time, remembering the true reason I’d come back to my country, for feelings just like this. The light rain hadn’t stopped and after several hours my hair was soaked. I didn’t mind. I pressed my hair flat with my hands, squeezing all the rainwater out. I was quite sure Chris had stopped foraging long ago. He’d be by the bicycles, sheltered, perhaps with a fire burning, warm by the river – that was my honest hope.

  When I reached the bicycles, there was no fire burning. Chris was sitting by the river, on the trunk of a fallen tree, smoking Håkan’s weed, his back to me, hood pulled up. I placed my basket by the bicycle, beside his, which contained nothing, not a single mushroom, and joined him by the river. He turned round and smiled, which surprised me, because I’d been expecting him to be annoyed. He must have waited several hours. He told me to take a seat and offered to fetch a cup of tea from our Thermos. My hands had become damp and my fingers were stiff. I was looking forward to a warm drink. Several minutes passed, no tea arrived. Finally I heard him call out my name.

  ‘Tilde?’

  Something was wrong. I stood up and saw Chris standing by the bicycles, staring down at my basket. He seemed upset. Now the trap will be sprung, I thought. I didn’t understand the nature of it but I could feel its jaws closing around me. My happiness had been complacency. Afraid, I slowly walked towards him, not sure what to expect. He crouched down and picked up my basket. Instead of chanterelle mushrooms it was full of these—

  • • •

  MY MUM PUSHED OPEN the other side of the matchbox, revealing a golden silver birch leaf suspended on a bed of cotton wool.

  Leaves, Daniel!

  Leaves!

  The basket was full of leaves! Chris was looking at me with mock pity in his eyes. It took me a few seconds to absorb the implication. This wasn’t a practical joke. He was claiming that I’d spent the entire day collecting leaves. I grabbed the top layer, crushing them in my hands, digging down to the bottom. Every chanterelle had gone. With a jerk of my wrists I threw the leaves into the air. Chris just stood there as they tumbled around us. The whole situation was preposterous. I couldn’t have made such an extraordinary mistake. Then I remembered my knife. It was smeared with chanterelle stem. So I brandished the blade, purely as evidence. Chris lurched back, as if I were threatening him. Belatedly I understood the nature of the trap. Only one explanation remained – Chris had replaced the chanterelles with these leaves. He’d collected them while we’d been separated. He knew we’d separate. He knew he’d have time to return and make preparations. While I was waiting for tea, he’d made the swap. I cried out, demanding to know where the mushrooms were. I patted his pockets. The mushrooms were surely close by. Perhaps he’d prepared a hole and tipped them in, burying them, covering them with loose soil. I began to dig, like a dog searching for a bone. When I looked up I saw Chris coming towards me, arms out wide, as if to smother me. This time I did use the knife, I slashed the air and told him to stay back. He was trying to soothe me as if I were a startled horse, but the sound of his voice made me sick. I had to get away, so I ran into the forest. When I looked back he was running after me. So I ran faster, heading for higher ground, I couldn’t beat him on the flat but I was a nimble climber, he was a smoker, I was fitter over long distances. He’d almost caught up, reaching out, fingertips stretched towards the tails of my rain jacket. I cried out, reaching the base of the boulder slope, scrambling on all fours. I felt him grab my leg so I kicked out, kicked and kicked until I caught him in the face. It bought me some time. From the bottom of the slope he screamed my name, this time not as a question but furious:

  ‘Tilde!’

  My name echoed around the forest but I didn’t look back, reaching the top and running as fast as I could into the woods, leaving Chris screaming from the base of the hill.

  Eventually I collapsed with exhaustion, lying under a tree on the wet moss, the light rain on my face, trying to fully grasp the implications of the plan that had been launched against me. As the sky darkened I heard my name being called out, not by one voice but several. I cautiously followed the sounds back to the ridge of boulders and saw crisscrossing beams of the torches through the trees, counting them – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven – seven beams of light, seven people looking for me. It was a search party. In a matter of hours since my fight with Chris a search party had been mobilised. It was an overreaction. There was no need to recruit so many people unless you required witnesses, unless you required this staged incident to be logged officially. Chris had probably given a statement, shown them the bicycles, the basket full of leaves, marked it as evidence, shown them the spot where I’d slashed at him with the knife. He’d been quick and smart. I’d been wild-tempered and foolish.

  Consider Chris’s character. As you can testify, he’s always hated the authorities, he’s wary of doctors, and he’s never trusted the police. If he were innocent he would’ve searched for me alone. What are the chances that he would have phoned the police to organise an official search party? The chances are zero. I wasn’t hurt or lost – I’m an adult and in no need of being escorted out of the forest like a lost child. To reassert my authority and offer proof of my presence of mind, there was only one option. I’d set about finding my own way back to the farm. This would prove that I was competent. There’s a legal phrase for this, a term I’ve heard a great number of times in the past few weeks, a Latin term – non compos mentis – not of sound mind. If I were found lost and cold, wandering in these forests, I’d be declared not of sound mind. I wasn’t lost, I was compos mentis, and once I’d located Elk River it was a simple case of following the fast-flowing water all the way back home.

  It was midnight by the time I reached our farm. There were several cars in the drive. My enemies were waiting for me. I recognised Håkan’s Saab, there was Stellan the detective’s car. But the remaining car was a mystery to me. It was expensive and impressive. I was outnumbered. I briefly considered running away, but the thought was a childish one. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have my satchel or my journal. Most importantly, I couldn’t abandon my responsibilities to Mia. If I ran, my enemies would only use it to support their argument. They’d claim I w
as acting erratically and illogically. I entered my farm, expecting an ambush. Even so, I was unprepared for what happened next.

  The mysterious expensive car belonged to Dr Olle Norling, the celebrity doctor. While our shoulders might have brushed at parties, I hadn’t, at that time, been worthy of his attention – this was the first occasion we’d spoken directly. Chris stood in the corner, his eyebrow fixed with a bandage. I guessed that was due to the injury I’d inflicted on him while trying to escape, a kick to the head. It was now part of the evidence against me, along with the silver birch leaves. I asked what was going on, not aggressively. I needed to be composed and articulate, not emotional. These men would catch me with emotion. They’d try to provoke me and then claim that I was hysterical. I didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I described our silly little argument in the forest. Feeling disgruntled, I’d walked home. That was the long and short of the matter, nothing more remarkable than that, so why were the police here, why were the detectives not looking for Mia, why was the great Dr Norling not hosting his radio show, or the powerful Håkan not dealing with his business empire, why were they gathered here, in our modest farm, as solemn as a wake?

  Norling’s first words were:

  ‘I’m worried about you, Tilde.’

  He spoke perfect English. His voice was so soft, like a cushion – you could rest your head and fall asleep on the sound of his allegations. He uttered my name like I was a dear friend. No wonder the public adores him. He could imitate the sound of genuine affection faultlessly. I had to pinch myself not to believe it. But it was a lie, the trick of a professional showman.