Snowdrift

by Helene Tursten

  Also by Helene Tursten

  The Irene Huss Investigations

  Detective Inspector Huss

  Night Rounds

  The Torso

  The Glass Devil

  The Golden Calf

  The Fire Dance

  The Beige Man

  The Treacherous Net

  Who Watcheth

  Protected by the Shadows

  The Embla Nyström Investigations

  Hunting Game

  Winter Grave

  An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good: Stories

  First published in Swedish under the title Snödrev

  Copyright © 2018 by Helene Tursten.

  Published in agreement with Copenhagen Literary Agency, Copenhagen.

  English translation copyright © 2020 by Marlaine Delargy.

  All rights reserved.

  First English translation published in 2020 by

  Soho Press

  227 W 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Tursten, Helene, 1954– author. | Delargy, Marlaine, translator.

  Title: Snowdrift / Helene Tursten

  translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy.

  Other titles: Snödrev. English

  Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2020.

  Series: The Embla Nystrom investigations; book 3

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020012354

  ISBN 978-1-64129-160-6

  eISBN 978-1-64129-161-3

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PT9876.3.U55 S6613 2020 | DDC 839.73/74—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012354

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Hilmer,

  with all my love.

  You have always been there for me.

  Snowdrift

  The front door slowly opened a fraction of an inch. After a while, a head cautiously peeped out. Everything seemed quiet, and a man stepped onto the small porch. Taking his time, he tucked a gun into the waistband of his pants, and slipped a cell phone into his pocket. Then he zipped his leather jacket, adjusted his night-vision glasses, and pulled up the hood of the sweatshirt he was wearing under his jacket.

  Large fields extended on both sides of the house. This was an advantage; there was no one nearby to see or hear him. But just to be safe, he reached around the doorframe and turned off the external light. He also removed the key from the inside, pushed the door shut with his hip, and locked it. Then he turned around and, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed the key into the darkness. Carefully he made his way down the slippery steps and was swallowed up by the night in seconds.

  The blizzard came sweeping in from the west. The strong wind whipped up the snow that had fallen earlier in the week, and, within minutes, visibility was virtually down to zero.

  The floor no longer felt solid, and her feet sank deeper with each step. She mustn’t stop or she would get stuck. Keep going, keep going! There was no time to waste! I’m coming, Lollo! The light got closer, and she thought she could hear voices through the pounding in her ears. She could just make out three large shadows up ahead. They were bending over a small curled-up figure; she knew it was Lollo. Please, God, don’t let it be too late! I promise I’ll never . . . If you just help us, God! She tried to call out, but nothing passed her lips; they merely moved in silence.

  One of the shadows suddenly turned toward her, and she realized she’d been spotted. At first she froze in fear, then she tried to run. But that moment of hesitation had been enough. Her feet were stuck. The menacing shadow was approaching, but she couldn’t move. He reached her and she felt him grasp her by the throat.

  “If you say a word to anyone, you’re dead! We know who you are and where you live,” he hissed.

  Somehow she managed to speak: “Lollo, Lol . . .”

  “Forget her!”

  He pushed her to the floor. The walls around her collapsed, and she sank into the ice-cold sludge; it filled her nostrils and her mouth. Breathe . . . she couldn’t breathe! Beneath her the ground began to shake.

  Embla woke to find herself sitting bolt upright in bed, terrified and gasping for air as sweat trickled between her breasts. Her T-shirt stuck to her back. It was usually the same when she had the recurring nightmare: she woke up because she couldn’t breathe. But this time something was different. The ground was shaking. Why was the ground shaking? And where was she?

  Slowly she began to gather her wits and realized the bed was moving.

  Uncle Nisse’s guest room was small, but there was just enough space for a camp bed at the foot of hers. That was where the movement was coming from. A halo of tousled brown hair appeared with a pair of wide-awake eyes sparkling beneath the curls. Elliot was impatiently shaking the rail at the bottom of Embla’s bed.

  “Come on, Embla—we’re going hunting today!”

  He leaped up and onto her bedspread.

  “Hunting! Hunting! Hunting!”

  He warbled away happily as he bounced up and down; Embla couldn’t help laughing. He was always full of energy, but right now the dial was turned up to maximum.

  “Okay—off you go to the bathroom, then put on the clothes I’ve left on the chair in the hallw . . .”

  She didn’t get any further; he was already on his way to the tiny en suite bathroom.

  Elliot was the best thing to come out of Embla’s relationship with Jason Abbot, a jazz musician. They’d split up almost five years ago after a series of excoriating rows about Jason’s inability to remain faithful, but a deep bond had grown between Embla and Jason’s son, Elliot, which his father had sensibly chosen to nurture. Needless to say, he had seen the value of having an adult around who was willing to help out. Elliot’s mother had died before he was one year old, and the boy’s only close relations in Sweden were a divorced maternal aunt and her three children, but she already had her hands full.

  Embla stayed under the covers for a little longer, trying to shake off the fear that still sat in the middle of her chest like a hard knot. Over the past week, the nightmare had haunted her every night. The reason was obvious. Her childhood best friend, Louise, who went by Lollo and had disappeared fourteen and a half years ago, had suddenly gotten in touch.

  Late on Friday night—eight days ago—Embla’s phone had trilled the opening bars of the original 1977 Star Wars soundtrack. She’d been annoyed, because she’d just broken up with Nadir and assumed it was him calling. Warily she’d answered: “Embla Nyström.”

  No one said anything, but she could hear shallow breathing and a faint rushing in the background as if the person on the other end was far away, or standing by the sea.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  There was a sharp intake of breath, then a female voice whispered, “Å . . . Åsa? Is that Åsa?”

  The hairs on the back of her neck had stood on end. Nobody had called her Åsa in years. Everyone called her Embla these days, which was her given name, but when she was little she’d hated it because it was so unusual, and she had persuaded all her friends and teachers to use her middle name, Åsa. As an adult she’d started to prefer Embla and had switched back. But someone who hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager couldn’t possibly know that. And the person on the other end of the phone hadn’t seen her for fourteen and a half years. She was certain of that because she recognized the voice.

  “Lo . . . Lollo!” she managed eventually.

  There was a gas
p, and the connection was broken.

  Her initial reaction had been shock, but after a while she had pulled herself together and began to process the realization that her friend was still alive. So many questions whirled around in her mind: Where was Lollo? Was she in danger? Would she get in touch again? Why had she called?

  Embla had decided to finally tell someone everything she knew about that night. There was only one person she could bring herself to share her trauma with: her former boss, Superintendent Göran Krantz, head of the technical department at Police HQ in Gothenburg. She’d called him and told him the whole story. Her best friend had disappeared one night when they were both fourteen years old. Embla had gotten seriously drunk for the first—and only—time. The only thing she remembered was the scene that constantly replayed in her nightmare: the three men bending over Lollo. The grip on her throat. The death threat. The sense of impotence. The guilt.

  As Embla and Elliot planned to travel to Dalsland the following morning for the school break, she and Göran had agreed to meet up as soon as she returned to Gothenburg. While she was away, he would try to take a closer look at the case notes surrounding Louise’s disappearance if time allowed. If Louise got in touch again, Embla was to contact Göran right away, and he would do his best to trace the call.

  Embla was glad she’d spoken to him. It had felt good to know that he’d taken her seriously and was going to help her find out what had really happened to Lollo.

  Ever since that phone call, Embla had gone over and over what she remembered. Sometimes she felt as if her head were about to explode. It was only when she was with Elliot and Nisse that she was able to relax for a while.

  Within minutes the bathroom door flew open and Elliot shot into the hallway, still singing his hunting song to the accompaniment of the toilet flush. The melody was catchy, but the lyrics were a little monotonous, as they still consisted of just one word: hunting. He used different stresses and tones; he had clearly inherited his father’s musicality and knew how to perform, but it was starting to get tiresome. This had been going on for several days, ever since Embla had given in to his pleas and Nisse’s assertion that she ought to let the boy find out what it’s like to go hunting.

  Embla still wasn’t sure it was a good idea to take a nine-year-old on a fox hunt. She had been fifteen when she first went out and had kept putting this forward as a reason to wait. Nisse had objected on the grounds that he’d been the same age as Elliot when his father had taken him hunting for the first time. But Embla knew the two situations weren’t the same. The tradition had been in her family’s blood for generations, but that wasn’t the case in Elliot’s family.

  Familiar sounds from downstairs penetrated her consciousness: the hiss of the coffee machine, the clink of plates and bowls, footsteps crossing the creaking floor, the low hum of voices on the radio. Her uncle Nisse was making breakfast.

  As usual he was up first. He’d always been an early riser. That’s what happens when you own a small farm. The animals have to be fed and stalls mucked out first, before you move on to the job that provides you with a regular income. Nisse had worked at the sawmill for nearly all of his adult life. He had just retired two years ago, and unfortunately he was now a widower. He and Aunt Ann-Sofi had no children, but Embla had always spent a lot of time with them. She loved the countryside, the forest, and the animals. Maybe she’d always felt more at home here than with her large family in the middle of Gothenburg, she reflected.

  She was a late arrival, the child no one could really be bothered with. Her three older brothers had, each in their own way, taken up a lot of space. All three had already started school by the time she was born. Her strongest recollection from her childhood was loneliness. Fortunately she’d had Lollo . . .

  At the thought of her friend she gave a start; she was suddenly wide awake.

  “Breakfast!” Nisse shouted up the stairs.

  Embla yawned and stretched before reluctantly clambering out of bed. She opened the roller blind, then stood gazing out the window. Much to her surprise, heavy snow had fallen overnight. Around six inches had come down earlier in the week, but now at least eighteen inches had accumulated. Another reason not to go hunting today. And it was cold. The thermometer outside her window read twelve degrees Fahrenheit, and a strong wind was still blowing.

  “Hurry up, Embla!” Elliot shouted impatiently. He had to go back to school in two days, after the February break. He couldn’t wait to tell his open-mouthed classmates about going hunting; a charter holiday in Gran Canaria or a ski trip to Åre didn’t even come close.

  Elliot could hardly sit still; his whole body was quivering with excitement.

  “I can have a gun, too, can’t I? Like, a little one? It doesn’t have to be loaded. Or maybe a bit, just in case a bear comes along.”

  “Elliot, there won’t be any bears. They’re asleep in their dens during the winter. We’re only going out to see if we can spot a fox,” Nisse said.

  “A fox? But I need a gun in case a wolf turns up! We’ll shoot him dead! BANG!” He aimed at an imaginary animal in the hallway, his body jerking with each shot he fired. “POW! POW! BANG!”

  “That’s a powerful recoil you have there,” Nisse commented, winking at Embla.

  She smiled at him, but she still wasn’t sure taking the boy hunting was a good idea. The snow, the cold, the fact that he was only nine . . .

  “And Seppo has to come, too!” Elliot exclaimed, pointing to the sturdy elkhound lying by the fire.

  When the dog heard his name, he opened one eye and pricked up his ears. But when he realized it wasn’t time for food, he closed his eye and went back to sleep.

  “No, Seppo isn’t the kind of dog we use for hunting foxes. He’s trained to deal with moose and deer,” Nisse explained patiently.

  “So what kind of dogs hunt foxes?”

  “Smaller dogs, often terriers. For example—”

  The ringing of the landline interrupted him. Nisse went over to the phone on the wall by the door.

  “Good morning! How’s life out there in Herremark?” he asked cheerfully.

  Embla immediately knew who it was: Harald Fäldt, her mother and Uncle Nisse’s cousin. Nisse had spent quite a lot of time with Harald and his wife over the years, but Embla hadn’t seen them for ages. She could hardly remember when they’d last seen each other . . . Oh yes, Harald and Monika had thrown a big party at the guesthouse they ran. A summer party—midsummer, perhaps? She wasn’t sure; she must have been seven or eight years old.

  “Did you use a little gun when you were my age? Do you still have it? Can I borrow it? Please?”

  “No, Elliot. There are no children’s guns. And I didn’t get a gun of my own until I was eighteen, and I’d passed my hunting exam,” Embla explained.

  Elliot frowned, looking confused. “Your what?”

  “My hunting exam.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it’s kind of like school.”

  He thought for a moment, then his face lit up. “Did you learn stuff about guns?”

  “Yes, but you also have to learn a lot about animals, and about the rules and regulations. Guns are very, very dangerous; you could easily shoot a person if you’re not careful.”

  Elliot nodded, his expression serious. It didn’t last. “So after you’ve been to this school, you’re allowed to fire guns?”

  “Yes. But you have to be eighteen.”

  He rolled his big hazel eyes and let out a huge sigh.

  Nisse turned to Embla. “Could you have a word with Harald? There’s a problem in Herremark.”

  Embla stood up and took the receiver from her uncle.

  “Hi, it’s Embla,” she said. She wasn’t sure what to expect.

  “Good morning—cousin Harald here. Well, not your cousin, Sonja’s and Nisse’s. Although we are related.”

 
He sounded stressed. He could obviously hear it for himself because he took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to steady himself.

  “It’s been a long time, Embla. But Nisse told me you and the boy were coming up this week, and I know you’re a police officer. You investigate homicides, don’t you? Well, something’s happened. One of our guests has been murdered during the night. We found him this morning,” he said, making an effort to remain calm.

  It was hard to imagine people killing one another in the peaceful surroundings of Herremark, but after her years with the Västra Götaland County Bureau of Investigation’s Mobile Unit, known as VGM, Embla was well aware that violent crimes were committed even in the most idyllic pastoral settings. But she was still taken by surprise.

  “Murdered? No chance it could be suicide?” she asked quietly so that Elliot wouldn’t hear. It was an unnecessary precaution; a boring phone call didn’t interest him at all. He was busy outlining his strategy for the hunt, while Nisse nodded in agreement.

  “He’s lying in his bed. Shot in the head,” Harald informed her, his voice shaking.

  Embla remained silent for a moment, thinking fast. Murder, suicide, sometimes it was difficult to establish which it was. Shooting oneself in the head was often a preferred method for those who’d decided to end their life using a gun.

  “Where is he?”

  “In one of the cottages we rent out.”

  Then she asked the most obvious question.

  “Have you called the police?”

  “Yes, but because it’s Saturday, only the police in Åmål are on duty, and they’re busy with another murder that happened last night—just a few kilometers from here, in fact. A young lad was stabbed at the indoor bandy club’s party.”

  “Okay, but the police in Bengtsfors . . .” Embla ventured.

  “As I said, the police station isn’t open on the weekends. I’ve heard they’re closing it down for good. That’s what Monika told me.”

  A violent coughing fit interrupted Harald’s account. “The Åmål cops said it would be a while before they can get over here,” he continued. “So I was wondering if you could come and take a look? It would make us feel better.”