Red Snow

by Will Dean

  ‘Muzzles,’ one of them says to Thord. ‘Make it the law.’

  ‘I don’t make the law, Mrs Alfredsson,’ says Thord.

  ‘If there’s a dog out mauling folk to death and chowing down on necks the least you can do is make muzzles the law,’ she says, her two friends nodding their agreement. ‘You got to round up the dogs or make the owners buy leather muzzles, I don’t see no other ways round it.’

  He explains that there is no killer dog prowling the snowy streets of Gavrik, but she doesn’t back down.

  ‘I’ll have a word with the Chief,’ he says, finally, and that appeases them. They turn and leave at the same time, a mass of dark fleece and red cheeks.

  He looks at me and shakes his head.

  ‘I found this outside Tammy Yamnim’s building last night,’ I say, placing the rolled up tea towel on the counter and then unrolling it to show the needle.

  ‘Drug users?’ he says.

  ‘It was embedded inside a snow skalle,’ I say. ‘It was poking out of its mouth. All melted away now apart from the needle and them.’ I point to the doll eyes on the towel.

  ‘I always thought the Gavrik skulls were cool as a kid,’ he says. ‘A town tradition that made us different from Munkfors or Malung, something just for us. But these aren’t cool. I’ll talk to all the head-teachers and we’ll have stern words. Leave this with me.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s the Ferryman’s work?’ I ask.

  He looks at me and gathers together the needle and the eyes in the towel and turns to walk back through the keycode door.

  ‘Kids,’ he says. ‘Leave it with me, Tuvs.’

  I step out and turn to the factory.

  The sky is white today, white as new snowdrop petals, and the smoke from the left chimney’s rising in a diagonal line linking the factory to the clouds, the earth to the heavens.

  ‘You’ll have to go round,’ says Janitor Andersson as he shovels slush from the arch entrance. ‘New security measures. Police advice. Go round the back like . . .’ he stops to cough, one of those rasping full-torso coughs you associate with lifelong smokers. ‘Like everyone else.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ I tell him.

  ‘He’s alive,’ says the janitor.

  ‘Do you think he’s well enough to speak with me?’

  ‘How would I know, ain’t spoken to him myself for twenty-two years.’

  ‘But you both work here?’

  He shrugs and coughs and spits into the gritty slush at his boots. I might not have noticed the phlegm except it looks like extracted liposuction fat and it’s speckled with red and it seems ungodly melting through the clean white snow.

  ‘Shouldn’t be driving that quick in them old wagons, that’s the truth of it. They got the drivers speeding up to make deliveries to make up for delays. Nobody round here listens to me. You just can’t drive that fast when it’s bad out. Ain’t safe.’

  So the guy I once found half-frozen in a ditch is now preaching to me about winter road safety?

  ‘I agree,’ I say, but he’s already turned away to shovel the rear yard.

  I walk through the arch looking up at the brickwork and the green mortar and the metal hook poking out of the front of the factory. A flock of white geese or swans, I can’t tell which, flies over St Olov’s and on toward the reservoir. They look graceful up there, white birds on a blank sky with no colour or counterpoint at all.

  The factory floor is busy and I can see laminated checklists stuck to various walls and machines, cleaning instructions and fire-safety notices. There’s also an A4 poster appealing for information regarding Per Gunnarsson. It shows the anonymous phone hotline. And someone’s scrawled along the bottom:

  DO NOT WALK TO YOUR CAR ALONE. GO IN PAIRS.

  I pass through the canteen.

  The staircase mirrors have been uncovered and I catch glimpses of myself as I walk up the steps and it makes me almost lose balance. The Receiving Room’s empty. I knock on the door to the residence, eager to get inside the Grand Room after so many setbacks, but nobody comes. I try the handle. Locked. I walk over to the offices and see figures talking in a glass-walled room.

  ‘Tuva,’ says Anna-Britta, opening the door. ‘Take a seat and wait five minutes would you.’

  The office is dated with a stained tile carpet and a water-cooler machine with no bottle on top. There’s a small toilet cubicle with a unisex sign on the door. The figures move inside the glass office and I can see them better now. It’s Chief Björn talking to Anna-Britta and if I try real hard I can just about read him, but not her, not from this angle.

  ‘More serious than . . .’ I get some words but it’s not easy. There are reflections on the glass. ‘Talked to the national forensic unit in Linköping . . .’ then the Chief wipes his mouth and I lose track. Anna-Britta says something but I can’t hear her or read her. ‘They have your truck,’ Chief Björn says, ‘may have it for some time. The brake lines were worn through.’ I see Anna-Britta raise her hand to her head. ‘Could have been wear and tear,’ the Chief says, ‘or rats. They’ll eat anything they can this time of year. Or could have been someone with criminal intent to harm or damage property.’

  Anna-Britta goes on and on, Björn nodding. I focus on his lips so I don’t miss the beginning of the next sentence.

  ‘CCTV, a proper check-in system, and keep that arch door locked permanently from now on. I already told Andersson as I came up here. Have all visitors file through that back door, the one by the lockers. A single entrance you can keep control of. You say the janitor stays on top of the van fleet?’

  She nods.

  ‘Well, I’ll have a word with him but I want you to get the other vehicles checked out, Jan-Östnäs out at the Toyota garage can do it for you, he’s got reliable mechanics but he isn’t cheap. And I hear right now his economy’s in such bad shape he’s taken in a lodger – that’s between you and me – so he could use the business.’

  I’m reading his lips but I can feel someone else’s eyes on me. I don’t want to look away from Björn but I glance quickly to my left like an animal keeping track of two predators. Karin Grimberg’s watching me from the top of the stairs, wearing a floor-length black dress and black gloves that stretch all the way up to her ashen-white armpits.

  24

  She looks like a young Galician widow and her dress is so long I can’t see her feet. She turns and glides into the Receiving Room. I follow.

  ‘Mother says I’m to talk to you.’

  I pull out my digital Dictaphone.

  ‘How long have you used them for?’ she points to my hearing aid.

  ‘Since I was a kid. Meningitis.’

  She keeps on staring at my ear.

  ‘Do you mind if we talk through there,’ I say, gesturing to the locked residence door. ‘Anna-Britta said it would be okay.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to?’ she says, her attention still on my ear.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  I nod to her.

  ‘If you’re sure,’ she says.

  ‘Is it safe?’ I ask, checking the doors and windows, checking the shadows.

  Karin shrugs and stands up and I reckon she must rub herself with talcum powder she’s so pale, so unnaturally dinner-plate white.

  She takes a key from her pocket and inserts it into the lock.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you don’t tell your friends about the Grand Room. We’re private people.’

  I nod, eager to see the paintings and furniture in this quarter of the building, that silver punchbowl sparkling by the table. Lena told me on my first week at the Posten that details matter, they add meat to the story.

  The door opens without a creak. Karin looks back at me and pushes through the heavy velvet curtain just beyond the door and steps inside.

  ‘This is the Grand Room. You’ll have to excuse the . . .’ she trails off.

  It is like no room I have ever seen before. I mean, I’ve been here, with Cici’s lemon-scented
hands over my eyes, I know the proportions. But I never expected this. And in the context of a room so large it seems all the more absurd.

  ‘Where is all the . . .’

  ‘The stuff?’ she asks.

  I watch her walk over to the tiled stove in the corner, a cylindrical wood-burner twice as tall as I am. I join her. The stove chimney feeds into the main factory chimney on this side of the house, the huge industrial suicide-chimney that dominates Gavrik along with its functioning twin.

  ‘Precautions,’ says Karin, picking up three cinnamon sticks. I look at them and then at her white face with its beauty spot, no spider legs today, and then I notice the hairs. Each cinnamon stick has hair threaded through it. One with white hair, one with brown, one with black. There’s a stack of cinnamon sticks on the mantelpiece, next to a box of matches, and they all have hair threaded through their hollow centres.

  I have about five-hundred questions I want to blurt out but I swallow them down. Important to gain trust. Slow and steady.

  ‘Impressive room,’ I say, my voice echoing in the empty space.

  She laughs a silent laugh.

  The long wall, the wall facing town, is bare. The bricks are slick with moisture and the mortar joining them together has a green sheen. It’s odd to see this indoors. There’s a vein pattern on the bricks, like a fine-boned vine making its way up and across the wall, tiny spider-thread lines branching up the bricks and across the wood of the window frames. The ventilation system is screaming its pale screams and the ceiling vents look like gaping mouths.

  ‘Refurbishing?’ I ask.

  Karin shakes her head and points to the window.

  ‘The frames are as wet as undersea sponges,’ she says. ‘There’s no point in replacing them because they’ll just rot again. The glass could fall out of them all at any minute.’

  ‘And the wall?’

  ‘They ripped out the plasterboard when Ludo and I were young. It was thrilling. The men carried it out; Father hired workers from the other side of the country, never anyone local, and each board was sodden with dirty water. They needed four men for each dripping board they were so heavy.’

  I frown at her.

  ‘They couldn’t burn them,’ she says. ‘They just would not burn, even when Ludo and I poured petrol and engine oil all over them with Father; we loved to see the coloured flames, it was the most exciting thing Ludo or I had ever done. The accelerants burned off it well enough but the boards just stayed there.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘He has nothing to do with it,’ she says. ‘So now we live like this, keeping ourselves to ourselves and taking extra precautions. The fireplace doesn’t work. We’d all die of carbon monoxide poisoning if we ever lit it. I was at college until recently and I had a dry little room and I suppose that was better, at least on paper. Do you take coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ll be back. We have a thermos in the kitchen.’

  I stay put. My eyes are everywhere, checking for people hiding, people watching. This is not a domestic room, it’s a weird mix of aristocratic proportions and industrial minimalism. And that wall. The front of the building. Soaking wet. I see a hutch with its straw bedding and a water bottle and a food bowl. I walk over and there’s a rabbit the size of a pit bull sitting there munching away. It turns and lollops over to the bed area and I can see that it has three plump white feet. And one stump.

  ‘That’s Agamemnon,’ says Karin walking through with a tray to the long bare table in the centre of the room. ‘Aggy for short.’

  The only other object in the room is the apothecary cabinet I saw last time I walked through, glancing between Cici’s citrus fingers.

  ‘Interesting home. Beats a radhus semi-detached.’

  ‘You think?’ asks Karin. ‘I never brought a schoolfriend here, you know. Father was always so private.’

  ‘Everyone in town thinks it’s a palace up here with chandeliers and gold taps.’

  ‘It almost was, back when Granny was young, but now all the best stuff’s in the Receiving Room to keep up appearances. It’s not pride, I don’t think. It was Mother and Father not wanting the workers to worry about their jobs.’

  ‘What’s behind those doors?’ I ask.

  She points to each in turn. ‘Granny’s room next to the big chimney, then Mother and Father’s room. Then the door to the attics.’ She points to the other wall. ‘Then my room over in the corner, I’m working on a clay figure at the moment or I’d show you.’ We sit down at the long table and there’s a tiny contact-lens case looking back at me, one side white, one side blue. The only plastic thing in the room. Karin pours coffee. ‘Then the bathroom and the kitchen. I moved into the corner room after Ludo died so I could see him whenever I wanted.’

  I frown.

  ‘His grave. I have windows facing to the rear root barns and also to the side, so I can see our family plot in St Olov’s. Now I can see father down there too.’

  ‘I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.’

  She looks weary. ‘This place takes its toll.’

  I move my chair and kick something. There’s a clank. I look under the table and there are a line of kitchen knives leading from one end to the other.

  ‘You have knives under the table,’ I say. I thought it was a silver punchbowl under there? I hadn’t expected this.

  She looks at me. ‘Nine knives for nine lives.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Precautions.’

  ‘But what do you mean by “precautions”?’

  She ducks under the table and lifts up a knife, it has an antler handle and an engraved base, and then she puts it back into place so it’s in line with the others.

  ‘Have you ever said “touch wood”?’ she asks.

  I nod.

  ‘Have you ever wished someone a safe flight? Or avoided walking under a ladder?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well then,’ she says. ‘You take precautions just like we do.’

  She offers me sugar.

  ‘You need to ask about my family, for the book?’ she says.

  ‘If that’s okay?’

  She looks up to the lamp above the table, which seems to have dead grass strands hanging from it. She reaches up and touches the grass.

  ‘Precaution?’ I ask.

  She bangs the table with her knuckles three times. ‘Bindweed,’ she says. ‘For the family.’

  Of course it is.

  ‘Granny had a different life to us,’ she says. ‘That’s why she and mother have such violent frictions, you see. Granny never really had to worry.’

  ‘Worry?’

  ‘Back when Grandfather was in charge the factory did rather well. Monetarily, at least. The man did nothing for morale or reputation. We’ve been in decline ever since Grandfather.’ She pauses and looks at me. ‘Ever since he left us.’

  Karin looks up to the ceiling, mould spores spreading toward the centre from each corner.

  ‘You hear that?’ she asks.

  I can’t hear anything but I can feel vibrations.

  ‘What is it?’

  Karin smiles and she has Cici’s smile, all teeth.

  ‘Granny’s up there strutting about.’

  I take another sip of coffee.

  ‘She’s a character,’ I say.

  ‘Granny takes more precautions than all the rest of us put together and maybe that’s why she’s okay. She manages to live her own life up there, dressing her mannequins, carving faces from florist oasis, stitching her outfits, playing with her puppets. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  ‘It is,’ I say. ‘What’s that?’ I ask, pointing to the huge apothecary cabinet.

  ‘That’s everything you’d need to destroy this place,’ she says, staring at me. ‘And half of Gavrik, too.’

  25

  Karin leads me to the cabinet. The hem of her dress brushes across the floorboards, dust fluff sticking to her like a grey angora fringe.

  ‘It’s my
most precious precaution,’ she says. ‘My cabinet of life.’

  She opens one door and then the other and I can see her breathing quicken. Her cheeks flush. The cabinet is dark wood, mahogany maybe, and it must weigh as much as a hearse. Inside is a collection of drawers and shelves, all polished and well-kept, all labelled in fine Gothic print, all veneered with small tusk-like handles.

  ‘My grandfather started this collection. Many of the oldest items he brought back from the Levant.’

  I reckon David Holmqvist might just have enough material for a decent book.

  ‘What’s inside the drawers?’

  She opens a mid-size drawer on the bottom left and brings out a glass vial with a screw cap.

  ‘The venom of an inland Taipan,’ she says.

  ‘A snake?’

  ‘The most venomous snake. Fifty-thousand mice.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘This is enough to kill fifty-thousand mice, some say two-hundred-and-fifty thousand. Or maybe a hundred full-grown women.’

  I stare at it and wonder how thin the glass is and what would happen if she dropped it. Is it still potent?

  ‘Put it back,’ I say. ‘It’s making me nervous. What else is inside?’

  She places the vial back on its black velvet cushion and closes the drawer. She doesn’t pull the other drawers, just points to them.

  ‘Fauna on the top. There’s a pufferfish spleen and the dried head of a black mamba. A scorpion, or the remains of one, and then a jellyfish thread coiled like a spring. Next is a shrivelled little poison dart frog, hardly bigger than my thumbnail, and then the tentacle of a blue-ringed octopus. I have two marbled-cone snails, and the carapace, the beautiful fragile miniscule carapace, of a black widow.’

  ‘Amazing,’ I say, lost for better words.

  ‘Isn’t it? There’s a certain power holed up in this old cabinet; a certain force. Next row down are fungi specimens. I’m missing so many but I’ll tell you what I have. Okay . . .’ she points at the left box. ‘Death cap, obviously, then a destroying angel and an abrupt-bulbed Lepidella. Such a beauty.’ She smiles at me. ‘Then fool’s mushroom, ha, then an ivory funnel and an autumn skullcap and two deadly dapperlings, one found by me in Utgard forest when I was eleven-and-a-quarter-years old. I have a deadly parasol and that larger drawer at the end is stuffed full of men-on-horseback.’