Red Snow

by Will Dean

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

  ‘I’m deaf, you see.’ I point to my hearing aid. ‘Want to make sure I don’t mishear you.’

  ‘You ain’t really deaf. You can hear me speaking.’

  I point to my aids again. ‘Not without these I can’t.’

  ‘You’re hard of hearing is all, same as my wife was before she passed.’ He raises his voice. ‘It’s called hard of hearing.’

  I clench my teeth.

  ‘What happened that night, Mr Andersson?’

  ‘My crash?’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, I was heading back from Munkfors, was supposed to have some kid with me asking questions but she cancelled apparently, too busy smoking the weed drugs most likely, and it was night-time you see, and my night vision isn’t as good as it used to be, I’ll be honest about that, and I was quite tired, I’m fifty-eight next winter, so I was driving, minding my own business, I told the police all this already, mind, so I’ll tell you what I told them, I was driving at a decent speed, and . . .’

  I nod, some desperate plea for him to get to the point.

  ‘And it wasn’t that cold, I reckon minus twelve or so, long-john weather, not like today, I can see the thaw out my window, all them dead bushes out there, isn’t much of a view is it? Anyway, like I was saying, I was driving empty, end of my shift, and there wasn’t no warning or nothing, well there wouldn’t be on our trucks, you seen ’em, have you?’

  ‘Your trucks?’

  He nods and takes a sip of water from the plastic cup on his table.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘They’re quite . . . vintage, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, you could say that. I mean they look nice and everything, all part of the Grimberg brand, but they’re not much fun driving in February, roll on spring, that’s what I say.’

  ‘But the crash, what actually happened?’

  He looks over to ventilator guy. ‘Policeman he is. Retired. Robocop I call him.’

  I almost laugh but thank God I hold it in.

  ‘The crash,’ I say. ‘When you came off the road?’

  ‘My brakes were working okay that day, maybe a little unresponsive on the country roads but I was used to that, some of the trucks have worse brakes, they all got personalities you know, I drive number one but we got twelve trucks these days, an even dozen.’

  ‘And they failed?’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘The brakes.’

  ‘They sure did, didn’t they? I braked going into a bend and maybe I was doing forty, something like that, maybe fifty, no faster, mind, I told the police all this, and nothing. It was over in a flash. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes or no white light welcoming me to St Peter’s Gates or nothing like that. I just crashed and it all went black. Then I woke up here.’

  He touches his bandaged forehead.

  ‘What do you think caused it?’

  ‘The brakes, you mean?’

  I nod and nudge the Dictaphone closer to him.

  ‘People reckon it might be rats or critters, it wouldn’t be the first time, damn janitor don’t do his job properly, the lazy old swine. Too busy daydreaming about moving to Spain or Thailand or someplace. He’s obsessed with hot countries and he thinks he’s in charge of the Grimbergs – well, he ain’t.’ He sniffs and takes a sip of water. ‘He’s in worse shape than me, you know that? Desperate to take all his grandkiddies away on a trip of a lifetime, I heard the lads laughing about it, reckons he’s saving up for one last big holiday with his grandkiddies before . . .’ He drags his finger across his neck. ‘Anyways, you know them old root barns in the yard, well they got no roots in ’em anymore, they import it all refined now, but they still store waste product in them barns. If you go there you’ll see big containers packed full of old sugar residue and them rats feast off it like you wouldn’t believe. I reckon sometimes they go after our brake lines.’

  ‘Maybe you need an exterminator?’

  He looks confused.

  ‘Someone to kill the rats.’

  ‘I got two rifles and one air rifle and I offered about ten-thousand times; big nest it is, but they want that old tomcat to fix them. Well, he was quite handy back in the day, but now I reckon the rats beat him up, you seen the state of him, he looks worse than Lieutenant Robocop over there.’

  ‘Can I ask you some general questions about the factory and the town?’

  ‘Sweetheart, you came all the way down here to visit me, you can ask me anything you like.’

  I smile and point to the water jug and he shakes his head.

  ‘Did you know Mr Grimberg?’

  ‘You mean Ludvig’s boy, Gustav, the one that fell?’

  Fell?

  I nod.

  ‘Not very well I must admit, but I spoke to him a few times. He always looked so, I don’t know how to put it, so tired. Pale and skinny like he was worn out before he even got started. Rumour is that he was caught with a married woman over in Utgard forest a few years back, some cab-driver’s wife, but you know how people talk,’ he makes his hand resemble a mouth opening and closing. ‘His father was much more of a forceful fella, all deep voice and no nonsense despite his hunchback.’

  ‘You must have been shocked when he jumped from the chimney.’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s in the bloodline, Moa, just like that bent spine all the Grimbergs get. Well, old folks, older folk than me, they’ll tell you Ludvig died of the septicaemia or too much pain medicine, or whatever they say, but he poisoned himself with the rat poison and then walked off to die. Terrible back pain, you see. He was a tyrant and most folk said good riddance even if they didn’t say it out loud.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  He taps his nose like now it’s our secret.

  ‘This is all on the record, Mr Andersson, that’s alright isn’t it?’

  ‘Good that it’s all being recorded, you can hear me okay? You want me to speak up?’ he points to Ventilator Guy. ‘He won’t mind.’

  ‘Did you know Per Gunnarsson?’

  He wrinkles his nose.

  ‘Kept himself to himself. Dreadful bully in his schooldays and nobody ever forgets a bully. Not many friends, young Gunnarsson. Terrorised half the town back in the day, had a thing for putting his fags out on other kids, almost forced my wife’s nephew to leave Gavrik town altogether.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ I ask.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your wife’s nephew.’

  ‘Hellbom, he’s a lawyer now. Might end up a bigshot judge here in Karlstad city, if he plays his cards right. Reckons all that bullying by Gunnarsson made him a fighter, you know, in the courts.’

  I nod.

  ‘Do you know the other Grimbergs?’

  ‘Madame Cecilia, that’s what we all call her, she’s a strange one. People reckon she likes controlling events from up in her attics but I don’t know, folk love to gossip, well they ain’t got nothing better to do have they. She lives in her own little world that one with all her jewels and her puppets. She made them herself, you know, some of them modelled on local people so they say. But she’s mad as an old stick, has been ever since her best friends died in the reservoir accident back in the seventies.’

  ‘Her best friends?’ I say. Why didn’t Cici tell me that in her attic?

  He nods. ‘Madame Cecilia was seen chatting to the couple that very morning. People used to say she talked them into it, pushed them into hiding in that bed together all weighed down, but nobody knows for sure. And most people from back then are either dead or else they’re too potty to remember, my brother included.’

  ‘Tell me more about Cecilia,’ I say.

  ‘Ludvig used to dote on her. Course, he used to dote on lots of women.’

  ‘He was a bit of a player?’

  ‘Fathered more than a dozen bastards, that’s what they say. His family tree would look like half a forest, if you know what I mean. Got ’em scattered
all over Gavrik, there’s Grimberg kids running around; most of ’em probably work in the factory these days what with them being the biggest work place in town.’

  He’s in full flow now and I’m silently hoping no nurse steps through the door.

  ‘Ludvig was planning on running off with a stamper young enough to be his own daughter. Like I said, it’s in the bloodline. But he backed out last minute. Broke her heart and Madame Cecilia’s heart and almost split the family down the middle.’

  This is the reality of small-town life. Pretty much everyone has some kind of history with everyone else. I gesture for him to keep talking.

  ‘He’d have hated all this, would Ludvig. He’d turn in his grave with a non-blood Grimberg running the factory, I mean . . .’ He sucks air through his teeth. ‘A woman. Ludvig would not have liked that one bit.’

  ‘You mean Anna-Britta, Gustav’s wife?’

  ‘That’s it. She used to be together with Hellbom back in high school. Sweethearts they was. Gustav stole her away what with his fortune and all that. Hellbom, my wife’s nephew he is, well he didn’t have much money back then. Not like today. I ain’t said much to Anna-Britta face-to-face but she seems bright enough. Not like that black one.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Not like that, I ain’t racist, I been to Egypt. No, I mean she wears black, she’s one of them devil-worshipping atheists, you know the ones.’

  ‘Karin, the daughter?’

  ‘Karin, that’s it, my idiot brother dotes on her but I can’t think why. Killed a whole family of hedgehogs back when she was a tiddler. Took them out one by one. They covered it up as a bonfire accident at the lake house so as not to get problems with the school.’ He looks at me. ‘She’s one of them Gothic people.’

  ‘So?’ I say.

  He frowns at me and I hold in my words because I need to find out more.

  ‘Do you think she’s dangerous?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ve had two operations and got two more to go,’ he says.

  ‘Is Karin dangerous?’ I ask again.

  ‘She’s dressed in black all the time, that’s all I know. Takes after her old man, rest his soul. Anxious people, you know, nervous. On edge. I remember she got in trouble at school for controlling the other kiddies. Maybe she got that from her granny, who knows? Manipulating them to do what she wanted, just like she did with her old dad, may he rest in peace. I heard young Karin was calling up Gustav on his mobile phone twenty times a day before he jumped off that chimney. Ain’t normal. Whereas her brother was a sweet kid, he used to love our vans, it was the same fleet back when he was alive, he used to come out with his little model trucks and want to sit in our cabs and turn our steering wheels. He was a good little lad was Ludo.’

  ‘What did he die from?’ I ask.

  ‘The masts,’ he says. ‘It was the phone masts that killed Ludo.’

  ‘Masts?’

  An orderly steps inside with a stainless steel trolley full of drink cartons and jugs of water and then a nurse follows him in.

  ‘Time for your wash and change, Mr Andersson,’ says the nurse in a rushed but kind tone. ‘Behind schedule today.’

  ‘It’s my bag that needs changing,’ he tells her. ‘Full to bursting it is.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I say, slipping my Dictaphone into my bag. ‘What kind of masts were you talking about?’

  The nurse looks agitated.

  ‘Mobile telephone masts,’ he says. ‘Up the chimneys.’

  Nurse looks like she might throw me out of the window any second.

  ‘Thanks for talking with me, Mr Andersson.’

  He looks over to ventilator guy, then back to me.

  ‘Safe drive.’

  27

  I have an ache to visit Mum and Dad so I head to the cemetery, the small one near the out-of-town DIY stores.

  There are no other cars at the graveyard. The ground snow has thawed because it’s a good five degrees warmer here than it is in Gavrik. The Karlstad daffodils burst up a fortnight before ours do. Plastic watering cans hang from hooks and a brown compost bin sits with its lid open like some stout lonely creature waiting for its snack.

  The plots are well-tended but it’s February so nothing looks good. I pass old graves, overgrown with weeds and long grass, and newer graves, all black sparkly marble and gold script. I skirt around the newest graves, the ones with gravel mounds still waiting to settle. I can’t look at them straight on. It’s too much. I can walk over ancient graves and old graves but it’s not right to step on a fresh mound, it’s just not.

  Mum and Dad up ahead, side-by-side. A space next to Dad for yours truly. That’ll be it, the end of the line, the original trio. Mum’s relatives are buried someplace up north near Umea and Dad’s parents are in Stockholm.

  I approach them.

  Dad’s side is clear and level: dead yellow grass and a candleholder standing empty at an angle. June 25th, that awful day, the worst day of my entire life, is carved into granite forever. Mum’s side is a mound. One of the freshest here. The awful swollen shape of it. A hill of pink-grey gravel, coffin-shaped, obviously. It’s two metres long and eighty centimetres wide and it’s almost as if she’s pushing up from below.

  It’s warm down there. I researched it. When I saw that weird propane-heater tank sitting on Gustav Grimberg’s plot I went back and looked it up. The top thirty centimetres or so freezes solid in winter, but underneath that things are always warm.

  Dad’s stone looks almost new and Mum’s is gleaming. Hers has an inscription on it, a few words she gave to her lawyer years ago, the same words I spoke out loud at the funeral and that I will not read again now I’m facing them on her headstone. I can’t. I focus on Dad instead. I consider taking a flickering candle from some ancient nearby grave, some person who died in the fifties maybe, someone who won’t really miss it now, who’s settled right in, right down, a level grave.

  This family, this oh-so-small nuclear family, one member still breathing, is a stark contrast to the Grimbergs. Although I suppose they’re only three now. But they’re not. Because they’re the whole town, an entire workforce, a deep lineage of industrial nobility. And we’re just three: Mum and Dad down there, and me up here.

  There are flowers on the next grave: a pack of Q8 carnations still in their cellophane, wilted from the bitter cold, frost glazing their petals like crystallised sugar. I apologise to Mum and Dad in my head for not bringing them anything, but then I almost laugh because they wouldn’t care, they don’t care. I start to imagine Mum down there, her hair still growing, her nails still growing, and I have to stop myself. When I see Mum’s stone I think of the janitor’s brother lying in hospital, grateful for me visiting him even though I was just doing my job, and I feel a concrete weight in my belly for not seeing Mum more when she was still around. I look at her stone and silently apologise and tears push from behind my eyes. They come much easier to me since the funeral. I’m so sorry, Mum.

  When I’m back in the truck I automatically check for the temperature but there’s no reading on the dash of the Shitmobile and that makes me feel like a sailor without a compass. Thermometers are the navigation aids which help guide cold country people through the whiteness to the spring; the tiny incremental changes offering hope when hope is thin on the ground.

  Missed call from Holmqvist on my phone so I sync with my hearing aid and drive off to join the motorway.

  ‘Yes?’ he says.

  ‘David, I missed a call from you.’

  ‘So you did. Tuva, we need to rendezvous today or tomorrow to look through your notes. I need to know what you’re including about the Ferryman so I can integrate it into the existing narrative. Can you make this evening?’

  It’s already dark and I’m tired and I can almost taste the warmth of rum on my tongue.

  ‘How long will it take?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, two hours, maybe more.’

  ‘Tomorrow night okay? I have plans tonight.’

  Write up my notes, the
n drink till the world fades.

  ‘Very well. I could invite you for dinner, perhaps. Tomorrow at seven sharp?’

  ‘Could we do six? I have my leaving drinks tomorrow at eight.’

  ‘Six? For dinner? Well, I suppose I could dine like a savage for the sake of a non-fiction bestseller.’

  ‘Can I bring anything?’ I ask.

  ‘A comprehensive and well-organised set of printed notes, double-spaced in Times New Roman, size fourteen or twelve if you must.’

  The air’s moist with sleet. As I approach Gavrik the factory chimneys dominate the skyline like the towers of some permafrost Soviet research-facility deep in the Urals. I pass ICA Maxi and look for the mobile-phone masts Andersson referred to, but I can’t see detail from this distance. I wonder if Cici’s spying back at me through her opera glasses. I wonder if the Ferryman’s spying on her spying on me.

  At five I say goodbye to Lena who’s rearranging my back-page sports stories using her fancy editor software. I’ve arranged to meet Tam at McDonald’s for a nugget beast-feast at seven so I drive to her place for a quick shower. Tam has a thing for scented candles. I count five. There are cushions piled on top of cushions and the fire’s set for someone to light it. The fridge is full of Tupperware boxes with lock-on lids and her cupboards and knives are so clean I’m scared to touch them.

  I shower and drink a rum and Coke and then roll up on the sofa with my knees under my chin. My aids are looking back at me from the table and I suppose I could light a small fire, one that would last an hour or so, just burn one log? I’ve never had my own fireplace so I leave it. I try to imagine life near Malmö, and promise myself to live a little more like Tammy if I can.

  I drive out to McDonald’s and park in my usual space, nice and broad, no reversing required to drive out afterwards. Ninety per cent of February diners choose drive-thru so there are plenty of spaces.

  I order a coffee just to keep me going until Tam gets here. The place is pretty empty: one old, hunched guy with a heavy stick drinking something hot, two tired-looking parents with a kid sleeping in its fleece-lined buggy, and a table of teenagers, all of them wearing those headphones that look like DJ headphones with the wire hanging out of one end.