by Will Dean
This is the same. Right now.
Noora reads with one hand on her book. Her thumbnail isn’t painted but her fingernails are, some kind of French manicure, self-done.
I look down and up, eager not to scare her.
She grips her Big Mac with her right hand. Small slivers of iceberg lettuce fall out into the cardboard carton. She’s poised, her elbow pivoting on the Formica, her mouth dimpling on one side as she chews.
I sip my Coke.
My breathing isn’t normal. It’s shallow, laboured, awkward, stifled, hot.
Noora finishes her burger. I haven’t touched mine. Then she wipes her mouth with a napkin and looks around to me and licks the corner of her mouth and nods to the bench opposite her.
I point to my chest like ‘me?’ and she smiles properly and her dimple looks like a stitch pulled tight behind a piece of fine silk.
Oh God.
I scooch over to her table. Her hoodie is unbranded and it looks very soft, maybe fleece-lined.
‘I hate Valentine’s,’ she says.
‘Me too.’
‘Card shops and candy companies,’ she says. ‘It’s not made for people.’
I nod and unbox my burger and for the first time in my life I’m conscious of how I’m going to eat this thing right in front of her. It’s grown in my hands to the size of a family sponge-cake, and now the middle layer is pushing out from its rightful position, threatening the integrity of the entire structure. I put it down.
‘Not hungry?’ she asks.
‘Not really.’
‘You missed your leaving drinks,’ she says.
Oh my God, she was there? She came?
‘You were there?’ I say. ‘You came?’
Noora nods her head and a black hair thick enough for me to see floats down and rests on her shoulder, one half hanging down near her collarbone, the other half hovering in mid-air above her hood. ‘I was in Ronnie’s bar with Thord. He fills me in on faces in the town, that sort of thing. Big group in there for you, they got quite worried, even asked us if there’d been any emergency calls or any more Ferryman sightings.’
‘I was stuck in the blizzard, that’s all.’
She nods. ‘I heard. Bloody Värmland weather.’
‘Have there been sightings?’ I ask.
‘Oh, yeah. I estimate there’s about thirty Ferrymen psychopath dog-owners in town according to what I’ve heard today. We had one grizzly dude tell us it’ll be a foreign dog with rabies that killed Gunnarsson, he told us it’s a common thing in foreign countries, and now it’s here in Sweden and we’ll need to do a cull. He said he’d help. And we’ve had lots of people reporting weird snow skulls all over, and seeing dark 4x4s cos there’s plenty here in Gavrik.’
I nod.
‘When are you leaving?’ she says.
‘Leaving?’ I say, looking at the door.
‘When are you leaving town?’
Never, I am never leaving. Ever. How come I meet Noora now? When I’m on my way out?
‘Monday.’
She nods and in her eyes, in the colour around her pupil and the way her lids close, I detect some faint regret or some ‘what might have been’. But it’s almost definitely just me imagining it.
‘My new paper prints every other Monday so they want me to start on a Tuesday. Break me in gentle.’
Noora looks at her cup and says, ‘Why doesn’t McDonald’s sell liquor, eh? They’d triple their Nordic profits in year one.’
I reach into my coat pocket and pull out my plastic Coke bottle.
She narrows her eyes.
‘I’m a police officer,’ she says. ‘I could lock you up.’
I pour rum into her half-empty Coke cup and then I fill mine. She raises her cardboard cup and smiles that one-dimple smile and we chink cups except they’re cardboard so the chinking is silent, more of a denting really.
We drink.
Her shoulders slump and she looks down into her cup and mouths ‘thank you’ to me. She hasn’t asked about my hearing aids yet and I could kiss her for that. We’re just two women on a non-date in McDonald’s on February 14th.
‘Have you seen Henrik Hellbom in the police station much?’ I ask.
‘Botoxed lawyer?’
I nod.
‘Few times. Thord reckons he’s selling the Chief a timeshare or something. Lots of paperwork. Heard the Chief talk about a “failsafe investment” – like such a thing ever exists. What is it with men and money?’
I think back to the speedboat brochures. The cruise catalogues. Is Hellbom offering Chief Björn a piece of the Grimberg action in return for a smooth sale? Does the Chief have that kind of influence?
‘Talk of an internal investigation,’ she says. ‘This isn’t for your paper. I don’t know anything for sure. But talk of protocols not followed after Grimberg’s suicide.’
‘Police protocols?’ I say, my voice low.
‘Coroner,’ she whispers. ‘He’s connected to the Grimbergs somehow and they asked for it to be done double-quick so they could bury Gustav. Might be an internal investigation.’
‘How did—’
She cuts me off. ‘I can’t say more. Nothing concrete yet anyway.’ She dabs her mouth with a paper napkin and changes the subject. ‘Where are you moving to? Going far?’
I eat a few fries, relaxing now with the rum numbing my tongue.
‘Just outside Malmö. Small town, but I can get to the big city in twenty minutes.’
‘Well, if you get stuck you can always give me a call and I’ll tell you my story. Might need to clear it with the Chief first, but should be okay?’
‘Your story?’
‘Parents both Iraqi medics. Mum was a cardiologist and now she’s a cleaner. She’s a cardiologist cleaner. Dad works in an out-of-town DIY store. I joined the police as soon as I could and started training with dogs but what I really wanted was to help with gang problems and minority hate-crimes. And they sent me to Gavrik, where everyone’s lily white and there is no crime.’
‘We had some crime this week.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ she says, her eyes tired.
‘And last year,’ I say.
‘I heard. Björn says you shouldn’t have got involved, should have left the Medusa case to the professionals.’
I let my eyes roll up in their sockets.
‘Thord thinks you did great, though. He’s got a soft spot for you.’
‘He’s alright,’ I say.
‘He’s out right now cautioning a woman about her homebrew. She’s built a distillery in her bathroom. Makes 90% proof vodka and sells it to the locals in rinsed-out wine boxes. Slices a tiny hole in the bags, she does. Fills them with rocket fuel and then seals them back up. Thord thinks the woman could blow up half her street.’
I remember the firefighter’s house. And his niece, Red, the stamper.
Noora sips her drink. ‘You really think the old Grimberg lady got pushed down the factory stairs?’
I shrug and shake the remaining fries from the cardboard pouch onto the tray. ‘No idea. She’s old but she’s as sharp as a hypodermic needle. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’
‘Björn thinks the old Grimberg woman could just as well be the Ferryman,’ she says.
‘Björn’s an asshole.’
She scrunches her chin into her chest and giggles. Her giggles turn into a cough and she drinks more rum and Coke to stop it.
‘No comment,’ she says.
‘Are you close to making arrests?’ I ask. ‘What was that second lead?
She shakes her head like ‘sorry I can’t go there’ and then she changes the subject and says, ‘Chief reckons Ludvig Grimberg had some problems years back. Chief met with him in the factory offices, something about an anonymous letter trying to extort cash. Some old family secret, a big scandal they wanted to keep quiet.’
‘They ever find out who was behind the letter?’
She shakes her head.
I lean in close and ask, �
��Off the record, are you pursuing any other lines of enquiry, anything?’
She leans in as well. ‘There is one thing,’ she says. ‘I’m only mentioning it cos you might help, quid pro quo.’
I move in even closer.
‘Gunnarsson was a bully back in his schooldays,’ she whispers, our faces so close together I could kiss her. ‘He was notorious. We’re looking at kids from his school, anyone his age or younger, anyone he targeted back then. Could be a motive.’
‘Any names come up yet?’ I say.
‘Nope,’ she says. ‘We identified two bullied kids so far: one taxi driver and one car salesman, but they were both at work the day of the murder.’
‘Revenge?’ I say.
She stands up and shrugs.
‘You leaving already?’ I ask.
‘Aren’t you?’
We both place our detritus in the appropriate bins and holes and gaps in the wall like responsible Swedes, and then we walk outside. It’s swine cold now, full-on wild-hog swine cold, with ice crystals glistening like fake diamonds, and the snow mountains casting shadows away from the white-light street lamps.
‘Ronnie’s?’ I say.
‘Too busy,’ says Noora.
‘Cinema’s already locked-up. They’ll be halfway through Dirty Dancing by now. Hotel has no bar and the restaurant’s fully-booked. There’s just Ronnie’s.’
‘I have an hour or two before I can go back to my apartment,’ she says. ‘My flatmate’s got a date.’
‘Ah,’ I say.
‘We could go for a drive in your . . .’ she looks at the Tacoma, ‘Limo?’
‘You want to come to my place for another rum and Coke?’ I say. ‘My flatmate, well, she’s not my flatmate, I’m just crashing at hers until I leave, she’ll be back in a few hours but we could drink there?’
She looks at me, really looks at me, and I’m not so cold anymore. It’s maybe minus twenty and my scarf isn’t around my face because I’d look stupid and I’m not cold.
We drive to Tam’s and park and go up without really saying much to each other. She’s behind me as I walk and I feel her gaze bore into me and warm me. We go in.
‘Lovely place,’ says Noora. ‘You picked the right flat to crash.’
I light the log burner. It smokes for a while before the column of cold air in the chimney clears and the fire gets going. Dad told me about this before his car got hit by an elk. He told me how the column of heavy frozen chimney air needs to shift before the fire can thrive and the smoke can escape. I close the blackened glass doors and think of Dad’s face and then I mix us both a drink.
Noora strokes my hand. She says, ‘New beginnings.’ Then she clinks my glass, they actually clink this time, and I realise I’ve asked her nothing about her new life here.
‘How are you settling in?’
She scrunches her eyes tight and falls back into the deep sofa and pulls a cushion onto her lap and then drags a blanket up close by her side.
‘It was tough to arrive in late January but I’m figuring things out. It’s a weird little town but I’m looking forward to summer.’
‘It’s just as weird in summer,’ I say.
She smiles. ‘Please don’t say that. I’d rather you just lie.’
I sit down next to her and pull another blanket over my knees. It’s soft and pale blue and it has tassels all along each edge. We sit and watch the fire, our knees almost touching. The yellow reflects around the room and the fire softens and warms the white walls.
‘Nice fire,’ says Noora.
‘It’s not bad,’ I say, and then she shuffles closer to me so our calves touch under the blankets. I daren’t move. I thought my senses were heightened earlier but now I can hear her every breath and I can feel it on my skin. I can smell her. The pressure of her leg against mine, the light pressure, I’m consciously thinking of it, her skin, drinking it all in, her leg against my leg, her knee on my calf.
I don’t move a millimetre.
Noora reaches out and leans her hand against a cushion. I can see soft down on her cheeks, like the fluff of a newborn chick, the slightest fuzz. She smells good. Her breath is rum and sugar and it’s hot on my neck. She moves closer. She bends down and rests her head on my shoulder. Is this the move of a friend or a lover? Her arm’s at my back. We’re slowly tangling together like climbing roses. But I’m much slower. I am terrified to jinx this probably imagined thing. She’s just cold. Or tired. I move my chin and rest it softly in her hair and the scent is dizzying. The fire flickers in the corner. I move my hand in tiny increments so it rests on her shoulder. I look at my fingers. I make my breathing slow to match hers. We rise and fall in the fire warmth, the blankets covering us, me inhaling her shampoo and her skin and all of her.
36
The front door bangs open. I rub my eyes and I’m hot, Noora wrapped around me, the blankets still on top of us, the fire glowing faintly in the corner of the room.
Tammy walks inside.
She looks tired and cold; big blue Ikea bags full of Tupperware boxes hanging from her hands. When she sees I’m not alone on the sofa she looks at me and her face hardens. In the dull light I can make out her molars grinding, that telltale bump on the side of her face enlarging and contracting, her eyes on me. She doesn’t even look at Noora.
I put my finger to my lip. ‘She’s asleep,’ I whisper.
Tammy walks through to her kitchen. I can hear her putting her chef knives away and she isn’t being too quiet about it. The fridge door slams and then a few minutes later I hear the bathroom door slam.
Noora moves, stretching like a sun-kissed cat on a warm rock. She has a cluster of freckles on her cheek like some recently discovered distant galaxy. She sits up and strokes my hair.
‘What time is it?’ she says.
‘Midnight.’
She fixes her clothes. I feel centred and good but I also feel like everything’s at risk.
‘You leaving?’ I ask.
‘I have to.’
I sort my clothes out and throw off the blankets and we stand there near the front door looking at each other, dishevelled, smiling like idiots, our fingers entwined.
‘Happy non-Valentine’s,’ I say.
‘That was yesterday,’ she says.
I kiss her and she pushes her lips to mine. Our fingers stay meshed, tightening, squeezing, stroking. I feel a glance of her tongue and then she walks out the door.
When I wake up at seven, Tammy’s already left for the day and the bottles have been tidied away. I shower. My skin’s a hundred times more sensitive than before, every touch noticeable and alive and electrified. I don’t look or feel hungover. But I am ravenous-hungry.
Bacon and scrambled eggs. I even use Tammy’s chives and slice them finely with her Japanese knife into tiny green rings. I can’t cook for shit but this is delicious. I wash up and head down to the truck.
The beer can from ICA has exploded. Not exploded really, more burst in slow motion and then frozen into some weird misshapen light-brown ice sculpture. It looks like the can has fallen asleep and spewed up its guts in the middle of the night; like it choked on its own vomit and swallowed its own tongue and then quietly froze to death.
I walk into the office. The door tinkles and Lena’s at her desk but nobody else is here. Lars doesn’t come in on Saturdays and Nils has booked off a four-day weekend to ice-fish for perch in some lake I’ve never heard of. Carve a hole in the ice, drop a line, sit for seven hours, pull out a fish the size of a roll-on deodorant that will for sure 100% guaranteed taste of mud. I don’t get it.
I leave the beer can in the sink to defrost and melt away.
‘You want coffee?’ I ask Lena through her door gap.
No answer.
I step inside.
‘I don’t ask much of you, Tuva.’ She pauses and looks at me. Right at me. ‘But I do ask that you do your job the best you can.’
I’m itchy in my jeans and my hands are sticky with cold beer.
; ‘I know.’
‘And the best you can do is better than the best most people can do, you understand?’
I nod. Can she smell the beer?
‘Your last paper was your weakest. You filed most of your copy late and I suspect you prioritised your ghostwriter assignment because he pays you more than I do.’ I try to answer but she holds up her hand. ‘This,’ she holds up the freshly-printed copy of the Posten, today’s copy. ‘This isn’t worthy of your name.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, the words catching in my throat.
She sighs out of her nose.
‘Sit down,’ she says.
I feel like crying but I don’t. ‘There’s one thing I might be able to do.’
She narrows her eyes.
‘Let me write you a story, free of charge, from down south. Maybe next week or next month, whatever you think. I’ll write a piece comparing the two places, something the Gavrik people would be interested in, an insight into down there from the perspective of up here.’
She scratches the groove above her top lip, thinking it over.
‘You’ll need to clear it with your management.’
‘I will.’
We drink together in her office, something I’ve never really done, and I feel like I might just be able to salvage my relationship with Lena. She tells me how Johan, her hydro-electric-engineer husband, the guy from Toytown she met in the US, the guy she left all that for, she tells me how he cooked her elk loin and lingonberries last night, and then they watched Predator together because that’s their movie.
‘Predator?’ I say.
She shrugs.
So I tell her about my date. Lena listens but it’s like a gap has grown between us. I don’t mention that my date was with a police officer, or that she’s a she, or that it was a non-date in McDonald’s, but she knows me well enough to fill in the blanks. Lena raises her coffee mug.
