Lelle turned his head and looked at the police officer. ‘Now’s your chance to get rid of me. One push and I’ll be nothing more than a bad memory.’
‘The thought had occurred to me, I can’t deny it.’
Hassan was the closest to a friend Lelle had these days, even though he was part of the local police force. It was an unlikely friendship born out of Lina’s disappearance.
Hassan stopped a few metres from the edge and put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the view. Lelle flicked his cigarette over the precipice and raised his head. Beyond the steep drop lay endless miles of black forest. Here and there the landscape was punctuated with rivers and areas left bare from felling. A few wind turbines crested a hill as a reminder of human progress and that nothing could remain untouched.
‘Well, here she is again,’ Hassan said. ‘Summer.’
‘Too bloody true.’
‘And you’ve started driving?’
‘I started back in May.’
‘You know what I think about that.’
Lelle smiled, turned his back on the precipice, reached out an arm and gave Hassan a pat on the shoulder. The dark uniform was hot in the sun.
‘At the risk of sounding disrespectful, I couldn’t give a shit what you think.’
Hassan grinned and ran his fingers through his curly hair. His neck muscles rippled above the unbuttoned shirt collar. He was the well-built kind, solid and impressive. Lelle felt puny by comparison. Used up.
‘I assume you have nothing new to offer?’
‘Not at the moment, but we’re hoping for something around the third anniversary. Someone might be brave enough to come forward.’
Lelle looked down at their shoes. Hassan’s shiny ones and his own, muddy and scuffed. ‘Anette has arranged a torchlit parade through the village.’
‘So I heard. That’s good. The last thing we want is for people to forget.’
‘I’m not much for people these days.’
The sun vanished behind a cloud and the air chilled instantly.
‘Talking about people,’ Hassan said. ‘Do you remember Torbjörn Fors?’
‘The guy who was getting the same bus as Lina that morning? How would I be able to forget that old devil?’
‘I saw him shopping in ICA the other day. With a woman.’
Lelle started coughing. He banged his fist on his chest and looked at Hassan dubiously. ‘You mean Torbjörn has met a woman after all these years? That’s hard to believe.’
‘I’m only telling you what I saw.’
‘Don’t say he’s imported some poor woman from Thailand?’
‘She’s from down south. And young, too. Considerably younger than him. Looked haggard, but couldn’t have been more than forty.’
‘Who would have thought it? How has the old fox managed that?’
‘No idea. And she wasn’t alone, either.’
‘What do you mean?’
Hassan’s jaw tightened. ‘She had a daughter with her.
A teenager.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I only wish I was.’
Silje’s croaky voice made her sound like someone very old or very sick. Meja watched her through narrowed eyes as she poured out the wine with an unsteady hand. The sight filled Meja’s chest with dread, making it hard to breathe. It wasn’t the first glass, because her eyelids were heavy and she slurred when she spoke. If Torbjörn noticed, he didn’t let on, not while Meja was there. He merely looked at her with his kindly eyes.
‘You’re out and about a lot, Meja. Have you made some friends in the village?’
Silje reached out her hand and stroked Meja’s hair. ‘Meja’s very independent. She’s not one for friends.’
‘I have met someone, actually. A guy.’
Silje slowly turned her head. There was a sudden glimmer in her dull eyes. ‘No! Who?’
‘He’s called Carl-Johan. We met by the lake.’
‘Carl-Johan. Is that his real name?’
Meja ignored her. She watched Torbjörn push a finger under his lip, dig out the pouch of snus and drop it on to his plate.
‘That’s not a name I recognize,’ he said. ‘Where’s he from?’
‘Svartliden.’
‘Svartliden!’ Dirty brown saliva flew over the plates. ‘You’re joking. Not Birger Brandt’s lad?’
Meja felt her heart start pounding. ‘Yeah.’
‘I can’t talk, seeing as folk think I’m the village idiot, but Birger and his wife? They’re in a class of their own.’
‘Why?’
Torbjörn’s lungs whistled as he breathed in. ‘They run some kind of hippie commune out there. Not that keen on modern technology, live like people did in the eighteen hundreds. Birger didn’t want his sons going to normal school and there was an almighty fuss, if I remember right. He wanted to home-school them on the farm, but the council was dead against it.’
‘Are they religious?’ Silje asked.
‘Who the hell knows? But it wouldn’t surprise me.’
Silje drained her glass and pointed it at Meja. ‘Why don’t you invite him over so we can have a look at him?’
‘Forget it.’
‘Come on, invite him here.’
Meja turned her eyes to the forest, where the sunlight streamed through the trees, its shafts illuminating clouds of dust and midges. She could see the glade where they had stood in the dawn light after Göran had dropped them off. The memory of his lips on hers almost made her feel giddy.
Lelle drove the Silver Road south, stopping to fill the car in Skellefteå, where a solitary night-worker stood behind the counter, tapping on his phone. An HGV driver, cap pulled low over his eyes and mouth full of snus, was standing by the coffee machine, filling two large mugs. Lelle bought a coffee and two packets of Marlboro Red from the preoccupied assistant. Beyond the harsh fluorescent lighting the night was wrapped in blue dusk that reminded Lelle of the sea. He got behind the wheel again, smoked a cigarette and tried to think of anything except the sea. But when he started the engine he knew it was too late and at the junction he steered left, away from the Silver Road. He knocked the ash clumsily out of the window and smelled the salt in the air as he drew closer. He drove until he saw the horizon and the sea spread out ahead of him. The sky glowed where the sun was beginning to break through from behind the clouds. He parked and set off walking along the stony edge of the bay until he reached the overgrown strip of beach where the cabin had been. Not a plank was left, but he could still make out the lines of the cellar under layers of dead vegetation. His feet stumbled and he dropped ash as he walked, feeling his breath catch and his heart lurch at the memories.
It had been his childhood home, the place where his dad had drunk himself to death and where Lelle had been left alone at night while his mother worked. He was only about seven or eight when he started draining the dregs his father left behind. He soon learned to taste the difference between weak and strong alcohol, between home-brewed vodka and the real thing. He wasn’t very old when he got drunk for the first time and woke with a pool of vomit beside his bed. He had no memory of throwing up. Naturally his mother noticed the smell of alcohol on him, but she never said a word, not to her son or her husband. Rule Number One: ignore the drinking.
Lina had never seen him drink and he was thankful for that. It was a part of him he had buried beside the sea. She had never seen the cabin where he grew up and she had never met her paternal grandparents. His father was dead by the time Lina was born, and Lelle had lied and said her grandmother was also dead. The questions started coming when Lina grew older, questions about his childhood and his parents, but he always avoided giving straight answers. That was the one thing he had promised himself, that his child would never be left alone. She would never come second to alcohol or anything else. He had sworn a solemn oath to himself, but still he had failed. He had failed miserably.
Lelle carried on to the strip of beach that had once been theirs, crouched down and searc
hed for flat stones he could skim on the water. He threw the stones skilfully and hard, as if it was the sea he was angry with. The very smell of salty air made him heave these days. It followed him into the car, which stank of the ocean when he climbed in. He sat for a long time, smoking and studying the weeds that formed a thick layer over his memories. The old familiar thirst grew in his throat, but his hands were steady on the wheel as he drove back north. Between Skellefteå and Glimmersträsk it started to rain, and on the approach to Arvidsjaur he was forced to stop twice, because the windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with the deluge. He smoked and listened to the rain beating against the metal. Lina had been wearing blue jeans and a white, long-sleeved top the day she disappeared, nothing that would survive this kind of downpour. He had obsessed about that the first summer, that she wasn’t wearing suitable clothes, that she would get cold or wet or bitten by mosquitoes. It was the natural elements that worried him. He didn’t want to think about the human factor.
A car pulled in behind him as he sat taking a break. Its fog lights shone through the rain and he couldn’t see the driver through the torrential downpour. He doubted the driver could see him, either. The rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was blowing hard against the wildlife fence. Lelle only had time to think about how grateful he was for this metal box he was sheltering in before there was a knock on the window. He jumped so violently his cigarette fell to the floor and burned a hole in the mat. The man outside had his hood up and the contours of his face were blurred. When Lelle wound down the window he saw it was an older man with sunken cheeks. He fumbled for the cigarette. The smell of burned plastic was gradually filling the small space.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you,’ said the man. ‘Have you got a mobile I can borrow? My battery’s died.’
Grey strands of hair were plastered to his skin and rain streamed down his eyebrows and the cleft under his nose. Lelle took a quick look at his mobile in the cup-holder.
‘You can sit in the car and call,’ he said and nodded towards the passenger door. ‘I don’t want my phone getting wet.’
The man hurried round and slid into the front seat. Water dripped from him and he steamed.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s good of you.’
Lelle stepped out of the car while the man tapped in the number. His legs had stiffened from all the sitting and he walked around to give them a stretch. He walked a lap around the man’s car and peered through the glistening windows, as casually as he could. The man had left his windscreen wipers on and they thrashed over the wet glass. The interior light was on and he could see a coffee cup in the holder. The back seat was covered with a black tarpaulin and diverse rubbish: sweet papers, fishing line, empty beer cans, a handsaw and a roll of gaffer tape. On the passenger seat was a scrap of white cloth, and through the mist he saw the outline of Lina’s face. Have you seen me? Ring 112. One of the many T-shirts ordered by Anette through the years. Had the man been there? Was he from Glimmersträsk?
His head throbbed as he went back to his car. The man gave him back the phone.
‘Thanks for letting me use it. I didn’t mean to send you outside in this weather.’
‘I needed to stretch my legs anyway.’
The man had a broken front tooth and his tongue showed through the gap when he smiled.
‘Blasted weather,’ he said. ‘I had to call my old lady to tell her where I was. She’ll hit the roof otherwise.’
‘Have you got far to go?’
‘No, no. I live just outside Hedberg.’
‘Drive carefully,’ Lelle said, drying his face on the arm of his jacket.
‘You too.’
The man got out and sprinted back to his car. Lelle locked the door behind him. He took his pistol out of the glove compartment and then entered the man’s number plate in his mobile, together with a description: Man, 50–60, average weight, broken front tooth. Hedberg?
The clock’s red lines indicated 4.30. Was his woman really sitting up waiting for him at this ungodly hour? It sounded unlikely to Lelle. He looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the man leaning back in his seat. It was impossible to see if his eyes were open or not, but his stillness indicated he was going to sit out the storm that was whipping up a curtain of rain between the two cars. Lelle fumbled with his phone. Hassan answered the call, despite the early hour.
‘What is it now?’
‘I’ve got a reg. number for you to check.’
Torbjörn insisted on making breakfast for her. As soon as Meja came downstairs his face lit up and he wanted her to sit at the old kitchen table. The radio was on in the background and he busied himself at the stove. In the beginning he had tried to persuade Silje to keep them company, but after a couple of fruitless attempts he had given up. Silje had never been a morning person. Meja couldn’t recall a single time they had eaten breakfast together.
Torbjörn made coffee in a brass coffee pot and laid out more food than either of them could eat: yoghurt, porridge, boiled eggs, bread, two kinds of cheese, ham, and some dark-looking meat that Meja turned down, but he insisted on offering her.
‘You must taste it! It’s smoked reindeer. You don’t have tasty things like this down south.’
She tore off a tiny piece and put it on her tongue, trying not to think where it came from. ‘It tastes like salty earth.’
That made him laugh. He had gaps between his teeth and food fastened in his moustache when he ate. But he didn’t worry her. There was something about the way his eyes slid past her, as if he wanted to see her, but not stare. As if he was concerned.
‘Your mother likes her sleep.’
‘She can sleep all day.’
‘Pity she misses breakfast. Best meal of the day, I always say.’
He was wearing a dirty grey string vest and gave off wafts of unwashed body when he moved. Meja wondered if Silje held her breath when they had sex. She shut her eyes and thought of the forest.
Torbjörn dried his hands on his trousers and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
‘My mother is grinning in her grave right now, I guarantee you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re sitting here. She was always nagging me to have children. More important than finding a wife, in her book. Someone to look after the land when you’re too old to do it yourself.’
Meja didn’t know what to say, so she stretched across the table for some reindeer meat. She put a slice on her bread and took a huge bite. She hoped it would make him happy. And sure enough, he smiled.
Torbjörn poured the remainder of the coffee in a flask and reached out for his ear defenders. Meja had no idea what kind of work he did, only that he spent his days in the forest wearing a green jacket with reinforced elbows and a hi-vis orange safety vest that flapped over his bulging stomach. Sometimes he brought his camera, telling her the names of the birds and flowers he hoped to catch, names that were wholly unfamiliar to her.
‘Remember there are bikes in the log shed if you get bored indoors.’
After Torbjörn left she opened Silje’s door a crack and was met by a sour odour of ashtrays and red wine. Silje was lying with her arms flung wide and her head hanging to one side, like Jesus on the Cross. Dead to the world. Her nipples were like bruises against the bloodless skin and Meja could see the ribs heaving as she breathed. It was always the breathing she wanted to check.
‘Are you awake?’
Meja walked over to the bed, slipped her hand under Silje’s back and turned her on to her side. Silje didn’t make a sound; there was no sign that she was even conscious. Meja pulled up her legs until she was in a foetal position and pushed her over the crumpled sheet until her head was close to the edge. It was safest that way. In case she needed to vomit in her sleep. Meja quietly left the room, searching her mind for an escape.
The sudden ring of the phone in the room made Lelle’s heart leap into his throat and his coffee slop on to the table. He would never get used to that sound. The p
iercing rings that could mean it was all over, that today was the day his life would fall apart.
‘I checked out the guy you met the other night, the one from Hedberg,’ said Hassan.
‘And?’
‘Looks like you can smell a villain. He’s called Roger Renlund, convicted of rape in ’75 and domestic violence a couple of times in the Eighties. Now living on a disability pension. Seems he inherited the family home in Hedberg after his parents died and he’s lived there alone since 2011.’
‘Alone? Are you sure?’
‘Well, he’s the only one registered at that address.’
‘He borrowed my phone to ring his old lady, or so he said. I checked the number and it’s for a care home in Arvidsjaur.’
‘Maybe she works there. Or perhaps he likes older women?’
Hassan had his mouth full of food while he was speaking. Lelle glanced at the clock: 12.05. Lunchtime for normal people.
‘Are you going to contact him?’
‘On what grounds? Because he’s got a T-shirt with Lina’s picture on it? Half of Norrland has got one of those T-shirts by now.’
Lelle’s fingers ached from gripping the receiver.
‘OK,’ said Lelle, bluntly. ‘I get it.’
‘Lelle,’ Hassan said, reprovingly. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, now.’
Lelle sat with the venetian blinds closed, studying the satellite view of Roger Renlund’s farm. It was in an isolated spot with thick forest to the rear and overgrown fields in front. Empty meadows with no sign of cattle or horses. There was a barn, three smaller sheds and a henhouse. Possibly an earth cellar in the right-hand corner of the plot, but it was hard to tell. The nearest farm lay five kilometres to the south. Apart from satellites way up in the sky, there was no way of seeing any of Roger Renlund’s land. Very practical, if you had something to hide.
Lelle didn’t want to dwell on that, but at the same time it was the only comfort he had. He refused to believe that Lina was dead. And he had said to Anette from the very beginning that someone had their daughter. Someone out there in the big wide world knew where she was, and he would find that someone if it was the last thing he did. That first summer he had knocked on the door of every lone man and village eccentric he knew and asked to have a look in their cellar and loft. He had been met with both profanities and invitations for coffee, but what remained with him was the loneliness, the fact that there was such loneliness everywhere. It corroded the region at the edges, spreading like a sickness among those who remained when all the others had moved away. And now he was one of them. One of the lonely people.
The Silver Road Page 6
