‘Who the fuck are you, anyway?’ he said. ‘Thinking you can go around shooting your mouth off about us.’
He reached round Lelle, found his back pocket and took out the wallet. He pulled out Lelle’s driving licence and studied it. Lelle let him, the keys still tight in his hand.
‘Lennart Gustafsson.’ Jonas looked up from the driving licence and stared at Lelle. ‘Sure you’re not a cop?’
‘I’m not from the police. And I couldn’t give a damn what you’re doing. I’m here because I’ve heard you know something about my daughter who disappeared.’
‘We don’t know nothing about your daughter.’
Lelle took the wallet and the driving licence from him, found the photograph of Lina and held it up like a shield in front of him.
‘This is Lina.’ His voice shook. ‘My daughter. It’s three years since she was taken from me – three years! – and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to find out what happened to her. Do you understand?’
They chewed their lips, both of them, and swayed from side to side as they thought it over.
‘Sounds fucking tragic,’ said Jonas. ‘But we had nothing to do with it.’
‘Maybe not, but you’ve been going around saying you know who did.’
The brothers exchanged a quick look. ‘We only heard rumours, like everyone else.’
‘What rumours?’
‘There’s been a lot of talk over the years.’
‘Talk about what?’
Jonas turned his face to the sky and sighed. ‘Listen mate, I don’t want to pour salt on your wounds, but your daughter was hanging out with a right dickhead.’
‘By that you mean Mikael Varg?’
‘Could be. Everyone calls him the Wolf.’
‘And what makes him a dickhead?’
‘He used to buy booze from us. And paid well, to start with. Until his girlfriend disappears, that is. Then he totally loses the plot. Calls every night, wants to buy on credit. Wants other shit, too. You know, tablets and stuff. Parties more than he can afford to. We don’t like that kind of thing.’
Lelle thought of Mikael Varg, the way he had staggered over the grass and made an air-pistol gesture with his fingers, and his break-in during the torchlit procession. How he had cried in Lelle’s kitchen. A feeling of nausea took hold.
Jonas was standing in front of him, edgily making a roll-up. ‘So we pay him a visit to demand the money. That’s when he loses it. Starts raving on about what he did.’
‘Did what?’
‘You know. Kill her.’
Lelle leaned back against the trunk of the tree. His legs felt unsure beneath him. Jonas sounded so nonchalant, as if he were talking about the weather. The other lad stood like a dumb shadow beside him, not looking in Lelle’s direction.
‘Can you tell me exactly what he said?’
‘He says they had this fight and he got mad. Got rid of the body. No one will ever find her.’
Lelle sank to his knees on the wet ground. The words echoed in his head and he felt the need to vomit. He leaned over and retched into the moss, but nothing came up. When he recovered, he looked up at the brothers.
‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’ he asked.
They both snorted. ‘We don’t talk to the cops if we can help it.’
‘But this isn’t about you selling your fucking illegal alcohol! It’s about the disappearance of a seventeen-year-old girl. If it’s true Varg admitted doing it, this changes everything!’
Lelle hauled himself up from the ground and faced the brothers. The rage made him feel straighter, somehow. Taller. There was no time for thinking. He stood so close he could feel Jonas’s breath on his face. They glared at each other in a silent battle of wills. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other lad moving in, felt his own hands clench into fists. They were two to one, but that didn’t scare him.
‘You gutless wankers,’ he said. ‘You care more about saving your own skin than a young girl’s life.’
Jonas cried out and snatched hold of his jacket with both hands, pulling him close. Lelle tried to twist himself free, but glimpsed the flash of a knife in the other lad’s hand. He felt the cold steel against his neck.
‘Listen up carefully,’ Jonas said. ‘You’re angry, I get that. If I had a missing daughter I’d be doing whatever I fucking could to find who did it. But we’ve done nothing and I don’t appreciate your attitude.’
‘Don’t do anything you’ll regret,’ said Lelle.
Jonas gave Lelle a long look before gesturing to his brother to put down the knife. Then he shoved Lelle away from him, hard, making him fall to the ground. The other lad spat at him.
‘Find Varg instead and take your anger out on him.’
Lelle lay still and watched them disappear into the shadows. Their shoes squelched as they started running. He didn’t bother following them, there was no point.
His arms started shaking first, then the rest of his body. His limbs were heavy and unresponsive. He dug his hands into the forest floor, sank deeper into the carpet of moss, and let himself be embraced by the cold, damp earth. He didn’t hear his own chattering teeth, only the whispering of the pines and the words that still resounded in his head. Got rid of the body. No one will ever find her.
Meja had never lived with a real family before and she found herself watching them closely, trying to learn their ways. There was no doubt Birger was in charge. As soon as he stepped into a room everybody suddenly found something to do. And he didn’t need to say anything, often his very presence was enough.
He called Anita my dear and liked to press his lips against her white head. Even so, it soon became clear that it was a game. Meja had seen that kind of game played many times between Silje and her men and she was disappointed to see it was no different between Birger and Anita, and that they forced themselves to put up with each other. She saw it in Anita’s eyes every time Birger was around, that she was thinking thoughts that had nothing to do with love. And then there was the humming. Anita hummed while she worked and you could tell where she was on the farm because of her humming. It was inescapable, floating above the wind and the barking of the dogs. Except when Birger was nearby. Then it stopped.
The brothers also fascinated her with their differences. Carl-Johan was the chatty one, the one who attracted most attention. If families had favourites, then he was theirs.
Pär laughed a lot, a loud liberating laugh that echoed through the house and infected the others. He had a knack with the animals and he collected knives. In the evening he would clean the cutting edges, stick the blades in apples and leave them overnight. They were hardened by the acid, he explained to Meja. There’s nothing worse than a weak knife.
Göran sought his own company. He went about with his hood up to disguise the damage to his face, the sores that tormented him. They formed scabs, which he scratched off, and then they bled and became even worse. When they passed on the farm, she tried desperately to see beyond the sores and look him in the eyes, but there was also something in his eyes that couldn’t be avoided. He looked at her with a kind of thinly veiled fury, as if her presence disturbed him in some way.
She was lying in the clearing when he walked up, her arms and legs outstretched in a sea of white wood anemones. If she squinted they looked like snow. She didn’t notice that his were the wrong feet, because of all the white. She held her arms up to the indistinct figure, but there was no response. Not until she propped herself up on her elbow did she see it was Göran. His thin hair was plastered to his weeping skin.
‘Did you think I was Carl-Johan?’
‘Why did you creep up on me?’
‘Was that your mum up by the gate?’
‘Yep.’
‘She looks so young.’
‘She was only seventeen when she had me.’
‘Shit.’
The anemones were crushed as he crossed his legs under him. He had a blade of grass in the corner of his mouth. Meja was thankful
for the sunlight, causing shadows that hid the scarred face.
‘Does she want you to move back again?’ he asked.
‘Mm.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I said this was my home now.’
Göran ripped up the grass, not caring if he damaged the flowers. His knee brushed Meja’s and the skin felt cold, despite the sun.
‘Was she sad?’
‘My mum’s like a kid. I’ve always been the one to take care of her.’
‘But now you’ve got Carl-Johan. And us.’
Meja smiled down into the grass.
‘That’s the one thing I haven’t got,’ Göran went on. ‘A girlfriend. Someone to share everything with.’
‘Then you’d better start looking.’
‘Don’t you think I have? No one wants somebody who looks like me.’
He tore flakes of skin from his raw palms. Meja didn’t look. She had begun to stretch when she heard Anita’s footsteps on the gravel. Her white plait beat against her back and she had a stern expression on her face.
‘What are you sitting here for?’ she said to Göran. ‘Haven’t you got a potato field to look after?’
‘I was just having a rest.’
‘So I see.’
He got to his feet and brushed his jeans. Before slouching off, he winked at Meja, as if they shared a secret. Anita reached down and helped her up. When they were standing beside each other her eyes had turned warm again.
‘Well, Meja,’ she said. ‘My sons are buzzing around you like bees around a hive.’
That made Meja feel embarrassed, and Anita noticed and smiled.
‘I was also young and pretty once, believe it or not. So I know what it’s like. Sometimes you get tired of all the attention.’
‘You are still pretty.’
Anita laughed so loudly it echoed all the way to the stable yard.
‘Kind of you to say that, Meja,’ she said, when she had recovered. ‘But if my boys give you any trouble, let me know. Promise?’
‘I promise.’
The madness scared him, the thought that he wouldn’t be able to keep it in check. That it would take over. All the time his toes were hanging over the edge of the Maravälta drop and the abyss was calling him. He was woken by a feeling of absolute terror in the pit of his stomach.
Dust motes floated in the sunlight that fell across the wooden floor, and Lina’s smile from the mantelpiece seemed twisted from where he was sitting on the sofa. He looked down at himself, at the muddy jeans and shirt stiff against his skin, and the sweat-stained, mismatched socks. The ashtray taunted him from the floor. If Lina walked in now she would turn around on the threshold, thinking it was the wrong house. It was that insight that made him get a grip on himself.
It took all morning to clean the house, and afterwards two full vacuum-cleaner bags were crammed into the rubbish bin. His hands stung from all the washing up and his cheeks itched from the shock of being shaved. Lelle sat at the kitchen table, worn out but showered, his wet hair dripping on to the newspaper cuttings. There was a new article about Hanna Larsson, which didn’t have much to offer. The search was continuing in the forests around Arjeplog and the police were appealing to the public for information. Same old story.
The gun lay in its holster on the bureau and the shiny metal kept catching his eye, as if it were calling to him. The cleaning had helped only temporarily. His brain wouldn’t give him any peace. Not now.
His jacket hid the weapon and the Laphroaig, and because the garage was still empty he went on foot through the forest. He had been keeping a watch on Varg long enough to know his haunts. The lad seldom left the family home, had never worked and had lost touch with his friends. Fishing and alcohol were the only things that took him outside.
Lelle found him down by Glimmersträsk Lake. Varg was sitting on a rock in the middle of the reeds with his fishing rod in his hand and the lake steaming around him like a witch’s cauldron. From the far side came the sound of screams and laughter of children swimming. Varg beat away the mosquitoes with his free hand. He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt and his vertebrae protruded like fish scales under the pale flesh.
Lelle hesitated for a long time at the edge of the trees. The blood pounding in his ears was drowned out by the whine of the mosquitoes, but he didn’t even try waving them away. The gun was cold against his thigh as he waded through the heather.
Varg didn’t hear him coming. He didn’t even turn round until Lelle put his feet in the water. He dropped the fishing rod in surprise.
‘What do you want?’
Lelle didn’t bother to remove his shoes or roll up his jeans. He waded out to the rock and hauled himself up beside Varg, getting rough lichen and bird droppings under his nails. He glimpsed a half bottle of spirits among the gleaming fishing baits in Varg’s box. He scanned the lake beach on the other side to make sure the children wouldn’t see them among the reeds, before bringing out the whisky.
‘Would you like a little snifter?’
Varg blinked, but then reached out for the bottle and swallowed a mouthful without changing his expression.
Lelle tried a smile. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time we buried the hatchet, for Lina’s sake?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘There’s nothing to be gained from being at each other’s throats.’
Varg handed back the bottle. Lelle took a swig and felt the whisky burn along with his deception. Sweat prickled under his jacket.
‘It feels like life came to an end when she disappeared,’ Varg said. ‘I feel like the living dead.’
Lelle waved the bottle under his nose.
‘Drink more. It helps.’
Varg took two deep swigs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked sideways at Lelle. ‘You’re not trying to poison me, I hope?’
‘Should I be?’
They gave each other a wry smile, squinted over the water where the sun glittered on the waves, and passed the expensive whisky leisurely between them. Lelle felt the alcohol inflame his rage and make his insides boil. The children’s laughter and lapping waves only added to it and led his thoughts to Lina.
‘I met two of your mates the other evening, up on Glimmers Hill.’
‘Did you?’
‘Uh-huh. Twins. Like two peas in a pod. Seems they used to do business with you?’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Varg’s jaw tighten and his fingers clench the fishing rod.
‘You mean the Ringbergs?’
‘Yes, that’s the name. Jonas and Johan Ringberg. They had a lot to tell me about you.’
The pulse on Varg’s neck became visible. ‘I thought you were here to bury the hatchet.’
‘And so I am,’ said Lelle, holding up his hands. ‘Does it look like I’ve got an axe with me? I haven’t come to fight, I’ve come to hear the truth. From you.’
‘What fucking truth?’
Lelle leaned closer, feeling the anger driving him on, giving him courage. ‘Why are people going around saying you admitted to killing Lina?’
‘How should I know? It’s a load of bullshit.’
‘You boasted about getting rid of the body. Said no one would find her.’
Varg’s face seemed to be coming apart at the seams. His voice grew louder. ‘That’s not true. I would never hurt Lina. Never.’
Lelle put down the bottle of whisky and checked again to make sure no one could see. After that everything happened very fast. He pulled the revolver from his waistband and pressed the muzzle to Varg’s ribs, seeing the terror in the lad’s eyes when he released the safety catch. The fishing rod fell in the water and bobbed on the surface.
‘You’re fucking insane!’
‘True, I am fucking insane, and if you want to get out of this alive I suggest you start talking.’
‘But I haven’t done anything.’
‘Why do the Ringbergs say you confessed?’
Varg shuddered. The revolver was making
a red eye on his skin. Lelle’s throat filled with bile, but his finger was calm on the trigger. He could feel the lad give up and almost crumple in front of him.
‘I owed the Ringbergs bloody thousands. They were on my case, threatened to break in, steal from my family. Said they’d kill me. I was desperate, I wanted them to back off and feel as afraid of me as I was of them.’
Varg started sobbing. He gasped for breath as if the crying was choking him. His teeth chattered and his joints trembled.
Lelle released the muzzle. It wasn’t needed any longer.
‘I’m not proud of it,’ Varg said. ‘And I only said I did it because I was desperate. And weak. Fucking weak. I lied to the Ringbergs, said I’d done it so they would get scared and back off. I reckoned if they thought I was capable of something like that, they wouldn’t burgle my home. That they would leave me alone. And it worked! They let me be.’
Lelle rocked up and down, feeling as if he was losing his grip on the world. He brought his face close to Varg’s. ‘If I understand this correctly, you took the blame for my daughter’s death to gain the respect of some fucking dealers? Right?’
Varg bent over his skinny legs and was lost in his crying.
Lelle sat there with his rage, letting it wash over him, making him cold. The gun began to wave in his hand and he pictured himself lifting the weapon towards the sobbing figure and pressing it against his forehead. He saw the birds flying from the trees at the bang, the children’s laughter falling silent. He felt the cold steel as Hassan fastened the cuffs, his disappointment in the rear-view mirror as he drove Lelle away. Hassan already thought he had lost his mind. And maybe he had.
It was Lina’s voice that brought him back. She was standing at the water’s edge, pleading with him to put down the weapon. Eventually he gave up, slid off the rock and waded back to the lakeside and Lina’s voice. Varg called out after him, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying. He didn’t want to turn around. He couldn’t. The fear of what he had almost done swept over him and he began jogging through the undergrowth. Away from the lake and from Varg. Away from the madness.
The Silver Road Page 15
