Nisse had made strong coffee for himself and prepared a hearty breakfast of boiled eggs and homemade bread with various toppings. He was well aware of his niece’s strict eating habits and had stocked up on natural yogurt, coarse flatbread, soft whole-grain bread, and low-fat cheese. Embla always brought unsweetened muesli and herbal tea with her, plus some mysterious containers of dietary supplements. “Just natural herbs, protein, and minerals. No anabolic steroids,” she always reassured him when he suspiciously tried to read the fine print on the labels.
Over breakfast she told him about her peculiar experience on the way home.
“How much did you have to drink?” he said with a teasing smile.
“More than usual. I wasn’t stone-cold sober, but I definitely wasn’t drunk either. I saw what I saw. And I heard someone moving around in the trees. I want to check on it.”
“I see. If you say so . . .”
Resolute, she met his questioning gaze. Neither of them said anything for a long time.
“Okay. We’ll go there after we finish eating,” he finally said with a sigh.
Embla had problems finding the place where she had gone into the forest to follow after the “Lady in White,” as Nisse persisted in calling the nocturnal apparition. After searching for a while she found marks in the grass by the side of the road where she had put down the bike.
“Yep. Here it is.”
Without hesitation she went into the thicket on the other side of the road. Because she had forced her way through the vegetation like a bulldozer, all she had to do was follow the broken or damaged branches and look for where the frost-bitten grass had been disturbed.
When they approached the hill, she asked Nisse to wait while she went up. The top was level, like a little plateau. The young birches the white-clad figure had disappeared into were off to the side. Embla started eyeballing the rough grass and hair moss that covered the ground. In some places it was clear the moss had been trampled.
“Nisse! Come here!” she called.
Without saying anything she pointed at the marks. He got down on his knees to take a careful look.
“Yes, someone has been walking here, but you can’t see the size of the shoe. Or if it’s even a person.”
“Okay. But in any case it is evident that someone actually was here last night and that I didn’t have acute delirium.” She took a few pictures of the marks in the moss with her phone and started carefully inspecting the branches of the birch trees. After a while she found what she was looking for. “Yes!” she said, pointing triumphantly at her find.
A long, light strand of hair was hanging at the very tip of a thin branch, glistening in the sunlight. Carefully she gathered the strand with the tweezers from her toiletry kit and put it into an ordinary plastic bag that she remembered to bring from Nisse’s kitchen.
When they got in the car her phone rang, and she saw on the display that it was Elliot. Before she could say anything his excited voice trumpeted, “Have you got a moose?”
“No, we haven’t gone up to the cabin yet. The hunt doesn’t start until tomorrow.”
“But then you’re going to shoot one?”
“Hope so. You know that it goes on for several days.”
“I know. Next year I want to come with you!”
She had explained to him at least a thousand times that he had to be fifteen years old to participate. Her hope was that he would lose interest in hunting by then. The boy had no hunting tradition in his family. The mere thought of his father, Jason, patiently sitting on watch for hours in the rain and cold was laughable. During his childhood in Jamaica he had never heard about either Sweden or moose, and that hadn’t really changed during his youthful years in Miami either. But Embla answered the same way she always did.
“When you’ve turned fifteen. You have to be at least that old to join in.”
“Do you have to?”
The disappointment in his voice sounded equally genuine every time. If you’ve just turned eight it feels like an eternity to fifteen.
She asked how he was doing with her cousins. Sulkily he let it be known that he would much rather have stayed with her hunting party in the forest. Manipulative like his dad, she thought. It had been several years since she and Jason had separated, but the bond between Embla and his son had become strong during the year they lived together. Jason was a well-known saxophonist and often had to travel for engagements. When she could she was more than happy to take care of the boy. This week Jason was at a jazz festival in Stockholm, and because she would be hunting, Elliot had to stay with her aunt’s family. He had no memories of his mother because she died when he was not quite a year old. Perhaps that made it easier for him and Embla to connect. Although the strongest reason was probably that they simply enjoyed being together. But she had noticed he was starting to become more and more like his father. The darned kid always managed to guide the conversation to how she had betrayed him and made his dad drop him off with her aunt.
“I miss you,” Elliott said in a low voice. “It’s no fun when you’re not here.”
It took her a moment before she could answer. “I miss you too. Hugs,” she said a little thickly.
When she ended the call they sat quietly a moment.
“What do you think about bringing the kid up here during fall break? A few days or so,” Nisse proposed at last.
“He would love that!”
She would tell Elliot that the next time they spoke—he would start the countdown immediately.
After lunch they stopped by the mailbox outside the ICA store. Embla had a letter she wanted to send. It was addressed to her boss, Superintendent Göran Krantz at VGM and contained the long strand of hair, along with a handwritten note that asked him to analyze it. As a reason for her inquiry she simply wrote: I’ll explain when I know more.
From there, they continued over to Karin and Björn’s farm. Everyone in the hunting party parked their cars on the farmyard and rode over together in two bigger cars. The last five kilometers up to the cabins they had to drive on a logging road that wound through the forest. Calling it a road was an exaggeration, it was just wheel tracks from logging machinery. Only four-wheel-drive vehicles could advance on that miserable surface.
This year there was a third car that could manage the logging road. Peter Hansson was driving a new Range Rover. The paint was metallic dark blue and the chrome glistened. Good-looking and expensive, thought Embla. She and Nisse moved their baggage, which also included Seppo, over to Björn’s Jeep. If more stowage room was needed there was also a brand-new Nissan Navara SE that Einar and Tobias owned. Sixten and Tilly were also riding in their big pickup. The latter was a female Drever, a very capable hunting dog that was starting to get a bit up in years.
The men at Dalsnäs Manor were also getting ready to depart. The estate manager, Stig Ekström, was driving a late-model, red King Cab, and his Hamilton foxhound was along for the ride. According to his fine pedigree, his name was “Freival’s Diamond’s Pathfinder,” but no one cared about that. He answered to the name of Frippe. Anders von Beehn owned the dog, but it was the Ekströms who took care of it between hunts and attended to training and practice sessions.
Stig Ekström was also responsible for transporting the day’s catch to the butchering shed and helping the others hang the gutted carcasses on sturdy hooks from the ceiling. Stig was also in the habit of bringing the hunters dinner that his wife, Anna, had prepared the day before, and she was a talented cook.
That morning, all five hunters rode in the Hummer. Anders drove the heavy vehicle while he talked to his hunting comrades. The conversation was conducted in English for Volker’s sake, which was no problem for Anders, who had lived in both England and the US and spoke the language fluently.
“I should explain how the hunt here is organized. Since my great-grandfather’s time, Dalsnäs has been one of the owners of the hunting grounds on the border between Norway and the Swedish provinces of Dalsland and Värmland. Th
ere are five other hunting rights holders in the area. The ancestors of these farmers and landowners got the forestland as payment for a big gravel pit and a peat bog. At that time the forest was considered rather worthless. Much later my great-grandfather managed to buy up over seven thousand acres of forest, but unfortunately it was from different landowners, which is why our hunting ground today is not clearly demarcated or even contiguous. The other landowners’ combined acreage is almost exactly the same size as the portion I inherited. So for practical reasons, we’ve run the hunt together since my great-grandfather’s time—so we’re talking somewhere in the late eighteen hundreds. We hunt under a joint leader and divide the game fairly. The advantage is that we have a good allotment of game.”
“Do we socialize with the others in the evenings?” Volker asked.
“Not usually. The other group has their own hunting cabins a few hundred meters from mine. But those men are capable hunters. And the women, too, for that matter.”
“The women?” the German said, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes, two of them. They’ve participated for several years.”
The three thatched-roof cabins were placed in a U formation in a large clearing. They parked the cars on the yard between the cabins and started unpacking. Nisse, Embla, and the Bergströms would stay in the biggest cabin. Nisse and his father had built the cabin when the old one was too run-down. It consisted of three small bedrooms with a bunk bed in each and a rather modest living room. In one corner of the living room there was a kitchenette with both a refrigerator and a stove, run on butane. The furniture consisted of a big gateleg table and eight old spindle-backed chairs.
Einar and Tobias Lindberg stayed in the adjoining cabin. It only had two bedrooms and because it did not have a living room, they always went over to Nisse’s. The same was true of Sixten Svensson, whose cabin was a somewhat more dilapidated version of Lindberg’s. This year he would stay there with Peter Hansson. Technically, the cabin belonged to Peter; it was his land and hunting right. Sixten’s land area was considerably smaller, and he had never had a cabin of his own. When he had rented the land from Peter’s father, he stayed alone in the cabin. The two men were childhood friends and happily shared a bottle, but Sixten had always called the old man “the bloodsucker” to the rest of the group, even though the rent was low. And now he had to try to get along with Hansson’s son.
A newly constructed outhouse stood a short distance from the cabins. It was built over a deep hole and supplied with plentiful quantities of carbolic lime to help prevent odor and keep insects and animals away. The lime sack was in a small plastic barrel with a cover on the bench beside the seat. When the hunting party had its annual cleaning day at the end of August, the task of tidying the outhouse had fallen to Embla. After checking on the lime level in the small plastic barrel beside the seat, she had replenished the toilet paper rolls. To finish it off she placed a bundle of Hunting Ground magazines on the small stool that was inside the outhouse.
Planning for the hunt would start at three o’clock sharp; the hunting leader, Sixten Svensson, was particular about that. As usual it would be held at von Beehn’s. Even though his hunting cabin was built of timber, it was an understatement to call it a cabin. The building was considerably bigger than Nisse’s farmhouse. They usually called it the Hunting Castle. It was built on a hill above a small, unnamed lake. If you wanted to swim you had to take the trouble to go down a steep slope to access the small beach—not that it was ever warm enough to swim during the week of the hunt. Behind the Hunting Castle Anders had had a glass veranda constructed with a view of the water. A few meters from the veranda, the hill dropped ten meters right to the water. Given the gentlemen’s habit of relieving their bladders after a few beers over the edge of the drop, it was called, a bit irreverently, the “Piss-ipice.” To prevent anyone from getting too close to the edge after the onset of darkness, a light post had been mounted a few steps from the drop.
In the early 1960s Anders von Beehn’s father had already made sure to have electricity brought in, which had cost a tidy sum. The house also had running water from a separately drilled well but no toilet because that would require a tank for the drainage. But there were facilities for both laundry and showering, as well as a good-sized sauna.
Every year when Embla came into the big room she had a feeling that she had been transported a hundred years back in time. The house was built early in the previous century, and the furnishings in the main room had been untouched since then. The big, open fireplace was made of granite blocks. The hearth was high enough that a man of normal height could stand upright in it, and whole logs were burned, not some trifling little blocks of wood. Several stately moose horns hung on the chimney. The walls had high wainscoting. Above them an artist had depicted the Norse gods and other motifs from ancient Nordic mythology, but strikingly, a number of the figures were bare-breasted Valkyries and athletic Vikings drinking mead out of large horns. Even though the colors had faded over the years, the paintings were still impressive. In the hall there were two long tables with enough chairs that everyone could have a seat. By tradition Anders treated everyone to coffee and cinnamon rolls.
Because they had a foreign guest, Anders translated the hunting leader’s instructions. For Volker’s and Peter Hansson’s sakes Sixten Svensson started by explaining where all the game crossings and paths went. Like the conscientious hunting leader he was, he had marked on a map where the stands were, and he had also numbered them all. The stands would be cleaned out during the afternoon so they would have clear fields of fire. It was just a matter of “taking a brush cutter and mowing down the shit,” as Sixten had said.
With a gloomy expression he reported that the year’s hunting quota had been reduced by one adult moose and a calf.
“But that was probably to be expected with all the wolf-lovers in Stockholm who make the decisions. For that reason we only get to shoot fourteen adults and fifteen calves this year,” he said bitterly.
Sixten pointed out the stands on the map while he informed the participants what number they had. For the most part they kept the same numbers year after year, but sometimes someone wanted to change, which was no problem since there were several extra stands.
He showed which firing directions were prohibited and told the group he had marked them with red plastic markers.
“And don’t forget the red band on your hat!” With that final remark he thanked them for their attention and asked if anyone had any questions.
Peter raised his hand. “I’d like a different stand,” he said.
Sixten swallowed hard several times, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down on his skinny neck. Peter did not look away.
“The one on the back side of the hill is available. And it’s on my land,” he said.
Sixten swallowed several more times before he managed to force out, “I see. Well . . . then you can have it.”
Peter hadn’t sounded perturbed, but Embla saw how his eyes had narrowed as he was speaking. Those two truly despise each other, she thought. How had Peter known that he’d gotten a bad stand? What Sixten had allotted him was on the edge of a bog and everyone in the hunting party knew animals seldom passed there. Peter must have inspected his land and his cabin, which made some sense since he was a new landowner and hunting rights holder.
During the run-through Sixten had not said anything about which stand he himself intended to claim and could therefore pretend he hadn’t been aiming for what Peter wanted. He pointed at the map. “I’ll take number fourteen.”
That was one of two stands that did not have complete backstop in all directions, but those who had been on previous hunts knew that it was a good spot where game often passed by.
“And because I’ll be sitting there, I will naturally be extra careful about checking the markers,” Sixten continued, managing to purse his lips into a strained smile.
Everyone chuckled at the joke and the slightly tense atmosphere loosened up. They st
ood up and thanked Anders for the coffee. Now it was a matter of clearing up the stands and the stand lines while there was still daylight.
As darkness fell the preparations began for the first dinner of the hunting days. In keeping with tradition, they had a rich moose stew the evening before the hunt. As usual Karin made the stew with a lot of mushrooms, onions, thyme, red wine, and cream. Nisse and Embla provided the meat; they always saved at least two kilos of last year’s stew pieces in his big freezer. Einar and Tobias relaxed; they were responsible for the next day’s grilling. As expected Sixten contributed a case of strong beer. There was also wine for anyone who preferred that, and Karin had remembered to bring along the leftover wine boxes from the potluck. To Embla’s irritation Peter pulled out a fresh bottle of O.P. Anderson, and he had remembered to bring small plastic drinking glasses to go with it.
The good food, beer, and aquavit lightened up the atmosphere around the table. Embla observed their new hunting companion in secret. Peter did not say very much, but he smiled amiably and poured shots for whoever wanted some. He looked just as handsome in the red-checked flannel shirt as he had in the white linen. A small gold cross glistened at his throat. From what she could see, he did not have more than one shot of aquavit himself. Handsome and pleasant but wants to stay in control, she thought. And after Sixten’s attack over dinner—not to mention the peevish air between them during the hunt meeting that afternoon—she could understand why. The two of them would also be sharing a cabin: another reason to maintain a clear head.
Embla’s cell phone gave a cheerful tune at five-thirty. Half asleep, she reached for it on the nightstand but woke up completely as she fumbled in empty air. She realized that she was in the hunting cabin and that the phone was on the floor. Yawning, she leaned down to turn off the alarm, stretched, and then got out of the narrow bed, deftly managing to avoid hitting her head on the top bunk.
Hunting Game Page 3
