by Will Dean
The radio starts to break up as I leave the asphalt behind and turn onto the grey gravel track. It’s wide enough for two cars to pass if both nudge the open ditches. It’s as dark as crushed velvet out here so I switch my beams to full and squint into the floating mists. In spring the forest is okay if you’re inside a truck. It’s all light green spruce growth and wild-flowers. Driving my Hilux pickup, I can handle it. But this is October and the pine needles are dark and sodden and the moss is brown and the birches are naked. My dash reads two degrees above zero. I’m driving up a dark alley with pine walls as tall as lighthouses.
The radio comes back on intermittently but it’s just a weather forecast. More rain. My GPS map shows a thin track that enters a featureless green area from the south and then stops right at its core. There are five houses dotted along the track so I just need to find the one with a cop car parked outside. I scratch my left ear and touch my hearing aid, partly because it’s unavoidable, and partly because it’s reassuring when I’m somewhere like this.
The Medusa murders were twenty years before I arrived. They’re a kind of local legend with a few facts and then plenty of bullshit piled on top. Three shootings in four years. The police never charged anyone and then the killings just stopped. The bodies were all found out in the woods and they were mutilated in some way, and that’s about all I know. Local people don’t like to talk about it. And the ones that do aren’t worth listening to.
I approach the first house of the village with my radio on low in case there’s more news. I slow down to ten kilometres an hour. The place looks run down. The wooden clapboards need painting and ivy covers some of the windows. The only thing I can really see is a garden, lit dimly by barely functioning solar lights, the cheap kind that this far north work a little in summer and barely at all in October. The houselights are off. Nobody home. As I accelerate away, I look in my mirrors and notice a light I didn’t see before, but it’s not in the house. Then it goes off as quick as it came on.
My phone battery’s low so I plug the adapter into the truck’s cigarette lighter. The music on the radio changes from harmonicas to banjos but the signal’s weak and there’s lots of white noise. I drive slower now. The track gradually gets narrower and narrower and on each side of it are scratched cliffs of granite and boulders piled on top of each other in clusters. The pines lean in towards each other, meeting in some places over the centre of the track, so that it’s almost enclosed. Looks like an awkward reverse to me.
The next house looks normal. It’s lit up with pendulum lamps hanging in all the windows and outdoor lights attached to the walls. One-storey high, it’s a torp; a traditional dark red cottage. I slow down again and let the truck amble with no pressure on the accelerator pedal. I switch on my wipers to clear the windscreen and stare out of the passenger-side window. Through a cloud of bugs I can see a Taxi Gavrik Volvo in the driveway. There are dead plants in the window boxes, some kind of geranium. I think I see a face look back from a window; a child’s face, low at the sill. But now I’m past the house and approaching a steep hill. I rev the Toyota and pick up speed. Heated seat to low. The hill has been recently gritted and my truck sounds noisy, winter tyres chewing up the stone chips as I climb. At the top, the track bends sharply to the right so I brake and my wheels skid on a slick of fallen leaves.
Each side of the track is marsh now, not ditches. The gravel track, elevated a few centimetres, slices through boggy land with reeds and murky water reflecting the sky.
The next house is on the right side of the road and I smell it before I see it. My lips are dry from the car heat so I take the lip balm out of my jeans pocket. I can smell fire, woodsmoke, and it’s reassuring in a way. Like a home. But this place doesn’t look like a home, it looks like some kind of workshop. I don’t slow down because inside there are faces lit by fluorescent strip lights. A one-storey workshop, open on one side with a wood burner in the centre and two, maybe three men in overalls – maybe three carpenters, carving and sanding. Next to the workshop is a modest house painted yellow with a couple of dead birds hanging from a hook outside the front door. Pheasants, maybe? Partridges? There’s a row of five numbered post boxes screwed to a metal bar.
The road narrows even further so I have to focus to stay on the level. The ditches either side look steep and full. They’re October full, just like the lakes and the reservoir outside town and the wells in local gardens. I think I see a flashing light in the distance but then the trees obscure it.
My phone has 22% battery. I pull it from the adapter and throw it down next to the camera. The windscreen starts to fog and I switch on the fan and crack open the window. The forest smells earthy like soil underneath an upturned stone. It smells of woodlice and rotten apples and slugs and wet carpet. I turn a corner and swerve past a fallen birch branch. There are lights up ahead: flashing blue roof-lights on three cars and an ambulance, and I’m happy because they’re protection and they show me where my story’s at, but also I’m happy for the powerful lights on their roofs, flashing up and bouncing off the wet pine branches like blue strobes at a rave.
I park and switch off my engine. The rain’s stronger now so I pull off my hearing aids and tuck them into my jacket pocket. If they get wet, they won’t work and I can’t afford to replace them. Each aid is a month’s salary. If I wear them with a hat I get crackling and feedback. I take my camera and my phone and pull up my hood and step out onto the track. The air smells even more pungent than before. Mulch. Old leaves and sitting water.
The house is quite nice, actually. It looks more expensive than the others, two storeys with large windows and a first-floor veranda wrapping round the entire building. A TV’s on upstairs. The room’s flashing.
I sense a voice somewhere but can’t hear the words or see anyone. I reach under my hood and slip my left aid over my ear.
‘Tuvs,’ says a voice from the veranda above me.
I look up.
‘You took your time.’
It’s Constable Thord Petterson, number two in command of Gavrik’s two-man police force.
‘It’s the middle of nowhere,’ I say. ‘Can I come inside?’
He shakes his head and smiles, rain dripping from the gutter above his head. He points to himself and then points down to me.
I keep the camera in my bag and wait by the front door. The veranda above protects me from the rain so I place my right hearing aid back in and switch it on.
The front door opens but something else seizes my attention. To my right, behind the house, I see two paramedics carrying a stretcher out of the woods escorted by Gavrik’s police chief. Soaked through and covered in mud to their knees, they step carefully over a derelict stone wall and through a thick patch of brambles. Then I see the other one. There’s a man walking behind the police chief and he’s wearing a bright orange baseball cap and he’s carrying a rifle.
3
But it’s not a man, it’s a tall, athletic woman with her hair swept up in the cap and the collar of her jacket zipped up to her nose. I can see her eyelashes.
The body the paramedics are carrying has a grey sheet laid over it. There’s a dark smudge in the centre of the sheet above the torso of whoever is underneath. The smudge is shiny. I can see a limp hand and a gold wedding ring. I lift my camera to my eye but the cops, Thord and Chief Björn, shake their heads at me as they walk past to the ambulance. The back doors are open and the paramedics carry the stretcher inside. Björn climbs in after them and the doors close and the ambulance drives off towards the motorway.
The woman with the rifle walks towards me and then Thord joins us. Together we stand there in the middle of Utgard forest under the shadow of a veranda. We say nothing for a full minute.
‘I can’t tell you much tonight, Tuva,’ Thord says. ‘Best to call the station in the morning.’
‘ID of the victim?’
‘Let’s leave all that till tomorrow.’
He turns to the woman in the cap.
‘Can I
give you a lift back home, Frida? I think Hannes would want me to. You’ve had a hell of a day and I bet you’ve had just about enough of this weather.’
‘I can do it,’ I say, desperate for information, a lead, a source, a quote. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Who are you?’ Frida asks.
‘Tuva Moodyson, I’m a reporter at the Posten. Sorry, I should have said.’
She holds out a strong hand and it’s red with cold.
‘Frida Carlsson,’ she says. ‘I’ll take you up on that lift. I live at the end of the track, it’s just a few kilometres deeper.’
Thord nods to us both.
‘Earlier today,’ I say to him. ‘When the traffic was bad, I heard a gunshot in these woods. I was on the track parallel to the E16. About 3pm.’
Thord wipes rain from his face. ‘Gunshots everywhere this week. You see anything, anyone?’
I shake my head.
‘About three o’clock, you say?’
I nod.
He nods and walks towards his flashing car. As he opens the driver’s side door, he turns and looks up and waves to someone.
I step out from under the veranda and into the rain to see who he’s waving at but the windows are blank and the veranda’s empty.
‘I’m parked up there,’ I tell Frida.
We jog to my truck and get in. Frida puts her rifle down on the back seat and I notice a leaf motif on the butt of the gun. I think it’s a shamrock. I turn the heat up high and hand Frida a small towel I keep in the central console to wipe condensation from the windows.
‘Who was Thord waving to?’ I ask.
Frida looks at me while she’s patting the towel over her dyed blonde hair.
‘David, I expect. Old friend of Thord’s, I think they went to school together. He’s a ghostwriter.’
I switch the headlights to full and focus on the track.
‘Just one house left?’
‘Just one,’ Frida says. ‘My husband and I live at the end of the road.’
The track’s been relatively straight until now but suddenly it turns twisty, climbing up and over boulders and around old Scots pine trees with ferns sprouting from their trunks.
‘This must be fun in winter,’ I say to her.
‘It’s okay if you’ve got your head screwed on right,’ she says, and that makes me think of Mum, she used to use the same expression. ‘You got the right clothes, the right car, then it’s fine. You have to be practical. It’s not like town.’
I see her house through a glossy tangle of wet pine branches. It’s like I’m driving a rally car in a video game, lurching from left to right, spinning the wheel and skirting toadstools as big as kittens. I turn into a clearing and up a long gravel driveway. The house is large and well lit.
‘Nice place,’ I tell her. ‘I didn’t expect a house like this here.’
‘Nobody ever does.’
There’s a flagpole in the garden and the house is pale grey with white trim. A mansard roof slopes down at different angles. It’s dated but well maintained. There are security lights outside and there are lights in every window except one upstairs room.
‘I think you’ve saved me from a cold,’ she says. ‘And to tell you the truth, I’d rather not be alone just now. Can I get you a coffee before you head back?’
I leap at the chance.
‘Sure.’
We park next to a grey timber garage with a weathervane on the roof. We walk towards the house and Frida looks pale. I’ve left my truck unlocked. Mosquitoes and midges buzz around the porch lights; they’re big fuckers this time of year, fat on blood and bold as hell, but the snows will soon fix all that. Frida opens the front door and slips off her boots and coat. I do the same. She shuts her rifle in a metal gun cabinet under the stairs. She seems tired now. The house is dry and clean and it smells of furniture polish. The floors are parquet wood and they’re warm, underfloor heating on high. I need more material, Lena needs more material. As I follow Frida, I take in the rooms and snatch a glimpse into her world. These details are the colour that will bring my articles to life – Lena taught me that. It’s all about the personal details: armchairs and blankets and bookshelves stuffed with well-read romance novels, and travel guides to Spain and Portugal. There’s an expensive stereo and a fireplace made up with sticks and birch logs. I spot last week’s Posten scrunched beneath the logs ready to light. Then I smell garlic, and my mouth waters.
‘You have a lovely home.’
‘Oh, it isn’t usually this tidy. I’ve been cleaning up. It’s never my mess but it’s always me cleaning.’
We walk into the kitchen and it’s like something out of a magazine. Not grand, but stylish and cosy. I’ve gone from murder forest to sanctuary in ten minutes and that’s fine by me. The tiled floor is warm under my damp socks; warm to the point where it would be too much for me to live with, but right now it’s good. I smell something like a stew and my stomach rumbles. The sound’s like a tube train coming out of a tunnel, but I’m not sure if that’s my aids or if hearing people feel the same when their stomachs growl.
‘You hungry?’ Frida says. ‘I have zero appetite after today, but I’ve got a kalops beef stew in the oven, just a thing I threw together. Made enough for the Gavrik hockey team. No bother if you’d like a quick bowlful and a chunk of bread. No bother at all.’
It smells amazing but feels wrong to eat a stranger’s food. Especially on a day like this.
‘Thanks, but I don’t want to intrude. A quick coffee would be lovely though . . . and do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions about, well, about what you found today.’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, her face apologetic and torn.
I smile and wait.
‘I suppose I can tell you what I know,’ Frida says, shaking a foil bag of ground coffee into a pot with a plunger. ‘It’s such a dreadful business.’
She joins me at the table with fresh coffee, a small plate of cardamom shortbread biscuits, a jug of milk, and a sugar bowl, all arranged on a vintage-style tray. On the table is a silk-lined box of silver teaspoons, eleven lying there in a box made for twelve. The silk lining has what looks like a family insignia printed on it, the letters in fancy script, white on grey.
‘That coffee smells good. Do you mind if I record this on my phone? My hearing’s not great.’ I point to my ears. ‘And I don’t want to miss your words.’
‘Okay, sweetie. Go right ahead.’
And suddenly I like her for not asking me about my deafness or my hearing aids. She hands me a spoon from the box and takes one for herself. I stir sugar into my coffee and turn the phone to record mode.
‘What happened tonight, what did you find?’
Frida looks down at her hands, and sighs.
‘Well, I was out picking ceps in the woods, they’re Hannes’s favourite. It’s been raining a bit and I thought they might have popped up so I grabbed a basket and . . .’
She pauses. I nod for her to continue and then I take a sip of from my cup and it is excellent coffee.
‘And I have my usual spots where the ceps come back year after year so I picked a few good handfuls and then I saw something next to a fallen beech tree. I thought it was a coat someone had left behind so I walked closer.’
She looks up at me.
‘I could smell it.’ She sips her coffee. ‘Like a fresh deer kill. So I stopped in my tracks and I ran back home, I didn’t have my mobile with me and it wouldn’t work out there anyway, so I ran back here and called the police station. I wasn’t half as scared as I should’ve been. Björn asked me to meet him at David Holmqvist’s place.’ She pauses. ‘He’s the ghostwriter whose house we just came from. So I took my husband’s gun and walked straight there and took them through the woods to the body. And that’s it.’
‘Did you recognise the body?’
Frida shakes her head. ‘Reckon it was a man but can’t be sure. It’s just awful. He was lying face down. I just saw a red stain on his jacket so I checke
d his pulse on his neck and he was completely cold. Been dead a while, I’d say.’
‘Could you see if he’d been shot? Stabbed? Attacked by an animal?’
‘He was bleeding through his coat, that’s all I know. Expect the police can help you with the rest.’
I turn off the recorder on my phone and slip it into my pocket.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that.’
‘It’s not nice, but that’s nature’s way. Life and death out here, you get to see enough of it over the years. Don’t know if this was an accident or what it was, but I am sure Björn will get to the bottom of it. Björn Andersson’s a damn good police chief, you ask anyone in Gavrik Kommun. Him and Hannes have been best friends since they were your age. Chief looks after his own – always has done, always will.’
4
Frida hands me my coat and pulls out a chair from the wall so I can put my boots on. She passes me a brown paper bag with a Tupperware carton of her kalops stew and to be honest I don’t argue too much, because it must be better than a frozen microwave ping meal for one. Along with the stew there’s a tiny loaf of bread in a clear plastic freezer-bag with a green clip, and a small pot of something with strips of Sellotape securing the lid.
‘Thanks for this. I may be in touch if I have more questions, if that’s okay.’
‘Okay,’ she says, smiling. ‘Think I’ll fix myself a proper drink now, think I need one. You make sure you drive carefully, okay. The track can be tricksy this time of year.’
I pull up my hood and head out to my truck and I can almost taste Frida’s ‘proper drink’ on my tongue. My pulse quickens. I drag my hand over the bonnet and it’s scratched up pretty bad from those antlers. It’ll need a repaint. I hear wind in the trees and then my hearing aid beeps another battery warning. As I drive out of the clearing, I spot Frida in my rear-view mirror. She’s lit from behind, waving goodbye from her front doorstep.
