Dark Pines

by Will Dean

  Thord walks out and smiles at me. He’s got a nice jaw but I reckon he could probably floss with a baseball bat.

  ‘You here to report a crime?’

  ‘Thank God, no. I think we’ve had enough. I was wondering if you might have a minute for a chat, though? Fancy getting lunch? Burger?’

  ‘Would love to, but I can’t abandon this place. I’m home alone, you might say. But I could let you come back here for a coffee if you’d like? Not strictly supposed to but you won’t tell nobody, will you?’

  I walk through the heavy door with the key-code lock and back into the inner sanctum of the police station. There are five desks and two of them are completely empty. Filing cabinets line the walls just like they do in my office. They’re the exact same models by the look of them. At the back of the room, there’s a corridor leading away to the left.

  ‘What’s back there?’ I ask.

  ‘The cells.’

  ‘Can I have a peek?’

  ‘Don’t see why not, there’s nobody in them.’

  We walk around the corner. Three cells side by side. I expected bars and three adjoining cages like you see in the movies, but it’s just three distinct rooms with walls and toilets and doors.

  ‘Which one was Holmqvist in?’

  Thord points to the cell on the right.

  ‘You think he’s innocent?’ I ask.

  Thord taps the side of his head. ‘Open mind. Dave’s stranger than a blizzard in June and the Chief can’t stand the sight of him, but my gut tells me he ain’t one to kill nobody.’

  ‘Not what the media thinks.’

  ‘Well, pardon my French,’ says ford, ‘but what the crap do they know about anything? Present company excepted, of course. Ain’t a scrap of physical evidence.’

  We walk back to the main office and he brings me a mug that reads Protect and Serve Coffee. The inside of the mug is stained brown and bears the scars of a thousand stirs.

  ‘You seem relaxed,’ I say, ‘considering there’s a killer on the loose.’

  ‘I’m not relaxed, I can tell you that. This week I’ve accrued more overtime than any week in my career to date. I’ll be needing a vacation soon or else I’m gonna hit a wall.’

  ‘Any developments on the Utgard bodies?’

  ‘Direct as ever. The Chief told me to be careful what I say around here, he’s stuck between you writing God-knows-what in your paper, and the boys from Karlstad homicide breathing down his neck every five minutes. They’re taking the lead on this now although Chief reckons they don’t know one end of a Scots pine from the other. We’re still talking to people of interest, but could be that it was just a wanderer that’s been and gone like the last time. Trouble is, killing in a hunting forest in October – with guns going off left, right and centre, with no good tracks, with no witnesses or CCTV– it doesn’t give us much to go on, now does it?’

  ‘You must have something.’

  He bites his lower lip. ‘Chief told me to keep this discreet but I reckon you’ll need to know about it sooner or later. Ballistics got back to us. They reckon the rifle that shot the bullet that killed Freddy Malmström was a Mauser 8mm, old World War II bolt-action thing.’

  ‘World War II?’

  He nods. ‘Five-round clip. Karabiner 98k is the proper name for it. Made them by the million, still pretty common as hunting rifles, not bad guns if you got a scope on ’em.’

  ‘Are there any registered around Gavrik?’

  ‘A few but none that have been fired anytime recent. We’ll keep looking but they’re compact rifles, about a metre long, easy to hide.’

  ‘Were all the victims shot with the same gun?’

  ‘I reckon so, but the white coats’ll need a few more days before they can tell us.’

  ‘Do any of the registered owners have a motive?’

  ‘Well now, if you look hard enough then just about everybody in this town has a motive to kill just about everybody else. Freddy and Rikard were two straight-talking, hard-working, stand-up fellas. They were both family men who paid their taxes and went to church and never caused no trouble. So to kill them and then do that to their . . .’

  He blinks three or four times.

  ‘What about the villagers? What about Viggo Svensson?’

  ‘I gave him a good talking-to after what you told me, I don’t think he’ll be bothering anyone like that again.’

  ‘Apparently, Viggo can outshoot just about anyone around here. Have you checked his weapons?’

  Thord shakes his head. ‘He was home with his kid both times. If he’d left we’d have seen it on his CCTV.’

  ‘What about the others? You’ve got an ex-soldier who hates meat-eaters, you’ve got two sisters who could probably use a few human eyes for their more expensive trolls, and you’ve got David Holmqvist who the whole goddam Kommun, except you, thinks did it. And then you’ve got Hannes Carlsson.’

  ‘Hannes ain’t no person of interest, if that’s what you’re getting at. And we ain’t just looking at the village. Coulda been someone from outside.’

  ‘Shouldn’t he be, though?’ I put my mug down on Thord’s desk. ‘Hannes? He can hunt, he’s in the right location, he’s a good shot, he knows the woods, and it seems he can get very jealous of other men, men like the two that were shot.’

  ‘I know Hannes Carlsson a little bit and Björn’s real good buddies with him, poker buddies even. Wasn’t him, Tuvs. He’s a tough old bastard, a good fighter, but everyone knows Hannes and everyone likes him. The boys up at the mill just love him cos he makes sure with the union that they get paid the best in the whole of Värmland.’

  Thord’s radio crackles into life. I hear some codes and jargon, and then Björn’s voice saying he’ll be back at the station in five minutes.

  ‘Best you be leaving now, if you don’t mind.’

  I nod and thank him for the coffee.

  ‘Watch your back, Tuva. Let us do our job and you get on and do yours.’

  I walk over to my office and spend the afternoon trawling through the ’90s Medusa files for information, and trying to mentally draw the spider’s web of allegiances and family ties that binds Gavrik town together. I knock off work ten minutes early and drive down to Tammy’s van.

  There’s no queue.

  ‘What’s this? On a Friday?’

  She grins down at me.

  ‘Sweden v France in the football. Thought you’d know that being a sports reporter.’

  ‘I’m an everything reporter, my beat covers it all. Seriously though, I thought there’d be a queue.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not complaining here, business is pretty good. They all ordered before kick-off, they all left work early for the game. So then they pick up their bags of food and I’ve hit my sales target early and I get to take the rest of the evening nice and easy. Hacked Game of Thrones off some website and watching it back here on my iPad.’

  ‘Nice life,’ I say. ‘Is it paused?’

  She smiles and nods and takes an empty plastic container and a pair of big chef’s tweezers.

  ‘Can I get a chicken with cashew nuts, hot as you like it, with steamed rice and a few crackers, please.’ I pause. ‘And a favour.’

  She smiles and spoons the rice and then the chicken pieces into a container. They’re steaming and glossy and smell of everything that Gavrik is not. I breathe it in and close my eyes.

  ‘That’s the chicken,’ she says, passing it to me. ‘Now, what’s the favour?’

  ‘I need you to drive me to Mossen village and leave me there. Then pick me up in a couple of hours at whatever time suits you.’

  ‘Hot date?’

  ‘Hardly. Just need to do some research for work.’

  ‘You going in locked and loaded?’

  I frown at her.

  ‘Are you invited to somebody’s house or are you snooping? If you’re snooping, do you have something to protect yourself?’

  ‘You know I have.’

  ‘My old bear-spray?’


  ‘And I’ve got a catapult.’

  ‘You’ll most likely lose your own eye with that. Wait there a second.’

  I eat out in the cold clean air and the food tastes amazing as always. The freshness of the ginger, the crunch of the cashews, the heat filling my stomach and tingling my lips.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You can shut up now? You sure?’

  She climbs out of the back of her van and closes the metal grill protecting the food-service hatch. She hangs a blackboard sign saying, Back at 7 on the metal grill.

  We walk to my truck. Tammy holds out her hand for my keys, and I let her open the driver’s door and climb up into the driver’s seat.

  ‘God, I love your truck,’ she says, settling into the seat. ‘This isn’t a redneck wagon like the locals drive, this is quality engineering right here.’

  We drive out of town and into Mossen village and a fine drizzle starts and it looks more like gas than liquid. We go past Hoarder and then Taxi. Tammy accelerates up the hill and I tell her to stop.

  ‘When do you want picking up?’

  ‘Ten okay?’

  ‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’ She brings the truck to a halt and pulls on the handbrake.

  ‘But I’ll have my phone on me the whole time. You call and I’ll be back here in twenty minutes.’ She looks at me. ‘I got something for you.’

  She takes out a gun, some kind of revolver or pistol, from her coat pocket and places it next to the gearstick between us.

  ‘That another starter pistol?’

  ‘It is not.’

  ‘Tammy, what are you doing?’

  ‘Trying to help a stupid friend. Now, you gonna take it or not?’

  ‘Why do you own an actual real gun?’

  ‘Well, now, let’s see. I’m twenty-two years old and work at night from a crappy food van on the edge of Shitsville. I work from the dark end of a deserted car park and once the supermarket’s closed I feel as alone as the man on the fucking moon. I’ve got cash in the van and everybody knows it. Most people round here, whether you think it or not, whether you want to believe it or not, don’t like or trust anyone that’s not as white as an aspirin. You think you’re an outsider, well you don’t know the first thing about it. So, how many more reasons do you need?’

  Her voice has an edge to it I haven’t heard before. The windows are getting steamed up and all I can do is stare at the gun.

  ‘So I take your gun and then you go and get held up tonight, or worse. No way. I can’t take it.’

  ‘I got more. Take it.’

  I look at her and then I look at it. I feel like if I even touch the damn thing then somebody will die. Probably me.

  ‘Thanks, but no. You keep it and I’ll see you at ten. I appreciate this. Thanks Tammy.’

  I grab my backpack from the rear seat and wave her off. As she does a three-point turn and drives away from me, the light levels fade. But I’m alone on a track and not alone in the woods and that is a very important distinction. I’m about three hundred metres away from the sisters’ workshop and I can smell their woodsmoke. All the uphill residents have motive and opportunity. The sisters own their own rifles. Holmqvist is still a suspect in my eyes, no matter what Thord wants to believe. He could have a rifle hidden somewhere, maybe his late father’s, an old gun, it’s possible. And Hannes is a man with as many secrets as he has connections. I reach into my left pocket and stroke the leather sheath of my knife. I reach into my right pocket and touch the plastic case of my phone and switch it to silent. I’m going to be fine.

  35

  The forest is turning. The three-quarter moon makes the woods as grey as the blood you find under a cooked salmon fillet.

  I walk along the verge of the narrowing track, my boots satisfied with the gravel and the dry ground. The thistly verge begins to narrow. On my right is a steep-sided ditch and then a layer of grey trees and then a wall of spruce. It’s colder now, about zero, perhaps less. My clothes are good and my nerves are alive and I have a belly full of chicken and cashew nuts. I feel warm. I trudge up the track and there are no more passing places and no landmarks to show where I am. It’s either birches, skinny all the way up to the fine branches at their very tops, or else it’s thicker pine trees, each one as straight as a ship’s mast.

  I hear something in the distance. My aids are picking up music, some kind of polka folk music with an accordion, or is it called an organ, I never remember. It’s the kind of tune that girls with head-scarves and traditional regional dress dance to. It’s shit, to be honest. I turn a gentle bend and see the lights of the sisters’ workshop and their house, smoke rising from their metal chimney in the centre of their metal roof. My hands are still in my pockets; left one, knife, right one, phone. The workshop is open to the road, a feature I never quite understood. Do they like the fresh air? Or, do they like to see who’s coming?

  The ditch is shallower on this side so I step over it and walk one tree deep parallel with the track. An owl hoots. I think it’s behind me but then it hoots again and it sounds like it’s up ahead somewhere; hidden and cocky and happy with its place in the order of things. The ground’s so uneven I have to look down and focus on not tripping through brambles or falling down holes. I get closer and I can see one of the sisters, the quiet one, working with her back to me. She must be carving another grisly troll. I move away from the track nice and slow so I’m two trees deep. The music’s louder now and I’m grateful to it for disguising my clumsy footsteps. I have a ski balaclava in my backpack but I can’t put it on. I’d look like a burglar or something. I reckon it’s more likely I’ll get shot with that thing on than with it off.

  I pull myself in closer to a tree. This one is a mature, white birch split near the ground, growing up as if twins. Could I get shot here? I cannot because I need to see Mum on Sunday, and I’m already overdue a visit. She has only me. But then I pull myself together and think like Dad for a minute. I look up to him and collect the facts. It helps. No woman has been shot in Utgard forest. I loosen my grip on the birch as the song the sisters are playing ends and another one, this one with a mouth organ, begins. Nobody has been shot on or near the track. This is going well, it’s a reassuringly long list. Nobody has been shot not carrying a rifle. Only hunters have been killed.

  I decide my vantage point is good enough even though I can only see two-thirds of the workshop. I’m looking into it at an angle as if from a cheap seat at the theatre. I slowly remove my backpack and take out the binoculars, and the bag of wine gums is right there next to it. So I take it and it rustles and I curse myself for not opening it before I got out here. No way I can rip it apart now, no way in the world. I place them back carefully and bring the binoculars up to my eyes. I rest them against the broader of the two birch trunks. Then I change position so my face is between the trunks, and it feels good. It feels like a natural stance.

  They’re both there. Cornelia and Alice, both holding knives with short blades, both working on a troll or something with their backs turned to me. I imagine them carving, shaving slivers of pale pine away from its ugly body with gentle caresses of steel blade, carving breasts and a pot belly and knees, and armpits stuffed with their own armpit hair.

  Money’s a fine motive for murder, and who knows what kind of prices their bespoke made-to-order trolls could fetch if they had human eyes. They both shoot. They live apart from other people, and from what I’ve been able to glean from locals, they have no friends, no partners, no ex-partners.

  The song’s quite upbeat and they’re not exactly dancing but they’re both working to its rhythm, swaying and head-bobbing in time with the violins. I increase magnification. The binoculars are excellent, but every time I breathe or move a little, the image shakes and I lose them. I slow my breathing like a marksman in the movies. They both step away from the troll, one to the left and one to the right, as if to admire their handiwork.

  But it’s not a troll, it’s a hare or a big rabbit. No, it’s definitely a h
are, I can tell by the out-of-proportion hind legs. My stomach groans, not from hunger but from something else. They have it pinned up on the wall of the workshop. Its hind legs and feet have been nailed to a horizontal stick and its head and tiny front feet are hanging down against the vertical post. It’s like a hare Jesus, but upside-down.

  They’re skinning it. It’s definitely dead, I tell myself. It is dead.

  They’ve skinned it from its knee joints down to its asshole – which is positioned directly in front of the centre of the cross – and then half way down its torso. Behind the fluff, its body is dark like red wine. It looks like I imagine a skinned human must look like. I can see its muscles in its back legs and its pelvis and they’re like the carved muscles of an athlete, all sinew and tight stringy tendon. It also looks like the lamb I tried to roast when I was fifteen. I was trying to bring back some normal to the home, something nourishing for Mum. But I ruined it.

  The sisters come back together but leave a space between them for me to watch. The quiet one yanks down on the pale brown fur as the talking one cuts it with her knife. It takes them seconds to tug down the skin as if pulling a woolly jumper over the head of a child. The fur hangs low at the base of the cross, the red torso taut and shiny above it. The talking sister uses her knife to snap the front legs and they look like frog legs compared to the hind ones still pinned to the top of the cross. The sisters stand apart and the quiet one swipes her hand and the hare’s head falls to the ground.

  I take a deep breath. So now it’s two huge bunny feet, still furry, pinned to a cross with a dark red, headless body hanging beneath it. Both sisters look around and then they get to work. I’m guessing they always work in the same order and they each have their specialisms, their favourite tasks. The talking one runs her knife down gently in one smooth line from the hare’s ass down to its neck. My stomach growls and I bite the end of my tongue. I’m not scared of wild meat, I like it, I’m scared of these two and how they’re doing what they’re doing.