by Will Dean
We pull up to my apartment building.
‘I’m gonna walk you inside,’ Tammy says.
I open the truck door and step into the street. The smooth, flat, predictable asphalt feels good under my boots, but my legs almost collapse from under me. I’m tired as hell.
We climb the stairs, me first, my keys held out in front of me. The light bulb still hasn’t been fixed. It’s dark. I unlock my front door, Tammy’s warm breath grazing the back of my neck.
‘Shit, you get burgled?’
I close the door, smiling.
‘Y’know, I’ve been tied up these past weeks what with all the dead eyeless bodies and all. Housework hasn’t been a priority.’
We sit on the sofa side by side sipping tea from white Ikea mugs.
‘How’s your mum?’
I just shrug. I feel even more exhausted thinking about Mum and about my Sunday visit and about how she will focus on why I haven’t been to see her recently and how Dad was always there for her, and how if I moved back to Sweden to be near to her I could have at least lived in the same goddam town.
‘Not good. She’s in decline, that’s what the doctors call it. Hate that word. They say it’s in her bones, in her blood, in her brain.’ I drink the last of my tea. ‘They’re not really treating her, just looking after her.’
‘She knows you’re close by. She knows if she needs you you’ll be there.’
I look at her. ‘I’m not good at this.’
Tammy says nothing, she just stretches a hand to my head and strokes my hair. She strokes slowly like you’d stroke a scared dog, her fingers moving softly over my head.
‘Whenever I look in a mirror, I always see her for the first split second and it scares the shit out of me that I look so much like her, that we have exactly the same expression, so I always change my face to one that’s clearly not natural to me but that I’m happy with. That first glimpse is real, and then I change it to a pose more like how I remember Dad.’
She continues to stroke my hair.
‘Some daughters would be there three days a week, home-baked cinnamon shortbread and family photo albums and anecdotes. Maybe I would be that kind of daughter if she ever looked pleased to see me. Not pleased, she’s too ill for that, I don’t need her to look pleased. Just not disappointed. She’s so disappointed, Tam. Because I’m not Dad, I suppose. I’m not him.’
38
The sun wakes me. I look around the living room and stretch like a cat under my blanket. I guess Tammy put it over me. The room’s tidier than I remember it. It’s not estate agent tidy or dinner party tidy, but it’s been cleared up, clothes piled on top of my set of drawers. I grab my hearing aids and put them both in and switch them both on. Tammy’s cleared away the pots and pans. Without her I’d have moved out of Gavrik within a single calendar month.
There’s a tightness in the back of my thighs. I drink a carton of UHT orange juice, the cheap stuff like coloured water.
It’s hot. I can’t regulate the heating, it’s the same for the whole building, and they’ve clearly now moved into winter mode. I pull off my robe and throw it on the sofa. Then I look at it a while in this semi-tidy room and pick it back up and walk into my bathroom and hang it on the door hook. It takes me fifteen minutes to get ready because I let my face enjoy the shower for a while. A thousand droplets beating down on my skin like a bargain spa treatment. Steamed and warm, I emerge with rosy skin and a calm pulse. I get dressed and rub my hair with a towel and stick it up in a ponytail, semi-wet, and pull on clothes from the wardrobe. I need food and information in that order.
I put on my coat and boots near the front door and unlock it. As I walk out I almost trip over something at foot level. I look down and see the troll. It’s the same one as before. It’s facing away from me, sun striking its front, the side I can’t see, from a stairwell window. How the fuck did it get back here? My pulse isn’t calm any more.
I kick it and then curse myself. Stupid. Coward. I pick it up. Hard pine body and rough sackcloth trousers. I step back into my flat, nudge the door shut with my hip, and turn it around.
It’s not the same troll. It’s similar, it’s the same shape roughly, the same size. But this one’s face is worse. It’s not so hairy, it’s almost bald, no nose or ear hair. But it has eyes, little black eyes. And it has a soft tongue hanging from one side of its carved little mouth. I can’t touch the tongue. I can hardly even look at it.
But that’s not the worst part. I thought its rough trousers were rucked when I picked it up, but they’re not. This one’s breasts are bigger than the other one’s. They’re heavier, like a breastfeeding mother or an ancient fertility sculpture. I tug at its trousers, like a child undressing a Barbie, curious to find the secret parts. The fabric is sewn onto it or glued on but there’s a fly. I separate the two sides of the fly, there’s no button just a crack in the fabric, and an erect wooden penis nudges past my hand.
I place it down on the kitchen counter next to the dirty dishes in the sink. Its little phallus is still poking out. It looks like a stick. It is a stick, I guess. But the whole thing’s evil, it’s an abomination, some abstract cruelty I could never have imagined. I rub my eyes and stand there sweating in my boots and coat.
I remember what Tammy said last night about facing my fears. I sniff, then walk up to it. I hold it firmly around the shoulders. That tongue. It looks drunk with its little tongue; drunk or the victim of a seizure of some kind. I reach out to touch it, then pull back. I rub my fingertips together as if about to appraise an expensive vase in an antiques showroom. Then I touch the tongue with the end of my right index finger. It moves. It’s stiff, but it moves. Like my tongue, it has tiny bumps all over it. They’re taste buds, I suppose. It is animal. I squeeze it gently. It’s firm. I pull it and more comes out from the mouth. Suddenly I feel unsteady on my feet, my empty stomach not up to this. The tongue comes out and then stops. It reaches the top of the troll’s chest; it’s about as long as my middle finger.
I want to take the troll to Thord and have it arrested and locked up in a jail cell. Or maybe I should drive to the sisters’ workshop and throw it in their log-burner. But I just stand and sweat and look at it. I reach up and open a cupboard, the one where spare table mats and a broken kettle are crammed on the bottom shelf. I bite my lip and pick up the troll and stretch to place it on the top shelf, facing the darkness of the cupboard. The thing’s ass, complete with a little ginger tail I hadn’t noticed before, points at me. I open my front door to walk out but it doesn’t feel right. I can’t leave this in my flat, I’ll never sleep again. But part of me knows it may be evidence of some kind. Might be important. I check that my basement key’s on my key chain, which is stupid because it always is, always, along with my spare batteries, always, and walk downstairs with the little bastard hidden inside my coat, its cock firm against my ribs.
I pass the laundry room and its meadow-fresh scent and unlock the solid door to the storage lock-ups. Where do I put the troll? I place it in the centre but it looks like a sick art installation, so I push it to the far end facing the wall but now it looks like a naughty kid who’s being punished. I bring it back to the centre and position it at an angle and then both its eyes fall out and roll across the polished concrete floor. I slam the door shut and run up and out into the cold Gavrik air.
There’s a white taxi parked right outside my building. But it’s not Viggo. It’s Saturday, 11am, and there’s nobody on the streets, no smoke from the liquorice factory, no shoppers walking down Storgatan. I jog towards work and I can taste blood in my mouth, but I’m not sure where it came from. The shops don’t open until lunch and then only for two or three hours. They’ll all be at handball practice or hockey training or grocery shopping at ICA Maxi. I say grocery shopping, but people here in Gavrik buy pretty much everything they ever buy from the supermarket. Clothes, garden supplies, fresh flowers, prescription drugs, small pieces of furniture, toys. And food. With only a few exceptions, this is why everyon
e dresses, smells, eats, and looks, roughly the same, albeit on different days of the week.
The office is locked. I think about the eyeless troll incarcerated in my basement. Two people cycle up towards the McDonald’s end of town. It’s a kid I recognise from a school feature I wrote on a local art exhibition, and it’s his mother who I recognise because she comes into the office every Friday to buy the Posten. She nods almost imperceptibly as she cycles past wearing the same coat I’m wearing. There’s a killer loose somewhere around here and people are still cycling around Toytown like everything’s okay.
The only places open apart from the supermarket are the newsagent and the hairdresser and the police station. I head for the station.
It’s unlocked but empty. The ticket-tape machine says 15 on its label and the screen above the counter says 15, so I ring the bell.
‘Thord,’ I shout. ‘It’s me.’
No answer.
I ring three times.
‘Thord, it’s me, Tuva.’
The door opens and Chief Björn Andersson walks over with a face like someone’s just kicked his grandmother.
‘Can I see your ticket?’
I reach back and take ticket 15 and pass it to him over the smooth pine counter.
‘What can I help you with this morning?’
‘Sorry to disturb you, Chief. Is Thord here?’
‘I made the constable take a day off, he wasn’t looking well. Do you need to report anything?’
He looks hungover. Maybe he’s just as tired as I am after the past few weeks. His sleeves are rolled up and I can see his tattoo real clear, it’s a faded red heart above a capital ‘K’, first letter of his wife’s name. Katarina works in the optician’s across the road from my office.
‘Cold outside,’ I say.
He licks his lips and I notice that the corners of his mouth are red raw.
‘You should see it in January,’ he says.
‘I have.’
He snorts at this, like the last two Januarys don’t really count, like my Januarys will never really count.
‘If you need a scarf,’ he smirks at me. ‘They sell wool down the road.’
‘Any progress with the Utgard killings, Chief?’
‘Well, I’d say you’d probably already know if there was.’
‘One of my sources thought it’d be a good idea to search Hannes Carlsson’s house for an unregistered rifle. Thought he might have the motive and the opportunity.’
‘Did they now.’
I nod.
‘And who is this source of yours?’
I shake my head.
‘Well, let me see here if I’m understanding you straight, young lady. Mr Carlsson, the upstanding member of the local community, governor of the local high school, family man, regular attendee of the local church, and generous donor to the annual Gavrik Sankta Lucia parade, is this that the same there Mr Carlsson that you are referring to?’
‘It’s an unsolved multiple murder. I just think you might want to check out his house and office, that’s all. Would be uncomfortable for you if he was the perpetrator all along and you were warned and you never acted on it . . . theoretically speaking.’
Chief Björn grips his side of the counter with both hands and I can see his tendons through his skin, tight as piano strings.
‘Is it complicated because he’s your cousin?’ I ask.
The sides of his cheeks throb as he grinds his molars.
‘Carlsson isn’t my cousin and if you were from around these parts you’d know that. He’s my second cousin. And for your information, young lady, if that’s even what I should call people like you, my mamma had eleven cousins and my pappa had nineteen. So in this town pretty much everyone worth knowing is my second cousin.’
I force myself to be professional even if he’s not.
‘Well, do you have any new suspects?’
I can see the pulse throb in his temple.
‘I think maybe you should leave professional police work to me, as I have thirty years’ experience under my belt, and I’ll best leave story writing to you and your Stockholm pals.’
‘Can you just ask him in for questioning, then?’
‘Not the way it works around here, not even close.’
‘Well, could you—’
The door opens behind me and the Karlstad homicide cop with the Bluetooth earpiece walks in.
‘Björn.’
The Chief nods to him.
The Karlstad cop walks straight past me, talking on his phone through his earpiece, and then he disappears through to the back office. Björn looks at me and chews his teeth and shakes his head. And then closes the key-code door behind him.
39
My phone vibrates in my pocket; a text message from Savanah asking me to meet her at the petrol station again. Asking me if we can meet this afternoon. I type back that I can be there in forty minutes. My phone vibrates in my hand. She says thanks, she’ll see me there.
I switch off both aids and drive. There’s a dead animal splayed across the line separating the slow lane from the hard shoulder, and the black and white of the road matches its markings so well it looks like it’s been placed there. I think it’s a badger. A white Volvo drives past with its sign up on its roof and I wonder if Viggo’s inside. I indicate and pull into to the Q8 petrol station. There’s nobody here yet because I’m five minutes early. I park up and turn off the radio and switch my aids back on.
A face in my wing mirror. It’s a thin girl, long hair with a fringe cut at an angle. She’s gripping her hands around her torso as if to hold herself together. I press a button and my window winds down.
‘Tuva?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Daisy. Savanah called you to set this up. So I could meet with you. She said you’d be okay about that.’
‘Savanah’s not coming?’
‘She’ll pick me up when we’re done. Can I get inside? It’s freezing out here.’
She opens the door and climbs into the truck. I look at her. She’s a pretty bird next to me, her coat wrapped around her like an extra-large hotel robe. I feel like a giant. I realise she’s not the girl from Hannes’s computer, the girl with the noose. She rubs her slender hands together and breathes on them so I switch on her heated seat and turn the blower to max but it’s too loud for my aids and I get feedback. I turn the blower down to medium.
‘Savanah said you were a good person,’ she looks at me, her hands over the air outlets. ‘Can I talk to you in confidence?’
‘You want this off the record?’
‘God, yes. I don’t want anyone to know we talked like this about him.’
‘Him?’
‘Can you promise?’
I nod.
‘Hannes,’ she says. ‘I’m his girl.’
‘This is off the record,’ I say, showing her my palms. ‘You can talk freely.’
She shakes her head as if about to change her mind, as if she’s about to sprint into the petrol station and hide inside a toilet cubicle.
‘You need a minute? You want coffee?’
She nods to me and smiles. She’s a beautiful girl, like a young Kate Moss, but with an asymmetrical face and a shit hairstylist.
I go inside and buy two cappuccinos that bear no resemblance to cappuccinos and two Danish pastries. I pay cash and jog back to my truck and hand her a cup and a greasy paper bag that’s now almost transparent like tracing paper.
‘He’s got a problem,’ she says, like she’s been rehearsing while I was inside. ‘Nobody knows about it, not even his wife.’
I wait.
‘It’s his eyes.’
Didn’t expect that. I take a sip from my bitter coffee and look at her.
‘He’s got some kind of degenerative eye disease. It’s awful really, for a man like him. He’s known about it since his twenties. He wears contacts so you’d never know, but his eyes have gone from medium to severe, from about minus five when I met him to about minus te
n now, maybe worse. You know what that means, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘He’ll lose his hunt permit. He’ll lose his gun licence to hunt his own bloody land. They tried to take it away from him this year because he failed the test; but him and the police are good friends so they let him have it, but they told him it’s his last one. This is his last season.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s not okay, not for a man like Hannes. He’s been shooting all his life, since he was about eleven years old. He’d killed and skinned and gutted a bull elk before he’d even kissed a girl. Aside from poker, it’s his whole life. It’s what gets him through the summer months, the thought of hunting all autumn and all winter. And this is his last. And that’s turning him crazy.’
I gesture with my cup in my hand for her to continue. She’s not drinking and she’s not eating.
‘He’s always looked after me real nice,’ she says. ‘But now I’m scared. The other girls have always bitched about how well he takes care of me, not to my face, but I know. And now he’s got more jealous. A lot more. He doesn’t want me talking or looking at any other men but him, professionally or outside of work. Gets staff to keep an eye on me. And that’s just not practical, you know? He’s my client and he was always kind of my friend, but he’s got a wife. I have to have my own life, you know? So I’m . . .’ She stops talking.
‘Go on.’ I gesture with closed fingertips, zipping my lips like a schoolgirl keeping a secret.
‘I got this friend, right, she’s from Gothenburg and she’s working in London and she’s doing real well. Good money. She says I can visit, I can stay with her, she’ll help me out, introduce me to her club. I’ve got savings so I reckon there’s nothing much keeping me here.’
Now I’m the one who’s jealous. In my head, in the blink of an eye, I see her flying to London and starting fresh and working in Mayfair, in some fancy bar, and having drinks with this friend of hers, who in my mind’s eye is Tammy somehow. She’ll be living the life I should be living.
