I leave them to their kiss. It’s the kind of kiss I haven’t had for four months and it makes me yearn for Noora. But part of me knows that if I’m still here when Noora gets back from her Gotland holiday then that means Tammy will still be missing. And I don’t want to think about that possibility.
I leave the acidic house, Sally and the paramedic still locked together, and retreat to the covered deck. There’s a rifle leaning against a pine pillar and I’m not sure if it’s a BB gun or a lethal weapon.
Behind Sally’s house is the river but there’s something else back there. Halfway between the shack and the bubbling water there are ten or twelve large white vats. Buckets full of God knows what. I can’t see from back here and something tells me Sally wants me off her land now her ‘friend’ is here. I get into my truck.
I’m sweating and I have a bad taste in my mouth. Not sure if it’s from Sally’s house or from feeling so impotent in this search. Unprepared. Powerless. Or else it’s the fact I’m surrounded by thousands of wrecked cars and that always makes me queasy. Takes me back to the night of Dad’s crash. I thought it was my fault. Me, a fourteen-year-old girl. I never got to see his car again. Never got to see him again.
I always blamed myself for his accident. All through my teens. He was planning on staying overnight after his conference and I pleaded with him to drive back so we could have his birthday breakfast together. I don’t blame myself anymore. I’ve dealt with that. But I will always be aware that if he had not driven back that night he’d still be alive today.
An Utgard crow caws high above. I amble up to the warehouse with my windows down. There’s a forklift parked next to the corrugated steel structure and there’s some kind of hideous animal head mounted on the wall.
A hunting trophy?
My dash reads twenty-one degrees but it feels more like thirty. No wind. I step out and walk to the loading doors. Sally said her son lives here but it doesn’t look like he’s in. The animal on the door is staring at me like it’s guarding the place. At first I don’t recognise the breed, the size of its teeth. But it’s a wolverine. The head. Looks like a shrunken, bloodthirsty bear or a rabid rat. All sharp incisors. Its jaws are wide open and this Karl-Otto character, the man who apparently dated or is dating my best friend, has placed his doorbell button inside the wolverine’s mouth. I’ll have to stick my finger between its razor-sharp teeth to buzz. So I do. What kind of meathead chooses a doorbell like this anyway?
The buzz is more like an insect drone.
‘You lost?’ asks a voice behind me.
I spin on my axis towards the gleaming cars and the sun’s reflection is so dazzling I need to shield my eyes to see him.
‘Looking for Karl-Otto,’ I say.
The man comes closer. He’s carrying an exhaust pipe in one hand and he’s wearing a baseball cap.
‘Not here,’ says the man, who, on closer inspection, is more boy than man.
‘My name’s Tuva Moodyson,’ I say. ‘I’m a friend of a friend of
Karl-Otto’s.’
‘You sick?’ he says.
What?
‘No,’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘Your voice is all weird. Like you got a cold or something.’
‘I’m deaf,’ I say.
He looks at me and then looks over to my Hilux and then looks back at me.
He says nothing for a full minute.
‘Can you drive a truck if you’re deaf?’ he asks.
Do not test me today, kid. Do not test me.
‘I can do everything except hear. What’s your name?’
‘Viktor.’
‘When will Karl-Otto be back, Viktor?’
He shrugs and carries the exhaust pipe towards the loading doors. This kid’s good-looking except his eyes are too far apart. Looks like a hammerhead shark.
‘You seen a woman around here in the last twenty-four hours, Viktor? She’s Swedish but her parents are both Thai. Name’s Tammy.’
His head snaps around to me. His eyes are almost round by his ears.
‘Karl-Otto knows a Tammy. Heard him speak about her.’
‘Saying what?’
He shrugs and blinks. ‘Can’t…can’t remember.’
I catch a whiff of my own sweat.
Can’t remember?
‘Are your parents here, Viktor? Can I speak with them?’
He looks over towards the shipping container home.
‘Mum’s shopping,’ he says. ‘Karlstad city. Axel’s with her buying his stupid audio equipment. Thinks he’s got a voice. I call him my uncle but he ain’t really.’
‘Can I check inside?’ I ask, pointing to the loading doors. ‘Just for a minute? Want to check Tammy’s not hiding in there.’
He shakes his head. ‘Karl-Otto told me to keep it locked up tight. We had problems one time someone stealing his cameras and his computers and stuff. Have to keep it locked up real tight.’
Below this kid’s denim shorts are a hundred raised red bumps. Bites.
‘Mosquitos bad this year, eh?’ I say.
‘Loggers,’ he says.
I frown, like ‘sorry?’
He points behind the warehouse towards Utgard forest. Impenetrable trees as tall as space rockets. ‘Two lumberjacks in there harvesting. Reckon it’s a whole summer’s work. Got ‘em living in a caravan and they got this cat, more like a lynx uncle Axel says, anyway it ain’t been fixed, and it’s making bitch cats pregnant all over the area. Axel says they’re all pests, them two and their tom cat.’
‘Where’s the lumberjack’s caravan, Viktor? I might need to talk to them.’
‘Top of the Mossen hill just before the troll-carving sisters’ house. Got their caravan near a passing place. Outsiders, not from round here. Axel reckons they’re ex-cons.’
I give Viktor my card and tell him to call me if he hears of anything at all about Tammy and he looks at it.
‘You from Malmö? What you doing all the way up here?’
‘I lived in Gavrik for years. I’m back to find my friend.’
He nods and stares towards Sally’s shack with its snake rooms and its rifle shining in the June sun. ‘Good luck with that,’ he says.
I drive off, thirsty from the heat. I trundle along at 10kph and my eyes are everywhere. Every wreck, every patch of head-high weeds, every hollow and dip.
The shipping containers at the six o’clock area are deserted. The red flowers in the window boxes have opened more since my earlier drive-by, each bright petal flexing to maximise its ration of light. This doorbell has no incisors. The patch of garden is parched brown. Normal-looking. But the house itself doesn’t look like any house I’ve ever seen. On the left: two long shipping containers stacked on top of each other, painted dark green, with windows and blinds. On the right: two more containers. They’re all connected. I suppose there’s a good amount of living space but it looks uninviting. Gloomy. I see shipping containers and I think exploited people being smuggled from one side of the globe to the other. Decent people being taken advantage of. Some of them dying on the voyage.
I step out of my truck and walk around pretending I don’t know there’s nobody home. There are maybe twenty or thirty more containers stacked and scattered around the place, and there’s a crane, and there’s a long loading lorry. Some of the containers haven’t got windows and others haven’t been painted yet; they’re still sporting names like Maersk and Pacific Cargo.
There are pipes sticking up out of the ground. Maybe ventilation ducts? Or some kind of drainage system? And then something shiny catches my eye. I walk towards a grey container. It has a window hole cut out and inside I can see timber joists and beams. The shiny thing on the wall, hanging from a nail, is a pair of steel handcuffs.
I step towards them and whisper, ‘Tammy?’
Nothing.
I peek inside the container and say, ‘Tammy, are you in there?’ But it’s completely empty.
I photograph the handcuffs on my phone and send the photo to Thord. But if someone kidnapped Tammy they wouldn’t leave handcuffs lying around, would they? Would they even use handcuffs?
Something behind me.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I turn.
It’s Viktor. No exhaust pipe. One hand in his pocket. He’s walking towards me with a claw hammer hanging from a loop on his trousers. I walk fast towards my truck.
‘Best come back when Karl-Otto’s here,’ he says, his eyes flitting from my T-shirt to my face.
‘Okay,’ I say, jogging now to get to the safety of my Hilux.
He speeds up.
‘Karl-Otto don’t like people here,’ says Viktor.
I get to my truck and climb in and close the door and lock it. Then I nod at Viktor through the window. As I switch on my engine I look forward and there’s an EPA tractor parked up – a small truck with a red triangle in its rear window, the kind of truck that farmers use. This one looks about twenty years old and there’s a wooden lid bolted down onto the flatbed to enclose it, and the wood’s been covered in roofing felt.
But that’s not what I’m staring at. I’m staring at the dry earth beneath the truck. The sticky patch. I’m staring at the dark blood dripping down from the back of the truck.