Thord warns me not to put two and two together and make five. I tell him to check the Utgard lumberjacks and he says he knows what he’s doing and I’m not to follow him. Just let him do his job.
I park behind my office. Sebastian’s BMW’s got a kitesurf sail on the back seat alongside about six rolls of black bin liners and a coil of green rope. A shallow forest grave outside Östersund? That poor woman. What she must have gone through.
I cross the road and walk to the shoe shop slash health-food store.
The door has a closed sign but it’s not locked and there’s still a woman inside clearing things away.
‘Sign’s up,’ she says. ‘Closed now for Midsommar.’
‘I’m looking for Freddy?’
She frowns at me like nobody’s ever come into the store looking for Freddy ‘Baby Face’ Bom.
‘His summer caravan,’ she says. ‘Up by the reservoir, used to be his mamma’s, no idea which one is his though.’
So, now I know he isn’t home in the burbs.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘Happy Midsommar,’ she says.
Not for me it isn’t.
I drive to Freddy’s house and park outside. The Christmas-tree hedge is dense with needles and it is alive with flies and wasps. I think about the body up north. Buried between fresh stumps. Probably unrelated. Please God, let it be unrelated. I look through the impossibly narrow gap in the spruces and there is no car in his driveway. No sign of his BMX. Looks deserted.
The gate squeaks on its hinge as I push through.
No cats.
Covered sandpit to my left with a wooden pallet and a pile of bricks on top securing the lid. Were they on top before? The curtains are closed. Garage to my right. Padlocked.
I walk up the path.
The garage door won’t budge so I call out, ‘Tam?’ and then I knock and say, ‘Tammy?’
A hint of cat urine in the still, warm air.
‘Tammy?’
‘She’s in the house,’ says a voice right behind me.
I turn on my heels and it’s Freddy standing there in pale blue shorts and a white polo shirt. His fingers look like claws and his face is as round as a dinner plate.
‘What do you mean?’ I say.
‘I mean Tammy’s inside.’
I slide my hand into my handbag and feel the weight of the stun gun.
‘I want to see her. Now.’
His lip curls up on one side and he leads me to the front door. I check around to see if people are nearby.
Nobody.
At least my phone works here. At least I can scream and run to a neighbour.
‘Is she alright?’ I ask, but he doesn’t answer, he just steps inside.
There are no feet under the rug this time.
‘Let me get her,’ he says.
Get her?
I’m still holding my stun gun, my hand inside my bag. Must be careful not to electrocute myself by accident. Last place in the world I want to be left incapacitated and writhing on the floor.
There’s a bookshelf on the far wall. My senses are on high alert – I can see medical encyclopaedias and books on podiatry and chiropody. Then there’s a whole shelf on feet binding. There’s a book on the Song dynasty and lotus feet. Thinner books on foot partialism and foot jewellery.
‘Here she is,’ he says, walking to me with a Persian cat in the crook of his arm. ‘Tamsin the half-Persian. Just look at her paws.’
‘Tamsin?’ I say.
‘Tamsin,’ he says. ‘Tammy for short. Oh, no,’ he looks horrified. ‘You didn’t think. Oh, my goodness me, no. Tamsin’s my cat. Fifteen years next January.’
I nod, the rise in hope, and at the same time in terror, too much for my body to process. I have a strange mixture of adrenalin and fear and relief.
‘Have you seen my friend?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘I’m very sorry, I have not.’
I check the front door, my exit.
‘Interesting library you have here.’
‘Oh, no,’ he says. ‘The library’s upstairs.’ He gestures with his big toddler head to the staircase covered with dark red carpet, a pattern from the seventies, the kind of carpet you might find in a pub or a skip.
‘You like feet?’ I ask. ‘You like small feet? Bound feet?’
He looks pained at my question, stroking the cat’s paws with his slender fingers to the point where the cat looks uncomfortable with it.
‘Not like,’ he says. ‘Fascinated. I don’t agree with the old practices, of course not. But as a historical subject, encompassing feminism, eroticism, class boundaries, anatomy.’ He points to his books. ‘I find the subject interesting.’
‘Have you–’
He interrupts me. ‘Did you know they started the process with young girls well before they were aged ten. Did you know that? It was often the mother that performed the procedure, the girl’s own mother. She’d take her daughter, her own flesh and blood.’ The cat squirms in Freddy’s arms and he tightens his grip. ‘The mother would do it all in the mid-wintertime when the feet would be at their most numb, and she’d soak her own daughter’s feet in a mixture of herbs and animal blood to soften them. Then the mother would break each toe in turn. Snap, snap, snap. And then she’d bend them underneath the child’s foot, and bind them with cotton bandages soaked in the same herbal blood mix. The arch of each foot would be cracked again and again if necessary. Can you believe––’
‘I can’t,’ I say.
The cat hisses and jumps from Freddy’s fingers.
‘Bound feet are beautiful.’ He squeezes his eyes shut and corrects himself. ‘Were beautiful. So delicate,’ he says. ‘You want a glass of milk? Such a baking hot day.’
‘Just water.’ I don’t want his water but I need to keep looking.
I try to sneak a look around the back of the bookshelf when he’s not in the room and then I start walking up the stairs. I need to look.
‘You need the bathroom?’ he says.
‘Yes, please,’ I say, pointing up the stairs. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
I have a stun gun and a knife and a scream that will alert neighbours. I can do this. I have to search.
‘Just down here,’ he says, opening a cupboard under the stairs, passing me a glass of water. It looks like there’s something fizzing in the bottom of it.
‘Is that a room?’
‘It’s a bathroom,’ he says, smiling.
I move past him and he smells of talcum powder. It’s a tiny bathroom with a sloping ceiling.
He closes the door. I lock the door and stare into the mirror. Jesus, I look like a wreck. Sunburnt skin and bad hair and bags under my eyes. I flush the avocado-coloured toilet and wash my hands in the avocado-coloured sink. The water has stopped fizzing. Smells normal. I pour it down the plughole. There are magazines stacked neatly on a table next to the toilet. The top one is a consumer magazine comparing different cameras and video equipment. I lift it.
Right there.
A copy of Tam’s takeout menu.
Folded and placed under the magazine.
I almost cry at the sight of it, at the sight of her name in print and of her telephone number that I know off by heart and of her logo and directions to her van. Her food options.
I start to sweat in this small under-stairs cupboard of a bathroom. It smells of damp and old potpourri. Probably Freddy’s late mother’s. I move another magazine, this one about women’s shoes, and there’s an audio-equipment guide and a Big Boy Book of Brainteasers. I look underneath. Another of Tam’s menus. Ten more. There are menus pressed between each magazine like Midsommar flowers pressed between the pages of a family bible.
A noise outside the door.
A bang.
I unlock and step out, my hand on my stun gun.
It’s just a cat, a different cat, there are seven or more in this entrance hall now, all meowing and rolling around as if high on catnip.
Freddy runs down the stairs.
‘Thanks for stopping by,’ he says, flustered, ushering me to the front door.
I step close to him, closer than I want to be. There’s something dark red under his thumbnails.
‘Do you know where my friend is?’
His face is glazed with sweat and he scratches his button nose with a long finger and says, ‘No. But if I see her around I’ll pop by and let you know.’
His perfect blue eyes, the whites pure and untroubled by blood vessels or puffiness, they look like they are telling the truth. Do I go to Thord with the menus? Is that a thing you can take to the police?
On the table by the door I see his keys and his Jurassic Park wallet.
And a black revolver.