Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (6 page)

BOOK: Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel
6.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“We’d like to talk to him,” Lena said. “Have you seen him recently?”

The man nods. “This morning.”

“Do you know where he went?”

When the man hesitates, Agnes produces her identity card. He looks at it, frowns, then turns to the boy and says something in a language Lena does not understand. When the boy has walked back to the kitchen, he turns back to Lena.

“Is he in trouble?” he asks.

“Please answer the question,” Lena says.

The man sighs. “I don’t know where he is. He’s seeing someone, but I have no idea where she lives. I’ve met her a few times. Blonde woman, his age. She said hello to me once.”

“Do you know John well?”

“Fairly well, yes.” The man shrugs. “He keeps to himself, but he’s been over for coffee a few times. He’s picked up my children from the childcare centre when I’ve been stuck in queues.”

“I see.” Lena unzips her jacket; the humid stairwell is making her sweat. “Is there anything you could tell us to help us find John?”

The man looks pained. “Is it about the radiators?”

Lena and Agnes share a glance. “No,” Lena says. “But now that you’ve mentioned them, please tell me about them.” She wonders if John deals in stolen goods, or if ‘radiators’ is slang for something else.

“John tweaked them,” the man explains. “For the flowers.”

“What?” Lena asks.

“He made them hotter; otherwise the cold would kill the flowers. In summer, he changes them back to normal. They’re his hobby. I like them too, and the landlord’s okay with them. But I told him he’d get in trouble if he tinkered with the plumbing.”

“These are John’s flowers?” Lena asks. “All of them?”

The man nods. “He waters them nearly every day. Well, nights. He works late shifts.”

“I see,” Lena says. “And no, we wouldn’t be here because he’s tampered with the plumbing.”

She hands the man her card and wonders what kind of advertisement agency did night shifts. In her experience, people in that business hung around vodka bars and cafés with menus in Italian.

“Let me know if you see John again,” she says, “or if you think of something else that can help us.”

“I will.” He nods and closes the door.

Lena looks at John’s door and at the flowers around her. They had been nursed by a man in love. A man who smiled a lot and looked after his neighbours’ kids. Now that man was running without shoes through the snow, gone along with footage of a probable killer.

A murderer whose face perhaps only John knows.

“What do you want to do?” Agnes asks.

“We’ve got the warrant,” Lena says, “so we’re taking a look inside. I need to get the bead on John. Find some clue as to where he is, what he’ll do, and who he is.”

Or was
, she adds quietly to herself.

The lock clicks open.

“Done,” the locksmith says. “All yours.”

*

John

Snow on the rails is slowing the train to a crawl, making the two-minute journey take more than ten. Next stop is Stora Mossen, near a high school, a handful of flats, and a busy roundabout.

The three men exchange glances again: this is the ideal location. It is unlikely that there will be any security staff, and outside the station are dozens of unlit bicycle paths, parkways and paths. They can clear the stairs or jump the fence if they end up chased. After that, the storm will hide them.

When the speakers announce the upcoming station
,
John does not stir. After a few seconds, the train stops and opens the doors, venting the warm air into the night.

The men spring into action.

Their routine is rehearsed to perfection. Each man knows his role. The outcome is inevitable and unconditional; only the tools and the size of the targets change. The rush, though, is always fresh, always worth the risk.

The largest of the three men stands up and bars the passage between the groups of seats. At the end of the train car, there is only one way to guard, so he opens his jacket to block the view and pretends to search a pocket. No one looks at him or his friends. Everyone is lost in his or her phone, bent over a free newspaper, or drifting off to sleep.

The ginger man and his tall comrade move in on John, low and fast.

Pinning John’s arm to the wall with his knee, the ginger man flashes his knife in John’s face and then holds it to John’s stomach. Its tip pokes a hole in John’s shirt. The other man grabs John’s jacket, flips it open and reaches for the wad of notes.

“Don’t fucking move,” the ginger man hisses. His voice is quiet and confident.

“Stop.” John’s eyes open, and he clutches his money.

“What the fuck?” The ginger man who holds the knife stares at John. “Let go, or I’ll gut you. I’ll fucking do it.” He presses the knife deeper. “Let go of the cash, you fuckwit. Are you slow?”

Unbeknownst to each other, the three men share a collective thought: this is not right. They have skidded off the road of routine and swerved out into the dark woods.

“Hurry up,” hisses the man who is blocking the corridor.

“Don’t,” John says. “You can’t. Not yet.” He holds on to his jacket while the ginger man tries to dislodge John’s hand.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” the ginger man growls. “Do you have a death wish? Do you
want
me to fuck you up?”

“I don’t want to die,” John answers, “but I need the money.”

“This is bullshit,” the black-haired man spits. “Cut him. Slice him open.
Come on.

The ginger man hesitates. “Man, I don’t know. They’ve got cameras in here–”

“His fingers,” the dark man says. “Cut them off.”


Will you get a fucking move on?
” The man who bars the corridor slams his hand into the wall in frustration. “The doors are closing.”

“Hold them open,” shouts the dark-haired man. There is no longer any point in trying to be discreet; this has already gone all kinds of wrong.

He snatches the knife from the ginger man, slashes at John’s hand once, twice. The two gashes make a deep cross on John’s hand. Blood jets away and paints patterns on clothes and seats.

John still holds on to the money. He tilts his head and studies the dark-haired man’s eyes, as if measuring him up.

The ginger man shakes his head and pulls at his friend. “He’s stoned,” he screams. “Fuck him. Let’s go.”

The train car shakes as the doors begin to close, but the man on lookout moves between them and holds them open. “Fucking hell,” he moans. “
Let’s go.

The dark-haired man stabs at John’s hand again, but a moment before the blade hits, John lets go of his jacket and flings it sideways, making the knife go through empty air.

“What the–” The attacker loses his balance, stumbles backwards and falls down on his back.

The car shakes again. Its speakers rasp, and the voice of the irritated driver booms throughout the train as she instructs all passengers to move away from the doors. Startled shouts come from farther down the car; people stand up and back away from the fight.

The large man and his ginger friend look at each other. They are at a breaking point: Their prey is irrational, and there is no time left. It is a matter of moments before someone calls the police.

As one, the two men run out and away, fleeing the train and the easy-hit-turned-disaster. The doors shut, and the train leaves the platform.

Left behind inside the train, the man with the knife is on his back as he wrestles John. Blood seeps through his clothes; he can feel its warmth against his skin. His jacket is ruined. His pants are stained beyond salvation. And he is alone, abandoned by his so-called mates.

But he has his knife, and in his other hand is the money, finally torn away from John’s grip. Two fistfuls of power and possibilities. Now only to disable the crazed junkie and escape.

Teeth clenched, he wriggles out of John’s hold, gets up onto his knees, and strikes again, aiming for the centre of John’s abdomen. For a moment, it seems as if his aim is true, then John’s foot shoots up and smacks into the man’s groin.

Red suns burst in the dark-haired man’s head. He sucks in air with a keening sound as nausea explodes in him, starting in his crotch and welling out into his limbs. All strength leaves him within the space of a second.

He falls onto his back between the groups of seats, in full view of the surveillance cameras. Only sheer pain makes him hold on to the knife and the money. When he manages to open his eyes, he stares down the length of another knife.

John holds the point of his knife millimetres from the man’s face. Blood oozes between John’s clenched fingers, and he uses both hands to keep the knife steady.

The man is bewildered but still furious. “Man, you’re–”

John stamps hard on the man’s arm until the man’s knife clatters to the floor.

“Drop the money,” John says when his opponent has stopped screaming.

“You’re screwed,” the dark-haired man wheezes and laughs hysterically. “When the train stops, I’m gone, and I’m keeping the money.
You’re
the one holding the knife, you fucking idiot.” He nods at the ceiling, implying the hidden CCTV camera.

For a long moment, John looks at the camera behind its protective plastic cover.

“That’s right,” the man says and grins. “What do you think they’ll see? You with a knife. It’s called armed assault. Now back the fuck away.”

John turns back to the man and moves the point of his knife to the man’s nostril, then pushes the knife up the man’s nose a full three centimetres. Before the man has time to scream, John rips the knife up and away, slicing open the entire length of the man’s nose.

Blood rises like a fine mist and rains over the man’s face, clogging his eyes and flooding his mouth. The man gives up a panicked, gurgling shriek. John slides the tip of the knife into the man’s other nostril and holds it there.

Searching the man’s pockets, John finds a mobile phone in chrome and a leather wallet. He holds each item in front of the man’s wild eyes, making sure the man understands the implications.

I have your name. I have your number. I have your friends’ numbers.

“I repeat,” John says, “let go of my money.”

Howling in pain, the dark-haired man clings to the bloodied stack of notes as if they were a rope that could pull him out of his terror.

John leans closer until his lips touch the man’s ear, and while the train slows down, he describes what he will do with the knife unless the man releases the money. The man wails, and the money falls from his shaking hand.

Finally, the train stops. John takes the money, the phone and the wallet, and runs out.

The other passengers who had retreated to the other end of the car rush out and back away from John. Parents carrying their children jog towards the exits. Men and women shout at their phones to make themselves heard over the wind and those around them:
Yes, a fight. On the train. I think someone’s dead.

John looks along the tracks. They continue onto a soaring bridge that connects the suburbs with the city. He hefts his bag, jumps down onto the tracks, and steps over the live rail to reach the maintenance walkway wedged between the rail and a thirty-metre drop down to the frozen strait. Two fences on each side provide a handhold.

John enters the walkway and runs up on the bridge, towards the city.

*

John

The cavern’s domed ceiling is almost lost in darkness, but the glow from Miriam’s lantern is enough to illuminate the barrier that cuts the cavern in half. John slowly walks closer while the frost stings his feet.

It could be a natural rock wall, running across the cave and reaching up almost halfway to the ceiling, but as his eyes adjust, details start to emerge. First lines, shadows within shadows, then curves and hard corners. Slowly, the geometry grows into familiar shapes.

“No,” John whispers, his arms hanging slack along his sides.

A row of rectangles turns out to be three windows, each divided into six smaller panes. In the middle of the wall is a large double door with metal doorknobs and small circular windows. Above the door is a huge clock.

Staring, he takes a cautious step closer. He cannot see the colour of the wall, but he knows it will be made of red bricks, battered from a thousand thrown pebbles. The window frames will be white, their paint worn and flaking. Years of bare hands and mittens will have polished the fake brass doorknobs down to a silvery hue. Above the door, right under the clock, will be a bell the size of a dinner plate.

The building is his old junior school.

He peers at the clock in black-painted steel. The second hand is missing, just as it always had been. As a child, he used to think the teachers removed it to hide the fact that time sometimes really stood still.

Some details are wrong: colours are too pale, the windows too tall and the door too small. What is right, however, is the threat radiating from the building, the invisible menace of never-ending days and rough shoves.

John sits down, ignoring the chill that burns through his jeans; it is warmer here than it had been on the frozen lake, but not much. He looks down, away, blinks hard, rubs at his eyes, and opens them again. The school is still there. It is waiting, its dark windows staring back at him. The building is both forbidding and summoning, and the conflicting impressions are nauseating.

“No,” he says again. “This can’t be.” Tears run down his cheeks, and soon he racks with hard, sharp sobs. He has gone insane. This is all the proof he needs.

Miriam sits down next to him and puts her arm around his shoulders. “If it’s any comfort,” she says, “this is the hardest part.”

“What – part?” John manages to ask when his crying abates.

“Acceptance.” She holds him closer. “The watershed room. Here is where you begin again.”

“It’s my damn school.” John wipes tears off his cheeks. “Right over there. But it can’t be, because it’s not
here
. It’s in a suburb, outside. I remember that much.” He stares at the school, hoping it will sink back into the shadows. Being lost is better; this way, his madness is a tangible horror rubbed in his face. “I’m losing my mind,” he says quietly. “Maybe I already have.”

She looks at him sideways with a warm smile. “No, sweetheart. You’re getting your mind back.”

“What?”

“Think. What happened at your old school that was so important? Not just all the formative years, but something more special. An insight or an activity that stood out.”

He searches what is left of his mind, if only to distract himself, and does his best to rack his brain for an answer.

And just like that, the memory returns.

It had not been an occurrence or a space of time, but an interest. In school, his need to escape the endless hours, the concrete and the clockwork regularity had turned him inwards, seeking for a way to vent himself. He had found it in the magic of shapes and colours.

“Art,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” He has no memories of the experience beyond his certainty. A glance at the school and its clock cements the idea. He had loved art. Years of routines and repetition had pressed down on him until, one glorious day in his early teens, his psyche had found an emergency exit in pictures and drawings.

“What kind?” Miriam asks. “Clay, plaster, crayons?”

“I’m a painter.” John had meant to say ‘artist’, but the other word had sprung to his mind, and he knew it was true. Before finding himself here, at some other point in time, he had been painting. Hues and tints calmed him and revealed secrets. Now that he knows the answer to Miriam’s question, the urge to paint hovers there again, like a trapdoor beyond his reach.

“Perfect.” Miriam licks her lips, a nervous tic that John finds both oddly familiar and strangely attractive. “I knew the penny would finally drop through your creative cranium.” Again, she looks over her shoulder.

John looks at the tunnel from where they have come. No sign of anyone else, no sounds apart from a faint wind, but the sense of a closing presence is strong. He is reminded of the sticky, prickling heat that heralds thunderstorms, only here the air is cold and clings to him, stripping him of warmth.

“I want to get out of here.” Shivering hard, John looks around one last time in hope of another door, but finds nothing. “Looks like the school is the only way onward.”

“It is,” she says, but she does not move. “That’s your first journey. Past the thresholds, across the breaking point. The moment when you learned how to breathe. But the reason you’re here also wants you to stay. It is banking on your cowardice delaying you until it catches up.”

John tries to focus. He wonders if he, in fact, is somewhere else, tied to a hospital bed in the real world or lying unconscious in a ditch, dreaming while those around him watch his comatose body. Perhaps his body is trembling with a fever that is projecting these horrific images on the screen of his mind.

Yet he knows the truth does not matter. He might be lost in a fantasy, but he is present and aware. And at risk.

“What’s at the top?” he asks. “A way out?”

“It’s a path back to the captain’s seat,” she says. “A road to the rickety director’s chair.” She taps her head with her finger.

“You mean back to me?” he asks.

She nods.

“That’s crazy. I’m here.”

“Only bits and pieces of you. The rest is on the move, and it’s got a plan. And that’s a problem, John. A very big problem.”

He is about to tell her to make sense when he hears a distant sound, like a long, frustrated exhalation. “Did you hear that?”

“Unless it’s your subconscious telling you to hurry up,” Miriam says, “I don’t want to know.” She tugs at his sleeve. “Please, open the door.”

“Hush.” He gazes at the school, up at the ceiling, and back down the tunnel. Only darkness. “I swear I heard a sound,” he says. “A kind of
whoosh
.”

He turns around and takes a step back.

Emerging from the tunnel are tendrils of dirty smoke, thin translucent strips that creep rather than drift over the ground. The smoke stops, as if hesitating, and spreads out, leaving patches of frost on the stone underneath.

Transfixed, John watches the smoke slither towards him, a carpet of cold and filthy fog, almost invisible against the dark rock. A thin wisp rises, squirming and writhing.
Sniffing,
John thinks.
Tasting the air. Searching.

“What the hell is this?” he breathes.

As he speaks, the fog jerks towards him and moves faster, snake-like. He backs up until his back touches the impossible school and stumbles forward again. There is nowhere to hide or run. Nowhere except through the school’s doors.

“John?” Miriam says in a panicked voice. “You have to go on. Now.”

“What the hell is this?” John moves sideways, and the smoke follows. The tunnel from where they came is lost behind a pallid cloud. A bitter, numbing cold radiates from the mist.

“It hasn’t taken form yet.” Miriam presses herself into a corner and tries to scale the wall back-first. “That’ll come later, when you’re closer to the exit.”

“Form?” he asks. The air is cooling fast; his lungs hurt with every breath. “What kind of form?”

“Just
go
.”

The smoke is almost upon John. He edges sideways and puts himself between Miriam and the advancing fog, but before he can move out of the way, the smoke whips across the ground and lashes out towards his legs.

He cries out in surprise, then again in horror when a tendril winds itself around his ankle. When he drags his foot back, the smoke falls away with a hiss, leaving behind the shredded remains of his trouser leg. The textile looks as if mauled by a pack of savage dogs. A furious wail rises from farther away, gaining in strength until it fills his head.

John leaps to the side and grasps the doorknob. The metal is worn and cool in his hand. It is just as he remembers it, even though he has no recollection of opening these doors. In the corner of his eyes, he sees the smoke rise, towering like a wave about to break on a shore.

He swings the door open and finds only blackness. It can be a wall or deep space, but it cannot be worse than the freezing, sentient fog that lurches for him. He has to get out. That is all that matters and almost all he knows.

Hoping that Miriam too finds a way to escape the fog, John throws himself through the doorway.

*

BOOK: Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel
6.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

First Light by Philip R. Craig, William G. Tapply
Hurt by Bruce, Lila
A Guide to the Other Side by Robert Imfeld
Black Water by David Metzenthen
A Hummingbird Dance by Garry Ryan
A Distant Summer by Karen Toller Whittenburg
Truth in Advertising by John Kenney
Year of the Monsoon by Caren J. Werlinger
The Big Whatever by Peter Doyle