Attack and Decay, page 8
Despite a cold clawing at my heart at the sight of that shining, predatory vehicle, even I began to laugh at this.
Then we turned off the main road and up a gravelled lane to rendezvous with a sight sufficiently weird to curtail all laughter.
10: UFOS AND DOG POO
Obi Van Kenobi was now progressing along a narrow lane that snaked among half-glimpsed buildings and dark clumps of trees. Occasionally our headlights revealed mysterious and jagged and unidentifiable, at least to me, shapes of farm equipment lying like the skeletons of beached leviathans on this dead ocean bed.
We were slowing down. Magnus signalled a right turn and we rumbled onto a gravel access road. Another right turn brought us to a low, modern ranch-style house with inviting, brightly lit windows.
Less inviting, perhaps, were the lights weaving around in the dark field behind the house. Tinkler perhaps described it best. “Hey, miniature UFO squadron.”
Magnus stopped the van and we got out. At first the lights appeared to be green, but as we got closer I could see they came from two glowing objects. The largest was a bright greenish yellow and the smaller one a bright yellowish green.
The larger object was shaped like a stubby rectangle, though it was constantly altering its shape and orientation, illuminated by a light source fixed to it. By the time we were standing beside the house, peering into the field, it was pretty clear this was someone wearing a high visibility vest, with a light attached to it, running around frantically in the dark.
The smaller shape was a glowing green ring, or more accurately a collar, on the neck of a dog—a very lively dog, who was running around and dodging the person in the high-vis vest.
This was all taking place in silence, with what would, in other circumstances, have been a commendable lack of barking from the dog. The vest chased the collar. The collar eluded the vest.
We gradually realised that there were other sources of light, out there in the darkness, but they were stationary. And they were smaller. Little insipid green glows, motionless in the long grass.
Standing beside the house, we could now see the space wasn’t just open fields. It was also studded with darkened outbuildings and yet more mysterious examples of farm machinery. The glowing green person and dog continued their weaving chase around the buildings and machinery and dark clusters of trees, the person occasionally pausing and leaving another little mound of pale green in their wake.
We were still puzzling over this spectacle when headlights swept across us and the Union Jack Mini pulled up. The anglophile Valkyrie Emma Fernholm emerged, followed by Christer Vingqvist, self-published priest and heir to a sizable Bang & Olufsen collection. He took one look at the miniature UFO display and said, “Oh, that damned dog. He’s back again.”
“That’s Barbro out there?” said Magnus.
“Yes,” said Emma and Christer in unison.
“What is she doing?” said Nevada.
“Well, you see, she has this very annoying neighbour,” said Christer. “Who allows their dog to come to over onto Barbro’s property to defecate.”
“Doesn’t just allow it, the wanker positively encourages it,” said Emma.
“Apparently so. At least according to Barbro. She claims this so-called ‘neighbour from hell’ has deliberately trained the dog to exclusively defecate on Barbro’s property, instead of on its owner’s property. And to do so silently at night to minimise the possibility of detection.”
“Why the glowing collar, then?” I said. That did nothing to minimise the possibility of detection.
“That’s a relatively recent development,” said Christer. “I suppose they added that collar because winning the game—by which I mean succeeding in having the dog defecate over here undetected—was too easy otherwise, and they were just getting bored. Or perhaps they just liked the look of it. The glowing collar. It has to be said that, even with the creature wearing it, it is proving most difficult for Barbro to fend off the dog.”
“Is that what she is doing now?” I said.
“Fending off the dog?” added Tinkler, unnecessarily and, as ever, open to salacious connotations.
“Well, at least keeping track of him. Of the spots where he might have paused long enough to have left a souvenir.”
“So that’s what the little glows are?” said Agatha, both fascinated and horrified.
“Yes, she drops glow sticks—you know the kind you break and they glow? Wherever she suspects…”
“The dog has taken a shit,” said Tinkler bluntly. “So they’re dog shit glow sticks.”
“Potential dog shit glow sticks, yes.”
“It gets on my tits,” said Emma suddenly and somewhat alarmingly. “The way she throws a wobbler if there is a little dog poo on the ground. Reality check: at the end of the day, it is a farm, okay, right?”
“Barbro isn’t really suited to farm life,” reflected Christer. “Even on a non-working farm.”
“But she really wanted this place,” said Emma, a trifle bitterly I thought. “When our old dear popped off, she couldn’t get her meat-hooks on it fast enough. She couldn’t wait to move in. She was gagging for it.”
The chase suddenly came to an end, with a final glow stick appearing and the high-vis vest remaining bent over it while the dog and its luminous collar loped happily away into the night. “Ah, the ballet concludes,” said Christer. “The dog defecation ballet.”
“Dog shit UFO squadron,” corrected Tinkler. “The dog shit UFO squadron concludes.” He wasn’t pleased at having someone else labelling things.
“Somebody should do something about that terrible neighbour,” said Christer.
The small yellow-green shape of the high visibility vest grew gradually closer until we could make out the person wearing it. A short, stout woman with dark hair cropped close to her head. She wore big black-framed glasses. Somehow these—and her large, beatific smile—gave her the appearance of a happy dog. Maybe I just had the happiness of that victorious defecating intruder still on my mind.
Barbro waved to us and we waved back as she came striding through the long grass. In one hand she was holding a red plastic bag, tightly knotted at the top.
“It’s well weird that she’s the local vicar, innit?” said Emma.
“She’s a vicar?” said Nevada.
“Or you could call her a pastor,” said Emma.
“Tubby female pastor,” said Tinkler under his breath. “Check.”
“That’s right.” Christer Vingqvist was nodding his big head. “Barbro and I both became deacons together in the same church. But by the time I started as the deacon at the hospital, she was already the hospital chaplain. And now she is the vicar for our entire community, and I am still just the humble deacon guy at the hospital.” He sighed. “But although our careers have drawn us apart, we still share two passions—one being crime fiction.”
We didn’t get to hear what the other one was—though I assumed hi-fi, with special reference to the products of Bang & Olufsen—because at that moment Barbro Bok joined us. Her face was flushed, her glasses steamed up and her hair matted with perspiration. Apparently, it had been a very merry, and energetic, chase with the dog.
“You must be Agatha,” she exclaimed, her English as perfect as everyone else’s here, and her voice warm and welcoming. “We are big admirers of your blog.” She gave Agatha a quick and awkward one-armed embrace, then repeated the process with each of the rest of us, starting with her sister, all the while holding the tightly knotted red bag at arm’s length with her other arm.
“Excuse me for hugging you when I have a bag of dog poo in one hand,” she said, with a self-deprecating little chuckle.
“No problem at all,” said Tinkler, trying to chuckle back and not quite carrying it off. “I understand there’s coffee and cakes?”
But Barbro had abruptly fallen silent. She’d caught sight of Christer Vingqvist, who’d been hanging back from the rest of us for some reason. Perhaps he was apprehensive about the dangling red bag. If so, his reticence did him no good because Barbro now gave a wrenching little sob and flung herself into his arms, embracing him fiercely.
They stood there like that for a long moment, Barbro pressing her face into his chest, right arm tightly wrapped around his waist, left hand holding the dog poo bag draped over his shoulder as she convulsed gently with silent sobs. Christer looked stiff and embarrassed. He was staring upwards at the night sky as though hoping for rescue from that direction. Even alien abduction would be better than this.
But apparently the UFO activity was over for the evening, so he was stuck with this small crying woman clinging to him. She finally lifted her face from his chest and said something in Swedish, then instantly switched to English, apparently in deference to her visitors. “I heard what happened to your car,” she said.
“It just overheated.”
“You were nearly killed.”
“It was no problem,” said Christer in a tone that hovered between boredom and irritation. “The car just overheated and so I simply steered it safely off the road and I stopped and got out. I was never in any real danger.”
“You almost died. You were almost gone forever. And if you had been gone forever…”
Barbro put her face back to his chest. She now began to weep openly and frankly and audibly. Christer stared up glumly into the dark sky. Where was a flying saucer kidnapping when you needed one?
After some time, and not without struggle, Barbro stopped sobbing, regained the power of speech, and looked up at Christer again. “I saw the pictures of the car. There was nothing left.”
At the mention of the pictures, Christer brightened. “Did you see the ones I posted on my socials? Weren’t they amazing? I cursed myself because I didn’t think to take any before it was almost too late. The fire had already died down quite a bit.”
Barbro now released her grip on Christer, much to his evident relief. She stood back a little, beaming up at him, her cheeks gleaming wet with tears beneath her big glasses. If she had been a happy dog before, she was now a positively ecstatic one. She stared at Christer as if memorising his features before he set off on a long journey.
“You must be more careful,” she said, stroking his arm with the hand that wasn’t still clutching the bag of dog crap.
“My car just randomly burst into flames. How can I be more careful?”
Christer seemed genuinely irritated by this quandary, but Barbro was no longer paying attention to him. It appeared she’d suddenly remembered her hostly obligations. She turned to us and smiled. “No doubt my dear friend here and my beloved sister have been giving you a full account of that foolish ritual of mine. Of course, I’m aware that I look ridiculous, running around in the darkness wearing a high visibility vest. But the dog is going to be able to smell me from the other side of the farm—with dogs it’s not a matter of visibility but smell-ability—so if there’s no chance of concealing myself from the dog, I might as well be highly visible.”
“Very sensible,” said Nevada. Although, like me, I imagine it made minimal sense to her.
“That cunning dog,” continued Barbro. She was trying for a light-hearted tone, but I could hear a real note of anger creeping into her voice. “He’s getting very good at avoiding me and coming in here stealthily and leaving his deposit for me to perhaps step in by surprise, or eventually to be led to by my nose or by the flies.”
“I don’t know why you’re going spare over a little dog poo,” said Emma. “This is a farm. You should expect big time manure on the ground, isn’t it?”
Barbro’s good-natured manner vanished instantly, and I reflected on how easily siblings could push each other’s buttons. “Manure, yes,” snarled Barbro. “The droppings of herbivores. Which are inherently less offensive than the disgusting, stinking leavings of a creature who feeds on meat.”
“August Strindberg feeds on meat,” said Emma.
“August Strindberg buries his leavings.”
From this exchange I gleaned that August Strindberg was a cat. The “well lovely” cat we’d been briefed about earlier. Nevada had come to the same conclusion. “Perhaps we could meet August Strindberg,” she said, ever the diplomat, and now neatly putting an end to the sisters’ bickering.
“Yes, of course,” said Barbro. “Come inside.”
* * *
August Strindberg proved to be a mound of marmalade fur, gently rising and falling, curled up and concealing all but one lazy, minatory amber eye that opened briefly to silently reprimand us for interrupting his slumbers.
“Maybe he’ll be a bit more lively later on,” said Barbro, without much conviction. “Please make yourself at home while I get the coffee on.” She bustled into the kitchen and we wandered into the living room. Magnus and Emma elected to sit on the sofa while we explored.
The place was a rambling bungalow with verandas on three sides. These long, rectangular verandas were so effectively winter-proofed that they served as additional rooms on a permanent basis. They were filled with storage racks, oddments of furniture and… bookshelves. Bookshelves stuffed with crime novels.
Agatha immediately fell upon these, her loyal disciple Nevada at her side.
Tinkler, Christer and I went in search of hi-fi equipment. Which we found in the veranda on the side of the house facing the erstwhile UFO display and dog waste excursion.
Here, on the kind of metal shelves you’d expect in a car workshop, were numerous bulky cardboard boxes, mostly stored flat. My heart sank when I saw these. It was definitely the best way to keep your kit in good condition, in the original packaging, but from a hi-fi voyeur point of view, it was a total bust.
If I wanted to see anything, it was going to have to be unpacked and set up, at considerable inconvenience to my hosts. Christer seemed to understand my dilemma. “I’m sure there must be something she has out that you can have a look at,” he said.
“What exactly is he so hot and bothered to see?” said Tinkler.
“A Beogram,” said Christer.
“That’s the turntable?”
“Yes, I believe there are some of the 8000 series here. They were the direct drive decks.” Christer smiled a wistful, nostalgic smile. “Jacob Jensen’s masterpiece.”
“These are the so-called tangential decks?” said Tinkler.
“There is nothing so-called about it,” said Christer curtly, his smile fading. Evidently Tinkler had managed to rile him without breaking a sweat. “They are tangential tracking and also tangential drive.”
“By which you mean direct drive?” said Tinkler, rather snottily.
Before this could erupt into a full-blown train-spotter squabble over hi-fi terminology, I cut in and said, “The tangential arm tracks in the same way that records are cut.”
“Okay,” said Tinkler. “I concede that is interesting. But you’re not cutting a lacquer when you’re playing a record. It isn’t the same procedure.”
“Surely it is,” said Christer. It was as though this was an article of faith to him.
“Well…” I said. “Actually, he’s right. In one case you’re creating the groove, in the other you’re following it.”
“Exactly,” said Tinkler.
“Did you know,” said Christer, changing tack somewhat, “that Bang & Olufsen are not Swedish? They’re Danish.”
“Sure, manufactured in Struer,” I said.
Christer gave me a toothy smile of approbation. “That is right,” he said. “Now let me just go and quickly check with Barbro. She must have a turntable out of its box and in operation somewhere.” He left us standing in the chilly veranda, breathing the faint odour of mildew.
Tinkler looked at me. “They still make them, you know,” he said. “The Beogram turntables.”
I nodded. “They’re reconditioning vintage examples.”
“Damning evidence that the ability to manufacture them from scratch has gone forever?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “If so, what a bummer.”
“How much are they going for?”
“Around ten grand.”
“Jesus. You could get a Xerxes for that and stick a motherfucker of an arm and cartridge on it.”
“Indeed.”
“And yet you’re still interested?” said Tinkler.
I shrugged. There was no denying it. I was.
“This isn’t serious hi-fi,” said Tinkler. “You do realise that? You’re just seduced by that sexy, elegant minimalist Scandinavian styling.”
“That’s part of the appeal, sure. But this stuff is beautifully built.”
“Seduced,” said Tinkler, shaking his head sadly.
* * *
Christer never returned from his turntable quest, so we went in search of the girls. And found them, as expected, avidly combing through Barbro’s library. Just as we arrived, they had paused to examine a framed photograph that hung on the wall in one of the few gaps between the ever-present bookshelves.
It was a photo of Christer Vingqvist. He was standing, posing—it was a fair word—against a backdrop of mountains with a hunting rifle. The mountain mist behind him was luminous. With the rifle slung over his shoulder, Christer looked almost dashing.
It was a very good photo, perhaps worthy of Mikael, bearded boy journalist.
But that wasn’t what we were thinking.
Nevada and I looked at each other. And then at Tinkler and Agatha.
Tinkler confirmed that this was another moment of group telepathy by saying, “Do you think those two were once banging? And I don’t mean like a ‘banging little farmhouse’. Although maybe they used to be banging in this banging little farmhouse.”
“Maybe they still are,” said Agatha.
Tinkler made a variety of vomiting noises and gestures, and Agatha looked progressively more impatient with each one. “You’re one to talk,” she said, when he had finally concluded. She glanced at me and Nevada. “He’s criticising other people’s sex lives while he’s being fleeced by a halfwit teenage stripper.”
“I challenge ‘fleeced’, ‘halfwit’ and ‘teenage’,” said Tinkler. “I guess that means I challenge pretty much everything except ‘stripper’. Anyway, it’s early days. It’s just a first date. Now, I wonder when food is going to be served? That coffee certainly smells enticing.”
