Ice Town

Book 0: Tuva Moodyson

by Will Dean

Genres: Female Sleuths; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

ONE WAY IN. NO WAY OUT.

Deaf teenager goes missing in Esseberg. Mountain rescue are launching a search party but conditions hinder their efforts.V The tunnel is being kept open all night as an exception.

When journalist Tuva Moodyson reads this news alert she knows she must join the search. If this teenager is found, she will be able to communicate with him in a way no one else can.

Esseberg lies on the other side of a mountain tunnel: there is only one way in and one way out. When the tunnel closes at night, the residents are left to fend for themselves. And as more people go missing, it becomes clear that there is a killer among them ...

ICE TOWN is the unputdownable new Tuva novel, which will delight existing fans of the series and bring many new readers to it.

Release date: November 7, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Acknowledgements

To my literary agent Kate Burke, and the team at Blake Friedmann (Isobel, Julian, Conrad, Anna, Juliet, Sian, Lizzy, Nicole, Daisy et al): thank you.

To my editor Jo Dickinson, and the team at Hodder (Alice, Alainna, Sorcha, Kate, Jenny, Nick, Sarah, Catherine, Richard, Sinead, Dominic et al): thank you.

To my international publishers, editors, translators: thank you.

To Maya Lindh (the voice of Tuva): thank you.

To all the booksellers and bloggers and librarians and reviewers and fellow authors: thank you. Readers benefit so much from your recommendations and enthusiasm. I am one of them. Special thanks to every single reader who takes the time to leave a review somewhere online. Those reviews help readers to find books. Thank you.

To @DeafGirly: thank you once again for your help and support. In many ways your opinion matters to me more than anyone else’s.

To my family, and especially my parents: once again, thank you for letting me play alone for hours as a child. Thank you for taking me to libraries to borrow books. Thank you for allowing me to build (so many) dens, and then letting me read and draw and daydream inside them. Thanks for not censoring my book choices (too much). Thank you for allowing me to be bored (a lot). It was a special, and increasingly rare, gift.

To my friends: thanks for your ongoing support (and patience, and love).

To the residents of Whittier, Alaska: thank you for inspiring this novel with your tunnel.

Special thanks to my late granddad for teaching me many valuable lessons. He urged me to treat everyone equally, and with respect. To give the benefit of the doubt. To listen to advice even if you don’t then follow it. To take pleasure from the small, inexpensive things in life. To protect nature, and to appreciate it. To read widely. To never judge or look down on anyone. To be kind. To grow food, even if that means herbs on a window sill. To spend time with loved ones. To keep the curious child inside you alive.

To every shy, socially awkward kid: I see you. I was you. It will get easier, I promise. You will make it through to the other side.

To my wife and son: thank you. Love you. Always.

Chapter 1

Gavrik, Sweden

An elk runs along the snowploughed road searching frantically for her lost calf.

Panic in her eyes. Myriad headlights picking out that panic.

The thick scent of exhaust fumes.

I slow my Hilux truck and switch on my hazard lights. The traffic on the other side is still moving, drivers desperate to exit these bleak winter roads and retreat to their apartments, their twenty-first-century caves.

The calf looks light as air. It is running, legs long and fragile, and it is desperate to be reunited with its beloved mother, its sole protector in this cold, dark wilderness.

A Volkswagen slows and hoots its horn. A teenager hangs out of the back window filming the towering mother elk on his phone. I look down on this behaviour and yet, at the same time, I know I will likely be using that same footage later this evening for the paper, crediting the very same teenager.

Complicit.

The cow elk summons an ungodly noise and runs onto the asphalt, falling, scrambling to stand back up, the calf lost among the mayhem, the halogen-lit chaos. A man yells something unintelligible from his lorry cab. The calf stops dead for a moment. Its mother trots down into a ditch, nostrils steaming, and someone overtakes me, beeping like this whole scene is an inconvenience, and I am struck, not for the first time, by the spectrum of priorities I witness from my fellow humans. Money, power, convenience, comfort, kindness. White light split through a prism into its many constituent parts.

A grey Saab on the other side of the road skids on a patch of black ice and then recovers. The cow elk makes one last effort to run across the road, to risk everything for her offspring, and a Ford pick-up brakes hard, swerving, missing the beast by a fraction. The elk bolts across in front of me. The Ford crashes down into a ditch, dirty slush-water erupting from its bonnet, red lights glowing through the mist at head height.

The elk family are lost to the forest in seconds. Running, together, nature corrected, back into the shadowy world of Utgard forest. You might try to search for a larger, denser forest than Utgard, but you will likely never find one.

The driver of the Ford is okay. Wet and cold, but okay. I have already called Thord at the police station, my hearing aid synched to my phone. He will probably drive by for ten minutes but this is more a job for a tow truck than law enforcement.

Traffic resumes. I make a turn and head back to Gavrik town, my home, the place the world forgot. A marginal settlement surrounded by vast forests. Hunters and salt liquorice. More than our fair share of darkness.

We haven’t had much news these past two years, truth be told.

Quiet place.

Time to heal.

I drive between McDonald’s and ICA Maxi, the two gateposts of Gavrik, and snow begins to fall. December flurries are always welcome. Check back again in March when my fellow Swedes are dreaming of moving south to Spain, or maybe Malmö. I moved here years ago when Mum was ill. After she passed away I just kind of stayed. Don’t ask me why. No, in fact, do ask me. Because the people I care about live in this desolate place. It is as simple and as complicated as that.

I go on.

Pensioners wearing more layers than most people on this planet would ever contemplate: merino wool as life support. Streetlights forming halos within pale clouds of snowflakes. A young man pulling his weekly shop home on a sledge.

The long-stem weeds on the roadside, despised all summer, are admired now that they are adorned with ice crystals.

I spot Tammy’s food truck in the distance. She will be in there listening to nineties dance classics and slicing chilies and spring onions. My best friend in the world. My sister in all but blood. Tammy will be refining her bone broths and cleaning out her rice cookers. Working culinary magic inside a van in the most inauspicious corner of a car park. An unlikely hero but a hero nonetheless.

Past Benny Björnmossen’s hunt shop, the stuffed brown bear looking back, judging me. Hunting is the main pastime here in Gavrik so Benny does well, although he’ll never say as much. Past the police station and through the long shadows cast by the twin chimneys of the Grimberg Liquorice factory, our largest and oldest employer.

Welcome to Toytown, population: 8,000 souls. Most of them lost, or on their way there.

I head into Gavrik Posten and the bell above the door tinkles. Lars looks up from whatever Jedi-level Sudoku he is currently working on.

I start peeling off layers and slipping off my snow boots. My blonde ponytail feels more dishevelled and dry than it usually does and that is saying something.

‘Elk out on the Utgard road. Almost hit a truck.’

Lars, as a general rule, takes a while to react. He used to be the sole full-time reporter here until I took over, and he’s much like an old-fashioned vinyl record playing at half speed. I take my gloves off and then, after a moment, he says, ‘Elk?’

‘Cow with her calf on the other side of the road. Both looked panicked.’

‘Almost hit a truck?’ he says.

‘Truck’s in a ditch. Everyone’s okay.’

‘Everyone is okay,’ he repeats, like he’s trying to reassure himself of the fact.

Lena is back in her office fixing for the print and Nils is in his trying to sell ad space to the same poor axe shop owners and hairdressers he’s been trying to sell ad space to for years. Swedes don’t bother so much with hair styling in the dark months, you see, not in rural parts. If you have your skull encased in a woolly hat all day every day why would you even bother?

The office smells of coats drying out.

I open up my last file and turn down the volume on my new hearing aids. They are superior to my old pair in almost every way – battery life, interference, water resistance – but they hurt. Every night when I return home I pull them out as soon as I open my door, and the relief is immediate.

One piece of breaking news grabs my attention.

It scrolls across the base of my screen.

Deaf teenager goes missing in Esseberg.

Police believe he has no money with him, or contacts outside of Esseberg town.

Mountain rescue are launching a search party but conditions hinder their efforts.

The deaf teenager is described as vulnerable.

The tunnel is being kept open all night as an exception.

Chapter 10

A frail man wearing a long sheepskin jacket walks in, and the Deacon’s wife goes off to sit him down and bring him a mug of something hot. I observe this church hall. A bookshelf serving as some kind of casual library, sparse tables from IKEA, radiators on full blast, a self-service table with buns and bread and soup. The kind of room we have needed for millennia. We may always need them.

The deacon’s wife comes back over.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I say.

She nods.

‘Who do I need to know in this town?’

She looks around the room then leans in closer to me. ‘You don’t need to know any of us.’

I smile. ‘You know those little dogs hunters send down holes to catch rats? I’m one of those. I never realised it until this past year. I go down the holes too tight for others to fit through and I come back up with useful things.’

She frowns at me.

‘I will find out what happened to young Peter Hedberg. I have the patience of a wronged parent. I will not stop.’

‘Somehow, I believe you.’

‘Who should I be speaking with, Hilda?’

‘My husband, when he has the time. You might also try Chief Skoglund, and Ulf Samuellson. He works the door at Wrath.’

‘A priest, a cop and a Hells Angel walk into a bar . . .’

She smiles flatly. ‘They do in this town.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Bertil Lind, perhaps? He’s our long-suffering choirmaster so he’s seen many of the locals grow up. Painfully shy but I can introduce you. Most people around here are tight-lipped. They are eking out a living and they don’t welcome any trouble.’

‘They’ve got trouble.’

She takes a sip of tea. ‘We’ve had people go missing before. A few years ago. People care until they don’t have the energy for it any longer. They need to keep moving forward. Stacking their firewood and paying their taxes. The person’s still missing but locals need to prepare for winter, for the next unavoidable hardship. They move on and keep pushing.’

‘Who else do I need to speak with?’

‘There’s Sven, I guess. He runs the power station. He’s not the boss over there but he manages the men who do the actual work, most of them Wolverines. And then there’s one of Bertil Lind’s choir stars, at least back when he still had the voice of an angel. You probably know about Johan already. He has one of those new podcasts everyone is so interested in. All sorts of guests fly up here to speak with him. It’s about awful crimes. Not my sort of thing at all.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘Find him?’

I nod.

‘You can find him driving a piste-basher every night. He grooms the slopes for the hotel. That’s your best bet as he lives outside town. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check everyone’s okay.’

She leaves.

They are not okay. They may think they are but I can sense an oppressive weight in this settlement, like a heavy chemical cloud weighing down on everyone from above.

Appropriately, it is foggy when I emerge onto the street.

I walk a few doors down to the ski-hire store.

The door bleeps as I enter.

‘How can I help you?’ asks the moustached blue-eyed man behind the counter. He’s backdropped by racks of skis and boots.

‘Can I buy a lift pass here?’

‘You sure can.’

I approach. The store smells of boot sweat and air freshener.

‘Day pass or a weekly?’

I check the prices on the board. Is it bad that for a hearing missing person I’d choose a day pass but for Peter I’m considering a weekly? It probably is bad. But it is also the truth.

‘I’ll go for a weekly, please.’

‘Well, I’m happy to hear it. The powder is exceptional. You have all the equipment you need or you want to hire gear? I’m running a five per cent discount until Wednesday.’

Five per cent? This is typical in Sweden. One of Lena’s neighbours asked her builder for a ten per cent discount on the cost of their new three-bedroom flat-pack home. The builder told them: sure, ten per cent off is fine, but your house will be ten per cent smaller. Scandinavians don’t really negotiate.

‘No need for gear. I want to check out the hotel on the top.’

‘Are you going up there now?’ he asks. ‘In the dark?’

‘The lift’s open, isn’t it?’

He looks out of the window at the inky mountains beyond and nods.

‘Lift closes at eight prompt,’ he says, his bushy eyebrows twitching. ‘If you’re not on the last run down you’ll need to stay in the hotel, and it’s pretty expensive up there. Eight o’clock is your last chance.’

He hands over my lift pass. It looks like a credit card.

‘Got it. Thanks.’

I check my phone again. No mention of a police presser on the official website. No updates whatsoever.

It feels all kinds of wrong to jump on a ski lift and ride up a steep mountainside on the same day a young man’s body was found frozen solid in the snow. In a city it wouldn’t be so strange carrying on with your life following such an event, but in a place as intimate as this, it feels disrespectful.

Few people out on the streets. One man pushing a buggy: the kid inside covered in more layers of blanket and hi-tech fabric than your average climber on Everest.

The chairlift squeaks, causing piercing interference in my aids.

I approach the queue of zero skiers and present my pass to the barrier and it opens automatically. There is one man here supervising. He wears a bright red ski jacket and a matching red hat with ear flaps. I can see he has a tattoo of a cross on his right cheek, beneath his eye.

I move into position and someone arrives behind me suddenly, almost pushing me into the snow. She apologises. The woman is carrying two large fabric bags.

We sit together awkwardly on the chairlift and it lifts us off the ground. Two people on a chair built for three. She is in the middle seat and I’m on the far end. The whole thing is out of balance. Rushed. We’re leaning quite severely to one side.

‘Nice day for it.’

She doesn’t know. Surely she doesn’t know. But how could she not know in a town this small?

‘You live here in Esseberg?’

‘I was born here. Four brothers and three sisters. You’re an outsider. I can always tell.’

I need to mine this lady wearing a misshapen fur hat for information. A captive audience if ever there was one.

‘I’m Tuva Moodyson.’

The chair leans even more as she contorts herself to offer me a gloved hand.

I take it.

‘Klara,’ she says. ‘Klara Svensson.’

‘Your bags look heavy,’ I say.

‘They are heavy. Wine for the hotel. I bring it to them from the Systembolaget in Åre when they run low in the cellars. They stock expensive wines there. French grapes.’

I wish she was sitting in the far seat. But now it’s too late to do anything about it.

‘You want me to hold a bag for you?’

She eyes me suspiciously for a split-second and then says, ‘Would you?’

I take the canvas bag. Six bottles inside. One of the labels says, ‘Margaux.’

She has a pretty face but her mouth is broad and I can’t help thinking, somewhat ungenerously, that it resembles a duck’s bill.

‘Very sad news,’ I say.

‘Peter Hedberg? Awful. His poor grandmother. He was her last living relative.’

‘So sad,’ I say. ‘Who could do such a thing?’

‘What do you mean?’

The chairlift rises dramatically up and over a vertical cliff of black granite.

It shudders.

‘I mean,’ I say, holding on tight. ‘Assuming he was killed by someone. I heard there were signs of a struggle.’

‘He was depressed, Tuva. I know about people because I used to work with the church youth programme. People talk. He didn’t have many friends in this town. Peter was an outsider. I think he made this terrible decision for himself. Which is another kind of struggle, I know, and it is very sad.’

‘I guess we’ll find out soon. Is there anyone in the town who could have hurt him?’

‘In this town?’

I adjust my grip on the safety bar and she says, ‘It’s high, eh? And in the dark, with the floodlights this weak. It’s hairy, isn’t it?’

I nod.

‘Town keeps itself to itself, Tuva. We have the Wolverines to make sure of it.’

‘You keep mentioning Wolverines. Who are they exactly?’

‘They are the men who congregate at Wrath, the pub outside town. They’re kind of like a team to keep watch over us all. The deacon keeps them in check, don’t worry. We have no official police of our own in Ice Town but the Wolverines do their best.’

‘I’d like to meet your deacon.’

‘I bet you would. The deacon’s a busy man. He doesn’t tend to mix with people he doesn’t already know.’

‘Are the Wolverines a biker gang?’

She takes back the wine from me. ‘I knew you weren’t from these parts.’

‘Värmland.’

‘Southerner.’

Hardly.

‘Wolverines are good men. Fair. They keep us safe.’

Not from what I can see, duckface.

‘What’s the hotel like?’

‘The Pinnacle?’

I nod, and she puts on her ski mask against the cold. A mallard with goggles.

‘Used to be a famous hotel. The King came here to ski in the forties. It still looks luxurious if you don’t stare too close, but most of it’s locked up now. Can’t afford the heating costs. Eric wouldn’t like me telling that to you, he’s convinced he’ll still find some Saudi or American money to inject into it just in time. A little delusional, my husband says.’

‘Eric?’

‘Eric Lindgren. He owns the Pinnacle. His family built it a hundred years ago and aside from his training at The Grand Hotel in Stockholm back in the day, he’s been here his entire life. Eric’s furious that all our ski custom went away when the major resorts became popular. Then his railway broke down, not the freight one, the rack and pinion that used to transport guests up to the hotel. Tremendous quote to fix it, there was. So now the only folks who stay are young snowboarders and such. You can’t take a suitcase up there anymore so it’s just youngsters with backpacks who ride this chairlift. They like the fact the mountains are so clear and challenging. I suspect Eric will be very displeased about all the police action today.’

‘Displeased?’

She nods. ‘He thinks of this as his family’s private town. Some say he looks down on us all from his summit, but I think that’s unfair. He will have been watching through his father’s antique telescope and cursing all the attention, though. If there’s any news that reflects negatively on Ice Town and the Pinnacle, Eric tends to lose his temper.’

Chapter 11

The anatine lady with the wine skis off elegantly to the rear of the hotel and I am left to trudge alone through the snow towards the main entrance. I can’t see any lift supervisor up here. The whole place has the vibe of a safari park with no wardens, or a theme park with rides running all by themselves.

I turn around.

It is like being on top of the world looking down. Esseberg appears as a model railway village down there. It seems to come out of nowhere. Most places have motorways or lit roads leading in and out, connecting it firmly to the outside world. Not here. A dark mass of mountains all around, carpeted with thick snow, and then, as if placed down gently by some benevolent deity long ago, an illuminated self-contained town.

‘Welcome,’ says a booming voice just behind me.

I turn abruptly and say, ‘Oh, hello.’

‘Hello indeed. Welcome back to The Grand Hotel Pinnacle. Quite the view, isn’t it?’

‘My first time.’

‘Really? I could have sworn I’d seen you before.’ He looks down at the valley. ‘Spectacular vista.’

‘Stunning.’ He ushers me closer to the entrance of the hotel and its revolving doors. I look up at the facade. Stone, in a style I would associate more with Colorado rather than Sweden, and then wood shingles from the second storey upwards. A Scandi version of The Over-look. Towering brick chimneys, and the hotel’s name in gilt lettering.

‘Please, do come inside.’

He has thin blonde hair with a side parting and pale blue eyes like mine. He’s a little taller than me, fine-boned, with a slightly anglophile attitude, like he’s impersonating a lord of the manor.

I follow him through the doors. Impressive flagstone floor, a roaring fire at the centre of the room, a pine reception desk with bell, and a brass luggage trolley on wheels.

‘Let me show you to Reception,’ he says.

‘Oh, no, I’m only here for a drink if that’s okay.’

He looks crestfallen but replies, ‘Of course. Choose any table you like. I’ll ask someone to come and take your order immediately.’ Eric has an awkward warmth to him. He shows his disappointment outwardly and I can’t help admiring that.

‘What do you think of our town so far?’ he asks.

‘Scenic,’ I say, trying to sound positive.

He smiles a rueful smile and I have to turn away. He reminds me of somebody.

There are no other people here. I have the whole place to myself.

After a minute or two Eric leaves to answer a call. He is replaced by a woman who approaches my table wearing cargo shorts with multiple pockets, a hammer hanging from her belt, and a blue denim shirt. The shirt emblem says, ‘Grand Hotel Pinnacle.’

‘What can I get you?’ she asks, unsmilingly.

‘A hot chocolate, please.’ I’ve had enough coffee today to euthanise a small horse.

‘Whipped cream?’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’

She looks relieved. I guess her to be fifty or fifty-five, muscular and capable. She comes back through holding a mug of hot chocolate and places it down on my glass-topped wooden table.

‘Lovely hotel,’ I say.

She sighs. ‘It will be when it’s finished.’

I frown.

‘We’re doing a lot of renovations.’

‘What’s changing?’

‘Most of it. We’re modernising the place. Of course, the main improvement will be having the train operational again. Are you from Stockholm?’

‘Originally, yes. But I live in Värmland now.’

‘Lovely part of the world.’

Bizarrely, I find myself agreeing with her.

‘When is peak season for you?’ I ask.

She laughs and says, ‘This is it, I’m afraid. Not easy competing with Åre, Sälen, and Hemsedal. But in my opinion we offer the best runs.’

‘Best runs?’

She shifts her weight from one leg to the other, like she’s in discomfort.

‘Pistes. The purest downhill experience, particularly for advanced skiers.’

‘Do you want to sit with me a minute? If that’s allowed?’

She says no but then, after a few awkward moments, she sits down anyway and I can see she is relieved to take the weight off her feet. The fire in the centre of the room spits and crackles.

‘We have the finest double black runs in Sweden,’ she says. ‘In all of Scandinavia, in fact. We’ve had Olympians stay at the Pinnacle. Slalom medallists. But these days it’s usually thrill-seekers with backpacks.’

‘No train,’ I say. ‘No suitcases.’

‘Exactly,’ she says. ‘It’s not easy. Our vintage chairlift isn’t for everyone.’

‘Have you worked here long?’

‘Over thirty years,’ she says, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. ‘I knew Eric’s father back when we were fully booked from one winter to the next.’

‘You run the hotel?’

She cringes. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. Eric runs the place. Mr Lindgren I mean. I manage reception, serve tables, cook in the kitchen. I organise for provisions to be brought up on the chairlift when needed. Oh, and I clean the rooms when we’re short-staffed. You could say I wear a lot of hats.’

‘Goodness. When do you sleep?’

‘I don’t sleep much, truth be told. I’m a genuine insomniac. Have been ever since I was a young child. I have the dark circles to prove it.’

I take a sip of the hot chocolate. It is rich and sweet. Delicious. She’s grated fresh chocolate on top even though I asked her not to.

‘Thanks for this.’

‘You’re welcome. Here on holiday?’

‘Work. I’m a journalist. Tuva Moodyson.’ I reach out my hand. I need to make contacts if I’m to dig deeper into this story.

She takes my hand. ‘Karin Bates.’

‘Bates?’

‘American . . .