The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense; Women's Fiction; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Richly atmospheric and haunting to the last page, Susanne Jansson's stunning debut will captivate fans of the celebrated suspense fiction of Jane Harper or Tana French.

The murky, windswept peat bogs of northern Sweden are a profoundly desolate place. Once upon a time, here amidst the stunted trees, marshy fields, and treacherous quicksand, ancient people came to leave offerings to the gods. Including human sacrifices.

Nathalie, a young biologist, has just arrived in the Mossmarken wetlands to begin field experiments. But Natalie has a secret. Her reasons for visiting the marsh are more than just scientific—her dark fascination with the bog is rooted in a traumatic event from her past that haunts her to this day.

When Nathalie finds an unconscious man out on the marsh, she's horrified to discover that someone has filled his pockets with gold—just like the ancient human sacrifices. Then Maya, the crime scene photographer assigned to the man's case, stumbles upon another body with coin-filled pockets-this time, dead-and it becomes clear that a dangerous serial killer is on the loose.

With the local police overwhelmed by a growing number of murders, Maya quickly finds herself entangled in a web of secrets spun by the superstitious locals. And Nathalie will be forced to face the buried horrors of her past, even if it means confronting a dangerous killer who may be closer to home than anyone else realizes...

In her evocative debut novel, Susanne Jansson weaves a tale that is as much about the stories we tell ourselves to survive, as it is about what may drive ordinary people to kill.

Release date: September 4, 2018

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

As evening approached, the wind started to pick up. It blew lightly across the treetops at first, but then it began to gust harder and harder until it was tearing at everything it could reach. Darkness would fall in just over half an hour.

In the car park outside the manor house, Johannes climbed off his bicycle and leaned it against a lamppost. He pulled a band around his dark hair and fastened it in a knot at the nape of his neck. This weather was truly awful. Not the sort of weather any normal person would go for a run in.

Fine then, he wasn’t normal.

As he locked up his bike, he cast a glance over at Nathalie’s cottage. The light of the kerosene lamp flickered in one of the windows, and he could see her moving around inside. Shadows danced across the walls, slow and evasive.

Like her.

She had slept over a few nights before. But when he woke up in the morning, she was gone. The bed was empty.

Sure, she’d said she had to get up early the next day, but that didn’t stop him from feeling disappointed. They’d had a nice evening—and then she just left without a word, or even a note.

It could probably be chalked up to the usual reason: fear of intimacy, he thought as he stretched; she suddenly felt vulnerable and so she retreated. A plausible explanation if you wanted to play psychologist.

The rain was coming down harder now, and the urge to ditch his run was getting stronger. He wasn’t dressed properly, he knew, but then again he hardly ever was. He’d never been the type to pay attention to weather reports—at most he would glance out the window—which was probably because his mother was the exact opposite. A different article of clothing for each degree on the thermometer; a special outfit for every occasion. His entire childhood had been full of fiddling and adjusting and changing clothes to make sure not a single drop of rain or chilly gust of wind could penetrate any of the layers.

Now, as an adult, he sometimes felt exhilarated if he accidentally got wet or cold.

He started running toward the path and took a right, away from Nathalie’s cottage. The forest was on one side; the other side gave way to a peat bog, a view he had become quite attached to: that wide-open desolation; that squat, gray vegetation; it looked even more uncompromising and remarkable as the rain fell and the wind picked up.

He remembered the sight of the white frost on the peat moss out there in the wintertime. There had been something unearthly about it, so fragile and seductive; he had never seen anything like it.

At one point a large moose showed up out of nowhere, swaying its way over the frozen pools, which rang out, crashing and tinkling like sorrowful chimes. Today the monotonous pounding of his own steps sounded like heavy blows, as if he were hammering his way forward, persistently, mechanically.

After the first section, the winding path turned into a long straight as it headed toward the old peat quarry. He could still glimpse the road here and there as it ran parallel, and soon he could see the car park for the bog. It was empty. He seldom saw anyone out here, but on this particular evening, with the rain whipping at his face, it felt extra deserted.

Here and there, narrow wooden walkways led into the bog. For a moment he thought about cutting across and taking a shorter route, but the boards looked slippery. It seemed too risky. You’d only have to lose your balance, and—

“Ouch!”

He had stepped awkwardly on a rock, even though he’d gone running here so many times that he knew every last root, every single rise like the back of his hand. The pain vibrated through his leg, then suddenly retreated in a flash, only to return in full force a minute later.

Damn it!

He hopped on one leg and tried to find something to steady himself against, but at last he collapsed on the path.

It really hurt. The wind and the rain tore and whipped at his clothes as he tried to stand, but he couldn’t put any weight on his foot at all.

He waited a little longer to see if the pain would subside. Meanwhile, he cursed himself for leaving his phone at home. How would he manage to get back to the manor house on one leg?

There was plenty of brush along the path, and it occurred to him that he might be able to break off some of the sturdier branches and improvise a pair of crutches. It seemed like a good idea, but after a while he had to give up—the branches he found weren’t strong enough.

Once he had made it some distance down the path by alternately hopping and dragging himself along, he looked out over the bog. That was when it struck him. It had stopped raining—and the wind had died down too, for that matter. It was perfectly still.

How strange.

The moon sailed out from behind the clouds in the dark sky. It illuminated tendrils of fog as they slowly swept across the damp ground.

He thought he heard a noise. Was it the wind? Or an animal? It almost sounded like a wail. Like faint cries.

Then he saw a glow coming down the path.

A flashlight. Someone was coming!

“Hello!” he called.

No response.

“I need help,” he went on. “I hurt myself…”

The glow came closer. And closer. At last it blinded him and he had to shield his eyes with his hand.

“Hello?”

Then the flashlight pointed in a different direction and his vision cleared.

He had time to think, What is happening?

Then everything went black.

 

Knock, knock, knock.

Nathalie woke up with a start. She pressed her fingers to her temples to make the knocking in her head go away.

Knock, knock, knock.

Knock, knock, knock.

A glance at her alarm clock told her that there were two hours left before it was time to get up. Pretty much the same as usual, in other words. No point in trying to go back to sleep.

There never was any point.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and wondered instead whether there was anything she had left to do. No. The apartment was clean and most of her belongings had been stored away. The suitcases that weren’t already in the car were packed and in the hallway. Everything was ready.

She showered and ate breakfast standing up, trying to leave as few traces behind as possible. She wrote a note for the people who would be staying in the apartment while she was gone and placed it on the kitchen table.



I left a few things in the fridge; maybe you can use them. The account number for the rent is in an email I sent yesterday.

Hope you enjoy your stay.

Best,

Nathalie

The street outside was empty and quiet, typical for a Sunday. She placed the last of her luggage in the trunk, got behind the wheel, and drove off.

She headed north out of Gothenburg on the E45 highway before the city could wake up. It felt like she was sneaking away after a one-night stand.

She stopped at a service station after a little while to get gas, buy a cup of coffee and pick up a few things to help her get through the first couple of days. Then she pressed on. And soon the landscape changed. Darkening, deepening.

Just imagine—it only took a few hours to travel so many years back in time. To this land of lakes and forest. To the place where she actually belonged.

She had always felt like a stranger in the big city by the sea. The rollicking, volatile, unreliable sea. She had never fitted in among the people who were always out sailing, who liked bare rock cliffs and the horizon, who worshipped the sun and wanted the weather to be as persistently warm as possible. It was as if they expected the same from her, some inner kind of get-up-and-go she’d never had access to but had, to some extent, learned to fake.

Each summer when she set her feet to the warm granite of Bohuslän and waded into the water for a swim, it felt like the sea wanted to spit her right back out again, out of sheer reflex. As if it knew she didn’t belong to its natural domain.

A September rain had started to fall against the windscreen. Hesitant, quiet. As though autumn were tiptoeing in, as though it didn’t want to disturb or upset.

Come, she thought. Just come.

Just fall.

We’ll do it together.

She passed the Åmål exits and turned off at Fengerskog. She felt a wave of unreality wash over her, as sudden as it was overwhelming, and she asked herself what she was about to do. What she was about to set in motion. At the same time, she realized she was almost there, and that it was way too late to turn back.

She slowed down by the art school and the old factory; she knew that nowadays it was a space for studios, galleries and workshops. At the crossroads, where once there had been only a small grocer’s, there were now also a bakery and a café, and she could see young people with canvas totes drinking their morning lattes or tea out of tall glasses. Then the buildings gave way to forest; after a while, the road turned into a birch-lined avenue that led up to the manor house.

A couple of cars were parked in the gravel drive. She stepped out, leaving her luggage in the car, and crossed the gravel to the front entrance.

It was a stately building with four towers, a white plaster façade, a tin roof the green shade of linden blossoms, and large windows looking out on its surroundings. It had been built on a small rise, as manor houses often were. Frequently they also look out over a beautiful landscape—a pretty lake or rolling hills.

This manor house was different. It gazed out over modest, quiet scenery. A vast landscape of fading colors, squatty pines and sinking ground. It was a landscape the sun seemed not to reach, a landscape that never dried out. The ground was always weeping, always wallowing.

And now she had returned of her own accord.

“Are you the one who’s renting the little cottage?”

The woman, who introduced herself as Agneta, was the manager of the manor. She wore a kaftan-like beige dress with wide bands of embroidered edging, which made her imposing body look like a pillar. Her dark blonde hair was cut to hang straight down over her shoulders, with a blunt fringe at the front.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Her husband was right behind her, a head shorter and dressed in a dark suit, his eyes nervously sweeping the room.

Gustav, Nathalie thought. Like a bodyguard. They’re just as I remember them.

“Then I’d like to welcome you to Mossmarken and Quagmire Manor. I hope you’re aware that the building you’re renting is a simple cottage. It is mostly used during the summer months.”

“Yes, I’m sure it won’t be a problem. It does have heat, doesn’t it?”

“Two fireplaces and a gas fridge. But that’s all. You can fetch water from the cellar here, and you can charge phones and computers and such in our office. There’s a shower and toilet in the hall upstairs. And of course there’s an outhouse behind the cottage too. What else…” she said, apparently thinking it over. “Oh right, the bike. There’s an old bike you can borrow if you want to. Where are you from, by the way?”

“I live in Gothenburg.”

She noticed the old portraits on the wall of the foyer—elegant ladies in voluminous dresses and proud gentlemen in military get-ups. She had been captivated by them as a child, and by one of the paintings in particular: the one of Sofia Hansdotter, wife of a landowner who lived at the manor in the late nineteenth century. She remembered Sofia’s pea-green dress and melancholy gaze.

It was said that she had lost seven of her eight children. That she had been crazy. That she had smothered the children in secret and then begged her husband to let her bury them in the bog near the manor. Because she wanted to keep them close, she said. Her husband had complied to avoid causing even more damage to her broken heart. Until one day, when the eighth child had just been born, in a moment of sudden clarity, he realized how all the children had died and decided to take the newborn from its mother. It was said that Sofia then walked down to the place where she had buried her children, stepped right out into the mire, and vanished. No one had done anything to save her.

The eighth child grew up to be a strong, healthy man who later took over the manor. He was the great-grandfather of the current owner, Gustav.

“Gustav and I have run this place as a guest house for over thirty-five years; before that it was kept by his parents,” Agneta went on, with a presence that suggested that this wasn’t the first time she’d told the story of the manor. “The estate has been in Gustav’s family since the 1600s. You can see all the old ancestors on the paintings around us.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand.

At that instant, a woman came down the stairs.

“Here comes our cook, Jelena, who makes the best smoked whitefish this side of Lake Vänern—if you’d like to eat up here some time.”

Jelena was pale and thin, as far from the clichéd image of the plump matron as a person could get.

“And here we have Alex, our caretaker,” Agneta said as a tall, muscular man came through the door. “You can give him a shout if anything needs fixing.”

Alex stopped, his eyes fixed somewhere up by the chandeliers, and gave a curt nod. Then he kept walking, heading for the back rooms.

“Gustav and I are available on weekdays from nine to four, in case you have any questions. Most of the time we’re in the office in the next room along, unless we’re up a ladder painting a barn door or fixing a broken tractor or the like. The rest of the time, you’re likely to find us in the east wing, which is where we have our home. It’s fine to contact us outside office hours as well.” She paused, then went on. “That should be about it. This is what we call the off season; there’s not much going on just now. Are you here for any particular reason, if I may ask?”

“Yes… I’m working on a doctoral dissertation. It’s about how the greenhouse effect influences the process of decomposition in wetlands. I’m a biologist.”

“I see.” Agneta smiled, motioning toward the window. “You came here because of the bog. Interesting.”

“Yes, I was planning to do a few last field experiments…”

“It is quite unique, this bog,” Agneta continued. “They say it was once a so-called sacrificial bog.”

“Right.”

“Maybe you’ve heard of those? Apparently, back in the Iron Age, various offerings to the gods were buried here. Even people, actually. We have brochures about it in the office. Around the new millennium one of those bodies was found here, from 300 B.C. It’s at the Karlstad Museum now…”

Nathalie nodded. “Yes, I think I did hear about that.”

“The Lingonberry Girl,” Agneta said.

“Okay,” said Nathalie.

“Yes, that’s what she’s called, the girl they found… but speaking of the bog, I hope you’ll be careful when you go out there. It’s very marshy in some spots and the boardwalks are slippery this time of year. But I suppose you’re used to it.”

The cabin was below the manor house and had one room plus a kitchen. The kitchen consisted of a counter and washbasin with no tap, a large wood-burning stove, and a dining nook with a traditional kitchen sofa and two chairs. The room was furnished with a bedframe on legs, a wardrobe, a simple desk, and, in front of the tile stove, two old easy chairs and a tiny table.

The autumn chill had forced its way through the thick timber walls. It felt raw inside, but it smelled fresh and clean.

A large mirror was leaning against the wall in one corner. Nathalie sank to the floor, sitting cross-legged, and observed her face. She never ceased to be surprised that she always looked so much more energetic than she felt. Her sand-colored hair, which she trimmed once a year, was still cut the same way a star stylist had suggested eleven years earlier as Nathalie was preparing for a modeling session. Simple, medium-length, a soft bob—easy to maintain.

When she was eighteen she had been “discovered” outside a cinema and offered a modeling contract, even though she was really too short—apparently she was expected to be immensely grateful that they were willing to overlook this fault.

She had just finished secondary school and was hoping to earn a bit of easy cash, but she couldn’t handle all the hustle and bustle. She couldn’t tolerate the hairspray that stung her nose or the powder brushes moving over her face or the commands in front of the camera: rather brusque orders that were supposed to make her radiate something exceptional—she never understood what. After two weeks she’d had enough.

The hairstyle was her only significant legacy from that parenthetical aside in her life. It took very little effort but helped her keep up her advantageous appearance, which she chose to maintain for purely practical reasons: it kept those around her satisfied and preoccupied by what was happening on the surface.

There were two jugs of water and a large basket of wood in the entrance. She began by lighting both the kitchen stove and the tile stove, and then she unpacked her groceries and placed her clothing in the wardrobe. Last of all she unrolled a large map of the area, tacked it on to the wall next to the desk, and pulled on her slippers and a heavy sweater.

She walked around for a moment, looking at the room. The fire crackled and popped, and so much smoke leaked from the stove that she had to open a window.

After a while, everything seemed to be working. She warmed up a can of tortellini from the service station and ate a piece of bread with cheese spread from a tube.

Behind the house was a small garden, hemmed in by overgrown dog-rose bushes, and in front there were two wooden lawn chairs. A few meters past them was the path that wound its way around the bog.

She put on her jacket, cautiously sat down on one of the chairs, and gazed out at the scenery. It felt like nothing had changed, as if everything had remained as it always had been—and not just for the past fourteen years but for centuries, since time immemorial. The knotty, gray pines. The pools of water, like blinking eyes, between damp green tussocks. A homey sort of desolation in a muted palette; the shimmering heads of cotton grass on their slender, rust-colored autumn stalks.

The flute-like song of the curlew: she could hear it echo beneath the skies although the bird had long since migrated away for the winter. She could hear it even though she hadn’t listened to its bubbling, cheerful song for so long; that aerial display and call—she had truly loved it before everything changed, before it transformed into scornful, mocking laughter in her memory, a threatening warning trill about what was to come.

When she considered what she was about to subject herself to, she felt bold, bordering on reckless. It was as though she had crossed a line out of some compulsion, even though she wasn’t properly prepared.

If she gaz. . .