Black River by Will Dean

Author:Will Dean
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786077127
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

27

I leave Toytown.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be. Noora and I were due to meet up for a special weekend next month. Nice Airbnb. Little cottage on the coast. To talk. To listen. To reconnect and come up with some kind of plan. Now I’m driving towards her with a sunburnt forehead and supermarket clothes. But the main thing is she’s here. The local police force has grown by fifty per cent. I feel sick with nerves and I feel as awkward as I was as a fifteen-year-old but she is here to help find Tam and Lisa. That’s what’s important.

I drive past a horse in a field just beyond the sewage works. The horse is wearing a black angular anti-fly mask that covers its whole head and it looks like some kind of equine executioner, its eyes totally concealed.

My guts are floating up inside me. I feel giddy and panicked at the thought of seeing Noora again. We’ve spoken on the phone. We’ve texted. But we haven’t seen each other since I left a snowy Gavrik back in February.

The reservoir gleams up ahead. A thousand fibreglass caravans and a hundred nylon tents and one giant man-made lake.

The owner’s house is in the distance. She runs the place, which basically means she has to work around the clock for two months to make enough money to survive the following ten. Because, sure, right now this place looks like fun with its pedal boats and fishing areas and campfire and the stage where local folk groups come to perform. But in autumn and winter this whole area is a frozen fog-blighted hellhole, a damp and unforgiving place where no tourist would ever choose to set foot.

I park and see Noora standing alone. Police uniform, short-sleeved shirt, police issue hat. She’s holding an iPad and she’s staring out at the lake.

As I walk closer I can see it’s not an iPad. Noora’s flying a drone. She’s using the control panel to direct it and she’s watching the view from its camera on her screen.

‘Need a co-pilot?’ I say, standing beside her.

‘Oh,’ she says, glancing my way, flustered, ‘I didn’t think you’d come all the way up here.’

And suddenly I am deflated. She didn’t think I’d come here to find her, just thought I’d wait? I would have crawled through Utgard forest to see her; I would have swum across Snake River.

‘I needed to come out here anyway,’ I say.

Noora turns her head and smiles. I guess she can’t put her controls down, she’d crash the drone, but she moves closer to me. Her arm touches mine and something floods into my blood. The warmth from her transfers into me and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and we both stand there, her in uniform, me in my ICA T-shirt, her looking down at her screen, me looking out at the water.

‘It’s great to see you, Tuva. But I am so, so sorry about Tammy.’ She moves her forearm a little.

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