1
There is a special place in hell for CEOs and venture capitalists. Men with webbed feet and arms that double as wings.
Like migrating birds they take off as soon as the weather changes, but new ones always replace them. The sort who defy the cold and roll up their sleeves as the biting wind whines all around.
Prospectors who can smell money. Big money, or they would have stayed in the sun.
Like diviners, they put their ear to the granite and say, “Here. Here lie such extraordinary riches that no one will be able to refuse.”
When the fun is over, when the seam has dried up or the metal prices have fallen, they won’t be the ones standing in a packed canteen telling those assembled that times are hard. They have a whole HR department to do their dirty work. They are already far away. Far from poisoned watercourses and contaminated ground, far from unemployed miners whose lungs have breathed in silica, asbestos and diesel fumes.
The CEOs and venture capitalists are already on their way to new places, other mountains. Using different company names.
With a fresh set of board members and a bundle of new money to wave under the noses of politicians, they are once again welcomed as heroes. Heroes who will take sparsely populated municipalities to new economic heights, create jobs and inject some belief in the future.
It is night. Several degrees below freezing even though it is well into May. The grass crunches as he takes the path through the forest, his destination in sight a few hundred yards upstream along the Njakkaure. A river that flows past the decommissioned Gasskas mine, commonly known as “the Pit.”
In the bright moonlight, buildings and spoil heaps tower up as if in some abandoned alpine village. From his vantage point he cannot see the Pit itself, and that is intentional.
He feels a sudden shiver of nerves, but he wasn’t born yesterday. He knows what he’s doing. Only he needs a little rest first. He shrugs out of his backpack, unfolds his seat and rummages for the Thermos flask.
A couple of cups later, he feels restored. His pulse is even. The air is good.
He drags the canoe from its hiding place under a spruce, where he left it last year. In the end there was only one trip. He examines the bottom for any damage. Drags the canoe down to the water and ties it to a tree so he can pause to get his breath back.
The water ripples around the hull as he pushes off with the paddle. Now he can take it easy and float with the current a few hundred yards down to the bridge.
The bridge over the stream is said to date to the eighteenth century. When the mine began operating at the end of the 1940s, the bridge assumed its current form. Reinforced with iron girders to withstand the pressure of fully loaded ore trucks on their way down to the coast. From below he can see the stonework of the old bridge structure. Beautifully proportioned blocks of granite fit perfectly to each other, built in an age when beauty was valued.
He brings the canoe to a stop. Slowly, so as not to lose his balance, he puts the straps of the backpack through a rusty iron loop and winds binding wire around it to fix it firmly. That should cope with a load of twenty-five pounds. No doubt twenty-five hundred, too. Gang members barely into their teens know how to build a bomb, but their awareness of impact in relation to the size of the charge will be very sketchy. The risk radius for a gram of explosive is twenty yards. The reason for his own outsize charge is the open terrain. An explosion is more effective in a room, a car or some other enclosed space and he wants to be sure the bridge really will be blown to bits.
He wishes he could stand a little way off and watch it all happen, but he has put the temptation out of his head. Technically it makes no difference if he is killed. He will soon reach the end of his lifespan. On the other hand, there are still a few things on his agenda before the heavenly light receives his soul.
He hides the canoe under a tree again. A few spruce branches wouldn’t harm, he thinks, but he can’t summon the energy. On the final stretch back to the car he has to stop several times. It isn’t that his is wheezy; he has no breath at all.
Cool sheets against a sweaty body. Another cup of coffee. He props up the pillows behind his back and reaches for his prepaid mobile phone.
A quarter past four is a good time for the people of Gasskas to wake to the sound of the next world war. His own war. He puts down the phone. Turns to the wall and listens to the distant bass note of the blast.
Shame to lose a good Thermos is his final thought before he falls asleep.
Or did he even sleep? The pain has come back.
For a moment he imagined he was free. His concentration had its focus elsewhere, on his exhilaration, draining the power from the stabs of pain in his back and making his cough cower like an exhausted tomcat.
Now it is clawing fresh wounds inside him. A quarter of an hour later he finally gets himself to the bathroom. Takes a pee, shaves while he’s there—he’s never been a slob—puts on another pot of coffee and waits for the local news bulletin at seven.
At 4:15 this morning an explosive charge detonated that was heard and felt across large areas of Gasskas. According to the police, it was an extremely powerful explosion, causing serious damage to the bridge over the Njakkaure River that formerly carried trucks of ore from the Gasskas mine.
“We are currently trying to orient ourselves in the area, to establish that there was no injury to human life. The attack has been categorized as widespread destruction posing a threat to public safety until the cause of the explosion can be established,” said Hans Faste of the Serious Crime Unit at Gasskas Police.
A decent start at any rate, he notes, and scrolls through the online edition of the local paper, Gaskassen. Despite the circumstances, it’s going to be a day to relish.
2
Whose idea was it?
Svala’s. There were three key factors.
The first: Ester Södergran, who is new to the town and to Gaskassen and looking for some different angles. The second: Svala Hirak, who is interning for a few weeks at the paper and helping her out. The third: Lisbeth Salander, who sent a drone as a Christmas present.
“Do you know of any large abandoned properties?” says Ester. “We could do a Saturday feature on haunted houses.”
“There must be loads, but I’ve no idea if they’ve got ghosts,” says Svala.
They make a list. Select the most spectacular. In a municipality like Gasskas, there are plenty of abandoned buildings. Mostly cheap chipboard huts and old timbered buildings that are empty for a variety of reasons. An owner with no heirs, a dispute over an inheritance, a location on a busy road that used to be practical but will barely even sell to the Dutch these days.
The last place on the list is the sanatorium.
Like other sanatoriums, the property is in a remote, elevated position in an attractive setting near a lake.
“ ‘By contrast with its nearby counterpart Sandträsk, which was in operation for fifty years, caring for almost thirty thousand patients, the sanatorium in Gasskas has an obscure place in Swedish medical history.’ ”
Svala is googling and reading out loud.
“ ‘The thirty-bed sanatorium was built in 1945, mainly to relieve Sandträsk, which was admitting large numbers of refugees suffering from TB. The last patients left in 1963. The building was subsequently used as a residential treatment center for addicts and as a refugee center during the Balkan War. The complex has been standing empty since the mid-2000s. Its inaccessibility and state of disrepair have led to proposals for its demolition.’ ”
“Well, that must have been written before December 2021, when it was apparently sold. Let’s get over there. It’ll be handy if there’s someone there. They might know if it’s haunted,” says Ester. She continues typing.
Svala watches Ester’s earnest profile, briefly frozen in some thought process, her gaze distant.
Over the weeks of Svala’s internship stint, a friendship has developed between them. Like a sister, thinks Svala. A big sister you can talk to, have a laugh with. One who listens and answers without sarcasm or a wagging, nagging adult finger. Someone who’ll message her in the evening and ask what she’s up to. Someone who shares stuff, shows her the ropes.
Svala laps it all up. Devises headlines, crafts ledes. Wrangles words into the taut article format.
“Christ, Svala, I mean, I can write, but you . . . you’re a real artist with words” is the sort of thing Ester will exclaim.
But there’s another side she likes even more. Comments like “Shit, Svala, get a load of this picture I took, see how fabulous you look,” and something stirs in the chrysalis on its way to life as a butterfly.
Something has changed in the way she views herself, and in what she sees in the eyes of others. She isn’t invisible any longer.
They take the route the GPS suggests through villages, alongside lakes and over hills until they reach journey’s end.
There is even a sign. Two. An old one with the name of the place and a more recent version telling visitors that it’s private land monitored by CCTV. The road is also blocked by a barrier.
“What do we do?” Svala says.
“Park the car and walk.”
The front drive sweeps around a circular flower bed, formerly grand with its low, neatly trimmed rowan hedges and fountain but now looking as neglected as the house. There are no human figures or vehicles to indicate any form of life. The winter weather has snapped an aged birch. And the flagpole. There are still drifts of snow in the shadier spots.
“Not a soul,” says Svala.
“But plenty of mosquitoes,” notes Ester, flapping her arms to ward them off.
Svala lets a mosquito sit on her arm until it has finished its meal.
“The ones waking up now are the overwintering females,” she says. “Pretty hungry, I should think.”
“Good thing there are animal lovers around for them to eat, then,” says Ester, delivering a lethal slap to a few more.
They tug at locked doors, do a circuit of the outbuildings, but can’t even get into those. Occasionally they think they hear sounds. But when they stop and listen, the place is silent apart from the background notes provided by nature.
They go around to the back. The glass in the ground-floor windows has been replaced by chipboard. The plaster is peeling in places, and bits have fallen to the ground.
“Hard to hunt ghosts if you can’t get into them. I guess we’ll have to give up or find someone who can unlock the door for us,” says Ester, and then comes to an abrupt halt. “Listen. That was a car, wasn’t it? Might not be a good idea to let them see us. It’s private property, after all.”
So they run for the cover of the forest and don’t stop until they emerge from the track onto the public road.
Copyright © 2025 by Karin Smirnoff. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
