The note was always the same. A single sheet of cheap, cream-coloured paper, folded once. The message, typed on a machine with a misaligned ‘e’, was brief and chilling: ‘For the Tree. One for the past. One is taken.’ It arrived at the Växjö police station every year, on the morning of September 24th. And every year, for the past three years, someone from the small community of Ödestugu had vanished. No bodies were ever found. No ransoms were demanded. It was as if the mist that clung to the shores of Helgasjön lake simply swallowed them whole. The press, with a grim fascination, had dubbed the unknown perpetrator ‘The Willow Man’, after the ancient, weeping willow that stood sentinel on the point where the last victim was seen. For Inspector Mats Lundström, the day was a splinter in his mind, a recurring nightmare of failure that no amount of Swedish coffee could wash away.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The rain fell on Växjö in a persistent, grey drizzle, matching Inspector Mats Lundström’s mood perfectly. He sat at his desk, the case file open before him. Three faces stared back. Erik Johansson, a retired postman, vanished in 2021. Anette Persson, a librarian, in 2022. Liam Forsberg, a university student, in 2023. No connection, no motive, no evidence beyond the notes.
His phone buzzed, shattering the silence. It was his son, William, calling from England.
“Hej, Pappa,” William’s voice was bright, a spark from another world. “Just checking in. It’s the 24th. I know what today is for you.”
Lundström felt a familiar pang, a mixture of pride and loneliness. “Hej, min son. Yes, the day. Another note arrived this morning. Same as the others.”
“Any leads?”
“None. It’s like chasing a ghost.” He looked out at the slick, dark streets. “How’s the thesis going?”
“It’s going. Listen, Pappa, don’t let it consume you. Again.”
Too late, Lundström thought, after hanging up. It already has. He was a man in his mid-fifties, his own life as cold and empty as his minimalist apartment. The job was all he had left, and this case was the one that mocked him, a puzzle with pieces that refused to fit.
His partner, young, energetic Constable Hanna Eklund, burst into his office, her cheeks flushed. “Mats! We’ve got something. A witness. From Ödestugu. An old woman, Elsa Gren. She says she saw a man acting strangely near the willow tree late last night. A man with a limp.”
Lundström was on his feet in an instant, the weariness sloughing off him like an old coat. A limp. That was new. “Let’s go.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
The village of Ödestugu was a postcard of rural Småland, a collection of red-painted cottages and fir trees huddled against the vast, brooding lake. Elsa Gren lived in a house crowded with porcelain figurines and the smell of mothballs.
“He was favouring his right leg,” she said, her voice a thin whisper. “Not old, but not young. He walked with purpose, towards the tree. I thought it was odd, so late, with the weather.”
“Can you describe him?” Lundström asked, his voice gentle.
“He wore a dark coat with the collar up. But he carried a bag. A doctor’s bag, like the old ones.”
At the willow tree, the forensics team found nothing but churned mud. But Lundström’s eyes, trained by decades of disappointment, caught what others missed. A few metres away, half-buried in the wet earth, was a small, brass key. It was tarnished and old-fashioned. It didn’t look like it belonged to a house or a car. It looked like it belonged to a diary, or a chest.
“The limp,” Eklund mused as they drove back. “An injury? A disability?”
“Or an affectation,” Lundström replied, staring at the key in his evidence bag. “A deliberate clue, or a deliberate misdirection.”
Back at the station, the key yielded its secret. It was stamped with a tiny, almost microscopic maker’s mark: A. V. Kronoberg, 1979. A. V. was Anders Vinter, a local locksmith who had retired decades ago. His shop was now a trendy café.
“1979,” Lundström murmured. “What happened in 1979?”
* * * * * * * * * * *
The Växjö archives were a temple of dust and forgotten stories. Lundström and Eklund spent hours sifting through brittle newspapers. And then they found it. September 25th, 1979. A fire. A small farmhouse on the outskirts of Ödestugu. The owner, a reclusive man named Tomas Arvidsson, had perished. The article was brief, the investigation concluded it was a faulty stove. A tragic accident.
But one line caught Lundström’s eye. Tomas Arvidsson was a known loner, but he was a master woodcarver. His specialty? Creating life-sized figures from willow wood. The local children, the article said with a hint of mockery, called them his ‘Willow Men’.
Lundström’s blood ran cold. “It’s not about the tree,” he said to Eklund. “It’s about the artist.”
They tracked down the only surviving relative, a niece named Birgitta, who lived in Kalmar. Over a crackling phone line, she filled in the gaps. “Tomas wasn’t just a woodcarver. He was heartbroken. The love of his life, a woman named Karin, left him for another man. She just vanished one day, leaving only a note. Tomas never recovered. He believed she’d been taken from him.”
“Who was the other man?” Lundström asked.
“I don’t know his name. He was from the village. A… a postman, I think. Yes, a postman.”
Erik Johansson. The first victim. A retired postman.
The pieces, frozen for years, began to shift and grind against each other. The limp. Lundström remembered the old fire report. Tomas Arvidsson had broken his leg escaping a barn fire as a young man. He walked with a slight limp for the rest of his life.
“He’s not kidnapping them,” Lundström realised, a grim certainty settling over him. “He’s punishing them. He’s re-enacting his loss. Karin vanished, so he makes others vanish. ‘One for the past.’ He’s avenging Karin.”
“But who are the others? The librarian? The student?” Eklund asked.
“We need to find out who they were related to. Who their families were in 1979.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
The investigation became a frantic race against a clock they couldn’t see. They discovered that Anette Persson’s mother had been Karin’s best friend, the one who had encouraged her to leave Tomas. Liam Forsberg’s grandfather had been the fire chief who had, perhaps too hastily, declared the 1979 fire an accident.
The pattern was clear. The Willow Man was methodically eliminating anyone he held responsible for his shattered life. But who was he? Tomas Arvidsson was dead.
“A son?” Eklund suggested. “The records show Tomas never married, never had children.”
“A disciple?” Lundström countered, frustration mounting. “Someone who has taken up his cause?”
The brass key was the final piece. It didn’t fit any of the victims’ possessions. Lundström laid it on his desk, staring at it as if demanding it speak. A doctor’s bag. An old locksmith. A fire. A woodcarver.
His phone rang. It was William. “Pappa, I was reading about your case. This key… a doctor’s bag. What if it’s not for medicine? What if it’s for tools? Woodcarving tools?”
The world snapped into a terrifying, crystalline focus. Lundström saw it all. The limp was a performance. The bag held not medical supplies, but the tools of the woodcarver’s trade. And the key… the key was a relic, a token from the past.
He knew where the Willow Man would be. Not at the tree. That was just a stage. He would be at the source. The ruins of the old farm.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The rain had turned to a fine, icy mist as Lundström and Eklund, backed by an armed response unit, moved through the skeletal remains of Tomas Arvidsson’s farm. Behind the charred foundations of the house stood a large, dilapidated barn, its doors padlocked shut.
The brass key fit the lock perfectly.
Lundström pushed the heavy door open. The air inside was thick with the scent of damp earth and fresh-cut wood. In the centre of the barn, under the beam of a single, dangling work light, stood a man. He was of average height and build, his face obscured by shadows. He wore a dark coat and, on the floor beside him, was an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. And he was standing perfectly straight, no sign of a limp.
Around him, arranged in a silent, macabre circle, were three life-sized, exquisitely carved willow figures. The faces were perfect, haunting renditions of Erik, Anette, and Liam.
“Inspector Lundström,” the man said, his voice calm, educated. “I wondered if you would ever find your way here.”
“It’s over,” Lundström said, his hand resting on his service weapon. “Where are they?”
The man smiled, a sad, empty gesture. “Where she is. Gone. But remembered. Perfectly preserved in my art, as she is in my memory.” He gestured to the figures. “They took her from me. They broke him. My father.”
“Your father was Tomas Arvidsson.”
“He was a genius! And they destroyed him. The postman who stole his love. The friend who poisoned her against him. The official who dismissed his tragedy. They created the Willow Man. I am merely… his hands.”
His name was David Lindgren. He was a respected art teacher from Växjö. He had been a young boy when his mother, Karin, had left his father. He had watched his father’s descent into madness and grief, and had secretly learned his craft. After his father’s death, the mission had consumed him.
“The limp?” Lundström asked, playing for time as the tactical team surrounded the barn.
“A tribute,” David said softly. “And a useful way to make people see what they expect to see. The ghost of my father.”
As he was led away in handcuffs, he looked back at his creations. “They are perfect, aren’t they? Just like she was.”
Lundström did not answer. He looked at the hollow eyes of the willow figures and felt not triumph, but a profound and weary sadness.
* * * * * * * * * * *
A week later, the case was closed. The bodies of the victims were found buried in a quiet corner of the woods, each with a small, carved willow token placed in their hands.
Lundström sat in his quiet apartment, a glass of whisky in his hand. He thought of William, of the life that had slipped through his fingers in his pursuit of other people’s ghosts. He had solved the mystery, he had caught the monster, but the taste was ashen. The Willow Man was not a man of flesh and blood, but a spectre of grief, passed from father to son. And as the long Swedish night closed in, Mats Lundström knew that some wounds never truly heal; they just find new, terrible ways to bleed.
END
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