Blackwater. Part 33

'Tell me what has, then.'

'I was exhausted and had a murderous headache. Couldn't sleep. That's what happened. I got up, dumped some money on the counter and left. It wasn't even four in the morning. An hour or so later I spotted you.'

'You must tell the Swedish police.'

She laughed, but without smiling. She had dropped ash on her chest and brushed it off the black-and-white dress with a hand that was unchanged. But the fingers were swollen and the engraved doctorate ring was sunk deep into the flesh.

'I shan't be telling the police or anyone else anything. I have a good life and a respectable position. I have no intention of making a fool of myself either as a pining spinster or a randy old woman.'

'Then I'll tell them.'

'No, you won't,' she said. 'You'll tell them nothing. For then they'll come here and question me, and I'll tell them that I met that boy Johan Brandberg as I was driving from Byvngen early on Midsummer morning. He was standing at the roadside, his thumb out and blood on his s.h.i.+rt.'

Although he shook his head, she poured him out some more whisky.

'Have a drink,' she said, almost with affection. 'The night is long.'

Annie had said there was something about the Brandberg sons, something lumpish and rank. No woman failed to notice it, she said, even when just pa.s.sing them in the post office.

She had never known the fifth son. He was fine-limbed and tall. When he was younger, he had been very slender. He didn't look well now. Dehydrated, Birger thought. He needs fluids. What the h.e.l.l has he been up to?

Those lumpish sons had all been there when Torsten Brandberg was questioned about the a.s.sault on Harry Vidart. He remembered them as pretty drunk and grinning. A drunk and confused state. It was not inconceivable that things had gone really wrong for one of them later on that night. The police had questioned them many times. Birger had asked Vemdal again, and he had dug the old information about them out of that cardboard box.

Pekka was the most likely, judging by the way he had behaved after that event by the water. He had spent an incredible amount on drink money he had earned on the oil rigs. He had badly beaten up a rival. That was in Sollentuna, but talk about it had reached Blackwater. He had once managed to sc.r.a.pe together a home with leather furniture and a stereo and had moved in with a very beautiful woman. She had thrown him out and he got none of the contents of the house. The reason was that he had been off sick and had been drinking heavily after an accident with a crane. A man had fallen from the platform and had been killed. Pekka couldn't work after that. He turned dizzy up there. During the last shoot he had been so drunk, they had had to take his rifle away. He was still working as a labourer down south but never on a crane. He was signing on now.

Per-Ola had been the one to take his rifle away from him, the new leader, the one who had so stubbornly stayed in Blackwater and had now built a house in Tangen. The square plot was a replica of any in a residential area in Froso or in the suburbs of ostersund. He had grown heavier and middle-aged, but he still had his strength and swiftness. He. was fair, or rather colourless, nowadays, his eyes small and close-set, his scalp clearly visible. Birger remembered one of the old men in the team shaking his head when they heard that Per-Ola had been chosen as Torsten's successor. Nothing except that shake of the head. Birger didn't know what that meant.

Vaine was the one who most resembled Per-Ola. He was fair and had the hard, gnarled body of a forestry worker. He had married young, a Norwegian woman who became pregnant. That hadn't lasted long. Now he had a boy who used to come some weekends; Gudrun looked after him. Vaine was often away working. He had a caravan which he lived in when felling. He was said to be a demon for work.

Bjorne was on a disability pension. Annie had liked him. He helped her with firewood and some other things. She had said he was amusing to talk to. He had started living by himself after he had cleared a parcel of forest, rather like Vaine. But he stayed. Annie had thought it was some kind of protest against modern times.

For his part, Birger had never regarded these cabin loners as rebels. He thought they really belonged in the past and that their deprivation was primarily s.e.xual. There were no women for them any longer, since they couldn't bring themselves to change their way of life. They didn't shower. They got too drunk and snuff juice dribbled out of the corners of their mouths. Their s.h.i.+rts were stiff with elk blood and engine oil. They always carried knives and their s.e.xual signalling system was so primitive, it was taken as a joke. Birger had prescribed far too much Antabuse for Bjorne over the years, which was why he no longer drank so much. Birger was at a loss as to what to do about his prescriptions.

More often than might be imagined, it was possible for these loners and leftovers to put their misery into words. But as therapy, that was worthless. It never changed anything. Antidepressant drugs were just as useless in the long run. Cabin life sometimes ended with a shotgun in an open mouth. Bjorne at least had been caught by the social services in time and had spells in the Froso clinic, where they reckoned electric shock treatment had a positive effect on him.

From the beginning, Birger had thought of warning Annie that Bjorne was not quite so teddy-bear nice as he might seem when he came lumbering with carriers of birch bark and resin-soaked sticks to light her stove. As an eighteen-year-old, he had tried to rape a girl of his own age. She had been in quite a bad way. It was never reported but it came out all the same. Torsten had settled the matter with the girl's father. It was said that he had helped out with a sum when the father was exchanging his old car for another one, thus enabling him to buy a heavy, four-wheel-drive American vehicle.

No one believed Bjorne had meant to rape the girl. He no doubt thought that was how it was done. Afterwards he found himself isolated. The girls kept their distance and he was never again alone with any of them.

When Birger heard how Annie had made his acquaintance, that she had gone with him into the company caravan, he understood why Bjorne had become her knight errant. She had rehabilitated him. She became his link with the village long after his parents had ceased to be so. The fact that she approved of his romantic explanation for his lone existence bound him even more strongly to her.

No, Birger had never warned Annie. He realised there was no need to. The bad talk about Bjorne must have eventually reached her and she had ignored it. She knew he would never do her any harm. Birger was convinced she had been right.

The activities of the Brandbergs that Midsummer night had been ba.n.a.l and were preserved in Vemdal's cardboard box. Pekka had got hold of some woman. There had been no intention of continuing the acquaintance and she had been embarra.s.sed when she had had to tell the police that he had gone back home with her. She was Norwegian and lived in a hamlet seventy kilometres across the border.

But what was her statement worth? Or that of Per-Ola's girl? Vaine and a friend had gone fis.h.i.+ng that night. They had probably not had any success at the community centre, nor even managed to get hold of any Norwegian liquor. There was a caravan by Roback waters and they broke into it; whether out of mischief or to steal something was not stated. The owner of the caravan appeared with a mate and caught them. They got beaten up and what might be called an alibi. But everything said about the Brandberg boys' Midsummer night and their father's seemed fragile and transparent now, so many years later. It was as if the threads had slid apart so that the fabric was on the verge of disintegrating. Who could swear to anything now?

Johan lay fully dressed on his hotel bed. His face was grey and stiff and there were lines round the corners of his mouth. The balance of fluids in him was awry. Birger brought him some mineral water and cautiously woke him.

'Try to drink a little,' he said. 'What the h.e.l.l have you been up to? Did you go out again last night?'

'Yes, I went and had a gla.s.s or two,' said Johan. He closed his eyes as he drank.

Ylja, Ylja? She couldn't remember how the name had arisen.

'It was something you said, another name. It sounded Finnish,' said Johan. But they couldn't pin it down.

He reckoned she was staying in the shadows, the darkness of the heavy drapes and furniture, just out of reach. She was not only bold, she was also cautious. She could never stand making a fool of herself.

He drank. He felt gutted, cleaned out, and now he was rinsing himself out inwardly. No headache, no dangers and no ridicule. Just pure liquor.

'Did you know John Larue was handsome?' she said.

She was no longer bothering to have secrets. There was a bloodstained s.h.i.+rt between them. It was a lie, but it was powerful and would work. In a way, it was a pity that was needed, he thought. We might have come to some agreement anyway. But she was probably not a person to make agreements with.

'Not difficult to imagine the sacrificial knife in his body. He never became a spring G.o.d. But no doubt he wanted to.'

Johan suddenly remembered the yellowing paper in her academic tome, the acrid smell from it.

'Christ, how I suffered in that guesthouse with its knotted rugs and wood carvings all round me. When I realised they'd gone after all. The streams running wildly up there, flowing over the marshlands. On Starhill. And she had him there. You like to think l.u.s.t is just chemical whims and itching, Jukka dear. But you know it's worse than that. She was as infatuated with him as I was. Though fatally. She had him and had him. How many times do you think they managed it? And all I had was a pillow that tasted synthetic and drab daylight in the room all night. So I left. And met you. The night had been stingy but the morning was bountiful.

'What do you think happened up there?' said Johan.

She grimaced.

'I don't know. I think it's another story. Not theirs.'

'But they were actually butchered to put it bluntly.'

'I'm glad it wasn't you. But you should watch out. I think your difficulties are still to come.'

He t.i.ttered in the semi-darkness and drank deeply. The liquor no longer burnt; it was as tasteless and cool as stream water.

'Are you clairvoyant?'

'You reminded me of the deer hunter who saw Artemis naked. He saw her in the middle of the day, in bright sunlight. She turned him into a deer. But he was still a human being inside, with a memory and guilt. Though mute.'

'How did he manage to turn himself back again?'

'He didn't manage.'

She emphasised the word as she repeated it, and with those broad vowels and her strong irony, it was pure scorn.

'He was butchered by his fellow huntsmen. All they saw was a deer. In those damp Germanic forest sagas we were brought up with, the hunter sees the appealing eyes. But in the dazzling white sunlight down there, they saw nothing. Only prey.'

'You like your stories,' he said. 'You play with them.'

'So do you.'

That was true. He sometimes thought that he was under the rule of Njord in the mists and dragging rain. Or that Tjas Olmai sent him a flood in answer to his officious forecasting.

He had slept on the sofa with its dog hairs. She was not in the room, or else was occasionally. Looking at him. He could sense her smile, which might just as well have been Gudrun's, and he slept raggedly and dreamt. The early morning was grey. He saw that the table by the window with its faded green velvet curtains was an altar. A cloth with wide lace was spread over it and between two candelabras stood a photograph. A young man in uniform. Fighting against the Russians had meant fighting for the Germans in the Continuation War, Johan thought. That was what obligation looked like. Or duty or honour, or whatever the upright young officer might have called it. Her grandfather had lost his money because he refused to cooperate with the Germans. Or was that a lie? Was Trollevolden on the contrary confiscated in the settlement after the war? Had he perhaps been a collaborator?

Why were these rooms almost untouched? Was she being faithful to something beneath all that mockery? But he didn't really want to know.

He met her on his way to find a lavatory. She now looked as she had when Birger and he had first seen her. Sallow and grey, absentminded. He splashed for a long time in the lavatory, which had a seat of lovely dark wood and was flushed by pulling a china handle on a chain. It solemnly roared and hurt his head. Light and sound made him feel sick.

She had put out ham and eggs in the kitchen. There was dark bread cut into slices, b.u.t.ter and coa.r.s.e-grained cheese. She was making coffee in an old-fas.h.i.+oned percolator as she talked about Artemis, though not in the way she had during the grey night. Now she was lecturing him.

'For a long time it was thought the famous statue of Artemis of Ephesus had a huge burden of b.r.e.a.s.t.s. That she bore her attribute of motherliness to excess. Round, bunlike and fruitful. Then the archaeologists started looking a bit closer at them. Two Austrians, they were. They saw the buns didn't really look at all like b.r.e.a.s.t.s.'

Off she skips, it hurts her t.i.ts, raced through Johan's head. Please G.o.d, keep my mouth shut. This isn't a hangover. I'm still not sober, though greyer. I'm fifteen. She has never met me.

'Have you seen a picture of Artemis of Ephesus?'

How would he know? He had perhaps seen it in some art book. A staring face. Bunches of b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Ylja put a plate in front of him. On it lay a slice of ham at least five millimetres thick. The moist meat was pink and interspersed with white fat. There were segments of meat with something translucent in between. Water? Aspic? She had fried an egg so carefully that it had hardly solidified, the yolk s.h.i.+mmering like oil.

'Do you know what it was?'

He closed his eyes to avoid looking at the egg.

'The feast of Artemis of Ephesus was celebrated by the priests castrating young bulls before her altar. They tied the s.c.r.o.t.u.ms together into a wreath. That's what she wears round her neck and on her chest, Jukka. The virgin mother. Not a pleasant acquaintance.'

He turned his head and slowly pushed the plate away.

'Can't you eat it?'

Then she broke an egg into a gla.s.s and poured in some vodka. She twisted the peppermill twice over the liquor and handed him the gla.s.s. He closed his eyes. The contents slid down like an oyster.

'I must go,' he said. 'I want to be back before Birger wakes.'

'Be careful, Jukka,' she said.

'Do you know something, or are you just talking?'

He had thought of saying, 'talking s.h.i.+t'. He was sick of her stories. And yet he felt like telling her she was right. Profound desire is not chemical. The soul is not a transformation of the ego. But he couldn't collect his wits enough to say anything. Well, he said goodbye. Quite politely, although he was pale and the palm of the hand he held out was moist.

He had to rest on his way back to the hotel. There was a park, the place where Birger had wanted to pat someone on the behind. A G.o.ddess. She was standing there on her plinth in the morning chill. He didn't want her to turn round and reveal a garland of bull's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and b.l.o.o.d.y shreds of s.c.r.o.t.u.m round her neck. Otherwise everything was as usual, a grey late-summer morning. Fat tree sparrows. Ice-cream wrappers.

Johan and Birger were at the McDonald's near the crossroads in Odengatan in Stockholm, watching a door on the other side of Sveavagen. Teenagers in red peaked caps were collecting trays, but on their table the greasy cartons and plastic litter were acc.u.mulating. Birger reckoned you had to keep fetching more if you sat there for so long. They had taken a table on the pavement. The traffic was roaring by and sometimes they couldn't see the door. A bus stopped in their line of vision, the stench gaseous in the humid air. It was difficult. That made Birger feel they were being useful. But the coffee was good.

'The Foundation,' said Birger. 'Funny name for a second-hand bookshop.'

'Must be second-hand SF,' said Johan.

Birger didn't understand what he meant, but it didn't matter. They would soon find him there. Vemdal had tracked him down for them. Birger thought they ought to ask Vemdal out to dinner, but Johan didn't want to. He was afraid of him.

He said quite honestly that he didn't know why he was afraid. But Vemdal must still have some of his police instincts. Suddenly it might be too much for his conscience or his vanity and then he'd pick up the phone, Johan had said. We might just as well lie low.

It was a narrow, brown door with a grid-covered gla.s.s window in the upper part and a bra.s.s letter box in the brown wood, a newspaper stuck in it. They had looked closely at the door. There was no notice of opening times, only two locks, one of which looked like a new double lock. There was only one shop window. They hadn't bothered about the books, but Birger now regretted not taking a look at them. He went in to fetch two more cardboard mugs of coffee and when he came back with the tray, Johan said: 'Something's happened.'

'Has he come?'

'No. Look at the letter box and you'll see.'

'Has someone stolen the paper?' said Birger.

'It was pulled into the shop from inside. There's someone there, although it's locked.'

'h.e.l.l, then we'll bang on the door until he opens up.'

'Wait.'

The door opened and he came out. As he turned round to lock both locks, they looked at him. He was wearing a dark-brown jacket with narrow cream-coloured stripes. His jeans looked new and his boots were black. His long hair was tied at the back with a ribbon or a rubber band. It was no longer golden but dark blond, though it still came far down his back. There were some lighter streaks in it, but it was impossible to see whether they were silvery.

Birger wanted to leap up and rush across the street, but he couldn't move. He saw the slim figure setting off towards Odengatan, his back very straight. Then he swung round the corner by the bank and disappeared.

'h.e.l.l's bells!'

Johan looked at Birger in the way you look at a sick man but can't do much for him.

'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'He'll probably be back soon. I think he lives there.'

'It'll soon be half past ten,' said Birger. 'Christ!'

Johan levered the lid off one of the mugs and practically inserted it into Birger's hand. He's afraid I'll start crying, Birger thought. What an old wreck I am! He thought of himself as full of garbage, like the table. The garbage of time. And there, on the other side of the street, Dan Ulander was walking quite unmoved through time.

Less than ten minutes later he was back, a paper bag in his hand.

'Fresh white rolls,' said Birger, so bitterly that Johan laughed. They left their coffee and made their way across Sveavagen.

The second-hand bookstore was small but deepened and darkened as they went further in. In the first section there was a stand of colourful pamphlets and books, rather like comics, Birger thought, but then he saw they were all science fiction.

Further in were bookshelves, all with neatly handwritten labels. Asimov. Lem. Clarke. The names meant nothing to Birger. Dan Ulander was standing by an old-fas.h.i.+oned desk made of dark wood. He had switched on a tape recorder and the cramped s.p.a.ce was filled with music. Birger felt shut in, a phobic feeling, his palms sweaty.

'Could you switch that off? We'd like to talk to you.'

'You don't like it? It's Richard Strauss. Stanley Kubrick used it when he made 2001.'

Birger repeated the only thing he could comprehend in the harangue.

'Strauss?'

'Well, not the king of Viennese waltzes,' said Ulander, smiling slightly.

In some incomprehensible way, he had manoeuvred himself into a position of superiority. He hadn't recognised Birger. Of course not. He had probably never even looked at him.

'We've come in connection with the death of Annie Raft,' said Johan. Occasionally Birger was reminded that Johan was a grown man, capable of taking over. But neither of them could interpret the vacant expression on Ulander's face as he said, hesitantly: 'Annie Raft . . . ?'