Blackwater. Part 34

'From Blackwater,' said Johan.

'Oh, Annie the one with the little girl. Is Annie dead?'

'Don't you read the papers?'

'Yes the small ads. For business purposes.'

He gestured with both hands, holding them away from his body like a dancer. Birger saw how the shape of his head was enhanced by the long, austerely drawn-back hair. At close quarters he could see that he had aged. His skin was very pale. Perhaps he hardly ever left his bookshop. But that slender body, didn't it need exercise?

He didn't ask them anything and Birger found that strange, even suspect. Then he realised that Ulander thought Johan had meant he would have seen the death notice.

'This is Annie's partner,' said Johan. 'Birger Torbjornsson. I was to be his son-in-law. We want to know what the situation was with John Larue.'

'The situation?'

Was he trying to gain time? It didn't seem so. He looked genuinely confused.

'Some tea?' he said.

There were fresh white rolls in the bag, as they'd thought.

'No, thank you,' said Johan. 'Tell us about John Larue.'

'Well, I don't know what Annie has said. To be honest, I didn't think she knew his name. Why do you want to know? Isn't all that over and done with?'

He stood there with his opened bag of rolls, apparently appealing to them. Something had happened, but Birger couldn't make out what, even less so when Ulander started talking. He didn't seem at all afraid of talking about John Larue. He was afraid of something else.

'Where did he come from?'

'Well, from Denmark most recently. Though I met him in Stockholm. He was a Vietnam deserter. Troublesome.'

What a word to use, Birger thought. What a precious vocabulary this little dancer has. He looks like a queer. I wish to G.o.d that he had been one.

'He hadn't got any papers. No pa.s.sport. I promised him he could live with us.'

'At Starhill.'

'That's right.'

'You called it Star Mountain,' said Birger, 'when you translated it for him.'

'I don't remember. Why do you want to know all this?'

'Why did they put up the tent? Why didn't they walk on up to Starhill?'

'I don't know. Maybe they thought it was further than it was. I'd sketched a map for them, but it had no scale. We had a postcard from Gothenburg. He was to come with a Dutch girl. The one who . . . you know. Well, him too.'

Touch on it lightly. Go on dancing, you little b.u.g.g.e.r, thought Birger.

'No.'

'Was she going to live at Starhill, too?'

'No, I think he just persuaded her she wanted to see the Swedish mountains. That probably suited him.'

He t.i.ttered.

'Tell us everything now,' said Johan. 'How you nicked the jeans and everything.'

'I'll make some tea, anyhow,' said Ulander. He sounded ingratiating. Something really had changed since they had gone into the shop and been flooded by his Strauss music. He opened a door and they could see an inner room like a s.h.i.+p's cabin, with a neatly made bed. Was it possible that he lived here? Alone? That he never read anything but ads for science-fiction books in the newspapers, slept till ten or half past and started the day with fresh rolls? When he came back with an electric kettle, Johan said: 'You remember all this very well although it's so long ago. Yet you could hardly remember Annie Raft.'

'Oh, yes, I remember Annie, too. Of course I do. It was just the name I'm not sure that I ever heard her surname.'

'What a load of c.r.a.p!' said Birger. 'You were a student of hers.'

'That doesn't matter,' said Johan. 'Tell us about when you took his jeans. What were you doing out so early in the morning?'

'We were all out. We were looking for Larue.'

He had put out Chinese tea mugs. He put the rolls on a dish. When the water began to hiss in the kettle, he warmed a teapot, going about it all with great thoroughness. To empty the teapot, he had to go out to a lavatory alongside the sleeping cabin. He spooned out some tea leaves and poured the water over them.

'Sugar?'

'Oh, lay off,' said Birger.

Ulander wanted them to sit down, but they stayed standing. So he sat down on the chair behind the desk and spread b.u.t.ter on the halved roll. He ate a few small mouthfuls before starting to tell them.

'I went to Roback on Midsummer Eve to leave the children with Yvonne. You know who she was? They were supposed to go with her. There was to be a demonstration against something. My G.o.d, there was a lot going on in those days.'

He smiled at them.

'The children couldn't walk all the way from Starhill and up to Bear Mountain on Midsummer Day.'

'We know all that.'

'Well, then I fetched Barbro Lund, a textile artist who was to move up to us. Eventually. She lived in Byvngen.'

Birger said nothing, but he could hear himself breathing heavily though his nose.

'When we got up to an old farm just before the road comes to an end '

'The Stromgren homestead,' said Johan.

'Yes. We saw a Dutch car there. A small red thing. I thought that must be Larue because he had written on the postcard that he was coming with a Dutch girl. Then we went to Bjornstubacken and left Barbro Lund's car there and continued on foot up to Starhill. We thought Larue would be there. But he wasn't. He and the girl never came. We waited all evening. In the end, we began to think they'd got lost. So we set off to look for them towards morning. We thought they would be wandering about in the marshes. Barbro Lund and I were almost down by the river when I saw the tent. I went down on my own.'

'Did she see what had happened?' said Birger.

'I'm not sure. We didn't speak to each other much afterwards. I saw that . . . well. But I had no idea it might be Larue and his girl. You couldn't see them. Only an arm and a foot. Then I spotted a pair of jeans. They were hanging over a spruce branch. They were Larue's.'

'For Christ's sake, you couldn't have recognised a pair of jeans!'

'Oh, yes, in those days jeans were like works of art. Every tear, every patch was a sign. An autograph. They were John Larue's jeans. I took them.'

'Why?'

'To take a closer look at them, I think. I ran back up to Barbro Lund and we found the others on the path down towards Bjornstubacken. We held a kind of council of war up there in the forest. We decided to pretend we didn't know John Larue. It would have been the end of the commune if we'd got involved in anything like that. There was a girl called Enel. She was actually quite a tough nut. She went with Petrus down to the tent and they fished out John's bag and emptied it. He had my map and everything in it. We went back up to Starhill and burnt his things. The jeans were wet. That was why he'd hung them up. I hid them because the thick material wouldn't burn until it had dried. Then Barbro and I went down to Bjornstubacken. We had to fetch the car. The others took the path along the lake to Roback. Later we said they'd been there all the time.'

'You told Annie you'd slept at Nirsbuan.'

'Maybe I did. Yes, I did. I phoned Barbro Lund, too. We agreed that that's what we would say. Annie thought I had been at Nirsbuan.'

'Was it really necessary to lie to Annie? She wouldn't have said anything.'

'Annie was a bit . . . how shall I put it? She had misunderstood the whole thing.'

'What thing?'

'She was jealous,' Birger said. 'She had left everything her whole life. She thought you two would be together for ever. But it was as a teacher you wanted her to come up to Starhill. And you were going to have Barbro Lund as a weaver and designer up there. Your a.s.signment was to get hold of useful people for the commune.'

Ulander s.h.i.+fted a little in his chair.

'You recruited with your p.r.i.c.k. But they misunderstood that. Annie did, anyway.'

He was aware that Johan was keeping an eye on him and he fell silent. For some reason, Johan was in charge. Now he said: 'You remember all this amazingly well.'

'Well, we rehea.r.s.ed it over and over and over again,' said Ulander. 'All of us had to say the same thing.'

'Memory Lane,' said Birger.

'What?'

'You went down Memory Lane. Over and over and over again.'

'Let's go,' said Johan.

Ulander had had no opportunity to pour out his tea. He followed them uncertainly to the door.

'Why do you want to know all this? You can't go to the police. Because of Annie, I mean. After all, she was involved. And it's all so long ago now. It would change nothing.'

When they came out into the street, Birger was so tired he could have sat down on the pavement. More customers had come to McDonald's. More mugs and cartons poured out and were collected up. They trudged over to the park by the City Library and he sank down on a bench.

'How he talked!' said Birger. 'I can't understand why he said anything at all.'

'Can't you?'

'But he wasn't afraid of the police. Not any longer. If he or any of the others at Starhill had had anything to do with John Larue's death, he wouldn't have talked like that. But I can't make out why everything just poured out of him.'

'He was afraid of you.'

'Me?'

'When we went through into the inner room and started talking about Annie, you looked as if you were directly threatening him.'

'I did?'

'Didn't you know?'

'No.'

He had never threatened anyone. He couldn't even imagine raising his hand against another person. But neither Dan Ulander nor he had been thinking.

A large body. Secreting anger. None of it was left now, only sticky sweat and weariness. The traffic roared by, squealing and juddering. He was as exhausted as if he really had tried to break all the bones in that light, dancing body.

He thought about time, moment added to moment in a line that pushed Annie and her shattered chest and diaphragm further and further back, inwards. The image flickered as if under a mesh. Not even shock and pain were immutable. They moved.

He had had one experience of total stillness in his life. At the Sulky Hotel, time had stopped. But there was no more than an image left of that, the memory a changeable and moving image, and it was turning grey as if from dirt.

Then it occurred to him that the dead were in absolute stillness.

That thought turned his life over. He was in the dirt. The silent ticking of moments threw a veil over every sharp image. She was where he wanted to be.

It's that simple, he thought.

These were not thoughts of suicide. On the contrary, they helped him to get going again. He trudged off to the health centre. Annie was where he wanted to be. He didn't have to avoid thinking about her. She was not in the water, shot to pieces. Not in bed with him. Nowhere where the inexorable ticking was going on.

She was in stillness.

He thought about there being places or moments that are as good as still. Where the ticking is as good as imperceptible. He liked standing by the open window at night feeling the air against his face. Quite a few of the things he remembered Annie had done seemed to be confronting stillness. She had known about it.

She stood on the steps listening to the rain in the aspens.

He had given up trying to find out how she had died. He was ashamed of that, but it was true. An enterprise lacking all sharpness and fire. There was war in Europe, the event by the Lobber being repeated every hour. He would not be going shooting this autumn. The ravages. Twisted metal. Dung pouring out of intestines. That was what he saw.

But very little was needed for him to change his mind. Just Mia sending the key, with a short letter as well. A sweet letter. He hadn't expected it, for he'd thought she didn't really like him. She wrote that he was to keep the key and use Annie's cottage during the shoot, and in future whenever he wanted to. She herself hadn't been there since they had cleaned up in the holidays. 'I probably won't be there all that much,' she wrote. The words evoked the abandoned state of the cottage for him. The rain in July and August. What did it look like? Had Mia asked anyone to go there and cut the gra.s.s?

He went on the Friday evening. The shoot was to start on Monday morning and it seemed quite natural to put his rifle into the car. It had long been decided that he would take his holiday during the shoot. What would he do in Byvngen? He didn't want to go away anywhere. He wanted to go to Blackwater to cut Annie's gra.s.s.

It was almost dark when he got there, but he could still make out the great drifts of wet gra.s.s and frosted roses rotting in the hedges. He had wanted to start at once, but there was a lot to do inside, too. The air was musty and cold. He lit the stove. There was still some birch bark and kindling Bjorne Brandberg had put ready. He went out with a torch and searched for some flowers. She had always had flowers indoors and he thought they improved the air. He found nothing but yarrow. Although it had begun to turn grey, it still smelt strong and spicy.

He thought about how often he would have to come here in future to keep back the ravages of time; the gra.s.s, the snow, trees felled by storms, the undergrowth creeping in and mice gnawing. He would have to keep time at bay so that her house could remain untouched and still.

There was a point where stillness and the busy restlessness of life merged together. He didn't think much more about it. But he realised that he had a lot to do if the house was to be able to hold its own against time.

In the morning, he saw that it was all much worse outside than he could have imagined. He tried attacking the tough gra.s.s from all directions with the scythe, exhausting himself. He took a trip down to the store to buy pilsner and sausage, and on his way back, he went in to Per-Ola Brandberg to pay his shooting dues. He was given a drink at the smoked-gla.s.s coffee table and he answered questions about the investigation. Nothing new. He realised the village very much wanted to return to the belief that it had been an accident, that Annie had tripped on the slippery stones at the ford. But it couldn't.

After leaving, he met Anna Starr. She had two carriers from the store with her and he stopped to offer her a lift up to Tangen. When they got to the uneven little road which was really nothing more than two wheel tracks and a hump of gra.s.s in between, he felt the pain again. But it was less sharp than before and he was able to say to Anna: 'Just think, this is the way Annie came on her way to see you. Wasn't it strange that she wanted to find out exactly where that ufo landed?'

He could feel her looking at him.