Blackwater (12 page)

‘I’m only putting some fish in,’ Birger said. ‘Your wife said it would be all right.’

He said goodbye and went down to the camping site to look in on the woman who had found the two dead bodies. He still had a guilty conscience about her. But he couldn’t find her.

By the time he got back, they had brought up a large police bus with radio antennae. The squad had found moped tracks on the path to the outfield buildings that ran up from the village. But they hadn’t found the moped. Nor Barbro.

‘Are you sure she came here?’ said Åke Vemdal.

What could he answer?

Johan had intended to stay awake and think up something to say to the woman driving the Saab. She was smoking and whistling quietly, and it was making him sleepy. He kept dozing off for longer and longer periods and didn’t even wake as they drove through the villages. She didn’t appear to slow down at all and when she finally braked sharply, he was thrown forwards with no time to brace himself.

‘Oops!’ was all she said, then added, as she was halfway out of the car, ‘just going to buy some cigarettes and a few things like that.’

They had stopped by a co-op store in a village he didn’t know. They must have driven far, past the first familiar places across the border. He could get out now. The simplest thing would be just to push off, then he wouldn’t have to say anything. He didn’t really know why but it would have made him uncomfortable to say that he wasn’t going any further with her.

Cigarettes and things like that, she had said. No food. Or was she going to buy something to eat? He had no money on him and was getting hungrier with every waking minute.

People were doing their Saturday shopping and a man was loading plastic carrier bags into the boot of his Ford. The man went back to fetch a pack of beer he’d had left on the steps and, having put it in the boot, he slammed it shut, leaving a carrier bag on the ground beside the car. The man went straight round to the front, got in and drove off.

The carrier looked as if it held cartons of cream. Full cream. Whipping cream. And other things. If he hasn’t far to go, he’ll soon be back, Johan thought. When he notices he’s left one bag behind. Or someone will come out of the store and notice it.

He didn’t decide to do it, he just did it – got out of the Saab, took three or four steps and picked up the carrier bag. It was quite heavy. He clasped it to him and carried it like that so that it couldn’t be seen from the store as he crossed the road. He walked straight into the forest along a small dirt road. He could hear a car coming up behind him and felt his back stiffen as he tried to hear whether anyone had come out of the shop. After a while the road curved and he knew he was no longer visible from the store. He ducked under a gate and ran straight up into the forest with his burden, the fir trees closing around him.

It was a steep, dark forest, silent in the heat. His back to a tree, he sat down in the moss and started unpacking the carrier. A leek. Twelve packets of yeast labelled Gjaer. The man had been going to make a mash for home brew. What had looked like a half-litre carton of cream was rodent killer. Ordinary yellow boxes of rat poison. A metal cake tin. Salt. Grease-proof baking paper. A packet of detergent.

The leek was the only edible item. The devil himself had packed the carrier bag. As he had been walking up he had thought about fried fishcakes, vacuum packed, or a whole lot of cream intended for porridge. After all, it was Midsummer. Chocolate cakes. Potato cakes and cheese.

But there was nothing. He couldn’t eat the leek. Stealing the carrier had been quite pointless and now he’d lost the eel. The pail was still in the car and the woman must have long since driven on.

Only now did he feel ashamed. But he couldn’t very well take the carrier back to the shop. He hid it behind the tree, but down by the road, he changed his mind and went back to fetch the boxes of rat poison. He stuffed them into the container intended for parking fees. At least no field mice would have gastric haemorrhages.

Before heading back to the main road, he had considered staying in the forest for a while to think about which direction he should hitch next. Maybe it would be just as well to go back home. But he was hungry, so hungry he couldn’t think straight. All he could do was walk, walk and walk until his stomach stopped tearing at him.

The Saab was still there. At first he thought it was another car, the same as hers, but she was sitting inside, that woman in the blue-and-white striped cotton jersey. It scared him a little. That was silly, of course, but it was rather strange that she was still there, peering at him as if she had known all the time he would come back. She was eating a banana.

‘Still here?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

A packet of Marlboro and a large bar of chocolate lay where he had been sitting.

‘I didn’t think you’d leave your eel,’ she said.

So she had opened the lid and looked in. Foolishly, he turned scarlet, a hot wave rising from his throat. He got into the car and she started up. When he put the chocolate on the dashboard, she said:

‘Go ahead. Have some if you like.’

He ate, and she started laughing.

Vemdal came over to him, holding out his palm. He was wearing a thin rubber glove. A piece of paper lay in his hand. It lodked like a crumpled bit of a paper bag. It was printed with a picture of the head of a Red Indian in a full feathered headdress and the word
pow
in large letters. Just where the paper was torn, he could see the Indian’s raised brown hand.

‘Do you know what this is?’

Birger shook his head. Åke Vemdal put the piece of paper down on a notepad and took out another piece of paper folded like an envelope. Carefully he started poking it open with a pair of blunt pincers, then spread it out. It held a few grains of white powder, and a closer look revealed some transparent crystals among it.

‘No medicine you know of?’

‘No. Have you found a syringe?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

Then Birger saw the pad of paper underneath the torn bag.

Antaris Balte on motocross bike. Reindeer herdsman. 8.15. Barbro Lund with son. 9.30.

‘But that’s her!’

Vemdal didn’t understand.

‘That’s Barbro. And my boy.’

He pointed.

‘What the hell is that about?’

‘They’re the people who came out this morning. From the Area,’ said Vemdal.

‘It’s Barbro. Her name’s Lund, was. Her maiden name.’

‘Why would she have given her maiden name?’

‘She uses it when she signs her tapestries.’

‘She was questioned and then they left at about ten,’ said Vemdal. ‘The car was up at Björnstubacken.’

‘Can you take a car up there?’

‘It’s really only a tractor road. But obviously it was possible.’

‘That was Barbro. Good God!’

When the the shock of relief had settled, he thought of the boy. How had she got him to go with her? Tomas hadn’t even wanted to come fishing. For him to go demonstrating against uranium mining was incredible. But he had been there. Barbro Lund and son, it said on the list.

‘Come back home,’ she said, when he phoned from the Strömgrens’ kitchen. Nothing else.

His stomach had troubled him from the moment he had seen her name on the list. He could feel the pressure on his bowels, but didn’t get a chance to make use of Henry and Oriana’s toilet. As he was on his way into the village, his guts rebelled and he had to get out and squat down behind some trees. Got no further. A police car passed and slowed down. Birger tried to wave as he relieved himself.

This had never happened to him before. It happened when you were really frightened. Shit-scared. In the trenches. When people were assaulted. It hadn’t happened to either of those two in the tent. But it had happened to him afterwards. After the fear.

Thick, dark-grey smoke was billowing out of a chimney further down in the village, dispersing very slowly in the gleaming sky. He stared at the cloud of smoke as he squatted there. Everything had gone so quickly he hadn’t brought any paper with him from the car. He took a handful of birch leaves. It felt unpleasant afterwards and he had to wash, so he drove to the Westlunds’. Elna tried to give him some coffee, but his stomach was still queasy and he declined. Assar went with him out onto the steps. Birger saw that Elna had hung out the washing although it was Midsummer Day. Blue-grey longjohns and floral duvet covers. He had grown up in a works community outside Gävle and when he was a child, no one ever hung the washing out on Sundays. You didn’t even rake the gravel path when morning service was being held.

‘Has Vidart come back?’ he said.

The Duett was standing in rusty majesty down by the road, just up Vidart’s drive.

‘He’s still in hospital. The Duett came back some time last night.’

Birger thought that was good.

‘The Brandbergs want to play it down,’ he said.

‘I suppose they hope the police have other things to think about.’

As he got into the car, he thought he could smell burning rubber. There was something else, too, something nauseating. The greyish-black smoke was flickering in the heat above the houses. He had a neighbour in Byvången who burnt butcher’s waste and old tyres on his Walpurgis bonfire. This was something like that. At first he thought it was coming from the Brandbergs’ chimney, but then he saw it was the Lennartssons’. That reminded him of his fish.

When he knocked on the back door, no one came. He knocked again and finally pushed open the door and called out. It was quiet. He felt a vague unease, went on in and opened the door to Lill-Ola’s bedroom. Ola was lying on his back and the room was almost insufferably hot and heavy. She had put a check car rug over him. A half-empty glass of milk stood on the bedside table. The envelope of tablets was crumpled up. The man had taken all six.

Birger opened the window. The sun was baking at the front and the air almost hotter outside. The stench of burning he had noticed outside the Westlunds’ came in. He felt Lill-Ola’s pulse, but it was regular and calm. He was asleep, would sleep for a long time and probably wake with a headache. The large-pored skin was pale grey and moist, sweat oozing out of his throat and forehead. Birger removed the rug before leaving.

He was going to take his fish parcel out of the freezer, but had to search around for a while before finding it. The stacks of cartons had been muddled up. Plastic bags of buns and vegetable packs lay among the packets of meat. I didn’t leave such a damned mess behind me, he thought. Lill-Ola must have been rummaging in the freezer. Did he think I had stolen something? Is he that crazy?

He heard sounds from the basement, the central-heating pipes echoing. He had to go round the house to find the basement door and when he opened it, evil-smelling smoke poured out at him. As it cleared, he saw Bojan Lennartsson poking about in the boiler. Flakes of soot and feathers were swirling round in the smoke. She was bent double, raking in and out of the bottom of the boiler.

‘Can I help?’ he said.

He frightened her. She swung round with the rake in her hand. She almost looked smoked herself, greyish black, and she was angry when she saw him. Or afraid.

‘I’m heating up the water,’ she snapped.

‘Yes, can I help? You’ve got back draught. You’ve probably forgotten a damper?’

She didn’t reply, but closed the boiler door. Now he could see she had been stuffing cardboard boxes into the boiler. She had cut them up into large pieces, and pale brown and white feathers lay trampled in the soot.

‘It’s done now,’ she said. ‘Ola is all right. You can go.’

‘He’s taken all those tablets I gave him. That wasn’t exactly intended.’

She wiped her dirty hands on her overall and shooed him ahead of her as she went out.

‘Is that dangerous?’

‘No, I didn’t give him that many.’

She poked her head forward and trotted off towards the stairs. Upstairs she slammed the door behind her so that the windows rattled. She had had enough. So have I, he thought.

He found a bag of mint toffees in the glove compartment and ate them all as he drove along, telling himself it was best to eat the lot so that he could throw the bag away. He didn’t want Barbro to find it. He was getting far too damned fat.

When the toffees were finished, he found himself again and again falling forwards over the wheel. His eyelids kept drooping and meaningless pictures rose before his eyes. He saw the flesh of disintegrating fish in muddy water. He was forced to stop in Laxkroken. He rang home from the phone box by the shop. Tomas answered.

‘I must get some sleep,’ Birger said. ‘I’ll park somewhere. How are things with Mum?’

‘All right.’

‘What about you?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I thought perhaps you found it creepy up there.’

‘Where?’

‘Where it happened. You were quite close.’

There was silence at the other end.

‘What?’ said Tomas finally. ‘I wasn’t there. I was at home last night.’

It was past six by the time Birger got home. He had slept heavily and was aching from sitting leaning back against the headrest. Before driving the car into the yard, he stopped to look at the latticework above the veranda and on the balcony.

Behind the house was the hill with the dead aspens. Ten years ago the site had been a sea of wild chervil and summer flowers, a forested hill behind. Abandoned cars had been half-buried in the sea of flowers, as well as broken glass, old shoes and rotting timber. The ground had been waterlogged and heavily churned up. The madman they had bought it from had had dreams that had never materialised. But there had been red and black currant bushes, twenty-one of them. In amongst all that rubbish, the poor soil had been generous.

After he had driven in, he again stood for a while looking at the balcony latticework, letting his eyes wander down to the fine fretwork details round the veranda – still not scraped – and following them round a window. Too late, he discovered Barbro’s face on other side of the pane. As he raised his hand, she vanished.

She was already on her way upstairs when he got in, and didn’t stop when he hailed her. He felt bad about having failed to notice her at once in the window.