Blackwater (28 page)

When she opened it, small paper clothes welled out. Cut out, beautifully painted and quite undamaged, they rose out of the crush underneath the protective corrugated sheet of gold paper. Every flap to hook them on to the paper doll’s body was intact. She couldn’t see one that was ragged or had been torn off. They were all in the style of the forties – the yokes, straight shoulders, pleated skirts, belts and hip draperies. There were clutch coats, topper coats and blazers. She remembered the terms Henny had laughingly used when she showed her old photographs. A muff with flaps that had been folded over and over. The paper doll lying almost at the bottom resembled Ava Gardner or Joan Crawford and had her arms held away from her body. The muff had to be fixed to the sleeve of her coat – she was to make a gesture with it. As if meeting someone. In town. It was cold, the snow falling and perhaps Christmas Eve with bells ringing – as in an American film from the days of the coat.

The doll of hard cardboard was home-made, as all the clothes were. You could tell the bright red lips had been coloured with a red crayon, the point of which had been moistened. The clothes were painted in paler watercolours, perhaps from a school paint-box. Flowers, squares, stripes and dots. Lace edges to collars. Sequin embroidery. Sewn-down pleats. Stitching and smocking. Everything was reproduced with loving care. Yes – love. She felt it herself as she touched the paper clothes. Carefully she put them all back under the gold paper and put the lid back on the box.

Åke Vemdal phoned. It was so unexpected, Birger could find nothing to say. But Åke said:

‘I can come now.’

‘Come?’

‘You invited me to dinner.’

Was he quite shameless? After all, he had refused the invitation without even thanking him. Birger was taken aback.

‘Of course. Good to see you. When can you come?’

He was tense as he cut up the venison and prepared the casserole. Åke must have been feeling the same, because when he arrived he didn’t seem interested in the food. He sat sipping at his vodka as if it were some kind of liqueur, though it was ordinary Smirnoff. He was supposed to add caraway or St John’s wort to it, but he forgot.

‘I hear Barbro’s gone away.’

Birger felt extreme annoyance. People talked, but no one said anything to him. No one had asked, not even Märta. Åke Vemdal was the first person to mention that Barbro had gone away, and on top of that he was clumsy enough to try to console Birger.

‘You’ll see, she’ll be back when she’s calmed down after the hearings. They’ve questioned her over and over again. They’ve got about seven hours of tape.’

‘They?’ said Birger. ‘Why do you say “they”? Haven’t you been involved?’

Åke drank his vodka back in one draught. These large glasses had never been used when Barbro was at home. Birger’s father had been a qualified forester, employed at an estate in Gästrikland, and he had been presented with them on his fortieth birthday. They had flying ducks engraved on them and a huntsman and his dog on the decanter. Vemdal was now scrutinising the decoration on his glass as Birger told him about them. But he didn’t seem to be listening.

‘I’ve been taken off the case,’ he said finally.

‘Officially?’

Birger felt this was something similar to what Barbro’s absence had been in the beginning. Something perhaps not definite or even quite real. But Åke said that was so. Official. Stated outright.

‘Why?’

‘I’m considered too involved in it.’

‘Was it because I spoke out of turn about that Three Towers boot print?’

‘I haven’t even heard about that. We can talk freely now, because, as I told you, I’m out of the picture. But I don’t think they’ve got much further. It’s come to a halt.’

‘They were creating hell around here,’ said Birger. ‘Do you want some whortleberry with it? There’s some pickled gherkin here.’

But Åke ate practically nothing. The colour in his face was unhealthy.

‘I still get a hell of a lot of anonymous letters. Telling me to do something about it. Get the man who did it so people can go out. So the tourists won’t be frightened away. Though it’s the other way round. Tourists descend like flies. Coachloads of them. I get letters to say I should stop snooping around, I should watch out, and some nasty, smelly things have been be sent to me. A soiled sanitary towel. I wanted to bring it into the investigation – that little Dutch girl had her period when she died, and I thought perhaps someone had found it, someone who didn’t want to admit having been up there. That was when I found out I had been taken off the case. When it was stated outright, I mean. And they said the sanitary towel was nothing but a comment on my involvement. Can you believe it? It’s not impossible, for that matter.’

‘In what way are you supposed to be involved?’

‘I’m not involved.’

He sounded slightly irritable.

‘Are you sleeping all right?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up! Don’t you know what they call you?’

‘Yes,’ said Birger. ‘I do. I think you should eat something. Then we’ll go and listen to some music. Perhaps skip coffee. Nothing wrong with you taking a few sleeping tablets back with you. I’m no pill doctor. And nor are you what they say about you.’

He didn’t really know what music to put on. He didn’t think Åke liked either Bach or Schubert. In among his first LPs, he had one called
Down South,
dance music of the very slow kind. He remembered that one of his sexually more enterprising medical friends had borrowed it whenever he hoped to bring a girl back home with him. When the dark, hoarse phrases came slowly welling out of the saxophones, filling the bright room, he felt like laughing and Åke noticed.

‘What is it?’

‘We’re a couple of old bachelors, you and me. Irretrievably.’

‘Don’t know about irretrievably. And you’re married, after all.’

‘Have been.’

‘I’ve had so little time. Though sometimes I think this way takes up more time. All this bloody – what’s it called? – courting. Unless you take the very simplest way out.’

He wanted some coffee anyhow.

‘You keep the place in order, I see,’ he said, out in the kitchen.

‘I keep it in order and I cook dinner every day. I’m living kind of . . . under a glass dome. Palpating people’s bellies and groins but not talking to them. I’ve given up reading about the case, too.’

‘No need to bother. There’s nothing new. You’ve read about Ivo Maertens, have you?’

‘No.’

‘He turned up at his home. His parents phoned. He came home on the first of July. It wasn’t him. He’d had a tiff with the girl in Gothenburg and they’d parted. He had no idea who it was she had with her in the tent. Nor have we.’

‘What was the tiff about?’

‘There was a major rock concert in Gothenburg. Ivo Maertens and Sabine Vestdijk were staying at the camping site in Långedrag and made contact with someone who wanted to sell them tickets. Black market, but at a reasonable price. Ivo didn’t believe it. He was sure they’d be cheated, that the tickets weren’t valid and they would never get in with them. So he didn’t want to. So they fell out and he started sulking. I think he’s pig-headed. She went to the concert. He doesn’t know who she was with, whether it was the person selling the tickets or someone else. Ivo never saw who it was. But he thought it was a man. She didn’t come back that night. He got damned worried by the morning and thought of going to the police. He went and asked at reception if they’d seen her and he asked in the tents next to theirs. However, she did come in the end. Out of another tent. That was the end between them. He was so furious, he packed up his things and left. He hitched home and that took a few days. He knew nothing about what had happened when he got back to Leiden. There they received him as if he had been resurrected from the dead. He doesn’t know what plans she had when they parted in Långedrag. But there had been no talk about the mountains, ever. So it seems as if that was the other man’s idea. Sagittarius’s.’

‘Sagittarius? Had he shot someone?’

‘Not as far as we know. The only thing of his we found in an old bag was a notebook. It had a sign of the zodiac on it: Sagittarius. That’s really the only thing we think we know about him.’

‘Why?’

‘The notebook was bought here, from the general store in Byvången. You can see that from the price tag. They had all the signs of the zodiac to choose from. So why should he have chosen one other than his own? They remember him. Though not that he bought a notebook. There were lots of people there on the day before Midsummer Eve. We’ve been able to trace Sabine Vestdijk and him all the way from Långedrag, because they stayed at camping sites all the way up. In that big tent. There’s been such a hullabaloo in the papers, people have phoned in. They arrived in Byvången the day before Midsummer Eve and rented a room there for the first time. That was at the Three Pines. In her name only. The landlady doesn’t remember if they said he was her husband. Anyhow, Sabine went to bed in the middle of the afternoon and he went to the chemist’s. The assistant there remembers him. She thought he was good-looking. Though unpleasant. She reckoned he was a druggie. He had a headband and looked a bit sloppy, she thought. Though you never know. That depends on her own standards, and in the store they said nothing about his appearance except that he had quite long hair. He kept on saying he wanted Saridon. He couldn’t understand that all strong drugs are on prescription. I don’t think the assistant had much English, either, and he only spoke English. “Painkiller,” he kept saying, over and over again. At first she didn’t understand. She noted the word “killer” and thought he was unpleasant. I think Sabine Vestdijk was feeling ill and needed a painkiller.’

‘Period pains.’

‘Yes, if they can be that bad. I don’t know.’

‘Young women can have very severe period pains.’

‘Anyhow he drifted around the place. It’s not definite that he bought the notebook himself. The assistant in the store can’t remember his doing so. She remembers him because he spoke English. She doesn’t know any English, she’s an older woman, so she had to go and get help. That’s how she remembered what the man wanted – beer. Nothing else. The store manager who helped her remembers the same – he bought only beer. So who bought the notebook? There were crowds of people the day before Mid-summer Eve, but no other customer spoke English. We don’t even know if it was Sagittarius who wrote the telephone number in it. Norwegian. He was extremely careful with it anyhow, and hid the notebook under a plastic-covered piece of cardboard at the bottom of the bag. I got quite excited about that. But the number was to a small self-service store in a backwater on the coast above Brønnøysund. They know nothing about him there. And I think that’s true. There were some Norwegians at the Three Pines that night and they’ve been questioned, too, of course, but they didn’t even know where the place was. Hard to say whether they were lying. But they weren’t people who’d normally have anything to do with long-haired youths in ragged, grubby jeans. They were a teacher couple from Namsos and a vet from Steinkjer. The poor girl never got any painkillers, but may have drunk some vodka, since there was an empty bottle in the room. Koskenkorva.’

‘What about the powder you showed me?’

Åke looked embarrassed.

‘I had the same thought about him as the chemist’s assistant had. But when they analysed the powder, it turned out to be mostly acetylsalicylic acid. Caffeine, too, and cola seeds. Same as in Coca-Cola.’

‘Semen colae
,’ said Birger. ‘But I don’t recognise that mixture.’

‘No stronger than aspirin, anyhow. That was all she had taken. They had gone in the morning – left without paying. Probably very early. No one knows what they got up to in the morning. Eventually she appeared at Lill-Ola Lennartsson’s. The man went shopping at the store. He actually asked about a mountain. But I’m beginning to think they had simply driven the wrong way, for it wasn’t a mountain anywhere around here.’

‘Which was it then?’

‘Starhill. That isn’t here. Meanwhile she’s at Lill-Ola’s. So it’s possible Lill-Ola thought she was alone. In that case, it wasn’t all that strange that he flannelled around and lent her a tent and so on. He’s quite a one for the ladies. They say he’s so bloody cheeky, he goes in to lone wives in rented cabins when their husbands are out fishing at night. I don’t know.’

‘You’ve had to listen to an awful lot of shit.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard quite enough about Lill-Ola Lennartsson. He was the one who said he saw you crossing the road and going into the forest. Up by the Lobber.’

‘Then he’s insane.’

‘He may have seen someone else, of course. And thought it was you. But I think he said it because I had his boiler room searched. He realised you had tipped me off.’

‘I find it hard to believe . . .’

‘You’re nice, Birger, that’s what you are. But wait – that’s not all. He said I began to persecute him afterwards. Searching his cellar and house. That I was protecting you. He’s lying, the bloody creep. But they believe him.’

It had gone quiet, the turntable whirling round, but Birger couldn’t bring himself to choose another record. He was so disgusted, he didn’t want to hear any more, but nevertheless said:

‘So they really do think I went up to the Lobber?’

‘No, they don’t. They don’t think anything. They’re trying to work without any presumptions. And I think they’ve got nowhere with your things, boots or whatever it was. You would have heard from them again. You mustn’t take it so hard that there’s been so much questioning. Lill-Ola. His wife. She may have been up there wanting to see what he was up to. She’s not unaware of his little peccadilloes. They’ve questioned Dan Ulander and Annie Raft and the whole Starhill lot. Yvonne and her men. They’ve turned over every stone in the village. But they did believe one thing, and that was that he
had
mentioned seeing you. That he said it to me at the very first interrogation. They think I thought it absurd because I’d been with you, and that I thought we’d been in contact all the time. But they think I couldn’t know that, not for sure, and that I ought to have included his statement in the records. Even if it wasn’t believable.’