Let the Old Dreams Die (3 page)

For the same reason that her shifts varied from week to week, her holidays were spread throughout the summer. A week here, a week there. If she had asked for a continuous break they would have agreed because they valued her, but she didn’t feel the need for it. After all, work was the place where she felt most at ease.

She took her first week so that she could go down and help out at the customs post in Malmö. An unusually sophisticated press for printing euro notes had been discovered in Hamburg, and they knew that hundreds of millions had already been printed, ready to be spread right across Europe.

On her third day the couriers arrived in a campervan. A man and a woman. They even had a child with them. The situation became clear to Tina only when she realised she was picking up signals from the man, not the other two. The woman and child knew nothing about the false floor and the ten million in hundred-euro notes hidden underneath it. She explained this to the police, and they said the information had been noted.

However, she also made contact with the public prosecutor in Malmö, whom she knew from a previous case, and repeated that the
woman was innocent (the child was eight years old and subject only to the worst punishment of all: being taken away from his parents). The prosecutor promised to do what he could.

When she got back to Kapellskär at the beginning of July, she let a few days pass before she asked.

She and Robert were taking a coffee break in the cafeteria in the entrance hall. The next ferry wasn’t due for an hour, and when they had finished their coffee she leaned back in her chair and asked, quite casually, ‘That guy with the insects. Has he been back?’

‘What guy?’

‘You remember—I thought he was carrying something, but he wasn’t.’

‘Are you still thinking about him?’

Tina shrugged. ‘No, I just wondered.’

Robert folded his hands over his stomach and looked at her. She glanced over at the pinball machines, and at first she thought she had turned her head so that the sun was catching it, because her healthy cheek suddenly felt hot.

‘No,’ said Robert. ‘Not as far as I know, anyway.’

‘OK.’

They went back to work.

During her second holiday week at the end of July she went to a dog show in Umeå with Roland. He took the car and she took the train because she didn’t want to travel in the car with the dogs, and the dogs didn’t want to travel in the car with her.

She didn’t actually go to the dog show either, but she and Roland had two free days together. They spent the first wandering around Umeå, and on the second day they went for a long walk in the surrounding area. Occasionally he stroked her arm or took her hand when there was nobody else in sight.

She couldn’t work out exactly what it was that made them a couple. They were much too different to be friends, and the only time they had tried to have sex it had been so agonisingly painful that she had been forced to beg him to stop. It was probably a relief for him.

He slept with other women, and she didn’t blame him for that. He had been kind enough to try with her, and she had told him to stop. The morning after their failed attempt, she remembered saying, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have sex with you. So if you…if you want to do it with someone else then…then that’s OK.’

She had said it out of despair, and had hoped that he would say—well, whatever. She had said it. And he had taken her at her word.

During the rest of her week off she went to see her father a couple of times. Took him out in his wheelchair so that he could escape from the residential home in Norrtälje for a little while; he had gone there after the death of his wife.

After the death of my mother,
Tina forced herself to think. They had never been close. Unlike Tina and her father.

They sat down by the harbour eating ice cream. Tina had to feed her father from a carton. His mind was completely clear, his body almost completely paralysed. When they had finished their ice creams and watched the boats for a while, he asked, ‘How are things with Roland these days?’

‘Fine. He had high hopes in Umeå, but they ended up with Best in Class as usual. People don’t like fighting dogs.’

‘No. Perhaps things will improve if they stop attacking children. But I really meant how are things between you and Roland.’

Tina’s father and Roland had met once, when her father called in to say hello, and it had been a case of mutual dislike at first sight. Her father had questioned the wisdom of both the kennels and renting out the cottage, wondered if Roland was intending to go the whole
hog and turn his family home into some kind of theme park, with carousels and goodness knows what.

Fortunately Roland had been diplomatic, but when her father left—after coffee drunk in an uncomfortable, brooding silence—he had launched into a tirade about old farts who couldn’t accept change and senile fools who wanted to block any kind of progress; he had stopped only when Tina reminded him that was her father he was talking about.

Her father normally referred to Roland as the Small Businessman; it was rare for him to use his name.

Tina didn’t want to talk about it. She went off and threw their serviettes and empty cartons in the bin without answering him, and hoped he would drop the subject.

No chance. When she came back, ready to take him to the residential home, he said, ‘Stop right there. I asked you a question. Am I so old that I no longer deserve an answer?’

Tina sighed and sat down on the plastic chair beside him.

‘Dad. I know how you feel about Roland…’

‘Yes, you do. But I have no idea how
you
feel.’

Tina looked out across the harbour. The Vaxholm ferry, which had been converted into a restaurant, scraped gently against the quayside. When she was little there had been a plane on the other side of the channel. The counter had been inside the fuselage, you could sit at a table out on the wing, drinking your coffee. Or juice. She had been sad when it was taken away.

‘The thing is…’ she said. ‘It’s a bit difficult to explain.’

‘Try.’

‘It’s nothing like…what about you and Mum, anyway? Why did you stay together? You had next to nothing in common.’

‘We had you. And to tell the truth, things weren’t too bad in bed either. When we got around to it. But what about you two? What have you got?’

The sun struck Tina’s cheek again.

‘I really don’t want to discuss this with you, Dad.’

‘I see. And who are you going to discuss it with, exactly? The tree?’ He turned his head towards her just a fraction, which was all he could manage. ‘Do you still go there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. Good.’ He blew air out through his nose, sat quietly for a few seconds, then said, ‘Listen, sweetheart. I just don’t want you to be exploited.’

Tina studied her feet through the straps of her sandals. Her toes were bent; even her feet were ugly.

‘I’m not being exploited. I want someone to be with and…it can’t be helped.’

‘Darling girl. You deserve better.’

‘Yes. But it’s not going to happen.’

They made their way back through the town in silence. Her father’s parting words were: ‘Say hello to the Small Businessman from me.’ She said she would, but she didn’t.

She was back at work on Monday. The first thing Robert said after they had exchanged the usual pleasantries was: ‘…and no, he hasn’t been here.’

She knew what he meant, but asked anyway: ‘Who?’

Robert smiled. ‘The Shah of Iran, of course, who do you think?’

‘Oh, you mean…Right. I see.’

‘I checked with the others too. In case he came through when I wasn’t on duty.’

‘It’s not that important.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Robert. ‘I’ve asked them to let me know if he comes through, but you’re not interested then?’

Tina got annoyed.

‘I got it wrong once,’ she said, holding up a rigid index finger
in front of Robert’s face. ‘Just once. And I don’t think I did get it wrong. That’s why I’m wondering what he does. Is that so strange?’

Robert held up his hands and took a step backwards.

‘OK, OK. I thought we’d agreed it was something to do with that—what was it called—insect hatching box.’

Tina shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that.’

‘So what was it, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

The summer rolled back its warmth and the holidays came to an end. The ferries began to run less frequently, and the little cottage was empty, thank goodness. When Tina brought up the idea of not renting it out in the future, Roland got annoyed. She let it be.

During the summer the house next door had been sold to a middle-aged couple with two children from Stockholm. The woman, who was pregnant with what she referred to as Tail-end Charlie, was always popping round. No doubt she thought that’s what people did in the country.

Tina liked the woman, whose name was Elisabeth, but she kept on and on about the fact that she was pregnant. She was forty-two years old, and slightly obsessed with the fact that she was going to be a mother again, and Tina sometimes found it painful to listen to her.

She would have liked to be able to have children herself, but as she was incapable of doing what was necessary in order to create a child, it was never going to happen.

She envied Elisabeth, but she liked the particular aroma surrounding the pregnant woman. A secret aroma, filled with expectation.

Tina was also forty-two, and from a purely theoretical point of
view she could have talked to Roland about IVF, but that wasn’t the way things were between them. Not at all.

So she sat and breathed in Elisabeth’s aroma and longed for something that could never be.

The weather had been unusually warm during the summer, and the autumn was taking its time to arrive.

In the middle of September he turned up again.

The feeling was just as powerful as it had been on the previous occasion. So powerful that there was an aura around him, a flashing neon sign with the words HIDING SOMETHING.

She didn’t even need to say anything. He walked straight to the counter and heaved up his suitcase, then linked his hands behind his back.

‘Hello again,’ he said.

Tina made an effort to sound normal: ‘I’m sorry? Do we know each other?’

‘No,’ said the man. ‘But we have met.’

He waved one arm towards the suitcase in an inviting gesture. Tina couldn’t help smiling. She waved her arm in turn, indicating that he should open the case.

He’s treating the whole thing like a game,
she thought.
But this time I’m going to win.

‘How was your summer?’ he asked as she went through the case. She shook her head. He might be treating this like a game, and she might have thought about him now and again, but when it came down to it they were on opposite sides of the counter. He was trying to bring in something illicit, and she forced herself to think
Drugs… drugs that will be sold to thirteen-year-old kids.
The man in front of her was one of the bad guys, and she was going to break him.

The contents of the case were largely the same as before, except that the Mankell novels had been replaced by Åke Edwardson. She
picked up the insect hatching box and looked inside. Empty. She tapped on the base to check that there was no hidden space. The man followed her movements with amused interest.

‘Right,’ she said when she had established that the case contained nothing more than the eye could see. ‘I am convinced that you are hiding something, and this time I intend to have a more thorough search carried out. Could you come this way, please.’

The man didn’t move. ‘So you do remember,’ he said.

‘I have a vague recollection, yes.’

He held out his hand and said, ‘Vore.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Vore. That’s my name. What’s yours?’

Tina met his gaze. His eyes were so deep set that hardly any light from the fluorescent tube on the ceiling reached them, and they looked like faintly reflective black mountain pools. Most people would probably be frightened by such a gaze. Not Tina.

‘Tina,’ she said dryly. ‘This way, please.’

Since the search was of an intimate nature, Tina did not participate. No ferries were due for some time, and while Robert carried out the external physical check she wandered around the entrance hall making bets with herself, fixing the odds on what might be found.