The Spring Tide

In Hasslevikarna, the coves on the island of Nordkoster on the west coast of Sweden, up near the border with Norway, the difference between high tide and low tide is usually between five and ten centimetres, except when there is a spring tide. That phenomenon that occurs when the Sun and the Moon are in line with the Earth. Then the difference is almost fifty
centimetres
. A human head is twenty-five centimetres in height, give or take.

Tonight there would be a spring tide.

For the time being the tide was out.

The full moon had sucked the reluctant sea back many hours before, and exposed an expanse of damp sand. Small, shiny crabs scuttled back and forth across the sand glowing in the steely-blue light. The limpets clung on particularly hard to the rocks, biding their time. All the life exposed on the shore knew that the tide would wash over them once again.

Three figures on the beach knew too. They even knew exactly when it would happen – in a quarter of an hour. Then the first gentle waves would roll in and wet those parts that had dried out, and soon the pressure from the dark rumble out there would push up wave upon wave until the flood of the tide had reached its maximum.

A spring tide; meaning that the beach would be covered with fifty centimetres of water.

But they still had a little time. The hole they were digging was almost finished. It went straight down, almost one hundred and fifty centimetres, with a diameter of about sixty centimetres. A body would fit perfectly. Only the head would reach over the top.

The head of a fourth figure.

The head belonging to the woman who was standing some way away, quite still, with her hands tied.

Her long dark hair fluttered gently in the intermittent breeze, her naked body shone, her face muted without any make-up. Her eyes revealed a strange lack of presence. She looked at the digging further down the shore. The man with the spade pulled the curved blade out of the hole, tipped the last of the sand onto the pile next to him and turned around.

He was finished.

One of the men shovelled sand into the hole. The dripping sludge settled around the woman’s body like wet cement. The hole was soon filled. When the first scattered waves rolled in towards land, only the woman’s head stuck out. Her long hair became wet, slowly; and a little crab became caught in a dark strand. She herself was staring at the moon, without uttering a sound.

The figures moved back a little, up amidst the dunes. Two of them were nervous, uncertain, the third was calm. They all watched the solitary moonlit head out on the sand.

And waited.

When the spring tide came at last, it came in rather fast. The height of the waves increased with every surge and washed over the woman’s head, into her mouth and up her nose. Her throat was filled with water. Whenever she turned her head away, a new wave hit her face.

One of the figures went back out to her and crouched down. Their eyes met.

The sea rose and became still, dark and shiny. Under the surface the woman shut her eyes. The last thing she felt was another kick, little and gentle, against the inside of her belly. Then her waters broke.

One-eyed Vera actually had two healthy eyes and a gaze that might halt a hunting falcon in mid-air. Her vision was
excellent
. But she argued her point with the subtlety of a
sledgehammer
. Started with her own opinion and then battered away so that any counterarguments were flung out in every direction.

One-eyed.

But loved.

Now she was standing with her back to the setting sun, with the last rays sliding across Värta bay, bouncing off Lidingö Bridge and reaching the park at Hjorthagen with enough strength still to create an elegant backlit halo around Vera.

‘It’s my
world
, that’s what this is about!’

The passionate way she said this would have impressed any parliamentary gathering, although her husky voice would have seemed out of place in a chamber. And maybe her clothes too – a couple of soiled, different-coloured T-shirts on top, and on the bottom a tulle skirt that had seen better days. And barefoot. But now she wasn’t standing in a parliamentary chamber, she was instead in a little out-of-the-way park near the Värta docks and her audience consisted of four homeless people in varying states, spread out on some benches among the oaks and ash trees and bushes. One of them was Jelle, silent and tall, he sat by himself as if in his own world. Benseman sat on another bench and next to him, Muriel, a young druggie from Bagarmossen. She had a plastic bag from the co-op next to her.

Arvo Pärt was snoozing on the bench opposite them.

At the edge of the park, hidden behind some thick bushes, two young men were crouched down. Wearing dark clothes, their gaze fixed on the benches.

‘It’s my world, not theirs! Right?’

One-eyed Vera gestured towards a distant spot.

‘They just come and bang their fists on the caravan and I’ve hardly got my teeth in and there they are standing outside the door! Three of them! And how they stared! “What the hell is this about?” I said.

‘“We’re from the council. Your caravan needs to be moved.”

‘“Why?”

‘“We’re going to develop the land.”

‘“For what?”

‘“An illuminated track.”

‘“A what?”

‘“A running track, it’s going to go right through here.”

‘“What the hell d’you mean? I can’t move this! I haven’t got a car!”

‘“Regrettably, that isn’t our problem. The caravan must be gone before next Monday.”’

One-eyed Vera stopped to catch her breath and Jelle took the opportunity to yawn, discreetly. Vera didn’t like you yawning when she was ranting.

‘Don’t you get it? There’s three blokes standing there looking like they were grown in a filing cabinet in the Fifties, and telling me that I should go to hell! So that some overfed idiots can run off their flab right over my home? Of course that really pissed me off, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Muriel was the one who hissed an answer. Her voice was rather lacerated, thin and grating, and she would never draw attention to herself unless she’d had a hit.

Vera brushed aside her thinning reddish hair and started up again.

‘But this ain’t about some fucking running track, it’s about all them folks out walking their furry little rats who don’t like someone like me being there, in their posh surroundings, I don’t fit in with their neat and tidy world. That’s what it’s about! They don’t give a fuck about us!’

Benseman leaned forward a little.

‘But you know, Vera, it could be that they…’

‘Right, let’s be off, Jelle! Come on!’

Vera took two big steps and prodded Jelle on the arm. She couldn’t care less what Benseman thought. Jelle got up, shrugged his shoulders slightly and followed her. He didn’t really know where to though.

Benseman gave a bit of a grimace. He knew his Vera. With slightly shaking hands he lit a crumpled cigarette butt and opened a can of beer. A sound that caused Arvo Pärt to come to life.

‘Now is fun.’

Pärt was a second-generation Estonian, his parents having come to Sweden as refugees during the war. He had his own special way of speaking. Muriel watched as Vera left, and then turned to Benseman.

‘Well, it’s right, a lot of what she said, as soon as you don’t fit in, then they want you out of the way… ain’t it like that?’

‘Yes, I suppose so…’

Benseman was from the north of Sweden, best known for his unnecessarily firm handshake and for the way the yellows of his eyes seemed to have been marinated in vodka. He was a big man, with a distinct northern dialect and rancid breath which oozed out through the gaps in his teeth. In a previous life, he had been a librarian up in Boden, with a large appetite for books and an equally large appetite for alcoholic beverages. The whole nine yards, from cloudberry liqueur to some of the extremely potent products from an illicit distillery. Ten years of alcohol abuse had completely wrecked his social life and ended with him driving down to Stockholm in a stolen van. Down in the capital he just scraped by as a beggar and shoplifter, like flotsam that had been washed ashore.

But he had read a lot.

‘…we are dependent on charity,’ said Benseman.

Pärt nodded in agreement and reached out for the beer. Muriel pulled out a little pouch and a spoon. Benseman reacted immediately.

‘You were going to lay off that crap, weren’t you?’

‘I know, I will.’

‘When?’

‘I will!’

And she did, immediately. Not because she didn’t want her fix, but because she suddenly caught sight of two youths who were sauntering towards them through the trees. One had on a black hooded jacket, and his mate a green one. Both of them were wearing grey tracksuit bottoms, heavy boots and gloves.

They were out hunting.

The homeless trio reacted fairly quickly. Muriel grabbed her plastic bag and ran off. Benseman and Pärt stumbled after her. Benseman suddenly remembered the second can of beer he had hidden behind the bin. That could mean the difference between getting some sleep or being awake the coming night. He turned back and accidentally tripped up in front of one of the benches.

His balance wasn’t at its best.

Nor was his reaction time. When he tried get back on his feet he got a hard kick right in his face and fell onto his back. The youth in the black jacket stood right next to him. His mate had pulled out a mobile and switched the camera on.

That was the start of an exceptionally brutal assault, filmed in a park from which nothing could be heard on the outside and where there were only two terrified witnesses hidden in some bushes quite a way away.

Muriel and Pärt.

But even from that distance they could see the blood running from Benseman’s mouth and an ear, and hear his muffled groans after each kick to his midriff and face.

Time after time.

After time.

What they didn’t get to see was how some of Benseman’s few remaining teeth were kicked into the flesh of his cheeks, poking out the other side. What they did see was how the big northerner tried to shield his eyes.

The eyes he used for reading.

Muriel cried, silently, and pressed the crook of her arm – full of scars – across her mouth. Every part of her emaciated body shook. In the end, Pärt took the young girl by the hand and pulled her away from the disgusting scene. There was nothing they could do. Or rather, they could call the police, they could do that, Pärt thought, and dragged Muriel with him as quickly as he could down towards Lidingövägen.

By the time one of Benseman’s hands had been stamped on till it was a bloody mess, the last of the sunlight had sunk into Värta bay. The youth with the mobile turned the camera off and his mate picked up Benseman’s hidden can of beer.

Then they ran off.

They left behind them the dusk and the big northerner on the ground. His smashed hand was clawing feebly at the gravel, his eyelids were closed.
A Clockwork Orange
, the book
title was the last thought winding through Benseman’s brain. But who the hell wrote it? Then the hand stopped moving.