The Spring Tide (8 page)

Then she saw the shadow.

A distant stroke of lightning threw a sliver of light into the forest and revealed a shadow that moved between the trees only a few metres away.

It seemed to be a shadow.

And it terrified her.

The sliver of light vanished just as quickly as it had come, and it became all dark again. She didn’t know what it was she had seen.

Between the trees.

A human?

The man who carried his wheeled suitcase through the thick forest was indeed a human. A focused human. The rain had made his blond hair fasten in wet wisps across his face. It didn’t bother him. He had been out in worse weather than this. In other parts of the world. With totally different tasks. All the more unpleasant tasks, as far as he was concerned. He had a certain degree of empirical readiness. Would it help him this time? That he didn’t know.

He had no experience of this task.

She had admittedly only seen it on the map, and on Google Earth for that matter, but since the rainclouds had decided to suddenly move on over to the mainland and had let a cold moon slip through a crack, she could recognise the outline.

She was looking at the coves at Hasslevikarna.

She had roamed around in total confusion for quite a while. Her clothes were still soaking wet. The cut on her forehead had stopped bleeding but she was shaking all over, and now she had stumbled across this. Which was her original destination. Ages ago.

Now she was shaking for other reasons too.

The weird blue light from that dead heavenly body up there created an eerie mood in the bay. And it was evidently low tide too. The beach seemed to go on forever. It started up by the sand dunes and went far out towards the sea.

She reached one side of the beach and sank down on a large rock and shook her way into a strange state of suggestion.

So this was where it had happened.

That horrible murder.

Here was the beach. Here was the place where the naked woman had been buried.

She ran her hand across the rocks in front of her.

Where had the boy been sitting when he had seen it? At the place where she was sitting just now? Or was it on the other side of the long beach? Where she could make out other rocks. She stood up and looked across to the other side and that was when she saw him.

A man.

He came out of the edge of the forest way over on the other side, with a… what was it? A suitcase on wheels? Olivia crouched down and hid behind the rock. She saw how the man let go of his suitcase on wheels and started to walk across the
dry sand down towards the sea. Slowly, further and further towards the sea. Suddenly he stopped, a long way out. Stood completely still and looked up at the moon… and then down towards the sand and up again. The wind tugged at his hair and jacket. Suddenly he squatted down and lowered his head as if in prayer, then he stood up again. Olivia pressed her clenched fists against her mouth. What was the man up to? Just there? Half way out to the sea? Just now when there was a low tide and a full moon?

Who was he?

Was he mad?

It was hard for her to say how long he stood there. It could have been three minutes, it could have been fifteen. She didn’t know. Suddenly he turned and walked back up towards the dunes. Just as slowly, back to where he had left his suitcase, turned round again and looked out towards the sea.

Then he disappeared into the forest.

Olivia remained sitting where she was. Long enough to be certain that the man had got some distance away.

Unless of course he had stayed near the edge of the forest.

He hadn’t. He had gone on towards his other place. The next place, rather, the one that was really more important. The first had just been more of a mourning rite. The second was concrete.

It was there he would do something.

He knew, of course, where it was, the green house, but he didn’t remember it as having such a thick hedge around the grounds. But that served his purpose. It made it easy to be able to slip in and stay hidden behind the hedge. Nobody would see him from the outside.

He noticed that there were lights on inside the house and that worried him. There were people there. He would have to sneak
past, along the side of the hedge, to get right there. Right up to the place that he must get to.

He started to move forwards, cautiously. He held the suitcase in his hand. He took each step as quietly as he could. In the dark it was hard to see where he was putting his feet. When he was almost level with the house, he heard a door open on the other side. He pushed his body into the hedge and got a thick branch in his face. He stood absolutely still. Suddenly he saw a little boy rounding the corner of the house, ten metres away. The boy gave a laugh and pressed himself against the wall. Was he playing hide-and-seek? Nilsson breathed as quietly as he could. If the boy were to turn and look in his direction then he would be discovered. He was too close for anything else.

‘Johan!’

A woman was calling. The boy crouched down a little and turned his head slightly, towards the hedge. For a moment Nilsson thought that their eyes had met. The boy didn’t move.

‘Johan!’

The woman called out louder now. Suddenly the boy detached himself from the wall and started to run again, disappearing behind the other corner of the house. Nilsson remained standing in the hedge until he heard the door slam on the other side. It fell silent. He waited several minutes before he started to move again.

She would probably have died in the forest. Frozen to death, or some other end that would look good on the newspaper placards, she thought. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t through her own efforts.

It was thanks to Axel.

When she finally sank down on a rock, utterly exhausted, she heard the voice.

‘Have you lost your way?’

A tall, broad-shouldered youth with short hair and intense eyes was standing about a metre away and looking at her wet apparition. He didn’t really need an answer to the question. And she didn’t answer either.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Axel. My mother said I should take a walk and see where you’d got to. She went past your cabin and you hadn’t come back. Have you lost your way?’

That’s putting it mildly, she thought, I’m about as fucking lost as you possibly could be on this fucking island.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘That’s quite an achievement.’

‘You what?’

‘Losing your way on this island, it isn’t very large.’

‘Thanks.’

Olivia was helped up. Axel looked at her.

‘You are completely soaked. Did you have a tumble?’

Have a tumble? Up at Hasslevikarna? Was that what they called it, the islanders? That you have a tumble? When half the fucking North Sea crashes down upon you?

What a bunch of weirdos.

‘Can you help me back?’

‘Yeah, sure. Take my jacket.’

Axel put his big warm jacket round the frozen Olivia and led her through the big bad forest all the way back to the little yellow cabin, and once there he offered to go and fetch a bit of food.

My hero, Olivia thought, sitting on her bed wrapped in a blanket and with some lukewarm food on the plate in her hand. A person who saves lives.

Who doesn’t talk too much, but just gets on with it.

Axel Nordeman.

‘Are you one of the lobster boys?’

She had asked him that, not really serious.

‘Yes.’

He had answered. And that was it.

Not exactly your Ulf Molin type.

With food and warmth and survival, most things were back to normal with Olivia. Even her mobile. That, too, had dried out with a bit of help from a borrowed hairdryer.

When she had checked her text messages and emails, it suddenly struck her that she had forgotten that she had to phone Ove Gardman again. She had phoned him yesterday, on the night train down to Göteborg, and got an answering machine. Now she was going to try again. She checked the time, it was pushing ten. She phoned and reached the answering machine again. She left a new message and asked him to phone her as soon as he heard it. Then she hung up and started coughing violently.

Pneumonia? went through her head.

Quite other things went through Nilsson’s head. He was
squatting
down. His suitcase next to him. Far behind him the green house could just be made out. There were no lights on there now.

With an extreme effort he pushed the larger rock aside. He had already moved the smaller one. He looked down into the exposed hole. A deep hole, just as he remembered it. He had dug it himself. A long time ago. To deal with any eventuality.

He glanced at the suitcase.

Suddenly she was overcome by tiredness. Suddenly her entire body was like a rag doll. All that roaming around getting lost had done her in. She hardly had the energy to pull the bedspread
back and creep under the covers. The little bedside lamp spread a warm glow over the room and she felt as if she was drifting away. Slowly… and dad Arne drifted up. He shook his head a little when he looked at her.

‘That could have been really nasty.’

‘I know. It was stupid.’

‘It wasn’t like you. You usually know what you’re doing.’

‘I get that from you.’

Then Arne smiled, and Olivia felt tears running down her cheeks. He looked so thin, like he must have looked at the end, when she didn’t see him, when she was in Barcelona, running away.

‘Sleep tight.’

Olivia opened her eyes. Was it Arne who had said that? She shook her head a little and felt how hot her face was, her brow. Was she running a temperature? Bound to happen, wasn’t it? Here. In a cabin on an island off the west coast that I’ve only booked for one night. Can you get more wilderness than that? What should I do now?

Axel?

He might not have gone to bed yet, he lived on his own after all, he’d told her. Perhaps he was sitting up there playing video games. A lobster boy? Hardly. But what if he suddenly knocked on the door and asked if the food was OK?

Then one thing would have led to another and when the bedside lamp was about to be turned off they would both be naked and terrible horny.

Thought Olivia, feverishly.

One-eyed Vera had been to a football match.
Situation Sthlm
versus a rehab from Rågsved. The match had ended with
Situation
2–0 up. Pärt had scored both goals.

He’d dine off that for a long time.

Now he was walking along with Vera and Jelle and enjoying the warm night. The match had been played on the Tanto pitch in the south of the city. Because of some bickering
afterwards
with the referee and some other hassle after the match, they hadn’t moved off until about elevenish. And now it was more like half past eleven.

Pärt was in a buoyant mood, he had after all scored two goals. Vera was in a good mood too, she had found some black nail polish in a skip near Zinken. Jelle was feeling so-so. But that’s how he nearly always felt, so nobody took any notice. There they were making their way through the night, two cheerful and one a bit disheartened.

Vera was hungry and suggested they should look in at Dragon House. The Chinese eatery down at Hornstull. She had just got her monthly pension and considered she could treat her less well-off friends. Pärt refused to enter and Jelle didn’t like Chinese. So instead they feasted on various sausages with accessories at Abraham’s Grill on Hornsgatan. When Pärt had received his generous portion he smiled a little.

‘Now is tasty.’

Then they strolled on along Hornsgatan.

‘Anyone know how things are with Benseman?’

‘No change.’

Suddenly somebody waltzed past them, a very short man without shoulders, a straggly little ponytail and a pointed nose. The man glanced across at Jelle in the midst of his waltzing.

‘Hi there, how’s things?’ said the short man with a decidedly squeaky voice.

‘Teeth bothering me.’

‘OK then. See you around.’

The short man continued his tripping.

‘Who the hell was that?’

Vera looked at the ponytail man.

‘The Mink,’ said Jelle.

‘The Mink? Who’s that?’

‘A guy from the past.’

‘Homeless?’

‘No, not as I know of. He’s got a place in Kärrtorp.’

‘Can’t you kip down there then?’

‘No.’

Jelle had no intention of kipping down at Mink’s place. The conversation they had just had was about the level of the relationship they had.

Nowadays.

And now Jelle knew what was coming.

‘You’re welcome to kip down in my caravan,’ said Vera.

‘I know. Thanks.’

‘But you don’t want to?’

‘No.’

‘Where would you rather kip down then?’

‘It’ll sort itself.’

They had had this conversation several times of late, Vera and him. It wasn’t about sleeping in Vera’s caravan. They both knew that. It was about something Jelle wasn’t too keen on, and the simplest way to avoid hurting Vera’s feelings was to decline the invitation.

To kip down in the caravan.

That meant no to the other thing too.

For the moment.

Olivia turned over in the bed in the lonely cabin. She slipped in and out of feverish dreams. First she’d be on the beach at Hasslevikarna, then in Barcelona. Suddenly she felt how an
icycold
hand was touching her naked foot on the edge of the bed.

She flew up!

Her elbow knocked the little bedside table and the lamp fell onto the floor. She threw herself up against the wall and stared around the cabin – empty. She pushed the covers a little to one side. Her violent heartbeats made her gasp for air. Had she been dreaming? Of course she’d been dreaming, what else could it have been? She was the only one there. There was nobody else in the cabin.