Harbour (45 page)

Whatever Karl-Erik's intentions might have been, he didn't manage to carry them out. Göran got there first, closely followed by Johan Lundberg. Together with Mats they managed to wrestle Karl-Erik to the ground and get the saw off him.

But in another way it was too late. When they turned their attention to Lasse they saw that he was lying flat on the ground with a wound in his forehead, and that he was alive. But the birch tree…the birch tree into which he had thudded, its trunk now spattered with his blood—the birch tree had started to fall.

It had started to fall and it couldn't be stopped. The tree was too big. Mats and the others could only stand watching open-mouthed as the enormous tree majestically and with studied slowness keeled over, tipped and fell.

The notch had been perfectly placed for its intended purpose, and the thick trunk went through the roof of the glass veranda first of all, shattering a number of panes, before smashing the chimney and snapping the roof beams. With a clatter of broken tiles, the entire roof of the little cottage folded and fell in. The trunk got halfway to the floor before its crown bounced in a cloud of splinters and brick dust, and lay still.

By this time several people had arrived and were taking care of Lasse, who was bleeding profusely from the wound on his head and the cut on his back. The falling tree had so completely occupied everyone's attention that they had forgotten about Karl-Erik for a while. He had a good deal to answer for, but when they turned around he was no longer there.

However, he wasn't far away. As if nothing had happened he had got up, picked up his saw and was now on his way towards one of the neighbouring gardens, heading straight for a couple of tall pine trees with a swing between them.

This time there was no negotiation. Mats, Göran and Johan caught up with him, wrenched the saw out of his hands and grabbed him before he could cause any more devastation. Karl-Erik struggled, but whether he was crazy or not it was three against one, and they managed to hold him.

While Mats and Göran held on to his arms, Johan stood in front of him and tried to catch his eye. It was impossible. The eyes were there and they were looking into his, but it was impossible to make any kind of contact.

‘Karl-Erik?' Johan asked anyway. ‘What's got into you? What the hell are you doing?'

During the whole of the terrible duel Karl-Erik hadn't made a sound, and they didn't expect him to answer now either. But they still had to try to talk to him as if he were a sensible person who had a reason for his actions. And they got an answer.

Tentatively, as if he were unused to his mouth and in a voice that sounded like Karl-Erik but yet not like Karl-Erik, he said, ‘Those houses. Have got to go.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Johan. ‘They're not our houses. It's not up to us to decide.'

This objection made no impression on Karl-Erik. With stiff, grimacing lips he said, ‘Those houses have got to go.'

He twisted and turned in their grasp, but Mats and Göran managed to hold him. Elof Lundberg came over to them, glanced at Karl-Erik and asked, ‘What's the matter with him?'

‘He's lost the plot completely,' said Johan. ‘If you can help out here I'll go and fetch Anna-Greta. He'll listen to her.'

So that was why Johan Lundberg got on his moped and rode off to the old village to ask Anna-Greta for help, then found himself standing on the jetty like an orphaned child, watching her and Simon disappearing towards the mainland in a cloud of gulls.

At something of a loss he climbed back on his moped and set off back to Kattudden to do what could be done.

That magician,
he thought as he rode along,
is someone we could do without.

In Norrtälje

At half-past three Simon and Anna-Greta were sitting in a pizzeria in Norrtälje, each with a capricciosa in front of them which they cut into small, easily chewed pieces, washed down with lukewarm Fanta. Simon had the required certificate in his inside pocket and two smooth gold rings in his outer pocket. Anna-Greta had asked to use the telephone in the national registration office and had rung Geir, the priest in Nåten, and booked the church for Sunday, in two days' time, after High Mass. They were ready.

There was something…youthful about the haste with which they had gone about things. Perhaps it was that same feeling of rejuvenation that had led them to celebrate their speedily executed preparations with a pizza. Neither of them had eaten pizza since the days when it was a novelty, and they chose a capricciosa purely because they vaguely recognised the name.

When Anna-Greta had eaten about half of hers, she pushed the plate away and said, ‘It was tasty at first, but it seems to be growing.'

Simon had exactly the same feeling. His stomach felt as if he had shovelled down half a litre of flour with a teaspoon. It was bubbling and swelling, and he stopped while he still had a delicious taste in his mouth.

Anna-Greta looked out of the window as Simon poked at the remains of what was probably the last pizza he would eat in this life. If you contemplated it when you weren't hungry, it didn't even look like human food.

‘Simon,' said Anna-Greta. ‘You have to be careful.'

Simon, who was still meditating on the suitability of pizza as food, replied, ‘You mean about what I eat?'

Anna-Greta shook her head. ‘If I'd known you were intending to do what you did this morning, I would never have let you go.'

‘Do we have to talk about this?'

Their errands at the registration office and the goldsmith's had distracted Simon's thoughts from the horror of the morning, and he wanted to remain in this blissful state of forgetfulness for as long as possible. Anna-Greta turned her palms upward to indicate that she had no intention of continuing along this line, took a deep breath and said, ‘A long time ago. When I used to travel around selling things. During the war. I was involved in something…something I haven't told you about.'

Simon didn't need to ask. Things had changed. He was now one of those in the know, someone who could be told. He leaned back as far as he could on the straight-backed chair as Anna-Greta went on.

‘I was allowed to travel with the soldiers sometimes because I was…popular. I don't think they were really supposed to have civilians on board, but after all I knew the archipelago and so…' Anna-Greta looked up and frowned. ‘What are you grinning at?'

Simon waved a hand. ‘Nothing, nothing. I'll just say one thing.
Belle of the boat
.'

‘I was not a belle of the boat! I knew every single…'

‘Yes, yes. But I'm sure there were plenty of others who knew the archipelago even better. They just weren't as pretty as you.'

Anna-Greta gasped for breath, but stopped herself and looked suspiciously at Simon. ‘Are you
jealous
?' she asked. ‘Are you sitting here sixty years on feeling
jealous
?'

Simon thought about it. ‘Now you come to mention it, yes.'

Anna-Greta looked at Simon, then shook her head at the absurdity of it all.

‘They were thinking about laying mines. Out towards Ledinge. Since the major shipping lane to Stockholm runs along there. And I went along on one of those…reconnaissance trips where they were diving to check out the conditions on the seabed. They had just started using modern diving equipment with tanks on their backs. But because visibility in the water was poor and they still weren't sure about these new things, they used a safety line, attached to the diver.'

Anna-Greta nodded to herself and pointed vaguely in the air as if she'd just thought of something. ‘That was probably why I went along, I think. Because I wanted to see the diving.'

Simon had a very witty comment on the tip of his tongue, but he kept it to himself and Anna-Greta went on:

‘So down he went, this diver, and the line ran from a pulley on deck. There was something hypnotic about it. I mean, you couldn't see the diver, you just had this pulley to look at, and it made a clicking sound as it turned, paying out the line as he went down. And then… it stopped. The line stopped moving, as if he'd reached the bottom. But that couldn't be right, because only about seven or eight metres of the line had been paid out, and it was at least thirty metres deep there. The line just didn't move for a good while, and I thought he must have found a new reef, that he was standing there speculating about what it should be called, if it should be given a name. And then…'

Anna-Greta flicked her hand so that it made a small circular movement.

‘…and then the line started moving again. But more quickly than before. Much more quickly. Ten metres, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. And the pulley was no longer clicking, it was…clattering. Then the speed increased until it was just a continuous hum. Thirty, forty, fifty metres. In just a few seconds. As if he were falling through the air rather than sinking through water. There was nothing we could do. Somebody tried to grab hold of the line, and burned the palms of their hands. Then it ran right to the end, another thirty metres, came off the pulley and disappeared into the water. At the same speed.'

Anna-Greta drank some of her Fanta and cleared her throat.

‘That's what happened. And that's why I want you to be careful.' She put down her glass and added, ‘They had to come up with some kind of explanation, of course. So they decided he'd somehow got himself attached to a submarine. Stupid but true. He was never found. But perhaps you suspected that already.'

Simon looked at her as she sat there wiping her mouth with her serviette. She didn't give the impression that she had just described something incomprehensible; it was more as if she had just been
forced
to explain this business of electricity so that you wouldn't poke your fingers in the socket.

‘I am careful,' said Simon. ‘I think.'

They went for a walk through Norrtälje and discussed to what extent they would change their current living arrangements after they were married. Well, it wasn't so much a discussion—they
joked
about it. In fact they were both in agreement from the start that they wanted to carry on as before.

There was no question of a honeymoon, but they decided to take a trip on the ferry to Finland and back. Some fine dining and a few symbolic dance steps, God (and their hips) willing.

At five o'clock they caught the bus back to NÃ¥ten, and at quarter to six they were on board the tender once again. Simon looked out over the dark sea and thought that it had changed. He no longer saw the surface, he saw the
depths
. He had studied the maritime charts, he had talked to people and he knew that the bay was between twenty and sixty metres deep outside NÃ¥ten. To the north and east there were deep trenches of a hundred metres or more.

The depths.

The colossal extent of it, the immense amount of water just between Domarö and Nåten, just lying there biding its time in its darkness, showing only its shining, harmless surface.

In his mind's eye Simon could see the ferry to Finland they would travel on before long.
Silja Symphony
. Hundreds of cabins and a long shopping mall down the centre. Ten storeys; at least one hundred and fifty metres from prow to stern.

He looked down at the sea, foaming up around the bow and thought:
It could sink here and it would be gone. There would be no sign of it at all. It would be lying down there.

A shudder ran down his spine and he put his arm around Anna-Greta's shoulders as they approached Domarö.

A welcome committee was standing on the jetty. It consisted of the same people who had been in the mission house, apart from Tora Österberg and Holger, who were missing. And Karl-Erik.

Tora hadn't felt strong enough to come, and Holger was sitting with Göran, keeping an eye on Karl-Erik. ‘So that he doesn't come up with something else,' as Johan Lundberg put it.

Lasse had been taken to the hospital in Norrtälje and had his wounds stitched, but had refused to stay one minute longer than necessary. When he was delivered back home his wife Lina had been just as unreasonable. She was normally the kindest, most helpful person you could imagine, but she had spat and hissed at Lasse's companions, transformed beyond recognition. She had let her husband in, but that was it. She hadn't even offered them coffee.

All this was relayed to Anna-Greta. Simon was deliberately ignored, and despite the fact that Anna-Greta took his hand to keep him within the circle, the group managed to close around her and exclude him. After a couple of minutes he had had enough. He squeezed Anna-Greta's hand and whispered to her that he was going to see how Anders was getting on.

He felt a pang of guilt when he turned around after a few steps and saw her standing on the jetty surrounded by dark figures, like a flock of crows. Although perhaps it wasn't guilt, he thought as he continued on towards the Shack. Perhaps it was jealousy.

She's not yours. She's mine. Mine!

The Shack was dark and silent, but when Simon went into the kitchen he could see light seeping out from beneath the bedroom door. He opened it gently and discovered Anders, fast asleep in Maja's bed with his arms around Bamse the Bear. Simon stood looking at him quietly for a while, then went out and closed the door silently behind him.

In the kitchen he switched on the light, found a pen and some paper and wrote a note about the wedding. As he was just about to leave he caught sight of the bead tile. He studied it carefully. Then he added something to the note and left the house.

Anna-Greta was already home. There hadn't been all that much to discuss, really. The only course of action on which they could agree had already been put in place: to keep Lasse and Karl-Erik under supervision and see how things developed. She pulled off her best boots and massaged her feet, which were feeling the effects of all that walking in Norrtälje. ‘I'm sorry the others were like that,' she said. ‘I'm sure they'll get used to the situation in time.'