Part 34 (1/2)

'From Blackwater,' said Johan.

'Oh, Annie the one with the little girl. Is Annie dead?'

'Don't you read the papers?'

'Yes the small ads. For business purposes.'

He gestured with both hands, holding them away from his body like a dancer. Birger saw how the shape of his head was enhanced by the long, austerely drawn-back hair. At close quarters he could see that he had aged. His skin was very pale. Perhaps he hardly ever left his bookshop. But that slender body, didn't it need exercise?

He didn't ask them anything and Birger found that strange, even suspect. Then he realised that Ulander thought Johan had meant he would have seen the death notice.

'This is Annie's partner,' said Johan. 'Birger Torbjornsson. I was to be his son-in-law. We want to know what the situation was with John Larue.'

'The situation?'

Was he trying to gain time? It didn't seem so. He looked genuinely confused.

'Some tea?' he said.

There were fresh white rolls in the bag, as they'd thought.

'No, thank you,' said Johan. 'Tell us about John Larue.'

'Well, I don't know what Annie has said. To be honest, I didn't think she knew his name. Why do you want to know? Isn't all that over and done with?'

He stood there with his opened bag of rolls, apparently appealing to them. Something had happened, but Birger couldn't make out what, even less so when Ulander started talking. He didn't seem at all afraid of talking about John Larue. He was afraid of something else.

'Where did he come from?'

'Well, from Denmark most recently. Though I met him in Stockholm. He was a Vietnam deserter. Troublesome.'

What a word to use, Birger thought. What a precious vocabulary this little dancer has. He looks like a queer. I wish to G.o.d that he had been one.

'He hadn't got any papers. No pa.s.sport. I promised him he could live with us.'

'At Starhill.'

'That's right.'

'You called it Star Mountain,' said Birger, 'when you translated it for him.'

'I don't remember. Why do you want to know all this?'

'Why did they put up the tent? Why didn't they walk on up to Starhill?'

'I don't know. Maybe they thought it was further than it was. I'd sketched a map for them, but it had no scale. We had a postcard from Gothenburg. He was to come with a Dutch girl. The one who . . . you know. Well, him too.'

Touch on it lightly. Go on dancing, you little b.u.g.g.e.r, thought Birger.

'No.'

'Was she going to live at Starhill, too?'

'No, I think he just persuaded her she wanted to see the Swedish mountains. That probably suited him.'

He t.i.ttered.

'Tell us everything now,' said Johan. 'How you nicked the jeans and everything.'

'I'll make some tea, anyhow,' said Ulander. He sounded ingratiating. Something really had changed since they had gone into the shop and been flooded by his Strauss music. He opened a door and they could see an inner room like a s.h.i.+p's cabin, with a neatly made bed. Was it possible that he lived here? Alone? That he never read anything but ads for science-fiction books in the newspapers, slept till ten or half past and started the day with fresh rolls? When he came back with an electric kettle, Johan said: 'You remember all this very well although it's so long ago. Yet you could hardly remember Annie Raft.'

'Oh, yes, I remember Annie, too. Of course I do. It was just the name I'm not sure that I ever heard her surname.'

'What a load of c.r.a.p!' said Birger. 'You were a student of hers.'

'That doesn't matter,' said Johan. 'Tell us about when you took his jeans. What were you doing out so early in the morning?'

'We were all out. We were looking for Larue.'

He had put out Chinese tea mugs. He put the rolls on a dish. When the water began to hiss in the kettle, he warmed a teapot, going about it all with great thoroughness. To empty the teapot, he had to go out to a lavatory alongside the sleeping cabin. He spooned out some tea leaves and poured the water over them.

'Sugar?'

'Oh, lay off,' said Birger.

Ulander wanted them to sit down, but they stayed standing. So he sat down on the chair behind the desk and spread b.u.t.ter on the halved roll. He ate a few small mouthfuls before starting to tell them.

'I went to Roback on Midsummer Eve to leave the children with Yvonne. You know who she was? They were supposed to go with her. There was to be a demonstration against something. My G.o.d, there was a lot going on in those days.'

He smiled at them.

'The children couldn't walk all the way from Starhill and up to Bear Mountain on Midsummer Day.'

'We know all that.'

'Well, then I fetched Barbro Lund, a textile artist who was to move up to us. Eventually. She lived in Byvngen.'

Birger said nothing, but he could hear himself breathing heavily though his nose.

'When we got up to an old farm just before the road comes to an end '

'The Stromgren homestead,' said Johan.

'Yes. We saw a Dutch car there. A small red thing. I thought that must be Larue because he had written on the postcard that he was coming with a Dutch girl. Then we went to Bjornstubacken and left Barbro Lund's car there and continued on foot up to Starhill. We thought Larue would be there. But he wasn't. He and the girl never came. We waited all evening. In the end, we began to think they'd got lost. So we set off to look for them towards morning. We thought they would be wandering about in the marshes. Barbro Lund and I were almost down by the river when I saw the tent. I went down on my own.'

'Did she see what had happened?' said Birger.

'I'm not sure. We didn't speak to each other much afterwards. I saw that . . . well. But I had no idea it might be Larue and his girl. You couldn't see them. Only an arm and a foot. Then I spotted a pair of jeans. They were hanging over a spruce branch. They were Larue's.'

'For Christ's sake, you couldn't have recognised a pair of jeans!'