Part 34 (2/2)

'Oh, yes, in those days jeans were like works of art. Every tear, every patch was a sign. An autograph. They were John Larue's jeans. I took them.'

'Why?'

'To take a closer look at them, I think. I ran back up to Barbro Lund and we found the others on the path down towards Bjornstubacken. We held a kind of council of war up there in the forest. We decided to pretend we didn't know John Larue. It would have been the end of the commune if we'd got involved in anything like that. There was a girl called Enel. She was actually quite a tough nut. She went with Petrus down to the tent and they fished out John's bag and emptied it. He had my map and everything in it. We went back up to Starhill and burnt his things. The jeans were wet. That was why he'd hung them up. I hid them because the thick material wouldn't burn until it had dried. Then Barbro and I went down to Bjornstubacken. We had to fetch the car. The others took the path along the lake to Roback. Later we said they'd been there all the time.'

'You told Annie you'd slept at Nirsbuan.'

'Maybe I did. Yes, I did. I phoned Barbro Lund, too. We agreed that that's what we would say. Annie thought I had been at Nirsbuan.'

'Was it really necessary to lie to Annie? She wouldn't have said anything.'

'Annie was a bit . . . how shall I put it? She had misunderstood the whole thing.'

'What thing?'

'She was jealous,' Birger said. 'She had left everything her whole life. She thought you two would be together for ever. But it was as a teacher you wanted her to come up to Starhill. And you were going to have Barbro Lund as a weaver and designer up there. Your a.s.signment was to get hold of useful people for the commune.'

Ulander s.h.i.+fted a little in his chair.

'You recruited with your p.r.i.c.k. But they misunderstood that. Annie did, anyway.'

He was aware that Johan was keeping an eye on him and he fell silent. For some reason, Johan was in charge. Now he said: 'You remember all this amazingly well.'

'Well, we rehea.r.s.ed it over and over and over again,' said Ulander. 'All of us had to say the same thing.'

'Memory Lane,' said Birger.

'What?'

'You went down Memory Lane. Over and over and over again.'

'Let's go,' said Johan.

Ulander had had no opportunity to pour out his tea. He followed them uncertainly to the door.

'Why do you want to know all this? You can't go to the police. Because of Annie, I mean. After all, she was involved. And it's all so long ago now. It would change nothing.'

When they came out into the street, Birger was so tired he could have sat down on the pavement. More customers had come to McDonald's. More mugs and cartons poured out and were collected up. They trudged over to the park by the City Library and he sank down on a bench.

'How he talked!' said Birger. 'I can't understand why he said anything at all.'

'Can't you?'

'But he wasn't afraid of the police. Not any longer. If he or any of the others at Starhill had had anything to do with John Larue's death, he wouldn't have talked like that. But I can't make out why everything just poured out of him.'

'He was afraid of you.'

'Me?'

'When we went through into the inner room and started talking about Annie, you looked as if you were directly threatening him.'

'I did?'

'Didn't you know?'

'No.'

He had never threatened anyone. He couldn't even imagine raising his hand against another person. But neither Dan Ulander nor he had been thinking.

A large body. Secreting anger. None of it was left now, only sticky sweat and weariness. The traffic roared by, squealing and juddering. He was as exhausted as if he really had tried to break all the bones in that light, dancing body.

He thought about time, moment added to moment in a line that pushed Annie and her shattered chest and diaphragm further and further back, inwards. The image flickered as if under a mesh. Not even shock and pain were immutable. They moved.

He had had one experience of total stillness in his life. At the Sulky Hotel, time had stopped. But there was no more than an image left of that, the memory a changeable and moving image, and it was turning grey as if from dirt.

Then it occurred to him that the dead were in absolute stillness.

That thought turned his life over. He was in the dirt. The silent ticking of moments threw a veil over every sharp image. She was where he wanted to be.

It's that simple, he thought.

These were not thoughts of suicide. On the contrary, they helped him to get going again. He trudged off to the health centre. Annie was where he wanted to be. He didn't have to avoid thinking about her. She was not in the water, shot to pieces. Not in bed with him. Nowhere where the inexorable ticking was going on.

She was in stillness.

He thought about there being places or moments that are as good as still. Where the ticking is as good as imperceptible. He liked standing by the open window at night feeling the air against his face. Quite a few of the things he remembered Annie had done seemed to be confronting stillness. She had known about it.

She stood on the steps listening to the rain in the aspens.

He had given up trying to find out how she had died. He was ashamed of that, but it was true. An enterprise lacking all sharpness and fire. There was war in Europe, the event by the Lobber being repeated every hour. He would not be going shooting this autumn. The ravages. Twisted metal. Dung pouring out of intestines. That was what he saw.

But very little was needed for him to change his mind. Just Mia sending the key, with a short letter as well. A sweet letter. He hadn't expected it, for he'd thought she didn't really like him. She wrote that he was to keep the key and use Annie's cottage during the shoot, and in future whenever he wanted to. She herself hadn't been there since they had cleaned up in the holidays. 'I probably won't be there all that much,' she wrote. The words evoked the abandoned state of the cottage for him. The rain in July and August. What did it look like? Had Mia asked anyone to go there and cut the gra.s.s?

He went on the Friday evening. The shoot was to start on Monday morning and it seemed quite natural to put his rifle into the car. It had long been decided that he would take his holiday during the shoot. What would he do in Byvngen? He didn't want to go away anywhere. He wanted to go to Blackwater to cut Annie's gra.s.s.

It was almost dark when he got there, but he could still make out the great drifts of wet gra.s.s and frosted roses rotting in the hedges. He had wanted to start at once, but there was a lot to do inside, too. The air was musty and cold. He lit the stove. There was still some birch bark and kindling Bjorne Brandberg had put ready. He went out with a torch and searched for some flowers. She had always had flowers indoors and he thought they improved the air. He found nothing but yarrow. Although it had begun to turn grey, it still smelt strong and spicy.

He thought about how often he would have to come here in future to keep back the ravages of time; the gra.s.s, the snow, trees felled by storms, the undergrowth creeping in and mice gnawing. He would have to keep time at bay so that her house could remain untouched and still.

There was a point where stillness and the busy restlessness of life merged together. He didn't think much more about it. But he realised that he had a lot to do if the house was to be able to hold its own against time.

In the morning, he saw that it was all much worse outside than he could have imagined. He tried attacking the tough gra.s.s from all directions with the scythe, exhausting himself. He took a trip down to the store to buy pilsner and sausage, and on his way back, he went in to Per-Ola Brandberg to pay his shooting dues. He was given a drink at the smoked-gla.s.s coffee table and he answered questions about the investigation. Nothing new. He realised the village very much wanted to return to the belief that it had been an accident, that Annie had tripped on the slippery stones at the ford. But it couldn't.

After leaving, he met Anna Starr. She had two carriers from the store with her and he stopped to offer her a lift up to Tangen. When they got to the uneven little road which was really nothing more than two wheel tracks and a hump of gra.s.s in between, he felt the pain again. But it was less sharp than before and he was able to say to Anna: 'Just think, this is the way Annie came on her way to see you. Wasn't it strange that she wanted to find out exactly where that ufo landed?'

He could feel her looking at him.

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