Part 36 (1/2)

The event ten, twenty savage knifings came out of nothing. Out of the darkness that follows us. Perhaps he doesn't even remember it.

And when he's alone? He tried to imagine Bjorne alone in the cottage. The way he lit the oil lamp as he was doing now, still with only one hand. The way reflections began to appear in the windowpanes. There was a milking stool in the bedroom, a book lying on it. The thought of Bjorne lying in those dirty sheets reading at night was unbelievable. Johan got up and went to look at the book.

”Tis Nostradamus,' said Bjorne. 'Sent for it from Finland. There was an advertis.e.m.e.nt. Nostradamus is the only one to have predicted correctly.'

He was hiding himself. He wanted them to think he was an oddball. A harmless, kindly old man of the forest. As folk were in the olden days. Perhaps he believed it himself. But that was no use. He was the son of one the few in the village who had done well for himself. There was work for him. There was money and machines. He had no need to be here.

Birger took the oil lamp off the table and shone it down Bjorne's leg. There was a dark patch on the denim above the clenched hand in his pocket. As they were looking, the patch spread.

'Have you cut yourself?'

He nodded.

He had been frightened and cut himself when he heard us. Had he been frightened for eighteen years? And Annie Raft with her gun. How have people been living here? I got out, Johan thought. I slipped out.

Birger rummaged in the woodbox for a newspaper.

'Put your hand on this,' he said.

Bjorne took out his left hand, the thumb clasped by the fingers. The blood seeping out was very dark. Birger got him to loosen the rigid fingers and straighten out his thumb. The wound gaped when he touched it and the blood started oozing faster.

'The rucksack, please, Johan.'

He was still holding Bjorne's hand.

'Find the bandages I put in. There's some tablets, too.'

'Don't want any,' said Bjorne.

'They're calming. I don't think it'd be a bad idea. We must talk about what happened. And we must go down to the village to get that st.i.tched. I've got my bag there.'

When Johan had given him the packages of bandages, compresses and cotton wool, he said: 'Go on out now, Johan. We'll have a talk while I do this.'

'No, I don't want to,' said Johan. 'That's stupid.'

'Do it, anyhow.'

He looked around. A shotgun hung on the wall by the kitchen cupboard. Bjorne had a knife in his belt.

'Don't want to.'

'Go on.'

Johan pulled on his jacket, trying to delay matters. They were sitting as before. Bjorne's head was hanging. Around the oil lamp was a pool of warm yellow light, in which Bjorne's and Birger's hands lay entwined. Birger nodded towards Johan. He had to go.

Outside, the darkness was not as compact as it had seemed through the window. It had begun to drizzle. He walked down towards the privy, stopping halfway to look back. The window was filled with the yellow light. He could see their heads and the lamp. It looked cosy, as always when you look into a room from outside in the dark and the rain. And Bjorne really did look like a kindly old man. An oddball.

'Did you know Lill-Ola Lennartsson had died?' said Birger.

'No.'

'Had a heart attack. Maybe I missed something there.'

He said the latter largely to himself, a thought with little energy behind it.

'He'd been living in ostersund since that business down by the Lobber. I suppose he didn't dare stay. Did you know he fainted when he saw it was his tent?'

'That b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' said Bjorne.

Birger pressed the edges of the wound together and put a compress over it.

'Yes, he was a real s.h.i.+t. He fiddled all sorts of things. When they a.n.a.lysed the feathers of the birds he burnt, they were buzzards. Two of them. I saw the parcels in his freezer. Unplucked capercaillie, he'd written on them. He must have been scared the police would look into everything at his place because he had been up there. I'm going to bandage this quite tightly now. I'll have to st.i.tch it when we get down to the village.'

He thought about Johan out there in the semidarkness. It was raining now, gusts of wind spattering the window with rain.

'You thought it was him, didn't you?'

'He drove up there himself. On the evening afore Midsummer. What business had he got up there? I knew the buzzard had chicks. And a Dutch car had come earlier on in the day. Now they're fetching them. I thought. He were taking the opportunity while they're all Midsummer partying. Goin' to sell the live chicks. As hunting hawks for some b.l.o.o.d.y Arab.'

'Did you go up to Alda's to see about Johan?'

'He was all right where he was. Anyroad, he'd got out of the well by the time I got there.'

'You took the moped.'

'I'd planned that all along. Take the car up an' I'd frighten the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Thought of catchin' him on the path. The buzzard's nest's up on the cliff above the river.'

'You recognised the tent?'

''Course.'

'Why did you set about it so ferociously?'

He said nothing, just sat there with his head bowed, breathing heavily.

'Didn't mean to,' he said. 'I were just going to give him a thras.h.i.+n'. But I saw his back. He was lyin' against the canvas. I could see his back. It bulged out. Then everything went black.'

'It wasn't him.'

'No.'

He sat in silence again. Birger wondered if he remembered the rest. Perhaps it was just as he had said. Black. A hole. A hole he had circled round for what would soon be twenty years.

'Annie was on her way up to ask you about the moped.'

'I weren't here. I were at Froson. Admitted at t'end of April.'

'Who was waiting for her?'

'I dunno.'