Part 36 (2/2)

'We must go down now. We must get that st.i.tched. Then I'll take you back to Froson. You must tell the doctor. It'll be best for you if you go to the police yourself.'

Was he listening at all?

'Things won't be very different for you than they've been in recent years. You'll be given leaves and you'll be able to come here. It'll soon be twenty years ago. Nothing else on your record, is there? No a.s.saults or fights?'

'No. Been mostly here on me own. Used to go and see Annie.'

'Annie would have said what I've said,' said Birger. 'Go to the police yourself. That'd be best.'

'They'll be here soon, I suppose.'

'No, I haven't phoned them. And I'm not going to. I want you to come down with me and have that st.i.tched. Then we'll go to Froson.'

He got up and opened the window.

'Johan!'

He had to call a couple of times. Johan wasn't all that wet when he came in.

'Has it stopped raining?'

'It's drizzling.'

'We must go now before it gets too dark.'

Johan's watchful eyes moved from Birger to Bjorne, still sitting at the table.

'We've talked about it all now. Annie probably came here to ask Bjorne about the moped. But he was in Froson.'

'Yes, I know he wasn't home,' said Johan. 'Mia and I were here early that morning. But Annie must have gone up to Gudrun to ask after you. Didn't she know you were in Froson?'

'Let's go now,' said Birger. His voice had turned thin. 'Don't let's talk about it any longer.'

Bjorne went over to the door and took his cap off the nail. He put it on, but didn't take a jacket. He was wearing a sweats.h.i.+rt that had once been dark blue, but was now so faded it was greyish over the shoulders and back. They heard him putting on his boots in the porch. Birger collected up his things and put them back in the rucksack.

'Turn the lamp out.'

Johan blew it out and the room turned dark. He had acted too soon: they had forgotten where they had put their jackets and started groping for them on the sofa.

'Hurry up, for Christ's sake,' said Birger. 'To h.e.l.l with the jackets.'

They stumbled over their boots and started pulling them on in the dark. They were in too much of a hurry and it all went wrong. Out in the porch, the door was open and swinging in the wind.

They shouted out his name, then consulted together in whispers. They ran to the cookhouse, then the privy, rushed back inside and lit the oil lamp, as if trying to attract a moth.

But he didn't come. They shouted and shouted, but there was no reply from the darkness. He was out there. Birger didn't dare guess what was in his mind, whether his thoughts were straight and cunning. Or whether there was nothing but darkness there. A hole.

But they had to get him in.

Johan and Birger sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, the lamp between them; the flame was burning too high and sooting up the gla.s.s. They didn't stay long.

'He'll take the car and drive down,' said Birger. Yet how could he say that with any certainty? He had to decide on something he could believe in.

'We must go down.'

'You don't think he'll come back here?'

'No.'

But before they blew out the lamp and set off for the second time, Birger took the shotgun off the wall. He didn't know, after all. Bjorne might well come back and finish the whole thing off with the gun.

They started walking along the path. The rain came in little squalls on the gusts of wind. Their eyes got used to the dark. It could have been worse. They were no longer calling out. Birger noticed that Johan was also trying to walk as quietly as possible.

Walking was more difficult when they got out into the Area, but it was also a little lighter there. The sky seemed to give off some kind of light. They could see the swift-moving clouds as if they were lit up from inside. They tried to walk so that they had the river within earshot. Birger noticed he was relieved once they were out in the Area. He had been scared inside the forest. Only an hour ago he had sat at the kitchen table with Bjorne and put everything right. He thought then that he knew what was going on in the man's mind. He had even told him. As people had probably always told Bjorne what he was thinking and what he had done. They had ordered him to fell the Area. Twenty years later, it was wrong to clear-fell like that. They let him do the wrong thing and then they told him so.

Now he was out there, not giving a d.a.m.n for the oil lamp or Nostradamus. He was himself in the darkness.

They reached the car and Johan started it and drove away before Birger had had time to close the door on his side. Johan drove fast, the cha.s.sis striking hard in the potholes, the headlights flickering on the spruces. When they got down to the Stromgren homestead, there was no sign of Bjorne's car.

'Wasn't it parked a bit further in? Towards the house.'

They stared along the houses on the slope, but at first could distinguish nothing.

'I'll go out and have a look,' said Johan.

He had taken a torch out of the glove compartment. Birger watched him go with some reluctance. His figure blurred, the torchlight a small yellow spot jumping and slowly growing fainter. Birger stared until the buildings down in the Stromgren homestead started flickering. Grey in grey, everything moving in the rain and gusts of wind.

'Wait! I'm coming too,' he shouted.

He caught up with Johan and they walked into the gra.s.s, now gone to seed and wetting their trousers right up to their thighs. The torchlight flickered over the uncut yellow gra.s.s. There were no car tracks. When they finally found them, they were far up by the road. The Saab had gone. He had gone.

'We'll have to drive on,' said Birger. 'Wish we'd b.l.o.o.d.y taken my car. I've got a mobile phone.'

Johan drove fast, the car bouncing in the potholes. It's the only thing we can do now, Birger thought. Drive fast. We've done wrong. Me and my officiousness. Johan and his thoughtless question. Though he wanted to know. He had been asking himself, and now he knows. Bjorne knows, too.

The dogs were barking in the Brandberg dog run. They stopped and saw them hurtling against the wire netting. Torsten had a bright light on at the end of the barn and it shone on them. The dog eyes caught the light from the headlights and looked like leaping pairs of dots. A more yellowish light was on in the porchway, illuminating the dark hop leaves.

'Drive on up,' said Birger.

Lights were on almost all over the house and the dogs went on barking as the car drove up. They saw Torsten come out on the steps and heard him quietening the dogs as they drove up. There was no car in the yard.

Johan did not get out. He wondered if Torsten could see who he was. He was standing up there in the light on the steps, trying to make out whose car it was.

'Has Bjorne been down?' Birger called out and got out of the car.

Torsten didn't reply until he had seen who was asking.

<script>