Part 37 (1/2)

'He's probably up at Nirsbuan,' he said.

'Is Gudrun there?'

'She's at her evening cla.s.s.'

'Where?'

'At the school.'

Before Birger shut the car door, he leant in towards Johan.

'I'll go in here and wait. You must go down and fetch Gudrun. Take her to Annie's house and wait there with her.'

'Are you going to phone the police now?'

'I must,' said Birger. 'I promised I wouldn't. But that was on condition he went with me.'

He himself thought it was odd to be standing there arguing the toss about his promise. Torsten was still standing in the strong light on the steps, trying to peer into the car.

'Who's that?' he said.

Women were on their way out to their cars when he got down to the school. But the Audi was still there. Johan drove up and parked as close to the steps as he could get. He wound down the window and listened to them chatting as they came out two at a time. He wondered what course they were taking this winter. Leatherwork? Genealogy? He marvelled at her going there. At the way she struggled on, day by day.

Her everyday life was to be ruined now. No more chat. No more coffee, lamplight, security. In a few moments, as soon as she looked up from the handbag she was just zipping up. Then he realised that it would take a little while. She wouldn't twig straight away.

'So it's you?'

She didn't want to go with him at first.

'You must,' he said. 'Just leave the car here.'

The other cars started up and he saw one or two people waving to her. She was annoyed with him.

'Why on earth should I go up to Annie Raft's house?' she said. 'What business have I there?'

But in the end she had got into his car and then she could do nothing about where they were going to go.

'You didn't really know her. You were never friends, were you?'

She said nothing, but she looked sideways at him. He drove straight up there. The gra.s.s was wet and his wheels probably left ugly marks. But he had to get her into the house.

'We're going to wait here,' he said. 'Birger Torbjornsson is with Torsten. The police are on their way.'

She asked no questions, but went ahead of him after he had unlocked. She was so small, her dark head level with his chest. He locked the outside door behind them.

'Wait,' he said. 'Don't switch on the light.'

He went round pulling down all the blinds and when he turned the light on, she was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, her face closed and guarded. Saddie had been sleeping in the bedroom and came lumbering out in all her deafness, sniffing at Gudrun's slacks with no real interest, her tail vaguely wagging.

'Take your coat off and go in and sit down,' he said. 'We may have to wait quite a while.'

She sat down at the kitchen table. He wondered what she was feeling as she looked around. He could see the kitchen through her eyes. The batik cloth on the kitchen table was flimsy. A yellowed rice-paper shade hung from the ceiling. At least Mia had cleared away everything that had hung from the hood above the stove a pair of pigeon feet, bunches of dried herbs, a birch fungus all covered with cobwebs and dust.

'Birger Torbjornsson and I did just what Annie did,' he said. 'We went to Nirsbuan to see Bjorne.'

It was cold indoors, but he didn't want to light the stove. He reckoned he had to keep an eye on her all the time.

'We'd been down to take a look at my moped he'd sunk.'

She didn't reply. She had put aside her bag but not unzipped her jacket. She was sitting straight up on the chair, her hands on the cloth in front of her. Her face was pale, but he had thought that every time he had seen her in recent years. Perhaps that was because she dyed her hair. He wondered whether she would now let it go grey.

This is where it all began, he thought. This is where Annie Raft stood looking out through the window and spotted me. How did she recognise me? No one knows.

She had thought she was seeing her child in the arms of a madman. A boy who had been insane or drunk and had plunged a knife over and over again into two people enclosed in a tent.

He suddenly noticed that Gudrun was cold. They had sat in silence for so long, and she hadn't s.h.i.+fted position, but she was shaking and her nose was running slightly. She kept sniffing, a nervous sound, the only sound in the house.

'I'll light the stove,' he mumbled.

He fumbled with birch bark and matches. It was easier to talk to her when he wasn't looking at her.

'Bjorne has told Birger that he's the one who did that down by the Lobber. He was to come down with us, but he ran away. We were afraid he might come and hurt you. Now that he knows it was you.'

He very carefully made a little pile of kindling before putting a match to the bark. A long time went by before she said anything. Then her voice was dry. Or hoa.r.s.e.

'Bjorne?'

'Yes. Bjorne. Not me. You were wrong. Annie Raft was, too.'

For a long spell she sat quite still, then he saw she was beginning to tremble.

'Hasn't she got electricity in here?'

She almost screamed it, her voice breaking. She had risen to her feet and wrapped her arms round herself. She was so cold she was shaking.

'Yes,' he said. 'Of course.'

He rushed into the living room and switched on the lamps and the radiators. He found a blanket folded up on the bed.

'Here, put this round you. Sit on the sofa. It'll soon warm up. Birger's got some whisky somewhere. Wait.'

She wrapped the blanket round her and sat looking out of it at Annie Raft's room. The curtains were of unbleached cotton. A colourful p. er monster floated below the ceiling. Must have been something the schoolchildren had made. She looked across at the bed and he thought about what she had said: 'Hasn't she got electricity?' As if Annie Raft were still alive. And she looked as if she had never seen the room before. Yet she had gone in here with the key she had taken from the shed.

'Had Bjorne told you where she kept the key?'

She looked up and nodded. Absent-mindedly, he would have called it. But it couldn't have been that.

'And the gun? That it was behind the bed?'

'Everyone knew that.'