Part 9 (1/2)

'In that case,' said his brother, 'why didn't he put the trap in there?'

'So we wouldn't stand on it, of course!'

As if to emphasise the danger posed by the mousetrap, he stamped on the ground and marched off towards the sandpits. The older one looked at Joel and raised his eyebrows: Kid brothers, what can you do, and followed him.

Joel went back inside and rang Anita's doorbell. When no one answered, he took the lift up to his apartment. As soon as he walked in he could feel the tilt.

Hasn't anyone else noticed anything?

He considered going over to see Lundberg on the other side-they were on nodding terms-but didn't know how to explain the situation. Lundberg would probably react in the same way as the man with the earphones: 'Yeah? And?'

He sat down and took out his modelling tools. Instead of gluing the matchsticks in place one at a time, he worked in the same way as a real s.h.i.+pbuilder: first of all he made a plank out of three hundred and twenty matchsticks, then hammered the plank in place with rivets and strengthened it with glue. He had half-finished one of the final planks for the deck. Since he didn't have the heart to completely cover the construction of the hull on which he had spent so much time and effort, he was planning to leave part of the deck unfinished so that it would be possible to admire the intricate skeleton of the framework through the gap. He might even put a small lamp inside.

He had been working for perhaps half an hour and had put eight matchsticks in place when he looked up at the s.h.i.+p and the feeling of seasickness came over him again. The s.h.i.+p was listing to one side.

It's my imagination. I'm listing as well, in that case. I can't see it.

However, the unpleasant feeling was still enough to break his concentration. He took a turn around the s.h.i.+p; it was as if he was walking on a swaying deck, and he had to sit down. He picked up the phone and called La.s.se, who answered on the fifth ring.

'Yes?' He sounded annoyed.

'Hi, it's Joel.'

'Hi. Listen, I'm in the bath. I just got home. They're absolute slave-drivers down there, you know. Was it anything in particular?'

'No, I was just wondering how to calculate degrees.'

'Degrees?'

'Yes, the angle if a building is listing one way, that kind of thing.'

'Were you away when we did that in school?'

'I was probably standing in the corner.'

La.s.se laughed. 'I'll ring you back in quarter of an hour, OK? Are you going to build something, or is it for your s.h.i.+p?'

'No, it's...I'll speak to you later.'

Joel hung up and sat on the sofa for a while, rocking back and forth to relieve the churning in his stomach. Then he went into the kitchen and looked at the spirit level, which was still on the floor. He lay down on his stomach, put his ear to the floor and looked at the bubble. Had it moved a fraction? He would make a mark and check it again the following day.

He was about to get up and fetch a pen when he heard something. From downstairs. In order to hear better, he stuck his index finger in the ear that wasn't next to the floor and closed his eyes.

It could of course be his neighbour downstairs doing something or other, but the boy's talk of mouse traps immediately evoked the image of a mouse moving around under the floor. A slow, sinuous movement. Joel sat up and stared at the linoleum. He wasn't scared of mice, but he couldn't work out how they could possibly have got into an apartment block, all the way up to the top storey.

He knocked on the floor. The response was a dull, solid sound against his knuckles. Concrete. Mice were supposed to live in wooden buildings, in the s.p.a.ces between the walls where they could build nests and do whatever it is mice do when they're not s.h.i.+tting and eating and s.h.i.+tting. It was unthinkable that a mouse could have eaten its way through the concrete. It must be making its way through drainpipes, ventilation shafts.

Joel looked around the kitchen. It was easy to summarise the phenomena he had observed during the course of the evening: This building is going to h.e.l.l.

In his mind's eye he could see an army of mice gnawing through the concrete, perforating the block like a roll of toilet paper, making it soften, tilt. Al-Qaeda mice, working with a long-term objective. He snorted at the image of bearded mice in turbans infiltrating the sw.a.n.ky buildings of the western world.

The telephone rang. La.s.se was out of the bath.

'So,' he said. 'What was it you wanted? Something about angles, you said.'

Joel told him about the unpleasant feeling he'd had that morning, how he could see the building listing to one side with the naked eye, the measurements he had taken. La.s.se wrote down the numbers, and Joel could hear a faint tapping sound of fingers on a calculator.

'OK,' said La.s.se. 'If what you say is accurate, then you have a divergence of approximately one degree.'

'Which means?'

'You know that already. The building is listing about twenty centimetres.'

'So how bad is it?'

'Well, you say bad...It's not good, definitely not, but I mean it's not going to fall down tonight, if I can put it like that. It was built in the sixties, wasn't it? Part of the Million Program, all that stuff?'

'I think so.'

'Mm. We've had a certain amount of trouble with those buildings. The strange thing in your case is that you say it kind of happened overnight. Are you sure about that?'

'Quite sure.'

'There ought to be cracks in the facade, down at the bottom. Concrete doesn't like to bend, as you know. When there are problems it's usually the main load-bearing girders. But the concrete cracks. Listen, I'll come over and have a look tomorrow evening, I'll bring a few bits and pieces with me. Maybe we could rent a film or something. Have you seen the new Coen brothers film, whatever it's called?'

'No. Sounds like a plan.'

'OK. I'll be there around seven, G.o.d and the boss willing.'

They said goodbye and hung up. Joel remembered the mice, picked up the phone again and started to key in La.s.se's number, but stopped. They could discuss it the next day. They were best friends, admittedly, but Joel didn't want to sound like some hysterical lunatic: 'La.s.se, the building's listing! La.s.se, there's a mouse in the kitchen! La.s.se, help!' Clearly there was no immediate danger.

He got up and took a walk around the s.h.i.+p.

No immediate danger.

But he wasn't convinced. At least the boat had stopped listing, and La.s.se's comments had made Joel feel calmer. He would have a couple of gla.s.ses of wine, watch TV for a while, then go to bed. He went into the bathroom and scooped some wine into a jug from the big plastic container. Sometimes he took the trouble to decant the wine into bottles, but he had noticed that it matured almost as well in the container, and he didn't have to bother fiddling about with a load of empty bottles.

The container was half full. When it was empty he would start a fresh batch, drinking wine from boxes in the meantime. He didn't have room for two containers side by side in the bathroom. Perhaps he was a bit of an alcoholic; he drank three gla.s.ses of wine each evening, but seldom more. Alkie lite.

A person has to have something.

When he lifted the toilet lid to pee, he noticed that the water level in the bowl was low, much lower than usual. He wouldn't have paid much attention if it hadn't been for the fact that it was all part of the same problem. There was something wrong with the building. He had a pee anyway, and the flush worked normally. He'd give the company that owned the building a call if it got any worse.

The evening pa.s.sed in the usual way. He watched a debate about Economic and Monetary Union in the EU, with both sides predicting a disaster if they didn't get their way. At a quarter to ten he rang Anita, but there was no reply. Perhaps she'd gone away on a course or something. He thought about using his key and going downstairs to sleep in her apartment, but decided against it. It wasn't a lasting solution.

When he did get to bed, he lay tossing and turning for a long time. Thought he could hear mice scrabbling and scuttling through the pipes. Or maybe it was the building creaking as it bent down further towards the ground.

The first thing he did when he woke up in the morning was to go into the kitchen and check the spirit level. Unfortunately he had forgotten to make a mark, but still, he was more or less certain that the bubble had moved towards the window. The feeling in his stomach told him the same thing: the tilt had got worse. He couldn't manage any breakfast before he went to work.

When he reached the spot where he had spoken to the man with the earphones, he turned around and studied the building. At first he thought nothing had changed: the top intersected with the building next door in the same place. Or did it?