Camilla Läckberg - The Hidden Child

‘Yes, I know, but…’ Erica said. Something was still bothering her. ‘Could you ring your colleagues tomorrow and ask them to check on the medal?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Patrik. ‘I think they’ve got better things to do than spend time looking for an old medal. We can talk to Erik’s brother later on. Ask him to find it for us. It’s probably still in the house somewhere.’

‘Oh right, Axel. Where is he? Why didn’t he discover his brother’s body?’

Patrik shrugged. ‘I’m on paternity leave, remember? You’ll have to ring Mellberg yourself and ask him.’

‘Ha ha, very funny,’ said Erica. But she still felt uneasy. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that Axel didn’t find him?’

‘Sure, but didn’t you say he was off somewhere when you went over to their house?’

‘Well, yes. Erik told me that his brother was abroad. But that was back in June.’

‘Why are you worrying about this?’ Patrik shifted his gaze back to the TV. Home at Last was just about to start.

‘I don’t really know,’ Erica said, staring blankly at the TV screen. She couldn’t explain even to herself why this feeling of anxiety had come over her. But she could still remember Erik’s silence on the phone and hear that slight catch in his voice when he asked her to bring over the medal. He had reacted to something. Something having to do with the medal.

She tried to put it from her mind and focus on Martin Timell’s woodcarvings instead.

‘Grandpa, you should have seen it. That black bastard went to cut in line and – Pow! One kick and he keeled over like a tree. Then I kicked him in the nuts and he lay there whimpering for at least fifteen minutes.’

‘And what good did it do, Per? Aside from the fact that you could be charged with assault and sent off to a juvenile institution, you’re not going to win any sympathy that way. You’ll just have everybody ganging up on you even more. And instead of helping our cause, it’s going to end with you mobilizing even more opposition.’ Frans stared at his grandson. Sometimes he didn’t know how he was going to curb all the teenage hormones surging through the boy. And he knew so little. In spite of his tough demeanour, with his army camouflage trousers, heavy boots, and shaved head, he was nothing more than a fearful child of fifteen. He knew nothing. He had no idea how the world operated. He didn’t know how to channel the destructive impulses so that they could be used like a spear point to pierce right through the structure of society.

The boy hung his head in shame as he sat next to him on the stairs. Frans knew that his harsh words had got through. His grandson was always trying to impress him. But he would be doing Per a disservice if he didn’t show him how the world worked. The world was cold and hard and relentless, and only the strongest would emerge victorious.

At the same time, he loved the boy and wanted to protect him from evil. Frans put his arm around his grandson’s shoulders, struck by how bony they were. Per had inherited his own physique. Tall and gangly, with narrow shoulders. All the gym workouts in the world wouldn’t change that.

‘You just need to stop and think,’ said Frans, his voice gentler now. ‘Think before you act. Use words instead of your fists. Violence is not the first tool you should use. It’s the last.’ He tightened his hold on the boy’s shoulders. For a second Per leaned against him, as he’d done when he was a child. Then he remembered that he was trying to be a man. That the most important thing in the world was that he make his grandfather proud. Per sat up straight.

‘I know, Grandpa. I just got so angry when he pushed in. Because that’s what they always do. They push their way in everywhere. They think they own the world, that they own Sweden. It made me so… furious.’

‘I know,’ said Frans, removing his arm from around his grandson’s shoulders and patting the boy’s knee instead. ‘But please stop and think. You’ll be no use to me if you end up in prison.’

He had battled seasickness all the way to Norway, although it hadn’t seemed to affect the others. They were used to sailing, had grown up going to sea. They had their sea legs, as his father used to say; they rolled with the swells and had no trouble walking on deck. And they seemed immune to the nausea that spread from his stomach up to his throat. Axel leaned heavily against the rail. All he wanted to do was lean over the side and vomit, but he refused to give into such degrading behaviour. He knew the taunts from the others wouldn’t be mean-spirited, but he was too proud to be the subject of their derision. Soon they’d be arriving, and the minute he went ashore, the nausea would vanish like magic. He knew this from experience, for he’d made this trip many times before.

‘Land ho!’ shouted Elof, the ship’s captain. ‘We’ll dock in ten minutes.’ Elof cast a glance at Axel, who had come to join him at the helm. The captain’s face was tanned and weatherbeaten, his skin like creased leather from years of exposure to the elements.

‘Is everything in order?’ he asked in a low voice, looking around. In the harbour at Kristiansand they could see all the German boats lined up, a clear reminder of the occupation. So far Sweden had been spared Norway’s fate, but nobody knew how much longer their luck would last. Until then the Swedes were keeping an anxious eye on their neighbour to the west, and for that matter on the Germans’ advance throughout the rest of Europe.

‘Take care of your own affairs, and I’ll take care of mine,’ said Axel. It sounded harsher than he’d intended, but it troubled him that he was involving the ship’s crew in risks that should have been his alone. Still, he wasn’t coercing anyone. Elof had agreed without hesitation when Axel asked if he might sail with him once in a while, bringing certain… goods along. He’d never needed to explain what he was transporting, and Elof and the other crew members on the Elfrida had never asked.

They put into port and took out the documents they would need to present. The Germans were punctilious when it came to paperwork, and only when the formalities were out of the way would the Swedes be allowed to unload the machine parts that comprised their official cargo. The Norwegians took delivery of the goods while the Germans grimly oversaw the procedure with guns at the ready. Axel bided his time until evening. His cargo couldn’t come ashore until after dark. Most often it was foodstuffs. Food and information. That was what he had this time as well.

After eating supper in tense silence, Axel sat down to wait restlessly for the appointed hour. A cautious knock on the windowpane made him and everybody else jump. Axel quickly leaned forward, lifted up a section of the floorboards, and began taking out wooden crates. Hands reached in, quietly and carefully, to receive the crates, which were then passed to someone on the dock. All the while they could hear the Germans talking amongst themselves in the barracks just a short distance away. By that time of night, they were on to the strong liquor, which allowed the dangerous activity on board ship to go unnoticed. Drunken Germans were significantly easier to fool than sober Germans.

With a whispered ‘thank you’ in Norwegian, the last of the cargo vanished into the darkness. Another delivery had gone smoothly. Giddy with relief, Axel went back down to the forecastle. Three pairs of eyes met his gaze, but no one said a word. Elof merely nodded and then turned away to fill his pipe. Axel felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards these men who defied both storms and Nazis with the same composure. Having long since accepted that they had no control over the twists and turns of life and fate, they simply got on with trying to live the best life they could. The rest was in God’s hands.