Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

“Hello?” she called out into the soughing wind.

No reply.

The house itself was small, but it was just one of several buildings. There was a boathouse with closed shutters at the windows, a woodshed, a barn, and something that might have been a sauna. It was a fantastic location, right by the shore, but the whole place needed painting and there was an air of gloom and abandonment about it all.

She knocked on the door of the cottage. No reply there either, as expected. The house was probably just a summer residence now, as Gerlof had thought. All traces of the Davidsson family were gone.

Eel Point wasn’t visible from here, but when Tilda had passed the pine trees and walked out onto the meadow by the shore, she could see the old wreck a few hundred yards away and the twin lighthouses on the horizon to the south.

She moved closer to the water, and a large bird that had

been sitting on a rock on the shore took off slowly, its wings beating heavily. A bird of prey.

On the edge of the wood there was another cottage, she noticed, and in front of it on the lawn was a chair where someone had placed a pile of blankets.

Then the blankets moved. A head poked out and Tilda realized there was a person wrapped up in them. She went closer and saw that it was an elderly man with a gray beard and a wooly hat, with a thermos flask beside him and a long, dark green telescope in his hands.

“You scared off my Haliaeetus albicilla,” he called out.

Tilda went over to him.

“Sorry?”

“The sea eagle,” said the man. “Didn’t you see it?”

“I did, yes,” said Tilda.

A birdwatcher. They turned up along the coast at all times of the year.

“It was watching the tufted ducks,” said the ornithologist. He pointed his telescope out to sea, where a dozen or so black-and-white birds were bobbing along on the waves. “They swim here all year round and hang out with the birds of prey. They’re tough little devils.”

“Very exciting,” said Tilda.

“It sure is.” The man in the blankets looked at her uniform and said, “This has to be the first time we’ve ever had a cop out here.”

“Well, it does seem very quiet out here.”

“It is. In the winter, at least. Just cargo ships passing by, and a few motorboats now and again.”

“This late in the year?”

“I haven’t seen any here this winter,” said the man. “But I’ve heard them further down the coast.”

Tilda gave a start. “You mean around Eel Point?”

“Yes, or even further south. You can hear the sound of an engine several miles away, if the wind is in the right direction.”

“A woman drowned over by the lighthouses at Eel Point a few weeks ago,” said Tilda. “Were you here then?”

“I think so.”

Tilda looked at him, her expression serious. “You remember the case?”

“Yes. I read about it… but I didn’t see anything. You can’t see the point through the trees.”

“But can you remember if you heard the sound of an engine on that particular day?”

The ornithologist thought it over.

“Maybe,” he said.

“If a boat went past going south out in the bay, would you have seen it?”

“It’s possible. I often sit out here.”

It was a vague testimony. Edla Gustafsson’s supervision of the highway was much better than this birdwatcher’s monitoring of the Baltic.

She thanked him for his help and set off back to the car.

“Perhaps we could keep in touch?”

Tilda turned around. “Sorry?”

“It’s a bit lonely here.” He smiled at her. “Beautiful but lonely. Perhaps you’d like to come back sometime?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’ll have to find a whooper swan to keep you company.”

After lunch Tilda spent almost three hours at the school talking about law and order with the pupils. She had several traffic reports to write up when she got back to the station, but couldn’t quite let go of the drowning at Eel Point.

She collected her thoughts, then picked up the telephone and rang the manor house.

Joakim Westin picked up after three rings. Tilda could hear the sound of a ball thudding and happy children’s voices in the background, a good sign. But Westin himself

sounded tired and distant when he answered. Not angry-it was just that there was no strength in his voice.

Tilda didn’t bother with any small talk.

“I need to ask you something,” she said. “Did your wife know anyone who has a boat here on Öland? A boat owner close to your place?”

“I don’t know anyone at all who has a boat here,” said Westin. “And Katrine… she never mentioned anyone with a boat either.”

“What did she do during the week when you were in Stockholm? Did she talk about it?”

“She was renovating the house and furnishing it, and looking after the children. She had her hands full.”

“Did she ever have any visitors?”

“Only me. As far as I know.”

“Okay, thanks,” said Tilda. “I’ll be in touch if-”

“I have a question too,” Westin interrupted her.

“Yes?”

“When you were here, you said something about a relative of yours who knew Eel Point… someone from the local history society in Marnäs.”

“That’s right, Gerlof,” said Tilda. “He’s my grandfather’s brother. He’s written a few things for the society’s yearbook.”

“I’d really like to have a chat with him.”

“About the manor?”

“About its history… and about a particular story about Eel Point.”

“A story?”

“A story about the dead,” said Westin.

“Right. I don’t know how much he knows about folk stories,” said Tilda, “but I can ask. Gerlof usually likes telling stories.”

“Tell him he’s very welcome to come over.”

By the time Tilda hung up, it was four-thirty. She switched on the computer to do some work on new cases and her own

reports, including the one about the black van. It was a reasonably concrete piece of information in the investigation into the break-ins. Everything the birdwatcher had told her about the sound of motorboat engines around Eel Point was too vague to put in a report.

She wrote and wrote, and when she had finished the reports it was quarter to eight.

Hard work-that was the best way to avoid thinking about Martin Ahlquist. To drive him out of her body and soul.

Tilda still hadn’t mailed the letter to his wife.

When the Second World War broke out, the manor at Eel Point was taken over by the military. The lighthouses were extinguished and soldiers moved into the house to guard the coast .

In the loft in the barn there is one name preserved from this time, but it is not a man’s name .

IN MEMORY OF GRETA 1943 it says, carved in thin letters .

– MIRJA RAMBE

The alarm is raised at the air-monitoring station at Eel Point the day after the great blizzard has passed by-a sixteen-year-old girl is missing.

“Lost in the blizzard,” says the director of the station, Stovey, when the seven men gather in the kitchen in the morning, wearing the gray uniform of the crown. Stovey’s real name is Bengtsson, but he has acquired his new name because he prefers to sit indoors next to the iron stove when there’s a cold wind outside. And there is almost always a cold wind outside in the winter at Eel Point.

“I shouldn’t think there’s much hope,” he goes on. “But we’d better search anyway.”

Stovey himself stays inside to coordinate the search-everyone else sets off in the snow. Eskil Nilsson and Ludvig Rucker, who is nineteen years old and the youngest at the station, are sent off to the west to search in the area around the peat bog, Offermossen.