Håkan Nesser - The Living and the Dead in Winsford

Five or six hours from now they would be enveloped in mist and darkness, but nothing could worry them less.

As we slowly trudged back towards the car I wondered if reflections such as these were something I would have tried to put into print, if I had in fact been the writer I pretended to be. Or perhaps I should put them into print in any case? But I decided that such thoughts were irrelevant. Why add a few more straws to the rubbish heap of nature observations that. . that white men have squeezed out of their existential poverty ever since the dawn of civilization? Words, words, words, I thought, and I felt undeniably pleased and relieved over the fact that my writing is no more than a mask.

On the way home we paused in Exford to do some shopping and buy a newspaper. I had barely glanced at a newspaper since sitting with Svenska Dagbladet on the ferry between Ystad and Poland, and when we got back to Darne Lodge, after making a new fire, I lay down on the sofa with Castor curled up under my legs and read through the Independent from the first page to the last. It was more of a gesture in the direction of reality and civilization as such, I think, and I found nothing that concerned me in any way, or induced me to take any interest in the outside world. I eventually fell asleep, of course, and when I woke up it was dark in the room and the fire was reduced to a barely glowing heap of embers.

I lit two candles on the table, lay on the sofa again and meditated. Listened to the whispering sounds of the rhododendron branches rubbing against the windowsill, and to the wind. It was beginning to blow quite strongly. There are no curtains in the living room. If a person or an animal were standing two metres outside the house and peering in, I wouldn’t detect it. I got up and added torch to my shopping list. According to Mr Tawkings’s inventory tucked away in its folder, there are supposed to be two torches in the house: but I haven’t discovered either of them.

Having got thus far on this unremarkable November day, I decided to take my first look at Martin’s material from Samos and Morocco.

There was no internet connection in my room in The Simmons Hotel, but there was a computer available for guests to use down in the lobby. Much to the annoyance of some younger guests, I spent almost two hours on it that first morning in London. It took me that long to find Darne Lodge just outside the village of Winsford in the county of Somerset. I must have checked up on over a hundred possible places to rent in the south-west of England: my reason for homing in on that area had to do with the fact that many years ago we had rented a house outside Truro in Cornwall — Martin, the children and I. We stayed there for a whole month, and I recall it as the happiest holiday we ever had during all our years together. Gunvald and Synn were in their early teens, but it worked well even so and I know that when we had our evening meals in the cramped little kitchen in our stone cottage after the day’s outings, we felt a sense of togetherness and fellowship that I had never felt before. Perhaps it was imagined rather than real, but it’s difficult to judge matters like that. I also remember that Martin and I enjoyed a really excellent sex life down there in Cornwall. Incidentally it was the summer before the winter in which Martin had his affair with another woman.

And I can’t be certain that the affair hadn’t started before the summer.

I’m not sure exactly how I thought that previous holiday could be of significance for the current circumstances, but I suppose I must have been looking out for the possibility of linking up with something in the past that had positive vibrations. In any case it had more to do with emotions than with rational thought, and I was aware that I had visions of a little cottage in south-west England in the back of my mind even before we left Berlin.

The description of Darne Lodge provided no contact information via the internet, only a telephone number. I borrowed the telephone from the sleepy Hungarian receptionist, and Mr Tawking answered after only one ring. As if he had been sitting there, waiting for somebody to phone him. After five minutes we had agreed on a rent for six months, and it was a done deal provided I paid a deposit into his bank account before the day was out.

‘Before the day is out?’ I wondered.

‘Before the day is out,’ said Mr Tawking. ‘People are generally queuing up for the privilege of living in my house.’

I doubted that, both at the time and later, but I accepted the condition. Castor and I went for a walk through the park down towards Kensington, and eventually found a bank where, after some discussion, I managed to make the payment to Mr Tawking without my needing to produce a credit card or any personal details — well, in fact I gave the new name I had adopted, Maria Anderson, and a fictitious address in Copenhagen.

I also changed some money and acquired £1,500 in sterling; and I thought I ought to do the same in several of the small bank branches along Queensway before we set off on our journey westwards — suitably split up into a number of smallish transactions which would not raise any eyebrows.

I mustn’t leave any traces. Incognito. When we emerged into the sunshine and the hustle and bustle of Kensington High Street I was suddenly possessed by a surprising degree of optimism. I was making decisions and carrying them out. I was coming across problems and solving them. I gave Castor a liver chew, and promised him that I would stay alive at least as long as he did.

My optimism was changed into its opposite about twenty minutes later, next to the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens.

‘Maria?’

I saw immediately who it was. Katarina Wunsch. Now working for Swedish Radio in Luleå, but we had been colleagues in the Monkeyhouse until the turn of the century. We were not all that close, but had been working together for rather a lot of years. She was with her husband: I didn’t remember his first name, but we had met several times.

And now here they were in London. A brief holiday visit, perhaps, or maybe to do with work — how could I know? I had half a second in which to react.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘But. .?’

Her surprise was total. She stared at me, then glanced at her husband for confirmation.

Confirmation that the woman with the dog they had almost literally bumped into in Kensington Gardens really was Maria Holinek, who. . who they had known for many years. Granted that we hadn’t met since about 2005 or thereabouts, but still? Surely there couldn’t be any doubt about it? The woman wasn’t exactly an unknown face, and they had even heard about the dog. No doubt they had read all that awful stuff in the papers in the early summer, just like everybody else. But could it really be. .?

I obviously don’t know what thoughts were whirling round inside the heads of Katarina Wunsch and her husband, whatever his name was, but it wasn’t hard to guess. And it felt as if something inside my own skull was about to burst.

‘Are you not. .?’

‘I’m sorry. There seems to be a mistake here.’

I really did manage to come out with that sentence. I actually told a lie. I didn’t faint, and I didn’t sink down into the ground. Mr Wunsch cleared his throat in embarrassment and took hold of his wife’s arm.

‘I apologize. We thought you were somebody else.’

I nodded.

‘Somebody we used to know. So sorry.’

They both produced a stiff smile, and continued on their way.

‘No worries,’ I said to their backs, but they didn’t turn round. I put Castor on his lead and hurried out onto Bayswater Road.

Then I sat down at a pavement cafe in Westbourne Grove and tried to calm down. Tried to analyse what had happened, and to guess what the Wunsches had said to one another after our surprise meeting.