Håkan Nesser - The Living and the Dead in Winsford

He must have left at some time during the night, for Vivianne was alone when she came down for breakfast the next day. It was a Saturday, both Martin and I had the day off. Vivianne looked tired and shaken, and to begin with she had nothing to say about the previous evening. I at least hoped that we would be spared having to listen to her account of it all, and that she would leave everything shrouded in mystery. But after a cup of coffee she had evidently decided to lift the veil of secrecy somewhat.

‘It’s an incredibly delicate situation,’ she said. ‘There’s so much at stake, and lots of things could go wrong.’

That was not an unusual claim, coming from Vivianne Holinek. Her life had to be littered with drama and perilous situations, otherwise it was not a life worth living.

‘So you are having a relationship with a top politician, and you’re afraid his wife will get to know about it — is that it?’ I asked, and received a dirty look from my husband.

‘I can’t go into details,’ said Vivianne, ‘but it’s much more complicated than that. And I have to bear the responsibility myself. Perhaps it was unfair to involve you, but the situation was such that I didn’t have any choice.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Martin. ‘I thought he looked like-’

‘That’s enough!’ interrupted his sister. ‘No names. Don’t make the situation worse than it is already.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I hope you had a good time anyway.’

‘It’s not like you think,’ said Vivianne.

She left us an hour later, warning that she might well come back. She said she was in a very precarious situation, but given the circumstances her own safety was not the most important consideration. There were much more important things at stake than that. People’s lives could be under threat.

We didn’t hear from her again until a month later. Or rather, it was Martin who heard from her. She telephoned from a hotel in Copenhagen and according to Martin she was totally hysterical. He spoke to her for ten minutes, but I couldn’t hear what was said as I was in another room; however, I could hear that he was doing his best to calm her down. When the call was over, I asked what it was all about this time.

‘She’s mad,’ said Martin. ‘I reckon she’s ripe for the loony bin. She claims that somebody is going to be killed.’

‘Killed?’

‘Yes, and that she can’t do anything about it. I really do think she’s gone off the rails this time.’

Four days later Olof Palme was murdered in Sveavägen in Stockholm. That same day I asked Martin if we ought to contact the police.

‘Not on your life,’ said Martin. ‘Don’t you think there’ll be enough loonies ringing the police with tips? Surely you don’t seriously think that my sister would have anything to do with the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister?’

I didn’t think so, of course, and as we said nothing from the start, we didn’t say anything later either. And it was over a year before we heard anything from Vivianne again. She was now living in Austria with a professional skiing instructor, and I think I’m right in saying that we only met her twice more before she died.

The fact that she died on the anniversary of Palme’s death was something we discussed briefly, Martin and I. We agreed that it was a coincidence. If it had been ten years later, we might have regarded that as being of some significance: but in fact twelve years had passed.

Nevertheless, I do occasionally think about that mysterious man walking up our drive with the hood concealing his face, I have to admit that.

The eighth of November. Clear but windy and cold. Only plus three degrees at eight in the morning.

We had spent the whole of the previous day indoors, due to appalling weather. Rain and gale-force winds non-stop — or perhaps it wasn’t in fact rain, but the upper layer of the sea that was being blown in over the land. It seemed suspiciously as if that really was the case, and was coming from that direction. Castor was restricted to three short runs around the garden. It was a difficult day in every respect — the worst one since I came here. I understand that I need to get out briefly every day, irrespective of the weather and the wind: spending thirty-six hours at a stretch in a house like Darne Lodge is not something to look forward to, most certainly not.

Perhaps I had convinced myself that Martin’s notes would keep me occupied, but after only a few pages I found myself overwhelmed by a degree of resistance that I neither want nor am able to explain. I put the whole lot of material away, and spent the day reading Dickens and playing patience instead. I hadn’t played patience since I was a teenager, but I found two almost unused packs of cards in a drawer, and after a while had remembered four different variations. Idiot Patience, of course, and Spider Harp — I can’t remember the names of the other two. I’m sure I learned all four from my father, probably even before I started school: and once I had realized this I simply couldn’t get him out of my mind. He was a person who wanted the best for everybody, and did whatever he could to make that happen; but in the last years of his life, after Gunsan had died and my mother had entered a twilight world, well. . How was he able to sum up his journey through life? As he lay there in hospital and died of a broken heart. What was left for him?

I thought about Gudrun Ewerts, and how she went on about the importance of weeping. If she was gazing down on me yesterday from the heavens above, she would have had every reason to nod approvingly. I cried my eyes out.

But that was yesterday. Today is another day, and having learned our lesson we set off on foot immediately after breakfast and Dickens. We headed southwards to start with, towards Dulverton, and after a while we came to that simple signpost pointing the way into the village. After eyeing one another up and down and thinking it over for a few moments, we set off along that path. It was muddy and difficult to follow at first, but after a few hundred metres we came to a narrow road along which one could stroll without too much difficulty. It wasn’t wide enough for a four-wheeled vehicle — I didn’t really understand how it had come to exist, or what purpose it could possibly have: but there is a lot about the moor that I don’t understand. It was downhill all the way, and the vegetation was abundant: deciduous trees in full leaf even though we were well into November; moss and ivy, holly and brambles. The road followed a fast-flowing stream, pheasants and all kinds of other birds twittered and hopped around in the bushes, and here and there, on the other side of the thick undergrowth, we could hear the bleating of sheep. It seemed to me that the ground must be enormously fertile — if you lay down and slept for twelve hours, you were bound to be covered in creepers when you woke up: it seemed a bit like a cautionary fairy-tale. A little girl and her dog go for a walk in the woods, and never return to their village. I tried to shake such thoughts off me.

We eventually came to a house. We had been under way for about half an hour, and its sudden appearance was about as likely as the chances of meeting a lawyer in heaven. That was another of my father’s expressions, incidentally, and I assume it was a hangover from the previous day’s games of patience. Anyway, it was a dark-coloured stone-built house so embedded in the vegetation that it was almost invisible — it was on the other side of the stream we had been following all the way, which at this point changed from being fast-flowing into a stretch of more or less still-standing water. A moss-covered stone bridge ran over the water to the house. We paused and contemplated the building: it was two storeys high, and the walls were covered in ivy and other climbing plants — some of the windows were almost completely overgrown.