Håkan Nesser - The Living and the Dead in Winsford

An e-mail from Eugen Bergman to Martin, dated the seventh of January:

My dear friend, I’m very sorry to hear that you are having problems. But writer’s block is a phenomenon that affects lots of authors, not just you; remember that. Bear in mind also that there are antidotes: which is best depends on the individual of course, but the most important thing is that you mustn’t go around worrying about it. Nobody benefits from sitting and staring at a blank sheet of paper or at a computer screen when the words are hiding away or tying themselves in knots. My dear Martin, give it a rest for a while and try to enjoy something else instead. Go to Casablanca and Marrakesh — simply writing the names of those places gives me goose pimples. Stockholm is sheer hell at this time of year, thank your lucky stars you’re not stuck here.

Say if there’s something you’d like to read and I’ll send you it.

I really hope you can recover your usual good humour eventually, but there’s no rush. Taking things slowly is not to be scoffed at. My best wishes to Maria, and write to me whenever you feel the need. I know that I’m your publisher, but I’m also your friend: don’t forget that.

Eugen

From Gunvald to Martin:

Hello! I’m sitting at the airport outside Sydney, waiting for a delayed flight. I’ve had an absolutely marvellous time down here: both the conference and my free days have been extremely rewarding. I’ve even tried surfing, but that was just a one-off. The Opera House. Manly Beach. Oysters and chardonnay at The Rocks, Blue Mountains. . You name it. I hope you two are having at least a fraction as much fun in Morocco as I’ve been having here. How long will you be staying there? My very best wishes to Mum. Gunvald

From Synn to me:

Huh. I have to say I find it hard to feel sorry for him. You’ll have to take care of him — after all, you’re the one who’s married to him, not me. I can’t help it if you think I sound cold and indifferent, you know I hate conventions and false outpourings. Anyway, we have had a very successful season over here, and we gather there’s lots of work lined up for the spring so it looks as if it will be some time before I fly over the Atlantic again. In any case, I hope he doesn’t spark off any new scandals: the last one was quite enough to be going on with. Pass on some kind of friendly greeting from me that you can invent. Greetings from a freezing cold Manhattan, small nails are pelting down over the Hudson. Synn

From Violetta di Parma to me:

Dear Maria. Very many thanks for your sympathetic response. I’ve booked a flight for 31 January. I’ll make sure the house is clean and tidy. I’ll be happy to pay a bit more than just the January rent, but perhaps we can reach an agreement on that in due course. It’s cold here around Stockholm, very cold — I assume your weather will be a bit warmer in Morocco. When I get back home to Argentina it will be the middle of summer of course. Many greetings to Martin, please tell him I’ve really enjoyed living in your house and that I’m very sorry to have to leave it like this. Hugs and kisses, Violetta

Nothing from Soblewski. I assume he’s waiting for my (Martin’s) views on Anna Słupka, but even so I hope I hear from him before he gets them. I can’t very well take up that unidentified dead body again, but if he forgets about my (Martin’s) question I suppose that suggests I don’t need to worry about it. That’s how I decide to interpret the situation in any case, and I also decide not to respond to a single message from today’s crop: they can just as well wait for a few days, and by then I reckon it could be time for me to contact Eugen Bergman personally. With a message in my own name, that is.

I leave the centre and turn into Ash Lane. When I’m standing in front of Mr Tawking’s front door with its flaking blue paint, it occurs to me that I haven’t heard a single squeak from him all the time I’ve been here. I’ve been living in his house for over two months: surely that’s a bit odd?

I wonder if he might be dead and nobody has thought to inform me, but I knock on the door even so.

He opens after a while and looks more dead than alive, but he did last time as well. I have the impression that he doesn’t recognize me, so I begin to explain that I’m the person who has been renting his house up on Winsford Hill since November.

‘I know,’ he says, interrupting me. ‘It’s just that my eyesight isn’t very good. Come in.’

I don’t get any tea this time, and it takes quite a while to reach an agreement. An agreed contract is an agreed contract, Mr Tawking insists, and if I’m daft enough to pay half a year’s rent in advance, that’s my problem.

I point out that it was he who insisted on that arrangement if I were to move in at all, and we sit there negotiating for a while in his gloomy living room. I don’t really care how the negotiations go, I’m not all that hard up in fact; but in the end he agrees to pay back two hundred pounds if I’ve moved out by the beginning of February. I’m welcome to call in and collect the money in a few days’ time, and we can sign a new document then. It strikes me that he is the only genuinely unpleasant person I’ve come across since coming to live on the moor.

That’s that, then, I think when I’ve left him and am walking back down to the monument with Castor at my heels. That means I have three weeks in which to see to everything. That should be long enough.

‘That stalker of yours,’ says Mark Britton. ‘What’s happened to him? You haven’t mentioned him for a while.’

We are out walking in Barle Valley. The astonishing thing is that Jeremy is here as well: he’s walking about ten metres behind us with enormous earphones on his head and his hands dug deep down into his pockets. Mark says he can hardly ever persuade him to leave the house. Castor is walking just behind Jeremy, but when we turn back shortly afterwards and head for home, they change places.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t seen him for several weeks. Not since I told you about him, I think.’

It’s the fifteenth of January, and that’s about right. It must be nearly a month since I last saw that silver-coloured Renault.

‘Hm,’ says Mark, kicking at a stone. I can see that he has more to say on that subject.

‘Why do you ask?’

He hesitates. Turns round to check that Jeremy is keeping up with us. Adjusts his scarf.

‘I think I might have seen him,’ he says in the end.

I stop dead. ‘What do you mean? Did you see him? Where?’

‘It was a few days ago,’ says Mark, trying to look apologetic for some reason. ‘In Dulverton. His car was parked outside the butcher’s, and he came out of there while I was watching. Got into the car and drove away.’

‘He?’

‘Yes, a man. In his sixties I’d say, or thereabouts. I didn’t get much of an idea of what he looked like, I was on the other side of the road. And he was wearing a hat. But it was a hire car from Sixt, and I noted down the registration number.’

‘Really?’ I suddenly feel all of a tremble. As if I couldn’t possibly take another step forward. He can see there’s something wrong.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that I suddenly felt dizzy.’

‘Dizzy? You don’t usually have attacks of dizziness, do you?’

‘It’s over and done with now. What did you do with the registration number?’

I can hear that he didn’t leave it at that.

He clears his throat. ‘I chased it up,’ he says.

‘Really?’ I say. ‘How?’

‘I phoned the rental firm and spun them a yarn. I said I thought the driver of that car had reversed into mine, and I wanted to contact him. They were a bit hesitant at first, but when I told them I was a police officer in Taunton and that they should come to the point they backed down. They checked the documentation, and it transpired that the car had been rented on a long-term contract by a person of Polish origins.’