Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

We met the coastguard’s biggest patrol boat, on its way back to the harbour after a tour of inspection along the coastline. I thought I could see Alma Hamrén at the wheel. My bags toppled as we bounced over the swell in the wake of the large vessel.

The wind had got up. Jansson pulled his old woolly hat low down over his forehead. He looked like a frozen animal, standing there steering his boat. I tried to prepare myself for the forthcoming encounter with my daughter, if she had returned. The important thing was not to lose my temper. I couldn’t bear the thought of us staring at one another with loathing.

However, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be alone, or whether I wanted her to stay. I couldn’t make up my mind.

I sat facing the direction in which we were going. The wind was against us and felt cold on my skin. I caught sight of something black, breaking the surface of the water. If it was a log we could easily have an accident. I waved my arms at Jansson, trying to tell him to veer to one side, but he misunderstood me and cut the engine.

‘There’s something in the water,’ I shouted.

Jansson swung to the side and moved the boat slowly forward. He spotted the object that I had seen, but we still couldn’t make out what it was. Jansson stood up, steering towards it with one foot. During all those years as a postman in the archipelago he had come across many strange, sometimes frightening things in the sea. He once found a human body, almost completely decomposed, which was never identified. After that incident he came to my little private clinic by the boathouse and complained that he was sleeping badly. He said he had the feeling that the body had been partially eaten, and as there were unlikely to be any flesh-eating monsters in the Baltic Sea, he had started to imagine it was the remains of a cannibal’s supper.

This time it was a dead seal. Not a cub, but a fully grown grey seal. It stank. The eyes had been pecked out by gulls or eagles. Jansson prodded it with the boathook while breathing through his mouth.

‘It’s been shot,’ he said. ‘With a shotgun.’

Using the boathook as a pointer, he showed me where the pellets had hit the back of the animal’s head.

‘It’s pure vindictiveness,’ Jansson said angrily. ‘Someone has amused themselves by shooting the seal without bothering to deal with it afterwards.’

‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘If it’s dead, there’s nothing we can do.’

‘I ought to tow it ashore and bury it. I don’t want it lying here stinking.’

‘You can do that when you’ve dropped me off,’ I said firmly.

I looked away; Jansson increased his speed.

As we turned in towards the jetty, I could see that my boat wasn’t there. Louise still hadn’t come home. Jansson noticed the same thing.

‘Your boat isn’t here,’ he said as he hove to.

‘Louise had a few errands,’ I said.

I quickly unloaded my bags, then gave Jansson two hundred kronor before he had time to protest. I placed the notes under the bailer so they wouldn’t blow away. He reversed out, no doubt heading back to bury the stinking seal. I waved and carried my bags into the boathouse.

It had been drizzling on and off, but at the moment it was dry. It didn’t look as if Louise had been back to the caravan during the day: everything was exactly the same as when I had changed my clothes in the morning.

I sat down on the bed and called Directory Enquiries to find out the number for Veronika’s cafe. It was a while before she answered. In the background I could hear the sound of lively customers, even though it was still only afternoon. Veronika seemed stressed.

I asked if she had been in touch with Nordin’s family. She had, and she now knew that Nordin had suffered a serious brain haemorrhage. His prospects were uncertain. She gave me the number of the hospital and I jotted it down on the back of a magazine about health food that Louise had brought with her.

‘It sounds as if you’re busy,’ I said.

‘There’s a very strange event going on here,’ she replied.

‘What do you mean, strange?’

‘A young woman has won twenty-five thousand kronor a year for the next twenty-five years, so she’s invited all her friends to a party, in the middle of the day. It’s important income, both for me and the cafe.’

‘Do I know her?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Her name is Rebecka Karlsson; she’s twenty-two years old and she’s never had a job. Nor has she been to college. She lives at home with her parents, who have always supported her. He’s a blacksmith, and her mother is a care assistant in an old people’s home. It’s disgusting, a person like that winning so much money!’

I expressed my agreement and we ended the call. I went back outside. The ruins of my house looked eerie in the dull afternoon light.

Something dangling in the sooty apple tree caught my attention. When I got closer I saw that it was a message left by Louise. She had clearly used the same pen with which I had made a note of the hospital’s phone number: Top of the hill!

Nothing else. Just those four words. I looked around to see if there were any further notes in the alders and oaks, but their branches were empty. I suspected that the most important part of the message was the exclamation mark at the end. She wanted me to go up to the top of the little hill where my grandfather’s bench was located: there were no other hills on the island.

When I got to the top I was expecting to find another note from Louise, but there was nothing on the bench or attached to the little juniper bush. I sat down, wondering if I had misunderstood her. Or did she want me to sit here wondering about some wild goose chase?

I gazed out across the sea, and then I understood. My boat was drawn up on the nameless skerry where I had pitched my tent.

I went back down to the caravan and dug out the old pair of binoculars that had been there ever since Harriet’s day. Now I could see Louise. She was sitting on a rock on the eastern side of the skerry with her back towards me, looking out over the sea. I stared at her until the effort of holding the binoculars made my hands begin to shake.

It was cold, and it had started drizzling again. I didn’t understand my daughter. She probably didn’t understand me either. In spite of all our efforts, we were doomed to misunderstand one another.

I returned to the caravan, switched on the light, plugged my phone into the charger and wondered what Louise was actually up to. Dusk fell. I took the torch and went up the hill to check on her. She had lit a small fire outside the tent, but she was sitting in the shadows; I couldn’t see her even with the binoculars. She was hiding in the darkness in a strange game of cat and mouse.

She must know I’m here, I thought. She must have heard Jansson’s boat. And she probably suspects that I’m sitting on this bench looking over at the skerry.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion. From my years as a doctor I could remember a similar tiredness after long days and nights on call. Laboriously I got to my feet. Back in the caravan I made myself something to eat; it was far too salty and had a metallic taste, but I ate every scrap, then lay down on the bed.

When I woke up I didn’t know where I was at first. Something in my dream was holding onto me. I was standing on the jetty, watching Harriet swim towards the land. But she wasn’t swimming in the sea, she was in the forest pool in Norrland that I had once promised to show her, the pool we had finally visited the year she died. In my dream the wind was not soughing in the tops of the trees around the pool; instead there was a whining noise that sounded like some kind of machinery. It was unbearable to listen to.