Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

I did as he said; the flames were shooting up into the air from Karstensön, where the Valfridssons’ large house was located.

‘I’d only just fallen asleep. I don’t know what woke me up, but now I’m here,’ Jansson shouted. ‘Anyone who can help needs to get over to the island!’

‘Are the Valfridssons out of the house?’

‘They’re away, the house is empty. It’s going to burn to the ground.’

‘What’s happened?’

Jansson didn’t reply, which was answer enough for me. The arsonist had struck again.

‘I’m on my way,’ I said. ‘We’re both on our way.’

When I went back inside, Lisa had switched on the light and got dressed.

‘Another fire,’ she said. ‘Is it what I’m thinking?’

‘It’s arson,’ I said. ‘We need to go over there and do whatever we can to help.’

‘Has anyone died?’

‘No.’

I got dressed as quickly as I could, then we hurried down to the boathouse.

I asked Lisa to sit in the prow with the beam of the torch pointing out across the water as I didn’t have any navigation lights. I sat in the stern with a chart on my knee, illuminating it with my phone from time to time. It was no more than two nautical miles to Karstensön, but there were several reefs along the way that I wasn’t entirely sure of.

As we swung out into the bay, the Valfridssons’ house blazed like an enormous midwinter sacrificial feast.

We were heading straight into the fire.

Boats were coming from all directions.

The New Year had started with yet another burning house.

Once again I saw a house transformed into a blackened ruin.

The Valfridssons’ house burned with the same fury that had obliterated my home. The old house stubbornly resisted, but the blaze was stronger. It reminded me of a lion, its jaws embedded in the throat of a dying gazelle.

There were about thirty of us running around with buckets of water and hosepipes, yelling at one another. Then the coastguard arrived and started up the pumps, and we stopped running around. Alexandersson, who was a little tipsy, took charge. I knew everyone there. We all wished each other a Happy New Year in the middle of the chaos, as we tried to do something useful.

I noticed that Lisa Modin was extremely capable. She took the initiative, and people listened when she made suggestions.

But of course there was nothing we could do. The whole place was already in flames by the time we arrived. At about five o’clock in the morning the roof began to collapse, the hot tiles shattering as they hit the ground. The windows burst, oxygen poured in and gave new strength to the conflagration. The heat was so intense that everyone had to move back.

I stood beside Alexandersson, sooty sweat pouring down his face.

‘Another one,’ he said. ‘Who’s burning down our property out here on the islands? What have we done to deserve this?’

‘Is it the same as my place?’ I asked. ‘A fire that starts everywhere and nowhere?’

‘We don’t know yet, but I’m sure the answer is yes. Same method, same lunatic.’

He shook his head then spat out something black and unpleasant, possibly a plug of snuff, and went back to his pumps and hoses.

Lisa was sitting on a rusty old kick sled next to a barbecue covered with a torn boat tarpaulin. The glow of the flames lit up her sweaty face. From Paris to a blaze in the middle of the night on one of our islands, I thought. We had almost spent an entire peaceful night together, until Jansson’s phone call shattered the intimacy.

Where was Jansson? At first I couldn’t see him, then I spotted him lurking in the shadows, where the glow didn’t reach his face. There was something strange about his body language. I moved closer; his eyes were fixed on the house and he still hadn’t noticed me. Now I realised what was odd about his posture. His hands were clasped in front of him, as if he were saying a silent prayer, but was it directed to himself or to some fire god whose name I didn’t know? His body was as rigid as if he were a wooden sculpture or a scarecrow.

He saw me just as I thought about the scarecrow. He immediately pulled his hands apart, as if I had caught him doing something embarrassing. I knew that embarrassment was the thing Jansson feared most of all; dropping a letter in the sea, letting the wind rip a pension payment slip out of his hand and watching it dance away across the water. Perhaps that was why he rarely sang, because he was afraid that one day a false note would come out of his mouth?

I went and stood beside him. He stank of sweat and booze, his best party shirt blackened with soot.

‘At least no one was at home,’ I said. ‘No one died.’

‘It’s still a terrible thing.’

‘You mean the fact that it’s another arson attack?’

Jansson gave a start, as if I had said something unexpected.

‘What else would it be?’

‘But who the hell is creeping around out here in the early hours of New Year’s Day?’

We didn’t say any more. I watched the people slowly moving around the fire and wondered if Jansson was thinking the same as me: that it could well be one of them who had started it.

I glanced at Jansson, but his expression gave nothing away.

It was seven o’clock by the time Lisa and I left. The house would carry on burning for several hours, but there was nothing anyone could do. Alexandersson had managed to contact the owners, who were staying in a hotel in Marseilles. Before we left he told me that fru Valfridsson had screamed so loudly that he thought his eardrum might burst.

I knew the lady in question; she was about my age and very thin. She had once come over to my island in a little motorboat to ask if I would look down her throat; she thought she had developed a tumour. I sat her down on the bench outside the boathouse, pushed down her tongue and checked her throat. There was no tumour. When I told her I couldn’t find anything, she burst into tears. I was completely taken aback. With some patients it’s obvious that they are going to have a strong reaction, whether the news is good or bad, but I was unprepared for Hanna Valfridsson’s tears.

And now she was screaming in despair in a luxury hotel in Marseilles.

Before I started the engine I had asked Lisa where she wanted to go, and now we were heading for the harbour in the darkness. It occurred to me that I had far too much alcohol in my blood to drive my car, but then again I couldn’t imagine there would be too many police officers hanging around this early on New Year’s Day, hoping to catch someone in the middle of nowhere driving under the influence.

Oslovski’s house was still locked up and deserted, but I stood for a moment looking at the window to the left of the front door. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the curtain, which was closed, looked slightly different. I couldn’t work out exactly what had attracted my attention; perhaps it was my imagination, or perhaps I was hoping that someone had been inside, that the place hadn’t been abandoned.

Lisa asked what I was staring at.

‘The curtain,’ I said. ‘But to be honest, I’m not sure. I thought maybe there was someone standing there watching us.’

‘The fire was quite enough,’ Lisa replied. ‘No more ghostly goings-on, thank you.’

We drove into town in silence, through the morning mist that sometimes concealed the forest by the roadside. Lisa switched on the radio to listen to the news.

There had been riots in the Paris suburbs. A firefighter had been badly injured when he was struck on the head by a rock.

A major jewel heist had been discovered this morning in Moscow, involving one of the biggest jewellers in Russia.

Someone had died because of a drug called Spice.