Elizabeth Peters - Silhouette in Scarlet

Nudged again, I shuffled forward. It would not have surprised me to learn that someone was following John. Someone usually was an outraged husband, a policeman, a fellow criminal. The list of people who might want to murder or cripple John was infinite. If I felt any guilt about raising the view halloo, my conscience was assuaged when I recalled that he had summoned me to Stockholm, right into the middle of whatever scam he was currently working. No, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt like killing the rat myself.

After cashing a traveller’s cheque I headed for the exit. I had intended to take the airport bus into the city, but at the last minute I had a change of heart. Ducking out of the line, I ran like hell and threw myself into a taxi. I got some outraged stares from the people who were ahead of me, but I was past caring about good manners. It had occurred to me that in my anxiety to inconvenience John, I had made a slight mistake. In fingering him, I had also fingered myself.

Chapter Two

IT HAD STOPPED raining by the time the taxi reached the city, but I couldn’t enjoy the scenery; I was too busy watching for pursuers. There didn’t seem to be any, but it was impossible to be sure; every other car on the road was a cream-coloured Saab. The sun made a tentative watery appearance and I decided I was being paranoid. If John had been under surveillance, my uninhibited whoop of greeting must have convinced a watcher that I was unwitting – or vastly unqualified for the role of coconspirator.

The Grand Hotel is on the waterfront, near where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic. The weathered green copper of the roof supported half a dozen flagpoles, from which the yellow and blue of the Swedish flag rippled in the breeze. Crimson shades marked the front windows and made a thick red line above the cafe and restaurant on the ground floor. Lined up at the quay in front of the hotel were some of the low white tourist steamers that ply the inland waterways. Even on a dull day the colours were stunning – clean, vivid colours, red and white and green and blue.

The lobby was filled with a truly international crowd: Japanese businessmen and German tourists, American students and Saudis in flowing robes. It wasn’t until after I had been escorted to my room and the bellboy had left that my spirits received a slight check. He had arranged my suitcases in a neat alignment on the luggage rack. Prominently displayed were the labels, inscribed in my sprawling hand: ‘Dr Victoria Bliss, Grand Hotel, Stockholm.’

The cases had been in plain view the whole time I waited in the currency-exchange line, including a good five minutes after I had raucously identified myself as a friend of John Smythe. It had been a waste of time watching for pursuing cars. If anybody wanted me, he knew where to find me.

I don’t believe in sitting around hotel rooms when I’m on holiday, but I got out of that one faster than I usually do.

I walked out of the hotel into the glorious sunshine I had yearned for. Gulls soared and swooped, crying hoarsely. A brisk sea breeze ruffled my hair. Waves slapped against the quay. There were boats all over the place – chugging busily along the water, docking, departing, bobbing at anchor. I felt like a kid with a fistful of money staring in the window of a toy store; the whole luscious city was spread out before me, parks and museums and shops and streets and canals.

The tourist water buses looked like fun, but I was tired of sitting. Across the inlet the dignified eighteenth-century facade of the royal palace filled one corner of the little island called Gamla Stan, the Old Town, or the City Between the Bridges – everything in Sweden seems to have several different names.

In the bulging shoulder pack I use in lieu of a purse I had a brochure on Gamla Stan that I had picked up at a travel agency in Munich. Six centuries of history, beginning with the thirteenth; cobbled streets and narrow alleys, medieval doors and baroque portals . . . I had visited a number of quaint old towns. Southern Germany has lots, complete with medieval ramparts and timbered houses. However, one can never get too much of a good thing. Also, the brochure had contained quite a few advertisements. The famous shop for Swedish shirts; Scandinavian knitwear; crystal from Swedish glassworks; old prints, books, maps; leather, silver, pewter, handwoven rugs, hand-embroidered blouses . . . I might claim that it was my antiquarian interests that led me to the twisty alleys of Gamla Stan, but if I claimed that I would be lying.

Like similar sections in other cities – Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Georgetown in Washington, D.C., the Via Sistina in Rome – Gamla Stan has become chic and fashionable and very expensive. Many of the shops occupied the ground floors of old buildings. The sculptured stone portals and intricate iron grillwork formed surprisingly pleasant settings for displays of modern Swedish crafts. Pedestrian traffic was slow. People stopped to read guidebooks or stare in shop windows or gathered at corners where itinerant performers played and sang.

I don’t know how long I wandered in purposeless content before I gradually realized I wasn’t relaxed any longer. Instead of admiring red wooden horses and knit ski caps, I was scanning the crowd, looking for a familiar profile. Instead of enjoying the diversified types strolling with me, I was beginning to feel surrounded and hemmed in. My back tingled with the uneasy sensation of being watched by unfriendly eyes.

It was with an absurd sense of escape that I emerged from the crowded streets into Stortorget, the Great Square of Old Town. I’d seen so many pictures of it, on postcards and travel folders, that it was like an old familiar habitat. Earnest tourists were aiming cameras at number 20, the tall red brick house with its exuberant wedding-cake gable, which is the most popular subject for photographers; it would reappear on screens in a thousand darkened living rooms later that summer while guests tried to muffle their yawns and the host’s voice intoned, ‘Now this one is someplace in Stockholm – or was it Oslo?’

The square was filled with people, but it didn’t give me the sense of claustrophobia the streets did. Rows of green slatted benches were flanked by great tubs of red geraniums, and the sun slanting down between the tall houses made the flowers glisten as if freshly painted. I decided my neurotic fancies were due in part to hunger, so I bought some jammy pastries from a shop and sat down on one of the benches where I could see the baroque tower of the Cathedral beyond the Borsen and the slit-like street beside it. When I had finished the pastries I licked strawberry jam off my fingers and continued to sit, staring dreamily at the green-patined curves of the cupola.

I guess my feet did stick out, but he could have avoided them. I didn’t see him; I felt an agonizing pain in my left instep and heard a crunch and a thud and a curse as a large object fell flat on the bricks at my feet.

I let out a howl and bent to clutch my foot. He let out a howl and stayed where he was, face down on the ground. He looked just as big prone as he had upright – a fallen Colossus, a toppled Titan.

If the same thing had happened in Denmark, we would have been swarmed over by helpful natives. Swedes don’t interfere unless arterial blood is jetting. There were a few murmurs of inquiry and one man took a tentative step towards the recumbent body, but retreated as soon as it heaved itself to hands and knees.

When he turned his head our eyes were on the same level. His weren’t blue, as a Viking’s ought to be; they were an odd shade of brown, like coffee caramels. Between the bushy brows, the bushier moustache, and the thick hair that had fallen over his forehead, I could see very little of his face. What I could see was bright red, and his eyes glittered like bronze spearpoints.