Harbour (29 page)

The people delineated against the bright glow of the fire like matchstick men seemed to be of the same opinion. Nobody was doing anything, they were just standing at a safe distance or walking around checking that no new blaze was about to break out.

Simon really wanted to go home, but he realised that wouldn't look good. When he spotted Göran standing to one side talking on his mobile phone, he headed over to him. Göran said something into the phone, nodded a couple of times then snapped it shut. He caught sight of Simon and came to meet him.

‘Hi there,' he said. ‘The fire service are on the way, but it'll be mainly a matter of damping down, I think.'

They stood side by side for a while, contemplating the burning house without speaking. The heat now lay like a dry film over their faces, and a shower of sparks flew up as one of the roof beams collapsed.

‘How did it start?' asked Simon.

‘No idea. But it seems to have caught hold incredibly fast.' Göran jerked his thumb in the direction of one of the houses further up towards the forest. ‘Lidberg, I think his name is. Lives up there. He said it just went
boom
and the whole place was on fire.'

‘Was anyone there? Inside the house?'

‘Not as far as I know. But I mean a fire doesn't start just like that for no reason.'

‘The Grönwalls—they're only here in the summer, aren't they?'

‘That's right. But I think the daughter stays here now and again.'

They took a few steps towards the fire, and Simon peered into the bright glow as if he expected to be able to see something in the flames. A person, something moving. Or a blackened skeleton. Another supporting post came down, bringing with it a couple of roof beams in a cloud of crackling flames. If there had been anything living in there, it certainly wasn't alive now.

The grass in the garden surrounding the house had dried out, and patches were beginning to burn. Simon, watching the fire moving towards the well, was overcome by the urge to do something significant. He could call up the water from the well, order it to pour down on the fire and make the work of the fire service unnecessary. With Spiritus in his bare hand he might be able to do such things.

If it had been a matter of saving lives, he would probably have done it. But in the current situation it would just be a meaningless demonstration that would also give rise to unpleasant questions. He didn't want to touch Spiritus. He didn't know why, but there it was.

Who's that knocking on your door?

Anders didn't know if he was swimming up towards the surface, or deeper towards the bottom. He was trapped in a dreadful, shapeless nightmare of a kind he had never experienced before. Part of his consciousness was telling him it was only a dream, and without that small comfort he would probably have gone crazy.

He was under water, in total darkness. There wasn't the slightest hint of light anywhere, nothing that could tell him what was up and what was down. The only thing he knew was that he was under water, that it was dark, and that he was drowning.

His arms were flailing desperately, he was dying, and his eyes were wide open, to no avail. He waited for the calm resignation that is said to visit those who are drowning or freezing to death, but it didn't come. Instead there was only panic, and the certain knowledge that he had only seconds to live.

But the seconds passed; he kept drowning but was not allowed to die. If fear can be matter, then he was inside that matter. And it was growing more dense. His heart was racing and his head was about to explode. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't open his mouth.

Denser. Closer. Something came to him out of the darkness. An immense formless body had picked up his scent, and was getting closer. His head twisted from side to side, but there was nothing to see. Only darkness and the knowledge that something bigger than it is possible to imagine was getting closer.

There was a thumping and banging in his ears, and the thumping was a relief. A noise. Something real, something that had direction and permanency, something other than darkness. The thumping was very loud, something was banging and it wasn't inside him. The darkness dispersed and the abyss in which he had found himself was no deeper than his eyelids.

He opened his eyes, and the sound of the last blow on the door hung in the air like an echo. It took him a few seconds to realise that he was inside his own house, that he was alive. Then he got to his feet and ran towards the front door. He slipped on the kitchen floor and almost fell, but managed to grab hold of the lukewarm kitchen stove, and carried on into the hallway.

This time you're not going to get away.

He yanked open the door and yelled, hurled himself backward to avoid the thing that was standing on the porch. A grinning face loomed over him as he fell back on to the hall floor. Still in the grip of blind terror, he scrabbled a metre backwards, dragging the rag rug with him. Then the calmer voice of reason kicked in, plucking at the fear and beginning to unravel it.

It's only the GB-man. He can't do you any harm.

The plastic figure's violent swinging slowed down. Anders lay on the hall floor looking at it. His senses were returning, and he could hear two things: some kind of siren from down in the village, and the sound of a moped engine accelerating up the hill then fading into the distance. He could also hear a faint rattling, and Anders realised it was a platform moped.

The GB-man was still standing there staring at him, and Anders couldn't make himself get up. If he moved, it would leap on him. In order to break the spell, he looked away from the GB-man's hypnotic gaze and allowed his head to fall back and hit the floor. He stared up at the ceiling.

It's nothing to be afraid of. Stop it. It's…a plastic doll produced as a marketing tool. Stop it.

It made no difference. It was as if he were two people. Or like Donald Duck, with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each giving conflicting comments and advice. He couldn't get himself together.

‘Go away you stupid ghost, you don't exist.'

What was that? Alfie Atkins, that's what. When he's going to go down into the cellar and he's scared of ghosts. That's what his daddy taught him to say. It had been one of Maja's favourite tapes. Anders raised his head. The GB-man was still standing there, and had completely stopped moving now.

‘Go away you stupid ghost, you don't exist.'

The siren down in the village fell silent. He could no longer hear the moped's engine. Anders drew his legs under him and stood up. He pulled himself together and went over to the GB-man, gazing out into the darkness in vain. There was nothing to see.

Who put it there?

The same person who rode off on the moped, obviously. But who?

Despite the fact that the palms of his hands were saying
No
because they were terrified of touching it, Anders managed to make himself grab hold of the GB-man's sharp plastic edges and heave the thing down off the porch. The cement block on which it stood was unexpectedly heavy, and he only managed to drag it about a metre along the lawn before he had to let go. The GB-man swung back and forth a few times, then settled in its new spot. It was still staring at him.

Ought to smash it up.

He considered going to fetch the axe, but it was as dark over by the woodshed as it had been in his dream, and besides…
the GB-man might take his revenge.

He tried moving the figure a quarter turn to the side, but that didn't help. It was looking at him out of the corner of its eye.

Who? Who knew?

The person who had placed the figure on his porch had done it to frighten him, and who could possibly know that he was scared of the GB-man? Wrong. That he had
become
scared of the GB-man. Who?

The same person who's watching me.

The GB-man looked at him. Anders went and got a black plastic sack, which he pulled over the figure and tucked under the cement block. The sack rustled faintly in the wind, and to anyone else the figure probably looked even more unpleasant now. But it had stopped looking. He had shut off its eyes.

‘I am not afraid.'

He said it out loud into the darkness. He said it again. Beneath the plastic the GB-man whispered:
You haven't even got the nerve to go and fetch the axe. But no, you're quite right. You're brave and strong. Always.

Anders got angry. He went back into the hallway, pulled on his jacket, checked that there was still some wine left in the bottle in his pocket, grabbed the torch and went out again. He went and stood in front of the GB-man's indistinct outline beneath the sack, raised the bottle and said, ‘Cheers, you ugly bastard'; he took a long drink, then switched on the torch and set off towards the track.

He wanted to check what the siren had been for. It had sounded a bit like an air-raid siren, but that was hardly likely to be the case.

As long as the Russians haven't come back.

The beam of the torch moved ahead of him along the path and he played with it, throwing it up the trees and down into the ditch, pretending it was an eager little animal investigating its surroundings. Snuffling through the bushes, running through the grass. An eager animal made of light, which no one could catch. To test himself, he switched off the torch.

The October darkness closed around him. He waited for the horror of the dream to seize him, but it didn't come. He listened to the sound of his own breathing. He wasn't under water. Nothing was chasing him. He tipped his head back and saw that the sky was full of stars.

‘It's fine,' he said. ‘There's no danger.'

He switched the torch back on and set off once more. He pulled out the bottle and had another drink to celebrate. His body was still a little dehydrated following the day's hard work, and his muscles were aching, so he took another swig. The bottle was almost empty.

The street lamps started by the ramblers' hostel. A light mist lay in the air and the glow of the lamps had taken hold, forming hovering enclosures of light around themselves. He switched off the torch and looked along the row of lights. It was reassuring. It led between people's houses and told him that nothing bad could happen, despite the autumn darkness and dampness.

The hostel lay in silence and darkness. He remembered when he was little he used to feel sorry for the people who had to live there. Those who didn't have a proper house. Even if the hostel was quite a stylish building, there were just so
many
of them who came to stay there. The ramblers. They would arrive by boat and stay for a day or two, then they would be off again, presumably to the next hostel.

But there's someone sitting there.

Anders switched on the torch and shone it on the hostel steps. There was indeed someone sitting there, the head drooping towards the knees. Anders swept the beam of the torch to either side to check if there was a moped nearby. There wasn't. But still he approached carefully.

‘Hello? Are you all right?'

The woman raised her head, and at first Anders didn't recognise Elin. Her face had altered even more since he last saw her, it had become…older. She screwed her eyes up against the light and pulled back, as if she were afraid. Anders turned the torch on to his own face.

‘It's me, Anders. What's happened?'

He directed the beam of the torch a metre to the right of Elin to avoid dazzling her, and saw that she had relaxed. He went over and sat down on the step below her, then switched off the torch.

Elin was hunched over, her arms tightly wrapped around her knees. He placed a hand on her shin, and she was trembling. ‘What's the matter?'

Elin's hand seized his and held it tight. ‘Anders. Henrik and Björn have burned down my house.'

‘No,' he said. ‘No, Elin. They're dead.'

Elin's head was moving slowly back and forth. ‘I saw them. On that fucking platform moped. They burned down my house.'

Anders closed his mouth around the words he had been about to say.

The platform moped.

But then there were lots of platform mopeds on Domarö. Practically every other person had one. That didn't prove anything. On the other hand: the GB-man. Henrik and Björn's favourite hobby had been moving stuff around. Taking someone's water butt and putting it in a garden on the other side of the island, or sneaking into someone's woodshed, stealing the chainsaw and putting it in the neighbour's woodshed.

It all made sense. But there was a major problem with this line of reasoning.

‘But they drowned. Fifteen years ago. Didn't they?'

Elin shook her head. ‘They didn't drown. They disappeared.'

Hubba and Bubba

Every gang has them. The ones who don't fit in. Maybe at one stage they tried to belong properly, but after a while they realise it's never going to work and they begin to work on their outsider status, making it a badge of honour.

They.
They can count themselves lucky if there are two of them. Usually it's just the one. They are not necessarily relentlessly victimised or bullied. Sometimes, yes; but often their role is to be the one against whom the gang measures itself, so to speak. The gang is a gang by
not
being the outsider.

These individuals are tolerated for that very reason. As a yardstick, or as an audience. It's often a sad story. If a gang is a royal court, then this person is its fool— thrown a few crumbs of friendship or temptation occasionally so it will jingle its bells or say something stupid that can be brought up later. Over and over again.

Such is the role of the fool. It is disagreeable, but can work quite well as long as the quasi-outcast is aware of his limits. It is when he tries to overstep them that tragedy strikes and everything goes wrong.

So there were the two of them, Henrik and Björn.

Unlike the rest of the gang, they were the children of parents who lived on the island permanently. Björn's father was a carpenter who built jetties, and his mother worked in geriatric care. Henrik lived alone with his mother, and it wasn't clear what she actually did.