Harbour (39 page)

When he pushed down the handle, the door was barricaded from the inside. But it had been done badly, and the chair that had been placed behind the door fell over when he pushed.

Elin was sitting in the bed, leaning against the bedpost. She had wrapped the quilt around her so that only her head was sticking up. The sheet at the foot of the bed was streaked with blood and covered in lumps of mud.

‘Elin?'

Her eyes were staring at him in terror. He didn't dare go into the room or switch on the light, because he didn't know how she would react. He became aware of the axe in his hand, and put it down next to the door. He shone the torch around the room, listened to the fire alarm. He looked at Elin, and a shudder ran through his body.

She's dead. They've killed her and put her here.

‘Elin?' he whispered. ‘Elin, it's Anders. Can you hear me?'

She nodded. A faint, faint nod. He made a gesture,
just hang on
, and turned away. Behind him he heard Elin say, ‘Don't leave me.'

‘I'm just going to make a phone call. I'll be right back.'

He went into the kitchen, switched on the light and rang Anna-Greta's number; he told her Elin was back, and they would deal with everything when they'd had a couple of hours' sleep. When Anna-Greta had hung up, Anders stood with the receiver in his hand, staring at the grubby tape on the table.

The music you play, would you say it was…just between ourselves… cheerful music?

He wanted to ring somewhere and ask for help. He wanted to ring Kalle Sändare. Sit at the kitchen table with the phone pressed to his ear listening to Kalle's gentle Gothenburg accent, like balm to the soul, talking about little things and laughing from time to time.

How can the world be like this? How can what happened tonight exist at the same time as Kalle Sändare exists?

He put the phone down and felt a strange pain in his chest. It wasn't Kalle Sändare he missed, but his father. Kalle was just a simpler and more manageable substitute. Because they had had so much fun together with Kalle, Kalle had come to mean Dad, but without the difficult associations.

It was really his father he wanted to talk to. The sense of loss that he had refused to recognise came crawling up through his chest, reaching for his heart with its long claws. He pushed it back and went into the bedroom.

Elin was sitting just as he had left her. Cautiously he sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. ‘Shall I put the light on?'

Elin shook her head. The light from the kitchen was enough for him to be able to see her face. In the half-light it was even more like Elsa's. Elin had had quite a prominent chin. It was gone now, running on from her throat just like Elsa's.

How did they do it? They must have…smashed her legs.

His eyes moved to the signs of blood and mud at the foot of the bed. ‘We need to…get you bandaged up.'

Elin pulled the quilt more tightly around her. ‘No. I don't want to.'

Anders didn't have the strength to insist. It was as if he had an anchor chain around his neck. His head kept trying to droop, and all he wanted was to go to bed. From time to time flashes of white shot through his eyes, and he didn't know if it was just tiredness, or if the wormwood really had poisoned his exhausted body.

‘There's something wrong with me,' whispered Elin. ‘I'm insane, I ought to kill myself.'

Anders sat there with his elbows on his knees, staring at the wardrobe. He didn't know what was best: to tell or not to tell. In the end he sought refuge in one simple sentence:
It's better to know.
He'd heard it in the context of illness, and didn't know if it was appropriate here, but he hadn't the energy to work it out.

‘Elin,' he said. ‘Somebody is making you do all this. All these operations. The things you do at night. Your dreams. They're not yours.'

In the silence that followed Anders noticed that the fire alarm had stopped, he didn't know how long ago. He could hear Elin breathing. The sound of his own poisoned blood in his ears.

‘Whose are they then?' she asked.

‘Someone else's. Another woman. She's inside you.'

‘How come?'

‘I don't know. But she lived at Kattudden before your house was built. She wants revenge, and she's using you.' Anders hesitated, then added, ‘She looked exactly the way you do now. She's the one who's made you…recreate her through all this surgery.'

If Anders had had the energy to be surprised, he would have been surprised by what happened next. Elin exhaled, a long, deep sigh, and her body slumped, relaxed. She nodded slowly and said, ‘I knew it. Deep down.'

Anders put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. The white flashes flared up and disappeared.

It's better to know. It's better…

He must have fallen asleep for a few seconds, because he only woke up when he was about to fall over sideways. Elin said quietly, ‘Go to bed.'

Anders stood up, took one step and collapsed on Maja's bed. He laid his head on the pillow, scrabbled for the quilt and managed to pull it over him. As he was falling asleep he heard Elin say, ‘Thank you. For coming after me. For helping me.'

He parted his lips to answer, but before the words had time to emerge he was asleep again.

A child was screaming. A single long, wailing note.

Screaming is the wrong word, wailing is the wrong word. Child is the wrong word. It was the monotone sound of pure fear that a human being can produce when it is trapped in a corner, and the thing it is most afraid of in all the world is approaching inexorably. The tongue is not used, the lips are not used, it is only air being forced out of the lungs and resonating through a closed-up throat. A single note, the primeval note that quivers through the breastbone as death approaches.

Anders woke up and saw everything through a fog. The room was still dark, and the sound was coming from the big bed. It was so horrible that he was terrified as well. He curled up inside himself, pulled the quilt more tightly around him. The sound continued to pour out of Elin. Something was frightening her out of her wits.

He heard steps on the porch, then someone was banging on the door. Three hard, sharp blows. Elin's long drawn-out scream became a little louder and penetrated Anders' body like a vibration, transmitted itself to him and made him start shaking.

Something sensible within him stared at the axe propped up by the door, told him he ought to dash over and grab it, but blind fear anchored his body to the bed.

It's the GB-man. The GB-man is coming.

The outside door was smashed open and Anders pulled the quilt over his head. His teeth were chattering and he pulled his feet up, not one tiny part of him must be visible outside the quilt.

The axe! Get the axe!

Heavy steps moved through the hallway, but he was incapable of movement. Through a tiny gap in his cocoon he looked at the axe and his will reached out for it, but his body refused. Elin's song of horror went up another notch and Anders' buttocks suddenly felt warm as he shat himself.

Steps through the living room and then Henrik's voice, ‘Hellooo? Anyone home?'

Do something! Do something!

He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. Silence fell. The footsteps stopped as well. There was the stench of excrement under the quilt. Despite the fact that he didn't want to, he opened his eyes again and peeped out through the gap.

Henrik and Björn were standing in the room. Henrik had his knife in his hand, Björn was holding a bucket, a white plastic bucket full of water.

I'm dreaming. This isn't real. If it were real I'd do something.

Like a child Anders pinched his arm hard so that he would wake up, but Henrik and Björn were still standing there. They were facing the big bed, from which Elin's note of terror continued to pour out into the room.

Anders stayed put as they dragged Elin out of the bed and said, ‘Sorry, darling, this can't go on any longer. You know what they say about pretty girls, don't you? They make graves.'

He bit his knuckles as they dragged her into the middle of the floor and forced her head down into the plastic bucket. Björn grasped her legs while Henrik held the back of her neck in an iron grip, pushing her head further down into the bucket so that the water surged over the sides. Her legs jerked, but Björn held her ankles firmly, pressing them against the floor.

A muffled scream could be heard from the bucket and bubbles rose up, making the water splash on to the floor. Elin's body suddenly arched, then slumped and lay still. Henrik wound her hair around his hand and yanked her head up out of the bucket. He looked at her face and said regretfully, ‘Fifteen minutes…I don't think I would have said no,' at which point he let go. Elin's face hit the floor with a wet crunch.

As if on a given signal they turned towards the little bed. Anders curled up into a tighter ball and gnawed the skin off his knuckles. ‘Please,' he whimpered. ‘Please. Don't hurt me. I'm so little.'

Henrik walked over to him and ripped off the quilt. ‘Little children, how they suffer.' He raised his eyebrows as if he were pleased with himself, and clicked his fingers. ‘That's just perfect, isn't it?'

He grabbed hold of Anders' shoulder, but withdrew his hand as if he'd had a shock. An expression of revulsion distorted his face.

‘What's the matter?' asked Björn. ‘He's shat himself, has he?'

Henrik contemplated Anders as he lay there with the only weapon he had left: his pleading eyes. Henrik gazed into them as if he were searching for something. Björn came over to the bed and put the bucket down. There was something in it, something that was making the small amount of water that was left move around. Something invisible.

Björn looked at Henrik and said, ‘Is he hidden?'

Henrik nodded and squatted down by the bed. Anders exhaled in a trembling, panting breath, and Henrik looked as if he was about to throw up when the smell hit his face. Without speaking to Anders, he said, ‘So how did you find out?'

‘What shall we do?' asked Björn.

‘Nothing we can do,' said Henrik. ‘Just at the moment.'

He glanced down into the bucket and seemed happy with what he saw. Something was whirling around down there, splashing about. Henrik stood up, towering over Anders. He leaned down and whispered in his ear, ‘You can't be here either, little Maja. We'll take you too, in time.'

Björn picked up the bucket and they left the room. Anders heard their footsteps moving through the living room and the hallway. Then the outside door closed. He lay there motionless, staring at Elin's lifeless body on the floor, the strands of her wet hair radiating out from her head like black sunbeams.

His fear of the GB-man. The way he'd recited words from Alfie Atkins, the fact that he had started making bead pictures, that all he wanted to do was lie in her bed reading about Bamse. I'm so little.

He finally understood what it meant:
Carry me.

2
Possessed

As long as the little boat can sail

As long as the heart can beat

As long as the sun sparkles

On the blue billows

E
VERT
T
AUBE
—A
S LONG AS THE LITTLE BOAT CAN SAIL

Bodies in the water

Beware of the sea, beware of the sea

The sea is so big, the sea is so big…

Taking care of business

The dawn came creeping behind the eastern islands and a glimpse of the sun was just appearing between the windblown pine trees on Botskär. Anders was standing right on the end of Simon's jetty, squinting into the approaching light. Despite his scarf and padded jacket he was frozen, and couldn't stop his body from shaking. He jumped as Simon dropped a chain in the boat behind his back. He tried to find a point of warmth inside himself, tried to find Maja. There was nothing there, and he felt like the sloughed-off skin of a human being. He turned around.

The chain lay in a heap in the prow of Simon's boat. In the stern lay Elin. He couldn't remember why they had decided to wrap her in two black plastic sacks with parcel tape wound around them. He wished they hadn't done that, would have preferred her empty, staring eyes to the person-shaped package on the deck. It looked horrible, and he didn't want to go anywhere near it. ‘Are we really going to do this?'

‘Yes,' said Simon. ‘I think it's the only thing we can do.'

With half-dried excrement smeared over his legs, Anders had crept to the telephone and called Simon. Simon had come, placed a tea towel over Elin's face and helped Anders to wash himself. Then they had sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, staring out of the window until a lone pink cloud drifted across the sky, a starting flag for the new day.

There were two possible courses of action.

Nobody would believe that two dead teenagers had turned up and drowned Elin in a bucket. On the other hand, as far as everybody was concerned, there had been no sign of Elin since the fire.

Therefore, one possibility was to come up with a different story: a story that would be closely scrutinised under interrogation, since this was a murder. Would Anders be able to stick to a made-up story when the police started questioning him? Probably not.

Which left the other possibility. To get rid of Elin and pretend it had never happened.

After Simon had argued back and forth for some time, mostly with himself, they agreed that this was the lesser of two evils.

Anders took the torch and went out to the shed to fetch a couple of plastic sacks. Once inside he stopped, and his knees gave way. He had a bowling ball stuck in the middle of his chest. A black, shining sphere of guilt. He had done nothing when they were murdering Elin, he had just stayed in his bed and watched.

‘It's not my fault,' he whispered.