Wexford 19 - The Babes In The Woods (39 page)

Ice and snow were to be expected, a kind of Ultima Thule on the northern edge of the world. He supposed he was lucky to be sent. Police officers normally looked on it as a perk to be sent abroad - only he was ungrateful enough to wish that, in March, it could have been Italy or Greece. Maybe where Burden would be going next day on his fortnight’s leave, the south of Spain.

   But it was Sweden. He had managed, at last, to speak to Philip Trent. And after one short phone conversation he knew, in Vine’s words, that he had ‘a right one here’. The old man spoke much the same kind of English as Mr Shand-Gibb, former owner of Passingham Hall, but Trent’s had a faintly alien intonation to it, not an accent - he was plainly a native English speaker - but the slight lilt that comes from habitually speaking a Scandinavian language. He admitted, without shame or apparent guilt of any kind, that Giles Dade was staying with him in his house in Fjardingen, a district of Uppsala. A quarter or ‘farthing’ in mediaeval times, he explained kindly, though he hadn’t been asked, and Wexford thought of The Lord of the Rings and hobbit country where counties were similarly named.

   ‘Oh, yes, Mr Wexford, he’s been here since early December. We spent a pleasant Christmas together. A nice boy. Pity about the fanaticism but I don’t think we shall hear much more of it.’

   Indeed? ‘He must he fetched home, Professor Trent.’

   An efficient young woman who spoke perfect English had revealed Trent’s rank to him and that be formerly held the Chair of Austro-Asiatic Languages (whatever they might be) at the University of Uppsala and that now, although well past the retirement age of sixty-five, he retained his own office for research purposes at the university as one of its distinguished former faculty members.

   ‘I am not up to travelling, as you will appreciate. Besides, I am too busy, I have my research to do here. Investigation of Khmer, Pear and Stieng, for instance, is still in its infancy, a situation not helpful to linguisticians and brought about by the warfare which raged for such an extended period over Cambodia.’ He spoke as if the only consequence of that war was its effect on the languages spoken by the people. ‘Perhaps you could send someone?’

   ‘I thought of coming over myself,’ said Wexford tentatively.

   ‘Did you? We’re enjoying rather pleasant weather at present. Cool and fresh. I suggest you put up at the Hotel Linne. It enjoys very attractive views across the Linnaean gardens.’

   When he had rung off Wexford looked up Austro Asiatic Languages in the encyclopaedia and found there were dozens if not hundreds of them, mostly spoken in south-east Asia and eastern India. He wasn’t much wiser, though he managed to connect ‘Khmer’ with the Khmer Rouge. The section on Uppsala was more rewarding. Not only the botanist Linnaeus came from there, but also Celsius, the temperature man, Ingmar Bergman and Dag Hammarskjold, second secretary-general of the United Nations, while Strindberg had attended Trent’s university. He wondered what Trent had meant by ‘rather pleasant weather’. At least, it wouldn’t be raining. . .

   At Heathrow he went into a bookshop and searched the shelves for something to read on the flight. A guide to Sweden he already had. Besides, he wasn’t looking for a travel book but anything, fiction or non-fiction, which might spontaneously take his fancy. Much to his surprise, among the ‘classics’, he found a little slender book he had never before heard of: A Short Residence In Sweden, Norway and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft. Confessing to himself that he had never come across any work by Mary Shel1ey’s mother apart from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, he bought it.

   The flight went at five. It was a mild day, very damp and misty, though no rain had fallen since the previous evening, but Wexford had rooted out his winter coat, a very old tweed affair, unworn for several years and superseded by raincoats. He laid it across his lap, settled down in his seat and opened his book. Unfortunately, Mary Wollstonecraft had spent more time in Norway and Denmark than in Sweden and while in that country had visited no more than Gothenburg and the extreme west. Wexford’s hope that she might have given him a picture of Uppsala in the last years of the eighteenth century faded fast. It would, anyway, be very different today, as would the diet of smoked meat and salt fish denounced by the author, and the pallid, heavy appearance of the people. Certainly the poverty would be past and gone but the ‘degree of politeness in their address’ might, he hoped, remain.

   He had decided to proceed straight to the Hotel Linné and meet Giles and Professor Trent first thing next morning. By now the Uppsala police knew all about Giles and the possibility of further spiriting him away was gone. Wexford had written ‘Hotel Linné, Uppsala’ on a piece of paper but the taxi driver at Arlanda Airport spoke enough English to understand his directions.

   It was dark. The drive took them along a wide, straight road through what seemed to be forests of fir and birch. The houses he saw, or made out through the fairly well-lit darkness, looked modern, uniform in materials - red-painted weatherboarding, leaded roof - if varied in design. Then the lights of the city in the distance showed him with dramatic impact a huge cathedral standing on an eminence, a black silhouette, its twin spires pointing at the jewel-blue starlit sky. In Matilda’s mezzotint it had onion domes. Only in the very old pictures were there Gothic spires. He didn’t understand, unless the images weren’t of Uppsala at all but of some other north-European city.

   A formidable castle on another hill, serene buildings he thought might be baroque, a fast-flowing black river. He got out of the taxi and the driver patiently sorted out his kronor for him. Oddly enough, he felt he could trust the man not to swindle him, something that wouldn’t be true everywhere. Outdoors only briefly, he was chilled to the bone by the bitter cold. But inside the Hotel Linné it was cheeringly warm. Everyone spoke English, everyone was polite, pleasant, efficient. He found himself in an austere room, pale, rather bare but with everything he could possibly need. Boiling hot water gushed out of the taps. He had eaten on the plane and wasn’t hungry now. In some trepidation he followed the hotel’s telephone directions and dialled Philip Trent’s number. Instead of a flood of Swedish, Trent’s voice said, ‘Hello?’

   Wexford told him he had arrived, would see him in the morning at nine thirty, according to their prior arrangement. Trent, who conformed uncomfortably to clichéd images of the absent-minded professor, so much so that his manner seemed assumed, had apparently for gotten who he was. Wexford wouldn’t have been surprised to have been greeted in Wa, Tin or Ho, some of the Austro-Asiatic languages he had discovered existed. But Trent, saying vaguely that he must ‘come back to earth’, agreed that nine thirty ‘would do’. Coffee was generally available at that time. He managed to imply that he was living in a restaurant.

   ‘My house is on the corner of Ostraagatan and Gamla Torget. That is “East Street” and “Old Square” to you. More or less.’ That was more or less the meaning or was the house more or less there? ‘It’s on the river. You can ask the hotel for a plan.’

   Philip Trent sounded profoundly uninterested in his visit. Wexford had a long hot shower and went to bed. But the street outside was noisier than he had expected. Just as the place was clean and cold, austere and not very populous, so he had anticipated utter silence. Instead, the voices of young people and their music reached him, the sound of something being kicked into the gutter, a motor bike noisily started up, and he remembered that this was a university city, Sweden’s oldest, its Oxford, and one of the oldest in Europe, but nevertheless full of modern youth. He sat up in bed reading Mary Wollstonecraft on the ease of Swedish divorce and the superiority of the little towns to similar places in Wales and western France. Eventually quiet came and he slept.

   The morning was bright and cold. But where was the snow? ‘We haven’t had much for many years,’ said a multilingual girl serving breakfast, or rather, directing guests to the buffet tables. ‘Like all the world, we are affected with global warming.’ She added severely, looking into Wexford’s eyes, Are you knowing Sweden has the best environmental record in the earth?’

   Humbly, he said he was glad to hear it. She returned to his table with a plan of the city she had procured for him from reception. ‘There. Fjardingen. Not very large, all things are very easy for you to find.’

   It was early still. He went out into the ‘Farthing’ and found himself in a place the like of which he had never seen before. It wasn’t that it lacked the modern appurtenances of the west. Far from it. He suddenly realised how odd it was, how refreshing in more senses than one, to see the latest models of cars, an Internet café, a CD shop, fashionably dressed women, a smart policeman directing traffic, yet at the same time smell pure crystalline air, unpolluted and clean. The sky was a pale sharp blue, scrawled over with wind-torn shreds of cloud. Some of the buildings were modern but most eighteenth-century, yellow and white and sepia, Swedish baroque. They would already have been here if Mary Wollstonecraft had passed this way. Not many cars were about, not many people. Walking towards the Linnaean gardens, he recalled that the entire population of this large country was only eight million, less than three million in Wollstonecraft’s time.

   He really only wanted to step into the gardens or look into them over the wall because the night before he had started out he had quickly read up on Linnaeus and his earth-wandering journeys to find new species. It wasn’t the best time of the year unless you were a plant enthusiast and expert, everything was still asleep, waiting for a later spring than England enjoyed. He thought of his own poor garden, swamped by unnatural rains. If it was true that this nation had the world’s best environmental record, would their thoughtful prudence save them from coming catastrophes?

   It was nine o’clock. He heard the chimes begin and, as if it were immediately above him, the deep-throated tolling of a clock striking the hour. Quickening his pace, he began to walk in the direction of that sound and, as buildings opened and parted to afford him a panorama, saw the great cathedral standing before him on an eminence. A line of prose came back to him, he had read it years ago, he couldn’t remember when or where, but it was from the writings of Hans Andersen who, visiting this city; spoke of the cathedral ‘lifting its stone arms to heaven’. It was exactly like that, he thought, as the final stroke of nine died away. The Domkyrka was crimson and grey, clerical grey, dark and austere, huge, formidable and as unlike any cathedral he knew as could be imagined. Only its straight lines and pointed arches recalled English Gothic. It made cathedrals at home look cosy; Below and beside it hung the buildings of the university, Odins lund and high above, the vast bastion of the castle with its two cylinder towers capped in round lids of lead. He was looking at the picture Matilda Carrish had hung on her staircase, even the sky was the same, pale, ruffled, a north-edge-of-the-world backdrop, but the cathedral’s spires in her mezzotint had been onion domes. . .

   Too early yet to make his way to the man who had been her husband. He came to a modem, rather ugly street of the kind of shops he most hated in English cities, the kind of architecture everyone dislikes but which goes on being used; then, turning his back on it, to the river. Called the Fyris, it scurried along to divide the town. Ice-cold and glittering dark-blue its little waves looked as they rushed and tumbled towards the bridge and the next bridge and the next. Standing on this one, he was glad of his old tweed coat and he noticed everyone was more warmly wrapped than they would have been in Kingsmarkham. Scarves and hats and boots protected them from the knife-blade wind and the icy bite of the air. He watched his own breath make a beam of mist.

   It would be pleasant walking along this river bank in summer, past the little shops and cafés, watching the boats. When would summer come? May or June, he supposed. On the western side he walked to the next bridge and, looking across the river, realised he had reached his destination. According to the map, that was Gamla Torget on the other side and the river bank street that ran into it, Ostraagatan. So the ochre-coloured house, three floors high, its plain windows in its plain façade each with its pair of useful shutters, must be Trent’s. The shutters were open now, the panes of glass gleaming in the thin sunlight. Like them, the front door was painted white. No Swedish architect, he thought, had wasted time or money on spurious house adornment, and the result was peaceful, calming, serene, if a little stark. As the cathedral clock chimed the half-hour, he crossed the bridge and rang Professor Trent’s doorbell.

   Trent himself would answer it, he had supposed, or whatever might be this cool and progressive nation’s idea of a servant, the maker of nine-thirty coffee per haps, a young girl rather like the severe waitress at the Linné. Very unexpected was to come face-to-face with a boy of sixteen, dark, extremely tall, but with the almost fragile thinness of adolescence.

   ‘Philip said I should let you in,’ Giles Dade said. ‘I mean he said I should and not anyone else.’

The warmth he had come to expect but not the eighteenth-century interior and early-Victorian furniture, white and blue and gleaming gilt Everything awesomely and most unacademically clean. The boy hadn’t spoken again. He was a good-looking boy with regular features, dark-blue eyes and luxuriant dark hair, which Wexford fancied had been left to grow for three months, perhaps the first time such laxness had been permitted. He showed Wexford into a living room that spanned the ground floor of the house. Almost the first things he noticed were the books in a bookcase like the one Matilda had and with more pictures of a tailless cat on their jackets. Pelle Svanslös, he read on a spine, not attempting to pronounce it. More pale delicate furniture, a ceiling-high stove in one corner encased in white and gold porcelain tiles, and a view of the river from the front windows and of a small bare garden at the back.