Silhouette in Scarlet

Leif came up again, treading water. He slashed at my hand and slipped sideways as Gus struck at him with the oar. Another blurring crimson line crossed the first on the back of my hand. X marks the spot? Half of a double- cross? The specific reference was obscure, but the general meaning was clear. I was now number one on Leif’s hate list, and he wanted me to know it. A slash here and a slash there, weakening, demoralizing – once in the water, I’d be easy prey for a murderous merman.

John rose to his knees. Somehow during the chaos he had managed to strip off shoes and sweater. One vigorous yank pulled most of the buttons off his shirt, and he shrugged out of it as I made an ineffective attempt to grab him. I think he said something, but I’m not sure. He slid over the side, leaving his pants floating on the surface until the water soaked them and they sank, with gruesome slowness.

There was no sound except that distant roaring. The water poured in. Gus was pulling at me, trying to get between me and the sleek fishlike shape that kept leaping and slashing, leaping and slashing. I couldn’t move. Blood poured down my arm and hand, but it wasn’t physical weakness that held me paralyzed, it was superstitious terror. Leif’s monstrous form seemed more, or less, than human, a water demon, an aquatic Bane.

He came up again, right beside me. His face was only inches from mine. His lips were drawn back in a fixed grin and his eyes were flat as brown glass. A ray of feeble sunlight glinted off the knife blade.

The valiant, abused craft finally gave way. But just before the icy water took me, I saw Leif’s grin vanish and a look of mingled fury and disbelief transform his face as he was pulled down into the steel-grey depths.

I swallowed a couple of pints of water before I managed to fight my way back to the surface. Somehow I was not at all surprised to find myself in the solicitous grasp of a total stranger whose face was blackened like Al Jolson’s.

So, after all, I danced the maypole dance with the people of Karlsholm on Midsummer Day.

I wore a dress that had belonged to Gus’s wife, brilliant with embroidery and laced with silver chains. Fortunately for me, she had been a stout, healthy woman, but we had to add a ruffle on the skirt. That was no problem for the housewives of Karlsholm. They’d have embroidered a whole dress if I had let them.

My partner was Erik, the son of Gus’s chauffeur; he steered me through the dance so adeptly that I didn’t screw up the pattern more than five or six times. Gus watched from the sidelines. He occupied the chair of honour, under a bower of green branches. When I glanced in his direction, which I did every time I went around the circle, he smiled and waved. He was trying to help me forget my tragedy. From time to time he addressed a remark to the little bald man beside him. The two of them had struck up quite a friendship.

But I guess I had better recapitulate.

The commando who hauled me out of the lake handed me over to a circle of waiting arms. To my dazed eyes the crowd seemed to number in the hundreds – more commandoes with blackened faces, mingling familiarly with elderly housewives and sedate old gentlemen in their Sunday best and sturdy youths wearing jeans. I fought my way out of a smothering mass of sympathetic faces. ‘Please – let me go back – he’s still out there . . .’ They wouldn’t let me go, they kept crooning at me and holding on. My muscles had gone soggy, so I couldn’t break away, and I couldn’t understand a word of the soft litany, but I knew what they were saying – oh, yes, I knew . . .

After an eon Gus came limping into the throng, pushing people gently aside until we stood face to face. His hair and clothes were soaked. Water trickled down his cheeks.

‘My child,’ he said, and held out his hands.

I don’t make a habit of fainting, but this seemed like a suitable moment for it.

They took Leif out of the water later that evening. I didn’t see him, but I heard people talking. I suppose the citizens of Karlsholm are still talking about him. Beautiful as Baldur, mighty as Thor . . . The water hadn’t damaged him, but there were deep slashes across his arms and chest.

They found no other bodies, though they searched for hours.

I frustrated the good ladies of the village by refusing to stay in bed. Why should I? I felt fine. I had the second-best guestroom in the mayor’s house – the best, despite his protests, was reserved for Gus – and we spent the evening in the mayoral parlour, waiting for the police to arrive. There was enough food to feed a regiment and enough drink to drive us into permanent alcoholism and two dozen people trying to explain what had been going on. The mayor’s wife finally won out, since she combined the loudest voice with the most idiomatic English. I summarize.

‘Mrs Andersson knew something was wrong. It was not like Mr Jonsson to send everyone away, on such short notice, and Mrs Andersson, who has read many detective stories, was sure the little grey man had a pistol under his coat. She saw the bulge. She said nothing and pretended to suspect nothing for fear the grey man would hurt Mr Jonsson. When she came here, with the others, we sat down and tried to think what to do. The police? Ya, the police are very well, but we feared they would attack, with guns and boats, and you would all be murdered. They could do nothing we could not do as well.’

She may have been right about that. Most of the men, and some of the women, had done their military training, and all of them were totally at home in the water. The island had been under observation from the first, by watchers hidden among the trees and by the petrified old gentlemen on the dock. They had seen me come and go, but had never caught a glimpse of Gus, and their anxiety mounted until it was decided they could wait no longer.

The operation had been mounted with typical Swedish thoroughness. The raid was supposed to take place that night, but one of the watchers on the east side of the lake had seen our activities in the pasture. He couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, but he didn’t like the look of things, so the rescuers got ready to move in. Because of the foul weather they didn’t see us till we were close to shore. During the frenzied seconds while Leif had tried to sink us we had been under observation by dozens of horrified eyes. That was the part I found hardest to believe – that the seemingly interminable interlude had happened so fast that the rescuers were unable to react, much less interfere, until it was almost over. I hadn’t even noticed them. I wondered if John had . . .

Mrs Mayor had seen him go over the side. She was one of the few watchers who had the presence of mind to keep her binoculars trained on Leif instead of being distracted by the capsized boat. Her description made the struggle sound like a Norse epic – flailing arms, struggling bodies, foam-lashed water, and the slow spreading stain on the surface . . .

When she got to that point, Gus let out a mammoth cough and stamped on her foot. She shut up, with a guilty look at me. Actually, the spreading bloodstain was probably her own invention. I doubt she could see it from so far away, even though the weather had cleared.

The realization of her tactlessness silenced the poor lady, and her husband had to finish the story.

‘We had our plans made. Ten of our best young men. Knives they took, but no other weapons. The villains must be overpowered in silence. We had one of them, in the cell in the town hall – ’

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘One of whom?’

‘Ya, he came the same day, after Mrs Andersson had told us of the danger, so we were ready for him.’ The mayor beamed. ‘He thought to deceive us. We are not so easily fooled, no. He said he was a friend of the lady’s. Ha! We lock him up, then we also have a hostage. Now, soon, all his criminal friends will join him in the prison.’

I almost hated to ask. ‘What does he look like, this villain?’

‘Oh, a harmless little man in his looks. It is always so with villains, ja? Stout, with a round, smiling face . . .’

I stood up and stretched. I was wearing one of Mrs Mayor’s flannel robes, which went around me twice and barely reached my calves, but I decided against changing. The more pathetic I looked, the easier it would be to calm him.

‘You had better let me see this villain,’ I said.

I don’t know what Schmidt had to complain about. The ‘cell’ in the town hall, which also served as youth centre, cinema, social club, and anything else necessary, was a pleasant room with a comfortable bed and pots of flowers on the windowsills. They had fed him regularly and let him keep his suitcase, which – typically – contained one change of clothing, two ponderous scholarly tomes, and four pornographic novels. But the way that man carried on, you’d have thought he had spent twenty-four hours hanging by his thumbs in a dungeon full of rats.

I let him get it out of his system, and then, as I had expected, he hugged me and told me I looked terrible. ‘Poor girl, what you have been through! But it is your own fault. If you had confided in me . . . I have been so