the running, lukewarm water with his face upturned. From time to time he drank a couple of gulps. The blood that had flowed out of his body must be replaced. When the water began to cool he soaped himself and carefully cleaned the gash in his thigh.
He closed his eyes and moved his soapy fingers to the wound in his throat. The skin was split in a gash half a centimetre wide, and the flesh was sore when he touched it. He could feel his pulse beneath his fingertips. The artery had repaired itself during the night, but was almost exposed in the absence of protective skin. He cleaned the area carefully and rinsed it with clean water, which was now almost cold.
He stood there until the water was ice cold, letting it sluice over his face, and drank and drank. He turned off the shower and when he had rubbed and patted himself dry with a hand towel, he found that the white spots had disappeared, that he could see clearly.
The bathroom mirror had steamed up; he cleared a patch with his hand and inspected the wound in his throat. It didn't look too bad, but he could see the artery moving beneath the connective tissue like a small fish in a net. He found a couple of pressure bandages and some surgical tape, and dressed his wounds as well as he could. His throat really needed stitches, but to go all the way to Norrtalje, wait in the
Emergency Department, try to explain to a doctor…it just wasn't going to happen.
And besides…
When he was fighting with Henrik and Bjorn, and afterwards when he was wading through the water to get into the boat, he had acquired a kind of knowledge. It could be down to his own traumatised state, but he didn't think so, and Simon had said something along the same lines: it was weakened.
There was a weakness in the sea. That was why Sigrid had floated ashore, and that was why some element of the people who had disappeared had managed to escape and penetrate the wells. There was a tiredness, a lack of attention, and he intended to make the most of it. If he could. If it was there at all.
He walked through the hallway naked, picked the snowsuit up off the floor and continued into the bedroom. The cold was giving him goose bumps, and he put on some clean clothes out of the suitcase he had brought from the city. Underwear, a pair of black corduroy trousers and a blue and white checked shirt. In the wardrobe he found his father's thick green woolly jumper, and pulled it carefully over his head. The polo neck made his throat itch, but it was good because it held the dressing in place.
He felt as if he were getting dressed up, smartening himsell up lot his own execution, and it was a good feeling. That was the point lie had reached. He ought to have cleaned the house as well, left it tidy, but he had neither the time nor the energy.
He examined Maja's snowsuit and decided that the stains wouldn't come off without washing it, and he had no time lot that either. He wound it around his stomach and managed to knot the sleeves and tuck in the legs so that it ended up like a very large waist bag.
He went into the hallway and picked up Simon's jacket. His fingers found the matchbox, half hidden in the torn lining of the pocket. He took it into the kitchen, sat down at the table and looked out of the window.
Evidently he had made the boat fast after all, at least at the stern end. The prow was facing away from the jetty at a right angle and the engine was scraping against the stonework, but the sea was almost dead calm, and there was nothing to worry about. Beyond the jetty, out in the bay he could see the lighthouse on Gavasten, a white dot in the morning light. A reflector suddenly glinted like a beckoning flash.
Spiritus was moving slowly around the sides of the box when Anders opened it and let a gob of saliva fall. When he tried to push the box shut, the skin wrinkled, because the insect had grown so fat there wasn't really enough room any more.
He could poke it with his finger and push it in, but it was too much. After all, it had saved his life the previous night. In the junk drawer he found a box of matches for lighting the fire, which was slightly bigger. He tipped the matches out and moved Spiritus into the bigger box.
Anders couldn't tell whether the insect was happier in its new prison, but at least he could close the box without resistance. He stood up and put the new box in his trouser pocket.
He should have been hungry, but he wasn't. It was as if his stomach had solidified around its own emptiness, and was unwilling to let in any food. And that was fine. In any case, he couldn't begin to imagine what he might eat.
He filled a glass with water from the kitchen tap and drank it, cheers, sweetheart, filled it up again. And again. His stomach, already stiff, contracted around the cold liquid.
On the worktop stood the bottle of wormwood. Without weighing up the pros and cons, Anders raised it to his lips and took a couple of deep swigs. His mouth tasted like shit and the dizziness went straight to his head, making him sway where he was standing.
With his back to the sink, he slid giggling to the floor. When his bottom hit the linoleum with a hard thud, the giggling turned into gasps of laughter. He slapped the palm of his hand on the floor but couldn't stop laughing, he just had to get it out, so he sang in a loud voice:
Still giggling, he staggered into the bedroom and found Bamse. He pushed the bear underneath the knotted sleeve of the snowsuit so that Bamse's head was sticking up above his hip and the short legs were dangling down his left thigh. He patted Bamse's hat, said, 'How lucky I am to have such a friend!', and by leaning on the walls and the furniture, he managed to make his way through the house and on to the porch.
His head cleared slightly once he got out into the fresh air. He rubbed his eyes hard with his knuckles and stopped giggling, blinking in the sunlight. It was a beautiful, calm day, a wonderful autumn day not unlike the winter's day almost two years ago that had brought him to this point.
His legs carried him steadily down towards the jetty. He could see the natural world around him with exaggerated clarity, he could feel the water inside, beneath and in front of him. He was an oversensitive consciousness transported in a fragile body, an infinitely complex organic computer inside a shell of rusty metal.
He loosened the mooring rope and clambered down into the boat, sat down and picked up the fuel can, gave it a shake. The liquid splashed to and fro ominously. He looked up and gazed over towards Gavasten.
He looked at the bubble of air that marked the level of the fuel. It sank to the bottom when he put the can down, and at the same time something sank inside him. The fatalistic calm that had filled his spirit since he got dressed faded in the face of this practical fact: there was no need for him to fill up with fuel, because he wouldn't be coming home.
Slowly, slowly the boat drifted south, while he sat with his arms resting on his knees, staring towards Gavasten. Then he nodded briefly, pumped up the petrol, pulled out the choke and yanked on the starter.
The engine started and he shut down his mind against any questions, engaged the clutch and set off as slowly as possible. Gavasten was gliding towards him across the sea and he was thinking about nothing at all, he just kept his eyes firmly fixed on the lighthouse and watched the distance diminish. When he was about halfway he could see that the birds were still out there. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of little white dots swarmed around the glowing white walls of the lighthouse like moths around a bright light.
With only a few hundred metres to go, the engine coughed. He was running out of fuel, but the strange thing was that the boat seemed to be moving even more slowly. When he had travelled another hundred metres or so, he heard a cracking noise.
Terrified, Anders looked along the sides of the boat, because it sounded as if the old fibreglass were splitting. There was no sign of anything, but the noise grew louder and the boat began to vibrate.
The engine coughed again and when it got going once more it felt as if it were struggling into a headwind. It was roaring for all it was worth, but the boat was barely moving forward. The vibrations became jolts and jerks and the engine began to cough.
'Come on! Come on!'
