Gerlof was silent.
“I’m switching the tape recorder on now. Okay?” said Tilda.
“What about from the sea?” said Gerlof.
“What?”
“If someone came along the coast in a boat and moored by the jetty on Eel Point,” said Gerlof. “Then there wouldn’t be any footprints in the sand.”
Tilda sighed. “Okay, so I’d better start looking for a boat, then.” Tilda looked at him and asked, “Gerlof, are you finding these recordings difficult?”
Gerlof hesitated.
“I find it a bit difficult to talk about relatives who have died,” he said eventually. “It feels as if they’re sitting and listening in the walls.”
“I think they’d be proud.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Gerlof. “I suppose it depends what I’m saying about them.”
“It’s mostly Grandfather I want to talk about,” said Tilda.
“I know.” Gerlof nodded seriously. “But he might be listening too.”
“Was he hard work as an older brother, Ragnar?”
Gerlof didn’t speak for a few seconds.
“He had his moments. He had a long memory. If he felt someone had cheated him, he would never do business with that person again… He never forgot an injustice.”
“I don’t remember him,” said Tilda. “Dad hardly remembers him either. At any rate, he never talked about him.”
Silence once again.
“Ragnar froze to death in a winter storm,” Gerlof went on. “The body was found on the shore to the south of his cottage. Did your dad tell you that?”
“Oh yes, he was the one who found Grandfather. He was going out fishing, wasn’t he? That’s what Dad said.”
“He’d been checking his nets on the seabed that day,” said Gerlof, “and then when the wind got up he had gone ashore at Eel Point. He was the watchman, after all, and people had seen him out by the lighthouses. The boat must have broken up in the waves, because Ragnar walked home along the shore… and then the blizzard came. Ragnar died in the snow.”
“Nobody is dead until they are warm and dead,” said Tilda. “People have been found frozen stiff and with no pulse in snowdrifts, but they’ve come back to life when they’ve been brought into the warmth.”
“Who told you that?”
“Martin.”
“Martin? Who’s that?”
“My… boyfriend,” said Tilda.
She immediately regretted using that word. Martin would not have liked being described as her boyfriend.
“So you’ve got a boyfriend?”
“Yes… or whatever you want to call it.”
“I should think ‘boyfriend’ will do perfectly well. What’s his surname?”
“His name is Martin Ahlquist.”
“Nice,” said Gerlof. “Does he live here on the island, your Martin?”
“He lives in Vaxjo. He’s a teacher.”
“But perhaps he’ll come and visit you sometimes.”
“I hope so. He has talked about it.”
“Nice.” Gerlof smiled. “You look as if you’re in love.”
“Do I?”
“Your face lights up when we talk about Martin; it’s lovely.”
He smiled encouragingly across the table, and Tilda smiled back.
Everything seemed so simple when she was sitting here with Gerlof talking about Martin, not complicated at all.
8
Livia fell asleep each night with Katrine’s red woolen sweater beside her in the bed, and Joakim lay with her nightgown under his pillow. It gave him a feeling of calmness.
Life at Eel Point went on, at half speed. The children had to be taken into Marnas and picked up each weekday, and Joakim took care of that job. In between he was alone at the manor for seven hours, but there was no peace. The funeral director called him several times with different questions before the funeral, and he had to contact banks and various companies to get Katrine’s name removed from their records. Relatives got in touch, both Katrine’s and Joakim’s, and friends from Stockholm sent flowers. Several of them wanted to come to the funeral.
What Joakim really wanted was to unplug all the telephones and lock himself in at Eel Point. Shut down.
Of course, there was a huge amount of renovation to be done inside the house, and in the garden and to the outside
of the house-but all he really wanted to do was to lie in bed, breathe in the scent of Katrine’s clothes, and stare up at the white ceiling.
And then there was the police. If he had been able to find the strength, he would have spoken to them to find out who was responsible for internal investigations, if there was such a person-but he just couldn’t do it.
The only one who got in touch from that particular authority was the young local policewoman from Marnas, Tilda Davidsson.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am very sorry.”
She didn’t ask how he was feeling, just kept on apologizing for the mix-up over the names. The wrong name was on the note she was reading from, she said-it was a misunderstanding.
A misunderstanding? Joakim had come home to console his wife, but had found her dead.
He listened to Davidsson in silence, answered in monosyllables and asked no follow-up questions. The conversation was a short one.
When it was over, he sat down at the family computer and wrote a letter to
He hadn’t expected anyone in the police to accept responsibility after that either, and he wasn’t disappointed.
Two days later he met Ake Hogstrom, the priest in Marnas who was to bury his wife.
“How are you sleeping?” the priest asked over coffee after they had gone through the ceremony one last time.
“Fine,” Joakim replied.
He tried to remember what they had decided. They had called the cantor to choose which hymns were to be played, he remembered that, but he’d already forgotten what they’d decided on.
The parish priest from Marnas was in his fifties, with a gentle smile, a little beard, a black jacket, and a gray polo-neck sweater. The walls in his study at the vicarage were covered with shelves full of books of all kinds, and on the desk stood a picture of the priest holding a gleaming perch up to the camera.
“The light from the lighthouse doesn’t disturb you?” he asked.
