“It’s possible. I often sit out here.”
It was a vague testimony. Edla Gustafsson’s supervision of the highway was much better than this birdwatcher’s monitoring of the Baltic.
She thanked him for his help and set off back to the car.
“Perhaps we could keep in touch?”
Tilda turned around. “Sorry?”
“It’s a bit lonely here.” He smiled at her. “Beautiful but lonely. Perhaps you’d like to come back sometime?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’ll have to find a whooper swan to keep you company.”
After lunch Tilda spent almost three hours at the school talking about law and order with the pupils. She had several traffic reports to write up when she got back to the station, but couldn’t quite let go of the drowning at Eel Point.
She collected her thoughts, then picked up the telephone and rang the manor house.
Joakim Westin picked up after three rings. Tilda could hear the sound of a ball thudding and happy children’s voices in the background, a good sign. But Westin himself
sounded tired and distant when he answered. Not angry-it was just that there was no strength in his voice.
Tilda didn’t bother with any small talk.
“I need to ask you something,” she said. “Did your wife know anyone who has a boat here on Oland? A boat owner close to your place?”
“I don’t know anyone at all who has a boat here,” said Westin. “And Katrine… she never mentioned anyone with a boat either.”
“What did she do during the week when you were in Stockholm? Did she talk about it?”
“She was renovating the house and furnishing it, and looking after the children. She had her hands full.”
“Did she ever have any visitors?”
“Only me. As far as I know.”
“Okay, thanks,” said Tilda. “I’ll be in touch if-”
“I have a question too,” Westin interrupted her.
“Yes?”
“When you were here, you said something about a relative of yours who knew Eel Point… someone from the local history society in Marnas.”
“That’s right, Gerlof,” said Tilda. “He’s my grandfather’s brother. He’s written a few things for the society’s yearbook.”
“I’d really like to have a chat with him.”
“About the manor?”
“About its history… and about a particular story about Eel Point.”
“A story?”
“A story about the dead,” said Westin.
“Right. I don’t know how much he knows about folk stories,” said Tilda, “but I can ask. Gerlof usually likes telling stories.”
“Tell him he’s very welcome to come over.”
By the time Tilda hung up, it was four-thirty. She switched on the computer to do some work on new cases and her own
reports, including the one about the black van. It was a reasonably concrete piece of information in the investigation into the break-ins. Everything the birdwatcher had told her about the sound of motorboat engines around Eel Point was too vague to put in a report.
She wrote and wrote, and when she had finished the reports it was quarter to eight.
Hard work-that was the best way to avoid thinking about Martin Ahlquist. To drive him out of her body and soul.
Tilda still hadn’t mailed the letter to his wife.
IN MEMORY OF GRETA 1943
– MIRJA RAMBE
WINTER 1943
The alarm is raised at the air-monitoring station at Eel Point the day after the great blizzard has passed by-a sixteen-year-old girl is missing.
“Lost in the blizzard,” says the director of the station, Stovey, when the seven men gather in the kitchen in the morning, wearing the gray uniform of the crown. Stovey’s real name is Bengtsson, but he has acquired his new name because he prefers to sit indoors next to the iron stove when there’s a cold wind outside. And there is almost always a cold wind outside in the winter at Eel Point.
“I shouldn’t think there’s much hope,” he goes on. “But we’d better search anyway.”
Stovey himself stays inside to coordinate the search-everyone else sets off in the snow. Eskil Nilsson and Ludvig Rucker, who is nineteen years old and the youngest at the station, are sent off to the west to search in the area around the peat bog, Offermossen.
It is only fifteen degrees below zero and there is just a light breeze today-considerably milder than previous winters during the war, when the thermometer has sometimes dropped to somewhere between minus thirty and minus forty.
Apart from the blizzard the previous night, it has been a quiet winter at Eel Point. The German Messerschmitts have more or less stopped appearing along the coast, and after Stalingrad it is the Soviet Union’s supremacy over the Baltic that Sweden fears most.
One of Eskil’s older brothers has been sent over to Gotland to live in a tent all the year round. Eel Point is in radio contact with southern Gotland-if the Soviet fleet attacks, they will be the first to know.
Ludvig quickly lights a cigarette when they get outside, and starts plowing through the snowdrifts in his boots. Ludvig smokes like a chimney, but never offers anyone else a cigarette. Eskil wonders where he gets hold of all his supplies.
Most things have been rationed at the manor for a long time. They can get fish from the sea and milk from the two cows at the manor, but there is a severe shortage of fuel, eggs, potatoes, cloth, and real coffee. Worst of all is the tobacco rationing, which is now down to three cigarettes a day.
But Ludvig seems able to get hold of tobacco with no problem, either in the mail or from someone in the villages around Eel Point. How can he afford it? The conscripts’ pay is just one krona per day.
When they have gone a few hundred yards, Eskil stops and looks for the main highway. He can’t see it-the blizzard has made it magically disappear. Bundles of fir branches had been pushed into the ground to mark out the route for the sledge teams, but they must have blown away during the night.
“I wonder where she came from?” says Eskil, clambering over a snowdrift.
“She came from Malmtorp, outside Rorby,” says Ludvig.
“Are you sure?”
“I know her name too,” says Ludvig. “Greta Friberg.”
“Greta? How do you know that?”
Ludvig merely smiles and takes out a fresh cigarette.
Now Eskil can see the western watchtower. A rope has
been fixed up to lead the way there from the highway. The tower is built of wood, insulated with pine branches
