summer cottages. When Tommy asked about the village of Stenvik, which Henrik had suggested, the glass had moved to YES, and when he asked if there were valuable things in the cottages up there, he had been given the same answer: YES.
Finally Tommy had asked, “Aleister, what do you think… can the three of us trust one another?”
The little glass had remained still for a few seconds. Then it had slowly moved to NO.
Tommy gave a brief, hoarse laugh.
“That’s okay,” he said, looking at Henrik. “I don’t trust anybody.”
Four days later Henrik and the Serelius brothers had made their first trip north, to the cluster of summer cottages that Henrik had selected and Aleister had approved. There were only closed-up houses there, pitch black in the darkness.
Henrik and the brothers weren’t looking for small, expensive objects when they broke open a window and got into a cottage-they knew no summer visitors were stupid enough to leave cash, designer watches, or gold necklaces behind in their cottages over the winter. But certain things were too difficult to transport home from the country when the holiday was over: televisions, music systems, bottles of spirits, boxes of cigarettes, and golf clubs. And in the outbuildings there could be chain saws, cans of gas, and electric drills.
After Tommy and Freddy had smashed the ship in the bottle and Henrik had finished muttering about it, they split up and carried on searching for treasures.
Henrik carried on into the smaller rooms. The front of the house faced the rocky coastline and the sound, and through a picture window he could see the chalk-white half-moon suspended above the water. Stenvik was one of the small empty fishing villages on the west coast of the island.
Every room he went into met him with silence, but Henrik still had the feeling that the walls and the floor were watching him. For that reason he moved carefully, without making any mess.
“Hello? Henke?”
It was Tommy, and Henrik called back: “Where are you?”
“Here, just off the kitchen… it’s some kind of office.”
Henrik followed Tommy’s voice through the narrow
kitchen. He was standing by the wall in a windowless room, pointing with his gloved right hand.
“What do you think about this?”
He wasn’t smiling-Tommy hardly ever smiled-but he was looking up at the wall with the expression of someone who might have made a real find. A large wall clock was hanging there, made of dark wood with Roman numerals behind the glass covering the clock face.
Henrik nodded. “Yes… could be worth something. Is it old?”
“I think so,” said Tommy, opening the glass door. “If we’re lucky, it’ll be an antique. German or French.”
“It’s not ticking.”
“Probably needs winding up.” He closed the door and shouted, “Freddy!”
After a few seconds the younger brother came clomping into the kitchen.
“What?”
“Give me a hand with this,” said Tommy.
Freddy had the longest arms of the three of them. He unhooked the clock and lifted it down. Then Henrik helped to carry it.
“Come on, let’s get it outside,” said Tommy.
The van was parked close to the house, in the shadows at the back.
It had kalmar pipes & welding on the sides. Tommy had bought plastic letters and stuck them on himself. There was no such welding company in Kalmar, but driving around in a company van at night looked less suspicious than some anonymous old delivery van.
“They’re opening a police station in Marnas next week,” said Henrik as they were lifting the clock out through the veranda window.
There was almost no wind tonight, but the air was fresh and cold.
“How do you know?” said Tommy.
“It was in the paper this morning.”
He heard Freddy’s hoarse laugh in the darkness.
“Oh, well, that’s it then,” said Tommy. “You might as well ring them and rat the two of us out, then you might get a reduced sentence.”
He dropped his lower lip, showing his teeth; that was his way of smiling.
Henrik smiled back in the darkness. There were thousands of summer cottages for the police to keep an eye on all over the island, besides which they usually worked only during the day.
They placed the clock in the back of the van, alongside the collapsible exercise bike, two large vases made of polished limestone, a video player, a small outboard motor, a computer and printer, and a television with stereo speakers that were already in there.
“Shall we call it a night?” said Tommy when he had closed the back door of the van.
“Yes… I don’t think there’s anything else.”
Henrik went back to the house briefly anyway, to close the window. He picked up a couple of small pieces of shale from the ground and pushed them into the gaps in the wooden frame to hold the window in place.
“Come on,” shouted Tommy behind him.
The brothers thought it was a waste of time, closing the place up after a break-in. But Henrik knew it could be months before anyone came to the cottage, and with the window open the rain and snow would destroy the decor.
Tommy started the engine as Henrik climbed into the passenger seat. Then he lifted off a section of the door panel and reached inside. Wrapped in small pieces of paper towels was ice-crystal meth.
“Want another?” said Tommy.
“No. I’ve had enough.”
The brothers had brought the ice with them from the Continent, both to sell and for personal use. The crystals were like a kick up the backside, but if Henrik took more than one hit per night, he started quivering like a flagpole, and found it difficult to think logically. The thoughts thudded around in his head, and he couldn’t get to sleep.
He wasn’t a junkie, after all-but nor was he boring. One hit was fine.
Tommy and Freddy didn’t seem to have the same problem, or else they were planning to stay awake all night when they got back to Kalmar. They stuffed the crystals in their mouths, paper and all, and washed the whole lot down with water from a plastic bottle on the back seat. Then Tommy put his foot down. He swung the van around the house and out onto the empty village road.
Henrik looked at his watch-it was almost twelve-thirty.
“Okay, let’s go to the boathouse,” he said.
Up by the main highway Tommy stopped obediently at the stop sign, despite the fact that the road was completely clear, then turned south.
“Turn off here,” said Henrik after ten minutes, when the sign for Enslunda appeared.
There were no other cars or people around. The gravel track ended at the boathouses, and Tommy backed the van up as close as possible.
It was as dark as a cave down here by the sea, but up in the north the lighthouse at Eel Point was flashing.
Henrik opened the van door and heard the rushing of the waves. The sound drifted in from the coal-black sea. It made him think of his grandfather. He had actually died here, six years ago. Algot had been eighty-five years old and suffering from heart disease, but he had still crawled out of bed and taken a cab out here one windy winter’s day. The driver had dropped him off on the road, and soon after that he must have had a major heart attack. But Algot had managed to
get to his boathouse, and he had been found dead just by the door.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Tommy as they were unloading the stolen goods by the beam of the flashlights. “A suggestion. Listen up and tell me what you think.”
“What?”
Tommy didn’t reply. He just reached into the van and pulled something out. It looked like a large black woolen cap.
