someone was standing there. I think it was her…”
“Okay.”
Tilda suddenly realized she just didn’t have the strength to talk anymore.
“I
Tilda met his eyes.
“We can… talk about it later,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be having plenty of interviews.”
Henrik just breathed out with a heavy sigh.
Silence fell in the vehicle again. Tilda just wanted to close her eyes and doze off, so that she could escape the pain and thoughts of Martin.
“Did you hear anything in the house last night?” Henrik suddenly asked.
“What?”
A door slammed. Then the carrier’s engine roared into life, and the vehicle moved off.
“Knocking noises?”
Tilda didn’t understand what he meant. “I didn’t hear anything,” she said through the noise of the engine.
“Me neither,” said Henrik. “No knocking. I think it was down to the lantern… or the board. But it’s all quiet now.”
He’d been stabbed and was well on his way to ending up in jail, but Tilda still thought he sounded relieved.
42
On the morning of Christmas Eve it was still dark at Eel Point. The power hadn’t been restored, and outside the windows huge banks of snow rose up.
Three police officers and a search dog had arrived in the all-terrain vehicle during the night and searched all the buildings without finding Martin Ahlquist’s murderer. Joakim had given them permission to look wherever they liked. After about three o’clock, when they had left for the hospital with Tilda Davidsson and the guy who had been stabbed, he actually managed to sleep for a few hours.
For the first time in several weeks he slept peacefully, but when he woke up at around eight in the silent house he couldn’t get back to sleep. The rooms were still pitch black, so Joakim got up and lit a couple of paraffin lamps. An hour later a stronger light penetrated the snow-covered windows.
It was the sun, rising over the sea. Joakim wanted to see it, but had to go upstairs, open the window on the landing, and
knock aside one of the shutters in order to be able to look out toward the sea.
The coast had been transformed into a winter landscape with a deep blue sky above sparkling snow dunes. The red walls of the barn looked almost black against the dazzling snow.
There was an arctic silence all around the place. There wasn’t a breath of wind-perhaps for the first time since Joakim had moved in.
The blizzard had blown itself out. Before moving on, it had hurled up a three-feet-high wall of sea ice down by the shore.
Joakim looked toward the shore. He had read about old lighthouses that tumbled into the sea during fierce storms, but the twin lighthouses had survived the blizzard. The towers rose above the banks of ice.
Joakim lit fires in the tiled stove at around nine, driving the cold out of the house. Then he woke the children.
“Happy Christmas,” he said.
They had fallen asleep with their clothes on in Gabriel’s bed. That was how he had found them when he came in from the barn the previous night. He had covered them with blankets and let them sleep on.
Now Joakim was ready for questions about what had happened during the night, about the noise of shooting and all the rest of it, but Livia merely stretched.
“Did you sleep well?”
She nodded. “Mommy was here.”
“Here?”
“She came in to see us while you were gone.”
Joakim looked at his daughter, then at his son. Gabriel nodded slowly, as if everything his sister said was true.
But instead he asked, “So what did Mommy say?”
“She said you’d come soon,” said Livia, looking at him. “But you didn’t.”
Joakim sat down on the side of the bed. “I’m here now,” he said. “I’m not going to disappear again.”
Livia looked at him suspiciously and got out of bed without a word.
Joakim woke Freddy, who was a quiet, calm young man without his brother. There hadn’t been room for him in the army vehicle, so Freddy had stayed behind, handcuffed to one of the radiators in the hallway.
“Still no sign of your brother,” said Joakim.
Freddy nodded wearily.
“What were you actually looking for?”
“Anything… valuable paintings.”
“By Torun Rambe?” said Joakim. “We’ve only got one. Were you looking for more in the barn?”
“There were no more in the house,” said Freddy. “They were somewhere else, the board said. So we went out and set fire to the staircase.”
Joakim looked at him. “But why?”
“Don’t know.”
“Are you going to do it again?”
Freddy shook his head.
Tilda had given Joakim the keys to the handcuffs, and he decided to show a little good faith and trust this Christmas Eve. He released Freddy from the radiator.
When the power came back on at about eleven, Freddy settled down in front of the television to watch Christmas programs while he waited for the police to come and take him in. With a mournful expression he gazed at cartoons about Santa, live broadcasts showing people dancing around Christmas trees, and a cooking show filmed in some snow-covered mountain chalet.
Livia and Gabriel sat down beside him, but none of them spoke. There was still a kind of Christmas community spirit, and they all seemed to relax.
Joakim went and sat in the kitchen with the notebook he had found next to Ethel’s jacket. For an hour he read Mirja Rambe’s dramatic accounts of life at Eel Point. And the story of what had happened to her there.
At the end there were some blank pages, then a couple that had been written by someone other than Mirja.
Joakim looked more closely and suddenly recognized Katrine’s handwriting. Her notes were scrawled, as if she had been in a great hurry.
He read them several times, without fully understanding what she meant.
At twelve o’clock Joakim prepared Christmas rice pudding for everyone.
The telephone was working, and the first call came after lunch. Joakim answered and heard Gerlof Davidsson’s quiet voice:
“So now you know what a real blizzard is like.”
“Yes,” said Joakim, “we sure do.”
He looked out of the window and thought about last night’s visitors.
“It was expected,” said Gerlof. “By me, anyway. But I thought it would come a bit later… How did you cope?”
“Pretty well. All the buildings are still standing, but the roofs are damaged.”
