Spring Tide

by Börjlind, Cilla

  ‘But the lobster season doesn’t start until September so they’ll have to cool it till then… or fly in some from America, like he did once, him Magnuson.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘I’ll show you when we go past.’

  They walked up through the little gathering of wooden houses down by the water. Some red and black fishing huts. A restaurant, Strandkanten. A couple of shops selling a mixture of archipelago kitsch and old fishing tackle. And then Leffe’s Laundry. And Leffe’s Fishmongers. Leffe’s Kayaks. And Leffe’s Veranda.

  ‘This Leffe guy seems to have a finger in every pie.’

  ‘Yes, we call him XL here on the island. Short for Extra Leffe. He grew up on the eastern side of the island. On one occasion he visited Strömstad and got a bad headache, and since then he hasn’t left the island. There it is!’

  They were now a bit above the harbour. Houses large and small lined the narrow lane. Almost all of them were well tended, with neat façades, properly painted. Mum would approve of this, Olivia thought, and looked in the direction Betty was pointing. At a large, magnificent house, obviously designed specially for its beautiful site on a plot sloping down towards the sea.

  ‘That’s Magnuson’s house. Bertil Magnuson, you know the man who owns that mining company, he had that built in the Eighties, he had no planning permission or anything, and then afterwards he bought his way out of it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He gave all the local councillors a fancy dinner and flew in a hundred lobsters from America and that problem was soon dealt with. For the people from the mainland, the rules are not the same as for us.’

  They continued walking towards the part of the island where there were fewer houses. Betty guided, and Olivia listened. Betty had the gift of the gab. Olivia had her work cut out to keep track of who had been fishing lobster unlawfully, who had had an affair with somebody else’s wife and who hadn’t kept their garden in good order.

  Crimes great and small.

  ‘And that’s where his companion lived, by the way, the one who disappeared.’

  ‘Whose companion?’

  Betty looked quickly at Olivia.

  ‘Him, Magnuson, I told you about him earlier.’

  ‘Yeah, right. And who disappeared? Magnuson?’

  ‘No, his companion, I just said. I can’t remember his name. Anyway, he disappeared, people thought he’d been kidnapped or murdered, as I recall.’

  Olivia stopped in her tracks.

  ‘But, wait a minute! Did that happen here?’

  Betty smiled at Olivia’s excited expression.

  ‘No, it was somewhere in Africa, and a bloody long time ago.’

  But this had fired Olivia’s imagination.

  ‘When did he disappear?’

  ‘Sometime in the Eighties it must have been.’

  Olivia picked up the scent. Could there be a connection?

  ‘Was that the same year that woman was murdered? At Hasslevikarna?’

  Betty came to a sudden halt and turned towards Olivia.

  ‘Is that why you’re here? Murder tourism?’

  Olivia tried to read Betty. Was it the question that had made her angry, or what? Olivia quickly explained why she was on the island. That she was a student at the Police College and was working on a student assignment about the beach case.

  ‘Is that right? So you’re going to join the police, are you?’

  Betty scrutinized Olivia with a sceptical look.

  ‘Yes, that’s the intention, but I’ve not finished…’

  ‘Well now, we’re all different aren’t we?’

  Nor was Betty especially interested in hearing about Olivia’s studies.

  ‘But no, he didn’t disappear the same year as the murder on the beach.’

  ‘When did he disappear?’

  ‘A lot earlier.’

  Olivia felt a sting of disappointment. But what had she thought? That she would find some sort of connection between a disappearance and the beach murder as soon as she had set foot on Nordkoster? And, on top of that, a connection that the police had missed over all those years?

  They met some families with small children out cycling, and Betty said hello to everyone. And kept on talking.

  ‘But that murder on the beach, nobody here on the island will ever forget that. It was horrific. It hung over us for years and years.’

  ‘Were you here yourself when it happened?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Where else would I have been?’

  Betty looked at Olivia as if that was the stupidest question she had ever been asked. So Olivia refrained from mentioning that there was an entire world outside of Nordkoster where Betty could have been. And then there was a long harangue about what Betty had done when the air ambulance arrived and the island was invaded by police and everything.

  ‘And then they interrogated everybody on the island and you can be sure that I told them what I thought had happened.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘Satanists. Racists. Some sort of -ists that was for sure, that’s what I told them.’

  ‘Cyclists?’

  Olivia meant it as a joke, but a few seconds passed before Betty twigged. Was she making fun of an old islander?… but then she started laughing. City humour. You had to take it for what it was.

  ‘There’re the cabins!’

  Betty pointed at a row of small yellow cabins a bit ahead of them. They were well kept too. Newly painted for the high season, set out in the shape of a horseshoe at the edge of a beautiful meadow.

  Just behind started a dark forest.

  ‘Now it’s my son who runs it. You booked it with him, Axel.’

  They got closer to the cabins and Betty got going again. Her hand indicated cabin after cabin.

  ‘Well, we’ve had all sorts of people staying here I can tell you…’

  Olivia looked at the small huts. All of them were numbered with a figure in brass that looked as if it had just been polished. Everything was spick and span at Nordemans.

  ‘Do you remember who was staying here then, when the murder took place?’

  Betty made a bit of a face.

  ‘You don’t give up do you? But yes, I do actually remember. Some of them anyway.’

  Betty pointed at the first in the row of cabins.

  ‘There, for example, a couple of homos stayed there, there was a lot of hush-hush about that, it wasn’t like it is today when every Tom, Dick and Harry climbs out of the closet. They said they were birdwatchers, but I didn’t see them looking at anything other than themselves.’

  Homos. Olivia had hardly heard the word used before. Would two homos have been capable of killing the woman on the beach? If, of course, they were homos, that might have been fake.

  ‘In number two was a family with children, as far as I recall. Yes, that’s right. Mum and dad with two kids who ran about frightening the sheep in the meadows. One of the kids got badly cut on the barbed wire and the parents were extremely indignant, they considered the farmer had been irresponsible. But the gods punish some people straight away, that’s what I thought.

  ‘Number four was empty, I know that, but there was a Turk staying in number five. He was here a long time, several weeks, he always had this red fez on his head, and he had a harelip and he lisped something awful. But he was nice and polite. Even kissed me on the hand once.’

  Betty laughed at the memory. Olivia’s head was processing the polite Turk. The woman had dark hair, could she have been Turkish? A Kurd? Honour killing? In the newspapers there had been something about her possibly being from Latin America, but what was that based on? Betty nodded at cabin number six.

  ‘And there were a couple of drug addicts in there, unfortunately. But I won’t stand for that sort of thing so I kicked them out. I had to scrub the whole cabin after them! The devils! And I found old syringes and bloody serviettes in the bin.’

  Drugs? Olivia had read somewhere that there were traces of Rohypn
ol in the woman’s body. Could there be a connection? She didn’t have time to follow that thought through before Betty went on.

  ‘But when I come to think of it, I reckon I threw them out before the murder… yes, I did, because after that they stole a boat and went off to the mainland. To stock up on drugs, if you ask me.’

  And there went Olivia’s lead too.

  ‘What an incredible memory you have!’ she said.

  Betty paused for breath and lapped up the praise.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I do, but we have a ledger too.’

  ‘But nevertheless!’

  ‘Well, I’m interested in people. That’s what I’m like, quite simply.’

  Betty looked smugly at Olivia and pointed to a cabin at the end of the row with number ten.

  ‘And that’s where the silly woman from Stockholm stayed. She stayed there first, then on a Norwegian yacht in the harbour. She was a real slut, made a show of herself for those poor lobster boys down by the quay so they couldn’t keep their eyes off her. But of course the police interrogated her too!’

  ‘To help them with their enquiries?’

  ‘I suppose so, they talked to her here first, and then I heard that they took her to Strömstad and continued there. That’s what Gunnar said.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Gunnar Wernemyr, policeman, but he’s retired now.’

  ‘And what was she called, the silly woman?’

  ‘Her name was… let me think, I can’t remember but she had the same first name as Kennedy’s wife.’

  ‘And what was she called?’

  ‘Don’t you know what Kennedy’s wife was called? You know who I mean, she got together with that Greek later, Onassis.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Jackie… Jackie Kennedy. Yes, that’s what she was called, the silly woman, Jackie, I can’t remember more than that. That’s your cabin!’

  Betty pointed at one of the yellow cabins and walked up to the door with Olivia.

  ‘The key’s hanging on a hook inside. If you need anything, Axel lives there.’

  Betty pointed to a house with asbestos-cement cladding on a rise a bit away. Olivia opened the door and put her sports bag inside. Betty remained outside.

  ‘Hope it suits you.’

  ‘It’ll be perfect!’

  ‘OK then. We might meet in the harbour this evening, XL is going to play his trombone at the Strandkant restaurant, if you end up there. Bye for now!’

  Betty started to walk away. Suddenly Olivia remembered what she had intended to ask all the time but not managed to fit in.

  ‘Fru Nordeman!’

  ‘Call me Betty.’

  ‘Betty… I was wondering, there was a little boy who saw what happened on the beach, wasn’t there?’

  ‘That was Ove, the Gardman boy, they lived in a house in the forest there.’ Betty pointed towards the dark forest. ‘His mother’s dead now, and his father is in a home in Strömstad, but Ove still has the house.’

  ‘Is he there now?’

  ‘No, he is out travelling. He’s one of those, what do you call it… a marine biologist, but he comes here now and then to look after the house when he’s in Sweden.’

  ‘OK, thanks!’

  ‘And Olivia, bear in mind what I said, about the weather, it’s going to get worse by the hour, so don’t go out on the rocks on the north side or anything like that, not on your own. If you do go there, then perhaps Axel can go with you. It can be dangerous up there if you take the wrong path.’

  Betty went off. Olivia remained where she was a minute or two and watched her. Then she glanced up at the cement-tiled house where her son Axel evidently lived. The idea that a guy she didn’t know should follow along with her as a bodyguard just because there was a bit of wind, she found that somewhat comical.

  * * *

  He had bought a suitcase in Strömstad. A suitcase on wheels and with an extendable handle. When he went on board the Koster ferry he looked just like any other tourist.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was a tourist, perhaps, but not just anybody.

  He was a man who had struggled with a growing chaos in his chest the whole way from Göteborg and not managed to get it under control until now.

  When he went on board the ferry.

  Now he knew that it wasn’t much further. Now he must be in control of himself. What he was going to do didn’t allow for wavering or weakness. He was forced to steel himself.

  When the ferry departed, inside him it felt shiny, cold, stripped. Like the rocks they passed. He suddenly thought about Bosques.

  They had hugged each other.

  * * *

  Olivia was lying down on the simple bed in the cabin. She had slept badly on the train. Now she stretched out and inhaled the mouldy smell of the cabin. Perhaps it isn’t mouldy, she thought, more like stuffy. She glanced up at the bare walls. Not a painting, no posters, not even one of those old fisherman’s floats of green glass. Betty would never be interviewed by one of the glossy magazines. Nor Axel, if it was him who was responsible for the furnishings. She raised the map again. She had bought it before she got on the ferry in Strömstad. A rather detailed map of the north-west side, only that. Coves with funny names, and not far away, on the map, Hasslevikarna.

  That was where she was really going.

  The site of the murder.

  Because that is what the entire journey was about, she knew that. Getting to the site of the murder and seeing what it looked like.

  Murder tourist?

  If you like. That’s what she’d have to be. But she was going to get to that beach. The place where a young woman had been buried and drowned.

  With a child in her womb.

  Olivia let the map sink down onto her chest and she let her mind wander, wander off to the Hasslevikarna coves and out on to the beach, the sea, the low tide, the darkness, and the naked young woman in the sand, and the little boy in the darkness somewhere, and then the perpetrators, three of them, that’s what it had said in the investigation, based on the boy’s statement, but how could they be sure of that? A terrified nine-year-old in the middle of the night? Perhaps they weren’t sure? Had they just assumed that he had actually seen three men? Or had the police simply just accepted that as a starting point, as they had nothing else to go on? What if there were five? A little sect?

  There she was again.

  This wasn’t especially constructive.

  She got up and felt that the time had come.

  To be a murder tourist.

  What Betty had said about the weather was fairly accurate, apart from the fact that the rain had already hit the island now in the afternoon. The wind coming from the sea had increased in strength by a couple of metres per second, and the temperature had dropped radically.

  It was pretty horrible outside.

  Olivia could hardly open the door when she went out. It slammed shut behind her as soon as she was out. Her extra jumper helped a little, but the wind pulled her hair across her face so she could hardly see, and the rain poured down. Why the hell hadn’t she brought a raincoat with her? She had behaved like an amateur! Or somebody from the mainland, as Betty would have said. Olivia glanced up at Axel’s house.

  No way. There were limits.

  She chose a path that led into the dark forest.

  The very overgrown forest. There had been no thinnings here for decades, and nobody had cleared the undergrowth either. Dry, brittle branches, a tangle of brushwood, everything almost black with the odd bit of rusty sheep netting.

  But she followed the path. She could just about manage that. The advantage was that there was much less wind in among the trees. Just the rain. At first she had used the map to shield her head until she realised it was a really stupid idea. The map was her only chance of getting to where she wanted to go.

  First she was going to see the little boy’s house. Ove Gardman. According to Betty it was somewhere around here, in among the trees, which Olivia was begin
ning to doubt. All around her was just a mass of bushes and fallen trees and netting.

  Suddenly there it was in front of her.

  A simple black wooden house. Two storeys, in the middle of the forest, in an opening where the trees had long been chopped down. There was a steep edge at the back and no garden. She looked at the house. It seemed to be deserted, and a bit spooky. At any rate under the circumstances that now prevailed. A strong gale and getting darker. She got the shivers. Why had she wanted to see this house? She already knew that the boy, or man as he must be today, presumably thirty-two years old, wasn’t there. Betty had told her. She shook her head a little but pulled out her mobile and took a couple of pictures of the house. She could always append them to her assignment report, she thought.

  Ove Gardman’s house.

  She reminded herself to phone him when she got back to the cabin.

  It took Olivia almost half an hour to get to the north side of the island. Now she was there, almost anyway, and she was beginning to fathom what Betty had warned her about. Here it was completely exposed to the open sea. The rain beat down from the black clouds. The wind howled round the rocks. Gigantic waves from the North Sea rolled in and crashed over the rocks. It was hard for her to judge how far up they came.

  She crouched down behind a large rock and looked out towards the sea. She thought she was in a safe position, but suddenly a super wave came roaring up to the rock and the water reached way up her legs. When she felt how the cold pull tugged at her body, she panicked and screamed.

  If she hadn’t fallen into a little gully, she would have been pulled into the sea.

  But she didn’t realise that until much later.

  Now she was running.

  As fast as her legs could carry her.

  Away from the sea up onto dry land.

  She ran and ran until she tripped on a flat rock, or an oasis of flat rocks. She landed flat on her stomach. Once down, she hugged the rock, hugged Mother Earth, gasping, with a bleeding forehead from when she fell into the gully.

  It was quite a while before she turned round and looked out at the raging sea beyond the small coves, and realised what an idiot she was.

  Then her whole body started to shake.

  She was soaked to her skin.