After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  Before I left the quayside I looked around the harbour, but there was no sign of my boat. I didn’t understand where Louise had gone. Perhaps I should be worried? I pushed the thought aside; she wasn’t the kind of person who would put herself at risk unnecessarily.

  Oslovski’s house was deserted. The curtains were closed, no sign of life. I picked up my car and set off. Once again I had to brake to avoid a fox that ran across the road. When I had recovered from the shock I thought angrily that the next time it appeared in front of my car, I would do my very best to kill it. The fox was running towards Golgotha, even though it didn’t know it.

  It took an hour to reach the town. About halfway there was a modest little roadside cafe where I usually stopped. It’s always been there; I remember it from when I was a child. In those days it was run by a lady who wore bright red lipstick, and spoke in an almost incomprehensible dialect. I remembered fizzy drinks and a plate of meringues. Today I drank coffee and chewed on one of the dry Mazarins that seem to have infected every cafe in our country.

  I was the only customer. I could see myself at the empty tables, in different manifestations and at different ages. The loneliness is palpable when you are surrounded by empty tables and chairs.

  The door opened and a woman with a wheeled walker manoeuvred her way in. I remembered Harriet’s slow progress across the ice a few years earlier. I couldn’t picture myself with a walker. The thought was terrifying, revolting. Would I really want to live if my legs wouldn’t carry me?

  The woman bought a cinnamon bun and drank a glass of water. The waitress carried the tray for her as she groped her way along, feeling for the edge of the table and the chair before she sat down.

  I wondered what she was thinking. In my eyes the earth was already dragging her down. She was slowly fading away, and eventually she would disappear completely.

  I picked up my coffee, poured it into a paper cup and left the cafe. I had never had anything to do with the police before, apart from routine business such as renewing my passport or reporting some minor damage to my car when someone drove into it on one occasion. Now I was suspected of a serious crime. I knew I was innocent, but I had no idea what conclusions the police had reached.

  I sat there and acknowledged my anxiety. The car had become a confessional.

  The police station was newly built, of red brick. Behind what I assumed was bulletproof glass sat a receptionist in civilian clothing. I told her who I was and showed her the letter. She picked up the phone and said: ‘He’s here.’

  After a few minutes a young police officer came through the door leading to the various departments. He wasn’t in uniform either. He held out his hand.

  ‘Månsson.’

  His grip was firm, but once we had shaken hands he withdrew quickly, as if he were somehow afraid of getting stuck. I followed him into the depths of the building, where at last I caught a glimpse of a uniformed officer. It was reassuring; in my world policemen wore a uniform and carried a baton.

  Månsson couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. I thought he was fashionably dressed, but what did I know. For some reason, perhaps a trend that had passed me by, he was wearing different-coloured socks.

  We went into a small conference room. There was another plain-clothes officer over by the window, absent-mindedly feeling the compost around a potted plant. He was a little older, maybe thirty-five. He didn’t shake hands, merely nodded and informed me that his name was Brenne.

  We sat down. The chairs were green, the table brown. There was a tape recorder. Brenne switched it on, but it was Månsson who took charge.

  I wished I had brought my yo-yo with me. Not so that I could get it out, unsettle the two officers, but to calm myself. Feeling its weight in my hand would have helped more than a solicitor.

  Månsson glanced down at a file on the table, then began to speak, directing his words at the microphone. I got the feeling he was already sick and tired of what was in front of him.

  ‘Interview with Fredrik Welin. The time is eleven forty-five. Detective Inspectors Brenne and Månsson are both present.’ He turned to me, then went on: ‘You have been called in for questioning about the fire which destroyed your house. You are aware that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘I’m not aware of anything. But yes, my house has burned down. Everything I owned is gone. I bought the clothes I’m wearing just a few days ago. Poor quality, made in China.’

  Both Månsson and Brenne were looking at me curiously. Obviously my response wasn’t what they had been expecting.

  ‘Our investigation hasn’t revealed a natural explanation for the fire,’ Månsson continued. ‘We have, however, established that it started simultaneously in at least four different places at the corners of the house. We therefore have reasonable grounds to suspect that the fire was deliberate.’

  ‘I know that, but I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Have you any idea who might have done such a thing?’

  ‘I have no enemies. Nor is there anyone who stands to gain financially from my house burning down.’

  ‘You were fully insured?’

  ‘Yes.’

  So far the interview had followed the pattern I had been expecting. Nothing I didn’t know, nothing to explain why the finger of suspicion was pointing at me apart from the fact that there was no alternative.

  Brenne broke his silence by asking if I would like a coffee. I declined. He left the room and returned with mugs of coffee for himself and his colleague.

  The tape recorder was switched back on. I was still missing my yo-yo. The interview seemed to be going round in circles: when exactly had I fallen asleep, when had I woken up and rushed outside, did I have any enemies who might have wanted me to burn to death. I gave them the times as best I could, and continued to deny that I had any idea who might have started the fire.

  Eventually I got fed up of the constant repetition.

  ‘I know I’m here because you suspect me,’ I said. ‘I can only reiterate that you’re on the wrong track. I haven’t a clue how the fire started or who might have wanted to harm or kill me. I’ve told you everything I know.’

  Månsson gazed at me in silence for a long time, then he spoke into the microphone, saying that the interview was terminated, and switched off the tape recorder.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be in touch again,’ he said as he got to his feet and adjusted his pink tie.

  Brenne said nothing. He had gone back to the potted plant on the windowsill.

  Månsson showed me out. I felt a surge of relief as I walked away from the police station. I left the car and went into one of the big department stores nearby. There was a sale in one of the clothing concessions, and I bought several items after carefully checking that none of them were made in China. I had lunch at an Italian restaurant in the galleria; the food wasn’t good. It could have been made by Brenne or Månsson, I thought. It contained more fatigue and sorrow than nutrition.

  I bought two bottles of vodka at the nearby state-run liquor store, then I went to collect my car. I saw two police officers dragging along a woman who had passed out from drink. One of the officers looked like Lisa Modin. The resemblance was so striking that I thought it was her at first, but then I realised that the officer’s face was thinner and covered in freckles.

  Before I headed back towards the harbour and my island, I called Louise again. This time I was able to leave a message.

  ‘Where the hell did you go?’ I said. ‘I had to swim to the mainland to get to the police station on time.’

  I didn’t ask her to pick me up. Instead I called her again.

  ‘I got beaten up,’ I said in my second message. ‘I’m probably going to lose the sight in my left eye.’

  I drove through a landscape filled with beautiful autumn colours, but at the same time it filled me with uncertainty. In the past the seasons had never affected me, but over the last few years the cold and the darkness evoked a growing sense of unease.

  I stopped when
I reached the place where I had bought my Chinese shirts. The shoe shop was closed. There weren’t many customers in the grocery shop. I filled my basket with things that I didn’t necessarily need to cook; everything could be eaten cold. I carried my bag to the car, then wondered briefly whether I should try to find out Lisa Modin’s home address. The temptation was strong, but I resisted and set off for the harbour. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The hilly road wound its way through dense forest, except in a few places where it was possible to glimpse the waters of a lake and eventually the sea, shining among the dark trees. If you didn’t know better, the forest could seem endless.

  There were few side roads. In fact there was really only one, leading north. The sign, which I don’t think had ever been cleaned, bore the name of a place called Hörum. It was seven kilometres away. I had passed that sign for years, ever since I was a child, but I had never had any reason to go to Hörum. I had no reason now either, but I instinctively turned off, the decision made so quickly that I didn’t even have time to brake. The gravel sprayed up around my wheels, and I only just managed to avoid skidding off the road and driving straight into the trees.

  I drove towards Hörum without knowing why. When I was a child I used to dream about a road that led nowhere, that simply kept on going for ever and ever. That feeling came back to me now. Hörum was the name of a place that didn’t exist. I slowed down, but I didn’t turn around. I was going to make that journey into the unknown, the journey I had always imagined.

  I stopped and switched off the engine. I cautiously opened the door, as if I might disturb someone. Outside the car the world was silent; there was no wind in the dense forest. I don’t know how long I stood there, I just know that I closed my eyes, thinking that soon I wouldn’t exist any more. I had only old age left. Soon that too would end, and then there was nothing.

  I opened my eyes; I ought to turn back. But instead I got in the car and kept on going.

  I drove down a steep hill, and then the trees began to thin out. I passed a few houses by the side of the road; some were empty, dilapidated, while others were perhaps still occupied. I stopped the car again and got out. No movement, not a sound. The forest had crept right up to the houses, swallowing the rusty tools, the overgrown meadows. A lost autumn bumble bee buzzed past my face. The two houses that might have been occupied, or at least still had curtains at the windows, lay in the middle of the little village. I saw a mailbox with the lid open; there was a sodden, half-rotten newspaper inside. It was the local paper that Lisa Modin worked for; three weeks old, its main story was about a horse that had died after being driven too hard in a trotting race.

  But no people. No one peeping from behind their curtains, as I had seen at Oslovski’s house. No one wondering who I was. Right at the end of the village lay the house that was in the worst state. The grass was overgrown, the gate hanging off its hinges into the ditch. I went into the garden. The remains of a kick sled were hidden among the bushes. The porch door stood ajar; I went inside the deserted house. The rooms were empty, the wallpaper was peeling off, a broken table had been overturned. There were few traces of the former inhabitants. A dead mouse lay on the stairs. The whole place seemed to be a sad sarcophagus, waiting for the walls to collapse and bury everything that had been there, once and for all.

  I went upstairs. In one of the bedrooms the roof had fallen in, and the floor had rotted because of the rain.

  But there was a bed. I stopped dead. It was made up with sheets that couldn’t have been there for long; they were clean, ironed, perhaps even unused.

  I went into the three other bedrooms: no beds or other furniture. Only in that one room, where the rain came in, was there a made-up bed.

  Behind the peeling wallpaper I found a newspaper that had once been used to provide insulation. 12 May 1934. A landowner born in 1852 had passed away. A priest by the name of Johannes Wiman had spoken at his funeral.

  There was a combine harvester for sale, and Svea Förlag were advertising a book that ‘seriously considered the difficult Jewish question’. The price was three kronor, and speedy delivery was guaranteed.

  The newspaper crumbled away between my fingers.

  But who slept in that bed? The question stayed with me as I left the house.

  I returned to my car and drove back to the main road. When I parked at Oslovski’s house, I could hear someone hammering. The garage door was ajar; she must be at home. I pushed the door open and she turned around. Again I saw her fear, but as soon as she realised it was me, she relaxed. She was holding a bumper.

  The day Oslovski bought the house, a truck had arrived with a vintage car in pretty bad condition. Nordin had seen the whole thing and had wondered what kind of strange female car enthusiast had moved in.

  Now, after all these years, I knew the car was a 1958 DeSoto Fireflite four-door sedan, and that Oslovski was restoring it from something resembling a heap of scrap metal to a shining vintage car. I had shown no interest whatsoever, but she had informed me that it had 305 horsepower and that the compression was 10:1. Needless to say I had no idea what that meant, just as I didn’t understand the significance of the fact that the tyres were Goodyear, size 8 × 14.

  However, I had realised how much passion this strange woman put into her car. When she had been away, she often returned with spare parts gleaned from some scrapyard.

  ‘A new find?’ I asked, nodding in the direction of the bumper.

  ‘I’ve been searching for this for four years,’ Oslovski said. ‘I eventually found it in Gamleby.’

  ‘Do you need many more parts?’

  ‘The clutch. I’ll probably have to go up north to find something suitable.’

  ‘Can’t you advertise?’

  ‘I want to find everything myself. I know it’s stupid, but that’s just the way it is.’

  I nodded and walked away. After only a few metres I heard her eager hammer blows once again. I wondered where I would find the old car that could fill my life with meaning. Perhaps that was why my house had burned down? So that rebuilding it would give me a purpose?

  As I was carrying my bags to the quayside I noticed an ambulance in front of the chandlery. Nordin was carried out on a stretcher. I put down my bags and ran. Nordin’s eyes were closed, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. The paramedics were very young.

  ‘I’m a doctor and a friend,’ I said. ‘What’s happened? Is it his head or his heart?’

  One of the paramedics looked dubiously at me. He had freckles, and spots around his nose.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ I repeated in a louder voice.

  ‘His head, we think,’ said the man, who was really no more than a boy.

  ‘Who made the call?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  I nodded and stepped back. Perhaps I should have gone with Nordin to the hospital, but when the door closed and the ambulance drove off, I just stood there.

  I was surrounded by too much death, too much misery. Had Nordin been so upset by my daughter’s appalling behaviour that he’d had a stroke?

  Veronika came running down from the cafe, wondering what was going on. I explained as best I could.

  ‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor.’

  I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to give her, and in any case she seemed to have lost interest in me.

  ‘I’ll call the family,’ she said. ‘Someone needs to lock up, and they won’t know what’s happened.’

  Suddenly we heard the ambulance’s siren; it was already quite a long way off. We stood in silence, both equally upset. Veronika ran back upstairs, and I fetched my bags and put them under the projecting roof of the kiosk which sells smoked fish in the summer.

  I walked out to the end of the quay as a light drizzle began to fall. I executed a few dance steps to shake off the bad feeling from the empty house and from what had befallen Nordin.

  Then I called Jansson. He answered on the second ring. Of course he would come and
pick me up.

  I waited for him under the roof with my bags. The faint smell of the summer’s smoked fish lingered in the air.

  CHAPTER 9

  Before I had even managed to stow my bags in the boat, Jansson wanted to know what was the matter with Nordin. How he could already know that something had happened was one of those mysteries I would never solve. He was like an old-fashioned telephone exchange operator, who put through calls then listened in.

  ‘It could be some kind of stroke,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Is he going to die?’

  ‘Let’s hope not. Can we go now?’

  Deep down Jansson is afraid of me. Not just of me, but everyone. His constant desire to help, to be of service, hides his anxiety that we will all turn on him. He is afraid that we will tire of him and stop contacting him when we need help.

  I noticed it now. He cowered as if I had delivered a physical blow, then started the engine and began to reverse out of the harbour – much too quickly, as if he feared my impatience.

  I usually feel slightly guilty when I have been too sharp with people, but to my surprise I experienced a certain satisfaction at having given Jansson a bit of a scare. I made it clear that I had had enough of his ingratiating self-importance. His friendliness irritated me until I could no longer control my impatience. Several times when he had complained about his imaginary aches and pains I had been tempted to lie, to tell him that he was suffering from a fatal illness. I had never done it, but as I sat in his boat on the way home I thought it would soon be time to give him a serious fright. I would deliver a death sentence when he was lying on the bench outside my boathouse being examined by these doctor’s hands, which he respected more than anything in the world.

  We met the coastguard’s biggest patrol boat, on its way back to the harbour after a tour of inspection along the coastline. I thought I could see Alma Hamrén at the wheel. My bags toppled as we bounced over the swell in the wake of the large vessel.