'What do you suspect?'
He shook his head.
'Suspicions. That's all. Perhaps what he knew became too difficult for him to bear. People can die because they know too much about other people's suffering.'
'You said that he was on to something?'
'I think it was inside him. A clue that was a thought. I never understood properly what he meant. The link he was looking for was very unclear. He talked about drug smuggling. Big cargoes of heroin from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Vessels anchored off Mozambique's ports at night, fast motorboats collecting goods, lorries taking stuff through unmanned border crossings into South Africa in the dark, and then on to the rest of the world. Even if fat bribes had to be paid to police officers, customs officers, prosecutors, judges, civil servants and not least the ministers responsible, the profits are astronomic. In this day and age the turnover in drug smuggling is as high as that of the tourist industry. More than arms manufacturing. Henrik spoke in guarded fashion about a link between all that and the Aids epidemic. I don't know where he got his information from. I have to go now.'
They said their goodbyes outside the hotel.
'I'll be staying with an official at the Swedish Embassy by the name of Lars Håkansson.'
Nuno da Silva pulled a face.
'An interesting person.'
'Do you know him?'
'I'm a journalist. It's my job to know everything that's worth knowing. About what goes on, and about people as well.'
He shook hands, turned on his heel and headed for the street. She could see that he was in a hurry.
The intense heat was upsetting her. She returned to her room. There had been no mistaking Nuno da Silva's facial expression. He had no time at all for Lars Håkansson.
She gazed up at the ceiling and wondered what she ought to do next. Perhaps she ought to give Lars Håkansson a wide berth. Then again, Henrik had stayed at his place. I have to go to the places where Henrik might have left some traces behind, she thought.
It was a quarter past nine. She phoned Artur. She could tell from his voice that he'd been waiting for her to ring. That brought a lump into her throat. Perhaps he'd been awake all night yet again. It's just him and me now. There's nobody else.
She thought he would feel better if she told him that all was well, and that she was going to stay with a man employed by the Swedish Embassy. He informed her that it was snowing now, harder than ever, over ten centimetres during the night. Moreover, he'd found a dead dog on the road when he'd gone to buy a newspaper.
'What had happened?'
'It didn't look to me as if it had been run over. It looked as if somebody had shot its head to pieces and thrown it onto the road.'
'Did you recognise it?'
'No. It wasn't from round here. But how can anybody hate a dog as much as that?'
After the call she lay down on the bed. How can anybody hate a dog as much as that? She thought about what Nuno da Silva had said. Could he really be right in thinking that the Aids epidemic was caused by a conspiracy with the aim of exterminating the population of Africa? Could Henrik have been a part of the 'drop in the ocean' he'd spoken about? It seemed utter madness to her. Surely Henrik could not have believed that either. He would never have believed in a conspiracy theory that could not withstand detailed examination.
She sat up in bed and pulled the blanket around her. The air conditioning made her shiver, she was getting goose pimples on her arms.
What was it that da Silva thought Henrik was on to? A clue that was a thought? What had Henrik discovered? Where ought she to be looking? She did not know, but nevertheless, she had the feeling she was getting warm.
She swore out loud. Then she got up, took a long, cold shower, packed her case and had paid her bill by the time Håkansson turned up.
'I was just thinking that if I'd been a boy, I'm sure my father would have called me Lars.'
'An excellent name. Easy to pronounce in any language you care to name, with the possible exception of Mandarin speakers in China. Lars Herman Olof Håkansson. Lars after my paternal grandfather, Herman after my maternal grandfather who was a naval officer, and Olof after the first king of Sweden in the eleventh century. I sail through life with those characters as my patron saints.'
But you wanted to call Lucinda Julieta. Why did changing her name turn you on?
She asked him to write down his address, and handed it over to reception with the request that they should pass it on to a woman by the name of Lucinda if she should come to the hotel and ask for Louise.
Håkansson stood some way away, lost in thought. Louise spoke in a low voice so that he would not hear.
His house was in Kaunda Street. A diplomatic district, with lots of national flags flying. Mansions behind high walls, uniformed guards, barking dogs. They went through an iron gate and a man working in the garden insisted on carrying her bags, although she tried to carry them herself.
'The house was built by a Portuguese doctor,' Håkansson explained. 'In 1974, when it finally dawned on the Portuguese that the blacks would very soon be declaring independence, he went home. They say he left a yacht in the marina, and a piano that slowly rotted away on the quay because it was never loaded onto the cargo ship bound for Lisbon. The state took over the empty house. Now it's rented by the Swedish government – the taxpayers pay my rent.'
The house was surrounded by a garden, with several tall trees at the back. A German shepherd on a chain eyed her suspiciously. There were two maids inside the house, one old, the other young.
'Graça,' Håkansson said when Louise introduced herself to the older woman and shook hands. 'She does the cleaning. She's too old, of course, but she wants to stay on. I'm the nineteenth Swede she's worked for.'
Graça picked up Louise's bags and carried them up the stairs. Louise stared in horror at the old woman's emaciated body.
'Celina,' said Håkansson. Louise shook hands with the younger woman. 'She's bright and a good cook. If you need anything, talk to her. There's always somebody here during the day. I'll be home late this evening. Just say when you're hungry, and they'll provide you with some food. Celina will show you to your room.'
He was halfway out of the door when Louise caught up with him.
'Is it the same room as Henrik stayed in?'
'I thought that's what you would want. But if you don't like the idea you can always change. The house is big. They say that Dr Sa Pinto had a very large family. All the children had to have their own room.'
'I just wanted to know.'
'Well, now you do.'
Louise went back inside the house. Celina was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Graça had come down and was busy doing something in the kitchen. Louise followed Celina up the stairs in this totally white house.
They came to a room where patches of damp had turned the plaster yellow. She detected a faint smell of mould. So this is where Henrik had slept. It was not a large room, most of the space was taken up by the bed. There were bars outside the window, as in a prison. Her suitcase was lying on the bed. She opened the wardrobe door. It was empty, apart from a golf club.
She stood motionless beside the bed and tried to imagine Henrik in this room. But he wasn't there. She could not find him.
She unpacked, then found a bathroom after taking a look at Håkansson's large bedroom. Had Lucinda, or Julieta as he paid to call her, slept in that bed?
Her distaste kicked in with full force. She went back downstairs, took the cork out of a half-empty bottle of wine and drunk directly from the bottle. Too late she noticed that Graça was standing in the half-open kitchen door, watching her.
At noon she was served an omelette. A table had been laid for her, as if she had been in a restaurant. She merely toyed with the food.
This is the empty feeling one has before a decision is made, she thought. I know really that I ought to get away from here, the sooner the better.
She drank coffee at the back of the house where the heat w
as less intense. The chained dog was lying down, watching her intently. She eventually dozed off. She was woken up by Celina tapping her on the shoulder.
'You have a visitor,' she said.
Louise stood up, half asleep. She had been dreaming about Artur, something that had happened when she was a child. Once again they had been swimming in that dark tarn. But that was all she could remember.
When she entered the living room she found Lucinda waiting for her.
'Were you asleep?'
'My grief and my sleep are intermingling. I've never slept so much nor so little as I have since Henrik's death.'
Celina came into the room and asked something in an African language. Lucinda replied. Celina went out again. It seemed to Louise that Celina was so light on her feet that it was impossible to imagine them actually touching the dark brown wooden floor.
'What were you talking about? I couldn't understand a word.'
'She asked me if I wanted something to drink. I said no thank you.'
Lucinda was dressed in white. Her shoes had very high heels. Her hair was in plaits and clung to the crown of her head. Louise was struck by Lucinda's beauty. She has shared Henrik's bed, and Lars Håkansson's as well.
She found the thought distasteful.
'I want to take you on a car trip,' Lucinda said.
'Where to?'
'Somewhere out of town. To a place that meant a lot to Henrik. We'll be back here by evening.'
* * *
Lucinda's car was parked in the shade of a flowering jacaranda tree. Lavender-blue petals had fluttered down onto its red bonnet. The car was old and battered. When Louise sat down in the passenger seat she could smell fruit.
They drove through the city. It was very hot in the car. Louise turned towards the open window in order to catch some of the slipstream. The traffic was chaotic, with vehicles overtaking haphazardly. Nearly all these cars would have been ordered off the roads immediately in Sweden, she thought. But they were not in Sweden, they were in a country on the east coast of Africa, and Henrik had been here a short time before he died.
They approached the outskirts of the city, shabby warehouses, pavements smashed up, rusty abandoned cars and an endless stream of pedestrians wherever you looked. When they stopped at a red light Louise watched a woman carrying a large basket on her head, and another woman balancing a pair of red high-heeled shoes on her head. Everywhere, women carrying burdens on their heads. And they are bearing other burdens inside themselves, burdens I can only guess at.
Lucinda turned off at a chaotic crossroads where the traffic lights were not functioning. She piloted her way forcefully through the confusion. Louise saw a signpost saying Xai-Xai.
'We're heading north,' said Lucinda. 'You'd end up in your own country if we carried on driving in this direction.'
They passed a large cemetery. Several funeral processions were assembled round the entrance gates. Then, suddenly, they had left the city, there was less traffic, fewer low houses built of mud and corrugated iron, the countryside took over, high grass, and a range of mountains in the distance, everything in various shades of green. Lucinda concentrated on her driving. Overloaded lorries and buses coughing out clouds of black exhaust fumes blocked the lanes of traffic, and there were few places where one could overtake. Louise observed the people in the fields. She could see a few men but they were mostly women; mattocks were being raised and lowered, backs bent, and along the verges a constant stream of pedestrians.
'This is Henrik's car,' Lucinda said out of the blue.
She had just overtaken one of the buses spitting out fumes, and the road ahead was straight and clear.
'He bought it for 4,000 dollars,' she added. 'That was far too much to pay. When he left he asked me to look after it until he came back. I suppose it's your car now.'
'No, it's not mine. Why did he need a car?'
'He liked driving. Not least since he started visiting the place we're going to now.'
'I still don't know where we're going.'
Lucinda did not answer, and Louise did not ask again.
'He bought it from a Dane who's lived here for many years and runs a little repair workshop. Everybody knows who Carsten is. A friendly man with a big stomach who's married to a thin little black woman from Quelimane. They're always quarrelling, especially on Sundays when they go for walks on the beach. Everybody loves it when they quarrel because you can see how much they like each other.'
They drove for just over an hour, most of the time in silence. Louise took in the changing countryside. She sometimes thought it reminded her of a winter landscape in Härjedalen, if you replaced the greens and browns with white. There was also a hint of the Greek countryside on Peloponnisos. Everything seemed to be part of a whole. You can build all kinds of landscapes from nature's fragments.
Lucinda changed down and turned off the road. There was a bus stop and a little market. The ground along the side of the road had been trampled down and a row of little kiosks sold beer, fizzy drinks and bananas. Some boys carrying cool boxes came rushing towards the car. Lucinda bought two bottles of soda water and gave one to Louise before shooing away the boys. They obeyed immediately, without trying to sell their packets of South African biscuits.
'We always used to stop here,' Lucinda said.
'You and Henrik?'
'Sometimes I don't understand your questions. Who else would I have come here with? Some of my customers from the past?'
'I know nothing about what Henrik did in this country. What did he want? Where are we going to?'
Lucinda was watching some children playing with a puppy.
'The last time we were here he said he loved this place. This is where the world ended, or started. Nobody would be able to find him.'
'He said that?'
'I remember the exact words. I asked what he meant, because I didn't understand. He could be so dramatic sometimes. But when he talked about the beginning and the end of the world he was completely calm. It was as if the fear that always troubled him had suddenly gone away, for one brief, passing moment at least.'
'What was his answer?'
'Nothing. He sat in silence. Then we drove off. That was all. As far as I know he never came here again. I don't know why he left Maputo. I didn't even know he was going. Suddenly he was no longer there. Nobody knew anything.'
Just like Aron. The same way of vanishing, without a word, without any explanation. Just like Aron.
'Let's go and sit in the shade,' said Lucinda, opening the car door. Louise followed her to a tree whose trunk had twisted to form a somewhat lumpy bench big enough for both of them.
'Shade and water,' said Lucinda. 'Two things we always share in hot countries. What do you share in a country where it's cold?'
'Heat. There was a famous man in Greece who once asked a powerful emperor, who had promised to grant him the thing he wanted more than anything else, if he would kindly move because he was preventing the sun shining on him.'
'You are similar, you and Henrik. You have the same sort of . . . helplessness.'
'Thank you.'
'I didn't mean to offend you.'
'It was a genuine expression of thanks, because you think I take after my son.'
'Isn't it the other way round? That he took after you? If not, that's where you and I are different. I don't think your origins are based in the future. You can't approach the unknown lying in wait for you unless you know what happened before.'
Kennedy's Brain Page 21