by Lars Sund
The girl can tell that Judit is towing something.
Judit steers a course farther and farther out into the firth. The girl follows her, screwing up her eyes to see better. She can feel her heart pounding fast and hard within her ribcage.
Now Judit is far out. The boat has shrunk to a small yellow smudge out on the grey waters and the buzz of the outboard can’t be heard above the deep murmur of the waves.
A little while later the boat can be seen on its way back to Aspskär. Judit is driving at full speed and there is a high bow wave foaming at the front.
When Judit steps out of the boat the girl does not rush up to her as she usually does. Instead she stands a little higher up the shore with her arms hanging loosely at her side, like someone who doesn’t know what to do.
“Aren’t you going to come and help me pull the boat up?” Judit asks gently.
The girl hesitates for a moment, then she goes slowly down to Judit. Without saying anything she catches hold of the side of the boat and they both heave. The fibreglass hull glides over the launching ramp rollers.
The girl doesn’t look at Judit.
Judit had thought about telling the girl what she was doing out by the reef. She had thought she might say, “It was just a dead seal washed up on the reef. I thought it best to get rid of it.”
But the lie remains unspoken. She thinks about reaching out a hand and stroking the girl’s cheek, but that doesn’t happen either.
Judit detaches the fuel line from the outboard and picks up the fuel tank and the wet nylon rope. She walks to the boathouse. The girl follows her, silently, head bent, like someone grieving.
Regional News
(The following text should be read aloud to create the illusion of a radio broadcast.)
Here is the regional news, with Patrick Wölin in the studio. Good afternoon. Another body has come ashore near Fagerö in the Gunnarsholmar islands. It was discovered yesterday morning and according to preliminary reports it is that of a male of about thirty years of age. It was found washed up on an uninhabited skerry roughly two nautical miles south-east of Fagerö. The driver of a passing boat made the discovery and immediately alerted the emergency services by radio. Ghita Saarinen reports live from Fagerö:
I am in Tunnhamn on the island of Fagerö. Just a short time ago the body of an unidentified man was brought ashore here. The body was discovered on the tiny island of Kummelpiken out in the Aspskärsfjärden and has now been removed to the identification centre the police have set up by the harbour to facilitate further investigations. The body was found just after ten o’clock this morning by a fisherman on his way back to Fagerö from checking his salmon traps. This brings the number of bodies, all assumed to have died by drowning, found on the islands to a total of nine in the course of little more than a week. The police have initiated enquiries but do not yet appear to have any clear leads. And as yet it has proved impossible to identify any of the bodies.
Inspector Riggert von Haartman is with me here on the quay in Tunnhamn. The inspector is in charge of the police investigation into the tragic finds. Inspector, do the police have any theories as to what may be behind these events? Can you give us any details about them?
At this stage it would be best for us to avoid speculation.
Can you say why?
A preliminary investigation is under way and any comments made at this stage could possibly threaten confidential aspects of the enquiry.
I see. Are we to assume, then, that you haven’t excluded the possibility of criminal activity?
I’d rather not comment on that.
But it really is rather remarkable, isn’t it … that … that … nine bodies have been discovered and, according to reports, not one of them has been identified. The police must surely have some idea, must have some line of enquiry?
The police are not following a specific line of enquiry at this stage.
But these people … where did they come from? How did they end up in the sea? What has happened here?
The police are making enquiries and we shall, of course, hold a press conference at an appropriate stage. Thank you.
Thank you. That was Inspector Riggert von Haartman, who is in charge of the investigation.
The bodies have caused an atmosphere of concern and sadness out here on Fagerö. The people in this idyllic little island community far from the mainland are asking themselves what disaster can have caused nine bodies to have been washed up on their shores. There is no official explanation available as yet and, as we have just heard, the police are being very reticent on the issue. The only thing certain at the moment is that there has been no major disaster at sea recently that could account for these events.
The people of Fagerö are also asking – understandably – whether there will be more corpses in coming days. And if so, how much more stress will this community and its inhabitants be expected to endure as a result?
This is Ghita Saarinen reporting live from Fagerö. Back to Patrick in the newsroom.
Surrounded by the Deep
Efraim Lökström, the assistant pastor, was in the pulpit at last.
The pulpit in the little church on Fagerö is not unlike the barrel that is used for the crow’s nest of a sailing ship. It is reached by a steep narrow ladder, which means that anyone mounting the pulpit should be neither too big nor too fat since the joiners who built it were thrifty islanders not given to being generous with valuable timber. Fortunately Rev. Lökström is not a big man, not physically anyway. There is room for him in the pulpit. He doesn’t have a particularly big voice either, but it’s sufficient to the modest size of the church.
On most ordinary Sundays the size of the congregation that comes to hear the Rev. Lökström preach the gospel is not large. The secularisation of society is noticeable even out here on Fagerö and, apart from Christmastime, the pastor usually finds himself preaching to half-empty pews. But this Sunday, the first after Whitsun, was a notable exception.
When the pastor stood in the narrow pulpit, he could survey the upturned faces of a full congregation. He took a firm grip on the handrail. The bright light of summer filled the church and from his elevated position the pastor, looking out through the windows at the east end of the church, could see a strip of blue sea, as blue as chicory in flower. A votive ship was suspended above the central aisle of the church, a model of the three-masted barque Oihonna under full sail. The votive ship was believed to have the ability to predict the wind – the wind would blow in whichever direction the barque was pointing. At the moment the bowsprit of the Oihonna was pointing north-west, as it had done for the last week.
The pastor was delighted to see that so many of his flock had come to the morning service. He understood their motives and was ready to provide his parishioners with comfort and consolation in this time of affliction. He had chosen to open his sermon with the Old Testament account of Jonah and the whale, or to be more precise, with the verses Jonah 2:5-7 in which Jonah utters a prayer from the belly of the whale:
The waters closed in over me to take my life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
O LORD my God.
He was planning to say the following: “The deep surrounded poor Jonah and weeds wrapped around his head. But God led his soul up from the grave just as he will raise all these poor drowned souls from their watery graves in the sea.”
It could well have been a beautiful sermon, perhaps the best that the Rev. Lökström had ever preached.
He looked at the upturned faces. He saw his wife in the first pew, and K-D Mattsson and Mrs Councillor, and Abrahamsson from Busö and Backas Isaksson and their wives, and Birger from the store and Pettersson from Lassfols. There were many people there and they were seeking comfort in this difficult time.
&
nbsp; They waited for the pastor’s words. Someone coughed and the sound echoed back from the ceiling.
In the organ loft the bald head of Lindman the organist gleamed in the sunlight that entered through the rose window at the gable end of the nave. It’s relevant to mention at this point that the Rev. Lökström had never got on well with Lindman the organist. A ridiculous thought suddenly entered the pastor’s head as he stood there in the pulpit, his mouth already opening to begin his sermon: Why in the name of all that is holy does Our Lord allow his light to shine upon such a hopeless fool as Börje Lindman, the organist?
“… hopeless fool …” To his horror the Rev. Lökström heard the echo of his words return to him from the church.
The rather abbreviated service was over. The congregation hung around the car park for a short time greeting one another and chatting before getting into their cars and driving home for a late Sunday breakfast or for coffee.
Early summer had now arrived in the islands in earnest. The downy birch trees around the church had unfurled their leaves and the foliage was tender and translucent as it is in the few short weeks before midsummer. The bird cherry behind the caretaker’s tool shed was blooming as white as a giant’s bride. A white wagtail with a rubbery earthworm dangling from its beak scuttled across the sandy car park on its quick thin legs. Swifts swooped and screeched around the bell tower, their long curved wings like black boomerangs.
K-D Mattsson opened the driver’s door of his Opel Kadett, dug around in his trouser pocket for the ignition key and said: “Lökström is obviously stressed by this awful business.” He broke off and looked at his car key as if he didn’t really know what it was for. “It can prey on anyone’s mind though, I have to admit that,” he added.
K-D got into the car, where his wife was already sitting, shut the driver’s door and started the engine.
IV
How Janne the Elder Was Miraculously Saved from the Sea and What Happened Afterwards
The shipping report on the radio at 22.05 had forecast a period of more unstable weather with the wind veering, Force 3-4, showers. The people of Fagerö looked at the sky and the sea, tapped their barometers and agreed with the forecast.
The murmur of the sea became deeper and darker in tone. The wind extended the pennants on the household flag-poles and scattered rain from the grey cloaks of the clouds. Rain rattled on the leaves and moistened the ground.
To:policedepartment@countycouncil
From:[email protected]
Subject:unidentified bodies
The coastguard boat brought two female bodies and that of a youth of c. 15 years into Tunnhamn at 15.00 hours. All three were found washed up on Flakaskär, south-east of Lemlot, Fagerö. Coastguard personnel made a preliminary examination of the location of the bodies and photographed it. The bodies are estimated to have been in the water for around a week and present injuries to the head, body and arms. Post-mortem lividity and swelling were also noted.
The wind drove a smattering of raindrops against the inspector’s window and Riggert von Haartman looked up from his computer screen for a moment.
A telephone rang out in the reception and the receptionist’s voice could be heard saying, “Fagerö District Police, Wikholm …”
The clock on the wall ticked.
The inspector looked at the telephone on his desk – white plastic with black buttons and a built-in speaker. The standard official model. His phone didn’t ring, the call obviously was not for him. He could hear Axelina’s voice in the reception, but couldn’t pick out what she was saying. The inspector turned back to his computer screen and typed with stiff forefingers:
No identity papers were found on the bodies.
The keyboard made a dull dap-dap-dap, dap-dap noise, the same sort of sound as a lesser spotted woodpecker hunting for food in a rotten tree trunk: hesitant and with frequent pauses for the bird to listen for the almost inaudible sound of larvae in the wood. Then the inspector wrote:
Detailed description and photographs are attached.
He paused and sat listening, his head slightly to one side. Perhaps he was listening to the rattle of the rain. And the ticking of the clock on the wall, the hum of the fan in his computer, Axelina’s footsteps out in reception.
Or perhaps he was listening for something quite different; something no one has words for yet, something it is too early to express.
What is Inspector Riggert von Haartman thinking about at this point? It’s easy enough for us to write him into the narrative as he sits there at the computer in his office and puts the finishing touches to a preliminary report on the most recent discovery of bodies. He is going to email it directly to the county police headquarters. He has already had to send in several similar reports.
With electronic help we can capture and read the messages he sends over the police intranet, though such an action is against the law and the scribe risks prosecution for hacking. We are in no position, however, to capture Inspector Riggert von Haartman’s thoughts by any means at all, electronic or otherwise. We can’t see through his eyes. There is no way of studying the images stored in his cortex.
We can only describe the externals. We can say, for instance, that he has black patches under his eyes, that his eyelids are swollen, that his mouth is slack, that he rubs the base of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“I really could have done with you here with me now, Elisabeth,” he whispers barely audibly.
From a narrative perspective we now find ourselves in a rather awkward situation. We shall be forced to turn to Janne the Post and ask his help if we are to take our story further.
“What’s in it for me?” Janne asks with a sly grin.
He has taken his shoes off and unbuttoned his shirt and is sitting at the table in his small kitchen drinking herbal tea and eating rusks. His kitchen is as clean and tidy as a health centre. Janne is not the man to leave dishes and cutlery in the sink with bits of dried food on them, and the stainless steel of his draining board has been dried and the tiles on the wall wiped spotless. The plates on the electric cooker are clean and the herb jars are lined up neatly on a shelf above the cooker. A cutting board hangs from a hook on the wall alongside a couple of embroidered oven cloths. The microwave is gleaming.
He has laid out all the tools for his illegal activity on the kitchen table – his cotton gloves, the sharp knife and the tweezers. The kettle is steaming away on the stove.
“You’re well aware that we can’t offer any guarantees of reward for your assistance, Janne,” the scribe says in answer to his question.
Janne carries on chewing rusks, hard crumbs of which scrunch between his molars with the same noise as sand in a cement mixer. It’s obvious that he is chewing over more than just his rusk. He swallows and swills his mouth clean with a sip of tea.
“Can I be quite open and honest with you?”
“Of course,” the scribe says kindly.
“It’s like this. Here I am in my best years, hale and hearty and in full possession of all my faculties. But the thing is that I’ve never been with a woman. It’s not for lack of the urge. I’m certainly not one of them! I mean, I like women … Now since you’re the scribe and everything, I was just wondering whether you might be able to write in a woman for me?”
“I’m afraid that might prove a bit difficult …”
“The one who was married to the inspector, for instance. You’d be hard put to come up with a better bit of skirt than that. Blond and smart and … That’s the kind of woman that would suit me.”
“No, no, Janne! It’s absolutely unthinkable!”
“Well, what about the girl who lives with Judit, then?”
“For goodness sake, she’s only seventeen, if I remember rightly.”
“What’s that got to do with it? She’s legal isn’t she?”
“Janne!”
The kettle on the stove begins its shrill whistling. Muttering to himself Janne flips through the outgoing post,
which is laid out on the kitchen table. There aren’t very many letters. Janne complains that the habit of writing is in decline even on Fagerö: everyone has a telephone or a computer these days, so what hope is there for the post? And he is doubtful whether the letters can provide further material for our story. But he’ll look through them, anyway, and that will take a while. While he is busy infringing the privacy of the mail perhaps we’d like to entertain ourselves with a story? The story of a miraculous rescue, the perils of travelling on weak ice and two kick sledges that ended up alongside each other at the bottom of the sea.
Janne snorts and begins moving the first envelope back and forth in the steam rising from the spout of the kettle.
Janne the Post inherited both his vocation and his nickname from his father. Johan Styris the Elder was known as the last real postman in the south-west archipelago, a bold and dutiful fellow who refused to be daunted by storms, mist, foul roads and ice or any of the other inconveniences nature can throw at the delivery of mail. It was essential that letters, packets, money orders and other properly addressed and stamped items reach the addressee without unnecessary delay. That is what the rule book of the Board of Posts and Telegraphs stipulated and that was the prescription that Janne the Elder lived by. He was a civil servant and therefore considered himself to be a cut above ordinary mortals. They were only subject to God and the criminal law, whereas he was also subject to the Code of Posts and Telegraphs.
Compared with the Code, everything – including life itself – weighed light in the scales.