by Lars Sund
At least the girl came to Fagerö was Judit’s first thought. That was some relief.
She took her moped from Gotfrid’s boathouse and rode to the graveyard.
No one was there. It was still raining softly.
She found the newly planted cowslips on the grave of the child.
She spent several hours searching for the girl around the graveyard, along the road to Storby and down in Tunnhamn. She went back to Storby and asked Pettersson at the campsite whether he had seen the girl. Then it occurred to her that the girl might have gone to the American Bar and she asked Pettersson to ring there. She asked everyone she met – given the weather there weren’t very many people about – whether they had seen the girl. Backas Isaksson and Elna drove up in their car and Judit stopped them. Outside the community centre she met Fride and a sober and shamefaced Axmar and they helped her search.
There was no sign of the girl anywhere and no one had seen her.
By midnight Judit was exhausted, soaked and close to breaking down.
She went up to Solgård to use their telephone to ring the emergency services.
The Eider Café
“She can’t still be on Fagerö. Impossible. We would have found her by this stage,” Backas Isaksson said and stirred his cup of coffee.
“I reckon she’s gone over to the mainland. You know what teenage girls are like. Once the money runs out, she’ll be back,” Birger from the store said.
“Well, she didn’t take the Arkipelag, that’s for sure. That was the first thing we checked,” Ludi said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Of course she might have slipped over to the mainland with one of the visitors’ boats, but I don’t really think so, I don’t.”
“She seems to have vanished into thin air,” Pettersson said.
He placed his empty cup on the saucer, fished a wad of snus out of his trouser pocket and tucked it under his top lip. He adjusted its position with his tongue and smacked his lips.
“It’s possible … perhaps … that she didn’t disappear of her own free will, if I can put it like that,” Pettersson said.
There was silence.
Sooner or later, of course, someone had to say it.
The men looked down at the laminated top of the table or into their coffee cups. Isaksson played with the teaspoon. Ludi wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again.
The search for the girl was into its second day. During the afternoon the police and volunteers had carried out a search of several pieces of woodland and the coastguard helicopter, which was equipped with a thermal imaging camera, had searched the shoreline and nearby skerries. At half past four Inspector von Haartman decided to call off the searches for the time being.
Isaksson, Pettersson, Ludi and several others felt the need for coffee and stopped off at the Eider Café on the way home.
The Eider Café is no ordinary café: it’s a time machine. When you open the door and step across the threshold of this little café far out among the most distant islands you are stepping back fifty years. The clock on the wall stopped once and for all one summer’s afternoon in 1957. The walls are wood-panelled to half height with rounded battens, which have been varnished yellow. The tables have red laminate tops. The counter has a glass cabinet for the display of a range of buns, sugar donuts, iced donuts, muffins and Swiss rolls, most of which are home-baked. There is a row of decoy ducks sitting on a shelf, a vine climbing along one of the long sides above the panelling, and a palm in a pot in one corner. Alongside the obligatory penny-in-the-slot machine there is a hatstand with a navy blue Breton cap that has been hanging there as long as anyone can remember. Should you attempt to order an espresso, cappuccino or latte you will be told, “We don’t do them here.” The Eider Café serves Real Coffee. Verna or Ing-Britt will come with a brown plywood tray, place cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and a cream jug on your table and pour your coffee with the words “There you go!” When the time comes to pay, the money goes into an old-fashioned cash register, the amount due being displayed in black characters on a white background in a window on the top of the machine. The cash drawer shoots out and makes a pinging noise as it does so. They do not accept banker’s cards.
When you are in the Eider Café you are, so to speak, in a backwater. Light enters through the big windows that face the road and glints on the varnished wall panelling. A car drives past, some summer visitors go by on their bicycles – they belong to another world, another age. There is no hurry in here, there is no music being played through hidden speakers, but there is the scent of freshly baked bread and fresh coffee.
“Well, well,” Ludi said, just to say something.
“Does anyone know how Judit’s taking it?” Birger from the store asked.
“Not very well at all,” Ludi said. “She’s phoned several times to ask whether there is any news.”
“Uncertainty wears you down,” Pettersson said. “It’s better to get news of some sort, whatever it might be, than not to know anything at all.”
“Look at the way Judit has looked after the girl … there’s not many people would have done that,” Birger said.
“It’s weird the way things are happening just now, no getting away from it,” Isaksson said. “First we get all these southerners being washed up and now the girl simply disappears. You have to ask yourself what’s going on …”
He shook his head.
Then Janne the Post spoke for the first time:
“I don’t really think she was made for this world, that girl, you know.”
The men looked at him in astonishment.
“How do you mean?” Isaksson wondered.
“Sort of … well …” Janne scratched his scalp with two fingers. “It was … like she didn’t really belong to our times. Like she was too innocent. Like there was a kind of inner toughness missing.”
“A real philosopher, you are, Janne,” Pettersson said.
“Like she was as much of a stranger here as those others.”
Hotmail
Ghita Saarinen wrote:
Subject: Report
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Hello!
Arrived here yesterday evening and took room in hotel in centre. Pretty basic, but nice and clean. Sitting watching the TV morning news. It’s about yet another scandal – corruption again: a company in one of the free economic zones seems to have been bribing politicians and civil servants to cover up major fiddles. Unfortunately I can’t understand all of it as my language is on the rusty side. I’m going to spend the day trying to get hold of some of my old contacts, so keep your fingers crossed.
Ghita
Riggert von Haartman wrote:
Subject: Re: Report
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Hi!
Best of luck. No change at this end – no more bodies. I think we can begin to assume it’s over now.
Riggert
Ghita Saarinen wrote:
Subject:Re: Re: Report
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Hello!
Finding my contacts was more difficult and took longer than expected – one of them has just died of cancer and another has moved abroad. Third time lucky, though! I managed to get an economics editor at the state radio on the phone – I used to know him – and I told him why I was here. He suddenly went quiet, said he had no time to talk as he was just about to go on air. I suggested we meet somewhere after he’s finished for the day. He said he’d contact me and I gave him my mobile number. I’m just hoping he’ll ring.
Ghita
Riggert von Haartman wrote:
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Report
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Hi!
Thanks for the update. We’ll have to see what emerges from your talk with the editor. We’ve decided to dismantle the reception centre at Tunnh
amn. Another problem has turned up, unfortunately – a seventeen-year-old girl has been reported missing for several days. We know she was at the cemetery last Sunday planting flowers on one of the graves, but no trace of her since. It seems the girl is a bit backward and keeps herself to herself. She was mixed up in a strange incident at the American Bar on midsummer’s eve: according to a couple of my colleagues who were present, some youths from the mainland were all set on causing trouble and she tried to calm them down by singing to them. As you might expect, her disappearance has caused a good deal of concern. First all the bodies and now this – though it isn’t likely there’ll be a connection.
Riggert
Ghita Saarinen wrote:
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Report
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Hello!
It’s late but I thought I’d write. I met my old contact, the economics journalist. We met in a pub in the old part of the city and he gave me a lot of information – off the record, of course. I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it, but I need to put a bit more flesh on the bones and that might take a couple of days. Meanwhile, I’m utterly exhausted. Goodnight!
Ghita
Safe to Thy Care I Commit Myself
You are allowing yourself a short break on a sunlounger out on the grass. Stig is at work on the mainland, though he’ll soon be taking a holiday – at last. The leaves on the old ash tree are rustling in the mild warm breeze. Woolly white clouds are sailing across the sky and a cabbage white flies in fits and starts away from the strawberry patch. The flycatchers are flitting constantly to and from the nest box. They are always in a hurry, but not so much of a hurry that they forget to be watchful. There’s the female now, but instead of flying straight to the box she lands on a twig and looks all round with her keen black eyes, and only then does she make for the hole and quickly slip in. Faint cheeping can be heard from inside the box. The female sticks her head out of the hole and checks there are no cats, squirrels, crows or sparrowhawks in sight before she flies away. By then the male is already waiting on a nearby twig with yet another insect in his beak to feed the chicks.
You have children yourself and you have to protect them against the dangers of the world. Sara and Viktor are playing on a blanket under the ash tree, blowing soap bubbles. The children hold the plastic rings to their mouths and the bubbles grow, filling with air and trembling a little. You have to be careful not to blow too hard or they will burst. Then the bubbles break free from the ring and float upwards, glittering and translucent in the sunlight. Jenni laughs in delight, stretching her chubby little fists after the bubbles and not understanding that she can’t reach them. The bubbles float away on the breeze, before bursting and disappearing as though they had never existed.
It is a fine summer’s day and you are watching the children blowing bubbles on the lawn at Olar. You have a tight feeling in your breast, trying not to think of all the dangers that threaten the children. You seek comfort and a line from Hymn 434 comes into your head: “Safe to Thy care I commit myself.” It is one of your mum’s favourite hymns. You try not to think that your father is going into hospital for tests next week. He is always tired, has lost so much weight and complains about pains around his midriff.
Safe to Thy care I commit myself.
The soap bubbles float into the air. You really ought to be weeding the strawberry patch. The female flycatcher is back. She checks the coast is clear and slips into the box. The chicks are cheeping hungrily.
You are no longer having to put up with the noise of the refrigeration units down in Tunnhamn. That, at least, is something to thank God for.
Several cars drive past along the Tunnhamn road. They are on their way to the ferry. You recognise the blue Volkswagen Golf belonging to Hildegaard Lökström, the deaconess. What kind of business can be taking her to the mainland? You could hardly bring yourself to look her in the eye when you met her in church last Sunday. She sat there in her pew looking so weary, and when she went up to take Communion you could see from her back how thin and worn-looking she had become in recent weeks.
What she had to witness in that tent in Tunnhamn doesn’t bear thinking about.
Dear God, why do you send us such trials?
Poor Hildegaard, she could have done without the scandal her husband caused by his strange outburst against Lindman the organist in the church on the Sunday before midsummer. Lökström hasn’t set foot in the church since then. He has been signed off sick and a temporary visiting pastor is standing in for him. Lökström has apologised to Lindman – rumour has it that he went down on his knees – but it seems likely that one of them will look for a post elsewhere.
The soap bubbles float up into the air. Sunlight shines through them and Jenni laughs.
Elna has heard on the bush telegraph that Mrs Councillor has been back in contact with K-D Mattsson at last. She has been with her sister in Sweden. K-D begged her to come home but she had answered that she hadn’t yet decided what to do.
“So we’ll have to wait and see what happens,” Elna said.
And they haven’t found any trace of Judit’s girl.
Then, for some reason or another, you remember what Stig said the other night. You were in bed and the children were asleep. Stig snuggled up close to you as he sometimes did, his big hand resting on your hip. You could smell his scent and everything was so still. Thank You, God, you thought, for giving me Stig.
And he whispered to you: “I can’t stop thinking about that girl, Mikaela. Disappearing just like that.”
And you whispered to him: “Dear Stig, I don’t want to talk about it.”
His eyes were wide and dark in his white face.
“What is it that’s happening? Here, on our Fagerö?”
“I don’t know, sweet one. Only God knows.”
He looked at you, his eyes wide and dark in the half-light of the bedroom. You stroked his cheek, felt the bristly growth with your fingers.
“Since those bodies started to come ashore, nothing has been the same.”
“Sh, you mustn’t say that.”
“It was a mistake to keep them here,” he whispered. “It was a mistake to bury them here.”
“Dear Stig, dear Stig …” A lump was rising in your throat and your eyes were beginning to fill. Why are you such a crybaby? But Stig understood, thank God, and put his arm round you and held you.
“I didn’t mean it, Mikaela …”
“You know how frightened I get.”
The fragile web of your thoughts is shattered by loud shouts.
Sara hits her brother and shouts in a voice close to tears: “Mum, Mum! Viktor has knocked over my mug of soapy water!”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Viktor yells and hits her back.
And you are dragged back to the everyday routine, saved from any more thoughts.
“Sara! Viktor! Stop quarrelling! Now look what you’ve done, you’ve made Jenni cry.”
Summoned to a Meeting
Her entry in the electoral register reads Elna Gunvor Viola Isaksson, née Sommarström. Here on Fagerö she is known as Backas Elna, but who is the real woman behind this name?
A few details of her appearance have already been mentioned: a narrow face, big heavy glasses with green plastic frames. Her hair is thick, streaked grey like the fur of a farmyard cat. In spite of the fact that she will be sixty in a couple of years her face is amazingly smooth and she looks much younger when she takes her glasses off. She usually wears a trouser suit with a silk scarf at the neck. She tends to favour green scarves.
Elna has a degree in commerce and runs her own company, which goes by the name of South-west Archipelago Bookkeeping Services. She has been married to Bernhard Isaksson at Backas in Storby for thirty-three years and they have two daughters and a son, all of whom have moved away. She devotes her leisure time to handicrafts and to the garden, but more recently she has also begun to take an interest in alternative medicin
e. Once a week during term time she takes part in the ladies’ fitness class run by Community Health.
She became a grandmother for the second time in October last year.
She is mildly hypochondriac and is particularly worried about getting cancer.
So here she is, Elna, standing by her green Toyota Camry outside the Eider Café. She has just come out, having bought some pastries. Maybe she is expecting a customer at her office, you never know. When she came out of the Eider on the way to her car she bumped into Beda Gustavsson who was marching along Käringsundsvägen with her walking poles, rucksack and a determined expression on her face. Elna is not one to forgo the chance of a chat in the car park, and being a broad-minded woman she is quite prepared to talk to summer visitors, some of them anyway.
And, of course, it’s doubtful whether Beda Gustavsson should be considered an ordinary visitor from the mainland. She first came to Fagerö when she was a student and she crawled around the islands and skerries with her magnifying glass and vasculum to the astonishment of quite a few of the islanders. Elna has known her for years.
Real high summer has now arrived out here among the islands. A kind of dusty calm rules in Storby: the school is closed, there are no children shouting and yelling in the playground of Mörten’s nursery, and the computers are switched off in most of the offices at the deserted community centre. Fluffy white clouds hang in the sky and it seems that apart from Elna and Beda the whole of Storby has been evacuated.