Blackwater (56 page)

Birger showed no fear once they had got going. He had taken some packs of dressings out of his doctor’s bag and put them into a rucksack. Johan carried it for him.

They came to the Brandbergs’ land where the great spruces still stood. 1:34, it was called. The mosses grew out in the damp autumn air, drinking and swelling. The deciduous trees were thinning out, their colours vanishing, the leaves fading and displaying their skeletons of nerves. Here and there colour flared, caused by the frost.

It was very quiet. He had expected to hear the clatter of game birds taking off, perhaps even see a large capercaillie cock flying between the trees with his heavy load of flesh.

The sound of an axe broke the silence, the rhythm that of someone chopping wood. Two, at the most three blows of the axe, then silence as he picked up the next log. One or two were stubborn. Duller sounds as he swung the axe and log onto the block. They were now so close that they could hear the dry sound of wood splitting as he twisted the two parts free with his hands.

They couldn’t see him. He was probably behind the cookhouse he used as a woodshed. Johan was standing by the privy, now slowly being taken over by forest. Moss and lichen were growing in the cracks of the steps, greyish-black and green-spotted lichen covering the planking with a rough skin, the timber slowly decaying beneath it.

Birger had sat down on a stone, presumably to rest in order to be level-headed when they confronted him. Perhaps he was wondering what to say. But Johan didn’t really believe he was planning anything beforehand. He was used to plodding straight on, straight into misfortune.

The chopping stopped, but Björne didn’t appear. It seemed to Johan that he was standing there, listening. Could he have heard them? Or could he sense them? Pick up their scent?

Björne was singular. Johan had been quite young when he realised it. There was something dark about Björne. He followed the brothers, moved just like them. But he was shapeless. No one could say Björne was like this or that – great talker, quick-witted, like Pekka, or competitive, like Per-Ola, unafraid of pain. Björne was the one who followed them.

Birger got up, went over and shouted. Björne immediately appeared from behind the cookhouse. He held one hand in his pocket and was walking rather stiffly.

Then everything became quite ordinary. Birger and Björne greeted each other, the words falling as they should. Oh, yes, so you two’re out an’ about, are you? Yes, we thought we’d make our way up here. Did yer come across t’Area? Yes, Christ, there’ll never be any forest there. Not many birds this year. Well, there’s some all right. But higher up. In t’thick forest.

They followed him indoors. There were rat droppings in the porch where he stored the firewood, and a rank smell. Maybe the stoat hunted there. When he opened the kitchen door, the air hit them like a sickly warm wall, reeking of coffee and snuff. Previously Björne had given off an earthy smell, but now the smell had sickened. The smell of old man, Johan thought. He’s old. Not yet fifty, but old.

Björne put a log into the stove, picked up a battered, blackened coffee pot and tipped a scoop of water into it. Then he opened the window and threw out the water and the old grounds. Johan wondered what it looked like outside the window. All the time, as he scooped in fresh water, added the coffee, put out a loaf and a box of soft cheese, he said nothing, and that was quite usual. Björne usually said nothing when he was working. But at the moment he was using only one hand, the other still in his pocket.

‘We’ve been to take a look at Johan’s moped. The one you sank outside Tangen,’ said Birger, after emptying his cup of coffee.

Björne looked up. The colourless blue eyes appeared. Then his face closed up again, as if it had no features. He was shapeless. Heavy rather than fat. The hair, once brown, had faded and thinned. There was a deep mark round his head where his cap had been, greasy compressed hair at the base. His cheeks and chin were unshaven, the stubble grey and white. He was holding a slice of bread in a big hand spotted black where engine oil had penetrated.

‘Hadn’t you heard they’d got a moped up? When they were dragging for something fallen from the skies, or whatever it was.’

He made a movement that might have been a shake of the head.

‘Sleeping all right?’ said Birger unexpectedly. Johan remembered Björne had been his patient.

‘Not so well,’ said Björne. ‘Used to. But now ‘tis hell. Usually put a buckler fern in t’bed. There’s somethin’ in ferns what makes you drop off. But you have t’watch it. You might drop off for ever.’

He dipped his slice of bread into his coffee and sucked into him the part that became too loose and was about to fall back into the coffee.

‘Used to work so hard a man jist fell in t’bed. A man slept then.’

‘I saw you when you were coming from the lake and had sunk the moped. You were pretending to fish with the long line and the otter board. Johan saw you going down in Vidart’s Duett.’

‘Remember once cycling home, at night t’was, and quite light. Been clearing above Alda’s and decided to bloody well finish before t’weekend. An’ I did. But was so bloody tired I didn’t think I’d make it home on t’bike. Then I felt it going by itself. T’was like if someone had his feet on the pedals and were pedalling for me.’

His eyes glinted. He seemed to want to see the effect of his story. If they believed that he believed it.

‘A man can get help,’ he said, and he grinned.

‘Remember old man Annersa?’ said Johan. ‘He didn’t get any help.’

Johan had been quite young when his brothers had told him about the old man in Vitstensviken. His name was Paul Annersa and he lived alone ten kilometres from Blackreed village. His cottage was on one side of the road and the stable and barn on the other. A great many people had seen the old man crossing the road, especially on autumn evenings before the snow had come. He was going to tend his horse. He died late one autumn.

Sometimes he used to be away for a couple of weeks at a time, sleeping in forest cabins, his horse with him. So no one exactly gave it much thought when he hadn’t been seen for quite a while.

It had been his appendix. The bottle of liquor and box of painkillers found on the floor by his bed showed that he must have suffered. The horse died of thirst. The old man never got to it. Its stall was kicked to pieces, but the iron chain had held.

The old man is very bent as he walks without looking where he’s going. There’s no need. One of the Brunström boys came driving at high speed round a corner. He didn’t see the old man until it was too late and he had time to think, Christ Christ Christ Almighty! But he drove right through the old man. He was like grey air.

The horse screamed and its kicks thundered on the wall of the stall. The wood splintered and broke. But its screams went unheard and the old man’s body was lying still on the pull-out sofa.

Ever since then, he crosses the road at dusk. He’s going to see if his horse has water. He must have worried about it at the time, although he couldn’t get out of bed. That is how strong the impulse was. And strongest in the autumn, at dusk.

‘Do you remember him?’

Björne nodded.

‘It hurts sometimes,’ said Johan.

‘’Tis why I haven’t no woman,’ said Björne. ‘Haven’t even a cat. No one after me.’

It was growing dark outside. They would be sitting there getting nowhere with him. He would talk about things that made his strangeness and aloneness quite pleasing to his listener. But Björne was no oddball. Perhaps he’s empty, Johan thought. Nothing but that inside him. He himself isn’t there.

He had done it.

The event – ten, twenty savage knifings – came out of nothing. Out of the darkness that follows us. Perhaps he doesn’t even remember it.

And when he’s alone? He tried to imagine Björne alone in the cottage. The way he lit the oil lamp as he was doing now, still with only one hand. The way reflections began to appear in the windowpanes. There was a milking stool in the bedroom, a book lying on it. The thought of Björne lying in those dirty sheets reading at night was unbelievable. Johan got up and went to look at the book.

“Tis Nostradamus,’ said Björne. ‘Sent for it from Finland. There was an advertisement. Nostradamus is the only one to have predicted correctly.’

He was hiding himself. He wanted them to think he was an oddball. A harmless, kindly old man of the forest. As folk were in the olden days. Perhaps he believed it himself. But that was no use. He was the son of one the few in the village who had done well for himself. There was work for him. There was money and machines. He had no need to be here.

Birger took the oil lamp off the table and shone it down Björne’s leg. There was a dark patch on the denim above the clenched hand in his pocket. As they were looking, the patch spread.

‘Have you cut yourself?’

He nodded.

He had been frightened and cut himself when he heard us. Had he been frightened for eighteen years? And Annie Raft with her gun. How have people been living here? I got out, Johan thought. I slipped out.

Birger rummaged in the woodbox for a newspaper.

‘Put your hand on this,’ he said.

Björne took out his left hand, the thumb clasped by the fingers. The blood seeping out was very dark. Birger got him to loosen the rigid fingers and straighten out his thumb. The wound gaped when he touched it and the blood started oozing faster.

‘The rucksack, please, Johan.’

He was still holding Björne’s hand.

‘Find the bandages I put in. There’s some tablets, too.’

‘Don’t want any,’ said Björne.

‘They’re calming. I don’t think it’d be a bad idea. We must talk about what happened. And we must go down to the village to get that stitched. I’ve got my bag there.’

When Jöhan had given him the packages of bandages, compresses and cotton wool, he said:

‘Go on out now, Johan. We’ll have a talk while I do this.’

‘No, I don’t want to,’ said Johan. ‘That’s stupid.’

‘Do it, anyhow.’

He looked around. A shotgun hung on the wall by the kitchen cupboard. Björne had a knife in his belt.

‘Don’t want to.’

‘Go on.’

Johan pulled on his jacket, trying to delay matters. They were sitting as before. Björne’s head was hanging. Around the oil lamp was a pool of warm yellow light, in which Björne’s and Birger’s hands lay entwined. Birger nodded towards Johan. He had to go.

Outside, the darkness was not as compact as it had seemed through the window. It had begun to drizzle. He walked down towards the privy, stopping halfway to look back. The window was filled with the yellow light. He could see their heads and the lamp. It looked cosy, as always when you look into a room from outside in the dark and the rain. And Björne really did look like a kindly old man. An oddball.

‘Did you know Lill-Ola Lennartsson had died?’ said Birger.

‘No.’

‘Had a heart attack. Maybe I missed something there.’

He said the latter largely to himself, a thought with little energy behind it.

‘He’d been living in Östersund since that business down by the Lobber. I suppose he didn’t dare stay. Did you know he fainted when he saw it was his tent?’

‘That bastard,’ said Björne.

Birger pressed the edges of the wound together and put a compress over it.

‘Yes, he was a real shit. He fiddled all sorts of things. When they analysed the feathers of the birds he burnt, they were buzzards. Two of them. I saw the parcels in his freezer. Unplucked capercaillie, he’d written on them. He must have been scared the police would look into everything at his place because he had been up there. I’m going to bandage this quite tightly now. I’ll have to stitch it when we get down to the village.’

He thought about Johan out there in the semidarkness. It was raining now, gusts of wind spattering the window with rain.

‘You thought it was him, didn’t you?’

‘He drove up there himself. On the evening afore Midsummer. What business had he got up there? I knew the buzzard had chicks. And a Dutch car had come earlier on in the day. Now they’re fetching them. I thought. He were taking the opportunity while they’re all Midsummer partying. Goin’ to sell the live chicks. As hunting hawks for some bloody Arab.’

‘Did you go up to Alda’s to see about Johan?’

‘He was all right where he was. Anyroad, he’d got out of the well by the time I got there.’

‘You took the moped.’

‘I’d planned that all along. Take the car up an’ I’d frighten the bastard. Thought of catchin’ him on the path. The buzzard’s nest’s up on the cliff above the river.’

‘You recognised the tent?’

‘’Course.’

‘Why did you set about it so ferociously?’

He said nothing, just sat there with his head bowed, breathing heavily.

‘Didn’t mean to,’ he said. ‘I were just going to give him a thrashin’. But I saw his back. He was lyin’ against the canvas. I could see his back. It bulged out. Then everything went black.’

‘It wasn’t him.’

‘No.’

He sat in silence again. Birger wondered if he remembered the rest. Perhaps it was just as he had said. Black. A hole. A hole he had circled round for what would soon be twenty years.

‘Annie was on her way up to ask you about the moped.’

‘I weren’t here. I were at Frösön. Admitted at t’end of April.’

‘Who was waiting for her?’

‘I dunno.’

‘We must go down now. We must get that stitched. Then I’ll take you back to Frösön. You must tell the doctor. It’ll be best for you if you go to the police yourself.’

Was he listening at all?

‘Things won’t be very different for you than they’ve been in recent years. You’ll be given leaves and you’ll be able to come here. It’ll soon be twenty years ago. Nothing else on your record, is there? No assaults or fights?’

‘No. Been mostly here on me own. Used to go and see Annie.’

‘Annie would have said what I’ve said,’ said Birger. ‘Go to the police yourself. That’d be best.’

‘They’ll be here soon, I suppose.’

‘No, I haven’t phoned them. And I’m not going to. I want you to come down with me and have that stitched. Then we’ll go to Frösön.’