The Girl Who Played with Fire (8 page)

She went back inside, ordered a caffè latte, and sat with it at the bar. It was past midnight. The atmosphere among the guests and staff was anxious. People were having subdued conversations, looking towards the horizon from time to time, and waiting. There were thirty-two guests and a staff of ten at the Keys Hotel. Salander noticed Geraldine Forbes at a table by the front desk. She looked tense and was nursing a drink. Her husband was nowhere to be seen.

Salander drank her coffee and had once more started in on Fermat’s
theorem when McBain came out of the office and stood in the middle of the lobby.

“May I have your attention, please? I have been informed that a hurricane-force storm has just hit Petite Martinique. I have to ask everyone to go down to the cellar at once.”

McBain stonewalled the many questions and directed his guests to the cellar stairs behind the front desk. Petite Martinique, a small island belonging to Grenada, was only a few sea miles north of the main island. Salander glanced at Ella Carmichael and pricked up her ears when the bartender went over to McBain.

“How bad is it?”

“No way of knowing. The telephone lines are down,” McBain said in a low voice.

Salander went down to the cellar and put her bag on a blanket in the corner. She thought for a moment and then headed back up against the flow to the lobby. She found Ella and asked her if there was anything else she could do to help. Ella shook her head, looking worried.

“Matilda is a bitch. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

Salander watched a group of five adults and about ten children hurrying in through the hotel entrance. McBain took charge of them too and directed them to the cellar stairs.

Salander was suddenly struck by a worrisome thought.

“I suppose everybody will be going down into their cellars about now,” she said quietly.

Ella watched the family going down the stairs.

“Unfortunately ours is one of the few cellars on Grand Anse. More people will probably be coming to seek shelter here.”

Salander gave her a sharp look.

“What will the rest do?”

“The ones who don’t have cellars?” She gave a bitter laugh. “They’ll huddle in their houses or look for shelter in a shed. They have to trust in God.”

Salander turned and ran through the lobby and out of the entrance.

George Bland
.

She heard Ella call after her, but she did not stop to explain.

He lives in a fucking shack that will collapse with the first gust of wind
.

As she reached the road to St. George’s she staggered in the wind that tore at her body, and then she began to jog. She was heading stubbornly into a heavy headwind that made her reel. It took almost ten minutes to
cover the four hundred yards to the shack. She did not see a living soul the whole way there.

The rain came out of nowhere like an ice-cold shower from a fire hose. At the same instant, she turned in towards the shack and saw the light from his kerosene lamp swinging in the window. She was drenched in a second, and she could hardly see two yards in front of her. She hammered on his door. George Bland opened it with eyes wide.

“What are you doing here?” He shouted to be heard above the wind.

“Come on. You have to come to the hotel. They have a cellar.”

The boy looked shocked. The wind slammed the door shut and it was several seconds before he could force it open again. Salander grabbed hold of his T-shirt and dragged him out. She wiped the water from her face, then gripped his hand and began to run. He ran with her.

They took the beach path, which was about a hundred yards shorter than the main road, which looped inland. When they had gone halfway, Salander realized that this might have been a mistake. On the beach they had no protection at all. Wind and rain tore at them so hard that they had to stop several times. Sand and branches were flying through the air. There was a terrible roar. After what seemed an eternity Salander finally spied the hotel walls and picked up the pace. Just as they made it to the entrance and the promise of safety, she looked over her shoulder at the beach. She stopped short.

Through a rain squall she spotted two figures about fifty yards down the beach. Bland pulled her arm to drag her through the door. She let go of his hand and braced herself against the wall as she tried to focus on the water’s edge. For a second or two she lost sight of the figures in the rain, but then the entire sky was lit up by a flash of lightning.

She knew already that it was Richard and Geraldine Forbes. They were at about the same place where she had seen Forbes wandering back and forth the night before.

When the next flash came, Forbes appeared to be dragging his wife, who was struggling with him.

All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The financial dependence. The allegations of chicanery in Austin. His restless wandering and motionless hours at the Turtleback.

He’s planning to murder her. Forty million in the pot. The storm is his camouflage. This is his chance
.

Salander turned and shoved Bland through the door. She looked around and found the rickety wooden chair the night watchman usually
sat on, which had not been cleared away before the storm. She smashed it as hard as she could against the wall and armed herself with one of its legs. Bland screamed after her in horror as she ran towards the beach.

She was almost bowled over by the furious gusts, but she clenched her teeth and worked her way forward, step by step, into the storm. She had almost reached the couple when one more flash of lightning lit up the beach and she saw Geraldine Forbes sink to her knees by the water’s edge. Forbes stood over her, his arm raised to strike with what looked like an iron pipe in his hand. She saw his arm move in an arc towards his wife’s head. Geraldine stopped struggling.

Forbes never saw Salander coming.

She cracked the chair leg over the back of his head and he fell forward on his face.

Salander bent and took hold of Geraldine Forbes. As the rain whipped across them, she turned the body over. Her hands were suddenly bloody. Geraldine Forbes had a wound on her scalp. She was as heavy as lead, and Salander looked around desperately, wondering how she was going to pull her up to the hotel wall. Then Bland appeared at her side. He shouted something that Salander could not make out in the storm.

She glanced at Forbes. He had his back to her, but he was up on all fours. She took Geraldine’s left arm and put it around her neck and motioned to Bland to take the other arm. They began laboriously dragging her up the beach.

Halfway to the hotel wall Salander felt completely drained, as if all strength had left her body. Her heart skipped a beat when she felt a hand grab her shoulder. She let go of Geraldine and spun around to kick Forbes in the crotch. He stumbled to his knees. Then she kicked him in the face. She saw Bland’s horrified expression. Salander gave him half a second of attention before she again took hold of Geraldine Forbes and resumed dragging her.

After a few seconds she turned her head. Forbes was tottering ten paces behind them, but he was swaying like a drunk in the gusting winds.

Another bolt of lightning cleaved the sky and Salander opened her eyes wide.

She felt a paralyzing terror.

Behind Forbes, a hundred yards out to sea, she saw the finger of God.

A frozen image in the sudden flash, a coal black pillar that towered up and vanished from sight into space.

Matilda
.

It’s not possible
.

A hurricane—yes
.

A tornado—impossible
.

Grenada is not in a tornado zone
.

A freak storm in a region where tornadoes can’t happen
.

Tornadoes cannot form over water
.

This is scientifically wrong
.

This is something unique
.

It has come to take me
.

Bland had seen the tornado too. They yelled at each other to hurry, not able to hear what the other was saying.

Twenty yards more to the wall. Ten. Salander tripped and fell to her knees. Five. At the gate she took one last look over her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of Forbes just as he was tugged into the sea as if by an invisible hand and disappeared. She and Bland heaved their burden through the gate. As they staggered across the back courtyard, over the storm Salander heard the crash of windowpanes shattering and the screeching whine of twisting sheet metal. A plank flew through the air right past her nose. The next second she felt pain as something solid struck her in the back. The violence of the wind diminished when they reached the lobby.

Salander stopped Bland and grabbed his collar. She pulled his head to her mouth and yelled in his ear.

“We found her on the beach. We didn’t see the husband. Understood?”

He nodded.

They carried Geraldine Forbes down the cellar stairs and Salander kicked at the door. McBain opened it and stared at them. Then he pulled them in and shut the door again.

The noise from the storm dropped in a second from an intolerable roar to a creaking and rumbling in the background. Salander took a deep breath.

Ella poured hot coffee into a mug. Salander was so shattered she could scarcely raise her arm to take it. She sat passively on the floor, leaning against the wall. Someone had wrapped blankets around both her and the boy. She was soaked through and bleeding badly from a gash below her kneecap. There was a rip about four inches long in her jeans and she had no memory of it happening. She watched numbly as McBain
and two hotel guests worked on Geraldine Forbes, wrapping bandages around her head. She caught words here and there and understood that someone in the group was a doctor. She noticed that the cellar was packed and that the hotel guests had been joined by people from outside who had come looking for shelter.

After a while McBain came over to Salander and squatted down.

“She’ll live.”

Salander said nothing.

“What happened?”

“We found her beyond the wall on the beach.”

“I was missing three people when I counted the guests down here in the cellar. You and the Forbes couple. Ella said that you ran off like a crazy person just as the storm got here.”

“I went to get my friend George.” Salander nodded at Bland. “He lives down the road in a shack that can’t possibly still be standing.”

“That was very brave but awfully stupid,” McBain said, glancing at Bland. “Did either of you two see the husband?”

“No,” Salander said with a neutral expression. Bland glanced at her and shook his head.

Ella tilted her head and gave Salander a sharp look. Salander looked back at her with expressionless eyes.

Geraldine Forbes came to at around 3:00 a.m. By that time Salander had fallen asleep with her head on Bland’s shoulder.

In some miraculous way, Grenada survived the night. McBain allowed the guests out of the cellar, and when dawn broke the storm had died away, replaced by the most torrential rain Salander had ever seen.

The Keys Hotel would be needing a major overhaul. The devastation at the hotel, and all along the coast, was extensive. Ella’s bar beside the pool was gone altogether, and one veranda had been demolished. Windows had peeled off along the facade, and the roof of a projecting section of the hotel had bent in two. The lobby was a chaos of debris.

Salander took Bland with her and staggered up to her room. She hung a blanket over the empty window frame to keep out the rain. Bland met her gaze.

“There’ll be less to explain if we didn’t see her husband,” Salander said before he could ask any questions.

He nodded. She pulled off her clothes, dropped them on the floor,
and patted the edge of the bed next to her. He nodded again and undressed and crawled in beside her. They were asleep almost at once.

When she awoke at midday, the sun was shining through cracks in the clouds. Every muscle in her body ached, and her knee was so swollen that she could hardly bend it. She slipped out of bed and got into the shower. The green lizard was back on the wall. She put on shorts and a top and stumbled out of the room without waking Bland.

Ella was still on her feet. She looked dog-tired, but she had gotten the bar in the lobby up and running. Salander ordered coffee and a sandwich. Through the blown-out windows by the entrance she saw a police car. Just as her coffee arrived, McBain came out of his office by the front desk, followed by a uniformed policeman. McBain caught sight of her and said something to the policeman before they came over to Salander’s table.

“This is Constable Ferguson. He’d like to ask you some questions.”

Salander greeted him politely. Constable Ferguson had obviously had a long night, too. He took out a notebook and pen and wrote down Salander’s name.

“Ms. Salander, I understand that you and a friend discovered Mrs. Richard Forbes during the hurricane last night.”

Salander nodded.

“Where did you find her?”

“On the beach just below the gate,” Salander said. “We almost tripped over her.”

Ferguson wrote that down.

“Did she say anything?”

Salander shook her head.

“She was unconscious?”

Salander nodded sensibly.

“She had a nasty wound on her head.”

Salander nodded again.

“You don’t know how she was injured?”

Salander shook her head. Ferguson muttered in irritation at her lack of response.

“There was a lot of stuff flying through the air,” she said helpfully. “I was almost hit in the head by a plank.”

“You injured your leg?” Ferguson pointed at her bandage. “What happened?”

“I didn’t notice it until I got down to the cellar.”

“You were with a young man.”

“George Bland.”

“Where does he live?”

“In a shack behind the Coconut, on the road to the airport. If the shack is still standing, that is.”

Salander did not add that Bland was at that moment asleep in her bed three floors above them.

“Did either of you see her husband, Richard Forbes?”