Chapter 23
Once again I saw a house transformed into a blackened ruin.
The Valfridssons’ house burned with the same fury that had obliterated my home. The old house stubbornly resisted, but the blaze was stronger. It reminded me of a lion, its jaws embedded in the throat of a dying gazelle.
There were about thirty of us running around with buckets of water and hosepipes, yelling at one another. Then the coastguard arrived and started up the pumps, and we stopped running around. Alexandersson, who was a little tipsy, took charge. I knew everyone there. We all wished each other a Happy New Year in the middle of the chaos, as we tried to do something useful.
I noticed that Lisa Modin was extremely capable. She took the initiative, and people listened when she made suggestions.
But of course there was nothing we could do. The whole place was already in flames by the time we arrived. At about five o’clock in the morning the roof began to collapse, the hot tiles shattering as they hit the ground. The windows burst, oxygen poured in and gave new strength to the conflagration. The heat was so intense that everyone had to move back.
I stood beside Alexandersson, sooty sweat pouring down his face.
‘Another one,’ he said. ‘Who’s burning down our property out here on the islands? What have we done to deserve this?’
‘Is it the same as my place?’ I asked. ‘A fire that starts everywhere and nowhere?’
‘We don’t know yet, but I’m sure the answer is yes. Same method, same lunatic.’
He shook his head then spat out something black and unpleasant, possibly a plug of snuff, and went back to his pumps and hoses.
Lisa was sitting on a rusty old kick sled next to a barbecue covered with a torn boat tarpaulin. The glow of the flames lit up her sweaty face. From Paris to a blaze in the middle of the night on one of our islands, I thought. We had almost spent an entire peaceful night together, until Jansson’s phone call shattered the intimacy.
Where was Jansson? At first I couldn’t see him, then I spotted him lurking in the shadows, where the glow didn’t reach his face. There was something strange about his body language. I moved closer; his eyes were fixed on the house and he still hadn’t noticed me. Now I realised what was odd about his posture. His hands were clasped in front of him, as if he were saying a silent prayer, but was it directed to himself or to some fire god whose name I didn’t know? His body was as rigid as if he were a wooden sculpture or a scarecrow.
He saw me just as I thought about the scarecrow. He immediately pulled his hands apart, as if I had caught him doing something embarrassing. I knew that embarrassment was the thing Jansson feared most of all; dropping a letter in the sea, letting the wind rip a pension payment slip out of his hand and watching it dance away across the water. Perhaps that was why he rarely sang, because he was afraid that one day a false note would come out of his mouth?
I went and stood beside him. He stank of sweat and booze, his best party shirt blackened with soot.
‘At least no one was at home,’ I said. ‘No one died.’
‘It’s still a terrible thing.’
‘You mean the fact that it’s another arson attack?’
Jansson gave a start, as if I had said something unexpected.
‘What else would it be?’
‘But who the hell is creeping around out here in the early hours of New Year’s Day?’
We didn’t say any more. I watched the people slowly moving around the fire and wondered if Jansson was thinking the same as me: that it could well be one of them who had started it.
I glanced at Jansson, but his expression gave nothing away.
It was seven o’clock by the time Lisa and I left. The house would carry on burning for several hours, but there was nothing anyone could do. Alexandersson had managed to contact the owners, who were staying in a hotel in Marseilles. Before we left he told me that fru Valfridsson had screamed so loudly that he thought his eardrum might burst.
I knew the lady in question; she was about my age and very thin. She had once come over to my island in a little motorboat to ask if I would look down her throat; she thought she had developed a tumour. I sat her down on the bench outside the boathouse, pushed down her tongue and checked her throat. There was no tumour. When I told her I couldn’t find anything, she burst into tears. I was completely taken aback. With some patients it’s obvious that they are going to have a strong reaction, whether the news is good or bad, but I was unprepared for Hanna Valfridsson’s tears.
And now she was screaming in despair in a luxury hotel in Marseilles.
Before I started the engine I had asked Lisa where she wanted to go, and now we were heading for the harbour in the darkness. It occurred to me that I had far too much alcohol in my blood to drive my car, but then again I couldn’t imagine there would be too many police officers hanging around this early on New Year’s Day, hoping to catch someone in the middle of nowhere driving under the influence.
Oslovski’s house was still locked up and deserted, but I stood for a moment looking at the window to the left of the front door. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the curtain, which was closed, looked slightly different. I couldn’t work out exactly what had attracted my attention; perhaps it was my imagination, or perhaps I was hoping that someone had been inside, that the place hadn’t been abandoned.
Lisa asked what I was staring at.
‘The curtain,’ I said. ‘But to be honest, I’m not sure. I thought maybe there was someone standing there watching us.’
‘The fire was quite enough,’ Lisa replied. ‘No more ghostly goings-on, thank you.’
We drove into town in silence, through the morning mist that sometimes concealed the forest by the roadside. Lisa switched on the radio to listen to the news.
There had been riots in the Paris suburbs. A firefighter had been badly injured when he was struck on the head by a rock.
A major jewel heist had been discovered this morning in Moscow, involving one of the biggest jewellers in Russia.
Someone had died because of a drug called Spice.
A snowstorm was slowly moving in from the east, but they weren’t sure how far south the snow would reach.
Lisa turned off the radio and asked me to stop. I pulled over on a logging track and she got out. When I realised she wasn’t going for a pee, I undid my seatbelt and followed her. There wasn’t a breath of wind. She had walked a few metres and was almost out of sight. A little further and she would disappear completely. That frightened me; I didn’t want her to cease to exist, to vanish without a trace among the tall pine trees.
‘It feels as if I’m part of a different story,’ she said.
She spoke quietly, as if she didn’t want to disturb the silence all around her. As I stood watching her I thought she was like an animal, a deer perhaps, alert to the possibility of attack at any moment.
‘Different from what?’ I asked.
She didn’t turn around.
‘The one I’m usually in. Sometimes I detest all those meaningless articles I write for the paper, words that are dead the moment someone reads them. People delouse a newspaper, picking off the words in the same way they pick lice off their bodies.’
I didn’t really understand what she was saying, but there was no doubt that she meant it.
‘I want to write something else,’ she went on. ‘Not books, I’m not good enough for that. I would be consumed with envy whenever I thought about those authors who really know how to choose their words, to create an unforgettable piece of work. Maybe I want to draw maps of places where no one has ever set foot? In the old days they used to let the cows wander free so that they would find the shortest and best route home. Let me go and I will find the forgotten pathways.’