Tobiasson-Svartman had never managed to forget the sight of that fat, half-naked body. He often thought that his father had decided to punish him one last time by dying before his very eyes.
The dead man was very young. Lieutenant Jakobsson bent down and placed a handkerchief over the empty eye sockets.
‘The uniform is German,’ he said. ‘He belonged to the German Navy.’
Jakobsson unbuttoned the dead man’s tunic. He produced some soaking wet documents and photographs from the inside pockets.
‘I don’t have much experience of dead sailors,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean of course that I’ve never fished dead men out of the sea. I don’t think this man has been in the water all that long. He doesn’t appear to have any wounds to suggest that he died in battle. Presumably he fell overboard by accident.’
Jakobsson stood up and ordered the body to be covered. Tobiasson-Svartman accompanied him into the mess. When they had sat down, and the papers and photographs were laid out on the table, Jakobsson realised that half of his face still had shaving foam on it. He shouted for the steward to bring him a towel and wiped his face clean. When Tobiasson-Svartman saw the half-shaved face, he could not help but burst into insuppressible laughter. Lieutenant Jakobsson raised an eyebrow in surprise. It occurred to Tobiasson-Svartman that this was the first time he had laughed out loud since coming on board the Blenda.
The idea of Lieutenant Jakobsson as a comic figure in a cinematographic farce came to him for the second time.
Chapter 35
Lieutenant Jakobsson started going through the dead sailor’s papers. Carefully he separated the pages of a military pay book.
‘Karl-Heinz Richter, born Kiel 1895,’ he read. ‘A very young man, not twenty. Short life, violent death.’
He was, with difficulty, deciphering the water-damaged writing.
‘He was a crew member of the battleship Niederburg,’ he said. ‘I think the Naval Headquarters in Stockholm will be surprised to hear that the Niederburg operating in the Baltic.’
Tobiasson-Svartman thought to himself: One of the smaller battleships in the German Navy, but even so it has a crew of more than eight hundred men. One of the heavy German naval vessels that could travel at impressively high speeds.
Jakobsson was poring over the photographs. One was a miniature in a glazed frame.
‘Frau Richter presumably,’ he said. ‘A woman with a friendly smile sitting in a photographer’s studio, never dreaming that her son will drown and have this photograph with him. A pretty face, but a bit on the plump side.’
He scrutinised the miniature more closely.
‘There’s a little blue butterfly behind the photograph,’ he said. ‘Why, we shall never know.’
The other photograph was blurred. He studied it for a long time before putting it down.
‘It could just possibly be a dog. A Swedish foxhound, perhaps. But I’m not sure.’
He handed over the photographs and the documents. Tobiasson-Svartman also thought it could be a dog, but he too was unsure about the breed. The woman, who was most probably Karl-Heinz Richter’s mother, looked cowed and scared. She seemed almost to be crouching before the photographer. And she was really fat.
‘There are two possibilities,’ Jakobsson said. ‘Either it was a banal accident A sailor falls overboard in the dark. Nobody notices. It doesn’t even have to be dark for such an accident to occur. It could have happened in broad daylight. It only takes two or three seconds to fall into the water from the deck of a ship. Nobody sees you, nobody hears when you fall in with a splash and struggle with the sea that relentlessly sucks all the heat out of you and then pulls you under. You die from hypothermia, in a state of extreme panic. Anybody who’s been close to drowning talks about a very special kind of fear that can’t be compared to anything else, not even the terror you feel when making a bayonet charge on enemy forces shooting at you for all they are worth.’
He broke off, as if he had lost the thread. Tobiasson-Svartman could feel his stomach churning.
‘But there could also be another explanation,’ Jakobsson said. ‘He might have committed suicide. His angst had got the better of him. Young people most especially can take their own lives for the strangest reasons. A broken heart, for instance. Or that vague phenomenon the Germans call “Weltschmerz”. But even homesickness is not unknown as a reason for servicemen taking their own lives. Mother’s apron strings are more important than life. If you lose your grip on the apron strings, the only alternative is death.’
He reached for the miniature.
‘It’s not impossible that this woman has been over-protective as far as her son is concerned, and made his life without her impossible.’
He studied the image for a while before putting it down again.
‘One could speculate about other reasons, of course. He might have been badly treated by his officers or fellow crewmen. I thought the lad looked little and scared even in death — he looked quite like a girl, in fact. All that was missing were the pigtails. Perhaps he couldn’t put up with being at the bottom of the pecking order. Even so, it needs a special sort of courage to throw yourself into the water. Courage or stupidity. Often enough it boils down to the same thing. Especially among soldiers and sailors.’
Lieutenant Jakobsson stood up.
‘I don’t want the man on board any longer than necessary. Death weighs heavily on a ship. A crew gets nervy when they have a dead body as cargo. We’ll bury him as soon as possible.’
‘Doesn’t there have to be a post-mortem?’
Jakobsson thought for a moment before replying.
‘I’m in command of this ship and so I make the decisions. We can’t be certain that the man hasn’t been ill. People can carry an infection even when they are no longer breathing. I’m going to bury him as soon as possible.’
He paused in the doorway.
‘I need some advice,’ he said. ‘You are presumably the best qualified person to give it in the whole of the Swedish Navy.’
‘What?’
‘I need a spot that’s suitably deep. Ideally somewhere close where we can sink the body. Maybe you could check your charts and find somewhere?’
‘That won’t be necessary. I know a suitable place already.’
They went on deck and walked to the rail. It was strangely silent on board. Tobiasson-Svartman pointed to the northeast.
‘There is a crack in the sea floor 250 metres from here. It never gets wider than thirty metres and it runs as far as Landsortsdjupet. As you know, that’s the deepest part of the whole Baltic Sea, in excess of 450 metres. The location I’m talking about is 160 metres deep. If you want anything deeper than that you’ll have to sail several nautical miles north.’
‘That will be fine. On land they bury coffins only two metres deep. At sea, 160 metres should be more than enough.’
The body was sewn into a tarpaulin. Various pieces of scrap metal from the engine room were lashed around the corpse. While the sea-coffin was being prepared, Lieutenant Jakobsson finished shaving.
The ship moved in accordance with the instructions given to the helmsman by Tobiasson-Svartman. It struck him that this was the first time he’d been in de facto command of a Swedish naval vessel. Even if it was only for 250 metres.
Chapter 36
The burial took place at nine thirty.
The crew gathered on the afterdeck. The carpenter had rigged up a plank between two trestles. The body wrapped in the tarpaulin was laid with the foot end next to the rail. The ship’s three-tailed flag was at half mast.