As he sat on the train he did not think about Sara Fredrika or Kristina Tacker. He thought about the girl who had scalded herself. Who had died from the stomach downwards.
Chapter 111
A conductor came past. Tobiasson-Svartman was standing in the corridor between the first and second coaches, and he asked the man why the train had stopped. He noticed that he had a Bible in one of his uniform pockets.
‘It’s the cold. A set of points has frozen. A couple of linemen are thawing it out. We’re twenty-five minutes late.’
‘Twenty-nine,’ Tobiasson-Svartman said.
They started off again shortly after midnight. The man in the corner woke up, gave Tobiasson-Svartman a bleary look and went back to sleep.
Tobiasson-Svartman had killed a man. Was he now less scared of death than before? Or more scared? There was no answer. His instrument was dead. His sounding lead was silent in his rucksack.
They arrived in Stockholm as dawn was breaking on 2 March. Outside the Central Station he passed the conductor from his train, but the man did not recognise him.
Chapter 112
Stockholm greeted him with snow flurries and freezing temperatures. He stood with his luggage and a porter, wondering where he should go. At first he gave his home address, then changed his mind and named a little hotel at Norra Bantorget. The porter disappeared into the snow and Tobiasson-Svartman went back into the station. He ordered breakfast in the first-class dining room, but the food stuck in his throat and he was forced to run to the toilets and throw up. The waitress looked at him in astonishment when he returned with tears in his eyes.
She can see, he thought. She can see that I have killed a man.
He paid his bill and left. The city and the falling snow made him dizzy. He came to the hotel where the porter was waiting for him. When the receptionist told him that the hotel was full, he was furious. The receptionist turned pale and gave him a room that was in fact already booked. The porter carried up his luggage.
‘That’s the way to treat them buggers,’ he said with a smile as he pocketed his payment.
Tobiasson-Svartman closed the door, locked it and lay down on the bed. It was like being back in the boathouse on Armnö. He closed his eyes and clutched his sounding lead to his chest. Nobody knew where he was, nobody knew where he was heading for, least of all himself.
There was a draught from the window. He wrapped a scarf round his head, moved as close as possible to the wall and waited for the strength to make a decision.
Chapter 113
The snow eased off at about eleven. He stood in the window and looked down at Vasagatan. He was looking for somebody among the pedestrians who might be himself.
He made his decision. He would stay in the hotel today and tonight. Then he would go home to Kristina Tacker.
The events on Halsskär began to fade. He examined his hands. No trace there of what had happened. His fingers were smooth and unmarked, his hands were unaltered.
He went out in the evening. It had stopped snowing, but it was bitterly cold and the city was deserted. Only those who had to ventured out of doors. He took a cab outside the Central Station and asked to be taken to the Grand Hotel.
As he was entering the dining room a man turned towards him. It was his father-in-law, Ludwig Tacker.
Tobiasson-Svartman could see no escape. Tacker introduced him to the man he was with, Tobiasson-Svartman understood his name to be something like Andrén. Tacker asked his companion to wait in the foyer.
‘I spoke to my daughter yesterday,’ Tacker said. ‘She was very worried to have heard nothing from you.’
‘My mission was classified as secret.’
‘So damned secret that you couldn’t even send a greeting to your wife? When did you get home?’
‘I came to Stockholm about an hour ago,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been home yet. I have to meet some of my superiors first and submit a report.’
Ludwig Tacker’s eyes were narrow and cold.
‘At the Grand Hotel? In the dining room of the Grand Hotel? Secret goings-on?’
‘We shall be meeting in a special room. I just wanted to see if I was the first to arrive.’
Tacker eyed him up and down.
‘And when are you intending to go back to your home and your wife?’
‘I don’t want to disturb her too late. I shall spend tonight in a hotel. I can’t go back home like a thief in the night.’
Tacker leaned towards him.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘I have never liked you, I could never understand why Kristina married you. You’re lying. There’s something fishy about you, something about you never rings true.’
He did not wait for a reply but marched out of the dining room. Tobiasson-Svartman went to the Grand Café and started drinking. His father-in-law had seen through him. Now he would have to repeat that explanation to Kristina Tacker when he got home the next day.
He would give her the details, apologise for having spent the night in a hotel then sit down calmly by her side. She would tell him what had happened while he had been away. He would listen, and all he would say about his expedition to the frozen waters at the edge of the open sea would be that he was glad it was over.
Chapter 114
That night he dreamed about very deep water.
He was holding his sounding lead in his hand, using it as a sinker and gliding down through the sea, but he felt no pressure despite being several kilometres under the surface.
It was not the fissure in the Pacific Ocean where a British hydrographic vessel had claimed to lower more than ten kilometres of line into the water before the bottom was reached. This was an unknown deep spot he had himself discovered, and even as he was gliding slowly down with his sounding lead in his hand, he knew that the bottom was 15,345 metres below the surface. It was a bewildering depth, and it concealed a secret. At the very bottom was a different world and a different life corresponding to the one he led.
He carried on sinking, perfectly calm, no hurry. His only worry was that he would never reach the bottom.
He had often had this same dream, and he had always woken up before reaching the bottom. It was the same again. When he opened his eyes he remembered that there had still been quite a way to go.
He stayed in bed. His disappointment at not having reached the bottom metamorphosed into an intense desire to murder Ludwig Tacker.
Somewhere there must be a hole in the ice for him as well, he thought. One of these days Ludwig Tacker too will descend to the bottom of the sea with iron sinkers strapped to his body.
Chapter 115
A porter wheeled his luggage through the streets of Stockholm.
Horses ploughed their way through the snowdrifts. It was still cold. He held a hand over his mouth as he followed on the heels of the porter.
I am frightened, he thought. Not because of what I have done, but because she will see straight through me, just like my father used to do with his scary eyes.
He longed to be back among the silence and the ice. It was as if the city had turned its back on him.
Chapter 116
His father-in-law had got there first. Kristina Tacker’s surprise at seeing him was pure artifice. The maid took his coat and left them alone.
‘I arrived in Stockholm late last night. I didn’t want to frighten you.’
‘You wouldn’t have frightened me.’
She took his hand and led him into the room in the middle of their flat, the warmest room in winter and the coolest in summer. There were flowers on a table. He was on his guard immediately. She never used to buy flowers.