Harbour

He gathered up the chain and hauled it forward, letting it coil down on top of the black bundle. Simon smiled sadly. 'Do you know where that chain comes from?'

'Is it the one you used when you…?'

'Mmm. It's been in the sea before.' Simon nodded to himself, and neither of them spoke for a while. Simon stroked the plastic covering Elin's head.

'She's dead. Nothing we do now will make any difference. To her. She drowned. Somebody drowned her. And now she's going into the sea. There's nothing strange about that. It isn't wrong. We just have to do it. Because we need to go on living.' Simon looked Anders in the eye. 'Don't you agree?'

Anders nodded mechanically. That wasn't really the problem. The problem was actually starting to touch the dead body, feeling muscles and bones through the black plastic without knowing for certain… that she was really dead.

'What's the plastic for?' asked Anders.

'I don't know,' said Simon. 'I thought…it would be better.'

'It isn't.'

'No.'

Anders understood the thought behind it, the idea of hiding what they were doing from themselves. And yet it was a relief when they pulled off the sacks and had Elin's corpse at their feet. Her skin had lost all its lustre, and the colour had faded from her wide-open eyes. It was a horrible sight, and yet it was better.

As Simon bent down and grabbed hold of the chain, he caught sight of the scars on her face and body, glowing white in the morning light. 'What are these? Scars?'

'I'll tell you all about it,' said Anders. 'But not now.'

They worked together to lift the body, turn it, wrap the chain around and secure it with a couple of locking pawls. However tightly they pulled the chain, there was no response from Elin's skin, no reddening or swelling. Her eyes stared up at the sky without blinking, and Simon was caught in her empty gaze.

'Who was she?' he asked.

That was the question that needed to be asked, the final question. Unfortunately, Anders didn't know the answer.

'I don't know,' he said. 'I think she was someone who…was looking for approval. Someone who tried, in a lot of…roundabout ways…to get the whole world to think she was wonderful. But…'

The memory of Elin's smile when Henrik and Björn were being humiliated by the boathouse flashed through his mind, and Anders lowered his head.

'In that case, we will remember someone who wanted to be wonderful,' said Simon, taking hold of the chain around her thighs and stomach.

They heaved Elin over the rail. Her legs hooked over the edge and she hung there for a few seconds with her head and upper body in the water. Then Simon gently lifted her feet. The body came free and slipped into the water with a faint splash.

Anders leaned over and watched her sink. A few air bubbles escaped from her mouth and rose to the surface like transparent beads. Her hair floated outwards and hid her face as she was dragged down into the depths. After a few seconds she had sunk so far that she was nothing more than a blurred, pale patch in the great darkness. Anders kept on staring until he was no longer sure he could see her, until she was replaced by the shifting pattern of the light on the surface of the water.

The black water. He was so dreadfully tired, he could sleep for a year. He leaned his head against the rail, closed his eyes and whispered, 'I'm so tired, Simon. I just can't cope any more.'

His head was expanding and shrinking, his brain was a lung. Expanding and contracting quickly, panting. His consciousness was gasping for air as if it was drowning, the lung close to bursting point.

There was a creaking sound as Simon got up and came to sit beside him, eased him away from the rail and placed his head on his knee. Anders curled up and put his arms around Simon's waist, resting his head on Simon's thighs. Simon's cold hand caressed his hair.

'There now, little Anders,' said Simon. 'Everything will be all right. Everything's fine. It'll all work out, Anders.'

Simon's hand went on gently stroking his hair, and it was like oxygen. He stopped panting inside, the panic subsided and he relaxed. He might have fallen asleep for a few seconds. If he did fall asleep, the worst was over when he woke up. Simon's hand was resting on the back of his head.

'Simon,' said Anders, without raising his head.

'Yes?'

'Do you remember saying…that we can never become another person, do you remember that? That however close we get, we can never become the other person.'

'Yes, I did say that. But it seems as if I was wrong.'

'It isn't just Elin. It's me as well. I'm turning into Maja.'

'What do you mean?'

There was in fact a word for what was happening to him. It wasn't the right word, it had the wrong kind of associations. Demons and devils. And yet it was the only word there was.

'I'm possessed. I'm turning into someone else. I'm turning into Maja.'

Anders pulled himself up into a sitting position and moved over to sit opposite Simon. Then he told the story again, in the light of his new insight. How he could sometimes hear her voice inside his head, his fear of the GB-man, the Bamse comics, her bed, the writing on the table and the bead tile.

Simon didn't ask any questions, didn't raise any objections. He simply listened and said 'Hmm' from time to time, and it was as if the strong hand that had been squeezing Anders' mind more and more tightly loosened its grip a little more.

'So I think…I know,' said Anders eventually, 'that she's doing all this through me. She's the one who's making a picture with the beads and reading about Bamse, but she's using my fingers and my eyes to do it and I don't know…1 don't understand what I ought to do.'

The sun had now risen so high that it had some heat. During his long narrative Anders had started to sweat in his warm clothes. He took off his hat and dipped his hand in the water, scooped up a handful and bathed his eyes. Simon was gazing towards Nåten, where the first tender of the morning was just setting off from the jetty. He asked, 'So what does she want?'

'You…believe me?'

Simon wagged his head from side to side, 'Let me put it like this: it isn't the strangest thing I've heard. Recently.'

'What do you mean?'

Simon sighed. 'I think we'll leave that for now.' When he noticed that Anders was frowning, he added, 'I need to talk to Anna-Greta. Is it OK if I tell her what you've told me?'

'Yes, I suppose so, but…'

'Speaking of Anna-Greta, I think we'd better head for home. She's probably getting worried by now.'

Anders nodded and gazed over the rail. Elin was lying on the seabed by now, perhaps fifty metres beneath them. He imagined the fish nudging at the new arrival, the eels crawling up from the mud as they caught the smell of food…

He cut off the thought before it started wallowing in physical details.

'Simon?' he asked. 'Did we do the right thing?'

'Yes. I think so. And if we did the wrong thing…' Simon looked down at the surface of the water,'…there's not much we can do about it now.'

Anders got up and went to the prow, curled up on the seat as well as he could as Simon started the engine and turned the boat, heading for home. For a long time Anders sat there trying to keep his eyes fixed on the spot where they had let Elin go. There should have been something there. A buoy or a flag, some kind of memorial. Something to mark the fact that there was a person down there. But there was only the constant shifting of the water, and Elin belonged to those who have disappeared into the sea.

They parted in silence at Simon's jetty, and Anders dragged himself back to the Shack. If someone had leapt out of the bushes and pointed a shotgun at him, he would have been incapable of reacting. He would simply have shuffled on, perhaps looking forward to the burning sensation in his back.

He looked at his feet, and they were moving without his cooperation or input. He was being drawn. Just as an animal hunted beyond endurance, with no strength left, still creeps towards its lair out of instinct or a blind sense of self-preservation, so he kept on moving homeward, homeward.