Joakim had heard her calling. He was sure of it, and that meant that the world was even more incomprehensible than he had thought.
After half an hour or so in the cold, he went back up to the house.
His mother, Ingrid, was the only member of the family left after the funeral. She was sitting at the kitchen table and turned her head with a start when Joakim came in, a furrow of anxiety across her forehead. The furrow had got deeper and deeper over the years, first of all during her husband’s illness and then with every new crisis Ethel brought home.
“They’ve all gone now,” said Joakim. “Have the children gone to sleep?”
“I think so. Gabriel finished his bottle and fell asleep straightaway. But Livia was restless… she raised her head and called out to me when I crept out the first time.”
Joakim nodded and went over to the counter to make a pot of tea.
“She plays possum sometimes,” he said. “She pretends to be asleep to fool us.”
“She talked about Katrine.”
“Right. Do you want some tea?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you. Does she often do that, Joakim?”
“Not when she’s going to sleep.”
“What have you told her?”
“About Katrine?” said Joakim. “Not much. I’ve told her… that Mommy’s away.”
“Away?”
“That she’s gone away for a while… just like when I stayed in Stockholm while Katrine and the children were here. I can’t cope with telling her any more right now.” He looked at Ingrid and suddenly felt uneasy. “And what did you tell her tonight?”
“Nothing. That’s your job, Joakim.”
“I will tell her,” he said. “When you’ve gone… when there’s only me and the children here.”
Mommy’s dead, Livia. She drowned.
When would he be ready for that? It was just as impossible as the idea of slapping Livia across the face.
“Will you move back now?” asked Ingrid.
Joakim stared at her. He knew she wanted him to give up, but he still pretended to be surprised.
“Back? Back to Stockholm, you mean?”
Leave Katrine? he thought.
“Yes… I mean, I’m there after all,” said Ingrid.
“There’s nothing for me in Stockholm,” said Joakim.
“But you could buy back the house in Bromma, couldn’t you?”
“I can’t buy anything,” he said. “I haven’t got the money, Mom, even if I wanted to. All the money went into this place.”
“But you could sell…” Ingrid stopped and looked around the kitchen.
“Sell Eel Point?” said Joakim. “Who’d want the place in this state? It needs fixing up first… and Katrine and I were going to do that together.”
His mother said nothing as she gazed out of the window, her expression morose. Then she asked, “That woman at the funeral, the one who arrived late… was that Katrine’s mother? The artist?”
Joakim nodded. “That was Mirja Rambe.”
“I thought I recognized her from your wedding.”
“I didn’t know if she would turn up.”
“Well, of course she was going to turn up,” said Ingrid. “Katrine was her daughter, after all.”
“But they hardly had any contact with each other. I haven’t seen her once since the wedding.”
“Had they fallen out?”
“No… but I don’t think they were exactly friends. They called each other from time to time, but Katrine hardly ever talked about Mirja.”
“Does she live here?”
“No. She lives in Kalmar, I think.”
“Aren’t you going to get in touch with her?” said Ingrid. “I think you should.”
“I don’t think so,” said Joakim. “But we might bump into each other sometime. This is a small island, after all.”
He looked out of the window at the darkness of the inner courtyard. He didn’t want to see anyone at all. He wanted to lock himself in here in the manor house at Eel Point and never go out again. He didn’t want to look for a new teaching post, nor did he want to carry on working on the house.
He just wanted to sleep for the rest of his life, next to Katrine.
9
The November night was dry, but it was cold, dark, and foggy. The only light in the sky came from a pale half-moon behind a film of cloud as fine as silk.
Perfect weather for break-ins.
The house on the rocky northwest coast of the island lay up on the ridge and had been built recently; it was only a couple of years old. It had been designed by an architect, with lots of wood and glass. Commissioned and built by summer visitors with too much money, thought Henrik. He remembered that his grandfather had called rich people from the mainland “Stockholmers,” wherever they came from.
“Hubba bubba,” said Tommy, scratching his neck. “Let’s go.”
Freddy and Henrik followed him in the direction of the graveled slope below the house. All three were dressed in jeans and dark jackets, and Tommy and Henrik were carrying black rucksacks.
Before they set off northward from Borgholm, the Serelius brothers had had another session with the Ouija board in Henrik’s kitchen. An hour and a half before midnight they had lit three candles, and Tommy had set up the board on the kitchen table, with the glass in the middle.
Everything went quiet; the atmosphere thickened.
“Is there anybody there?” asked Tommy with his finger on the glass.
The question hung in the air for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, then the glass jerked and moved to the side. It stopped on the word YES.
“Is it Aleister?”
The glass didn’t move.
“Is it a good night tonight, Aleister?” asked Tommy.
The glass remained on yes for a few more seconds.
Then it began to move toward the letters.
“Write it down!” Tommy hissed at Henrik.
Henrik wrote, with a cold, unpleasant feeling in his stomach.
E-E-L-P-O-I
Finally the glass was still again in the middle of the board. He looked down at the paper and read what he’d written:
“EEL POINT EEL POINT WORKS OF ART EEL POINT ALONE WALKS THERE,” he read.
“Eel Point?” said Tommy. “What the fuck is that?”
Henrik looked at the board. “I’ve been there… it’s the site of a lighthouse.”
“Is there a lot of art there?”
“Not that I saw.”
At around midnight Henrik and the Serelius brothers had parked the van behind a boathouse five hundred yards away, then remained among the rocks down by the shore until the last of the lights were switched off behind the shining picture windows on the upper floor. Then they had
waited for almost another half hour and each swallowed a dose of ice crystals before pulling the black hoods over their heads and beginning to move toward the house.
Henrik was a bit cold, but the ice had increased his pulse rate. The greater the risk, the greater the excitement. He hardly thought about Camilla at all on a night like this.
The sound of the waves, rhythmically swirling in over the gravel behind them, muffled the sound of their footsteps as they made their way almost silently up the steep slope.
An iron fence surrounded the whole garden, but Henrik knew there was an unlocked gate on the side facing the sea. They were soon in the shadows by the wall of the house.
The sliding door to the ground floor was made of glass, fastened with a simple catch, and Henrik took a hammer and chisel out of his rucksack. All it needed was a short sharp blow, and the catch was open.
The small wheels squeaked faintly as Tommy pushed the door to one side on its steel track, but the sound was barely louder than the sighing of the wind.
No alarm reverberated through the darkness.
Tommy stuck his masked head through the doorway. Then he turned and nodded to Henrik.
While Freddy stood guard by the door, they went into the warmth. The sound of the wind from the sea faded away, and the shadows in the house enveloped them.