“Really?” said Tilda. “And when was this?”
“It was the fall of ’73.”
“Right…”
“I remember, because my husband was still alive and we still had the car.”
“Okay, but we’re looking at more recent break-ins at the moment, over the last few months.” Tilda held up her notepad. “So I have a few questions about unfamiliar cars on the main highway… Gerlof tells me that you keep an eye on the traffic.”
“Through the window, that’s right. I always have done; I
can hear them getting closer. But there are so many nowadays.”
“But I don’t suppose there are too many cars at this time of year, in winter?”
“No, it’s easier now than when the tourists come… but I don’t write the numbers down anymore, I haven’t time. They drive past so quickly. And I’m no good at identifying the make of a car.”
“But have you seen any cars you didn’t recognize over the past few days? Late at night… last Friday, for example?”
Edla gave it some thought.
“Big cars?”
“Probably. In some cases they have stolen quite a lot, so they would have needed a car with plenty of space to stow everything.”
“Trucks often drive past here. Garbage trucks too, and tractors.”
“I don’t think they’re driving a truck,” said Tilda.
“A big black car came past here last Friday. It was heading north.”
“Like a van? Was it late at night?”
“Yes, it was just before twelve, after I’d switched the lights off up in the bedroom,” said Edla. “A big black van, that’s what it was.”
“Good… did it look new or old?”
“Not particularly new. And there was some kind of writing on the side. ‘Kalmar,’ and something to do with welding.”
Tilda made a note of that.
“Great. Thank you so much for your help.”
“Will there be a reward if you catch them?”
Tilda lowered her notepad and shook her head sadly.
After visit to Edla, Tilda headed back toward the north and turned onto the coast road south of Marnäs. It
went past Eel Point, but that wasn’t where she was going. She wanted to take a quick look at her grandfather Ragnar’s old place in Saltfjärden before she went back to the police station.
PRIVATE ROAD, it said on a piece of wood by the side of the road. An icy, overgrown track led down toward the sea, and Tilda’s police car bounced along in the wheel ruts.
The track led past an old Iron Age burial ground covered in round stones, and ended at a closed gate in front of a white cottage. She could just catch a glimpse of the sea through a grove of pine trees.
Tilda parked by the gate and walked in among the overgrown grass in the yard. Her memories were vague, and everything seemed smaller than when she had last been here with her father, fifteen years earlier. At that time Ragnar was long dead and Tilda’s grandmother had been taken into the hospital. The house had been for sale. She vaguely remembered the smell of tar, and that there had been several old eel tanks in the yard. They were gone now.
“Hello?” she called out into the soughing wind.
No reply.
The house itself was small, but it was just one of several buildings. There was a boathouse with closed shutters at the windows, a woodshed, a barn, and something that might have been a sauna. It was a fantastic location, right by the shore, but the whole place needed painting and there was an air of gloom and abandonment about it all.
She knocked on the door of the cottage. No reply there either, as expected. The house was probably just a summer residence now, as Gerlof had thought. All traces of the Davidsson family were gone.
Eel Point wasn’t visible from here, but when Tilda had passed the pine trees and walked out onto the meadow by the shore, she could see the old wreck a few hundred yards away and the twin lighthouses on the horizon to the south.
She moved closer to the water, and a large bird that had
been sitting on a rock on the shore took off slowly, its wings beating heavily. A bird of prey.
On the edge of the wood there was another cottage, she noticed, and in front of it on the lawn was a chair where someone had placed a pile of blankets.
Then the blankets moved. A head poked out and Tilda realized there was a person wrapped up in them. She went closer and saw that it was an elderly man with a gray beard and a wooly hat, with a thermos flask beside him and a long, dark green telescope in his hands.
“You scared off my Haliaeetus albicilla,” he called out.
Tilda went over to him.
“Sorry?”
“The sea eagle,” said the man. “Didn’t you see it?”
“I did, yes,” said Tilda.
A birdwatcher. They turned up along the coast at all times of the year.
“It was watching the tufted ducks,” said the ornithologist. He pointed his telescope out to sea, where a dozen or so black-and-white birds were bobbing along on the waves. “They swim here all year round and hang out with the birds of prey. They’re tough little devils.”
“Very exciting,” said Tilda.
“It sure is.” The man in the blankets looked at her uniform and said, “This has to be the first time we’ve ever had a cop out here.”
“Well, it does seem very quiet out here.”
“It is. In the winter, at least. Just cargo ships passing by, and a few motorboats now and again.”
“This late in the year?”
“I haven’t seen any here this winter,” said the man. “But I’ve heard them further down the coast.”
Tilda gave a start. “You mean around Eel Point?”
“Yes, or even further south. You can hear the sound of an engine several miles away, if the wind is in the right direction.”
“A woman drowned over by the lighthouses at Eel Point a few weeks ago,” said Tilda. “Were you here then?”
“I think so.”
Tilda looked at him, her expression serious. “You remember the case?”
“Yes. I read about it… but I didn’t see anything. You can’t see the point through the trees.”
“But can you remember if you heard the sound of an engine on that particular day?”
The ornithologist thought it over.
“Maybe,” he said.
“If a boat went past going south out in the bay, would you have seen it?”
“It’s possible. I often sit out here.”
It was a vague testimony. Edla Gustafsson’s supervision of the highway was much better than this birdwatcher’s monitoring of the Baltic.
She thanked him for his help and set off back to the car.
“Perhaps we could keep in touch?”
Tilda turned around. “Sorry?”
“It’s a bit lonely here.” He smiled at her. “Beautiful but lonely. Perhaps you’d like to come back sometime?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’ll have to find a whooper swan to keep you company.”
After lunch Tilda spent almost three hours at the school talking about law and order with the pupils. She had several traffic reports to write up when she got back to the station, but couldn’t quite let go of the drowning at Eel Point.
She collected her thoughts, then picked up the telephone and rang the manor house.
Joakim Westin picked up after three rings. Tilda could hear the sound of a ball thudding and happy children’s voices in the background, a good sign. But Westin himself
sounded tired and distant when he answered. Not angry-it was just that there was no strength in his voice.
Tilda didn’t bother with any small talk.
“I need to ask you something,” she said. “Did your wife know anyone who has a boat here on Öland? A boat owner close to your place?”
“I don’t know anyone at all who has a boat here,” said Westin. “And Katrine… she never mentioned anyone with a boat either.”
“What did she do during the week when you were in Stockholm? Did she talk about it?”
“She was renovating the house and furnishing it, and looking after the children. She had her hands full.”