He turns and heads toward Eel Point. Eskil walks slowly backward so that he won’t be turning his back on the dead girl too quickly, then catches up with Ludvig.
They plow along silently in the snow, side by side.
“Are you going to carve her name up in the barn?” he asks. “Like we did with Werner?”
Werner was a seventeen-year-old who had been called up for military service; he fell into the water from a boat and drowned off the point in the summer of 1942. Greta’s name should be carved next to his up in the hayloft, in Eskil’s opinion. But Ludvig shakes his head.
“I hardly knew her.”
“But…”
“It was her own fault,” says Ludvig. “She should have stayed with me in the tower. I’d have warmed her up.”
Eskil says nothing.
“But there are plenty of girls in the villages,” Ludvig goes on, looking across the far side of Offermossen. “That’s the best thing about girls, they never run out.”
Eskil nods, but he can’t think about girls right now. He can only think of the dead.
December
18
It was a new month, the month of Christmas, and it was Friday afternoon. Joakim had returned to the hayloft in the ice-cold barn, and was standing in front of the wall with the names of the dead carved in it. In his hands he held a hammer and a newly sharpened chisel.
He had gone up into the loft an hour or so before he was due to pick up Livia and Gabriel, just as the sun was going down and the shadows were gathering in the inner courtyard. It was a kind of reward that he allowed himself if the renovation work had gone well.
Sitting up here in the loft felt quiet and restful, despite the cold, and he liked studying the names on the wall. He read Katrine’s name over and over again, of course, like a mantra.
As he began to learn many of the names by heart, so the wall itself, with its knotholes and the convoluted rings in the wood, was becoming familiar to him. On the left, in the corner, a deeper split ran along one of the middle
planks, and in the end it tempted Joakim to go and take a closer look.
The plank had split along one of the rings, showing the age of the original tree. The crack had then widened downward in a diagonal line, and when he pressed his hand against it the wood cracked and gave way.
That was when Joakim had gone to fetch his tools.
He pushed the chisel into the crack, hit it with the hammer, and the sharp metal went straight through the wood.
All it took was a dozen or so hard blows with the hammer to loosen the end of the plank. It fell inward, and the dull thud when it landed proved that the wooden floor continued on the other side of the wall. But it was impossible to see what was in there.
When Joakim bent down to look through the hole, just a couple of inches wide, a definite smell struck him. It rushed toward his face, making him close his eyes and lean against the wall.
It was Katrine’s smell.
He got down on his knees and pushed his left hand into the opening. First his fingers, then his wrist, and finally the whole of his forearm. He groped about, but could feel nothing.
But when he lowered his fingers, they touched something in there, something soft.
It felt like coarse fabric-like someone’s pants or jacket.
Joakim quickly withdrew his hand.
The next moment he heard a dull rumbling on the track outside, and a beam of light illuminated the windows of the barn, white with frost. A car was driving into the courtyard.
Joakim cast a final glance at the opening in the wall, then went over to the steps leading down from the loft.
In the courtyard he was dazzled by the headlights of a car. A door slammed.
“Hi there, Joakim.”
It was a brisk voice that he recognized. Marianne, the head of the preschool.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
He stared at her in confusion, then pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch. In the beam of the headlights he could see that it was already half past five.
The school closed at five. He had forgotten to pick up Gabriel and Livia.
“I missed… I forgot what time it was.”
“It’s okay,” said Marianne. “I was just so worried that something might have happened. I tried to call, but there was no reply.”
“No, I’ve been… out in the barn doing a bit of carpentry.”
“It’s easy to forget the time,” said Marianne with a smile.
“Thanks,” said Joakim. “Thanks for bringing them home.”
“No problem, I live in Rörby anyway.” Marianne waved and went back to her car. “See you Monday.”
When she had reversed out of the courtyard, Joakim went inside, feeling ashamed of himself. He could hear voices from the kitchen.
Livia and Gabriel had already taken off their boots and outdoor clothes and thrown them down in two separate heaps. They were sitting at the kitchen table sharing a clementine.
“Daddy, you forgot to come and get us,” said Livia as he walked in.
“I know,” he said quietly.
“Marianne had to drive us home.”
She didn’t sound cross, more surprised at the deviation from the normal routine.
“I know,” he said. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Gabriel was eating his clementine segments, apparently unconcerned, but Livia gave her father a long look.
“I’ll make us something to eat,” said Joakim, and went quickly over to the larder.
Pasta with tuna sauce was a favorite, and he boiled some water for the pasta and warmed the sauce. Several times he glanced out of the window.
The barn loomed up on the far side of the courtyard like a black castle.
It had secrets. A hidden room without a door.
A room that, for a moment, had been filled with the scent of Katrine. Joakim was sure he had felt her presence; the smell of her had poured out through the hole in the wall, and he had been unable to defend himself.
He wanted to get into that room, but the only way seemed to be to attack the thick planks of wood with a saw or crowbar. But then the carved names would be destroyed, and Joakim could never do that. He had too much respect for the dead.
When the temperature dropped below freezing, the cold began to creep into the house as well. Joakim relied on radiators and tiled stoves on the ground floor, but there were strips of coldness along the floor and around some of the windows. On windy days he searched for drafts along the floor and walls, then blocked the gaps by loosening sections of the outer paneling and pushing flax fiber in between the timbers.
The first weekend in December the thermometer hovered around minus five when the sun was shining, but dropped down to minus ten in the evening.
On Sunday morning Joakim looked out of the kitchen window and discovered that there was a layer of black ice out at sea. The open water was now several hundred yards away. The ice must have formed by the shore during the night, then slowly crept around the headland and out toward the horizon.
“We’ll soon be able to walk across the water to Gotland,” he said to the children as they sat at the breakfast table.
“What’s Gotland?” said Gabriel.
“It’s a big island further out in the Baltic.”
“Can we walk there?” asked Livia.
“No, I was just joking,” said Joakim quickly. “It’s too far away.”
“But I want to.”
It was impossible to joke with a six-year-old-she took everything literally. Joakim looked out of the kitchen window and an image came into his mind of Livia and Gabriel walking out onto the black ice, going further and further out. Then suddenly it cracked, a black hole opened up, and they were pulled down…
He turned to Livia.
“You and Gabriel must never go out onto the ice. Not under any circumstances. You can never be sure it will hold.”
That night Joakim called his former neighbors in Stockholm, Lisa and Michael Hesslin. He hadn’t heard a word from them since the night they left Eel Point.