And then I see the raven. It’s sitting on the top of the left-hand embankment ten metres ahead of us, and I understand straight away that this is the reason why Castor has refused to go any further. You simply don’t pass underneath a raven that is sitting there staring at you. Most certainly not, that’s something every dog learns in its first class at school.
And at that very moment, as I am standing there, staring at the raven while the big, black bird sits glaring at us with one eye and Castor looks studiously in another direction, it starts raining. Not the familiar, pleasant and gently caressing rain that usually falls over the moor, but a veritable cloudburst from directly above us. Fistfuls of hailstones clatter down on the asphalt. There is nowhere to shelter. I shout to Castor and tell him he is absolutely right, and we start hurrying back up the Devil’s road. Behind us I can hear the raven croaking a threatening message as it flies away. If we could, we would run all the way back to the car: but it’s too steep. My heart is pounding away in my chest as a result of the effort, and perhaps for other reasons as well, and I assume that Castor’s is pounding similarly. He is staying close by my side all the while, and he doesn’t usually do that.
It takes us much longer to get back to the church than it took us to get down to the raven, and the rain persists all the while. Aggressively and stubbornly as if it were intent on destroying something: that seems to be the kind of rain it is, and we can’t avoid it. Not for a metre, not for a second.
But it hasn’t managed to make our filthy Audi look much cleaner. At least not the front door on the driver’s side, which has been slightly screened by the abandoned tractor — and somebody has written in very clear letters rubbed out of the dirt: DEATH.
Probably with an index finger inside a glove, by the looks of it.
I stand and stare at it.
I look round. No sign of anybody. Darkness is falling fast. No lights are lit in any of the houses round about us, not a single one. The church seems to be leaning over us.
Can that message have been there earlier, when we left Dulverton? Can somebody have written it when we were in The Bridge Inn? Death?
Or has somebody written it during the half-hour we left the car in this remote place?
What difference would it make? What kind of an idiotic question is that to ask? I rub out the letters with my jacket sleeve. Castor is whimpering by my side: I let him into the back of the car, and I clamber into the driver’s seat. Soaking wet dog, soaking wet missus. But at least we have a roof over our heads now. The rain is pounding away. I lock the doors and sigh deeply.
Turn the ignition key: but the engine doesn’t start.
I close my eyes and repeat the procedure.
Nothing happens. Not a sound from the engine.
I whisper a desperate prayer.
Third time lucky. The engine starts, I back out quickly from the parking area, and drive away.
I’ve no idea in which direction I’m heading, but that doesn’t matter. I must get away, I think. Away from here.
No, it was a mistake to go to Hawkridge.
34
The thirteenth of December, a Thursday. St Lucia’s Day, the day when Swedes burn candles to celebrate the light in the middle of winter. It continued raining all night, growing less heavy during the next morning but not ceasing altogether. The usual westerly wind, the morning walk up to Wambarrows and the same route back. Six degrees. It’s getting muddier and muddier for each day that passes, and you need to be careful not to get stuck. In the afternoon we drive to Watersmeet, walk up towards Brendon and are back in Darne Lodge by early dusk soon after four o’clock. No previously unexplored paths, no strolls along steep roads used by the Devil.
Generally speaking, I feel more on edge. With a fear lurking in the background that I would prefer not to look more closely into. I’m grateful that we are going to have dinner at Mark Britton’s place tomorrow evening. Extremely grateful. I only wish it were this evening.
I play sixteen games of patience, but only solve three of them; I read a little but find it hard to concentrate. When it has become midnight in Sweden, albeit only eleven o’clock in this country, I try three new passwords: Grass, Soblewski and Gusov. They work just as badly as yesterday’s Herold, Hyatt and Megal. Perhaps I shall have to think along different lines.
But what lines? I ask myself. I have no idea. In any case I have noted down the names I’ve already used, so that I don’t risk repeating the same mistake twice. Names? It occurs to me that there’s no reason why the password should be a name. It could just be a word, any word at all. Doubt. Bunker. Raven.
It doesn’t even need to be a word in any language: a combination of letters or letters and numbers would be sufficient. How on earth could I possibly hit upon the correct combination? How could I imagine that I knew my husband so well that I could work out what password he would choose from hundreds of thousands of possibilities?
Presumptuous.
Presumptuous and stupid.
But I must open that document — it seems more of a burning necessity with every hour that passes. I don’t know why. Or do I? At Dawn.
Is there a short-cut? How would a Lisbeth Salander approach the problem?
A silly question. Lisbeth Salander would already have solved it. For an ordinary person it’s a question of finding a Salander.
Or somebody of her calibre, at least. Or half of it. A tiny fraction of it.
Alfred Biggs?
Margaret Allen?
Mark Britton. That thought feels like a lump of ice in my throat. No, not Mark Britton, as. . as Mark Britton has no part to play in this business. I’m not at all sure where he does have a part to play, whatever I mean by that, but in any case I don’t want to involve him in Greece or Morocco.
On the other hand — during today’s walk alongside the East Lyn River, a pleasant and quite dry route that I could walk five times a week — I have started to toy with another thought involving Mr Britton. So far it is no more than an undeveloped foetus, maybe I shan’t develop it any further, but it’s that experience in Hawkridge that lies at the bottom of it.
Hawkridge together with the other things. The hire car and the pheasants. But as I said, I don’t want to spell it out yet, nor even to think about it. We go to bed instead, my dog and I; we switch off the light and lie there under the covers, listening to the wind and another sound that comes whining over the moor. I don’t know what it is, it’s the first time I’ve heard it: a metallic, almost mournful noise; I can’t decide if it’s coming from an animal or from something else.
Something else? What might that be? It’s two miles down to the village. One to Halse Farm.
The curtains are not quite tightly closed, as usual. I roll over onto my side, with my back towards the moor. Place the pillow over my head so that all sounds are eliminated. I think about Synn. About Gunvald. About Christa and about Gudrun Ewerts.
About Martin.
Rolf.
Gunsan.
People I have met during my life. One more week, and it’s the shortest day of the year.
*
We wake up late on Friday. I feel sluggish and listless. If I didn’t have a dog to think about I would presumably stay in bed all day.
No, that’s not true. If I didn’t have a dog I would kill myself. I would become the third case of suicide in Darne Lodge — perhaps Mr Tawking could turn the place into a tourist attraction on that account. Our names on a plate on the wall; but I have forgotten the names of my predecessors. Selwyn something, and the man with the Belgian name. Maybe he could include Elizabeth Williford Barrett on the other side of the road, I remember her name because we pass her grave nearly every day. It occurs to me that I still haven’t found out who she was, and why she is lying where she is. Maybe I can ask about that at the computer centre: I remind myself to pay a visit there later today. Perhaps I can ask about the password as well, if there is some way of getting round it. In principle, that is: I could make it seem that it’s one of my own documents and I’ve simply forgotten what the password is because it’s so long since I thought it up. .