After the Fire

Chapter 1

My house burned down on an autumn night almost a year ago. It was a Sunday. The wind had got up during the afternoon and by the evening the anemometer indicated that the gusts measured over twenty metres per second.

The wind was coming from the north and was very chilly in spite of the fact that it was still early autumn. When I went to bed at around half past ten I thought that this would be the first storm of the season, moving in across the island I had inherited from my maternal grandparents.

Soon it would be winter. One night the sea would slowly begin to ice over.

That was the first night I wore socks to bed. The cold was tightening its grip.

The previous month, with some difficulty, I had managed to fix the roof. It was a big job for a small workman. Many of the slates were old and cracked. My hands, which had once held a scalpel during complex surgical procedures, were not made for manipulating broken tiles.

Ture Jansson, who had spent his entire working life as the postman out here in the islands before he retired, agreed to fetch the new slates from the harbour although he refused to accept any payment. As I have set up an improvised surgery in my boathouse in order to deal with all his imaginary medical complaints, perhaps he thought he ought to return the favour.

For years now I have stood there on the jetty by the boathouse examining his allegedly painful arms and back. I have brought out the stethoscope which hangs beside a decoy duck and established that his heart and lungs sound absolutely fine. In every single examination I have found Jansson to be in the best of health. His fear of these imaginary ailments has been so extreme that I have never seen anything like it in all my years as a doctor. He was simultaneously the postman and a full-time hypochondriac.

On one occasion he insisted he had toothache, at which point I refused to have anything to do with his problem. I don’t know whether he went to see a dentist on the mainland or not. I wonder if he’s ever had a single cavity. Perhaps he was in the habit of grinding his teeth while he was asleep, and that’s what caused the pain?

On the night of the fire I had taken a sleeping tablet as usual and dropped off almost immediately.

I was woken by a light being switched on. When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by a dazzling brightness. Beneath the ceiling of my bedroom I could see a band of grey smoke. I must have pushed off my socks in my sleep when the room got hot. I leaped out of bed, ran down the stairs and into the kitchen through that harsh, searing light. The clock on the wall was showing nineteen minutes past midnight. I grabbed my black raincoat from the hook by the back door, pulled on my wellington boots, one of which was almost impossible to get my foot into, and rushed outside.

The house was already in flames, the fire roaring. I had to go down to the jetty and the boathouse before the heat became unbearable. During those first few minutes I didn’t even think about what had caused this disastrous conflagration; I just watched as the impossible unfolded before my eyes. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would be smashed to pieces inside my chest. The fire was ravaging me in equal measure.

Time melted away in the heat. Boats began to arrive from the other islands and skerries, the residents rudely woken from their sleep, but afterwards I was unable to say how long it took or who was there. My gaze was fixed on the flames, the sparks whirling up into the night sky. For one terrifying moment I thought I saw the elderly figures of my grandmother and my grandfather standing on the far side of the fire.

There are not many of us out here on the islands in the autumn, when the summer visitors disappear and the last of the yachts return to their home harbours, wherever those might be. But someone had seen the glow of the fire in the darkness, the message had been passed along, and everyone wanted to help. The coastguard’s firefighting equipment was used to pump up seawater and spray it on the burning building, but it was too late. All it changed was the smell. Charred oak timbers and wall panels, burned wallpaper and linoleum flooring combined with salt water to give off an unforgettable stench. When dawn broke all that remained was a smoking, stinking ruin. The wind had dropped — the storm had already moved on, heading towards the Gulf of Finland — but it had fulfilled its spiteful task, working together with the blaze, and now there was nothing left of my grandparents’ pretty house.

That was when I first thought to ask myself: how had the fire broken out? I hadn’t lit any candles or left any of the old paraffin lamps burning. I hadn’t had a cigarette or used the wood-burning stove. The electrical wiring throughout the house had been renewed just a few years ago.

It was as if the house had set fire to itself.

As if a house could commit suicide as a result of weariness, old age and sorrow.

I realised I had been mistaken about a key aspect of my life. After performing an operation that went disastrously wrong and led to a young woman losing her arm, I moved out here many years ago. Back then I often thought that the house in which I was living had been here on the day when I was born, and that it would still be here on the day when I no longer existed.

But I was mistaken. The oak trees, the birches, the alders and the single ash tree would remain here after I was gone, but of my beautiful home in the archipelago only the foundations, hauled to the island across the ice from the long-defunct quarry at Håkansborg, would remain.

My train of thought was interrupted as Jansson appeared beside me. He was bare-headed, wearing very old dark blue overalls and a pair of motorcycle gloves that I recognised from the winters when the ice had not been thick enough to drive across, and he had used his hydrocopter to deliver the post.

He was staring at my old green wellingtons. When I looked down I realised I had pulled on two left boots in my haste. Now I understood why it had been so difficult to put one of them on.

‘I’ll bring you a boot,’ Jansson said. ‘I’ve got a few pairs back at home.’

‘There might be a spare pair down in the boathouse,’ I suggested.

‘No. I’ve been to look. There are some leather shoes and some old crampons people used to fix onto their boots when they went out on the ice clubbing seals.’

The fact that Jansson had already been rooting around in my boathouse shouldn’t have surprised me, even if on this occasion he had done it out of consideration. I already knew that he was in the habit of going in there. Jansson was a snooper. From an early stage I had been convinced that he read every postcard that passed through his hands when the summer visitors bought their stamps down by the jetties.

He looked at me with tired eyes. It had been a long night.

‘Where will you live? What are you going to do now?’

I didn’t reply because I didn’t have an answer.

I shuffled closer to the smoking ruin. The boot on my right foot was chafing. This is what I own now, I thought. Two wellingtons that aren’t even a pair. Everything else is gone. I don’t even have any clothes.

At that moment, as I grasped the full extent of the disaster that had befallen me, it was as if a howl swept through my body. But I heard nothing. Everything that happened within me was soundless.

Jansson appeared beside me once more. He has a curious way of moving, as if he has paws instead of feet. He comes from nowhere and suddenly materialises. He seems to know how to stay out of another person’s field of vision all the time.

Why hadn’t his wretched house on Stångskär burned down instead?

Jansson gave a start as if he had picked up on my embittered thought, but then I realised I had pulled a face, and he thought it was because he had come too close.

‘You can come and stay with me, of course,’ he offered when he had recovered his equilibrium.

‘Thank you.’

Then I noticed my daughter Louise’s caravan, which was behind Jansson in a grove of alders alongside a tall oak tree that had not yet lost all its leaves. The caravan was still partly concealed by its low branches.

‘I’ve got the caravan,’ I said. ‘I can live there for the time being.’

Jansson looked surprised but didn’t say anything.

All the people who had turned up during the night were starting to head back to their boats, but before they left they came over to say they were happy to help with whatever I needed.

During the course of a few hours my life had changed so completely that I actually needed everything.

I didn’t even have a matching pair of wellingtons.

Chapter 2

I watched as one boat after another disappeared, the sounds of the different engines gradually dying away.

I knew who each person was out here in the archipelago. There are two dominant families: the Hanssons and the Westerlunds. Many of them are sworn enemies who meet up only at funerals or when there is a fire or a tragedy at sea. At such times all animosity is set aside, only to be resurrected as soon as normal circumstances resume.

I will never be a part of the community in which they live despite all those long-running feuds. My grandfather came from one of the smaller families out here, the Lundbergs, and they always managed to steer clear of any conflict. In addition, he married a woman who came from the distant shores of Åland.

My origins lie here in the islands, and yet I do not belong. I am a runaway doctor who hid in the home I inherited. My medical expertise is an undoubted advantage, but I will never be a true islander.

Besides, everyone knows that I am a winter bather. Every morning I open up the hole I have made in the ice and take a dip. This is regarded with deep suspicion by the permanent residents. Most of them think I’m crazy.

Thanks to Jansson I knew that people were puzzled by the life I led. What did I do, out here all alone on my island? I didn’t fish, I wasn’t a part of the local history association or any other organisation. I didn’t hunt, nor did I appear to have any interest in repairing my dilapidated boathouse or the jetty, which had been badly affected by the ice over the past few winters.

So, as I said, the few remaining permanent residents out here regarded me with a certain measure of distrust. The summer visitors, however, who heard about the retired doctor, thought how fortunate I was to be able to retire to the tranquillity of the archipelago and escape the noise and chaos of the city.

The previous year an impressive motor launch had moored at my jetty. I went down to chase the unwanted visitors away, but a man and a woman carried ashore a crying child who had erupted in a rash. They had heard about the doctor living on the island and were obviously very worried, so I opened up my boathouse clinic. The child was placed on the bench next to the area where my grandfather’s fishing nets still hung, and I was soon able to establish that it was nothing more than a harmless nettle rash. I asked a few questions and concluded that the child had had an allergic reaction after eating freshly picked strawberries.

I went up to my kitchen and fetched a non-prescription antihistamine. They wanted to pay me of course, but I refused. I stood on the jetty and watched as their ostentatious pleasure craft disappeared behind Höga Tryholmen.

I always keep a good store of medication for my own private use, and several oxygen cylinders. I am no hypochondriac, but I do want access to drugs when necessary. I don’t want to risk waking up one night to find that I am having a heart attack without being able to administer at least the same treatment as I would receive in an ambulance.

I believe that other doctors are just as afraid of dying as I am. Today I look back and regret the decision I made when I was fifteen years old to enter the medical profession. Today I find it easier to understand my father, a permanently exhausted waiter; he looked at me with displeasure and asked if I seriously thought that hacking away at other people’s bodies was a satisfactory choice in life.

At the time I told him I was convinced that I was doing the right thing, but I never revealed that I didn’t think I had any chance whatsoever of gaining the qualifications to train as a doctor. When I succeeded, much to my own astonishment, I couldn’t go back on my word.

That’s the truth: I became a doctor because I had told my father that was what I was going to do. If he had died before I completed my training, I would have given up immediately.

I can’t imagine what I would have done with my life instead; I would probably have moved out here at an earlier stage, but I have no idea how I would have earned a living.

The last boats disappeared into the morning mist. The sea, the islands, greyer than ever. Only Jansson and I were left. The stinking ruin was still smoking, the odd flame flaring up from the collapsed oak beams. I pulled my raincoat more tightly over my pyjamas and walked around the remains of my house. One of the apple trees my grandfather had planted was a charred skeleton; it looked like something from a theatre set. The intense heat had melted a metal water butt, and the grass was burned to a crisp.

I felt an almost irresistible desire to scream, but as long as Jansson stubbornly hung around, I couldn’t do it. Nor did I have the strength to get rid of him. Whatever happened, I realised that I was going to need his help.

I rejoined him.

‘Can you do something for me?’ I said. ‘I need a mobile phone. I left mine in the house, so it’s gone.’

‘I’ve got a spare one at home that you can borrow,’ Jansson replied.

‘Just until I manage to get a new one.’

Obviously I needed the phone as soon as possible, so Jansson went down to his boat. It’s one of the last in the archipelago that has a so-called hot bulb engine, which has to be started with a blowtorch. He had a faster boat when he used to deliver the post, but the day after he retired he sold it and started using the old wooden boat he had inherited from his father. I have heard everything about that boat, including how it was built in a little boatyard in Västervik in 1923 and still has its original engine.

I stayed where I was, beside the smoking ruin. I heard Jansson spin the flywheel. He stuck his head out of the wheelhouse hatch as he waved goodbye.

Everything was quiet in the aftermath of the storm. There was a crow sitting in a tree contemplating the ruin. I picked up a stone and threw it at the bird, which flapped away on weary wings.

Then I went over to the caravan. I sat down on the bed and was overwhelmed by sorrow and pain, by a despair that I could feel all the way down to my toes. It made me hot, like a fever. I let out a yell so loud that the walls of the caravan seemed to bulge outwards. I began to weep. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a child.

I lay down and stared at the damp patch on the ceiling, which to my eyes now resembled a foetus. The whole of my childhood had been shot through with an ever-present fear of being abandoned. At night I would sometimes wake and tiptoe into my parents’ room just to check that they hadn’t gone off and left me behind. If I couldn’t hear them breathing I was terrified that they had died. I would put my face as close to theirs as possible until I was sure I could feel their breath.

There was no reason for my fear of being left alone. My mother regarded it as her life’s work to make sure I was always clean and nicely dressed, while my father believed that a good upbringing was the key to success in life. He was rarely at home because he was always working as a waiter in various restaurants. However, whenever he did have time off or was unemployed because he had been sacked for some perceived insolence towards the maître d’, he would open up his very own training academy for me. I would have to open the door between our kitchen and the cramped living room and pretend to show a lady in ahead of me. He would set the table for a fine dinner — perhaps even the Nobel dinner — with countless glasses and knives and forks so that I could learn the etiquette of eating and drinking while at the same time conversing with the elegant ladies sitting on either side of me. Now and again I would be faced with the winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, or the Swedish foreign minister, or the even more distinguished prime minister.

It was a terrifying game. I was pleased when he praised me but constantly worried about doing something wrong in the world into which he led me. There was always an invisible venomous snake lurking among the glasses and cutlery.

My father had actually worked as a waiter at the Nobel dinner on one occasion. His station had been down at the end of the furthest table, which meant he had never been anywhere near the prize-winners or royal guests. But he wanted me to learn how to behave in situations that might arise in life, however unlikely.

I don’t remember him playing with me when I was a child. What I do remember, however, is that he taught me how to do up my own tie and how to knot a cravat before I was ten years old. I also learned how to fold serviettes into a whole array of artistic shapes.

I must have fallen asleep eventually. It’s not unusual for me to seek refuge in sleep when I have suffered some kind of trauma. I can drop off at any time of the day, wherever I happen to be. It’s as if I force myself to sleep, in the same way I used to search for hiding places when I was a child. I set up secret dens among the bins and heaps of coal in the yards behind the apartment blocks where we lived. I would seek out thickets of undergrowth among the trees. Throughout my life I have left a series of undiscovered hiding places behind me. But none of these hiding places has ever been as perfect as sleep.

I woke up shivering. I had left my watch on the bedside table in the house, so that was gone. I went outside and looked at the ruin, which was still smoking. The odd ragged cloud was scudding across the sky; judging by the position of the sun, I guessed it was somewhere between ten and eleven o’clock.

I went down to the boathouse and carefully opened the black-painted door, because the hinges are in poor shape. If I pull too hard, the door comes off completely. There was a pair of dungarees and an old sweater hanging on a hook inside; among the tins of paint I also found a pair of thick socks that my grandmother had knitted for me many years ago. They had been far too big at the time, but now they were a perfect fit. I searched among the spent batteries and rusty tools until I found a woolly hat advertising a television set that had been sold in the 1960s. ALWAYS THE VERY BEST PICTURE it said in barely legible letters.

The mice had been at work — it looked as if it had been peppered with pellets from a shotgun. I pulled it on and went back outside.

I had just closed the door when I spotted a paper bag on the jetty. It contained a mobile phone, some underwear and a packet of sandwiches. Jansson must have come back while I was asleep. He had also left a note on a torn-off piece of a brown envelope.

Phone charged. Keep it. Underpants clean.

Next to the bag stood a wellington boot for the right foot. Mine were green, but this one was black. It was also larger because Jansson has big feet.

There was another note inside the boot.

Sorry, haven’t got green.

I wondered briefly why he hadn’t brought the other half of the black pair, but Jansson operates according to a logic I have never understood.

I took the bag and the boot back to the caravan. Jansson’s flimsy underpants were far too big, but there was something deeply touching about the fact that he had brought them.

I kept my pyjama jacket on as a shirt and pulled on the dungarees and the sweater. I found some paper bags in a drawer, screwed them up and used them to pad out the black wellington boot then sat on the bed and ate a couple of Jansson’s sandwiches; I needed the strength to decide what I was going to do.

A person who has lost everything doesn’t have much time. Or perhaps the reverse is true. I didn’t know.

I heard the sound of an approaching boat. I could tell it wasn’t Jansson; after all the years I have spent living out here, I have learned to identify different types of engine and individual boats.

I listened as the vessel came closer and closer, and identified it as one of the coastguard’s smaller boats, a fast thirty-foot aluminium launch equipped with two Volvo diesel engines.

I put down the sandwiches, put on my holey hat and went outside. The blue-painted boat swung around the headland before I had reached the jetty.

There were three people on board. To my surprise, a young woman was at the helm. She was wearing the coastguard uniform, her blonde hair spilling out from beneath her cap. It was the first time I had seen a woman working on a patrol boat.

She looked alarmingly young, little more than a teenager in fact.

The man standing legs wide apart in the prow, holding the mooring rope, was called Alexandersson. He was about ten years younger than me and the direct opposite of me in physical terms: short and overweight. He was also short-sighted and his hair was thinning.

He was a police officer. A few years ago, after a spate of break-ins at closed-up summer cottages early in the spring, he had called on all the permanent residents to see if we might have noticed anything suspicious. They never found out who was responsible, but Alexandersson and I got on very well. I had no idea whether he knew anything about my past, but after his first visit I thought he could have been the brother I never had.

He owned a little summer cottage on one of the small skerries, which were known as Bräkorna. Whenever he came to see me, we would have a cup of coffee, talk about our health, then discuss the wind and the weather. Neither of us had any reason to get into more serious issues. We would quite happily sit in silence for long periods of time, listening to the birds or the wind soughing in the treetops.

Alexandersson had been married for many years, and his children were grown up. Then all of a sudden his wife left him. I have no idea why; I never asked. I sensed a deep sorrow within him. Perhaps I recognised myself in his grief? Yet another of those questions I am incapable of answering.

Alexandersson landed clumsily on the jetty. He looped the rope around one of the bollards before shaking my hand. A man I had never seen before came out on deck and also jumped ashore. He had seemed unsure of how to behave on a boat that was never completely still. He shook my hand and informed me that his name was Robert Lundin and that he was a fire investigation officer. I couldn’t place his accent right away, but I suspected that he came from somewhere up in Norrland, away from the coast.

The young woman had switched off the engine and made fast the stern mooring rope. She came over and nodded to me. She really was very young.

‘Alma Hamrén,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry about your house.’

I nodded in return, suddenly on the verge of tears. Alexandersson realised what was happening.

‘Shall we go and take a look?’ he said.

Alma Hamrén stayed with the boat; she was composing a text message, her nimble fingers flying.

No one commented on my odd wellington boots. I couldn’t even tell whether they had noticed; surely they must have done?

Smoke was still rising from various spots in the ruins of my house.

‘Do you have any idea how the fire might have started?’ Alexandersson asked.

I explained that there had been no candles burning, and the stove had gone out by the time I went to bed. I had been asleep for less than two hours when I woke to find the whole house ablaze. I also told him that the wiring had been renewed, and that I couldn’t see any logical explanation as to why the fire had broken out.

Lundin remained in the background, listening. He didn’t ask any questions. I realised it was his job to establish the cause of the fire; I hoped he would succeed. I wanted to know what lay behind this disaster.

Alexandersson and Lundin began to walk around among the debris. I kept my distance, observing their slow progress. Occasionally one of them bent down; they reminded me of watchful animals.

I suddenly felt dizzy and had to lean on the old water pump for support. Alexandersson noticed that I wasn’t feeling well and gave me a searching look. I shook my head and went over to the caravan. I sat down on the steps and made an effort to breathe deeply. After a few minutes I stood up; the dizziness had passed. I set off back to the site of the fire, but stopped as I rounded the corner of the caravan and saw the two men standing among the sooty remains of the roof timbers. They were talking; I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I immediately had the feeling that they were deliberately speaking quietly, as if they didn’t want anyone else to hear.

From time to time Alexandersson glanced in my direction, but I was still hidden by the greenery surrounding the caravan.

I knew, even though I didn’t know. They were discussing the cause of the fire. Saying there were no external factors. Wondering whether I could have started it myself.

I held my breath, trying to make sense of it. Could they really believe that I was capable of such a thing? Or was it just that they had to consider every possibility, no matter how bizarre?

I stayed where I was until they resumed their slow, meticulous examination of the site. From time to time Lundin took photographs.

I pushed aside the low branches and went to rejoin the men.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

‘It takes time,’ Alexandersson replied. ‘It’s difficult.’

‘Very difficult,’ Lundin agreed. ‘There’s nothing obvious.’

The young woman called Alma Hamrén was sitting on the bench where I usually examined Jansson when he turned up with his imaginary aches and pains; she was still busy with her phone.

They carried on working for a couple of hours, then said they would probably be back later in the day. I told them I might not be here; I had to go over to the mainland to do some shopping.

I stood on the jetty until the boat had disappeared beyond the headland, then I went back to the remains of the house. They had placed some of the items they had found on a small sheet of plastic.

There were fragments of electrical cables, some half-melted fuses from the fuse box, and at the edge of the sheet I saw something I vaguely recognised. When I bent down to take a closer look, I realised what it was.

It was one of the buckles from the shoes that Giaconelli, the Italian shoemaker, had made for me some years ago.

At that moment I understood that I really had lost everything.

Nothing remained of my seventy-year life.

Chapter 3

I stood there gazing at my burned-down house. If I stared at the ruins for long enough, it was as if the building rose again from the sooty ashes.

The site reminded me of a war zone: it could have been the result of exploding grenades, tossed from passing tanks.

I was feeling more and more shaken. The sight of the blackened apple tree filled me with both sorrow and disgust. It was like an attack on the memory of my grandparents. I imagined that it would produce black, putrid apples. No one would be able to eat them. The tree was alive, yet at the same time it was dead.

I moved closer. The ruins were also a burial ground. The whole of my former life had been cremated. During those few violent hours last night the house had been transformed into an oven.

I experienced a vague but growing sense of loss for everything that had gone. I think I was most upset about my logbooks, which is what I called my diaries. The black-covered books hadn’t even crossed my mind as I rushed out of the house, and now they were nothing more than ashes. I could have carried my life in my arms; instead I had fled empty-handed out of the dragon’s mouth.

I thought about Giaconelli’s shoes. The only thing left of them was the charred buckle on Alexandersson’s plastic sheet.

It looked like an insect, perhaps one of the stag beetles I used to see in the summer when I was a child. They had disappeared, although no one seemed to know why. I had once asked Jansson whether there were any among the clumps of oak trees on the islands of the archipelago, and he had asked all the permanent residents when he delivered their post. No one except old widow Sjöberg, who lived in her isolated house on Nässelholmen, had seen a stag beetle since the 1960s. There were plenty around her place, she claimed, but she was notorious for lying about virtually everything, including her own age.

In death Giaconelli’s handmade leather shoes, which he had given me as a present, had been reduced to a charred black stag beetle. I wondered what the buckle was made of. The silver candlestick I had given my grandparents on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary was gone, the silver now simply part of the remains of the fire.

But the buckle had survived. I wouldn’t be able to ask Giaconelli what material he had used; after many years up in the forests of Hälsingland, where he had set up his shoemaking business surrounded by opera music pouring out of an old transistor radio, he had abruptly returned to Italy.

It seemed he had abandoned his workshop in haste. He didn’t have many friends, and none of them had any idea what had happened. He hadn’t even closed the front door. It had been standing open, banging in the wind, when a neighbour came over to see if the shoemaker could fix the loose sole of one of his work boots.

Giaconelli had completed all his orders before simply getting up from his chair and disappearing.

Later I found out from my daughter Louise that he had gone back to Italy by train, to his home village of Santo Ferrera north of Milan, where he had taken to his bed in a simple boarding house in order to die.

I had no idea what had happened to the workshop, or to his tools and all those lasts in the shape of people’s feet. Louise hadn’t told me, so presumably she didn’t know either.

I picked up the buckle. The last time I had spoken to Louise was two weeks ago. She had called late one night from a noisy cafe on the outskirts of Amsterdam, when I had just fallen asleep. She wouldn’t tell me what she was doing there, even though I asked her twice. The conversation was very brief. She was calling to check that I was still alive, and I in turn asked her if she was all right. Perhaps we regard each other as two patients, carrying out our doctors’ rounds together through a series of telephone calls?

The buckle was a charred memory of a pair of handmade shoes, and of a time when there had been stag beetles on the island. I wondered how Louise would react when she found out that the house that would one day have been hers had burned down.

I didn’t know my daughter well enough to gauge her reaction. Louise might simply shrug her shoulders and never mention the matter again, but she might also fly into a rage, blaming me for failing to prevent the fire. She might decide that I was a pyromaniac, even though there was nothing whatsoever to suggest that I had started the blaze.

I put down the buckle, went back to the caravan and finished off Jansson’s sandwiches, then went down to the boathouse, where I had a small open plastic boat with an outboard engine. It’s eighteen horsepower, and if the weather is good and the sea is calm, I can get up to twelve knots. I started the engine, sat down on a mouldy cushion and reversed out of the boathouse. I rounded the headland and increased my speed.

When I looked back I was horrified. I had always been able to see the roof and the upstairs windows of my house above the trees, but now there was only a gaping hole. I was so shaken by the discovery that I almost ran aground on Kogrundet, which lies just beyond the headland, managing to veer away only at the last minute.

I switched off the engine when I reached open water. The sea was empty, not a sound, no boats, hardly even any birds. A lone sea duck was skimming along just above the surface of the water, heading for the outer skerries.

I shivered. It came from deep inside. The boat drifted with the invisible wind. I lay down and stared up at the sky, where the clouds had begun to gather. There would be rain tonight.

The water lapped gently against the thin plastic skin that formed the outer shell of my boat. I tried to decide what to do.

The mobile Jansson had given me rang; it could only be him.

‘Is there something wrong with your engine?’ he asked.

He can see me, I thought, turning my head. But the sea was still empty. There was no sign of Jansson’s boat.

‘Why would there be something wrong with my engine?’

I shouldn’t have snapped at him; Jansson always means well. I sometimes thought that the enormous amount of mail he had read before delivering it over all those years was a kind of declaration of love to the dwindling population of the islands. I think he felt it was part of his duty as a seafaring postman to read every postcard sent or received by the summer visitors. He had to keep himself informed about what these people who turned up for the summer thought about life and death and the permanent residents of the archipelago.

‘Where are you?’ I said.

‘At home.’

He was lying. If he was at home on Stångskär, there was no way he could see me slowly drifting along. That disappointed me. When I came to live on the island I decided never to let other people’s behaviour get me down. The fact that Jansson wasn’t always completely truthful didn’t usually bother me — but when I had just lost my home in a devastating fire?

I suspected he was perched on a rock somewhere, clutching his binoculars.

I told him I had switched off the engine because I needed to think through my situation, and now I was going to head for the mainland to do my shopping.

‘I’m starting her up now,’ I said. ‘If you listen you’ll hear that she’s running perfectly.’

I ended the call before he could say anything else. The engine started and I sped away, heading for land.

My car is old but reliable. It’s parked down by the harbour on the mainland, outside a house that belongs to a strange woman whose name is Rut Oslovski. No one calls her Rut, as far as I know. Everyone says Oslovski. She allows me to park there, and in return I check her blood pressure from time to time. I keep a stethoscope and a blood-pressure monitor in the glove box. Oslovski’s blood pressure is too high, in spite of the fact that she has been taking metoprolol for the past few years. She’s not even forty, so I think it’s important to keep her blood pressure under control.

Oslovski’s left eye is made of glass. No one seems to know how she lost her eye. No one knows very much about Oslovski, to be honest. According to Jansson, she suddenly turned up here twenty years ago after being granted asylum. At the time her Swedish pronunciation was terrible. She later claimed to have come from Poland and become a Swedish citizen, but Jansson, who can be very suspicious, pointed out that no one had ever seen her passport or any proof that she really was a Swedish citizen.

Unexpectedly, Oslovski turned out to be a skilled mechanic. Nor was she afraid of taking on hard physical work in the late autumn or early spring, repairing jetties when the melting ice had damaged the structure, leaving them crooked and unsafe.

She was strong, broad-shouldered, not beautiful but friendly. She kept herself to herself for the most part.

The handymen in the area kept a close eye on her, but no one could say that she took work away from them by charging too little.

When she first arrived, Oslovski lived in a small cottage in the pine forest, a few kilometres from the sea. After a while she bought the little house down by the harbour, which used to belong to a retired pilot.

Jansson had spoken to his colleague who delivered the post in the harbour area; Oslovski never received any letters, nor did she subscribe to any newspapers or magazines. Did she even have a mailbox out on the street?

Sometimes she disappeared for several months and then one day she would be back. As if nothing had happened. She moved around like a cat in the night.

I moored the boat and went up to my car. There was no sign of Oslovski. The car started right away; I dread the day when it gives up and decides it’s time for the scrapyard.

It usually takes me twenty minutes to drive into town, but on this particular day the trip was much faster. I slowed down only when I realised I was putting myself in danger. I was beginning to suspect that the fire had destroyed something inside me. People can have load-bearing beams that give way too.

I parked on the main street, which is in fact the only street in town. It lies right at the end of an inlet poisoned by heavy metals from the industries that were here in the past. I can still recall the stench of a tannery from my childhood.

The bank is a white building right next to the toxic inlet.

I went up to the counter and explained that I had no bank cards and no ID; everything had been lost in the fire. The clerk recognised me but didn’t seem to be quite sure what to do. A person without any form of ID always constitutes some kind of threat nowadays.

‘I know my account number,’ I said, reeling off the numbers as he entered them into his computer.

‘There should be about a hundred thousand kronor in there,’ I said. ‘Give or take a hundred.’

The clerk peered at the screen, as if he couldn’t believe the information that had appeared.

‘Ninety-nine thousand and nine kronor,’ he said.

‘I need to withdraw ten thousand. As you can see, I’m wearing my pyjama jacket instead of a shirt. I’ve lost everything.’

I deliberately raised my voice when I explained what had happened. The whole place fell silent. Behind the counter there were two women in addition to the clerk who was helping me, and three customers were waiting their turn. Everyone was staring at me. I made a ridiculous bow, as if I were acknowledging silent applause.

The clerk counted out my money, then helped me to order a new card.

I went over to a cafe on the other side of the street. I had picked up a free pen and a couple of withdrawal forms in the bank, and I sat down and made a list of what I needed to buy.

It was a very long list. When I had filled both the slips and my serviette, I gave up.

I wondered how I was going to bear the pain and sorrow. I was too old to start again. The future had nothing to say. I could neither hear nor see any way out.

I screwed up the slips and the serviette, finished my tea and left. Then I went to the only clothes shop in town and bought shirts and underwear, sweaters and socks, trousers and a jacket, paying no heed to either quality or price. I put my bags in the car, then headed for the shoe shop to buy wellington boots. The only pair I could find had been made in Italy. That annoyed me. The assistant was a young girl in a headscarf whose Swedish was very poor. I tried to be pleasant, even though I was cross because they didn’t have ordinary Tretorn wellingtons.

‘Don’t you have any Swedish wellingtons? Tretorn?’ I asked.

‘We have these,’ she replied. ‘No others.’

‘It’s ridiculous not to sell classic Swedish wellingtons in a Swedish shoe shop!’

I was still doing my best to be civil, but she must have seen through my tone of voice. I could see that she was scared, which annoyed me even more. I had asked a perfectly simple question that wasn’t supposed to be rude or threatening.

‘Have you any idea what I’m talking about?’ I asked.

‘We have no other boots,’ she said.

‘In that case I’ll leave it. Unfortunately.’

I walked out. I couldn’t help slamming the door behind me.

There were no wellingtons in the ironmonger’s either, just work boots with steel toecaps. I bought a cheap watch, then made my way to a shop down by the harbour to stock up on food. There was an LPG stove in the caravan, plus a few pans. I didn’t buy anything I wanted, but I didn’t buy anything I didn’t want either. I filled my black plastic basket with indifference.

As I was passing the chemist’s I remembered that my medical supplies had been destroyed in the fire, so I went inside. As a doctor I am still entitled to purchase prescription-only drugs.

Before I went back to the car I also bought a pay-as-you-go mobile phone.

I suddenly realised I had no electricity on the island.

I drove back towards the harbour. I still had about half of the money I had taken out. I parked the car in the usual place; the door to Oslovski’s house was shut, and a rotting crow lay on the gravel path. Perhaps Oslovski was off on one of her mysterious trips?

I put my bags in the boat, then went to the chandlery. They had wellington boots, and they were made in Sweden. Or at least they were Tretorn anyway, but they didn’t have my size. I ordered a pair and was informed that it would be at least two weeks before they arrived.

The owner of the shop is called Nordin. He’s always been there. He spoke as if he had mourning crêpe in his voice when we talked about the fire. Nordin has a lot of children. He has been married three or four times. His present wife is called Margareta, but they have no children.

Jansson claims that Nordin does magic tricks for his children, but I have no idea whether that is true or not.

I felt chilled to the bone when I emerged onto the quayside. I went over to the boat, took a shirt out of one of the plastic bags, then went into the cafe above the chandlery. I ordered coffee and a Mazarin. When I picked the pastry up it disintegrated into a pile of dry crumbs.

I sat down at a table with a view over the harbour, unpacked my mobile phone and used the charging point on the cafe wall.

A man who will soon be seventy years old has nowhere to live because his house has burned down. He has no worldly possessions left apart from a boathouse, a caravan, a thirteen-foot open boat and an old car. The question is: what does he do now? Does this man have a future? Does he have any real reason to go on living?

I stopped dead right there. My daughter Louise — why hadn’t I thought of her first of all? I was ashamed of myself.

Whether it was my crumbling Mazarin or what I had just been thinking I couldn’t say, but the tears began to flow. I wiped my eyes with my napkin. The scene was the very epitome of loneliness and isolation. An old man sitting in a deserted cafe on an autumn day, the only customer in a harbour establishment to which the yachts and cruisers will not return until next summer.

I realised I had to call Louise. I would have preferred to wait, but she would never forgive me if I didn’t tell her what had happened right away. My daughter is a volatile individual who lacks the tolerance and patience I believe I possess. She reminds me of her mother Harriet, who made her way across the ice using her wheeled walker some years ago, then died in my house the following summer.

My train of thought was interrupted as the door of the cafe opened and an unfamiliar woman of about forty came in. She was wearing exactly the kind of green wellingtons I had been searching for, plus a warm jacket and a scarf wound around her neck and head. When she took it off I saw that she had short hair and was very attractive. She went over to the counter and contemplated the unfortunate Mazarins.

Suddenly she turned and smiled at me. I nodded, wondering if I had met her before and forgotten. Veronika, who ran the cafe, emerged from the kitchen, and the woman ordered coffee and a Danish pastry. She came over to my table. I didn’t know who she was.

‘May I join you?’

She pulled out the chair without waiting for a response. A ray of pale autumn sunshine lit up her face as she sat down. She reached for the yellow curtain and pulled it across, shutting out the sun.

She smiled again. She had nice teeth. I smiled back but was careful to show only a little of my upper teeth; they still look reasonably good. My daughter Louise inherited her mother’s genes as far as her teeth are concerned, and unfortunately they are not as good as mine. Sometimes when Louise has been visiting and has got really drunk, she has quite unexpectedly attacked me because her teeth are not as white as mine.

‘My name is Lisa Modin,’ the woman said. ‘And you must be the man who watched his house burn down last night. My sympathies, of course. It must have been a terrible experience. After all, a house and a home is like an outer skin for a human being.’

She spoke with a slight accent that could have been from Sörmland, but I wasn’t sure. And I was even less sure about why she had come to sit at my table. She took off her warm jacket and hung it over the back of the chair next to her.

I still didn’t know what she wanted, but it didn’t matter. In a moment of madness the very fact that she had sat down at my table made me start to love her.

An old man doesn’t have much time at his disposal, I thought. This sudden love is all we can hope for.

‘I’m a journalist. I write for the local paper. The editor asked me to go over and talk to you, take a look at the site of the fire. But when I went into the chandlery to ask how I could get to your island, they said you were probably in the grocery shop. Which you weren’t — but you were here.’

‘How did you know it was me?’

‘The man in the chandlery described you as best he could. It wasn’t difficult to work out, particularly as there was no one in the grocery shop, and there’s no one else in here.’

She took a notepad out of her bag. The music from the radio in the kitchen suddenly seemed to irritate her; she got up, went over to the counter and asked Veronika to turn it down. After a moment the radio fell silent.

Lisa Modin was smiling as she came back to the table.

‘I’ll take you over,’ I said. ‘If you can cope with a small open boat.’

‘And you’ll bring me back?’

‘Of course.’

‘Are you still living on the island? I mean, your house burned down.’

‘I have a caravan.’

‘On an island? I thought it was really small. Is there a road?’

‘It’s a long story.’

She was holding a pen but hadn’t yet opened her notepad.

‘The news about the fire is one thing,’ she said. ‘My editor is dealing with that; he’ll speak to the police and the fire service. He wants me to write a more in-depth article about what losing your home like that means to a family.’

‘I’m on my own.’

‘Don’t you even have pets?’

‘They’re dead.’

‘Did they burn to death?’

She seemed horrified at the thought.

‘Dead and buried.’

‘And you don’t have a wife?’

‘She’s dead too. Cremated. But I do have a daughter.’

‘What does she have to say about all this?’

‘Nothing so far. She doesn’t know yet.’

She gave me a searching look, then she put down her pen and drank her coffee. I noticed that she was wearing a ring with an amber stone on her right hand. No ring on her left hand.

‘It’s too late today,’ she said. ‘But how about tomorrow? If you have time?’

‘I’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘Surely not, if everything you owned has gone up in smoke?’

I didn’t reply because of course she was right.

‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow,’ I said instead. ‘What time?’

‘Ten o’clock? Is that too early?’

‘It’s fine.’

She pointed to the window. ‘Down there?’

‘I’ll be by the petrol pumps. Wear something warm. And we might have rain tomorrow.’

She finished her coffee and stood up.

‘I’ll be there at ten,’ she said and left the cafe.

I heard the sound of a car starting. I wondered if she knew my name.

I travelled home across the dark sea. The boat was full of plastic bags. I thought about Lisa Modin and the movements of her hands as she wound her scarf around her head and neck. I felt a sense of excitement and anticipation as I contemplated the following day.

I rounded Höga Tryholmen expecting to see the coastguard’s boat moored at my jetty, but it wasn’t there. I pushed my boat into the boathouse and carried all my bags to the caravan. I had switched on the small fridge and the heater before I left and the place felt nice and warm. I checked the LPG gauge; there was plenty of fuel in the cylinder.

I unpacked my new clothes and glanced at where they had been made. The three shirts were all manufactured in China. I moved on to the underclothes and socks: also China. The jacket was made in Hong Kong, so from now on I would be going around entirely dressed in clothes from China. Until my new wellingtons arrived, nothing that I was wearing to keep out the cold would be from anywhere other than faraway China.

I hung up the shirts, wondering why it seemed important. Was I just looking for something to complain about? As if the last thing that remains for a man who is growing old is the ability to complain?

I put on a shirt, a sweater and the jacket. The remains of the fire had now stopped smoking; however, the acrid stench of the seawater-sodden oak timbers was still unpleasant. It made me feel sick if I got too close. I walked slowly around the ruins of my house to see if there might be something salvageable after all, apart from the buckle from one of Giaconelli’s shoes. I didn’t find anything. The feeling that I was contemplating a war zone returned.

I stopped when I reached the plastic sheet. I frowned. Something had changed. I stood there for several minutes before I gave up. I had noticed something, but I couldn’t say what it was.

I glanced at my new watch. I feel helpless if I don’t know what time of the day or night it is. Perhaps it’s because my father was such a poor timekeeper; on at least one occasion he was sacked from the restaurant where he was working for turning up late three days in a row.

I went up to the highest point on the island, from which I could see in all directions. My grandfather built a bench so that he and my grandmother could sit up there on warm summer evenings. I don’t know whether they talked to each other or sat in silence, but once when I was a child, a few years before they died, I picked up my grandfather’s binoculars and trained them on my grandparents. Much to my surprise I discovered that they were holding hands. It was a clear expression of tenderness and gratitude. They had been married for sixty-one years.

The bench is falling apart. I haven’t looked after it. I have neglected it, like so many other things on the island.

I stood there staring out across the archipelago. My gaze settled on a little skerry to the east of my island. The skerry belongs to me too, but it doesn’t have a name. It consists of no more than a couple of rocks and a small hollow in which a few trees grow. The hollow is deep enough to be protected from the wind. When I was a child I often built a den there. From the age of ten, when I was a strong swimmer, my grandparents allowed me to sleep over there when the weather was good.

When I was a teenager I had a tent on the skerry during the summer. Now I was looking at the place with different ideas. A thought had struck me, but I hadn’t quite processed it yet.

I continued my walk around the island. On the western side I caught a glimpse of two mink disappearing among the rocks. Otherwise everything was quiet. It was as if I was all alone in a deserted world.

I stopped when I reached the plastic sheet again. Now I realised what I had noticed earlier. Lundin and Alexandersson had been back while I was away, then they had left without any indication as to whether they would return.

I couldn’t prove it, but I was absolutely certain.

They suspected me of having started the fire. There was no obvious cause, so they had to investigate the possibility that I was an arsonist.

I knew I had done nothing, but how would I cope with being suspected of a crime?

My life had been turned upside down once before, when my career as a doctor came to an end following a botched operation. Had I now been afflicted by another disaster? How much could I bear?

I went to the boathouse and took down the blood-pressure monitor I use when Jansson turns up with his imaginary pains. I unbuttoned my Chinese-made shirt, rolled up my sleeve and took my blood pressure: 160 over 98. That’s unusually high for me, so I checked the other arm too: 159 over 99. I wasn’t happy with the result, even though I understood that it was probably because my house had burned down. I had had a shock. I had bought the medication at the chemist’s earlier; I didn’t normally take metoprolol, but it would bring down my blood pressure. If necessary I could also take an Oxascand tablet, a tranquilliser I use occasionally.

I took my pulse: 78. A little high but nothing serious. As I put the monitor back in the boathouse, I heard the sound of an engine in the distance. It was so far off that I couldn’t work out which boat it was, and after a little while it died away.

I remembered that there was an old wind-up alarm clock in the boathouse. I had no idea whether it still worked; I searched among the tools and took it outside. The spring held when I wound it up, it started ticking and the hands began to move. I set it to the right time and put it down beside me on the bench. Right now that clock, my mobile phone and the Chinese shirts were my most valuable possessions.

The wind had got up. The weathervane on top of the boathouse was hovering between south and west. I picked up the clock and got to my feet.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to try and get hold of my daughter.

Chapter 4

Louise is forty years old. As I said, the last time we spoke she was in Amsterdam. I presumed she had friends there but saw no reason to tell me anything about them. Of course she could also have been driven to the Dutch city by one of the political projects to which she devoted her time.

She doesn’t only write to presidents and dictators. More than once she has caused a scandal by throwing bags of rubbish at reactionary politicians. Sometimes it seems to me that she is an anarchist who has got lost along the way, at other times she appears to be a right-thinking radical woman who resorts to hopeless methods. Whenever I have tried to engage in a political discussion with her, I have always lost. Even if she hasn’t managed to convince me with her arguments, she has crushed me with her constant interruptions.

I have no idea how she supports herself, but she doesn’t seem to be short of money, and she has a stubborn streak which I envy.

When Harriet surprised me with the news that I had a daughter, Louise was already an adult. At the time she was living inland in a melancholy area of southern Norrland. It was her mother who took me to see her. Harriet had told me only that we were going to visit someone on the way to the forest pool that was our official destination. It wasn’t until after the door of the caravan opened and I was faced with a complete stranger that I found out she was my daughter. Needless to say it was one of the most overwhelming and important moments of my life. I had a child, a daughter, who was born when she was already over thirty years old.

She was living in the caravan, which was later transported to the island on an old cattle ferry. She stayed here until Harriet had died and we had burned her body in my old wooden boat, which had been lying there rotting on the shore. Shortly afterwards Louise disappeared. I eventually found out what she had been doing through a picture in the newspaper in which she was shown dancing naked in front of several international politicians whose actions she despised.

I hardly know her at all, but I wish I did. She has become increasingly fond of this island, and I have promised her that she will of course inherit everything when I am gone. The alternative would be for me to sell my home or to donate it to the local history society, but I don’t need the money, and the society seems to consist mostly of people bickering among themselves about what it should really be doing. I don’t want my grandparents’ house — if it is rebuilt — to be turned into a badly run summer cafe.

A few years ago several young women lived here for a period of about six months. They had been evicted from a home for vulnerable girls run by the woman whose arm I had so unfortunately amputated by mistake. She had forgiven me, and I had been so pleased to be able to help the girls when they were homeless. However, they were restless souls, and living on this isolated island soon began to increase their anxiety levels. They left when a place on the mainland became available, and I never saw them again.

I was glad they weren’t here now that the house had burned down. I shuddered at the thought that one of them could have died in the fire.

I sat on the bed in the caravan for a long time before I managed to pluck up the courage to call Louise. I hoped she wouldn’t answer, then I could wait until the following day with a clean conscience. She picked up after four rings. Her voice was as clear as if she were standing just outside the caravan.

As usual I started by asking if I was disturbing her. I wasn’t. Then I asked where she was. In the past we always began a phone call by enquiring how the other person was; now we want to know where they are.

She didn’t answer, which meant that she had no intention of revealing her whereabouts. I didn’t push it. If I am too inquisitive she often takes her revenge by not responding for several weeks when I call her.

I told her what had happened.

‘The house burned down. Last night.’

‘What house?’

‘My house. The one you were supposed to inherit.’

‘The house has burned down?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh my God!’

‘Indeed.’

‘What happened?’

‘No one knows. The whole place was ablaze when I woke up. I didn’t manage to save anything except myself.’

‘Not even your diaries?’

‘Nothing.’

She fell silent, trying to process what I had said.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No.’

‘But surely there must be an explanation?’

‘The police and a fire investigation officer have been here poking around in the ruins. They couldn’t find a cause.’

‘Houses don’t just burn down for no reason. Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where are you living?’

‘In your caravan, for the time being.’

Another silence. At least her surprise hadn’t turned to anger at me.

‘I’m coming home.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I know, but I want to see it with my own eyes, see that everything is gone.’

‘You can believe what I say.’

‘I do.’

I could tell from her voice that she didn’t want to talk any more. She said she would be in touch very soon, and we ended the call. I lay down and noticed that I was sweating. In spite of everything, right now Louise was the only person I could talk to about what had happened.

After a while I got up and went outside. I put Jansson’s phone in a small metal box under the bench on the jetty, then I sent him a text to let him know that he could come and pick it up. I also placed a fifty-kronor note in the box to cover the few calls I had made. At the end of my message I said that I would prefer not to have any visitors.

I sat down on the bench and leaned back against the wall of the boathouse; the red paint was flaking.

When I woke up it was twilight. I shivered and walked back up to the caravan. All at once I found the gathering darkness frightening. There was no glow from the windows that were no longer there. The light outside the boathouse wasn’t working either. I was surrounded by darkness. I switched on the LPG light inside the caravan and dug out an old paraffin lamp that Harriet had once given to Louise. I opened a tin of soup and heated it up. When it was ready I switched off the LPG light, leaving the softer glow of the paraffin lamp.

I went to bed early that night. As I lay there I realised how tired I was. I didn’t even have the energy to worry about the following day. It was as if the fire had consumed all my strength, along with my house.

I woke from a dream about a storm. With the help of the old alarm clock I worked out that I had slept for nine hours. I don’t think I’ve slept for that long since I was a child. As usual I got up immediately. If I stay in bed, anxiety spreads through my body. I put on my raincoat and realised that I had forgotten to buy a towel the previous day. I decided to sacrifice the yellow Chinese shirt. I headed for the boathouse, where at the very end of the jetty there is a ladder leading into the water. I climbed down and floated away on my back.

It was cold. I guessed that the temperature of the sea was seven or eight degrees. The wind had strengthened during the night, and the weathervane on top of the boathouse was veering between west and south-west. I hadn’t remembered to buy a radio either, I thought as I clambered out of the water. I rubbed my skin dry with the yellow shirt in order to get my circulation going. I avoided looking too closely at myself; as I get older, I find my body increasingly repulsive. This morning I thought I looked more decrepit than ever.

I hurried back to the caravan and got dressed. After a cup of coffee and a couple of sandwiches, I called Directory Enquiries and eventually managed to get hold of Kolbjörn Eriksson. He is the same age as me, and returned to the archipelago after spending many years as an electrician aboard a cargo ship sailing between Europe and South America. These days he lives in a house he inherited from his uncle, who was a member of one of the better-known seal-hunting families out here on the islands. Kolbjörn repaired my electric cooker a while ago, and he is also the man who renewed all the wiring in the house.

He answered immediately. When I told him who I was, I thought I heard him let out a groan.

‘My house has burned down, but you probably know that already.’

‘I was there,’ he replied. ‘I don’t suppose you remember.’

I had absolutely no recollection of seeing him among those working in vain to extinguish the blaze. How could I not recall his characteristic face, his bald head, his height and his slightly reedy voice?

‘I don’t remember anyone who was there,’ I replied. ‘But thank you for trying to help.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was definitely nothing to do with the wiring you renewed,’ I reassured him.

‘You didn’t leave a candle burning?’

‘No. We’ll have to wait and see what conclusion the investigators reach.’

I almost told him that I was probably suspected of arson, but I managed to stop the words before they flew out of my mouth.

‘I need electricity,’ I said. ‘I’m living in the caravan at the moment; I need light and heat.’

‘I’ve already thought about that. I can come over today.’

I was due to pick up Lisa Modin in three hours.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And could you bring some outside lights and some lamps that I can use inside the caravan, if you have any?’

Kolbjörn promised he would be there the following day; we agreed on seven thirty. I put the phone in my pocket and went down to my boat, which started first time. I headed for the skerry with no name. I switched off the engine, flipped it up and made my way in using an oar. The bottom of the boat scraped against the rock. There was no need to make it fast because I would be able to see it from wherever I was on the skerry. The wind was a south-westerly, and the waves were lapping against the stern.

I found a few bones from a herring gull on the rocks. I had been finding such things, including entire skeletons, ever since I was a child. But I didn’t want to think of the skerry as a graveyard. I went down to the hollow between the two rocks; beyond lay the open sea, with the odd reef barely visible on the horizon.

When I was little I used to think of the reefs as the backs of whales, emerging from the sea.

I still do.

I paced out the hollow; the caravan would fit. With ropes and a block and tackle it wouldn’t be impossible to transport it from a ferry to the spot between two dense clumps of alders. I decided to carry out the plan that had come into my mind the previous day. I was sure that my daughter would approve. I was going to relocate the caravan.

I walked around the skerry. The wind felt fresh out here, with no islands to get in its way.

I got back in the boat and headed for the harbour. There was still an hour to go before I was due to meet Lisa Modin. I went to see Nordin and asked if he had ordered my wellingtons. He had. He looked almost insulted at the question.

I also bought a life jacket for Lisa. I have an old one that I never use. After mooring the boat I had taken it out from the little storage area in the stern, and had tried in vain to wipe off the oil and fish scales.

I was astonished when I paid for Lisa Modin’s life jacket. Nordin agreed that it was expensive, but of course he didn’t set the price.

Some construction workers were sitting in the cafe drinking coffee. They were in the middle of resurfacing the jetty where the coastguard patrol boats are moored. Apparently one of them had spotted a perch a few days earlier, and there was a loud discussion about whether he might have been mistaken. Everyone knows that perch has practically died out in the archipelago. I haven’t seen any in the water by my boathouse for almost three years. The odd shoal of dace has drifted by, but nothing else.

I listened distractedly to their conversation. The Baltic Sea was dying. Its decline was insidious. Parts of the seabed invisible to the naked eye were already dead, leaving nothing but a sterile underwater desert. The increasingly intense algae blooms were like an outbreak of psoriasis every summer. The sea was shedding its skin while being suffocated at the same time.

The construction workers left without reaching any agreement on the existence or otherwise of the perch. I was alone in the cafe. Veronika was in the kitchen, listening to the radio. I had noticed that she turned down the volume when I came in.

Veronika is the granddaughter of one of the last pilots out here. She has a brother who was born with hydrocephalus and lives at home with his parents. Veronika has a small apartment squeezed in between the grocery store and the cafe.

She is friendly and attentive, but permanently anxious, afraid of doing something wrong or saying something inappropriate. Sometimes I think she will always be here in the cafe, serving customers until old age takes its inevitable toll. I wonder what she really longs for. There must be something.

I went to the toilet and contemplated my reflection in the mirror. It was what it was. My hair was thinning but neatly combed. My expression was grim. I attempted a smile. I tried to picture Lisa Modin without any clothes on. I immediately felt embarrassed.

I discovered a mark on the blue Chinese shirt I had put on this morning, a small flaw on the collar. This made me so angry that I was on the point of ripping off the shirt and throwing it in the bin in the toilet, but I managed to calm myself down. If I pulled up my jumper by a few centimetres, the flaw wouldn’t show.

I still had twenty minutes before Lisa Modin was due to arrive. I went to the grocery shop and bought a brioche loaf. The place was just as empty as the cafe had been. There were hardly any people left on the islands, just as there were hardly any fish left in the sea.

I went down to the boat and waited. There was a light breeze blowing across the water. A rain front was building over to the east, but it was unlikely to reach us before the evening.

The construction workers were banging away on the jetty, the smell of asphalt filling the air.

I looked down into the water. No fish. Not even a little shoal of whitefish.

Ten o’clock. No sign of a car. Had she decided not to come after all?

At that moment a pale blue car came racing down the hill; the driver slammed on the brakes when it reached the parking area. Lisa Modin got out. She was wearing the same jacket as the previous day. I stood up and waved. In my eagerness I exaggerated the gesture; the boat rocked and I almost fell in the water. I banged my knee on one of the oars and sat down in the bottom with a thud. I don’t know if she noticed; I was back on my feet by the time she reached the boat.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said.

‘No problem.’

I took her handbag and helped her into the boat. She was wearing gloves. I gave her the life jacket and cast off. She settled down on the seat in the middle with her back to me. I headed out of the harbour and increased my speed. Nordin was standing outside the chandlery smoking his pipe. He’s one of the few people I know these days who stubbornly refuses to give up smoking.

Lisa Modin didn’t say a word throughout the whole journey, she just sat gazing out across the islands, the rocks and the open sea. A sea eagle drifted high above us on the thermals. That was the only time she turned to me. I nodded towards the bird, which appeared to be suspended on invisible strings.

‘A golden eagle?’ she called out.

‘Sea eagle.’

Those were the only words we exchanged. I slowed down as we approached my jetty. The site of the fire was clearly visible. I manoeuvred carefully into the boathouse.

She didn’t need any help getting ashore. We went straight up to my burned-out house. She walked around the blackened remains once, twice, the second time in the opposite direction. I stood by the charred apple tree, watching her. For a brief moment she reminded me of Harriet when she was young, although Harriet had never had such short hair. Suddenly I didn’t know if my desire was focused on a memory or on the woman walking around the ruins.

Lisa rejoined me, shaking her head.

‘What happened?’

‘I was asleep, and I woke up because the room was full of a searing light. I ran straight outside.’

‘I spoke to Bengt Alexandersson on the phone. He said the cause of the fire is still unclear.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘No. Just that the cause of the fire is unclear.’

I immediately felt that she wasn’t telling the truth. Alexandersson must have said something else. Did she know that I was suspected of having set fire to my own house?

I turned away and slowly walked back to the boathouse and the bench. I no longer had the desire to invite her into the caravan for a cup of coffee. She followed me and sat down beside me with her notepad and pen in her hand.

‘How do you survive?’ she asked.

‘You get out of the house as fast as you can.’

‘That’s not what I meant. How do you survive when you’ve lost everything you own?’

‘We really need very little in order to live.’

‘But what about all the memories? The family heirlooms? The photograph albums? The floors you have always walked on, the wallpaper you have seen every day, the doors you have opened and closed?’

‘The most important memories are preserved in my mind. I can’t weep over the fact that everything is gone. I have to decide what to do. I have no intention of allowing the fire to steal my life.’

‘Are you going to rebuild the house?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘But you were fully insured, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘Including the contents?’

‘I don’t know.’

She jotted a few things down. I noticed that she used shorthand. She was still wearing her gloves. I ought to ask her what Alexandersson had really said.

She suddenly pulled a face and bent her head. I could see that she was in pain.

‘I’m wondering if I’ve slipped a disc,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s just a stiff neck?’

I got to my feet.

‘I run a kind of doctor’s surgery from this bench,’ I said. ‘Would you like me to check?’

She looked as if she thought I was joking.

‘I could examine you,’ I said quietly. ‘It will only take a couple of minutes.’

She hesitated, but then she took off her scarf and unbuttoned her jacket. I felt her neck, gently pressing the vertebrae. Then I asked her to move her head and neck according to my instructions. I suspected it could well be a slipped disc, but she would need an X-ray to confirm my diagnosis.

Her body was warm. I wanted to rest my face against her skin. I asked her to carry out a few unnecessary movements just so that I could leave my hands where they were.

She put her scarf back on and promised to go for an X-ray. I suggested that we go into the caravan for a cup of coffee while we continued our conversation. First of all she took a couple of photographs of me sitting on the bench with the sea in the background, then she wanted me to go and stand right at the end of the jetty looking out to sea. I did as she said.

The caravan was very cramped with two people inside it at the same time. I sliced the brioche and set it out on a plate and served coffee in mismatched cups, which were all I had. I sat at the table on a stool, while Lisa sat on the bed with a cushion behind her back. She asked me about the history of the house and the island, how long I had lived there and how I saw my future.

The last question was the most difficult to answer. I simply said that I hadn’t yet made any decisions. The fire was still burning inside me.

‘That’s a beautiful way of putting it,’ she said. ‘Beautiful and terrifying.’

When she didn’t appear to have any further questions, I asked her how she had ended up working for the local newspaper. She told me she had split up with her husband and left Strängnäs, where she had been working for another local paper. She had moved here a year ago for the job, and I had a feeling that she wasn’t particularly happy.

She had no children. I didn’t ask, she just told me.

‘What will you be doing in ten years?’ I wondered.

‘Hopefully something I can’t even imagine today. What about you?’

‘I’ll give the same answer as you.’

‘But you’ll still be here? In a new house?’

I didn’t reply. We sat in silence as the alder branches tapped against the roof of the caravan.

‘I’ve never been out in the archipelago before,’ she said. ‘Strangely enough. Now I can see how beautiful it is.’

‘It has a particular beauty just before the winter. There’s nothing lovelier, although some people see it as desolate and frightening.’

‘I heard about one of the outer skerries where poor fishermen and their families used to live long ago. Apparently you can still see something of the foundations of their houses, and no one can understand how anyone could survive out there. I’d like to see that. But if I’ve understood correctly, no one is allowed to go ashore?’

‘That’s only during the birds’ breeding season. You can go there at this time of year.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘Many times. I can show you if you like.’

She immediately accepted my invitation.

‘Next Wednesday?’ she suggested. ‘If you have time? I realise you have a lot to think about at the moment.’

‘I’ve got all the time in the world.’

We carried on talking about the fire. She asked me to describe my former house, room by room. I told her about the rough oak timbers in the walls, how the trees had been felled in the northern reaches of the archipelago and dragged across the ice by horses. My grandfather had told me that one of the wagonloads had gone down near a small insignificant shallow that was known as Kejsaren, for some reason. Even if the ice was thick, treacherous cracks could appear in the vicinity of shallows or close to long shorelines. The horse, which according to my grandfather was called Rommel, had gone straight through the ice along with the driver, who was only twenty years old. No one had been around, no one had heard the screams. It wasn’t until late at night that the search had begun, by flickering torchlight. The following day the crack had sealed itself, and neither horse nor driver were found until the spring came and the ice loosened its grip.

I felt as if I was walking through my house once more. The cumulative impressions left by several generations had been obliterated in just a few short hours. Invisible traces of movements, words, silences, sorrows, suffering and laughter had disappeared. Even things that are invisible can be reduced to soot and ashes.

As we walked down to the boathouse I was already looking forward to Lisa’s return. Right now that was more important to me than the blackened ruins of my house.

I dropped her off in the harbour by the petrol pumps. We shook hands. I waited until she got into her car and drove off.

Back on the island I discovered that Jansson had been to collect his phone. He had placed a bag of freshly baked crisprolls in the metal box.

Jansson is a man of many talents. On one occasion he revealed that he was interested in how people had executed one another over the centuries. It turned out that he knew everything about strange, barbaric methods of execution. I listened in astonishment and with growing revulsion to the catalogue of human brutality until he abruptly stopped, as if he had realised that he had said too much.

But the most remarkable thing about Jansson is his clear, sonorous tenor voice. On Harriet’s last birthday he surprised us all by suddenly getting up from the table in the midsummer twilight and singing Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, the sound echoing across the water. We were all deeply moved and equally taken aback. No one knew he had such a powerful voice. However, when he was subsequently asked to join the church choir, he said no. No one has heard him sing since that birthday party, when Harriet sat with a garland of flowers in her hair just a few weeks before she died.

I took the crisprolls up to the caravan, where I sat down and made a list of all the things I had to sort out. I also looked at my financial situation and discovered that, thanks to my thriftiness over the years, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared. I had around two hundred thousand kronor in various bank accounts, plus a quantity of stocks and shares.

I opened a couple of tins and made myself something to eat, then went for a walk around the island. When I got back I fetched an old transistor radio from the boathouse. I didn’t expect it to work, but when I put in the new batteries I had remembered to buy the previous day, it actually made a noise. I listened to a lecture by a professor at the University of Lund who was talking about the healing properties of magnetism. As a doctor I obviously don’t believe in the miraculous power of magnets, but the professor had a pleasant voice. I didn’t really care what he was saying.

Then came the news and the shipping forecast. The outside world becomes more incomprehensible with each passing day. I am losing track of which terrorist groups are killing each other. A Palestinian boy had been burned alive outside Jerusalem. This terrible bulletin ended with a report about a group of rebels in Iraq who had been crucified by their opponents. Their hatred was based on different opinions on what constituted the true religion. Both parties believed that they were serving the same god.

There was no god in my caravan. Perhaps he wandered around the island at night? Perhaps he slept in the boathouse? I had no intention of ever letting him in here, not even if he was frozen stiff. When it came to contact with gods, I was capable of inhumane behaviour.

I woke early the following day. During the night I had dreamed of an armada of ancient motorboats surrounding the island. The beams of their headlights shone at my caravan with such intensity that it reminded me of the fire. I woke up thinking the caravan must be burning. I ran out into the darkness stark naked. My heart carried on pounding for a long time, even after I had realised it was only a dream.

I lay awake for ages. The wind rocked the caravan slightly, like a vessel bobbing around on its moorings.

Eventually I dozed off and slept until six o’clock. I went down to the boathouse and took my morning dip. The thermometer was showing seven degrees. The yellow Chinese shirt served as a towel once more. I made coffee and sardine sandwiches. Just to be on the safe side, I checked the tin to make sure it didn’t say ‘Produce of China’, but in fact the fish had made the long journey from Lagos in Portugal.

At seven thirty Kolbjörn arrived in his big aluminium ferry. Apart from his electrical expertise, he also has an in-depth knowledge of different forms of marine propulsion. This particular vessel was driven by a jet stream, which meant it didn’t need a propeller.

We chatted for a while down by the jetty. He had brought some outdoor lights as well as a couple of table lamps for the caravan.

The electric cable to my island comes ashore on the south side. There is a sign to say that dropping anchor there is forbidden. I asked Kolbjörn if he would like a cup of coffee, but he declined; he wanted to get straight down to work. He had only glanced in passing at the site of the fire; it was as if he would prefer not to see it.

I asked if he needed an unqualified labourer. Once again he declined; he would rather work alone. When I wondered whether we should discuss his fee for the job, he muttered something unintelligible in response.

I knew he would charge me next to nothing. As far as he was concerned, I was a person in dire straits who needed support.

My mobile rang. I didn’t recognise the number and when I answered I heard an eager voice wanting to sell me outdoor furniture made of durable plastic. Before I ended the call in an outburst of rage I gathered that the price had been slashed now the summer was over. The salesman didn’t call back.

As I slipped the phone in my pocket I heard the throb of an engine; it was the coastguard. This time Captain Pålsson was at the helm, with Alexandersson and a man I had never seen before on board. They hove to next to Kolbjörn’s ferry and came ashore. Alexandersson was in uniform, while the other man wore an overcoat with blue overalls underneath.

Alexandersson introduced him.

‘Detective Inspector Sture Hämäläinen. The police are investigating the cause of the fire too.’

Hämäläinen was short and chubby, and his face was so pale I thought he was wearing white make-up. He shook my hand.

‘It’s just routine,’ he said. ‘Apart from anything else, you’ll have problems with the insurance if the cause of the fire can’t be established.’

He spoke Swedish with a Finnish accent. At least he wasn’t made in China, I thought grimly.

We went up to the house. Kolbjörn and Alexandersson nodded to one another.

‘I’m not a pyromaniac,’ I said. ‘Why would I set fire to my own house?’

I was speaking to Hämäläinen, but he didn’t reply. He was staring at the ruins. I wasn’t even sure if he had heard what I said. Then he began to walk slowly around the plot.

‘Why are the police involved?’ I asked Alexandersson. ‘Do you really think I’m responsible for this?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What does he think he’s going to find?’

‘The cause. He’s very good.’

‘Let’s hope you’re right.’

I noticed that I was getting annoyed. Alexandersson understood. We didn’t say anything else.

Kolbjörn was busy fixing up an external light down by the boathouse.

‘Who’s the stranger?’ he wanted to know.

‘A detective inspector who’s going to try and find out if I set fire to my own house.’

Kolbjörn dropped his screwdriver. I bent down and gave it back to him.

‘I’m not an arsonist,’ I said. ‘I’m going shopping. There’s a flask of coffee in the caravan.’

I didn’t go shopping. I chugged aimlessly around the islands instead, then I decided to go out to Vrångskär, the skerry I would be visiting with Lisa Modin in a few days.

I went ashore, pulled the boat up behind me, then found a place to sit under a distorted pine tree where the ground was dry.

I could see storm clouds gathering on the distant horizon. I gazed out to sea, thinking that soon I would have to decide what I was going to do.

Had my life gone up in flames? Did I still have the desire to imagine anything beyond the humiliation of old age? Could I find a new will to live?

Basically it came down to just one question: did I want to rebuild the house or should I let Louise inherit the site of a fire?

I carried on staring out to sea, hoping that an answer would drift ashore. But nothing turned up.

However, I did make up my mind that I wouldn’t wait any longer; I was going to move the caravan to the skerry and the hollow between the two rocks. No doubt Kolbjörn would be able to run a cable from the island to the skerry; he wouldn’t hesitate to break the law if that was what it took to solve an emergency energy issue.

The decision gave me the strength to get to my feet. I went down to the boat, breaking off one of the last roses of the summer on the way, and set off for home.

The two boats were still there. Kolbjörn was in the process of fixing up the wiring in the caravan, while Alexandersson and Hämäläinen were still at the site of the fire.

‘Have you found anything?’ I asked.

I couldn’t help noticing the fleeting glance they exchanged. It worried me, but it also irritated me. A mixture of worry and anger leads to fear.

‘What have you found?’ I persisted.

‘Indications that the fire started simultaneously in several places,’ Hämäläinen said.

‘What kind of indications?’

‘There are signs that an accelerant was used.’

‘So the fire was started deliberately?’

Hämäläinen grimaced and shook his head. Alexandersson looked troubled, scraping his foot at the ash around the foundations.

‘So I’m suspected of starting the fire,’ I said.

Hämäläinen shrugged, then looked me straight in the eye.

‘Did you?’

‘Did I what?’

‘Start the fire.’

I turned to Alexandersson. ‘Who is this fucking Finn you’ve brought with you?’

I didn’t wait for a response, but stormed off down to the caravan. Kolbjörn, who was outside balancing on a ladder, could see that I was upset. But he didn’t say anything.

A little while later I heard the coastguard’s boat start up. I waited until the throb of the engine had died away, then I went outside. I explained to Kolbjörn that I was thinking of moving the caravan to the skerry without a name. Could he help me? I knew he had an old cattle ferry. He would also be able to solve the problem of finding a block and tackle to get it into the right place in the hollow.

He promised to see what he could do. Sorting out a supply of electricity would be no trouble either.

He finished work just before dusk fell. A lantern shone outside the boathouse.

I switched on the lamp he had placed on the small table in the caravan. It would be easier to make decisions now, I thought. The light would help me.

That evening I ate unmemorable fish soup. I was fast asleep before midnight.

Chapter 5

The following day I spent a long time searching the boathouse for something to write on. The only thing I could find, in a box of worn-out paintbrushes, was a tattered notebook in which my grandfather had kept a record of the oil changes he had carried out on his car, a PV444 that he owned in the 1950s. The book was stiff with dried oil, but there were several blank pages that would serve my purpose.

I was about to push away the box of brushes when I discovered another object right at the bottom, under a few sheets of well-used sandpaper. It was a black yo-yo, made of wood and with the string still intact.

I hadn’t held a yo-yo in my hand for sixty years. Had my grandfather or grandmother secretly performed tricks with it? Or could this be my own childhood toy?

I went out onto the jetty, slipped the middle finger of my right hand through the loop and tried to make the yo-yo dance. I could just about get it to travel up and down the string once.

I’m not quite sure what happened next. I felt dizzy and collapsed onto the bench; the dizziness was followed by nausea. There was no pain in my chest or my left arm. I sat completely still, trying to breathe calmly. The yo-yo dangled lifeless from my right hand. Slowly I began to feel better. I tried to think of it as nothing more than a funny turn, but then I realised I was having a panic attack that was spreading through my body. I thought that each breath, each moment would be my last.

I staggered up to the caravan and lay down on the bed, convinced that I was going to die right there and then. I swallowed two tranquillisers with a mouthful of cold coffee, but the panic continued to grow. I felt as if I had a herd of horses inside my head, bolting in all directions. I slammed my hand against the wall to chase them away, but to no avail.

By the time the attack had passed and I tried to sit up, the sun was no longer shining in through the skylight. I switched on the transistor radio. After a few minutes a classical music programme was interrupted by the news. It was two o’clock. I had been battling the panic and terror for at least five hours.

I switched off the radio and went outside. The sun was still strong. I carried on down to the boathouse. The notebook containing my grandfather’s record of his oil changes was lying on the jetty. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

Now the attack was over, I thought that perhaps it had been caused by old age. Until now I had believed that the passing years didn’t mean much. I was ageing, but slowly, almost imperceptibly. Growing older was like a mist silently drifting across the sea.

But perhaps that was no longer the case. Now suddenly I was an old man, afraid of dying. Taking that step across the invisible border was the final element. It was a step I feared much more than I had realised.

All at once I knew I needed to talk to someone. I don’t know when I last felt that urge. I keyed in Jansson’s number, but as the phone started to ring I cancelled the call. I didn’t want to talk to him; instead I called my daughter, but once again I changed my mind before she could answer.

I heard the throb of an engine in the distance. After a little while I realised it was the coastguard’s boat, and that the sound was getting closer. I wondered if I had time to cast off and slip away on my boat in order to avoid seeing Alexandersson and whoever he had brought with him, but it was too late.

Pålsson was at the helm. I had no idea what had become of the blonde girl, Alma Hamrén. However, both Alexandersson and Hämäläinen were on board. We shook hands and went up to the site of the fire.

‘Have you got anywhere?’ I asked.

Alexandersson glanced at Hämäläinen.

‘We have no explanation for the fire,’ Hämäläinen said. ‘But we do have a number of clues.’

‘Like what?’

‘As I told you last time, the fire seems to have started in several places simultaneously.’

‘And how would you interpret that?’

‘It’s too early to say.’

I didn’t ask any more questions because I knew I wouldn’t get any straight answers. I left them up by the ruins and went back to the caravan. I put the notebook on the table and found a pen. But I didn’t write anything. I had nothing to say. There was a little mirror hanging on the wall, and I could see my unshaven face. I looked like a highwayman. Or perhaps I looked the way an arsonist is supposed to look. I made a note to buy razors and shaving foam. That was the first thing I wrote in my grandfather’s old notebook.

I lay down on the bed and must have fallen asleep. I was woken by someone knocking on the door; it was Alexandersson.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘Of course not. Who the hell sleeps in the middle of the afternoon?’

He shook his head apologetically.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions. Well, not me — Hämäläinen.’

We went back up to the ruins, where Hämäläinen was waiting. The sun was low in the sky now. The rain I had been expecting had gone away.

This is when it happens, I thought. This is when they accuse me.

The yo-yo was in my pocket. I wondered whether to whip it out and try to make it dance while Hämäläinen was asking his questions.

I left it where it was and looked him in the eye.

‘There’s still this feeling that the fire started in several places at the same time.’

‘Is it a feeling or a fact?’

He didn’t answer my question.

‘It’s impossible to pick up a specific odour,’ he said instead. ‘But in all four corners of the house there are signs that a highly flammable liquid has been poured out and ignited. It leaves particular marks on burning wood.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Ridiculous or not, it’s something we have to investigate further.’

‘What did you want to ask me?’

‘Do you have access to petrol or diesel?’

‘I have a boat engine that runs on petrol. Apart from the tank on board, I have a can with a reserve supply of twenty litres.’

‘Could we go down and take a look at it?’

‘The tank on board or the reserve supply?’

‘I was thinking of the reserve supply.’

Alexandersson remained a few steps behind. I unscrewed the cap, and once the petrol fumes had dispersed, it was obvious that the can was empty. ‘I realise you will interpret this as further evidence against me. A reserve is no use unless it’s full.’

I was so agitated that my voice was hoarse. I could hardly speak.

‘We need to carry out a chemical analysis of the remains of the fire,’ Hämäläinen said.

‘I didn’t burn down my house!’ I shouted. ‘If that’s what you’re accusing me of, then I suggest you arrest me right now!’

I held out my hands in a pathetic gesture, inviting him to slap on the handcuffs. Which he didn’t do, of course.

‘I’d like you both to go to hell now,’ I said. ‘Carry out your investigation, but let me know when you’re coming so that I can make sure I’m not around.’

I took out my mobile and read out the number. Alexandersson put it into his own phone. Hämäläinen just stood there staring down at the bare boards of the jetty.

Silence fell, and I could feel my anger turning to despair. The road from failed doctor to suspected arsonist was not long.

‘Is there anyone you can think of who might have set fire to your house?’ Hämäläinen suddenly asked.

‘Someone who knew I was asleep in there, and was prepared to risk my being burned alive? Or maybe that was the aim — is that what you mean?’

‘There can be many reasons for starting a fire.’

‘Don’t a lot of arsonists simply enjoy seeing the fire spread, consuming everything in its path?’

‘That’s pyromaniacs. Arsonists have a motive, even if it is obscure.’

‘I have no enemies out here in the archipelago.’

‘What about elsewhere?’

I thought about it. Harriet had hated me for many years, but she was dead and I didn’t believe in ghosts. I couldn’t come up with anyone else.

‘Not that I know of,’ I said. ‘But of course there could be people after me that I’m totally unaware of.’

The conversation foundered. Hämäläinen returned to the site of the fire, while Alexandersson and I remained on the jetty and talked about the autumn weather. If it had been spring, we would have talked about the spring weather. I sometimes wonder how many hours of my life I have spent conversing with various people about the wind and the weather. Hämäläinen came back carrying several plastic bags containing samples of burned material.

Alexandersson was keen to make a move. Pålsson, who never said a word, started the engine.

‘What happened to Alma?’ I asked. ‘Your blonde companion?’

‘She’s got flu,’ Alexandersson said. ‘She’ll be back when she’s better.’

‘Well, if she needs a doctor you know where I am.’

I immediately regretted my comment. Alexandersson stared at me in surprise. I could understand why. What use would I be to a young woman suffering from flu?

I stood on the jetty and raised my hand in farewell. It felt as heavy as a stone. My brief outburst had worn me out.

I went back to the caravan, lay down on the bed and tried to think. But my head was spinning. That herd of bolting horses was back.

How long I lay there I don’t know. Eventually I left the caravan with a vague idea of cleaning out the boathouse. Many years ago, when I first moved to the island, I had a good clear-out, but haven’t touched it since. Even if you live as simply as I do, life seems to consist mainly of amassing a huge amount of rubbish that has no importance or value whatsoever.

There is an inner room in the boathouse where my grandfather kept his nets. It also contains the stool he used to sit on while mending torn nets. Some of them are still on the walls, but they are so fragile that they would fall apart if I so much as touched them. None of them would be any use for fishing. My grandfather made many of his own nets, and they constitute a memory of him that I have no wish to get rid of.

I began by clearing a shelf behind the old flounder nets. Under a pile of tools I found a little brown book that I’d never noticed before. The room was dark and the light wasn’t working, so I took the book outside and sat down on the bench. To my surprise I saw that it was very old. It had been printed in Stockholm in 1833, and was based on an original text in German. It didn’t say who was responsible for the translation, but the author’s name was D. J. Tscheiner. The Swedish title was Anwisning till Sångfåglars Fångst och Skötsel — A Guide to the Capture and Care of Songbirds. I flicked through the pages, wondering how such a thing had ended up with my grandfather. It was very difficult to read.

My curiosity was aroused, and I went back inside. After a while I found what I first assumed was part of a discarded eel trap, but then I realised it was the remnants of a plaited birdcage. It was as if I had discovered some totally unknown aspect of my grandparents’ lives. A birdcage and a 181-year-old book?

I carried on searching until I had gone through the entire room and there was only a box of old glass jars left. I found a mummified mouse in there, but the jars were empty. I sniffed them but couldn’t determine what they might have contained. They weren’t labelled.

Apart from one — virtually the last one I picked up. I took it outside. It contained something grey, a congealed jelly-like substance. It gave off a faint smell that I thought I recognised, but I couldn’t put a name to it, and it was hard to make out what was written in ink on the white sticky label. After much pondering I decided it said Fågellim — Birdlime. I wasn’t sure whether it was my grandfather’s or grandmother’s handwriting. To be honest, I don’t think I’d ever seen anything they’d actually written.

Birdlime?

I tried to put together the old book, the jar and the birdcage to form a whole. The key clue was of course the title of the book: A Guide to the Capture and Care of Songbirds. The remnants of the cage fitted in with this. But the jar and its contents? Had I read the label correctly? Was birdlime something that was used to trap larks and finches?

I had no recollection of a birdcage in the house when I was a child. Nor could I remember any talk of birds apart from the eider ducks and velvet scoters my grandfather shot when he was out hunting.

I decided to wait until my daughter arrived before trying to find the answers to my questions. She has a computer that helps her solve most problems that arise.

Songbirds and birdlime.

I carried on rummaging around in the boathouse. I found plenty of dead swallows that had got caught up in various discarded tools and been unable to free themselves. The place was like a swallows’ graveyard. Some were adults, others little more than fledglings. They must have barely flown the nest before becoming trapped, never to escape.

Then I found my old tent from my childhood, with an equally ancient sleeping bag lying next to it. I took both items out onto the jetty, assuming they were rotten and would have to be thrown away. However, the tent and the sleeping bag were intact and the pegs were still there. I couldn’t resist the temptation of pitching the tent on the grass. The process came back to me straight away. When the tent was up, I was surprised at how small it was.

I threw the sleeping bag over the washing line to air, then I crawled inside the tent. The pale autumn light produced a greyish-green glow.

As I sat there on the green groundsheet I experienced a great sense of calm, a feeling that I had distanced myself from the disastrous fire for just a little while. The horses in my head had stopped galloping around. I made up my mind to erect the tent out on the skerry that very afternoon. I needed to get away from the remains of my house and the charred apple tree.

I set off at about six o’clock. I had tried out the sleeping bag; the musty smell still lingered, but it was usable. I had eaten dinner early, then packed some sandwiches, a flask of coffee and a bottle of water.

I dragged the boat ashore on the skerry and moored it by the same rock I had favoured when I was a boy. I put up the tent in what had been my usual spot. I spread out the sleeping bag and lay down. The uneven ground beneath me was instantly familiar.

I got up, gathered twigs and branches in the semi-darkness and piled them up in a crevice in the rock. However, as I knelt there with a box of matches in my hand, I decided not to light my fire. I had had enough of flames. I left the branches where they were and went back to the tent. I hadn’t brought any source of light with me, so I lay on top of the sleeping bag, had a cup of coffee and ate a couple of sandwiches. The wind came and went in sudden gusts. I was filled with a sense of liberation. For the first time since I rushed out of my burning house, I was able to think clearly once more.

I had made up my mind to move the caravan, but I didn’t want to make a decision about the house until my daughter came home. It was more about her future than mine.

I thought about Lisa Modin and her impending visit. I pleaded with her in my thoughts. I didn’t hurt her, didn’t cross the line with my hopes of perhaps experiencing love again in my old age.

These pleasant reveries carried me slowly into the diffuse landscape where reality slips into sleep and dreams.

I woke up shivering. Before I crawled into the sleeping bag I went outside. The sky was full of stars, and there was hardly a breath of wind. There are flight paths directly above this part of the archipelago, but after eleven o’clock at night it’s usually quiet.

I couldn’t see the moon. There had always been autumn nights, and there would always be autumn nights even when I was no longer around. I was a temporary guest in the darkness, and I would never be anything else.

I slept badly. If a stray gust of wind shook the tent flap, I was immediately awake. I would lie there for a long time before nodding off, only to be woken again a little while later.

I thought about Louise, wondered what she was doing. I wondered when she would come home. I thought back to the time when I had been a doctor and to the years after the disaster when I had lost all sense of direction in my life. I passed one crossroads after another.

It was a night of broken sleep and shattered contemplation. At dawn, when the first ray of light appeared over the sea, I got up and left the tent. I jumped up and down to shake some life into my body, frightening a lone swan on the shore. It flew away on heavy wings. I looked at my watch. Fourteen minutes to seven. It was a cold morning. Far away on the horizon, a cargo ship was ploughing northwards through the waves.

I left the tent where it was and simply folded up my sleeping bag. I took the flask, the bottle of water and the greaseproof paper my sandwiches had been wrapped in down to the boat. I pushed it off the rock and jumped in.

The engine didn’t start. That had never happened before. I had no tools with me, nothing I could use to adjust the spark plugs. I doubted that any water had got into the fuel tank.

I made several more attempts to start the engine, then I flipped it up and took to the oars. I decided to call Jansson. I don’t know anyone who can deal with a recalcitrant engine better than him, apart from the professional mechanics on the mainland, of course. I didn’t like having to contact him, but I couldn’t see any other option. There was no way I could ask him to pick up Lisa Modin, take us out to Vrångskär, then pick us up a few hours later.

I rowed home, moored the boat and made a dozen or so further attempts to start the engine. Still nothing. I sat down on the bench and called Jansson. He promised to be there within the hour. He asked a few questions about what the engine sounded like when I pulled the cord, in much the same way as I asked questions when he came to me with his imaginary aches and pains.

‘It won’t start,’ I said. ‘It sounds perfectly normal. There’s just one problem. It won’t start.’

‘I’m sure we can get it going,’ Jansson said.

He arrived an hour later, to the minute. I went into the boathouse with him. He pulled the cord several times; the engine didn’t start.

‘I’m sure we can get it going,’ he said again.

‘Come up to the caravan if you want a cup of coffee,’ I said.

Jansson probably wanted me to stay and keep him company. While I was grateful for his help, I couldn’t cope with the endless, unrelenting stream of his words, particularly if he started talking about macabre execution methods or something else that lay buried in his bizarre store of knowledge.

I went through the drawers in the caravan and found a pack of cards. The only form of patience I know is Idiot’s Delight. I played a few games, and of course it didn’t come out. After an hour or so I went to see how Jansson was getting on. He had removed the protective housing, unscrewed the spark plugs, and was shining his torch on the internal workings of the engine.

‘Have you found out what’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘Not yet. But I’m sure it’s nothing serious.’

I didn’t ask any more questions. He carried on working, and I watched him in silence for a little while. I was just about to go back to the caravan when I thought about my phone.

‘Can you set the clock on my mobile? I don’t trust these cheap watches.’

Jansson switched off the torch, put down the tool he was using and took my phone. In less than a minute he had set the time, calibrating it with his own watch.

‘I’m not very good at the technical stuff,’ I said.

‘It’s very simple. If you like I can show you what else it can do.’

‘Thanks, but the time is really all I need.’

‘You can use it as an alarm clock, but maybe you know that already.’

‘I don’t need anything to wake me up.’

I stayed a little while longer, watching as Jansson continued his meticulous examination of my recalcitrant engine. Then I went back to my cards.

Even though Jansson insisted it was nothing serious, it took him another three hours to identify and fix whatever was wrong. I was having a cup of coffee when he knocked on the door.

‘All done,’ he said.

‘What was it?’

‘Nothing, really. But those are the trickiest problems to solve.’

‘Coffee?’

‘Thanks, but I’ll get off home. It took a bit longer than I expected.’

We went down to the boat. The housing was back on, the tools all put away.

‘Start her up,’ Jansson said.

I clambered down into the boat. The engine started straight away. I switched it off and tried again. Same result.

I climbed out and walked along the jetty with Jansson. I asked how much I owed him. He looked offended and said I didn’t owe him anything.

‘There was nothing wrong,’ he insisted.

‘There must have been something — it took you hours!’

He mumbled something unintelligible, got into his boat and started her up. I cast off his mooring ropes and he reversed away from the jetty, one hand raised in farewell.

I wondered if he sang in his beautiful voice when he was alone in his boat, speeding across the waves.

A bank of cloud was approaching from the south. I went over to the mainland to shop for food and also put an A4 pad of lined paper in my basket. The rain arrived when I was about halfway home, hammering against the boat. I was soaked to the skin by the time I reached the boathouse.

Back in the caravan I changed into the remaining unused Chinese shirt. I had no dry trousers so I hung the sodden pair over the edge of the table and wrapped a blanket around my legs.

I fell asleep early that night.

The following day the rain had gone. I went over to the mainland again and bought more clothes from the same shop.

There was no sign of Oslovski when I picked up my car, nor when I came back. I called in at the chandlery to ask if my wellingtons had arrived. They hadn’t.

Alexandersson and Hämäläinen didn’t turn up. I cleaned the caravan, thinking of very little apart from Lisa Modin. I avoided going anywhere near the site of the fire. However, I did dream about my grandparents for the next two nights. They were talking to me, and they looked exactly as I remembered them from my childhood. But in my dreams their voices were inaudible. They were talking to me, but I couldn’t hear a word they said.

In the evenings I read the book from 1833, the one about the capture and care of songbirds. I still couldn’t work out the connection between my grandfather and the birdcage. I had put the jar of birdlime on the shelf above the kitchen sink.

I woke earlier than usual on the morning I was due to pick up Lisa Modin. The sun still hadn’t shown itself when I went down for my dip.

After breakfast I got into my boat and tried the engine. It started right away. I was nervous about seeing Lisa. I tried to set aside any expectations. She was still a young woman, in contrast to the old man I had become. The omens were hardly favourable when it came to love.

I moored by the petrol pumps an hour before she was due. I wandered around and saw that the repairs to the coastguards’ jetty had been completed. The big vessel was out; I knew that they had an extensive area to patrol.

There is a noticeboard on the quayside by the bus stop. One of the things that brings home the passage of time most powerfully to me is the sight of old, peeling posters about summer festivals or outdoor dance parties. There were also handwritten adverts for smoked whitefish or live rabbits. The bus timetable was shredded, but I couldn’t tell whether the wind or an angry traveller was responsible.

I walked up to my car. Oslovski’s door was closed, but the dead crow had been removed. I didn’t hang around; I didn’t want to risk Oslovski appearing and demanding that I take her blood pressure.

A cat that I think belonged to the grocery shop was padding across the quayside. Its presence reinforced the sense of desolation. A graveyard of summer memories. I stared at the window display in the chandlery: rucksacks, tins of paint, a selection of anchors.

I still had half an hour left before Lisa Modin arrived. I walked right to the end of the jetty, balancing on the rubble that made up the outer defences of the harbour, then came back again.

It was ten past ten when her car appeared, by which time I had begun to think she wasn’t coming. She parked outside the chandlery’s storage depot, which isn’t actually allowed.

She was wearing a bright yellow raincoat, with an old-fashioned sou’wester in her hand. A small rucksack hung over one shoulder.

‘I’m always late,’ she said apologetically.

‘No problem. It’s many years since I was in a hurry.’

I took her rucksack and held out my hand to help her into the boat, but she put one foot on the step cut into the quayside and grabbed hold of the iron ring. I cast off and started the engine. The sound sliced through the silence. I caught a glimpse of Veronika at the window of the apartment next to the grocery store and waved at her.

The weather was calm. We puttered slowly out of the harbour. Lisa Modin was sitting in the prow; she flung her arms wide.

‘Which way are we going?’ she shouted.

‘North-east,’ I replied, pointing. I increased my speed.

Lisa seemed to be enjoying the fresh autumn air. She closed her eyes.

I set my course towards the island of the poor people.

Chapter 6