After the Fire

Chapter 20

The first thing Lisa did after bandaging my leg was to open the balcony door wide. The chilly night air came pouring in.

I watched as she gathered up her post. She was obviously a woman who read a lot of journals and magazines and disliked junk mail.

She asked me what I wanted to eat. Tea. Sandwiches — liver pâté, sardines. She told me to make myself comfortable on the sofa. I offered to help her get it ready, but she just shook her head.

I realised she was having doubts about whether she should have invited me to stay.

I sat down and thought about all the times I had been in a similar situation: alone with a woman with no idea what might happen.

I recalled the first time I had made love, well over fifty years ago. Some friends had told me this girl had ‘loose morals’ and was always up for it. I think her name was Inger and she used to turn up at the school dance. I was fourteen years old. I danced badly and regarded these occasions as a necessary evil in order to lure girls into adventures. At least that’s what I told myself. I spotted her over by the wall. The girls were waiting for the charge from the opposite side of the room, where the boys were poised on invisible starting blocks. I had fortified myself with arrak supplied by Hasse the baker’s son, who pinched it from his father’s bakery, then sold it at a premium in small glass bottles that he bought from the pharmacy. I wasn’t drunk, just far enough gone to have the nerve to dash across the floor. Inger hadn’t a clue who I was. We moved around the floor like small, sweaty icebreakers, forcing our way through the crowd. This wasn’t a dance, more an evening of pushing and shoving. I don’t think we said a single word to one another.

After two ‘dances’, I suggested that we should go. She asked where. I didn’t know. Just away from this dance floor that stank of sweat, booze and cheap perfume. Then she made it very clear that there was no one at home.

She lived in a suburb — I can’t remember the name of it. Bagarmossen, perhaps? We travelled on the underground, still not talking. She was wearing a brown skirt, boots that indicated she had big feet, a white blouse and a dark red coat. She didn’t look in the least like a girl with loose morals who was prepared to go to bed with just about anybody. Then again, what did that kind of girl look like?

She lived in a three-room apartment in a 1950s block. On a shelf I saw a photograph of her father in a conductor’s uniform. I sat down on the sofa, which was covered in cushions, embroidered with various quotations that I have long since forgotten.

Inger disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush and wondered what to do. What awaited me was both terrifying and irresistible.

She emerged from the bathroom, stood in front of me and offered me an unexpected helping hand. ‘Do you want to fuck now, or shall we wait a bit?’ she said.

She didn’t explain what we would be waiting for.

‘Now,’ I said, feeling my face go red.

She nodded, walked towards the door of her little bedroom, then turned and raised her eyebrows. I immediately got to my feet and followed her. She pointed to the bathroom.

‘You can use the blue towel.’

I have almost no memory of what happened after that. She had turned off the light, undressed and got into bed; there were soft toys everywhere. I took off my clothes and got in beside her. During a fumbling embrace when I sometimes wasn’t sure whether I was groping teddy bears or her breasts, I pushed inside her and immediately came. She giggled, I cursed my incompetence and angrily tossed several furry creatures on the floor.

‘It’s impossible to fuck among a pile of bears,’ I snapped.

Inger giggled again but said nothing.

I stayed for an hour. We still didn’t talk. Then I got dressed and left.

‘See you,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You won’t.’

I sat on Lisa Modin’s sofa all these years later, wondering what Inger had meant. Didn’t she want to see me again, or did she realise that I had got what I came for and was no longer interested in her?

I wondered briefly what had happened to Inger, with her brown skirt and her alleged loose morals. Was she still alive? Had she had a good life? I never saw her again.

My reminiscences of that first inept and humiliating experience were pushed aside as Lisa asked me to join her in the kitchen.

Lisa and I ate and chatted about nothing in particular, then she asked me to clear away and wash up while she used the bathroom. I wiped the table, closed the balcony door then sat on the sofa until she came out in her bathrobe and went into the bedroom.

‘There’s a towel on the side of the bath,’ she called out.

I thought about Inger. So different, and yet so similar.

‘Is it blue?’

‘It’s white — why?’

By the time I had showered and dried my hair, she had turned off the bedroom light, leaving only a floor lamp burning in the living room. I walked over to the bed, let the towel fall and crept between the sheets.

We lay in silence in the darkness. I reached for her hand, but it was clenched into a fist. I didn’t try to open it.

She was asleep when I got up at six and left.

It was cold as I walked to the car. The place was deserted. Driving along the road was like passing through a skilfully constructed set on which no film would ever be made. I imagined that everyone who lived there carried a clapperboard around with them all the time, hoping that they would be able to use it one day.

I drove to the water and got out of the car. In spite of the chill I walked up and down the wooden quay trying to make sense of what had happened last night. My only conclusion was that I really didn’t understand Lisa Modin. Why had she travelled to Paris?

There were no answers. I carried on down to the harbour; I met a car en route and had to slam on my brakes. I thought I recognised a marine engineer, who was clearly drunk. Jansson had once hinted that this guy was an alcoholic, but then you could never be sure when it came to Jansson. People he disliked were always alcoholics.

I pulled into my parking space at Oslovski’s house. A light drizzle had begun to fall. I got out my bag and was about to call Jansson to ask him to pick me up when I decided to check whether Oslovski was at home and had already started working on her car in the garage. I knew she was an early riser. The gravel drive was freshly raked, the curtains closed. I listened for any sounds from the garage, but all I could hear was the wind blowing off the sea. I thought I might as well go up to the garage anyway. As I rounded the corner of the house, I saw that the door was ajar. Oslovski must be there; she was always very careful about locking up.

Nordin had told me that Oslovski had once been in his shop, searching for money in her trouser pocket. She had taken out the biggest bunch of keys Nordin had ever seen. He had often wondered how a person who lived in such a small house could possibly need as many keys as a prison guard.

I knocked on the door, simultaneously pushing it open. The light was on.

Oslovski was lying on the cement floor behind the car, which was jacked up. As usual she was wearing her blue overalls, with the company name ALGOTS just visible in faded letters.

I didn’t need to touch her to know that she was dead. She was lying on her back with one leg bent underneath her, as if she had tried to stop herself from falling. She was holding a spanner in one hand, and blood had trickled from her head onto the hard floor. Her eyes were closed. I went over, knelt down and checked her pulse; she was dead but not yet cold. Nor had her skin begun to take on the yellow, waxy pallor that comes after death. She had been dead for an hour at the most. There was nothing to indicate an assault; she had suffered either a stroke or a heart attack. Or perhaps a haemorrhage had sent her to her death with no warning.

I sat down on a grubby stool next to the wall where the tools hung in their designated places. I mourned her. Perhaps not as a friend, but as a person who had brought a certain security with her presence in my life.

First Nordin, now Oslovski. I was increasingly surrounded by dead people. The child growing in my daughter’s belly only partly redressed the balance between the living and the dead.

Afterwards I couldn’t explain why I did what I did, but I got up from the stool, took the bunch of keys out of Oslovski’s pocket and went over to the house. From the harbour I could hear the morning bus into town struggling up the steep hill. I waited until the sound of the engine had died away, then I unlocked the door.

I had never been in there before. The closest I had come was on the odd occasion when Oslovski had appeared and we had chatted on her tiny veranda. I had always felt that she wasn’t just standing there to talk to me; she was acting as a kind of sentry, making sure no unauthorised person crossed the threshold.

I stood there in the dark hallway; I was aware of the bitter smell that always seems to accompany loneliness. Had my own house smelled like that before it burned down?

I switched on the lights and walked slowly through the three rooms. On the steep staircase leading up to the attic were piles of newspapers and countless carrier bags from various grocery shops. I realised that Oslovski, in her isolation, had become a manic hoarder. The whole place was in chaos. Clothes, bundles of fabric, shoes, galoshes, hats, skis, a damaged kick sled, furniture, broken lamps, fishing nets. It was indescribable. Only the room containing her bed was remotely tidy. I paused in the doorway, struck by something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then I realised that in spite of the mess everything in the house was spotless. The piles of newspapers were dust-free, the sheets on the bed were clean. The cluttered kitchen contained a washing machine and a tumble dryer. In a bin bag on the floor next to the sink I could see the packaging from a French fish gratin, which might well have been Oslovski’s last meal. A single red chair with a plastic seat pad stood next to the small dark green Formica table.

It was clear that Oslovski had never expected or wanted dinner guests.

I went through the house one more time. Chaos and pedantic neatness, side by side.

I stopped. I had the feeling I had seen something to which I should have reacted. At first I couldn’t work out what it was, then I realised it was to do with her bedroom.

I went back up the stairs; as soon as I walked in I knew what it was.

The sheets had a sky-blue border adorned with stars. I had seen those same sheets very recently — in the deserted house in Hörum. There was no doubt. The bed in that house was made up with exactly the same sheets as those on Oslovski’s bed.

Oslovski must have been a lone vixen, I thought. She wasn’t running towards Golgotha, but perhaps she had a den with two exits. One where I was now, the other in the dilapidated house in Hörum. Perhaps she hid there when her fear of whatever it might be became too much for her?

Oslovski had lived close to us for many years, yet she had remained a stranger. Had she ever wanted to develop a closer relationship with us? Perhaps her fear, wherever it came from, was so great that she preferred to live alone in her den, with more than one exit and entrance?

She really had taken almost everything with her, I thought. She had left only a made-up bed in a house that was falling down, and a partially restored DeSoto in a garage. And a mystery no one will ever be able to solve: the mystery of loneliness.

I was sure it was Oslovski who had used that bed in Hörum, although I would never know why.

She had disappeared without a sound, leaving a cold, inaccessible trail.

The stale, musty smell was making me feel sick. I went out onto the veranda and called Jansson.

‘It’s me.’

I knew he always recognised my voice.

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m fine, thank you for asking. I’m down by the harbour. Oslovski is dead.’

There was a pause before Jansson responded; he sounded completely taken aback. ‘Oslovski is dead too?’

‘What do you mean, too?’

‘I was thinking about Nordin.’

‘Yes, Oslovski is dead. I found her in the garage. Either a massive stroke or a haemorrhage, I suspect.’

When Jansson spoke again, after another pause, he was on the verge of tears.

‘She was so lonely.’

‘We all are. We die alone. At least when we’re born we have company.’

Jansson’s lachrymose mood suddenly switched to anger. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means exactly what I said: at least we have our mother with us when we’re born. Even if she’s half-crazy with pain.’

Silence once more. This time I didn’t bother waiting.

‘I want you to pick me up,’ I said. ‘In two hours. I need to sort out this business with Oslovski first.’

‘What were you doing in her garage?’

‘I usually stop by to say hello. She never let anyone into the house, but I used to pop into the garage when she was working on her old car.’

‘A Cadillac, wasn’t it?’

‘A DeSoto.’

‘And she died, just like that?’

‘We can talk about it when you pick me up. In two hours. I need to call the police now.’

Jansson reluctantly let me go. I went back into the garage and replaced the keys in Oslovski’s pocket. To be on the safe side, I checked her pulse one more time.

Oslovski was and remained dead.

I called the emergency number, gave my name and location, explained that I was a doctor and that I had found a dead woman in a garage. When I was asked if a crime could have been committed, I said no.

The unnatural life Oslovski had lived had ended with her death from natural causes.

I went out onto the road and waited. When it got too cold I went and sat in the car. In my mind my fingertips were caressing Lisa Modin’s shoulders.

It was forty-five minutes before a police car and an ambulance arrived. When I saw them coming down the hill towards the harbour, I went out into the road to meet them. I didn’t recognise the two police officers. One of them reminded me of my daughter: the same determined look, which could be interpreted as stand-offishness by those who didn’t know her.

We went up to the garage with the paramedics, two older, stronger men. I told them about Oslovski and the fact that I had her permission to park my car on her property. We stopped outside the door.

‘She’s in there,’ I said. ‘I’m a doctor, and I’m sure she’s dead.’

I waited outside. I was finding the thought that Oslovski was gone more and more depressing. I had never really known her, but we had lived at the same time. She was one of the people with whom I had shared my life, and now she was gone. A part of my world had disappeared.

The paramedics came out.

‘We’re not allowed to transport dead bodies in the ambulance,’ one of them said.

‘We’ve sent for the body wagon,’ the other one said. ‘Looks like a stroke to me.’

I went in to join the two police officers, who were gazing down at Oslovski.

‘There’s a wound on her head,’ the female officer said.

‘She would have sustained that when she fell,’ I said. ‘If you have a massive stroke you go down like a bird that’s been shot.’

‘We’d better take a look in the house,’ the other officer said.

‘She usually carries her keys in her pocket,’ I said.

I waited on the veranda. They rummaged around in the house for a while and came out when they had found her ID card.

‘The way some people live,’ the woman said.

I didn’t reply. I gave them my details, locked my car and walked down to the quayside. Another doctor would come to certify the death. While I was waiting for Jansson I did some food shopping and bought a newspaper. The cafe was open, so I decided to have breakfast.

As soon as I saw Veronika, I realised she didn’t know about Oslovski. She hadn’t seen or heard the ambulance or the police car.

‘You’re early,’ she said with a smile. ‘Coffee? I can’t honestly recommend the Mazarins!’

‘Come and sit down,’ I said, pointing to a table by the window.

She looked puzzled.

‘Rut is dead,’ I explained. ‘Rut Oslovski. I found her in the garage, where she’d been working on her old car. They’ll be taking her body away shortly.’

Veronika recoiled, as people do when something unexpected has occurred. Her eyes filled with tears. I knew she was one of the few people Oslovski used to talk to. They might only have chatted about the weather, but at least they had a conversation.

‘But what on earth has happened?’

‘She was lying on the floor with a spanner in her hand. I’m guessing she had a stroke or a haemorrhage. She hadn’t been attacked, anyway.’

We sat there talking quietly, neither of us really able to process the morning’s events. Veronika brought coffee, along with sandwiches defrosted from the previous day.

‘She was lonely,’ Veronika said.

‘Lately I had a feeling she was frightened,’ I said.

Veronika frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought she’d changed.’

‘She was always frightened, all the years I knew her.’

‘Do you know why? Did she ever say anything?’

‘No.’

‘But what do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose you can be scared without knowing why.’

‘Where did she come from?’

‘I’ve no idea. There was always something...inaccessible about her.’

‘She repaired jetties and worked on her car. Who was she really?’

‘I don’t know.’

Jansson would be here soon. I wanted to distract Veronika before I left.

‘How’s the woman who won twenty-five thousand kronor a month for twenty-five years getting on?’

‘Just because you have an arsehole it doesn’t mean you have to be one,’ Veronika said pensively. ‘But that’s exactly what she is. She’s boasting about the fact that she’s going to spend the winters in Thailand.’

I’d never heard Veronika talk that way before. As far as I was concerned, she had always been the quiet owner of the cafe, but now she was suddenly something different. Something more. I was embarrassed.

I saw Jansson’s boat approaching and got up to leave. Veronika was lost in thought.

‘We’ll miss her,’ I said.

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

Jansson was waiting on the quayside.

‘Is it really true? Is Oslovski dead?’

‘You don’t know me very well if you think I’d lie about something like that.’

He pulled a face. ‘There are too many people dying. It’s like an epidemic.’

‘It’s just coincidence,’ I said. ‘Death is breathing down the back of our necks, but no one knows when the blow will fall.’

I stowed my bag and my groceries in the boat. I didn’t want to make this conversation any longer than necessary; I wanted to get home to my caravan. Jansson understood; he cast off and clambered aboard with some difficulty. That particular activity exposes the ageing process. About five years ago I had discovered that I could no longer leap easily into my boat without losing my balance. My joints had grown stiffer. Old age has arrived when you can no longer jump aboard. I watched as Jansson shuffled along, almost hating those stiff joints of his, and reversed away from the quayside. I sat in the prow, hunched against the wind and the autumn chill.

We travelled to my island in silence. Once again I was surprised not to see the house among the bare trees. I still hadn’t managed to get used to the blackened ruin.

Jansson skilfully hove to. The ability to come alongside a jetty with a barely noticeable bump hadn’t left the former postman. I lifted my bags ashore and was about to give Jansson his hundred-kronor note when he took off his cap. I knew this meant that he wanted to say something.

‘What do you want? Can’t it wait? I’ve had a long journey — I’m tired.’

‘My heart feels funny. I’m frightened.’

Under normal circumstances, when Jansson turns up with his aches and pains and asks me to examine him, I know from the start that it’s all in his mind. But this morning it was different. I nodded in the direction of the bench and climbed out of the boat. Jansson followed suit. I went into the boathouse and fetched my stethoscope. When I came out he was already taking off his thick jacket.

‘Take off your shirt and jumper too,’ I said.

Jansson did as I asked. He sat there, naked to the waist, his skin covered in goose bumps in the cold wind. I listened to his lungs and his heart, asked him to take deep breaths. His lungs sounded fine, but as soon as I picked up his heartbeat, I knew there was something wrong. I must have checked Jansson’s heart a hundred times over the years; I had never had any cause for concern. But now it was different: I could definitely hear an arrhythmia.

As I stepped back I could see the fear in his eyes. Jansson had become an old man.

‘It might be a good idea if you pop into the clinic, ask them to do an ECG,’ I said.

‘Is it serious?’

‘Not necessarily. It might be nothing, but at our age it’s a good idea to have an ECG now and again.’

‘Is it fatal?’

‘If you don’t go to the clinic, it could be. Put on your clothes and go home; tomorrow you can take the bus into town. The clinic will look after you.’

Jansson got dressed in silence as I put the stethoscope away. I came out of the boathouse to find him bent forward on the bench, hands clasped as if he had suddenly felt the need to say a prayer. He looked up at me as the door creaked shut.

‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’

‘I am telling you the truth. You need to go to the clinic. Don’t worry unnecessarily. I just picked up a little murmur; I’m sure there’s an explanation, and medication can work wonders these days.’

‘I’ve been reading about the heart,’ he said. ‘It starts beating long before we’re born. I think a lot of people believe that doesn’t happen until the umbilical cord is cut.’

‘It happens on the twenty-eighth day,’ I said. ‘That amazing muscle starts working on the twenty-eighth day, and after that it usually stops only once. Death is the end of a race, after all, but we don’t charge through and break a tape. If the heart were a bird with wings, you could well have flown to the moon and back several times before it decides that it’s time for those wings to rest.’

Jansson nodded. I realised he knew all about the wonderful heart muscle’s life and death.

We sat in silence on the bench, two old men in a spot meant for major and minor truths. Jansson was sixty-nine years old, I was seventy. So together we were one hundred and thirty-nine. If I counted back in time, that took us to 1875, when surgeons operated wearing a starched collar, sometimes evening dress.

‘We’re not allowed to learn to die,’ Jansson said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the past death was a part of life. Now it’s completely separate. I remember I was six years old when my grandmother died. Her body lay on a door in the parlour at home. There was nothing odd about that. Death was a natural part of our lives. Not any more. We no longer learn to die in this country.’

I understood what Jansson meant. His fear was totally genuine, and yet there was something about his reaction that puzzled me. It was as if the Jansson I had known was casting off his skin, like a snake.

‘How do you learn to die?’ he whined.

I had no answer. Of all the dead people I have known while they were alive, none has given me a rational explanation of the ability to handle death, which sooner or later will catch up with me too.

We don’t just die alone. We never know how we are going to die, even if a medical diagnosis can be made.

As I sat there next to a worried Jansson I thought about a black and white photograph I had seen many years earlier — an image that had frightened me more than any photograph I have ever come across.

It must have been taken during the early 1950s. A chimney sweep on a roof in Stockholm decides that it is time to end his life. He is about sixty years old. He attaches a steel cable to one of his brushes, loops the cable around his neck, and fixes the other end to the square chimney. Then he balances on the ridge. He must have been standing there for quite a long time, because he has been spotted. Some men up a ladder are trying to persuade him not to go through with it; there must be a photographer up another ladder, but of course I can’t see him. Their efforts are in vain; the sweep throws himself off the roof. The camera clicks a fraction of a second before the cable is pulled tight, and the man dies as it breaks his neck and slices into the skin and sinews of his throat. The chimney sweep dangles there for ever in that final void. On his face is etched either determination or despair; I have never been able to decide which, in spite of the fact that I have spent many hours staring at that photograph.

Did the chimney sweep teach me to die? Does the picture reveal anything of the mystery hidden in that final moment? What is it about the chimney sweep’s leap out into the unknown that has both repelled and fascinated me over all these years?

This is what I have left, I thought. Sitting on a bench with another old man who also finds it difficult to clamber into his boat without hurting his knees or losing his balance. Here we sit, hunched in silence, complaining that we don’t know how to behave when death comes for us.

I didn’t like this. I didn’t want to sit here with Jansson, moaning and groaning about the misery of getting older. I nudged him with my elbow.

‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’

‘I was thinking about Oslovski. And now you’re shoving me as if you hate me.’

‘I don’t hate you,’ I said in astonishment. ‘Why would you think such a thing?’

‘You thumped me.’

‘I did no such thing, for God’s sake! I just gave you a nudge!’

‘I know you’ve always thought about killing me,’ Jansson went on. ‘Just as I learned to read a letter through the envelope, I can see what’s going on inside your head.’

He got up, unhooked the mooring rope and did what he could no longer do: he jumped down into the boat. Needless to say he fell over as the boat rocked. He banged his head on the gunwale, opening up a small cut. I thought about Oslovski lying dead on the floor of her garage next to her DeSoto.

Jansson reversed away from the jetty with blood dripping from his eyebrow. Perhaps he was in the first stages of dementia?

I didn’t even wait until he had rounded the headland before going up to the caravan. A little mouse scuttled out when I opened the door. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, how mice can get into a sealed room.

The phone rang just as I sat down with a cup of coffee. It was Lisa Modin; she asked about Oslovski straight away. I pictured her at her desk with her notepad in front of her.

‘How do you know about it?’ I asked.

‘I have people who keep me informed.’

‘Police officers?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Paramedics?’

‘Not so much.’

‘Undertakers?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Is this where you say you are not at liberty to reveal your sources?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I was the one who found her.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

I explained how I had pushed open the garage door and found Oslovski lying on the concrete floor with a spanner in her hand. As I told Lisa my story it was as if I was only just beginning to grasp what had happened. The death that comes to others is every bit as incomprehensible as that which will one day come to me.

‘Was there anything suspicious about her death, as far as you could see?’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘The post-mortem will show natural causes — a stroke or a haemorrhage. It could be something else of course.’

‘Such as?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to wait for the post-mortem.’

‘Did she still have her glass eye?’

The question took me by surprise. Who had told Lisa about Oslovski’s eye? Had I mentioned it?

‘You told me about her when we were out on that island,’ she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked.

I vaguely remembered.

‘Yes, it was still there.’

Silence; perhaps she was making notes.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Drinking coffee.’

The conversation came to an end even though I would have liked it to continue.

After a few minutes the phone rang again; I hoped it was Lisa, but it was the churchwarden. He introduced himself as Lars Tyrén and he asked if I was happy to be one of the bearers for Nordin’s coffin. The funeral would take place at eleven o’clock on Friday morning; I promised to be there early in order to go over the ceremony in advance.

‘Isn’t he being cremated?’

‘He will be laid to rest in the family grave.’

I drank my coffee, thinking that I needed to go and buy a dark suit.

Lisa didn’t contact me again, and I didn’t call her either. I did, however, speak to Louise every day. There was a different tone between us now. We talked about Harriet each time we spoke; I also noticed that she was pushing me to get things sorted out with the insurance company so that I could make a start on the construction of the new house.

I went into town and bought a suit. I went into the most exclusive gentlemen’s outfitters I could find and chose black Armani. Because I didn’t know whether ties at the funeral were to be black or white, I bought one of each. Before I picked out a white shirt, I was assured that it wasn’t made in China, but in a factory in Turin.

The suit cost six thousand kronor. In spite of myself, I was pleased that I had allowed myself to splash out.

A strong north-easterly was blowing as the day of the funeral dawned. It had been an unusually windy autumn. Jansson’s boat bobbed and rocked in the squall. He was wearing a black tie with his suit.

Oslovski’s house was locked up when we picked up the car. Jansson gazed around curiously. He insisted on seeing where I had found Oslovski’s body, but the garage was locked too.

We drove to the church. I managed to put on my black tie, with the help of the rear-view mirror.

Nordin’s coffin was pale brown, with a bouquet of roses resting on the lid. The priest talked about Nordin as the eternal servant. His words made me feel sick; they sounded so false. Nordin had been a good person, but none of the residents of the archipelago had forgotten that he sometimes refused credit to those who were less well off. No doubt many people regarded him as a complete bastard.

We carried the coffin through the gusts of wind to the family grave in the western corner of the churchyard. The oldest inscription informed us that landowner Hjalmar Nordin had passed away on 12 March 1872.

As we lowered the coffin, I exchanged a glance with Jansson. I had the impression that he felt as if he were lowering his own coffin.

The ceremony was over. We walked over to the parish hall for coffee and sandwiches, but all I really wanted to do was run away. Suddenly the proximity of death frightened me.

It took me completely by surprise.

I hurried into the hall.

I took shelter inside the den.

Chapter 21

The first snow fell on the archipelago on 1 December. When I stepped out of the caravan, stark naked, to take my dip in the cold water, the ground was white. There wasn’t a puff of wind. Nature was holding her breath as autumn turned into winter. My bare feet left prints in the thin covering of snow. I climbed down the ladder, inhaled and counted to ten with my head under the water. The cold burned my skin. Back on the jetty, I was shivering so much my teeth were chattering. But I had no intention of giving up my dip, however cold it became or whatever thickness of ice I had to chop my way through.

I hurried back to the caravan and made my breakfast. On this particular morning I put on one of the blue Chinese shirts; the collar had already started to fray. I looked at my face in the shaving mirror: it was pale, my eyes increasingly sunken. My hair was thinner, the hairline receding. I had a sore that refused to heal at the left-hand corner of my mouth. It could be an ingrowing wart. As I stared into my eyes, I saw a person I only partly recognised.

A duel was going on between the man in the mirror and the man standing on the floor of the caravan.

Time had passed, and time continued to pass. It was already several weeks since the trip to Paris, Oslovski’s death and Nordin’s funeral. Veronika, who keeps herself well informed about what is going on in the archipelago, told me that Oslovski’s post-mortem had confirmed my suspicions: she had suffered a massive stroke and died in seconds. The PM had also revealed that her body was riddled with cancer, with the primary tumour in one of her adrenal glands.

No one had been able to track down any relatives. I went to her funeral. She had left instructions stating that she wanted to be cremated. The church was sparsely populated. I couldn’t understand why Jansson wasn’t there; his absence upset me. His curiosity at least should have brought him there.

I occasionally spoke to Lisa Modin on the phone. Every time our conversation ended I wanted it to continue. She would often call back the following day, and I began to realise that in spite of everything she had the same need to talk to someone as I did.

Jansson had followed my advice and taken himself off to the clinic, where an ECG had revealed exactly what I had suspected: signs of a disturbance in the cardiac conduction system. He was now on medication and no longer had any symptoms. However, I noticed that he was constantly expecting the problem to recur. Every time he turned up I listened to his heart. When I assured him that it sounded perfectly normal, he didn’t believe me.

He told me that the residents of the islands were afraid that there would be another fire. Apparently the police were getting nowhere. Jansson thought the arsonist was an outsider. That was the term he used: an outsider. Someone who travelled around starting fires, only to disappear.

Louise and I continued to grow closer through our phone calls. I was visited by representatives from the insurance company. Kolbjörn Eriksson and a relative who was a carpenter were contracted to build the new house; in the best-case scenario, it would go up during spring and summer the following year.

The day the first snow fell, I went into town to shop for groceries. As usual I parked outside Oslovski’s house; no one knew what was going to happen to the place because there was no will, no family.

When I had locked the car I suddenly decided to walk up to the garage.

The door had been forced. Whoever had broken in had done so with such violence that the lock had been ripped out of the wood.

The DeSoto was gone. Someone must have driven up in a truck or recovery vehicle and towed it away. All the tools were exactly where they should be on the walls; only the car was gone.

I immediately called the police and reported the break-in. As the situation wasn’t regarded as an emergency, the operator informed me that it would probably be more than two hours before a car was dispatched.

I gave them my details because I had no intention of waiting around for that long.

The break-in and the theft had upset me. This was an attack on Oslovski. A dead person is dead, but to steal the car that she had worked on for so many years, determined to restore it to its former glory, that was still an attack.

I bought long johns, gloves, a woolly hat, a scarf and a thick winter coat. I made sure none of them had been made in China. Oddly enough, the hat was from Indonesia. Afterwards I went to the restaurant in the bowling alley for something to eat. I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since I got back from Paris; I didn’t miss it at all.

Before I went back to the harbour, I called in at the small electrical shop. It was owned by Johannes Rudin, a man with a hunchback. He had been there all those years ago when I had visited the shop with my grandfather to buy a new radio. According to Jansson, Johannes had recently turned eighty-five and had no intention of retiring.

I had decided to get a TV for the caravan. Listening to the old transistor radio wasn’t enough; I wanted something to look at.

Johannes listened with one hand cupped behind his ear as I explained about my caravan, then he pointed to the smallest flat-screen TV in the shop.

‘You’ll need an aerial,’ he said. ‘You can put it up yourself if you’re a bit of a handyman.’

I paid and carried the TV and aerial to my car. When I had stowed everything away and straightened up, I saw a poster informing me that it was time to book a table at the bowling alley restaurant for Christmas and New Year.

I decided to organise my own New Year party. In my caravan. I would invite Jansson and Lisa Modin. It would be cramped and hot and sweaty with the three of us, but a New Year celebration in a caravan was something different. About as far from an event in a restaurant as it was possible to get. I would ask Veronika to prepare the food, while I would provide the drinks.

I drove back to the harbour. My decision was challenging, but I had good reason to say goodbye to a difficult year. At the same time I wanted to celebrate the fact that my daughter and I had deepened our relationship, and that hopefully a child would soon come into the world. Of course Louise, Ahmed and Muhammed would also be welcome if they wanted to make the journey from France to the archipelago. Then the caravan really would be crowded, but we could manage.

To my surprise, Lisa said yes when I rang and invited her for New Year’s Eve. She said she was looking forward to the party. I asked what she was doing for Christmas, and she told me she was going to Crete. That made me feel jealous, but of course I didn’t say anything.

Jansson offered to arrange a small fireworks display.

Veronika came up with some suggestions for a simple menu, and we reached an agreement on the cost and all the practical details.

Snow fell from time to time, but it soon melted away. Fear still drifted across the islands and their sparse population like a sea fret, but there were no more fires. Jansson kept me informed; the police didn’t seem to have any leads, and it looked as if their investigation had ground to a halt. I kept wondering who had burned down my house and why. Sometimes I thought there was something I had missed, something I ought to have realised, but I didn’t know what it was.

No one seemed to have any idea what was going to happen to Oslovski’s house, but one day Jansson paid me an unexpected visit. He clambered up onto the jetty and we sat down on the bench. He had brought a magazine about vintage cars containing both articles and small ads. He turned to the advertising section, with pictures and prices.

He pointed, and I immediately saw what he meant. Oslovski’s car was for sale, and the image had been taken inside her garage. The thieves had photographed the car before they moved it.

Oslovski’s DeSoto Fireflite, manufactured in 1958.

I could still remember her telling me that this particular model had had a short production run — only 4,192. One of the most unusual details was that the exhaust pipe actually came through the bumper. The advert stated that the bodywork was a mixture of Wedgwood Blue and Haze Blue. No price was given; there was a phone number for interested parties to call.

‘How did you find this?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t know you were into old American cars.’

‘My nephew called,’ Jansson said. ‘I’d told him about the break-in and the fact that the car had been stolen. He knows everything about vintage American cars, and he guessed this might be the one. He was right.’

‘You’ve got a nephew?’

Jansson took out his phone and handed it to me instead of replying.

‘It’s best if you call. My voice starts trembling if I get nervous.’

A woman answered.

‘It’s about the car,’ I said. ‘The DeSoto. I was wondering how much it was?’

‘A hundred and eighty-five thousand.’

Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were speaking through a handkerchief.

‘Can you tell me something about the car? Background, previous owners, that kind of thing?’

‘You’ll have to talk to my brother about all that, but he’s not home at the moment.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Can I come and see the car? Where is it?’

‘You need to talk to my brother.’

‘Surely you can tell me where the car is?’

She saw through me.

‘Try again in a few hours,’ she said dismissively and ended the call.

Jansson had leaned closer to listen in to the conversation; it felt as if we were an old married couple, sitting there on the bench in winter chill.

Two swans flew past. We watched them until they were out of sight.

‘Bastards,’ Jansson said. ‘Stealing a dead woman’s car.’

We went up to the caravan for a cup of coffee, then we played cards. Jansson won every game.

After an hour and a half, by which time we were both tired of playing, I rang the number again. No one answered. In a sudden burst of energy I called the magazine’s advertising desk and informed them that one of the cars on their ‘For Sale’ pages was stolen. The man I spoke to was very concerned and asked me to report it to the police.

I did as he said. When the officer suggested that I report the matter via the police service website, I flared up, telling him I was sitting in a caravan on a remote island, with no internet access.

I don’t think he really grasped my situation. He noted down the details with an air of indifference, as if he wanted to let me know from the start that this was going nowhere and that a prosecutor would immediately dismiss the possibility of an investigation.

Oslovski was like a piece of human flotsam that had drifted onto our shores. Jansson had started a collection for a headstone, but it was difficult to get people to contribute. I think he ended up paying most of the eventual cost himself, but at least I was there when the stone was erected in the churchyard. Oslovski was placed between one of the archipelago’s last pilots, who happened to be a relative of Veronika from the cafe, and a landowner from Röda Furholmen who was notorious for his unpleasant behaviour when he’d been drinking. Occasionally some unknown person would lay flowers on her grave.

In the middle of December a storm swept in across the archipelago. It came from the Baltic to the south-west, and struck with full force in the middle of the night. The gusts of wind were so strong that the caravan shook. I went out into the sleety darkness with my torch, shoring up my home with tree stumps and plastic barrels filled with water. I had just finished and gone back inside when there was a power cut. I undressed and dried myself with a recently purchased towel made in Cambodia. I still had the LPG stove, and I made some coffee in spite of the fact that it was four o’clock in the morning. I had a candle on the table, its flame flickering in the draught.

My telephone rang. I immediately assumed it was Jansson, wanting to know if my electricity had gone too, but instead it was a man speaking English with an accent. I couldn’t work out who it was and thought it must be a wrong number. Then I realised it was Ahmed.

‘I am at the hospital. Louise is having the baby.’

The child was coming, much too soon. I could hear the anxiety in Ahmed’s voice, but he told me there was no need to worry. Louise had asked him to call me; he promised to let me know as soon as the child was born.

I didn’t get any more sleep that night. The child was so premature that it would have to be placed in an incubator. The storm and the hurricane-force gusts outside the caravan felt like an ominous backdrop as I awaited the birth of my first and perhaps only grandchild.

I thought about Harriet. Once again I pictured her making her way across the ice with her wheeled walker. I found it difficult to remember what she had looked like on that occasion, but in my mind’s eye I could picture her as a young woman, back in the days of our messy relationship. I experienced an intense sense of loss. Or perhaps it was longing. Which isn’t quite the same thing.

One night she and I and Louise had slept together in the caravan before it was moved to this spot. Now Harriet was gone, and Louise was lying in a hospital bed in Paris, giving birth to her child.

The candle flickered again, and memories passed through my mind like uneasy shadows. My father was there, my mother, my grandparents — and various women with whom I had had relationships or whom I had never managed to conquer. I was there too, among the shadows. Perhaps I was the one slinking along close to the walls of the caravan, making sure the light never fell on my face?

At ten to six the phone rang again. It was Ahmed: Louise had had a girl. The baby didn’t weigh much, but everything had gone well. She was in an incubator, as I had expected.

Ahmed said the baby looked like me.

That wasn’t true, of course. Newborn babies, especially if they are premature, don’t look like anybody except themselves. They are unfinished sketches that will develop in an unknown direction.

I went out into the darkness and the wind. Still no power. I used the torch to light my way, dizzy with joy. I hadn’t expected to have such strong feelings. I went into the boathouse, with the wind howling and whistling through the gaps. I sat down on one of my grandfather’s old eel traps, which he had used right up until the last year of his life. By now the net was so fragile with age that it tore if I pushed two fingers into one of the holes and spread them apart.

I felt a tremendous urge to tell someone what had happened, but who could I call? Jansson or Lisa Modin. Perhaps Veronika or Oslovski? But Oslovski was dead, and I had never had her phone number anyway.

I tried Lisa, hoping I would wake her. Which I did.

‘You,’ she said. ‘At this hour — what time is it?’

‘Half past six. I’ve just become a grandfather.’

‘Congratulations. Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘A girl.’

‘Did everything go well?’

‘I believe so, but the baby is premature. That always carries risks.’

‘Will they put her in an incubator?’

‘They already have. I must confess I’m lost for words.’

‘And you chose to call me? That’s nice.’

‘I don’t have anyone else to call.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘Perhaps we could have a drink, wet the baby’s head?’

‘Not at half past six in the morning.’

‘At the weekend?’

‘Maybe. Ring me in a couple of days.’

‘You ring me.’

She promised to get in touch, and I immediately began to look forward to seeing her again. It was a long time since the trip to Paris.

I called Jansson.

‘I’ve got no power,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you wanted to know.’

‘Louise has had her baby. A little girl.’

There was a pause, then he said, ‘Isn’t that a bit early?’

‘Yes, but everything’s fine. I hope.’

‘In that case allow me to congratulate you on behalf of the entire archipelago.’

Sometimes Jansson expresses himself in the most peculiar way. His words can border on pomposity, but right now it felt as if he really meant it: he was representing the collective joy of the islanders. He had made me a part of the ever-dwindling population of the archipelago. I was no longer an outsider.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

Then we talked about the storm. Jansson had contacted the electricity company, and they hoped to have the power back on by nine. Apparently a substation where the cable left the mainland had been damaged. In addition, the wind had brought down a large number of trees.

When the conversation was over, I went back to the caravan, lay down and waited for the dawn. As the grey light filtered in, I went outside again. Up on the hill, not far from my grandfather’s bench, an oak tree had come down, the roots sticking up like a giant mushroom that had been kicked to pieces. I walked all the way around the island and was able to ascertain that the fallen oak was the only casualty. All the other trees had survived. The topsoil might not be very deep out here, but the trees are tough, clinging on with their claw-like roots.

I fetched my handsaw and cut a slice from the trunk of the oak. It seemed to take forever; I was dripping with sweat by the time I finished. I went down to the jetty for a dip, then dried myself off in the caravan. I took my magnifying glass to the boathouse, sat down and counted the rings. To my surprise, the tree was older than I could have imagined. After checking again to make sure, I concluded that the first ring dated from 1847. The following year, when the oak was no more than a sapling, the European revolutions took place. I worked my way outwards, as if I were on the edge of eternity. I placed my finger on the line separating 1899 and 1900. A war begins in 1914, another in 1939. I was born in 1944, the year before the war ended. And now the tree had fallen in a December storm, all those years after it began to grow.

I left the slice of wood in the boathouse, went outside and sat down on the bench, which was sheltered from the wind. The waves were still choppy, and there was the odd squally shower from time to time.

The power had been restored, just as the company had promised Jansson. All the lights came on at five past nine in the morning, and late in the afternoon I noticed that the wind had started to die down, although far out at sea the waves were pounding the reefs on the surface. Once again I walked around the island.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Louise and my granddaughter. Ahmed rang again in the evening and told me that all was well with Louise and the baby. Of course he didn’t mention what both he and I knew: that there were many hurdles to overcome for a child born so prematurely.

‘Have you chosen a name?’ I asked for the want of anything else to say.

‘Not yet.’

I heard him laugh. I still couldn’t understand what Louise saw in him, but his laugh gave me a clue.

That evening I sat down to plan my New Year’s Eve party. I noted down the food I had discussed with Veronika and made a list of the beer, wine and spirits I would buy. All the time I could picture that tiny baby in her incubator.

When the storm had passed, I went over to the mainland and talked through the whole thing with Veronika. She didn’t think I needed to buy crockery; she could lend me whatever was necessary from the cafe. She would also bring chairs because there was only one chair and a stool in the caravan.

‘Tablecloths?’

‘Yes, please.’

She jotted everything down on the back of a receipt book.

Then we talked about Oslovski. The story of the stolen car, Jansson and the magazine, and my peculiar conversation with the woman on the phone, whose brother was apparently selling the car, was the talk of the town. Veronika knew all about it.

‘They must be local,’ she said. ‘Someone who knew what she had in the garage.’

‘Do people suspect anyone in particular?’

‘No.’

I wasn’t sure if I believed her. The answer had come much too quickly. Perhaps she had someone in mind, but I let it drop. I was convinced that the DeSoto would never be recovered.

We spoke about the precarious financial situation of the cafe, and Veronika confided in me that she had started to think about moving.

‘To a different cafe?’

‘To a different country. I might open a cafe, I might not.’

‘You’d be missed.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

The bell over the door pinged and a dozen or so people came in.

‘The local council,’ Veronika whispered. ‘They’re going out into the archipelago to plan where to put the new toilets. Can you believe it takes that many civil servants to make a decision?’

Before I picked up the car, I went to the chandlery. Needless to say, my wellingtons hadn’t arrived.

I drove into town and did my shopping for the party. I loaded the five bags I filled into the car before going to the bank and the pharmacy to stock up on cash and medication. I stopped outside the shoe shop. It was closed, the window empty.

Every now and again I have a little flutter on the horses. I know nothing about harness racing and I’m too idle to study the form before I place a bet, but on one occasion, twenty years ago, I was almost horrified to find that I had won no less than ninety-six thousand kronor — 96,322 kronor, to be exact. I will never forget that moment.

When I received the money I went to South Africa, even though apartheid was still in force. I hired a car at Nelspruit airport and drove to the Kruger National Park. I spent a week there, driving from one overnight post to another. I experienced the ever-present arrogance of the whites towards the blacks. There was a strange silence everywhere. The whites spoke to the blacks or coloureds only when issuing an order. I never heard a relaxed conversation between the races. I was terribly upset and tried to show kindness towards the blacks who served me at mealtimes or topped up my car with petrol, but my friendliness made them wary, suspicious.

I travelled around the vast park and encountered all the wild animals I had hoped to see. I had the constant feeling that the animals saw me twice as often as I saw them. A boa constrictor had half-swallowed a wild-boar cub. A pride of lions was tearing at a zebra. I was a visitor, a polite guest cautiously knocking on the door of untamed nature.

I spent the rest of the money on some expensive suits and dining at exclusive restaurants. I even bid fifteen thousand kronor for a statue of the Buddha at an antiques auction. I lost it when my house burned down.

I went into the betting shop in the town centre and worked out an improvised system of a couple of hundred lines on harness races in Solänget. God knows where that was. Needless to say I didn’t recognise the names of any of the horses or the drivers, but I decided I preferred a horse called Bumblebee’s Brother to another in the same race with the name Wolfskin. The owner of the shop was a man whose bald head had an indentation to the left of his temple. According to Jansson, who knew all about everyone’s medical problems, the man had had an accident with his tractor when he was trying to get his old motorboat into the water one spring many years ago. Jansson thought it was remarkable that he had survived without suffering brain damage, but during my years as a doctor I often saw people whose heads were a very odd shape as a result of accidents without any loss of their mental capacities. In particular I remembered a young academic researcher who was regarded as a mathematical genius both before and after a car accident. His head looked like a cone.

I handed over my betting slip, put the receipt in my inside pocket, then went to the restaurant at the bowling alley for something to eat.

I had just left the restaurant when Louise called. The odd snowflake was drifting through the air. I went back inside and stood by the lane; there were no noisy games in progress at the moment.

She was fine, but naturally she was worried about her baby.

I asked as many questions as I could think of about the unit where the child was being cared for. Louise felt that all the staff were very experienced and knew what they were doing.

‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.

‘Pray.’

‘Pray? But I’m not a believer!’

‘You can pray anyway.’

‘OK. I can say a prayer and send it off in all directions, backwards and forwards in time, straight out into the universe and down into the depths of the sea.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is there anything else you want me to do?’

‘Not right now.’

Louise assured me she was getting all the support she needed from Ahmed. Then she started talking about Muhammed in his wheelchair.

‘His eyes are like light,’ she said. ‘They move at the speed of light, looking into worlds I know nothing about. One day he will receive answers to all the messages he sends out.’

‘I don’t really understand what you mean,’ I said. I asked if they had chosen a name for the baby yet.

‘She’s going to have three names, and later on she can choose which one she prefers. Rachel, Anna and Harriet.’

I thought about Rachel who had cleaned my room at the hotel in Paris. I thought about Harriet. No one in our family was called Anna; perhaps the name was linked to Ahmed and Islam?

‘Pretty names,’ I said. ‘So what are you calling her at the moment?’

‘We vary it from day to day.’

‘I want to see her,’ I said.

‘That’s really why I called. I’m sending a picture to your phone.’

‘Are you coming home for Christmas?’

‘This is home. Besides, she’s still in an incubator.’

‘If you’re short of money, I can help.’

‘This isn’t about money. Build the new house.’

Because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing the closeness we had achieved, I quickly dropped the subject. She asked if it was raining or snowing. Talking about the weather is always the last resort, but it calmed us both down. No angry ripostes, no hostile silences.

The photograph of Rachel Anna Harriet arrived immediately after the call ended.

My grandchild, barely visible in the incubator, looked like no one but herself. I couldn’t see anyone else in her little face, not even Ahmed. I stood there by the bowling lane and realised I was moved. There on my phone was a new person who had just begun to participate in the dance of life. A little girl with three names who would live, if she achieved a ripe old age, until the end of the twenty-first century.

I didn’t stop looking at my phone until a group of young men arrived for a game. They spoke a language I didn’t understand; presumably they belonged to the group of refugees who had just been billeted in the town.

I drove down to the harbour, keeping an eye out for foxes all the way, but nothing happened this time. All I saw were some crows flapping away from the remains of a dead badger on the road.

Oslovski’s house was deserted; no one appeared to have crossed the neatly raked gravel drive. I carried my bags down to the boat, which was moored by the petrol pumps, and went to show Veronika the picture of my grandchild.

‘She’s very pretty,’ she said.

‘I don’t know about that. It’ll be a while before we can say one way or the other.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Veronika said. ‘Maybe Paris is a city I could move to? I know you’ve been there.’

‘Paris is a very big city. It’s easy to disappear if you don’t know why you’re there.’

I headed back down to the quayside, then changed my mind and called in at the chandlery, where fru Nordin was drinking coffee with a plate of Danish pastries in front of her. As a doctor I ought to say something about her obesity, but then I noticed that her eyes were suspiciously shiny, as if she had just been crying. No doubt she was still grieving for her husband.

I didn’t show her the photograph on my phone; I just asked for new batteries for my torch.

The sun broke through the clouds as I travelled home. I decided I would ask Jansson to sing at the New Year party, just as he had sung at Harriet’s midsummer party a few weeks before she died.

I couldn’t think of a better ending to the old year or a better start to the new one.

Perhaps I could even ask him to sing ‘Ave Maria’?

The same as last time. Now as then.

Chapter 22

One day Louise and Ahmed decided that their baby would be called Agnes. All thoughts of Rachel and Harriet disappeared.

Agnes. A beautiful name that no one in our family had ever had. A beautiful name for a very small person.

A few years before they died my parents had been seized by a sudden urge to find out more about their background. They both knew their maternal and paternal grandparents, but that was it; anything further back lay hidden in a thick fog. They dug through church records and regional archives; they sought information from the few relatives who were still alive. I remember sensing a silent competition between the two of them: who would succeed in tracing their family back the furthest? The only way each of them felt they could achieve some kind of nobility was to find out more than the other.

When they died, they left behind a decent family tree, but there was no Agnes. On my mother’s side they had discovered, to their boundless shame, that a brother of her great-grandfather had been executed — beheaded, in fact — on a hill just outside Västerås. He had been a guardsman; he had got into a drunken quarrel with a comrade and had killed him, stabbing him twenty-one times, as the court record meticulously noted. King Karl XV had refused to show him any mercy, and Karl Evert Olaus Tell had lost his head early one morning in 1867.

This knowledge sent an icy wind whistling through their research. When I came home for a visit from medical school, I noticed that all the papers relating to the family tree had disappeared from their place of honour on the bureau with the secret compartment where I had once found a pair of old spectacles when I was a child, but no hidden treasures. One evening when my mother had dozed off and my father had drunk a fair amount, he had revealed the humiliating truth about the executed guardsman. The discovery somehow lurked beneath the surface like a silent, grotesque, corrosive accusation against my mother.

Gradually they started looking into their past once more, but the joy and excitement had gone, replaced with a sense of anxiety about what they might find in the yellowing documents.

It is difficult to imagine two more reluctant researchers than my parents. They had taken on a task of which they were now ashamed. The archives sent a poison coursing through their veins.

Needless to say, they didn’t come across any more murderers. To their surprise they learned that they both came from the sparsely populated inland area of Västerbotten and the equally desolate forests of Härjedalen. There was Finnish blood on my father’s side, and on my mother’s an unexpected diversion to Russia.

But no Agnes. The little girl in Paris was Agnes the First.

From time to time the police contacted me, occasionally with a question but usually to tell me that they still had no answers. The fire seemed to have come out of nowhere.

Louise and I spoke on the phone every day. Occasionally Ahmed would start the call, and we would exchange a few words before he handed over to Louise. I thought I detected a new tone in her voice, although I couldn’t quite pin it down. Hadn’t the child’s arrival brought unadulterated joy? Was Louise tired? Was she experiencing the fear that so often accompanied new motherhood, particularly when it involved a premature baby? I always ended our conversation with an assurance that I was there if she needed my help.

We also spoke about the burned-out house. She told me she often dreamed about it, saw it rising from the ashes. Another recurring dream she dismissed as embarrassingly childish. Every morning the Carpenter Elves had raised the wooden walls by one metre, using their old-fashioned skills. Nobody knew where they came from, nobody heard the sound of their hammers during the night. The house kept on growing, but the ruins were still there, black and cold, just as they had been after some unknown person came along and set the fire.

I promised Louise that our house would be rebuilt; I stressed that promise again on the day she told me the baby’s name was Agnes.

‘In the old days people used to give their children several names,’ I said. ‘Even if they were poor, they could shower their children with a wealth of names. I had a classmate with seven Christian names, even though he was the poorest of the poor in my school.’

‘Do you remember the names?’

‘Karl Anton Axel Efraim Hagbert Erik Olof. His surname was Johansson.’

‘My daughter will only be called Agnes,’ Louise said. ‘She’ll never be in any doubt about what her name is.’

One morning I noted the fact that Agnes was one month old as I took my morning dip in the ice-cold water. The weather was changeable, as temperamental as an irascible human being. It snowed, the snow melted, the wind blew from all directions, then there was the kind of windless calm that really belongs to high summer. It could rain for four days non-stop, with constant cloudbursts hammering down on the fragile roof of the caravan.

No one knew what was going to happen to Oslovski’s house. There were rumours about the lights being on from time to time, so people started to believe the place was haunted. Someone mentioned her glass eye, claiming that at night it was transformed into a sparkling prism which seemed to find light in the darkness. At least these rumours meant the property was safe from break-ins or vandalism.

The gravel drive was always pristine; no one went near the house. It was as if people doubted whether Oslovski had actually died. Perhaps she had just gone off on one of her mysterious journeys; no one knew where she went or why. Except to track down parts for her car, which remained missing.

‘It’s always been desolate around here in the winter,’ Jansson said one day. ‘But now it’s worse than ever. As if empty can become emptier.’

I knew what he meant. The silence in the archipelago intensified during the winter. It wasn’t just the quayside crumbling away and the iron bollards rusting; it was as if the sea itself didn’t really have the heart to fill the harbour basin with water any more.

At Oslovski’s wake I took the opportunity to ask Jansson if he would sing at our New Year party. He recoiled as if I had suggested something inappropriate.

‘It would make the party just perfect,’ I said with a smile.

Jansson chewed his lower lip like an awkward schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework.

‘I can’t sing any more.’

‘Of course you can!’

‘And besides, “Ave Maria” isn’t the only song I know,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘That’s fine.’

We didn’t discuss it any further, but I knew I had his word. He would sing when we were gathered in the caravan, as midnight approached.

I went through the catering one more time with Veronika. We had settled on hot-smoked salmon for the main course, with soup to start and apple cake to follow.

‘I would have invited you,’ I said. ‘But there isn’t enough room in the caravan.’

‘I’m going to Iceland on New Year’s Day,’ she said.

I looked at her in astonishment.

‘Iceland? Isn’t it even colder there than it is here?’

‘I don’t care about the weather. I’m going because of the Icelandic horses.’

‘Is that where you might move to?’

‘Perhaps.’

Her phone rang; I gathered from the conversation that it was someone enquiring about a birthday party. I picked up my jacket, pulled my hat down over my ears and waved to her. She smiled at me as she began to make notes on a turquoise pad.

There was an old newspaper lying on one of the tables, so I checked my betting slip. I hadn’t won anything, of course.

I headed home, the boat buffeted by choppy waves. I felt as if the sea might solidify at any moment, petrifying the waves, the spume, the boat and me.

A grey sea like this one was like a clockface without hands. Or a room where the walls have fallen down. Sometimes I had a vague premonition that the sea was the force that would one day take my life.

In order to avoid the even rougher waters as I reached the part of the bay leading to the open sea, I followed the inner shipping lane. It was a longer route, but it was sheltered from the north wind almost all the way, except for the very last part of my trip. I passed an island where the bare branches of the oak trees reached up into the sky. I thought I caught a glimpse of a wild boar slipping away into the undergrowth. I let the engine idle and allowed the waves to carry me, hoping the animal would reappear. The next island was called Hästholmen; a geology professor called Sandmark had once built a summer cottage there. I had seen him when I had accompanied my grandfather to the harbour as a child. Sandmark always wore a black beret and a baggy British khaki uniform, and he lived until he was a hundred and seven years old. Back then it was Jansson’s father who delivered the post; according to Jansson, Professor Sandmark had died on his jetty, having just received a pension payment. Jansson’s father had been standing there with the notes in his hand when Sandmark sank silently to the ground and died on the spot.

Jansson’s father had been particularly upset by the fact that the professor had collapsed without so much as a groan of pain, fear or protest.

The summer cottage was in a terrible state. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought it was owned by two granddaughters, two sisters who hated each other because one had become rich while the other had failed in life.

My phone rang; it was Jansson.

‘I’m sure,’ he said.

‘Sure about what?’

‘That the arsonist isn’t local.’

‘Did anyone ever really believe that? Apart from when I was the prime suspect.’

‘I’ve gone through every single person who lives out here on the islands. It can’t be any of them.’

‘What do we really know about people?’ I said. ‘What do you know about me? What do I know about you?’

‘Enough to be confident in what I’m saying.’

I had the feeling that our conversation was going round in circles.

‘What do the police think?’ I asked, purely for the sake of something to say.

‘I imagine they probably think the same as me, but where do they start looking?’

Jansson chuckled, as if he had said something funny, then he became serious again.

‘I’d really like to hear your view,’ he said. ‘On who’s behind all this. These house fires.’

‘I’ll give it some thought, but right now I’m out in the boat. It’s cold.’

‘We need to talk about this.’

‘You’re right, we need to talk about this. At some point.’

I ended the call and put my phone back in my pocket. Something about our conversation was bothering me. Even though Jansson had spoken as he always did, something wasn’t right. I just couldn’t work out what it was.

What did I really know about Jansson, apart from the fact that he had delivered the post for years in all weathers? He had an extensive knowledge of everyone who lived out on the islands. Everyone knew Jansson, the helpful postman in the archipelago. But who really knew him?

I went over the conversation in my mind. I didn’t feel any better, and I still couldn’t decide where the anxiety was coming from.

I accelerated and headed home. A few Canada geese were flying around beneath the grey clouds, unable to find their route south.

Back home I solved a chess problem in the local paper; it was much too easy. The most stupid amateur could work out that a combination of moves involving a castle and a bishop would quickly lead to checkmate for the black pieces. I felt like contacting the paper to complain about the way they regarded their readers as idiots, but of course I didn’t do it. Those occasions when I have felt like protesting and have actually done so are few and far between.

It was hot inside the caravan. In spite of the fact that darkness had fallen, I undressed, picked up my torch and went to the boathouse. I climbed down into the water and forced myself to swim a few strokes before the cold got too much for me. I was on my way up the ladder when I heard my phone ringing; I had left the door of the caravan ajar. I set off at a run, but slipped and fell over one of the wet stones in the grass.

I put my clothes back on before I checked to see who had called. I could only think of two people: Louise or Jansson.

It was Lisa Modin. I called her back, but it was ages before she picked up. I was about to give up when she answered, sounding surprised to hear my voice.

‘You called me but I couldn’t get to the phone in time,’ I explained. ‘I’d just been for a dip and I was down by the jetty.’

‘I didn’t call you.’

‘But my phone is showing your number.’

‘I don’t understand that — I didn’t call you.’

‘And I’m not mistaken.’

She was breathing heavily, as if she had just run a long way uphill.

‘I’ll call you back,’ she said. ‘I need to check this out.’

I sat down to wait; she rang me after ten minutes.

‘I didn’t call you,’ she said yet again. ‘I must have accidentally pressed a button when the phone was in my pocket.’

‘So you didn’t intend to speak to me?’

‘Not right this moment, no.’

‘In that case it’s probably best if we end this conversation now.’

I rang off before she had the chance to say any more and threw my phone down on the bed. It was still lying there when it started ringing again. I ignored it. I couldn’t work out what I was doing.

I did, however, send a text an hour later. You’re still welcome to come to the New Year party. Unless you’ve changed your mind.

She didn’t reply until after midnight, by which time I had given up hope that she would still come. The display showed just one word: Yes.

I lay there for a long time, thinking about that one word. Yes.

I was woken at dawn by cramp in one leg. I wondered if I had developed diabetes; cramp in the calves is a common symptom. However, I wasn’t drinking large amounts of water or getting up to pee during the night.

I dug out a blood glucose meter from one of the plastic bags where I keep my medical supplies; the reading was 6.9. I didn’t have diabetes.

In a burst of impatient energy I tidied the caravan. I hadn’t really touched the place since I moved in. I lit a fire in an old oil drum where my grandfather used to burn his rubbish and chucked in all the crap I had accumulated over the past few weeks. I got rid of one of the blue Chinese shirts; the colour had already faded, the cuffs were frayed and the stitching around the buttonholes was coming undone. I fed the shirt slowly into the flames.

When I was a child, if I had toothache I would sometimes take revenge by pulling the wings off insects. A painful bruise could be eased by drowning a pretty butterfly or by laying a perch on the shore and letting it suffocate.

Now I took my revenge by torturing things that were already dead. This time the Chinese shirt would pay the price.

Later in the day I rowed out to the skerry. The tent was still there, although the recent storm had ripped out some of the pegs. The stones and twigs I had positioned to reveal the presence of an intruder were exactly where I had left them. Nor had anyone lit a fire among the soot-covered rocks.

The sea was calm now. On my way back to the island I looked for the drift net I had seen earlier in the autumn, the net that carried on fishing even though no one would ever empty it.

That night there was a heavy snowfall in the archipelago. At dawn I undressed and went down to the water completely naked, using my torch to pick a path through the snow.

Winter had arrived. Soon it would be Christmas, then New Year.

The snow stayed until Christmas but melted away on the third day, when warmer winds blew in from the south. I hung coloured lanterns between the boathouse and the caravan. Veronika brought extra chairs and crockery, along with some of the food. We did a trial run, setting everything out in the caravan; it was a tight squeeze, but it would be OK.

New Year’s Eve was cold and clear, and there wasn’t a breath of wind. At three o’clock in the afternoon Veronika got everything ready and gave me my final instructions concerning the food. In order to make things easier for me, the soup was in Thermos flasks; she had also lent me an extra LPG hob, which we set up in a sheltered spot behind the caravan.

We drank a toast to wish each other a Happy New Year, then said our goodbyes on the jetty as I waved her off on her trip to Iceland.

Jansson arrived at seven, having picked up Lisa Modin. Burning torches lit the way to the caravan. Jansson spent half an hour sorting out his firework display.

The three of us sat down at the little table and we ate and drank from half past seven until just after eleven. By then we were all tipsy, the food was gone, and it was so hot inside the caravan that Jansson had taken off his shirt and was sitting there bare-chested. When Lisa went out for a pee, I asked Jansson if it wasn’t time for a song. He brightened up as if he had been afraid that I wouldn’t mention it. However, he didn’t want to sing just yet; he would prefer to wait until midnight.

‘ “Ave Maria”,’ I said. ‘You have to sing “Ave Maria”.’

‘I promise, but I have another song too.’

I couldn’t help wondering what it might be.

‘ “Buona Sera”,’ he said. ‘Made famous by Little Gerhard in Sweden in the 1950s.’

I thought I remembered the song he was talking about, but I would have preferred the combination of ‘Ave Maria’ with something other than Little Gerhard.

‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Very good.’

Lisa came back, her gaze slightly unfocused. She tripped and laughed at her own clumsiness.

I had a bottle of champagne on ice: Veuve Clicquot. I remembered the name from a wedding anniversary that my father hadn’t forgotten, much to my mother’s surprise. He had come home with this very label. When Louise arrived with Agnes, Ahmed and Muhammed one day, we would also celebrate with Veuve Clicquot.

We finished off a bottle of red first, then I went outside and called Louise, who was at the hospital.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to hear it!’

Midnight was approaching. Jansson insisted that his watch was accurate to the second; none of us wanted the TV or radio on. The thermometer by the caravan door was showing plus two. The coloured lanterns were reflected in the calm, shining water, and ragged clouds drifted slowly above our heads. Jansson led the way up to my grandfather’s bench; I could hear him quietly warming up his voice. I took Lisa’s arm when she stumbled, and she didn’t pull away.

We were surrounded by silence. Jansson fixed the beam of the torch on his magic watch. I tried to picture Louise, Agnes and her family, Muhammed in his wheelchair, all of them perhaps gathered by a window.

We stood there on the hill as if we were the last people in the world. Jansson began to count down the remaining seconds of the old year. I gripped Lisa’s cold hand, and still she didn’t pull away. With the other hand I felt in my pocket to make sure I had my cigarette lighter to give to Jansson so that he could start his firework display.

‘Now,’ Jansson said, his voice trembling with excitement and emotion.

The year was over. Jansson launched into ‘Buona Sera’. Lisa clearly recognised the song but was as taken aback as I had been at Harriet’s last midsummer party, when Jansson astounded us all with his powerful voice. He held the torch so that it illuminated his face from below, giving him a ghostly pallor, but neither Lisa nor I were bothered about his appearance. It was his voice that exhorted us to look to the future. And then came ‘Ave Maria’. The cold winter’s night disappeared, and summer bloomed all around us. I could see Harriet sitting there with a glass of white wine in her hand and Jansson standing at the end of the table singing in a way that simply knocked all the air out of our lungs.

Afterwards, when he had fallen silent, I saw that Lisa had tears in her eyes. So did I, and perhaps even Jansson himself. We passed the schnapps around, drinking straight from the bottle as you do when you are with friends. We wished each other a Happy New Year and praised Jansson’s wonderful voice. I asked him to start the firework display; the bangs and the not particularly impressive rockets echoed among the rocks and flared against the night sky, only to disappear in seconds. However, Lisa and I applauded Jansson’s brave attempt to frighten away the evil spirits with fire and smoke.

When it was over we went back to the caravan. Jansson seemed tired and refused another drink.

‘I’m going to head home,’ he said. ‘It’s late for an old postman who isn’t used to performing.’

‘I had no idea you could sing like that,’ Lisa said. ‘A Jussi Björling out here among the rocks and skerries!’

‘I’m happier keeping quiet,’ Jansson said, getting ready to leave. He seemed anxious, restless.

We walked down to the jetty with him. To my surprise he appeared to be stone cold sober as he made his way over the slippery rocks to his boat.

He moved quickly, as if he were suddenly in a hurry. The feeling I had had before, that I didn’t understand him at all, came back to me. However, right now I just wanted to make sure he actually left and didn’t change his mind.

‘You sang beautifully,’ I said.

‘Mozart and Little Gerhard,’ Lisa said. ‘Extraordinary.’

‘Schubert,’ Jansson said. ‘Not Mozart.’

‘Who wrote the Italian song?’

Jansson shook his head. He didn’t know.

‘Off you go,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter who wrote “Buona Sera”.’

Jansson fired up the engine while Lisa and I stood shivering on the jetty. He had put on his leather cap, which was looking rather scruffy after all the winters he had worn it while delivering the post.

We could hear the sound of bangs and whooshes in the distance.

‘Vattenholmen,’ Jansson said.

‘What’s the name of the people who live there? Erlandsson?’

‘They own a mail order company selling health products,’ Jansson said. ‘They’ve been reported to the police several times for making false promises, claiming that their creams and herbal preparations can cure everything from eczema to cancer.’

‘That house they built can’t have been cheap.’

‘No, but the smell of scandal lingers around most people who make a ridiculous amount of money.’

With that he bobbed down through the hatch and started the engine with a good spin of the flywheel. He reappeared, waved a hand in farewell and reversed away from the island. We stayed there until the red and green navigation lights had vanished around the headland.

I went into the boathouse and switched off the coloured lanterns, then we went up to the caravan.

‘He sang so beautifully,’ Lisa said.

‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ I said. ‘He hides his voice as if he were carrying around a huge, possibly dangerous secret.’

‘Why was he in such a hurry to leave?’

We had stopped outside the caravan. I didn’t have an answer; Jansson often resembled an indolent cat, reluctant to stir unnecessarily, but then he would suddenly turn into a completely different feline, moving across the rocks like lightning.

We went inside. Veronika had supplied me with several black bin bags and some paper carriers. I asked Lisa to put the empty bottles in the paper bags, separating plain and coloured glass, while I dumped the remains of the food in a bin bag. I had asked Veronika why she had given me more than one black sack.

‘They come in useful if you want to throw up,’ she said. ‘Saves you doing it just outside the caravan.’

I didn’t think anyone had suffered from the amount we had drunk, although I couldn’t swear to it of course.

I tied up the bag and pushed it under the caravan, then put an untouched crate of beer in front of it.

When I had finished I couldn’t resist glancing in through the window. Lisa was sitting on the bed with an unlit cigarette in one hand. In the other she held the lighter I had given Jansson to start his firework display.

She looked up, straight at the window; I didn’t have time to move away. She called to me to come in, then she reached out and switched off the light.

She had unrolled the mattress on the floor for me, and she got into the bed. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I didn’t dare. Right now I was grateful that I didn’t have to be alone. I wondered if she felt the same.

She began to talk, perhaps because she had been drinking, perhaps for other reasons. She told me about a man who had once been part of her life, a man she still hadn’t forgotten.

‘It was before I started trying my hand at journalism,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t decide what I wanted to achieve — or if I actually wanted to achieve anything at all. I worked in a paint shop to earn a living; ask me whatever you like about different kinds of paint and brushes, and I’ll have an answer for you. One day a man came in and bought a small tin of blue paint. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was the one I wanted to live with. A few days later he came back and bought another tin. We started chatting; he was doing up an old cupboard. And so we became a couple. He had an incredibly boring job as an office clerk working for the local council, and every time he came home it was as if there was a great darkness surrounding him. He wasn’t much to look at either, but I loved him to distraction. And he loved me. We were together for four years, but one day he got home from work, surrounded by that black cloud, and told me he didn’t want to live with me any more. That was almost fifteen years ago, but to be honest I still haven’t forgotten him.’

She fell silent.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘So that you’ll know.’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Right now I’m just happy that you’re here. Tomorrow I might feel differently.’

We both lay awake, and the conversation edged along. She had cautiously opened one or two of her doors, just a fraction, and allowed me to peep inside.

It was very hot inside the caravan. The heater was on the highest setting, but neither of us could be bothered to get up and turn it off. I started to believe that there was a closeness between us after all, beyond all my expectations.

My phone rang; it was too late for Louise. It must have been at least three o’clock in the morning. I swore and wiped the sweat off my face. Lisa told me to pick up; the caller was probably drunk, so it would be a short conversation.

The person on the other end wasn’t drunk at all. It was Jansson, and he was scared. I could tell that his body was shaking just as much as his voice was trembling.

‘There’s a fire,’ he yelled in my ear. ‘Karl-Evert Valfridsson’s house is in flames! If you go outside you’ll see the glow in the north-west.’

I did as he said; the flames were shooting up into the air from Karstensön, where the Valfridssons’ large house was located.

‘I’d only just fallen asleep. I don’t know what woke me up, but now I’m here,’ Jansson shouted. ‘Anyone who can help needs to get over to the island!’

‘Are the Valfridssons out of the house?’

‘They’re away, the house is empty. It’s going to burn to the ground.’

‘What’s happened?’

Jansson didn’t reply, which was answer enough for me. The arsonist had struck again.

‘I’m on my way,’ I said. ‘We’re both on our way.’

When I went back inside, Lisa had switched on the light and got dressed.

‘Another fire,’ she said. ‘Is it what I’m thinking?’

‘It’s arson,’ I said. ‘We need to go over there and do whatever we can to help.’

‘Has anyone died?’

‘No.’

I got dressed as quickly as I could, then we hurried down to the boathouse.

I asked Lisa to sit in the prow with the beam of the torch pointing out across the water as I didn’t have any navigation lights. I sat in the stern with a chart on my knee, illuminating it with my phone from time to time. It was no more than two nautical miles to Karstensön, but there were several reefs along the way that I wasn’t entirely sure of.

As we swung out into the bay, the Valfridssons’ house blazed like an enormous midwinter sacrificial feast.

We were heading straight into the fire.

Boats were coming from all directions.

The New Year had started with yet another burning house.

Chapter 23

Once again I saw a house transformed into a blackened ruin.

The Valfridssons’ house burned with the same fury that had obliterated my home. The old house stubbornly resisted, but the blaze was stronger. It reminded me of a lion, its jaws embedded in the throat of a dying gazelle.

There were about thirty of us running around with buckets of water and hosepipes, yelling at one another. Then the coastguard arrived and started up the pumps, and we stopped running around. Alexandersson, who was a little tipsy, took charge. I knew everyone there. We all wished each other a Happy New Year in the middle of the chaos, as we tried to do something useful.

I noticed that Lisa Modin was extremely capable. She took the initiative, and people listened when she made suggestions.

But of course there was nothing we could do. The whole place was already in flames by the time we arrived. At about five o’clock in the morning the roof began to collapse, the hot tiles shattering as they hit the ground. The windows burst, oxygen poured in and gave new strength to the conflagration. The heat was so intense that everyone had to move back.

I stood beside Alexandersson, sooty sweat pouring down his face.

‘Another one,’ he said. ‘Who’s burning down our property out here on the islands? What have we done to deserve this?’

‘Is it the same as my place?’ I asked. ‘A fire that starts everywhere and nowhere?’

‘We don’t know yet, but I’m sure the answer is yes. Same method, same lunatic.’

He shook his head then spat out something black and unpleasant, possibly a plug of snuff, and went back to his pumps and hoses.

Lisa was sitting on a rusty old kick sled next to a barbecue covered with a torn boat tarpaulin. The glow of the flames lit up her sweaty face. From Paris to a blaze in the middle of the night on one of our islands, I thought. We had almost spent an entire peaceful night together, until Jansson’s phone call shattered the intimacy.

Where was Jansson? At first I couldn’t see him, then I spotted him lurking in the shadows, where the glow didn’t reach his face. There was something strange about his body language. I moved closer; his eyes were fixed on the house and he still hadn’t noticed me. Now I realised what was odd about his posture. His hands were clasped in front of him, as if he were saying a silent prayer, but was it directed to himself or to some fire god whose name I didn’t know? His body was as rigid as if he were a wooden sculpture or a scarecrow.

He saw me just as I thought about the scarecrow. He immediately pulled his hands apart, as if I had caught him doing something embarrassing. I knew that embarrassment was the thing Jansson feared most of all; dropping a letter in the sea, letting the wind rip a pension payment slip out of his hand and watching it dance away across the water. Perhaps that was why he rarely sang, because he was afraid that one day a false note would come out of his mouth?

I went and stood beside him. He stank of sweat and booze, his best party shirt blackened with soot.

‘At least no one was at home,’ I said. ‘No one died.’

‘It’s still a terrible thing.’

‘You mean the fact that it’s another arson attack?’

Jansson gave a start, as if I had said something unexpected.

‘What else would it be?’

‘But who the hell is creeping around out here in the early hours of New Year’s Day?’

We didn’t say any more. I watched the people slowly moving around the fire and wondered if Jansson was thinking the same as me: that it could well be one of them who had started it.

I glanced at Jansson, but his expression gave nothing away.

It was seven o’clock by the time Lisa and I left. The house would carry on burning for several hours, but there was nothing anyone could do. Alexandersson had managed to contact the owners, who were staying in a hotel in Marseilles. Before we left he told me that fru Valfridsson had screamed so loudly that he thought his eardrum might burst.

I knew the lady in question; she was about my age and very thin. She had once come over to my island in a little motorboat to ask if I would look down her throat; she thought she had developed a tumour. I sat her down on the bench outside the boathouse, pushed down her tongue and checked her throat. There was no tumour. When I told her I couldn’t find anything, she burst into tears. I was completely taken aback. With some patients it’s obvious that they are going to have a strong reaction, whether the news is good or bad, but I was unprepared for Hanna Valfridsson’s tears.

And now she was screaming in despair in a luxury hotel in Marseilles.

Before I started the engine I had asked Lisa where she wanted to go, and now we were heading for the harbour in the darkness. It occurred to me that I had far too much alcohol in my blood to drive my car, but then again I couldn’t imagine there would be too many police officers hanging around this early on New Year’s Day, hoping to catch someone in the middle of nowhere driving under the influence.

Oslovski’s house was still locked up and deserted, but I stood for a moment looking at the window to the left of the front door. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the curtain, which was closed, looked slightly different. I couldn’t work out exactly what had attracted my attention; perhaps it was my imagination, or perhaps I was hoping that someone had been inside, that the place hadn’t been abandoned.

Lisa asked what I was staring at.

‘The curtain,’ I said. ‘But to be honest, I’m not sure. I thought maybe there was someone standing there watching us.’

‘The fire was quite enough,’ Lisa replied. ‘No more ghostly goings-on, thank you.’

We drove into town in silence, through the morning mist that sometimes concealed the forest by the roadside. Lisa switched on the radio to listen to the news.

There had been riots in the Paris suburbs. A firefighter had been badly injured when he was struck on the head by a rock.

A major jewel heist had been discovered this morning in Moscow, involving one of the biggest jewellers in Russia.

Someone had died because of a drug called Spice.

A snowstorm was slowly moving in from the east, but they weren’t sure how far south the snow would reach.

Lisa turned off the radio and asked me to stop. I pulled over on a logging track and she got out. When I realised she wasn’t going for a pee, I undid my seatbelt and followed her. There wasn’t a breath of wind. She had walked a few metres and was almost out of sight. A little further and she would disappear completely. That frightened me; I didn’t want her to cease to exist, to vanish without a trace among the tall pine trees.

‘It feels as if I’m part of a different story,’ she said.

She spoke quietly, as if she didn’t want to disturb the silence all around her. As I stood watching her I thought she was like an animal, a deer perhaps, alert to the possibility of attack at any moment.

‘Different from what?’ I asked.

She didn’t turn around.

‘The one I’m usually in. Sometimes I detest all those meaningless articles I write for the paper, words that are dead the moment someone reads them. People delouse a newspaper, picking off the words in the same way they pick lice off their bodies.’

I didn’t really understand what she was saying, but there was no doubt that she meant it.

‘I want to write something else,’ she went on. ‘Not books, I’m not good enough for that. I would be consumed with envy whenever I thought about those authors who really know how to choose their words, to create an unforgettable piece of work. Maybe I want to draw maps of places where no one has ever set foot? In the old days they used to let the cows wander free so that they would find the shortest and best route home. Let me go and I will find the forgotten pathways.’

We stood in silence in the forest for a little while. This was my seventieth New Year’s Day. The thought of how few I had left was a frightening one. I shuddered, and Lisa turned to face me. She was smiling.

‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘I’m going to write a detailed account of last night’s fire.’

Everything was quiet in her apartment block. As if to protest at the unwelcoming silence, she stomped noisily up the concrete stairs. A dog started barking, but stopped when a man yelled at it. I followed one step behind and reached out my hand, but I didn’t touch her.

She made coffee while I sat on the sofa where I had once tried to sleep.

We drank our coffee at the kitchen table, ate a couple of sandwiches, didn’t say much.

‘I ought to get some sleep,’ she said as she cleared the table. ‘Otherwise I’ll think it was all a dream.’

‘I can assure you that house really did burn down.’

Lisa leaned against the draining board and looked at me.

‘What’s going on out there on your islands? Houses going up in flames in the small hours. I’d never experienced the roar of a fire until last night.’

‘It was arson,’ I said. ‘There’s no proof yet, but everyone knows. Someone who helped to put out the fire probably started it.’

‘It shouldn’t be impossible to find out who’s responsible,’ she said almost crossly. ‘There aren’t very many of you. There are comparatively few inhabited islands.’

‘No one profited from burning down my house. Who has anything to gain from destroying the Valfridssons’ property? Or from seeing the widow Westerfeldt’s pretty home collapse in ruins? It seems like total insanity to me.’

‘Could it be revenge?’

‘We all have our differences; envy can eat away at someone over the years. But surely no one would go so far as to risk people being burned alive!’

‘The desire for revenge can send you crazy.’

‘We’re too simple for that kind of thing out here on the islands.’

‘You don’t come from the islands.’

I looked at Lisa in surprise.

‘I don’t, but my family does. I also have a profession which the local residents approve of; I’m a doctor, I’m regarded as useful. I have a kind of honorary status as an islander. I probably don’t really “belong” in the archipelago; I don’t have a stamp on my soul. But I’m accepted.’

We didn’t say any more. I could tell from her expression that she didn’t agree with me, but it wasn’t worth pursuing the matter.

As if it were the most self-evident thing in the world, we went and lay down on her big bed. I listened to her steady breathing as it grew deeper. At first I saw the flames dancing, then I fell asleep.

It was ten thirty when I woke up. My head felt heavy, my mouth was dry. I could hear the muted sound of the radio from the kitchen, the clink of coffee cups. I coughed, and a chair scraped. Lisa appeared in the doorway in her dark blue dressing gown with a glass of water in her hand.

‘If you feel the way I do you’ll want a glass of water,’ she said.

I drained the glass as she watched.

‘Painkillers?’ I said.

She came back with the same glass, this time full of a sparkling analgesic solution.

I drank it down and leaned back against the pillows.

‘How’s it going with your article?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t started it yet. But soon.’

‘Are you going to write about the voluntary firefighter who’s sleeping in your bed?’

‘I don’t think anyone would be interested in that.’

My phone rang; it was Kolbjörn, the electrician. He didn’t ask where I was, he simply wished me a Happy New Year then got to the point. He’s not a man who converses unnecessarily.

Apparently a small group of those who had helped out last night had come to a decision and were ringing round other residents of the archipelago. Kolbjörn had been asked to contact me.

I could tell from his gravelly voice that he was hungover. Or perhaps he was still drunk. There were rumours that he was something of a binge drinker, but no actual proof. He had never given the impression that he had been drinking when he worked for me, nor in my grandparents’ day when he was a young electrician serving his apprenticeship with a man called Ruben. That was before he joined the merchant navy.

‘We’re going to have a meeting in the local history association centre,’ he explained. ‘We’ve decided to wait until Twelfth Night. Two o’clock in the afternoon. We want as many people as possible to be there; we’re going to talk about these arson attacks and what we can do.’

‘To stop them?’

‘To catch whoever’s responsible. Then they’ll stop.’

‘Any suspects?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘Two o’clock.’

Lisa had left the bedroom while I was on the phone; the door of her study was ajar.

She was sitting at her desk, writing. Her dressing gown had ridden up her thighs. I realised that my need for sex was not a spring that had dried up for the rest of my life. That definitely wasn’t true.

However, I didn’t want her to see me peeping through the door. I moved away, made a noise with my glass and sat down at the table.

She emerged with the notepad in her hand.

‘I’m writing about the fire, but I’m saying that I ended up there because I was at a New Year’s party on one of the islands. I’m not mentioning any names.’

‘Shouldn’t you at least mention Jansson’s name? The former postman who was at the party? If nothing else, it would please him greatly if he appeared in the local paper. His first name is Ture.’

Suddenly I realised she wasn’t listening. She looked anxious, but her voice was firm when she spoke.

‘I’m used to being alone. Right now I need to be alone. And I need to write.’

‘You won’t even notice I’m here. I’ve perfected the art of being quiet.’

‘That’s not what I mean. I need to close everything down around me.’

I sat down on the chair in the hallway to tie my shoes. Lisa stood in the kitchen doorway, still holding the notepad. When I got up and attempted to give her a hug, she moved away.

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘I’m not being unkind, that’s just the way it is.’

I drove to the harbour. In a field next to the long inlet I saw a skier making his way over the thin covering of snow. A dog was racing along in front of him, as if tracking some unknown quarry.

I parked the car in its usual place. A biting wind was blowing in off the sea. I couldn’t resist the temptation to go and take a look at Oslovski’s garage, but it was all locked up. Through the dirty window I could see the emptiness left behind after the theft of her DeSoto Fireflite. I had a lump in my throat; I missed the person called Oslovski, the person I had hardly known but who had been close to me. Her glass eye had seen me more clearly than others’ eyes. Perhaps I was actually experiencing grief at her loss?

I walked down to the harbour, which was deserted on this New Year’s morning. As I set off for home, the black sea seemed to be feeling the cold just as much as I was.

It snowed during the night of 5 January. When I reached the local history association centre, which was situated in an inlet below the church, I could see footprints leading up from the jetty. I squeezed my boat in between an old wooden craft from Krutholmen and Holmén the pilot’s Pettersson boat from 1942. It looked as if a lot of people had turned up. The tracks in the snow made me think of a flock of crows that had wandered around for a long time before flying away.

The aroma of coffee and a welcoming fire greeted me as I walked into the spacious room. Kolbjörn Eriksson nodded, then came over and shook hands. His own hand was as big as a bear’s paw.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

‘It’s good to see so many people here.’

‘Do you want to say something?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Well, your house was the first to burn down.’

I shook my head; I had nothing to say. In the coffee queue I exchanged a few words with people I rarely saw. My ability to remember names has declined dramatically over the years; sometimes I think that much-feared gateway is slowly opening for me. One day I will walk through into the land where memory has been swallowed up by forgetfulness.

I had just got my cup of coffee when Louise called. She knew about the fire, but I hadn’t mentioned the meeting. I quickly explained where I was and promised to call her back later. She said that Agnes would soon be out of her incubator, which made me feel both happy and relieved.

I had counted fifty-six people when Wiman, a retired priest who lived on Almö, clapped his hands and asked for silence. Personally I had never heard him preach, but many people had told me that he divided his parishioners. For some incomprehensible reason, a number of those living out on the islands were annoyed because he never stressed the constant presence of hell and the devil during his sermons. Those who lived on the mainland, however, thought he was an excellent priest who never brought up the darkness of evil unnecessarily when he was standing in the pulpit.

Wiman welcomed everyone, blew his nose, wished us a Happy New Year and blew his nose again. Then he raised his voice with practised ease and bellowed that there must be no more of this insanity, no more setting fire to houses out on the islands. We must all learn to keep a closer eye on our neighbours’ property and take note of any unfamiliar vessels in our waters. We must take responsibility for our brothers and sisters. There was no need for any formal organisation; however, Kolbjörn Eriksson, Ture Jansson and Wiman himself were joining together as a committee. One of them would always be available if anything happened, if anyone had suspicions or was worried.

He opened the discussion to the floor to be met by silence — no one was used to a priest letting others speak. Again he encouraged everyone to ask questions or to comment. Eventually an old fisherman called Alabaster Wernlund from Torpholmen, one of the smallest fishing communities in the archipelago, got to his feet, making an enormous amount of noise with his chair. Everyone knew that he was hard of hearing, that he had a volatile temper and that he not infrequently called the coastguard when he got it into his head that large-scale smuggling was going on around his island. He might be eccentric, but everyone also knew that he had a sharp mind and couldn’t be bamboozled by fancy talk.

He was wearing a red woolly hat and the kind of orange hi-vis jacket you usually see on construction workers.

‘What are we going to do if it turns out that this pyromaniac is here in this room? Surely that’s just as likely as the idea that he’s coming over from Denmark?’

Pontus Urmark immediately stood up. He was a skinny carpenter from the far end of the small islands in Kattskärsvarpen. He might have less sense than Wernlund, but he had just as much of a temper.

‘Why the hell would an arsonist come from Denmark?’ he said. ‘Haven’t they got their own islands?’

‘Belgium, then, if you prefer that!’ Wernlund yelled.

Wiman tried to intervene, but it was already too late. The two men were standing at opposite ends of the hot room, sweat pouring down their faces like two actors fighting over the right to a riposte on stage. Urmark, whose profile resembled that of Karl XII, had the loudest voice, but Wernlund was a worthy opponent; he knew exactly when to make his poisonous remarks.

The quarrel ended just as suddenly as it had flared up. They both sat down in sullen silence, but they were watching one another and might easily launch a fresh attack.

Wiman used the lull in hostilities to return to how important it was for those of us living out on the islands to look out for strangers who appeared in the harbour or on boats around the archipelago. At that point his audience seemed to come to life. Many people wanted to speak or at least waved their hands to show that they were engaged in the debate. A young fisherman from the southern part of the archipelago stood up and said in a trembling voice (I’m not sure if he was nervous about addressing the gathering or flustered because of what he was going to say) that it was these strangers — foreigners, in fact — who were responsible for dragging Sweden further and further down. Perhaps one couldn’t blame these mysterious foreigners for eradicating the fish in the waters of the archipelago; that was down to ‘the bloody Polacks’ as he insisted more than once. Not people from the Baltic countries or Russia. No, the lack of perch these days was definitely down to the bloody Polacks. But the foreigners were clearly responsible for everything else: any form of crime, particularly the theft of outboard motors, break-ins and these arson attacks. Sweden had abandoned its borders. The Sweden that had once been ours had been handed over to the hordes who were now allowed to pour across its borders and help themselves.

I sat in my corner listening to this agitated young man, his freckled face glowing in the heat. He was obviously convinced that he was speaking the truth. At that moment his faith was greater than Wiman’s had ever been. He carried on ranting about foreigners and the politicians who allowed them to ravage our country. He cursed uncontrolled immigration; he applied his verbal branding iron to the forehead of everyone with evil intentions, be they beggars or pickpockets, who were running amok mainly in our cities, but whose presence was increasingly being felt in rural areas and now around our islands.

Then he burst into tears. It was such a shock that the whole room stopped breathing. He covered his face with his hands, his whole body shaking as he slumped back down on his chair. He had come alone; there was no wife or relative to comfort him.

I realised later that his tears were a call to arms. Islander after islander stood up in support of the young man, saying how right he was. Xenophobia, based on nothing more than myths, hearsay and what a friend of a friend had allegedly experienced, settled over the room like a fetid cloud. Few people took a different view. Wiman did his best, but he lacked the strength — and perhaps the conviction. The only one who really protested against the tone was Annika Wallmark, who had a small ceramics workshop just outside the town, but as she was a well-known radical, no one took any notice of her. Murmurs broke out as soon as she opened her mouth.

Veronika had sprained her foot falling off her horse during a trek in Iceland, and had come back limping. She said what we all knew: that we could only guess at the identity of the perpetrator. There was a significant risk that we would start looking for a scapegoat and spreading even more toxic rumours.

What did I say — the doctor with a daughter who was a pickpocket in Paris? I didn’t agree with the young fisherman, nor did my views match those of Annika Wallmark.

I said nothing. The meeting and all those voices turned into a labyrinth, simultaneously threatening and reassuring. We would keep an eye on each other’s houses, we would watch any unfamiliar vessels with eyes more used to looking out for seabirds during the hunting season. We had shifted every last scrap of suspicion from ourselves to those nameless individuals who had invaded our country.

I said nothing, but as Wiman began to draw the meeting to a close I experienced an unfamiliar, nasty taste in my mouth. I thought about Louise and her Ahmed; if he had turned up here and heard how he was regarded, as a representative of all those foreigners, I’m sure he would have fled. Would I have been able to defend him?

Something unfamiliar was hiding beneath the surface I knew so well, and it frightened me.

I walked back to the boat with Jansson. It was dark by now. We could hear muttered conversations here and there between those who had been at the meeting; the breath coming out of their mouths was like a series of smoke signals.

Down on the jetty there was a little shed where the association stored its flags and flagpoles. I stood in the doorway as Jansson changed out of his suit and into warm maritime clothing. A bell rang in my head as I watched him, but I couldn’t understand why.

Jansson carefully folded up his suit and put it in a plastic bag. I still couldn’t work out what the situation reminded me of.

Something was bothering me, but what?

We went out onto the jetty; some of the boats were already on their way, their navigation lights showing. Someone was locking the doors up at the centre. Jansson and I nodded to one another, and he disappeared down the hatch to fire up his engine. I switched on my torch, pulled the cord to start my engine and set off for home.

The late afternoon was very cold. The ice had started to form in the inlets and along the coast. If the temperature continued to fall, most of the archipelago would soon be surrounded by ice.

Back in the warmth of the caravan, I was finally able to shake off the unpleasant feeling from the meeting. I had seen and heard people I thought I knew, but who had turned out to hold opinions I would never have expected.

What had I expected? What had I thought about these people’s view of the world beyond the islands?

I was sitting there with a cup of coffee, still unable to answer my questions, when Lisa Modin called. We had spoken a few times since the morning of New Year’s Day, but when I had wanted to go and see her or suggested that she should come to me, she had said no. I had been careful not to try and persuade her; I was afraid she might withdraw completely.

‘How was the meeting?’ she asked.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I want to know.’

‘Lisa Modin or the journalist?’

‘We’re the same person.’

I had told her I was going to the meeting; after all, Kolbjörn Eriksson had called me when I was lying on her bed. But how could she know it was over and that I’d got home just a little while ago?

‘Who’ve you been talking to?’

‘I’m talking to you.’

‘How do you know the meeting is over?’

‘I guessed.’

I didn’t believe her. She must have spoken to someone; the only person I could think of was the woman no one listened to.

‘You’ve been talking to someone, and I know who it is. Annika Wallmark.’

‘I never reveal my sources.’

‘She pops up from behind her potter’s wheel, gossiping and talking about all kinds of stuff, and no one gives a damn.’

‘Why don’t you just tell me how the meeting went, instead of trying to get answers to impossible questions?’

‘It was well attended and we were all in agreement. We’re going to keep an eye on what’s happening to our neighbours’ houses. We islanders have added an eleventh commandment. We’re going to transform ourselves into vigilantes, so to speak. It sounds pathetic and it is pathetic, but it’s also true. It was Wiman, the priest, who said those words.’

‘Can you tell me any more?’

‘No.’

‘What was the atmosphere like?’

I had the feeling that she knew considerably more than she was letting on. Did she have other contacts? Jansson? Hardly. Nor the young fisherman who had started crying. Wiman, perhaps?

I realised I didn’t trust anyone who had been at the meeting. I tried to change the subject: when would she like to come and visit my caravan again?

‘Not yet.’

‘Maybe I’m too old and boring. It would be better if you just came straight out with it. Old doctors can usually cope with the truth.’

That was a lie. If anything distinguished us from other people, it was probably the fact that we were less well equipped to deal with the truth.

‘No,’ Lisa said. ‘You’re not too old. But both of us are solitary by nature.’

When the conversation was over, I went back to my cup of coffee. I still thought there was a chance that I might manage to break out of my loneliness through meeting Lisa Modin, in spite of everything.

I was aware of a growing sense of happiness. There was Lisa, there was Louise and there was the baby. I felt nothing yet for Ahmed and Muhammed, but perhaps it would come one day.

I lay down on the bed, with the radio quietly playing music that was supposed to be calming.

I had just dozed off when I woke with a start. At first I didn’t know why, but then I realised.

When Jansson called me after the New Year’s Eve party to tell me that the Valfridssons’ house was burning, he had said that he had been at home and had been woken up. And yet he had been wearing at least some of the same clothes from the party when I met him later, at the fire. I had reacted, but without giving the matter any further thought.

I lay in bed with the radio still playing. I recognised an old song: ‘Sail Along Silvery Moon’.

Thinking about Jansson’s clothes made me anxious, but I still didn’t know what it was that I had discovered.

It was like an unexpected reef in what I thought was a well-charted shipping lane.

Chapter 24

The cold never loosened its grip during the week following Twelfth Night. Ice began to form in the bays and inlets. I still didn’t need an axe to cut a hole when I went down for my morning dip, but a thick mist lay just above the surface of the water, which was growing blacker by the day. Soon the ripples would turn to ice.

Two days after the archipelago meeting I was sitting in the caravan playing patience when I felt unwell. It was like a nausea in my head rather than my stomach. I left the cards, put on my jacket and went outside. I didn’t know what was wrong. I had spoken to Louise the previous evening, and everything was fine. She promised to send me some new pictures of Agnes. When I asked if she and Ahmed needed any financial assistance, she just laughed and said she would let me know when poverty really moved into their apartment.

I had also spoken to Lisa Modin; she was in her car on the way to Stockholm, so it had been a short conversation. She was going to a school reunion, having accepted the invitation after much hesitation. She promised to call me when she got back.

I walked around the island. The frost sparkled like glass on the site of the fire and the blackened remains of my house. I went up to my grandfather’s bench, pulling on the gloves that were in my pocket.

We were approaching the depths of winter. Almost every year there is a point when the islands and bays close their doors. No one is allowed in or out. The shops are shut, the curtains drawn. Sometimes it happened as early as the end of November or the beginning of December, sometimes not until February.

In some years the archipelago didn’t close down at all. My grandfather used to say that if the sea didn’t ice over and the snow didn’t cover the skerries, then come summer the fishing would be poor. I had once asked Jansson if that was true, and he had firmly answered no. However, when I told him that was what my grandfather had said, he immediately changed his mind.

The nauseous feeling in my head had now turned into a vague, nagging pain. I decided to row across to my tent. Perhaps I had spent too long sitting at the table in the caravan and needed some exercise. I went down to the boathouse and pushed out the skiff. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I rowed with powerful strokes and immediately started sweating. After every fifteenth stroke I rested on the oars for a moment before carrying on.

When I was five years old, my grandfather built a little boat for me to play with. He used Masonite board, with a prow and stern made of pine and oars of alder. That boat had been my most cherished possession throughout my childhood.

Could I make something similar for Agnes? Probably not; it was far too big a job for an inexperienced carpenter. However, perhaps I could ask Kolbjörn Eriksson? I had heard that he was exceptionally talented in the skilled art of boatbuilding.

I reached the skerry and pulled the skiff ashore. The tent was securely anchored in the little hollow; I had come over to check on it every time we had had high winds, but it had stood firm.

I immediately saw that I had had visitors. The bank of stones forming a wall around the cooking area had grown, and someone had made a hook on which to hang a pot to boil water. I opened the tent flap and was struck by a smell I recognised: acetone. Could my mysterious visitor be a woman? Acetone made me think of nail polish, which Harriet had used. And hadn’t Louise been wearing nail polish when I saw her in Paris?

Of course I also realised that there was a more disturbing possibility: acetone is an important ingredient in the production of synthetic drugs, above all the narcotic known as Spice. Was a junkie seeking refuge in my tent from time to time?

I found this idea upsetting. All my life I have felt antipathy towards those who sully their lives with drugs. As a surgeon I often had to operate on someone who had taken something and been involved in an accident, or been stabbed in a dispute over those expensive commodities. As they lay there on the table, helpless under the knife, I frequently thought that I was doing what I was supposed to do, but that I really didn’t care what happened to them afterwards.

When I attempted to discuss this with my colleagues, none of them seemed to agree with me. I soon gave up, deciding that I was probably ill-suited to my profession when it came to my views on the value of certain individuals.

No doubt that was partly why the smell in the tent bothered me so much. I crawled outside, closed the flap, wondered whether I ought to take down the tent, then went on a tour of inspection around the skerry. In a crevice, neatly covered by torn-up moss, I found a small rubbish heap. I rooted through the empty milk cartons and bread wrappings and came across a scrap of black rubber. At first I thought it was a piece of a tyre from a bicycle, then I realised it was actually neoprene and therefore more likely to have come from a diving suit. However, this was an unsatisfactory conclusion; no one dived in the waters off these islands in the winter. Nor could it have drifted ashore on the southern side of the skerry where I found it; the wind out here is almost always offshore.

So it couldn’t be part of a diving suit. All of a sudden I knew: it came from a wetsuit worn by surfers to keep out the chill from the wind and water. My visitor was the black-clad windsurfer who had turned up in the autumn and on several occasions had headed out towards the open sea with his board and his sail.

I stood scanning the horizon, but there was nothing to see except the banks of cloud slowly drifting in from the Gulf of Finland.

I walked around the skerry again, but I couldn’t find any more clues.

I didn’t have time to worry about the identity of my visitor. As I set off for home I decided it was the moment to tackle the insurance company so that the construction of the new house could get under way. I didn’t have time to wait, either for my own sake or for the sake of my daughter and granddaughter.

From time to time I rested on the oars and gazed down into the dark water, hoping to spot another drift net floating silently along in the depths like a predator seeking its prey. But the sea was empty and black, with no hint of light.

Back on the island I pictured the new house slowly rising from the ruins. Even though all my photographs had been destroyed in the fire, I knew that the local history association had commissioned a photographer to document all the houses and boathouses in the archipelago during my grandparents’ day. The pictures were kept in the association’s archive collection. I should have thought of that when I was at the meeting; Wiman was the archivist and would have been able to help me.

I had been asked to join the association’s board more than once, but I had always refused, feeling slightly more guilty each time. Jansson, who had served on the board several times, had told me there were no more than four meetings a year; the work was not arduous. It was an important organisation that did a great deal to fight for those who lived in the archipelago.

However, I knew that Jansson wasn’t telling the whole truth. I had heard rumours, even without Jansson’s assistance; there were deep divisions between various members and groups. At times it seemed as if open warfare raged between different factions. I had never really understood the reasons behind this seething tension, but something told me it was essentially down to the fact that there was only one dung heap and far too many aspiring cockerels.

I called Wiman; I began by saying how well I thought he had handled the meeting, then I asked about photographs of my house. He promised to look through the archive to see what he could find.

‘Things weren’t kept in particularly good order in the past,’ he said. ‘The archive is in a state somewhere between chaos and a complete mess, created by the archivists with the apparent aim of making it impossible to find what you’re looking for.’

He was in danger of tipping over into his preacher’s voice, so I quickly ended the call.

I spent the next few hours playing poker with myself. It’s the saddest expression of loneliness I know. I never feel more overwhelmed by weariness and unhappiness than when I’m trying to win money off myself. There is no deeper form of isolation.

I sat there for a long time that evening making notes about the new house; I hoped to start building in the early spring. There was no need to lay new foundations, so it was just a matter of removing the burned-out ruins. I intended to ask both Jansson and Kolbjörn Eriksson for advice; I would ignore whatever Jansson said, but I didn’t want to incur the sullenness and ill will that would follow if I didn’t consult him. Kolbjörn was the one I trusted.

That night I dreamed of caves. I was wandering around in a darkness that became so heavy I could hardly breathe. At that point I woke up. There were mice scampering around on the roof of the caravan. I listened for the wind, but all was calm.

For a brief moment I thought I might never wake up if I went back to sleep. Death was suddenly very close.

But I did fall asleep, right in the middle of that thought, surrounded by mice seeking shelter from the cold.

The following day I called the insurance company. I had expected a long-drawn-out infuriating duel between myself and uncooperative bureaucrats, but once I got through to Jonas Andersson, everything was very straightforward. A little too straightforward, perhaps. Were there invisible pitfalls ahead, to be revealed only gradually? However, I chose to believe what Andersson said. The new house would be built, starting in the spring. If necessary he could send me a list of suitable building firms in the area, recommended by the insurance company.

After lunch I had just decided to call Kolbjörn when I heard Jansson’s boat approaching. I went down to the jetty to meet him. Sometimes I thought I could tell from the sound of the engine what mood Jansson was in and what he wanted from me. It was all in my mind, of course, but the idea amused me.

He moored by the jetty but didn’t switch off the engine, which meant he was intending to stay for only a short time. There was therefore no danger that he would ask me to examine him because of some new imaginary ailment.

He climbed onto the jetty; we shook hands and then he reached inside his thick jacket and handed me a letter.

‘You’ve retired,’ I said. ‘You don’t deliver the post any more.’

‘Wiman asked me to bring you this.’

I took the envelope, which wasn’t sealed. It contained old black and white photographs of my grandparents’ house. I merely glanced inside; I didn’t want to reveal the contents to Jansson. However, as I slipped the envelope into my pocket I realised he knew exactly what was in there; he had already opened it, of course. I felt an almost irresistible urge to push him into the cold water. Perhaps he noticed something because he took a step back. I smiled.

‘Could you tell your successor that from now on I would like my post delivered again, please?’

‘You’ve changed your mind?’

‘Yes, just now. Thank you for bringing the photographs.’

‘What photographs?’

I thought I ought to come straight out with it, put into words what everyone in the archipelago knew: that during his long years as a postman Jansson had read final demands, letters of condolence, threatening letters, friendly letters, letters that didn’t say much at all. He had read the lot. And now he stood here pretending he didn’t know what was in the envelope from Wiman.

‘I’d like you to leave now,’ I said in a pleasant tone of voice. ‘I have a lot to do today. Can I pay you for the delivery?’

He shook his head and clambered down into the boat, but remained standing with one hand on the bollard.

‘Could it have been Oslovski?’ he asked.

I didn’t understand the question.

‘Who burned down the houses.’

‘Why the hell would she have done that?’

‘Nobody knew anything about her. She was a foreigner. God knows what a person with one eye is capable of.’

I was astounded by his grotesque logic. What could the fact that Oslovski had one eye possibly have to do with the arson attacks? I usually let Jansson’s stupid comments go, like water off a duck’s back, but not this time.

‘Of all the possible pyromaniacs, Oslovski is the least likely. Besides which she’s dead.’

Jansson was offended. He let go of the bollard and cast off the mooring rope. For once we didn’t wave to one another as he reversed away from the jetty.

I went back to the site of the fire. A couple of crows pecking among the sooty ruins rose into the air and flapped away. I would bury Giaconelli’s buckle when the foundations were tidied up, ready for the new house; it would be a token, a memorial to the house that had once stood there — but also a memorial to the man who had been a master shoemaker.

I happened to be listening to the radio once when a world-famous soprano who had appeared on stage in the biggest theatres all over the world was being interviewed. She was asked what the most important thing was for an opera singer.

‘Good shoes,’ she had replied without hesitation.

I understood what she meant. Good shoes in which to walk, stand and work are every bit as important for a fisherman as for a surgeon.

Right now I longed for the wellington boots I had ordered months ago, which still hadn’t arrived.

I took out my phone and called the chandlery. Eventually fru Nordin answered; I wondered if I had woken her. Perhaps she had made herself a bed in the storeroom for the time of year when customers were few and the bell over the door rarely pinged? I suspected she was one of those people in the archipelago who went into hibernation when winter began to press down on the earth.

My wellington boots still hadn’t arrived.

I sat down at the table in the caravan with Wiman’s photographs spread out in front of me. The oldest was from around 1900. The porch hadn’t yet been built. My grandfather was standing by the front door with my grandmother on a stool next to him. They were still young. My grandfather had a moustache; the bushy beard was still far in the future. On the back of the picture was a note stating that it was probably taken by Robert Sjögren, who travelled around the islands at the turn of the century.

I went through the pictures one by one. Most were taken from the front; the back of the house didn’t appear anywhere.

In one of the photographs, dated ‘Summer 1946’ by an unknown hand, the white garden furniture had appeared. The porch had been added over twenty years earlier. My grandparents were sitting on the ribbed wooden chairs with cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits. In the half-shadows, as if he were slightly shy of the unknown photographer, sat a man named on the back as Adolf Sundberg.

I suddenly remembered him; he came walking towards me as a distant memory, growing clearer as he got closer. Adolf Sundberg lived to the age of a hundred and four. He was born in 1899, and even as a young man he had said that he intended to live during three centuries. Which he did — he passed away in 2003.

He often visited my grandparents. He was a good raconteur, so I would often hang around as he sat on one of those white chairs drinking coffee.

He once told a story about his family that my grandparents discussed for ages afterwards. Was it true or not? I can’t have been more than ten years old at the time, but that was when I really understood the huge, almost immeasurable distance between a lie and the truth, between a tall tale and an account of something that had actually happened, something no one need ever doubt.

Adolf Sundberg had arrived in the archipelago as a stranger. His family originated inland, in the town of Alingsås far away in Västergötland, on the plains stretching down towards the sea. He had served on board two-masted wooden ships carrying cargo around the inner archipelago, but after a quarrel with a captain about a broken compass, he had signed on with Blåsut, which was lying idle in Västervik, before it set sail again, travelling between Gävle and Copenhagen. After a few years he came ashore, married a girl from Kalmar and took over the farm her uncle had owned. That was how Adolf Sundberg from Västergötland came to the islands. At a haymaking party where a great deal of schnapps had been consumed he told the story that was a discussion topic for ever afterwards, when people met and wondered how reliable Adolf Sundberg actually was.

In Alingsås, he said, his grandparents had owned a pharmacy. One of the most popular products back in the 1840s was leeches. His grandfather had come up with the brilliant idea of breeding leeches in an old fish pond in the municipal park, instead of the ornamental carp that had once occupied the muddy, evil-smelling water. Every time the supply of leeches dropped and the glass jars in which they were kept began to look empty, Adolf’s grandmother knew what was coming. There was no point in protesting, even though she found the whole process utterly humiliating. They would set off from home at first light, Grandfather carrying a long pole and Grandmother dressed in a simple shift, which she concealed beneath a capacious coat. She probably put up a bit of a fight when they reached the pond, but to no avail. She stripped naked; her body was fat and shapeless. She waded out into the pond until the water covered her breasts. Grandfather held out the pole so that she would have something to grab; if she fell over she would drown, because she couldn’t swim and Grandfather would never be able to drag her out. Then she stood there as the eager leeches sank their teeth into her ample body. When she had had enough, she made her way back to dry land with the black leeches firmly attached, mainly to her backside. When Grandfather sprinkled salt on them they let go and dropped into the glass jars.

This exercise was repeated at regular intervals. After a while everyone in Alingsås knew about the strange pantomime played out early in the mornings during the warmer months. Curious onlookers hid behind bushes and in the undergrowth, gleefully watching as the naked matron ploughed through the water before complaining as the leeches fastened themselves to her flesh.

This was Adolf Sundberg’s story. Everyone believed it deep down but felt obliged to express their doubts with regard to its veracity. You couldn’t just send a naked old woman into a fish pond, using her body as bait to catch leeches. It wasn’t possible. Admittedly some men mistreated their wives, but this was beyond the bounds of decency.

I spent a long time gazing at the picture of Adolf Sundberg with his cup of coffee. From far away I heard the voices coming back to me: my grandfather’s slow, almost hesitant way of formulating a sentence, my grandmother, who didn’t say much but spoke with the utmost precision, using beautiful similes taken from a seemingly inexhaustible store. And then Adolf Sundberg, with his domed hat, his bushy beard and his shiny waistcoat; over the years the stains and grease marks had combined to form a patina that was never washed away.

They would always sit there on those white chairs, even though they were all dead and the chairs had been lost in the devastation of the fire.

The last black and white photograph had been taken on my grandfather’s seventy-fifth birthday, 19 June 1957. The photographer, Tage Palmblad, had gathered a large group of people around the porch and the garden furniture, with my grandfather right at the front, my grandmother by his side. When I studied the picture more closely I discovered to my surprise that I was there too, squeezed in between two of my grandmother’s cousins, who were considerably more interested in how they appeared than in giving me enough room.

I was thirteen years old when that picture was taken: my hair bleached chalk-white by the sun, short trousers, a striped top, sandals, skinny body, unsure of myself in front of all those people.

I thought I would invite everyone I had got to know in the archipelago to a house-warming party when my new home had risen from the ruins. I would sit right at the front, with Louise and her family beside me.

I called Wiman to thank him for his speedy response to my request.

‘There might be more pictures,’ he said. ‘But as I explained, the archive is in a real mess, and I haven’t had time to sort it out yet.’

‘These are fine — more than enough for those who are going to build my new house.’

‘Did you know that the Österströms’ place on Skarsholmen was built at the same time?’ Wiman said. ‘If I’ve understood correctly, they used the same builder.’

So whoever I chose could use the Österströms’ house as a detailed model.

‘It hadn’t occurred to me, but of course that’s very important because there are no drawings. In the old days the master builders and their clients were their own architects.’

After the conversation with Wiman I went up to my grandfather’s bench with my binoculars so that I could check on my tent, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.

Twilight was beginning to fall. I shivered. I had almost reached the caravan when I heard my phone ringing on the table. I stumbled on a root and banged my chin on the edge of the caravan. When I reached up to check the damage, my hand came away covered in blood. I staggered inside and grabbed my phone as it stopped ringing. I wiped my bloody face with a tea towel; I could feel with the tip of my tongue that I had lost a tooth from my lower jaw. I picked up the torch and went back outside to see if I could find it in the grass.

I couldn’t find the tooth. Had I swallowed it without noticing? I went back inside, put some ice cubes in a plastic bag and held it against my lips. It took a long time for the bleeding to stop. I looked at my mouth in the shaving mirror; the tooth had broken off cleanly, and the root was lost in congealed blood. When I pressed the gum with my finger, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain. I would have to go and see the dentist tomorrow; it was too late now. I could probably find an emergency dentist in town, but I didn’t want to set off at this hour.

I took some strong painkillers then checked to see who had called. It was Louise. I rang her back, but the number was busy. I tried again; still busy. I lay down on the bed clutching my mobile. The thought of having to spend time going to the dentist annoyed me. Or perhaps I was just tired. Growing older meant losing a little bit of energy every single day. And one day it would be completely gone.

I dropped off to sleep, only to be woken by Louise on the phone. I didn’t ask how she was, or Agnes, or the family; I simply launched into an account of my bleeding mouth and my broken tooth. However, she interrupted me.

‘Agnes is sick.’

Her voice was almost breaking. I sat up straight and clamped my jaws together, which was a painful mistake.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘They don’t know.’

‘What are her symptoms?’

‘She screams all the time. She’s in pain.’

‘In her tummy?’

‘Her head.’

‘Her head?’

‘Oh God, I don’t know. No one knows.’

Her fear became mine. I had no doubt that whatever was wrong, Louise’s reaction was definitely not unwarranted. I racked my brains for an answer. I had never specialised in paediatrics, nor had I been involved in anything other than routine surgical procedures on children. The fact that it was something to do with the head was worrying. A baby’s heart and brain are fragile.

I tried to calm both Louise and myself. I asked her to tell me what had happened; could she tell me any more about Agnes’s symptoms? What exactly had the doctors said?

Apparently the whole thing had been very fast. That morning Agnes had suddenly started screaming. Nothing had helped, not even an attempt at breastfeeding. Louise had taken her to the hospital while Ahmed stayed at home with Muhammed. In the children’s emergency unit they had immediately admitted her for observation and tests. Louise was calling from the hospital; I wrote down the name on the back of a packet of crispbread.

Her explanation didn’t enable me to reach any conclusion about what might be wrong with the child. It was very unusual, but not unknown, for babies to suffer a brain haemorrhage. On the other hand encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, sometimes affected small children and could be life-threatening. Nor could a tumour be ruled out. The French doctors were trying to establish a definite diagnosis at this very moment.

I asked if Agnes had a temperature. She didn’t, but the pain in her head was still there. Louise was waiting for her to undergo a brain scan.

I asked if she wanted me to come. She said no, but I could tell from her voice that she could easily change her mind.

She didn’t want to stay on the phone because she was waiting for Ahmed to call. She promised to let me know as soon as she had any news.

‘If nothing happens, call me anyway,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep the phone with me all the time, and it’s fully charged.’

Clutching the phone as tightly as if it were a rosary, it seemed to me that death was suddenly present in the caravan. I didn’t want him here. I called Lisa. I didn’t ask where she was or if I was disturbing her, I simply told her what had happened.

‘That sounds terrible,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come over?’

‘No, but thank you for asking.’

‘Are you really going to sit there in the caravan all by yourself?’

I didn’t reply. More than anything I wanted to stagger down to the boat, hope the engine started and head for the mainland.

‘Perhaps you could come here?’

‘There isn’t room for the two of us and so much worry in your caravan.’

I asked if I could reach her during the evening, and she said yes.

‘What are you doing right now?’ I asked.

‘I’m praying that there isn’t anything seriously wrong with your grandchild.’

‘That’s what you’re thinking. What are you doing?’

‘I’m standing here holding my gloves and a bag of groceries. I’m on my way home.’

Silence drifted by. A gust of wind shook the caravan.

‘Thank you,’ I said and ended the call.

I went out into the cold air and took a deep breath. It was already dark. I went down to the bench on the jetty. My phone rang again; it was Louise. Agnes was about to undergo an MRI scan; the doctors still hadn’t reached a firm diagnosis, but I could tell from her voice that she was more scared than the first time she called. I don’t think I was able to hide my own panic at the thought of what must not happen.

It was a brief conversation; Agnes was being taken away on a trolley, and someone told Louise to switch off her phone.

I shivered and went back to the caravan. Proximity to death turns time into an overstretched elastic band, making us constantly afraid that it will break. The information about Agnes was too vague; I thought I ought to speak to one of her doctors, but my French wasn’t good enough. I knew that fear was drilling deep holes in Louise, and there was nothing I could do to help her.

I had a sleepless night; Louise called at first light to tell me that Agnes had a mild form of meningitis. She would have to stay in the hospital for a week or so, then hopefully everything would be fine.

We both started crying; we were exhausted. At least now we could rest.

I was woken by the sound of an engine at some point during the morning. My jaw was aching where my tooth had broken off. I drank a scoop of water out of the container on the draining board. I knew Jansson was on his way; no other engine sounds like his.

I was sitting on the bench by the time he rounded the headland. He hove to, leaving the engine running. I relaxed; he wasn’t intending to stay long this time either. He looped the mooring rope around the bollard and clambered ashore. We shook hands and discussed the essentials: the weather, wind direction, the banks of cloud over to the east, the temperature, the ice and the fact that the Enberg family, who farmed sheep and fish, had a ten-year-old daughter who played the double bass; she had just been given a grant of three thousand kronor by the Lions.

I waited impatiently for Jansson to tell me why he had come. I didn’t want to run the risk of him staying any longer than necessary, so I didn’t mention Louise’s calls or my lack of sleep.

‘I’m going to visit my brother,’ he said at last, when there was nothing more to say about the weather.

‘You’ve got a brother? I’ve never heard you mention him.’

‘We don’t have much contact with each other. He’s a few years younger than me, and he left long before you moved here.’

‘But you’ve never even told me that you’ve got a brother!’

‘Of course I have.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Huddinge.’

‘Stockholm...and that’s where you’re going?’

‘I’m setting off first thing tomorrow morning, and I’ll be away until Sunday.’

I did a quick calculation: he would be away for three days.

Jansson got to his feet. ‘It’s many years since I was in Stockholm,’ he said as he unhooked the mooring rope. ‘Perhaps it’s time to see how the capital city is getting on.’

‘Have a good trip, and say hello to your brother from me. What’s his name?’

‘Albin.’

We waved to each other as he reversed away from the jetty. I found it very strange that Jansson had never mentioned his brother in all the years I had known him. Or had I forgotten?

I managed to get hold of a dentist who was willing to see me. The trip and the treatment took three hours; by the time I got back the pain had gone.

The following day I woke early; I had slept for many hours. Louise rang at eleven o’clock that night and told me that the doctors now had Agnes’s illness under control. She promised to call me the next day. That night I went to bed with a feeling of relief that I didn’t recognise from any other time in my life.

It was cold and still when I woke up. As I sat at the table with a cup of coffee, I was struck by a thought that I immediately pushed aside. But it came back.

I would go over to Stångskär and visit Jansson’s house. He had once told me that he kept a spare key under a stone in the garden.

I couldn’t explain why I needed to go there; perhaps it was something to do with the unease I had felt when the Valfridssons’ house burned down?

At ten o’clock in the morning I left the island and set my course for Stångskär. From time to time the boat sliced through thin shards of floating ice. Another week of this cold, and the ice would be here to stay.

Jansson’s boathouse and his old slipway lay in a south-facing inlet, where he and his boats were sheltered from the worst of the storms coming in from the north and west. I switched off the engine and drifted towards the jetty. His boat wasn’t there; he really had gone to see his brother. I climbed out and called his name a few times just to make sure he really wasn’t around. I walked up to his two-storey house, which was one of the oldest in the archipelago. I knocked on the door but no one answered. The key was well hidden, and it took me a while to find it. As I inserted it in the lock I wondered once again why I was making this secret visit. I thought about Oslovski’s house and about the deserted house deep in the forest. And now here I was at Jansson’s red-painted cottage with its sparkling windows and freshly painted decorative carving above the porch.

I went inside. Jansson kept the place very clean. The floors were spotless; everything in the kitchen shone. In that way he reminded me of Oslovski. I went upstairs and into what must be his room. The bed was neatly made, slippers side by side, no clothes lying around. The other rooms were empty because he never had visitors. The beds were made up, but for what reason? Could they be an expression of his loneliness, his longing?

I went back downstairs. In the living room he had draped a sheet over the television. The house didn’t suit Jansson at all. He should live in completely different conditions.

Finally I went into the laundry room beyond the kitchen. Again, everything was in perfect order. The pale January sun shone in through the window. Clean clothes were arranged on hangers, underwear folded in baskets. I suddenly remembered Jansson bringing me underpants after my house had burned down.

I was just about to leave when I noticed the laundry basket, which contained items that had not yet been washed. I saw the shirt and trousers Jansson had been wearing at my New Year’s Eve party and when I saw him later at the fire.

I couldn’t help picking them up. They told me nothing that I didn’t already know. I was just about to put them back when I noticed another shirt underneath. This one had black sooty marks on the lower part of the sleeves. I lifted it to my nose; it stank of petrol.

My head was spinning. I felt as if I could see everything with perfect clarity.

The night when my house burned down, a dazzling light had flared up.

That’s how it must have happened.

When I went back to the boat a little while later, I was afraid.

I hoped I hadn’t left any traces behind.

Chapter 25

I thought about the Japanese garden my daughter had described to me.

The Ocean of Emptiness.

That’s what it felt like as I headed home from Jansson’s island. It was as if Stångskär had metamorphosed into a fortress where Jansson had hidden himself with all his secrets. I now knew what I had understood, but I didn’t understand what it was that I knew. Jansson had become transparent, yet at the same time he was far, far away. If I stretched out my hand, I would never be able to reach him.

I switched off the engine and tried to think, but my head was all over the place.

I continued my journey home; as I reached the bay I saw someone moving around outside my tent on the skerry. I turned into a narrow inlet that is navigable only in a small boat like mine. This enabled me to approach the skerry from the side where a high rock face made it impossible for anyone to see me from the tent. Like a hunter I was also careful to stay downwind of my prey. I killed the engine and used the oars instead. Rowing this boat was hard work, even when I flipped up the engine.

My head was full of Jansson, but there was still a little bit of room left to find out who was using my tent and my skerry.

I hove to next to the steep cliff, where a number of depressions in the rock made it possible to scramble ashore. I remembered carving my name at the water’s edge in this very spot when I was a teenager, but there was no trace left now. I crawled across the rock like a clumsy lizard to see who was outside my tent, but there was no one in sight. Whoever it was had gone inside and zipped up the flap. Two separate strands of distaste and anxiety were fighting for space inside my mind: Jansson’s insanity and a concern that the person in the tent would turn out to be violent.

The surfboard and sail lay where I usually left my boat, looking like an insect that had been washed ashore.

I took a step away from the tent and accidentally kicked a pile of stones. Before I had time to scurry back to the boat, the tent flap opened.

The boy was fair-haired and couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old. He was wearing a black neoprene suit and I immediately noticed a tear on one shoulder, which he had made a reasonable job of repairing with masking tape. His eyes were dark; I couldn’t tell whether he was afraid or simply watchful. There was something about his hair that bothered me: it was too blond, too white. It looked as if it had been dyed by someone who didn’t really know what they were doing. But why had he changed the colour of his hair? In order to become someone else or because of an impatient desire to make himself different?

I signalled to him to come out; for some reason I didn’t think he spoke Swedish. He crawled out and sat down; I sat down too. My anxiety was gradually giving way to a growing curiosity.

‘I haven’t taken anything,’ he said suddenly. ‘I have only rested.’

He spoke Swedish with a slight accent; perhaps he came from the north?

I was about to ask him his name when he leaped to his feet and ran towards his surfboard. It happened so fast that I only just had time to get up. He pushed the board out into the water and jumped onto it. He was extremely agile, moving like a sure-footed animal with a gleaming black coat. There was enough wind to fill his sail.

I was overcome with a strange mixture of fury and impotence. I yelled after him, ‘Hey! Hey you!’

With hindsight I can’t think of a more pointless thing to shout. He didn’t turn around, of course. I watched him disappear around the southern headland.

Soon the ice would form, and he would no longer be able to windsurf.

The tent flap was fluttering in the breeze. I crouched down and drew it back. There wasn’t much inside, just an empty plastic bottle, several screwed-up pieces of paper and the remains of a packet of biscuits. I crawled in and smoothed out the sheets of paper. They looked as if they had been torn off a squared pad. On some of them he had played noughts and crosses with himself. Several of the games were unfinished, with no winner.

There was some writing on one of the pages. His handwriting was ornate, almost old-fashioned. It took me a little while to work out what it said.

The same text was repeated twice, like a refrain:

I could read the words but found it difficult to understand what he meant. Was it a poem or a message he had decided not to send to an unknown recipient? Was it for me, the man who had put up the tent and provided him with a refuge?

I tucked the piece of paper in my pocket and left the tent. With some difficulty I managed to scramble up the steep cliff to the top, where I could look out across the bay.

There was no sign of him. He could be hiding among the islets in the small archipelago known as Hällarna, which is unnamed on maritime charts.

A little further out lay Satansgrundet, or the Devil’s Reef, which was shaped like a chopped-off pillar sticking straight up out of the sea. He could hide there if that was what he wanted.

I stayed at the top of the cliff until I started shivering. Back at the tent I took a pen out of my pocket and wrote a note on the reverse of one of the unfinished games of noughts and crosses.

Nice poem. You’re welcome to use the tent, but naturally I’m curious about who you are.

I thought for a moment, then signed it: Fredrik. I added my phone number, then I placed the piece of paper in the middle of the groundsheet, zipped up the flap and set off for home.

I wondered what the boy’s name might be. He was no Erik or Anders — then again perhaps that’s exactly what he was?

It occurred to me that the only person I knew who would have done the same thing was my daughter. In a way he was her brother. He was a visitor from a new age that I would only have time to brush up against.

I hoped he would get in touch.

I didn’t start the engine, I simply allowed the boat to drift towards my island. Dusk was beginning to fall. The ice would come late this year.

A few weeks of intense cold followed. The ice reached further and further out to sea. I lay in the caravan listening to the movement of the sea and the ice. If I placed my hand on the wall, it soon felt chilled to the bone. However much I turned up the heating, there was a constant battle between the bitter cold outside and the heat inside.

Needless to say I spent a great deal of time thinking about Jansson and the discovery I had made at his house on Stångskär. I have never experienced so many confused and contradictory emotions, not even when I botched the operation that destroyed my life as a doctor. I brooded about him during the day and dreamed about him at night. On several occasions I sat there clutching my phone, ready to call the police, but I just couldn’t do it. The idea that Jansson could have let me burn to death in my house was too improbable, too appalling.

I think I was most afraid of the day Jansson would return from his mysterious trip. How would I confront him? He had said he would be away for three days, but several weeks had passed.

There were days when I walked around in the cold stillness of feeling as if I were confined in a cage. I forced myself to carry on taking a dip each morning, but not even the icy water could make me think more clearly. In my head Jansson had been transformed from a friendly seafaring postman into something that could only be described as a monster.

I spoke to Louise every day; Agnes was now fully recovered. I didn’t ask any questions about how they lived their life or where they got their money from. I found it difficult to imagine Louise going out and earning her money as a pickpocket with a baby at home, but I had no way of knowing, and perhaps I didn’t want to know.

It was after one of these conversations with Louise that I remembered an occasion when my father had come staggering home much too early. He was drunk, his hair a mess, and he was furious. The rage was etched on his face, every muscle seemingly set in the throes of an agonising cramp. I could also see the despair in his eyes. I must have been about ten years old at the time. My mother pushed the door to, leaving it open just a fraction. Looking back, I realise she did this so that I would be able to follow what was said, and perhaps so that I would learn how a person could be utterly crushed yet still be open to solace and have the ability to overcome his humiliation.

I couldn’t see much, but I heard every word.

It was the same old story: my father had fallen out with the maître d’ and been fired on the spot. He had thrown his cloth on the floor and simply walked out. The maître d’ had followed him into the street, and they had stood there yelling at one another until there were no words left. It had been raining. They had stood there like two dripping-wet dogs.

My father was often fired under dramatic circumstances. It was by no means unusual to find him sitting at the kitchen table moaning while my mother slowly persuaded him to regain his faith in humanity, and above all in himself. But on this particular evening he said something quite different from the standard litany of complaints about the indignities to which he was constantly subjected.

Earlier in the day, while the restaurant was quiet, he had apparently flicked through a magazine left behind by a customer. He had read about a Chinese emperor who, long long ago, had ordered that a large drum be placed by the main entrance to his palace. Anyone who came along could stop, strike several powerful blows, then pass on their complaint to a servant, who would immediately convey it to the emperor. Everyone had the opportunity to put forward a grievance without the risk of incurring imperial rage.

‘These drums don’t exist anywhere,’ my father fumed. ‘There isn’t a single place where we can wield our drumsticks to make sure that someone listens to all the injustices we have to suffer.’

Why did I think of my father and the emperor’s drum after I had spoken to Louise? There was no connection. A waiter and a pickpocket had nothing in common. The only thing I could come up with was that both of them wanted to live in a different, fairer world where justice applied to everyone.

I jotted down a few words on a scrap of paper.

The emperor’s drum. My father’s tears at the kitchen table. What’s the connection?

The following day when I was in the caravan I heard Jansson’s boat approaching. My heart started racing. I opened the door and listened. There was no doubt: it was definitely Jansson.

He seemed exactly the same as usual. The way he raised his right arm slowly, a little stiffly, before he waved with fingers outspread. He didn’t stop waving until I had returned the gesture. I couldn’t believe he had discovered my secret visit to Stångskär; if he had, he was hiding it very well.

He had run the mooring rope from the prow to the roof of the wheelhouse, and when he reached the jetty he flung it to me. I caught it and looped it around the nearest bollard.

Jansson clambered ashore.

‘My brother was fine,’ he said, perching at the end of the bench. ‘But the trip was a bit longer than I’d planned.’

He took off his left boot and shook out a fragment of a pine cone, then put it on again.

I stood looking at this man, whom I had known for so many years. I realised now that I had known only a small part of a complex, splintered individual. I had never had any suspicion that a terrifying figure was hidden behind the ordinary person who had delivered the post to the island for so long.

Did he himself know who he was? Do any of us really know who we are?

I had no answer. The only thing I was clinging to at the moment was the incomprehensible.

A grey-haired postman who was also a ruthless arsonist.

If the bright light hadn’t woken me, I would have burned to death. The widow Westerfeldt could also have been the victim of the terrifying power of fire. And Jansson had had no way of knowing whether the Valfridssons were out on their island or not.

Standing there in front of the man on the bench, I felt utterly helpless.

‘You don’t usually come over for no reason,’ I said.

‘I just wanted to tell you that my brother is fine, but living in a big city seems like an insecure kind of existence to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How can you keep tabs on yourself when other people are pushing and shoving and bumping into you all the time?’

I was struck by the thought that Jansson might not even have a brother. Could that be as much of a lie as everything else? The man sitting there on the bench had set fire to my house, then invited me to stay with him when my house no longer existed. He had even brought a wellington boot to replace the one I had lost in the fire. He had celebrated New Year’s Eve with me; he had said he was going home to bed, but instead he had set fire to another house. And in between these two incidents he had also burned down the widow Westerfeldt’s home.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to face up to him.

‘Why?’ I said.

Jansson looked at me.

‘Sorry, did you say something to me?’

‘There’s no one else here.’

‘I didn’t quite hear what you said.’

‘Yes, you did.’

Jansson didn’t seem to have any idea that I knew. How could he be so sure that no one had found any evidence? Wasn’t he even on his guard?

‘Coffee would be nice,’ he said abruptly.

During all the years he had been coming to the island, he had never asked for coffee. I wondered if it meant anything. Should I be afraid? If he could burn down a house in which someone lay sleeping, he could whip out a hammer and smash my skull.

We went up to the caravan side by side, Jansson with his usual slightly rolling gait. He sat on the bed while I made coffee. He asked after Louise and Agnes, he talked about Lisa Modin, but when he started enquiring about the plans for the new house, I felt like throwing the boiling water over his face and hands.

I didn’t do it, but I did stop making the coffee.

‘I want you to leave,’ I said. ‘I want you to leave and never show your face here again.’

Jansson looked startled.

‘What do you mean? I don’t understand what you mean.’

I had opened the door, but he was still sitting on the bed as if he really didn’t understand.

Of course he did. He might not have noticed that I had been in his house while he was away visiting someone who might possibly be his brother, but he certainly realised that I knew he was responsible for the arson attacks.

‘You’ve opened the door,’ he said. ‘But I still don’t understand what you want. Are you throwing me out?’

I closed the door. Now I wanted to prevent him from leaving.

Why had he burned down my house when I was lying there fast asleep? Was it me or the house he wanted to destroy? Or was it something else?

‘I know it was you,’ I said. ‘I know, and I can give the police enough information to warrant an investigation, which will see you charged and convicted. I have proof — clothes in your laundry basket, stinking of petrol.

‘I wonder if, deep down, you wanted me to find out the truth. Wasn’t that why you came here to tell me you were going to visit your brother? Who may or may not exist. You hoped I would go over to your island. If you’d really wanted to hide the evidence, you would have washed everything to do with the fires. You’re like one of those criminals who writes letters to the police to give them clues. But who are you?

‘Have you always been waiting for the moment when you can start setting fire to houses, and perhaps killing people at the same time? Has it always been your dream? Is that what you thought about as you travelled around with your letters and magazines and pension payment slips? Did you think that one day you would turn into a completely different person — the good, kind postman who becomes evil?’

Jansson didn’t say a word.

‘That shirt in your laundry basket might not be enough to convict you,’ I went on. ‘But I’m sure the police will find further proof. Unless of course you decide to confess. They’ll lock you up for years. Given your age, you’ll probably die in prison. Or maybe they’ll decide you’re insane, in which case they’ll put you away indefinitely in a mental institution, along with other crazy people. Mind you, going to prison isn’t the worst thing; you could probably cope with that. But can you live with the fact that people out here in the archipelago will hate you? That the only memory you will leave behind is the image of a wicked man who stopped delivering the post and started burning down the beautiful houses on these islands?’

Jansson was no longer pretending that he didn’t understand. He was slumped on the bed, his hands resting heavily on his knees, his head drooping. ‘Why?’ I yelled. ‘Why did you call me with a handkerchief over your mouth and warn me about the police?’

He didn’t respond. He was motionless, as if he had turned to stone, fixed in a denial that couldn’t be smashed to pieces with a hammer.

I stood by the door feeling every bit as helpless as I presumed Jansson himself was feeling.

‘Why?’ I said again. ‘Why did you want to kill me?’

He straightened up and looked at me with nothing but surprise.

‘I didn’t want to kill you. Why would you say such a thing?’

‘I was asleep. I could have burned to death.’

‘I would have helped you out. If you hadn’t woken up.’

‘So you stood there watching the fire take hold?’

‘I was waiting for you to wake up.’

I tried to imagine the scene: I had come rushing out of the raging inferno wearing mismatched wellington boots, and Jansson had been standing there in the shadows. Only then did he leave, returning before long to help put out the fire.

He was still looking at me, but he was gazing beyond me, far into the distance, at horizons known only to him. I would never find out why he had done what he had done. There were no answers, least of all in his own head. A light had gone out within him; a darkness had come creeping in, a darkness that he wanted to illuminate from the outside, with torches in the form of burning houses.

Jansson got to his feet; I stepped aside. I watched him walk slowly down to the jetty. For the first time ever I saw him move without purpose.

The boat reversed away from the jetty. I went up to my grandfather’s bench. It was too cold to sit down; I simply stood there looking out to sea as the ice floes drifted by. Nothing was in a hurry any more.

I wondered what to do. I ought to call Alexandersson and inform the coastguard, of course, but I couldn’t do it. I had to understand this myself before I could expect anyone else to do so. I couldn’t just ring up and announce that Jansson was the guilty party; no one would believe me.

I imagined myself sitting in the caravan with Alexandersson, telling my story. He would simply stare at me, then he would ask if I could really prove what I was alleging. A shirt that smelled of petrol was not enough.

The story in my head just wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. The fact that to me it all seemed to fit together wouldn’t help at all.

I knew that Alexandersson would ask why Jansson had set fire to our homes.

Why?

My response had to be that I didn’t know. Only Jansson himself could answer that question.

What would happen if he was arrested? There would be an initial sense of relief throughout the community, but this would soon be followed by a feeling of angst because one of the archipelago’s most trusted inhabitants had turned out to be the perpetrator.

If Jansson was the arsonist, who could we trust in future? Something would come to an end out here on the islands, perhaps the last thing that was holding us together. Trust, a willingness to provide support for anyone who needed it — and not just by carrying each other’s coffins when the time came.

In my mind I could see everyone huddled together on their jetties or in the harbour. Our impotent attempts to understand. No doubt more than one person would angrily say that we should go and burn down Jansson’s house on Stångskär, but of course no one would be prepared to do it.

I thought about Jansson with a mixture of rage and astonishment. His loneliness had been so much greater than mine after all.

Time passed. I still didn’t say anything. No one seemed to suspect Jansson. According to what I heard, the police had no leads; the investigation into the arson attacks was going nowhere.

I considered sending an anonymous letter to the police, accusing Jansson. I didn’t do it, though; I didn’t quite trust my own judgement, mainly because deep down I still couldn’t believe that Jansson was a completely different person from the man we had all thought he was.

I wondered if he was ill. Could he have developed a tumour that had damaged part of his brain and distorted his thought processes? I dreamed more than once that he had set fire to the caravan, and that I ran screaming out into the night.

On 30 April, Walpurgis Night, Kolbjörn arrived on his cattle ferry with his son Anton and one of Anton’s friends. Together we managed to get the caravan on board. Kolbjörn had brought along an electric cable, which he ran from the island to the skerry. He chuckled at the thought that this was completely illegal but assured me there was no risk of dangerous short circuits.

We towed the ferry across with my launch; Kolbjörn took several photographs on his phone.

‘It’s forty-five years since we last transported cows on this ferry,’ he said. ‘But my father always insisted we should keep it; you never know when it might come in useful. And here we are, using it to move a caravan.’

He stood in silence for a moment, contemplating his ferry.

‘It’s weird,’ he said. ‘The police haven’t got a single lead or a single suspect for the arson attacks.’

‘I suppose it’s not that easy,’ I replied. ‘No one seems to have gained anything from the fires.’

Kolbjörn pulled a face and shook his head.

‘I’m trying to understand, but it’s impossible. I’m sure they’re doing their best. Maybe we should all take a practical approach, like Jansson.’

I gave a start when he mentioned Jansson’s name, but he didn’t seem to notice.

‘Why, what has Jansson said?’

‘He’s written a letter to the council, suggesting that they provide everyone who lives out here during the autumn and winter with a fire extinguisher, free of charge.’

‘Really?’

‘I think it’s a very sensible idea.’

It crossed my mind that I was going crazy. Where was Jansson heading with this? Why was he mocking the residents of the archipelago?

‘I think the council will give us our fire extinguishers,’ Kolbjörn went on. ‘But I don’t suppose Jansson will get any thanks for it.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose he will.’

My voice was unsteady. Kolbjörn glanced at me. I smiled. The smile said: I’m absolutely fine.

Kolbjörn had carefully prepared the ground on the skerry. He had laid out a track made of thick planks of wood and had set up a complex block and tackle system. Everything worked perfectly, and the caravan was soon settled in its new home. Kolbjörn connected the electricity while I opened a bottle of champagne. We drank a toast as if it had been schnapps.

That night I slept on the skerry for the first time without needing to use my tent. I dreamed that I was on board a boat; the skerry had broken away from the bedrock and was carrying me to the distant Öresund Sound.

I woke up early the next morning. It was the first of May, and the air was warm. I had told Kolbjörn and Anton to wait until after the holiday before they made a start on the house, but Kolbjörn had said there was no point in hanging around.

After breakfast I went over to the island. They arrived at nine, the ferry laden with a small digger, a shed and an unconscionable number of tools. I sat on the bench by the boathouse and watched as things got under way. Anton was a real grafter. I could see that he took the same intense pleasure in his work as his father. It wouldn’t take long before his digger had cleared the ruins and made room for my new house.

They packed up for the day at about six. A blackbird landed on the roof of their shed, the first one I had heard this year.

I walked down to the jetty with them.

‘I want to bury a token, a memorial under the new house,’ I said to Kolbjörn as Anton started up the engine.

‘How big is it?’

‘It’s just a small tin containing a shoe buckle.’

He looked intrigued.

‘It’s a very fine buckle,’ I went on. ‘It holds a special meaning for me.’

‘I’ll ask Anton to dig a hole right in the middle of the foundations. If there’s a rock in the way we can take it out with a non-explosive demolition agent.’

I waved to them as they left; I wondered what on earth a non-explosive demolition agent might be.

The ferry had only just vanished around the headland when the prow of another vessel appeared; it was a fast aluminium boat that I didn’t recognise at first. However, as it drew nearer I could see the advert for the cafe adorning the port side and realised it was Veronika’s boat.

She had never visited me on the island, apart from when we were making preparations for my party. I was worried; something must have happened.

She climbed onto the jetty with the mooring rope in her hand. I could tell from her expression that my premonition was well founded.

‘Has the coastguard been in touch?’ she asked.

‘No?’

‘So you don’t know anything?’

I sat down on the bench; I didn’t want to collapse if she told me something terrible. She was still holding onto the boat like a dog on a leash.

‘Jansson has gone. He headed straight out to sea in his boat. The coastguard was on the way in from Landsort and saw him far beyond the archipelago. They went over to check if everything was all right; Jansson seemed perfectly normal. He told them he was going to turn back very soon. Alexandersson decided to let him be; after all, Jansson is Jansson. When he got back to the office, there was a message on the answering machine: Jansson yelling that he didn’t want anyone to come looking for him, and no one would find him anyway. The coastguard went straight back out and they’re going to carry on searching until dark. Of course everyone is wondering if Jansson has gone mad.’

I listened to Veronika with no sense of surprise whatsoever.

Jansson was leaving us. He would fill his body with sleeping tablets, weigh himself down with a grappling iron, chains and the anchor, and make a small hole in the boat so that it would sink slowly. No one would ever be sure what had happened. No one would find him.

‘He’s always been a little strange,’ I said tentatively.

‘I often think he’s one of the most normal people out here on the islands. What do you mean, strange?’

‘Perhaps I mean he’s...very individual. He’s not married, he doesn’t have any children.’

‘I’m not married. I don’t have any children.’

‘You’re not seventy years old.’

‘Jansson is shy, but there’s nothing else wrong with him. What if he’s planning on killing himself? Something must have happened.’

It was as if Veronika had given me the solution. We were sitting on the bench where I had examined Jansson so many times without being able to find anything wrong with him. Perhaps I had found something at last.

‘As a doctor I have a duty of confidentiality to my patients,’ I said. ‘I haven’t told anyone else what I’m about to tell you. If it gets out, I’ll know that you have betrayed my confidence.’

‘I would never do such a thing!’

I knew she wouldn’t say a word.

I quickly ran through possible diagnoses where there was only one conclusion unless a miracle occurred.

‘Jansson has cancer,’ I said. ‘An aggressive, incurable cancer. It started in the pancreas and has spread to the liver. He’s unlikely to last until the summer.’

Veronika understood. A doctor always tells the truth. Perhaps she had chosen to come and talk to me because she suspected that Jansson was ill? There could be no other explanation for his departure.

‘Is he in pain?’

‘It’s been possible to alleviate it so far, but I don’t know about the future.’

‘Is there nothing that can be done?’

‘Nothing.’

There wasn’t much more to say. Veronika was still clutching the mooring rope.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ she said after a while. ‘I’m going to sell the cafe, do some travelling.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Not straight out to sea, at any rate.’

She got to her feet.

‘I wanted you to know,’ she said. ‘And now I know.’

Her boat zoomed away from the jetty.

No one would ever find Jansson. If he had decided to take the truth about the house fires with him to the grave, then that’s what he would do. The last letter would never reach its destination.

Nor would he set off and fall over the edge of the horizon. If I knew Jansson as well as I thought I did in this respect, he had fooled Alexandersson. When he was alone he would change course and return to the inner archipelago. There were many areas with a depth of almost a hundred metres where he could scuttle his boat. No one would find him because everyone would believe he had disappeared far out at sea.

I got up from the bench. It was a simple, crystal-clear moment in my life. My clinic on the jetty was closed and would never reopen.

Kolbjörn and Anton started building my house. I helped out as a labourer, although I was probably more of a hindrance than a help. However, I could provide information when there was any uncertainty about what a particular detail might have looked like; the house in my memory had never burned down.

By the end of June Kolbjörn said I would be able to move in during August.

Veronika had sold the cafe to an Iranian couple; I decided to arrange my own house-warming party.

Lisa Modin often came to visit, watching as the new house emerged. I still longed for the love she couldn’t give me, but I became increasingly grateful for her companionship. I was an old man who had gained a female friend. I could bear to contemplate my face in the mirror. I shaved meticulously, I didn’t neglect myself. Thanks to Lisa, I had something to look forward to. She helped me resist my tendency to depression.

However, I was under no illusions. One day she would go away, to another newspaper, a TV company, another town. I didn’t know how I would react when that day came, but I still had Louise and her family, who were also my family.

Louise promised to come to my house-warming; she would bring Ahmed and Muhammed too, not just Agnes.

But during all those weeks as the house progressed I kept thinking about Jansson, Oslovski, Nordin. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I should stop communicating with old friends just because they were dead. I carried on talking to them, listening to them, remembering them. I carried on trying to picture Jansson’s death, Nordin’s final moment, and I wondered whether Oslovski had had time to realise that death had come to call on her in the garage with her 1958 DeSoto Fireflite.

In these people I saw myself, and during that spring and summer when my house was being built I also came to understand that other people must see themselves in me.

July was unusually warm, followed by a great deal of rain in the first weeks of August.

I moved in on 27 August, even though several of the rooms were still unfurnished. Lisa Modin arrived in the evening and stayed overnight. In her own room, of course. The following day Kolbjörn would pick up Louise, Agnes and the rest of my family from the harbour and bring them over.

Early in the morning I went for my dip, then checked my blood pressure on the bench that was now part of a defunct clinic.

I was an old man, but as a doctor I was able to tell myself that I was fine.

I walked right to the end of the jetty and threw my stethoscope in the water. It drifted towards the seabed like a dead snake.

At that moment I saw something; I couldn’t believe my eyes, but then I realised it actually was a perch. It wasn’t very big, but there was absolutely no doubt in my mind.

A fish had returned and presented itself to me like a gift.

The stethoscope had settled on the bottom. In a few days it would be buried in the mud, which ultimately consumed everything.

As I stood there on the jetty, my telephone rang. It was Margareta Nordin.

She told me that my wellington boots had finally arrived. There was no mistaking the joy in her voice.

I went up to the house that had risen from the ruins. I thought about the day almost ten years ago when I had removed the enormous anthill from under the dining table in the living room. That too had been a day of great joy.

In the new dining room I placed a table I had found among the dead swallows in the loft at the boathouse. On the table was the glass jar containing birdlime and the remnants of the old birdcage. I would often leaf through the Guide to the Capture and Care of Songbirds at night before I fell asleep.

One day I would understand why my grandparents had spent their time catching birds with lime spread on twigs. I had no intention of giving up. It was a task that suited an old man like me.

I contemplated the apple tree, which I had washed with soap and water. It had regained its original colour, but I didn’t know whether it would bear fruit.

Beneath the floor of the house, buried in the ground, lay the tin containing Giaconelli’s shoe buckle. It gave me a sense of security to think that the buckle had survived the fierce flames.

It was already late August.

Soon the autumn would come.

But the darkness no longer frightened me.