The Darkest Room

9

The November night was dry, but it was cold, dark, and foggy. The only light in the sky came from a pale half-moon behind a film of cloud as fine as silk.

Perfect weather for break-ins.

The house on the rocky northwest coast of the island lay up on the ridge and had been built recently; it was only a couple of years old. It had been designed by an architect, with lots of wood and glass. Commissioned and built by summer visitors with too much money, thought Henrik. He remembered that his grandfather had called rich people from the mainland “Stockholmers,” wherever they came from.

“Hubba bubba,” said Tommy, scratching his neck. “Let’s go.”

Freddy and Henrik followed him in the direction of the graveled slope below the house. All three were dressed in jeans and dark jackets, and Tommy and Henrik were carrying black rucksacks.

Before they set off northward from Borgholm, the Serelius brothers had had another session with the Ouija board in Henrik’s kitchen. An hour and a half before midnight they had lit three candles, and Tommy had set up the board on the kitchen table, with the glass in the middle.

Everything went quiet; the atmosphere thickened.

“Is there anybody there?” asked Tommy with his finger on the glass.

The question hung in the air for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, then the glass jerked and moved to the side. It stopped on the word YES.

“Is it Aleister?”

The glass didn’t move.

“Is it a good night tonight, Aleister?” asked Tommy.

The glass remained on yes for a few more seconds.

Then it began to move toward the letters.

“Write it down!” Tommy hissed at Henrik.

Henrik wrote, with a cold, unpleasant feeling in his stomach.

E-E-L-P-O-I

Finally the glass was still again in the middle of the board. He looked down at the paper and read what he’d written:

“EEL POINT EEL POINT WORKS OF ART EEL POINT ALONE WALKS THERE,” he read.

“Eel Point?” said Tommy. “What the fuck is that?”

Henrik looked at the board. “I’ve been there… it’s the site of a lighthouse.”

“Is there a lot of art there?”

“Not that I saw.”

At around midnight Henrik and the Serelius brothers had parked the van behind a boathouse five hundred yards away, then remained among the rocks down by the shore until the last of the lights were switched off behind the shining picture windows on the upper floor. Then they had

waited for almost another half hour and each swallowed a dose of ice crystals before pulling the black hoods over their heads and beginning to move toward the house.

Henrik was a bit cold, but the ice had increased his pulse rate. The greater the risk, the greater the excitement. He hardly thought about Camilla at all on a night like this.

The sound of the waves, rhythmically swirling in over the gravel behind them, muffled the sound of their footsteps as they made their way almost silently up the steep slope.

An iron fence surrounded the whole garden, but Henrik knew there was an unlocked gate on the side facing the sea. They were soon in the shadows by the wall of the house.

The sliding door to the ground floor was made of glass, fastened with a simple catch, and Henrik took a hammer and chisel out of his rucksack. All it needed was a short sharp blow, and the catch was open.

The small wheels squeaked faintly as Tommy pushed the door to one side on its steel track, but the sound was barely louder than the sighing of the wind.

No alarm reverberated through the darkness.

Tommy stuck his masked head through the doorway. Then he turned and nodded to Henrik.

While Freddy stood guard by the door, they went into the warmth. The sound of the wind from the sea faded away, and the shadows in the house enveloped them.

They walked across a painted concrete floor into a fairly large cellar. There was a table in the middle of the room, a billiard table. There was plenty of stuff here.

Like a commando, Tommy indicated with a hand signal that they should split up, and Henrik nodded and went off to the left. There was a small bar along one side of the room, with a dozen or so bottles lined up. Five of them were unopened, and he carefully pushed them down into his rucksack, one after the other. Then he went further into the house, past the wooden staircase leading to the upper floor.

He went into a television room with a leather sofa. The

sofa was facing a small television and video, and he carried those over to Freddy by the outside door. Then he went back and took a look under the sofa.

There was something large and shiny under there. A set of golf clubs?

He bent down and pulled out a folded tarpaulin, with some effort. On top of it lay a complete set of diving equipment, with flippers, yellow oxygen tanks, some kind of pressure meter, and a black wetsuit. The stuff looked as if it had never been used; perhaps it had been bought the previous summer for some bored teenager who wanted to learn to dive but had changed their mind.

There was something else on the tarpaulin as well: an old hunting gun.

The rifle seemed to be well looked after, with a polished wooden butt and a shoulder strap of well-oiled leather. A small red cardboard box containing cartridges lay beside it.

Henrik took one thing at a time. He started by carrying out the oxygen tanks and bumped into Tommy, who was carrying a computer monitor to the outside door.

Tommy saw the tanks and nodded his approval.

“There’s more,” whispered Henrik, and went back.

He put the rest of the diving equipment under one arm and slung the gun over his shoulder. He pushed the box of cartridges into his rucksack. Then he went back to the sliding door, where Tommy was busy carrying out an exercise bike. That looked brand new as well, but Henrik shook his head.

“No room,” he whispered.

“It’ll fit,” said Tommy, “we’ll take it apart and-”

They heard a thud in the darkness.

A thud, followed by footsteps. The noise came from upstairs.

Then the light on the staircase was switched on.

“Hello?” called a man’s voice.

“Forget the bike!” hissed Henrik.

They all took to their heels at the same time. Out through the glass door, across the lawn, out through the gate and down to the shore. All three were laden with stolen goods, but it wasn’t far to the van across the pebbles.

Henrik put down what he was carrying, took a deep breath and looked around. There were lights everywhere in the house now, but no one seemed to be following them.

“Load up!” shouted Tommy, pulling off his hood and climbing in behind the wheel.

He started the engine without putting the headlights on.

Henrik and Freddy quickly pushed everything into the back of the van-rucksacks, TV, diving equipment…They had managed to bring everything down from the house, everything except the exercise bike. Henrik still had the gun over his shoulder.

Tommy floored the accelerator and the van shot away. Up onto the road and south along the coast. Not until they were out of sight of the house did he switch on the lights.

“Take the east road,” said Henrik.

“What are you scared of?” said Tommy. “Roadblocks?”

Henrik shook his head.

“Take it anyway.”

It was one-thirty now, but Henrik was wide awake, his heart pounding. They had done it. They had found gold on the coast. It was almost like before, like his outings with Mogge.

“We must do this again,” said Tommy once they were out on the main highway. “It was so fucking easy!”

“Reasonably easy,” said Henrik beside him. “We woke them up.”

“So what?” said Tommy. “What could he do? We were quicker, straight in and out.”

They came to a sign on the eastern road pointing down to a side track, and Tommy slammed on the brakes. Then he turned the wheel.

“Where are you going?”

“Just one last thing. Something really simple, before we go home.”

A tall white stone building appeared among the trees to the left of the track. Long and narrow and illuminated by spotlights.

A church, Henrik realized.

It was the white medieval church in Marnäs. He vaguely remembered that his grandparents were married there many decades ago.

“Is it open?” said Tommy, pulling in by the churchyard wall. He continued on for a few yards to a small graveled track next to the church, and braked in the shelter of some close-growing trees. “You can usually walk straight in.”

“Not at night,” said Henrik.

“So? In that case we’ll just have to break in.”

Henrik shook his head as Tommy switched off the engine.

“I’m not coming in,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You two can do this on your own.”

Henrik had no intention of saying anything about his grandparents’ wedding in the Marnäs church. He just stared at Tommy, who nodded.

“Okay, you sit there and keep an eye open, then,” he said. “But if we find anything in there, it’s ours. Mine and my brother’s.”

Tommy took out the rucksack containing the tools, slammed the door of the van, and headed for the church, disappearing into the darkness with Freddy trailing along behind.

Henrik leaned back and waited. The darkness was dense among the trees. He thought about his grandmother, who had grown up around here.

The door of the van suddenly opened, and Henrik jumped.

It was Freddy. His eyes were shining, as they did after a particularly successful raid, and he was talking fast.

“Tommy’s on his way,” he said. “But look at this! There was a cupboard in the sacres… sacarest… What the fuck is it called?”

“The sacristy,” said Henrik.

“What do you think these might be worth?”

Henrik looked at the old candlesticks Freddy was holding out. Four of them; they looked like silver. Had they been there when his grandparents got married? There was a good chance.

Now Tommy was back at the van, sweaty and excited. “You can drive,” he said to Henrik. “I need to count all this.” He jumped into the passenger seat to the sound of clinking.

He had a plastic bag in his hand, which he emptied onto the seat between his legs. Coins and notes came pouring out.

“Their collection box was made of wood,” he said with a laugh. “It was right by the door, all I had to do was give it a kick.”

“Hundred-kronor notes,” said Freddy, leaning forward between the seats.

“I’m going to count them,” said Tommy, with a look at Henrik. “Just remember, this belongs to us.”

“You keep it,” said Henrik quietly.

He didn’t feel so good now. It was just too much, breaking into churches and stealing money that was meant to go to pensioners or people in Somalia with leprosy or whatever. Too fucking much. But what was done was done.

“What’s this?” said Tommy, bending down.

He had discovered the gun on the floor under the seat.

“I found it in the house,” said Henrik.

“Fucking hell.” Tommy picked it up. “It’s an old Mauser. Collectors love this sort of thing, but people still use them for hunting. They’re very reliable.”

He looked curiously along the barrel and pulled back the bolt.

“Take it easy with that thing,” said Henrik.

“It’s fine… the safety catch is on.”

“So you know about guns?”

“Sure,” said Tommy. “I used to hunt elk. When Dad was sober, we were always out in the forest.”

“You might as well take care of it, then,” said Henrik.

He started up the van and switched on the lights. He swung around and slowly drove out of the trees.

“Not too many more,” he said when they were back on the road.

“What?”

“These trips, I can’t cope with many more.”

“We have to do a few more. Four more.”

“Two,” said Henrik. “I’ll go out with you twice more.”

“Okay. Where?”

Henrik was silent behind the wheel.

“A couple of places I know,” he said. “A priest’s house where there could be some jewelry. And maybe the manor house at Eel Point.”

“Eel Point?” said Tommy. “The one Aleister gave us a tip about.”

Henrik nodded, even thought he believed that the person moving the glass around the board was called Tommy, not Aleister.

“We can go up there and see if he was right,” said Tommy.

“Sure… but then that’s enough.”

Henrik stared gloomily at the empty road. Fuck. This was completely out of control-not at all like the trips with Mogge.

He should have tried harder to stop that last break-in.

Stealing from churches brought bad luck.