The killer's art

52

Saturday started off with the pale and hesitant light of winter sunshine.

Johan served Emma breakfast in bed. He placed a red rose on the tray. They ate warm croissants with raspberry jam, drank coffee and read the newspaper as Elin slept so sweetly in her cot. Emma’s parents would arrive around eleven to take care of Elin, so they’d have the rest of the weekend all to themselves. They’d gone to the jeweller’s together to select their rings. Emma had decided on a ring of white gold with five diamonds. Johan felt dizzy when he saw the price, but then how often in life did a person get engaged?

Over and over they’d discussed how they should exchange rings, yet both of them had agreed that they should do it soon. Of course they wanted to have some peace and quiet and time alone, free from a crying baby and dirty nappies; yet they didn’t want to be away from Elin for too long.

Finally they had decided to have a private engagement ceremony at Emma’s favourite place: the beach at Norsta Auren, at the northernmost tip of Faro. Her parents owned an old limestone house there, and Emma and Johan could have it all to themselves. They wouldn’t be able to have dinner in a restaurant because none was open on Faro in the wintertime. Instead, they decided to have a cosy time at home alone. The house stood right by the sea, and it had a fireplace, so it should be fine.

They left Roma before lunch and drove north. At Farosund they took the ferry across the channel and over to the small island. The landscape was more desolate and barren there, although in the winter the difference didn’t seem as great as in the summer.

Beautiful Faro church stood high on a hill, and the Konsum grocery store was open, although only one car was parked in front. Johan wondered how the shop managed to stay in business during the winter. They had done all of their grocery shopping in Visby, just in case. They didn’t want to run the risk of the small shop not stocking fillet of beef, tiger prawns and Belgian chocolates.

Johan enjoyed looking at the landscape as he drove. The snow was unusually deep, a thick white layer covering the island’s lovely stone fences, windmills and pasture lands. Here and there they passed a farm, its stone buildings built to withstand the wind and severe weather.

When they turned off the main highway that cut across Faro, the road got narrower. They passed the beach at Ajkesvik, where seagulls bobbed on the crests of the waves, and continued on towards Skar and Norsta Auren. The road became a bumpy cow track for the last stretch of the way, and here the snowdrifts were even higher. They almost couldn’t drive all the way up to the house, in spite of the fact that Emma’s father had been out to shovel off the snow that morning.

The white limestone house stood all alone, surrounded by low stone walls, with the sea as its neighbour. When they got out of the car, they were struck by the magnificence of nature. And for once the wind was hardly blowing at all.

The first thing they did was go down to the shore, which extended for several kilometres and was wider than most beaches that Johan had seen. It stretched beyond the bay’s furthest promontory, preventing them from seeing the Faro lighthouse, which stood on the other side.

This was a special place, for several reasons. Not just because of its natural grandeur but also because of the memories it evoked. Here Emma had run for her life as she was chased by a serial killer a couple of years earlier. The memory was still strong for both of them. Johan had joined the chase and was hard on her heels. But the perp was too fast for him, and he had disappeared in a car with Emma as his hostage.

Maybe they both wanted to replace those awful memories with something as positive as their engagement. Regardless of what had happened, Emma loved this shoreline more than any other place on earth.

They decided to carry in their belongings, have lunch, and then take a walk along the shore. The rings were in a little box in Johan’s pocket. He felt as if the box were on fire.

They ate fish soup with prawns and fresh basil. They had brought along fresh-baked bread, which they warmed up in the oven. Johan felt strangely solemn as he sat there at the big drop-leaf table in the kitchen. Emma was wearing a turtleneck sweater, and she had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. He found himself wondering how she would look as an old woman. The next second he felt a surge of happiness come over him. Were they really going to grow old together? Spend the rest of their lives together? Sometimes that realization seemed so obvious, like a door thrown open with him standing outside, looking at himself from a distance.

Emma was his family now. Emma and Elin. And that felt amazing.

They bundled up in warm clothes and a bit reluctantly left the warmth of the house to take their walk along the beach. Johan took Emma’s hand and led the way, trudging through the snow.

‘Take it easy,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’m about to fall over.’

‘The question is, how are we going to exchange rings without freezing our fingers off? I’m already frozen,’ he shouted happily.

Out on the beach it was bitterly cold and the wind cut right through their clothes, making their eyes fill with tears. The sea was a steel grey and the water struck the shore in rhythmic waves. Johan had never seen a longer horizon. The sky and sea merged — it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. There were no buildings in sight except for the house owned by Emma’s parents. They were enveloped by the sky, the sea and the snowy white shore. Its wide expanse rose up to an embankment, and on the other side were the woods, so typical of Faro with their stunted pines whose branches had been twisted by storms that had come and gone over the years. It was all so magnificent that Johan shouted with joy, reaching out for the wind.

‘I love Emma! I love Emma!’

His words vanished over the sea, drowned out by the shrieks of seagulls. Emma’s eyes were filled with laughter as she looked at him, and he felt more strongly than ever before that it was true. So true. He didn’t want to wait a second longer. He pulled out of his pocket the box holding the rings and then drew Emma close. He pressed his lips against her hair, damp with cold, as he put the ring on her finger. She did the same for him.

All of a sudden she cried, ‘Look, Johan! What’s that?’

Something big and grey was lying at the water’s edge a short distance away. It looked like a big boulder, but how had it ended up there? Everywhere else the beach was flat and white as far as the eye could see.

Cautiously they approached. When they were about twenty yards away, the shape began to move. Emma instantly pulled out her camera. She snapped a picture just as the grey seal dived back into the water.

For a long time they stood there in silence, watching as it disappeared into the waves.