Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,102

a ballast in his pockets that made it more and more difficult for him to move. He thought about what Angel had said, about the inhospitable skerry scraping her to the bone.

CHAPTER 177

Every three or four days he would sit down to write a letter to Kristina Tacker. He had found a rock formation on the south side of the skerry that gave him both a bench to sit on and a rough desk to write on.

He described a voyage in a convoy of ships heading for Bornholm and the Polish coast. It had been a dangerous but necessary expedition. Now he was back in Swedish waters again, and by coincidence he had ended up in Östergötland, among the islands where he had already spent such a long time. He would soon be returning to Stockholm. His mission had been long and drawn out, but there was an end in sight, he wrote, an end, and then he would return home. He asked about Laura, how Kristina Tacker herself was, and not least her father. Had he recovered? Had they arrested whoever had carried out the attack?

But he also wrote about himself, tried to capture something of his own desperation without revealing the true facts. When I'm alone I sometimes get so close to myself that I understand who I am. But then you are not there, nobody else can see what I see, only me, and that is not enough.

He hesitated for a long time, wondering whether to leave out the last few lines. But in the end he left them in, felt that he dared do so.

He buried the letters under a piece of turf, wrapped inside a waterproof pouch. Towards the end of August he decided he would have to send at least one of the many letters. He had intended to give the letters to some fisherman or hunter who passed by the skerry, but none of them landed. He could see sailing dinghies in among the skerries sometimes, but none of them came close. One day he decided that it could not wait any longer. He told Sara Fredrika that he was going to go to church in Gryt on the last Sunday in August.

'I'm not much of a believer,' he said, 'but after a while I feel very empty inside.'

'If you're lucky you'll be able to sail there. If there's no wind you'll have a long way to row.'

They got up at dawn and she went with him to the inlet. He had his uniform wrapped inside his oilskin.

'You'll have a good wind,' she said. 'Easterly veering towards north, a church wind in both directions. Sing a hymn for me, listen to the gossip outside the church. I've no idea who's dead and who's still alive. Bring me some news, even if it's old news.'

He stopped once on the way, landing on one of the islands in Bussund. He changed into his uniform and scrubbed away a stain on one of the shoulders. As he sailed into Gryt accompanied by other boats with passengers on their way to church, he was wearing his naval cap. He could see that his companions were bemused, but some of them must know about him, he could not be completely unknown.

There was a man on Sara Fredrika's island, the father of the baby that was about to be born.

Remarkably enough, he felt something approaching pride when everybody looked at him.

CHAPTER 178

There had been a time when you could sail right up to the church from both the north and the south.

But the sound had silted up, and now you had to walk. There were a lot of people gathered outside the church. People seldom came from the outlying islands in winter.

Suddenly he came face to face with the farm labourers from Kättilö. They were not entirely sober.

'We haven't said a word,' Gösta said. 'Nothing has slipped out.'

'Let's keep it that way,' Tobiasson-Svartman said. 'And we mustn't make it too obvious that we know each other.'

He turned on his heel and walked away. The sexton told him that the man who looked after the post in Gryt was smoking his pipe by the church wall.

Tobiasson-Svartman gave him two letters. He asked for one to be posted right away, the other ten days later.

During the service he half listened to the Reverend Gustafsson's sermon about the devil who takes possession of our flesh, and the mercy of the Son of God.

Afterwards he wandered around, listening to the conversations. He had