Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,20

up.

He checked his watch, hanging by the side of his bunk. A quarter past five. Not yet dawn.

He thought about the flash he thought he had seen on two occasions now. But surely Halsskär was just a barren rock? There could not be any kind of light there.

He lit the paraffin lamp, dressed, took a deep breath and examined his face in the mirror. It was still his own.

When he was a child – all the time he was growing up, in fact – he had looked like his mother. Now, as he grew older, his face had begun to change and he thought he could see more of his father every time he looked in a mirror.

Was there yet another face within him?

Would he ever be able to feel that he looked like himself and nobody else?

CHAPTER 39

It was hazy over the sea when he came out on deck.

The watchman with the hacking cough was sitting on the capstan, smoking. He jumped up when he heard footsteps. Hid his fag behind his back. Then he succumbed to a violent coughing fit. Scraping and rasping noises seemed to be tearing his chest.

Tobiasson-Svartman clambered into one of the tenders and untied the painter. The watchman, who had recovered from his coughing fit, asked breathlessly if the officer required an oarsman. Tobiasson-Svartman declined the offer.

The sun had not risen over the horizon as he rowed towards Halsskär. The rowlocks squeaked forlornly. In order to get to the skerry as directly as possible he lined his tender up with the starboard wing of the bridge, and did not need to change course at all. He rowed with powerful strokes and beached the boat at the same place as last time.

Halsskär gave the impression of having been crushed by a giant's hand. There were deep ravines and hollows, muddy soil had accumulated in depressions and provided a footing for moss campion and occasional clumps of wormwood. Lichens were creeping over the rocks, and sparse red heather.

He followed the shore northwards. Here and there he had to move inland when the cliffs became too steep. The terrain was in constant conflict with him, cliffs turned into precipices, rocks were slippery, every obstacle he overcame gave way to a new one.

After ten minutes he was covered in sweat. He was deep down in a crevice with steep rock walls on either side, and he could no longer see the sea. He was surrounded by stone. A snake had shed its skin at the bottom of the fissure. He continued clambering over the rocks, saw the sea once more and came to the edge of an inlet that seemed to have been carved out of the cliffs.

He stopped dead.

As far in as you could go was a rickety jetty. Moored there was a dinghy. A sail was furled around the mast, situated towards the bows. On the shore were some fishing nets hanging from hooks attached to poles that had been driven down among the stones. There was also a big washtub made of tarred oak, a heap of stones for weighing down the nets, and some floats made of bark and cork.

He stood motionless, taking in what he saw. He was surprised to find that a skerry so far out in the archipelago, next to the open sea, was being used by fishermen and bird-hunters. They could not very well be seal-hunters as there were no rocks or skerries in the vicinity of the Sandsänkan lighthouse where grey seals were known to bask. You would have to go further into the archipelago for that, to the shallows east of Harstena.

He continued walking along the shore towards the sheltered inlet, and noted that the dinghy was well looked after. The sail furled round the mast was not patched and the sheets were whole rather than being knotted together from odds and ends of line. The nets, hanging neatly from the hooks, were small-meshed and evidently intended for catching herring. Furthest in was a well-worn path leading towards dense thickets of dog rose and sea buckthorn. The path meandered on beyond the thickets and between two large outcrops. Beside it, to his surprised delight, he observed a freshwater spring.

Then he came upon a patch of level ground and a little cabin squatting in the shadow of a cliff wall. It had a brick chimney, and a thin wisp of smoke was rising skywards. The foundation was of rough stones, and the walls were made of grey planks, varying