the bleeding had stopped.
The door of the grey cottage was shut. Smoke was coming out of the chimney. He sat behind some large rocks and let his telescope glide over the building, the door, the walls, the window. The only moving thing was the smoke. He waited. Suddenly a black cat with a white nose appeared round one corner of the cottage. It paused and looked towards where he was sitting, one front paw poised. He held his breath. The cat moved on again and vanished into some bushes. The door opened. Sara Fredrika came out. She lifted up her skirt and squatted down. He had a glimpse of her white legs. He hesitated for a moment, then grasped the telescope and aimed it at her. Just as she stood up she looked straight at him. He jerked the telescope away and closed his eyes. She walked along the path towards the inlet where the sailing dinghy was moored, and disappeared behind an outcrop of rocks.
He stood up and half ran to the highest point of the skerry, where he could see down into the inlet. There was the creaking sound of an oar, some squeaking from a rowlock, and then he saw the boat moving away from land. She rowed with good, strong strokes, and the sail was hanging loose, flapping as if enjoying its freedom. He could see through the telescope that she had tucked her skirt above her knees, and that there were nets lying on the stern thwart. She emerged from the inlet but did not follow the line of the coast. Instead she headed for the inner archipelago where the nearest landmark was a group of bare rocks sticking up out of the water.
She tossed a cork float over the side and as the dinghy glided downwind at a fair pace she let the net go. The breeze was easterly, barely enough to cause ripples. He estimated the net to be forty-two metres long, and she quickly adjusted the flow whenever it threatened to become tangled. She knew what she was doing and wasted no time. Her blonde hair kept falling over her face, she kept blowing it away, shaking her head, and eventually hung on to a long strand with her teeth to keep it out of her way.
He lowered the telescope. Odd that she was out in the boat on her own. Was her husband ill? Was he in bed at the cottage, behind the closed door?
He made up his mind on the spot. It would be some time before she finished laying out the nets and came back to the skerry.
He walked down to the cottage. The door was still closed and there was no sign of the cat. He approached cautiously and peered in through the window. It was quite dark inside and difficult to see anything. A fire glowed in the hearth. Suddenly it flared up. There was only one room, a bed, a table and a chair inside the rough walls. He could not see anybody in there. He tried the door, knocked gently, then opened it. The room was empty. No sign of her husband. No boots, no overcoat, no pipe on the table, no shotgun on the wall. She lived there alone.
There was no husband. Sara Fredrika lived all alone on Halsskär.
He thought he heard the dinghy scraping against some stones in the inlet and hurried back to his hiding place behind the rocks. She soon appeared, walking towards the cottage. She glanced up at the sky then went inside.
The fog was lifting when he returned to the ship. He rowed so fast that his clothes were sticking to his body. Why was he in such a hurry?
Was he running away from something, or towards something?
CHAPTER 45
Lieutenant Jakobsson was standing by the rail, cleaning his pipe.
He smiled.
'You get up early.'
'I hope I didn't wake you?'
'If I manage to sleep, I dream I'm awake. Sometimes I don't know if I'm awake or asleep. But when I come out on deck it's the real world, and I saw that one of the tenders was missing and they said you had rowed off into the fog.'
'I need some exercise. The work in the boats isn't enough.'
He climbed up on deck and headed for the mess and breakfast. He had spent too much time on Halsskär. Work would be late in starting today.
Jakobsson followed him.
'Maybe I should accompany you,' he said, after lighting his pipe. 'Maybe you've discovered something?'
For a moment