and me. I shall give instructions to the effect that the new chart should not yet be sent out. When could you embark on this mission?'
'Within the next two weeks.'
'I'll see to it that you get the necessary orders.'
Tobiasson-Svartman left Captain Sturde and returned to his own office. He was drenched in sweat. But everything had gone according to plan. Without anybody knowing, he had taken Welander's journals home and spent several evenings altering the figures. It was a perfect forgery that would never be discovered. Even if Welander were able to leave hospital one of these days, his memories of the time spent on the Blenda would be twisted and muddled.
He thought about Sara Fredrika and the journey over the ice that was in store. He thought that his father would no doubt have secretly admired him.
CHAPTER 86
Somebody was practising the violin. The tone was tinny, the same phrases were repeated time after time.
It was the evening of 12 February. The severe cold lay like a carpet over the platform of Norrköping railway station when Tobiasson-Svartman stepped off the train and looked around for a porter. There were only a few passengers, black shadows hurrying through the darkness. Only when the engine hissed out steam and a shudder ran through the coaches as it began its journey further south did a man with icicles in his beard appear to take care of the luggage.
Tobiasson-Svartman had sent a telegram and ordered a room in the Göta Hotel. The river running through the town was frozen over.
The room was on the second floor and looked out on to a church squatting in the half-light. It was warm in the room – he had chosen that hotel because it had central heating. When he had closed the door behind him he stood perfectly still and tried to imagine that he was on board a ship. But the floor beneath his feet refused to shift.
That was when he heard the violin. Somebody in a room nearby was practising. It might have been Schubert.
He sat on the bed. He could still call off the journey. He thought he was mad. He was heading willy-nilly towards chaos, towards an abyss from which there was no return. Instead of continuing with it he could take a train back to Stockholm. He would be able to explain it away. He could remember at the last minute that he still had the correct figures. He could dispose of the forged chart and replace it with another one that was correct. Nothing was too late, he could put a stop to the headlong dash he had set in train, he could still save himself.
A cage, he thought. Or a trap. But is it inside me? Or am I the trap myself?
CHAPTER 87
He went down to the dining room and had dinner.
A string quartet played something he took to be highlights from Verdi operas. The dining room was almost empty, waitresses standing around with nothing to do. Outside, where it was very cold and the snow crunched underfoot, was somewhere the shadow of a war that nobody really understood, nor very much cared about, in fact.
He imagined himself with a gun, firing gas shells. A red-faced man sitting next to one of the pillars in the dining room was hunched over a newspaper. He estimated the distance as thirteen metres, then fired the gun. The man was blown to smithereens and swallowed up by flames. He killed the diners one by one, then the waitresses and the cashier, and finally the musicians in the string quartet.
He fled the dining room at midnight. He lay in bed with the cold sounding lead clutched to his body. The freezing temperatures made the hotel walls creak. The violin in the nearby room could no longer be heard.
Before he slept he tried to take his bearings. Where was he, where was he actually going to? Every movement made him feel dizzy, perhaps he was heading for his own demise. The last thing he thought about was the ice. Would it hold his weight? Had the sea frozen over as far out as Halsskär? Or would he be forced to pull a boat over the ice and row the last part of the way? Would he ever get there?
Ice floes drifted through his sleep.
CHAPTER 88
He left the hotel after a quick breakfast.
The receptionist, who spoke with a Danish accent, ordered him a cab. This was not straightforward since he wanted to be taken as far