coming from a little child. Then he was silent.
Tobiasson-Svartman kicked the stone to the edge of the hole and fastened the rope round the waist of the man in the hole. The water was cold, the broken ice covered in sticky blood. He tried not to look at the man's face, the mutilated eyes. When he pushed the stone into the water the body sank immediately and vanished.
CHAPTER 106
He thought of the burial of Karl-Heinz Richter.
Now Herr Richter and Herr Dorflinger would meet in the cemetery 160 metres under water. Two men with no eyes, two men who spent five or six minutes sinking to the bottom of the sea.
He listened. Not a sound. He wiped his sounding lead clean and scraped away the blood that had spurted on to the ice.
When everything was clean around the hole, it dawned on him what he had done. For the whole of his life he had been afraid of death, of dead people. Now he had killed a man, not in a war, not obeying an order, not in self-defence. He had acted in cold blood, with malice aforethought, without hesitation or regret.
He looked at the hole in the ice, the grave opening. Down there in the depths, he thought, two people are sinking to the bottom of the sea. One is a German deserter. I killed him because he got in my way. But there is another person sinking with an invisible weight tied round his neck.
Me. The person I was. Or possibly the person I have at last discovered that I am. He felt dizzy. So as not to fall over, he sat down on the ice. His heart was pounding, he had difficulty in breathing. He stared at the hole and had a powerful feeling that Stefan Dorflinger was about to climb out of the ice-cold water.
What have I done? he thought, horrified. What is happening to me? There was no answer. The panic taking possession of him was incapable of words.
He stood up and prepared to throw himself into the water. But Kristina Tacker appeared by his side and said: 'It's not you who's going to die. It's your enemies who die. Lieutenant Jakobsson, who despised you, he dropped dead. You are alive and the others die. Never forget that I love you.'
Then she was gone.
Love is unfathomable, he thought. Unfathomable, but perhaps invincible.
He stayed for half an hour by the hole in the ice, then walked slowly back to the skerry that was still shrouded in fog. Every time he saw a piece of wood marking out the path, he bent down and threw it as far as he could, one to the left, the next to the right.
The hole would soon freeze over again. There was no longer a path behind him.
There was nothing behind him.
CHAPTER 107
It would not be difficult to explain to Sara Fredrika what had happened. The deserter quite simply could no longer cope. There were people who tried to get the better of death by taking their own lives. That was nothing special, it often happened, particularly in wartime. When living in the proximity of death, it was usual for people not only to hang on to life but also to take out an advance on death.
As he came to the skerry he threw the last bit of wood out into the fog.
She was gutting cod, and now and then a bass, up by the cottage. She knew right away that something had happened. She dropped her knife and sat down, not on the stool behind her but on the ground.
'Tell me,' she said. 'Don't beat about the bush, tell me now.'
'There's been an accident.'
'Is he dead?'
'Yes, he's dead.'
'Did the ice give way?'
'He must have drilled holes so as to create a potential trapdoor when he was alone on the ice. He stepped on the weakened patch and just disappeared.'
She shook her head.
'He took his own life,' Tobiasson-Svartman said. 'I was taken completely by surprise. He didn't say a word. He just appeared out of the fog, walked up to where he must have drilled the holes and stepped straight on to it. He didn't hesitate. He can only have wanted to die.'
'No. He didn't want to die. He wanted to live.'
She was adamant. She bit hard on her hair. He had the impression that she was in a hole in the ice, hanging on by her own hair.
'He was scared. He was surrounded by fog, but even so he was alert