Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,72

He killed the cat in a spasm of violent rage. I don't know why. But I thought you would like to know.'

She did not reply.

Their leave-taking was awkward, a handshake, no more.

He counted to two hundred paces. Then he turned round. She had gone. She was left behind.

PART VII

Capture

CHAPTER 110

The train came to a halt between stations. They had just passed through Åby. The station had been in darkness, but a fire was burning next to the line. It was evening, with a wind blowing from Bråviken. Tobiasson-Svartman was in the carriage next to the engine. He was sharing a compartment with a man fast asleep in a corner, his head buried in a moth-eaten fur coat. He listened to the sighing noise coming from the steam engine, and was overcome by a feeling of unreality: he would be stuck here, the train would never start moving again. There were no rails ahead of him, only an endless vacuum and sighs from the engine.

It was the second day after he had left Halsskär and started his trek to the mainland. He had spent the night in the boathouse on Armnö, but he had been unable to sleep and as soon as dawn broke he went on walking over the ice towards Gryt.

Round about Kättilö he had heard rifle shots, first one, then another. Apart from that all was silent: the ice, the islands, solitary birds.

When he came to Gryt, walking up the hill towards the church, he had a stroke of luck. A car approached and they gave him a lift as far as Valdemarsvik. The driver said not a word all the twenty-kilometre journey. There were big rust holes in the car, and Tobiasson-Svartman could see the road beneath his feet.

On the back seat was the body of a child, a little girl, wrapped in a blanket Only when they reached Valdemarsvik did he ask what had happened.

The man replied wearily: 'She scalded herself. Knocked over a bowl of boiling water. She was soaked in it from her stomach downwards. She screamed something awful before she died. But her face wasn't burned.'

The girl was lying with her face turned towards him.

As he sat on the train he did not think about Sara Fredrika or Kristina Tacker. He thought about the girl who had scalded herself. Who had died from the stomach downwards.

CHAPTER 111

A conductor came past. Tobiasson-Svartman was standing in the corridor between the first and second coaches, and he asked the man why the train had stopped. He noticed that he had a Bible in one of his uniform pockets.

'It's the cold. A set of points has frozen. A couple of linemen are thawing it out. We're twenty-five minutes late.'

'Twenty-nine,' Tobiasson-Svartman said.

They started off again shortly after midnight. The man in the corner woke up, gave Tobiasson-Svartman a bleary look and went back to sleep.

Tobiasson-Svartman had killed a man. Was he now less scared of death than before? Or more scared? There was no answer. His instrument was dead. His sounding lead was silent in his rucksack.

They arrived in Stockholm as dawn was breaking on 2 March. Outside the Central Station he passed the conductor from his train, but the man did not recognise him.

CHAPTER 112

Stockholm greeted him with snow flurries and freezing temperatures. He stood with his luggage and a porter, wondering where he should go. At first he gave his home address, then changed his mind and named a little hotel at Norra Bantorget. The porter disappeared into the snow and Tobiasson-Svartman went back into the station. He ordered breakfast in the first-class dining room, but the food stuck in his throat and he was forced to run to the toilets and throw up. The waitress looked at him in astonishment when he returned with tears in his eyes.

She can see, he thought. She can see that I have killed a man.

He paid his bill and left. The city and the falling snow made him dizzy. He came to the hotel where the porter was waiting for him. When the receptionist told him that the hotel was full, he was furious. The receptionist turned pale and gave him a room that was in fact already booked. The porter carried up his luggage.

'That's the way to treat them buggers,' he said with a smile as he pocketed his payment.

Tobiasson-Svartman closed the door, locked it and lay down on the bed. It was like being back in the boathouse on Armnö. He closed his eyes and clutched his