Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,74

with iron sinkers strapped to his body.

CHAPTER 115

A porter wheeled his luggage through the streets of Stockholm.

Horses ploughed their way through the snowdrifts. It was still cold. He held a hand over his mouth as he followed on the heels of the porter.

I am frightened, he thought. Not because of what I have done, but because she will see straight through me, just like my father used to do with his scary eyes.

He longed to be back among the silence and the ice. It was as if the city had turned its back on him.

CHAPTER 116

His father-in-law had got there first. Kristina Tacker's surprise at seeing him was pure artifice. The maid took his coat and left them alone.

'I arrived in Stockholm late last night. I didn't want to frighten you.'

'You wouldn't have frightened me.'

She took his hand and led him into the room in the middle of their flat, the warmest room in winter and the coolest in summer. There were flowers on a table. He was on his guard immediately. She never used to buy flowers.

She sat down on the edge of one of the red plush chairs and said something in such a low voice that he couldn't make out what it was.

'I couldn't hear.'

'I'm pregnant.'

He did not move. Even so, it felt as if he had started running.

'I've been waiting for a chance to tell you.'

He sat on a chair next to her.

'Are you pleased?'

'Of course I am.'

'The baby is due in September.'

He worked it out in his head and realised right away when it must have been conceived: the night after he had come home in December.

'I've been frightened. I didn't know how you would react.'

'I have always wanted to have a child.'

She stretched out her hand. It was cold. Sara Fredrika's hands had been warm. He held her hand and longed to be back on Halsskär. As he was walking over the ice he had thought that he would never return. Sara Fredrika would stay there, waiting for him. But the ice would melt away without his going back, the sea would open up but he would never go back to her island.

Kristina Tacker said something he did not catch. He was thinking about Sara Fredrika and could feel his lust rising. What he longed for was somewhere else. Not in the warmest of the rooms in Wallingatan.

'Life will be different,' she said.

'Life will be as we imagined it would be,' he replied.

He stood up and walked to the window since he couldn't bear to look her in the eye.

He heard her leaving the room. Her steps were sprightly. There was a clinking noise as she started moving her china figurines about. He closed his eyes, and it seemed to him that he was now sinking down to the point where there was no bottom.

CHAPTER 117

The next morning he left the flat at about nine.

He forced himself to walk quickly, so as to shake off his tiredness.

He had not slept a wink all night. When Kristina Tacker had fallen asleep he breathed in the smell of her skin, then carefully got out of bed. He wandered around the flat, trying to understand what was happening. He was losing his grip on his surroundings. This had never happened to him before. His instrument no longer worked.

He stood with one of her china figurines in his hand, just before dawn, when time seems to stand still. He thought aloud and whispered to the china figurine with its naively painted face that in fact he was the one who no longer worked. He had no right to blame his instrument.

He was out of breath by the time he came to Skeppsholmen. He waited until his pulse rate was normal before going in through the high doors.

CHAPTER 118

Tobiasson-Svartman walked down the echoing corridors and reported to a lieutenant by the name of Berg.

Lieutenant Berg looked at him in surprise.

'Nobody told us you were coming.'

'I'm doing that now. I don't expect to be interviewed today, I've only come to report that I'm back in Stockholm.'

The lieutenant asked him to take a seat while he finished writing an urgent message. Tobiasson-Svartman sat down to wait. The clock on the wall was two minutes slow. He could not resist standing up, opening the glass case and adjusting the minute hand. Lieutenant Berg raised his head, saw what he was doing then continued writing. His pen made a rasping sound. When the letter was finished he put it in an envelope, sealed