Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,83

it, a sign of life amid all the death. He removed the fish and the seaweed, and threw the net back into the water.

He was reminded of the piece of drift net he'd seen that morning on board the Blenda. The soundless, lifeless movements, the freedom that meant always being on the move. Now another net had achieved freedom.

He examined the pieces of bone. There was part of a forearm, a broken rib and the remains of a left foot.

The foot upset him. There was something shameless about this well-preserved section of a man's skeleton, the only thing to remind an observer so vividly that this person had drowned in a state of inconceivable terror and loneliness.

He rowed back to Halsskär. At one point he stopped rowing and felt his forehead to feel if he had a temperature. His forehead was cool.

When he got back to the cottage he found it empty. He put the bones down, walked back to the spring and drank deep. Then he went to look for her. She must be there somewhere. Even so, he suddenly felt all alone on the skerry.

CHAPTER 137

He found her at the far north end of the island. She had crawled into a crevice, pressed herself down into the heather, lay with her eyes wide open but seeing nothing. He sat down beside her.

There is nothing so easy as taking control of suffering people, he thought. People totally lacking in resistance. He remembered his mother, weeping, alone in one of the dark rooms that comprised his childhood home.

A flock of crows was cawing somewhere in the distance. The sound died away. He waited. Thirty-two minutes passed. Then she stood up and hastened away. She walked back to the cottage. He was about to follow her in when she came out and hurried down towards the inlet.

He stood quite still. Should he allow her to be on her own? There was nowhere she could disappear to, there were no hidden doors in the rocks that could open up.

Then he saw smoke and could smell tar. When he got there he found she had set fire to a tar barrel and was stuffing nets and eel traps into the flames.

'You can burn yourself!' he yelled. 'You can get burning tar all over you!'

He pulled at her, but she refused to budge. So he smacked her, hard, in the face. When she stood up he hit her again.

This time she stayed sitting on the ground. He knocked the barrel over and kicked it into the water. The barrel sizzled, the smoke stank. She was lying on the ground now, stained with tar and blood, her skirt pulled up way above her stomach. He reminded himself that there was a baby inside there, a baby that existed even if it couldn't be seen.

The burning tar slowly went out. There was a thin layer of smoking grease on the surface of the water. He helped her up.

'I must get away,' she said. 'I can't stay here.'

'We'll leave the island. Soon. But not yet.'

'Why do we have to stay here? Why not now?'

'I haven't finished my task.'

She examined her tar-stained hands.

'I salvaged the bones and cut off the floats,' he said. 'The net has gone.'

'It'll come floating up again.'

'It will be driven by the currents down deep in the water. It will never come up to the surface again. Not here at least.'

She looked around.

"The bones are in the cottage.'

'I have to bury him.'

She set off. When they got to the door he took hold of her again.

'I found something else.'

'His head! God, I can't take this.'

'Not his head. But a foot.'

'They were big and dirty. His feet were only important for him, not for me.'

She collected the remains on the ground in front of her and squatted down. She was murmuring, conducting a whispered conversation between herself and the bones. He leaned towards her to hear what she was saying, but he could not make out any words.

Then she stood up and fetched the fur from the mad fox. She rolled up the bones and the piece of leather inside it, and asked him to bring a spade.

The grave was a shallow hollow in one of the rocky ledges towards the west of the island. She did the digging, would not allow him to do it for her. When the spade struck rock she put the pelt in the hole and covered it with the soil. That evening she took the pipe and threw it