Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,84

into the fire. It seemed to Tobiasson-Svartman that she did that for his sake, removing the last trace of her husband. That night she clung tightly to his body. Her hands made it clear to him that she never intended to let go.

CHAPTER 138

The next day, in the evening, he told her that Halsskär was a sort of haven. A remote outpost in the sea for people with nowhere to go.

'It's like a church,' he said.

She had no idea what he meant by that.

'This skerry from Hell? A church?'

'Nobody commits a crime in a church. Nobody sticks an axe into his enemy's head in a church. It's a haven. In the old days outlaws were able to seek sanctuary in a church. Perhaps Halsskär was that kind of place for you and your husband? Without your realising it?'

She looked at him in a way he did not recognise. It was as if her eyes were turning away.

'How did you know about her?' she asked.

'Know about who?'

'The woman who sought sanctuary on this island. The goddess. I heard about her once from Helge. A storm had blown up and I let him stay overnight. That was when he told me about the winter's night in 1843. You can't always believe what Helge says, but he tells lovely stories. He has many words, just as many as you have. It was a severe winter that year, the ice was so thick that they say it roared like a wild animal when it formed pack ice. But there was an open channel from the sea way out near Gotska Sandön, and a woman came floating along in that channel, she must have been a goddess because there was a sort of halo all around her body. She had been thrown overboard by a drunken sailor. She was transparent and freezing cold and the open channel froze over once she had passed through it. But she reached here, and she hid herself on the skerry. The following year a dead sailor drifted ashore, he had cut his own throat. It was the sailor who had thrown her overboard, and now it was his turn to be washed up here. Helge had heard the story from his father. I sometimes think that she and I are the same person.'

She snuggled down under the covers. He sat down on the floor next to the bed, she stroked his hair.

Then he started to tell her about another goddess, the one who stood guard on the edge of the great city in the west, far away over the sea, and bade welcome to everyone who went there seeking sanctuary.

'I'll take you there,' he said. 'It's time for me to make a new start as well. You have your dead husband, I have my dead family.'

'I want to go to somewhere far away from the sea. I don't want to see it, or hear it, or smell it.'

'There are towns surrounded by desert. It's a long way to the sea from there.'

'What would you do there? In the middle of a desert? With your sounding leads and your sailor's book and your navigable channels?'

'There are things to measure in deserts as well. I could explore the depth of the sand. I could keep track of how it keeps moving.'

'But what about the water?'

'If I started to long for it, I could no doubt find a sea out there to start sounding out.'

She fell asleep. He lay close to her, felt her warmth.

That night he dreamed about a ship sailing backwards across the horizon. It felt like somebody being taken to be executed.

CHAPTER 139

One night in the middle of May she woke him up and put his hand on her stomach. The baby was kicking.

The cry of a bird rang out through the night.

They said nothing, just the hand, the baby kicking, the cry of a bird.

He tried to conjure up the baby. Sara Fredrika's baby. Kristina Tacker's baby.

Kristina Tacker's had a face, it was his own.

Sara Fredrika's looked like the skeleton of a foot.

When she fell asleep again he got up and went out. It was a bright spring night, damp, with a breeze blowing over the rocks. He went to the highest point of the skerry and looked out to the sea.

He was overcome by his helplessness. All his lust and desire had gone. All he could envisage was dirt and misery.

I have to get away from here, he thought. Without her. I have to find a way