Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,93

tell anybody, not even her father. Besides, she knew nothing about naval ships. If he told her that there was a ship that could sail at the prodigious speed of eighty knots, she would not question it.

Kristina Tacker never questioned secrets.

He sat on the stone and played with the thought of expeditions to distant countries.

He made a measurement he had never attempted before. How far from the truth could he transport a fantasy before it collapsed in ruins?

There was no answer to that, of course. He also imagined transforming his sounding lead into a diving bell and descending into the depths himself. How strong a pressure would he be able to tolerate? Would the shell hold or would it shatter so that he was sent shooting back up to the surface and the real world once more?

It was already late afternoon when he left his stone and continued walking towards the mouth of the river. He imagined himself trudging along a path somewhere inside a steaming rainforest in a tropical land without a name.

CHAPTER 162

The boat was the same type as Sara Fredrika's, but the sail was patched and the farm labourers drunk. They were asleep, tangled together among the empty herring barrels and baskets in the bottom of the boat. It was six o'clock when he woke them up. One of them, the older one called Elis, asked Tobiasson-Svartman if he had brought the aquavit with him. He showed them the bottles but said he had no intention of handing them over until they were south of Finntarmen and preferably had reached their destination.

And what was the destination? It was the younger man, Gösta, who asked.

'It's secret. A military operation,' he replied. 'I am to be dropped on a skerry and I shall be collected from there by a naval vessel.'

'Which island?' Gösta wondered.

'I'll show you when we get close to it.'

The men were hung-over and starting to moan, and wanted to wait until the next day before leaving the mouth of the river. But he cajoled them into setting out to sea right now, there was no time to waste. There was a following wind that would take them out of Slätbaken before they lay up for the night. Gösta sat at the tiller and Elis kept an eye on the sail. He cursed every time he tightened the sheet or let it go.

Tobiasson-Svartman made himself comfortable in the bows. He had his rucksack with the sounding lead between his legs. There was an acrid smell coming from the sea. He recognised it from his time aboard the Blenda.

They anchored for the night in a creek on the edge of the approach to Slätbaken. He had spent a night with Sara Fredrika on the other side of the narrow channel.

He suddenly felt pangs of guilt. It was as if he were no longer being taken south, but was descending the sounding line inside himself. He found it difficult to breathe.

It was not until the fire had died out and the farm labourers had fallen asleep that he could feel his panic subsiding.

He looked at the sleeping labourers. I envy them, he thought. But between their lives and mine is a distance that can never be bridged.

CHAPTER 163

They were between Rökholmen and Lilla Getskär when Gösta asked once again where he wanted to be put ashore.

The wind had freshened during the night and they were making good progress after a night's rest.

'Halsskär,' Tobiasson-Svartman told him.

The man looked at him in astonishment.

'That bare bit of rock near the open sea? Near the lighthouses and the seal rocks?'

'There is a Halsskär south of Västervik and another way up north off Härnosönd. But I'm hardly going to be going all that way.'

'What the hell are you going to do on that godforsaken bloody place? A madwoman lives there. Is that who you're going to see?'

'I don't know anything about the island being inhabited. I have my orders. That's where I'm going to be collected from.'

The fisherman seemed amused.

'They say that all the bloody Finnish hunters without a licence wandering around the outer archipelago stop off there to get a bit of leg-over on the way out and again on the way back,' Elis said.

Tobiasson-Svartman was cold as ice. But even if he could have killed them, he wanted to know about the rumours.

'You mean there's a trollop living on the skerry? How on earth did she end up there?'

'Her husband drowned,' said Gösta. 'How else could she make a living? I've seen