Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Author:John Ajvide Lindqvist
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: FIC000000, FIC015000, FIC024000
ISBN: 9781921799792
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2010-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

2

Possessed

As long as the little boat can sail

As long as the heart can beat

As long as the sun sparkles

On the blue billows

EVERT TAUBE—AS LONG AS THE LITTLE BOAT CAN SAIL

Bodies in the water

Beware of the sea, beware of the sea

The sea is so big, the sea is so big…

Taking care of business

The dawn came creeping behind the eastern islands and a glimpse of the sun was just appearing between the windblown pine trees on Botskär. Anders was standing right on the end of Simon’s jetty, squinting into the approaching light. Despite his scarf and padded jacket he was frozen, and couldn’t stop his body from shaking. He jumped as Simon dropped a chain in the boat behind his back. He tried to find a point of warmth inside himself, tried to find Maja. There was nothing there, and he felt like the sloughed-off skin of a human being. He turned around.

The chain lay in a heap in the prow of Simon’s boat. In the stern lay Elin. He couldn’t remember why they had decided to wrap her in two black plastic sacks with parcel tape wound around them. He wished they hadn’t done that, would have preferred her empty, staring eyes to the person-shaped package on the deck. It looked horrible, and he didn’t want to go anywhere near it. ‘Are we really going to do this?’

‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I think it’s the only thing we can do.’

With half-dried excrement smeared over his legs, Anders had crept to the telephone and called Simon. Simon had come, placed a tea towel over Elin’s face and helped Anders to wash himself. Then they had sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, staring out of the window until a lone pink cloud drifted across the sky, a starting flag for the new day.

There were two possible courses of action.

Nobody would believe that two dead teenagers had turned up and drowned Elin in a bucket. On the other hand, as far as everybody was concerned, there had been no sign of Elin since the fire.

Therefore, one possibility was to come up with a different story: a story that would be closely scrutinised under interrogation, since this was a murder. Would Anders be able to stick to a made-up story when the police started questioning him? Probably not.

Which left the other possibility. To get rid of Elin and pretend it had never happened.

After Simon had argued back and forth for some time, mostly with himself, they agreed that this was the lesser of two evils.

Anders took the torch and went out to the shed to fetch a couple of plastic sacks. Once inside he stopped, and his knees gave way. He had a bowling ball stuck in the middle of his chest. A black, shining sphere of guilt. He had done nothing when they were murdering Elin, he had just stayed in his bed and watched.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he whispered.

Say it once, twice, a thousand times. Eventually you might believe it.

He was finding it difficult to breathe, because the bowling ball was in the way, pressing on his lungs.

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