The Spring Tide by Cilla Börjlind, Rolf Börjlind Page B

what. It only lasted a flash of a second.
    ‘What were you doing there?’ he asked.
    ‘I’d got lost and ended up there.’
    ‘A beautiful place.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Silence… and what were you doing there? Didn’t he understand that that was the underlying question?
    Perhaps he did, but it was a question he had no intention whatsoever of answering.
    ‘Good night.’
    Nilsson went on his way, with the image of Olivia on his retina.
    * * *
    The trombone lay in its black case and XL sat next to it, on the quay below the restaurant. It had been a long evening and he had poured quite a lot down his throat. Now he was going to sober up a little. He would open a smoke house tomorrow. Leffe’s Smokehouse. Freshly smoked fish for the mainlanders, that would turn a nice profit. The well-built islander next to him was sober. He was on call to man the taxi boat and had just got a booking.
    ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Someone from over there.’
    Over there could mean anything from Strömstad to Stockholm.
    ‘How much did you ask for?’
    ‘Two thousand.’
    XL did a bit of mental arithmetic and compared it with his smokehouse. The hourly rate did not work out to the smokehouse ’s advantage.
    ‘Is that him?’
    XL nodded upwards. A man with a leather jacket and black jeans was walking towards them.
    A man who had done what he had to do.
    On Nordkoster Island.
    Now he was forced to take another step.
    In Stockholm.
    * * *
    She had finally fallen asleep. With the lamp on, the door locked and the name Dan Nilsson on her lips.
    The man from Hasslevikarna.
    The rest of the night Olivia was in the grip of feverish nightmares . For hours. Suddenly a frayed bellow pushed up through her throat and out of her wide-open mouth. A terrible bellow. Cold sweat ran out of every pore and her hands clawed at the air. On the windowsill behind her, a spider sat watching the drama taking place in the bed. How the young woman tried to clamber up out of a hole of terror.
    In the end she got out.
    She remembered the nightmare down to the tiniest detail. She had been buried in the sand. Naked. The tide was low and there was moonlight and it was cold. The sea started to roll in. Closer and closer. The water rushed up towards her head, but it wasn’t water, it was a lava stream of thousands of small black crabs that gushed forth towards her naked face and into her open mouth.
    That was when the bellow came.
    Olivia leapt out of bed and gasped for breath. She pulled up the blanket with one hand, wiped the sweat off her face and stared around in the cabin. Had the entire night been a dream? Had that man really been there? She went up to the door and opened it. She needed air, oxygen, and stepped out into the darkness. The wind had died down a great deal. She felt she needed to pee. She went down the steps and then squatted behind a large bush. It was then she saw it, a little to her left.
    The suitcase.
    The man’s wheeled suitcase lay on the ground.
    She went up to it and peered around her in the darkness. She couldn’t see anything. Or anybody. She couldn’t see Dan Nilsson at any rate. She sank down beside the suitcase. Should she open it?
    She unzipped the flap from one side to the other, and cautiously lifted the upper part of the case.
    It was completely empty.
    * * *
    From a distance, it might look rather idyllic, the greyish caravan. Embedded in the nocturnal greenery from the Nothing forest, quite close to the Pampas Marina in Solna, with a weak yellow glow through the oval window.
    But on the inside the idyll vanished.
    The caravan was very decrepit. At one time the Calor gas stove beside the wall had worked, now it was all rusty and useless. At one time the plexiglass dome on the roof had let in some light, now it was covered with dirt and opaque. At one time the doorway had been covered with long colourful plastic ribbons, now there were only three left, and they only reached halfway to the floor. At one time the caravan had served as a holiday