by Viveca Sten
As she showered she thought about all the things that had changed on Sandhamn since she’d been a child attending those swimming lessons. As the summer population had increased, so had the traffic to the island. Now the tourists could take a half-hour flight over the archipelago, and there was a helicopter service flying hungry diners out to the Sailors Restaurant. The conference center, situated in the Royal Swedish Sailing Society’s former clubhouse, built in 1897 in the National Romantic style, was open year-round. It was also possible to hire kayaks and old-fashioned bikes to travel around the island.
The beautiful people loved coming out to Sandhamn, hobnobbing whenever there was a regatta or an international yacht race. The Gucci quota had shot up by several hundred percent, as Henrik would remark with some amusement as the big jetty in front of the clubhouse filled up with elegant women in expensive clothes and middle-aged men who carried both their rotundity and their bulging wallets with an air of authority and assurance.
Some of the residents complained about the increased traffic and the number of tourists on the island, but the majority, who depended on the employment opportunities they provided for their survival, had a positive attitude toward the development.
The contrast between the summer months, however, with two to three thousand more people staying on the island and a hundred thousand day visitors, and the winter, with its hundred and twenty residents, could not have been greater.
Despite the fact that Thomas had spent every summer of his life in the Stockholm archipelago, he still found it remarkably stunning in the clear morning air.
Traveling to Sandhamn by helicopter was an unexpected privilege. The view from the wide windscreen was unparalleled. The contours of the islands, strewn across the glittering water, were razor-sharp.
They had flown over Nacka and out toward Fågelbrolandet. Once they had left Grinda behind them and reached the outer islands, the character of the landscape changed. The gentler green of the inner archipelago, with its leafy trees and open meadows, changed to rocky islands with low-growing, windblown pine trees and bare expanses of rock.
When they were level with Runmarö, the characteristic view of Sandhamn opened out in front of them—a closely packed collection of red- and buff-colored houses, just where the sound between Sandhamn and Telegrafholmen began.
Thomas never tired of that first sight of the familiar outline of the little community out on the edge of the archipelago. It had existed as a post for customs and pilot boats ever since the end of the sixteenth century, through Russian devastation, bitter winters, the arrival of steamboats, and the isolation of the war years. It was still a vibrant community.
Thomas squinted through his sunglasses and looked down.
Motorboats and yachts were tied to the wooden jetties, and behind them he could just see the old pilot tower rising up from the highest point on the island. White buoys bobbed out beyond the landing stages, with green-and-red markers showing the way for both commercial traffic and leisure sailors. It was early in the morning, but the channel was already full of white sails on their way out to sea.
After only a minute or so they were over Sandhamn. The pilot rounded the elaborate eighteenth-century customhouse, and the helicopter landing stage beside it quickly came into view. With a precise maneuver he put the helicopter down in the center of the marked rectangle, just a few yards away from the wharf.
“I can wait half an hour or so, then I need to leave,” said the pilot, looking at Thomas.
Thomas looked at his watch and thought for a moment. “We shouldn’t be finished that quickly. You might as well go. We’ll get back somehow.” He turned to the two technicians, who had lifted their black bags out onto the helipad. “OK, let’s go. We’re heading for the west beach, north of Koberget. The maritime police are already there. No vehicles are allowed on the island, so we’ve got a nice brisk walk ahead of us.”
CHAPTER 4
As Nora cycled through the harbor area with Simon on the luggage rack, she noticed a police helicopter on the landing pad. On the far side of Ångbåtsbryggan on Nacka Strand, a large police launch had moored in the spot reserved for the doctor’s boat. A policeman wearing the distinctive uniform of the maritime police was standing on the deck. It was unusual to see so many police officers this early in the morning.
Something must have happened.
Nora cycled past the row of small shops, where you could buy your fill of sailing clothes, chandlery, and sail-making items, and carried on past the back of the clubhouse. She turned into the harbor and cycled along the narrow track that ran parallel with the minigolf course up to the enclosed pool area. After parking the bike behind the ice cream kiosk, she lifted Simon and set him down. She held on to him with one hand and carried the bag with his swimming gear in the other, ducked underneath the sign that said “Closed,” and went into the swimming school.
In one corner, some of the parents were talking as the children ran around waiting for the swimming lesson to begin. Nora put the bag down on a lounge chair and went over to the group.
“Has something happened?”
“Didn’t you see the police helicopter?” said one of the mothers. “They’ve found a dead body—it washed ashore on the west beach.”
Nora gasped. “A dead body?”
“Yes, tangled in a fishing net, can you imagine? Apparently it was just below the Åkermarks’ house.” She pointed over toward one of the mothers, whose son attended swimming lessons at the same time as Simon. “They’ve sealed off the entire beach down there. Lotta barely got through on her way here with Oscar.”
“Was it an accident?” Nora asked.
“No idea. The police wouldn’t say much when she asked them. But it sounds gruesome, doesn’t it?”
“Is it somebody from the island? Could it have been somebody who was out fishing and just fell in?” Nora looked at the rest of the group.
One of the fathers spoke. “I don’t think anybody knows. I don’t suppose it was very easy to see. But Lotta was pretty shaken up when she got here.”
Nora sat down on a bench by the edge of the pool. In the water, Simon was hanging on to an orange float as he struggled to kick his legs properly. She tried to shake off the horrible feeling without success.
Despite herself, she could see the image of a person gasping for air as he became more and more entangled in a net that was slowly dragging him down.
The western part of the island was unnaturally quiet. No morning breeze disturbed the surface of the water. Even the gulls had given up their usual screaming.
Down on the beach, the maritime police had already sealed off the area where the body lay. A few curious onlookers were standing behind the police tape in a silent huddle, watching.
Thomas greeted his colleagues and walked over to the bundle on the ground.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
The torn fishing net had been shifted slightly to one side, revealing the remains of something that appeared to be the body of a man. It was still wearing the remains of a sweater and tattered pants. It looked as if something had been gnawing at one ear; only flakes of skin remained.
A looped rope was wrapped around the body, just under the arms, looking somewhat worse for wear. It appeared to be an ordinary rope, the kind used to tie up small boats. Strands of green seaweed that had dried in the sun were still hanging from the rope.
The stench in the hot sunshine was almost unbearable, and Thomas turned away as it wafted up.
Some things a person never got used to.
He quelled the impulse to vomit and walked around the body to look at it from the other side. It was difficult to draw any conclusions about the man’s appearance. Clumps of dark hair clung to the skull, but it wasn’t really possible to make out what he had looked like. The face was swollen, the skin suffused with water. The body was blue and spongy; it looked as if it were made of wet c
lay.
As far as Thomas could judge, the man had been medium height, somewhere between five six and five nine. It didn’t look as if he’d been married; the ring finger on his left hand was still there, and there was nothing on it. Then again, a ring could have easily slipped off in the water.
The forensic technicians had opened their cases and were examining the scene. A middle-aged man was sitting on a rock a little way off. He was leaning back against a tree trunk, his eyes closed. Beside him stood a dachshund, snuffling anxiously. It was the dog owner who had made the gruesome discovery earlier and called the police.
The poor guy must have been waiting there for several hours, thought Thomas, as he went over to introduce himself.
“Did you find the body?”
The man nodded.
“I’ll need to talk to you. I’m just going to sort something out here, then we can have a chat. Can you stay a little while? I know you’ve been here for quite some time, and I really appreciate that you’ve waited for us.”
The man nodded again. He looked as if he didn’t feel well. Beneath the suntan he was pale, his face almost green. There was an unpleasant smell coming from his shoes.
His morning hadn’t gotten off to a particularly good start, Thomas thought before he went back to have a few words with the technicians.
“Thomas, have you come to visit?” Nora smiled when she saw Thomas, one of her oldest and closest friends, outside Westerberg’s grocery store on her way back from swimming. Her bike skidded to a halt on the gravel, and she lifted Simon.
“Look who’s here, Simon. Give your godfather a big hug.”
She had to stretch up so Simon could reach. Although she was above average height, it was nothing compared with Thomas at six foot four. On top of that he was well built, his shoulders broad from years of handball training. He looked just like the archetypal policeman, big and reassuring, with blond hair and blue eyes.
“They ought to use you on recruitment posters for the training academy,” she used to tease him.
Thomas’s parents lived on the neighboring island of Harö, and ever since they had attended the Friends of Sandhamn sailing camp together where they were nine, Nora and Thomas had been the best of friends.
Every summer they had picked up the threads from the previous year, and despite their parents’ conviction that there was romance in the air, they had remained just good friends, nothing more.
The first time Nora got so drunk she threw up, it was Thomas who had cleaned her up and got her home without her parents knowing. At least they’d never mentioned it. When the great teenage love of his life had dumped him, Nora had done her best to console him and let him go on and on about it. They had spent a whole night sitting on the rocks as he poured his heart out.
When they were fourteen they had spent a whole summer studying for their confirmation with the priest in the chapel on Sandhamn, and both of them had done every available summer job on the island: worked in the ice cream kiosk, helped out at the bakery and at the sailing club, ran the till at Westerberg’s shop. They had also danced in the Sailors Restaurant, until, hot and sweaty, they ended the evening with a nighttime dip in the sea below Dansberget as the sun was rising.
When Henrik first showed an interest in Nora by inviting her to the medical students’ ball, she had called Thomas to tell him. She had been deeply attracted to Henrik, whose spontaneous charm had hit her with full force. As usual, Thomas had listened as she fell in love and prattled on.
Thomas had always wanted to join the police, just as Nora had always wanted to study law. She used to joke that when she became minister for justice, she would make him the chief of police of Sweden.
When Adam was born, Nora knew Thomas was the obvious choice for a godparent, but Henrik wanted to choose his best friend and his wife. When Simon came along, Nora insisted that Thomas be his godfather. Thomas was the kind of person they could rely on if anything happened to her or Henrik.
“I’m here to work,” Thomas said with a serious expression. “Did you hear that a dead body has been found on the other side of the island?”
Nora nodded. “It sounds dreadful. I was just at the swimming school with Simon, and that was the only topic of conversation. What happened?” She looked anxiously at Thomas.
“I’ve no idea at this stage. All we know is that it’s a man’s body, and it was entangled in an old fishing net. It looked pretty bad, so it must have been in the water for quite some time.”
Nora shuddered in the warm sunshine. “Terrible. But it must have been an accident, surely? I can’t believe anybody could be murdered here on Sandhamn.”
“We’ll see. The pathologist will have to examine the body before we can draw any conclusions. The man who found it couldn’t tell us much.”
“He must have been shocked.”
“Yeah, I feel sorry for him. Nobody expects to find a corpse when they’re out on their morning walk,” said Thomas with a grimace.
Nora lifted Simon back onto the bike. “Can you come over when you’re finished? I’m sure you’ve earned a cup of coffee,” she said.
Thomas smiled. “Sounds like a good idea. I’ll try.”
CHAPTER 5
Nora cycled home deep in thought. She wondered if the man who had died had been a resident or a total stranger. If he lived on Sandhamn, then she should have heard that someone was missing. The island was small enough for most people to keep an eye on each other. The social network was strong. But she hadn’t heard a thing.
As she lifted Simon down and parked the bike by the fence, she saw her next-door neighbor, Signe Brand, watering her roses. The most glorious roses covered the south-facing wall of Signe’s house, pink interspersed with red. The rose bushes were several decades old, their stems as thick as a wrist.
Signe, or Auntie Signe as Nora called her when she was little, lived in the Brand house, one of the most beautiful houses on the island, right in the middle of Kvarnberget, just by the inlet to Sandhamn. When the old windmill that had stood on Kvarnberget was moved in the 1860s, Signe’s grandfather, the master pilot Carl Wilhelm Brand, saw an opportunity to make use of the land. After many years he built a truly imposing house right at the top of the hill.
Although the fashion at the time was to build houses close together in the village in order to protect each other from the wind, the master pilot built his house so that it stood alone in solitary majesty. It was the first thing visitors saw when the steamboat docked in Sandhamn, a landmark for all those who came to the island.
The master pilot had skimped on nothing when the house was being built. He used only the finest material. The National Romantic style was fully embraced, with narrow roof projections, wide decorative bargeboards, and gently curving lines in the attic and bay windows. Inside were lavish tiled stoves, specially ordered from the porcelain factory in Gustavsberg, and a huge claw-foot bathtub in what was an unusually modern bathroom for the time. There was even an indoor toilet, which provoked great surprise among the neighbors, who were used to the inconvenience of the outhouse.
Some of them had shaken their heads, muttering something about fancy city ways, but the master pilot had taken no notice. “I’ll shit where I like,” he had roared when the gossip reached him.
Signe had bought herself a television after resisting for many years, but that was the only thing that didn’t fit in with the style of the house. Everything was so beautifully preserved it was barely noticeable that a hundred years had passed since the house was furnished.
These days, Signe lived alone in the house with her dog, a Labrador named Kajsa. From time to time she complained about the cost of everything, but each time some fresh outsider tried to tempt her with an amazing offer for what had to be one of Sandhamn’s most beautiful buildings, she snorted and sent them packing.
“This is where I was born, and this is where I’m going to die,” she
would say without a shred of sentimentality. “No rich kid from Stockholm is moving in here.”
Signe loved the house she had inherited, and Nora could understand why. When she was little, Signe had been like an extra grandmother, and Nora felt just as much at home in her house as in her parents’.
“Did you hear about what happened?” she asked Signe.
“No, what?” Signe said, putting down the watering can. She straightened up and came over to the fence.
“Somebody drowned—they found a body over on the west beach. The police are out in force.”
Signe looked at her in surprise.
“You can imagine how wound up the parents at the swimming school were,” Nora said.
“Somebody’s dead, is that what you said?”
“Yes. I bumped into Thomas down by Westerberg’s. He’s here to investigate the death.”
“Do they know who it is? Did you recognize the body?”
“I wasn’t there. Thomas said it was a man, and the body was in a really bad state. Apparently it’s been in the water for several months.”
“So Thomas is here on police business. To think he’s so grown up,” said Signe.
“So am I. He’s only a year older than me,” Nora said with a grin.
“It’s still hard to grasp. Time goes so quickly.” Signe looked sad. “I can hardly believe you’ve got children of your own. It seems like just yesterday you were as small as Adam and Simon.”
Nora smiled, said good-bye, and went inside. She loved her house, which she had inherited several years earlier from her grandmother. It wasn’t all that big, but it was charming and had held up really well, considering it was built in 1915. On the ground floor there was a large kitchen and a big room that served as a TV room and playroom as well as a sitting room for the adults.
