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  The police officer frowned at me. “You know her name?”

  “We think it’s Elsa Westerlund. She lives at 44 Skeppsbron. Her father’s a doctor, Axel Westerlund. I think her younger sister’s around here, too—Felicia. I’m sure I saw some guy dragging her around the back of the museum.”

  One of the paramedics leaned out of the ambulance cab and said, “Vad är skedde? Kanna vi gå nu?”

  “You saw some guy what?”

  “Pulling her along with him. It looked like she didn’t want to go.”

  The second police officer came up to us. He was older, grayer, with weary-looking bags under his eyes, as if he used to smoke a hundred a day. “What is wrong here?”

  “These people think they can identify the dead girl. They want to look at the body.”

  The older police officer said, “Nej. Impossible. Not here.”

  “Hey, excuse me—I think that somebody might have pushed her into the water deliberately. I saw her younger sister Felicia only a few minutes ago—there, behind the museum—and it looked like this man was abducting her—trying to take her away. He might have been trying to do the same to her, but she wouldn’t let him.”

  “Gideon,” said Kate, “you can’t be certain that it was Felicia.”

  “It sure looked like Felicia.”

  “But she’s supposed to be shopping in the city center with her friends, isn’t she? What would she be doing here?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure that’s Elsa, in the ambulance, and if that’s Elsa, then the chances are that it was Felicia, wouldn’t you say?”

  The older police officer looked at me gravely. “Where are they now—this girl and this man?”

  “They just disappeared.”

  “They disappeared? Where? In which direction?”

  “I don’t know. But they couldn’t have gotten far. They could be inside the museum.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  At last, I thought. Somebody who believed me. I gave him a quick description of “Jack” and “Felicia,” and he beckoned to the two police officers who were still standing on the jetty.

  “You are looking for a man in a black coat with a nose like en hök. Also a young girl with blonde hair wearing a yellow windbreaker.”

  The two police officers went back toward the museum, pushing their way briskly through the crowds of tourists.

  “I saw them about there,” I told the older police officer, pointing to the gardens. “I ran after them but they just vanished.”

  The older police officer looked at me and his left eyelid twitched. “If they are still here, sir, I assure you we will find them. Do you have any idea why anybody should want to take this girl?”

  “None at all. Kate? You know the Westerlunds pretty well.”

  Kate shook her head. “No idea. But then I didn’t see her.”

  I turned back to the older police officer. “Please—if we can take a look at the girl in the ambulance—”

  He thought for a moment, tugging at his nose as if it helped him to think. Then he said, “Very well. Yes? But it is not normal protocol. What do you think would happen if we permitted everybody to stare at dead bodies, just because they said they knew who they were?”

  He called out to the paramedics, and one of them climbed out of the ambulance and came around to open up the rear doors.

  “Kate?” I said. But Kate said, “No. You do it.”

  I stepped up into the ambulance, along with the older police officer and the paramedic, and the paramedic folded down the blanket that covered the girl’s face.

  “Well?” asked the older police officer. “You know her?”

  The girl’s face was bloated, and what really disturbed me was that her eyes were open. It was Elsa, no doubt about it, and she was giving me the same milky stare that she had given me in the hallway.

  “It’s her,” I said. It was airless inside the ambulance and I felt as if I could hardly breathe. “Elsa Westerlund.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “We’re staying with her family. We had supper with them last night, and spent the whole evening with them. Of course I’m sure.”

  The paramedic looked warily at the older police officer and said, “This girl has been in the water at least three days.”

  “That can’t be possible,” I told him. “I wrote a song for her yesterday evening, and sang it for her.”

  The paramedic pulled down the blanket farther. “You see how swelled up her stomach is? The sea here is very cold, never more than five degrees, so people who drown do not decompose so quickly as they would in warmer water. But I can tell you for certain that she has been dead for more than seventy-two hours. The medical examiner will confirm it for sure.”

  The older police officer looked at me with an expression that was partly regretful and partly pitying. “I’m sorry, sir, it seems that you have made an error.”

  “I don’t understand it. It looks so much like her.”

  “It is easy to do, especially when the victim has been dead for some time.”

  I looked down at the drowned girl again. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t Elsa, but I couldn’t argue with cold forensic fact. Elsa had been alive last night. This girl had been floating in the harbor.

  “I’m sorry,” the older police officer repeated.

  We all climbed out of the ambulance. Kate was waiting for me with her hands thrust deep into her coat pockets.

  “She can’t be Elsa,” I told her. “She looks exactly like her, but apparently she’s been floating in the water for several days.”

  Kate said nothing, but took hold of my arm, and drew me close to her.

  “You’re not going to stop looking for the other girl?” I asked the older police officer.

  “Of course not. If you say that you saw a young girl being taken away against her will, then I have to take the matter seriously. But maybe your wife here is right, and you have mistaken her identity.”

  I didn’t correct him for calling Kate my wife. It would have been too complicated, and in any case I was quite flattered by it. But, “I really don’t think so,” I told him. “Maybe that isn’t Elsa, but I’m certain I saw Felicia.”

  “Do you know which school she attends?”

  “Adolf Fredriks Folkskola,” said Kate. “But of course they have a free day today. Look—I have her mother’s cell number. Why don’t I call her? Then she can call Elsa and Felicia and make sure that they’re both okay?”

  The older police officer shrugged his assent. Kate took out her cell and flipped it open. She waited for a few moments, listening. Then she said, “Tilda? Sorry to disturb you at the clinic . . . it’s Kate.”

  She paused, and then she said, “Listen, Tilda, do you have Elsa’s number? She asked me to buy something for Axel today, and I’ve forgotten what it was. Aftershave, as a matter of fact, but I can’t remember the brand. Okay, thanks. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  The older police officer said, “Very diplomatic, madam. You would make a good police officer.”

  Kate dialed the number that Tilda had sent her. Again, she had to wait for a while, but eventually she said, “Elsa? Elsa, can you hear me? It’s Kate. Where are you, Elsa?”

  She turned to the older police officer and said, “Åhlens, in the café, with her friends.” Then, “Is Felicia there? Yes? I can hear her laughing. Can I talk to her?”

  Elsa must have passed her cell over, because Kate said, “Felicia? It’s Kate. No, nothing. We just wanted to know if you were having a good time.”

  The older police officer held out his hand and Kate gave him her cell. He listened, without saying a word, and then he gave it back again.

  “Okay,” he said. “Whoever you saw, sir, it obviously wasn’t this particular girl.”

  The ambulance gave a single whoop and drove away. A crosswind had sprung up from the northeast, and although it was still sunny, it was beginning to grow bitterly cold. As we stood talking, the two police off
icers came out of the museum entrance shaking their heads.

  “No sign,” one of them said, as they approached us. “Many children, but no men with noses like hawk birds.”

  “Well,” I said, “It looks like I’ve made a mistake. But even if it wasn’t Felicia, I did see a man taking a young girl away, and he was taking her by force.”

  The older police officer said, “That is what you have told us, sir, and I assure you that our officers will continue to look for this man and this girl. But I have to tell you that none of the museum staff saw anybody answering your description, and nobody else has reported seeing them either.”

  Kate said, “We’re sorry. We really seem to have wasted your time.”

  “Nej. Don’t worry, madam. If there is one thing I have learned in this job, it is that nothing is ever what it seems to be.”

  Fifteen

  Back in the old town, in one of the narrow cobbled streets, we went into an old-fashioned café called Den Gråtande Fisk and ordered a bottle of zinfandel. The café was gloomy and paneled in dark oak, with even gloomier landscapes hanging on the walls. The windows were glazed with amber glass, so that the endless stream of passersby looked like characters in a shadow theater.

  “You’re very quiet,” said Kate.

  “I’m totally confused, that’s why. I was so darn sure that was Elsa.”

  “I know. But the poor girl had been floating in the water for three days.”

  “Kate, I can’t get my head round any of this. But whatever it is, I’ve had enough of it.”

  Kate took hold of my hands. “I’ve explained to you, darling. You can see things that hardly anybody else can see—and feel them, too. You’re a very creative guy and you’re stressed out, that’s all. Remember that this is the first vacation you’ve taken in three years. Give yourself a few days and I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

  “No . . . I’m sorry. I’m going to cut this trip short. I don’t understand what’s going on and I don’t want to understand it. I’m packing my bags tonight, Kate. I’m going home. Are you going to come with me?”

  “You can’t leave, Gideon. Not yet.”

  “Oh, no? Give me one good reason why not.”

  “Because I’m asking you. Isn’t that enough?”

  “But why? This thing with Elsa and Felicia . . . it’s too weird for words. And I don’t think Axel has exactly warmed to me, do you?”

  “Please, Gideon, I need you. The Westerlunds need you, too. You don’t even know how much.”

  “You keep telling me that, but you never explain what it all means.”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  She was silent for a while, although she didn’t take her eyes off me. Eventually, she said, “I promise you, Gideon, everything will fall into place. Not tomorrow, maybe. Not the day after. But soon. So please don’t go. Not if you really do care for me.”

  “I do care for you. As a matter of fact, I love you.”

  I waited for her to say something, but all she did was lower her eyes and part her lips slightly, as if she were finding it difficult to breathe.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I asked her. “I love you. But you have to tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  She looked up again. “Do you think we’re good together?” she asked me. “Not just in bed, but in every other way.”

  I thought how much I had changed since Kate and I had been together. Not just my music, but everything about me. Up until the day she had first come around for that lunch, I had always acted just like my father: clever, yes, but cynical. Kate had shown me that I was someone else altogether. I wasn’t exactly sure who—not yet, anyhow. But I was much more concerned about other people than I had ever been before, and much more sensitive to other people’s feelings. That was why I wanted to leave Stockholm. The Westerlunds were trapped in some kind of surrealistic madness, but if I couldn’t help them to escape from it, I didn’t want to be there.

  Kate leaned forward a little, and lowered her voice. “Would you like it if we could spend much more time together?”

  “You mean—?”

  “You and me. It’s not impossible.”

  “What about Victor?”

  She hesitated, and then she said, “It’s not impossible. Not if you decide to stay.”

  I sat back. She had taken me by surprise. I had fallen in love with her much more quickly and much more inextricably than I had ever expected. It was like getting caught in a thorn thicket: the more I pushed my way forward, the more entangled I became. But I hadn’t yet considered the possibility that our relationship could be anything more than a clandestine affair, whenever Victor was playing squash or out of town on business or sleeping off last night’s orgy.

  “Okay,” I said, slowly. “I’ll stay. I hope I know what I’m letting myself in for.”

  * * *

  That night, Tilda served us smoked elk for supper—three thin slices each of dark, almost prune-colored meat, with sweet red lingonberry jelly, and potato salad.

  She was exceptionally chatty, and told us about a patient of hers whose left foot had been amputated more than a year ago, but who insisted that it still gave him agonizing pain.

  “He says it is proof that ghosts exist. If I can feel a left foot that isn’t there, he says, why is not possible to have a whole person who isn’t there?”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Felicia.

  “Neither do I,” said Elsa. “If there were ghosts, where would they all live?”

  “And what did you two do today?” Axel asked Kate.

  “I took Gideon to the Wasa Museum.”

  Axel said, “Ah, ja,” and carefully buttered himself another piece of rye bread, but said nothing more.

  Tilda said, “You found it interesting, Gideon, the Wasa?”

  “Very interesting, Tilda, yes. Especially all of the stuff they found in her, like barrels that were still filled up with beer, even after three hundred years.”

  I looked across the table at Elsa. She was staring at me, unblinking, almost as if she were challenging me to tell her mother what we had seen, when we visited the Wasa Museum. But she couldn’t have known, because Kate and I had decided not to tell the Westerlunds what had happened, and there had been no mention of it on the SVT news that evening.

  Kate said, “Tomorrow we’ll probably go to the royal palace at Drottningholm.”

  “You will love Drottningholm,” Tilda assured me. “The gardens are wonderful, with statues and fountains. The Swedish royal family still live there. Maybe you will meet one of them.”

  Elsa was still staring at me, so intently that I began to feel uncomfortable. “I am going swimming with my school tomorrow,” she told me.

  “Oh, yes?” I replied. “Be very careful, won’t you?”

  She didn’t answer me, but kept on staring. I almost had the feeling that she was trying to tell me something telepathically. You were right about that drowned girl, Gideon. That was me. But of course it couldn’t have been. I was just giving myself the willies.

  * * *

  We played charades that evening, until well past eleven o’clock. Axel mimed The Devil’s Eye, by Ingmar Bergman, by closing one eye and holding his fingers up over his head like horns.

  Felicia’s mime was High School Musical 2, while Kate acted out A Doll’s House.

  For her charade, Elsa lay on her back on the floor, with both hands held up, and her head slightly raised, swaying very slightly from side to side. She gave us no other clues but the pose was so distinctive that Kate guessed it immediately.

  “Ophelia,” she said. “Hamlet’s lost love, drowning herself.”

  Elsa looked up at me, from the floor. I still had the feeling that she was trying to tell me something, but I was damned if I could work out what it was.

  * * *

  All the same, I was much more relaxed by the time we went to bed. Three glasses of merlot with my supper had helped to conv
ince me that Kate was right, and that I had simply been suffering from stress. After my dad had died, I thought that I had seen him several times—once in Gristedes grocery on Third Avenue, down by the deli counter, and once on Forty-Second Street, staring out of the rain-beaded window of a crosstown bus. Maybe I was suffering the same kind of delusion with Elsa and Felicia.

  Kate and I made love that night in a very slow, stylized way, as if we were swimming, too. Kate came close to an orgasm time and time again, without ever quite reaching it, and after nearly an hour she was slippery with perspiration. Eventually, though, she pushed me over onto my back, and sat astride me, guiding me inside her with both hands. Then she moved up and down in a complicated rhythm, her thigh muscles clamping me harder and harder.

  As she climaxed, she took a deep breath, and I thought she was going to scream. But she bent her head forward and bit my shoulder, very hard, and her teeth stayed buried in me while she quaked and quaked and snuffled through her nose.

  “Ouch,” I said, when she had finished. But believe me, “ouch” was an understatement.

  “Oh God, Gideon, I’m sorry.” She switched on the bedside lamp. I could clearly see the marks of her teeth in my shoulder. She pulled a tissue out of the box on the nightstand and folded it into a pad. “I was scared that I was going to break a mirror or something.”

  I winced and examined my wound. “Next time, try biting the pillow instead.”

  “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”

  I held her close and kissed her. “Don’t worry about it. You can make it up to me before we get up tomorrow.”

  She put her hand down between my legs and squeezed me. “That’s a deal.”

  * * *

  I had only just fallen asleep, however, when I was woken up by the sound of Axel shouting and Tilda screaming, and their bedroom door slamming—not once, not twice, but three or four times.

  I sat up in bed. “God almighty! Those two seem so mild-mannered, don’t they? But listen to them now!”