I imagined myself calling the Stockholm morgue. ‘Got any surplus bodies today? A man about thirty-five, five eleven and a half, slight, fair-haired – or maybe black, or grey, or bald
. . .’
There was bound to be someone of that description lying around. Any large city has its share of murders and suicides and accidents. The extensive stretches of water in Stockholm must be a
temptation to despairing lovers, drunken tourists, and exasperated spouses.
I didn’t really believe he was dead. No, he was skulking around somewhere, plotting and planning in a Machiavellian fashion.
I finished my beer and summoned the waiter. As I fumbled for the money to pay the check, I felt a surge of well-being. Indecision is the one thing that drives me crazy. Probably the decision I
had reached was the wrong one, but it was better than doing nothing.
On my way out I passed the table where the man in grey was at work. Two of the ladies were giggling over their portraits, and he was engaged on number three. Seeing me, the chubbiest of the
girls (I’m sure that’s how they referred to themselves) gave me a dimpled grin and held up her silhouette. It was a masterpiece, subtly flattering, and even more subtly caricaturing her
worst feature – multiple chins, pinched mouth, receding forehead. I did not pause to admire it, I just smiled and nodded and went on. The ladies smiled and nodded. People at nearby tables
smiled and nodded. The silhouette cutter smiled and nodded . . . And I’m sure any astute reader of thrillers has surely, by this time, caught the implications I flat-out missed. Take the
‘had I but known’ comment as read.
Innocent and stupid and unaware, I ambled into the park and paused to consult my map. Strandvägen, the wide boulevard along the waterfront, looked like the most direct route. And I had
better hurry. Museums keep peculiar hours; some are open in the evening, some close at four o’dock.
The long white boats glided over the water, carrying carefree tourists on their way. I wished I were one of them. I wasn’t even sure why I was heading for the Statens Historiska Museum. I
wanted to refresh my memories of Viking art objects and take some notes to replace the ones in my lost notebook, but my real reason was far less sensible. The dream kept itching at my mind. I could
account rationally for almost all the elements of it, including the anxiety that had led me to visualize a masterpiece threatened with destruction. Any art object John was after had a poor chance
of survival; it would probably vanish into the limbo of lost treasures. But I couldn’t explain the chalice itself. Why that, of all the other examples in museums – the Kingston brooch,
the golden horns from Gallehus? I wanted a closer look at that chalice, and I needed the address of the private museum that owned it. Someone at the National Museum of Antiquities would be able to
supply that information.
I was only a block or two from the museum when I saw a stationer’s and went in to get a replacement for my notebook. It was then that, with the abruptness of pure illogic, I remembered the
name of the place I was looking for.
The clerk was very helpful. He looked up the name and address and showed me where it was on the map. As I might have expected, I had gone in the wrong direction. The Hansson Collection was on
Riddarholm Island on the far side of Gamla Stan.
Every large city has places like the Hansson Collection – small, privately endowed museums that are dedicated to a particular specialty and are visited only by experts in that specialty
and by compulsive tourists who follow lists of ‘things to see.’ The building in which it was housed had once been a private residence – that of Mr Hansson, I assumed. It was a
beautiful seventeenth-century mansion in the ornate Dutch Renaissance style, with rosy-red bricks and carved window frames. I lucked out on the schedule. It was open from one to five. I still had
an hour.
I passed through room after stately room, my footsteps echoing, in spite of my efforts to tread lightly. The focus of the place was prehistory. I don’t think I saw more than six people,
all of them frozen in rapt contemplation of shapeless stone axes and rotted copper tools. Prehistory is definitely not my field, and I have never had any trouble resisting exhibits of cracked pots,
but I must confess to a certain morbid interest in graves. A goodly proportion of the objects displayed in archeological museums come from tombs, but that isn’t the reason why reconstructions
of ancient burials are so popular with visitors. I suppose they remind us of the futility of material ambitions and the inevitability of death. ‘As I am now, so you shall be . . .’
Since I didn’t need reminders of mortality just then, I headed directly for the Treasure Room, where the most valuable pieces in the collection were housed – valuable, at least, in
material terms. The arrangement had been made not so much for the convenience of tourists as for security. Like our treasure room in Munich, it was built like a vault, windowless and
steel-walled.
Reaching the end of the wing, I turned a corner and came to a sudden, shocked halt. I’m sure the exhibit had been deliberately arranged to have that effect. Sensitive tourists of either
sex probably shrieked.
She lay on her back, her head turned to one side and her limbs lightly flexed in an attitude of sleep. The brown ribs showed through the flattened chest wall, and one hand modestly covered the
sexual area, but there was no doubt she was female; the rounded hips and slender arms had been petrified into a variety of tanned leather. Her head had been shaved. The delicate folds of her ear
had been flattened by the earth that held her down, and a strip of woven cloth covered her eyes. They had at least had the decency to blindfold her before they drowned her in the bog and left her
there.
I had read about the bodies found in peat bogs, incredibly preserved by natural chemicals. They aren’t mummies, for mummification implies a drying process. This is more like tanning. Some
of the bog people, like the man from Tollund, are more lifelike than most Egyptian mummies. The majority of them come from Denmark. This girl – fourteen years old, according to the catalogue
– had been found in Halland, on the west coast of Sweden. She had died sometime during the first century
AD
, a sacrifice to some unknown god, or an executed criminal.
It was hard to think of a crime a fourteen-year-old would commit. The catalogue suggested adultery. Fourteen years old . . . Many of the women were married that young. And throughout the centuries,
up to modern times, women convicted of adultery often had their hair cut off before they were killed. Only the women. Their male partners in ‘crime’ probably handed the barber his
razors and then headed for the local pub to drink a few horns of mead with the boys.
As I went on into the next room, I heard a muffled shriek, as another unwary visitor came on the girl from Halland.
There were two people in the Treasure Room. One looked like a student – beard, jeans, T-shirt. He was leaning over a glass case containing coins and beads.
The other person was a woman, and for a startled second I felt as if I had come upon my doppelgänger, that image of oneself that is the harbinger of imminent death. Like me, she was
unusually tall; like me, she had long blond hair. Like me, she wore white slacks. There the resemblance stopped. Her blouse had long, full sleeves and an unnecessary profusion of ruffles around the
neck and shoulders. Compared to her mane of shimmering hair, mine was lank and lusterless – like the before and after in a shampoo commercial. Her hips were as straight as a boy’s, but
any deficiency in that area was compensated for up above. She must have been wearing a bra. Nobody’s muscles are that good.
The chalice was in a separate case in the middle of the room. My dreaming mind had an excellent visual memory; it had reproduced the major features. The shallow bowl and the wide foot were
joined by a band of heavy gold overlaid with exquisitely coiled filigree. A band of the same material encircled the bowl just below the rim. This band and the twin handles were inlaid with garnets
and scarlet enamel, set off by the gold strips of the cloisonné in which the enamel was set. The intricacy of the design was incredible. It was hard to imagine how it could have been done
without a magnifying glass. Two of these relatively modern devices had been set up inside the case in order to enlarge portions of the filigree.
Colour photography is superb these days, but nothing can capture the true wonder of work like that. You have to see it. As I bent over the lovely thing, I heard the bearded man walk out. The
woman was moving methodically around the room, stopping at every exhibit.
The catalogue contained a long paragraph on the chalice. Discovered in 1889, one of the first objects presented by Karl Hansson when he contributed his collection to the city.
Footsteps moved towards me. Without looking up from the catalogue I stepped to one side to give the newcomer a better view. It was her perfume that caught my attention – divine. I
couldn’t identify it, probably because it smelled like money as well as musk, the kind of money I’ve never possessed.
Golden locks tumbled over her face as she bent to look more closely at the chalice. I caught only a glimpse of a tanned cheek, but that was all I needed. He heard my breath catch, and that was
all
he
needed. Before I could express myself with the eloquence the situation demanded, he said in a hideous falsetto, ‘Aren’t you the clever little thing! I felt sure you would
figure it out.’
I ejected one word – ‘You – ’ before he cut off the noun. ‘I beg, dear girl, that you won’t shout. I believe I’ve lost him, but one can never take too
many precautions.’
‘Who is “him”?’ I inquired. I spoke softly. I didn’t want to attract ‘his’ attention either.
A less subtle comedian might have made some stupid joke about grammar. John just brushed the voluminous hair back from his face and grinned. I understood the necessity for the fluffy blouse; he
was no weight lifter, but his biceps could never have passed for a woman’s, and his shoulders were broad enough to require camouflage. And, as I studied his pensive profile, I also understood
the dark makeup.
‘I see you’ve already had a little set-to with him,’ I said.
Wincingly John touched the bruise on his jaw. There were others around his throat, almost hidden by the ruffles.
‘You needn’t sound so pleased. He caught me off guard. It won’t happen again.’
‘I’ll bet. Who is “him”?’
‘No one you’d care to meet, and no one you need worry about. It’s a private matter. Nothing to do with the present – er – ’
‘Swindle,’ I suggested.
‘Matter. Affair?’ He turned an inquiring, amused blue eye in my direction.
‘You’re not my type,’ I said. ‘Particularly not in that outfit. How you’d have the gall to think I’d fall for your machinations again, after –
’
‘Keep your voice down. I admit I owe you an explanation about Paris – ’
‘And a lot of other things.’
‘And a lot of other things. But this isn’t the time or the place. Though I’m ninety-nine per cent certain that my friend doesn’t want to kill anyone except me –
’
‘There is that one per cent,’ I said apprehensively.
‘There is. And where you are concerned, my heart’s dearest, those odds are too high. I’ll drop in this evening, around midnight. Three knocks, then a pause, then two
knocks.’
I started to say something sarcastic, but he looked so ridiculous pawing at his hair, with those preposterous breasts jutting out at an impossible angle as he bent over the case, that my sense
of humour got the better of me. I didn’t want him to see me laugh, so I turned and sat down on one of the velvet-covered couches surrounding the pièce de résistance, the case
containing the chalice.
‘What are you going to look like next time I see you?’ I asked.
John sat down beside me. ‘Not like this. I’ve already shaved twice today, and my skin is quite sensitive.’
‘You make a very pretty girl.’
‘I knew you were going to say that. What’s your room number?’
‘First tell me what this friend of yours looks like.’
Half a lifetime of eluding the law had made John quick at catching undertones. He turned so abruptly that I jumped. My purse slid off my lap and spilled half its contents onto the floor.
‘Have you acquired a friend too?’ he asked intently.
‘I may have.’
‘Medium height, heavy-set, brown hair and beard, horn-rimmed glasses?’
‘No.’
‘Sure? He could have shaved the beard – ’
‘No chance. Mine is blond, seven feet tall.’
‘Hmmm. Do I perchance scent a rival?’
‘Definitely. Speaking of scent, what is that perfume?’
‘Like it?’ John turned a ruffled shoulder to me and batted his eyelashes. They weren’t false. His eyelashes are one of his best features, and he knows it.
‘Love it.’
‘Then I know what to get you for your birthday. Gather up your gear and get lost, darling. I’ll see you tonight.’
‘But I want to know – ’
‘Later.’ He began picking up my scattered possessions. Instead of kneeling, he moved in a shuffling squat – afraid to dirty the knees of his white slacks, I suppose. I was
about to join the pursuit when all of a sudden he went absolutely rigid. His knees hit the floor. Stiff as a marble statue of a supplicant he knelt, staring at the papers he held.
During the course of our Roman adventure I had seen John face assorted perils – guns, dogs, maniacal killers with relative aplomb. His appearance of Best British sangfroid was not due to
courage but to his insane sense of humour; he couldn’t resist making smart remarks even when the subject of his ridicule was brandishing a knife under his nose. When the wisecracks gave out,
he reverted to type, groaning over every little scratch and trying to hide behind any object in the neighbourhood, including my skirts. I’d seen him turn pale green with fright and livid with
terror. I had never seen him look the way he looked now.
I let out a muffled croak. John leaped up as if he had knelt on a scorpion. Thrusting the papers into my lap, he reached the doorway in three long leaps and disappeared.