Silhouette in Scarlet (3 page)

After cashing a traveller’s cheque I headed for the exit. I had intended to take the airport bus into the city, but at the last minute I had a change of heart. Ducking out of the line, I
ran like hell and threw myself into a taxi. I got some outraged stares from the people who were ahead of me, but I was past caring about good manners. It had occurred to me that in my anxiety to
inconvenience John, I had made a slight mistake. In fingering him, I had also fingered myself.

Chapter Two

I
T HAD STOPPED
raining by the time the taxi reached the city, but I couldn’t enjoy the scenery; I was too busy watching for pursuers. There
didn’t seem to be any, but it was impossible to be sure; every other car on the road was a cream-coloured Saab. The sun made a tentative watery appearance and I decided I was being paranoid.
If John had been under surveillance, my uninhibited whoop of greeting must have convinced a watcher that I was unwitting – or vastly unqualified for the role of coconspirator.

The Grand Hotel is on the waterfront, near where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic. The weathered green copper of the roof supported half a dozen flagpoles, from which the yellow and blue of
the Swedish flag rippled in the breeze. Crimson shades marked the front windows and made a thick red line above the cafe and restaurant on the ground floor. Lined up at the quay in front of the
hotel were some of the low white tourist steamers that ply the inland waterways. Even on a dull day the colours were stunning – clean, vivid colours, red and white and green and blue.

The lobby was filled with a truly international crowd: Japanese businessmen and German tourists, American students and Saudis in flowing robes. It wasn’t until after I had been escorted to
my room and the bellboy had left that my spirits received a slight check. He had arranged my suitcases in a neat alignment on the luggage rack. Prominently displayed were the labels, inscribed in
my sprawling hand: ‘Dr Victoria Bliss, Grand Hotel, Stockholm.’

The cases had been in plain view the whole time I waited in the currency-exchange line, including a good five minutes after I had raucously identified myself as a friend of John Smythe. It had
been a waste of time watching for pursuing cars. If anybody wanted me, he knew where to find me.

I don’t believe in sitting around hotel rooms when I’m on holiday, but I got out of that one faster than I usually do.

I walked out of the hotel into the glorious sunshine I had yearned for. Gulls soared and swooped, crying hoarsely. A brisk sea breeze ruffled my hair. Waves slapped against the quay. There were
boats all over the place – chugging busily along the water, docking, departing, bobbing at anchor. I felt like a kid with a fistful of money staring in the window of a toy store; the whole
luscious city was spread out before me, parks and museums and shops and streets and canals.

The tourist water buses looked like fun, but I was tired of sitting. Across the inlet the dignified eighteenth-century facade of the royal palace filled one corner of the little island called
Gamla Stan, the Old Town, or the City Between the Bridges – everything in Sweden seems to have several different names.

In the bulging shoulder pack I use in lieu of a purse I had a brochure on Gamla Stan that I had picked up at a travel agency in Munich. Six centuries of history, beginning with the thirteenth;
cobbled streets and narrow alleys, medieval doors and baroque portals . . . I had visited a number of quaint old towns. Southern Germany has lots, complete with medieval ramparts and timbered
houses. However, one can never get too much of a good thing. Also, the brochure had contained quite a few advertisements. The famous shop for Swedish shirts; Scandinavian knitwear; crystal from
Swedish glassworks; old prints, books, maps; leather, silver, pewter, handwoven rugs, hand-embroidered blouses . . . I might claim that it was my antiquarian interests that led me to the twisty
alleys of Gamla Stan, but if I claimed that I would be lying.

Like similar sections in other cities – Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Georgetown in Washington, D.C., the Via Sistina in Rome – Gamla Stan has become chic and fashionable and very
expensive. Many of the shops occupied the ground floors of old buildings. The sculptured stone portals and intricate iron grillwork formed surprisingly pleasant settings for displays of modern
Swedish crafts. Pedestrian traffic was slow. People stopped to read guidebooks or stare in shop windows or gathered at corners where itinerant performers played and sang.

I don’t know how long I wandered in purposeless content before I gradually realized I wasn’t relaxed any longer. Instead of admiring red wooden horses and knit ski caps, I was
scanning the crowd, looking for a familiar profile. Instead of enjoying the diversified types strolling with me, I was beginning to feel surrounded and hemmed in. My back tingled with the uneasy
sensation of being watched by unfriendly eyes.

It was with an absurd sense of escape that I emerged from the crowded streets into Stortorget, the Great Square of Old Town. I’d seen so many pictures of it, on postcards and travel
folders, that it was like an old familiar habitat. Earnest tourists were aiming cameras at number 20, the tall red brick house with its exuberant wedding-cake gable, which is the most popular
subject for photographers; it would reappear on screens in a thousand darkened living rooms later that summer while guests tried to muffle their yawns and the host’s voice intoned, ‘Now
this one is someplace in Stockholm – or was it Oslo?’

The square was filled with people, but it didn’t give me the sense of claustrophobia the streets did. Rows of green slatted benches were flanked by great tubs of red geraniums, and the sun
slanting down between the tall houses made the flowers glisten as if freshly painted. I decided my neurotic fancies were due in part to hunger, so I bought some jammy pastries from a shop and sat
down on one of the benches where I could see the baroque tower of the Cathedral beyond the Borsen and the slit-like street beside it. When I had finished the pastries I licked strawberry jam off my
fingers and continued to sit, staring dreamily at the green-patined curves of the cupola.

I guess my feet did stick out, but he could have avoided them. I didn’t see him; I felt an agonizing pain in my left instep and heard a crunch and a thud and a curse as a large object fell
flat on the bricks at my feet.

I let out a howl and bent to clutch my foot. He let out a howl and stayed where he was, face down on the ground. He looked just as big prone as he had upright – a fallen Colossus, a
toppled Titan.

If the same thing had happened in Denmark, we would have been swarmed over by helpful natives. Swedes don’t interfere unless arterial blood is jetting. There were a few murmurs of inquiry
and one man took a tentative step towards the recumbent body, but retreated as soon as it heaved itself to hands and knees.

When he turned his head our eyes were on the same level. His weren’t blue, as a Viking’s ought to be; they were an odd shade of brown, like coffee caramels. Between the bushy brows,
the bushier moustache, and the thick hair that had fallen over his forehead, I could see very little of his face. What I could see was bright red, and his eyes glittered like bronze
spearpoints.

‘Clumsy, careless – ’ he began. Then his eyebrows rose and disappeared under his hair. ‘You were at the airport!’

It sounded like an accusation. I half expected him to demand indignantly, ‘Are you following me?’

‘Yes, I was at the airport. So what? I think my foot is broken. Why the hell didn’t you look where you were going?’

Still on hands and knees, he gave his head a toss that flung the blond berserker locks away from his eyes. Caesar had a trick like that when he was trying to be cute. I laughed. The Viking
staggered to his feet, swayed, swore, and clutched his knee. The woman sitting next to me on the bench picked up her parcels and beat a hasty retreat. It may have been tactful consideration for a
wounded fellow creature, but I think she was afraid he was about to fall on her.

He took the vacated seat. We sat in stiff silence for a few seconds while he rubbed his knee and I nursed my foot.

Finally he muttered, ‘Sorry.’ His voice was rather light for such a big man, once he had conquered the anger that had deepened it to a growl.

‘You should be.’

‘Let me see.’

I caught the edge of the bench as he took my foot onto his lap; but he did it skilfully, without upsetting my balance. A woman of my size does not have small feet. His huge brown fingers reduced
my size ten to something as dainty-looking as that of a Chinese maiden.

He returned the foot to me. ‘There will be a bruise, I am afraid. Perhaps you had better visit a doctor.’

‘No, it’s all right. How about your knee?’

Unconcernedly he rolled up his pants leg. His calf was as big around as the thigh of a normal man, thick with muscle and covered with fine hairs that glowed in the sunlight like the golden
nimbus that surrounds the bodies of saints and divine heroes. I was so fascinated by this fabulous anatomical specimen that I didn’t get a good look at the wounded knee. I caught only a
glimpse of reddened skin before he pushed the fabric down.

‘It is not so bad.’

‘I am glad,’ I said slowly, ‘that you did not tear your trousers.’

‘I too am glad. They were very expensive.’

They didn’t look expensive. However, that is a relative term, and I didn’t feel I knew him well enough to pursue the subject. As I started to rise, he put this hand on my arm.

‘You will allow me to buy you – ’ he said.

‘I don’t really think – ’

‘A schnapps. Or something else, if you prefer.’

‘I don’t really – ’

‘You must allow me.’

‘Must’ was the word. It wasn’t an invitation; it was an order, and the weight of the hand on my arm reinforced it.

All at once I was overcome by the most abject feeling of panic. I am – as I have mentioned a time or two – unusually tall. I am also built like my Scandinavian ancestors –
big-boned, well-muscled. Wrestling matches with my brothers had toughened me at an early age, and I’d kept in reasonably good physical condition with exercise and diet. Now for the first time
in my life I understood how my normal-sized sisters feel when a man grabs them. Small, weak, vulnerable.

My eyes moved from the hand that dwarfed my not inconsiderably muscled arm, up along a couple of yards of coat sleeve, to his face. It was an almost perfect rectangle; the angles of jawbone and
cheek were so square that the lower part of his face formed a straight line. His lips were full and healthily pink, bracketed by the luxuriant growth of hair on his lip. His nose rose out of the
brush like a sandstone promontory; his eyes, wide-set and slightly protruding, met mine with unblinking sobriety. Every feature was larger than life-sized, but they harmonized perfectly. He was, to
summarize, a handsome man with a gorgeous body, the kind of man who could turn a vacation into a memory of the sort little old ladies simper over when they sit rocking on the front porch of the
nursing home.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

I could have eluded him if I had wanted to. He didn’t take my arm or hold my hand. At times, when the crowds thickened, we had to walk singlefile through the narrow streets. He preceded
me, explaining solemnly, ‘I go first because I know the way. You will excuse the rudeness.’

The stiff formality of his manner made me smile, and I dismissed that brief moment of panic. I just wasn’t accustomed to feeling fragile and feminine, that was my trouble.

It was something of a coincidence that we should run into one another twice in the space of a few hours. However, Stortorget and the Old Town are tops on the lists of most tourists. Even if he
had followed me, even if the accident had been premeditated – well, I have my share of vanity. I could think of reasons why a man might force an acquaintance with me, reasons that had nothing
to do with John Smythe. When Leif Eriksson bowed me into the doorway of a restaurant that had once been a wealthy merchant’s house, I stepped right in.

I had schnapps. I had been meaning to try it anyway.

The alcohol loosened him up a little. He even ventured to ask a personal question.

‘Are you, by chance, American?’

I nodded. ‘And you,’ I said, with equal gravity, ‘are, by chance, Swedish?’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘Because only a Swede would hedge about a simple question like that.’

He laughed. It wasn’t one of your hearty Norse guffaws, but a prolonged chuckle, as rich and mellow as his speaking voice was light. The moustache added a fascinating dimension to his
smile. The ends actually appeared to curl up parallel to his lips. His teeth were big and white, just the dentures to rip into a haunch of raw meat.

‘You are unkind to us,’ he protested. ‘Why do you have a prejudice against this country?’

‘I’m not – I mean, I don’t. I’m half Swedish myself. The other half is a mixture – Norwegian, Swiss-German, American Indian, you name it. Like all Americans,
I’m a mongrel, and proud of it.’

He frowned a little, as if puzzled. Abandoning the problem with a shrug, he announced, ‘My name is Leif Andersen. And yours?’