‘And Lena?’

‘I’m coming to her. Not surprisingly, Carina became pregnant. And she discovered that if there was one thing she liked even more than sex it was the sensation of carrying a child. She’d had five or six before I met her. She’d given them all up for adoption. When life was difficult she turned to drink and by the time I met her she had discovered one thing she liked as much as being pregnant, maybe more, and that was being drunk.’

‘Poor woman.’

‘She was not as unhappy as that makes her sound. She asked for little. Usually she was in good spirits.’

‘And Lena was the child she decided to keep?’

‘Yes. I don’t know why. “There’s something different about this one,” she used to say. Perhaps it was just that she was getting older and could see that it might be useful to have a girl who could help earn a living. She made sure she went to school.’

‘So you watched Lena grow up?’

‘Yes. I stopped visiting when she was born because … You can’t do that sort of thing with a child in the house. But I was fond of the little girl.’

‘Why?’

‘I assumed I was her father.’

Anton looked at Gustav, his yellowish face impassive in the light of the desk lamp. He didn’t look much like Lena.

‘Did Lena suspect?’

‘No. Never. I was just the funny writer man who once gave her a book.’

‘And when she came the other day?’

‘She wanted me to know that she had made a friend at last. Johanna.’

‘There must have been other candidates. To be the father.’

‘Yes, though at the time when Lena was conceived maybe only three or four.’

Anton put down his cup, a little thrown by the possibilities. ‘And what more can you tell me about Lena?’

‘She was a child of nature. She ran wild, though her mother made her afraid of the river. I always felt she had intelligence, but there was no discipline. I think it didn’t work out for her at school. Something didn’t catch. You don’t have much time as a child. And then the chance was lost. She was in a hurry to get out. I suspect the other children were cruel to her, because of her mother.’

As Herr Gustav spoke, Anton observed him with a reporter’s eye, as though he would later have to write a description of the gold-rimmed glasses, the spidery lines on the skin of his cheeks and the voice so underused that it was already beginning to fail, requiring regular sips of water from the glass on his desk.

‘Were you able to help?’ said Anton.

‘I paid their rent for two years. They didn’t know that. But as you can see I have very little to spare. My own books sell in small numbers, I’m afraid. These three rooms, and these books, that’s all I have.’

‘But you remained friends with Carina?’