Read Online Three Dog Night by Elsebeth Egholm - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Elsebeth Egholm
Tags: Denmark
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gloved hand to her face, she couldnât see it. She found pole one, grabbed hold of the search line and swam twenty metres across the basin holding the wire in one hand. Along the way she felt the sludge with her other hand for anything that might be a dead body, but found nothing. At pole two she turned around and repeated the process until she was back at pole one with the carabiner an armâs length from the pole, and then swam the twenty metres back to pole two. All the time she kept one hand deep in the fish sludge. After a few minutes, she could feel something bothering her, so she was forced to remove her mask, drain the water out and put it back on. During this manoeuvre she got polluted water in her face, and the stench of fish waste reached her nostrils and made her gag. It was like swimming in fish soup. She appreciated all the more her suit, her gloves and the full mask that kept her dry, and the body heat that was generated by moving around in water that was three degrees Celsius.
She concentrated on her work, her hand groping and touching bottles and scrap iron on its way. And so the first twenty minutes passed. She had almost got used to the smell and the thought of the sludge when something quickly wrapped itself around her fingers. She stopped and examined it more closely. Grass? Hair?
The cold began to penetrate her drysuit now that she was no longer moving. Images rushed in from the job in Vejle Fjord: the long hair floating in the water. It was the hair she had felt first. She had pulled at it to free her hand and been scared the head might follow.
She tugged gently at whatever it was she had got hold of. It gave and her arm recoiled in an arc, still holding the tuft. It wasnât hair, much too coarse for that, she concluded. More likely old, frayed rope. She forced herself to breathe calmly until she was back to normal. No one must know that she had reacted like this. It would pass, she was sure of it. It always did.
She breathed in and out. Slowly, but regularly.
She started moving forward again, concentrating on being systematic. Routine was her salvation. She swam back and forth, back and forth between the poles in a steady rhythm. It was important not to think too much.
It worked. Her focus returned and she could dismiss the episode while her hands worked away once more and she felt the current pulling at her body. It was strong, but the poles had been anchored firmly and evenly across the seabed and were held down by weights, fixed, so they couldnât move. There was an eighteen-kilo weight at each end, and a seven-kilo one in the middle. In addition, a rope was attached to each pole leading up to a buoy on the surface. The poles werenât going anywhere. Bodies were another matter. They had a tendency to drift in strong currents. She hoped they werenât chasing a body on the move around the harbour.
Time passed quickly, and yet it didnât. Suddenly she felt a double tug from above on the line connecting her to the surface. Then a single tug and then another double tug: Morse code for âkâ, which meant it was time for her to surface. She hadnât finished this line so there had to be another reason to break off. She rose to the surface, annoyed. She had found a variety of things: bicycles, shopping trolleys, tyres, oil barrels and bottles. But she hadnât found Nina Bjerre.
âThereâs a fishing boat coming in,â Allan told her as soon as she grabbed onto the dinghy. Niklas, too, had been asked to surface. They waited in the water until the boat had entered the basin. It was pointless to summon the divers all the way up only to send them down again immediately afterwards. If you did, they would have to start all over again, adjusting the equipment at the bottom. Even so, she had lost her momentum when Allan Vraa finally did send them down again, and when the time was up and the diving was over, she felt dissatisfied.
She sat on the gunwale of
She concentrated on her work, her hand groping and touching bottles and scrap iron on its way. And so the first twenty minutes passed. She had almost got used to the smell and the thought of the sludge when something quickly wrapped itself around her fingers. She stopped and examined it more closely. Grass? Hair?
The cold began to penetrate her drysuit now that she was no longer moving. Images rushed in from the job in Vejle Fjord: the long hair floating in the water. It was the hair she had felt first. She had pulled at it to free her hand and been scared the head might follow.
She tugged gently at whatever it was she had got hold of. It gave and her arm recoiled in an arc, still holding the tuft. It wasnât hair, much too coarse for that, she concluded. More likely old, frayed rope. She forced herself to breathe calmly until she was back to normal. No one must know that she had reacted like this. It would pass, she was sure of it. It always did.
She breathed in and out. Slowly, but regularly.
She started moving forward again, concentrating on being systematic. Routine was her salvation. She swam back and forth, back and forth between the poles in a steady rhythm. It was important not to think too much.
It worked. Her focus returned and she could dismiss the episode while her hands worked away once more and she felt the current pulling at her body. It was strong, but the poles had been anchored firmly and evenly across the seabed and were held down by weights, fixed, so they couldnât move. There was an eighteen-kilo weight at each end, and a seven-kilo one in the middle. In addition, a rope was attached to each pole leading up to a buoy on the surface. The poles werenât going anywhere. Bodies were another matter. They had a tendency to drift in strong currents. She hoped they werenât chasing a body on the move around the harbour.
Time passed quickly, and yet it didnât. Suddenly she felt a double tug from above on the line connecting her to the surface. Then a single tug and then another double tug: Morse code for âkâ, which meant it was time for her to surface. She hadnât finished this line so there had to be another reason to break off. She rose to the surface, annoyed. She had found a variety of things: bicycles, shopping trolleys, tyres, oil barrels and bottles. But she hadnât found Nina Bjerre.
âThereâs a fishing boat coming in,â Allan told her as soon as she grabbed onto the dinghy. Niklas, too, had been asked to surface. They waited in the water until the boat had entered the basin. It was pointless to summon the divers all the way up only to send them down again immediately afterwards. If you did, they would have to start all over again, adjusting the equipment at the bottom. Even so, she had lost her momentum when Allan Vraa finally did send them down again, and when the time was up and the diving was over, she felt dissatisfied.
She sat on the gunwale of
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