Chapter 26
The balcony door was ajar, and Bente thought she could hear Didrik’s voice from outside. She peeped out and saw him sitting at the wrought iron table with Don.
As Bente went out to join them, Don got to his feet and held up his coffee cup. “Just going inside for a refill.”
Didrik looked up at her and pushed out the chair beside him so that she could flop down.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Not really. I’m afraid that this show is going to be reduced to some kind of nonsense where we talk about feelings with other celebrities, me wearing stripy Breton tops and you, creased linen shirts.”
“Don’t be too disappointed—I look really good in a creased linen shirt.” Didrik winked, and once again her stomach flipped. Creased linen shirts and Didrik Holgersson seemed like a lethal combination. His expression grew serious. “Don’t worry, we’ll bring them around.”
She nodded. “Thank you. It means a lot that you think the show is important too.” It was a great comfort to know that he was on her side, after all.
She allowed herself to gaze at him for a moment in the soft twilight, which would soon be swallowed up by darkness. His hair was more tousled than ever, and the stubble made him even more attractive.
“By the way, I found something that I think Don was interested in,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yesterday I got the diary of that woman who was in the resistance movement. I wanted to tell you in person—she mentions a Scandinavian guy at a vineyard. His name was Per, but he seems kind of anonymous, and had very pale skin and hair. That fits with the photos we’ve seen of Sven.
As we discussed before, Sven was almost certainly using a different identity.
It might be a long shot, but it’s worth looking into. ”
She nodded. “Absolutely. And you’ve told Don?”
“Yes, just now, when I managed to get him to myself for a while.”
“And he listened to you?”
“He did. He thought it sounded exciting.”
Bente managed a smile. “Great.” She ought to be pleased that they’d captured Don’s interest, but it bothered her that he had ignored her all evening.
“Time for more Manhattans!” a voice announced from the kitchen. Hanna appeared in the doorway with another tray of cocktails, with Lydia, Don, and Agneta right behind her. Clearly the premium wines had been abandoned in favor of Hanna’s hastily mixed Manhattans.
The others took a glass, then Hanna shoved the tray under Bente’s and Didrik’s noses.
“Thanks, I’m fine.” Bente held up her wineglass.
“Er . . .” Didrik’s eyes flickered toward Bente; he obviously remembered her comments about the dubious quality of her sister’s cocktails, but he picked up a glass like the polite guest he was. “Thank you.” He nodded to Hanna, then took a sip.
“Good, isn’t it?” Hanna said.
“Fantastic.” He pursed his lips. Bente could see that he was trying not to grimace, and she only just managed to stop herself from laughing.
“It’s okay, you can pour it in that plant pot,” she said when Hanna had gone back inside.
“Are you sure the pansies won’t die—along with anyone else who drank one of these?” Didrik asked before tipping out the contents of his glass.
Don, Agneta, and Lydia sipped happily as Agneta fiddled with her phone.
Soon music was pouring out of the speakers in the living room, and the small speaker on the balcony.
The trio started dancing, Agneta in Dad’s old oilskin coat and her Wellington boots.
Bente and Didrik stayed where they were, watching the three of them.
Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” came on, and as always when Bruce began to sing, Bente felt the pain in her heart, in her bones.
The dancers bellowed along with the lyrics, singing about a spark being needed to make a fire.
“So what do you say?” Didrik held out his hand, and Bente got to her feet. The balcony floor was cold beneath her warm soles. They joined the others, dancing in the dark, with the sparkling lights of the city all around them.
Next came the opening chords of Springsteen’s “The River.” Bente sank down on the sun lounger in one corner with Didrik beside her as the others shimmied in the living room, singing away and clutching their cocktails.
She rested her head against the wall. Listening to Bruce always made her feel ambivalent.
To her, his music meant weekends. Childhood.
Security. Normality. It reminded her of Dad, who always wore a suit to the office but jeans and a T-shirt at home, sang and danced to Bruce while cooking dinner, drove her to and from sports practice and other childhood activities, and played badminton with a group of local dads on Tuesday evenings.
In so many ways he had been a perfectly ordinary father.
But the darkness had always been there. At the time, Bente had noticed only that there were periods when he was low.
“Thinking about your dad?” Didrik asked.
“Yes . . . or rather the way life used to be.”
There was such a clear division in her mind between before and after.
A before with a dancing dad at the weekends who cooked meals for his family and their friends; when their family went on skip trips with other families and were invited over for dinner in return.
When everything was carefree. And then there was an after—a time when Bente, Hanna, and their mother had no friends left.
When they were excluded from the community, brutally and completely.
And when they no longer had Dad either.
“And how was life back then?”
“It was . . .” She looked at him, smiled. “I like that.”
“What?”
“The fact that you’re curious about me.” She couldn’t resist placing a hand on his arm. Feeling the tweed fabric of his jacket, rough and almost prickly beneath her fingers. She completely forgot that she was trying to remain objective when it came to Didrik.
“Of course I’m curious about you. I loved experiencing Paris with you.”
“I feel the same.”
For a few seconds she allowed herself to get lost in his eyes.
“I don’t think much of this wine . . .” Hanna’s voice drifted to them from inside, then she stepped out onto the balcony.
She was holding an almost full wineglass in one hand, and a bottle in the other.
Bente didn’t register what was going on at first; her vision was too clouded by the whole situation—by the wine, by being so close to Didrik again.
She blinked, focused on the bottle, and her eyes widened. No! It couldn’t be . . .
Shit.
“Fuck” was all Bente managed to say before she leaped to her feet. “You opened that bottle?” She snatched it out of Hanna’s hand.
“Yes—it looked a bit sad, it didn’t even have a label. It reminds me of the stuff our neighbor mixed up in the bathtub when we lived on Lovv?gen. You remember the guy who—”
“Hanna, you can’t drink that wine—it’s almost eighty years old.” Bente felt her desperation rising.
“Don’t worry, I’ll reimburse you,” her sister said cheerily. She took another sip and grimaced.
“It’s irreplaceable!” Bente snapped. “Stop drinking right now. That’s the bottle we’re working on.” She took the glass away from Hanna.
“But how was I supposed to know . . .” Hanna rolled her eyes. “You always complain about my cocktails, so I thought I’d pour you a glass of wine.” She sighed loudly. “Like I said, I’ll reimburse you.”
“It’s not about that.” Bente groaned. Gazed at the bottle. “How am I going to explain this to Camille?”
The others had heard the argument, and now they came out onto the balcony.
“Well, since it’s open, maybe we should all have a taste?” Agneta suggested with a shrug. “I mean, it’s the reason for this evening’s dinner party, isn’t it? It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”
Bente was about to protest, then realized that her mother had a point. They could try it. And it might make good content for the show—if Didrik had managed to talk Don around.
She ran and fetched her camera while everyone gathered around the dinner table.
She provided each of them with a clean glass, and gave brief instructions on how to treat the wine.
She contemplated the pale-red liquid in her glass.
The sediment swirled around when she moved it.
There was nothing wrong with the color, she thought as she tilted the glass and studied the contents against the white surface of the table.
However, she had no great expectations about the taste, which must have deteriorated over the years.
It was only the very best wines that opened up and improved during such a long storage time, and she wasn’t sure this one fell into that category.
They all sniffed their glasses simultaneously.
Elnaz reached for Bente’s camera and began filming.
Bente stuck her nose in the glass and inhaled, then glanced up at Elnaz and the others, feeling both pleased and surprised.
“I’m getting dried berries.” She sniffed again.
“Tobacco and cedarwood.” She took a deep breath.
“There it is, leather and mushrooms.” She usually allowed everyone else to say what they thought when she conducted a tasting, but right now she was completely caught up in the moment.
She realized what she was doing, and looked to the others. “What are you getting?”
“The same, I think.” Don swirled his glass just as Bente had done. “Maybe a little earthiness?”
“Good,” Bente said.
“And . . . stables?” Didrik looked inquiringly at her. Bente nodded eagerly—she could smell that too. “Shall we taste?”
“I already know what it tastes like,” Hanna said.
“Yes, but try again—take your time. Think about what you’re really getting. Close your eyes.” Hanna did as Bente instructed, and the others followed suit. “Although I guess your cocktails have probably already destroyed your taste buds for the evening.”
Bente swirled her glass again and took a small sip.
The taste reflected the nose, but she was also picking up pine needles.
The wine wasn’t particularly mellow; back then the alcohol content was relatively low, unlike today’s Bordeaux wines.
But it was clearly from a good vineyard, and had been made using high-quality grapes.
There was very little roughness on her tongue—the tannins had faded over time.
“Just imagine, this was bottled eighty years ago,” Didrik said. “And it’s been lying at the bottom of the sea until very recently.”
Bente nodded. “Unbelievable. That’s what’s so exciting about wines, the way they change and develop.
The acidity would have been much greater when the wine was bottled, but it’s since rounded off; the flavors of mushrooms, an earth cellar, and a stable come from age.
But the taste can deteriorate if it’s aged for too long.
It could even be that those flavors were more noticeable twenty years ago, when it was probably meant to be drunk. It’s hard to know for sure.”
She held up the bottle to the light; the sediment had dropped to the bottom.
“How do you think the conditions have affected the wine? The darkness, the pressure at the bottom of the sea?” Don seemed genuinely interested.
“The darkness and the cold temperature are why the wine has kept so well. The relatively constant temperature and the water pressure made it keep for longer. It might not have survived that length of time in an ordinary wine cellar.”
They all looked at one another in silence.
Even Agneta and Hanna seemed to appreciate the magnitude of the occasion, because this was clearly something special—the wine had a history.
The story of this bottle was the most complex Bente had ever come across.
She turned it around as she gazed at it.
The cork must have kept well—there were no fragments whatsoever in the wine.
“Where’s the cork?” She wanted to sniff it.
“I think I threw it away,” Hanna said.
Bente went into the kitchen and saw the corkscrew on the counter, with the cork still attached.
She gently unscrewed it and headed back to the table.
She sat down, holding the cork between her thumb and forefinger.
It had darkened over the years, but had retained its shape, and expanded slightly when it was removed from the bottle.
Then she saw it.
“Look. There’s something here.” She peered more closely. What she saw was very small—tiny, in fact. That’s why they hadn’t seen anything when they looked through the neck of the bottle before. “It’s . . . numbers and symbols.”
“What could it be?” Didrik leaned across the table, and Bente gave him the cork while she fetched a pen and paper.
Outside it had started raining. Hanna had lit the candles on the table, and Bente switched on more lamps so they’d be able to see better. Once she was seated again, she wrote down the numbers and symbols; the numbers were separated by a circle and two apostrophes.
“I think those are coordinates,” Agneta said, looking over her shoulder.
Didrik nodded. “I think you’re right.”
Bente glanced at Don, who seemed fascinated. She picked up her phone, opened Google Maps, and entered the details.
Then she froze as an image appeared. Could this be the breakthrough they’d been waiting for?
She stared at the screen. It was showing Bordeaux, more specifically a small village in Médoc. When she zoomed in, she couldn’t see a vineyard, but there was a building and an address—16 Rue des Templiers.
They had an address!
She beamed at Don, then Elnaz, and finally Didrik. She held up her phone to show them the map.
“I’ve found it!”