Free A Necessary Action by Per Wahlöö

and stayed there until they had come round the lighthouse.
    ‘Fascinating,’ said the girl quietly to her fiancé. ‘Did you see, like an animal, with only one aim in mind …’
    When they arrived back, Ramon was able to stand up again. He was still very pale in the face, breathing heavily and raspingly, and Santiago had to help him up the jetty.
    The fun was over. The glow in the girl’s eyes had gone.
    ‘Have you got any loose change on you?’ she said to her fiancé.
    The man dug into his pocket and drew out a fistful of coins and small notes. He held them out, almost shamefacedly, and Santiago took them hesitantly.
    ‘Well, goodbye then,’ said the General’s daughter.
    She stopped for a moment in front of Ramon, looked him up and down and smiled at him in a way that could mean many things.
    ‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Santiago.
    He put his arm round his brother and they walked towards the fish-van.
    ‘How are you feeling?’
    ‘My head’s aching again. How much did we get?’
    ‘Don’t know. Couple of hundred, perhaps.’
    ‘Not bad. That’s more than we usually earn from your mysterious affairs.’
    ‘Huh … and we don’t do that just for money, anyhow.’
    ‘No, of course not. Did you see what a girl she was? You, she’d make a good tail, wouldn’t she? Think of tearing off those trousers of hers and … She was even better than the Norwegian woman!’
    ‘How you talk, little brother,’ said Santiago, looking round seriously.
    Then he bent down and began winding the starting-handle of the old Ford.

10
    At the beginning of December the weather changed. The temperature rose swiftly and the wind dropped. It was just as hot as in the height of summer and the few resident foreigners in the puerto began bathing again. The fishing boats, which had been in harbour a couple of weeks because of the bad weather, went out to sea and made good catches. In the town up in the mountains, the heat lay heavily and immobile between the stone walls. It was hard to work in the daytime and the hot nights did not lend themselves to sleep.
    The good weather lasted for two weeks.

Part Three

1
    When the sun went down, the heat became more and more apparent, as if it had been materialized into something dry and black and dusty and it closed in even more round the houses and people.
    The inhabitants of the house in Barrio Son Jofre had eaten and were sitting out on the steps. They were smoking and looking out into the darkness in silence.
    They had not done any work, but had spent nearly the whole day in the puerto, lying stretched out in the shade of a cliff about two strides from the water. When they had gone back, they had felt rested and refreshed, with a dawning desire to work, but now this had already gone and they knew it would be a long time before the night would bring them any relief.
    Siglinde shifted restlessly and crushed her cigarette out between her fingers.
    ‘I can’t stand this silent dark heat tonight too,’ she said. ‘Let’s go down to the puerto again, where at least there’s a slight breeze. It seems to be easier to breathe when you’re nearer the water, somehow.’
    ‘It’ll be better in an hour or two,’ said Dan Pedersen.
    ‘It’s just those hours I don’t want. If you’re not coming, I’m going down by myself.’
    ‘You daren’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    She sounded genuinely surprised.
    ‘You can hardly start the truck.’
    ‘You’ve no idea what I can and can’t do.’
    They all three went, as usual with Dan and Siglinde in the front and Willi Mohr on the bench behind.
    Halfway to the puerto, Dan Pedersen ran over a sheep and killed it. The whole flock was standing quite still on the road beyond a sharp bend and as the camioneta had its engine switched off, the meeting was equally surprising for both parties. Dan braked sharply but it was no use. The nearest animal was knocked over by the bumper and fell partly under the front wheel. Only a few days before, the mail