Echoes From the Dead (12 page)

He didn’t look away, and in the end Boel nodded. She didn’t

like alterations to the routine, but this time she didn’t say anything about it.

“Wait two minutes and I’ll drive you,” she told him.

When they reached the northern turnoff for Stenvik leading down to the quarry, Gerlof raised his hand and pointed straight ahead.

“We’ll take the southern road,” he said.

“Whatever for?” said Boel. “You said you wanted to go to”

“I have two friends in Stenvik,” said Gerlof. “One was Ernst.

The other needs to be told what’s happened.”

She drove on; the southern turnoff soon appeared, with the

campsite sign taped over to indicate that Stenvik’s campsite was closed for the season. It was John Hagman who had done that, despite the fact that there wasn’t much risk of anybody turning up with a tent or trailer in October.

The closed kiosk appeared, then the minigolf course, where

a middleaged man in a green tracksuit was sweeping the track; he glanced shyly at their car as they drove past. It was Anders Hagman, John’s only son. Anders was a bachelor and very quiet, and Gerlof had hardly ever seen him wearing anything other than that scruffy tracksuitperhaps he had several.

The track leading onto the campsite appeared.

“Here,” Gerlof told Boel. “It’s that house over there.”

He pointed to a small house beside the track, a low building with narrow windows that looked like some kind of guardhouse.

A rusty old green VW Passat was parked outside the door, which meant John was at home.

Boel braked and stopped the car. Gerlof opened the door and

climbed out, using his cane, and almost at the same moment the door of the small house opened. A short man in dark blue dungarees, his gray hair swept back and caught in a little knot at the back of his neck, came out onto the wooden steps in his stocking feet. It was John Hagman, who was always quick to come out and see who was visiting.

John and Anders Hagman ran the campsite together in the

summer months. Anders mostly lived in Borgholm during the

winter.

John stayed in Stenvik all year, and had to take care of the daily maintenance of the campsite when Anders wasn’t around. It was hard work for an old manGerlof would have helped him, if he hadn’t been even older than John.

Gerlof nodded to John, who nodded back, then pushed his

feet into a pair of black Wellington boots standing on the steps.

“Gerlof?” said John as Gerlof walked over. “This is unexpected.”

“Yes.

There’s been an accident,” said Gerlof.

“Where?”

“At the quarry.”

“Ernst?” said John quietly.

Gerlof nodded.

“Is he hurt?”

“Yes. It’s bad,” said Gerlof. “Very bad.”

John had known him for almost fifty years; they had kept in

touch after their years together at sea. He seemed to understand exactly how bad it was from Gerlof’s expression alone.

“Is there someone with him?” he asked.

“There should be by now,” said Gerlof. “My daughter Julia

Was going to phone them. She’s there now. She came over from Gothenburg yesterday.”

“Right.” John stepped back into the house, and when he came

out again he was holding a padded jacket and a bunch of keys.

“We can take my car,” he said. “I’ll just go and have a word.”

Gerlof nodded, that would be good. Boel was bound to want

to get back to the senior home, and it would be easier to talk to John if they were alone.

John went over to Anders, stopped in front of him, then pointed at the golf course and said something quietly. Anders shook his head. John pointed at him, and Gerlof could hear his raised voice.

The Hagman father and son had a somewhat strained relationship, Gerlof knew thatthey were too dependent on each other.

In the end Anders nodded, and John shook his head and

turned his back on his son. They’d finished arguing.

As John was unlocking his own car, Gerlof made his way |

slowly over to Boel to thank her for the lift.

“So Ernst is dead, then,” said John behind the wheel.

“That’s what Julia thought,” said Gerlof beside him, looking out at the shore and the glittering water down below the coast road.

“A stone fell on him,” said John.

“A big stone. That’s what Julia said,” explained Gerlof.

There hadn’t been a serious accident for over sixty years

in the quarry, he realizedbut now that it was closed, Ernst had ended up underneath a stone.

“I brought the spare key,” said John. “In case they’ve taken him away.”

“Did he give you a key?” said Gerlof, who had never been

entrusted with one by Ernst. On the other hand, he’d never given Ernst a spare key to his cottage either. Perhaps they hadn’t really trusted one another.

“Ernst knew I wouldn’t go snooping around,” said John.

“Maybe we should take a look around in there now, though,”

said Gerlof. “I don’t really know what we’re supposed to be looking for. But we ought to look.”

“Yes,” said John. “It’s different now.”

Gerlof didn’t say anything else, just gazed ahead through

the windshield, because there was an ambulance coming toward them along the coast road. Gerlof had never seen an ambulance in Stenvik before.

It was coming slowly along from the track to the quarry, and the dark blue lights on the roof were not flashing. This wasn’t a good sign, but it was what they’d expected. John slowed as the ambulance passed them, then they turned off onto the northern road into the village.

“His work sold really well last summer,” said John after a

while. “We joked about it a bit, the fact that Ernst had more customers than I had fish in my nets.”

Gerlof merely nodded; there was nothing more to say right

now. Ernst’s death still felt like a great weight resting on his shoulders.

John

turned onto the narrow track leading to the plateau above

the quarry, and Gerlof could see the tracks of several vehicles in the mud. Ernst’s and Julia’s cars were up ahead, and behind them two police cars and another private car, a shiny blue Volvo. Beside it stood a man wearing a cap, his camera resting on his stomach.

“Bengt Nyberg’s bought another new car,” said Gerlof.

“I suppose newspaper editors earn good money,” said John.

“Do they?” said Gerlof as John pulled up level with the sign craft work in stonewelcome and switched off the engine.

Gerlof got out of the car with some difficulty; his limbs were stiff as usual, protesting at the unfamiliar movements. He balanced himself using his cane, straightened his back, and nodded at the local editor of OlandsPosten for northern Oland, who was ambling toward them with his hand resting on his camera.

“The ambulance has taken him away,” said Nyberg.

“We know,” said Gerlof.

“I missed him too. I’ve taken a few pictures of the police and the big mark down there, but I don’t think we’ll be able to print them. The Borgholm office will decide, of course.”

It sounded as if he were talking about pictures of a car that had driven into a ditch, or a broken window. Bengt had always been insensitive, thought Gerlof.

“Best not to use them,” said Gerlof.

“Do you know who found him?” said Nyberg, pressing a button

on the camera.

There was a whirring sound as the film rewound.

“No,” said Gerlof.

He began to walk slowly toward the edge of the quarry. Where was Julia?

“Go home and write your article, Bengt,” said John behind

Gerlof.

“I’ll do that,” said Nyberg. “You’ll be able to read all about it tomorrow.”

He went over to his new car, got in, and started it up.

Gerlof kept walking past the house and the shed toward the

quarry. When he was a few yards from the edge, a uniformed police officer came scrambling up from the quarry. He managed to get one leg up onto the edge, heaved himself up, then bent down to help another officer up, a younger colleague. Then he breathed out heavily and looked at Gerlof, who didn’t recognize either of them. The policemen must be from Borgholm, or from the mainland.

“Are

you relatives?” asked the older officer.

“Old friends,” replied Gerlof. “His relatives live in Smaland.”

The police officer nodded. “There isn’t much to see,” he said.

“Was it an accident?”

“A workrelated accident,” said the police officer.

“He was moving a sculpture at the edge here,” said the

younger officer, pointing at the cliff edge, where there was a small hollow in the gravel. “So he was standing here, and he must have grabbed hold of it. And then …”

“He slipped or stumbled and fell down, and it landed on top

of him,” said the older one.

“It would have been very quick,” said the younger officer.

Gerlof took another step forward, leaning on his cane. He

could see it now.

The church tower, Ernst’s biggest sculpture, was lying down

in the quarry. You could clearly see where it had landed when it fell. There was a deep gash in the gravel down below.

A trace of Ernst. Gerlof looked quickly away, out over the;

quarry, but when he thought about how many gravestones and

tombstones had been hacked out of this hillside over the years, he let his eyes gaze even further away, toward the shore and the water, and then he finally felt a little better.

Then he looked to the right along the edge of the cliff, where the other stone sculptures were lined up. Ernst had arranged them a few yards apart, but there was a wider space over there … Gerlof walked across.

Another sculpture had fallen down, a smaller one. He could

see it down at the bottom of the quarry, a long oval shape that!

might have been some kind of egg or the head of a troll. Unlike the church tower, this sculpture had split into two pieces.

Gerlof turned away, slowly so that he wouldn’t lose his balance on the uneven gravel, and began to make his way to the house.

“Is Julia Davidsson still here?” he asked the police officers.

They had stopped to look in Ernst’s shed, where hammers, wheelbarrows, and an old stone plane were jammed together with yet more sculptures of different sizes.

“She’s in there with Henriksson,” answered the older officer, pointing toward the house.

“Thank you.”

The door of the house was ajar, so John must have gone in.

Gerlof made his way laboriously up the low wooden steps. He

wiped his feet on the doormat. Then he pushed open the door.

Several pairs of outdoor shoes were in his way; Gerlof had to push them aside with his cane in order to get past. There was no question of bending down and taking off his own shoes; he kept them on and continued along the narrow hallway. Framed pictures of old quarrymen with picks and spades in their hands hung along the walls.

He could hear low voices up ahead.

John was standing by the window in the big room, looking

out. Julia and another uniformed police officer were sitting on the sofa; he was an older man who had politely removed his cap.

Gerlof nodded to him. “Hello, Lennart.”

Lennart Henriksson had been a policeman for almost thirty

five years; he worked all over northern Oland, but lived in a house north of Marnas, and had a local office by the harbor. His hair was gray, and he was slowly heading toward his pension. Normally his expression was rather listless and his broad shoulders were slumped in his uniform, but at the moment he was sitting up very straight next to Julia.

“Hello there, skipper,” Henriksson said to Gerlof.

“Hi, Dad,” said Julia quietly.

It was the first time in many years she’d used that word to

him, so Gerlof knew she was unsettled. He slowly walked over and stood by the table.

“Would you like to sit down?” said Lennart.

“I’m fine, Lennart. I need a bit of exercise from time to time.”

“You’re looking well, Gerlof.”

“Thank you.”

There was a silence. Behind them John turned and left the

room without a word.

“Julia was just telling me she’s your daughter,” said Lennart.

Gerlof nodded, and there was silence once again.

“Has the ambulance gone?” said Julia, looking at Gerlof.

“Yes …John and I passed it on the road.”

Julia nodded. “So he’s gone, then.”

“Yes.” He looked at Henriksson. “Was there a doctor?” he asked.

“Yes. A young one from Borgholm … I haven’t met him before.

He just confirmed what had happened.”

“He said it was an accident?” said Gerlof.

“Yes. Then he left.”

“But he’d been lying out in the rain overnight,” said Gerlof.

“Yes,” said Lennart. “It must have happened yesterday evening.”

“So there wasn’t any blood,” said Gerlof. “I suppose all the traces had disappeared in the rain?”

He didn’t really know himself why he was asking these questions or where they might lead, but he presumed he wanted to make himself look important. The need to be important is perhaps the last thing that leaves us, he thought.

“He had blood on his face,” said Julia. “A little bit of blood.”

Gerlof nodded. Footsteps came clomping along the hallway,

and the younger of the two police officers looked into the room.

“We’re done now, Lennart,” he said. “We’re off.”

“Fine. I think I’ll stay a little bit longer.”

“You’re the boss.”

There was something respectful in the younger officer’s voice thought Gerlof. Perhaps the respect came from Lennart’s many years in service, or the fact that his father had been a policeman too, and had been killed in the course of his duty.

“Drive carefully,” said Henriksson; his colleague nodded and disappeared.

John was standing behind him holding a large brown leather

wallet. He held it up to Gerlof and Julia and Henriksson.

“Three thousand two hundred and fiftyeight kronor, from

selling the sculptures,” he said. “It was in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, underneath the plastic bags.”