Echoes From the Dead (35 page)

Gerlof nodded. Vera had died on the very same staircase Julia had fallen down. He asked: “Did you hear what they were talking about? The two men?”

Maja shook her head. “I only heard a few words before I

knocked,” she said. “Something about longing. It was the one with the loud voice who said something about somebody longing: And of course you’re both longing to see each other,’ or something like that.”

Gerlof thought about it.

“Perhaps they were relatives of Vera’s,” he suggested.

“Relatives from Smaland?”

“Perhaps,” said Maja.

There was silence. Gerlof had no more questions; he needed

to think this over.

“Well…” he said, reaching his hand up to pat Maja gently

on the shoulder, but she leaned forward slightly so that his fingers ended up touching her cheek.

They stayed there, almost of their own accord, trembling in a movement which slowly became a caress.

Maja closed her eyes.

Gerlof released his breath softly, then leaned away.

“Well…” he said again. “I can’t… not anymore.”

“Are you sure?” asked Maja, opening her eyes.

Gerlof nodded sadly. “Too much pain,” he said.

“Perhaps it’ll disappear come the spring,” said Maja. “That

happens sometimes.”

“Maybe,” said Gerlof, getting to his feet as quickly as he could.

“Thank you for talking to me, Maja. I won’t spread this any further.

You know that.”

Maja stayed where she was, sitting at the table.

“It’s fine, Gerlof,” she said.

Gerlof realized he was still holding the case in his left hand, and put it back on the table. But Maja picked it up, took out the crucifix, and gave the case back to him.

“You take them,” she said. “I don’t want them any longer. It’s better if you have them.”

“If you’re sure.”

He nodded several times, like a clumsy farewell, and left

Maja’s room with the case in his pocket. It was heavy and cold, and rattled faintly as he walked along the empty corridor.

Gerlof closed the door behind him once he was back in his

own room. He didn’t usually lock it, but he did now.

The spoils of war, he thought. Soldiers are always looking for the spoils of war. From whom had the soldiers received or taken the precious stones? Had anyone else died for them, apart from the soldiers themselves?

And where should he put them? Gerlof looked around. He

didn’t have a sewing box with a false bottom.

In the end he went over to the bookcase. On one of the

shelves was a ship in a bottle representing the final journey of the brig Bluebird of Hull, as he thought it would have looked that stormy night on the coast of Bohuslan. Bluebird was on her way to the Bohuslan rocks, where she would go aground, and six men would drown.

Gerlof picked up the bottle and took out the cork. Then he

opened the case and slowly, carefully, tipped the stones into the bottle. He shook the bottle to get them in the right place. There, now, if you didn’t look too closely it looked as if the stones were rocks the brig was about to run aground on.

That would have to do for the time being.

Gerlof put the ship back on the shelf and hid the empty case behind a row of books on a lower shelf.

For the rest of the evening, before he went to bed, he kept

looking over at the bottle. After the twelfth or fifteenth time he began to understand why Maja had looked so relieved when she handed the old metal case over to him.

That night his only real nightmare from his time at sea came back to him.

He dreamed that he was standing by the gunwale of a ship

sailing slowly across the Baltic, somewhere between the northern tip of Oland and the island of Oaxen. It was twilight, not a breath of wind, and Gerlof was standing gazing out across the shining water toward the horizon, with no land in sight anywhere …

.. . and then he looked down into the water and caught sight of an old mine from the Second World War.

It was floating just beneath the surface: a massive black ball of steel covered in algae and mussels, with its black spikes sticking out.

It was impossible to veer away. All Gerlof could do was to

look on in horror as the hull of the ship and the mine slowly but remorselessly glided toward one another, closer and closer.

He woke up with a cry in the darkness of the home, just before the mine exploded.

Early morning: Julia was sitting by the window in Astrid’s living room, her crutches leaning against the back of the chair, watching her older sister Lena and her husband Richard driving her car away out on the ridge.

She had managed to hold on to the car for a week longer

than planned, but now it was over. Perhaps it was just as well; she couldn’t drive anyway, with her broken bones.

Lena and Richard had arrived on Saturday for a short visit

to Oland; they had called on Gerlof and had coffee in Mamas

before spending the night up in the summer cottage. In the morning they came down to Astrid Linder’s to say hello, and it then became clear that they were also intending to take Julia back to Gothenburg with them.

Naturally they hadn’t bothered to inform Julia of this plan.

She didn’t even know Lena and Richard were going to turn up, until she saw the dark green Volvo come up the road and park outside Astrid’s house. And by that time it was too late to run away.

“Hi there!” called Lena breezily when Astrid let her in. She gave Julia a hug which made the pain of her cracked collarbone stab through her neck. “How are you?” Lena was looking at the crutches.

“Not too bad now,” said Julia.

“Dad phoned and told us what had happened,” said Lena.

“Terrible… but it could have been worse… That’s the way you have to think about it, it could have been worse.” And that was all her sister had to say about Julia’s broken bones. She added, “It’s very kind of Astrid to let you stay here, isn’t it?”

“Astrid’s an angel,” said Julia.

And it was true. Astrid was an angel who enjoyed living in

the quiet emptiness of Stenvik, but she’d said that she also felt lonely sometimes. She was a widow after all, and her only child, a daughter, was a doctor in Saudi Arabia, and only came home at Christmas and midsummer.

Richard didn’t actually have anything to say at all; he merely nodded impatiently at Julia, didn’t take off his light brown autumn jacket, and started looking at his Rolex after just a few minutes. No doubt for him the only important thing was to get the car back to Torslanda, Julia thought, so that his daughter could use it.

Astrid offered them morning coffee and cookies, and Lena

was full of enthusiasm for how quiet and peaceful it was in Stenvik at this time of year, when all the tourists were gone. Richard sat stiffly beside his wife and said nothing. Julia sat at the opposite side of the table looking out of the window, thinking about Vera Kant’s house behind the tall trees.

“Right, well, we’d better be thinking about leaving soon,” said Lena when they’d had coffee. “We’ve got a long journey home.”

She quickly helped to clear away the coffee cups while Richard went out to help Astrid fix a gutter that was coming away at the back of the house.

Julia could do nothing but sit and watch. She had no legs, no job, no children. But life would still go on, somehow.

“Nice of you to come,” she told her sister.

“We decided straightaway that we’d come over and help you

get home,” Lena said. “I mean, you can’t drive now.”

“Thank you,” said Julia, “but there’s no need. I’m going to

stay.”

Lena wasn’t listening. “If I take you and drive the Ford,

Richard can drive the Volvo home,” she went on, rinsing out the coffeepot. “We usually stop for lunch in Rydaholm, there’s a very nice restaurant there.”

“I can’t go home without Jens,” Julia said. “I have to find

him now.”

Lena turned and looked at her.

“What did you say?” she said. “But there aren’t any …”

Julia shook her head.

“I know Jens is dead, Lena,” she interrupted, meeting her sister’s gaze steadily. “My son is dead. I’ve realized that now, but this isn’t about that. I just want us to find him, wherever he is.”

“Okay, okay, that’s fine. Dad enjoys having you here,” said Lena, hastily. “So that’s absolutely fine.”

Yes, better than drinking wine and taking pills in front of the television in Gothenburg, thought Julia. For a second she felt all the wasted years like a heavy pressure against her breastthe years when the grief over her missing child had become much more important than all the happy memories of him that could have given her solace; a black hole of grief in which she nearly drowned, while avoiding life.

But now there was peace. Just a little peace.

In the end, when you were old enough, it all came down to

being in a peaceful place where you felt at home, together with people you liked. Like Stenvik, with Astrid the angel. And Gerlof.

And Lennart. Julia liked them all.

And Lena meant well. Julia knew that even her older sister

somehow meant well.

“Good,” she told Lena. “See you in Gothenburg.”

Half an hour later, Richard was sitting in the big dark green Volvo outside Astrid’s house and Lena was getting into the little Ford.

She leaned forward and waved to Julia through the windshield.

And then they set off, first Richard and then her sister.

Julia breathed out.

A minute or so later the telephone out in the hallway began

to ring.

“I’ll get it,” said Astrid. Julia heard her lift the receiver and listen, and then she called out, “It’s the police, Julia, for you … It’s Lennart.”

Julia hobbled into the hallway on just one crutch and picked up the telephone. “Hi there.”

“How are you feeling?” asked Lennart.

“Better,” said Julia. “Time heals broken bones… and Astrid’s looking after me.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ve got some news … but perhaps you’ve already heard it.”

“Have you found Nils Kant?” said Julia.

It sounded as if Lennart were sighing quietly at the other end of the phone.

“It isn’t a ghost who’s been digging up that cellar,” he replied.

“Didn’t Gerlof tell you?”

“We haven’t had much chance to talk,” said Julia.

“Your father helped me trace the owner of the snuff tins. You know, the tins that were down in Vera’s cellar.”

“Who was it?”

“Anders Hagman.”

“Anders Hagman? You mean Anders … over at the campsite?John’s son?”

“The very man.”

“Are you sure?”

“He hasn’t admitted it himself, because we haven’t managed

to speak to him yet,” said Lennart. “Anders is keeping out of the way. But all the indications are that it’s him.”

“So it wasn’t Nils Kant who’d been sleeping at the house.”

“No,” said Lennart. “There’s usually a simple explanation,

Julia. Anders Hagman lives just a few hundred yards away. It was easy for him to sneak over to Vera Kant’s house after dark.”

“But why was he digging?”

“There are a few different theories about that. I have my own ideas, and I’ve discussed them with my colleagues in Borgholm.

Do you know Anders? Did you see anything of him when you

lived in Stenvik?”

“No. He’s younger than me … four or five years younger.”

She had only a vague memory of a powerfully built, shy, silent boy. Anders Hagman had kept to himself, worked on his father’s campsite, and never taken part in any of the midsummer dances or parties down by the jetty, or anything else in Stenviknot that she could recall.

“He has a conviction for assault,” said Lennart. “Did you

know that?”

“Assault?”

“There was a drunken brawl at the campsite twelve years ago.

Anders knocked down a young lad from Stockholm. I went down

there myself that night and arrested him. He got a suspended sentence and a fine.”

“Is he suspected of anything now?” asked Julia. “Are you

after him?”

“No, it’s not a question of being after him,” said Lennart. “We just want to find him, have a chat with him … find out what he’s been doing at Vera Kant’s. He’s guilty of breaking and entering, at any rate.”

So am I, thought Julia.

“Aren’t you going to ask him about Jens?” she asked. “Where

Anders was when Jens disappeared?”

“Perhaps,” said Lennart. “Do you think we should?”

“I don’t know,” said Julia.

She couldn’t remember if Anders Hagman had even met her

son. But surely he would have? They’d swum over by the jetty in the summer, within sight of the campsite. Jens had run around on the shore all day long in his swimming trunks and a sun hat. Had Anders stood on the ridge watching him?

“Evidently Anders is in Borgholm. We’ll track him down,” said Lennart. “If we find out anything interesting, I’ll be in touch.”

Gerlof had also called Julia after her accident, but Julia hadn’t let it turn into a long conversation. She was embarrassed. The more she thought about breaking into Vera Kant’s house and her idea that Jens had hidden in there, the more embarrassed she felt.

On Monday morning Gerlof finally came to Stenvik in John

Hagman’s car and rang the doorbell. Julia struggled with her crutches to get to the door; she was alone in the house. Astrid was up in Marnas, shopping.

John was the chauffeur, but he stayed out in the car. Julia

could see him slumped behind the wheel, looking pensive.

“I just wanted to call in and see how you were,” said Gerlof, leaning on his cane, out of breath after walking from the car to the house all by himself.

“I’m pretty good,” said Julia, leaning on her crutches. “Are you and John off somewhere?”

“We’re going to Smaland,” said Gerlof briefly.

“When will you be back?”

Gerlof laughed. “Boel asked exactly the same question at the home. She’d much rather I stayed in my room from morning till night. But it’ll be this evening, or late this afternoon … We might call on Martin Malm too, if his mind is a bit clearer today than it was last time.”