Echoes From the Dead (36 page)

“Does this have anything to do with Nils Kant?”

“It might have,” said Gerlof. “We’ll see.”

Julia noddedif he didn’t want to tell her any more, that was fine.

“I heard about Anders Hagman,” she said. “That you told the

police about him.”

“I mentioned his name … I don’t think John’s too pleased

about it. But they’d have worked out his name anyway, sooner or later.”

“They want to talk to him,” said Julia. “I’m not sure … but it seems as if the police in Borgholm might be on the way to reopening the investigation. Into Jens’s disappearance, I mean.”

“Mmm … but I think they’re on the wrong track with Anders.

And of course John thinks so too.”

“Aren’t you going to put them right, then?”

“The police don’t listen to us pensioners, not when they think our ideas are too crazy,” said Gerlof cheerfully. “We’re not reliable.”

“But

you never give up. That’s something to admire.”

“Good,” said Gerlof. “We do our best.”

“You keep on looking,” said Julia. “It can’t do any harm.”

That particular comment was ironic, although she didn’t know itthe next time she saw Gerlof he would be dying.

CIUDAD DE PANAMA, APRIL 1963

dull lights lit the canal country of Panama.

Tall apartment blocks and dilapidated shacks side by side.

Cars, buses, motorbikes, and jeeps. Mestizos, military police, bankers, beggars, buzzing flies, and gangs of sweaty American soldiers along the avenues. The smell of burnt gas, rotten fruit, and grilled fish.

Nils Kant wanders through the narrow streets every day, the

soles of his feet burning inside his shoes.

He’s looking for Swedish sailors.

There aren’t any in Costa Ricaat least, Nils has never met

any. To be sure of finding Swedes, he has to come here, to Ciudad de Panama.

The journey south by bus takes six hours. Nils has made five such journeys to the canal area in three years.

In the long canal between the oceans, ships line up to avoid the lengthy journey around Cape Horn. The sailors go ashore to enjoy themselves in the big port. Some stay behind: the bums.

He is looking for the right man among these forgotten sailors: those who gather at the docks when ships from Scandinavia arrive, at the Scandinavian church when they’re handing out

food, and who spend the rest of their time within reach of the bars and shops. Those who’ll drink anything that contains alcohol, from cheap Colombian rum to pure spirit distilled from shoe polish.

On the second evening of his fifth visit, he is walking along the cracked cement sidewalks when he sees a shadowy figure clutching a bottle, crouching in a dark doorway a few blocks away from the entrance to the Scandinavian church. Sniveling, fits of coughing, and the stench of vomit.

Nils stops in front of him.

“How are you?” he asks.

He speaks Swedish. It isn’t worth wasting time on anyone

who doesn’t understand what he says right away.

“What?” asks the bum.

“I said, How are you?”

“Are you from Sweden?”

The look in the Swede’s eyes is more sorrowful and weary

than dull, his beard is unkempt, but the lines around his mouth and eyes are not that deep. This man hasn’t been drinking all that long, despite the fact that he looks as if he’s just about thirtyfivearound Nils’s age.

Nils nods. “I come from Oland.”

“Oland?” The bum raises his voice and coughs. “Oland,

shit… I’m from Smaland… shit. Born in Nybro.”

“It’s a small world,” says Nils.

“But now … I missed the ship going through the lock.”

“Really? That’s a shame.”

“Last year. I missed … the ship was supposed to go through the lock after two days. Up, down. Got arrested here … there was a fight in a bar, I was swigging beer straight from the jug.” The man looks up with a new light in his eyes. “Have you got any money?”

“Maybe.”

“Buy something, then, buy whisky … I know where.”

The man tries to get up, but his legs are too stiff.

“I might be able to go and buy a bottle,” Nils tells him. “One bottle of whisky, we can share it. But you’ll have to wait here. Are you going to wait for me?”

The man nods, and squats down again.

“Buy something” is all he mutters.

“Good,” says Nils, straightening up without looking the man

in the eyes. “Perhaps we can be friends.”

Five weeks later in Jamaicatown, which is the name of Puerto Limon’s English quarter: Tican Hotel it says on the sign, but it’s hardly a hotel, and the lobby is just a cracked piece of wood balanced on a couple of table legs, and a register spotted with mold. A staircase on the outside of the building leads up to a few small guest rooms on the second floor. Nils can hear English being spoken loudly in a building on the opposite side of the street.

He goes silently up the steps, past a fat, shiny cockroach on its way down the wall. He reaches the narrow veranda on the second floor, and knocks on the second door in a row of four.

“Yes, sir!” calls a voice from inside, and Nils opens the door.

For the third time he sees the Swede who says he has come to help him get home.

The Swede is sitting on the only bed in the stifling hotel room, amid a heap of tangled sheets and brownspeckled pillows, his upper body bare and gleaming with sweat. He has a glass in his hand.

A small fan is humming away on the bureau next to the bed.

The man whom Nils has begun to think of as the Olander. He

has never said where he’s from, but Nils has listened carefully, and thinks he can detect a faint Oland accent when the man speaks.

He has realized the man knows the island well. Did Nils meet him there?

“Come in, come in.” The Swede smiles and leans back against

the wall, nodding toward a bottle of West Indian rum on the bureau.

“Drink, Nils?”

“No.”

Nils closes the door behind him. He’s given up drinking alcohol.

Not completely, but almost.

“Limon is a wonderful town, Nils,” says the man on the bed,

and Nils can hear no hint of sarcasm in his voice. “I was out for a stroll today and I found a genuine brothel, purely by chance, hidden in some rooms behind a bar. Wonderful women. But of course I didn’t indulge, to put it politely … I had a drink and left.”

Nils nods briefly and leans against the closed door. “I’ve found somebody,” he says. “A good candidate.” He still feels uncomfortable speaking Swedish out loud after eighteen years abroad. He fumbles for the right words. “He’s from Smaland too.”

“Good, mat’s good,” says the Swede. “Where? In Panama

City?”

Nils nods. “I brought him with me … The border controls

have got stricter, I had to bribe my way through, but it went okay.

He’s in San Jose now, in a cheap hotel. He’s lost his passport, but we applied for a new one at the Swedish Embassy.”

“Good, good. What’s his name?”

Nils shakes his head. “No names,” he says. “You haven’t told me yours.”

“All you have to do is look it up downstairs,” says the man on the bed. “I signed the register. You have to do that.”

“I’ve read it,” says Nils.

“And?”

“It said Fritiof Andersson,” says Nils.

The man nods with satisfaction. “You can call me Fritiof,

that’ll be fine.”

Nils shakes his head. “That’s just a name from an old song

about a sailorI want to know your real name.”

“My name isn’t important,” says the man, staring at him.

“Fritiof will do very well. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” Nils nods slowly. “For the time being.”

“Good.” Fritiof wipes his chest and forehead with a sheet.

“Now, we’ve got a few more things to talk about. I’m going to”

“Did my mother really send you?”

“I’ve already told you that.”

The man on the bed doesn’t appear to appreciate being interrupted.

“She

should have sent a letter with you,” says Nils.

“That’ll come later,” says Fritiof. “You got money, didn’t you?

That was from your mother.” He takes a swig of his drink. “But right now we have other things to discuss … I’m going back home in two days. You won’t hear from me for a while. But I’ll be back when everything’s ready, and that’ll be the last time. How long will it take, do you think?”

“Well… a couple of weeks, maybe. He has to get his pass

Port and travel down here,” says Nils.

“Fine,” says Fritiof. “Keep an eye on him and do everything

by the book. Then you’ll be able to go home.”

Nils nods.

“Fine,” says Fritiof, wiping his face again.

Someone laughs down on the street, a motorbike roars past.

All Nils wants to do is open the door and get out of this stinking room.

“How does it feel, by the way?” asks the man, leaning forward.

“How

does what feel?” says Nils.

.?ť

“I’m a little curious.” The man who calls himself Fritiof

Andersson is smiling among the filthy sheets. “I’m just wondering, Nils, purely out of curiosity … How does it feel to kill someone John drove across the Oland Bridge, past Kalmar, then north along the coast of Smaland. Neither of them said much during the journey.

Gerlof was mainly thinking about the fact that it had become much more difficult to leave the home in MamasBoel had questioned him closely this morning about where he was going and how long he was going to be away. In the end she had hinted that perhaps he was too healthy to stay on at the home.

“There are many elderly people with severe mobility problems in the north of Oland who would like to get a room here, Gerlof,” Boel had said. “We have to make sure we’re prioritizing correctly. All the time.”

“Quite right,” Gerlof had said, and set off, leaning on his cane for support.

Didn’t he have the right to care? When he could hardly

move ten yards without help? Boel should be glad he got out

into the fresh air sometimes, along with old friends like John.

Shouldn’t she?

“So Anders has gone off, then,” said Gerlof eventually, when they were just a few kilometers from Ramneby.

“Yes,” said John.

He always drove at the speed limit, and a long line of cars had built up behind them.

“I assume you told Anders the police were looking for him,”

said Gerlof.

John remained silent behind the wheel, but he nodded.

“I don’t know if that was such a good idea,” said Gerlof. “The police tend to get annoyed when you don’t want to talk to them.”

“He just wants to be left in peace,” said John.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” said Gerlof again.

“Did you speak to Robert Blomberg when you were in

Borgholm last week?” John asked. “The car salesman, I mean.”

“I saw him,” said Gerlof. “He was in the showroom. We didn’t speak … I didn’t really know what to say.”

“Could he be Kant?” said John.

“If you’re asking me straight out… I’ve thought about it, and I don’t believe he could,” said Gerlof. “It seems unlikely that somebody like Nils Kant would come back from South America with a new name, and manage to blend in in Borgholm with a new life.”

“Maybe,” said John.

A few minutes later they drove past the yellow sign telling

them they were entering Ramneby. It was a quarter to eleven in the morning. A flatbed truck carrying a load of newly felled timber thundered past them.

Gerlof had never been to Ramneby before, either by car or

boat. The village itself was no bigger than Mamas, and they were soon on the other side of it, turning off for the sawmill.

There was a closed steel gate at the sawmill, and a parking lot outside it where John left the car.

Gerlof took his briefcase and they walked over to the wide

gate and rang the bell. After a while there was a scraping noise from a small loudspeaker next to the bell.

“Hello?” said Gerlof, unsure whether he should be talking to the bell or the loudspeaker, or perhaps to the sky. “Hello … We wanted to visit the wood museum. Could you open the gate?”

The loudspeaker remained silent.

“Did they hear you?” whispered John.

“I don’t know.”

Gerlof heard a cawing noise behind him; turning his head,

he saw two crows perched in a leafless birch tree beside the parking lot. They kept cawing, and Gerlof thought they sounded different from the crows on Oland. Did birds have different accents too?

Then he noticed someone approaching on the other side of

the gate, an elderly man in a cap and a black padded jacket, moving almost as slowly as Gerlof himself. The man pressed a button on the other side, and the gate swung open.

“Heimersson,” said the man, extending his hand.

Gerlof shook it. “Davidsson,” he said.

“Hagman,” said John.

“We wanted to visit the wood museum,” said Gerlof again. “I

called yesterday …”

“That’s fine,” said Heimersson, turning to show them the way.

“It was a good thing you did. The museum is really only open in the summer. Including August. But if you call in advance, it’s usually fine.”

They had reached the factory area now. Gerlof had expected

the smell of newly sawn wood in his nostrils and the sight of groups of men in caps carrying planks of wood around between heaps of sawdustas usual he was stuck in the past. All he saw instead were roads and tarmac between huge gray buildings made of steel and aluminum. There were big signs on them with the name ramneby TIMBER.

“I’ve worked here for fortyeight years,” said Heimersson

over his shoulder to them. “Started when I was fifteen, and stayed on. That’s the way things turned out… Now I look after the museum.”

“We

come from the village where the owners used to live,”

said Gerlof. “In the north of Oland.”

“The owners?” said Heimersson.

“The Kant family.”

“The Kants don’t own this place any longer,” said Heimersson.

“They sold it at the end of the seventies, when August Kant died.