Echoes From the Dead (41 page)

SERIOUS accident on e22DEAD

NOT YET IDENTIFIED; CAROLA HAPPY AGAIN; ALL YOU NEED TO

KNOW ABOUT THIS WEEKEND; HAVE YOU WON THE LOTTERY?without them affecting her in any way.

She felt fine now, despite her broken bones. She even

felt… happy. Happy that she and Gerlof had grown closer to each other than ever before, happy that she and her sister Lena had parted more or less as friends, and happy too that Lennart Henriksson seemed to enjoy her company.

She was even happy that the police had let Anders Hagman

go. It would have been terrible if anyone in Stenvik had been involved in her son’s disappearance. Despite everything, it would be better if Jens had gone down to the shore in the fog that day without anyone seeing him. He had conquered his fear of the sea and started jumping around on the rocks out in the water, just like any little boy would, and he’d slipped.

Julia believed that now.

JONKOPING, APRIL 1970

it does have a view over Lake Vattern,” says the

owner of the property, pointing out of one of the windows. “And the kitchen equipment and the bed are included in the rent.”

The owner is puffing and blowing in the narrow room. The

elevator in the building is broken, and his forehead is shiny with sweat after plodding up four flights of stairs. He’s a man in a suit, with a very big belly beneath his shirt.

“Fine,” says his potential tenant.

“There’s good parking too.”

“Thanks, but I don’t have a car.”

It takes no more than five minutes to inspect the whole apartment, less than five minutes actually. One room and a kitchen, right at the top of Grona gatan in the south of Jonkoping.

“I’ll take it. For six months. Maybe longer.”

“A traveling salesman? With no car?”

“I use the train and the bus,” says his tenant. “I move around quite a bit… and I’m waiting for my bosses back home to send for me.”

Nils is still trying out his new name and his new life. He is slowly growing into it, and can feel his old life fading away. But it never disappears completely. It’s like having another life preserved beneath a cheesedish cover. His new life is freerit has an ID number and a passport that is accepted at bordersbut despite that, it never feels completely real. Not in Costa Rica, not during the years in Mexico or the year outside Amsterdam or the last six months in an almost completely empty apartment out in Bergsjo outside Gothenburg, when he sometimes woke up in a cold sweat believing he was back in the steaming heat of Costa Rica.

“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” says the landlord.

“Fortyfour.”

“Best time of life.”

“Maybe.”

When Nils asks when he’s actually going to be able to go home to Oland, all he’s had so far from Fritiof are evasive answers.

“An impatient person makes mistakes,” Fritiof had said to him over a crackling telephone connection three weeks earlier. “Just be patient, Nils. The coffin is buried in Mamas; the grave is starting to get overgrown with grass and your old mother puts flowers there from time to time. She’s waiting for you.”

“Is she all right?” he wanted to know.

“She’s fine.”

Fritiof pauses, then goes on: “But she’s had postcards. Lots of postcards. First of all from Costa Rica, then from Mexico and Holland. Did you know that?”

Nils did know that. He has sent letters and postcards to his mother throughout all those years, but he’s always been careful.

“I didn’t put my name on them,” says Nils.

“Good. I’m sure they made her happy,” says Fritiof, “but now there’s a rumor that Nils Kant is alive. The police aren’t listening, of course, they’re not interested in village gossip, but that’s what people are saying down in Stenvik. That’s why you mustn’t be impatient. You do understand that?”

“Yes. But what happens when I get home to Oland?”

“What happens …” says Fritiof, as if the answer weren’t interesting at all. “What happens is that you come home, to your mother. But first of all we’re going on a treasure hunt, right?”

“That’s what we said. If I get home, I’ll show you where the treasure is.”

“Good. We just have to wait for the right opportunity,” says Fritiof.

“And when will that be?”

But Fritiof had already hung up.

This man, whose name is definitely something else, simply put the phone down. Nils has a feeling that he’s already a completed project for Fritiof Andersson, a dead man. Dead and buried in Mamas churchyard.

“The rent is payable in advance,” says the owner.

“That’s fine,” says Nils. “I can pay now.”

“And it’s a month’s notice.”

“Fine. I don’t need any longer.”

Nils is not dead, he’s on his way home.

And the man who calls himself Fritiof shouldn’t make the

mistake of thinking anything different.

Jerlof was sitting on the bus to Mamas thinking things over.

He’d nodded off for a while on the road between Borgholm and Kopingsvik, but he woke up when they got out onto the alvar.

Now he was thinking.

He’d come out with far more than he’d intended during the meeting with Martin Malm, a whole lot of baseless hypotheses that it would presumably be impossible to prove. He hadn’t got a confession out of Martin, but at least he’d managed to say everything.

Now

he could try to move on. Make more ships in bottles.

Ask John over for coffee. Read the obituaries in the newspaper and watch the winter approaching outside the home.

But it was difficult to forget. There was so much to think

about.

He picked up the book about Malm Freight again, the anniversary book that was starting to look rather dogeared from constantly being taken out and put away. Gerlof opened it at the page with the picture on the quayside at Ramneby, and once again he saw Martin Malm and August Kant standing side by side in front of the sternfaced sawmill workers.

He thought about what AnnBritt Malm had told himthat

it was Vera Kant who had lent the money for Malm’s first big ship, and not August. In other words, that Vera had paid Martin to bring Nils home.

But if August Kant hadn’t wanted anything to do with his nephewand perhaps would have preferred him to stay out of the way in South America foreverthen what did this picture mean, this close business link with Martin Malm? August’s hand on Martin’s shoulder …

Because it was August’s hand, wasn’t it? Gerlof took a closer look. The thumb appeared to be on the wrong side of the fingers.

He stared at the picture until his eyes ached, until the black and white contours began to blur and merge. Then he took his reading glasses out of his briefcase, put them on, and kept looking.

When that didn’t help, he took them off and held them above the picture like a magnifying glass. This made the white, staring faces of the sawmill workers come nearer to him, but at the same time they dissolved into black and white dots.

Gerlof moved the lens over the picture and peered more

closely at the hand on Malm’s shoulder. There it lay, resting in a friendly way close to the back of the shipowner’s neck, but now Gerlof could clearly see that what should have been August’s right hand was in fact a left hand. And just behind the hand …

Gerlof looked at the smiling faces in the picture.

Suddenly he saw for the first time what Ernst must have

seen.

“Christ,“he said.

To invoke the name of Jesus was a very old curseover seventy years ago Gerlof’s mother had forbidden him to utter it. He hadn’t sworn like that once since then.

In order to be really certain, he took out his notebook, flicked through until he found the list of names he’d written down at the museum in Ramneby, and read it.

“Christ…” said Gerlof again.

For a few seconds he was completely stunned and absorbed

in his discoverythen he looked up and remembered he was on a bus traveling northward toward Marnas. But they weren’t there yet, they were still south of Stenvik, and just as he looked out of the window the bus was passing the first signpost that said campsite 2 km. Stenvik, the bus was nearly in Stenvik. He had to talk to John about his discovery.

Gerlof reached up quickly to press the red stop button.

As the bus began to slow down at the stop a hundred yard

north of the turnoff for Stenvik, he pushed the book and his glasses into his briefcase and stood up, his legs trembling.

The central doors of the bus opened with a hiss, and Gerlof

climbed down the steps and out into the cold and wind. Sjogren]

was muttering in his arms and legs, but the pain wasn’t making too much noise so far.

The doors closed behind him and the bus pulled away. He

was alone at the bus stop, and it was still drizzling. There used to be a little wooden shelter where you could sit if it was raining, waiting for the bus or waiting to set off home, but of course, that had been taken away. Everything that was good and free was |

quickly taken away.

When the dull roar of the engine had died, Gerlof looked

around him at the desolate landscape, buttoned his coat right up , to the top, then looked over at the yellow signpost pointing down toward Stenvik. That was where he was going.

He looked around several times to make sure he wasn’t going

to be run over as he crossed the road, but there wasn’t a car in sight. The main road was completely deserted. He covered the fifty yards over to the turning for Stenvik quite quickly, but when he set off down the road the wet wind was blowing directly into { his face, and he had to slow down.

He must have gone two hundred yards along the side of the ,

road toward the village when he suddenly remembered that John j Hagman wasn’t down in Stenvik.

John was in Borgholm.

Gerlof stopped dead on the road, blinking into the lashing

wind.

How the hell had he managed to forget that? He’d only left

John at the bus station less than half an hour earlier, but he’d been so elated by what he’d discovered from the picture that he’d completely forgotten about that. §

But somebody would be at home in Stenvik, surely? Julia |

might not be back yet either, but Astrid should be there. She was I almost always at home. Anyway, there was nothing else for it but to keep on goingMarnas was even further away.

His footsteps felt heavier now, and the cold was beginning to penetrate right through his coat. The wind was pulling and dragging at him, and he bent his head.

One step at a time on the cracked tarmac. He counted them: one, two, threeand at the twentyfifth step he looked up again, but the trees on the horizon marking the end of the alvar and the beginning of the village didn’t appear to be any closer.

For the first time Gerlof began to feel a little anxious, like a swimmer who has boldly decided to set off across an icy lake, but suddenly loses all his strength when he gets halfway. Going back to the main road was impossible, but it was almost as difficult to keep on going.

He suddenly stumbled on the tarmac, almost falling into the

ditch. He only about managed to keep his balance with the help of his cane, and that was when he heard the dull roar of an engine once again.

It was a car, and it was coming from Stenvik.

The car was big and shiny and dark green, Gerlof could see

as it came closer: ajaguar, its windshield wipers swishing rhythmically to and fro.

It didn’t drive past, it pulled up and the tinted side window slid down, revealing a face with a gray beard.

“Hi there!” called a cheerful voice.

Gerlof recognized Gunnar Ljunger from Langvik.

The hotel owner who was always talking about more ships

in bottles every time they met was the last person Gerlof wanted to meet right now, but he felt obliged to raise his hand in a tired greeting.

“Good afternoon, Gunnar,” he said in a weak voice which

the wind almost drowned out, and took one step further along the road.

“Hi, Gerlof,” called Ljunger from inside the car. “Where are you going?”

It was a very stupid question that might have merited a very stupid answer, but Gerlof simply nodded toward the village and said: “Down to Stenvik.”

“Are you going to visit someone?”

“Yes, maybe.” Gerlof swayed in the wind. “Astrid, perhaps.”

“Astrid Linder?” said Ljunger. “It didn’t look as if she was home when I drove past… I couldn’t see any lights in her windows.”

“Oh?”

If Astrid wasn’t home either, then nobody was home in

Stenvikand Gerlof would freeze to death down there in the wind from the sea. The police would find his cold, stiff body the next day, behind some juniper bush.

He thought about it and looked at Ljunger.

“Might you be going to Marnas, Gunnar? Past the home?”

“Sure … I was going to do a bit of shopping at the ironmonger’s.

I’ll give you a lift.”

“Would you?”

“Of course.” Ljunger leaned across and opened the passenger

door. “Hop in.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

Gerlof clambered laboriously into the warmth of the car with his cane and his briefcase.

It was quiet and very warm in the car; the heating was turned up high. Ljunger was sitting there with his yellow padded jacket unbuttoned, and despite the fact that Gerlof was still frozen, he too unbuttoned his coat.

“Okay, let’s go,” said Ljunger. “Marnas, here we come.”

He floored the accelerator and the car shot away with such

power that Gerlof was pressed back into his seat.

“Any particular time you have to be back, Gerlof?” asked

Ljunger.

Gerlof shook his head. “No, but I’d like”

“Good, then we’ve got time to take a look at something.”

They had already reached the main road, and it was just as

empty as it had been earlier. Ljunger pulled out onto it. But heading south, not north.

“I don’t think I can” Gerlof began, but Ljunger interrupted

him:

“How’s it going with the ships in bottles, then?”