Echoes From the Dead (48 page)

Gerlof hoped the visit wouldn’t last too long; all he really wanted to do was to be alone. To sleep. He had no strength to talk or to get out of bed.

He still didn’t remember much about the last few days.

Presumably he wouldn’t have survived without the rapid response of the emergency medical crew. He had been in critical condition for two days. Then he had finally improved and become more stable, and on the fourth day he had been taken by ambulance to the hospital in Borgholm.

There was more privacy there than in Kalmar, and Gerlof had his own room on the second floor with a view of Slottskogen and the houses of Borgholm. Julia and Lennart had come to visit him; it was the fifth day since Ljunger’s attempt to kill him on the shore outside Marnas.

“This is the fifth time in five days I’ve been to see you, Dad,”

Julia told him. “But it’s the first time you’ve been awake.”

Gerlof merely nodded tiredly.

His left arm was in a splint and bandaged after his fall onto the sand. One foot was in a cast. A tube leading from a bag of some kind of nutrient solution was attached to a needle in his arm; another tube was attached to a catheter; and he was lying under a double layer of blanketsbut he still felt better than the previous day. His temperature had slowly but surely gone down.

Gerlof tried to sit up so that he could see Julia and Lennart, and his daughter quickly got up and slipped an extra pillow behind his back.

“Thank you.”

His voice was very weak, but he could talk.

“How are you feeling today, Dad?” she asked.

Gerlof slowly raised his right thumb toward the ceiling. He coughed and inhaled laboriously.

“At first they thought I had … pneumonia.” He took a ragged breath, then said, “But this morning… they said I’ve only got bronchitis. And they’re pretty sure I’ll… be able to keep both feet.” He coughed, then added, “I’d like to do that.”

“You’re tough, Gerlof,” said Lennart.

Gerlof nodded at the big policeman. “Gunnar Ljunger … said the same thing.”

Lennart’s pager suddenly bleeped from his belt. “Not again …”

The policeman sighed wearily. He glanced down at the display.

“Looks

as if my boss wants to talk to me again, the questions are neverending … I’d better go and call him. Back soon.”

Lennart smiled at Julia, who smiled back and nodded toward the bed.

“Don’t run away, Gerlof,” he added.

Gerlof nodded slowly back at him, and Lennart closed the door.

There was silence in the sickroom, but for once it wasn’t an uncomfortable or menacing silence. There was nothing that really needed to be said. Julia placed her hand on Gerlof’s coverlet and leaned forward.

“Everybody sends their love,” she said. “Lena called from Gothenburg last night; she’s coming soon. And Astrid sends her love, too. John and Gosta came to see you yesterday, but they said you were asleep. So everybody you know is thinking about you.”

“Thank you.” Gerlof coughed again. “And how … are you feeling?”

“Fine,” said Julia quickly. “I’ve been spending some time with Lennart over the past few days, up at his house in the pine forestit’s lovely there. Although of course he’s had to spend most of his time sitting writing a load of reports, or he’s had to be down in Borgholm … so I haven’t been able to do a great deal for him.

I’ve spent most of my time sitting in the next room, worrying about you.”

“I’ll… be fine,” whispered Gerlof.

“Yes. I know that now,” his daughter said. “And so will I.”

Gerloff coughed and went on: “You’re feeling strong, then?”

“Sure.” Julia smiled, as if she didn’t really understand what he meant. “I’m much stronger, anyway.”

“I’ve been thinking…” Gerlof said. “I’m not sure … but I think I know how it all happened now.”

Julia started to shiver.

“All of it?” she asked.

“All of it,” whispered Gerlof. “Do you want to know … what happened to Jens?”

“Did Ljunger tell you exactly what happened, Dad?”

“He said … a few things. Not everything, I suspect. So part of what happened … I’ve only guessed. But it’s … not a happy ending, Julia. The ending is just the way it is. Do you want to know?”

Julia found she was holding her breath. Did she really want to know?

“Tell me,” she said.

“Do you remember, when you came to Oland I said … that the murderer might be tempted to turn up … to look at Jens’s sandal?”

Julia nodded. “But he didn’t come.”

Gerlof looked over at the sun setting above the trees outside the window. He wished he were a little boy listening to the spine chilling stories in the twilight hour, instead of being old and having to tell them himself.

“I think he did,” he said. “The murderer came to us … even if you and I didn’t see him.”

OLAND, SEPTEMBER 1972

Gunnar stands directly in front of Nils and slowly raises the heavy iron pick. He looks around at the fog, as if he wants to make sure nobody can see what is happening out on the alvar. Or what is going to happen.

“You can’t go home, Nils,” he says. “You’re already dead.

You’re already buried.”

Nils shakes his head. “Let go of the pick,” he says.

It seems as if a deathly silence has suddenly descended on the whole of the alvar, as if all the air beneath the sky had disappeared.

“Let

go of the shovel first, Nils.”

Nils shakes his head again. He steals a quick glance at the other treasure hunter, Martin, who is breathing heavily as he lies sprawled on the ground a few yards away, clutching his forehead.

He’s no threat.

But Gunnar is dangerous. He’s standing there with his legs braced, gripping the pick and listening; suddenly his head cocks slightly, as if he hears something in the distance.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m dropping the pick now.”

And he does. It lands beside the cairn with a heavy thud.

“Good.” And Nils drops the shovel too, but he doesn’t relax.

“And now I want to go down to …”

Suddenly he can hear a noise as well. It’s getting louder. A faint hum from the village road, which rapidly swells to a dull roar.

A car engine.

“I think we’ve got company,” says Gunnar.

He doesn’t seem surprised.

Seconds pass. Then a broad shadow takes shape in the fog behind them. A shadow moving across the grass on four wheels.

It’s another Volvo, a gleaming brown Volvo creeping slowly toward them out of the fog. It stops next to Gunnar’s car, and the engine is switched off.

The driver’s door opens.

Nils doesn’t recognize the car, or the man who gets out. But he can see that the man is much younger than him, and is dressed in a neatly pressed uniform. He’s wearing a gun in his holster. The man closes the car door, straightens and adjusts his jacket.

The man who has just arrived stops in front of Nils. His eyes are fixed on Nils.

“We’ve never met,” says the man. “But I’ve thought about you a great deal.”

Nils is staring, openmouthed.

“You murdered my father,” says the man.

For several seconds Nils understands nothing.

“Nils, this is Lennart,” says Gunnar. “Lennart Henriksson.

His father was the district superintendent. You remember, when you were young, many years ago … You met on the train to Borgholm.”

The district superintendent’s son.

Finally, Nils understands. He understands what’s going to happen, and he finally reacts. Nils sees Henriksson fumbling with his holster. He steps backward into the fog and begins to run.

“Stop!”

Nils doesn’t stop, of course; he keeps on running. The trap which has been set is starting to close, but he hurls himself out of it.

He is no longer young, and his progress across the grass is far too slow, but this is the alvar, his ground. He flees through the smoky fog with his head down, breathing hard, aiming for the nearest big clump of bushes and expecting at any moment to hear a shot behind himbut he manages to reach the juniper bushes before it comes.

Nils hears several shouts in the fog.

He doesn’t stop. Straight ahead, with long strides.

Is this the way down to the village?

Nils thinks it is. He’s on his way home now, he’s going home to his mother at last, and nobody can stop him.

Nils suddenly sees a figure taking shape in the fog ahead of him, and he stops, bewildered.

This is no pursuer. This is a little boy, maybe no more than five or six years old. The boy comes forward out of the gray fog and stops just a few short steps away.

The boy is small and skinny, dressed in shorts and a thin red shirt, with a pair of little sandals on his feet. He looks up curiously at Nils in silence, hesitating, as if he isn’t really afraid, but knows he should be.

But Nils isn’t dangerous, not to a child. He has never done anything but defend himself, and he really did try to save his brother from drowning that summer’s day, even if it was too lateand he’s never harmed a child in his entire life. Never.

“Hello there,” rasps Nils.

He tries to calm his heavy breathing so that he won’t frighten the child.

The boy doesn’t reply.

Nils quickly turns his head and looks around, but it doesn’t seem as if anyone’s chasing him. The fog is protecting him. He can’t stay here long, but just for the moment he is safe from his pursuers.

Then he looks at the boy again, without smiling, and asks quietly:

“Are you on your own?”

The boy nods silently.

“Are you lost?”

“I think so,” says the boy quietly.

“It’s all right… I can find my way anywhere out here on the alvar.” Nils takes a step closer. “What’s your name?”

“Jens,” says the boy.

“Jens what?”

“Jens Davidsson.”

“Good. My name’s …”

He hesitateswhich of his names should he use?

“My name’s Nils,” he says in the end.

“Nils what?” says Jens. It’s a bit like a game.

Nils gives a short laugh.

“My name is Nils Kant,” he says, taking another step forward.

The

boy stands still, in a world made only of grass and gray stone and juniper bushes. In the fog, there is nothing but grass and stones and bushes. Nils tries to smile at him, to show that everything is okay.

The fog closes in around them, not a sound is to be heard.

“It’s all right,” says Nils.

He’s intending to take the boy down to the village and find out where he lives, and then he himself will go home to his mother.

They are standing very close to each other by now, Nils and Jens.

Then the rumble of an engine comes echoing out of the fog behind them, and Nils tries to turn and run, but he hasn’t time to take one single step.

The noise swells and swells, and it seems to be coming from every direction.

It’s the car, the brown Volvo, and it comes hurtling between the rocks and the bushes, slithering across the grass before straightening up and aiming at him, aiming directly at Nils. It doesn’t slow down.

Right or left?

The car is growing, it’s so wide. Nils has only seconds to decide, one secondand then it’s too late. He can only watch, with his arm around the boy. There is no protection.

Everything disappears for a while.

Everything falls silent. Cold darkness.

The sounds return like dull echoes. The fog, the cold, and a car engine ticking over.

“Did you get him?” asks a voice.

“Yes … I can see him.”

Nils is lying on his back, stretched out on the grass. His right leg is twisted beneath him at an odd angle, but he feels no pain.

The car is just a few yards away from him, with its engine running. The driver’s door opens. The policeman slowly gets out, his revolver in his hand.

The passenger door on the other side opens too. Gunnar steps out too, but stays by the car, looking out across the alvar.

The policeman steps over to Nils, then stops.

He says nothing, he merely stares.

Nils suddenly remembers the boy in the fog, Jenswhere did he go?

He’s gone.

Nils hopes that Jens Davidsson has disappeared, that he got away in the fog and ran back down to Stenvik in his little sandals.

A successful flight. Nils wants to follow him, to go back home, but he can’t move. His leg must be broken.

“It’s over” is all he says.

It’s over, Mother. It ends here on the alvar.

Nils is very tired. He could crawl down to Stenvik, but he hasn’t the strength.

The dead are gathering around him, mute gray shadows crowding in.

His father and his little brother, Axel. The two German soldiers.

The district superintendent on the train and the Swedish sailor from Nybro.

All dead.

Standing over him, the young policeman nods.

“Yes,” he agrees. “It’s over now.”

The policeman releases the safety catch on his gun with the barrel pointing downward, then he raises it, aims at Nils’s head, and pulls the trigger.

Gerlof tells the story of Nils Kant’s death in a series of slow whispers.

Julia had been forced to lean closer to him in order to hear.

But she heard everything, right to the very end.

Now she sat there by his bed, stiff and mute. She does not look at Gerlof.

“This … happened?” she said after a long silence. “What you’ve just told me? It happened … Are you sure about that?”

Gerlof nodded slowly. “Pretty sure,” he whispered.

“Why?” said Julia. “How can you be sure?”

“Well… things Ljunger said to me … when he was waiting for me to freeze to death,” said Gerlof. “He said… this wasn’t just about getting Vera Kant’s money and land. He said it was about revenge too. But… revenge on whom? And who wanted revenge? I’ve been lying here thinking about it… and I could only come up with one person.”

Julia shook her head. “No,” she said.

“Why should Nils Kant be brought home … at all?” persisted Gerlof. “Not for Gunnar Ljunger’s sake. For Ljunger, Nils was more valuable over in South America … He was no danger to Ljunger there, and with each year that passed, Gunnar could get more land out of Vera … The Germans’ treasure was of no significance in comparison to all the land Gunnar could get his hands on.” He took a breath. “But somebody else wanted Nils home … and to let him almost get home to his mother before he was executed. It was to be a fitting punishment.”