The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (29 page)

The thought cheered him up, because there was something bad quivering in the air this summer. Something much worse than gastroenteritis.

Swallow
was slowly beginning to regain her former beauty, with the help of new boards and strong-smelling creosote. Gerlof had brought a flask of coffee down to the gig by the boathouse, where John and Anders were busy painting the hull on this warm evening. John looked suspiciously at the coffee as Gerlof poured it out.

‘Have you boiled it properly?’

Gerlof stopped in mid-movement. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You have to boil your drinking water, Gerlof.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s an outbreak of gastroenteritis all along the coast,’ John explained. ‘People have ended up in hospital. It’s a real epidemic. Haven’t you read the paper?’

‘Not yet,’ Gerlof said as he carried on pouring the coffee. ‘I feel perfectly all right.’

‘Stenvik doesn’t really seem to have been affected,’ John said. ‘The problem is mainly at the Ölandic Resort.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’ Gerlof sipped his coffee. ‘Right in the middle of the high season, too … It’s a bit of a disaster, I’d say.’

‘Absolutely. Apparently, the sewage disposal system on the campsite has broken down, things are so bad … and people have started to leave. They’re packing up their tents and caravans and heading home.’

Gerlof had expected John to look pleased, but he knew that if something was bad for one campsite, it was bad for all of them. People who went home because of a bad experience in a holiday village or campsite usually bad-mouthed the whole island.

He liked standing here in the glow of the setting sun, with a warm breeze blowing in off the Sound. But he wouldn’t be here for much longer. In five days, he was due to move back into his room at the residential home in Marnäs, and in a way the summer would be over, as far as he was concerned. It would be much more difficult to get out and about.

Which was a shame. This might be his last summer in the village.

Gerlof swatted a fly away from his cheek and looked to the south. The inlet was quiet. A few people were swimming by the jetty, and there were still plenty of sun-worshippers on the beach.

A short distance away, he could see the cairn, and thought about what he had told Jonas.
That’s not the real cairn.

Then he screwed up his eyes; something wasn’t right.

‘The bunker door is open,’ he said.

John stopped what he was doing. ‘What are you talking about?’

Gerlof pointed to the other end of the inlet, at the debris the stonemasons had left behind on the rocks above the shore.

‘The door of the old bunker … it’s open. It’s usually closed, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ John said. ‘The army fixed a padlock to it many years ago. I haven’t checked, but I should think it’s still there.’

Gerlof saw signs of movement; a figure emerged from the bunker, but he was too far away for Gerlof to be able to make out any details.

He thought back to what Jonas Kloss had said about the man who suddenly appeared by the cairn, then simply disappeared.

‘Perhaps he’s a phantom soldier,’ he said.

The Homecomer walked slowly out of the bunker and into the diminishing warmth of the sun. He secured the door with a padlock he had brought from Einar Wall’s collection.

His back was stiff and aching. He had been stooping beneath the low concrete ceiling for over an hour. It had felt like being back in that endless ditch in the Soviet Union.

He had managed to get into a rhythm, digging inside the bunker, but it was a slow process. Behind each rock he dug out there seemed to be two more, bigger than the first. The ground here on the island consisted of more stones than earth. He drove the pickaxe into the wall, prised out stones and earth that came rattling down, then repeated the same movement two hundred times or more during the course of an evening, toiling away like a miner in a prison camp.

The sweat was pouring off him on this warm evening; his arms ached.

Outside, in the bottom of the dip, he stretched his limbs, looking to the south. He couldn’t see the Ölandic Resort from here, but he thought about the hum of the high-pressure pump he and Rita had used down there. It had done its job.

He glanced to the north. The shore was almost deserted by now, but there were still a few holidaymakers by the jetty. Perhaps they had come from the Ölandic, escaping the problems with the water in the resort.

On the other side of the inlet, he could see a couple of old fishermen by a boathouse, painting a wooden gig. It was a peaceful scene, and it made the Homecomer think of his grandfather, who would always work on his nets and boats in the evenings at Rödtorp, totally absorbed in the task.

A sense of peace.

He could go over to the old men, talk to them, swap stories. Find a little serenity, just for a while. But he knew who he carried inside him. Sooner or later, Vlad would emerge, and he was always on his guard.

Aron is eighteen years old. He wears his dead friend Vlad’s warm clothes, sleeps in Vlad’s bunk and eats out of Vlad’s mess tin. Some of the prisoners know or suspect that he is not really a Soviet citizen, that his name is not Vladimir, but Sven has managed to keep them quiet. So far.

Old Grisha is the biggest problem. Grisha
knows
, and he wants money to maintain his silence.

‘Ready money,’ he says to Aron one evening when they are alone. ‘Real roubles. Otherwise, I’ll go to Polynov.’

Vlad merely nods. Polynov is the commandant, a moustachioed former police officer who struts around with a riding crop when he inspects the prisoners. But Polynov is interested in only two things: an orderly camp and strong vodka.

Grisha is the only one who cares about money. He is the last capitalist in the camp.

Capitalists deserve to die.

Aron has to do something, but he can’t ask his stepfather for help. Sometimes, he can meet Sven’s eye in the exercise yard, but he dare not speak to him. Sven is a foreigner.

Nor can he visit Vladimir’s grave. Vlad was buried with the other prisoners who had died, in an ever-growing cemetery in the forest to the south of the camp. There is no cross over the grave, but on one of the walls in Aron’s hut Sven has carved A
RON
F
REDH
1918–1936 next to hundreds of other names. For appearances’ sake.

Sven looks thinner and shorter each time Aron sees him. His stepfather reminds him of a restless dog, constantly moving. He sidles along by the huts, staring at people. If one of his fellow prisoners happens to say the wrong thing to him, there is always trouble; Sven spits or throws a punch, but he usually hits nothing but thin air. He can’t even fight any more.

Had Aron really been afraid of his stepfather when he was little? Now, as Vlad, he isn’t afraid of him at all. Sven is like an old mongrel among a pack of young dogs.

Sometimes, he sneaks into Vlad’s hut and hides little notes to Aron in his bed, written in Swedish. This is incredibly dangerous. Vlad rips them up and eats the scraps of paper; he daren’t even read what Sven has written.

Sven’s plan to make Aron a Soviet citizen has worked but, like Vlad, he no longer believes they will be able to escape from the new country.

How could it happen? How could Sven and Aron ever get away?

First of all, they would have to get through the barbed wire surrounding the camp, past the guards. Then they would somehow have to find their way through the vast Russian forests, through the snow and the cold. Through a country where, according to the rumours, citizens receive one hundred roubles if they go to the police with the severed hand of a fugitive.

It is too risky. And eventually it becomes impossible, because, one day, Sven is gone.

Aron assumes he was taken during the night, just like all the other foreigners. One day, there is no sign of him in the exercise yard, and when Aron looks in his hut he sees only an empty bed. Two days later, another prisoner has taken it over, because it is closer to the stove.

This happens all the time, of course; prisoners simply disappear. Someone comes for them during the night, and they are taken away. No one asks questions.

Vlad keeps quiet. He doesn’t care about foreigners.

But Sven is Aron’s only link with his home in Sweden, and he has to find him. He tries searching for Sven in different parts of the camp but is met with silence and frightened looks.

Only a white-haired farmer from Karelia gives him a thin smile one day as they stand in the mud in the yard.

‘Pfff!’ he says, blowing air through his lips and making his moustache quiver. ‘Pfff … and they’re gone. All foreigners end up as a fart in the wind. They are convicted of spying and sent up a chimney. You know that, don’t you, Swedish boy?’

Inside Vlad, Aron recoils. ‘Sven isn’t a spy,’ he says.

‘He’s been convicted by the troika,’ the farmer says. ‘No foreigner escapes.’

Aron doesn’t say anything, and the farmer leans forward and lowers his voice. ‘I’ve spoken to Grisha. He told me what you did in the forest. You swapped clothes, didn’t you? What a miracle … A dead Soviet citizen came back to life!’

Aron clenches his fist. ‘Shut your mouth,’ he snarls. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Vlad is beginning to take over.

‘You don’t know what I’m talking about?’ the farmer says. ‘Well, perhaps Polynov would want to know.’

He is still smiling beneath his moustache, so Vlad takes a step forward and punches him right on his hairy upper lip.

Unfortunately, it isn’t a very hard blow; he is too tired. The farmer merely shakes it off, then he measures up to Vlad and punches him back, almost as ineffectually.

They circle around one another. It is a pathetic fight, like a stumbling dance in the mud, but it attracts a crowd, and soon a ring of yelling prisoners forms around them.

In the end, a guard steps in and separates them.

It is over. Vlad’s chest is aching from a hard blow with an elbow, and he has managed to graze the farmer’s cheek.

The guard calls over a colleague, and Vlad and his opponent are taken away to see Polynov.

Polynov is the king of the camp.

It is a strange feeling, being led into his office. It has a well-scrubbed wooden floor; there is a small collection of wine in a cupboard on the wall and there is even a rug.

Commandant Polynov looks like a fat toad sitting on his throne, which is a rickety wooden chair. On the desk in front of him is a half-empty glass of vodka and an old army revolver. Hanging on the wall are two framed portraits, one of Jagoda, the chief of the secret police, and one of the president, Josef Stalin. In his mind’s eye, Aron sees Stalin, the great leader, with a blade of grass in his mouth.

‘What’s happened?’ Polynov asks, sighing over the trail of mud the prisoners are leaving on his floor. ‘Why were you fighting? Haven’t we broken you yet?’

‘Comrade Commandant,’ the farmer says, pointing to Vlad. ‘He started it.’

‘That’s not true,’ Vlad responds. ‘The Kulaks just love fighting, everyone knows that.’

‘Shut up, you little bastard!’ the farmer yells.

The commandant plays with the revolver as he listens wearily to the prisoners’ bickering. ‘Enough,’ he mutters.

Polynov gets to his feet, suddenly stone-cold sober. His gaze bores first through Vlad, then the farmer. He places the gun on the desk in front of the two prisoners. ‘Sort this out among yourselves.’

Vlad stares at the cracked wooden butt of the revolver. He doesn’t really know what the commandant wants.

But the farmer understands and wipes the blood from his cheek.

‘Comrade Commandant,’ he says in an authoritative tone of voice. ‘I have important information which I feel I must pass on to you.’ He points to Aron. ‘This prisoner is not what he claims—’

At that moment, Vlad picks up the revolver. It seems to fit perfectly in his hand. The farmer must be stopped, whatever he is thinking of saying about Aron, so he places the barrel of the gun on his fellow prisoner’s chest and pulls the trigger.

A sudden recoil through his hand, a loud bang, and the farmer is lying on the rug, twitching like a rag doll, staring up at the ceiling.

Vlad takes aim and fires again, but the only sound is a dry click.

Polynov reaches out and takes the revolver. ‘There was only one bullet.’

He nods, and the guard steps forward with his rifle, aims it at the farmer’s chest and fires.

The world stops.

‘… Ukrainian?’

Aron turns his head. The commandant has asked a question.

‘So you’re Ukrainian?’

Aron takes a deep breath and straightens up, almost standing to attention. He is calm now; he allows Vladimir Jegerov to come forward.

‘I am a Russian Ukrainian, herr Commandant. My father came from Stalingrad and my mother from Kiev, but they are no longer with us.’

‘Why are you here?’

Vlad answers without hesitation. ‘I hid a loaf of bread for my little sister to eat, herr Commandant. She lived for another week because of that loaf.’

‘So you stole bread from the state? And they didn’t shoot you?’

‘They sent me here, herr Commandant,’ Vlad says. ‘I have five months left to serve.’

‘Good,’ says Polynov. ‘You can certainly shoot.’

Vlad grows even taller as the commandant continues. ‘We have too many idiots among the guards. Untrained drunks. They keep on missing when they fire.’

‘I don’t drink,’ Vlad says.

The commandant glances at his bottle of vodka, then he bellows, ‘Jakov!’

The head of the guards enters the room, and Polynov points to Vlad. ‘A new recruit for you.’

Jakov steps forward. He is short but sticks his nose in the air just centimetres from Vlad’s chin. ‘Your first order, Comrade.’ He jerks his head towards the farmer’s body. ‘Fetch a couple of prisoners. Bury him after dark.’

Polynov goes over to a cupboard and takes something out. ‘This is a Winchester that the Tsar’s bandits had stashed away … It’s old, but it works. Wear it over your shoulder so that everyone can see it. If you lose it, you’re back on hard labour.’