Echoes From the Dead (22 page)

The train stops again, with a dull hiss. The carriages remain still.

Nils opens his eyes, waits. He’s still alone in the carriage.

A minute passes, then two. Is something wrong?

Somebody shouts something outside, and at last he feels the

train begin to move again. It slowly picks up speed, and Nils sees the station house slip past and disappear behind him. Cool air blows into the carriage through gaps in the windows; it feels like a sea breeze on the shore at Stenvik.

Nils’s shoulders slowly drop. He places a hand on his rucksack, opens it, and leans back in his seat. The train’s speed is increasing all the time. The whistle screams.

Suddenly the door of his compartment opens.

Nils turns his head.

A wellbuilt man wearing a black police uniform with shiny

buttons and a police cap walks in. He looks Nils straight in the eye.

“Nils Kant from Stenvik,” says the man, his expression serious.

It isn’t a question, but Nils nods automatically.

He’s sitting there as if he were nailed to the seat as the train races across the alvar. The greenish brown landscape outside the window, blue sky. Nils wants to stop the train and jump off, he wants to get back out onto the alvar. But the train is moving swiftly now, the wheels pounding along the track, the wind howling.

“Good.”

The man in the uniform sits down heavily on the seat diagonally opposite Nils, so close that their knees are almost touching.

The man straightens his coat, which is buttoned up despite the heat. His forehead is shiny with sweat beneath the brim of his cap.

Nils recognizes him, vaguely. Henriksson. He’s the district police superintendent in Marnas.

“Nils,” says Henriksson, as if they knew each other, “are you going to Borgholm?”

Nils nods slowly.

“Are you going to visit someone down there?” asks Henriksson.

Nils shakes his head.

“What are you going to do, then?”

Nils doesn’t answer.

The police officer turns his head and looks out of the window.

“Anyway, we can travel together,” he says, “and we can have

a little chat in the meantime.”

Nils says nothing.

The police officer goes on:

“When they phoned and told me you were here, I asked them

to hold the train for a few minutes so that I could come along and join you.” He turns his gaze back to Nils almost reluctantly. “I’d really like to talk to you, you see, about all those long walks on the alvar …”

The train begins to slow down again at one of the stations between Marnas and Borgholm. A little cottage surrounded by apple trees slips past Nils’s window. He imagines he can smell the aroma of pancakes through the window; his mother had made him fresh pancakes with sugar the previous evening.

Nils looks at the policeman.

“The alvar … there’s nothing to talk about,” he says.

“I can’t really agree with you there.” The police officer takes a handkerchief out of his pocket. “I think we do need to talk about it, Nils, and many other people agree with me. The truth will always come out.”

The policeman holds Nils’s gaze as he slowly wipes the sweat from his face. Then he leans forward.

“Several people from Stenvik have got in touch with us over

the past few days. They’ve said that if we want to know who’s been shooting out on the alvar with a shotgun, we ought to talk to you, Nils.”

Nils can see the two dead soldiers lying out there on the alvar; he can see their staring eyes inside his brain.

“No,” says Nils, shaking his head.

There’s a rushing sound in his ears. The train begins to

brake.

“Did you meet the foreigners out on the alvar, Nils?” asks the policeman, putting his handkerchief away.

The train stops, jolting the carriages slightly. After only half a minute or so it begins to move again.

“You did, didn’t you?”

All the time the policeman is looking at him and waiting for a reply. His steady gaze sears Nils’s face.

“We’ve found the bodies, Nils,” he says. “Was it you who shot them?”

“I didn’t do anything,” says Nils quietly, his fingers fumbling with the opening of his rucksack.

“What did you say?” asks the policeman. “What have you got

there?”

Nils doesn’t reply.

The wheels begin to pound again, the whistle screams, his

fingers tremble and search and burrow into the rucksack, which falls over on its side. His right hand gropes among his clothes and possessions.

The police officer half gets up from his seat; perhaps he has realized that something is about to happen.

The train whistle screams in terror.

“Nils, what have you got”

Inside the rucksack, Nils’s fingers close firmly around the

sawnoff shotgun. He presses the trigger and the gun jerks among the clothes inside the rucksack.

The first shot shreds the bottom of the rucksack, ripping up the seat beside the policeman. Splinters of wood spray up toward the ceiling.

The police officer jumps at the noise, but doesn’t try to take cover.

He has nowhere to go.

Nils quickly lifts the torn rucksack and fires again, without even looking where he’s shooting. The rucksack is ripped apart.

The second shot hits the policeman. His body is flung back

against the wall so hard that Nils can hear the crack, he falls heavily, his back rolls across the shattered seat and crashes down on the carriage floor.

The wheels pound against the rails, the train hurtles across the alvar.

The police officer is lying on the floor in front of Nils, his arms twitching slightly. Nils keeps hold of the shotgun, but lets go of the torn rucksack and stands up, his legs unsteady.

Shit.

“Take the train to Borgholm,” he hears his mother saying inside his head.

Her plan is ruined now.

Nils gazes around, and sees the landscape racing past the

window.

The alvar is still there, and the sunshine.

He turns the rucksack upside down and ripped clothes stinking of gunpowder come tumbling out: socks, pants, a woolen sweater.

But there’s a little bag of butter toffees right at the bottom, and his wallet and hip flask full of brandy are undamaged. He picks up the flask, takes a quick swig of lukewarm brandy, and slips the flask into his back pocket. That feels better.

The money, the sweater, the flask, the gun, and the toffees.

He can’t take anything else with him. He’ll have to leave the suitcase of clothes.

Nils climbs over the policeman’s motionless body, opens the

door, and makes his way out into the thundering din between the carriages.

The train rolls on across the alvar. The wind tugs at him, he screws up his eyes against it. Through a window he can see into the carriage in front of him; a man in a black hat is sitting with his back to him, swaying in time with the train’s movement. The sound of the shots was deadened by the clothes in the rucksack the train thunders on along the track, and no one seems to have heard a thing.

Nils opens the side door, catches the scent of the plants on the alvar and sees the gravel on the track hurtling past beneath him like a pale gray river. He climbs down onto the last step above the ground, sees that the track behind is empty, and jumps.

He tries to jump through the air and hit the ground with his legs moving, but the impact knocks his feet from underneath him.

The wheels of the train thunder on, the world spins around. He is hurled to the ground, takes a hard blow on the forehead, and tenses his body, aware of the risk that he might die beneath the train. But the track knocks him out of the way.

He raises his head and sees the train moving away, sees the

last carriage, the one he has just left, growing smaller and smaller along the track.

The train disappears in the distance. There isn’t a sound.

He made it.

Slowly he gets up and looks around. He’s back out on the

alvar, his shotgun still in his hand.

No buildings are in sight, no people. Just the endless grass and the blue sky.

Nils is free.

Without a single glance back toward the railway line, he

quickly strides out onto the alvar, toward the west coast of the island.

Nils is free, and now he’s going to disappear.

He’s already disappeared.

By the time she’d finished telling the story of Nils Kant, the wine bottle was empty. The glow of the sun had gradually disappeared outside the kitchen window and had become a narrow, dark red line on the horizon.

“So the policeman on the train … he died?” asked Julia.

“The conductor came into the compartment and found him

lying there dead,” answered Astrid. “Shot in the chest.”

“Lennart’s father?”

Astrid nodded.

“Lennart must have been eight or nine when it happened,

so he probably doesn’t remember much about it,” she said, and added, “But it must have had a terrible effect on him … I know he never wants to talk about how his father died.”

Julia looked down into her wineglass. “I understand why he

didn’t want to talk about Nils Kant either,” she said. Thanks to the intoxicating effect of the wine, she was beginning to feel a blossoming sense of closeness to Lennart Henrikssonhe had lost a father, she had lost a son.

“No,” said Astrid. “And these rumors about Nils Kant still being alive don’t make it any easier for him.”

Julia looked up at her. “Who’s saying that?” she asked.

“Haven’t you heard people talking about it?”

“No. But I have seen Kant’s grave in Marnas. There’s a gravestone and the date and …”

“There aren’t many left who remember Nils Kant any longer,

but those who do, the older ones … Some of them believe

the coffin contained nothing but stones when it came home from overseas,” said Astrid.

“Is that what Gerlof thinks?”

“He’s never said,” replied Astrid. “Not that I’ve heard. Gerlof’s an old sea captain after all, so he’s probably never given much credence to rumors. And that’s all this talk about Nils Kant is … just rumors and gossip. Some people say they’ve seen Nils Kant standing by the side of the road in the autumn fog, watching the cars, with a shaggy beard and gray hair … and others have seen him wandering around out on the alvar, as he did when he was young, or in amongst the crowds in Borgholm in the summer.” Astrid shook her head. “I’ve never seen hide nor hair of Kant. He must be dead.”

She picked up their wineglasses and got up from the table. Julia stayed where she was, wondering whether she and her mother, Ella, would have sat chatting like this in Stenvik, if Ella had still been alive. Probably not; her mother had hardly ever given away what she was thinking.

Then Julia felt something soft and warm against her trouser

leg and gasped, but it was only Astrid’s fox terrier Willy, who had padded over to her under the table. She reached down and scratched the coarse hair at the back of his neck, gazing pensively out of the kitchen window at the red afterglow of the sun on the mainland.

“I wish I could stay here,” she said.

Astrid turned from the sink. “You stay right there,” she said.

“You don’t need to go, it’s not that late. We can talk some more.”

Julia shook her head. “I mean … I wish I could stay in

Stenvik.”

And she did. It might just have been the wine, but at that moment she could feel the memory of all those childhood summers in the village, like the echo of a beautiful melody in her head, an Oland folk song, as if it were here in Stenvik that she really belonged. Despite the pain associated with Jens’s disappearance, despite Ernst’s death.

“Well, can’t you stay here?” said Astrid. “You’re going to

Ernst’s funeral up in Marnas, aren’t you?”

“I need to get the car back to my sister.” It was a very feeble reason; she was the joint owner of the Ford after all, but it was all she could come up with. “I’ll probably go tomorrow evening, or the day after.”

She got up from the table, with a certain amount of difficulty.

Her legs were unsteady after the wine.

“Thank you so much for dinner, Astrid,” she said.

“It was a pleasure,” said Astrid, smiling broadly for once. “We must try and meet up again before you go. Or next time you come to Stenvik.”

“We will,” promised Julia. She patted Willy and went out

through the kitchen door.

It wasn’t yet night outside, only early evening, and she didn’t need to feel her way home through the pitch darkness.

“Come over to me if you get scared in the dark,” called Astrid behind her. ‘Just thinkthere’s only us left in Stenvik now, you and me and John Hagman. There were three hundred people living here at one time. There was a temperance society and a mission house and rows of mills down by the sea. Now there’s only us left.”

Then she closed the kitchen door, before Julia had time to

answer.

The intoxication which had been so noticeable in Astrid’s

kitchen began to subside out in the fresh airat least Julia thought so. The evening was clear and cold, and faint lights glimmered far away on the mainland, on the other side of the sound. To the north and south along the Oland coast, more lights glowed from houses and lamps too far away to be visible in daylight.

Julia had kept the key to Gerlof’s cottage, and after a few hundred yards she turned inland. She walked along the village road, striding out as best she could; she glanced into Vera Kant’s garden, and wondered briefly if old Vera had managed to see her beloved son Nils before he died, or not.

The garden was silent and full of shadows. Julia kept walking up to the summer cottage, unlocked the outside door, and switched on the light in the hallway.

No shadows here. Jens was in the cottage, but only as a vague memory. Jens was dead.

She used the cottage bathroom to wash, go to the toilet, and brush her teeth.

When she’d finished, she turned off the hall light, but the last thing she did was to pick up the cell phone, which had been charging all day in the cottage. Standing in the hallway in front of the big window, she dialed Gerlof’s number at the residential home.