Echoes From the Dead (23 page)

He answered after three rings.

“Davidsson …”

“Hi, it’s me.”

She always had a guilty conscience when she spoke to Gerlof

when she wasn’t entirely sober, but there was nothing she could do about that.

“Hello,” said Gerlof. “Where are you?”

“In the cottage. I had dinner at Astrid’s, and now I’m going back to the boathouse and I’m going to bed.”

“Good. So what did you two talk about?”

Julia thought for a moment. “We talked about Stenvik … and about what happened to Nils Kant.”

“Haven’t you read about it yet, in the book I gave you?” asked Gerlof.

“I haven’t finished reading it yet,” replied Julia, then changed the subject. “Shall we go to Borgholm soon?”

“I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to go on Tuesday,”

said Gerlof, “if I can get out of here. I think we’ll soon need written permission from Boel to leave the premises.”

This was typical of Gerlof’s sense of humor.

“If you can get permission,” retorted Julia, “I’ll come and pick you up at half past nine on Tuesday.”

Then her breath caught in her throat and she leaned against

the window.

She could see something out there, a pale light…

“Hello?” said Gerlof. “Are you still there?”

“Is anybody living in the house next door?” asked Julia, her eyes fixed on the window.

“What do you mean, next door?”

“In Vera Kant’s house.”

“Nobody’s lived there for over twenty years. Why?”

“I don’t know …”

Now she couldn’t see any lights over there. And yet she was

still certain she’d seen a light flicker in one of the rooms on the ground floor.

“So who owns that house?” she asked.

“Er… it must be distant relatives, I suppose,” said Gerlof.

“Second cousins of Vera Kant’s, I think. At any rate, nobody’s shown the slightest interest in maintaining it. You’ve seen the state it’s in … and it was already in a mess when Vera died in the seventies.”

Everything

was still dark outside the window.

“Okay,” said Gerlof, “see you tomorrow. And then on Tuesday, we’ll go to Borgholm.”

“So are we going to find the man who took Jens away?”

“I never said that,” said Gerlof. “All I promised to do was to show you the person who sent the sandal to me. That’s all.”

“Isn’t that the same person?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you explain why?”

“I’ll do that in Borgholm.”

“Okay,” said Julia, who knew he wouldn’t say more, no matter how hard she implored him. “Tomorrow, then.”

She switched off her cell phone.

On the way down the village road, Julia slowed as she walked past Vera Kant’s house this time. It was dark beneath the dense old trees, and she kept staring up at the big, empty windows. They were all dark. The derelict house formed a big, black shadow against the night sky. The only way to find out if anyone was hiding in there was to … go into Vera’s house and have a look for herself.

But it would be insane to do it, Julia knew that. At least to do it all alone. Vera Kant’s was a ghost house nowadays, but…

What if Jens had gone in there on that day? What if he was still in there?

Come inside, Mummy. Come inside, come and get me …

No. She mustn’t think like that.

Julia walked quickly down to the boathouse, opened the door, and went in. She locked the outside door behind her.

Next morning was cold and windy, and it was humiliating for Gerlof not to be able to walk out to the car on his own. He was forced to lean on both Boel and Linda as he made his way out of the home to Julia’s Ford out at the front.

Gerlof could feel how hard both women were working to

make his heavy, unwilling body move forward. All he could do was grip his cane tightly with one hand and his briefcase with the other, and allow himself to be led.

It was humiliating, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Some days he could walk without too much difficulty, other days he could hardly move. This autumn day was cold, and that made everything worse. It was the day before Ernst’s funeral, and Gerlof and his daughter were off on an excursion.

Julia opened the passenger door from the inside, and he got in.

“Where are you off to?” asked Boel beside the car. She always liked to keep tabs on him.

“South,” said Gerlof. “To Borgholm.”

“Will you be back for dinner?”

“Probably,” said Gerlof, closing the door. “Right, off we go,”

he said to Julia, hoping she wouldn’t comment on the wretched state he was in this morning.

“She seems to care about you,” said Julia as she drove away from the home. “Boel, I mean.”

“It’s her responsibility, she doesn’t want anything to happen to me,” said Gerlof, and added, “I don’t know if you heard, but a pensioner has disappeared in the south of Oland … The police are looking for him.”

“I heard it on the car radio,” said Julia. “But we’re not going out onto the alvar today, are we?”

Gerlof shook his head. “Like I said, we’re going to Borgholm.

We’re going to see three men. Not all at the same time. One after another. And one of them sent Jens’s sandal to me. You want to talk to him, don’t you?”

“And the others?”

“One of them is a friend of mine,” said Gerlof. “His name’s Gosta Engstrom.”

“And the third man?”

“He’s a little bit special.”

Julia braked as they approached the stop sign at the intersection with the main road.

“You always have to be so secretive, Gerlof,” she said. “Is it because you want to feel important?”

“No, it isn’t,” said Gerlof quickly.

“Well, that’s what I think,” said Julia as she turned onto the main road to Borgholm.

Maybe she was right, thought Gerlof. He’d never really considered what it was that motivated him.

“I’m not selfimportant,” he said. “I just think it’s best to tell stories at their own pace. Before, people always took their time over telling stories, but now everything has to be done so quickly.”

Julia didn’t say anything. They drove south, past the turning for Stenvik. A few hundred yards further on, Gerlof could see the old station house on the horizon to the west. This was where Nils Kant had walked that summer’s day after the end of the war, the day that ended with him shooting District Superintendent Henriksson dead on the train.

Gerlof could still remember the commotion. First two German soldiers shot dead on the alvar, then the murder of a policeman, and a murderer on the runa sensation that merited plenty of news coverage, even during the final bloody and dramatic months of the Second World War.

Reporters had come from far and wide to write about the violence and the horrifying events on Oland. Gerlof himself had been in Stockholm at the time, trying to resume his civilian maritime career, and had only been able to read about the drama in the newspaper. The police had called in reinforcements from all over southern Sweden to search the island for Kant, but he had jumped off the train and managed to get away.

There were no trains on Oland now; even the railway tracks had been pried up, and the Marnas train station had become someone’s home. A summer home, of course.

Gerlof looked away from the station house and leaned back in his seat; a few minutes later something suddenly started bleeping persistently somewhere inside the car. He looked around quickly, but Julia remained calm and, as she was driving, slid a cell phone out of her purse. She spoke quietly, answering in monosyllables, then switched off the phone.

“I’ve never understood how those things work,” said Gerlof.

“What things?”

“Cordless phones. Cell phones, as they call them, whatever a cell is.”

“All you have to do is switch them on and make a call,” said Julia. Then she added, “That was Lena. She says hello.”

“That’s nice. What did she want?”

“I think she mainly wants her car back,” said Julia tersely.

“This one. She keeps calling me about it.” Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I own it jointly with her, but that doesn’t seem to bother her.”

“Right,” said Gerlof.

His daughters obviously had points of disagreement between them that he knew nothing about. Their mother would doubtless have done something about it if she’d been alive, but unfortunately he had absolutely no idea what he ought to do.

Julia sat in silence behind the wheel after her telephone conversation, and Gerlof couldn’t come up with any way of breaking the silence.

After a quarter of an hour Julia turned off onto the exit road to Borgholm.

“Where are we going now?” she asked.

“First of all we’re going to have our morning coffee,” replied Gerlof.

It was warm and comfortable in the Engstroms’ apartment on the southern outskirts of Borgholm. Gosta and Margit had a fantastic view of the ruined castle from their balcony in the low apartment block. On the far side of a narrow, deserted meadow was a long steep hillside with huge deciduous trees clinging to it, and on the plateau above the hillside rose the medieval castle. One of Borgholm’s many mysterious fires had ravaged it at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now both the roof and the wooden beams were gone. Great black openings gaped where the windows had been.

The burntout windows up there always made Gerlof think of a skull with empty eye sockets. Some of those who lived in Borgholm had never liked the castle, he knew, at least not until it was transformed from a showy, dilapidated wreck into a historic ruin that brought in the tourists. Centuries ago, the inhabitants of Oland had been forced to build the castle, but it had been yet another royal command that brought nothing but blood and sweat and disappointment for them. The people of the mainland had always tried to suck the island dry.

Julia stood in silence on the balcony contemplating the ruin, and Gerlof turned to her.

“In the Stone Age they used to throw the old people who were sick off that cliff,” he said quietly, pointing toward the ruin. “That’s what they say, anyway. Of course, that was before the castle was built. And long before those who govern us started building old people’s homes …”

Margit Engstrom bustled toward them. She was carrying a tray of coffee cups and wearing an apron that proclaimed the best GRANNY IN THE WORLD!!!

“In the summer they have concerts in the ruin,” she told them, “and it can get a bit noisy here. Otherwise it’s really nice living below a castle.”

She set the tray on the table in front of the television and poured coffee for them all before fetching a basket of buns and a plate of cookies from the kitchen.

Her husband Gosta was wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and suspenders, and was smiling the whole time. He had looked happy when he was a sea captain too, Gerlof rememberedat least as long as people were doing what he told them to do.

“Nice to see you both,” said Gosta, picking up a steaming cup of coffee. “Of course we’re coming up to Marnas tomorrow.

You’re going too, I presume?”

He was talking about Ernst’s funeral. Gerlof nodded.

“I am, at least. Julia might have to get back to Gothenburg.”

“What’s happening to his house?” said Gosta. “Have they said?”

“No, I suppose it’s too early to decide,” said Gerlof. “But I imagine it will end up as a summer cottage for his family in Smaland. Not that northern Oland needs any more summer cottages … but I expect that’s what it will be.”

“Yes, things will have to change a good deal before anybody moves in to live there all year round,” said Gosta, taking a sip of his coffee.

“We’re so happy down here in town, with everything close by,” said Margit, placing the generously filled dishes on the table.

“But of course we’re members of the Marnas local history association.”

Her

husband smiled lovingly at her.

They didn’t stay long at the Engstroms’, no more than half an hour.

“Okay,” said Gerlof once they were back in the car, “you can drive over to Badhusgatan now. We’ll stop off at Blomberg’s car lot and do a little shopping before we head off down to the harbor.”

Julia looked at him before she started the car.

“Was there any point to this visit?”

“We got coffee and cookies,” said Gerlof. “Isn’t that enough?

And it’s always nice to see Gosta. He was the captain of a Baltic cargo ship, just like me. There aren’t many of us left now …”

Julia turned onto Badhusgatan and drove past the empty sidewalks.

They hardly met any cars either. Ahead of them at the end

of the street was the white harbor hotel.

“Turn in here,” said Gerlof, pointing to the left.

Julia blinked, then turned onto an asphalt area where a sign saying blomberg’s Autos hung in front of a low building housing both a workshop and a usedcar lot. A few newer Volvos had the honor of being positioned inside behind glass, but most of the vehicles were parked outside. Handwritten signs behind each windshield showed the price and mileage.

“Come on,” said Gerlof when Julia had pulled up.

“Are we buying a new car?” she asked, bewildered.

“No, no,” said Gerlof, “we’re just going to pop in and see

Robert Blomberg for a few minutes.”

His joints had grown warmer and coffee with the Engstroms

had perked him up. His aches and pains had subsided somewhat, and he was able to walk across the asphalt with only his cane for support, although Julia did go ahead of him to open the door of the workshop.

A bell rang, and the smell of oil hit them.

Gerlof knew a lot about boats but far too little about cars, and the sight of engines always made him feel unsure of himself. There was a car standing on the cement floor, a black Ford surrounded by welding gear and various tools, but nobody was working on it.

The place was deserted.

Gerlof walked slowly over to the little office inside the workshop, and looked in.

“Good morning,” he said to the young mechanic in grubby

overalls who was sitting at the desk, intent on the cartoon page of OlandsPosten. “We’re from Stenvik, and we’d like to buy some oil for the car.”