Echoes From the Dead (39 page)

“It’s almost like winter out there today,” he said to AnnBritt Malm.

She merely nodded, clearly uninterested in small talk.

The door on one side of the room was ajar, and she went over and pushed it open. Gerlof followed her.

It led into a larger room, a drawing room. The air was musty and stuffy, and there was the smell of stale cigarette smoke.

Several windows looked out onto the back garden, but the dark curtains were closed. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, swathed in white fabric. There were tiled stoves in two of the room’s corners, and in a third a television was showing cartoons, with the sound turned low.

The Flintstones, Gerlof noticed.

A wheelchair was positioned in front of the television; in it an old man was slumped, a blanket over his knees. His bald head was pitted with dark liver spots, and an old white scar ran across his forehead. His body shook constantly.

This was Martin Malm, the man who had sentjens’s sandal.

“You’ve got a visitor, Martin,” said AnnBritt.

The old shipowner jerked his head from the television. His gaze fastened on Gerlof and stayed there.

“Good afternoon, Martin,” said Gerlof. “How are you?”

Malm’s quivering chin dropped an inch or so in a brief nod.

“Are you feeling all right?”

Malm shook his head.

“No? Me neither,” said Gerlof. “We get the health we deserve.”

On

the television screen Fred Flintstone jumped into his car and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

“Would you like some coffee, Gerlof?” asked AnnBritt.

“No, thanks, I’m fine.”

Gerlof sincerely hoped she wasn’t intending to stay in the room.

Evidently she wasn’t. AnnBritt Malm turned with her hand on the doorknob and looked at Gerlof for one last time, as if they understood one another.

“I’ll be back in a while,” she said.

Then she went out and closed the door.

Everything went very silent in the drawing room.

Gerlof stood still for a few moments, then went over to a chair by the wall. It was several yards away from Martin, but Gerlof knew he hadn’t the strength to drag it over to Martin, so he sat down on it where it was.

“There we are, then,” he said. “We can have a little chat now.”

Malm was still staring at him.

Gerlof noticed that the drawing room was free of maritime reminders, in contrast to the hallway and his own room at the home in Mamas. There were no pictures of ships here, no framed charts, no old compasses.

“Don’t you miss the sea, Martin?” he asked. “I do. Even on a windy day like this, when you shouldn’t go out. But I’ve still got this …” He held up his briefcase. “I used to have all my papers in here when I was out at sea, and it’s still more or less in one piece.

And I wanted to show you something …”

He opened the briefcase and took out the memoir about Malm Freight, then went on:

“You’ll recognize this, I’m sure. I’ve often looked at it and learned a lot about all your ships and your adventures at sea, Martin. But there’s a photograph here which is particularly interesting.”

He

opened the book at the page with the photograph from

Ramneby.

“This one,” he went on. “It’s from the end of the fifties, isn’t it? Before you bought your first Atlantic ship.”

He looked up at Martin Malm and saw that he had managed

to capture the old shipowner’s attention. Malm was staring at the picture, and Gerlof could see his right hand twitching, as if he wanted to raise it and point at the picture.

“Do you recognize yourself?” he asked. “I’m sure you do.

And the ship? That’s Amelia, isn’t it? She used to lie beside my Wavebreaker at the quay here in Borgholm.”

Martin Malm was staring at the picture without speaking. He was breathing heavily, as if there weren’t enough air in the room.

“Do you remember where it was taken, this picture? I mostly took engine oil to Oskarshamn when I was sailing around Smaland, but this is further south, isn’t it?”

Martin didn’t reply, but he still hadn’t taken his eyes off the old photograph Gerlof was holding up. The row of men on the jetty stared back at him, and Gerlof noticed that Martin’s chin had begun to tremble uncontrollably again.

“It’s Ramneby sawmill, isn’t it? There’s no caption, but Ernst Adolfsson recognized the place. When this picture was taken, it was still possible to make a living sailing just one cargo ship. Just about, anyway …” Gerlof pointed at the picture again. “And this is the owner of the sawmill himself, August Kant. The brother of Vera Kant in Stenvik. You knew August pretty well, didn’t you?

You two did quite a bit of business together.”

Martin tried to get out of the wheelchair to move closer to Gerlof. At least that’s how it seemed; his shoulders were twitching and he was panting, his legs tensing against the footplates of the wheelchair. He was still staring at the photograph, and he opened his mouth.

“Frrshoff,” he said in a thick voice.

“Sorry?” said Gerlof. “What did you say, Martin?”

“Frrshoff,” said Martin again.

Gerlof looked at him in confusion, and lowered the book with the picture from the sawmill. What had Martin said? Free something, it sounded like.

Or had he perhaps said a nameFridolf?

Or Fritiofr.

PUERTO LIMON, JULY 1963

Nils waits for over an hour in the darkness beneath

the palm trees with his back to the beach. The mosquitoes are swarming around him. He waves them away and thinks of Oland, what it was like to wander over the alvar, free and without a care in the world. At the same time he is constantly listening, but nothing is to be heard from the beach down below.

Finally someone approaches in the sand behind him.

“That took a while, but he’s sleeping now,” says Fritiof.

“Good.”

Nils goes back down to the beach with Fritiof. Borrachon the Swede is slumped by the glowing fire like a sack of coal, his head sagging, his hand on the last wine bottle.

“Good, you can get going now,” says Fritiof.

“Me?”

“Yes, you.” Fritiof stares at him. “It’s been hard enough for me keeping this drunken lout awake for the whole journey. You can take over now.”

Nils looks down at Borrachon, but doesn’t move.

“He’s worthless, Nils,” says Fritiof. “He’s valuable only to us.”

Nils still doesn’t move.

“Do you think you’ll go to hell for this?” asks Fritiof.

Nils shakes his head.

“You won’t,” says Fritiof. “You’ll be able to go home.”

“It’s here,” says Nils.

“What is?”

“Hell,” says Nils. “Hell is here.”

“Good.” Fritiof nods. “Then it’s time for you to leave it.”

Nils nods wearily, then he bends down and grabs hold of

Borrachon’s arms. The man mumbles in his sleep, but offers no resistance. Nils drags him off through the sand, away from the fire, and down toward the dark sea.

“Look out for sharks,” warns Fritiof behind him.

The water is lukewarm and the waves broad but powerless.

Nils backs right out into the Caribbean, dragging Borrachon’s body with him.

Suddenly it moves. Borrachon coughs as the foam swirls over his face, and he begins to struggle. Nils grits his teeth, moves back a couple of yards more until the water is up to his thighs, then pushes Borrachon beneath the surface. He closes his eyes and begins to count: One, two, three …

The man flails wildly with his arms, desperately trying to get his head above water. Nils holds him firmly, thinks of Oland and keeps counting.

… fortyeight, fortynine, fifty …

It feels as if it takes an hour before the body stops moving in the water. Nils remains where he is, rigid, holding it beneath the surface. All trace of life must be gone, nothing must remain.

If he waits long enough, perhaps Borrachon won’t turn up in his dreams, as the district superintendent has done.

“Is it over?” calls Fritiof from the beach.

“Yes.”

“Well done, Nils.” Fritiof wades out into the water, bends down to Borrachon, lifts one arm, and lets it drop. “Well done.”

Nils says nothing. He stays where he is, feeling the pull of the waves, while Fritiof drags the body to the water’s edge, and suddenly he thinks of his little brother, Axel.

It was an accident, Axel, I didn’t mean it… Killing makes those who are already dead come back, stronger than ever.

Fritiof plows back up the beach, wiping his brow with his shirtsleeve. He breathes out.

“Good, that’s done,” he says, turning to Nils. “Okay, now you can tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Nils walks slowly out of the sea and stands in front of him.

“About the treasure you hid. Where is it, Nils?”

The body of the man from Smaland is lying between them on the beach. Nils senses that Fritiof has the upper hand now, but he refuses to give in.

“In that case, what’s your name, Fritiof Andersson? Your real name?”

The man in front of him doesn’t reply.

“If you take me home,” says Nils eventually, “I’ll get you the goods.”

“It’ll take a while,” says Fritiof, waving away a mosquito. “I’ll take care of everything, but it’ll take a while. One step at a time.

The body has to be taken to Oland first… it has to be buried and forgotten, as far as possible. Then you can come home. You do understand that?”

Nils nods.

Fritiof pokes the body between them with his shoe.

“We’ll drag it back out again now, just a few yards, cut the face up a bit and anchor it to the bottom… then we’ll let the fish do their job. After that, nobody will be able to tell the difference between you.” He nods toward Borrachon’s little bag by the fire.

“Don’t forget to take his passport. You might not get into Mexico otherwise.”

“And afterwards,” says Nils, “you’ll come back here?”

“Yes. You stay in Mexico City, and I’ll come back here in a week or so. I’ll haul the body onto the beach and get rid of any traces, then I’ll drive back down to Limon and start asking people if anyone has seen my Swedish friend Nils. It’s probably best if someone else comes and finds the corpse, but otherwise I’ll have to do it.”

Nils starts to get undressed. “We’ll swap clothes, then.”

Fritiof looks at him. “Anything else?” he says. “Have you forgotten anything?”

Nils pulls off his shirt in the darkness. “Like what?”

Fritiof points silently at Nils’s left hand, at his two bent fingers.

Then he bends down and grabs hold of Borrachon’s arm, straightens it out so that the left hand is lying in the sand, and stamps down hard on the ring finger and the middle finger with the heel of his shoe. Harder and harder, until a quiet crack is heard in the darkness.

“There,” says Fritiof, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and tying the broken fingers to the palm at a crooked angle. “You’ll soon be twins.”

Nils just looks at him. This man, Fritiof, is ahead of him all the time when it comes to planning. How does he intend this to finish?

Nils pushes his unease to one side.

“Take off his trousers,” he says. “I’ll dry them over the fire.

Then he can have mine instead, and my wallet.”

All he wants to do now is go home. If he can just get back to Stenvik, all this will have a happy ending.

Then it won’t matter that he’s in hell.

“now we’re old” Jorlaf said.

“And we’ve got time to think. And I’ve been thinking a

great deal lately …”

He met Martin’s gaze. They were still sitting opposite each other in the dark drawing room, where the TV was now showing pictures of Fred Flintstone hacking rocks out of the mountainside.

Gerlof still had the book with the photo from Ramneby in his hand.

“Your freight company wasn’t that big when this picture was taken,” he said. “I know that, because mine was just as small. You had a few sailing ships that carried cargo, stone, and timber and all kinds of goods across our own little Baltic Sea, just like the rest of us. But then three or four years later you bought your first steamship and started sailing to Europe and across the Atlantic. The rest of us limped along with our sailing ships for a little while longer, until the regulations about minimum crew numbers and maximum loads became too much for us. We couldn’t get the banks to lend us any money for bigger ships; you were the only one who invested in modern tonnage at exactly the right time.” He was still looking at Malm. “But where did you get the money from, Martin? You had just as little money of your own as any other skipper at that time, and the banks must have been just as miserly with you as they were with the rest of us.”

Martin’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

“Did it come from August Kant, Martin?” asked Gerlof. “From the owner of the sawmill at Ramneby?”

Martin stared at Gerlof, and his head jerked.

“No? But I think it did.”

Gerlof reached into his briefcase again, then grabbed his cane and got up. He walked slowly around the television and over to Martin.

“I think you got paid for bringing home a murderer from

South America, Martin. Nils Kant, who’d murdered a policeman … August’s nephew.”

Martin moved his head back and forth. He opened his mouth again.

“Eera,” he said. “Eera Aant.”

“Vera Kant,” said Gerlof. He was beginning to understand

Martin a little now. “Nils’s mother. No doubt she wanted her son home as well. But it was her brother August who paid, wasn’t it?

First he paid you to bring home a body in a coffin to Oland, which was buried up in Mamas so that everybody would believe Nils Kant was dead. Then you brought Nils home several years later, more discreetly.”

He stood in front of Martin, who had to twist his neck in order to look up at him.

“Nils came home, sometime toward the end of the sixties, and hid somewhere here on Oland. He didn’t need to hide particularly carefully, because nobody would recognize him after twentyfive years. I’m sure he was able to visit his mother sometimes, and go walking out on the alvar.”

Gerlof looked down at the man in the wheelchair.