The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (12 page)

The seaman opened his mouth and his expression changed from quizzical to uneasy – but by that time the Homecomer had produced his gun.

Pecka had also reached the ship, while at the same time Rita swung the launch around sharply, heading for the stern.

The ship was moored with three hawsers. Pecka positioned himself next to the first one, and raised the axe. Five sharp blows, and the hawser was severed. He quickly moved on to the next one.

The Homecomer was on the deck now, still pointing the Walther at the seaman and speaking quietly but firmly as he issued a series of instructions.

He glanced back and saw that Pecka had lowered the axe. All three hawsers had been cut, and the ship slowly began to drift away from the quayside and out into the dark waters of the Sound.

He looked around. The quayside was still deserted.

The seaman looked confused; he raised his hands and began to back away.

The hijacking had begun.

Sixty-eight years earlier, the ship that is to take Aron and Sven to the new country is made of metal, and is bigger than any vessel Aron has ever seen.

They have travelled by train from Kalmar, journeying northwards through Sweden. The train has chugged its way through vast coniferous forests, past mountains and lakes, then out into the sun and straight into the heart of a big city.

The station is enormous, packed with travellers and all their luggage. Outside the city awaits, with its long, straight cobbled streets, people strolling along the pavements, and more vehicles than Aron has seen in his whole life. Plenty of carts and horse-drawn carriages clatter by, but there are also big, black motor cars, rumbling along with uniformed chauffeurs behind the wheel and smartly dressed men in the back seat.

‘Stockholm,’ Sven says.

Aron recognizes the name from school.

‘The capital city of Sweden.’

They eat a plate of steaming-hot stew in a smoky café not far from the central station, then buy provisions and the last bits and pieces for their journey. In an ironmonger’s, Sven equips himself with a hammer and a decent spade.

‘It’s easier to get a job if you bring your own tools to the new country,’ he explains.

Then they wander across the city’s bridges, past the tall buildings and the splendour of the Royal Palace, then down through narrow alleyways, to a long quayside with rows of derricks and crowds of people.

‘There she is!’

Both large and small ships are moored alongside, but Sven is pointing to a long, white vessel. A thin curl of smoke is emerging from a big funnel, which has three yellow crowns painted on a blue background. Pennants along the railing flutter in the wind, and a large Swedish flag hangs down from the stern.

The name on the prow reads SS
Kastelholm
.

‘That’s our bridge,’ Sven says. ‘The bridge that will take us across the water!’

He quickly takes a pinch of snuff from the wooden box, and seems to have left all his anger, all his troubles, behind.

Aron sees that they will not be crossing the sea alone. There are at least twenty fellow travellers standing on deck, with suitcases and rucksacks and tools in their hands. They are all straight-backed, heads up, as if something great is waiting for them.

‘Let’s go on board,’ Sven says. ‘We’re off to the new country!’

Aron feels a shiver run down his spine. It might be the cold wind blowing off the water, or a sudden fear of the unknown.

He has no idea what is going to happen in the new country, but he follows Sven up the gangplank and turns his back on Sweden.

The sun disappeared into a huge bank of cloud behind Gerlof’s cottage on Monday evening. A dark-grey wall rose up on the horizon, as if there were a forest fire on the mainland – but, as an old seaman, Gerlof knew that more overcast weather was on the way. He must remember not to whistle, because whistling brought gales and thunderstorms.

There was no need to whistle; things were already noisy enough in the cottage. He was the only adult at the dinner table; his daughters had gone back to the mainland after midsummer, back to their jobs. But their children were still here.

Julia and her husband were coming over for a holiday at the beginning of July, and until then Gerlof was in charge. He often missed his wife, particularly at a time like this, because she would have been much better at looking after the three boys. Vincent was nineteen, and old enough to keep an eye on the two younger ones, who were sixteen and eleven, but all three had an energy and speed that Gerlof had lost a long time ago. They and their friends raced around the cottage with enormous water pistols, and played video games – Nintendo and
Super Mario Bros
, or whatever they were called.

Or they watched TV, which was something Gerlof rarely did. He remembered what an old Pentecostalist acquaintance had said to him when he put up his first television aerial towards the end of the sixties: ‘That’s the Devil himself, sitting on your roof!’

He had suffered in silence so far, but he had formulated an escape plan.

‘I’m going to sleep in the boathouse tonight,’ he said over dinner.

He would get away from the cottage for the night. Seek sanctuary down there, as the old fishermen had done in days gone by.

‘But why, Granddad?’ Vincent said.

Gerlof combined a lie with the truth. ‘It’s … darker down there. And a bit quieter.’

Vincent nodded; he was grown up enough to understand.

So, after dinner, Gerlof picked up his pyjamas and a bottle of water and left the cottage. This evening, his legs felt strong enough for him to manage without the wheelchair, but he used his walking stick and linked arms with his grandson as they made their way to the ridge. They strolled along at a leisurely pace, and the smell of meat and oil reached Gerlof’s nostrils. Someone was having a barbecue.

On the grass next to the road he noticed an empty beer can, and poked at it with his stick. ‘Tourists from Stockholm … Terrible.’

‘Someone from Småland might have dropped it there,’ Vincent said.

Gerlof bent down with some difficulty and picked it up. ‘Put this in our bin, would you?’

‘No problem,’ Vincent replied.

Gerlof made it his business to pick up litter – at least there was something he could still do.

As they passed his old gig, he saw that someone had used a plane to remove all the rotten wood. John, presumably, or his son, Anders. Gerlof wasn’t surprised; they always kept their promises.

Vincent unlocked the door of the boathouse up above the shore. The ceiling light was broken and it was dark inside, but Gerlof could see that both camp beds were made up. Had he done that? He couldn’t remember.

‘You’ll have a nice quiet night here, Granddad,’ Vincent said, lighting a paraffin lamp in the window.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Gerlof said.

When Vincent had gone, he left the door open. He looked around at the beds, the fishing nets and the little table. He and John had spent many a night in here, when they had laid their nets out in the Sound and were waiting for them to fill up. Back in those days, Gerlof had often woken at sunrise, but tomorrow morning he intended to lie in, at least until seven o’clock.

He stepped outside for a little while to enjoy the cool evening air. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, listening to the summer silence.

Peace at last.

It was so quiet, with just the faintest breeze.

But he could hear a distant noise to the south. A dull rumbling; he could only just make it out. Gerlof stood very still and realized that it was a powerful engine idling away, further down the coast.

A big ship? If so, it was hidden by one of the points, because there wasn’t a single vessel in sight out in the Sound.

He went back inside and locked the door. There was an old radio in the boathouse, and the last thing he did before going to bed was to switch it on and listen to the weather forecast for Öland and Gotland. Cloudy with virtually no wind overnight, but with the risk of localized showers early in the morning. Tuesday would be sunny once more.

Gerlof put on his pyjamas and removed his hearing aid. Another little gadget to think about, but he’d actually started to like it.

Before he pulled down the blind he looked out across the darkening Sound and saw a strip of deep red below the curtain of cloud on the horizon.

As dark as blood, he thought, but without any misgivings. He had seen that same strip many times before; it was nothing more than the last glow of the sun, lingering on the horizon like a glowing ember.

He left a couple of tea lights burning on the windowsill. They were in glass holders, and would go out during the night; it was perfectly safe.

Slowly, Gerlof lay down on the camp bed and closed his eyes, feeling contented. This was a bit like settling down in his cabin after dropping anchor in some natural harbour on a still summer’s evening. The same narrow bed, the same proximity to creation, the same sense of peace. If the wind got up it would no doubt wake him; that was a relic from all those years at sea.

Darkness fell over the shore, and there wasn’t a sound.

Gerlof was soon fast asleep, dreaming that he had gone down to the sea and pushed a brand-new wooden gig, smelling of oil, into the water, straight out into the stillness.

Right in the middle of the dream, he woke up with a start. But it wasn’t the weather that had disturbed him; someone was hammering on the door of the boathouse.

Floating across the depths, drifting along in the sunset.

Jonas was lying on his back in the rubber dinghy, which felt like a water bed. No, it
was
a water bed, because he was floating out by the gill nets, his feet dangling over the side as he gazed up at the sky above the Sound. The vault of the heavens was slowly darkening, and stars had begun to glimmer on the horizon.

Out here, he was free of everything. Alone on the sea, just like someone who had been shipwrecked.

His brother’s secret plan for the evening had worked. Just after six o’clock, Jonas had got into the car with Mats and their cousins. The adults had assumed that all four boys were on their way to the cinema in Kalmar, but as soon as they reached the campsite at Stenvik – out of sight of Villa Kloss – Mats had handed Jonas the money from Dad for his cinema ticket, then turfed him out of the car.

‘Have fun, bro! We certainly will!’

The cousins smiled and nodded at him, and the car headed off towards the main road.

Jonas had watched the car until it disappeared, then he had gone down to the jetty. It was busy with people taking an evening dip, and he had sat down on a rock to watch them for a while, particularly a girl of his own age, with long, almost pure-white hair. She was sitting on a blanket with two girlfriends, chatting and laughing, and she never even glanced at him. Not once. He might as well have been invisible.

So he had got up and made his way south across the banks of pebbles on the shore until he reached the point below Villa Kloss. The area was deserted at this time of the evening, and it was a good hiding place. He just had to find a way of keeping busy, getting through the evening.

First of all, he had gone for a long swim, then he had dried himself in the sun. He had done a bit of beachcombing, but had found nothing but a few empty German milk cartons.

Then he had had another swim. By this time the sun was low on the horizon and the shallow water had cooled.

When he was dry, he pulled on his shorts before dragging Casper’s rubber dinghy out of the boathouse. He slipped on a lifejacket and waded out into the water for an evening outing. Once the sun had set he would creep back up to his little chalet in the darkness and go to bed. In the morning he would tell the adults he had enjoyed the film.

A good plan.

Jonas stepped on to a rock, the dinghy in front of him, and looked around. The surface of the water was calm and shining. The Sound looked perfectly safe, but he knew that the seabed dropped away sharply just ahead of him, and that you could go under and drown just metres from the shore.

The water turned pitch black when the sun disappeared, as if the Sound had suddenly become bottomless. A bit scary, but exciting.

He stepped carefully into the dinghy and started to row along the shoreline; when he reached the gill nets he turned and headed away from the land, following the nets and feeling the pull of the black depths below him. The algae and the fish, the seaweed and the rocks. Another world …

Eventually, he reached the middle of the nets and tied the little boat to one of the thick poles.

The water out here was as deep and dark as a grave, but there wasn’t a breath of wind.

Jonas settled down in the bottom of the dinghy and watched as the sky above him grew darker and darker. There were gaps in the cloud cover, and small pinpricks of light glimmered through.

They’ll be in the cinema in Kalmar by now, he thought.

While Mats and their cousins were watching the film, all Jonas could do was gaze at the stars above the island. But gradually the all-consuming envy faded away, leaving a kind of peace, a sense of floating weightlessly between sea and sky. There were no insects to disturb him this far out in the Sound, not even the mosquitoes.

He closed his eyes. Everything was dark and quiet.

But a faint sound made him open his eyes and raise his head. A dull throbbing that could be felt through the water as well as heard.

It was the sound of a ship. A big ship that had started up its pounding diesel engines, somewhere in the darkness. The throbbing grew louder, then diminished.

He blinked slowly, feeling drowsy. Had he fallen asleep? Jonas didn’t have a watch, but the sun had gone down and clouds covered the night sky. The stars had vanished.

He looked to the south, but saw nothing. There were no lights approaching.

The island was even darker than the sea. The two spits of land jutting out into the Sound on either side of the bay were pitch black, apart from the odd light in the windows of the summer cottages closest to the shore.