The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (27 page)

Vlad has somehow managed to hide away a fresh onion, which he shares with Aron. While they are eating he says that he saw Max Hingley being taken away by men in grey uniforms. They were from the secret police, the GPU, and they came in the middle of the night.

‘It was because he was a foreigner.’

Aron stiffens, clutching a piece of onion in his hand. ‘A foreigner?’

‘The secret police assume all foreigners are spies.’

They munch on the onion in silence, and after a moment Aron says, ‘I’m not a spy.’

‘Are you sure?’ Vlad smiles and leans forward. ‘You ought to become a Soviet citizen … you and Sven. You ought to get yourselves Russian passports, then you can travel freely when you’re released.’

‘We don’t want to become Soviet citizens,’ Aron says. ‘We want to go home.’

Vlad nods. ‘But you have to get out of here first. Then you can go home.’

‘Yes, but how do we do that?’

‘You take passports from those who don’t need them.’

At first, Aron doesn’t understand. ‘But surely everyone needs their passport?’

Vlad shakes his head. ‘Not if they’re
fitili
.’

Fitili
means candle wicks. It is the word used to describe those who will soon be extinguished – the dying prisoners.

Aron listens, and thinks things over.

He talks to Sven that night, in the darkness between the bunks when the other prisoners have fallen asleep, when they are snoring and snuffling loudly.

Aron whispers in Swedish, passing on Vlad’s warning and his advice.

‘He means … steal a Soviet passport?’ Sven whispers back when Aron has finished. ‘Turn thief in order to become a citizen? Is that what he said?’

Aron nods. ‘Take a passport. From a dying candle.’

They stare at each other in the darkness, listening to the snores and snuffles.

The interview at Villa Kloss was over; everyone had begun to get to their feet. It took the longest for Gerlof, who was there in his capacity as an independent witness, but he was deliberately being slow. He had remained silent while Cecilia Sander was questioning Jonas, but had kept an eye on Kent Kloss the whole time. The owner of the Ölandic Resort was smiling now, as if he had won a tennis match.

Gerlof wanted to wipe that smile off his face, so as he leaned on his stick for support he looked over at Kent and said quietly, as if he was just chatting, ‘By the way, I saw your dredger passing by Stenvik back in the spring … I presume it was on the way down to the Ölandic?’

In fact, it was John who had seen the dredger out in the Sound, but Kloss didn’t know that.

He nodded. ‘Yes, we had to clear some mud.’

‘From the bottom of the harbour?’

‘That’s right.’

Kloss wasn’t really listening; he glanced at his watch.

‘I know there’s a harbour at the resort,’ Gerlof went on. ‘It started off as a narrow steamboat jetty and was converted into a cargo dock after the war …’

Kloss didn’t say anything; he was already moving away from the table. But Gerlof stuck out his walking stick, almost barring Kent’s way, and asked, ‘Do you use the cargo dock?’

Kloss stopped and looked at him. ‘Well, you say cargo dock – it’s really just an old stone jetty that we’ve shored up with concrete.’

‘And you keep it in working order?’

‘Yes – as I said, we usually do some dredging in the spring; otherwise it just silts up.’

‘So what’s the depth by the jetty?’

‘A few metres … Three, maybe?’

Gerlof waved his stick at the picture of the
Ophelia
, which was still lying on the table. ‘That’s deep enough,’ he said. ‘I should think the draught of that ship is around two metres. So she could easily have been moored at the Ölandic’s jetty.’

Kent Kloss stared at him. Gerlof definitely had his attention now. He went on, ‘No one down in Borgholm seems to have seen her, and since the waters off this part of the coast are so shallow, there aren’t many other harbours. So was she in your cargo dock?’

Kent Kloss didn’t say anything, but now Cecilia Sander was also beginning to show an interest. She had gathered up her papers, but suddenly she looked at Kent. ‘Was she
your
ship?’

Kent Kloss turned to face her, and answered tersely, ‘The answer is no. Not really.’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘She wasn’t
ours
, I do know that … but it’s possible we might have been using her.’ Kloss lowered his gaze. ‘We had a ship in the dock at midsummer, but I don’t remember her name … She was delivering cargo; we’d rented part of the hold.’

‘For what?’ Cecilia Sander demanded.

Kent looked down at his hands and studied his nails. ‘For … food supplies,’ he said eventually.

‘It was fish,’ Gerlof said. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Fish, exactly. They brought fish from the Baltic to our restaurants. They unloaded over the midsummer holiday, then they left.’

‘You must have had some contact with them?’

‘Not since then.’ Kent Kloss shrugged, but Gerlof thought it was an act, that he was making an effort to appear relaxed. ‘And it was our kitchen manager who dealt with the delivery. I didn’t even know what Captain Herberg looked like; all I have is the phone number of the company in Hamburg.’

‘And have you seen the ship’s log?’ Sander asked.

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t,’ Kent said.

Sander jotted something down in her notebook. She nodded to herself, but didn’t seem entirely satisfied.

Gerlof wasn’t satisfied either. A delivery of fish from overseas. Perhaps that sounded logical at this time of year, but was it that simple?

He looked out of the window and saw Jonas on the decking, talking to a middle-aged man in a jacket. The man’s expression was serious and, occasionally, he glanced over towards the house. Jonas’s father, Niklas, Gerlof guessed.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ Cecilia Sander said as she left. She looked straight at Kent Kloss and added, ‘We’ll be working with Customs and Excise and with the coastguard on this case.’

Gerlof followed her outside. The sun had almost disappeared, but the heat was still there. At least Kloss had a big blue pool in which to cool off.

Jonas was already hard at work; he had switched on a small sander and was moving it over the decking with long, even strokes. His father had disappeared.

Gerlof turned and saw Kent Kloss standing by John Hagman’s car. John had wound down the window, and they were talking. They stopped when Gerlof reached the car. Kloss stared at him; the self-assured look was back in his eyes.
Just you try
, it seemed to be saying.

Five minutes later, John started up the car and reversed on to the road.

‘I see you were chatting with the enemy,’ Gerlof said.

‘Kloss isn’t an enemy. Just a rival,’ John said.

‘What did he want?’

‘He was asking if I had any elderly guests staying on the campsite.’

‘You must have, surely?’ Gerlof said. ‘You’ve got your regulars, haven’t you?’

‘Of course. And then he wanted to know if there were any elderly men on their own, someone who might not have stayed here before in the summer. New faces. There are a few; he asked me if they were from overseas, but I haven’t a clue.’

‘So he’s looking for elderly foreigners? Just like us.’

‘That’s right. He wanted me to tell him which caravans they were staying in, but I can’t do that. I can’t betray the confidence of my guests.’

‘Of course not,’ Gerlof said, in spite of the fact that he had been thinking of asking John exactly the same thing. ‘What do you know about Kent’s brother?’

‘His name is Niklas.’

‘Indeed. And what else do you know about Niklas Kloss?’

‘Not much,’ John said, glancing back at the coast road. ‘He runs the restaurant, but I don’t see much of him. It’s Kent Kloss who’s around most of the time, and sometimes their sister, Veronica.’

‘It was the same today,’ Gerlof said thoughtfully. ‘Kent Kloss was there while the boy was being interviewed. It should really have been Jonas’s father, but he seemed to be hiding.’

‘Niklas Kloss is the black sheep of the family,’ John said. ‘If you believe the gossip.’

‘What’s he supposed to have done?’

John nodded in the direction of the houses on the coast road. ‘He also inherited a plot of land here, but he couldn’t afford to build on it, so after a few years he sold it. Gambling debts, apparently. And then of course he ended up in jail.’

‘Did he? What for?’

‘No idea. Fraud, maybe, or theft … It’s not very long since he came out.’

Gerlof nodded pensively. ‘In that case, I can understand why he avoids the police.’

The second weekend in July, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky over Öland; from morning till evening, the island was bathed in light and warmth, and the sun attracted visitors from all over southern Sweden. This was when the real wave of tourists arrived from the mainland. The holiday season was well under way. There were no traffic jams, as there had been at midsummer, but from Friday to Sunday a steady stream of cars and caravans passed over the bridge before dispersing all over the island, from north to south.

The beaches were packed with people during the day, the campsites and hotels at night. Summer cottages were opened up, barbecues set up, lawnmowers hummed into life. For the next few weeks, every road, every electrical supply cable and every sewage outlet on the island would be used to its maximum capacity, until calm returned in August.

The holiday complexes were also full to bursting, as were the nightclubs. This was the most important month of the year for the Ölandic Resort outside Stenvik.

The Homecomer was standing in a picnic area just off the main road, watching the cars pass by. Rita was beside him; she looked tired but resolute. She tilted her head in the direction of her own car: ‘Well, we’ve done what we had to do … I’ll be on my way.’

The Homecomer nodded, thinking once again that he could have been her father or grandfather. He took out his wallet and removed a wad of notes. ‘A bit more from the ship,’ he said. ‘Where will you go?’

She took the money but made no attempt to count it. ‘Copenhagen,’ she said. ‘I’ve got friends there. I’m going to stay out of the way for a while … What about you?’

‘I’m staying here on the island,’ the Homecomer said.

‘How long for?’

‘Until I die.’

Rita smiled briefly, as if he were joking. ‘Thanks for everything.’

She gave him a quick hug, then walked away. Heading for new adventures.

The Homecomer remained where he was. Several cars had stopped, and the picnic tables were beginning to fill up with people. He knew that the Kloss family would be looking forward to the arrival of all the tourists.

The Ölandic Resort was ready. But no one except the Homecomer and Rita knew that disaster was on its way to the complex. It was already creeping through the ground.

The day when disaster strikes is just like any other working day.

There are four of them in the forest: Aron, Vlad, old Grisha and Sven. They are shifting logs, and on this particular occasion they have an old horse to help them. His name is Bokser, and he drags the sledge down to the river and back again. Bokser is half dead; he has scabs as big as saucers on his neck, but he still has to work. He is the third horse the commandant has requisitioned from a farm to the south of the camp; the first two froze to death. The meat tasted like dry bacon.

Bokser is a luxury, and no one knows how long they will be allowed to keep him. Other brigades don’t have a horse; the prisoners have to pull the sledges instead.

The four of them work hard, felling trees and loading up the logs; they are behind with their quota. They are always behind. The trees would have to fall down by themselves in their thousands for them to catch up. There should have been seven of them in the brigade today, but two are sick and one is in solitary confinement, accused of trying to cheat the system.

The logs are lying on the ground. Vlad counts to three, then he and Grisha and Aron lift them on to the sledge, one after the other, and Sven secures them with a chain. Grisha whines and complains after each one. They have done all this thousands of times before.

Aron’s movements are mechanical; in his mind, he is on the shore down below Rödtorp, where the sun is shining and the waves murmur among the rocks. Where the sand is soft and you can go for a swim whenever you like.

‘Aron,’ Sven says quietly.

Aron blinks, and he is back in the cold, the endless exhaustion. He turns his head and sees Sven standing by the sledge laden with logs; there is a strange expression on Sven’s face. A resolute expression. His hands are moving, turning something around and around.

Then everything falls apart. The world shakes and shatters.

‘Look out!’ Sven yells in Swedish.

Vlad is still bending down next to the sledge, but Aron begins to move. He realizes what is happening. The chain has come off, and the logs are moving. Nothing can stop them now.

‘Vlad!’ Aron shouts.

At the same time, he jumps back, and almost gets away. He hears the crash as the first log falls off the sledge, but the end of it catches his shoulder, dislocating the joint.

The next log strikes him, knocks him to the ground and hits him in the face.

Aron feels no pain. He feels only the power, the weight of the tree trunk pressing him down into the snow. He sees the rest of the logs rolling down, long and black against the sky. They bounce on the frozen ground like millstones, crushing everything in their path, but by some miracle every single one misses his head, and they go rolling down the slope.

He can hear Grisha’s voice shouting through the racket. Bokser neighing frantically. They have both survived.

But somewhere under the logs is Vlad. Vladimir from the Ukraine. With his warm coat and his sheepskin hat.

Aron knows he is there, but he can’t see Vlad. His eyes are swollen shut. When the pain from his broken bones takes over his entire body, Aron is no longer there. He has gone away, drifted off into unconsciousness as if it were the sea, gently lapping on the shore near Rödtorp.