The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (38 page)

He pointed towards the house.

‘The control panel for the intruder alarm is on the wall just inside. You open the door and switch it off. It covers the guest chalets as well.’

He gazed at the assembled group. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So now we have both an external and internal alarm to guard against intruders; everyone will be given the codes. Any questions?’

No one said anything. All Jonas wanted to do was slip away.

‘What about the hares?’

Jonas looked around; his father had put up his hand.

‘I’m sorry?’ Kent said.

‘There are hares all over the place at night,’ Niklas went on. ‘Won’t they set off the alarm when they run across the garden?’

‘Yes,’ Kent said. ‘Which is why we’re getting a fence next week. One and a half metres high, all the way round Villa Kloss, with an automatic gate. The hares won’t get over that.’

Aunt Veronica was standing slightly apart from everyone else; she had remained silent so far. She wasn’t in camouflage gear, just a pale-green dress, and now she was shaking her head. ‘I’m not having some kind of Berlin Wall around my part of the property,’ she said.

‘It’s quite a low fence,’ Kent insisted. ‘Even the boys will be able to see over it.’

Veronica stared at him. ‘Our family is not going to hide.’

‘No, but we do need to protect ourselves until things calm down. This isn’t just a petty quarrel between neighbours, Veronica.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ With that, she turned and went back to her own house.

Kent ignored her; he took several small pieces of paper out of his pocket and addressed the group once more. ‘Good, that’s everything, then … Come and collect your copy of the alarm codes.’

Jonas joined the queue; as he was waiting, he looked over at the cairn. It had been quiet there for the past few days; one or two tourists had stopped to gaze at the stones, but there had been no sign of an old man.

‘Can you see anything, JK?’

Jonas turned his head and saw Uncle Kent smiling at him. He was holding out a piece of paper, and Jonas took it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a thing.’

Kent glanced down at the road. ‘I know someone is watching us,’ he said quietly. ‘An old man who sometimes sneaks into the bunker … But we’re going to take care of that particular problem.’

‘Are you feeling all right?’

Lisa was playing her guitar at the restaurant in Stenvik. It was Saturday night, and the place was more or less full; there were a couple of empty tables inside, but the outside tables were packed. Presumably, most people were there for the beer and pizza and the view over the bay rather than for the music, but it didn’t matter.

The odd ‘
Yeeaah
…’ drifted back to her.

‘Good to be here!’ she said into the microphone.

It was all a bit of a cliché, but it
did
feel good to be there, even if her voice was starting to sound hoarse after several weeks of shout-outs and singing, constantly trying to make herself heard above the hum of conversation. It was much nicer to be out here in the evening sun by the sea, rather than down in the cellar in the nightclub. Any pleasure in playing Lady Summertime over there had completely disappeared.

Here in the village, her audience consisted only of ordinary holidaymakers who wanted to relax. Playing records in the May Lai Bar had been something completely different over the past week; it had felt like playing in a tomb. The upper-class brats who had been there at the beginning of July, throwing their money around, had moved on to Gotland or Stockholm, leaving the place empty and much too quiet.

However, here at the restaurant, there were people to entertain, and she was enjoying herself.

‘Thank you!’ she said in response to scattered applause. ‘And now here’s a song by Olle Adolphson, which you just might recognize …’

It was a warm evening with a golden sunset. Lisa brought out the old Swedish songs about the beauty and fragility of the summer, knowing that all this would soon be over. It was almost August. The summer was short, there was no denying it. Life wasn’t that simple; you couldn’t just drift around doing whatever you wanted while the sun was shining.

She had less than a week left in Stenvik, then she would be going home, back to the city and its exhaust fumes. Back to Silas, to answer his questions about why she hadn’t sent any money, and what she was going to do about it.

The setting sun was in Lisa’s eyes, but she tried to focus on her audience. Most tables were full, but right at the back she could just see a man on his own, with a glass of water in front of him. He was only a dark shadow against the sun, but he was nodding in time with the music.

Was it the man from the campsite? Was he watching her? Did he want the wooden box back?

Concentrate, she thought.

She closed her eyes and sang, trying to forget about the man. Otherwise, she would lose it.

She managed two more songs, with her eyes shut. When she looked up, the man had disappeared.

‘Thank you!’ she shouted, and it was over. She slid off her stool and made her way into the darkness of the restaurant.

Niklas Kloss was standing by the till. He had seemed tired and distracted over the past week, moving at a completely different speed from the waiters and waitresses and spending most of his time hanging around by the chiller cabinet. She presumed that the outbreak of gastroenteritis at the Ölandic had given the whole Kloss family sleepless nights.

‘Well done,’ he said.

That was it. Time to go home. But as Lisa left the restaurant, someone stepped out of the shadows. A slim figure, moving quietly across the gravel.

‘Lisa?’

It was Paulina, and she was smiling a little uncertainly. ‘Nice music,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

Lisa wondered how long Paulina had been standing there listening. Why hadn’t she sat down at one of the tables? Was she shy, or didn’t she have any money?

‘You are going back now, Lisa?’ she said, nodding towards the campsite.

‘Yep,’ Lisa said, picking up her guitar case. ‘Back to the caravan for a rest before my last gigs.’

Paulina walked beside her in the darkness, past the maypole with its withered garlands. As they were crossing the coast road, she jerked her head towards Villa Kloss and said quietly, ‘He has a suggestion.’

‘Oh yes?’

Lisa didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was – Kent Kloss, of course.

‘He has a job for you. For us,’ Paulina went on.

‘Another gig?’

‘No, a different kind of job … here in the village.’

Lisa looked at Paulina. ‘What does he really want? Is he exploiting you?’

Paulina gazed at her for a moment, trying to work out what Lisa meant, then she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not like that. I just work for him.’

She sounded so definite that Lisa was sorry she had asked the question and quickly changed the subject. ‘So how did you get the job here?’

‘An advert. He put an advert in lots of newspapers, and I answered.’

‘Just like me,’ Lisa said with a sigh.

Paulina looked at her. ‘He’s going to talk to us soon. He wants more help.’

‘I know,’ Lisa said wearily. ‘I’ve already helped him, down on the campsite.’

She knew that this wasn’t a request for help, of course. Kent Kloss didn’t make requests. He gave orders.

‘He’ll pay,’ Paulina said.

‘Will he, indeed? And is this job legal?’

Paulina didn’t say anything, and Lisa shrugged. Legal or not, she had her price.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘In that case, maybe I’ll help him one last time before I go home.’

There was a hotel in the village on the coast to the north of Stenvik – a huge white colossus not unlike the Ölandic Hotel, right by the harbour in Långvik.

The Homecomer pulled into the car park, then went into Reception. A young girl in a white blouse and shorts who looked as if she was about to go and play tennis welcomed him. He smiled at her.

‘Do you have any vacancies?’

‘We had a cancellation yesterday evening,’ the girl said, looking at her computer. ‘It’s a double room.’

‘I’m on my own, but I’ll take it.’

‘Excellent.’ The receptionist entered something into the computer. ‘Do you have some form of ID? A driving licence?’

The Homecomer stared at her. He hadn’t been asked for anything like that at the Ölandic.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing Swedish … I’m from overseas.’

‘So you have a passport?’ the receptionist said. ‘We have to register overseas guests.’

The Homecomer didn’t say anything.

Register.
That meant they would contact the police. Or Kloss. Had Kent Kloss asked them to keep an eye open for him?

‘It’s in the car,’ he said in the end. ‘I’ll go and get it.’

He backed away and hurried out of the hotel; he could feel the receptionist watching him the whole time.

He got in the car and drove away. Out of Långvik, up on to the main road. There were lots of cars there; it was easy to blend in, become one of the crowd.

Then he suddenly remembered a hiding place where he could stay. He had been there before.

A place near to the Kloss family property but still out of the way.

He turned off the main road, constantly checking in his rear-view mirror. No one.

Aron has turned twenty, and this year is full of work and news. From the cellar in Leningrad, he hears radio reports of political trials and major purges of Party officials in Moscow. But Vlad himself is promoted to the rank of lieutenant within the NKVD.

This brings privileges. Each month, Vlad receives a book of coupons that he can use to shop at Insnab, the new shop for employees of the state, which sells foreign goods and clothes.

His new rank also brings respect. As an NKVD man, Vlad wears his uniform in the street, attracting brief glances from his fellow citizens – deferential looks from
babusjkas
, admiration from small boys. He stands for law and order, a symbol of security in a world full of enemies.

But there is a great deal of work. Night work. With Captain Rugajev, Comrades Trushkin and Popov, and all the rest.

The interrogation of the prisoners often takes place in shifts, down in the cellar, with posters on the walls displaying slogans such as ‘T
OWARDS THE FUTURE WITH
C
OMMUNISM!
’ and ‘C
ARRY OUT YOUR TASK WITH
S
OVIET HONOUR!
’

Vlad and the other interrogators grow tired, and tiredness makes them violent, but at least they are allowed to rest sometimes. The prisoners are never allowed to rest. A prisoner who must be broken is placed on a hard chair in bright light and is bombarded with questions, often day and night, non-stop:

‘Why are you spying for Japan?’

‘Why didn’t you raise your glass in a toast to the Party?’

‘Why did you laugh at that particular joke?’

The questions are endless.

So is the stream of prisoners. Higher powers in Moscow have established that there are thousands of enemies of the state, perhaps millions. Every NKVD commissariat has been issued with a quota of people who are to be deported and executed, which means that people must be arrested.

The black vans go out every night, picking up more and more enemies of the state and delivering them to the prison. Sometimes they are dressed in expensive furs, sometimes in flimsy pyjamas. Sometimes they have small children in their arms, or following behind them in tears.

Late at night, Aron occasionally hears knocking in the darkness of the cellar, a protracted, quiet tapping. It unsettles him, but every time he approaches the rhythmic sounds they stop.

‘It’s a kind of language,’ Trushkin explains.

‘A language?’

‘The prisoners are talking to one another from cell to cell, tapping out a code on the wall.’

‘Oh?’

‘We try to stop them,’ Trushkin says, ‘but they just carry on knocking.’

Aron relaxes slightly. It is people who are knocking.

The prisoners are processed as if they are on a conveyor belt; everything is organized to be as quick and easy as possible.

All prisoners are examined, stripped naked, their bodily orifices are searched, then they are immediately taken down to the cellar, shaking and terrified. Vlad stands there in his uniform, his black boots firmly planted on the cement floor, and Aron hears him ask the same questions over and over again:

‘Why have you been slandering the Party?’

‘Why did you sabotage the machinery?’

‘What are the names of the agents you recruited?’

When Vlad’s voice begins to grow hoarse, one of his colleagues takes over.

Comrade Trushkin never tires as an interrogator, no matter how long his shift, and Vlad regards him as a role model. Trushkin hurls himself at every prisoner, spitting out question after question:

‘Why did you join the Trotskyites?’

‘Why do you want to leave your homeland?’

‘Why didn’t you think about your children?’

Sometimes, other prisoners are brought in, those who are already broken, to help persuade intractable saboteurs to admit to the crimes of which they are accused.

Sometimes, prisoners who suffer from claustrophobia are locked up in particularly confined spaces, where the walls and ceiling seem to close in around them. Shivering prisoners are put in ice-cold cells; those with a fever are sluiced down with cold water. Torture is an approved interrogation method, and a
dubinka
, a rubber baton, is used on their backs and the soles of their feet.

There are many methods, but the goal is always the same: to obtain a written confession, the scribbled signature at the bottom of the notes taken during the interrogation, scrawled in ink which is often mixed with drops of blood.

The confession provides proof that the interrogation has gone well. Proof that the enemy is guilty.

Vlad writes down all the names they gabble. Names, titles, crimes.

Then the notes are read and signed by the criminal.

And after that:
Vysshaia mera
. The ultimate punishment under the law.