The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (41 page)

Vlad is in control, but Aron is tired now. He is tired of picking people up, tired of the interrogations, tired of being a guard. He is thirty years old, but often feels as if he were sixty.

The interrogations continue, the transportations continue, the shootings continue. Traitors are shot, deserters are shot, enemies are shot. Russians or foreigners, it makes no difference.

‘Do you know why we put a bullet in the back of their neck?’ Karrek asks late one night, after several glasses of vodka.

Aron and the other guards shake their heads. They’ve never given it any thought; they’ve just done it, year after year, bullet after bullet, even if the first shot wasn’t fatal. Sometimes it took a second bullet when the prisoner was lying down. Sometimes a third. There are rumours that sometimes the sand that was thrown over a body kept on moving.

‘You don’t know?’

‘No.’

‘It’s obvious,’ Karrek says. ‘Because the back of the neck can’t stare at us.’

‘I don’t know how you have the patience,’ John Hagman said.

‘It keeps my hands flexible,’ Gerlof replied.

He was sitting at the table opposite John, concentrating on finishing off the rigging for a clipper, the classic
Cutty Sark
. It was a fiddly job, using wire hooks and thread and thin yardarms made of toothpicks.

When the very last tiny knot had been tied, he let out a long breath.

‘I don’t really understand it either, John,’ he admitted. ‘And I haven’t even got a customer for this one, I’ve just—’

He was interrupted by the sound of the telephone. He stared at it, then pulled himself together and picked up the receiver.

‘Davidsson.’

‘Good evening,’ a voice said quietly.

Gerlof recognized it; he was more prepared this time. He nodded to John.

‘Good evening, Aron. How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘I’m not,’ Gerlof said. ‘I’ve been reading a book, a history book about the terrible things that happened in the Soviet Union in the thirties.
The Great Terror
.’

‘I don’t read books.’

‘But you’re familiar with the Great Terror.’

There was no reply, and Gerlof went on, ‘A million people were executed between 1936 and 1938 alone. Most were shot, according to the book. Others died under torture. A million, Aron, in less than two years.’

Still nothing.

‘What were you doing during those years, Aron? You said you were a soldier, but what did you do?’

‘I obeyed orders,’ the voice said. ‘I fought against Fascism.’

‘But you’re not a soldier any longer, Aron. You can give up now. You can start talking to the Kloss family.’

‘No. There are too many dead.’

‘Not here on the island,’ Gerlof said.

‘Yes. Here, too.’

‘Where?’

The voice seemed to hesitate before answering. ‘On Kloss land.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘A security guard,’ the voice went on. ‘He’s buried under the cairn between the shore and Rödtorp. He was shot.’

As Gerlof listened, he remembered Tilda talking about a security guard who had gone missing at midsummer. ‘Why are you telling me this, Aron?’

‘Who else would I tell?’

Gerlof thought for a moment. ‘I heard about your sister,’ he said. ‘I know that your younger sister died in the home at Marnäs last year, Aron. Was she your only family?’

‘I have a daughter. But she’s not here.’

‘So you must have a wife, too.’

‘Not any more.’

‘What happened?’

The voice didn’t respond.

‘Goodbye,’ it said eventually, and Gerlof heard a click at the other end of the line. He sighed and put down the phone.

So that was that. He looked at John.

‘He’s somewhere else now … I couldn’t hear the same background noises. There was no whinnying horse this time.’

‘The question is, why did he call you?’

‘I suppose he wants some kind of contact, like everyone else,’ Gerlof said. ‘Everyone wants to feel human. Even murderers have that need within them.’

He stared at the telephone.

‘Aron had a family,’ he said. ‘He talked about a daughter, and about a wife who isn’t around any more. I think he’s completely alone now, and that’s not good … It felt as if that was our last conversation, as if he was just calling to say goodbye.’

When John had left, Gerlof picked up the phone again and called Tilda. She was back in Sweden, but didn’t want to talk.

‘I’m on holiday,’ she said.

‘It’s about a police matter,’ Gerlof said.

‘As I said, I’m on holiday.’

‘Unfortunately, this can’t wait. The security guard who disappeared at midsummer – is he still missing?’

‘As far as I know,’ Tilda said.

‘I’ve got some information.’ He explained what Aron Fredh had told him about the body near Rödtorp.

At least Tilda was listening.

‘I’ll ask them to check,’ she said. ‘Where exactly is Rödtorp?’

‘It’s where the Ölandic Resort is now. Aron Fredh grew up there.’

‘Inside the complex?’

‘Yes, down by the water,’ Gerlof said. ‘So this will mean more hassle for the Kloss family, if what he says is correct … as I’m sure he’s well aware.’

Gerlof could hear Tilda writing something down, then she said, ‘We have to try and find this man.’

Gerlof sighed. ‘Talk to Kent Kloss.’

Something bad had happened. Jonas could feel it in the air around Villa Kloss.

He didn’t speak to anyone, he just kept on working, and Veronica’s decking was half finished. After several weeks on his knees, he had developed a routine when it came to sanding down and oiling the wood, and fortunately he was able to make much faster progress; there were only three days left of his summer holiday in Stenvik. Everyone seemed to be hurrying to get things finished before the summer was over.

Jonas hadn’t seen much of his father; Niklas often worked late at the restaurant, and stayed in bed in the mornings. He emerged later and later with each passing day, wearing dark glasses, but he always had a smile for Jonas before he went off to work.

Mats was going home on Saturday morning, Jonas and Niklas on Sunday. Either Veronica or Uncle Kent would give them a lift to the station.

Jonas was hoping it would be Veronica.

He had a good view of Villa Kloss from the decking, and he could see brief family meetings here and there: Uncle Kent and Niklas had a lunch meeting by the garage, Veronica and Niklas had a chat afterwards by the pool, and later in the evening he noticed Kent and Veronica sitting on Kent’s decking. Whispered conversations, every one.

Something had definitely happened – but there was still work to do and a blazing sun to bring him out in a sweat, so Jonas kept on slogging away.

At the beginning of the holiday he had been afraid that he would be lonely, but now he enjoyed spending time on his own during the day. Avoiding Kent and his cousins – even Mats and their father.

Urban and Mats got back very late from working at the Ölandic that evening. Urban went straight to his room, but Mats stopped to have a word with his kid brother. He crouched down on the decking and asked quietly, ‘Have you heard, bro?’

‘No, what?’

‘The police have found a body. Hidden under a cairn.’

Jonas immediately glanced over at the ridge, but Mats shook his head. ‘Not that one – another one, inside the Ölandic complex. The cops are all over the place.’

‘Who was it?’

‘A guy who worked for us, a security guard … I never met him, but he worked at the Ölandic.’

Jonas looked at his brother and wondered whether to tell him about the cairn ghost, but Mats straightened up. ‘Anyway, that was my last shift.’ He sounded relieved.

One by one, everyone returned to Villa Kloss. Jonas stood on the decking as the sun went down; he had the feeling that they were all keeping up a pretence in front of him. In spite of the fact that they chatted about the dry weather and the shortage of water and the fact that there would be no more swimming lessons after today, he knew that the adults were thinking about something else entirely.

The sun was cooled by the sea and became a red line on the horizon. Jonas turned around and saw Veronica sitting by the house with a glass of wine.

‘Hi, Jonas,’ she said.

He went over, expecting her to tell him about the body that had been found, but she just ruffled his hair.

‘Tired?’

‘A bit,’ he said.

Veronica took a sip of her wine; she seemed to be thinking something over. After a moment, she asked, ‘Has your father told you about our family, Jonas?’

Jonas shook his head. ‘Not really.’

His aunt leaned back in her chair and gazed out across the coast.

‘It’s a fascinating story,’ she began. ‘It all started with a farmer called Gillis, who acquired a lot of cheap land here on the coast in the nineteenth century. Everyone thought it was worthless, because after all you couldn’t grow crops on the coast … but he just kept on buying more, and held on to it all his life. Then he passed it on to his three sons, Edvard and Gilbert and my grandfather Sigfrid, and after his brothers died, Sigfrid fenced off a large portion of the land and created what became the Ölandic Resort. So we’ve owned that land for generations. The Kloss family has lived here for as long as anyone can remember, I think. People have tried to take it away from us, but they have never succeeded.’

She twirled the wine glass around in her fingers. ‘We should all be proud of our family. That’s what I tell Casper and Urban, and it applies to you, too, Jonas.’

He nodded – but, to him, the family was just a series of names. He had no idea who Gillis and Edvard and Gilbert and Sigfrid were.

He said goodnight to his aunt and went off to his little chalet.

As he lay beneath the cool sheet he could hear a lone bird outside, a subdued song that gradually fell silent in the twilight.

And just before he fell asleep he heard quiet footsteps crossing the decking; it sounded as if Uncle Kent was setting the alarm, or perhaps sneaking off down to the coast road. Jonas closed his eyes and covered his ears with the pillow and the duvet. All he wanted to do was sleep.

Aron knew they were getting closer.

They were bound to have discovered the body by now, if Gerlof Davidsson had believed him, but that meant the police would be concentrating on the Ölandic Resort.

After the telephone conversation with Gerlof, he had waited until the sun went down before leaving Marnäs and driving back to the western side of the island.

He could move around in the darkness now. It was long after midnight, and the dip down below the coast road was full of shadows.

Was anyone there?

Standing at one end, he wasn’t at all sure. He could see the metal door of the bunker fifty metres away, and he listened hard to check if he could hear anything.

Silence.

Slowly and cautiously, he moved along the dip, just as he had for several weeks now.

The padlock was still in place; he took out the key and quietly unlocked the door. It squeaked slightly, but swung open.

He had finished digging the hole beneath the cairn, which was why he was being more careful than before. He no longer came here in daylight; he had become a nocturnal creature.

The moon emerged from a bank of cloud over the Sound, helpfully illuminating the entrance to the bunker as he looked inside. Everything looked fine, just as he had left it, his tools and the boxes in place.

A roll of electric cable lay just inside the entrance, and Aron picked it up and took it outside, closing the bunker door before he started paying out the thin cable behind him, concealing it under pebbles and larger limestone rocks.

Eventually, it was completely hidden. Good, he thought, as he straightened up.

Then he heard the sound of rustling in the darkness.

Someone had entered the dip at the far end and was moving towards him.

Aron wasn’t prepared to take any risks at this stage. He quickly turned around and hurried away.

After ten metres, he was out of the dip and could see the campsite and the jetty. The Sound shimmered before him beneath an almost full moon, but he moved away, into the darkness beyond the shore. Across the coast road, past the festival site and in among the low-growing trees.

Only when he reached the shadows in the forest did he stop and listen. He couldn’t hear any footsteps behind him.

And yet Aron could feel the blood surging through his arms and chest. His heart was pounding, damaged and worn after more than eighty years, but he thought it would go on beating for a little while longer.

He needed his heart to see out this week.

It is late autumn in Moscow, and Aron has just left a deathbed in a bedroom that is cramped and dusty and unbearable. Like many others, he has gone out on to the street this evening, scanning the sky for the Sputnik satellite, which is supposed to be whizzing around up there. A technological triumph. But the sky above him is dark grey.

His former commanding officer Major Karrek looked just as grey when Aron left him. Karrek has been at death’s door for a long time, his body swollen from alcohol abuse, yet at the same time shrivelled like a mummy in his tiny apartment. A young nurse has visited him every day over the past year, but in the evenings Aron is alone with Karrek. No one else comes to see him.

Soldiers die alone.

So much has happened in just a few years. Stalin also died eventually, sick and alone in his bed, because no one dared to disturb him. The new leader is called Nikita Khrushchev and, in common with everyone who had held that position, he carried out a purge when he took over. Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s spymaster, was quickly condemned and executed and, once he was gone, Comrade Karrek had to leave his post. Karrek had done his duty as the governor of Lubyanka Prison, and no punishment awaited him, just a small state pension and total obscurity.

Karrek was evicted from his office, and he took it very hard. Only three years after Beria’s death, Karrek’s liver collapsed, destroyed by his drinking. The major was already thirsty beforehand, but once the great leader’s protective hands were gone Karrek went into freefall in a sea of vodka, like so many who had worked for the security of their country and dedicated their lives to tracking down the enemies of the people.