Echoes from the dead

By:Johan Theorin
Original title: Skumtimmen Translated by Marlaine Delargy Pages 7 - 51 ÖLAND, SEPTEMBER 1972 The wall was built of big, rounded stones covered in greyish-white lichen, and it was the same height as the boy. He could only see over it if he stood on tiptoe in his sandals. Everything was grey and misty on the other side. The boy could have been standing at the end of the world, but he knew it was just the opposite – the world began on the other side of the wall. The big wide world, the world outside his grandparents’ garden. The thought of exploring the world on the other side of the wall had tempted the boy all summer long. Twice he tried to climb over the wall. Both times he lost his grip on the rough stones and fell backwards, into the damp grass. The boy didn’t give up, and the third time he succeeded. He took a deep breath and heaved himself up, held on tight to the cold stones, and managed to get on top of the wall. It was a victory for him – he was almost six years old, and for the first time in his life he was on his way over a wall. He sat there on the top for a little while, like a king on his throne. The world on the other side of the wall was huge, with no boundaries, but it was also grey and blurred. The fog that had drifted in over the island this afternoon prevented the boy from seeing much of what lay outside the garden, but at the bottom of the wall he could see the yellowish-brown grass of a small meadow. Further away he could just make out low, gnarled juniper bushes and moss-covered stones, sticking up out of the earth. The ground was just as flat as in the garden behind him, but everything looked much wilder on the other side; strange, enticing. The boy put his right foot on a big stone that was half-buried in the ground, and climbed down into the meadow on the other side of the wall. He was outside the garden all on his own for the first time ever, and nobody knew where he was. His mother had gone off somewhere today, left the island. His grandfather had gone down to the beach a little while ago, and when the boy put on his sandals and crept out of the house, his grandmother had been fast asleep. He could do whatever he wanted. He was having an adventure. He let go of the stones in the wall and took a step out into the wild grass. It was sparse, easy to get through. He took a few more steps, and the world in front of him slowly became a little clearer. He could see the juniper bushes taking shape beyond the grass, and walked towards them. The ground was soft and any sound was muted; his footsteps were nothing more than a faint rustling in the grass. Even when he tried jumping with both feet together, or stamping his feet really hard, all that could be heard was a slight thud, and when he lifted his feet the grass sprang up and all trace of his footsteps quickly disappeared. He covered several metres like this: Hop, thud. Hop, thud. When the boy left the meadow and reached the tall juniper bushes, he stopped jumping with both feet together. He breathed out, inhaled the cool air, and looked around. While he had been hopping across the grass, the fog that had been drifting ahead of him had crept silently around, and was now behind him as well. The stone wall on the other side of the meadow had become indistinct, and the dark brown cottage had completely disappeared. For a moment the boy considered turning around, walking back across the meadow and climbing over the wall again. He had no watch and precise times meant nothing to him, but the sky above his head was dark grey now, and the air around him had grown much colder. He knew the day was coming to an end, and the night would soon come. He’d just go a little bit further over the soft ground. He knew where he was, after all; the cottage where his grandmother lay sleeping was behind him, even if he couldn’t see it any more. He carried on over the flat ground, walking towards the hazy wall of fog which could be seen but not touched, and which kept moving just a little bit further away from him all the time, in a magical way, as if it were playing with him. The boy stopped. He was holding his breath. Everything was silent and nothing was moving, but suddenly the boy had the feeling that he wasn’t alone. Had he heard a noise in the fog? He turned around. Now he could no longer see the wall or the meadow, he could see only grass and juniper bushes behind him. The bushes were all around him, motionless, and he knew they weren’t alive – not alive in the way that he was – but he still couldn’t help thinking about how big they were. They were black, silent figures surrounding him, perhaps moving closer to him when he wasn’t looking. He turned around again, and saw more juniper bushes. Juniper bushes and fog. He no longer knew in which direction the cottage lay, but fear and loneliness made him keep moving forwards. He clenched his fists and ran across the grass; he wanted to find the stone wall and the garden behind it, but all he could see was grass and bushes. In the end he couldn’t even see that much; the world was blurred by his tears. The boy stopped, took a deep breath, and the tears stopped flowing. He could see more juniper bushes in the fog, but one of them had two thick trunks – and suddenly the boy realised it was moving. It was a person. A man. He came forward out of the grey fog and stopped just a few short steps away. The man was tall and broad-shouldered; he was dressed in dark clothes, and he had seen the boy. He stood there in the grass, heavy boots on his feet, looking down at him. His black cap was pulled down over his forehead and he looked old, but not as old as the boy’s grandfather. The boy stood still. He didn’t know the man, and you had to be careful of strangers, his mummy had said. But at least he wasn’t alone in the fog with the juniper bushes any more. He could always turn around and run if the man wasn’t nice. “Hello there,” said the man in a deep voice. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d just walked a long way in the fog, or as if he’d been running fast. The boy didn’t reply. The man turned his head quickly and looked around. Then he looked at the boy again, without smiling, and asked quietly: “Are you on your own?” The boy nodded silently. “Are you lost?” “I think so,” said the boy. “It’s all right … I can find my way anywhere out here on the alvar.” The man took a step closer. “What’s your name?” “Jens,” said the boy. “Jens what?” “Jens Davidsson.” “Good,” said the man. He hesitated, then added: “My name’s Nils.” “Nils what?” asked Jens. It was a bit like a game. The man gave a short laugh. “My name is Nils Kant,” he said, taking another step forwards. Jens stood still, but he’d stopped looking around. There was nothing but grass and stones and bushes in the fog. And this strange man, Nils Kant, who had begun to smile at him as if they were already friends. The fog closed in around them, not a sound was to be heard. Not even birdsong. “It’s all right,” said Nils Kant, reaching out his hand. They were standing quite close to each other by now. Jens thought that Nils Kant had the biggest hands he’d ever seen, and he realised it was too late to run away. 1 When her father Gerlof rang one Monday evening in October, for the first time in almost a year, he made Julia think of bones, washed up onto a stony shore. Bones, white as mother-of-pearl, polished by the waves, almost luminous among the grey pebbles at the water’s edge. Fragments of bone. Julia didn’t know if they were actually there on the shore, but she had waited to see them for over twenty years. Earlier that same day, Julia had had a long conversation with the benefits office, and it had gone just as badly as everything else this autumn, this year. As usual she had put off getting in touch with them for as long as possible in order to avoid hearing their sighs, and when she had finally rung up she was answered by a robotic machine asking for her personal ID number. When she had keyed in all the numbers, she was put through to the next step in the telephone network labyrinth, which was exactly the same as being put through to total emptiness. She had to stand there in the kitchen, looking out of the window and listening to a faint rushing noise on the other end of the line, an almost inaudible rushing like the sound of distant running water. If Julia held her breath and pressed the receiver against her ear, she could sometimes hear spirit voices echoing in the distance. Sometimes they sounded muted, whispering, sometimes they were shrill and despairing. She was trapped in the ghostly world of the telephone network, trapped among those pleading voices she sometimes heard from the kitchen fan when she was smoking. They echoed and mumbled through the building’s ventilation system – she could hardly ever make out a single word, but she would still listen with great concentration. Just once she’d heard a woman’s voice say with absolute clarity: “It really is time now.” She stood there by the kitchen window, listening to the rushing noise and looking out onto the street. It was cold and windy outside. Autumn-yellow birch leaves tore themselves away from the rain-soaked surface of the road and tried to escape from the wind. Along the edge of the pavement lay a dark grey sludge of leaves, crushed to a pulp by car tyres, which would never leave the ground again. She wondered if anybody she knew would pass by out there. Jens might come strolling around the corner at the end of the terrace, wearing a suit and tie like a real solicitor, carrying his briefcase, his hair newly cut. Striding out, his gaze confident. He would see her at the window, stop in surprise on the pavement, then raise his arm, waving and smiling at her … The rushing noise suddenly disappeared, and a stressed-out voice filled her ear: “Social security, Inga.” This wasn’t the new person who was supposed to be dealing with Julia’s case, her name was Magdalena. Or was it Madeleine? They’d never met. She took a deep breath. “My name is Julia Davidsson, and I wanted to ask if you could …” “What’s your personal ID number?” “It’s … I’ve already entered the number on the telephone keypad.” “It hasn’t come up on my screen. Can you give me the number again?” Julia repeated the number, and there was silence at the other end of the line. She could hardly even hear the rushing noise any more. Had they cut her off on purpose?
“Julia Davidsson?” said the voice, as if she hadn’t heard Julia introduce herself. “How can I help?” “I wanted to extend it.” “Extend what?” “My sick leave.” “Where do you work?” “At the hospital, Östersjukhuset, the orthopaedic department,” said Julia. “I’m a nurse.” Was she still a nurse? She’d had so much time off in recent years that she probably wasn’t even missed in orthopaedics any more. And she certainly didn’t miss the patients, constantly moaning about their ridiculous little problems when they didn’t have a clue about real unhappiness. “Have you got a note from your doctor?” asked the voice. “Yes.” “Have you seen your doctor today?” “No, last Wednesday. My psychiatrist.” “And why didn’t you ring earlier?” “Well, I haven’t been feeling very well since then …” said Julia, thinking: Nor before then, either. A constant ache of longing in her breast. “You should have phoned us the same day …” Julia heard a distinct breath, perhaps even a sigh. “Right, this is what I’m going to have to do,” said the voice, “I’m going to have to go into the computer and make an exception for you. On this occasion.” “That’s very kind of you,” said Julia. “One moment …” Julia stayed where she was by the window, looking out onto the street. Nothing was moving. But then someone came walking along the pavement from the busier road that cut across; it was a man. Julia could feel ice-cold fingers clutching at her stomach, before she realised that this man was too old, he was bald and in his fifties and dressed in paint-spattered overalls. “Hello?” She saw the man stop at a building on the opposite side of the street, key in a security code and open the door. He went in. Not Jens. Just an ordinary, middle-aged man. “Hello? Julia?” It was the voice again. “Yes? I’m still here.” “Right, I’ve sent the form through. It should arrive tomorrow, so all you need to do is send it back with the doctor’s note.” “Good. I …” Julia fell silent. She looked out onto the street again. “Was there anything else?” “I think …” Julia gripped the receiver. “I think it’s going to be cold tomorrow.” “Right,” said the voice, as if everything was perfectly normal. “Have you changed your account details, or are they the same as before?” Julia didn’t reply. She was trying to find something ordinary and normal to say. “I talk to my son sometimes,” she said in the end. There was a brief silence, then the voice could be heard again: “As I said, the form should be there tomorrow …” Julia hung up quickly. She remained standing in the kitchen, staring out of the window and thinking that the leaves out on the street were forming a pattern, a message she couldn’t understand however long she gazed at it, and she longed desperately for Jens to come home from school. No, it would have to be from work. Jens should have left school many years ago. What did you become in the end, Jens? A fireman? A lawyer? A teacher? Later that day she was sitting on her bed in front of the television in the narrow living room of her one-room flat, watching an educational programme about adders, then she changed channels and watched a cookery programme where a man and a woman were frying meat. When that finished she went back into the kitchen to see if the wine glasses in the cupboards needed polishing. Oh yes, if you held them up to the kitchen light you could see tiny white particles of dust on the surface, so she took the glasses out one by one and polished them. Julia had twenty-four wine glasses, and used them all in rotation. She drank two glasses of red wine each evening, sometimes three. That evening when she was lying on her bed beside the TV, wearing the only clean blouse left in her wardrobe, the telephone in the kitchen began to ring. Julia blinked when it first rang, but didn’t move. No, she wasn’t going to obey it. She wasn’t obliged to answer. The telephone rang again. She decided she wasn’t at home, she was out doing something important. She could see out of the window without raising her head, even if all she could see were the rooftops along the street, the unlit street lamps, and the tops of the trees stretching above them. The sun had gone down beyond the city, and the sky was slowly growing darker. The telephone rang for the third time. It was dusk. The twilight hour. The telephone rang for the fourth time. Julia didn’t get up to answer it. It rang one last time, then there was silence. Outside the street lamps were starting to flicker, beginning to spread their glow over the tarmac. It had been quite a good day. No. There weren’t any good days, actually. But some days passed more quickly than others. Julia was always alone. Another child might have helped. Michael had wanted them to try for a brother or sister to Jens, but Julia had said no. She had never felt sure enough, and in the end Michael had given up, of course. Often when Julia didn’t answer the telephone she got a recorded message as a reward, and when it had stopped ringing this evening, she got up from the bed and picked up the receiver, but all she could hear was the rushing noise. She put the phone down and opened the cupboard above the fridge. The bottle of the day was standing there, and as usual the bottle of the day was a bottle of red wine. To be perfectly accurate, it was the second bottle of red wine of the day, because at lunchtime she’d finished off a bottle she’d started the previous evening, The cork came out with a soft popping sound as she opened the wine. She poured a glass and knocked it back quickly. She poured a fresh glass. The warmth of the wine spread through hr body, and now she could turn and look out through the kitchen window. It had grown dark out there, the street lamps illuminating only a few round patches of tarmac. Nothing was moving in the glow of the lamps. But what was hiding in the shadows? It was impossible to see. Julia turned away from the window and emptied her second glass. She was calmer now. She had been feeling tense since the conversation with the benefits office, but now she was calm. She deserved a third glass of wine, but she could drink that more slowly, in the bedroom. She might put on some music soon, Satie perhaps, take a tablet and get to sleep before midnight. Later the telephone rang again. On the third ring she sat up in bed, her head bowed. On the fifth she got up and by the seventh she was finally standing in the kitchen. Before the telephone rang for the ninth time, she picked up the receiver. She whispered: “Julia Davidsson.” The reply was not a rushing noise, but a quiet, clear voice: “Julia?” And she knew who it was. “Gerlof?” she said quietly. She no longer called him Dad. “Yes … it’s me.” There was silence once more, and she had to press the receiver closer to her ear in order to hear. “I think … I know a bit more about how it happened.” “What?” Julia stared at the wall. “How what happened?” “Well, how it all … with Jens.” Julia stared. “Is he dead?” It was like walking around with a numbered ticket in your hand. One day your number was called, and then you were allowed to go up and collect the information. And Julia thought of white fragments of bone, washed up on the shore down in Stenvik, despite the fact that Jens had been afraid of the water. “Julia, he must be …” “But have they found him?” she interrupted him. “No, but …” She blinked. “Then why are you ringing?” “Nobody’s found him. But I’ve …” “In that case, don’t ring me!” she screamed, and slammed the phone down. She closed her eyes and stayed where she was, beside the telephone. A numbered ticket, a place in the queue. But this wasn’t the right day, Julia didn’t want this to be the day when Jens was found. She sat down at the kitchen table, turning her gaze to the darkness outside the window, thinking nothing, then looked at the telephone again. She got up, walked over to it and waited, but it remained silent. I’m doing this for you, Jens. Julia picked up the receiver, looked at the scrap of paper which had been stuck to the white kitchen tile above the bread bin for several years, and keyed in the number. Her father answered after the first ring. “Gerlof Davidsson.” “It’s me,” she said. “Julia. Yes.” Silence. Julia gathered her courage. “I shouldn’t have slammed the phone down.” “Oh, it’s …” “It doesn’t help.” “No, well,” said her father. “It’s just one of those things.” “What’s the weather like on Öland?” “Cold and grey,” said Gerlof. “I haven’t been out today.” There was silence once more and Julia took a deep breath. “Why did you ring?” she said. “Something must have happened.” He hesitated before replying. “Yes … a few things have happened here,” he said, then added: “But I don’t know anything. No more than before.” No more than I do, thought Julia. I’m sorry, Jens. “I thought there was something new.” “But I’ve been doing some thinking,” said Gerlof. “And I think there are things that can be done.” “Done? What for?” “So that we can move on,” said Gerlof, then quickly went on: “Can you come over here?” “When?” “Soon. I think it would be a good idea.” “I can’t just take off,” she said. But it wasn’t that impossible – she was signed off work long term. She went on: “You have to tell me … tell me what it’s about. Can’t you tell me that?” Her father was silent. “Do you remember what he was wearing that day?” he asked eventually. That day. “Yes.” She’d helped Jens to get dressed herself that morning, and afterwards she’d realised he was dressed for summer, despite the fact that it was autumn. “He was wearing short yellow trousers and a red cotton top,” she said. “With the Phantom on it. It had been his cousin’s, it was one of those transfers you could do yourself, with the iron, made of thin plastic …” “Do you remember what kind of shoes he had on?” asked Gerlof. “Sandals,” said Julia. “Brown leather sandals with black rubber soles. One of the straps across the toe of the right one had come loose, and several straps on the left one were about to come loose too … They always did that at the end of the summer, but I’d stitched it back on …” “With white thread?” “Yes,” said Julia quickly. Then she thought about it. “Yes, I think it was white. Why?” There was silence for a few seconds. Then Gerlof replied: “An old right sandal is lying here on my desk. It’s been mended with white thread. It looks as if it would fit a five year-old … I’m sitting here looking at it now.” Julia swayed and leaned against the worktop. Gerlof said something else, but she broke the connection and there was silence once again. The numbered ticket – this was the number she had been given, and soon her name would be called. She was calm now. After ten minutes she lifted her hand from the receiver rest and keyed in Gerlof’s number. He answered after the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for her. “Where did you find it?” she asked. “Where? Gerlof?” “It’s complicated,” said Gerlof. “You know how I … you know it’s not so easy for me to get about, Julia. It’s just getting more and more difficult. And that's why I’d really like you to come here.” “I don’t know …” Julia closed her eyes, hearing only the rushing noise on the telephone. “I don’t know if I can.” She could see herself on the shore, see herself walking around among the pebbles, carefully collecting all the tiny parts of the skeleton she could find, pressing them close to her breast. “Maybe.” “What do you remember?” asked Gerlof. “What do you mean?” “About that day? Do you remember anything in particular?” he asked. “I’d really like you to think about it.” “I remember than Jens disappeared … He …” “I’m not thinking of Jens at the moment,” said Gerlof. “What else do you remember?” “What do you mean, Dad? I don’t understand …” “Do you remember the fog lying over Stenvik?” Julia didn’t speak. “Yes,” she said eventually. “The fog …” “Think about it,” said Gerlof. “Try to remember the fog.” The fog … The fog was a part of every memory of Öland. Julia remembered the fog. Thick fog in northern Öland wasn’t usual, but sometimes in the autumn it drifted in from the sound. Cold and damp. But what had happened in the fog that day? What happened, Jens? STENVIK, JULY 1936 The man who is to spread so much sorrow and fear throughout Öland later in life is a ten year-old boy in the middle of the 1930s. He owns a stony beach and a large expanse of water. The boy is called Nils Kant; he is sunburned and is dressed in shorts in the summer heat, and he is sitting on a big round stone in the sunshine, down below the houses and the boathouses in Stenvik. He is thinking: All this is mine. And it’s true, because Nils’ family owns the beach. They own large tracts of land on northern Öland; the Kant family has owned this land for centuries, and ever since his father died three years ago, Nils has felt that it is his responsibility to take care of it. Nils doesn’t miss his father, he remembers him only as a tall, silent, strict man, and Nils thinks it’s a good thing that only his mother Vera is waiting for him in the wooden house above the beach. He doesn’t need anyone else. He doesn’t need friends, he knows that there are children of all ages living in the villages along the coast, and older boys where he lives who are already working in the quarry – but this particular stretch of beach belongs only to him. The millers in the mill up above and the fishermen who use the boathouses are no threat. He decides to have another swim, one last swim before he goes home. “Nils!” shouts a high, boyish voice. Nils doesn’t turn his head, but he can hear the gravel and the pebbles on the slope up above the beach loosening and trickling down, then rapid footsteps approaching. “Nils! I got toffees from Mum too! Lots of toffees!” It’s his brother. Axel, three years younger than Nils and full of life. He’s carrying a knotted grey cloth in his hand. “Look!” Axel hurries over and stands beside the big stone, looking excitedly up at Nils, and he undoes the bundle and spreads the contents out on the piece of cloth. There’s a little pocket knife in there and toffees, dark, shiny butter toffees. Nils counts eight toffees. He only got five from his mother before he came out, but he’s eaten them all by now, and his heart races in a sudden spurt of rage. Axel picks up one of his toffees, looks at it, shoves it in his mouth and gazes out over the sparkling water. He chews slowly and with satisfaction, as if not only the toffees belong to him, but also the beach and the water and the sky up above them. Nils looks away. “I’m going for a swim,” he says, facing towards the water. He jumps down and pulls off his shorts and places them on the stone. He turns his back on Axel and begins to walk out into the waves, balancing his feet on the stones, shiny with algae. Little tendrils of brown seaweed get stuck between his toes. The water has been warmed by the sun, and foams out to the sides as Nils throws himself in a dozen or so steps from land. This summer he has learned to swim underwater. He takes a deep breath, dives beneath the surface, wriggles his way down towards the stony seabed, turns and comes hurtling up into the sunshine again. Axel is standing on the shoreline. Nils glides around in the water, splashing it all around him, turning somersaults, the bubbles sparkling around his head. He swims a few metres further out, so far that he can no longer touch the bottom with his feet. Out here there’s a big boulder, a block of stone lying just beneath the surface like a slumbering sea monster. Nils clambers up onto its back, stands with his feet just below the surface of the water, then dives in. he can’t touch the bottom here. He floats, treading water, and sees Axel still standing by the water’s edge. “Can’t you swim yet?” he yells. He knows Axel can’t. Axel doesn’t reply, but he drops his eyes, his expression darkening with both shame and rage beneath his fringe. He pulls off his shorts and places them on the stone beside the toffees. Nils swims calmly around the boulder, first on his stomach, then on his back, just to show how easy it is when you can do it. A kick with his legs, and he’s back on top of the boulder again. “I’ll help you!” he calls to Axel, and for a moment he considers actually doing it, being a big brother and teaching Axel to swim today. But it would take too long. He just waves. “Come on!” Axel takes a wobbly step into the water, feeling his way across the pebbles with his feet, his arms waving about, as if he were balancing on the edge of an abyss. Nils watches his little brother’s unsteady progress from the beach in silence. After four paces Axel is standing there with the water up above his thighs, looking at Nils, his face rigid. “Are you brave enough?” A joke, he’s just having a little joke with his brother. Axel shakes his head. Nils quickly dives off the boulder and swims towards the shore. “It’s quite safe,” he says. “You can touch the bottom almost all the way out.” Axel reaches for him, leaning forwards. Nils moves backwards, and his little brother takes an involuntary step forwards. “Good,” says Nils. The water is up to their waists now. “One more step.” Axel does as he says, takes one more step, then looks up at Nils with a nervous smile. Nils smiles back and nods, and Axel takes another step. Nils leans over, falling slowly backwards with outstretched arms, just to show how soft the water is. “Everybody can swim, Axel,” he says. “I taught myself.” He kicks his legs and swims slowly out towards the boulder. Axel follows him, keeping his feet on the bottom. The water is up to his chest. Nils jumps up on to the boulder again. “Three more steps!” he says. Although that isn’t quite true, it’s more like seven or eight. But Axel takes one step, two steps, three steps, has to stretch his neck upwards to keep his mouth above the surface, and there are still three metres to go before he reaches the boulder. “You have to breathe,” says Nils. Axel takes a short, panting breath. Nils sits down on the boulder and holds his hands out calmly to Axel. And his little brother throws himself forwards. But it’s as if he quickly regrets it, because he takes a big breath and his mouth and throat are filled with cold water, he’s flailing around with his arms and staring at Nils. The boulder is just out of reach. Nils watches Axel struggling in the water for a second or two, then quickly leans over and pulls his brother up onto the safety of the boulder. Axel holds on tight, coughing and taking short, jerky breaths. Nils gets to his feet beside him and says what has been in his mind the whole time: “The beach is mine.” Then he throws himself off the boulder, diving straight as an arrow, and comes up several metres away, swimming with long, sure strokes until his hands touch the pebbles by the beach and his joke is complete. Now he can enjoy it. He shakes his head to make his ears pop and goes over to the stone where Axel unwrapped his bundle. The little shorts Axel took off are there too. Nils picks them up, imagines he can see a flea crawling along a seam, and throws them away on the beach. Then he bends over the bundle. The butter toffees are lying there in a pile, shining in the sun, and Nils picks one up and places it slowly in his mouth. He hears an infuriated roar across the water from the boulder, but takes no notice. He chews carefully, swallows, picks up another toffee. The sound of splashing reaches him from out there. Nils looks up; his little brother has finally thrown himself into the water from the boulder. Nils is already beginning to dry off in the sun, and overcomes his first impulse, which is to go out to Axel. He picks up a third toffee from the cloth on the stone instead. The splashing continues, and Nils watches. Axel can’t touch the bottom with his feet, of course, and he’s desperately trying to get back onto the boulder. But his hands keep slipping off. Nils chews on the toffee. You have to get some speed up to get onto the boulder. Axel has no speed, and turns to make his way back to the beach. He’s flapping his arms wildly, the water foaming all around him, but he isn’t moving forwards. He’s looking at Nils with wide, terrified eyes. Nils looks back at him, swallows the toffee and picks up another one. The splashing quickly grows fainter. His brother yells something, but Nils can’t hear what it is. Then the waves close over Axel’s head. Now Nils takes a step towards the water. Axel’s head pops up, but not as far out of the water as before. All Nils can actually see is wet hair. Then he sinks beneath the surface again. Air bubbles come up, but a little wave sweeps them away. Nils is in a hurry now, he jumps into the water. His legs kick up foam and he’s fighting with his arms, his eyes fixed on the boulder. But there’s no sign of Axel. Nils makes his way quickly to the boulder, and when he’s almost there he dives, but he’s not very good at keeping his eyes open underwater. He closes his eyes, feeling his way in the cold darkness, touches nothing with his hands and comes up into the sunlight again. He grabs the boulder with his hands, coughs, and pulls himself up. Nothing but water all around him, wherever he looks. The sunlight sparkling on the waves hides everything that exists beneath the surface. Axel is gone. Nils waits and waits in the wind, but nothing happens, and in the end, when he starts to feel cold, he dives in and swims slowly back to the shore. There’s nothing else he can do. He gets out of the water, breathes out, and leans on the big stone on the beach. Nils stands there in the sun for a long time. He’s waiting for the sound of splashing, a familiar shout from Axel, but he hears nothing. Everything is quiet. It’s hard to grasp. There are four toffees left on Axel’s cloth, and Nils looks at them. He thinks about the questions that will be waiting for him, from his mother and others, and thinks about what he’s going to say. Then he thinks about when his father died and how gloomy everything had been during the long-drawn out funeral up in Marnäs church. Everybody had been dressed in black, singing hymns about death. Nils tries a sob. That sounds good. He’ll go up to his mother and sob and tell her Axel is still down on the beach. Axel wanted to stay, but Nils wanted to go home. And when everybody starts looking for Axel, he can think about the sad organ music at his father’s funeral and cry along with his mother. Nils will go up to the house soon; he knows what he’s going to say and what he’s not going to say when he gets there. But first of all he finishes off Axel’s toffees. 2 Gerlof Davidsson was sitting in his room at the residential home for senior citizens in Marnäs, watching the sun go down outside the window. The kitchen bell had just fallen silent after ringing for the first time, and it would soon be time for dinner. He would get up and walk to the dining room. His life wasn’t over. If he’d still been living in the fishing village he came from, Stenvik, he could have sat by the shore watching the sun sink slowly into Kalmar Sound. But Marnäs lay on the east coast, which meant that each evening he watched the sun disappear behind a grove of birch trees, between the residential home and Marnäs church in the west. At this time of year, in October, the branches of the birch trees were almost completely bare of leaves, and looked like slender arms reaching out towards the orange disc of the sinking sun. The twilight hour had arrived – the time for bloodcurdling stories. When he had been a child in Stenvik, this had been the time when the work in the fields and around the boathouses was over for the day. Everyone would gather in the cottages as the evening drew in, but the paraffin lamps wouldn’t be lit just yet. The older people would sit there in the twilight hour, discussing what had been achieved during the day and what had happened elsewhere in the village. And from time to time they would tell the children a story. Gerlof always thought the scariest stories were the best. Tales of ghosts, dire warnings, trolls and evil deeds in the Öland wilderness. Or tales of how shipwrecks were driven towards the shore along the stony coastline, and smashed to pieces against the rocks. The kitchen bell rang for the second time. A skipper who had been caught up in the storm and drifted too close to the shore would sooner or later hear the rocks on the sea bed scraping against his keel, louder and louder, and that was the beginning of the end. On the odd occasion he might be skilful enough and fortunate enough to put out an anchor and slowly haul himself against the wind back into clear water again, but most ships couldn’t move a metre once they’d gone aground. Usually the skippers had to abandon their vessel quickly in order to save themselves and their crew, trying to make their way onto dry land through the crashing waves; then they would stand there on the shore, soaking wet and frozen to the marrow, watching the storm drive their ship harder and harder aground until the waves began to smash it to pieces. A small cargo boat that had run aground was like a battered coffin that had been left out in the open air. The kitchen bell rang for the last time, and Gerlof grabbed hold of the wooden edge of the desk and pulled himself up. He could feel Sjögren coming to life in his limbs. He could feel it, and it was painful. He considered the wheelchair standing at the foot of his bed, but he had never used it indoors, and he had no intention of doing so now. But he picked up his stick in his right hand, gripping it tightly as he made his way towards the hallway, where his outdoor clothes hung on their hangers and his shoes were neatly arranged. He stopped, leaned on the stick, then opened the door to the corridor. He went out and looked around. He could hear shuffling steps along the corridor, and saw them coming along one after the other: his fellow residents. They came slowly, with the help of sticks or walking frames. The residents of the Marnäs home gathering to eat. Some of them greeted each other quietly, others kept their eyes fixed on the floor the whole time. So much knowledge moving along this corridor, thought Gerlof as he joined the tired stream on its way into the dining room. “Good evening, lovely to see you all!” said Boel, who was in charge of their section, smiling among the food trolleys outside the kitchen. Everybody sat down carefully in their usual places around the tables. So much knowledge. Around Gerlof sat a shoemaker, a churchwarden and a farmer, all with experience and knowledge that nobody was interested in any more. And then there was Gerlof himself; he could still tie a bowline knot with his eyes closed in just a few seconds, to no purpose whatsoever. “Could be a frost tonight, Gerlof,” said Maja Nyman. “Yes, the wind’s coming from the north,” said Gerlof. Maja was sitting next to him, tiny and wrinkled and skinny, but brighter than anyone else in there. She smiled at Gerlof, and he smiled back. She was one of the few who could pronounce his name correctly, Yairloff, nothing else. Maja came from Stenvik but had married Helge Nyman, the farmer, and gone to live north-east of Marnäs in the 1950s; Gerlof himself had moved to Borgholm when he became a skipper. Before he and Maja met up again in the residential home, they hadn’t seen each other for almost forty years. Gerlof picked up a piece of crispbread and began to eat, and as usual he was grateful that he could still chew. No hair, poor eyesight, no strength and aching muscles – but at least he still had his own teeth. The aroma of cabbage was spreading from the kitchen. There was cabbage soup on the menu today, and Gerlof picked up his spoon as he waited for the food trolleys to arrive. After dinner most of the residents would settle down to watch TV for the rest of the evening. These were different times. All the stranded ships had disappeared from Öland’s shores, and no-one told stories in the twilight hour any longer. Dinner was over. Gerlof was back in his room. He placed his stick beside the bookshelf and sat down at the desk again. It was evening now outside the window. If he leaned over the desk and pressed his nose right up against the glass he would just be able to catch a glimpse of the fields north of Marnäs and beyond them the beach and the dark sea. The Baltic, his former workplace. But he couldn’t manage such gymnastic contortions any longer, and had to content himself with looking out across the birch trees behind the old people’s home. It wasn’t called an old people’s home by those who decided these things any longer, but of course that’s what it was. They were always trying to come up with new words that would sound better, but it was still a collection of old folk bundled together, far too many of whom simply sat around waiting for death. A black notebook lay beside a pile of newspapers on the desk, and he reached out and picked it up. After sitting at his desk just staring out of the window for the whole of his first week at the home, Gerlof had pulled himself together and gone into the village to buy the notebook in the little grocery shop. Then he’d begun to write. The notebook consisted of both thoughts and reminders. He wrote down things that had to be done, and crossed them out when they’d been accomplished, except for the reminder HAVE A SHAVE!, which was written at the top of the first page and was never crossed out, as it was a daily task. Shaving was necessary, and was something he’d remembered to do earlier today. This was the first thought in the book: PATIENCE IS WORTH MORE THAN VALOUR; BETTER A DISCIPLINED HEART THAN A STORMED CITY. This was a worthwhile quotation from Proverbs chapter sixteen. Gerlof had started to read the Bible at the age of twelve, and had never stopped. At the back of the book were three lines that hadn’t been crossed out. They said: PAY THIS MONTH’S BILLS. JULIA COMING TUESDAY EVENING. TALK TO ERNST. He didn’t need to pay the bills for the telephone, newspapers, the upkeep of his wife Ella’s grave over in the churchyard and his monthly fees for staying at the home until next week. And Julia was on her way, she’d finally promised to come. He mustn’t forget about that. He hoped Julia would stay on Öland for a while. After all these years she was still full of sorrow, and he wanted to take her away from that. The last reminder was just as important, and also had to do with Julia. Ernst was a stonemason in Stenvik, one of the few people who lived there all the year round these days. He and Gerlof and their mutual friend John spoke on the telephone every week. Sometimes they even sat there in the twilight hour telling each other old stories, something Gerlof really appreciated, even though he’d usually heard them already. But one evening a few months earlier, Ernst had come to Marnäs with a new story: the one about the murder of Gerlof’s grandchild, Jens. Gerlof wasn’t at all ready to hear the story – he didn’t really want to think about little Jens – but Ernst had sat over there on the bed and insisted on telling his tale. “I’ve been giving some thought to how it happened,” said Ernst quietly. “Oh yes,” said Gerlof, sitting at the desk. “I just don’t believe your grandchild went down to the sea and drowned,” Ernst had said. “I think perhaps he went out onto the alvar in the fog. And I think he met a murderer out there.” “A murderer?” said Gerlof. Ernst had fallen silent, his callused hands folded on his knee. “But who?” Gerlof had asked. “Nils Kant,” said Ernst. “I believe it was Nils Kant he met in the fog.” Gerlof had just stared at him, but Ernst’s gaze had been serious. “I really believe that’s what happened,” he said. “I believe Nils Kant came home from the sea, from wherever he’d been, and caused even more misery.” He hadn’t really said any more on that occasion. A short story in the twilight hour, but Gerlof hadn’t been able to forget it. He hoped Ernst would soon come back and tell him more. Gerlof carried on flicking through the notebook. There were far fewer thoughts noted down than reminders, and soon he’d got to the end. He closed the book. He couldn’t do much more at the desk, but remained there anyway, watching the swaying birch trees in the darkness. They reminded him a little of sails in a stiff breeze, and from that thought it wasn’t far to the memory of himself standing on deck in autumn winds like these, watching the coast of Öland slipping slowly by, either at close quarters with its rocks and cottages, or as just a dark strip along the horizon – and just as he was picturing the scene, the telephone on the desk suddenly rang. The sound was shrill and loud in the silent room. Gerlof let it ring once more. He could often sense in advance who was calling; this time he wasn’t sure. He lifted the receiver after the third ring. “Davidsson.” No-one answered. The line was open, and he could hear the steady hiss of electrons or whatever it was that whirled around the telephone cables, but the person holding the receiver didn’t say a word. Gerlof thought he knew what the person wanted anyway. “This is Gerlof,” he said, “and I received it. If it’s the sandal you’re calling about.” He thought he could hear the sound of quiet breathing on the other end. “It came in the post a few days ago,” he said. Silence. “I think it was you who sent it,” said Gerlof. “Why did you do that?” Only silence. “Where did you find it?” The only thing he could hear was the hissing noise. When Gerlof had been pressing the receiver to his ear for long enough, it began to feel as if he were sitting there all alone in the entire universe, listening to the silence of black outer space. Or to the sea. After thirty seconds, someone gave a deep cough. Then there was a click. The receiver at the other end had been put down. 3 Julia’s older sister Lena Lundqvist was clutching the keys firmly and looking at the car, almost exclusively at the car. She glanced briefly at Julia, then looked back at their shared car. It was a small red Ford. Not new, but still with shiny paintwork and good summer tyres. It was parked on the street next to the driveway of Lena and her husband Richard’s tall brick-built house in Torslanda; they had a big garden, and although there was no sea view, they were still so close to the sea that Julia thought she could smell the tang of the salt water in the air. She heard the sound of shrill laughter from one of the open windows, and realised all the children were home. “We’re really not keen on lending it out … When did you last drive?” asked Lena. She was still holding the car keys in one hand, her arms firmly crossed over her chest. “Last summer,” said Julia, adding a quick reminder: “But it is my car … at least, half of it is.” A cold, damp wind swept along the street from the sea. Lena was wearing only a thin cardigan and skirt, but she didn’t ask Julia to come inside where it was warm so they could discuss things further – and even if she had, Julia would never have agreed. Richard was bound to be in there, and she had no desire to see either him or their teenage children. Richard was some kind of big boss (or a reasonably big boss at any rate) at Volvo. He had his own company car, of course, as did Lena, who was head of a primary school in Hisingen. They were very fortunate. “You don’t need it,” added Julia, her voice steady. “You’ve only had it while … while I haven’t wanted to drive.” Lena looked at the car again. “Well yes, but Richard’s daughter is here every other weekend, and she wants …” “I shall pay for all the petrol,” Julia interrupted her. She wasn’t afraid of her older sister, she never had been, and she had made the decision to drive to Öland. “Yes, I know you will, it isn’t that,” said Lena. “But it doesn’t feel right, somehow. And then there’s the insurance. Richard says …” “I’m only going to drive to Öland in it,” said Julia. “And then back to Gothenburg again.” Lena looked up at the house; there were lights behind the curtains in almost every room. “Gerlof wants me to go,” Julia went on. “I spoke to him yesterday.” “But why now?” said Lena, then went on without waiting for an answer. “And where are you going to stay? I mean, you can’t stay with him at the home – there aren’t any guest rooms there, as far as I know. And the cottage in Stenvik is all closed up, we turned off the electricity and the water and …” “I’ll sort something out,” said Julia quickly, then realised then she didn’t actually know where she was going to stay. She hadn’t thought about it. “But I can take the car, then?” She could sense that her sister was on the point of giving in, and wanted a quick answer before Richard came out to help his wife put off lending her the car. “Well …” said Lena. “All right, you can borrow it then. I just need to get a few things.” She went over to the car, opened the door and took out some papers, a pair of sunglasses and half a bar of Marabou chocolate. She walked back to Julia, held out her hand, and let go of the keys. Julia took them, then Lena handed her something else. “Take this too,” she said. “So we can get hold of you. I’ve just had a new one through work.” It was a mobile phone, a black one. Perhaps not the smallest model, but small enough. “I don’t know how to use these,” said Julia. “It’s easy. There’s a code that you key in first … here.” Lena wrote it down, along with the telephone number, on a piece of paper. “When you make a call you just key in the whole number, with the area code, and press this green button. There’s a bit of credit left on it, when that’s gone you’ll have to pay yourself.” “Okay.” Julia took the phone. “Thanks.” “Right … Drive carefully,” said Lena. “Love to Dad.” Julia nodded and walked over to the car. She got in, smelled the fragrance of her sister’s perfume, started the engine and drove off. It was already dusk. And as she drove through Hisingen back towards Gothenburg, at twenty kilometres below the speed limit, she thought about why she and Lena could never look at each other for more than a few seconds at a time. They’d been close in the past – after all, Lena was the reason why Julia had moved to Gothenburg once upon a time – but now it was just the opposite. And things had been this bad since that Friday several years earlier when Julia had been inside Lena and Richard’s house for the last time, at a small dinner party without the children, which had ended with Richard putting his wine glass down, getting up from the table and asking: “Do we have to sit here constantly going over this tedious nonsense about things that happened twenty years ago? I’m just wondering. Do we have to?” He was angry and slightly drunk and his voice was rough – despite the fact that Julia had merely mentioned Jens’ disappearance in passing, simply as the reason why she was feeling the way she was. Lena’s voice was calm as she looked at Julia, then made the comment that had made Julia refuse to accompany her sister to Öland two years later, to help Gerlof move from the cottage in Stenvik to the residential home in Marnäs: “He’s never coming back,” Lena had said. “I mean, everybody knows that … Jens is dead, Julia. Even you must realise that?” Standing up and screaming hysterically at her across the dinner table hadn’t helped at all, but Julia had done it anyway. Julia got home, parked the car on the street and went inside to pack. When she had packed clothes for a ten-day stay, a few toiletries and some books (and two bottles of red wine and some tablets), she ate a sandwich and drank some water instead of wine. Then it was time to go to bed. But once in bed she lay staring up into the darkness, unable to sleep. She got up and went into the bathroom, took a prescription tablet and went back to bed. A little boy’s shoe. A sandal. When she closed her eyes she could see herself as a young mother, putting on Jens’ sandals, and that memory brought with it a black weight that settled on her breast, a heavy uncertainty that made Julia shiver under the covers. Jens’ little shoe, after more than twenty years without a single trace of him. After all that searching on Öland, all that brooding through those sleepless nights. The sleeping tablet slowly began to work. No more darkness now, she thought, half asleep. Help us to find him. It was a long time before morning came, and it was still dark outside when Julia awoke and got up. She had breakfast, then she washed up, locked the flat and got into the car. She started the engine, switched on the windscreen wipers to clear the leaves, then she was finally on her way out of the street where she lived, on her way out of the city in the sunrise and the morning traffic. The last traffic light turned to green, and she turned eastwards onto the motorway, away from Gothenburg and out into the country. She drove for the first few miles with the window down, letting the cold morning air blow away all trace of her sister’s perfume from the car. Jens, I’m coming, she thought. I’m actually coming, and no one can stop me now. She knew she shouldn’t talk to him, not even silently to herself. It was unbalanced, but she’d been doing it on and off ever since Jens disappeared. After Borås the motorway came to an end and the houses grew smaller and more sparse. The dense fir forests of Småland crowded the sides of the road. She could have turned off and headed for an unknown destination, but the tracks into the forest looked so desolate. She carried straight on, heading across the country towards the east coast, and trying to take pleasure in the fact that she was undertaking a longer journey by herself than she had done for many years. She pulled in at a service station a few miles from the coast to fill up with petrol and to eat a few mouthfuls of a stew that was chewy and sticky and not worth the money, and then she set off again. Towards the Öland bridge. North of Kalmar the bridge led to the island; it had been built over twenty years earlier, completed and opened the autumn that … That day. She wouldn’t think about it any more, not until she arrived. The Öland bridge stood high and steady, spanning the sound, resting on broad concrete pillars, completely unaffected by the sharp gusts of wind that tore at the car. It was wide and completely straight, apart from an arched section close to the mainland, which allowed taller ships to pass beneath the road. The arch was a viewing point, and she could see the flat shape of the island. It extended along the horizon, from north to south. She could see the alvar, the grass-covered plain that covered large parts of Öland. Dark, low clouds drifted slowly by, like long airships above the landscape. Both tourists and residents loved to go walking and bird watching out there, but Julia didn’t like the alvar. It was too big – and there was nowhere to shelter if the vast sky up above came tumbling down. After the bridge she drove north, towards Borgholm. The road was almost dead straight for several miles along the west coast, and she met few cars now the tourist season was over. Julia kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead in order to avoid looking out across the desolate alvar and the great expanse of water on the other side of her, and she tried not to think about a little sandal with a mended strap. It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t have to mean anything. The journey up to Borgholm from the bridge took almost half an hour. When she arrived there was just one crossroads with a set of traffic lights, and she decided to turn left, down to the little town by the water. She stopped at a cake shop at the beginning of Storgatan, thus avoiding the harbour, the square and the church; the church behind which she and her parents had lived when Gerlof had his own cargo boat and wanted to live near the harbour. Her childhood was in Borgholm. Julia had no desire to see herself running along the streets around the square like a pale ghost, an eight or nine year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her. She didn’t want to meet any young men, striding towards her along the street and making her think of Jens. She had enough reminders of that kind in Gothenburg. The bell above the cake shop door tinkled. “Afternoon.” The girl behind the counter was blonde and pretty, and looked extremely bored. She listened to Julia with a vacant expression as she asked for two cinnamon buns and a couple of strawberry cream cakes for herself and Gerlof. This girl could have been her thirty years earlier, but of course Julia had moved away from the island when she was just eighteen, and had lived and worked in both Kalmar and Gothenburg before the age of twenty-two. In Gothenburg she had met Michael and fallen pregnant with Jens after just a few weeks, and much of her restlessness had disappeared and never returned – not even after their separation. “There aren’t many people here now,” she said, as the girl lifted the cakes out of the glass display counter. “In the autumn, I mean.” “No,” said the girl, without smiling. “Do you like living here?” said Julia. The girl shook her head briefly. “Sometimes. But there’s nothing to do. Borgholm only comes to life in the summer.” “Who says that?” “Everybody,” said the girl. “People from Stockholm, anyway.” She fastened the box of cakes and handed it over. “I’m moving to Kalmar soon,” she said. “Will that be all?” Julia nodded. She could have said that she too had worked in Borgholm as a teenager, in a café down by the harbour, and that she too had been bored, waiting for life to begin. Then all of a sudden she wanted to talk about Jens, about her sorrow and the hope that had made her come back. A little sandal in an envelope. She said nothing. A fan was humming away; otherwise the cake shop was silent. “Are you a tourist?” the girl asked, “Yes … no,” said Julia. “I’m going up to Stenvik for a few days. My family has a cottage there.” “It’s like Norrland up there now,” said the girl as she handed Julia her change. “Practically all the houses are empty. You don’t see a soul up there, whatever you do.” It was half past three in the afternoon by the time Julia came out of the cake shop and looked along the street. Borgholm was virtually deserted. There were a dozen or so people around, one or two cars keeping to the lowest possible speed on the streets of the town; not much else. The huge ruined castle looked down from the hill above the town, its windows dark, empty holes. A cold wind was sweeping along the streets as Julia walked back to the car. It was almost eerily silent. She passed a big notice board covered in a patchwork of posters, all stuck on top of one other: American action films at the cinema in Borgholm, rock concerts in the ruined castle, and various evening classes. The posters had faded in the sun, and the corners had been chewed to pieces by the wind. This was the first time Julia had visited the island as an adult so late in the year. During the low season, when Öland slowed down. She walked back to the car. I’m coming now, Jens. North of the town the dry, grassy plain of the alvar continued on both sides of the road. The road headed slowly inland from the coast, pointing straight into the flat landscape, where round, lichen-covered grey stones had been lifted from the fields and used to build long, low walls. The walls formed a gigantic pattern right across the alvar. Julia had a slight feeling of agoraphobia out here beneath the vast sky, and longed for a glass of red wine – a longing which grew stronger as she got closer to Stenvik. At home she was trying to stop drinking every day, and she never drank when she was driving, but out here in this desolate place the wine bottles in her bag seemed like the only interesting company she had. She wanted to lock herself in somewhere and devote all her attention to them until they were empty. On the way north she met only two vehicles, a bus and a tractor. She drove past yellow signs bearing the names of small villages and estates along the road, names she remembered from all those earlier journeys. She could recite them by heart, like a nursery rhyme. They were places she had only driven past for years. For her mother and father there had been only Stenvik every summer, and the holiday cottage they had built there at the end of the 1940s – many years before the tourists had discovered the village. Autumn, winter and spring in Borgholm, but the summer had always been Stenvik for Julia. And before she went up to Marnäs to see Gerlof, she wanted to see the village again. There were bad memories up there, but many good ones too. The memory of long, hot summer days. She saw the yellow sign from some distance away: Stenvik 1, and beneath it the word CAMPSITE crossed out with black tape. She braked and turned onto the village road, away from the alvar and down towards the sound. After five hundred metres the first little group of summer cottages appeared; they were all closed up, with white blinds pulled down at the windows. Then the kiosk, always a place for the villagers to gather in summer. The front had been cleared of notices and adverts and pennants, and there were shutters at the windows. Next to the kiosk was a sign pointing south towards the campsite and a mini-golf course, covered in big green tarpaulins. The campsite was run by a friend of Gerlof’s, she remembered. The road carried on towards the water, curved to the right along the rocky outcrop above the beach and carried on northwards, where even more closed-up cottages lined the eastern side of the road. On the other side was the beach, covered in stones and pebbles; small waves ruffled the surface of the water out in the sound. Julia drove slowly past the old windmill, standing up above the water on its sturdy wooden base. The mill had stood there abandoned a dozen or so metres from the beach for as long as Julia could remember, but now it had turned grey and lost almost all of its red colour, and all that remained of its sails was a cross of cracked wooden slats. About a hundred metres past the windmill lay the Davidsson family’s boathouse. It looked well cared for, with red wooden walls, white windows, and tar-black roof. Someone had painted it recently. Lena and Richard? Julia had a picture in her memory of Gerlof, sitting there mending his long nets on a stool in front of the boathouse in the summer, while she and Lena and their cousins ran about on the beach down below, the sharp smell of tar in their nostrils. But Gerlof had been down at the boathouse cleaning his flounder nets. That day. Since then, Julia had never liked his fishing. Now there was no one at the boathouse. Dry grass quivered in the wind. A wooden skiff, painted green, lay on its side in the grass beside the house – it was Gerlof’s old boat, and its hull was so dried out that Julia could see strips of daylight between the upper planks. She switched off the engine, but didn’t get out of the car. Neither her shoes nor her clothes were suitable for the Öland autumn wind, besides which she could see an iron bar with a large padlock across the boathouse door. The blinds were pulled right down inside the small windows, as they were in the cottages in the rest of the village. Stenvik was empty. Scenery, it was all just scenery for a summer theatre. A gloomy play, at least as far as Julia was concerned. Okay. She would go and look at Gerlof’s house, the holiday cottage. Gerlof had built it himself on land the family had owned for years. She started the car and carried on along the village road, which forked up ahead. She took the right hand road, back inland. There were groves of low-growing trees here, protecting the few houses that were occupied over the winter, but all the trees were leaning slightly away from the beach, bowed by the constant wind. In a large garden to the right of the village road lay a tall, yellow wooden house which looked as if it were about to fall to pieces behind the tall bushes. The paint was flaking off the walls, and the roof tiles were cracked and covered in moss. Julia couldn’t remember who it had belonged to, but had no recollection of the place ever having looked smart and well cared for. Among the trees on the right a narrow track led off the road, a strip of knee-high yellow grass growing down the middle. Julia recognised the entrance, pulled in and switched off the engine. Then she put on her coat and got out into the chilly air, which felt fresh and full of oxygen. It wasn’t completely silent outside, because the wind was soughing in the dry leaves on the trees, and behind that was the more muted sound of the waves on the shore. But apart from that, there was no sound: no birds, no voices, no traffic. The girl in the cake shop had been right: this was just like the mountains of Norrland. The track leading to Gerlof’s cottage was short, and ended at a low iron gate set in a stone wall. Julia opened the gate and it gave a faint squeak. She went into the garden. I’m here now, Jens. The little house, painted brown with white eaves, didn’t look quite so closed up as many of the other cottages in Stenvik. But if Gerlof had still been here, he would never have let the grass grow so tall, or allowed yellow pine needles and leaves to litter the garden. Her father was a conscientious worker, and always worked quietly and methodically until the job was done. They had been a hardworking couple, Gerlof and Julia’s mother. Ella, who had remained a housewife all her life, had sometimes seemed like a visitor from the 19th century, from an age of poverty when there was neither the time nor the energy for laughter and dreams on the island, and every scrap of kitchen paper had to be dried and used several times. Ella had been small and silent and had a dogged determination about her; the kitchen was her empire. Julia and Lena had had a pat on the cheek from their mother occasionally, but never a hug. And of course Gerlof had been away at sea most of the time while she was growing up. Nothing was moving in the garden. When Julia was little there had been a water pump in the middle of the lawn, a metre high, painted green, with a big tap and a pretty curved handle, but it was gone now. All there was in its place was a concrete cover over the well. To the east of the cottage was a stone wall, and beyond it the alvar began. It ran all the way to the horizon in the east. If the trees hadn’t been in the way, Julia would have been able to see Marnäs church sticking up like a black arrow over there; she had been christened in that church when she was just a few months old. Julia turned her back on the alvar and went towards the cottage. She went around a trellis covered in vines that had grown wild, and climbed up the pink limestone steps that had seemed so enormous when she was a child. The steps led up to a little veranda with a closed wooden door. Julia pushed down the handle, but the door was locked. As expected. This was both the beginning and the end of her journey. It was remarkable that the cottage was still here, thought Julia, because so much had happened out in the world since Jens had disappeared. New countries had come into being, others had ceased to exist. In Stenvik the village was now virtually empty of visitors for most of the year – but the house that Jens had left That Day was still there. Julia sat down on the steps and let out a sigh. I’m tired, Jens. She looked at a little collection of stones that Gerlof had built up in front of the house. On the top lay an uneven, greyish-black stone that he maintained had fallen from the sky as a burning lump, and had made a crater over in the quarry at some stage towards the end of the 19th century when Gerlof’s own father and grandfather were working there. This ancient visitor from outer space was spattered with bird dirt. Jens had walked past the stone from space That Day. He’d put on his sandals, left the house where his grandmother lay sleeping, gone down these steps and out into the garden. That was the only thing that was absolutely definite. Where he had gone after that, and why, nobody knew. When she got home from the mainland that evening, she’d expected Jens to come racing out of the house. Instead, two policemen were waiting for her, along with a weeping Ella and a stony-faced Gerlof. Julia wanted to get out a bottle of red wine right now. To sit there on the steps drinking steadily, losing herself in dreams until darkness came – but she quashed the impulse. Scenery. This empty garden felt just as much like a stage set as the rest of the village, but the play had ended many years ago, everyone had gone home, and Julia felt a crippling sense of loneliness. She remained there on the steps for several minutes, sitting perfectly still, until a new sound combined with the rushing of the sea. An engine. It was a car, a tired old car, slowly chugging along the village road. The sound didn’t go away. It carried on, grew closer, and then the engine was switched off very close to the garden. Julia got up, leaned forwards and glimpsed a round, dumpy car through the trees. An old Volvo PV. The gate by the road squeaked as someone opened it. She straightened her coat, ran her fingers automatically through her pale hair, and waited. The footsteps approaching through the dead leaves were short and heavy. The old man who appeared without saying a word, stood at the bottom of the steps and looked sternly at Julia, was also short and heavy. He reminded her of her father to a certain extent, but she couldn’t say why; perhaps it was the cap, the baggy trousers and the ivory-coloured woollen jumper that made him look like a real skipper. But he was shorter than Gerlof and the stick he was leaning on suggested that he hadn’t sailed for a long time. His hands were heavily marked with old and new abrasions. Julia vaguely remembered meeting this man many years earlier. He was one of Stenvik’s permanent residents. How many were left? “Hello there,” she said, stretching her lips into a smile. “Good day to you.” The man nodded back at her. He took off his cap and Julia could see the strands of grey hair combed in thin lines across his bald head. “I just called to have a look at the place,” she said. “Yes … It needs somebody to keep an eye on it from time to time,” he said in the strongest Öland accent Julia had ever heard, a harsh, low dialect. “That’s what he wants.” Julia nodded. “It looks really good.” Silence. “I’m Julia,” she said, adding quickly with a nod towards the cottage: “Gerlof Davidsson’s daughter. From Gothenburg.” The old man nodded, as if it were obvious. “Of course,” he said. “My name is Ernst Adolfsson. I live over there.” He pointed behind him, diagonally towards the north. “Gerlof and I know each other. We have a chat from time to time.” Then Julia remembered. This was Ernst, the stonemason. He’d been walking around the village rather like some kind of museum exhibit even when she was young. “Is the quarry open now?” she asked. Ernst lowered his eyes and shook his head. “No. No, there’s no work there now. People come and fetch the reject stone sometimes … but nothing new is quarried any more.” “But you work there?” said Julia. “I make sculptures,” said Ernst. “From stone. You’re welcome to come and have a look, see if you want to buy anything … I’ve got a visitor this evening, but tomorrow is fine.” “Okay. I might do that,” said Julia. She probably couldn’t afford to buy anything, not with the small amount of sickness benefit she received, but she could always go and have a look. Ernst nodded and turned away slowly with small, unsteady steps. Julia didn’t realise the conversation was over until he’d completely turned his back on her. But she hadn’t finished, and she took a deep breath: “Ernst,” she said, “you must have lived in Stenvik twenty years ago?” The man stopped and turned back towards her, but only halfway. “I’ve lived here for fifty years,” he said. “I was just thinking …” Julia stopped speaking; she hadn’t been thinking at all. She wanted to ask a question, but didn’t know which one to choose. “My child disappeared at that time,” she went on with an enormous effort, as if she were ashamed of her grief. “My son Jens … do you remember that?” “Of course.” Ernst nodded briefly, without emotion. “And we’re working on it. Gerlof and I, we’re working on it.” “But …” “If you see your father, tell him something from me,” said Ernst. “What?” “Tell him it’s the thumb that’s most important,” said Ernst. “Not just the hand.” Julia stared at him. She didn’t understand a thing, but Ernst went on: “This will be solved. It’s an old story, it goes right back to the war … But it will be solved.” Then he turned away again, with short unsteady steps. “The war? “ said Julia behind him. “Which war?” But Ernst Adolfsson left without replying. STENVIK, JUNE 1940 When the horse-drawn cart has been unloaded for the last time down on the beach, it is hauled back up to the quarry and the men can begin to load the newly cut and polished limestone onto the boats. This is the heaviest work, and for the past six months it has been done by hand, since the two lorries belonging to the quarry have been requisitioned by the state and are being used as military vehicles. There’s a world war on, but on Öland the everyday work must continue as usual. The stone has to be quarried and taken to the cargo ships. “Load up!” yells Lass-Jan Augustsson, the foreman of the stevedores. He is directing the work from the deck of the cargo ship Wind, gesticulating to the men loading her with his broad hands, dry and cracked from the rough blocks of stone. Beside him the stevedores are waiting to take the stone on board. Wind is lying at anchor a hundred metres or so out in the water, at a safe distance from the shore in case a storm should suddenly blow up along the Öland coast. In Stenvik there is no pier in the harbour behind which a ship can shelter, and close to the shore the shallow, rocky sea bed is waiting to smash the ship if it gets the opportunity. The blocks being loaded on board are ferried out in two open rowing boats. In one of them the starboard oar is manned by boatman Johan Almqvist, who is seventeen and has been working as a quarryman and oarsman for a couple of years. The oar on the port side is manned by Nils Kant, who is new to the job. He’s fifteen now, almost fully grown. His mother gave Nils a job at the family quarry after he failed his examinations at school. Vera Kant has decided that he is to be a boatman despite his tender age, and Nils knows that he will gradually take over the responsibility for the whole quarry from his uncle. He knows he will one day set his mark deep in the hillside. He would like to excavate the whole of Stenvik. Sometimes Nils dreams of sinking down through black water at night, but during the day he rarely thinks of his drowning brother Axel. It wasn’t murder, whatever the gossips in the village have to say. It was an accident. Axel’s body has never been found; it was dragged down to the bottom of the sound, as is the case with so many who drown, and it never came up again. An accident. The only memory of Axel is a framed picture of him on his mother’s desk. Vera and Nils have grown much closer to each other since Axel drowned. Vera often says he’s all she has left, which makes Nils realise how important he is. The rowing boats are lying waiting for their load beside a temporary wooden jetty extending a dozen or so metres out into the sea; the carts arrive on the beach, piled high, and the stones are then carried out onto the jetty in an endless cycle – youngsters, women, older men, and those few men in their prime who have not yet been called up for military service. Girls too; Nils can see Maja Nyman walking around in a red checked dress out there on the jetty; she’s a year older than him. He knows that she knows he watches her sometimes. The war hangs like a shadow over Öland. Norway and Denmark were invaded by the Germans a month or so earlier without presenting any particular difficulty. There are extra news bulletins on the radio every day. Is Sweden really equipped to repel an attack? Foreign warships have been spotted out in the sound, and several times it has been rumoured in Stenvik that southern Öland has been invaded. If the Germans do come, the islanders know they will have to fend for themselves, because help has never come in time from the mainland when enemy forces have landed on Öland in centuries gone by. Never. People say the army intends to put parts of northern Öland under water in order to prevent an invasion of the island, which would be a bitter irony now that the serious spring floods out on the alvar have finally begun to evaporate in the sun. When the sound of a distant engine was heard across the water earlier that morning, the unloading of the stones stopped, and everyone gazed anxiously at the overcast skies. Everyone except Nils, who wonders what a real bombardment by a plane looks like. Are there whistling bombs that turn into balls of fire and smoke and tears and screams and chaos? But no plane appeared over the island, and the work resumed. Nils hates rowing. Hauling stones might not be much better, but the mechanical process of rowing gives him a headache right from the start. He can’t think when he has to steer the heavily laden boat with his oar, and he’s being watched the whole time. Lass-Jan follows the progress of the boats with his peaked cap pulled right down to his eyebrows, directing the work with his voice. “Let’s have some effort, Kant!” he roars across the water once the last stone has been loaded at the jetty. “Slow down, Kant, look out for the jetty!” he yells as soon as Nils pulls on the oar too hard once the boat has been unloaded and is easy to row back. “Get a move on, Kant!” Lass-Jan shouts constantly. Nils glares at him all the way out to the cargo ship. Nils owns the quarry. Or to be more accurate, it’s his mother and uncle who own it, but even so Lass-Jan has treated him like a slave right from the start. “Load up!” yells Lass-Jan. In the morning people chatted and laughed with each other when they began unloading, there was almost a party atmosphere, but the stone has mercilessly subdued them with its silent weight and its hard edges. Now people are carrying it doggedly, with their backs bent, their footsteps dragging and their clothes powdered with white limestone dust. Nils has nothing against the silence, he never speaks to anyone anyway unless he has to. But from time to time he looks over at Maja Nyman on the jetty. “She’s full!” shouts Lass-Jan when the blocks of stone are piled a metre high in the boat Nils is sitting in, and the sea water is almost lapping at the gunwale. Two loaders climb down and sit on the piles of stone, looking down on a little nine year-old boy who’s there to bail out. He sneaks a terrified glance at Nils before he picks up his wooden pail and begins to scoop the water from the bottom of the boat, which is not watertight. Nils pushes hard with his feet and heaves on the oar. The boat glides slowly off towards the cargo ship, where the other rowing boat has just been emptied. Back and forth with the oar, back and forth without a break. Nils’ hands are smarting, and the muscles in his arms and back are screaming in pain. He longs to hear the roar of German bombers right now. The boat finally hits the hull of the ship with a dull thud. Both loaders move quickly to the stern, bend down, take hold and begin lifting the stone blocks over Wind’s gunwale. “Let’s put our backs into it!” yells Lass-Jan from the deck, standing there in his stained shirt with his fat belly sticking out. The stones are lifted over the gunwale and carried over to the open hatch, then they slide down into the hold along a broad plank. Nils is supposed to help with the unloading. He lifts a few slabs up to the ship, then hesitates just a fraction too long with a thick block on the edge, and drops it back into the boat. It lands on the toes of his left foot, and it bloody hurts. In a fit of blind rage he picks the block up again and heaves it over the gunwale without even looking where it lands. “Bugger this!” he mutters to the sea and the sky, sitting down at his oar. He undoes his shoe, feels his aching toes and rubs them gently with his fingers. They might be broken. Around him the last of the blocks are unloaded from the boat, and the loaders jump over the gunwale to finish sorting them out down in the hold. Johan Almqvist follows them. Nils stays in the boat with the little boy who was bailing. “Kant!” Lass-Jan is up above him, leaning over the gunwale. “Get up here and give us a hand!” “I’m injured,” says Nils, surprised at how calm he sounds, when in fact an entire squadron of bombers is screaming into action like furious bees inside his head. Equally calmly, he places his hand on his oar. “I’ve broken my toes.” “Get up.” Nils gets up. It doesn’t actually hurt all that much, and Lass-Jan shakes his head at him. “Get up here and start loading, Kant.” Nils shakes his head, his hand closing around the oar. The bombs are falling now, whistling through the air inside him. He undoes the rowlock and lifts the oar a fraction. He swings it slowly backwards. “Broken his toes …” Another of the loaders, a short, broad-shouldered lad whose name Nils can’t remember is leaning over the gunwale next to Lass-Jan. “Better run off home to mummy, then!” he says scornfully. “I’ll take care of this,” says the foreman, turning his head towards the loader. This is a mistake. Lass-Jan never sees Nils’ oar come swinging through the air. The broad blade of the oar hits the back of his head. Lass-Jan utters a long-drawn out “Hooooh”, and his knees give way. “I own you!” yells Nils. He balances with one foot on the side of the boat, and swings the oar again. This time he hits the foreman across the back, and watches him fall over the gunwale like a sack of flour. “Bloody hell!” shouts someone on board the cargo ship, then there’s a loud splash as Lass-Jan falls backwards into the water between the rowing boat and the hull of the cargo ship. Shouts echo from the shore, but Nils takes no notice of them. He’s going to kill Lass-Jan! He raises the oar, smashes it down into the water and hits Lass-Jan’s outstretched hands. The fingers break with a dry crack, his head jerks backwards and he disappears beneath the surface of the water. Nils brings the oar down again. Lass-Jan’s body sinks in an eddy of swirling white bubbles. Nils raises the oar with the intention of continuing to hit him. Something whizzes past Nils’ ear and hits his left hand; the fingers crunch even before the pain almost numbs his hand. Nils wobbles and is no longer able to hold the oar; he drops it into the boat. He closes his eyes tightly, then looks up. The loader who was making fun of him is standing up by the gunwale with a long boathook in his hand. His eyes are fixed on Nils, terrified but resolute. The loader draws the boathook back towards him and lifts it again, but by this time Nils has managed to push off from the hull of the ship with his oar, and is on his way back to the shore. He leaves the loaders on the ship and Lass-Jan on his way to the bottom of the sea, and fixes the portside oar back in the rowlock. Then he rows straight for the shore, the broken fingers of his left hand throbbing and aching. The little boy who does the bailing is crouching in the prow like a trembling figurehead. “Get him out of there!” someone shouts behind him. He hears the sound of splashing and shouting across the water from the cargo ship as Lass-Jan’s inert body is hauled over Wind’s gunwale. The foreman is lifted to safety, the water is forced out of his body and he is shaken back to life. He’s been lucky – he can’t swim. Nils is one of the few in the village who can. Nils has his gaze fixed much further away, on the straight line of the horizon. The sun has found gaps in the cloud cover over there, and is shining down on the water, making it gleam like a floor made of silver. Everything feels fine now, despite the pain in his left hand. Nils has shown everybody who owns Stenvik. Soon he will own the whole of northern Öland, and will defend it with his life if the Germans come. The bottom of the boat scrapes against the rocks, and Nils picks up the oar and jumps out. He’s ready, but no one attacks him. The loaders are standing over on the jetty as if they’ve been turned to stone, women and men and children. They gaze at him silently with terrified eyes. Maja Nyman looks as if she’s about to burst into tears. “Go to hell!” Nils Kant roars at the lot of them, and flings the oar down in front of him on the pebbles. Then he turns to run back to the village, home to his mother Vera in the big yellow house. But neither she nor anyone else know what Nils knows: he is meant for greater things, greater than Stenvik, as great as the war. One day he will be known and talked about all over Öland. He can feel it. Pages 161 – 174 STENVIK, MAY 1945 Nils Kant is sawing the end off his shotgun. He is standing out in the heat of the woodshed where the birch logs are stacked right up to the roof, his back bent. The pile of wood looks as if it might topple over onto him at any moment. His Husqvarna is lying on the chopping block in front of him, and he has almost sawn right through the barrel. His booted left foot is resting on the butt of the gun and he is working the hacksaw with both hands. Slowly but with determination he saws through the barrel, occasionally waving away the flies that buzz around the shed, constantly trying to land on his sweaty face. Outside everything is as silent as the grave. His mother Vera is in the kitchen, sorting out his rucksack. A tense air of waiting fills the warm spring air. Nils goes on sawing, and at last the blade bites through the final millimetre of steel and the barrel falls onto the stone floor of the woodshed with a brief metallic clang. He picks it up, shoves it in a little hole near the bottom of the woodpile, and places the saw on the chopping block. He takes two cartridges out of his pocket and loads the gun. Then he goes out of the shed and places the shotgun in the shadow by the door. He’s ready. It’s four days since the shooting out on the alvar, and now everybody in Stenvik knows what’s happened. GERMAN SOLDIERS FOUND DEAD – EXECUTED WITH SHOTGUN was splashed across the front page of yesterday’s newspaper, Ölands-Posten. The headline was just as big as when the forest near the shore outside Borgholm was bombed three years earlier. The headlines are a lie – Nils didn’t execute anyone. He was caught up in a gun battle with two soldiers, and he was the one who won in the end. But perhaps not everyone will see it that way. For once, Nils went down into the village in the evening, walking along the road past the mill, and he was met by the silent gaze of the millers. He didn’t say anything, but he knows they are talking about him behind his back. There’s gossip. And stories about what happened out on the alvar are spreading like rippling circles on the water. He goes into the house. His mother Vera is sitting there silent and motionless at the kitchen table with her back to him, looking out through the window over the alvar. He can see that her narrow shoulders are tense with anxiety and sorrow beneath her grey blouse. Nils’ own fears are equally wordless. “I think it’s probably time now,” he says. She merely nods, without turning around. The rucksack and the small suitcase are on the table beside her, all packed, and Nils walks over and picks them up. It’s almost unbearable; if he tries to say anything else his voice will be thick with tears – so he simply leaves. “You will come back, Nils,” say his mother behind him, her voice hoarse. He nods, although she can’t see it, and takes his blue cap off the peg by the door. His copper hip flask is hidden in the cap, filled with brandy. He pushes it into his rucksack. “It’s time, then,” he says quietly. He has his wallet with his own travelling money in his rucksack, as well as twenty substantial notes from his mother rolled up and tucked into his back trouser pocket. He turns around in the doorway. His mother is now standing in the kitchen, her profile towards him, but she still isn’t looking at him. Perhaps she can’t do it. Her hands are clasped over her stomach, her long white nails digging into her palms; her mouth is trembling. “I love you, Mother,” says Nils. “I’ll be back.” Then he walks quickly out of the door, down the stone steps and into the garden. He stops briefly by the woodshed to pick up his shotgun before going around the house and in among the ash trees. Nils knows how to leave the village without being spotted. He stoops and moves along the cow paths, through the dense thickets far away from the road, climbing over lichen-covered stone walls and stopping occasionally to listen for whispering voices beyond the humming of the insects in the grass. He emerges in the sunshine on the alvar south west of the village, without being discovered. Out here the danger is past; Nils can find his way here better than anyone, and moves rapidly and easily across the grass. He can spot anybody before they see him. He walks almost directly towards the sun, giving a wide berth to the place where he met the Germans. He doesn’t want to see if the bodies are still there or have been carted off. He doesn’t want to think about them, because they are the ones who are forcing him to leave his mother. The dead soldiers are forcing him to go away, for a while. “You need to keep away,” his mother said the previous evening. “Take the train to Borgholm from Marnäs, then take the ferry over to Småland. Uncle August will meet you in Kalmar, and you must do what he tells you – and take your cap off when you’re thanking him. You’re not to speak to anyone else, and you’re not to come back to Öland until all this has settled down. But it will do, Nils, if we just wait.” Suddenly he thinks he hears a muted shout behind him, and he stops. But he hears nothing more. Nils moves more cautiously through the juniper bushes, but he can’t go too slowly. The train won’t wait. After a couple of kilometres he reaches the gravelled main road. A cart is approaching from the south, and he quickly hurries across the road and hides in the ditch. But the cart is being pulled by a lone horse, its head drooping, and Nils is far away from the road by the time it draws level. He is roughly in the middle of the island now, and thinks about what he read in the newspaper: It was along this road that the German soldiers are presumed to have sneaked a week or so earlier, when their boat suffered engine failure and drifted ashore to the south of Marnäs. He’s not going to think about them, but for a moment he remembers the little box of precious stones he took from the soldiers, and sees himself burying it deep beneath the sacrificial stone. In recent days while he and his mother have mostly stayed in the house, he has almost told her about his spoils of war several times, but something has made him keep quiet. He will tell her, he will dig them up and show his mother the treasure, but he intends to leave all that until he comes home again. After another twenty minutes’ walking, the gravel-covered railway track appears ahead of him. It’s the narrow-gauge track between Böda and Borgholm, and he turns north and walks alongside it towards the station in Marnäs. The two-storey wooden station house stands alone just to the south of the village; it’s a post office and railway station combined, and he catches sight of the house just as the two tracks divide and become four just ahead of him. The track is empty. His train hasn’t arrived yet. Nils has been to Borgholm and back three times before, and knows how a traveller should behave. He walks into the station, where everything is quiet, goes over to the window and buys a single ticket to town. The miserable-faced woman with glasses behind the iron grille looks up at him, then quickly looks down at the desk as she issues the ticket. The steel nib of her pen rasps across the paper. Nils waits anxiously, feeling as if he’s being watched, and looks around. Half a dozen people, mostly men in neatly buttoned suits, are sitting on the wooden benches in the waiting room. They are waiting alone or in groups, and several have black leather bags with them. Nils is the only one with both a rucksack and a suitcase. “There you are. Last carriage, number three.” Nils takes the ticket, pays, and walks out onto the platform, his rucksack over his shoulder and his suitcase in his hand. After just a few minutes he hears the screech of a train whistle, and the train chugs slowly into the station with its three red-painted wooden carriages. There is an enormous power in the black, puffing steam engine as it slows down in front of the station house, its brakes squealing. Nils climbs aboard the last carriage. The stationmaster calls out something behind him, the doors of the station house open and the other travellers emerge. Nils turns around on the top step and stares silently at them; they choose to go towards the other carriages. The carriage is dark and completely empty. Nils lifts his suitcase onto the luggage rack and sits down on a leather-covered window seat with a view over the alvar, his rucksack beside him. The train jolts, heavy and steady, and begins to move. Nils closes his eyes and breathes out. The train stops again, with a dull hiss. The carriages remain still. Nils opens his eyes, waits. He’s still alone in the carriage. A minute passes, then two. Is something wrong? Somebody shouts something outside, and at last he feels the train begin to move again. It slowly picks up speed, and Nils sees the station house slip past and disappear behind him. Cool air blows into the carriage through gaps in the windows; it feels like a sea breeze on the shore at Stenvik. Nils’ shoulders slowly drop. He places a hand on his rucksack, opens it, and leans back in his seat. The speed is increasing all the time. The train whistle screams. Suddenly the door of his carriage opens. Nils turns his head. A well-built man wearing a black police uniform with shiny buttons and a police cap walks in. He looks Nils straight in the eye. “Nils Kant from Stenvik,” says the man, his expression serious. It isn’t a question, but Nils nods automatically. He’s sitting there as if he were nailed to the seat as the train races across the alvar. The greenish-brown landscape outside the window, blue sky. Nils wants to stop the train and jump off, he wants to get back out onto the alvar. But the train is moving quickly now, the wheels pounding along the track, the wind howling. “Good.” The man in the uniform sits down heavily on the seat diagonally opposite Nils, so close that their knees are almost touching. The man straightens his coat, which is buttoned up despite the heat. His forehead is shiny with sweat beneath the brim of his cap. Nils recognises him, vaguely. He’s the district police superintendent in Marnäs. “Nils,” says Henriksson, as if they knew each other, “are you going to Borgholm?” Nils nods slowly. “Are you going to visit someone down there?” asks Henriksson. Nils shakes his head. “What are you going to do, then?” Nils doesn’t answer. The police officer turns his head and looks out of the window. “Anyway, we can travel together,” he says, “then we can have a little chat in the meantime.” Nils says nothing. The police officer goes on: “When they rang and told me you were here, I asked them to hold the train for a few minutes so that I could come along and join you.” He turns his gaze back to Nils. “I’d really like to talk to you, you see, about all those long walks on the alvar …” The train begins to slow down again at one of the stations between Marnäs and Borgholm. A little cottage surrounded by apple trees slips past Nils’ window. He imagines he can smell the aroma of pancakes through the window; his mother made him fresh pancakes with sugar the previous evening. Nils looks at the policeman. “The alvar … there’s nothing to talk about,” he says. “I can’t really agree with you there.” The police officer takes a handkerchief out of his pocket. “I think we do need to talk about it, Nils, and so do many other people. The truth will always come out.” The policeman holds Nils’ gaze as he slowly wipes the sweat from his face. Then he leans forwards. “Several people from Stenvik have got in touch with us over the past few days. They’ve said that if we want to know who’s been shooting out on the alvar with a shotgun, we ought to talk to you, Nils. Nils can see the two dead soldiers lying out there on the alvar, he can see their staring eyes inside his head. “No,” says Nils, shaking his head. There’s a rushing sound in his ears. The train begins to brake. “Did you meet the foreigners out on the alvar, Nils?” asks the policeman, putting his handkerchief away. The train stops, jolting the carriages slightly. After only half a minute or so it begins to move again. “You did, didn’t you?” All the time the policeman is looking at him and waiting for a reply. His steady gaze sears Nils’s face. “We’ve found the bodies, Nils,” he says. “Was it you who shot them?” “I didn’t do anything,” says Nils quietly, his fingers fumbling with the opening of his rucksack. “What did you say?” asks the policeman. “What have you got there?” Nils doesn’t reply. The rails begin to pound again, the whistle screams, his fingers tremble and search and burrow into the rucksack, which falls over on its side with the opening towards him. His right hand gropes among his clothes and possessions. The police officer half gets up from his seat, perhaps he has realised that something is about to happen. The train whistle screams in terror. “Nils, what have you got …” Inside the rucksack Nils’ fingers close firmly around the sawn-off shotgun. He presses the trigger and the gun jerks among the clothes inside the rucksack. The first shot shreds the bottom of the rucksack, ripping up the seat beside the policeman. Splinters of wood spray up towards the ceiling. The police officer jumps at the noise, but doesn’t try to take cover. He has nowhere to go. Nils quickly lifts the torn rucksack and fires again, without looking where he’s shooting. The rucksack is ripped apart. The second shot hits the policeman. His body is thrown back against the wall so hard that Nils can hear the crack, he falls heavily to the side, his back rolls across the shattered seat and crashes down on the carriage floor. The rails pound, the train hurtles across the alvar. The police officer is lying on the floor in front of Nils, his arms twitching slightly. Nils keeps hold of the shotgun, but lets go of the torn rucksack and stands up, his legs unsteady. Shit. “Take the train to Borgholm,” he hears his mother saying inside his head. Her plan is ruined now. Nils gazes around, and sees the landscape racing past the window. The alvar is still there, and the sunshine. He turns the rucksack upside down and ripped clothes stinking of gunpowder come tumbling out: socks, pants, a woollen sweater. But there’s a little bag of butter toffees right at the bottom, and his wallet and hip flask full of brandy are undamaged. He picks up the flask, takes a quick swig of lukewarm brandy, and slips it into his back pocket. That feels better. The money, the sweater, the flask, the gun and the toffees. He can’t take anything else with him. He’ll have to leave the suitcase of clothes. Nils climbs over the policeman’s motionless body, opens the door, and makes his way out into the thundering din between the carriages. The train rolls on across the alvar. The wind tugs at him, he screws up his eyes against it. Through a window he can see into the carriage in front of him; a man in a black hat is sitting with his back to him, swaying in time with the movement of the train. The sound of the shots was deadened by the clothes in the rucksack – the train thunders on along the track, and no one seems to have heard a thing. Nils opens the side door, catches the scent of the plants on the alvar and sees the gravel on the track hurtling past beneath him like a pale grey river. He climbs down onto the last step above the ground, sees that the track ahead is empty, and jumps. He tries to jump through the air and hit the ground with his legs moving, but the impact knocks his feet from underneath him. The wheels of the train thunder on, the world spins around. He is hurled to the ground, takes a hard blow on the forehead and tenses his body, aware of the risk that he might die beneath the train. But the track knocks him out of the way. He raises his head and sees the train moving away, sees the last carriage, the one he has just left, growing smaller and smaller along the track. The train disappears in the distance. There isn’t a sound. He made it. Slowly he gets up and looks around. He’s back out on the alvar, his shotgun still in his hand. No buildings are in sight, no people. Just the endless grass and the blue sky. Nils is free. Without a single glance back towards the railway line, he quickly strides out onto the alvar, towards the west coast of the island. Nils is free, and now he’s going to disappear. He’s already disappeared. 14 “That was a story in the twilight hour,” said Astrid quietly. By the time she’d finished telling the story of Nils Kant, the wine bottle was empty. The glow of the sun had gradually disappeared outside the kitchen window, and had become a narrow, dark red line on the horizon. “So the policeman on the train … he died?” said Julia. “The conductor came into the carriage and found him lying there dead,” said Astrid. “Shot in the chest.” “Lennart’s father?” Astrid nodded. “Lennart must have been eight or nine when it happened, so he probably doesn’t remember much about it,” she said, and added: “But it must have had an effect on him … I know he never wants to talk about how his father died.” Julia looked down into her wine glass. “I understand why he didn’t want to talk about Nils Kant either,” she said. Thanks to the intoxicating effect of the wine, she was beginning to feel a blossoming sense of closeness to Lennart Henriksson – he had lost a father, she had lost a son. “No,” said Astrid. “And these rumours about Nils Kant still being alive don’t make it any easier for him.” Julia looked up at her. “Who’s saying that?” she said. “Haven’t you heard people talking about it?” “No. But I have seen Kant’s grave in Marnäs,” said Julia. “There’s a gravestone and the date and …” “There aren’t many left who remember Nils Kant any longer, but those who do, the older ones … Some of them think the coffin contained nothing but stones when it came home from overseas,” said Astrid. “Is that what Gerlof thinks?” “He’s never said,” replied Astrid. “Not that I’ve heard. He’s an old sea captain after all, so he’s probably never given much credence to rumours. And that’s all this talk about Nils Kant is … just rumours and gossip. Some people say they’ve seen Nils Kant standing by the side of the road in the autumn fog, watching the cars, with a shaggy beard and grey hair … and others have seen him wandering around out on the alvar, as he did when he was young, or in amongst the crowds in Borgholm in the summer.” Astrid shook her head. “I’ve never seen hide nor hair of Kant. He must be dead.” She picked up their wine glasses and got up from the table. Julia stayed where she was, wondering whether she and her mother Ella would have sat chatting like this in Stenvik, if Ellen had still been alive. Probably not; her mother had hardly ever given away what she was thinking. Then Julia felt something soft and warm against her trouser leg and gave a start, but it was only Astrid’s fox terrier Willy, who had padded over to her under the table. She reached down and scratched the coarse hair at the back of his neck, gazing pensively out of the kitchen window at the red afterglow of the sun on the mainland. “I wish I could stay here,” she said. Astrid turned from the sink. “You stay there,” she said. “You don’t need to go, it’s not that late. We can talk some more.” Julia shook her head. “I mean … I wish I could stay in Stenvik.” And she did. It might just have been the wine, but at that moment she could feel the memory of all those childhood summers in the village, like the echo of a beautiful melody in her head, an Öland folk song, as if it were here in Stenvik that she belonged. Despite the pain associated with Jens’ disappearance, despite Ernst’s death. “Well, can’t you stay here?” said Astrid. “You’re going to Ernst’s funeral up in Marnäs, aren’t you?” Julia shook her head again. “I need to get the car back to my sister.” It was a very feeble reason; she was the joint owner of the Ford after all, but it was all she could come up with. “I’ll probably go tomorrow evening, or the day after.” She got up from the table, with a certain amount of difficulty. Her legs were rather unsteady after the wine. “Thanks ever so much for dinner, Astrid,” she said. “It was a pleasure,” said Astrid, smiling broadly for once. “We must try and meet up again before you go. Or next time you come to Stenvik.” “We will,” said Julia, patted Willy and went out through the kitchen door. It wasn’t yet night outside, only early evening, and she didn’t need to feel her way home through the pitch darkness. “Come over to me if you get scared in the dark,” called Astrid behind her. “Just imagine, there’s only us left in Stenvik now, you and me and John Hagman. There were three hundred people living here at one time. There was a temperance society and a mission house and rows of mills down by the sea. Now there’s only us left.” Then she closed the kitchen door, before Julia had time to answer. The intoxication which had been so noticeable in Astrid’s kitchen began to subside out in the fresh air – at least Julia thought so. The evening was clear and cold, and faint lights glimmered far away on the mainland, on the other side of the sound. To the north and south along the Öland coast more lights glowed from houses and lamps too far away to be visible in daylight. Julia had kept the key to Gerlof’s cottage, and after a few hundred metres she turned inland. She walked along the village road, striding out as best she could; she glanced into Vera Kant’s garden, and wondered briefly if old Vera had managed to see her beloved son Nils before she died, or not. The garden was silent and full of shadows. Julia carried on up to the summer cottage, unlocked the outside door and switched on the light in the hallway. No shadows here. Jens was in the cottage, but only as a vague memory. Jens was dead. She used the cottage bathroom to have a wash, go to the toilet and brush her teeth. When she’d finished she turned off the hall light, but the last thing she did was to pick up the mobile, which had been on charge all day in the cottage. Standing in the hallway in front of the big window, she rang Gerlof’s number at the residential home. He answered after three rings. “Davidsson …” “Hi, it’s me.” She always had a guilty conscience when she spoke to Gerlof without being entirely sober, but there was nothing she could do about that. “Hello,” said Gerlof. “Where are you?” “In the cottage. I had dinner at Astrid’s, and now I’m going back to the boathouse and I’m going to bed.” “Good. So what did you talk about?” Julia thought for a moment. “We talked about Stenvik … and about what happened to Nils Kant.” “Haven’t you read about it yet, in the book I gave you?” said Gerlof. “I haven’t finished reading it yet,” replied Julia, changing the subject. “Shall we go to Borgholm soon?” “I’ve been thinking that would be a good idea,” said Gerlof, “if I can get out of here. I think we’ll soon need written permission from Boel to leave the premises.” This was typical of Gerlof’s sense of humour. “If you can get permission,” said Julia, “I’ll come and pick you up at half nine.” Suddenly she fell silent and leaned against the window. She could see something out there, a pale light … “Hello?” said Gerlof. “Are you still there?” “Is anybody living in the house next door?” asked Julia, her eyes fixed on the window. “What do you mean, next door?” “In Vera Kant’s house.” “Nobody’s lived there for over twenty years,” said Gerlof. “Why?” “I don’t know.” Julia was trying to peer through the window. Now she couldn’t see any lights over there. And yet she was still certain she’d seen a light in one of the rooms on the ground floor just now. “So who owns the house?” she asked. “Er … it must be distant relatives, I suppose,” said Gerlof. “Second cousins of Vera Kant’s, I think. At any rate, nobody’s shown the slightest interest in doing it up. You’ve seen the state it’s in … and it was already in a mess when Vera died in the seventies.” Everything was still dark outside the window. “Okay,” said Gerlof, “see you tomorrow.” “So are we going to find the man who took Jens away?” “I never said that,” said Gerlof. “All I promised to do was to show you the person who sent the sandal to me. That’s all.” “Isn’t that the same person?” said Julia. “I don’t think so,” said Gerlof. “Can you explain why?” “I’ll do that in Borgholm.” “Okay,” said Julia, who couldn’t cope with talking any more in any case. “See you.” She switched off her mobile. On the way back down the village road, Julia walked more slowly past Vera Kant’s house this time. It was dark beneath the dense old trees, and she kept staring up at the big, empty windows. They were all dark. The derelict house formed a big, black shadow against the night sky. The only way to find out if anyone was hiding in there was to … Go into Vera’s house and have a look for herself. But it would be insane to do it, Julia knew that, at least on her own. Vera Kant’s was a ghost house nowadays, but … What if Jens had gone in there on That Day? What if he was still in there? Come inside, Mummy. Come inside, come and get me … No. She mustn’t think like that. Julia carried on down to the boathouse, opened the door, went in, and locked the outside door behind her. Pages 199 – 209 17 “I’ve always blamed my mother,” said Julia. “She went for a lie down and fell asleep that afternoon. She blinked the tears away and went on: “I’ve blamed my father even more … Gerlof, that is … Because he went down to the sea to mend his nets. If he’d been at home, Jens would never have left the house – Jens loved his grandfather.” Julia snivelled and sighed. “I’ve blamed them for many years,” she said, “but it was actually my fault. I left Jens and went to Kalmar to meet a man. Although I knew it was a waste of time. He didn’t even turn up.” She stopped speaking, then added: “It was Michael … Jens’ father. We’d split up and he was living in Skåne, but he’d been talking about catching the train and coming up to see me … I’d thought we might be able to try again, but he wasn’t interested.” She snivelled again. “So of course Michael was absolutely no help either when Jens disappeared, he was still in Malmö … But the main person who was to blame was me.” Lennart sat in silence on the opposite side of the table, listening – he was a good listener, thought Julia – and letting her talk. When she fell silent, he said: “It was nobody’s fault, Julia. It was simply, as we say in the police … a series of unfortunate circumstances.” “Yes,” said Julia. “If it was an accident.” “What do you mean?” said Lennart. “I mean … Unless Jens went out and met somebody who took him away.” “But who?” said Lennart. “Who would do such a thing?” “I don’t know,” said Julia. “A madman? You know more than I do about these things, you’re a policeman.” Lennart shook his head slowly. “Such a person would need to be disturbed … extremely disturbed,” he said. “And they would almost certainly have come into contact with the police already for other violent crimes. There was nobody like that on Öland at the time. Believe me, we looked for suspects … We knocked on doors, we went through our records.” “I know,” said Julia. “You did what you could.” “Our assumption was that he went down to the water,” said Lennart. “It’s only a few hundred metres, and it would have been easy to get lost in the fog that day. Many people who have drowned in Kalmar Sound have disappeared forever, both before and since …” He stopped. “It must be difficult for you to talk about this, and I don’t want to …” “It’s fine,” said Julia quietly. She thought for a moment, then added: “I didn’t think it would be a good thing to come here in the autumn and face it all again, but it has been. I’ve started to get over Jens … and I know he isn’t coming back.” She made an effort to sound absolutely certain: “I have to move on.” It was Tuesday evening in Marnäs. Julia had intended to call in briefly to see Lennart in the police station, but she was still there. And Lennart had obviously been about to finish work for the day, turn off the computer and go home, but he’d stayed. “So you’re not on duty tonight?” Julia had asked. “I am, but not until later,” said Lennart. “I’m on the building committee and we’ve got a meeting tonight, but not until half past seven.” Julia wanted to ask what political party he represented, but there was always the risk that she wouldn’t like the answer. Then she wanted to ask if he was married, but she might not like that answer either. “We could order a pizza from Moby Dick,” said Lennart. “Would you like one?” “That would be nice,” said Julia. There was a kitchen in the office at the police station. Although the offices were impersonal, there was a certain level of home comfort in there in the form of curtains, red rag rugs on the floor, and even a couple of pictures on the walls. A spotlessly clean coffee machine stood on the equally spotless worktop. There was a low table with armchairs in one corner, and when the pizzas topped with ham had been delivered from the bar down by the harbour, Lennart and Julia ate them there. As they were eating they began to talk - not just small talk this time – and their quiet conversation centred on sorrow and loss. Afterwards Julia couldn’t remember which of them had first started to make things so personal, but she assumed it was her. “I have to move on,” said Julia. “If Jens disappeared in the sound, I have to accept it. It’s happened before, as you say.” She added after a pause: “It’s just that he was afraid of the water, he didn’t like playing on the beach. So I’ve sometimes thought he went the other way, out onto the alvar. I know how it sounds, but … Gerlof thinks the same.” “We looked on the alvar too,” said Lennart quietly. “We looked everywhere over the next few days.” “I know, and I’ve been trying to remember … Did we meet at the time?” asked Julia. “You and I, did we meet?” The police officers who had turned up and asked questions when Jens disappeared were just a nameless row of faces to her. They had asked, she had answered mechanically. Who they were had been irrelevant, just as long as they found Jens. Much later she had realised that some of their questions had focused on the possibility that she herself – for some unknown reason, insanity perhaps – had killed her own son and hidden the body. Lennart shook his head. “You and I never met … at least, we never spoke,” he said. “Other officers were responsible for the contact with you and your family, and as I said I was one of those leading the search. I assembled volunteers down in Stenvik who spent the entire evening searching along the beach, and I drove round in my patrol car, all along the roads around Stenvik and out on the alvar. But we didn’t find him …” He stopped speaking, and sighed. “Those were terrible days,” he went on, “particularly as I’d … I’d been involved with something similar before, in my private life. My father had …” He stopped again. “I know something about that, Lennart,” said Julia gently. “Astrid Linder told me what happened to your father …” Lennart nodded, his eyes downcast. “It’s no secret,” he said. “She told me about Nils Kant,” said Julia. “How old were you when … when it happened?” “Eight. I was eight years old,” said Lennart, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I’d started school in Marnäs. It was almost the end of term, a beautiful, sunny day. I was happy … looking forward to the summer holidays. Then a rumour started going round among the pupils – there had been a shooting on the train to Borgholm, somebody from Marnäs had been shot … but nobody knew anything definite. It wasn’t until I got home that I found out. My mother was at home and her sisters were there. They sat there in silence for a long time, but in the end my mother told me what had happened …” Lennart stopped, lost in the past. In his eyes Julia thought she could see the shocked, unhappy eight year-old he had been that day. “Are policemen not allowed to cry?” she asked tentatively. “Oh yes,” said Lennart quietly, “but I suppose we’re better at keeping the lid on our feelings.” He went on: “Nils Kant … I didn’t even know who he was. He was more than ten years older than me, and we’d never met, although we lived just a few kilometres from each other. And now he’d shot my father dead.” There was silence once again. “What did you think of him afterwards, then?” asked Julia eventually. “I mean, I can understand it if you hated him …” She was thinking of herself, the number of times she’d wondered how she would react if she met Jens’ murderer. She didn’t know what she would do. Lennart sighed, looking out of the window through the darkness at the back of the police station. “Yes, I hated Nils Kant,” he said. “Deeply and intensely. But I was afraid of him too … Particularly at night, when I couldn’t sleep. I was terrified he’d come back to Öland and kill me and my mother too.” He paused. ”It took a long time before those feelings went away.” “Some people say he’s still alive,” said Julia quietly. “Have you heard that?” Lennart looked at her. “Who’s still alive?” “Nils Kant.” “Alive?” said Lennart. “That’s impossible.” “No. I don’t believe it either …” “Kant is not alive,” said Lennart, cutting into his pizza. “Who says he is?” “I don’t believe it either,” said Julia quickly. “But Gerlof has been talking about him ever since I got here … it feels as if he’s trying to get me to believe that Nils Kant is behind Jens’ disappearance. That Jens met Kant that day. Although he must have been dead for ten years by then.” “He died in 1963,” said Lennart. “The coffin arrived in Borgholm harbour that autumn.” He looked down. “And I don’t know if it would be a good idea if this came out … but the coffin was opened up by the police in Borgholm. Very discreetly, for some reason; perhaps out of fear or respect for Vera Kant, I mean she did have a lot of money and she owned a considerable amount of land … but it was opened.” “And there was a body in it?” said Julia. Lennart nodded. “I saw it,” he said in a low voice, adding: “This isn’t exactly official either, but when the coffin came ashore …” “From one of Malm Freight’s ships,” Julia interposed. Lennart nodded. “That’s right. Is it Gerlof who’s filled you in on all this background stuff?” he asked, then carried on without waiting for her reply: “I’d just started as a police constable in Marnäs, after a couple of years in Växjö, and I asked if I could go down to Borgholm to be there when they opened up the coffin. Of course my reasons were entirely personal, nothing to do with the police, but my colleagues were very understanding. The coffin was in one of the sheds down by the harbour waiting for the undertaker, in a wooden box that was nailed shut, with documents and stamps from some Swedish consulate in South America.” He paused, then went on: “One of the older constables broke open the lid. And it was Nils Kant’s body lying in there, partly dried out and covered in furry black mould. A doctor from the hospital in Borgholm was there and confirmed that he’d drowned in salt water. He’d obviously been in the water for quite some time, because the fish had started …” Lennart’s expression had become absent as he was telling the story, but suddenly he looked down at the table and seemed to remember that they were eating pizza. “Sorry about all the details,” he said quickly. “It’s fine,” said Julia. “But how did you know it was Kant? Fingerprints?” “There were no confirmed fingerprints of Nils Kant on record,” said Lennart. “No dental records either. But he was identified because of an old injury to his left hand. He’d broken several fingers during a fight at the quarry in Stenvik. I’ve heard that myself from several people who lived in Stenvik. And the body in the coffin had exactly the same injury. So that decided it.” There was silence in the kitchen for a few seconds. “How did it feel?” asked Julia eventually. “Seeing Kant’s body, I mean.” Lennart seemed to be considering the question. “I didn’t actually feel anything. It was the living Kant I wanted to meet. You can’t hold a dead body responsible for anything.” Julia nodded pensively. There was something she’d been thinking of asking Lennart to do for her. “Have you ever been inside Kant’s house?” she asked. “Did the police ever look for Jens in there?” Lennart shook his head. “Why would we have looked in there?” “I don’t know … it’s just that I’ve been trying to work out where Jens could have gone. Perhaps if he didn’t go down to the sea, and he didn’t go out onto the alvar, he might have gone into one of the neighbours’ houses. And Vera Kant’s house is only a couple of hundred metres from our cottage …” “Why would he have gone in there?” said Lennart. “And why would he have stayed?” “I don’t know. If he’d gone in and fallen, or …” said Julia, thinking: Who knows, perhaps Vera Kant was just as crazy as her son. Maybe you went in there, Jens, and Vera locked the door behind you. She went on: “I know it’s a long shot … but would you like to take a look in there? With me?” “Take a look … You mean go inside Kant’s house?” said Lennart. “Just a quick look, before I go back to Gothenburg tomorrow,” Julia went on, her eyes holding his dubious gaze. She wanted to tell him about the light she’d seen inside the house, but decided against it in case she’d been imagining things. “I mean, it can’t be breaking and entering if the house is empty, can it?” she asked. “And you must be able to go in wherever you want to, as a police officer?” Lennart shook his head. “There are very strict regulations,” he said. “As the only policeman in a country posting I’ve been able to improvise a little bit, but …” “But nobody’s going to see us,” Julia interrupted him. “Stenvik is practically empty, and the houses all around Vera Kant’s are summer cottages. Nobody lives nearby.” Lennart looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go to this meeting,” he said. At least he hadn’t said no to her suggestion, thought Julia. “And after that?” “You mean you want to go in there tonight?” Julia nodded. “We’ll see,” said Lennart. “These meetings can drag on a bit. I can ring you if it finishes early. Have you got a mobile?” “Okay, ring me.” There were a couple of pencils on the kitchen table, and Julia tore off a piece of the pizza box and wrote down her number. Lennart tucked it in his breast pocket and stood up. “Don’t do anything on your own,” he said, looking at her. “No, I won’t,” she promised. “Vera Kant’s house looked as if it was about to fall down last time I went past.” “I know. I won’t go in there on my own.” But if Jens was there, all alone in the darkness – would he ever forgive her if she didn’t go and look for him? The streets of Marnäs were completely empty when they emerged from the police station. The shops were dark, and only the kiosk over in the square was open. The damp air felt almost as if it were starting to freeze. Lennart switched off the light and locked the station door behind them. “So you’re going back to Stenvik now?” he said. Julia nodded. “But we might meet up later, then?” “Maybe.” Julia thought of something else. “Lennart,” she said, “did you find out anything about the sandal? The one Gerlof gave you?” He looked at her enquiringly, then he remembered. “No, unfortunately,” he said. “Not yet. I sent it to Linköping in a sealed bag, to the national forensic lab there, but I haven’t had a reply yet. I’ll give them a ring next week. But perhaps we shouldn’t hope for too much. I mean, so much time has passed, and we’re not even sure it’s the right …” “I know … It might not even be his shoe,” said Julia quickly. Lennart nodded. “Take care, Julia.” He held out his hand, which seemed like a rather impersonal way to say goodbye after everything they’d revealed about themselves. But Julia wasn’t much of a one for hugging either, and she took his hand. “Bye then. Thanks for the pizza.” “You’re welcome. I’ll ring you after the meeting.” His gaze lingered on her face for a moment longer, in the way that you can interpret however you like afterwards. Then he turned away. Julia crossed the street to her car. She drove slowly out of the centre of Marnäs, past the residential home, where Gerlof was perhaps sitting and drinking his evening coffee, past the dark church and the graveyard. Was Lennart Henriksson married or a bachelor? Julia didn’t know, and hadn’t dared to ask. On the way down to Stenvik she pondered over whether she had revealed too much about herself and her feelings of guilt. But it had been good to talk and to get some perspective on this remarkable day in Borgholm, when Gerlof had come out with his new theories: that the man who’d murdered Jens was lying there ill in a luxury villa in Borgholm, and that Nils Kant, who’d murdered district superintendent Henriksson, might be alive and working as a car salesman in the same town. It was difficult to know if her father was winding her up or not. No. He wouldn’t joke about these things. But she didn’t feel that his ideas were moving them forwards, somehow. Might as well go home. She decided to go back to Gothenburg the following day. First of all she would go to Ernst Adolfsson’s funeral, then she’d say goodbye to Gerlof and Astrid – and in the afternoon she’d drive home and try to live a better life than before. Drink less wine, swallow fewer tablets. Get back to work as a nurse as soon as possible. Stop clinging to the past and brooding over riddles that could never be solved. Live a normal life and try to look to the future. Then she could come back and visit Gerlof – and perhaps Lennart too – in the spring. The first houses of Stenvik appeared at the side of the road, and she slowed down. At Gerlof’s cottage she stopped the car, got out in the darkness and opened the gate, then drove in. She would spend this last night in her room at the cottage, she decided. Sleep close to all the good and bad memories for one last time. When she got in, she switched on some lights. Then she left the cottage and went down to the boathouse to collect her toothbrush and everything else she’d left down there – including the bottles of wine she’d brought with her from Gothenburg, and never opened, against all the odds. She was very conscious of Vera Kant’s house in the darkness on her left as she walked along the village road, but she didn’t turn her head. She merely glanced in passing at the lights in Astrid Linder’s house and John Hagman’s to the south before she went down to the boathouse. When she’d collected all her belongings, she caught sight of the old paraffin lamp hanging in the window; after a second’s hesitation, she unhooked it and took it up to the cottage with her. To be on the safe side. On the way back she did look up at Vera’s house behind the tall hawthorn hedges: big and black. There were no lights to be seen at the windows now. “We never looked in there,” Lennart had said. And why should the police have gone in? Vera Kant was hardly suspected of having abducted Jens. But if Nils Kant had hidden himself in there in secret, if Vera had been protecting him. If Jens had gone out onto the village road in the fog and down towards the sea, and stopped at Vera Kant’s gate and opened it and gone in … No, it was too far-fetched. Julia carried on towards the summer cottage. She went back inside into the warmth, and switched on the lamps in every room. She took one of the bottles of wine out of her bag, and since this was her last evening on Öland, she opened it in the kitchen and filled a glass with red wine. When she’d drunk that, standing by the kitchen worktop, she quickly refilled the glass. She took it into the living room. The alcohol spread through her body. But – just a quick look. If Lennart’s meeting up in Marnäs finished early, and if he rang … She’d ask him again if he’d come down. Did he really not want to take a look inside the house where his father’s murderer had grown up? Just a quick look? It was like a fever that Gerlof had infected her with – Julia couldn’t stop thinking about Nils Kant. Pages 217 – 225 18 Lennart didn’t ring. Julia sat there waiting in the summer cottage for several hours. It got to eight thirty on Tuesday evening, then nine o’clock, but he never rang. By this time Julia had finished off the bottle of red wine; it wasn’t difficult. And her resolve to go inside Vera Kant’s house had become so fixed that it didn’t actually matter whether Lennart turned up or not. She thought about ringing Gerlof and telling him what she was intending to do, but decided against it. She couldn’t do any more packing or cleaning to make the time pass. She was restless and curious. Darkness and silence pressed against the walls of the cottage. At quarter to ten Julia finally stood up, slightly dizzy from the wine, but more determined than tipsy. She put an extra sweater on under her coat, and thick socks. There was an old brown woolly hat in the wardrobe by the front door; she tucked her hair inside it and glanced at herself in the hall mirror. Had the furrows of anxiety etched on her forehead smoothed out slightly since her conversation with Lennart? Maybe – or then again, it could be the red wine. She put her mobile in her pocket, picked up the old paraffin lamp in her left hand, and switched off the light in the cottage. She was ready. Just a quick look. The evening had turned clear and cold, with just a faint breeze in the trees. Julia came out onto the village road and the darkness closed around her, but she could see glimmering points of light on the mainland. She stopped after a few metres, listening for noises among the shadows: rustling leaves or creaking branches. But there wasn’t a sound – nothing was moving. Stenvik was deserted. The gravel crunched faintly beneath her feet as she made her way down to Vera Kant’s house. There she stopped again. The gate was glowing pale and white in the moonlight, and it was closed as usual. Julia slowly reached out and felt the cold iron latch. It was rough with rust, and was stuck fast. She pushed. The gate groaned slightly, but didn’t open. Perhaps the hinges had rusted up. In the end Julia put the paraffin lamp on the gravel, stood close to the gate with both hands on the top, and lifted it up and inwards. It moved a few inches before sticking again. But now she could get through the opening. The intoxication from the wine was holding her fear of the dark at bay, but only just. The garden was surrounded by tall trees and was full of black shadows. Julia stood still for a moment, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Slowly she began to discover details in this new darkness: a winding path made of limestone slabs that led further into the garden like a silent invitation, a round well lid covered in leaves and patches of black mould beside the path, and overgrown grass everywhere. On the far side of the well stood a rectangular woodshed, the roof of which seemed to be on the point of collapse, like a badly erected tent. Julia took a tentative step into the dark garden. And another. She listened, and took a third step. It was getting more and more difficult to move forwards. Her mobile suddenly started beeping; the ring-tone made her heart jump. She quickly pulled the phone out of her coat pocket, as if it might disturb someone or something in the darkness, and pressed the reply button. “Hello?” “Hello … Julia?” It was Lennart’s calm voice on the other end. “Hi,” she said, making an effort to sound sober. “Where are you?” “I’m still in the meeting,” he said. “And we’re not quite finished yet … it went on a bit. But I was thinking of going straight home afterwards.” “Okay,” she said, taking a couple more steps along the path. Now she could see one corner of Vera Kant’s house. “That’s fine. At least I know …” “It’s just that it’s the funeral tomorrow, and I have to put in a few hours’ work before that,” Lennart went on. “I don’t really think I can manage to get to Stenvik tonight …” “No, I understand,” said Julia quickly. “We can do it some other time.” “Are you outdoors?” asked Lennart. There was no hint of suspicion in his voice, but Julia was still tense as she came out with the lie in a relaxed voice: “I’m just out by the … I’m just taking a little evening stroll.” “Oh, right … Will I see you tomorrow? In church?” “Yes … I’ll come,” said Julia. “Okay,” said Lennart. “Good night, then.” “Good night … sleep well,” said Julia. Lennart’s voice vanished with a click. Julia was completely alone once more, but it felt better now. She’d had the feeling he wouldn’t be able to make it. Half a dozen steps in front of her, the path came to an end at the bottom of a flight of broad stone steps, leading up to a white wooden door and a glassed-in veranda decorated with ornate carvings that the wind and rain had done their best to splinter and wear away. The house loomed above Julia like a silent castle made of wood. The black windows made Julia think of the burnt-out ruined castle in Borgholm. Are you there, Jens? Not even the darkness could disguise the state of decay. The panes of glass on either side of the front door were cracked, and the paint was flaking off the window frames. The veranda inside was pitch black. Julia walked slowly to the end of the path. She listened. But who was she actually creeping up on? Why had she almost whispered when she was talking to Lennart on the telephone? She realised how ridiculous it was to try and be quiet when nobody could hear – but she still couldn’t relax. She went up the stone steps with stiff legs, her back tense. She tried to reason like Jens, feel as Jens would have done if he’d been here the day he disappeared. If he’d gone into Vera Kant’s garden – had he been brave enough to go up the steps to the front door, and knock? Perhaps. The iron handle on the door to the veranda was pointing downwards, as if someone were just opening it from the inside. Julia assumed it was locked and didn’t even bother reaching out for the handle – until she realised the door was slightly ajar. A piece of wood had been hacked or whittled out of the door frame so that the barrel of the lock had nothing to click into. Then all they’d had to do was open the door and walk in. So somebody had broken into Vera Kant’s house. Burglars, perhaps? They came out to rural areas in the winter so that they could work undisturbed in the empty summer cottages. An abandoned property that had belonged to one of the richest women in northern Öland was bound to have been of interest to them. Or was it someone else? Julia reached out silently and pulled at the door. It didn’t move, and when she looked down she could see why. A small wooden wedge had been pushed under the door. Presumably somebody had put it there so that the door wouldn’t be snatched by the wind, with the lock being broken. Would a burglar be so considerate? No. Julia nudged the wedge out with her foot and pulled at the handle again. The hinges were stiff, but the door opened slowly. The compact darkness inside made her feel even more nervous, but she couldn’t turn back now. Curiosity killed the cat. But the person who had put the wedge there had done it from the outside, so they weren’t still inside the house. Unless of course there was another way out. Julia walked across the threshold of Vera Kant’s house as cautiously as she could. It was just as cold inside as outside, and as dark and still as in a cave. She couldn’t see a thing, and then she remembered that she was carrying the paraffin lamp. She took a box of matches out of her pocket, struck one, and lifted the glass. The broad wick began to burn with a small, flickering flame, which grew bigger and brighter when Julia lowered the glass over it. There was enough light to illuminate the empty veranda with a thin grey glow, even though the darkness remained in the form of shadows creeping around the corners of the room. She lifted the lamp and made her way through the veranda towards the inside door. It was closed but not locked, and Julia opened it. Vera’s hallway. It was narrow and long, with flowery wallpaper faded by the sun, and it was just as empty as the veranda. Julia wouldn’t have been surprised to find a hall stand with Vera’s black coats still hanging there, or a row of narrow ladies’ shoes, but the floor was completely bare. Along the walls and from the ceiling hung white curtains made of cobwebs. There were four doors leading off the hallway. They were all closed. She reached out for the nearest door along the long wall, and opened it. The room inside was small, only a few square metres, and completely empty apart from some glass jars on the floor, containing something mouldy. A storeroom for cleaning materials. She closed the door carefully, and opened the next one. This was Vera’s kitchen, and it was huge. Julia could see a brown linoleum floor which changed to polished stone in the centre of the room, where an enormous black iron stove stood resplendent against the wall. Straight ahead were two big windows looking out from the back of the house, and Julia knew that the summer cottage lay behind the trees, just a few hundred metres away. It made her feel less alone, and gave her the courage to step into the room. To the left along the wall a narrow, steep wooden staircase with a rickety banister led to the upper floor. A faint smell of rotting vegetation hung in the dark, motionless air. Dust and dead flies lay in drifts on the floor. This is where Vera Kant must have stood in the evenings, leaning over her steaming pots and pans. This was the room Nils Kant had left with his shotgun hidden in his rucksack one beautiful summer’s day after the war. I’ll be back, Mother. Had he promised her that? There was a door under the stairs and when Julia took a couple of silent steps towards it, she saw a steep drop on the other side. It was the staircase down into the cellar. The cellar would be a good place to start if she was looking for … A dead body, hidden away. But she wasn’t. Was she? Just a quick look. Julia could feel the weight of her mobile in her pocket. Lennart’s number was in the memory, and she could ring him any time she wanted to – a small consolation. So she leaned in through the doorway under the stairs, holding the paraffin lamp up in front of her. The staircase leading underground was made of rough-hewn planks of wood. At the foot of the steps was a hard-packed earth floor, black and moist and glistening in the glow of the lamp. But – something was wrong. Julia went down a couple of steps so that she could see more clearly. She bent her head to avoid catching it on the sloping ceiling, and stared downwards. The earth floor in the cellar had been dug up. The patch at the bottom of the steps had been left untouched, but somebody had made little holes all over the place along the stone walls. And there was a spade leaning against the staircase, as if the person who’d been digging had just gone for a short break. Patches of dried mud from a pair of boots led up the cellar stairs towards her. Earth was piled up in a little heap along the wall, and a couple of full buckets stood a little further away. Somebody was in the process of methodically digging up the entire cellar. What was going on? Julia moved backwards up the stairs. She moved as noiselessly as she could until she was back in the kitchen, holding her breath while she listened. Everything was still silent. She could ring Lennart now – but she didn’t want to be heard, or seen. She reached carefully into her pocket and took out her mobile. She started to walk across the kitchen taking small steps, switching on the mobile and retrieving Lennart’s number from the memory at the same time. Then she let her thumb rest on the call button. If something happened, if … She tried to convince herself that Jens was with her in this dark house, even if he was dead, and that he wanted her to look for him. She succeeded to a certain extent, and carried on walking. Piles of fluff swirled noiselessly away from her shoes and scuttled along the walls to hide as she walked across the linoleum in the kitchen, onto the stone floor and past the iron stove. Then she went up the first flight of stairs to the upper floor, her heart pounding. The wood creaked beneath her feet, but only faintly. Julia allowed her right hand, holding the mobile, to rest lightly on the banister so that she could feel the solid security of the wall, and continued moving upwards, where the light of the paraffin lamp didn’t reach. When another stair creaked, she placed her foot on the one above instead. It was pitch dark above her. Halfway up the staircase she stopped, breathed out, and listened once more. Then she set off again. The banister ended by an opening without a door, and Julia stepped cautiously onto the wooden floor of the upper storey. She was in a corridor, just as narrow as the hallway downstairs, and with a closed door at either end. Fear and indecisiveness made her stop once more. Right or left? If she stood still for long it would be impossible to move in the end, so she chose the left side of the corridor. It seemed less dark, somehow. She kept going, moving through yet more balls of fluff and the black corpses of flies. Paler rectangles were visible on the walls – the traces of pictures that had once hung there. She had reached the end of the corridor. She pushed open the door, holding the paraffin lamp in front of her. The room inside was small and unfurnished, like the rest. But it wasn’t completely empty. Julia stepped inside and stopped when she saw a dark figure lying by the wall next to the room’s only window. No. It wasn’t a person lying there, she could see that now. It was a sleeping bag, unrolled like a black cocoon. It was lying below a collection of newspaper cuttings stuck up on the wall. Julia took another step forwards. She saw that the cuttings were old and yellow, attached to the wallpaper with pins. GERMAN SOLDIERS FOUND DEAD – KILLED WITH SHOTGUN was printed in black on one of them. On another: POLICE KILLER HUNTED NATIONWIDE And on a third, slightly less yellow: BOY VANISHES WITHOUT A TRACE IN STENVIK In a black and white picture beside the headline a little boy smiled his carefree smile at her, and Julia was seized by the same feeling of despair that overwhelmed her every time she saw her son. There were more cuttings, but she didn’t stay to read them. She quickly looked away and backed out of the room. She stopped. In the light of the paraffin lamp she saw that the door at the other end of the corridor was now open. It had been closed before, but now the threshold leading into the darkness of the room was visible. This room wasn’t just dark, it was pitch black. And it wasn’t empty. Julia could feel that there was someone waiting in there. An old woman. She was sitting on a chair by the window. This was her bedroom. A cold bedroom, full of loneliness and waiting and bitterness. The woman was waiting for company, but Julia stood there in the corridor, rooted to the spot. She heard a scraping noise from within the darkness. The woman had got up. She was moving slowly towards the door. Dragging footsteps were moving closer … Julia had to get away. She had to get back downstairs. The paraffin lamp’s flame flickered, she was moving quickly. Onto the landing and then down. She thought she could hear footsteps above her, and she felt the old woman’s cold presence behind her. He deceived me! Julia felt the hatred like a hard push in her back. She moved blindly forwards in the darkness, missed the next step and lost her balance, three or four metres above the stone floor. Her arms flailed in the air, both the mobile and the paraffin lamp went flying. The lamp and the mobile smashed onto the kitchen floor down below. Flames shot up from the paraffin – and Julia knew that she would very soon land on the stone floor down below. She gritted her teeth against the pain.