Echoes From the Dead

11

Julia was standing in Marnäs churchyard looking down at Nils Kant’s grave.

It lay over by the west wall, the last in a long row of graves. The name NILS KANT was etched into the gravestone, and the dates 1925–1963. The headstone was small and unassuming, an ordinary piece of limestone that had probably come from the quarry down in Stenvik. Perhaps Ernst Adolfsson had hewn it out. It was over thirty years old, and patches of white lichen had begun to cover the top.

There was dry, yellow grass growing over the grave, but no flowers.

Julia had been wondering why nobody had mentioned Nils Kant as a suspect when Jens went missing. To provide an answer, Gerlof had sent her here, to the deserted churchyard outside Marnäs — and now she could see that Nils Kant couldn’t have had anything to do with Jens’s disappearance. In 1972 Kant had been dead for almost ten years. The answer to her question was carved into the stone.

So. Another dead end.

Two yards away was another gravestone, also made of limestone, but this one was taller and broader. Names and dates were carved into it: KARL-EINAR ANDERSSON 1889–1935 and VERA ANDERSSON B. KANT 1897–1972. In smaller letters below these names was another one: AXEL THEODOR KANT 1929–1936. That was Nils Kant’s little brother who had drowned, and whose body had been lost in the sound.

Just as Julia was about to turn and leave the churchyard, she caught sight of something small and white fluttering behind the stone on Nils Kant’s grave. She stopped, took a couple of steps, and bent down.

A white envelope was stirring slightly in the breeze, wedged in between the stems of a couple of dried-up roses.

Somebody had placed the roses behind the gravestone not very long ago, Julia realized, because they still had their dry, dark red petals. When she picked up the envelope, she could feel it was damp. If something had been written on it, the ink had been washed away by the rain.

She looked around. The churchyard was still completely deserted. The white church rose up fifty yards or so away, but the door had been locked when Julia tried it, and nobody was moving behind the narrow church windows.

Quickly she stuffed the envelope in her coat pocket and turned her back on the grave.

She went back to her mother’s grave, brushed aside a yellow birch leaf that had blown down onto it during the few minutes she’d been away, and bent down to check that the candle in the little lantern was still burning. It was.

Then she went back to the car to drive the short distance into the center of Marnäs.

When Julia was little, a trip from the summer cottage to Marnäs on the eastern side of the island had been a real adventure. There wasn’t just one kiosk here, there were shops. You could buy toys.

As she drove into the little village now she was mainly grateful for the fact that you could park free of charge — a big advantage over Gothenburg. You could park outside the ICA supermarket, along the short main street, and down by the harbor. Julia chose the harbor. There was a little bar there, the Moby Dick Restaurant & Pub, and the tables by the windows were all empty, just half an hour or so before lunchtime.

There were neither pleasure boats nor fishing boats in the little harbor. Julia got out of the car and went over to the empty concrete jetty that pointed out toward the horizon. She stood there for a few minutes gazing out over the gray sea, its surface crinkled with ripples. Nothing could be seen on the horizon. Beyond it somewhere to the northeast lay Gotland, and on the other side of the Baltic was Eastern Europe, and the old/new countries that had broken away from the Soviet Union — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. A world Julia had never visited.

She turned away and walked along the main street without meeting a soul. She went past a small clothes shop and a flower shop, then came to a cash machine, where she stopped to take out three hundred kronor. The receipt showed that she was short of money as usual, and she quickly crumpled it up.

Above the next door hung a metal sign that said ÖLANDSPOSTEN. In smaller letters underneath it said: The daily newspaper for the whole of northern Öland.

Julia hesitated for a few seconds, then went in.

A little brass bell tinkled above her head as she opened the door. Inside was a small room where the light was good but the air was terrible — it stank of stale cigarette smoke. There was an empty reception desk by the entrance, and behind it an office with two desks covered in newspapers and papers. Two men, not exactly young, sat at humming computers; one of the men had gray hair, the other had no hair at all, and both wore jeans and shirts that needed ironing. There was a nameplate on the bald man’s desk: LARS T. BLOHM. There was no plate on the gray-haired man’s desk, but Julia recognized him as Bengt Nyberg, the reporter who had been on the scene so quickly over at the quarry. Lennart Henriksson had told her who he was.

On the wall hung a long series of news placards; the one on the far left said TRAGIC FATAL ACCIDENT AT QUARRY in thick black letters.

Weren’t all fatal accidents tragic?

“Can I help you?” Bengt Nyberg didn’t appear to recognize her; he was peering at Julia through a pair of thick reading glasses as she came over to the desk. “Was it about an advert?”

“No,” said Julia, who didn’t really know why she’d come in at all. “I was just passing... I’m living down in Stenvik at the moment and... My son has disappeared.”

She blinked. Why had she said that?

“Right,” said Nyberg. “But this isn’t the police station. That’s next door.”

“Thank you,” said Julia, feeling her pulse rate increase, as if she’d said something embarrassing.

“Or do you want us to write about it?”

“No,” said Julia quickly. “I’ll go to the police.”

“When did he disappear?” asked the other man, Lars Blohm. He had a deep, gruff voice. “What time was it? Was it here in Marnäs?”

“No. It didn’t happen today,” said Julia. She could feel her face getting redder and redder, as if she were standing there lying to the two newspapermen. “I have to go now. Thank you.” She could feel their eyes on the back of her neck as she quickly turned and left the office.

Out on the sidewalk she took a shaky breath in the cold air, and tried to relax. Why on earth had she gone there at all? Why had she mentioned Jens? She wasn’t used to meeting people she didn’t know. And it was even worse in a small place like this, where everybody knew everybody else and a new visitor was instantly noticed and became the subject of gossip. She longed for Gothenburg, where people treated each other like trees in the forest and met on the sidewalks without so much as a glance.

In order to escape from the blank windows of Ölands-Posten, she took a few steps, and noticed another sign next to the newspaper office: POLICE, with the blue and yellow police shield above it.

A note was taped to the door beneath the sign. Julia went up the two steps to the door to read it.

Station manned Wednesdays 10–12, it said on the note in black ink.

It was Friday, so the station was closed. What happened if a crime was committed in Marnäs on a day other than Wednesday? There was no note to answer that question.

She looked at the window and saw a shadow moving about inside.

She walked down the steps and just at that moment the door rattled. A key turned, and Lennart Henriksson appeared in the doorway. He was smiling.

“I saw I had a visitor,” he told her. “How are you feeling today?”

“Hi,” she said. “I’m fine... I didn’t think there was anybody here. I read the sign...”

“I know, I have to be here for two hours on Wednesdays,” said Lennart. “But I’m here at other times too. Although that’s a secret — I get more done that way. Come in.”

He was wearing a black uniform jacket with a police radio and a revolver in his belt, so she asked, “Are you on your way out?”

“I was going for lunch, but come in for a minute.”

He stepped aside to let Julia in.

The room inside looked older than the newspaper office she’d just visited, but it was clean and neat with plants on the windowsill, and there was no smell of stale cigarette smoke. There was just one desk, facing the door, with all the paperwork in tidy piles. A computer, a fax machine, and a telephone were neatly arranged. Above a shelf full of files was a poster with a drawing of a telephone, advertising the police narcotics helpline. On another wall was a big map of northern Öland.

“Nice office,” said Julia.

Lennart Henriksson liked everything neat and tidy, and that pleased her.

“Do you think so?” asked Lennart. “It’s been here for over thirty years.”

“Are you the only one who works here?”

“At the moment, yes. In the summer there are usually more of us, but at this time of year it’s just me. There are more and more cutbacks all the time.” He looked around the room with a gloomy expression, and added, “We’ll see how long this place is allowed to stay open.”

“Is it going to close?”

“Maybe. The big bosses are always talking about it, to save money,” said Lennart. “Everything should be consolidated in Borgholm, according to them; that will be the best and cheapest arrangement. But I hope I can stay here until I retire in a few years.” He looked at Julia. “Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

Julia shook her head, thought about it, and realized she was actually quite hungry.

“Shall we eat together?” said Lennart.

“Yes... okay.”

She couldn’t come up with any reason for saying no.

“Great. We’ll go over to Moby Dick... I’ll just shut down the computer and put the answering machine on.”

Five minutes later Julia was back by the little harbor, together with Lennart. They went into the best restaurant in Marnäs — both the best and only one in the village, he’d explained.

The décor inside was inspired by the sea, with shipping charts and fishing nets and old, cracked wooden oars hanging on the dark wood-paneled walls. Half the tables were occupied by customers eating lunch, and the room was filled with the low hum of conversation and the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen. A few curious faces turned toward Julia as she walked in, but Lennart went first as if to protect her and chose a table by the window set slightly apart, with a view over the Baltic.

When had Julia last eaten in a restaurant? She couldn’t remember. It felt very strange to sit down at a table in a room full of strangers, but she made an effort to breathe calmly and to meet Lennart’s gaze across the table.

“Good afternoon. Welcome.”

A man with a huge belly, his shirtsleeves rolled up, came over and handed them two leather-bound menus.

“Hi, Kent,” said Lennart, taking the menus.

“And what would you like to drink on a beautiful day like today?”

“I’ll have a light beer,” said Lennart.

“Iced water, please,” said Julia.

Her first impulse was of course to order red wine, preferably a whole carafe, but she suppressed it. She was going to get through this sober. It wasn’t dangerous, people had lunch in restaurants all over the world every single day.

“Today’s special is lasagna,” said Kent.

“Fine by me,” said Lennart.

“Me too.”

Julia nodded and caught a glimpse of a broad tattoo, dark green and blurred with age, on Kent’s upper arm just beneath the sleeve as he reached over for the menus. It looked like letters in some kind of frame. A name? The name of a ship?

“Salad and coffee are included in the price,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Lennart got up to fetch some salad, and Julia went with him.

“Lennart!” a man’s voice called out from the other side of the room as they were on their way back to the table. “Lennart!”

The police officer sighed quietly.

“Back in a minute,” he told Julia in a low voice, turning toward the man who had called him; he was an elderly man with a red, shiny face, wearing some kind of blue farm overalls. Julia sat down at their table and watched the man gesturing wildly, telling Lennart something with a determined expression on his face. Lennart gave him some kind of answer, quietly and briefly, and the man started waving his arms about again.

Lennart came back to the table after a few minutes and had just sat down when Kent arrived with two plates full of bubbling hot lasagna.

Lennart sighed again. “Sorry about that,” he said to Julia.

“It’s fine.”

“He’s had a break-in in his barn and somebody’s taken a petrol container,” he went on. “When you’re a country policeman, you’re always on duty, you never have any problems deciding what to do in your spare time. Anyway, let’s eat.”

He bent over the lasagna.

Julia started eating too. She was suddenly hungry now and the lasagna was good, with plenty of meat.

As his plate gradually emptied, Lennart took a sip of his beer and leaned back.

“So you’re here visiting your dad?” he asked. “Not to lie in the sun and swim?”

Julia smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said, “although Öland is lovely in the autumn too.”

“Gerlof seems well,” remarked Lennart. “Except for the rheumatism.”

“Yes... He has Sjögren’s syndrome. It’s some kind of rheumatic pain in the joints that comes and goes. But there’s nothing wrong with his mind. And he can still build ships in bottles.”

“Yes, they’re quite beautiful... I’ve kept meaning to order one for the police station, but I’ve never got round to it.”

There was a silence again. Lennart emptied his glass and asked quietly:

“And what about you, Julia? Are you all right now?”

“Oh yes...” said Julia quickly. It was a lie to some extent, one she was accustomed to telling, but then she realized Lennart might genuinely be interested, and asked, “You mean... after yesterday?”

“Well, yes,” said Lennart, “partly that. But I was thinking about what happened a long time ago as well... over twenty years ago.”

“Oh,” said Julia.

Lennart knew about it. Of course he did, what had she been thinking? He’d been a police officer here for thirty years, he’d told her that. And just like Astrid, he’d dared to bring up the forbidden topic, calmly and cautiously — a topic her sister had long ago grown tired of, and which several of Julia’s relatives had never dared to mention.

“Were you... involved?” she asked quietly.

Lennart looked down at the table, hesitating, as if the question had evoked unpleasant memories.

“Yes, I was involved in the search,” he said at last. “I was one of the first officers on the scene down in Stenvik... I sent people out in search parties along the shore. We were out there all evening; the search was called off an hour or so after midnight. When a child disappears, nobody wants to give up looking...”

Julia remembered Astrid Linder saying almost the same thing, and she looked down at the table. She had no intention of starting to cry, not in front of a police officer.

“Sorry,” she said to Lennart a second later, as the tears came.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” said Lennart. “I’ve cried too, sometimes.”

His voice was low and calm, like the still surface of a pool. Julia blinked and concentrated on his serious face in order to keep her gaze clear. She wanted to say something, anything.

“Gerlof,” she said, clearing her throat, “doesn’t believe that Jens, my son... he doesn’t believe he drowned.”

Lennart looked at her.

“I see” was all he said.

“He’s... he’s found a shoe,” said Julia. “A little sandal, a boy’s sandal. Like the one Jens had on when he...”

“A shoe?” Lennart was still looking at her. “A boy’s sandal. Have you seen it?”

Julia nodded.

“And did you recognize it?”

“Yes... maybe.” Julia picked up her glass of water. “I was sure about it at first... but now I don’t really know. It was a long time ago. You think you’ll never forget certain things, but you do.”

“I’d like to see it,” said Lennart.

“I’m sure that’ll be fine.” She didn’t know what Gerlof would make of this, getting the police involved, but it didn’t really matter. Jens was her son. “Do you think it might mean something?” she asked.

“I don’t think we should get our hopes up,” said Lennart. He finished off his lasagna and added, “So Gerlof’s turned private eye in his old age?”

“Private eye... yes, maybe.” Julia sighed; it was actually good to talk about this with someone other than Gerlof. “He’s got a load of theories, or whatever you like to call them. Vague hypotheses... I don’t really know what he thinks. He’s told me the sandal was sent to him in an envelope through the mail, with no sender’s address, and he’s been talking about a man called Kant who—”

“Kant?” Lennart interrupted. He was completely still now. “Nils Kant? Is that what he said?”

“Yes,” said Julia. “He was from Stenvik, but he wasn’t living there when I was born. I was over in the churchyard today and I saw—”

“He’s buried in Marnäs churchyard,” Lennart interrupted again.

“Yes, I saw the gravestone,” said Julia.

The policeman in front of her was staring out the window at the sparkling water. His shoulders drooped, and he suddenly looked very tired again.

“Nils Kant... He just refuses to die.”