Echoes From the Dead

29

Gerlof was sitting on the bus to Marnäs thinking things over. He’d nodded off for a while on the road between Borgholm and Köpingsvik, but he woke up when they got out onto the alvar. Now he was thinking.

He’d come out with far more than he’d intended during the meeting with Martin Malm, a whole lot of baseless hypotheses that it would presumably be impossible to prove. He hadn’t got a confession out of Martin, but at least he’d managed to say everything.

Now he could try to move on. Make more ships in bottles. Ask John over for coffee. Read the obituaries in the newspaper and watch the winter approaching outside the home.

But it was difficult to forget. There was so much to think about.

He picked up the book about Malm Freight again, the anniversary book that was starting to look rather dog-eared from constantly being taken out and put away. Gerlof opened it at the page with the picture on the quayside at Ramneby, and once again he saw Martin Malm and August Kant standing side by side in front of the stern-faced sawmill workers.

He thought about what Ann-Britt Malm had told him — that it was Vera Kant who had lent the money for Malm’s first big ship, and not August. In other words, that Vera had paid Martin to bring Nils home.

But if August Kant hadn’t wanted anything to do with his nephew — and perhaps would have preferred him to stay out of the way in South America forever — then what did this picture mean, this close business link with Martin Malm? August’s hand on Martin’s shoulder...

Because it was August’s hand, wasn’t it? Gerlof took a closer look. The thumb appeared to be on the wrong side of the fingers.

He stared at the picture until his eyes ached, until the black and white contours began to blur and merge. Then he took his reading glasses out of his briefcase, put them on, and kept looking. When that didn’t help, he took them off and held them above the picture like a magnifying glass. This made the white, staring faces of the sawmill workers come nearer to him, but at the same time they dissolved into black and white dots.

Gerlof moved the lens over the picture and peered more closely at the hand on Malm’s shoulder. There it lay, resting in a friendly way close to the back of the shipowner’s neck, but now Gerlof could clearly see that what should have been August’s right hand was in fact a left hand. And just behind the hand...

Gerlof looked at the smiling faces in the picture.

Suddenly he saw for the first time what Ernst must have seen.

“Christ,” he said.

To invoke the name of Jesus was a very old curse — over seventy years ago Gerlof’s mother had forbidden him to utter it. He hadn’t sworn like that once since then.

In order to be really certain, he took out his notebook, flicked through until he found the list of names he’d written down at the museum in Ramneby, and read it.

“Christ...” said Gerlof again.

For a few seconds he was completely stunned and absorbed in his discovery — then he looked up and remembered he was on a bus traveling northward toward Marnäs. But they weren’t there yet, they were still south of Stenvik, and just as he looked out of the window the bus was passing the first signpost that said CAMPSITE 2 KM.

Stenvik, the bus was nearly in Stenvik. He had to talk to John about his discovery.

Gerlof reached up quickly to press the red stop button.

As the bus began to slow down at the stop a hundred yards north of the turnoff for Stenvik, he pushed the book and his glasses into his briefcase and stood up, his legs trembling.

The central doors of the bus opened with a hiss, and Gerlof climbed down the steps and out into the cold and wind. Sjögren was muttering in his arms and legs, but the pain wasn’t making too much noise so far.

The doors closed behind him and the bus pulled away. He was alone at the bus stop, and it was still drizzling. There used to be a little wooden shelter where you could sit if it was raining, waiting for the bus or waiting to set off home, but of course that had been taken away. Everything that was good and free was quickly taken away.

When the dull roar of the engine had died, Gerlof looked around him at the desolate landscape, buttoned his coat right up to the top, then looked over at the yellow signpost pointing down toward Stenvik. That was where he was going.

He looked around several times to make sure he wasn’t going to be run over as he crossed the road, but there wasn’t a car in sight. The main road was completely deserted. He covered the fifty yards over to the turning for Stenvik quite quickly, but when he set off down the road the wet wind was blowing directly into his face, and he had to slow down.

He must have gone two hundred yards along the side of the road toward the village when he suddenly remembered that John Hagman wasn’t down in Stenvik.

John was in Borgholm.

Gerlof stopped dead on the road, blinking into the lashing wind.

How the hell had he managed to forget that? He’d only left John at the bus station less than half an hour earlier, but he’d been so elated by what he’d discovered from the picture that he’d completely forgotten about that.

But somebody would be at home in Stenvik, surely? Julia might not be back yet either, but Astrid should be there. She was almost always at home. Anyway, there was nothing else for it but to keep on going — Marnäs was even further away.

His footsteps felt heavier now, and the cold was beginning to penetrate right through his coat. The wind was pulling and dragging at him, and he bent his head.

One step at a time on the cracked tarmac. He counted them: one, two, three — and at the twenty-fifth step he looked up again, but the trees on the horizon marking the end of the alvar and the beginning of the village didn’t appear to be any closer.

For the first time Gerlof began to feel a little anxious, like a swimmer who has boldly decided to set off across an icy lake, but suddenly loses all his strength when he gets halfway. Going back to the main road was impossible, but it was almost as difficult to keep on going.

He suddenly stumbled on the tarmac, almost falling into the ditch. He only about managed to keep his balance with the help of his cane, and that was when he heard the dull roar of an engine once again.

It was a car, and it was coming from Stenvik.

The car was big and shiny and dark green, Gerlof could see as it came closer: a Jaguar, its windshield wipers swishing rhythmically to and fro.

It didn’t drive past, it pulled up and the tinted side window slid down, revealing a face with a gray beard.

“Hi there!” called a cheerful voice.

Gerlof recognized Gunnar Ljunger from Långvik.

The hotel owner who was always talking about more ships in bottles every time they met was the last person Gerlof wanted to meet right now, but he felt obliged to raise his hand in a tired greeting.

“Good afternoon, Gunnar,” he said in a weak voice which the wind almost drowned out, and took one step further along the road.

“Hi, Gerlof,” called Ljunger from inside the car. “Where are you going?”

It was a very stupid question that might have merited a very stupid answer, but Gerlof simply nodded toward the village and said:

“Down to Stenvik.”

“Are you going to visit someone?”

“Yes, maybe.” Gerlof swayed in the wind. “Astrid, perhaps.”

“Astrid Linder?” said Ljunger. “It didn’t look as if she was home when I drove past... I couldn’t see any lights in her windows.”

“Oh?”

If Astrid wasn’t home either, then nobody was home in Stenvik — and Gerlof would freeze to death down there in the wind from the sea. The police would find his cold, stiff body the next day, behind some juniper bush.

He thought about it and looked at Ljunger.

“Might you be going to Marnäs, Gunnar? Past the home?”

“Sure... I was going to do a bit of shopping at the ironmonger’s. I’ll give you a lift.”

“Would you?”

“Of course.” Ljunger leaned across and opened the passenger door. “Hop in.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

Gerlof clambered laboriously into the warmth of the car with his cane and his briefcase.

It was quiet and very warm in the car; the heating was turned up high. Ljunger was sitting there with his yellow padded jacket unbuttoned, and despite the fact that Gerlof was still frozen, he too unbuttoned his coat.

“Okay, let’s go,” said Ljunger. “Marnäs, here we come.”

He floored the accelerator and the car shot away with such power that Gerlof was pressed back into his seat.

“Any particular time you have to be back, Gerlof?” asked Ljunger.

Gerlof shook his head. “No, but I’d like—”

“Good, then we’ve got time to take a look at something.”

They had already reached the main road, and it was just as empty as it had been earlier. Ljunger pulled out onto it. But heading south, not north.

“I don’t think I can—” Gerlof began, but Ljunger interrupted him:

“How’s it going with the ships in bottles, then?”

“Fine,” replied Gerlof, although he hadn’t touched them for the last week — he hadn’t even thought about them. “You can come over and see me at the home sometime before Christmas, and we can have a look at them...”

Ljunger nodded. He drove along the main road for just a few hundred yards before he turned off again along a narrow, stony track with no signposts, running between a plowed field and an old stone wall. It led eastward, toward the sea.

“I was just thinking... Is it too late to have all the hulls completely in red?” asked Ljunger. “If it’s possible, that would look really nice.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Gerlof nodded and took a deep breath. “Gunnar, where are we actually going?”

“Not far,” said Ljunger. “We’ll soon be there.”

He didn’t speak again after that, but merely slowed the car along the narrow track. All Gerlof could do was go along for the ride, staring at the windshield wipers monotonously swishing back and forth.

He looked down into the storage space between the seats. Gunnar’s cell phone was there; it was black with silver edges, and was much smaller than any Gerlof had seen before — it was only half the size of Julia’s.

“Where are we going, Gunnar?” he asked quietly.

Ljunger didn’t reply — it was as if he were no longer listening to Gerlof. He was looking only at the sodden gravel track ahead of the car, avoiding the potholes and bumps with a light touch on the wheel. He was smiling.

Gerlof’s forehead was greasy with sweat.

He ought to say something, make some casual, everyday remark. A polite question about how things were going in the hotel industry, perhaps. But he was tired and his head was completely empty of small talk at this moment.

In the end Gerlof could come up with only one question:

“Have you ever been to South America, Gunnar?”

Ljunger shook his head, still smiling.

“I haven’t, unfortunately,” he replied, then added, “The closest I’ve been is Costa Rica.”