Echoes From the Dead

16

A broad path made of large limestone slabs led up to Martin Malm’s big white house; Julia looked at the building and thought of Vera Kant’s house in Stenvik. It was about the same size, but of course this one had been painted and was well looked after, and somebody lived here. But who lit a candle in Vera Kant’s house late at night? Julia couldn’t stop wondering — had she really seen the light at the window?

She held on to Gerlof’s arm as they opened the heavy iron gate and made their way over the rough stones. Maybe he was supporting her as much as she was supporting him, thought Julia, because she was feeling nervous now.

For her, this was a meeting with Jens’s murderer. If Martin Malm had definitely sent the sandal, then he must be the murderer — whatever reservations Gerlof might have.

The path stopped at steps leading up to a broad mahogany door with an iron nameplate that said MALM. In the middle of the door beneath a small stained glass window was a bell, shaped like a little key.

Gerlof looked at Julia. “Ready?”

Julia nodded, and reached out toward the bell.

“Just one more thing,” said Gerlof. “Martin had a brain hemorrhage quite a few years ago. He has good days and less good days, more or less like I do. If this is a good day, we can talk to him. If not...”

“Okay,” said Julia, her heart pounding.

She twisted the bell and a muted but prolonged ringing could be heard from inside the house.

A shadow appeared behind the glass panel after a moment, and the door opened.

A young woman was standing in front of them. She was small and blonde and slightly wary.

“Hello,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” said Gerlof. “Is Martin home?”

“Yes,” said the girl, “but I don’t think he—”

“We’re good friends,” said Gerlof quickly. “My name’s Gerlof Davidsson. From Stenvik. And this is my daughter. We wanted to call on Martin.”

“Okay,” said the girl. “I’ll check.”

“Could we come into the warmth in the meantime?” asked Gerlof.

“Of course.”

The girl stepped back.

Julia helped Gerlof over the threshold and across the marble floor of the hallway. It was spacious, with dark wooden panels on the wall, showing off framed photographs of old and modern ships. Three doors led off into the house, and a wide staircase led to the upper floor.

“Are you a relative of Martin’s?” asked Gerlof when they had closed the front door behind them.

“I’m a nurse from Kalmar,” the girl said, shaking her head and walking toward the middle door.

She opened it and Julia tried to see what lay beyond, but there was a dark curtain on the other side.

She and Gerlof remained where they were, in silence, as if the big house with its closed doors didn’t invite conversation. Everything was as hushed and solemn as in a church — but when Julia listened carefully she thought she could hear someone moving about upstairs.

The middle door opened and the nurse came back out.

“Martin isn’t feeling too well today,” she told them quietly. “I’m sorry. He’s tired.”

“Oh dear,” said Gerlof. “That’s a shame. We haven’t seen each other for several years.”

“You can come back another time,” said the nurse.

Gerlof nodded. “We’ll do that. But we’ll call first.”

He was moving backwards toward the front door, and Julia reluctantly went with him.

Outside the air seemed even colder than before, Julia thought. She walked beside Gerlof in silence, opened the iron gate, and then looked back at the big house.

She could see a pale face staring at her through one of the broad windows on the upper floor. It was an elderly woman, standing up there and gazing intently down at them through the window.

Julia opened her mouth to ask if Gerlof recognized the woman, but he was already at the car. She had to move quickly to get the door open for him.

When she looked at the house again, the woman at the window had vanished.

Gerlof settled into his seat and looked at his watch.

“Half past one,” he said. “Maybe we should get something to eat. Then we need to pop down to the liquor store. I promised some of my neighbors at the home I’d make a few purchases. Is that okay?”

Julia got behind the wheel.

“Alcohol is a poison,” she said.

They ate the pasta dish of the day at one of the few restaurants in Borgholm that was open during the winter. The dining room was almost empty, but when Julia tried to get Gerlof to discuss the visit to Martin Malm, he just shook his head and concentrated on the food. Afterward he insisted on paying, then they went off to the liquor store, where Gerlof bought two bottles of schnapps flavored with wormwood, a bottle of advocaat, and six cans of German beer. Julia had to carry it all.

“Time to go home now,” announced Gerlof when they were back in the car.

He had the carefree tone of someone who had enjoyed a successful day in town, and it annoyed Julia. She slammed the car into gear and pulled out onto the street.

“Nothing happened,” she said once they were on their way and had stopped at a red light east of Borgholm.

“What do you mean?” said Gerlof.

“What do I mean?” said Julia, turning north onto the main road. “We achieved nothing today.”

“But we did. First, and most important, we had delicious cakes at Margit and Gösta’s,” said Gerlof. “Then I got a closer look at Blomberg the car dealer. And we also got—”

“Why did you want to do that?” interrupted Julia.

Gerlof didn’t reply at first.

“For various reasons,” he said eventually.

Julia took a deep breath.

“You need to start telling me things, Dad,” she said, staring fixedly through the windshield. She felt like stopping the car, opening the door, and throwing him out on the alvar. It felt as if he were teasing her.

Gerlof was silent for a while longer.

“Ernst Adolfsson got an idea in his head last summer,” he said. “A theory. He believed that my grandchild, our Jens, went out onto the alvar in the fog that day, not down to the sea. And he believed that Jens met a murderer out there.”

“Who?”

“Nils Kant, perhaps.”

“Nils Kant?”

“Nils Kant who’s dead, yes. He’d been dead and buried for ten years at the time... You’ve seen his gravestone, after all. But there were rumors...”

“I know,” said Julia. “Astrid told me about them. But where did the rumors come from?”

Gerlof sighed. “There was a mailman in Stenvik... Erik Ahnlund. There was a story he used to tell after he’d retired, to me and Ernst and anybody else in the village who was prepared to listen to him; he said Vera Kant used to receive postcards with no sender’s name on them.”

“So?”

“I don’t know when they started to arrive, but according to Ahnlund she kept getting postcards from different places in South America in the fifties and sixties. Several times a year. Every one with no sender’s name.”

“Were they from her son?”

“Presumably. That’s the most likely explanation.” Gerlof looked out across the alvar. “Then of course Nils Kant came home in a coffin and was buried in Marnäs.”

“I know,” said Julia.

Gerlof looked at her.

“But the postcards kept on coming even after the funeral,” he said. “From abroad, with no sender’s name.”

Julia glanced quickly at him. “Is that true?”

“I think it probably is,” said Gerlof. “Erik Ahnlund was the only one who actually saw the postcards addressed to Vera, but he swore they kept arriving for several years after Nils’s death.”

“And that made people in Stenvik think Kant was still alive?”

“Definitely,” said Gerlof. “People have always sat around chatting in the twilight hour. But Ernst wasn’t much of a one for gossip, and he thought the same thing.”

“And what do you think?”

Gerlof hesitated.

“I’m like the apostle Thomas,” he said. “I want proof that he’s alive. I haven’t found it yet.”

“So why did you want to see this Blomberg?” asked Julia.

Gerlof hesitated again, as if he were afraid of appearing old and gaga.

“John Hagman thinks Robert Blomberg might be Nils Kant,” he said at last.

Julia stared at him. “But surely you don’t think that?”

Gerlof slowly shook his head. “It seems a bit far-fetched,” he said. “But John made a number of points. Blomberg was a seaman, as I said. He grew up in Småland and went to sea as an engineer when he was just a teenager. He was away for many years... twenty or twenty-five years, or more. Eventually he came home and moved to Öland. He got married here, and had children. I think his son is the one who was in the workshop today.”

“That doesn’t sound particularly suspicious,” said Julia.

“No,” agreed Gerlof, “the only odd thing really is that he was away for so long. John’s heard rumors that Blomberg was kicked off his ship, then drifted around some port in South America as a down-and-out alcoholic until some Swedish captain finally brought him home.”

“But Blomberg can’t be the only person who’s moved to Öland?”

“Oh no,” said Gerlof. “Hundreds of people have moved here from the mainland.”

“And does John suspect them all of being Nils Kant?”

“No. And I didn’t think Blomberg was anything like him either,” said Gerlof. “But you see what you want to see, don’t you? My mother — your grandmother Sara — saw a goblin once when she was young... Do you remember? She used to refer to him as ‘a gray man’...”

“Yes, I’ve heard that story,” said Julia, “you don’t need to—”

But there was no stopping Gerlof.

“Whatever it was, she saw him one spring day toward the end of the nineteenth century as she was standing down by Kalmar Sound doing her washing, outside Grönhögen. She suddenly heard rapid footsteps behind her, and he came rushing out of the forest... A little man, about three feet tall, in gray clothes. He didn’t say a word, just ran toward the sound, straight past Sara without even looking at her. And when he reached the water, he didn’t stop... Mother called out to him, but he kept on going, straight out into the water, until the waves washed over him and he sank beneath the surface. Then he was gone.”

Julia gave a brief nod. It was a bizarre tale — maybe the strangest of all the stories told by her family on Öland.

“A goblin who commits suicide,” she said, a little sarcastically. “Now, there’s a thing you don’t see every day.”

“Obviously the story isn’t true,” Gerlof went on. “But I believe it. I believe my mother saw a goblin, or at least some kind of natural force or unknown phenomenon that she interpreted as a goblin. And at the same time, I know goblins and trolls don’t exist.”

“They don’t appear so often nowadays, at any rate,” said Julia.

“No,” said Gerlof slowly, “and it’s probably the same with Nils Kant. Nobody talks about him, nobody sees him. The police have got him down as being dead, and he’s buried in Marnäs churchyard with a gravestone anybody can go and look at. And yet there are still certain people in northern Öland who believe Nils Kant is still alive. At least among those who are old enough to remember him.”

“What do you think?” asked Julia again.

“I think it would be a good thing if all the strange things surrounding Nils Kant could be sorted out,” said Gerlof.

“I’d rather find my son.” Julia said it quietly. “That’s why I came here.”

“I know,” said Gerlof. “But there might be a connection between the two stories.”

“Nils Kant and Jens?”

Gerlof nodded. “I already know they are connected to some extent, in fact. Through Martin Malm.”

“But how?”

“Malm had Jens’s sandal,” said Gerlof. “And it was one of Malm Freight’s ships that brought Nils Kant’s coffin home to Sweden.”

“Was it? How do you know that?”

“It’s no secret. I was down at the harbor myself when the ship with the coffin came in. An undertaker in Marnäs took care of it.”

Julia gave this some thought as they were approaching Marnäs. She braked and turned.

“But we didn’t get to speak to the person who sent the sandal today,” she pointed out.

“No, but you did see his house,” said Gerlof. “Martin was bad today, but sooner or later we’ll be able to speak to him. Next week, maybe.”

“I can’t stay here just for that,” said Julia sharply. “I have to get back to Gothenburg.”

“So you say,” said Gerlof. “When are you leaving?”

“I don’t know. Soon... tomorrow, maybe.”

“Tomorrow’s the funeral in Marnäs church,” said Gerlof. “Eleven o’clock.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to go,” said Julia, turning into the entrance to the home. “I didn’t even know Ernst, after all. His death is tragic and I’ll never forget the morning I found him... but I didn’t know him.”

“Try to come anyway,” said Gerlof, opening the car door.

Julia got out to help him. She carried the bag of liquor and his briefcase.

“Thank you,” said Gerlof, leaning on his cane. “My legs are much better now.”

“See you soon,” said Julia when she’d walked him as far as the elevator. “Thanks for today.”

She watched Gerlof open the elevator door and step in without falling over.

Then she returned to the car and turned out onto the road again, heading east. She decided to buy some groceries in Marnäs before she went down to the boathouse.

It was slowly beginning to grow dusk now; it was twenty past four. Normal people, people who had jobs, were no doubt on their way home from work.

But some people hadn’t gone home yet. As she drove past the little police station in Marnäs, she could see there was a light on inside.

Julia stopped at the grocery store and bought milk and bread and something to put on it. She didn’t have much money left in her account, and there was over a week left until her next benefit payment.

When she came out of the store, she noticed the light in the windows of the police station again. She thought about Lennart Henriksson, and about what Astrid had told her about him. Lennart too had been affected by a great tragedy in his life.

Julia stopped, looking at the light in the windows. She put the food in the trunk of the Ford and locked it. Then she crossed the road and knocked on the door of the police station.