Echoes From the Dead

21

Julia was awakened from the warmth of sleep by a squeaking noise, and after a few seconds she remembered where she was: in Vera Kant’s big house in Stenvik.

She was shivering. The pain in her broken body had made her drowsy, and after a long night lying awake on the floor, she had closed her eyes and dreamed about that last summer with Jens, when the sun seemed to shine on Öland without interruption. When the autumn was far away.

She saw a dusty, dirty floor underneath her, and realized it was daylight.

The squeaking noise was coming from the outside door, which was being pushed open.

“Julia?” an echoing voice called out above her.

A pair of hands raised her head and pushed a rolled-up jacket or sweater under the back of her neck.

“Can you hear me? Julia, wake up!”

She turned her aching face up toward the ceiling. She could only use her left eye — the right one was swollen shut.

It was Lennart’s calm voice — she recognized it even before she saw that it really was him. He wasn’t wearing his uniform; he was in a black suit and shiny shoes. They were covered in dried mud from Vera Kant’s garden, but he didn’t seem to care about that.

“I can hear you,” she said.

“Good.” He didn’t sound annoyed, just tired. “Good morning, in that case.”

“I came in here and... fell down the stairs,” she went on faintly, lifting her head from the floor. “It was stupid.”

“Gerlof said you’d gone home,” said Lennart. “But I thought you might be here.”

Julia was lying on the veranda; that was as far as she’d managed to crawl during the night when she’d finally regained consciousness on the kitchen floor, among the remains of her cell phone and the broken lamp. The paraffin had leaked out and ignited, but the fire had gone out on the stone floor.

It had been impossible to stand, because somebody had driven a red-hot nail through her right foot. So she had begun to crawl laboriously toward the outside door, just to get out of the kitchen, and in the darkness out on the veranda she’d collapsed again. She could hear the wind blowing outside, and had no strength left to set off out into the night. She had collapsed by the door, constantly terrified that she might hear footsteps approaching from inside the house.

“Stupid,” Julia repeated quietly. “Stupid, stupid...”

“Don’t think about that now. I should have come over last night, but the meeting...” Lennart stopped speaking, and she felt his hands under her arms. He tried to lift her up, carefully. “Can you stand up?” he asked her.

She hoped he wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been drinking. The intoxication was still with her like a revolting aftertaste.

“I don’t know... I’ve broken something... some bones.”

“Are you sure?”

Julia nodded wearily. “I’m a nurse.”

And she was, in fact. And the diagnosis she had reached even before she’d started crawling out of the kitchen was a fractured wrist, broken collarbone, and possibly also a broken right foot.

The foot could of course just be very badly sprained, it was difficult to tell. Julia had had patients who’d been unable to put their weight on a sprained ankle for several weeks — while others had broken theirs and walked around almost normally afterward, assuming it would soon get better.

She had no idea what her face might look like. Terrible, no doubt. Her nose might be bleeding as well, because it felt stuffed up.

“Try and get up, Julia,” said Lennart.

She liked the fact that his voice remained calm, not annoyed, not stressed.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice thick.

“For what?” Lennart lifted her gently under the arms.

“Sorry I came in here without you.”

“Don’t think about it,” said Lennart again.

But Julia didn’t want to keep quiet, she wanted to tell him everything.

“I was looking for Jens. I saw a light in the window one night and I think... He’s living here.”

“Living here? Jens?”

“Nils...” said Julia. “Nils Kant, Vera’s son. He’s got a sleeping bag upstairs. I saw it. And old newspaper articles.”

“Can you walk?” asked Lennart.

“He’s been digging in the cellar too... I don’t know why. Is that where Jens’s body is, down there? Do you think it might be, Lennart? Has he hidden him down there?”

“Come.”

Lennart began to lead her slowly through the door, out into the chill wind, and down the steps. It wasn’t easy, she couldn’t put her weight on her right foot, but Lennart supported her all the time.

When they reached the stone path, Julia saw a dark green car parked outside the gate.

“Is that yours, Lennart?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Haven’t you got a police car? You ought to have a police car.”

“That’s my own car... I’ve been to the funeral today.”

“Oh... of course.”

Ernst’s funeral. Julia remembered now. She’d missed it.

The old gate was just as difficult to open as it had been the night before, and Lennart had to leave her balancing on one foot while he dragged and kicked it open enough for them to get through.

She got into the car with enormous difficulty, as if she were ninety years old.

“Lennart,” she said quickly, before he had time to close the door. “Could you just go into the house and take a look? I just have to know that... that I saw what I saw last night. Upstairs and down in the cellar.”

He looked at her for a few seconds. Then he nodded.

“I assume you’ll wait here?” he said.

She nodded. “Lennart... have you got a gun?”

“A gun?”

“Yes... in case there’s anyone there now... inside. I don’t think there is, but...”

Lennart gave a short laugh. “I haven’t got a gun with me, just a flashlight,” he said. “There’s no danger, Julia, I’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.”

Then he closed the car door and got the flashlight out of the trunk. Julia watched him go into the garden and disappear behind the dilapidated woodshed.

She breathed out in the silence of the car, leaned back cautiously in her seat, and stared blankly at the ridge and the gray sea at the end of the village road.

Lennart wasn’t away long, perhaps between five and ten minutes. Julia had begun to feel anxious as soon as he disappeared, and felt relieved when she saw him coming back through the gate.

He opened the driver’s door, got in, and nodded at her.

“You were quite right,” he said. “Somebody has been there. Very recently, too.”

“Yes,” said Julia, “and I think—”

Lennart quickly held up his hand. “Not Nils Kant,” he interrupted her.

Then he placed a small object in front of her on the dashboard.

“I found this in the cellar. There were several on the floor down there.”

It was a snuff tin, one of the round ones that can only be used once.

“Somebody who takes snuff,” she said.

“Yes, he takes snuff... whoever it is who’s been here,” said Lennart, turning the key in the ignition. “And now we’re going to the hospital.”

At the hospital in Borgholm they cut off Julia’s clothes, both her sweater and her pants, and gave her an injection to ease the pain. A young male doctor came in to examine her, and asked how her injuries had happened.

“It was an accident — she had a fall last night,” said Lennart, who was standing by the door of the examination room. “Up in Stenvik.”

“On the shore?”

Lennart hesitated only for a second before nodding. “On the shore, yes.”

Then Lennart left, and the doctor began to palpate her back and stomach, and to pull at her legs and arms, and the nurses took a series of X-rays. Then they began to apply the wet, cold plaster bandages. Julia didn’t protest, she knew the procedures. She just wanted to get it all over with.

There were more important things to think about. She had made an important discovery in Vera Kant’s house, she was sure of it.

Nils Kant was alive. He was alive and living in his mother’s old house, just like that man in that horrible Hitchcock film. He was hiding in the house and Jens had crept in there and Kant had been forced to kill him. Unless they’d met in the fog on the alvar. Perhaps Nils Kant liked walking out there.

Julia didn’t want to stay in the hospital. She asked to borrow a telephone, and she called Astrid in Stenvik. She told her what had happened and asked a question.

Of course Julia could stay with her for a few days, Astrid said. It was always nice to have some company.

Lennart came back to fetch her after an hour.

“You need to be careful of all those stones and rocks on the shore,” said the young doctor when he’d checked the plaster once more. “Especially when it’s dark.”

“Did you have things to do in town?” asked Julia as they were driving back north.

“I was over at the police station,” said Lennart. “Their computers are faster than mine up in Marnäs, so I wrote up a few reports.” He looked at her. “Including one about a break-in in Stenvik.”

“Oh,” said Julia.

“It wasn’t about you,” said Lennart. “I reported that somebody had broken into the Kant house and was sleeping there. You’ve never been in there, don’t forget. You saw a light there one night. The following day you called me and reported it. Isn’t that what happened?”

Julia stared back at him.

“Okay,” she said. “I stumbled and fell on the shore. In the dark.”

“Exactly,” said Lennart.

“But I still think Nils Kant has been in there,” she added quietly. “I don’t believe he’s dead.”

“You can believe what you like,” said Lennart tersely. “Kant is dead.”

But at the same time Julia could see, or thought she could see, a shadow of doubt in his eyes.