Echoes From the Dead

22

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Gerlof,” said Lennart slowly, “but you’ve obviously made your daughter believe that Nils Kant is still alive. That he’s living in his mother Vera’s old house. And that he stole her son away out on the alvar.”

It was late afternoon at the home in Marnäs, and Gerlof was sitting at his desk. He was gazing at the floor like a schoolboy who’s been found out.

“I might have hinted at something along those lines,” he said eventually. “Not that Nils is hiding in Vera’s house, I never said that, but that he might possibly be alive...”

Lennart just sighed. He was standing in front of Gerlof in the middle of the room, dressed in his uniform. He’d come to the home to tell Gerlof that Julia was now resting at Astrid’s cottage down in Stenvik, after being treated at the hospital in Borgholm the previous day.

“How is she?” asked Gerlof.

“Sprained right foot, broken wrist, broken collarbone, severe nosebleed, lots of bruises, and concussion,” said Lennart; he sighed again, then added, “As I said, it could have been worse, I mean she could have broken her neck. It could have been better, too... She could, for example, have decided not to break into Vera Kant’s house.”

“Will she be charged?” said Gerlof. “With the break-in?”

“No,” said Lennart. “Not by me. And the owners are hardly likely to do it either.”

“Have you spoken to them?”

Lennart nodded. “I managed to find a nephew of Vera’s in Växjö,” he said. “I called him before I came here. A younger cousin of Nils’s... He hasn’t been to Stenvik for many years, and was pretty sure nobody else in the family has either. The house is owned by several cousins in Småland, but they obviously can’t decide whether to renovate it or sell it.”

“I suspected it was something like that,” said Gerlof. Then he shook his head and looked at the policeman. “I never told Julia that I believe Nils Kant is still alive, Lennart,” he said. “I only said that some people believe it.”

“Like who?” asked Lennart.

“Well... Ernst,” said Gerlof, not wanting to get John Hagman mixed up in police business. “Ernst Adolfsson. I think he believed Nils Kant was alive and that Kant had killed Jens out on the alvar. So Ernst tried to get me to...”

Lennart looked at him wearily.

“Private eyes,” he interrupted. “Some people think they know better than the police how crimes should be solved.”

Gerlof considered coming out with a dry witticism, but couldn’t think of anything.

“There’s another thing, of course; somebody has actually been inside Vera Kant’s house,” Lennart went on.

Gerlof looked at the policeman in surprise.

“Really?” he said.

“The door has been forced. And there were traces upstairs. Newspaper cuttings pinned on the wall, stale food... a sleeping bag. And the cellar has been dug up.”

Gerlof thought it over.

“Have you examined the house?” he said.

“Only briefly,” said Lennart. “My priority was getting your daughter to the hospital.”

“Good. Her father thanks you for that,” said Gerlof.

“This morning I went into Vera Kant’s house again before I came here,” the policeman went on. “Julia was lucky: the paraffin lamp smashed on the stone floor when she dropped it. If it had ended up by the wall, the whole place could have burnt down.”

Gerlof nodded. “But what’s this about the cellar? Have they dug things up? Or buried them?”

“It was hard to see. Dug up, I should think. Or just dug.”

“People who break in don’t usually start digging for things,” said Gerlof. “And they don’t usually stay the night.”

Lennart looked tiredly at him. “Now you’re playing private eye again.”

“I’m just thinking out loud. And I’m thinking...”

“What?” pressed Lennart.

“Well... I’m thinking it must be somebody from Stenvik who’s been in the house.”

“Gerlof...”

“You can do plenty of things up here on Öland without being disturbed. You know that too. There’s hardly anybody around to see you...”

“Do feel free to write a letter to the paper about the shortage of police officers,” said Lennart sharply.

“But one thing people always see,” Gerlof went on quietly, “is strangers. Strangers with shovels, strange cars parked outside Vera Kant’s house — people in Stenvik would have noticed something like that. And they haven’t, as far as I know.”

Lennart thought about it.

“Who actually lives in Stenvik all year round?” he asked eventually.

“Not many people.”

Lennart didn’t speak for a few seconds.

“I might need your help, Gerlof,” he said, and quickly added, “Not as a private eye, but just to check out a few facts. I found something in the cellar.” He put his hand in his pocket. “There were several snuff tins on the windowsill in the cellar and under the stairs. All empty. They’re hardly from Vera Kant’s day.”

He pulled out a snuff tin, along with a notepad. The tin was in a small plastic bag.

“I don’t take snuff,” said Gerlof.

“No. But do you know anybody down in Stenvik who does?”

Gerlof hesitated for a few seconds, then nodded. There was no point in hiding things the police could find out anyway.

“Just one person,” he said.

Then he gave Lennart a name. The policeman wrote it down on his pad and nodded.

“Thanks for your help.”

“I’d like to come with you,” said Gerlof. “If you’re going to see him.” Lennart opened his mouth, and Gerlof added quickly, “I feel fine today, I can walk on my own. He’ll relax and be more ready to talk if I’m there. I’m almost sure of it.”

Lennart sighed.

“Put your coat on, then,” he said “and we’ll go for a little ride.”

“That was a fine speech, John,” said Gerlof. “At Ernst’s funeral, I mean.”

John was sitting on the other side of the table in his little kitchen in Stenvik, and nodded briefly without replying. He leaned back for a few seconds, then forward again. He was tense, Gerlof could see that very clearly, and it wasn’t difficult to see the reason either: the third person at the table was Lennart Henriksson, still dressed in his uniform. It was a quarter to six in the evening, and it was dark outside.

The empty snuff tin was on the table between them.

“So you’re reopening the case?” John asked Lennart.

“Well, I don’t know about reopening...” said Lennart, shrugging his shoulders. “We’d like to talk to Anders, if this actually is his snuff tin. Because that means he’s definitely the person who’s slept at Vera Kant’s house and been digging in the cellar and tacked up several newspaper cuttings about Nils Kant and Jens Davidsson. And we’d also really like to find out where Anders was the day little Jens disappeared.”

“You don’t need to ask Anders about that,” said John. “I can tell you.”

“Okay,” said Lennart. He took out a notepad and pen. “Tell me.”

“He was here,” said John tersely.

“In Stenvik?”

John nodded.

“And you were here too? Can you give him an alibi for that day?”

John shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t remember... but in the evening we were out searching along the shore. Both of us. I do remember that.”

“So do I,” said Gerlof.

Even if many other memories of that evening were very hazy, he had a picture in his head of John and his son, who must have been around twenty at the time, walking side by side southward along the shore.

“And in the afternoon?” said Lennart. “What was Anders doing then?”

“Don’t remember,” said John. “He might have been out. But he certainly wasn’t up near Gerlof’s cottage.” John looked at Gerlof. “There’s no evil in my son, Gerlof.”

Gerlof nodded. “Nobody thinks there is.”

“Anyway, we need to talk to him,” Lennart said. “Is he here?”

“He’s in Borgholm,” said John. “He went down yesterday after the funeral.”

“Does he live there?”

“Sometimes he does... with his mother. Sometimes he lives here with me. He pleases himself. He doesn’t drive, so he catches the bus there and back.”

“How old is he now?”

“He’s forty-two.”

“Forty-two... and he lives at home?”

“It’s no crime.” John pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “And he’s got his own cottage, just behind mine.”

“I think,” Gerlof interjected tentatively, “... that we might say Anders is a little bit special. Don’t you agree, John? He’s kind and helpful, but he’s a little bit different.”

“I’ve met Anders a couple of times,” said Lennart. “He seemed perfectly capable to me.”

John looked straight ahead, his neck rigid. “Anders keeps himself to himself,” he said. “He thinks a lot. Doesn’t talk much, not to me and not to anybody else. But there’s no evil in him.”

“And his address?” said Lennart.

John gave them the address of an apartment on Köpmansgatan. Lennart wrote it down.

“Good,” he said. “Well, we won’t disturb you any longer, John. We’ll get back to Marnäs now.”

The last sentence was directed at Gerlof. He had seen the blind fear beginning to grow in John’s eyes during the conversation. The fear that Authority, circling high above like a bird of prey, had finally spotted him and his only son up in the desolation of northern Öland, and would never let go of them again.

“There’s no evil in my son,” John repeated, despite the fact that Lennart was on his way to the door.

“There’s nothing to worry about, John,” said Gerlof quietly, not sounding in the least convincing. “We’ll have a chat on the phone tonight? Would that be okay?”

John nodded, but he was still looking tensely at Lennart, who stood waiting in the doorway.

“Come on, Gerlof,” he said.

It sounded like an order. Gerlof didn’t even feel like a policeman any longer, more like a lapdog — but he got up obediently and followed Lennart outside. He would really have liked to go and visit his daughter at Astrid’s, but that would have to wait until another time.

Gerlof’s muscles were trembling more than usual as he walked back to his room; the pain in his joints was also worse than usual. Lennart had brought him back to the home.

He could hear the telephone ringing through the door, and didn’t think he’d get there in time, but it kept on ringing.

“Davidsson?”

“It’s me.”

It was John.

“How are things?”

Gerlof sat down heavily on the bed.

John didn’t say anything.

“Have you spoken to Anders?” asked Gerlof.

“Yes. I phoned him in Borgholm. I’ve spoken to him.”

“Good. Maybe you shouldn’t tell him that the police want to—”

“It’s too late,” John broke in. “I told him the police had been here.”

“Right,” said Gerlof. “And what did he say?”

“Nothing. He just listened.”

Silence.

“John... I think we both know what Anders was doing at Vera Kant’s. What he was looking for in the cellar,” said Gerlof. “The soldiers’ treasure. The spoils of war everybody believed they had with them when they came ashore on Öland.”

“Yes,” said John.

“The treasure Nils Kant took from them,” Gerlof went on, “if that’s what happened.”

“Anders has been talking about it for many years,” said John.

“He’s not going to find it,” said Gerlof. “I know that.”

John was silent again.

“We need to go to Ramneby,” Gerlof went on. “To the sawmill and the wood museum. We can go tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” said John. “I have to go to Borgholm to get Anders.”

“Next week, then. When the museum is open. And afterwards maybe we can stop off in Borgholm and see how Martin Malm is.”

“Fine,” said John.

“We’re going to find Nils Kant, John,” Gerlof told him.

It was almost nine o’clock that same evening. The corridors of the home were hushed and empty.

Gerlof was standing outside Maja Nyman’s closed door, leaning on his cane. There wasn’t a sound from her room. On the door was a little handwritten note, which said: PLEASE KNOCK! JOHN 10:7.

“ ‘Truly I say unto you: I am the door of the sheep-fold,’ ” murmured Gerlof to himself.

He hesitated for a moment, then raised his right hand and knocked.

It took a while, but eventually Maja opened the door. They had seen each other at dinner a few hours earlier, and she was still wearing the same yellow skirt and white blouse.

“Good evening,” said Gerlof with a gentle smile. “I just wanted to see if you were home.”

“Gerlof.”

Maja smiled and nodded, but Gerlof thought he could see a tense furrow among all the others in her forehead, beneath her white hair. His visit was unexpected.

“May I come in?” he asked.

She nodded a little hesitantly, and stepped back into the room.

“I haven’t tidied up,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter at all,” said Gerlof.

Leaning on his cane, he walked slowly into the room, which looked just as clean and tidy as the last time he’d been there. A dark red Persian rug covered most of the floor, and the walls were full of portraits and pictures.

Gerlof had been in Maja’s room a number of times. They had had a relationship, which had begun a few months after Gerlof’s arrival at the home and ended a year or so later, when the pain of his Sjögren’s syndrome became too severe. After that they had continued a quiet friendship which was still strong. Both of them came from Stenvik; both had been left alone after a long marriage. They had plenty to talk about together.

“How are you feeling, Maja?”

“Fine. I’m keeping well.”

Maja pulled out a chair at the small brown table by the window, and Gerlof sat down gratefully. Maja sat down as well, and a silence fell.

Gerlof had to say something.

“I was just wondering, Maja, if you could tell me about something we talked about once before...”

He reached into his pocket and took out the little white envelope Julia had given him the week before.

“My daughter found this letter in the churchyard, by Nils Kant’s gravestone. I know you wrote it and put it there, that isn’t what I wanted to ask you about. I’m just wondering...”

“I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” said Maja quickly.

“Absolutely not,” said Gerlof. “I didn’t—”

“Nils never gets the best bunch of flowers,” said Maja. “My husband always gets that... I always see to Helge’s grave first, before I tidy Nils’s.”

“That’s good,” said Gerlof. “All graves should be looked after.” He went on: “That wasn’t what I wanted to ask about, it was something else... I remember you once told me you met Nils on the alvar, the same day he... dealt with the German soldiers.”

Maja nodded seriously. “I could see it in his face,” she said. “He didn’t say anything, but I could see something had happened... but he didn’t want to tell me what it was. I tried to talk to him, but Nils fled out onto the alvar again.”

“I understand,” said Gerlof, then paused before continuing cautiously:

“And you mentioned that you got something from him that day...”

Maja stared at him. Then she nodded.

“I’m just wondering if you could show me what he gave you,” Gerlof went on. “And if you’ve told anybody else about this. Have you?”

Maja sat motionless, looking at him. “Nobody else knows anything,” she said. “And it wasn’t something I got from him, it was something I took.”

“Sorry?”

“I didn’t get anything from Nils,” said Maja. “I took it. And I’ve regretted it so many times...”

“A package,” said Gerlof. “You said it was a package.”

“I followed Nils,” said Maja. “I was young and curious. Far too curious... so I stayed hidden behind the bushes and I watched Nils. And he went to the memorial cairn outside Stenvik.”

“The cairn? What did he do there?”

Maja said nothing. Her gaze was distant.

“He dug a hole,” she said at last.

“Did he bury something?” asked Gerlof. “Was it the package?”

Maja looked at him and said:

“Nils is dead, Gerlof.”

“It seems so,” said Gerlof.

“It is so,” said Maja. “Not everybody believes it, but I know. He would have been in touch otherwise.”

Gerlof nodded. “Did you dig up the package when Nils had gone?”

Maja shook her head. “I ran home,” she said. “It was later... after he came home.”

It took a few seconds for Gerlof to understand.

“You mean... after he came home in a coffin?”

Maja nodded. “I went out onto the alvar and dug it up,” she said.

She got up, smoothed down her skirt, and went over to the television in the corner of the room. Gerlof stayed where he was, but turned his head so that he could watch her.

“It was one autumn day in the sixties, a couple of years after Nils’s funeral,” said Maja. “Helge was out in the fields and the children were at school in Marnäs. So I locked up the house and went out onto the alvar on my own, with a garden spade in a plastic bag.”

Gerlof watched Maja struggle to lift a blue-painted wooden chest decorated with red roses from a shelf beneath the TV. He’d seen it before; it was her old sewing box. She carried it to the table and placed it in front of Gerlof.

“I crossed over the main road,” she went on, “and after half an hour or so I got down to the alvar outside Stenvik. I found what was left of the cairn and tried to remember exactly where I’d seen Nils digging... and in the end I did.”

She opened the lid of the chest. Gerlof saw scissors, yarn, and rows of cotton reels, and thought about when he used to mend torn sails. Then Maja lifted up the false bottom and placed it to one side, and Gerlof could see a flat case lying in the secret compartment underneath.

A metal box, discolored with old rusty patches.

At least, Gerlof hoped it was rust.

“Here it is.”

Maja took out the case and handed it to him. He heard something rattling inside.

“Can I open it?” he asked.

“You can do whatever you like with it, Gerlof.”

The case had no lock, and he opened it very carefully.

The contents sparkled and shone.

Perhaps it was just twenty or so bits of glass in a case, just trinkets — but it was difficult not to see something different, something more precious. And there was a cross lying alongside them. Gerlof was no expert, but it looked like a crucifix made of pure gold.

Gerlof closed the lid, before he was tempted to pick up the stones and roll them between his fingers.

“Have you told anyone else about this?” he asked evenly.

“I told my husband before he died,” Maja replied.

“Do you think he might have told anyone else?”

“He didn’t talk about things like that to other people,” said Maja. “And if he had, he would definitely have told me. We didn’t have any secrets.”

Gerlof believed her. Helge hadn’t been particularly talkative. But somehow the rumor that the soldiers Nils killed had had some kind of war spoils from the Baltic with them had begun to spread in the north of Öland. Gerlof had heard them too — so had John and Anders Hagman.

“So you’ve had them hidden here the whole time?” he said.

Maja nodded. “I’ve never done anything with them, I mean, they weren’t mine.” She added, “But I did try to give them to Nils’s mother Vera once.”

“Oh? When was that?”

Maja sat down carefully on the chair beside him, and Gerlof noticed that she drew the chair forward so that their knees were just touching between the ornate legs of the table.

“It was a few years later, at the end of the sixties. Helge had heard that Vera Kant had started to sell all her land along the coast, that she was getting short of money. So I thought maybe she should have the stones back...”

“Did you go and see her?” asked Gerlof.

Maja nodded. “I got the bus to Stenvik and went into Vera’s garden... It was summer, so the outside door was ajar as I went up the steps. My legs were shaking. I was scared of Vera, like most people...” Maja stopped, then went on: “A gramophone or a radio was playing inside the house, I could hear music. And voices. She had visitors.”

“She had a housekeeper for several years, so it might have been—”

“No. It was two men,” Maja interrupted him. “I could hear two men’s voices from the kitchen. One was mumbling, and the other one was speaking much more loudly and firmly, almost like a captain...”

“Did you see either of these men?” said Gerlof.

“No, no,” said Maja quickly. “And I didn’t stand there eavesdropping either... I knocked on the door as soon as I got to the top of the steps. The voices stopped, and Vera came hurtling out onto the veranda, slamming the kitchen door behind her. It was a shock, coming back to the village and seeing her after so many years. She’d got so thin and twisted... like a dried-out rope. But she was still suspicious, she looked at me as if I were a thief or something. ‘What do you want?’ she wanted to know. No hello, no politeness. I lost it completely. I had the case in my pocket, but I didn’t even get it out. I started stammering something about Nils and the alvar... and that was probably stupid. It was stupid, because Vera screamed at me to go away. Then she went back into the kitchen. And I went back home... and she died a few years later, of course.”

Gerlof nodded. Vera had died on the very same staircase Julia had fallen down. He asked:

“Did you hear what they were talking about? The two men?”

Maja shook her head. “I only heard a few words before I knocked,” she said. “Something about longing. It was the one with the loud voice who said something about somebody longing: ‘And of course you’re both longing to see each other,’ or something like that.”

Gerlof thought about it.

“Perhaps they were relatives of Vera’s,” he suggested. “Relatives from Småland?”

“Perhaps,” said Maja.

There was silence. Gerlof had no more questions; he needed to think this over.

“Well...” he said, reaching his hand up to pat Maja gently on the shoulder, but she leaned forward slightly so that his fingers ended up touching her cheek.

They stayed there, almost of their own accord, trembling in a movement which slowly became a caress.

Maja closed her eyes.

Gerlof released his breath softly, then leaned away.

“Well...” he said again. “I can’t... not anymore.”

“Are you sure?” asked Maja, opening her eyes.

Gerlof nodded sadly. “Too much pain,” he said.

“Perhaps it’ll disappear come the spring,” said Maja. “That happens sometimes.”

“Maybe,” said Gerlof, getting to his feet as quickly as he could. “Thank you for talking to me, Maja. I won’t spread this any further. You know that.”

Maja stayed where she was, sitting at the table.

“It’s fine, Gerlof,” she said.

Gerlof realized he was still holding the case in his left hand, and put it back on the table. But Maja picked it up, took out the crucifix, and gave the case back to him.

“You take them,” she said. “I don’t want them any longer. It’s better if you have them.”

“If you’re sure.”

He nodded several times, like a clumsy farewell, and left Maja’s room with the case in his pocket. It was heavy and cold, and rattled faintly as he walked along the empty corridor.

Gerlof closed the door behind him once he was back in his own room. He didn’t usually lock it, but he did now.

The spoils of war, he thought. Soldiers are always looking for the spoils of war. From whom had the soldiers received or taken the precious stones? Had anyone else died for them, apart from the soldiers themselves?

And where should he put them? Gerlof looked around. He didn’t have a sewing box with a false bottom.

In the end he went over to the bookcase. On one of the shelves was a ship in a bottle representing the final journey of the brig Bluebird of Hull, as he thought it would have looked that stormy night on the coast of Bohuslän. Bluebird was on her way to the Bohuslän rocks, where she would go aground, and six men would drown.

Gerlof picked up the bottle and took out the cork. Then he opened the case and slowly, carefully, tipped the stones into the bottle. He shook the bottle to get them in the right place. There, now, if you didn’t look too closely it looked as if the stones were rocks the brig was about to run aground on.

That would have to do for the time being.

Gerlof put the ship back on the shelf and hid the empty case behind a row of books on a lower shelf.

For the rest of the evening, before he went to bed, he kept looking over at the bottle. After the twelfth or fifteenth time he began to understand why Maja had looked so relieved when she handed the old metal case over to him.

That night his only real nightmare from his time at sea came back to him.

He dreamed that he was standing by the gunwale of a ship sailing slowly across the Baltic, somewhere between the northern tip of Öland and the island of Oaxen. It was twilight, not a breath of wind, and Gerlof was standing gazing out across the shining water toward the horizon, with no land in sight anywhere...

... and then he looked down into the water and caught sight of an old mine from the Second World War.

It was floating just beneath the surface: a massive black ball of steel covered in algae and mussels, with its black spikes sticking out.

It was impossible to veer away. All Gerlof could do was to look on in horror as the hull of the ship and the mine slowly but remorselessly glided toward one another, closer and closer.

He woke up with a cry in the darkness of the home, just before the mine exploded.