Echoes From the Dead

24

Gerlof and John drove across the Öland Bridge, past Kalmar, then north along the coast of Småland. Neither of them said much during the journey.

Gerlof was mainly thinking about the fact that it had become much more difficult to leave the home in Marnäs — Boel had questioned him closely this morning about where he was going and how long he was going to be away. In the end she had hinted that perhaps he was too healthy to stay on at the home.

“There are many elderly people with severe mobility problems in the north of Öland who would like to get a room here, Gerlof,” Boel had said. “We have to make sure we’re prioritizing correctly. All the time.”

“Quite right,” Gerlof had said, and set off, leaning on his cane for support.

Didn’t he have the right to care? When he could hardly move ten yards without help? Boel should be glad he got out into the fresh air sometimes, along with old friends like John. Shouldn’t she?

“So Anders has gone off, then,” said Gerlof eventually, when they were just a few kilometers from Ramneby.

“Yes,” said John.

He always drove at the speed limit, and a long line of cars had built up behind them.

“I assume you told Anders the police were looking for him,” said Gerlof.

John remained silent behind the wheel, but he nodded.

“I don’t know if that was such a good idea,” said Gerlof. “The police tend to get annoyed when you don’t want to talk to them.”

“He just wants to be left in peace,” said John.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” said Gerlof again.

“Did you speak to Robert Blomberg when you were in Borgholm last week?” John asked. “The car salesman, I mean.”

“I saw him,” said Gerlof. “He was in the showroom. We didn’t speak... I didn’t really know what to say.”

“Could he be Kant?” said John.

“If you’re asking me straight out... I’ve thought about it, and I don’t believe he could,” said Gerlof. “It seems unlikely that somebody like Nils Kant would come back from South America with a new name, and manage to blend in in Borgholm with a new life.”

“Maybe,” said John.

A few minutes later they drove past the yellow sign telling them they were entering Ramneby. It was a quarter to eleven in the morning. A flatbed truck carrying a load of newly felled timber thundered past them.

Gerlof had never been to Ramneby before, either by car or boat. The village itself was no bigger than Marnäs, and they were soon on the other side of it, turning off for the sawmill.

There was a closed steel gate at the sawmill, and a parking lot outside it where John left the car.

Gerlof took his briefcase and they walked over to the wide gate and rang the bell. After a while there was a scraping noise from a small loudspeaker next to the bell.

“Hello?” said Gerlof, unsure whether he should be talking to the bell or the loudspeaker, or perhaps to the sky. “Hello... We wanted to visit the wood museum. Could you open the gate?”

The loudspeaker remained silent.

“Did they hear you?” whispered John.

“I don’t know.”

Gerlof heard a cawing noise behind him; turning his head, he saw two crows perched in a leafless birch tree beside the parking lot. They kept cawing, and Gerlof thought they sounded different from the crows on Öland. Did birds have different accents too?

Then he noticed someone approaching on the other side of the gate, an elderly man in a cap and a black padded jacket, moving almost as slowly as Gerlof himself. The man pressed a button on the other side, and the gate swung open.

“Heimersson,” said the man, extending his hand.

Gerlof shook it. “Davidsson,” he said.

“Hagman,” said John.

“We wanted to visit the wood museum,” said Gerlof again. “I called yesterday...”

“That’s fine,” said Heimersson, turning to show them the way. “It was a good thing you did. The museum is really only open in the summer. Including August. But if you call in advance, it’s usually fine.”

They had reached the factory area now. Gerlof had expected the smell of newly sawn wood in his nostrils and the sight of groups of men in caps carrying planks of wood around between heaps of sawdust — as usual he was stuck in the past. All he saw instead were roads and tarmac between huge gray buildings made of steel and aluminum. There were big signs on them with the name RAMNEBY TIMBER.

“I’ve worked here for forty-eight years,” said Heimersson over his shoulder to them. “Started when I was fifteen, and stayed on. That’s the way things turned out... Now I look after the museum.”

“We come from the village where the owners used to live,” said Gerlof. “In the north of Öland.”

“The owners?” said Heimersson.

“The Kant family.”

“The Kants don’t own this place any longer,” said Heimersson. “They sold it at the end of the seventies, when August Kant died. It’s a forestry company in Canada that owns Ramneby nowadays.”

“The previous owner... August Kant?” said Gerlof. “Did you meet him?”

“Did I meet him,” said Heimersson, smiling as if the question were amusing. “I met him every day. He always drove his MG in... Anyway, here we are. This is the old office, it got too small in the end.”

WOOD MUSEUM said a wooden sign above the door. Heimersson unlocked it, went in, and switched the light on.

“Right... you’re both very welcome. That’ll be thirty kronor each.”

He had gone behind a counter with an ancient, enormous cash register on it.

Gerlof paid for both of them and received two receipts exactly like the one he’d found in Ernst Adolfsson’s wallet, then they went into the museum.

It wasn’t large, just two rooms with a short corridor between them. Some old saws and measuring equipment stood in the center of the room, and there were pictures on the walls. Lots of black-and-white photographs, framed and behind glass, all with labels explaining what was in each one. Gerlof went over to them in silence and stared at group photographs of sawmill workers, at forestry workers with saws in their hands, and at pictures of ships at anchor, their decks covered in piles of timber.

“There are some more recent photos in the other room,” said Heimersson from behind him.

“Right,” said Gerlof.

He would have preferred to look around alone, and noticed that John was carefully keeping out of the guide’s way.

“Our first computer is in there too,” said Heimersson. “That’s progress for you... I mean, computers run all the sawing nowadays. I don’t actually understand how it works myself, but it seems to be very effective.”

“Right.”

Gerlof kept searching among the black-and-white photographs.

“Ramneby exports refined wood all the way to Japan,” said Heimersson. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any business over there?”

“No,” said Gerlof, and added quickly, “But there’s limestone from Öland on the floor of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.”

Heimersson didn’t reply, and Gerlof changed the subject:

“A friend of ours was here last month, actually, here in the museum. Ernst Adolfsson.”

“From Öland?”

Gerlof nodded. “He used to be a stonemason. He was here in the middle of September.”

“Yes, I remember him very well,” said Heimersson. “I opened the museum especially for him, just like I have for you. I enjoyed meeting him. He said he lived on Öland, but that he came from this village originally.”

“From Ramneby?” said Gerlof.

“Yes. He grew up down in the village, before he moved to Öland.”

This was news to Gerlof, who had never heard Ernst talk about the village he came from.

He took a couple more steps, and then he saw it: the picture of Martin Malm and August Kant side by side at the sawmill harbor, standing stiffly in front of a row of younger workers.

A friendly business meeting on the quayside at the sawmill, 1959, said the typed strip of paper beneath the picture, despite the fact that only one solitary man in the group was wearing a friendly smile. The rest of them, Martin and Kant included, were staring at the camera with serious expressions.

1959. So that was several years before Martin bought his first big ship, thought Gerlof.

On this copy of the photograph, which was bigger than the picture in the book, the hand on Martin’s left shoulder could be seen clearly, and that was at least a sign of friendliness. It had certainly never occurred to Gerlof to place an arm around Martin Malm’s shoulder; he wasn’t a person who invited any form of intimacy. But it had been fine for August Kant to do that.

“This is one of our friends,” said Gerlof, pointing at Martin Malm’s face. “A boat captain from Öland.”

“Oh yes,” said Heimersson. He didn’t sound particularly interested. “There were cargo ships here all the time in the old days... They used to take wood to Öland. You haven’t got much in the way of forests there, after all.”

“We did have forests, but they were chopped down by people from the mainland,” said Gerlof. He pointed at the picture again. “And that’s August Kant, isn’t it?”

“That’s the boss, yes.”

“He had quite a well-known nephew,” said Gerlof. “Nils Kant.”

“Oh yes, him,” said Heimersson. “I’ve heard about him — he murdered a policeman. Read about him in the paper, too. But he died, didn’t he? Ran off overseas and died?”

“Yes,” said Gerlof. “But did he ever come here before that?”

“I don’t think the boss was very keen on Nils,” said Heimersson. “He never talked about his nephew. So nobody else talked about him either, not if the boss was around.”

“Perhaps he didn’t want to give away the fact that he knew where Nils was?” said Gerlof.

“Could be, I suppose,” said Heimersson. “But Nils was here when he was running away from Öland, after he’d murdered that policeman.”

“Was he? And did he meet his uncle?”

“I don’t know. But he hung around here for a while... people saw him in the forest.” Heimersson pointed toward the photographs. “Gunnar there was an errand boy like me at the time, and he boasted that he’d met him and got money from him. But then he boasted about a lot of things... I just remember that somebody tipped the police off in the end, told them Nils Kant was here. The cops came and watched the sawmill for several days, just in case he turned up. Everybody was a bit nervous... but we did our jobs, of course. And the murderer stayed well away from us.”

Gerlof felt he could almost see young Nils creeping around the office building over on the far side, crouching low and trying to peep in through the windows to find his uncle August.

“Did our friend Ernst happen to mention this picture from the quayside?” asked Gerlof.

Heimersson thought it over.

“Yes, he did,” he answered. “He stopped at that one. He wanted to know the names.”

“The names?” said Gerlof. “Of the sawmill workers?”

“Yes. And I gave him the ones I remembered. You forget things like that as you get older; for example these days I can’t—”

“Could you tell me the names too?” Gerlof cut in.

He’d got his notebook and a ballpoint pen out of his briefcase.

“No problem,” said Heimersson. “Right, let’s see, from the left...”

There were three men in the row whose names Heimersson couldn’t remember, they were probably sailors, but Gerlof wrote down the rest: Per Bengtsson, Knut Lindkvist, Anders Åkergren, Claes Frisell, Gunnar Johansson, Jan Ekendahl, Mikael Larsson. Then he looked at the list he’d made, but didn’t recognize a single name. He still didn’t know what Ernst had been looking for.

Heimersson moved on cheerfully. He went ahead of them along the corridor to the other room.

“There’s our first computer, over there... The size of a house. But that’s the way they used to be.”

Gerlof nodded absently and allowed Heimersson to show him around the room where the technological development of the sawmill and forestry in general was presented. Most of it dealt with statistics and big machines.

“It really is very interesting,” said Gerlof after ten minutes. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re very welcome,” said Heimersson. “It’s always a pleasure to meet people who are interested in wood.”

He went outside with them and pointed over to one of the steel buildings.

“We’ve just installed a new X-ray process to assess the quality of the wood. Perhaps you’d like to see that too?”

Gerlof caught a brief shake of the head from John, who had had enough of timber.

“Thank you,” he replied, “but I should think that would be far too technical for us. But we would like to go down to the harbor and have a look around, if that’s okay. On our own.”

“The harbor?” said Heimersson. “I wouldn’t call it that. It’s too shallow here for the big ships to come in. All our wood is transported by truck.”

“We’d still like to take a look,” said Gerlof.

“Fine,” said Heimersson. “I’ll lock up the museum, then.”

He was right — Gerlof could see it wasn’t much of a harbor to speak of when they’d walked the hundred yards or so down to the water. There was hardly anything that could be called a quay, the asphalt was cracked, and the square granite slabs along what was left of the quay had become dislodged, with gaping spaces between them.

Beside the quay a wooden jetty extended a dozen or so yards out into the water. Even that needed repairing, in Gerlof’s opinion. Was there really not enough timber from the sawmill to do that?

There was an old lone wooden skiff bobbing in the water by the jetty, silently waiting for its owner to lift it out before the winter storms came.

The wind was coming off the land, bitterly cold, and Öland could just be glimpsed as a dark strip along the horizon. Despite the fact that the coast of Småland was beautiful, with its islands and inlets, Gerlof was already longing to get back to the island.

“I assume it was here that Martin Malm’s ships used to dock,” he said.

“That’s right,” said John. “The picture was taken here.”

There wasn’t much more to see, and Gerlof was feeling the cold right through his overcoat. He had no desire to go out onto the jetty in this wind, and when John turned away he did the same.

On the way back Gerlof stopped and looked out over the open space between the sawmill buildings. It was still completely deserted.

At that same moment he was suddenly struck by absolute certainty. There was no logic to it; it came up from his subconscious like a dark fish, appearing and striking just beneath the surface of the water, and before he had even managed to think it through, he opened his mouth:

“It began here.”

“What did?” said John.

“Everything began here. Nils Kant and Jens and... My grandchild died because of something that began here.”

“Here in Ramneby?”

“Yes, here. Here at the sawmill.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can feel it,” said Gerlof, and he could hear how stupid it sounded. But still he had to go on: “There was some kind of meeting, I think it was a meeting. When Nils came here... He must have met his uncle August and reached some kind of agreement. Something like that must have happened.”

But the feeling of certainty had already disappeared.

“Right. Shall we go home, then?” said John.

Gerlof nodded, and set off again.

Gerlof was sitting alone in John’s car. It was parked next to the stone houses on a deserted Larmgatan in the middle of Kalmar. John had wanted to stop off in the town for a brief visit to his sister Ingrid before they went back to Öland.

Gerlof was thinking things over. Had they really got anything out of the visit to the museum? He wasn’t sure.

On the other side of the street the door of Ingrid’s apartment block opened and John came out. He walked straight over to the car and opened the driver’s door.

“Was she all right?” asked Gerlof.

John settled himself behind the wheel without replying. Then he started the engine and pulled out.

They left Kalmar and drove out on the straight freeway toward Öland in silence, but it wasn’t until they reached the bridge that Gerlof decided it had lasted long enough.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Did something happen at Ingrid’s?”

“The police have got Anders,” John said. “They picked him up there at lunchtime.”

“Picked him up where?” said Gerlof. “At Ingrid’s?”

John nodded. “Anders was at his aunt Ingrid’s. He was hiding there. And now they’ve arrested him.”

“Arrested him — are you sure about that?” said Gerlof. “The police only arrest someone if they think—”

“Ingrid said they walked in without knocking,” John interrupted him. “They came in and told Anders he had to go with them to Borgholm. They refused to answer her questions.”

“Did you know he was in Kalmar?”

John didn’t say anything, he simply nodded again.

“As I said this morning,” said Gerlof slowly, “it’s never a good idea to take off if the police want to talk to you. It just makes them suspicious.”

“Anders doesn’t trust them,” said John. “He was trying to prevent that brawl at the campsite. But he was the one who ended up in court, not those people from Stockholm.”

“I know,” said Gerlof. “And that wasn’t right.” He thought for a while, then asked as gently as he could, “But if... if the police think Anders might have anything to do with my grandchild’s disappearance, and want to talk to him about it... Is there anything to suggest they might be right? I mean, you know Anders better than anyone else... Have you ever suspected anything?”

John shook his head. “Anders is a decent man.”

“You don’t even need to think about it?” said Gerlof.

“The only stupid thing I’ve ever seen him do,” said John, “was one evening when he was creeping around in the juniper bushes by the jetty. He was spying on some girls who were getting changed at the swimming club. He was twelve or thirteen at the time. I told him never to do anything like that again. And he never did.”

“That’s not too serious,” Gerlof said, nodding.

“He’s a decent man,” John repeated. “But they’ve arrested him anyway.”

The car had crossed the bridge now, and they were back on the island.

Gerlof was thinking as he gazed out over the windswept alvar east of the main road. He nodded again.

“Okay, let’s go to Borgholm,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Martin Malm one last time. He’s going to tell me what really happened.”