Echoes From the Dead

27

“We’re old men after all, both of us,” said Gerlof to Martin Malm. “And we’ve got time to think. And I’ve been thinking a great deal lately...”

He met Martin’s gaze. They were still sitting opposite each other in the dark drawing room, where the TV was now showing pictures of Fred Flintstone hacking rocks out of the mountainside.

Gerlof still had the book with the photo from Ramneby in his hand.

“Your freight company wasn’t that big when this picture was taken,” he said. “I know that, because mine was just as small. You had a few sailing ships that carried cargo, stone, and timber and all kinds of goods across our own little Baltic Sea, just like the rest of us. But then three or four years later you bought your first steamship and started sailing to Europe and across the Atlantic. The rest of us limped along with our sailing ships for a little while longer, until the regulations about minimum crew numbers and maximum loads became too much for us. We couldn’t get the banks to lend us any money for bigger ships; you were the only one who invested in modern tonnage at exactly the right time.” He was still looking at Malm. “But where did you get the money from, Martin? You had just as little money of your own as any other skipper at that time, and the banks must have been just as miserly with you as they were with the rest of us.”

Martin’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

“Did it come from August Kant, Martin?” asked Gerlof. “From the owner of the sawmill at Ramneby?”

Martin stared at Gerlof, and his head jerked.

“No? But I think it did.”

Gerlof reached into his briefcase again, then grabbed his cane and got up. He walked slowly around the television and over to Martin.

“I think you got paid for bringing home a murderer from South America, Martin. Nils Kant, who’d murdered a policeman... August’s nephew.”

Martin moved his head back and forth. He opened his mouth again.

“Ee-ra,” he said. “Ee-ra A-ant.”

“Vera Kant,” said Gerlof. He was beginning to understand Martin a little now. “Nils’s mother. No doubt she wanted her son home as well. But it was her brother August who paid, wasn’t it? First he paid you to bring home a body in a coffin to Öland, which was buried up in Marnäs so that everybody would believe Nils Kant was dead. Then you brought Nils home several years later, more discreetly.”

He stood in front of Martin, who had to twist his neck in order to look up at him.

“Nils came home, sometime toward the end of the sixties, and hid somewhere here on Öland. He didn’t need to hide particularly carefully, because nobody would recognize him after twenty-five years. I’m sure he was able to visit his mother sometimes, and go walking out on the alvar.”

Gerlof looked down at the man in the wheelchair.

“I think Nils was walking around out there one foggy September day, when he met a little boy who had got lost in the fog. My grandson, Jens.”

Martin Malm said nothing.

“And then something went wrong,” Gerlof went on quietly. “Something happened and Nils got scared. I don’t believe Nils Kant was as evil and as crazy as some people maintain. He was just scared and impulsive, and he could be violent sometimes. And that’s why Jens died.” Gerlof sighed. “And then... you probably know better than anyone. I think Nils came and asked you for help. Together you buried my grandson’s body somewhere out on the alvar. But you kept one thing.”

He brought out the object he had taken from his briefcase. It was the brown envelope with Malm Freight’s logo torn off, the one Gerlof had received in the mail.

“You kept one of Jens’s sandals. You sent it to me a couple of months ago, in this envelope. Why did you do that, Martin? Did you want to make your confession?”

Malm looked at the envelope, and his chin moved again.

“Unn-er’s a-zee.”

Gerlof nodded without understanding what the other man meant. He sat down slowly to get his breath back, and gave Martin one last long look.

“Did you kill Nils, Martin?”

Gerlof’s final question received no answer, of course, so he answered it himself:

“I think you did... I think Nils had become too dangerous for you. And I think he was the one who gave you that scar on your forehead. But I can’t prove that either, of course.”

He leaned forward and wearily pushed the book and the envelope back in his old briefcase. It had been hard work, this performance, and he was exhausted.

On a bookshelf along one wall, framed family photographs were arranged, and Gerlof could see smiling youngsters on several of them.

“Our children, Martin...” he said. “We have to expect that they will forget about us. We want our children to remember all the good things we did in spite of everything, but that isn’t always the way things turn out.”

Gerlof was so tired now, just saying whatever came into his head. Martin Malm too seemed to have lost all his strength. Over in his wheelchair, he was neither moving nor attempting to say anything else.

The air in the drawing room seemed to have been completely used up, and the room felt darker than it had been. Gerlof got up slowly.

“It’s time I was on the move, Martin,” he said. “Look after yourself... I might be back.”

He thought the last sentence sounded threatening, and that was his intention, to a certain extent.

The door to the hallway opened before he got there. Ann-Britt Malm’s pale face appeared.

Gerlof smiled wearily at her.

“We’ve had our little chat,” he told her.

It was actually only Gerlof who had done any chatting, and he hadn’t received one single clear answer.

He walked past Martin Malm’s wife, and she closed the drawing room door behind them.

“Right, well, thank you very much,” said Gerlof, nodding to her.

“It was me who sent that,” said Ann-Britt Malm.

Gerlof stopped. She was pointing at his briefcase, where the top edge of the brown envelope was sticking up.

“Martin has cancer of the liver,” she said. “He hasn’t got long left.”

Gerlof remained rooted to the spot, not knowing what to say. He looked down at his briefcase.

“How did you know...” He cleared his throat. “... where to send it?”

“Martin gave me the envelope last summer. The sandal was already inside, and he’d written your name on it. All I had to do was send it.”

“Did you call me too?” he asked. “Somebody called me after it had arrived... somebody who put the phone down.”

“Yes. I wanted to ask... about the sandal,” said Ann-Britt Malm. “Why Martin had it, what it might mean. But I was afraid of the answers... afraid Martin might have done something to your child.”

“Not my child. Jens was my grandchild. But I don’t know what the sandal means.”

“I don’t know either, and it’s...” She fell silent. Then she said, “Martin didn’t want to say anything when he got it out, but I... I had the feeling he’d taken the sandal as some kind of security. Could that have been the case?”

“Security?” said Gerlof.

“Against somebody else,” said Ann-Britt. “But I don’t know.”

Gerlof looked at her. “Has Martin ever talked about the Kants? The Kant family?”

Ann-Britt hesitated, then she nodded. “Yes, but nothing more than to mention they were doing some business together... Vera invested money in Martin’s ships, after all.”

“Vera in Stenvik?” said Gerlof. “But it was August, surely?”

Ann-Britt shook her head. “Vera Kant in Stenvik put money into Martin’s first steamship. And he really needed that money, I do know that.”

Gerlof merely nodded. He had only one question left, then he wanted to get out of this big, gloomy house.

“When Martin gave you the envelope,” he said, “had anyone been to visit him, just before that?”

“We don’t get many visitors,” said Ann-Britt.

“I think someone from Stenvik might have been here. An old stonemason... Ernst Adolfsson.”

“Ernst, yes, that’s right,” said Ann-Britt. “We’ve bought a few things made of stone from him — he’s dead now. He did call in to see Martin... but I think it was earlier in the summer.”

Ernst had got there first again, thought Gerlof.

“Thank you” was all he said, picking up his overcoat. It felt much heavier now, like some kind of armor. “Will Martin be going into the hospital soon?” he asked.

“No, he won’t,” said Ann-Britt. “No hospitals. The doctors always come here.”

Out on the steps the wind grabbed hold of him again, and this time it made him sway unsteadily. It had begun to drizzle. He screwed up his eyes to face the cold alone, but then he spotted John’s car parked a dozen or so yards away.

John nodded as Gerlof opened the passenger door and got in.

“It’s over,” he said.

“Good,” said John.

Only then did Gerlof notice there was someone sitting in the back seat: a broad-shouldered figure who had managed to sink right down and hide himself behind John. It was Anders, his son.

“I went over to the apartment,” said John. “Anders is back home. They let him go.”

“Excellent. Hi there, Anders.”

John’s son merely nodded.

“It’s good that the police believed you, isn’t it?” said Gerlof.

“Yes,” said Anders.

“You won’t go into Vera Kant’s house anymore, will you?”

“No.” Anders shook his head. “It’s haunted.”

“That’s what I heard,” said Gerlof. “But you weren’t scared?”

“No,” said Anders. “She stayed in her room.”

“She? You mean Vera?”

Anders nodded. “She’s bitter.”

“Bitter?”

“She feels as if she’s been deceived.”

“Does she indeed,” said Gerlof.

He was thinking about what Maja Nyman had told him, about the two male voices she’d heard in Vera’s kitchen. Had one of them belonged to Martin Malm?

It kept on raining, and John switched on the windshield wipers as he pulled out into the street.

“I was thinking of staying here in Borgholm with Anders for a while,” he said. “We’re going to have a coffee with his mother. I’m sure you’d be welcome too.”

“No, I’d better get back,” said Gerlof quickly. “Otherwise Boel will have a fit.”

“Right,” said John.

“I can get the bus to Marnäs,” said Gerlof. “Isn’t there one at half past three?”

“We can have a look at the depot,” said John.

Gerlof sat in silence as they drove through Borgholm, thinking things over. As usual he had the feeling he’d missed things at Martin Malm’s, that he’d asked the wrong questions and hadn’t interpreted correctly the few answers he’d been given. He should have made some notes.

“Martin can’t talk anymore,” he said with a sigh.

“Oh yes?” said John.

When the car turned right at the square, Gerlof turned his head and suddenly saw Julia through a window on the opposite side of the street.

She was sitting in a restaurant beside the church with Lennart Henriksson, the policeman. Gerlof felt no surprise at seeing them together.

Julia was looking at Lennart and she looked calm, Gerlof thought as the car moved away from the restaurant. Not happy, perhaps, but peaceful. And Lennart also looked better than he had for many years. Good.

“So you’re okay catching the bus?” asked John.

Gerlof nodded. “I feel fine now,” he said. This was partly true; he could walk, at any rate. “And we have to support public transport. Otherwise no doubt they’ll get rid of the buses too.”

John turned north toward Borgholm’s bus station. It had been a railway station in times gone by, the terminus for the train Nils Kant had jumped off after he murdered the policeman — but now only buses and cabs stopped there.

The car pulled into the parking lot. John got out and went around to the passenger’s side to open the door.

“Thanks,” said Gerlof, wobbling to his feet. He nodded a farewell to Anders.

It had been a strenuous day, but he fought hard to walk steadily and with dignity toward the buses behind the station, with his briefcase in one hand and his cane in the other. The drizzle was coming down more heavily now. The bus going to Byxelkrok via Marnäs was already in; the driver was sitting behind the wheel reading the paper.

Gerlof stopped by the door of the bus.

“Anyway, it’s finished now,” he told John. “We’ve done as much as we could. Martin will have to live with what he’s done. For however long he’s got left.”

“Yes. He will,” said John.

“One thing...” said Gerlof. “Fridolf... have you ever heard of anyone Martin knew by that name?”

“Fridolf?” John said. “As in Little Fridolf? In the comic strip?”

“Yes. Or maybe Fritiof,” said Gerlof. “Fridolf or Fritiof.”

“Not that I know of,” said John. “Is it important?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Gerlof stood in silence in front of John for a few moments as two teenage boys in black padded jackets and with spiky hair pushed quickly past them and leapt onto the bus without so much as glancing at the two old men.

Gerlof suddenly realized it wouldn’t matter at all if he’d just unmasked a murderer or not. It wouldn’t change a thing. Life was carrying on as normal around him, and Öland was still a sparsely populated island.

He felt depressed. Perhaps he was having an eighty-year-old’s crisis.

“Thanks for today,” he said to John. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

“You do that.”

John nodded and held his cane as Gerlof struggled up the high steps onto the bus. He took his cane, paid the driver for his journey, including his senior citizen’s discount, and went to sit on the right by a window. He watched John walk back to his car and get inside.

Gerlof leaned back, closed his eyes, and heard the bus rumble into life. As slowly as an old cargo boat, it began to pull away from the station.

Fridolf or Fritiof, he thought. And a meeting in Ramneby, where Ernst grew up.

Fridolf? Fritiof?

Gerlof didn’t know anyone on Öland with either of those names.