Echoes From the Dead

32

“Here we are,” said Lennart, switching off the engine of the police car. “What do you think of my little hideaway?”

“It’s lovely,” said Julia.

He’d turned onto a private drive a few kilometers north of Marnäs, driven slowly along between the trees, then stopped in a glade. The blue-gray sea lay ahead, and in front of it Lennart’s red-brick house and his little garden.

It wasn’t big, just as he’d said, but the location was wonderful. The only thing visible beyond the house was the sweeping expanse of the horizon. The neatly cut lawn sloped down toward the sea, almost imperceptibly blurring into a broad, sandy beach.

The bare trunks of the pine trees framed the garden like the walls of a church, providing shade and subduing any sound.

Once Lennart had switched off the engine, the silence had an air of solemnity about it; the only sound was the wind soughing in the treetops.

“The pine trees were brought in and planted, of course,” said Lennart, “but that was long before my time.”

They got out of the car, and with her eyes closed, Julia inhaled the scent of the forest.

“How long have you lived here?”

“A long time... almost twenty years. But I’m still very happy here.” He glanced around, as if he were looking around for the first time, then asked, “Are you allergic to cats? I’ve got a Persian called Missy, but I think she must be out somewhere.”

“No problem, I’m fine with cats,” said Julia, following him into the house on her crutches.

Its brick walls looked sturdy, as if no winter storm from the Baltic would ever be able to move them. Lennart unlocked the door and held it open for her.

“You’re not very hungry yet, are you?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine,” said Julia, walking into a small entrance hall that led into the kitchen.

Lennart wasn’t a fussy housekeeper, just tidy. The whole house was much neater than Julia’s little apartment in Gothenburg, with copies of Ölands-Posten tidily arranged in a wooden newspaper rack on the wall. The only clue to his profession was a few copies of the magazine Swedish Police in the same rack. There were several fishing rods in the hall, two or three plants in each window, and a well-stocked shelf of cookbooks above the stove in the kitchen.

Julia couldn’t see any beer cans or bottles of alcohol anywhere. She was pleased about that.

Lennart moved around switching on lamps in the windows of the big room beyond the kitchen.

“Do you want to go down to the shore,” he called out, “before it gets too dark? If we take an umbrella?”

“Love to, as long as I can manage on my crutches.”

Lennart laughed. “We’ll take it carefully. If you go out onto the point, you can see Böda on a clear day,” he said, adding, “You know, the bay with the big sandy beach.”

Julia smiled. “Yes, I know where Böda is,” she said.

“Of course you do. I forgot you were brought up here. Shall we go?”

She nodded, and glanced at the clock. A quarter past five.

“Do you mind if I use the phone first?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

“I’ll just give Astrid a quick ring and tell her where I am.”

“It’s on the countertop,” said Lennart.

Astrid always gave her number when she answered the phone, so Julia had learned it off by heart. She keyed it in quickly and heard the phone begin to ring. On the fifth ring Astrid picked up, with Willy barking furiously in the background.

“Julia,” she said when she realized who it was. “I was out at the back raking leaves. Where are you?”

“I’m in Marnäs, or rather north of Marnäs, at Lennart Henriksson’s. We’ve—”

“Is Gerlof there with you?”

“No,” said Julia. “I assume he’s at the home.”

“No, he isn’t,” said Astrid firmly. “The lady who’s in charge there, Boel, rang me a little while ago, wondering where he was. He went off this morning with John Hagman, and he hasn’t come back.”

“I expect he’s with John, then,” said Julia.

“No,” said Astrid, again firm. “It was John who called Boel. He’d left Gerlof at the bus station, and Gerlof was supposed to phone him when he got home.”

Julia thought for a moment. Gerlof ought to be allowed to do whatever he wanted, and he was sure to be fine, but...

“I’d better ring the home, then,” she said, despite the fact that all she really wanted to do at the moment was to go down to the shore with Lennart.

“Good idea,” said Astrid, and they said goodbye.

Julia hung up.

“Everything okay?” asked Lennart behind her. He was standing in the doorway and had already put his jacket back on. “Shall we go? We can have a cup of coffee when we get back.”

Julia nodded, but she had a thoughtful furrow in her forehead.

The sky had darkened now; it was almost evening, and even colder than before. The soughing of the wind in the tops of the pine trees surrounding the house sounded even more desolate now.

None of the dead has been identified, thought Julia.

It was a headline about a car accident she had read on a placard down in Borgholm, she remembered. It was going round and round in her brain: None of the dead identified, no dead identified...

She turned.

“Lennart,” she said, “I know I’m being a pain and I know I’m worrying for no reason... but can we go down to the shore a bit later on this evening, and drive down to the home in Marnäs now? I need to check that Gerlof has got there.”