The Quarry

67

As Per made his way back towards the coast, the shadows across the alvar were even longer than before. The sun hovered in front of him like a gold disc in a narrow blue strip between the clouds and the horizon.

He was very tired. The last thing he had done up by the road was to call Max Larsson and explain that he had found Vendela unconscious out on the alvar, but that she had come round and was on her way to the hospital in Kalmar. After that he had set off home, heading west.

Less than fourteen hours to go.

He thought about it when he got back to the spot where he had come across Vendela and the boy keeping watch beside her — back by the dense thicket of juniper bushes and the big rock in the centre.

The elf stone.

He had lingered for a while. This was where he and Vendela had sat a few evenings earlier, exchanging secrets. He had told her things about himself and his father that he hadn’t told anyone else, and she had told him that she was the one who wrote most of Max’s books.

Max has nothing against being well known, but I prefer to remain invisible, Vendela had said.

Per had remained by the stone for a few minutes looking at the empty hollows in its surface. Then he had taken out his wallet and placed a note in one of them, with a few coins on top.

Wishful thinking.

He knew what he was doing, but he couldn’t help seeing Nilla’s face in his mind’s eye as he let go of the coins. He couldn’t help making a wish as he stood there by the stone — offering money and praying for a miracle.

He heard a rustling noise from somewhere in the bushes.

He looked around, suddenly afraid that he was being watched. And he was. A pointed, russet-coloured face was staring at him. At first he thought it was a dog with big ears, but then he realized it was a fox. It stood stock still for a few seconds, then it wheeled around and disappeared.

Per set off again, walking away from the stone.

The sun had almost set by the time he got back to Stenvik. There was a breeze blowing off the sea, and he could hear distant sounds from the southern end of the village. Laughter and cheerful shouts. People had begun to gather down on the shore to light the bonfire and to celebrate the end of winter and the coming of spring.

He was just too tired to go down there. He walked up the path to the cottage, took out his keys and unlocked the door. The smell of Vendela lingered in her jacket as he hung it up in the hallway. He went into the kitchen and put some water on to make vegetable soup before driving to see Nilla.

The note he had found in Hans Bremer’s kitchen was still lying by the phone, and he glanced over at it as he chopped some carrots. He looked at the last name: Danielle, whose real name had been Jessika Björk, as it turned out.

Jessika and Hans Bremer had been in touch, despite the fact that she hadn’t worked for him for many years. Why? And why had someone murdered them?

The water was boiling. He added a stock cube, some herbs and the vegetables, and when the soup was ready he ate it at the kitchen table, still pondering.

Arsonists almost always operate on their own patch, Gerlof had said.

Jerry and Bremer knew the studio in Ryd better than anyone else. But neither of them could have rigged up and set off the incendiary devices in the house. Jerry was too old and too ill, and Bremer had been lying upstairs with his hands tied behind his back.

Per pushed his soup bowl to one side and looked over at the window. The sun had gone down by now, but a bright light suddenly fell across the cottage.

A dark-coloured car was driving along the coast road.

Was it a Ford?

He reached for the phone just as the car braked and turned off into the shadows by the quarry. It moved slowly down the track with its lights on, and stopped on the gravel at the bottom. Then it just stayed there.

Per picked up the phone and keyed in a number on the mainland.

A man’s voice answered: ‘Ulf.’

‘Could I speak to Ulrica, please?’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Per Mörner.’

‘I’ll just check...’

There was a noise at the other end of the phone, and at the same time he saw the car door open down in the quarry. He heard Ulrica Ternman’s voice in his ear: ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, it’s Per Mörner again. Do you remember me?’

There was a brief silence before she answered quietly, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘I know,’ Per said quickly, ‘but I’ve just got one quick question.’

‘About what?’ said Ulrica Ternman, still speaking very quietly.

‘I was just wondering what Hans Bremer looked like.’

‘Bremer? I suppose he was... quite ordinary. He looked a bit like you, actually.’

‘Oh? But he was older than me, I presume?’

‘Younger.’

‘Much younger?’

‘I thought he was old at the time, but then I was a teenager... I suppose he would have been about thirty.’

‘Thirty?’

The driver was getting out of the car now. Per couldn’t see his face; it was too far away, and he was wearing a cap. The man looked around the quarry, glanced over at the houses, then got back in the car. He seemed to be waiting for something.

‘If Hans Bremer was thirty when you saw him in the studio,’ Per went on, ‘then he would have been about forty-five when he died in the fire. But that can’t be right. Hans Bremer had a younger sister, and she’s older than me.’

‘Oh? I really have to go now.’

‘Wait, Ulrica... I just want to say one thing. I’ve just worked it out: the director who took pictures of you and your friends wasn’t Hans Bremer.’

‘He said that was his name.’

‘Yes,’ said Per. ‘But if there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, it’s that nobody in the sex industry uses their own name. Everybody wants to be anonymous, don’t they? Even my father changed his name, from Gerhard Mörner to Jerry Morner.’

She didn’t respond, so he carried on, ‘Someone had simply borrowed Hans Bremer’s name, paid him money so that they could call themselves Hans Bremer and avoid dirtying their own name.’

‘So I’m dirty, is that what you’re saying?’ snapped Ulrica Ternman.

‘No, I didn’t mean—’

But she had already hung up.

Per sighed and looked at the phone, but didn’t call back. He glanced down at the car in the quarry one last time. Then he left the kitchen.

On his way into the hallway he saw the old axe lying in the bedroom, and went to pick it up. He pulled on his jacket and went out into the cold once more. He walked along the side of the cottage with the axe in his right hand, but suddenly he thought he could hear someone wheezing in the shadows.

‘Jerry?’

He turned his head quickly, but of course it was just his imagination. There was no sign of anyone by the cottage.

The car was still parked down in the quarry. It was seventy or eighty metres away from him, between two heaps of stone. It was a Ford, but if it was the same car that had killed Jerry, there were no traces of the collision. The bodywork looked as if it had been recently cleaned.

Per thought he knew why the driver was still sitting in the car; he was waiting for darkness to fall.

The trolls come out at night, he thought.

He stopped at the top of the rock face and heard the sound of the engine being switched off. Silence fell, then the window opened and the driver stuck his head out. ‘Hello?’ he shouted.

‘Hello,’ said Per.

‘Is this Stenvik?’ The voice sounded lost.

‘It is!’ replied Per, gripping the axe more firmly.

The driver’s door opened again, and the man stepped out on to the gravel. ‘Are you Per Mörner?’ he called out.

‘I am. Who are you?’

‘Thomas Fall from Malmö!’ the man replied. He held out a large object that he was carrying. ‘I just came to drop this off on the way to Stockholm. You did say you wanted it...’

Per nodded. ‘Excellent, that’s great. But you took a bit of a wrong turning, Thomas.’

‘Did I? But you said you lived by the quarry.’

‘Right idea, wrong track.’ Per pointed over his shoulder towards the cottage. ‘We live above the quarry, up there.’

‘OK... Well, anyway, this is Bremer’s briefcase!’

Per pointed at the steps and shouted, ‘I’ll come down!’

He made his way cautiously down the wobbly blocks of stone to the gravel at the bottom. It was a few degrees colder here in the quarry, as usual.

The car was still in the same place with its headlights on. They dazzled Per, and turned Thomas Fall into a black figure in a cap, walking towards him with a briefcase in his left hand and a bunch of keys in his right. He was rattling the keys nervously, but he was holding out the briefcase. ‘Here it is.’

Per looked at Fall and clutched the handle of the axe. ‘Put it down.’

‘What?’

‘You can put it down in front of you.’

Fall looked at him. ‘What’s that in your hand?’ he asked.

‘An axe.’

Thomas Fall took two steps towards him, but didn’t put the briefcase down. Or the bunch of keys.

‘Are those Bremer’s keys as well?’ Per asked.

Fall didn’t reply; he had stopped ten or twelve paces away from Per. It was still impossible to see his face clearly. Per pointed at the briefcase. ‘I don’t think that belongs to Bremer. I think it’s yours, but I suspect it amounts to the same thing. You were Hans Bremer, weren’t you? You borrowed his name when you worked with my father.’

Fall seemed to be listening; he didn’t move.

‘I think Jessika Björk tracked you down. I think she found Hans Bremer’s apartment so that she could talk to him about her friend Daniel, who became infected with HIV while he was filming under the name Markus Lukas. But when Bremer opened the door, Jessika didn’t recognize him. She saw a different, older Bremer from the one who’d been there when she was filming. And my father didn’t know or work with this Hans Bremer at all.’

Fall said nothing, so Per continued, ‘So the real Bremer admitted to Jessika that someone else had paid him money to use his name and that this man had started working in the porn industry. The real Bremer told her the truth about you. And then Markus Lukas got really sick, and Jessika Björk eventually tracked you down, demanding money to keep quiet. You had to burn down the studio to silence them both for good so that “Bremer” could disappear and become Thomas Fall again.’

Fall remained silent for a few seconds. Then he undid the straps on the briefcase, and answered in a quiet voice, ‘You’re right. I worked for your father for several years and he knew me as Hans Bremer. I emptied his bank accounts after he had the stroke... But I had a right to that money.’ He looked up at Per. ‘He was my father too... We’re brothers, you and I.’

Per blinked and lowered the axe. ‘Brothers?’ He stared at Fall, who was slowly slipping his hand into the briefcase.

‘That’s right — half-brothers, anyway. Jerry was only with my mother for one summer at the end of the fifties, but that was enough... He never recognized me and I didn’t say anything either, but I think he was happier with me than he was with you, Per. He didn’t know I hated him.’

Per listened as he gazed at Thomas Fall, trying to make out his face beneath the cap. Were they alike?

Then came the attack.

It happened fast. Dazzled by the headlights, Per couldn’t really see what Fall was doing, except that he opened up the briefcase and twisted something with his hand.

There was a sudden crackle from the case, and Fall hurled it at Per. It spun around and began to leak yellow flames, spreading fire all around. Per stepped backwards, but not quickly enough. Some kind of liquid was pouring out of the briefcase, sticking to his arm and burning fiercely with a hot, searing brightness.

His left arm was burning, and so was his hand. A clear, white fire, but although he could feel the heat, it didn’t hurt.

Per dropped the axe and staggered backwards; at the same time he heard footsteps running across the gravel, then the sound of a door slamming shut. The car engine started up.

The liquid splashing down on to the gravel split into long, red arms reaching out for him, but he turned away and they couldn’t get hold of him.

Thomas Fall floored the accelerator and Per tried desperately to put out the sticky fire on his skin.

There was no water in the quarry any more, only dry stone, so he hurled himself to the ground, rolling over and over in an attempt to douse the flames. With his right hand he dug down into the gravel, scooping it over his arm, over the yellow flames flickering along his sleeve. But it kept on burning, eating into the fabric and working its way inwards.

Then came the pain.

Don’t pass out, he thought. But his arm was throbbing and he was aware of the heat and the stench of it, the acrid smell of burnt skin. Thin, dark sheets seemed to be drifting down through the air around him. But he kept on scooping the gravel over his arm, and eventually both the flames and the glowing heat were extinguished.

He suddenly realized that the sound of the car engine was much louder; it was very close to him.

Per looked up, but only had time to see that Fall’s car was heading straight for him; he got up and moved to one side, but everything happened much too quickly. He couldn’t get out of the way.

The front right-hand side of the car caught him and lifted him into the air. His face hit the windscreen; he heard the thud and felt the crunch before he landed on the ground at the side of the car. His left foot and ribcage took the worst of the impact with the ground, but his head also received another blow and he lost consciousness in silent darkness for a few seconds.

Then he was awake again, curled up on the hard rock. Slowly he got to his knees, feeling the cold wind against his body and rivulets of warmth on his face as the blood flowed. A split eyebrow, or possibly a broken nose.

The car shot backwards in the darkness, and he heard a door slam shut.

Footsteps crunched towards him over the gravel. Thomas Fall stopped and lifted something in the air. When Per looked up he could see it was a can of petrol.

The surprise is that it isn’t a surprise at all.

He couldn’t move. He was on his knees, his ribs were broken and he was surprised at the tepid warmth of the petrol being poured over him. Compared with the cold evening air the liquid could almost be called hot, and it made his skin burn and smart as it ran down over the cuts in his face.

There was a calm, rhythmic glugging sound as the plastic container was emptied. Then the sound stopped and the empty container was thrown to one side.

He was in the middle of a large puddle, his clothes sodden. He was dizzy from the blow to his head, and the petrol fumes were making the world blurred and unclear.

Supporting himself on his hands, he tried to lift his knees from the ground. But it was difficult to focus, and Thomas Fall was no more than a shadow against the dark-red evening sky.

Like a troll, thought Per. His half-brother looked exactly like a troll.

‘Walpurgis Night,’ said Fall. ‘People will be lighting fires all over the island tonight.’

Then he took something out of his jacket pocket, something small that made a faint rattling noise.

It was a box of matches.

Per suddenly thought of something he could do — he could beg for mercy. Brother to brother.

And for Nilla’s sake, too. How many hours to go now?

He opened his mouth. ‘I’ll keep your secret,’ he whispered.

His half-brother didn’t reply. He opened the box and took out a match. Then he closed the box, held the match between his fingers and struck it.

There was a faint crackle and the match was burning just a metre or so in front of Per’s eyes, and in the darkness of the quarry the glow was so bright that everything else disappeared.

He closed his eyes and waited.