The Voices Beyond

Gerlof

Could a boat die? And, if so, when was it dead? Gerlof gazed at his old wooden gig and considered the question. She should have been in the water on this sunny June day, but she was still ashore. Cracks all over the place, tipped on her side on the grass. The name of the gig was Swallow; it was carved on a little wooden nameplate on the stern, but she no longer flew across the water. A fat green fly was crawling idly around the dry hull.

‘What do you think?’ asked John Hagman, who was standing on the other side of the boat.

‘She’s a wreck,’ Gerlof replied. ‘Old and useless.’

‘She’s younger than us.’

‘Indeed. So that probably means we’re wrecks as well.’

Gerlof was eighty-four years old, while John would turn eighty next year. They had sailed across the Baltic on cargo ships together for almost three decades as captain and first mate, carrying limestone and oil and general cargo to and from Stockholm, through stormy weather and calm waters. But that was a long time ago, and now the Öland gig was the only boat they had left.

Swallow had been built in 1925, when Gerlof was just ten. His father had used her to fish for flounder for almost thirty years, then Gerlof had taken over in the fifties and had sailed her every summer for another forty years. But one spring in the early nineties, when the ice had receded out into the Sound and it was time to carry Swallow down to the water, Gerlof simply hadn’t had the energy.

He was too old. And so was Swallow.

Since then she had been lying there next to Gerlof’s boathouse as her planks dried out and split in the sunshine.

The light on Öland was intense, and on this cloudless day the sun was blazing down on the coast. A fresh, cooling breeze was coming off the sea in gentle gusts. So far, there had been no heatwave on the island; the really hot weather didn’t usually arrive until July, and sometimes it didn’t arrive at all.

Gerlof poked at the gig’s dried-out oak planks with his stick and watched as it penetrated the wood. He shook his head.

‘She’s a wreck,’ he said again. ‘She’ll sink in seconds if we put her in the water.’

‘She can be fixed,’ John said.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Absolutely. We can seal the cracks. I’m sure Anders will help out.’

‘Maybe... but the work would be down to the two of you, in that case. All I can do is sit and watch.’

Gerlof suffered from Sjögren’s Syndrome, a type of rheumatism that came and went. It was unpredictable; in the summer his legs usually felt better with the warmth, but sometimes he needed a wheelchair to get around.

‘There’s money in this,’ John said.

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. The Öland Wooden Boat Association usually supports projects like this.’

They heard a whining noise from the coast road behind them, and both men turned their heads. They saw a shiny black Volvo, an SUV, but it had foreign number plates and tinted side windows.

It was a Monday, the week before Midsummer’s Eve. And Stenvik, the fishing village that had turned into a holiday resort, had come back to life.

Nature had come to life in May, of course, turning the meadows and the alvar purple, yellow and white. Butterflies had emerged, the grass was green once more, the scent of herbs and flowers filled the air. But in spite of the early sunshine and the heat, the summer visitors had decided that the season didn’t really begin until now. They arrived in force at midsummer to unlock their chalets, dig out the hammocks and live the rural life, close to nature. Until the beginning of August, when they all set off back to the city.

The Volvo whizzed past, heading north. Gerlof caught a glimpse of several people in the car, but didn’t recognize them.

‘Was that the Norwegian family from Tönsberg?’ he said. ‘The ones who bought the Brown House a couple of years ago?’

‘The Brown House?’

‘Yes — well, it’s painted red now, but it was brown when the Skogmans owned it.’

‘The Skogmans?’

‘You remember — they were from Ystad.’

John nodded as he watched the Volvo.

‘No, it’s not turning in at the Skogmans’ place... I thought somebody from Holland bought their place?’

‘When?’ Gerlof asked.

‘Two years ago, I think... spring ’97. But they’ve hardly spent any time here.’

Gerlof shook his head once more.

‘I don’t remember. There are too many people around these days.’

In the winter, Stenvik was virtually empty, but at this time of year it was impossible to keep up with all the old and new faces. Gerlof had seen generations of summer visitors pass through the village, and these days he found it difficult to distinguish between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.

No doubt the visitors didn’t know who Gerlof was either. He had lived in the residential home for senior citizens up in Marnäs for several years, and it was only recently that he had started coming down to his childhood home in the spring and summer, steadfastly battling the pain in his joints.

It seemed as if his legs were pretty tired of supporting him, and he was tired of it, too. Lately, he had tried turmeric and horseradish for the pain; it had helped to a certain extent, but he could still walk only short distances.

Take me back, he thought, to a period in my life when there was still time.

Several expensive cars were speeding along the coast road, but Gerlof turned his back on them and looked at the gig again.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll fix her up then, with your son’s help.’

‘Good,’ John said. ‘She’s a fine boat. Perfect for fishing.’

‘Indeed she is,’ Gerlof agreed, although he hadn’t been fishing for many years. ‘But can you fit it in?’

‘Definitely. The campsite more or less runs itself.’

John had leased the campsite in Stenvik every summer since he had come ashore at the beginning of the sixties. When his son, Anders, was old enough they had started to share the work between them, but John was still the one who went around the tents and caravans each morning and evening, collecting fees and emptying the bins. He hadn’t had a single free summer in thirty-five years, but he seemed to enjoy it.

‘That’s agreed, then,’ Gerlof said. ‘Perhaps in August we’ll be eating plaice that we’ve caught ourselves.’

‘Perhaps,’ John said. ‘But she can stay here for a while.’

A while. When it came to John, that could mean anything from three days to three years, but Gerlof assumed that Swallow would remain by the boathouse for a few weeks before Anders and John set to work on her.

He sighed and looked around. His village, the best place in the whole world. The wide bay with its deep blue waters. The row of boathouses. The old cottages and the new houses. The lush summer greenery of Öland in the background, so different from the treeless coastal landscape when Gerlof was a little boy. He had spent his childhood here in the bay before going off to sea as a teenager, eventually returning as a grown man to build a summer cottage for his family.

The road came to an end on the southern point, and that was where the village also ended. The coast was more dramatic over there, with a steep cliff leading down to flat, wide rocks along the shoreline and a burial cairn, known as a rör in the local dialect, up on the ridge above the water.

The finest summer cottages were also at the southern end of the village, lining the coast road. Last of all, completely separate, were the two houses belonging to the Kloss family.

The Kloss family. The three brothers, Edvard, Sigfrid and Gilbert. Edvard and Gilbert had died at almost the same time; only Sigfrid had lived to a decent age. He had inherited his father’s land and turned it into a holiday complex, which was now run by his grandchildren.

‘Have the Kloss gang arrived yet?’ Gerlof asked.

‘Indeed they have. Their place is already packed with cars, and people are out on the golf course.’

The Kloss family’s holiday complex lay a few kilometres south of the village, and was called the Ölandic Resort, but John always referred to it as ‘the Kloss place’. He regarded it as competition, in spite of the fact that his shop in Stenvik was no more than a shoebox in comparison. The Ölandic Resort had everything — a golf course, a campsite, a range of shops, a nightclub, a swimming pool and an entire holiday village.

In Gerlof’s opinion, the Kloss family owned far too much, but what could he do?

All these rich residents bothered him. He did his best to avoid them. Them and their boats and swimming pools and chainsaws — all those new acquisitions making a racket in the countryside. Frightening the birds.

He looked out across the bay.

‘You know, John, sometimes I wonder... is there anything that’s improved on the island over the past hundred years? Anything at all?’

John gave the matter some thought.

‘Nobody goes hungry these days... And the roads aren’t full of potholes.’

‘I suppose so,’ Gerlof conceded. ‘But are we happier these days?’

‘Who knows? But we’re alive. That’s something to be happy about.’

‘Mmm.’

But was it? Was Gerlof really happy to have lived to a ripe old age? These days, he took one day at a time. After some seventy years he could still remember Gilbert Kloss collapsing with a heart attack at his brother’s grave.

Everything could come to an end at any moment, but right now the sun was shining. Sol lucet omnibus — the sun shines on everyone.

Gerlof decided to enjoy this summer. To look forward to the new millennium. He was due to get a hearing aid, so soon he would be able to sit in his garden listening to the birds.

And he would be more friendly towards visitors in the village. Or at least he would try. He wouldn’t just mutter when he came across a tourist, and he would answer the people from Stockholm when they spoke to him.

He nodded to himself and said, ‘Let’s hope we have nice quiet, well-behaved visitors this year.’

The Homecomer

The fisherman’s cottage had thick walls, and small dark rooms that smelled of blood and booze. The odours didn’t bother the old man standing by the doorway; he was used to both.

The smell of booze came from Einar Wall, the owner of the cottage. Wall was in his sixties, bent and wrinkled, and he had obviously made an early start on his midsummer celebrations; a half-empty bottle stood beside the table where he was sitting working.

The stench of blood came from his most recent booty: three large birds were suspended from hooks on the low ceiling. A partridge and two woodcocks. They were peppered with buckshot but had been plucked and drawn.

‘Shot them yesterday, out on the shore,’ Wall said. ‘Woodcocks are supposed to be protected at the moment because they’re breeding, but I couldn’t give a damn about that. A man should be able to catch fish and birds whenever he wants.’

The old man was a hunter himself, and said nothing. He looked at the other two people in the cottage, a young man and a girl, both in their early twenties, who had just arrived in their own car and settled down on the shabby sofa.

‘What are your names?’

‘I’m Rita,’ said the skinny girl, who was curled up like a cat, one hand on the boy’s denim-clad knee.

‘Pecka,’ the boy said. He was tall; he leaned back with his shaven head resting against the wall, but his leg was twitching.

The old man didn’t say any more. It was Wall who had found these two, not him.

A puppy and a kitten, he thought.

But he had also been young once, and had grown more capable as time went by.

Pecka didn’t seem to like the silence. He stared at the old man, his eyes narrowed.

‘And what do we call you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But who the hell are you? You sound a bit foreign.’

‘My name is Aron,’ said the man. ‘I’ve come home.’

‘Home?’

‘I’ve come home to Sweden.’

‘From where?’ Pecka wanted to know.

‘From the New World.’

Pecka continued to stare at him, but Rita nodded.

‘He means the States... don’t you?’

The old man said nothing, so Rita tried again: ‘You mean America, don’t you?’

The man didn’t respond.

‘OK, so we’ll call you Aron,’ Pecka said. ‘Or the man who’s come home. Whatever, as long as you’re in.’

The man said nothing. He went over to the table and picked up one of the guns by its slender barrel.

‘A Walther,’ he said.

Wall nodded with satisfaction, as if he were manning a market stall.

‘It’s a fine piece,’ he said. ‘The police used it as their service weapon for many years. Simple and solid... Swedish craftsmanship.’

‘It’s German,’ the old man said.

‘Mine are made under licence.’ Wall pointed to the rest of his display. ‘This is a Sig Sauer, and this one is a Swedish automatic assault rifle. That’s what’s on offer.’

Pecka got up and came over to the table. The old man recognized the look in his eyes: the same curiosity that every young soldier felt when a new weapon appeared. Every young soldier who had never killed someone, at least.

‘So you like guns?’ Pecka said.

The old man nodded curtly. ‘I’ve used them.’

‘So you’re an old squaddie?’

The old man looked at him. ‘What?’

‘An old soldier,’ Pecka said. ‘Did you fight in a war?’

A war, Aron thought. It was something young men might long for. A new country.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

Pecka shook his head gloomily.

‘I haven’t been in a war,’ he said, but then he lifted his chin proudly. ‘But I never back down... I was in court for GBH last summer.’

Wall didn’t look quite so impressed.

‘That’s crap,’ he said. ‘It was just a tourist who got out of hand.’

The old man realized that they were family, and that Wall was concerned about Pecka. He calmly pushed in the Walther’s magazine and put it down on the table.

He looked out of the window. The sun was shining over the sea and the shore, but barely reached in through the grubby windows. Wall’s cottage was in an isolated spot, on a section of the shore where the grass ran all the way down to the water’s edge. There was a small enclosure housing a few geese by the shoreline, with a boathouse made of grey limestone beside it, looking every bit as neglected as the cottage itself.

Wall heaved himself to his feet.

‘Here,’ he said, handing out the guns. Rita was given a small Sig Sauer, Pecka a Walther, and the old man both a Walther and the automatic.

‘Will you be needing plastic explosives as well?’ Wall asked.

The old man who had come home looked up.

‘Have you got some?’

‘I brought some back last winter,’ Pecka said proudly. ‘From a road construction project in Kalmar. Fuses, detonators, the lot.’

Wall looked equally pleased.

‘It’s all carefully hidden and locked away,’ he said. ‘Nobody will find it. The cops were here back in May, but they left empty-handed.’

‘We can take a couple of charges,’ the old man said. ‘What about payment?’

‘Afterwards,’ Wall said. ‘Do your job and take care of the safe, then we’ll split everything later.’

‘We’ll need balaclavas as well, Einar,’ Pecka said. ‘Did you get them?’

Wall didn’t ask any questions. He simply opened a cardboard box underneath the table and took out a packet of rubber gloves and several grey balaclavas with holes cut out for the eyes.

‘Burn them when you’re done,’ he said.

The old man looked at them and said, ‘I don’t need any protection.’

‘You’ll be recognized,’ Pecka said.

The man shook his head.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ he said, gazing out of the cracked window. ‘I’m not here.’

The New Country, May 1931

The journey begins one sunny summer’s day, eleven months after the death of Edvard Kloss. Aron has almost stopped thinking about that night. About the wall that fell down, about Sven giving him a shove. ‘In you go! Get in there and fetch his money.’

Sven had been Aron’s new father for just a couple of years, but he did as he was told. Otherwise he might face a beating.

They don’t talk about that night, just about the trip. It feels as if they have been preparing for today all through the spring, but everything they are taking with them still fits into one suitcase each.

Sven has brought the old snuffbox made of apple wood. Aron wants to bring something as well, something precious.

‘Can I take my gun to America?’

Aron has his very own single-barrel shotgun, which he fills with pellets so that he can shoot partridge and seabirds.

‘Of course you can’t,’ Sven says. ‘They wouldn’t let you on board the ship.’

So Aron has to leave his shotgun behind. It was given to him by his grandfather, who is a huntsman himself; he told his daughter, Astrid, that the boy is a pretty decent shot. That sounds good, ‘a decent shot’.

And indeed he is; he was only ten years old when he shot his first seal. It was lying on an ice floe that came drifting towards the island one cold, sunny spring day. The seal raised its head, Aron raised his gun and when he fired the seal’s body jerked, then lay still. He had hit the back of its neck and broken its spine. It was over a metre long and provided over twenty kilos of blubber.

‘But I need a gun,’ Aron says. ‘How am I supposed to be a sheriff without a gun?’

Sven laughs; it sounds like a dry cough.

‘We’ll find you a new one when we get there.’

‘Do they have shotguns in the new country?’

‘Lots of them. They have everything there.’

Aron knows one thing they don’t have in the new country: a waiting family. His mother, Astrid, and his sister, Greta, are staying behind in Sweden, and saying goodbye to them is hard. Greta is only nine, and gazes at her brother in silence. His mother clamps her lips together.

‘Stay out of trouble,’ she says. ‘Look after yourself.’

Aron nods, then he picks up his bag and goes with Sven, taking long strides to stop him from turning back.

The day of their departure is dry and sunny.

They walk side by side along the dirt track. Sven has longer legs, but he limps with his right foot, so Aron is able to keep up with him.

‘You’re off to the new country in the west,’ his mother had said, ‘the country they call America. You’re going to work hard over there for a couple of years, then you’ll come home with money.’

And Sven says the same thing, but more concisely.

‘The new country. That’s where we’re going. Away from all this.’

They head north, across the Kloss family’s extensive land, almost all the way up to the cairn. It’s on top of the ridge in the west and it looks like a harmless pile of stones, but Sven spits anyway, just to be on the safe side.

‘I hope it falls into the sea!’

Then they turn to the east, moving inland past several tall windmills, standing on their thick wooden feet with their sails in the air, ready to catch the wind from all directions. Sven glares at the windmills, too.

‘We won’t have to look at those damned things where we’re going either!’

He lopes along, addressing the horizon as if he is giving a speech: ‘Free at last — free from all those filthy jobs! As white as a ghost every time I come out of the mill — never again!’ He looks at Aron. ‘Where we’re going, they have machines that take care of everything. They have huge agricultural factories, where the grain goes in at one end and sacks of flour come out at the other. They just press a button, and hey presto!’

Aron listens, but he has just one question: ‘When are we coming home?’

Sven slows down, then he turns around and wallops Aron across the back of the head.

‘Don’t ask me that question! We’re not going to think that way! We’re going to the new country — forget about home!’

It’s not the hardest blow Aron has ever received, it’s just making a point, so he feels brave enough to carry on: ‘But when are we coming home?’

‘Impossible to say,’ Sven replies.

‘Why?’

‘Because not everyone comes home.’

The summer air feels colder when Aron hears those words. He doesn’t say any more — he doesn’t want to provoke any further blows, but even before they reach the train he makes his mind up that he will do what his mother told him to do, and that he will come back home.

Home to the island.

Home to the croft.

Jonas

‘What’s going on, Officer?’ asked Uncle Kent. ‘Has there been an accident?’

‘No,’ replied the policeman, who had just got off his motorbike. ‘It’s just you.’

‘Me? What have I done?’

‘You were driving too fast.’

‘Me?’

Uncle Kent had lowered the window with the press of a button so that he could speak to the police officer, and the faint smell of flowers drifted into the car from the ditches along the roadside, reaching Jonas in the back seat. He could see a profusion of yellow and purple flowers swaying in the breeze. Their scent mingled with the aroma of his uncle’s aftershave and a hint of perspiration from his father, who had arrived late and had to run to catch the train. Mum had told him off on the platform, and Mats and Jonas had just looked at one another.

His father sat in silence next to Kent; he seemed tense in the presence of the police officer. But Jonas had a clear view of his uncle’s profile and could see a slight smile playing around the corner of his mouth.

‘Driving too fast?’

‘Much too fast.’

The Öland sunshine was bright, dazzling Jonas when he looked out of his own window. The traffic cop was no more than a dark shape next to the car, dressed in a blue uniform.

‘Could you tell me how fast?’ Uncle Kent said.

‘Twenty-two kilometres over the speed limit.’

Kent sighed and leaned back in his seat.

‘It’s all down to this bloody car. A Corvette only runs really smoothly when you take her up above a hundred.’

Jonas had encountered the police on only one occasion previously, when two officers came to talk to his class in Huskvarna about traffic awareness for cyclists. They had been really nice, but he still felt a bit nervous.

Uncle Kent’s car was red with black stripes, and it looked a bit like a spaceship. It felt like a rocket inside, too, low and narrow, particularly in the back seat. Jonas still had some growing to do, but he still had to bend his legs to one side to fit in. His older brother, Mats, had a bit more room because he was sitting behind Niklas, their father, who had shorter legs.

‘Are you going to fine me?’ Uncle Kent said.

‘Indeed I am.’

‘Typical, on the sunniest day of the summer so far.’ He smiled at the police officer. ‘But I hold my hands up... I broke the law.’

Jonas looked at his father, who still hadn’t said a word. Nor had he so much as looked at the policeman.

Uncle Kent had picked up Jonas and Mats and their father from the station in Kalmar in his red Corvette. He owned a big Volvo as well, but in the summer he preferred to drive his sports car. And it was fast.

They had left the Öland bridge half an hour earlier, whizzing northwards as his father and Uncle Kent chatted in the front, but when the motorcycle came up alongside them and waved the car over to the side of the road, his father had immediately fallen silent. He had stopped speaking and shuffled down in his seat.

Uncle Kent was doing all the talking. He sat there with his hands resting on the wheel, seeming totally relaxed, as if this was merely a minor hiccup on the road to Villa Kloss.

‘Do I pay the fine directly to you?’ he said.

The police officer shook his head.

‘I’ll write you a ticket.’

‘How much?’

‘Eight hundred kronor.’

Uncle Kent looked away and sighed. He gazed out across the sunlit cornfields to the right of the road, then glanced back at the police officer.

‘What’s your name?’

No reply was forthcoming.

‘Is it a secret?’ Uncle Kent persisted. ‘What’s your first name?’

The police officer shook his head. He took a pad and a pen out of his inside pocket.

‘My name is Sören,’ he said eventually.

‘Thank you, Sören. I’m Kent Kloss.’ He nodded to his right. ‘This is my younger brother, Niklas, and his two boys. We’re all going to spend the summer together.’

The officer nodded impassively, but Uncle Kent kept on talking.

‘Just one thing, Sören... Here we are on a dry, flat road, two days before midsummer. The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day. A fantastic summer’s day, the kind of day when you feel most alive... What would you have done, if you were me? Would you have stayed behind that caravan all the way to Borgholm?’

Sören didn’t bother to answer; he finished filling in the penalty notice and passed it through the window. Kent took it, but refused to give up: ‘Couldn’t you at least admit it, Sören?’

‘Admit what?’

‘That you would have done the same thing? If you’d been the one stuck behind that caravan, in the summer sun on your way to the sea? Wouldn’t you have put your foot down... well, maybe not put your foot down, but gone just a little bit over the speed limit? Won’t you admit that?’

Kent wasn’t smiling now, he was deadly serious.

The traffic policeman sighed. ‘OK, Kent. If it makes you feel better.’

‘A little better,’ said Kent, smiling once more.

‘Good. Drive carefully now.’

He went back to his motorbike and started it up, then did a U-turn and headed south.

‘You see that? Look at the speed he’s going, the bastard!’ Uncle Kent nodded to Jonas and Mats. ‘Never let them get the upper hand, boys. Just you remember that!’

With that, the engine kicked into life with a dull roar and Uncle Kent pulled out on to the road, right in front of yet another caravan. He quickly increased his speed.

The sun was shining, the road was flat and straight. Jonas had a warm breeze on his face and the scent of wild flowers in his nostrils. Uncle Kent still had his window down, his left elbow sticking out as he steered the car with one hand, fingers resting lightly on the wheel. Nothing more.

His mobile rang. He answered using his free hand, listened for twelve or fourteen seconds then interrupted loudly: ‘No. A supporting wall, I said. What for? Support, of course! I want it to look old, kind of medieval, but modern at the same time. Made of stone, or railway sleepers. And I want the pipework under the wall, not next to it. Good... Has the digger arrived?’ He listened again. ‘Fantastic! In that case, we can... Hello?’ He lowered the mobile. ‘Lost the connection — typical.’

Uncle Kent had certain favourite words, like ‘typical’ and ‘fantastic’. He imbued them with an energy and self-confidence that Jonas could never manage, whatever he said.

Kent slipped his mobile into his pocket and said, ‘Shall we take the boat out when we arrive?’

‘Sure,’ Jonas’s dad agreed at once. ‘As long as it’s not too rough out there.’

Uncle Kent laughed.

‘Motorboats like waves, they just jump over them! We’ll take a little trip, then we can have a Cosmo on the decking.’

Niklas nodded, but he didn’t look particularly happy.

‘OK.’

Jonas had no idea what a Cosmo was, but he didn’t ask. The trick when it came to looking grown up was to listen and to look as if you knew exactly what was going on. And to laugh along with everyone else.

Kent glanced in the rear-view mirror.

‘We’re going to get you up on those skis this summer, JK. All right? Things didn’t go too well a couple of years ago, as I recall...’

He always called Jonas by his initials, JK.

‘I’ll give it a go,’ Jonas said.

He didn’t really want to think about water-skiing. He didn’t want to think about that summer either, when his father had just started serving his sentence and Jonas and Mats had come to Öland on their own.

He could see the expanse of the Sound now; they had reached the village and were passing the kiosk and the restaurant. They turned left on to the coast road, with the ridge on one side of the car and houses on the other.

Jonas hadn’t managed to get up on his skis once that summer. Uncle Kent must have tried to pull him up with the line from the motorboat at least fifteen times; Jonas had coughed up water and clung to the handle so tightly that his knuckles turned white, but he always ended up pitching forward after just a few metres. In the evenings, his legs had felt like spaghetti.

‘You’re not going to give it a go, JK, you’re going to do it! You’re much tougher this year. How old are you now?’

‘Twelve,’ Jonas said, although his birthday wasn’t until August. He glanced at his brother, afraid of a scornful correction, but Mats was gazing out at the water and didn’t appear to be listening.

They had arrived. The summer place was known as Villa Kloss, even though it consisted of two houses side by side, with huge panoramic windows overlooking the sea. Aunt Veronica and the cousins lived in the north house, Uncle Kent in the south.

Jonas’s father no longer had a house of his own. They would be staying in the guest chalets.

‘Twelve years old, that’s the best time of your life,’ Kent said as the Corvette swung into his drive. ‘You’re totally free. You’re going to have a fantastic summer here, JK!’

‘Mmm,’ said Jonas.

But he didn’t feel free. Just small.

Gerlof

Gerlof met the Swedish-American on the way to the dance.

He was late, leaning on his chestnut walking stick and making his way along the coast road as quickly as he could. He wouldn’t be dancing around the maypole himself, of course, but he enjoyed listening to the music. Midsummer came along only once a year, after all.

The problem was that he had forgotten something — two things, in fact — which was why he was late. His daughters and grandchildren were waiting for him, but when he got to the bottom of the steps and was standing in the garden, he couldn’t hear any birds singing in the treetops.

The device. He wasn’t used to it yet.

‘I’ll go and get it,’ his daughter, Julia, said.

She was carrying a small folding chair for Gerlof, but she put it down and went back indoors. A minute later she reappeared and handed over the small plastic ear buds.

‘Do you mind if we go on ahead? The boys really want to be there from the start.’

Gerlof inserted the hearing aids and waved her away.

‘I’ll follow you.’

He had only his stick and the birdsong for company as he set off towards the maypole down at the far end of the inlet.

He was pleased to be able to hear the birds, even if he needed some help to do so.

In the spring and summer, Gerlof left his room at the residential home for senior citizens in Marnäs and spent as much time as possible in the cottage on the coast, where he had the sea and the wind and all the birds — the migrants who came back from Africa in the spring. Back home to Gerlof’s garden.

Sparrows and bullfinches gathered on the edge of the little limestone bird bath in the corner of the lawn. Gerlof would watch them dip down for a drink of water, then they would open their beaks to chirrup and sing.

The problem was that he could no longer hear their song.

His hearing problem was nothing new; it had been creeping up on him for a long time. Gerlof had stopped hearing the crickets when he was about sixty-five years old, the year after he retired. He had stood on the veranda listening in the evenings, but there was only silence out there in the darkness. At first he had thought that pollution had killed them off, but then a doctor had explained that the sound the crickets made was on such a high frequency that his old ears couldn’t pick it up.

Old ears? His ears were the same age as the rest of him. But he could cope with not being able to hear the crickets; they were fairly irritating, and he didn’t really miss them. And, in any case, it wasn’t the crickets that chirped all day long, it was the grasshoppers.

But Gerlof did want to hear the birdsong. Last spring it had seemed a little more muted than before, as if they were singing through an invisible blanket. And this year the garden had been silent. At that point Gerlof had realized that something was seriously wrong, and had contacted Dr Wahlberg, who had sent him to Kalmar for a hearing test.

Gerlof had been expecting a neatly dressed technician in a white coat, with a pen tucked behind one ear, but the man who greeted him was wearing jeans and had a ponytail.

‘Hi, I’m Ulrik. I’m an audiologist.’

‘An archaeologist?’

‘Audiologist. I’ll be producing an audiogram showing the level of your hearing.’

All these new words made Gerlof feel dizzy. He had had to sit in a little booth wearing headphones, and had been told to press a button when he heard a range of sounds. For long periods, things had been worryingly silent.

‘How does it look?’ he asked when Ulrik released him.

‘Not too good,’ came the reply. ‘I think it’s probably time for a little technical assistance.’

Technical assistance? Was Gerlof going to have something stuck in his ears? He remembered that his old grandfather — a notoriously mean man — had developed hearing problems in his nineties, and had made himself a metal ear trumpet out of an old snuff tin. Simple and completely free.

Today everything was made of plastic. Ulrik took a cast of Gerlof’s ear canal so that a suitable model could be made.

In the middle of May, Gerlof was able to try out the hearing aid in his own garden, when Ulrik came over to Öland with a small computer.

‘We don’t normally do home visits,’ he said, ‘but I love this island... The sun and the scenery...’

Gerlof was delighted and took him out on to the veranda to see the birds. An olive-green bird was sitting in the bath washing its wings.

‘A greenfinch,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a canary when it sings... if you can hear it.’

‘When we’ve finished, you’ll be able to hear it perfectly,’ Ulrik said, placing his computer on the table.

After a few minutes, Gerlof was sitting motionless on a chair on the veranda, with wires running from the computer to the buds in his ears, which fitted perfectly.

Ulrik gazed at the screen.

‘How’s that? Can you hear any whistling?’

Gerlof shook his head — very carefully, so that the wires wouldn’t come out. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated.

He listened. No, there was no whistling, but there was a faint sighing that he hadn’t heard for many years. It seemed to be coming from outside, and he realized that it was the breeze, blowing around the cottage.

And, through the breeze, he suddenly heard the pure, clear sound of birdsong. The greenfinch, warbling in the birdbath. And, somewhere over in the bushes, a whitethroat answered him.

Gerlof opened his eyes and blinked in surprise.

‘I can hear them,’ he said. ‘The birds.’

‘Good,’ Ulrik said. ‘In that case, we’re on the right track.’

Gerlof could hear the birds around him, but he couldn’t see them. It made him think about a mystery from his childhood, and he decided to ask the question while he had an expert on the spot.

‘Can a person hear noises even though they don’t exist?’

Ulrik looked confused.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If someone heard mysterious sounds, coming out of the ground, for example... could that be some kind of hallucination? Like an optical illusion, but to do with hearing instead?’

‘That’s a tricky question. I mean, sometimes we hear sounds that exist only in our heads, if someone has tinnitus, for example.’

‘This was nothing like that,’ Gerlof said. ‘It was knocking. Loud knocking from inside a coffin that had been lowered into the ground. I heard it when I was young, and so did several other people... Everyone who was there heard it.’

He looked at Ulrik, but the young man just shook his head.

‘I’m afraid I’m no expert on ghosts.’

As he approached the celebrations he could hear the buzz of a large crowd, like the sound of a rushing waterfall in the distance. There was an expectant hum; the dancing hadn’t started yet.

Gerlof knew there were a lot of people in the village at the moment, because the water pressure in his taps had dropped over the past few days. Water was less than plentiful on the island in hot weather, and in the summer many people had to share it.

His muscles ached as he hurried along the coast road, past the track leading down to the jetty. He could see a group of young people standing there, dressed in tiny trunks and bikinis. He thought back to the old days, when bathing suits were knitted and smelled of wool.

When Gerlof reached the long row of mailboxes and was about to turn inland towards the crowd surrounding the maypole, he noticed a man of about his own age standing there. He was tall, with white, wavy hair, and he was wearing a dark-brown jacket. He had an old Kodak camera around his neck.

Gerlof looked at the man, with a vague recollection of having seen him before.

The man returned his gaze, then held up the camera in front of him, almost like a shield, and snapped away in the direction of the mailboxes.

Gerlof remembered that he had resolved not to pre-judge strangers, so he went over to the man.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘We know one another, don’t we?’

The man hesitated, then stepped away from the mailboxes and looked Gerlof in the eye once more.

‘We’ve met,’ he said. ‘But it was a long time ago.’

He spoke with an Öland accent, but there was a hint of something else there. Gerlof held out his hand.

‘My name is Davidsson, Gerlof Davidsson.’

The man shook his hand.

‘OK, now I remember,’ he said. ‘Gerlof... we went out fishing one evening in your beautiful boat.’

‘She’s not so beautiful these days.’ Gerlof suddenly found the memory he was searching for. ‘And you’re a Swedish-American, aren’t you?’

The man nodded.

‘More American than Swedish, though. My name is Bill Carlson, and I’m from Lansing in Michigan. My cousin is Arne Carlson in Långvik... I’m visiting his kids this summer.’

He fell silent and glanced over at the mailboxes again. Gerlof realized that not all Americans were talkative.

‘I used to know Arne well,’ he said. ‘Welcome home, Bill.’

‘I’ve never lived here,’ the American said, looking almost embarrassed. ‘My father emigrated from Öland when he was young. But we spoke Swedish at home, and I usually come over to see the family every five years or so. But there aren’t many of them left. I was just looking at the names on these mailboxes, but I hardly recognize any...’

‘You’re not the only one,’ Gerlof reassured him. ‘So many new people come to the island in the summer these days... And you never see hide nor hair of them for the rest of the year.’ He nodded in the direction of the maypole. ‘Are you coming to listen to the music?’

‘Absolutely,’ said the American. ‘The song about the little frogs is my favourite!’

They set off together, with Bill taking long strides and Gerlof following as best he could. He struggled to keep up so that they could continue the conversation.

‘How old are you, Bill — if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Almost eighty-six. But I don’t feel a day over seventy.’

Gerlof envied the ease with which Bill made his way over the grass. He found sprightly folk who were older than him a little difficult. Some people just never seemed to get old.

Lisa

Lisa slept badly the night before the trip, because Silas had gone out during the evening and hadn’t come back until dawn. In the summer he stayed out longer, and lived rough. When Lisa got out of bed at seven o’clock in the morning, it looked as if a pile of rags was lying on the sofa.

She tiptoed past without saying anything. There was no point. She packed quietly, locked the door behind her without a sound. No goodbyes. Silas would ring her soon in any case. Silas always rang her.

The old Passat was parked on the street. The lock was as useless as the rest of the car, so she kept her guitar and her records in the apartment. She stowed them in the boot and set off, heading south.

She had played almost every weekend over the past year, and had got used to driving, so she put her foot down once she hit the main road. However, only an hour or so after leaving Stockholm, she became aware of an acrid smell, like burnt rubber or something equally alarming.

Shit. But she was late for the midsummer gig, and she just had to hope the car would make it. She kept on going, blinking and yawning.

Lisa could never get to sleep when she was waiting for Silas. And the nights were too light as well. The summer heat was lovely, but she didn’t like it when the line between day and night became blurred.

The southbound traffic was heavy and slow; the midsummer revellers who were on the road now were seriously late. There were a lot of them, and they didn’t have much patience.

On the coast road down to Kalmar, Lisa glimpsed the island out in the Baltic several times, like a long, black strip on the horizon, and it was frustrating that the Öland bridge went over to the southern end of the island when she wanted to be in the north. She would have to drive down, then back up again.

Eventually, she reached the long, high bridge across the Sound. She had been here on a school trip fifteen years ago when she was only ten; it was cool to be back.

There was a solid line of cars on the bridge, like a shimmering ribbon, and as Lisa pulled up, the smell from the engine quickly got worse.

The bridge was one of the longest in Europe, and it certainly felt like it today as the traffic edged along. The waves glittered far below as the sun blazed down on the tarmac. She hoped her vinyl records wouldn’t melt in the heat. Surely things couldn’t get any worse.

She was wrong. As the car began the climb to the highest point of the bridge, the engine started smoking.

She clutched the wheel and took her foot off the accelerator. The car stopped dead, right in the middle of the traffic. There was nowhere to pull off the road, and soon the cars behind her were sounding their horns. It was midsummer, and ten thousand people had decided to go over to the island at the same time. Every single one of them just wanted to get there.

The sun burned in through the windows, the inside of the car grew hotter and hotter, and Lisa hadn’t thought to bring any water or soft drinks. All she had was chewing gum.

What should she do? Turn around and forget about Öland?

A traffic cop on a motorbike rode up between the cars and pulled into the gap that had appeared when Lisa stopped halfway up the hill.

Fuck. She lowered her head and hoped he would keep on going.

He didn’t, of course. He got off his bike and knocked on the window. She wound it down.

‘You can’t stop here,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to stop here,’ she said, nodding towards the bonnet. ‘Something’s wrong under there.’

‘With the engine?’ He sniffed the air. ‘I can smell burning.’

‘Me too...’

‘It’s probably the clutch. You’ve been overdoing it on the way up the hill.’ He pointed to the other side of the bridge. ‘It’s OK to drive, but pull off at the first car park and let the engine cool down. You’ll find some of my colleagues over there — they’ll help you out.’

Lisa nodded. She had held a driving licence for five years, but felt like a complete novice as she put the car in gear and gently pressed the accelerator to rejoin the queue of traffic.

She felt much better once she had passed the highest point and was on her way downhill. The acrid, burning smell was still powerful inside the car, but when she opened the window the stench of exhaust fumes came pouring in instead. The queue of vehicles and caravans stretched the entire length of the bridge, and was moving at roughly the same speed as a rowing boat. It was almost twelve thirty. The gig in Stenvik started at two — under normal circumstances, she would have had plenty of time.

It took twenty-five minutes to cover the seven kilometres over the bridge and to reach the island, but the traffic jam continued on the other side. Lisa spotted a large car park on the right and turned off the road.

There wasn’t much room — the police were there, just as the traffic cop had said, and had stopped several cars. Most were small and battered, with very young drivers and passengers who had been asked to get out and open the boot.

Lisa got out and opened the bonnet. God, it stank. The engine was red-hot and ticking angrily, but at least there wasn’t any smoke now. She would wait for a little while before setting off again; that would give her an hour before the gig.

After a while, a police officer came over to the car. She was younger than the cop on the bridge, probably around thirty; she was tanned and wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

‘Problems?’

Lisa nodded.

‘But I think it’s just temporary... Apparently, the clutch needs to cool down.’

‘Good — we need all the space we can get. We’re pulling in a lot of cars.’

‘Is it a speed check?’

‘No. Booze.’

‘Booze?’

The officer nodded over towards an old red Volvo estate. Three lads a few years younger than Lisa were unloading box after box of bottles of wine from the boot, under the watchful eye of two policemen. None of them looked particularly happy.

‘People bring too much alcohol with them at midsummer,’ the officer said. ‘If they’re under age, or seem to be bootleggers, we confiscate it.’

‘Do they get it back?’

‘No, I’m afraid we pour it all away.’ She looked at Lisa’s car. ‘How does it seem now?’

Lisa sniffed, but she couldn’t smell burning any more. Just exhaust fumes.

‘I think I can probably risk it... Do you know if the traffic eases off as you head north?’

‘Not so you’d notice. It is midsummer, after all.’

‘I know,’ Lisa said.

She rejoined the queue; a friendly caravan driver braked to let her in. The traffic was moving a little faster, but still at only fifty kilometres an hour. She wouldn’t gain much time if she tried overtaking; all she could do was relax and try to enjoy the summer weather.

Try to forget about Silas for a while.

It took her almost forty minutes to reach Borgholm, where a lot of cars turned off. After that, Lisa was able to increase her speed, but by then she had only fifteen minutes to go before she was due on stage.

She consoled herself with the thought that she was only the accompanist. Of course, she would have preferred not to play her guitar at the dance at all — she had given up children’s parties and corporate events several years ago — but she needed the money.

At four minutes to two, she turned off the main road and drove down towards the village. The festival site was right by the road, almost at the water’s edge, and it was easy to find: the maypole had been raised on the grass, and the audience had gathered.

Lisa jumped out of the car, took a deep breath of sea air, grabbed her guitar — which was no doubt out of tune by now, thanks to the heat, but would have to do — and ran towards the maypole. It must have been set up that morning, because the birch leaves were still bright green in the sunshine. The two flower garlands beneath the crossbar were dancing in the wind, high above the heads of well-dressed children and adults.

Everyone looked horribly cheerful. A load of rich people in the country. Lisa quickly made her way through the crowd.

‘Excuse me... excuse me...’

She held the guitar by the neck in front of her, almost like a cudgel, and people jumped and moved out of the way when she gave them a shove.

Two older men were waiting on the far side of the pole, one holding a microphone, the other with an enormous accordion resting on his belly. They both nodded to her as she arrived.

‘Aha, here’s our accompanist... Are you Lisa Turesson?’

She nodded, looped the guitar around her neck and took a plectrum out of her pocket. She ran it over the strings and quickly tuned up. That would have to do.

‘We start at two o’clock,’ the accordionist said. ‘You knew that, I presume?’

Lisa stared at him from beneath her fringe.

‘There was a traffic jam on the bridge.’

‘You should have set off in plenty of time,’ the singer said. He looked at her guitar. ‘Ready?’

‘Absolutely.’

He raised the microphone, every trace of irritation gone.

‘Good afternoon, everybody! Can you hear me? Excellent, in that case let me welcome both young and old to Stenvik’s midsummer celebrations. I’m Sune, and Gunnar and Lisa will be accompanying me today. We’re going to sing and play so that you can all dance before you go home and eat your herring and potatoes. Does that sound good?’

A few voices answered, ‘Yeesss...’

‘Good, then take one another by the hand. Don’t be shy now!’

People did as they were told, linking together like a living chain.

‘We’re starting off with “The Priest’s Little Crow”...’ He looked at Lisa. ‘... the song about the poor bird who went out for a drive but ended up in the ditch. Is everyone ready?’

Sune counted them in, and Gunnar and Lisa began to play. People started dancing around the maypole, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Summer had arrived, and Lisa was earning money.

Gerlof

Everyone was dancing around the maypole. The cult of the sun had begun. Gerlof was sitting on his chair on the grass, wondering if all this wasn’t in fact too late. The summer solstice had fallen four days ago so, technically, the autumn was closer than the spring at this stage, and the darkness closer than the light.

But the sun and the summer were being celebrated anyway, and Gerlof saw many smiling faces beneath the garlands. Several hundred people of all ages were moving in wide circles around the maypole.

Gerlof couldn’t dance; he sat on his chair with stiff legs, thinking longingly of the smorgasbord to come, the herring and potatoes and schnapps. But there was a good atmosphere; he enjoyed listening to the music and watching the people.

He was particularly pleased to see Julia dancing. She had stayed away from Öland for a long time, after her young son disappeared without a trace. Gerlof had brooded about the tragedy for many years and, eventually, he had solved the mystery. One man had ended up in prison and, at long last, Julia had been able to move on, together with a new husband and his children.

Many of the dancers were strangers to him, but Gerlof did recognize the Kloss family, the owners of the Ölandic Resort. They were standing slightly apart, on the edge of the festival site, and they weren’t dancing. Kent Kloss often appeared in the newspaper, pontificating about the importance of tourism to the island. His younger brother, Niklas, was next to him, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

Their sister Veronica was there too, in a white dress, her chestnut locks flowing. Gerlof hadn’t seen her since last year, when she gave a talk about the Kloss family history in the common room up at the home in Marnäs. She had made the men in the audience — Gerlof included — smile, their eyes sparkling, even though some of them were over ninety. Veronica Kloss was tall and imposing. She could easily have stood on a palace balcony, waving to the masses.

The children were there too today, all boys, just as suntanned as their parents.

Bill Carlson reappeared, wandering around and clicking away in all directions with his camera. Finally, he came over to Gerlof, grinning from ear to ear.

‘Could anything be more Swedish than this?’

‘Swedish?’ Gerlof said with a little smile. ‘Don’t tell Anders Zorn or Carl Larsson, but this is a German festival.’

‘Really?’

‘Originally, yes. German bowmen used a maypole for target practice, before it was adorned with spring flowers. Then the German merchants brought the idea of a flower-clad pole over to Sweden... But most of our flowers don’t come out until June, so the celebration was moved back a month.’

‘Well, there you go,’ Bill said. ‘From warfare to flower power.’

‘That’s what happens sometimes.’

‘So you read a lot of history, Gerlof? It’s something that interests you?’

‘Yes. My own history and that of others.’

Gerlof glanced over at the Kloss family again. They looked relaxed but, for them and the rest of the tourist industry, this was the weekend when everything got under way, for six weeks from midsummer onwards. Tourism on Öland was like a Bengal fire that burned only in the summer, brief but intense.

The dancing went on for half an hour and ended with an exploding ‘rocket’. Everyone gathered around the pole, clapping their hands, stamping their feet and whooping up into the sky and jumping as high as they could to simulate a rocket. They did this three times, and then the party was over.

The circles broke up and people started heading home. Gerlof had no responsibilities, as his daughters were taking care of everything, but he remembered his vow to be polite to strangers, and looked up at his new acquaintance, Bill from America.

‘Are you cycling back up to Långvik, Bill?’

‘Yes. Home for the smorgasbord.’

‘Would you care for a little something before you set off? A glass of wormwood schnapps, maybe?’

‘Can I take a raincheck on that?’ Bill said. ‘Strong drink goes straight to my head these days, and that road is full of potholes...’

Gerlof nodded.

‘Another time, then.’

They kept each other company part of the way along the coast, together with lots of other villagers who were on their way home. Gerlof saw girls picking daisies and speedwell by the roadside, in spite of the fact that, according to tradition, they should be picked after sunset to bring the best possible luck.

Midsummer’s Eve was the long day when everything was supposed to happen but very little actually did. There was love in the air, the youngsters’ love for one another and the older people’s love for nature, but it was often swept away overnight.

Bill and Gerlof parted company at the northern end of the road leading to the village.

‘Give me your phone number,’ Gerlof said. ‘We’re fixing up the boat, so we might manage a fishing trip towards the end of the summer.’

‘Great. And there are more old Americans here on the island who would love to come along, if there’s room.’

‘Possibly,’ Gerlof said. ‘But when it comes to groups, Bill... I think I prefer birds.’

Lisa

After half an hour, the celebrations were over. They finished off with the song about the three old ladies from Nora, then all the children had to scream as loudly as they could, pretending to be rockets shooting off into the sky.

Then everybody let out a long breath and set off home. The only trace of the dance was wide circles of trampled-down grass around the maypole. Lisa took off her guitar and relaxed.

‘Well done,’ Sune said.

‘Thanks.’

He nodded in the direction of the village bar and restaurant.

‘I hear you’re playing there this summer?’

‘A few times, yes, but mostly down at the Ölandic Resort.’

That reminded her of something important. ‘What about the money?’

‘Money?’

‘Who do I talk to about getting paid?’

‘Not us,’ Sune said quickly. ‘Talk to Kloss.’

Lisa recognized the name; someone called Kloss had booked her through the agency.

‘Veronica or Kent,’ Sune went on. ‘They’re over there.’

Lisa saw a group of four adults and four teenage boys on the far side of the maypole. They looked just as happy as all the other families who had been there.

She went to put the guitar back in her car. She had calmed down now, after racing against the clock to get here. She was free now; no more music today.

Just the money, Silas whispered in her head.

The Kloss family were waiting. She went over to them, directing her biggest smile at the woman nearest to her.

‘Veronica Kloss? I’m Lisa Turesson — you called me last week...’

The woman looked anxious and held up a defensive hand.

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I am not fru Kloss. I am Paulina.’

Her Swedish was hesitant; she sounded Eastern European. Foreign cleaner, Lisa thought, then wished she hadn’t.

The other woman in the group stepped forward. She was in her forties, but her face was unlined. She had attractive dimples.

‘Hi, Lisa,’ she said. ‘I’m Veronica. Well done — thank you!’

‘You’re welcome,’ Lisa said, taking a deep breath. ‘I was just wondering about the money?’

‘We’ll sort that out. You’re going to play some more, aren’t you? In our restaurant and the nightclub?’

Lisa nodded quickly.

‘I’m here until the end of July, but I could do with some cash to be going on with...’

‘Of course,’ Veronica said. She took out her purse and handed over two notes, without asking for a receipt.

Meanwhile, one of the men had come over to Lisa.

‘Kent Kloss — welcome to the village,’ he said. ‘Would you like to join us at the house for a Cosmo?’

‘Sorry?’

‘A Cosmopolitan on our patio?’

Kent Kloss was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, just like the teenagers, and Lisa thought it was hard to make a guess at his age. His face was that of a middle-aged man, but he was smiling like a boy.

‘No, thanks,’ Lisa said. ‘Best not. I’m driving.’

‘So?’ Kloss said. ‘It’s a holiday!’

Lisa put on her best professional smile.

‘Thanks, anyway.’

Veronica Kloss took a key out of her pocket and pointed in the direction of the water.

‘You’re staying down there, on the campsite. We have a number of static caravans for our staff, right by the water. It’s a little primitive, but there’s no charge... and the view is fantastic. Is that OK?’

‘Brilliant,’ Lisa said.

But as she walked back to the car she was overcome with tiredness.

A static caravan. She had been hoping for a little red chalet by the sea, pretty and cosy.

But, of course, the campsite in Stenvik was just metres from the shore, and the views were stunning.

As she drove in she saw tents and caravans, but there was also a kind of wildness about the place. Campsites were usually neat and well planned, with large, rectangular grass plots, but this was stony and uneven, with lots of bushes and undergrowth. There were no straight roads; the tents and caravans were all over the shop, standing on their own or in groups. Many were old and faded by the sun; a few were new, protected by wooden fences.

She found her way easily following Veronica’s directions and arrived at an old-style caravan, white and rounded, with no fence. It was far from new, but at least it appeared to be clean and rust-free.

She unlocked the door and looked inside. It wasn’t very big: one room with a kitchen area, with a small bedroom beyond, but it had definitely been cleaned. She sniffed and picked up the smell of disinfectant. No mould.

Good. She sat down on the narrow bed and took out her mobile. Time to call Silas, tell him she’d arrived and see how he was feeling.

The Homecomer

An impressive fence. Not the highest fence the Homecomer had ever seen, but very robust.

Steel posts supported a green wire mesh. The steel sparkled in the sun, and between each pair of posts was a yellow sign: No UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

The Homecomer took out his wooden box and slowly picked up a pinch of snuff. The warning was absurd, but the fence was worth examining. It was almost three metres high. It wasn’t an electric fence but was topped with four strands of barbed wire. To the left it ran down towards the water, to the right was a dense deciduous forest.

‘They haven’t enclosed the whole area,’ he said.

Pecka was standing beside him, just in front of his girlfriend, Rita.

‘No,’ Pecka said. ‘Kloss has only fenced off the things he wants to protect... The central electricity supply and the dock.’

The Homecomer nodded.

‘And what about Rödtorp?’

‘What’s that?’

‘A little croft, south of the dock.’

‘Never heard of it.’ Pecka didn’t sound remotely interested. ‘But the fence stops just south of the dock, by the bathing area.’

‘Can we get in?’

Pecka nodded.

‘There’s a gate down by the water, but it has a CCTV camera.’

The Homecomer looked up at the fence.

‘It’s too high for me.’

‘We’re not climbing it,’ Pecka said. ‘There are other openings... Come with me.’

He set off among the trees and headed east. It was difficult to get through the undergrowth, but Rita and the Homecomer followed him.

The Homecomer had his gun with him, tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

After perhaps sixty paces they reached a small glade; there was a steel gate in the fence. It was locked, but Pecka pulled a key out of his pocket. He smiled.

‘I “forgot” to hand this in last year when they kicked me out.’

He unlocked the gate, and all they had to do was walk through.

Pecka raised a hand; it was time to be quiet. It was obvious that he knew the area; he walked straight through the trees and led them to a path. He chose the right-hand fork.

The further they got into the forest, the more cautious Pecka became. He moved slowly, and seemed to be listening all the time. He kept on going, and after a few minutes the Homecomer heard a faint rushing sound. He glimpsed the water through the trees.

The sea, and an open area covered in tarmac.

‘This is the dock,’ Pecka whispered.

He and Rita stopped, but the Homecomer kept on going, past the tarmac and on through the forest. The path led through trees and dense undergrowth, and he was astonished — he recognized this place from his childhood, and yet he didn’t.

The trees were new, but the earth and the water and the smells were the same.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of breaking glass beneath his boot.

A piece of an old windowpane.

He looked up and saw the space just twenty metres away. Everything had been cleared.

This was the spot. This was where the croft had stood. But a giant appeared to have stamped all over it, brushed the bits and pieces to one side, then moved on.

The Homecomer looked at what was left for a little while, then backed away. That was enough.

He turned around and increased his speed — and almost bumped into the other two. Pecka and Rita were crouching down in the undergrowth; Pecka was holding a pair of binoculars and looking in the direction of the dock.

The Homecomer saw that there was a small cargo boat moored by the quayside; it looked rusty, possibly abandoned. But then he noticed movement on deck. People were moving around by the hatches leading to the hold, and on the bridge.

‘We know their schedule,’ Rita said. ‘They’ve brought goods ashore for the past two days, and she sails straight after midsummer.’

The Homecomer didn’t say anything, but Pecka nodded.

‘That’s when we’ll do it.’

They carried on watching the boat in the middle of a cloud of buzzing flies, but the Homecomer couldn’t forget the remnants of his childhood, deep in the forest.

The New Country, June 1931

The flies are buzzing inside the carriage, the wind is strong as they speed along, and the train whistle blows. Aron has watched the trains crossing the alvar all his life, but he has never been on one. It’s a real adventure, chugging across the island just a few carriages behind the engine, straight through the flat landscape. A journey through emptiness, through the grassy plain that is the alvar, but it’s still exciting. Aron sticks his head out of the window, feeling the wind in his hair. The steam train is moving faster than the odd cars and buses he sees on the road.

Sometimes they travel past a barn, which brings back memories of last summer, when the barn wall collapsed and everything went quiet in the darkness.

The wall had fallen to reveal a black gap underneath, like the opening of an underground crypt. Aron had stood stock still, staring at it. Then Sven had placed a hand on his back and given him a shove.

‘In you go,’ Sven had growled, sweaty and stressed. ‘Get in there and fetch his money.’

Aron had done as he was told. He had lain down on the grass and wriggled under the wall.

Into the darkness. He had crawled in over the cold ground, in under the hard, wooden wall. A nail had scratched his forehead, but he had ducked and kept on going.

Towards the body.

Edvard Kloss, lying there under the wall.

Trapped. Motionless.

Aron shudders in the cold wind as he gazes out of the train window. He doesn’t want to remember that night.

But the farms alongside the railway line don’t seem to bother Sven. When he sees the farmhands working by the barns, he raises a hand and waves.

‘Do you know them?’ Aron asks.

‘No, but all workers are my brothers. They, too, will be liberated from their back-breaking toil one day!’

After Kalleguta, the railway turns sharply to the west, towards the station in Borgholm. Outside the town the sea appears once again, like a blue ribbon in the west. Aron has never travelled on the ferry to the mainland either; he has never crossed the Sound.

When they arrive they alight from the train at the big stone building, then wander through the straight streets. The black-suited residents of the town glance at Aron and Sven’s simple clothes as they pass by. Aron can hear them speaking quietly behind them.

‘They were gossiping about me,’ Sven says. ‘They know who I am.’

‘Do they?’

Sven nods, his lips compressed into a thin line.

‘They haven’t forgotten my quarrels with those who were out to exploit the poor.’

They carry on down towards the harbour, where a dozen or so small cargo boats and a couple of ferries are moored, with a large yacht in solitary splendour slightly further away.

In the restaurant they each have an omelette, which costs two kronor and fifty öre. Sven has a glass of beer, Aron a soft drink.

After the meal Sven takes a pinch of snuff from his wooden box, the one Aron gave him, and stares gloomily at the bill for lunch. He shakes his head, but pays.

‘In the new country you can eat for free,’ he says when they are back on the street.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. You pay only if you have money.’

In the afternoon they leave the island, crossing the Sound on a steamship. Sven keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the mainland, but Aron turns around and watches as the island slowly shrinks to a greyish-brown strip on the horizon. He feels as if it is sinking into the sea, as if his whole world is disappearing behind him.

Jonas

Over the past two years Jonas had forgotten how brilliant it was to wake up by the sea. It was a bit like being an astronaut, waking up on a strange planet where the sounds and the air were different.

On Midsummer’s Day, he opened his eyes to the sound of the wind and the cries of the gulls, bumble bees buzzing around the house and bikes rattling by out on the coast road — and, beyond that, the faint rushing of the waves out in the Sound.

Villa Kloss, he thought.

The sounds were strange, yet familiar. Jonas was back in a summer world where his father had brought him ever since he was a little boy. But now he was grown up. Almost. He was nearly twelve years old and no longer slept in Uncle Kent’s big house with his dad but in a little chalet of his own twenty metres away. A guest chalet, consisting of nothing more than a narrow room with white walls and a white wooden floor. His older brother, Mats, and cousin Casper were staying in the other two chalets, but he had this one all to himself for the next four weeks.

Aunt Veronica, his father’s sister, had helped him make up the bed, bringing a faint hint of perfume with her along with the sheets.

Veronica had been wearing a white dress, and had the same bright-blue eyes as his father. Jonas was fond of his aunt, but he hadn’t seen her for almost two years. He hadn’t come over last year, and Veronica hadn’t had time to come and visit them in Huskvarna. Jonas had a feeling that Veronica and his mother didn’t particularly like each other.

‘This is your very own space,’ Veronica had said when they had finished making the bed. ‘Nobody to disturb you — that will be nice, won’t it?’

It was lovely. Jonas had slept, and nobody had disturbed him.

He sat up in bed and looked out of the window. He could see water — the pale-blue swimming pool was only ten metres away.

On the other side of the coast road, the dark-blue Sound sparkled at the bottom of the steep cliffs.

And up there on top of the cliffs, almost at the very end of the plateau, lay the old cairn. The big, rounded grave made of stones, which was haunted. But not now, not when the sun was shining.

Jonas jumped out of bed.

All he could hear were the faint sounds of summer. No voices. When he fell asleep last night, the rest of the family had still been awake, celebrating the shortest night of the year in various ways: Mats and his cousins had gone down to the jetty to see if there were any girls around, Jonas’s father had been working as a chef in the village restaurant, which was also owned by the Kloss family, and Aunt Veronica and Uncle Kent had been sitting on the decking together with Veronica’s husband, who was on a flying visit from Stockholm, and Kent’s new girlfriend, whose name Jonas didn’t know. Uncle Kent had had a new girlfriend every summer, ever since Jonas could remember. They didn’t say much, and they didn’t usually stay around for long.

Jonas had been too tired to stay up. He had gone to bed at about ten, and fallen asleep to distant music, quiet voices and loud laughter.

This morning he pulled on his shorts and a thin T-shirt, opened the glass door and went out into the sunshine. It was only eight o’clock, but it was already hot.

The two plots that made up this part of Villa Kloss extended around him, covered in stones, the odd juniper bush and viper’s bugloss. His father used to own the third plot at the southern end, but that was several years ago, before he got involved in some business that didn’t go too well. His summer cottage had been sold, and Jonas noticed that the new owners had put up a fence to separate the place from Villa Kloss.

He was hungry, and hoped there would be something to eat in Uncle Kent’s kitchen.

A wide, gravelled path led past the pool to the main house. The water looked warm and clear, but hardly anyone ever swam in it. The adults never seemed to have time, and Jonas thought it was more fun to go down to the shore. It was somehow wilder down there, with flat rocks and seaweed and tiny shrimps swimming around your legs.

He went up the steps to the wooden decking at the front of the house. This would be Jonas’s workplace for the next few weeks, along with Veronica’s decking. His job was to sand down all the planks, then oil them. His wages would be thirty-five kronor an hour. That was a lot of money — Jonas had said yes straight away.

Uncle Kent’s house was long and wide, with huge panoramic windows at the front. There was also a sliding glass door; Jonas pushed it to one side and went in. He had always thought that walking into this cool room felt like stepping into the command module in a huge spaceship. Not that he had ever done such a thing, but this was what it ought to look like: a rectangular room with enormous windows and electronic gadgets everywhere. There were rows of tiny lights on the ceiling and an impressive stereo next to an even bigger TV, both connected to black speakers built into the wall.

Kent’s golf bag was on the right, next to a treadmill, and beyond that lay the entrance to the kitchen, which was every bit as shiny and metallic as the living room. Various things were humming and flashing in there.

Uncle Kent had employed a young housekeeper from Russia or Poland this summer; she was standing by the worktop, where she had laid out an array of breakfast food: bread, butter, juice, eggs, fruit and four kinds of cereal.

Jonas stared. He was glad he was alone right now, because back home in Huskvarna he always had to wait until Mats had finished helping himself. Now he could just dive right in. He picked up a blue bowl, filled it with cornflakes and milk and sat down on the biggest of Uncle Kent’s black leather sofas. He had a fantastic view of the coast from here: the stony garden, the coast road, the sea and the burial cairn up on the edge of the cliff.

After about fifteen minutes the sliding door opened and Aunt Veronica came in.

‘Good morning, Jonas. Did you sleep well?’

She was already dressed, in a black business suit and red shoes.

Jonas chewed, swallowed and nodded.

‘Mmm.’

‘Are Kent and Niklas here?’

‘I haven’t seen anyone,’ Jonas replied.

‘I expect they’re out jogging,’ Veronica said with a smile.

In the winter Veronica lived in Stockholm with Urban, who was eighteen, and Casper, who was fifteen, and their father, but in the summer she lived here at Villa Kloss; she was the managing director of the Ölandic Resort. She never took any time off during the period when the complex was open, from the end of May to the beginning of September.

‘So what are you going to do today, Jonas? Do you have any plans for the summer?’

He looked out at the wooden decking and nodded.

‘I’m going to make a start on rubbing down the decking.’

‘Not today. It’s Midsummer’s Day, and almost everyone is off work. You, too, Jonas. You’re on holiday.’

That sounded good.

Holiday, Jonas thought. Not a break from school. He hadn’t even started work yet, but he was already on holiday, like a grown-up.

Lisa

The Ölandic Resort was a couple of kilometres south of Stenvik and was owned by the Kloss family. Lisa was also working at the resort this summer, and she drove down there at lunchtime to get things ready.

At the entrance there was a reception booth and a barrier, and a CCTV camera. She could feel the cold lens staring at her as she wound down the window and gave her name to the security guard, but everything was fine. The barrier was raised and she drove on to a tarmac road, past rows of tents and caravans, down towards the sea and the gleaming white Ölandic Hotel.

It was Midsummer’s Day, the day after the big party. But of course every night was party night at the Ölandic — at least it was in the nightclub in the hotel basement. Two DJs and two cover bands would be working there in shifts right through July, from early evening until late into the night.

This evening was Lady Summertime’s debut, and Lisa wanted to make sure everything went well.

The Ölandic Resort was a custom-built holiday complex with straight roads and huge lawns. The contrast with the little campsite in Stenvik was striking. The Ölandic was a place for thousands of summer visitors to gather in the sun, on the beach, on the golf course, in the hotel and in the nightclub. But as Lisa drove down towards the water she didn’t see many people, and those she did see looked as if they were sleepwalking. People were probably having a lie-in, or sunbathing down on the shore, beyond the dense deciduous forest.

She parked in front of the hotel. It was four storeys high, built on the slope above the beach. The hotel had the best view in the resort, the summer cottages the next best, and the campsite lay furthest away from the sea.

Lisa picked up her CDs and LPs and went inside; the reception area was cool, with goldfish swimming around in a large aquarium on the limestone floor. Two blonde receptionists, both in their twenties and wearing pale-blue blouses, were on duty behind the desk.

The one nearest to Lisa smiled, and Lisa introduced herself.

‘Oh, so you’re Lady Summertime. The club’s downstairs.’

She led the way, but didn’t offer to carry any of Lisa’s records.

A red neon sign above the door read ‘MAY LAI BAR’. The club beyond the cloakroom was large, with tables on the right and a bar made of dark wood running the entire length of the left-hand wall. There wasn’t a soul in sight, but there was a good variety of drinks on the shelves, and green champagne bottles ready and waiting in a glass fridge.

‘The calm before the storm,’ the receptionist said.

‘So does this place get stormy in the evenings?’ Lisa asked.

‘Well, people do like to let rip... It’s full every night in July. Quite a few kids with rich parents come here, with a sports car of their own and Daddy’s credit card.’

Lisa nodded; she knew the type.

The DJ booth was near the door, next to a wide glass door leading out on to the seafront. The dance floor looked freshly mopped, black and shining, but a faint smell of perspiration and alcohol still lingered.

‘Have you got “Summer Is Short”?’ the receptionist asked.

Lisa looked blank.

‘Tomas Ledin,’ the girl said. ‘“Summer Is Short”. Do you play that one?’

‘Sometimes.’

Lisa much preferred Daft Punk’s “Around The World”, but she knew that the old classics brought people in.

The booth was locked, but the receptionist had a bunch of keys. She handed one of them over to Lisa.

‘Just say the word if you need anything.’

‘Thanks.’

Lisa unlocked the door, went inside and checked out the equipment. The turntables were Technics SL 1200; they looked as if they’d been through some tough times, but the Pioneer mixer desk looked brand new. There was an effects panel which would allow her to control a small light show over the dance floor, complete with glitter ball, and even a cordless microphone for shout-outs.

‘We’ve got a smoke machine, too,’ the receptionist said, pointing to a button close to the floor.

‘Excellent,’ Lisa said. She loved special effects.

The booth was raised above the dance floor, a bit like a pulpit, but it was just as cramped as all the others she had worked in. A sheet of Plexiglas at the front protected her from the public and any alcohol that might be splashing around.

‘What about security?’ she asked.

‘We’ve got guards here 24/7 in the summer,’ the receptionist said. ‘In the evenings they move between the hotel and the club. There’s an alarm button over by the bar if things kick off.’

‘Great.’

‘Make yourself at home,’ the receptionist said, and headed back up the stairs.

Lisa placed her records and CDs on the floor behind the Plexiglas, then locked the booth and went over to the glass door to have a look outside.

The door was like a wide fire exit or an escape route — which was good. She slid it open and stepped out into the summer heat. The sea air rushed towards her from the sparkling Sound, carrying with it the faint smell of seaweed.

On the large wooden deck there were more tables and metal chairs arranged around a large barbecue made of metal and stone; there was also a bar decorated with bamboo. There was no one in sight, but many of the tables already had a RESERVED notice on them.

Immediately below the hotel she saw a sandy beach in an inlet extending south. To the north there was a verdant deciduous forest, with a low stone wall in front of it. The wall was topped with tightly stretched barbed wire.

A flight of stone steps led down to the lawn in front of the hotel, where croquet hoops had been set up. Lisa walked down past the croquet lawn, and went over to the forest and the wall.

Fences and walls always made her curious. She could see nothing but a dense wall of low trees and tangled bushes, so why the need for barbed wire?

Cautiously, she grabbed hold of the wire and pulled it up so that she could wriggle underneath. First her legs, then the rest of her body. The wire seemed keen to shred the back of her head, but she managed to squeeze through and jump down on the other side of the wall.

Now she was in the forbidden forest. It looked old, with lichen-covered ash trees and gnarled oaks among younger birch and elder. An enchanted forest waiting for a princess, for Lady Summertime.

She was only intending to go a short distance. There was a narrow track leading away from the wall — possibly made by hares or deer — and Lisa took a few tentative steps along it. Then she stopped and took a deep breath.

It was so quiet here. Dark and peaceful, with the muted sound of birdsong and the hum of various insects. She carried on down the track, and when she looked back she could no longer see the hotel. The wall she had climbed over was barely visible through the foliage. Forests on the island weren’t tall or extensive but dense and thick with undergrowth; they could hide just about anything.

She heard a twig snap up ahead. It was very distinct, definitely not the product of her imagination, but she couldn’t see any movement. Everything around her was green and brown, leaves and branches trembling in the gentle breeze.

The narrow track gradually widened, and after perhaps fifty metres it ended in a glade with tall, overgrown grass. Lisa stepped out into the light and screwed up her eyes as she turned her face up to the sun. It was almost at its zenith now. She could hear splashing and cheerful shouts from the beach to the south.

The Swedish summer. Tomas Ledin was right, it was short, but that made it all the more intense. Lisa was a city girl; she had grown up in Farsta in a family that didn’t own a summer cottage, but a vague, almost atavistic longing for a rural community had attracted her to the job on Öland for this summer season.

And the money, of course.

When she looked down at the grass she noticed wide grooves — deep tyre tracks. A large, heavy machine had driven through this ancient forest, straight across the glade and over to the trees on the far side.

A small building had once stood there, but the machine must have driven right into it, because now there was nothing left but the foundations and a few grey planks of wood.

Beyond the ruin she saw more trees, and further away the sun glinted on the sea; there was a small beach and a few boulders protruding into the water to form a narrow jetty.

A lost idyll. The family that had lived here once upon a time would have been able to go down for a swim every day...

‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice behind her.

Lisa turned around. A young man was standing in the middle of the glade, staring at her.

He was wearing a black peaked cap, and a shirt and trousers in the same shade of blue as the receptionists’ uniform up at the hotel. He was tall and thin; his forehead was covered in sweat as he strode towards her. Lisa noticed a black two-way radio clipped to his belt, and realized that he was one of the guards. Young and determined.

Lisa had nothing against security guards, but Lady Summertime, the rebel within her, didn’t like them. Uniforms — sooooo boring.

‘What am I doing?’ she said, staring right back at him. ‘I work here.’

‘Where?’

‘At the Ölandic Resort.’

‘Do you?’

‘I’m a DJ at the May Lai Bar.’

The guard stopped a metre away from her.

‘Oh? I haven’t seen you before.’

‘It’s my first day,’ Lisa said. ‘I start tonight — Lady Summertime. Do you want to see my ID?’

He stared at her for a little while longer, then shook his head. ‘I just wanted to...’

Then he glanced over her shoulder and froze. ‘Shit, there’s somebody else...’

He fell silent, and Lisa turned around. At first she couldn’t see anything apart from leaves and shimmering water, but then she saw a shadow against the dazzling sunlight. Someone was standing motionless on the jetty, his back to the beach. An old man in a fisherman’s jumper, straight-backed and sturdy.

Lisa looked at the guard. ‘Can I go?’

He glanced at her, then nodded reluctantly. ‘OK. Go back to the hotel. You shouldn’t be here.’

‘This is part of the resort, isn’t it?’

‘It’s private property — it belongs to the Kloss family.’

‘I see,’ Lisa said.

She had nothing more to say to him, and left the glade without another word. When she looked back for the last time she saw that he was on his way down to the sea and the old man, striding out as before.

Fascist, she thought.

She returned to the track, squeezed carefully under the barbed wire and over the wall, and was back at the hotel.

The glass door was still ajar. She decided to go in and make sure she’d locked the booth before she went back to the caravan to call Silas and grab a few hours’ rest before tonight’s debut as Lady Summertime.

Just as she was about to step inside, she thought she heard something behind her, a short, sharp noise from the forest. An old oak tree coming down? A firework? Lisa stopped in the doorway for a moment, but she didn’t hear anything else.

She went in and closed the glass door behind her.

The Homecomer

The Homecomer was standing out on the makeshift jetty when the guard turned up. The boulders from his childhood, arranged in a row stretching out from the shore — but of course it was a mistake to walk out on to them. It made him too visible, too vulnerable.

He had longed to stand here by this narrow sandy shore almost every day while he was overseas, had dreamed of coming back and walking right to the very end of the jetty. His croft up in the forest was gone, but Kloss couldn’t erase these rocks.

He had sat among the trees for a while, watching the Ölandic dock with Pecka, his young recruit, but the flies had been a nuisance and his leg had gone to sleep. Eventually, he had left the protection of the forest and gone down to the sea, with the Walther still tucked into the waistband of his trousers at the back. He had made sure the safety catch was on.

Tentatively, he made his way along the boulders, and for a few moments he had allowed himself to be drawn back to his childhood, although he didn’t leap from rock to rock like a boy; he took the slow steps of an old man.

Twelve steps, and the Homecomer was standing on the very last boulder. He straightened his back and gazed out across the empty Sound.

The sun was shining, but the water around him was dark and full of shadows; the bright light barely reached the sandy seabed. However, when he looked north he could clearly see the black ship that Pecka had been watching. It was still moored in the dock, and the crew were working flat out. They seemed to be carrying plastic boxes of fish from the ship to a delivery van on the quayside.

In the other direction, to the south, he could hear the sound of the Ölandic’s summer residents enjoying the sunshine, but the bathing area was hidden behind a spit of land. The Homecomer couldn’t see them, and no one could see him.

There was an air of calm about the island. No doubt the visitors who weren’t down on the shore were fast asleep in their tents and chalets, and many of those who had celebrated the shortest night of the year would wake up with gaps in their memory and trembling hands, feeling ten years older on this bright summer’s day.

But the Homecomer was wide awake, and he felt good.

After a while, the van drove away from the quayside. The seamen went back on board, and the Homecomer decided it was time to leave.

‘Hey! You there!’

The voice came from behind him, and he slowly turned around.

‘Yes, you! This is private property!’

A young man was standing on the shore, but it wasn’t Pecka. He was wearing blue trousers and a black peaked cap, and he looked like a park keeper.

‘Private?’ the Homecomer said, standing his ground.

The security guard nodded. ‘Were you looking for someone?’

No doubt this was a question he usually asked unauthorized persons, but out here it sounded rather odd.

The Homecomer shook his head and stayed exactly where he was. He wondered whether Pecka had seen the guard.

‘I used to live here when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘I used to stand here on the rocks catching pike with a wooden spear... We had a croft in the forest.’

‘Right,’ the guard said. ‘Well, there’s no croft there now.’

‘No, it’s been knocked down.’

The guard wasn’t listening; he seemed to be pondering something.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘I walked.’

‘Didn’t you see the notices?’

‘No.’

‘But what about the fence? You must have seen the fence!’

The Homecomer shook his head — and at the same time he felt for the pistol with his right hand. His fingers touched the butt of the Walther he had bought from Einar Wall.

‘This place used to be called Rödtorp,’ the Homecomer said, holding the security guard’s gaze. He kept the pistol hidden behind his back as he carried on talking. ‘Our cottage was small but cosy... my grandfather built it. I lived there with my mother, Astrid, and my sister, Greta, and my stepfather, Sven. But Sven wanted to travel to the new country, so that was what we did. We sailed from Borgholm and—’

‘I’m sure you did,’ the guard interrupted him, his voice hardening, ‘but you need to come ashore!’

The Homecomer nodded. He set off along the rocks, but he wasn’t quite so steady on his feet now.

He stopped and shook his head. ‘My legs have seized up.’

‘Hang on,’ the guard said wearily. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

He stepped on to the first rock.

The Homecomer waited for him, holding the pistol behind his back. He could hear the excited screams and joyful shouts of the holidaymakers in the distance.

The guard took five strides and reached the Homecomer.

‘Put your hand on my shoulder and we’ll get you back,’ he said, turning away. Perhaps he was pleased at the thought of being able to help an old man.

‘You’re very kind,’ the Homecomer said, his eyes fixed on the back of the young man’s neck.

He raised the gun, slipped off the safety catch and took aim.

The guard grabbed his radio and began to turn as he heard the sound, but it was too late.

The back of his neck was unusually slender. The line where the skull ended and the vertebrae began was clearly visible.

The Homecomer fired.

The shot echoed out across the water; the guard’s body convulsed and he fell sideways. Down into the water, away from the light, with a cascade of white foam all around him.

The Homecomer watched as the waters closed over the young man and the body disappeared into the darkness.

He looked around, listened. The shot had been a sharp report in the wind, short and hard, with no echo. Trees muffled the sound of a bullet being fired, as he knew very well, and there were plenty of trees around the shore.

Pecka had heard the shot. He had got to his feet among the trees and was staring open-mouthed towards the sea. Slowly, he began to move.

After ten seconds, the guard’s body floated back to the surface, face up. A stream of bubbles was coming out of his mouth, and his arms were moving feebly.

Pecka appeared. He stared at the guard in the water.

‘He’s still alive,’ he said.

The Homecomer crouched down with his arm outstretched, put the Walther under the water and fired into the guard’s head, with hardly a sound.

The bubbles stopped.

Everything went quiet.

‘Let’s get him out,’ the Homecomer said.

Pecka looked at him blankly. ‘What?’

The Homecomer didn’t reply. He looked around; there was no one in sight, which meant that no one had heard the shot. And if there was one thing he knew about, it was taking care of dead bodies.

He bent down and grabbed hold of the man’s belt, then started hauling the body towards the shore.

‘Give me a hand,’ he ordered.

Pecka moved like a sleepwalker, but stepped down into the water and seized the guard’s arms.

They dragged the body to the shore, then pulled it ashore and in among the trees.

‘Shit,’ Pecka said. ‘Shit...’

The Homecomer wasted no time on him. He quickly ripped open the guard’s shirt and removed the wet clothes.

There was an old ditch under the tangle of dog roses, just a few metres away. He got Pecka to roll away all the big stones in order to make it deeper, then they tipped the naked body into the hollow. He covered it with a thick layer of rotting bladder wrack from the shore to contain the smell of the corpse, then topped the seaweed with several layers of stones.

The Homecomer stepped back to admire their handiwork. They had built a little burial cairn in the forest. It wasn’t old like the one in Stenvik; this one was brand new.

‘Have you... Have you done this before?’ Pecka asked.

‘Not here,’ the Homecomer said. But he knew what would happen in the grave from now on; that was nothing new.

The birds wouldn’t be able to detect the stench of the corpse, so they wouldn’t start pecking at it, which was good — but the insects would soon find it. The bluebottles would buzz in among the stones in just a few hours and, since the guard wasn’t wearing any clothes, they would start laying their eggs immediately. When the maggots hatched, they would be hungry. They would break down the body, work their way in until they reached the skeleton, until it no longer stank. In a few weeks all the soft parts would have dried out or disappeared, and in two months only the bones would remain.

And by that time the Homecomer would be gone.

He looked to the north through the trees, away from the grave. The ship was still at the quayside. ‘Have you been keeping an eye on the ship?’

Pecka had been staring at the stones, but he gave a start and answered mechanically, ‘Yes. They’ve all gone ashore. To the restaurant.’

‘Good,’ the Homecomer said. ‘Let’s go.’

With a final glance at the grave, he led the way into the forest, heading back towards the fence. His footsteps were light as he walked along, in spite of his age and what he had just done. He was still capable.

Jonas

It was morning, a lazy Sunday when nothing much seemed to be happening along the coast. Jonas was gazing out from the decking in front of Uncle Kent’s house. The sun was spreading its warmth, and summer was all around him. Boats in the Sound, holidaymakers relaxing on the shore, the odd car passing by. The stony ground above the water was coloured red and blue by the petals of poppies and viper’s bugloss, which were shooting up everywhere.

But something had happened. The door behind him was wide open, and he could hear Uncle Kent’s voice in the middle of a phone call. His uncle usually sounded quite pleased, but today his tone was harsh and angry.

‘Gone?’ Kent said. ‘What do you mean, gone? Was he there in the morning, or did he not turn up at all?’ Pause. ‘He was? So he just cleared off at some point during the day? He’s done it again...’

Pause.

‘I know. We had some trouble with him last season, but Veronica decided to give him a second chance this year. She believed in him. He promised to pull himself together, work harder. And now this...’

Jonas didn’t want to eavesdrop, so he left the garden and went out on to the coast road. He could see the campsite just a few hundred metres to the north, and the jetty where almost everyone in the village gathered to swim and sunbathe when the weather was good. Summer visitors.

The summer visitors were lying there in the sun; the hotter it got, the more of them there were. The shore was covered with a mosaic of red, white and blue beach towels, with thermos flasks, balls, bottles and bicycle baskets scattered all around. The summer visitors had lots of stuff, but they hardly ever bothered with any of it. They went for a swim and played Frisbee, but mostly they lay motionless in the sunshine.

Jonas waved away a fly and looked in the other direction. Villa Kloss was the last house in the village, then the coast road narrowed to a dirt track. The Ölandic was a few kilometres away, with its huge campsite and luxury hotel, but the resort was hidden by a series of headlands jutting out into the sea.

Jonas crossed the road and walked out on to the plateau known as the ridge. It was covered in gravel and dropped down into a little hollow above the shore.

And right on the edge of the plateau, straight in front of Uncle Kent’s house, was the rounded burial cairn. It must have been there for a thousand years.

Jonas slowed down as he reached the cairn. He had never dared to come this close when he was little — not on his own. The cairn looked like a hillock, but at close quarters you could see that it was made up of hundreds of big stones, all piled on top of one another. It had been built during the Bronze Age.

Jonas knew that there was a coffin under all those stones — but not a wooden one. One day when they were standing there studying the cairn, his father had told him that it was a sarcophagus made up of solid blocks. The stones and boulders had been piled up on top of the coffin, to protect it from grave robbers.

Suddenly, he heard a rattling sound; he stopped and turned around a few metres from the cairn and saw his cousin Casper on a dark-blue Yamaha, approaching from the south.

Casper was fifteen now — of course he had bought a moped. Or perhaps Aunt Veronica had given it to him.

The summer before last, they had both had bikes and used to race each other on the gravel tracks in the quarry, but Jonas knew there was no chance of that now.

Casper turned on to the plateau and nodded to Jonas. He didn’t get off, but sat there revving the engine impatiently until Jonas went over to him.

‘Cool!’ he shouted.

Casper nodded. ‘Got it back in the spring. What are you doing?’

Jonas wasn’t doing anything; he was just standing here by the cairn. But he had to say something.

‘I’m counting stones.’

Casper revved the engine again. Jonas considered asking if he wanted to play, but suspected that his cousin probably no longer used that word.

‘Stones?’ Casper said.

‘Every year some of the stones fall down from the cairn. I’m keeping a check on them.’

That was in fact true; since he was last here at least three big stones had come tumbling down and were lying on the grass, along with others that had been there for several years. Jonas counted them and looked at his cousin.

‘Nine,’ he said, and continued in a confident voice: ‘When thirteen stones have fallen, the ghost will be free.’

‘What ghost?’

‘The one that lives in the cairn.’

The idea had only just come to him, but it sounded really good.

‘What will he do then?’ Casper wanted to know.

He didn’t sound all that interested, but Jonas had to keep going.

‘He’ll go to the houses on the other side of the road and...’ Jonas tried to think of something terrible that could happen. Something really bad. ‘He’ll go into every room and raise his sword, then chop off everyone’s arms while they’re fast asleep. The pain will wake them up, and they’ll see the blood pumping out, and their arms lying on the floor. Most of them will survive, but they’ll never be able to swim again.’

Casper was listening, but didn’t look impressed.

‘Wrong. He’ll take over their bodies while they’re asleep. And when they wake up, they’re possessed.’

‘Possessed?’

‘Possessed by the ghost.’

‘Right.’

‘I saw a film about that kind of thing last winter,’ Casper said. ‘Fallen. It was about a demon who came up from hell and took over people’s souls. He could move from one person to another, and when someone was possessed they had to do whatever he wanted. He turned them all into serial killers, but when the police arrested the murderer, the demon simply transferred into another body. So nobody could catch him.’

Jonas nodded. He hadn’t seen the film, but being possessed by a demon sounded worse than having your arms chopped off. He tried to think of something even more terrifying, but he’d run out of ideas.

He looked down at the cairn. ‘More stones have started to come loose — can you see?’

‘Maybe the ghost is on his way out,’ Casper said. ‘But you could always roll them back.’

‘OK.’

But Jonas was just saying that; he didn’t even want to touch the fallen stones. Anything could happen if he did that.

Casper revved his moped one last time and gazed out across the water. He didn’t even look at Jonas; it was as if he was talking to himself.

‘I was thinking of going up to Marnäs, to meet some mates by the harbour... See what’s happening there.’

He didn’t ask if Jonas wanted to go with him, and Jonas didn’t ask if he could come along, but now Casper looked at him and said, ‘You can use my rubber dinghy if you want. If you’re going swimming. It’s in the boathouse.’

‘OK,’ Jonas said.

Casper swung the moped around and set off along the coast road, increasing his speed so that the rattling got louder and louder until he turned on to the track leading past the maypole and the mini-golf course, heading up towards the main road.

Slowly, Jonas walked away from the cairn.

He remembered that Uncle Kent had promised him a great summer. He had said it was going to be fantastic.

But now he was all by himself on the coast, completely alone. As Jonas watched his cousin disappear, he knew that the next month was going to be terrible.

Lisa

The sun had gone down, and the party was under way.

Lady Summertime gazed out across the room at the crowded dance floor, the bubbling cauldron down below her throne. Hands flew up in the air, hair was tossed around, upper bodies swayed to the beat, forming dark, billowing waves.

‘Summer of love!’ she yelled into the microphone. ‘It’s going to be a long, fantastic summer!’

It was one thirty in the morning, the club was packed and Lady Summertime was running the show with flashing lights and a thumping backbeat. She was completely in charge, in her purple wig, oversized yellow T-shirt, black nail varnish and black leather jacket. Lisa would never wear such clothes, but this was Lady Summertime’s uniform.

She had arrived at seven thirty, and the cooks in the kitchen had provided her with a late dinner. Then she had put on her make-up and her wig. At half past eight, Lisa (Lady Summertime!) had gone into the club and put on a CD with fairly gentle tracks as background music.

People had been a little slow on this Sunday after midsummer, but at about ten o’clock they had started making their way down from the hotel and the campsite, red in the face from too much sunshine and front loading. They had gathered at the bars, both indoor and outdoor, ordering beer and glancing over towards the DJ booth.

At half past ten she suddenly turned up the volume, and everyone jumped.

‘OK, everybody on the dance floor! Right now!’ Summertime shouted, and people did as they were told.

When they had had enough to drink they became more adventurous, raising their hands in the air — they were ready to party.

By eleven the bar was jam-packed and the tables were covered with ice buckets. Lisa stuck to water all evening, but she was probably the only one.

At quarter past eleven the first glass smashed on the dance floor. The shards went everywhere, but the dancing continued.

At half past eleven the first bottle of champagne was emptied on to the floor, sprayed all over the place by the guy who had paid fourteen hundred kronor for it. He was rich — that was obvious from his early suntan. People screamed with laughter in the shower of bubbles, and several credit cards were waved at the bar staff. ‘More champagne!’

By midnight the place stank of booze and sweat. People were dancing with few inhibitions, in sleeveless tops and sweat-drenched shirts. A couple of the boys were wearing nothing but swimming trunks. The girls’ hair was plastered to their faces with perspiration; their make-up had slid off long ago. Lady Summertime had acquired her own little group of cheerleaders, standing immediately below her booth. A forest of fists rose in the air, in time with the music.

‘Summertime! Summertime!’

And she shouted back: ‘Love ya! Love ya!’

After twelve, she put on the Cowley remix of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, pressed the button for a strobe effect on the lighting desk and set the smoke machine going — then Summertime jumped down from the booth and set off on tour among the dancers, right into the middle of the chaos.

It was sweaty, it was smoky, the darkness split by flashing lights.

Summertime became a jumping body among all the others, moving to the beat, raising her fists in the air, allowing a hug here and there, and rejecting a proposition whispered in her ear by some guy in a white shirt. She shook her head, smiling — Summertime was always in control — and after a few minutes she was back in her booth. She turned off the smoke and switched to ‘Situation’ by Yazoo.

‘Summertime! Summertime!’

Her little group was growing. Deafening shouts, hands in the air, stumbling feet, drinks spilling everywhere.

Summertime flicked through her vinyl collection and smiled at the chaos, but suddenly she spotted three guys at the far end of the dance floor. They looked like Greeks or Italians, and were standing very close together, about a metre from the bar. They were whispering and glancing around them, almost furtively.

She mixed in ‘Firestarter’ by Prodigy, and the next time she looked up they had gone.

Booze was knocked back by the bottle, more champagne was ordered. Lisa watched as one guy who was clearly the worse for wear counted out seven thousand-kronor notes to pay his tab; he passed them over to the bartender with a wave of his hand. ‘Keep the change!’

It was crazy; it was the height of summer.

A security guard appeared at the side of the DJ booth. He signalled to Lisa, and she took off her headphones and leaned forward.

‘We’ve had some trouble!’ he shouted to her. ‘Can you say something? Ask people to be a bit more careful?’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Thieving!’ the guard yelled. ‘Some people have lost their wallets!’

Lisa picked up the microphone, but thought for a second, then shouted back to the guard, ‘I saw three guys just now... They looked a bit dodgy!’

The guard had started to move away, but he stopped. ‘What did they look like?’

‘How can I put it?... Kind of greasy. Mafia types, if you know what I mean. Slicked-back hair and white shirts.’

The guard nodded, his expression grim.

‘OK, we’ll see if we can track them down.’

He made his way through the crowd as Lisa turned down the music and warned people to keep an eye on their possessions and their money. Nobody took any notice; they just carried on dancing.

The club closed at two thirty, and it was all over. Lisa finished with a slow number to calm things down.

‘Thanks, everyone! I love you all — see you tomorrow!’

The security staff took over and started ushering people out. However, the partying continued as everyone dispersed towards the campsite, chalets or the hotel, dancing their way home. Some would catch the night bus, others might decide to sleep under the full moon, or go for a swim.

The place was almost empty, but a guy who was far too young for Lisa hung around the booth, helping her pack away. He was wearing a black jacket and was just as tanned as the kids with rich daddies.

‘Do you recognize me?’ he said.

‘Vaguely. From Stockholm?’

He shook his head.

‘I was there when you picked up the keys. My name is Urban Kloss. I’m the one who owns all this... the Ölandic Resort.’

‘Oh, really?’ Lisa said; she could see that he was twenty at the most. ‘And when did you buy it?’

He stopped smiling, not quite sure what to say. Eventually he said, ‘It’s in the family.’

‘In that case, your family owns the place,’ Lisa said. ‘Not you, Urban. You just work here.’

‘I’m the manager,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘I am, I’m the acting catering manager.’

‘Whatever,’ Lisa said.

Urban smiled at her. He seemed to be enjoying the banter.

‘Do you fancy playing golf sometime? It’s the Ölandic Open next week.’

Summertime smiled back, anything but sweetly. Guys often chatted her up, and she was much better at dealing with them than Lisa was. She shook her head.

‘Balls are delicate; hitting them isn’t such a good idea,’ she said with a yawn. ‘And now I’m heading back to Stenvik with my records and I’m going to bed.’

‘I’ll help you.’

‘It’s fine, Urban, I can—’

‘Let me help you, for fuck’s sake.’

He picked up the bag of LPs and headed off. Lisa locked the booth and followed him, carrying her CDs. The car park was full of people hanging around. Among the Swedish cars there was a Porsche, a BMW, even a Lamborghini. And her Passat.

‘There you go,’ Urban said, turning to face her.

She gave him a brief hug, an ironic hug, and quickly got into the car.

‘Sleep well, Urban.’

If you were wearing a purple wig, giving a guy the brush-off was no problem.

She had split herself into two different people over the last couple of years: one was Lisa Turesson, who played melodic tunes on the guitar and was afraid of most things (like seagulls, wasps and snakes at this time of year), and the other was Lady Summertime, the feisty DJ in the purple wig who yelled into the microphone and got everyone on their feet. Lisa liked Lady Summertime.

She was back at the campsite in Stenvik in fifteen minutes. Everyone seemed to be asleep; there wasn’t a sound, but Lisa’s ears were still ringing from the music.

It was ten to three. The sun rose at about half past four, but the night sky was still dark grey. She could see a few faint lights along the coast in cottages and boathouses, but nobody saw Lisa carry her bag into the caravan and lock the door. She drew the curtains, too.

Then she opened the bag and started flicking through her records. The stolen wallets were hidden at the bottom. There were five altogether and, in spite of the fact that she was super-sleepy, she couldn’t help opening them and counting her spoils.

Mostly credit cards, but a reasonable amount of cash as well. She tipped them out on top of the fridge and counted three thousand-kronor notes and several five hundreds.

Early in the morning, Lisa would go through the wallets looking for scraps of paper with PIN numbers written on them. If she found any, she would drive down to the ATM in Marnäs and take out some money.

But now it was time to go to bed.

By twenty past three she was in a deep sleep. No dreams, no guilty conscience.

It wasn’t Lisa who had taken the wallets, it was Lady Summertime. And it wasn’t Lisa who needed the money, it was Silas.

Gerlof

Midsummer was over, and many people on the island of Öland could now relax; above all, security staff and those who owned campsites or bars.

Gerlof also relaxed. Stenvik was still standing.

His young relative Tilda Davidsson belonged to the group who perhaps felt the greatest sense of relief; she was a detective inspector with the county police in Kalmar but lived with her husband and children by a lighthouse on eastern Öland and seemed to feel that she was personally responsible for keeping an eye on things on the island.

‘So it was a good midsummer as far as the police were concerned?’ Gerlof asked when he spoke to her on Monday.

‘It was no worse than a normal weekend,’ Tilda replied.

‘How did you manage that?’

‘We ran a checkpoint at this end of the bridge. We pulled over as many cars as we could and confiscated all the alcohol.’

‘But surely people will always find booze, if they really want to?’

‘Yes, but we locked up those who’d already had too much, so we avoided any major disturbances.’

‘So everything was quiet?’

‘Well, no, there’s always something,’ Tilda said. ‘We had a couple of cases of GBH, quite a lot of petty thefts, some outboard motors went missing, there was a certain amount of vandalism and five or six drink-driving cases... but it was quieter than it’s been for a long time.’

‘Sounds good,’ Gerlof said.

‘We’ve got a missing person too,’ Tilda went on. ‘A security guard at the Ölandic Resort. But they think he’s probably gone off to the mainland.’

‘He’s disappeared?’

‘We’re looking for him,’ Tilda said.

Gerlof knew that she wouldn’t give him any more information. He could get her to talk about her work, but only up to a point.

‘Perhaps he’d had enough of Kent Kloss,’ Gerlof said. ‘Anyway, you’ll be finishing work soon, won’t you?’

‘I’ve got less than two weeks to go,’ Tilda said. ‘My holiday starts on the sixteenth.’

‘Let’s hope things stay nice and quiet, then.’

‘Absolutely. I hope you have some peace and quiet, too.’

But Gerlof knew that things were never really quiet when there were teenagers around. He was going to be alone with them for the next five days, until Julia returned from Gothenburg.

Ulrik the audiologist came back to Stenvik the day after the midsummer weekend to make the final adjustments to Gerlof’s new hearing aid.

He seemed pleased.

‘Don’t forget to take it off when you go to bed,’ he said. ‘And turn it off at night to save the batteries.’

He switched on the device, looked up at the trees and the blue sky, and added, ‘I wouldn’t mind working in the country all the time.’

Ulrik was talking to himself, but to Gerlof it sounded as if someone was shouting in his ear. It was almost too loud. He could hear lots of other things, too: a chainsaw in a garden somewhere inland, a moped rattling along the coast road and the faint buzz of a light aircraft.

All at once the outside world was very close. It was as if a volume control in his ears had been slowly turned down over the course of several years and had suddenly been turned back to full strength.

‘I can hear everything,’ he said, blinking at Ulrik in astonishment. ‘Is that normal?’

‘How does your own voice sound? Is it echoing inside your head?’

‘A little bit.’

The audiologist clicked on his computer and the echo diminished.

‘I’m putting on four different programs,’ he explained. ‘That means you can adjust the hearing aid to suit you, depending on the context — whether you’re listening to the birds, chatting to someone, listening to the radio, or you just want to hear more distant sounds.’

‘You mean if I want to eavesdrop?’

Ulrik smiled. ‘In that case, you need to choose the setting for gossip.’

When Ulrik had gone, Gerlof remained sitting in the garden, amazed at all the sounds he could hear. He had regained a lost world.

An ear-splitting screech from the east almost made him jump, but it was only a lovesick cock pheasant wandering around the freshly mown meadow calling for hens.

Suddenly, Gerlof heard two voices from another direction, somewhere to the south. He turned his head but could see only trees behind him. The voices were coming through the forest, possibly from the coast road. Or from the shore? They sounded so close, but Gerlof had experienced this phenomenon before on Öland. Because the island was so flat, voices could sometimes be heard over a distance of several kilometres, if the wind was in the right direction.

He adjusted the hearing aid.

The eavesdropper’s setting, he thought, feeling slightly ashamed of himself.

The voices were much clearer now. A man and a woman were talking; Gerlof couldn’t hear what they were actually saying, but the man sounded calm, the woman more agitated. She was speaking much faster and louder; his responses were slow. It seemed like an intimate conversation between close friends. Friends, or lovers?

Gerlof tried to adjust the sound in his ear, improve his ability to eavesdrop, but he still couldn’t make out what they were saying. Were they speaking Swedish, or a different language?

Then the catch on the gate rattled and Gerlof saw that his grandchildren were back from the jetty. He sat up straight and quickly turned down the volume; their cheerful shouts were a little too much.

Jonas

Mats looked around as if to make sure that no adults were listening, then leaned closer to Jonas and lowered his voice.

‘You can’t come to Kalmar with us. You do understand that?’

Jonas was sitting next to him on Uncle Kent’s leather sofa. He wanted to protest, have the courage to stand up to his older brother, but he said nothing.

‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t understand it at all.’

‘Because you’re too young for the film,’ Mats said. ‘You have to be over fifteen to see Armageddon.’

Jonas looked at him. He knew that the battle over the cinema trip was already lost, but he went on anyway: ‘I’ve seen films like that in Marnäs. The two of us have... All we had to do was walk in.’

Mats waved a fly away from his ear. ‘Yes, but this is different. They check on everybody in Kalmar. They’ve got security, they ask for ID. You don’t have any, which means you wouldn’t get in and you’d have to sit on a park bench waiting for the film to end. You’d be hanging around Kalmar on your own all evening... Is that what you want?’

Jonas shook his head. Mats was eighteen, Urban nineteen, and he knew they’d got together behind his back and chosen an American action movie with a 15+ certificate so that Casper could go with them but Jonas couldn’t.

‘You’ll get the money for the ticket anyway, that’s no problem,’ Mats said. ‘But Dad and Kent and Veronica will think you’re with us in Kalmar, so try and stay out of the way until we get back.’ He smiled. ‘Go and play with one of your little friends.’

Play? Jonas didn’t have any real friends in the village. All the boys were either older than him, or much younger. He wasn’t allowed to hang out with the older boys, and the younger ones were boring.

Hiding away inside Villa Kloss wasn’t an option, because the adults were having a party. If he could have disappeared without a trace for the evening, he would have done just that.

‘Hi there, you two!’

Their father came into the big room. Jonas thought he was looking at his two sons as if they were no more than recent acquaintances, in spite of the fact that they had seen him several times over the past few years.

‘So you’re off to the cinema in the big city tonight?’

Jonas didn’t say a word.

‘Are you catching the bus to Kalmar, Mats?’

‘Urban’s driving.’

‘OK. Stay off the beer, in that case.’

Mats looked up at the ceiling, then down at his father.

‘But I expect you’ll be having a few drinks at the party tonight, Dad? Knocking them back?’

‘No,’ Niklas said, but he couldn’t look his son in the eye. ‘Have you ever seen me drunk, Mats?’

‘Mum has. She says you were often drunk when you were married.’

Jonas stared at the floor, wondering where everyone else was. Please let Veronica come in...

Niklas looked at Mats.

‘That was a long time ago. Before you were born. In our first apartment. We had a few parties that got a bit out of hand. And Anita... Anita wasn’t always sober back then either. I could tell you a few tales about her.’

‘Don’t start badmouthing Mum.’

‘I’m just telling it like it was, Mats.’

Jonas got up, slowly and silently. If he moved very carefully, perhaps no one would notice him. Like a ghost, he drifted towards the glass door leading to the veranda; he was almost there when the call came.

‘Jonas?’

He stopped, turned around — and saw that Dad had found a smile somewhere and plastered it on.

‘Fancy a swim?’

The sky was blue and the air dry and warm outside, but Jonas still felt chilled to the bone. And alone, in spite of the fact that he was walking next to his father. There was no trip to the cinema in Kalmar to look forward to tonight, just loneliness.

They walked across the baking-hot coast road and out on to the ridge. Niklas didn’t speak until they were passing the burial cairn. He pointed to the stones and said, ‘People think there’s treasure buried beneath the cairn. You know it’s an ancient grave, don’t you?’

Jonas nodded. ‘We learned about the Bronze Age in school. It came between the Stone Age and the Iron Age.’

‘Exactly. So there’s a Bronze Age chieftain buried here, just like King Mysing in his burial mound in the south of the island. But you’re not scared, are you?’

‘Not me,’ Jonas said.

Not at the moment, anyway, he thought; not when the sun was shining and his dad was here. The cairn was completely harmless right now. But he didn’t like being out here in the evening, when it became a portal to another world, and the ghost came out and turned people into killer zombies.

His dad had said something, asked a question as they started down the stone steps leading to the water.

‘What?’ Jonas said.

‘Is Mum OK?’

‘Yes... I suppose so. She spends a lot of time working.’

‘Good,’ his dad said. ‘It’s good that she’s got a job.’

He looked as if he wanted to ask more questions about Mum, so Jonas hurried down the steps.

They could hear cheerful cries from the jetty further north, but the shore down below Villa Kloss was empty and red-hot. The waves lapped gently against the flat, greyish-white rocks. Niklas pointed to a row of thick poles extending a couple of hundred metres straight out into the water, just to the south of the bathing area.

‘I see the fishermen have laid their gill nets this year, too. There must be some eels left in the Sound...’

A limestone boathouse near the bottom of the steps housed the sun loungers and swimming gear belonging to the Kloss family. It was padlocked, but Casper had given Jonas the combination.

Casper’s rubber dinghy was in there, along with a couple of plastic oars, but the air had gone out of it over the winter, and it looked deflated and a bit pathetic. Casper hadn’t used it for several years. Jonas must have grown seven or eight centimetres since he last sat in it, and he was definitely heavier. He probably wouldn’t be able to use it after this summer, but he dragged it out into the sun anyway.

‘Are you going out in that?’ his father asked.

Jonas nodded.

‘Well, don’t go too far... I’ll help you blow it up.’

While his father was pumping more air into the dinghy, Jonas quickly pulled on his trunks. He just wanted to get out on to the water, follow the nets and see if any eels were moving around down there in the darkness.

He didn’t want to spend any more time talking to his father. If he did, then sooner or later he would ask him what he had done to end up in prison; all Jonas knew was that it was something bad. Something to do with money and the customs office. Something Dad didn’t want to talk about.

‘Dad fucked things up for the whole family,’ Mats had once said when they were alone. As if the fault lay not in what their father had done, but in the fact that he had got caught.

The Homecomer

The summer evening seemed to be ageing, turning as grey as the Homecomer as the light vanished on the west coast of the island. The sun began to go down, and the day’s short shadows quickly grew longer. The horizon disappeared, and sea and sky became a darkening curtain in the west. The figures moving beneath the trees were almost invisible.

It was time.

Pecka and the Homecomer had entered the Ölandic’s private area through the north fence then made their way south through the forest. They had kept out of sight of the shore until they reached the dock. The car park in front of them was empty now; all the cars had left.

‘How are you feeling?’ the Homecomer asked.

‘Fine,’ Pecka said, but his eyes were darting all over the place, and he hadn’t said much all evening. Pecka had grown a lot quieter since the murder of the security guard, but he still obeyed orders.

They had remained hidden among the trees until the sun went down, but now they stepped out and moved towards the water. Towards the L-shaped quay and the ship on the outer side of the dock.

The Homecomer had spent so much time watching the ship over the past few days that he almost felt like a member of the crew. There were four men on board, all foreigners. Today there had been no loading or unloading, and all the indications were that the ship would set sail tomorrow morning. Tonight the crew were probably up at the hotel, celebrating. Happy and unsuspecting.

Time to get on board.

They made their way quickly towards the quayside, the Homecomer in front, with Pecka a few steps behind him.

Both were armed. Pecka didn’t want to carry a gun any more, but he was carrying a freshly sharpened axe. The Homecomer had the Walther hidden behind his back.

‘Here we go, then,’ he said.

‘OK,’ Pecka replied, pulling the balaclava over his head.

The Homecomer could feel his age in his legs but increased his speed.

Once they reached the quayside and everything was quiet, Pecka pressed a key on his mobile and allowed it to ring out twice, which was the signal to Rita to start up the launch, come around the point and board the ship from the other side. When they had finished, all three of them would make their escape in Rita’s boat. That was the plan.

But suddenly they heard a rumbling noise, disturbing the peaceful evening.

The Homecomer slowed down. At first he couldn’t work out what was going on, but then he realized that someone had just started up the ship’s engines. He heard Pecka behind him: ‘Fuck! We’ll have to forget the whole thing!’

The Homecomer shook his head and kept on going.

‘There are too many of them!’ Pecka yelled. ‘They’re all on board... they’re leaving tonight!’

But the Homecomer just kept on walking towards the ship, the gun hidden behind his back. He headed straight for the gangplank, knowing that Pecka was following him, in spite of his protests.

Yes, there were lights on the bridge — the crew were on board. The Homecomer spotted one man in the stern, a seaman who must have just come up on deck. He was in his fifties, dressed in blue overalls, and had started repairing a broken air vent with a piece of corrugated cardboard. He looked extremely bored.

The Homecomer was so close to the ship that he could read the name on the prow: Elia. The hull was dark, a mixture of rust and black paint.

He heard an angry buzzing through the throbbing of the engines. Rita had rounded the point in the little launch.

The seaman looked up and saw the two visitors. He stared at them with no trace of suspicion, merely surprise.

The Homecomer walked to the edge of the quay and said, ‘Good evening,’ in a calm, steady voice.

The seaman opened his mouth and his expression changed from quizzical to uneasy — but by that time the Homecomer had produced his gun.

Pecka had also reached the ship, while at the same time Rita swung the launch around sharply, heading for the stern.

The ship was moored with three hawsers. Pecka positioned himself next to the first one, and raised the axe. Five sharp blows, and the hawser was severed. He quickly moved on to the next one.

The Homecomer was on the deck now, still pointing the Walther at the seaman and speaking quietly but firmly as he issued a series of instructions.

He glanced back and saw that Pecka had lowered the axe. All three hawsers had been cut, and the ship slowly began to drift away from the quayside and out into the dark waters of the Sound.

He looked around. The quayside was still deserted.

The seaman looked confused; he raised his hands and began to back away.

The hijacking had begun.

The New Country, June 1931

Sixty-eight years earlier, the ship that is to take Aron and Sven to the new country is made of metal, and is bigger than any vessel Aron has ever seen.

They have travelled by train from Kalmar, journeying northwards through Sweden. The train has chugged its way through vast coniferous forests, past mountains and lakes, then out into the sun and straight into the heart of a big city.

The station is enormous, packed with travellers and all their luggage. Outside the city awaits, with its long, straight cobbled streets, people strolling along the pavements, and more vehicles than Aron has seen in his whole life. Plenty of carts and horse-drawn carriages clatter by, but there are also big, black motor cars, rumbling along with uniformed chauffeurs behind the wheel and smartly dressed men in the back seat.

‘Stockholm,’ Sven says.

Aron recognizes the name from school.

‘The capital city of Sweden.’

They eat a plate of steaming-hot stew in a smoky café not far from the central station, then buy provisions and the last bits and pieces for their journey. In an ironmonger’s, Sven equips himself with a hammer and a decent spade.

‘It’s easier to get a job if you bring your own tools to the new country,’ he explains.

Then they wander across the city’s bridges, past the tall buildings and the splendour of the Royal Palace, then down through narrow alleyways, to a long quayside with rows of derricks and crowds of people.

‘There she is!’

Both large and small ships are moored alongside, but Sven is pointing to a long, white vessel. A thin curl of smoke is emerging from a big funnel, which has three yellow crowns painted on a blue background. Pennants along the railing flutter in the wind, and a large Swedish flag hangs down from the stern.

The name on the prow reads SS Kastelholm.

‘That’s our bridge,’ Sven says. ‘The bridge that will take us across the water!’

He quickly takes a pinch of snuff from the wooden box, and seems to have left all his anger, all his troubles, behind.

Aron sees that they will not be crossing the sea alone. There are at least twenty fellow travellers standing on deck, with suitcases and rucksacks and tools in their hands. They are all straight-backed, heads up, as if something great is waiting for them.

‘Let’s go on board,’ Sven says. ‘We’re off to the new country!’

Aron feels a shiver run down his spine. It might be the cold wind blowing off the water, or a sudden fear of the unknown.

He has no idea what is going to happen in the new country, but he follows Sven up the gangplank and turns his back on Sweden.

Gerlof

The sun disappeared into a huge bank of cloud behind Gerlof’s cottage on Monday evening. A dark-grey wall rose up on the horizon, as if there were a forest fire on the mainland — but, as an old seaman, Gerlof knew that more overcast weather was on the way. He must remember not to whistle, because whistling brought gales and thunderstorms.

There was no need to whistle; things were already noisy enough in the cottage. He was the only adult at the dinner table; his daughters had gone back to the mainland after midsummer, back to their jobs. But their children were still here.

Julia and her husband were coming over for a holiday at the beginning of July, and until then Gerlof was in charge. He often missed his wife, particularly at a time like this, because she would have been much better at looking after the three boys. Vincent was nineteen, and old enough to keep an eye on the two younger ones, who were sixteen and eleven, but all three had an energy and speed that Gerlof had lost a long time ago. They and their friends raced around the cottage with enormous water pistols, and played video games — Nintendo and Super Mario Bros, or whatever they were called.

Or they watched TV, which was something Gerlof rarely did. He remembered what an old Pentecostalist acquaintance had said to him when he put up his first television aerial towards the end of the sixties: ‘That’s the Devil himself, sitting on your roof!’

He had suffered in silence so far, but he had formulated an escape plan.

‘I’m going to sleep in the boathouse tonight,’ he said over dinner.

He would get away from the cottage for the night. Seek sanctuary down there, as the old fishermen had done in days gone by.

‘But why, Granddad?’ Vincent said.

Gerlof combined a lie with the truth. ‘It’s... darker down there. And a bit quieter.’

Vincent nodded; he was grown up enough to understand.

So, after dinner, Gerlof picked up his pyjamas and a bottle of water and left the cottage. This evening, his legs felt strong enough for him to manage without the wheelchair, but he used his walking stick and linked arms with his grandson as they made their way to the ridge. They strolled along at a leisurely pace, and the smell of meat and oil reached Gerlof’s nostrils. Someone was having a barbecue.

On the grass next to the road he noticed an empty beer can, and poked at it with his stick. ‘Tourists from Stockholm... Terrible.’

‘Someone from Småland might have dropped it there,’ Vincent said.

Gerlof bent down with some difficulty and picked it up. ‘Put this in our bin, would you?’

‘No problem,’ Vincent replied.

Gerlof made it his business to pick up litter — at least there was something he could still do.

As they passed his old gig, he saw that someone had used a plane to remove all the rotten wood. John, presumably, or his son, Anders. Gerlof wasn’t surprised; they always kept their promises.

Vincent unlocked the door of the boathouse up above the shore. The ceiling light was broken and it was dark inside, but Gerlof could see that both camp beds were made up. Had he done that? He couldn’t remember.

‘You’ll have a nice quiet night here, Granddad,’ Vincent said, lighting a paraffin lamp in the window.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Gerlof said.

When Vincent had gone, he left the door open. He looked around at the beds, the fishing nets and the little table. He and John had spent many a night in here, when they had laid their nets out in the Sound and were waiting for them to fill up. Back in those days, Gerlof had often woken at sunrise, but tomorrow morning he intended to lie in, at least until seven o’clock.

He stepped outside for a little while to enjoy the cool evening air. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, listening to the summer silence.

Peace at last.

It was so quiet, with just the faintest breeze.

But he could hear a distant noise to the south. A dull rumbling; he could only just make it out. Gerlof stood very still and realized that it was a powerful engine idling away, further down the coast.

A big ship? If so, it was hidden by one of the points, because there wasn’t a single vessel in sight out in the Sound.

He went back inside and locked the door. There was an old radio in the boathouse, and the last thing he did before going to bed was to switch it on and listen to the weather forecast for Öland and Gotland. Cloudy with virtually no wind overnight, but with the risk of localized showers early in the morning. Tuesday would be sunny once more.

Gerlof put on his pyjamas and removed his hearing aid. Another little gadget to think about, but he’d actually started to like it.

Before he pulled down the blind he looked out across the darkening Sound and saw a strip of deep red below the curtain of cloud on the horizon.

As dark as blood, he thought, but without any misgivings. He had seen that same strip many times before; it was nothing more than the last glow of the sun, lingering on the horizon like a glowing ember.

He left a couple of tea lights burning on the windowsill. They were in glass holders, and would go out during the night; it was perfectly safe.

Slowly, Gerlof lay down on the camp bed and closed his eyes, feeling contented. This was a bit like settling down in his cabin after dropping anchor in some natural harbour on a still summer’s evening. The same narrow bed, the same proximity to creation, the same sense of peace. If the wind got up it would no doubt wake him; that was a relic from all those years at sea.

Darkness fell over the shore, and there wasn’t a sound.

Gerlof was soon fast asleep, dreaming that he had gone down to the sea and pushed a brand-new wooden gig, smelling of oil, into the water, straight out into the stillness.

Right in the middle of the dream, he woke up with a start. But it wasn’t the weather that had disturbed him; someone was hammering on the door of the boathouse.

Jonas

Floating across the depths, drifting along in the sunset.

Jonas was lying on his back in the rubber dinghy, which felt like a water bed. No, it was a water bed, because he was floating out by the gill nets, his feet dangling over the side as he gazed up at the sky above the Sound. The vault of the heavens was slowly darkening, and stars had begun to glimmer on the horizon.

Out here, he was free of everything. Alone on the sea, just like someone who had been shipwrecked.

His brother’s secret plan for the evening had worked. Just after six o’clock, Jonas had got into the car with Mats and their cousins. The adults had assumed that all four boys were on their way to the cinema in Kalmar, but as soon as they reached the campsite at Stenvik — out of sight of Villa Kloss — Mats had handed Jonas the money from Dad for his cinema ticket, then turfed him out of the car.

‘Have fun, bro! We certainly will!’

The cousins smiled and nodded at him, and the car headed off towards the main road.

Jonas had watched the car until it disappeared, then he had gone down to the jetty. It was busy with people taking an evening dip, and he had sat down on a rock to watch them for a while, particularly a girl of his own age, with long, almost pure-white hair. She was sitting on a blanket with two girlfriends, chatting and laughing, and she never even glanced at him. Not once. He might as well have been invisible.

So he had got up and made his way south across the banks of pebbles on the shore until he reached the point below Villa Kloss. The area was deserted at this time of the evening, and it was a good hiding place. He just had to find a way of keeping busy, getting through the evening.

First of all, he had gone for a long swim, then he had dried himself in the sun. He had done a bit of beachcombing, but had found nothing but a few empty German milk cartons.

Then he had had another swim. By this time the sun was low on the horizon and the shallow water had cooled.

When he was dry, he pulled on his shorts before dragging Casper’s rubber dinghy out of the boathouse. He slipped on a lifejacket and waded out into the water for an evening outing. Once the sun had set he would creep back up to his little chalet in the darkness and go to bed. In the morning he would tell the adults he had enjoyed the film.

A good plan.

Jonas stepped on to a rock, the dinghy in front of him, and looked around. The surface of the water was calm and shining. The Sound looked perfectly safe, but he knew that the seabed dropped away sharply just ahead of him, and that you could go under and drown just metres from the shore.

The water turned pitch black when the sun disappeared, as if the Sound had suddenly become bottomless. A bit scary, but exciting.

He stepped carefully into the dinghy and started to row along the shoreline; when he reached the gill nets he turned and headed away from the land, following the nets and feeling the pull of the black depths below him. The algae and the fish, the seaweed and the rocks. Another world...

Eventually, he reached the middle of the nets and tied the little boat to one of the thick poles.

The water out here was as deep and dark as a grave, but there wasn’t a breath of wind.

Jonas settled down in the bottom of the dinghy and watched as the sky above him grew darker and darker. There were gaps in the cloud cover, and small pinpricks of light glimmered through.

They’ll be in the cinema in Kalmar by now, he thought.

While Mats and their cousins were watching the film, all Jonas could do was gaze at the stars above the island. But gradually the all-consuming envy faded away, leaving a kind of peace, a sense of floating weightlessly between sea and sky. There were no insects to disturb him this far out in the Sound, not even the mosquitoes.

He closed his eyes. Everything was dark and quiet.

But a faint sound made him open his eyes and raise his head. A dull throbbing that could be felt through the water as well as heard.

It was the sound of a ship. A big ship that had started up its pounding diesel engines, somewhere in the darkness. The throbbing grew louder, then diminished.

He blinked slowly, feeling drowsy. Had he fallen asleep? Jonas didn’t have a watch, but the sun had gone down and clouds covered the night sky. The stars had vanished.

He looked to the south, but saw nothing. There were no lights approaching.

The island was even darker than the sea. The two spits of land jutting out into the Sound on either side of the bay were pitch black, apart from the odd light in the windows of the summer cottages closest to the shore.

He could hear the faint sound of voices and laughter; it was probably the party up at Villa Kloss. Dad and Aunt Veronica and Uncle Kent and their guests would be sitting on the veranda, eating and drinking.

Jonas considered spending the whole night in the dinghy. Soon the summer night would be completely black, and perhaps then they would all stop drinking and laughing up at Villa Kloss, and when the car from Kalmar came back without him they would wonder where he was. They would be worried. Where’s Jonas? Has anyone seen Jonas? For once, he would be important to them.

He would stay down here and row a bit further — out to the very end of the gill nets, further than he had ever been before.

He rowed with even strokes, and through the thin rubber bottom of the dinghy he could feel the water quickly growing colder. He couldn’t see any rocks now, only blackness. If the boat got a puncture, he wasn’t sure he would be able to swim ashore, even with his lifejacket.

The depth of the water made him feel dizzy.

Finally, he reached the very last pole, tall and slender. He could see that it was held in place by long ropes and chains.

Jonas stopped rowing. The dinghy drifted on and he reached out and grabbed the pole, clinging to the rough wood with both hands. The pole proved that at least there were other people in the world, people who had come out here at the beginning of summer and laid their nets, hoping to catch eels.

He looked over the side but couldn’t make out the nets. Were there eels down there right now, trapped in the darkness? The Kloss family ate smoked eel occasionally, but Jonas didn’t really like the taste. It was too oily.

Suddenly, he heard the throbbing again. Was it a motor boat? It should have had its lights on if it was out at sea at night, but there was no sign of anything.

Silence.

He let go of the wooden pole and drifted away as the current drew the dinghy out into the sound. Bye bye, pole.

He picked up the oars but didn’t start rowing, allowing the boat to drift instead.

Out into the blackness. But only for a little longer. It was OK, because he was wearing his lifejacket, but he would turn back soon. He just wanted to see if he could catch a glimpse of the other vessel.

He peered around. A faint haze had begun to rise from the water, a night mist that made it even more difficult to see.

All at once, Jonas had the feeling that something huge and silent had appeared by the spit of land to the south — a grey shadow on the water, long and slender like a sea monster. A sea serpent, or a giant octopus lurking in the Sound...

Was the shadow moving? He blinked, but it was gone.

He started rowing. He wanted to get home now, but it was so dark and misty that he was no longer sure exactly where he was, or even how far he was from the shore. There was nothing to give him his bearings. Were those dots of light coming from the houses on the coast, or were they faint stars glimmering in the distance?

He stopped rowing and let out a long breath. He listened.

He could hear splashing. Small ripples lapped against the side of the dinghy, but this was louder. It sounded like rushing waves.

Jonas looked up — and suddenly he could see. The full moon emerged through a gap in the clouds, and the Sound was bathed in light. The water around him turned into a glittering expanse of silver.

And, in the middle of it all, he saw something large and black — a ship.

It was gliding straight towards him, at speed. Making no attempt to slow down. In the moonlight, he could just make out a name in white letters on the prow: Elia.

Jonas smelled the diesel and heard the throbbing of the engines.

There was no collision; his dinghy was too small. It was simply sucked towards the bow by the swell and carried along with the ship.

Jonas got on his knees, a cold feeling in his belly; the bow wave was beginning to compress his little boat. It was starting to sink.

He was frightened now, and tried to stand up. His hands fumbled, but he managed to get hold of the end of a rope swinging from side to side. He looked up; it was the end of a nylon rope, dangling from the ship’s gunwale like a liana in the jungle.

He clung on as tightly as he could and pulled himself up out of the dinghy, which suddenly freed itself from the swell and spun around like a yellow lifebuoy. Then it slipped away towards the stern, whirled around several times in the glittering waves and disappeared under water.

Casper’s dinghy. Gone.

Jonas wanted to save it, but if he let go of the rope he would be sucked down beneath the keel. He held on.

But not for much longer.

He gritted his teeth, swung his legs and managed to get his right foot on a rusty little ledge part way up the hull. Using the ledge for support, he hauled himself up towards the black steel rods that made up the gunwale, then clambered up as if they were the wall bars in a school gym.

He couldn’t hear any sound of human activity from the vessel above him. No voices, no footsteps. The engines seemed to have died away, too; there was only the gentle lapping of the waves as the ship drifted on through the night under its own steam.

Jonas gathered his strength, heaved himself over the gunwale and landed on a cold metal deck in his bare feet. He was frozen and shaking, but he was safe.

He breathed out and looked around. Where was he?

On board a large fishing boat, apparently. He couldn’t see any nets, but the stench of fish and diesel filled the air.

He was standing next to a closed hatch with a small white structure on either side — a smaller one in the prow and a larger one towards the stern. There was a faint light in one of the windows of the latter; the rest of the ship was in darkness.

Jonas blinked. Where had it come from? He had seen big ships out in the Sound in the summer, but never this close to the shore.

He stood by the hatch, wondering what to do. Should he head for the prow, or the stern? Or just stand here and let the ship decide?

Slowly, he began to make his way along the edge of the hatch, moving towards the stern. He felt it was better to go towards the light, however faint it might be.

Nothing was moving.

He kept on going, taking very small steps. The hatch came to an end, and beyond it he saw something round and dark. At first, he thought it was a ball.

Then he realized it was a head. And a neck, and a pair of shoulders.

There was a man lying on the deck.

Jonas stopped dead.

The man was wearing dark overalls. His face was turned towards Jonas, and the lower half of his body was stuck in a square hole in the deck; it looked as if he had been trying to climb out of the hold.

But he wasn’t moving now; he didn’t even appear to be breathing. He was just lying there.

Jonas stared at him. He was just thinking about giving the man a little push with his foot when he heard the sound of moaning from down in the hold.

There were more people in there, but their voices didn’t sound normal. They sounded muffled, and in terrible pain.

He listened, frozen to the spot.

The voices fell silent.

Jonas heard a rattling noise on deck, right behind him. He turned around and saw a figure stumbling out of the darkness, from the prow. A tall, thin man with black hair. He was young, dressed in jeans and a white sweater — but he looked ill, with staring eyes, his head drooping. He staggered forward as if he were in a trance; he almost tripped over the hatch but slowly straightened up, his expression blank.

The living dead. A zombie.

He spotted Jonas; he raised his arms and made a kind of noise. It sounded like a foreign language, a hoarse wheezing.

The zombie reached out; he was only two metres away now.

One metre.

Jonas backed away, turned around and fled along the gunwale. His feet jumped past the man lying on the deck as his eyes searched for a safe place.

The sea was as black as ink. Öland was far away. Jonas ran blindly towards the stern and the wheelhouse, which had a narrow steel door.

But the door was closed. Locked. And there was no handle. He pushed his fingers between the edge of the door and the frame, but it wouldn’t budge.

Trapped.

He could hear the wheezing behind him, coming closer and closer. He turned around, saw the outstretched hands. Moving towards him.

Jonas closed his eyes and felt his pants fill with warmth. He had wet himself. At the same time, the steel door shook against his back. Someone on the other side was trying to open it.

Another monster? Jonas shrank in his wet pants as he heard the door squeak.

It was thrust open with such force that he was pushed aside. Someone emerged — first of all a foot in a leather boot, then a denim-clad leg, then a pair of raised arms. Holding an axe.

The man who stepped out on to the deck was also tall and thin; he had a shaven head, and he didn’t seem to have noticed Jonas. He took two steps past him and swung the axe.

It had a long handle; the blade flashed and went straight into the zombie’s chest. The blow sent the body reeling backwards and it landed on the deck next to Jonas.

The zombie kept on moving, waving its hands and trying to get up. The man with the axe shouted something and hit it again, twice, three times, four times — then the zombie fell back and lay still.

Silence. The ship drifted on through the night.

The man with the axe took a long breath; he sounded as if he was shivering. He turned and saw Jonas.

Their eyes met in the moonlight. Jonas realized that he recognized this man, those blinking eyes, that tense expression. He had definitely seen him before.

But the man’s eyes were cold. Cold and afraid. He bent over Jonas and gasped a question: ‘Who are you?’ He gripped Jonas by the shoulder. ‘Where’s Aron, the Swedish-American?’

Jonas opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Every single word had disappeared from his brain, but the man kept on asking questions.

‘The old man — where’s he gone?’

He raised the axe, which was dripping with blood.

Jonas managed to make his body move, and rolled to the side. He had to get away, anywhere. He reached out, felt the cold metal of the gunwale and quickly got to his feet. He saw a white lifebelt; his hands grabbed it in passing and tossed it overboard as he clambered to the top of the gunwale.

‘Wait!’ the man shouted.

But Jonas swung his leg over and glanced behind him one last time. He saw a new figure, someone standing at the window of the wheelhouse. An old man, with grey hair, a pale face...

He had seen enough; he threw himself off the ship, straight out into the darkness of the sea.

The water was bitterly cold; it took hold of him, dragged him down. He sank into a world of bubbles. The currents around the hull of the ship pulled at him as a dull rushing sound filled his ears, but his flailing hands carried him back up to the surface.

He gulped in the night air, saw the horror ship looming above him. But it was moving away, its engines still throbbing faintly.

Jonas was floating — his lifejacket was doing its job. The lifebelt was just a metre or so away; he managed to get hold of it and slipped it over his head and under his arms.

The jacket and the lifebelt carried his body, and when he turned his head he saw lights. They were a long way off, but they were glittering. The lights of Öland. His only option was to start swimming towards them.

He kicked his legs ten times, then rested for a while, using the belt to support him, then kicked out ten times more. Slowly, he made his way towards the shore. The lights were getting closer; he could see little houses now.

The dark coast came into focus, and at last Jonas felt the rocks beneath his feet. He had reached the shore.

He could hear a splashing sound; was someone following him? He looked around, but saw only black water. The Sound was in complete darkness; there was no sign of the lights of a ship out there.

But perhaps the dead had jumped in the water after him, perhaps they were slowly swimming towards the shore right now...

He crawled out of the sea, water pouring from his shorts and top; he wriggled out of the lifebelt and lay there on the pebbles. He was utterly exhausted, but terror at the thought of the dead made him get to his feet.

Where could he hide?

Whereabouts on the island was he?

The shore was less steep here, and he realized he was further north. He saw a row of boathouses up on the ridge, all in darkness apart from one small wooden hut with a faint light in one window.

Jonas stumbled towards it as quickly as he could and finally he made it. He tugged at the handle, but the door was locked. He started hammering and shouting for help, and at last the door was opened.

Not by a zombie, not by a madman wielding an axe, but by an old man who looked as if he had just woken up. He stepped aside, welcoming Jonas into the warmth and the light.

Jonas almost fell in. The water from his clothes dripped on to a soft rug beneath his feet, but he could do no more. He collapsed.

The man was still staring at him, the door still open to the night.

‘Shut the door,’ Jonas whispered. ‘Lock it! They’re after me!’

‘Who’s after you?’

‘The dead. From the ship.’

Gerlof

Gerlof had been woken by strange vibrations, a racket that made him think he was lying in his bunk on board a ship. Then he opened his eyes and remembered that he had decided to spend the night in the boathouse in order to get some peace and quiet. But the walls were actually shaking.

Could it be an earthquake? Slowly, he got out of the camp bed, but it was only when he put in his hearing aid that he realized what was going on. Someone was hammering on the door, and a high voice, somewhat muted by the wood, was shouting, begging to be let in.

‘I’m coming,’ Gerlof muttered.

He pulled on his trousers and his guernsey so that he would be warm and presentable, then opened the door.

Out of the darkness a boy came hurtling in; he almost fell over the doorstep. He was wearing a lifejacket and soaking-wet clothes; Gerlof had never seen him before.

‘Dear me,’ Gerlof said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The boy was kneeling on the rag rug, shaking like a leaf. He looked over at the doorway with terror in his eyes.

‘Shut the door,’ he whispered. ‘Lock it! They’re after me!’

‘Who’s after you?’

‘The dead. From the ship.’

Gerlof closed the door and turned the key.

‘Someone’s after you? What are you talking about?’

The boy crawled further into the boathouse. He stopped when he reached Gerlof’s narrow bed, and clung to it, still staring at the door. He didn’t look at Gerlof; his expression was blank, trapped in fear. He was holding his breath, and appeared to be listening. Gerlof listened, too, but nobody tried the handle or knocked on the door.

He made an effort to stay calm. Should he be afraid? He was still half asleep.

Slowly, he lit several candles on the table, to chase away the shadows. Then he took a couple of steps towards the boy. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Jonas.’

‘And what exactly has happened, Jonas? Can you tell me?’

Finally, the boy met Gerlof’s gaze. ‘There’s a ship out in the Sound,’ he said. ‘A big ship... It came straight at me. I climbed aboard.’ Pause. ‘From my rubber dinghy.’ Pause. ‘But they were all dead.’ Pause. ‘All except one. He had an axe.’

‘And he’s the one who was chasing you?’

‘The ghost,’ the boy said, raising his voice. ‘The ghost was on the ship. He was fighting with the dead!’

The boy took a deep breath, and a single tear rolled down his cheek. Gerlof waited until he had taken a few more deep breaths before reaching out and gently unfastening the lifejacket. Then he said firmly, ‘That was no ghost.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘No. Shall I tell you why?’

The boy nodded.

‘Because ghosts can’t cope with water.’ Gerlof slipped off the lifejacket and carried on: ‘My grandfather always used to say that you should make your escape by boat if you saw a spirit of some kind. So, whatever you saw tonight, it was no ghost, Jonas. I promise you that.’

The boy looked doubtful, but seemed to calm down, even though he was still glancing anxiously at the door.

Eventually, Gerlof went over and opened it again. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, and said reassuringly, ‘I’m just going to have a look. And see if I can hear anything.’

There was probably nothing to worry about but, just to be on the safe side, he picked up a weapon. It was a long orthoceras which he kept as an ornament. He had found it on the shore; it was the shell of an extinct cephalopod that had become fossilized after several million years under extreme pressure on the seabed.

The stone felt pleasingly heavy, like a cudgel, as Gerlof stepped out into the darkness, into the mild night. The shore around the boathouse was dark grey, the water like a black abyss down below. He moved silently, listening hard, but he could hear only the lapping waves.

He walked away from the patch of light by the door and gazed out across the Sound. A few white pinpricks of light glimmered over on the mainland but, otherwise, there was nothing to see.

He switched his hearing aid to the setting for background noise, then straightened up and listened again.

Now he could hear something in the night, a distant rumbling sound out at sea. He recognized the dull throbbing — he had heard it just before he went to bed. But now it was coming from the north, and it was heading away. He fiddled with the hearing aid, trying to turn up the volume, but the rumbling slowly died away.

He waited for another minute or two, then he heard the waves splashing on the shore, rattling the pebbles as the swell of a vessel passing through the Sound reached the land.

He went back inside and locked the door.

‘There’s no one out there,’ he said. ‘No ghosts.’

Jonas didn’t say anything, so Gerlof went on, ‘My name is Gerlof.’

‘I know,’ the boy said. ‘You’re Kristoffer’s granddad.’

A friend of Kristoffer, Gerlof’s youngest grandchild. Now he recognized the boy. He had seen him just a few days ago, at the midsummer dance. He was a member of the Kloss family.

‘Are you Jonas Kloss?’

The boy nodded, staring at the door again. ‘He hit the dead people on the ship with an axe.’ Pause. He thought for a second, then continued, ‘And he asked about an old American. He said, “Where’s Aron, the Swedish-American?”’

A Swedish-American? Gerlof thought.

‘And the man who was holding the axe, Jonas... Did you recognize him?’

The boy shook his head. ‘I don’t know... I don’t know his name.’

Gerlof considered this response. ‘But you did recognize him?’

Jonas thought hard. ‘I think so.’

‘Where had you seen him before?’

‘I don’t know.’

The boy had lowered his gaze, and Gerlof didn’t want to press him, so he simply said quietly, ‘Just try to remember... What was the first thing that came into your mind when you saw the man on the ship?’

Jonas looked up at Gerlof and frowned, then said, ‘Africa.’

The Homecomer

The engines had fallen silent. The ship was drifting in the middle of the Sound now, almost motionless in the calm conditions, but it was still difficult for an old man with weary arms and stiff legs to disembark.

The Homecomer threw the bag containing his booty into the bottom of the launch. Then he tied the end of a long plastic cable around his wrist, climbed over the gunwale and managed to get his feet on the front seat. For a few seconds he was sure the two vessels were going to drift apart, but Rita was in control, revving the outboard motor and keeping them side by side.

The Homecomer slid down into the launch, the plastic cable still around his wrist; it was now the only connection between the ship and the launch.

Rita didn’t say anything. She seemed calm and collected, unlike her boyfriend. Pecka was sitting in the middle of the launch with his head down, mumbling to himself. As soon as he got in he had hurled his bloodstained axe into the water, far out into the darkness.

‘Fuck... fuck...’

The Homecomer slumped down in the prow and touched his knee. ‘Pecka. Look at me.’

Pecka raised his head. ‘Fuck,’ he said again. ‘They’re dead.’

The Homecomer nodded. ‘Yes, and now we need to remove all traces.’ He held up the cable in the darkness. ‘We’ve got one thing left to do.’

Pecka stared blankly at him. ‘We killed them,’ he said. ‘The whole crew.’

The Homecomer took his hand, which was ice cold. He knew what was wrong with Pecka. He was in shock, just like many soldiers when they have killed for the first time. The important thing was to get Pecka to focus on details now, to forget the wider picture. When he himself had started killing as a young man, he had thought only about his gun, about handling it correctly — nothing else. Then it had been quite easy.

‘They were sick, weren’t they?’ Pecka went on. ‘Because of something in the hold?’

The Homecomer shook his head. He had no answer to that.

‘They had only themselves to blame,’ he said eventually, passing the end of the cable to Pecka. ‘Let’s finish this. You can do it.’

Pecka looked at the cable, which ran up over the gunwale of the ship and disappeared into one of the hatches. He grabbed the end in his trembling right hand, clutched the small detonator and pressed hard.

They heard a dull thud from inside the ship. The darkness seemed to shudder, and there was a gurgling noise from beneath the waterline. They had blown a hole in the hull.

The Homecomer had been holding his breath, and now he let it out. ‘OK, let’s go.’

Rita turned the wheel, and the launch moved away from the ship, which had already begun to list. The Homecomer had placed the explosives in the bow, which went down first. The stern began to tip up, slowly to start with, then faster and faster.

The ship sank majestically but almost silently, with only the odd hiss of air forced out of the vents.

After less than fifteen minutes the surface of the water was empty, and Rita set off at speed, heading home through the night.

The black shape of the island quickly grew larger as they approached. From a distance the shoreline was made up of gentle curves, but as they came closer the Homecomer could see how rocky and jagged it really was.

They had reached the inlets and the headlands between the Ölandic and Stenvik, where they had parked the car. The shore was still dark and deserted; everything was going to be OK.

Just before they landed, the Homecomer reached into the bag and took out two rolls of banknotes. He gave one each to Pecka and Rita.

‘That’s to keep you going until we meet again.’

Pecka didn’t say thank you, but he seemed more composed now. He raised his voice above the sound of the outboard motor. ‘That kid who came aboard the ship... What was he doing there?’

The Homecomer stared at him. ‘A kid?’

‘Yes, when were were on our way out into the Sound... He just appeared by the hatch, all of a sudden. I was looking for you, but you’d gone, and then this boy turned up with the living dead behind him — one of the crew members, I mean — so I used the axe and—’

‘Calm down,’ the Homecomer interrupted. He looked at Pecka as the bottom of the boat scraped against the rocks in the shallows. ‘This boy — did he see you?’

‘Well, yes, he was only a metre away. Right in front of me on the deck. God knows where he came from; I tried to grab hold of him but he disappeared over the gunwale...’

Rita turned off the engine. ‘But you were wearing your balaclava, weren’t you?’ she said into the silence. ‘He couldn’t see your face?’ Pecka shook his head, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

‘I wasn’t wearing it at the time,’ he said after a while. ‘I got so fucking hot and sweaty.’

The Homecomer got to his feet and gazed out at the dark shore. ‘Do you know who he was?’

‘No.’

The Homecomer stepped ashore, but turned back to face Pecka. ‘Go straight home,’ he said. ‘And stay there. Don’t go out.’

Pecka seemed to understand the seriousness of the situation. He nodded. ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Will you be going home soon?’

‘Home?’

‘Yes... Back to America?’

The Homecomer didn’t answer. He merely stared out at the black waters of the Sound. He was thinking about his voyage across the sea when he was a boy, when he still believed in the future.

The New Country, July 1931

Aron has left Sven in the cabin. There is nothing he can do. Sven’s skinny body is lying in his bunk, but his head is hanging over the edge of the bed as he vomits into an enamel chamber pot on the floor. The smell is indescribable. Aron can’t breathe in there.

Between the bouts of vomiting Sven mumbles to himself. He talks about the Kloss family, about the burial cairn and rocks rolling down and falling walls.

‘You always have to have the last word... He was like a pillar of stone, solid and erect... I should have gone home... should never have raised my fist to him...’

Sometimes, Sven seems to think he is back on the island, that he is lying on the shore at Rödtorp, but that is not the case. He is lying on board the long white ship SS Kastelholm, as she steams across a vast, choppy sea.

He and Aron are sharing a bunk, but Aron is rarely in the cabin. He doesn’t want to lie next to Sven in the middle of that stench; he spends most of his time on deck. Or on the bridge, where the captain has allowed him to come and watch how they sail the ship.

At the beginning of the voyage, Sven also wandered around SS Kastelholm. He would often stand on the foredeck, his hands resting on the gunwale as he gazed out to sea. But on the third day the waves began to get bigger and he took himself back to the cabin. And the chamber pot.

Aron is standing by the gunwale, watching the rushing water.

The sun is hidden behind a bank of cloud, the horizon has disappeared, and there is no sign of land or any other vessels. All he can see are the never-ending waves, racing towards the ship in long lines and breaking against the bow in a burst of spume.

Aron has lost all concept of time at sea, and he longs for them to arrive. To step on to dry land, any land at all. He can almost smell it.

Cold air, a stiff breeze. Aron can hear the sound of the steam engine out here, but he stays away from the machinery. He is happier with the wind and the sun, which reminds him of the shore by the croft.

He waits, and longs for the journey to end.

After a while, he hears someone limping up behind him; Sven has made it. He inhales the sea air and positions himself in front of the short mast, his legs firmly planted on the deck and his gaze fixed on some distant point. On the unknown.

Aron looks at him. ‘Are we nearly there?’

Sven sighs. ‘The same question, over and over again...’ He swallows, belches quietly and keeps his eyes fixed on that distant point. ‘Can you see any sign of land?’

Aron screws up his eyes and peers into the wind. He shakes his head.

‘You will, before too long,’ Sven goes on. ‘We’ll soon arrive in the new country.’

Aron has a question. ‘Then can we write to Mum?’

‘Of course. When we get there. If you can find what you need... a pen and paper and a stamp.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘And if it’s not too expensive.’

Aron decides that he will find pens and paper and stamps when they go ashore, whatever they cost.

‘How long are we going to be there?’

‘Be there?’ Sven says. ‘We’re not just going to “be there”. We’re going to work, make a decent living. We’re staying for at least a year.’

‘And then we can come home?’

Sven sighs again. ‘We’ll come home when we come home,’ he says. ‘Don’t ask so many questions.’

Then he turns and heads back to the cabin and the chamber pot.

Aron stays where he is. He stares out to sea, waiting for the coastline to appear, the beginning of the new country, another world.

Gerlof

The sun rose over the island at half past four, but Gerlof didn’t wake until after seven. He blinked in the grey light of the boathouse and glanced over at the old nets hanging on the far wall. He remembered the hammering on the door and a frightened, soaking-wet boy tumbling in from the darkness. Was it all a dream?

No, there were some items of clothing hanging up to dry below the ceiling, and he was not alone. A small figure was fast asleep under several blankets on the other camp bed. The boy — Jonas Kloss.

When Gerlof blew out the candles, his breathing had slowly calmed down and, at last, all was quiet.

Gerlof had been too agitated and taken aback to settle down properly. He had nodded off after a while, in a half-sitting position on his bed, the ridiculous stone cudgel by his side, determined to keep a vigil in case of unknown dangers. Dead seamen and hungry monsters. But they had failed to materialize.

Now he placed his feet on the cold floor and opened the blind to look at the world outside.

The shore was just as grey as the water; the sun had yet to reach its summer strength. There wasn’t a soul in sight along the coastline, and no sign of a shipwreck out in the Sound. The sea was as calm as a mirror — but, suddenly, he saw something moving down there, a little coal-black head swimming along by the shore.

Behind him, Jonas stirred.

‘Good morning,’ Gerlof said.

‘Is he there?’ The boy’s voice was full of anxiety.

‘No, there’s no one out there at all,’ Gerlof said quietly. ‘All I can see is a mink; he’s probably searching for birds’ eggs.’

A few gulls were circling above the shore, uttering shrill warning cries. They had also spotted the mink, and soon the first bird came swooping down towards the water, using its sharp beak as a weapon. The mink quickly disappeared beneath the waves as the gull attacked, but popped up again a short distance away and headed towards the shore, where the rocks provided some protection. It emerged from the water, shook itself with a certain elegance, then slunk away like a wriggling black eel.

Gerlof smiled at the boy. ‘How are you feeling this morning? Better?’

Jonas nodded, but his expression was strained and frightened. ‘Can you see anybody?’

‘No,’ Gerlof said again. ‘And there’s no ship either.’

He noticed an old drawing pad on the little bookcase. One of the grandchildren must have left their paper and crayons. The pad gave him an idea.

‘Shall we try to work out what the boat looked like?’ he said. ‘You can describe it to me, and I’ll draw it.’

‘OK,’ Jonas said.

Gerlof picked up a black crayon and drew the outline of an Öland fishing boat. He added a small wheelhouse and a short mast in the prow. ‘Was it a fishing boat? One like this?’

‘No. I could smell fish on the deck, but it was longer.’

Gerlof drew a tugboat, with a reinforced prow and stern. ‘Like this?’

‘No... even longer than that,’ the boy said.

Gerlof screwed up the piece of paper and made a third attempt. This time he drew a bigger ship, with several cargo hatches. ‘How about this?’

Jonas nodded silently, and Gerlof felt quite pleased with himself.

‘And what was it made of? Wood or metal? Did you notice any rivets in the hull when you climbed aboard?’

Jonas thought for a moment, then nodded again.

‘Good, so it was metal... What could you see on deck? Any kind of structure?’

Jonas pointed. ‘There was a little kind of hut here at the front... and a bigger one at the back.’

Gerlof started drawing and asked another question. ‘Did you notice any Plimsoll lines on the freeboard?’

The boy looked at him blankly, so Gerlof went on: ‘It doesn’t matter... Were there any masts on the ship?’

Jonas closed his eyes. ‘I can’t remember. There might have been a little one right at the front. And there was a big hatch in the middle.’

Gerlof drew a thick line to mark the position of the hatch, then asked, ‘And where were these men who were dying?’

‘They were lying there. And there. And there.’

‘And the others?’

‘The man with the axe was standing here.’ Jonas pointed. ‘And there was an old man with white hair up in the wheelhouse... there.’

Gerlof marked each spot with a black cross.

‘Did the ship have a name? Did you notice a name on the bow?’

Jonas nodded. ‘It said “Elia”.’

‘Elia? As in the man who raised the dead in Zarephath?’

The boy stared at him, and Gerlof realized that Jonas had yet to be confirmed. Then again, children probably didn’t read the Bible when they were preparing for their confirmation these days; they probably gave each other massages and sang happy songs.

He wrote the name Elia on the bow of the ship. Good. Then he rolled up the drawing and nodded. ‘Well done, Jonas. Shall we go and have some breakfast? It’s on me.’

He didn’t get a smile in return, but the boy nodded and got to his feet.

Lisa

The day after her second stint as a DJ, Lisa was woken by a noise outside the caravan. Someone was hammering metal. She sat up in bed and looked at the clock. Ten past ten. Her grandmother had always slept until at least ten o’clock in her old age. If I get up any earlier, the day is much too long, she used to say, making it clear how tedious she found life after the death of Lisa’s grandfather.

Lisa’s life was far from tedious.

The night before, Lady Summertime had almost got caught. Almost. A rich kid who had had far too much to drink and had been throwing his money around all night had placed his sweaty hand on hers just as she was about to remove his wallet from his jacket pocket.

Fuck! she had thought.

But a second later she had let go of the wallet (which was very fat, unfortunately) and allowed it to slip back into his pocket. The boy had stuck his tongue in her ear, then turned back to the bar, as drunk as a skunk. He hadn’t noticed a thing.

Lisa got up and peered through the window at the glorious morning. The sky was bright blue and she could hear the rushing of the waves. The only slightly depressing note was struck by the maypole, abandoned over on the festival site and adorned with flowers that had wilted in the sunshine.

She noticed an old man with white hair over by a caravan that was listing to one side. He was bent over a jack, trying to right it. That explained the noise. She turned away from the window and decided it was time for breakfast.

When she had eaten, she picked up her mobile and called the apartment in Huddinge. It rang out twelve times before a hoarse, weary voice replied, ‘Hello?’

Silas. It was quarter to eleven — early in the morning for him.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

Silas sighed. Lisa could tell from his breathing that he was clean today. Tired, but clean.

‘Hi.’

Then there was silence, apart from the sound of breathing.

‘How are you?’ Lisa asked.

‘OK. Thirsty.’

‘Well, have a drink then.’

‘There’s nothing in.’

‘Drink tap water.’

‘I don’t want to... There’s arsenic in tap water.’

Silence.

‘I’ve sent you a letter,’ Lisa said.

‘With papers?’

‘Yes. Lots of papers.’

‘Good... Will you be sending more letters this summer?’

‘I think so,’ Lisa replied. ‘It looks that way.’

‘Great.’

Silas didn’t say thank you, but he sounded pleased.

The conversation didn’t last much longer, because Silas was on his way out. He didn’t say where he was going. As usual.

Lisa switched off her mobile and sat motionless in the caravan for a little while. Eventually, she picked up an empty plastic container and went out into the sunshine to fetch some water. As she was standing by the taps, the door of one of the neighbouring caravans among the dog roses opened. Lisa recognized the young woman who stepped out; she was the girl who had been at the midsummer dance with the Kloss family.

Paulina, wasn’t that her name? They nodded at one another.

‘Morning,’ Lisa said. ‘So you live here, too?’

Paulina nodded again.

‘Have you been here long?’

‘Two weeks... Summer job.’

‘Same as me,’ Lisa said. ‘I’m working here through July. Will you be going back to Poland after that?’

Paulina shook her head. ‘Not Poland. I come from Lietuva.’

‘Lietuva?’ Lisa thought for a moment. ‘That’s Lithuania, isn’t it?’

‘Yes... Lithuania.’

Paulina didn’t say anything else. Lisa gazed at Paulina’s caravan; it was smaller and even older than hers, and much shabbier. It resembled a cracked egg more than anything. She suddenly felt privileged, and slightly embarrassed.

‘Right,’ she said, picking up the container, ‘I’d better go and get ready for work... Are you working today?’

Another nod.

‘For the Kloss family?’

‘Not family. I only work for him.’

‘Him?’

‘Yes,’ Paulina said, her expression serious. ‘Only for Kent Kloss.’ She looked away and didn’t say any more. But Lisa got the feeling that Paulina didn’t much like what she had to do for Kent Kloss.

Gerlof

Jonas was recognized when they walked into the cottage; apparently, eleven-year-old Kristoffer, Julia’s bonus child following the loss of her son, Jens, had attended swimming classes with him. They said a slightly shy ‘hi’ to one another.

Good. An established friendship would make everything easier, Gerlof thought. He led Jonas over to the telephone.

‘Ring your parents. They must be worried — tell them you’re fine.’

The boy seemed hesitant. ‘There’s only my dad here... We’re staying with Auntie Veronica and Uncle Kent.’

Gerlof nodded; he knew about the owners of the Ölandic Resort.

‘Well, call the house then. Tell them you’re over at the Davidssons’. Do you want them to come and pick you up?’

Jonas shook his head, then slowly picked up the phone. His expression was so troubled Gerlof thought it best to leave the room. He heard the boy talking quietly to someone.

Afterwards, they had breakfast. Gerlof was expecting his three grandsons to ask where he had found Jonas, but they didn’t, and after a little while Jonas started to join in with the conversation, smiling when the other boys smiled.

Gerlof wasn’t smiling. He glanced over at the coffee table, where he had left the drawing of the ship. Elia. He looked at the black crosses by the cargo hatch, and pondered.

After breakfast, he picked up the drawing and his straw hat and asked Jonas to come outside with him for a little while. They sat side by side on deckchairs on the lawn, with the sun starting to burn down on Gerlof’s shoulders and legs. Jonas kept his eyes fixed on the grass.

‘Are you thinking about what happened yesterday?’ Gerlof asked.

The boy looked at him and nodded, and Gerlof knew that the fear had come back.

‘Everything you told me about the ship... Are you still saying it’s all true?’

‘Yes.’

‘You saw dead seamen on the ship, and two people who were still alive. An older man up in the wheelhouse, and a younger man with an axe... and you think he comes from Africa. Is that right?’

‘Well, yes,’ Jonas said quietly. ‘But I didn’t say he was from Africa. You asked me what came into my mind when I saw him — I thought about African animals and jungle drums.’

Gerlof was puzzled. ‘Have you ever been to Africa?’

Jonas shook his head.

Gerlof didn’t think he was going to get any further with this; he picked up his stick and slowly got to his feet. ‘I think we’d better call the police,’ he said.

Jonas looked frightened, but Gerlof held up his hand.

‘It’ll be fine... We’re family.’

Tilda Davidsson was the only serving police officer Gerlof knew, and she was also the granddaughter of his late older brother. Gerlof managed to get hold of her at home on the eastern side of the island and briefly explained what had happened.

‘So I was wondering whether the coastguard had seen any ships adrift in the Sound last night?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Tilda replied. ‘I’m not with the coastguard. And it’s my day off.’

Gerlof could hear children laughing in the background, but went on anyway. ‘Could you ask them to check?’

‘No, that will be up to the central communications office, if we decide the boy’s story is credible.’

Gerlof sighed; so much hassle. ‘Well, could you come over and see what you think?’

And she did, without any of her colleagues, and out of uniform. She was wearing a loose-fitting denim dress, and Gerlof wondered if she might be pregnant. However, he didn’t dare ask.

Tilda said hello to Gerlof and the grandchildren, then shook hands with Jonas Kloss, who was playing a video game.

‘Tilda is a police officer from Kalmar,’ Gerlof explained. ‘I think it would be a good idea if you two had a little chat.’

Jonas got up slowly, looking far from thrilled at the prospect. Tilda spoke quietly to Gerlof. ‘You can sit in.’

‘Can I?’

‘You can be a witness; the police sometimes bring in an independent observer to make sure an interview is carried out correctly.’

Gerlof agreed, and followed Jonas and Tilda out into the shimmering heat.

‘Do you come here every summer, Jonas?’ Tilda asked when they were settled under the parasol.

‘No. Last summer we stayed at home with Mum. Because Dad...’ He fell silent and looked at Gerlof.

‘And where does your mum live?’ Tilda went on.

‘Huskvarna.’

Gerlof sat quietly and let Tilda do the talking. First of all, they chatted about video games and football stickers, which it seemed Tilda knew quite a lot about. After a few moments, she leaned forward. ‘I believe you saw something terrible last night...’

Jonas nodded.

‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

‘OK.’

They sat there listening for twenty minutes. Gerlof heard the same story from Jonas Kloss all over again — the same dark ship in the Sound, the same dead seamen, the same man with the axe and the elderly man called Aron — and because it matched his first account so perfectly, Gerlof became more and more convinced that it was true.

Afterwards, Tilda and Gerlof stayed in the garden and let Jonas go back indoors.

‘Your interrogation produced the same result as mine,’ Gerlof said.

‘That wasn’t an interrogation,’ Tilda quickly corrected him. ‘You have to be very careful when you question minors — we have specially trained officers for that. We were just having a chat.’

‘So are you going to look into this?’

‘Look into what, Gerlof? If the county police are going to send out officers to start knocking on doors and questioning witnesses, there has to be a crime scene. And as far as we know, there isn’t one.’

Gerlof unfolded the drawing he had brought from the boathouse.

‘There’s this. I drew it this morning, with Jonas’s help. He says this is the ship he was on. It’s not from Öland.’

Tilda looked at the sketch.

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s too big. It looks like a smallish cargo ship, probably around ninety feet, from the period between the wars. It could be an old cement ship from Degerhamn, but none of them is called Elia.’

‘OK, but in that case, where is it? I drove a little way along the coast road before I came here, and there were no ships in the Sound.’

‘It’s moved on. The boy said it had engines... I heard a ship last night, heading north, and I saw the backwash. It could have left the Sound and carried on into the Baltic.’ Gerlof paused for a moment, then added, ‘Unless it’s sunk. Or been scuttled.’

‘All right, you win.’ Tilda gave him back the drawing. ‘I can ask the coastguard to keep an eye open, but if no ship turns up we don’t have much to work on. Just a little boy.’

‘A frightened boy. His whole body was shaking when he stumbled into my boathouse. He’d seen something truly horrific.’

‘Ghosts on a ghost ship,’ Tilda said.

‘Seeing ghosts isn’t the same as saying they exist,’ Gerlof insisted. ‘But I could tell you a story...’

Tilda smiled wearily. ‘One of your ghost stories?’

Gerlof wagged a finger at her. ‘Just you listen to me. This is true. It’s something that happened to me back in the fifties, when we were carrying stone to Stockholm. We sailed along the coast virtually every week — it was pure routine. But one hot summer’s day we stopped in Oskarshamn to unload a cargo of machine oil. There was a fishing boat moored beside us at the quayside; she looked completely seaworthy but seemed to be deserted. There was no sign of anyone on board. But at sea it’s a tradition to call on your neighbours, so when we’d finished unloading I went over to see where the crew were, thinking they might be asleep or something.’

He glanced over to the west, where the water was just visible through the trees.

‘So I knocked on the wheelhouse door, but there was no response. No one was there. I could have gone back to my own ship, but I had a strange feeling. So I walked around the deck and saw that the cargo hatch was partly open. I looked down into the darkness, and they were just lying there. Two fishermen side by side in the hold.’

‘Murdered?’

‘That’s what I thought at first, so I climbed down. They were dead, but there wasn’t a mark on them — just a kind of blue tinge to their faces. That was when I guessed what had happened, and I tried to turn around to climb back up out of the hold. That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up on deck, with John yelling at me. Somehow I had managed to crawl up the ladder before I passed out. I felt terrible... you could say I was one of the living dead by that stage.’

‘So there was poison gas in the hold of this fishing boat?’

Gerlof shook his head. ‘No, just fish... but it was the fish that had killed them. The fishermen had been cleaning their catch below deck, and the guts had started to rot in the summer heat, producing hydrogen sulphide. It had consumed all the oxygen, suffocating them.’

‘Does it happen very often?’

‘Not on modern fishing boats. They have refrigeration equipment and ice to keep the fish fresh. But it used to happen sometimes in the past, in the summer. And on an old ship with fish in the hold, the kind of ship Jonas might have been on last night... it could happen. He said the deck stank of fish, so the men he saw could have been poisoned by hydrogen sulphide.’

Tilda thought about what he had said. ‘So we’re talking about a fatal accident?’ she said.

‘It could have been an accident,’ Gerlof conceded. ‘But I wonder... You have to be in an enclosed space in order to suffocate. And why would they all be below at the same time, on a ship so near to the coast? It’s as if someone forced the crew below deck, then locked them in.’

Tilda didn’t say anything for a moment, then she took out her mobile and moved a short distance away. Gerlof heard her speaking quietly to someone. After a few minutes she was back.

‘I’ve spoken to the coastguard; they had no reports of ships off Öland last night.’

‘What did you say to them?’

‘I just said that a member of the public had seen a ship that appeared to be adrift off the coast near Stenvik. They’re not going to launch a major search, but they did promise to keep an eye open.’

Gerlof picked up his stick and accompanied Tilda to her car.

‘Is this important to you?’ she asked.

‘Not really,’ Gerlof said, then he thought for a second and went on, ‘But someone has to listen to young people. When I was a boy I heard the sound of knocking from inside a coffin up in the churchyard, but my father just laughed when I came home and told him about it. And that’s why I never laugh, whatever strange tales I might hear.’ He looked at Tilda. ‘How are you getting on with your ghosts up at the lighthouses, by the way?’

‘They’re on holiday,’ she said tersely. ‘Just like I shall be, very soon.’

She got in the car and drove off.

There’s nothing more I can do, Gerlof thought as he went back to sit in the garden. The birds were singing, the sun was blazing down. But he couldn’t stop going over what Jonas had told him.

A ghost ship in the Sound, with an elderly American on board.

And a younger man from Africa?

The Homecomer

On sunny summer days Öland’s beaches were crowded; there were more tourists than the Homecomer had ever seen, which was a good thing. He could simply walk around like one of them, an old man in shorts and a red T-shirt and sunglasses.

He could also visit the burial cairn in Stenvik without anyone asking what he was doing there. It was an ancient monument, after all, open to everyone. So he parked the Ford he had bought in Stockholm among all the other cars down by the mailboxes in Stenvik, then headed south.

When he looked out over the Sound he could see a number of vessels: small motorboats close to the shore, and a few larger yachts further out, but not one single ship.

In the warm sunshine, with a good night’s sleep behind him, it was difficult to recall exactly what had happened yesterday: boarding the ship, forcing the crew below, blowing a hole in the hull. There was no sign of the ship today.

The Homecomer passed the small campsite down by the water, then headed up towards the ridge. He could stay out of sight of the summer cottages along the coast road, because there was a narrow dip above the shore. It was man-made; it had been hacked out by stonemasons in days gone by as they worked their way down the rock. They had left behind a V-shaped cleft with gravel and broken stones at the bottom. The Homecomer moved cautiously so that he wouldn’t trip.

After a while, he saw the cairn above him; it looked like a large pile of stones up on the ridge. It was closer to the edge than he remembered; the cliff face must have suffered from erosion over the past seventy years.

Time smashed everything to pieces.

A few metres below the cairn there was a metal door set in a concrete frame; it seemed to lead right into the rock almost directly below the cairn. It looked like the entrance to a bunker — perhaps it was a defence post left over from the war?

The Homecomer glanced around, but he was still alone.

The metal door was secured with a heavy padlock and chain. He tugged at it, but to no avail. He would need a pair of bolt cutters.

After a minute or so, he walked away from the bunker and found a narrow flight of stone steps that took him up the hill and on to the ridge. He stood by the cairn for a while, silent and still, thinking of Sven.

Then he turned and looked inland, towards the houses on the other side of the coast road. Two rectangular bungalows with enormous windows and an expanse of wooden decking. Between them he could see a huge blue swimming pool.

He was close to the Kloss family now, just a few hundred metres away, but he could move around out of sight in the dip. And they didn’t know him. No one knew who he was.

Which made everything so much easier.

The New Country, July 1931

Aron and Sven are standing on deck with their luggage. They have arrived. The steamer SS Kastelholm is sliding into a large, unfamiliar harbour full of other ships; she slowly heaves to beside a broad stone quay. Aron watches as the city with its tall buildings and wide streets grows before his very eyes. Vast buildings with long rows of narrow windows.

Stockholm was nothing compared to this. Aron doesn’t recognize the name of the city; he just knows they have arrived in America.

The United States. The new country.

Sven carries their bags and tools down the gangplank; they are led through a dark stone doorway where everyone has to stand in line. Eventually, two broad-shouldered men in uniform arrive to interview them, with the help of an interpreter. Aron says nothing; Sven does all the talking. He shows their passports, holds up the spade, smiles at the interpreter and the grim-faced officials.

‘We’ve come here voluntarily.’

‘Of course,’ says the interpreter. ‘But what is it you intend to do here?’

‘We want to work, both of us. We want to build the new country.’

The interpreter confers with the guards, then he says, ‘What is your profession?’

‘We’re agricultural workers. I’ve worked in flour mills, but I’ve spent most of my time growing crops and tending cattle. And my stepson has attended school and helped me in his spare time.’

The interpreter checks Aron’s passport. ‘He’s only thirteen years old...’

‘Yes, but he’s big and strong and hardworking.’

One of the guards shows Sven a picture, a portrait of a man with sharp eyes, his chin raised. ‘Do you know who this is?’

‘Your leader,’ Sven replies.

‘What’s his name?’

Aron hears Sven say an unfamiliar name without the slightest hesitation, and the guards nod with satisfaction.

Finally, Sven gives the men some of their dollar bills. That does the trick. Their passports are stamped, travel documents are issued and they are allowed into the new country.

Sven and Aron remain in the city for three days; they stay in a small hotel near a big railway station and wander the wide, crowded streets. Aron hears lots of foreign languages but doesn’t understand a single word. Everyone around them appears to know where they are going, but Sven seems somehow lost. In the cramped room, his mood deteriorates, and he hits Aron several times.

In the evenings he goes out, and is gone for hours. Aron can only wait by the window.

On the second evening, Sven is much more cheerful when he returns. Everything is arranged; he has met someone who speaks Swedish.

‘We’re moving on,’ he tells Aron. ‘There are lots of Scandinavians in the forests in the north. They’ve got work for us up there.’

Aron would like to spend longer in the city, but he has no say in the matter.

They leave by train the following day. The concrete buildings disappear, the countryside takes over and they travel north through a green and brown landscape of vast plains, virgin coniferous forests, wide rivers and immense lakes.

The train is packed with optimistic workers, all equipped with their own tools — saws, pickaxes and spades.

Sven and Aron are with them in the third-class carriage. The dollar bills are almost gone. They have hardly any food, but at one end of the carriage you can buy steaming-hot tea. Everything else on the train is freezing cold.

But Sven keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the route ahead, one hand resting on his spade.

Jonas

It was almost twelve o’clock by the time Jonas got back to Villa Kloss. He had only pretended to call home from the Davidssons’ house, just to appease Gerlof. No one in his family knew where he had spent the night. If he gave the game away, Mats and their cousins would probably chuck him off the rocks.

On the way home he had gazed out across the bay, but there was no sign of any ships and no dead seamen had floated ashore. The sun was shining and the breeze was warm. People were swimming and sunbathing by the jetty as if it were an ordinary summer’s day, but Jonas’s heart was pounding.

He had reached Villa Kloss. Might as well go straight in.

He slid open the glass door of Uncle Kent’s house, expecting to see everyone gathered around the long dining table: Uncle Kent, Dad, Mats and the cousins, all worried and with lots of questions, but no one seemed to have noticed his absence. They weren’t even there.

Only Paulina was around, standing in the kitchen, stacking dishes after the party. Everyone else was probably still in bed, or else they’d gone off to the Ölandic. Jonas had a drink of water and went over to his chalet. On the way he met Mats and Urban, both wearing green shorts and sunglasses. They were carrying two racing bikes.

‘Hi, bro.’

‘How’s things?’ Urban said.

‘Fine,’ Jonas replied.

Mats stopped and spoke quietly. ‘We told Dad you stayed over with a friend last night. That’s what you did, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, kind of... I slept in a boathouse.’

‘Good... I should think that was a lot more fun than Kalmar. The film was crap.’

Jonas nodded and thought about dead men on the deck of a ship. And then about Africa. He could hear jungle drums pounding in his head, and he just wanted to ring his mum in Huskvarna. Ask her to come and pick him up, take him home.

But he didn’t. He had to stay here; he had work to do.

So when Mats and Urban had cycled off down the coast, he went out on to Uncle Kent’s warm, sunlit decking. The planks were waiting. First of all he had to sand them down, then he would apply Chinese wood oil, which had been ordered specially.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of an engine behind him. Uncle Kent drove in and parked over by the garage. He was holding his mobile phone and seemed to be doing a lot of listening, with occasional monosyllabic responses. He was red-faced and sweaty, and when the call was over he sat in the car, looking out towards the Sound.

Then he shook his head and made another call.

Something seemed to have upset Uncle Kent, but Jonas didn’t want to know what it was. Kent didn’t appear to have noticed him, anyway, he was too stressed — after only a minute or so, he reversed on to the coast road and drove off again.

Jonas looked down at the decking. He was no longer on holiday. The previous evening, his father had shown him what to do. ‘Steady, even strokes, Jonas, and make them as long as possible. Keep your hand moving all the time so that you don’t chip the wood.’

Jonas picked up the sander, switched it on and ran it over each plank. It was hard work. The dirt was ingrained in every piece of wood, and he had to go over each one several times in order to bring it back to its original pale colour.

But it was good to be working; it stopped him thinking. About the man with the axe, and the dying seamen.

After perhaps twenty minutes the glass door slid open.

‘Afternoon, Jonas!’

His father emerged, wearing sandals, shorts and a shirt. He blinked up at the sun and waved to Jonas. ‘Everything OK?’

Jonas nodded. His father went and sat on a sun lounger by the pool and closed his eyes.

Did he have a hangover from the party? Jonas couldn’t tell.

He carried on working, but when he had sanded down two more planks and the sweat was pouring down his back, he took a break. He went over to join his father and sat down on the edge of the pool, dangling his feet in the cool water. Niklas smiled at him, and Jonas asked, ‘Did you see the ship?’

Niklas stared at him, then looked out across the Sound. ‘What ship?’

‘A big ship. Last night.’

‘Not last night,’ his father said. ‘But I have seen a few cargo ships passing through the Sound since we arrived.’

Jonas didn’t say any more about the ship. He sat there for a few minutes longer with his feet in the water, until he had stopped sweating, then he stood up. ‘I’d better get on.’

It was easier now; he had learned how to hold the sander.

After a while he got up and stretched, and saw that he was being watched from the other side of the coast road. A grey-haired man with a white beard and sunglasses was standing on the ridge above the shore, staring at Villa Kloss. He was wearing a red T-shirt, but Jonas couldn’t make out his face. Too far away.

He was standing in the middle of the rocks that had rolled down from the cairn, and when Jonas realized that he went cold all over.

He turned to see whether his father had noticed the man as well, but Niklas was lying back on the sun lounger with his mouth open. He had fallen asleep.

Jonas slowly bent down and resumed his sanding, but when he had finished the plank he looked over at the cairn once more.

The man had disappeared.

Gerlof

The birds were singing at the tops of their voices. Gerlof was sitting in the garden with his hearing aid turned up to full volume, and the song in the bushes rose and fell like a summer concert.

Who needed a gramophone when there were blackbirds? Not Gerlof.

It was early evening, but still warm and calm. The entire day had gone, June would soon be over, and he had done very little apart from doze in the sunshine.

He had had a headache, probably due to lack of sleep, so he turned down the opportunity to play mini-golf with his grandchildren and listened to the birds with his eyes closed instead — until he heard the gate opening.

A boy was standing there. Jonas Kloss, his overnight guest, was back.

Gerlof waved and the boy slowly came over to say hello.

‘Is Kristoffer home?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘We were going to play FIFA on his Nintendo,’ Jonas said.

Gerlof had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded anyway.

‘The boys have gone over to the restaurant, but they’ll be back soon. How are you this evening, Jonas?’

‘Fine.’

Just one word. Then silence, until Gerlof asked, ‘Have you thought much about what happened... about the ship?’

Jonas nodded. He was rigid and tense, as if the dead had him in their clutches. And that was probably true; after seventy years, Gerlof still remembered Gilbert Kloss collapsing in the churchyard. He had been a few years older than Jonas at the time, but that day still haunted him. He didn’t want Jonas to be affected the same way, so he leaned forward. ‘Jonas,’ he said slowly. ‘I think I know what had happened to those men you saw on the ship. They weren’t monsters or zombies. They’d been poisoned by gas.’

Jonas stared at him. ‘Gas?’

‘From the fish in the hold. You said you could smell fish on board, but I think the fish had gone rotten in the heat.’

He told Jonas the same story he had told Tilda. Jonas listened in silence and seemed to relax slightly when Gerlof stopped speaking. He started to move away, but Gerlof hadn’t finished.

‘And the man with the axe, Jonas... Have you remembered where you’d seen him before?’

The boy shook his head.

‘I can try to help you if you like. Would that be all right?’

‘OK.’

With some difficulty, Gerlof pulled up another garden chair. ‘Sit down.’ Now they were sitting face to face, and Gerlof picked up his notebook and a pen. He smiled at Jonas. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘Good. In that case, let’s try to travel back in time... Can you conjure up the man from the ship so that you can see his face?’

Jonas nodded, but kept his eyes lowered.

‘Try to think back to where you’d seen him before,’ Gerlof said, speaking more slowly. ‘Imagine you’re going back in time, to the moment just before you saw him.’

‘OK,’ Jonas said again, his head drooping even more.

The garden was suddenly quiet, apart from a lone bumble bee buzzing past their chairs.

Gerlof waited for a few seconds, then asked, ‘What can you see now, Jonas?’

‘A building.’

‘And what time is it?’

‘I don’t know... but it’s summer. Evening.’

‘And you’re standing outside a building. Is it here on the island?’

‘Don’t know. I think so.’

‘What does this building look like?’

‘It’s big.’

‘Is it made of stone, like a castle? Or brick?’

‘Wood. Big planks of wood.’

Jonas was staring at the grass. He wasn’t in a hypnotic trance, he was just concentrating hard.

A wooden building. Gerlof quickly made a note of that.

‘You have to be very careful when you question minors,’ Tilda had said. Gerlof would be careful. And this wasn’t a real interview, he told himself, it was just a chat. He went on, ‘What colour is the building?’

‘Red.’

Most wooden buildings on Öland were red, of course. The whole of Sweden was full of red buildings. Gerlof tried again. ‘So he’s inside a big red building?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you inside, too?’

‘No, but I’m going in.’

‘On your own?’

‘With Mats.’

‘Who’s Mats?’

‘My older brother.’

‘And how do you and Mats get into this building?’

‘We go up a big stone staircase.’

‘And in through a door?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the man from the ship is waiting for you in there?’

‘Yes... He’s sitting there, and he’s, like, waiting.’

‘Does he say anything to you?’

‘No. I think he nods.’

‘Does he do anything else?’

‘He holds out his hand.’

Gerlof thought about this, then asked, ‘Does he want something from you?’

‘Yes, our money.’

‘Your money? How much money?’

‘All of it. From Mats. Mats gives him the money.’

‘Does the man give...’

... you anything in return? he was going to ask, but at that moment he heard the gate and the boys came running up the path. They were back from mini-golf.

‘Hi, Jonas!’ Kristoffer shouted.

Jonas opened his eyes, his concentration broken. He waved to his friend, then quickly got to his feet as if he were embarrassed, and mumbled to Gerlof, ‘Got to go.’

‘I know, but thanks for the chat.’

Jonas nodded and hurried over to join Kristoffer.

The memory of a man in a big red building. And Africa. Gerlof sat there puzzling over the mystery all evening, but he couldn’t solve it.

In the end, he went indoors.

Jonas had gone home but, as usual, his grandchildren were sitting there watching a film with lots of car chases and explosions. They put on a film most evenings, but turned down the volume when Gerlof was around. That was one thing they had learned.

He went to the bathroom, then into his bedroom.

‘Goodnight, boys,’ he said, closing the door.

He would sleep in the cottage tonight. It seemed like the quieter option, in spite of everything.

Two hours later, the cottage was quiet; the boys had switched off the television and gone to bed. Gerlof’s head sank deeper and deeper into the pillow; he was almost asleep.

But suddenly he opened his eyes; he was wide awake.

The boys watch a film almost every evening.

The thought made him sit up, turn on the light and open his notebook. He read through what Jonas had said with fresh eyes and blinked in surprise, because his almost-sleeping brain had worked through all those random memories and come up with a possible solution to the mystery of Jonas and Africa.

Gerlof picked up a pen with trembling hands and wrote down one word so that it wouldn’t go out of his head by morning. Then he reached for the phone book. He needed to speak to someone, an old acquaintance from the local history society.

He found the number and keyed it in. The person at the other end picked up after only three rings, and Gerlof spoke quietly, so as not to wake his grandsons.

‘Good evening, Bertil — it’s Gerlof Davidsson.’

‘Gerlof? Oh... good evening.’

‘Am I disturbing you? Were you asleep?’

‘Not at all — I stay up late in the summer. We’ve been sitting out on the veranda, my brother and I, so it’s absolutely—’

‘Good,’ Gerlof interrupted him. ‘It’s just that I have a question that might sound a bit odd. But it’s important, and it’s about the Marnäs manor house. Are you still running things up there?’

‘I am — I can’t get out of it.’

‘I’m looking for someone who had a summer job there five years ago, selling tickets. A young man, but I don’t know his exact age — just that he was young.’

‘Five years ago? ’94?’

‘That’s right. Can you think of anyone who fits the bill?’

Bertil didn’t say anything for a moment.

‘The only person I can remember who had a summer job was Pecka. He would have been about twenty back then...’

‘Pecka?’

‘That’s what he called himself, but his real name is Peter, Peter Mayer. He worked for us for one summer, then he moved on.’

‘Do you know where to?’

‘He had lots of different jobs. As far as I remember, he joined the crew of a fishing boat for a while, then he worked at a couple of campsites and in a grocery store. I don’t think things worked out too well for him; he had some problems with his temperament, and disciplinary issues, if you know what I mean.’

‘I think I do,’ Gerlof said. ‘One last thing... Do you have a list of the films you’ve shown at the manor house?’

‘Not here, but there’s one in the office.’

‘Could I have a look at it?’

‘Of course,’ Bertil said. ‘I’ll drop by in the morning.’

‘Thank you, Bertil — thank you very much.’

Gerlof said goodnight and ended the call. Then he went back to his notebook to write down a name he had never heard before: PETER MAYER.

Then he turned off the light and went back to sleep.

Jonas

Jonas had finished sanding for the day and had treated himself to a dip in the pool afterwards. As usual, he was alone. Nothing that had happened over the past few days had changed that. Casper had gone off on his moped; he hadn’t really seemed to care when Jonas finally told him that his old rubber dinghy had sunk. Dad was at the restaurant, and Mats and Urban were working down at the Ölandic.

There were, of course, boys of approximately his own age in the village. Kristoffer was a year younger, and perhaps a little childish, but he was still a pretty cool companion. After his swim, Jonas cycled over to the Davidssons’ cottage.

‘Jonas!’

As he walked in through the gate, he saw Kristoffer’s grandfather Gerlof in his usual spot in the garden. He waved his little notebook at Jonas.

Gerlof seemed bright and cheery this Wednesday, as if he was bursting with news. Jonas went over to him, and Gerlof started talking right away.

‘Kristoffer’s inside, you can go and see him in a minute, but I just want to show you something first. I wrote something down after we’d had our chat yesterday. It’s about the ship, and the man you saw on board. Would you like to see?’

Jonas didn’t really want to think any more about the ghost ship, but he didn’t have much choice.

‘Good. Here it comes.’

Gerlof held out his notebook and pointed to three words written in pencil, in shaky handwriting. Jonas leaned forward and read, ‘The Lion King’. He read it twice, then looked up at Gerlof.

‘It’s a film,’ Gerlof said. ‘I’ve only seen it on video with my grandchildren, but it’s been on in the cinema, too... Do you remember it?’

Jonas nodded; he had seen it several times. ‘It’s about animals in Africa,’ he said. ‘A father lion is killed by his brother and thrown off a mountainside. And there’s loads of music.’

‘Exactly,’ Gerlof said, looking pleased. ‘It was when you said the word “Africa”... During the night, I got the idea that the man who was after you might have been working in a cinema when you and your brother went to see The Lion King. I checked with an acquaintance who’s involved in showing films on the island, and it was on at the manor house in Marnäs five years ago, in the summer of ’94. Were you here then?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good. Because Marnäs manor house is a big red building, made of wood. Just like the one you described to me.’

Jonas remembered now. He had been seven years old that summer; Mats had been twelve. Dad had taken them up to Marnäs, but he hadn’t stayed for the film, he had just dropped them off and picked them up afterwards. So they had gone to the cinema on their own, for the first time ever. They had gone into the building and up to the ticket office, and...

It was all coming back to him now.

‘Yes, that’s where he was. The man from the ship, he was sitting in a little kiosk, and he sold us our tickets.’

‘Good,’ Gerlof said again. ‘And I managed to find a name... There was only one young man who worked in the cinema that summer, so I think we can identify him.’

He paused and leaned forward. ‘But if I tell you, will you promise not to tell anyone else?’

Jonas didn’t look too sure, but he agreed.

‘His name is Peter, Peter Mayer. But he’s known as Pecka. Do you recognize that name?’

Jonas shook his head. ‘The man on the ship didn’t tell me his name.’

‘No, of course not. But I looked in the phone book this morning, and there’s a Peter Mayer who lives up in Marnäs.’

Jonas stiffened. There was a sudden chill in the evening air. ‘So he lives here... on the island?’

‘Yes, if that’s him. But there’s nothing to worry about, Jonas. He doesn’t know who you are.’

Nevertheless, Jonas’s heart was pounding. Marnäs wasn’t far away; you could cycle there in half an hour. Casper went there on his moped virtually every day. And the man with the axe lived there.

‘We just need to find out more about him,’ Gerlof went on. ‘You said he mentioned an old man, an American?’

‘Aron,’ Jonas said.

‘Aron,’ Gerlof repeated thoughtfully.

Jonas wanted to tell Gerlof about the figure he had seen by the cairn the previous day, the figure that reminded him of the man on the ghost ship — but now he was no longer sure whether he might have imagined it.

They sat in silence for a moment, then Gerlof looked down at his notebook.

‘Right, Jonas. I’ll try to find the American, too. If he exists.’

Gerlof

Tilda’s phone was still engaged. Gerlof had things to tell her, but he hung up. He knew that it wasn’t against the law for a private individual to look into things, but he thought it was time to let her know what he had found out about Peter Mayer. And the mysterious Swedish-American.

Gerlof thought about the period of mass emigration from Sweden to the United States, the great exodus from Sweden that had lasted from the 1840s into the 1920s and beyond.

These days, as the summer residences in Stenvik kept on getting bigger and bigger, and all the shiny, expensive cars zoomed along the coast road, it was easy to forget how poor this area had been a hundred years ago. Poverty had reigned throughout the whole of Sweden — a remote country in the north without any great wealth. Hunger and lack of work had driven a fifth of the population overseas, mainly to America.

Öland and America were linked by all those journeys — first of all, the journey to the new country, then the journey home. Most of those who returned were poverty-stricken; the odd one had made it and was rich.

Gerlof didn’t know of any emigrants who were still alive, so he picked up the phone again and called someone who might just have the answer. Bill Carlson in Långvik was the only elderly American he knew; Bill was an interested descendant of genuine emigrants from the island.

A young Swedish relative answered, but he quickly called Bill in from the veranda.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hello Bill, it’s Gerlof Davidsson.’

There was a brief silence at the other end of the phone, then an enthusiastic ‘Gerlof! Hello-o! How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘How’s your little boat?’

‘Well, we’re working on her...’ He cleared his throat and went on. ‘Bill, I need your help with something. I’m looking for an American.’

‘An American?’

‘Yes. I think he’s on Öland at the moment, but I don’t know where.’

‘Good luck with that. There are more of us than you might think in the summer. I was in the grocery store here in Långvik yesterday, and I met a whole bunch of kids from Washington who—’

‘This is an old man,’ Gerlof broke in. ‘A Swedish-American who might be called Aron. He comes from northern Öland, I think — at least, he seems to be familiar with the coast around here. And I think he’s interested in ships.’

‘Doesn’t ring any bells. Anything else?’

‘No... but he seems a bit of a dubious character.’

Bill laughed quietly. ‘You mean he’s a criminal?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know him.’

‘There were all kinds of emigrants,’ Bill said. ‘Have you heard of Oskar Lundin from Degerhamn?’

‘No, who was he?’

‘An old Swedish-American from Chicago... I met him one summer many years ago, and he claimed he’d been a driver for the Mafia back in the thirties. For Al Capone. Lundin said he used to drive Capone to meetings, until he was arrested and locked up in Alcatraz.’

‘Is he still alive, this Lundin?’

‘No, he’s every bit as dead as Capone. Most of those who came home are dead now.’

Gerlof sighed. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

‘But some are still alive,’ Bill said. ‘We’re meeting up for lunch on Friday.’

‘Who’s meeting up for lunch?’

‘Those who’ve come home to northern Öland... Those of us who are left. There’s always an annual get-together for all Swedish-Americans at the Borgholm Hotel, just after midsummer.’

‘And does everyone come along?’

‘Who knows?’ Bill said. ‘But I’ve got something I can show you, if you want more names. It’s taken from the church registers — it’s a list of everyone who emigrated from Öland during the twentieth century. My cousin has been to the House of the Emigrants in Gothenburg to do some research; he got the list from their archive.’

‘That would be very useful,’ Gerlof said. ‘And this lunch...’

‘It’s usually very good. You’re welcome to come with me.’

‘Really? I’d love to, but I’m not a Swedish-American, Bill. I’ve never even been to America.’

‘Don’t you have any emigrants in the family?’

‘Well, yes... my grandfather’s two brothers. They set off across the sea in the early 1900s. One ended up in Boston and became quite wealthy; the other is supposed to have died on the street in Chicago. That’s the closest I can get.’

‘In that case, you can be an honorary homecomer,’ Bill said.

‘Thank you.’

‘People won’t ask you many questions anyway. They’ll just go on and on, like windmills. All they want to do is talk about their own stories and adventures.’

‘Then I’m happy to listen,’ Gerlof said.

The Homecomer

Everyone seemed to be carrying around their own little telephones these days. Everyone except the Homecomer. He had to rely on the public kiosks that still stood in the squares and picnic areas on the island, and he was standing in one of those kiosks right now.

He keyed in a number, and a hoarse male voice answered, sounding suspicious.

‘Hello?’

‘Wall?’

‘Yes...’

‘Do you know who this is?’

‘Yes...’

The arms dealer’s voice was slurred, as if he had been drinking all day.

‘I’d like to do some more business with you,’ the Homecomer said.

‘We need to sort out the last lot first,’ Wall said. ‘What the hell did you do with the ship?’

The Homecomer was silent.

‘Nothing that can be undone,’ he said eventually.

‘Exactly. Pecka called me yesterday; he was really shaken up. He told me you sank her.’

‘Yes. We had no choice... There was poison gas on board.’

Wall didn’t speak; the Homecomer heard him swigging something at the other end of the line, then he said, ‘So you want to come here and do some more business?’

‘Yes. And I’ve got money now.’

‘Tomorrow evening,’ Wall said.

The Homecomer put the phone down. He thought about the bunker not far from Villa Kloss, then about a man he had once met, a man who had made rocks fly through the air.

The New Country, April 1932

‘We have to be prepared to make sacrifices,’ Sven says. ‘You do understand that, don’t you?’

Aron looks at his sore hands and says nothing. Sven’s hands are in just as bad a state as his own. The skin is cracked, the nails are coming away from the flesh, there are cuts along almost every finger. They’re actually quite lucky, because some of the other workers have already lost a couple of fingers. It’s the mud and the rocks that destroy the hands, the sticky mud that hides beneath the grass, keeping the rocks firmly in place. The workers stab at the ground with their spades, trying to gain some leverage, but the clay and the rocks refuse to give way.

Life in the new country consists only of sleep and work.

Every night they sleep in a kind of hut with twenty other men, or perhaps more, on beds that are not beds. Sven’s is made up of three empty boxes, while Aron’s slightly shorter one is a few planks of wood balanced on two sawhorses.

Every day is full of digging, from morning till night. Sven, Aron and the other immigrants are building a canal through the forests, or perhaps a wide ditch. Aron doesn’t really know which, he just keeps digging. There are poles in the ground to show where they have to dig, a straight line leading towards the mountains on the horizon, and Aron doesn’t think about the eventual goal. He just keeps toiling away with his spade, but over and over again it gets stuck in the unforgiving ground. He tugs, he pulls, he sobs. He digs and digs.

Winter turns to spring, and they carry on digging.

One day when the snow has melted, the work suddenly gets easier. An energetic man in a black cap arrives from the direction of the railway, pushing a cart containing some wooden boxes. He greets the workers with a cheery wave, and when he hears that some of them are Swedish he raises his hat to them.

‘Ruotsi!’ he says, using the Finnish name for Sweden before continuing in Swedish. ‘I come from Esbo in Finland, but I became a mining engineer and wanted to get out and see the world. This is a fantastic country, isn’t it?’

Sven nods, but Aron just stands there.

The man looks around. ‘Any stubborn rocks you want to get rid of?’

‘Definitely,’ Sven says.

There are always huge rocks. Some of the older workers point out several waiting up ahead.

‘Excellent, in that case allow me to demonstrate a little magic trick!’ the man from Esbo says, lifting the first wooden box off the cart.

Aron helps him to carry the rest, and watches as he takes fat sticks wrapped in oiled paper out of the boxes.

‘Ammonal!’ he shouts, gathering the men around the nearest rock. He picks up the sticks. ‘These are my boys, and they’re going to work together... Put them on the opposite side of the rock from the direction you want it to go in, bury them deep in the ground so they have something to kick against and press the detonator against the fuse. But slowly! You have to treat these boys as tenderly as if they were your very own cock!’

The men burst into raucous laughter, then fall silent. They all watch with tense anticipation as the man borrows a pickaxe and makes a row of holes for the dynamite underneath the rock. He shows them in which direction to point the sticks, and how to pack them tightly in order to achieve the best possible effect.

Then the man lights a metre length of black fuse wire and, when it begins to spark and crackle, he makes everyone move back. A long way back.

The ground shakes. A cloud of smoke and fire erupts, and the rock is hurled in the air. It’s like magic! The men cheer and the man raises his cap once more.

‘Ammonal! Dynamite is the future!’

The man from Esbo teaches them how to blow up rocks, but he soon moves on, and it’s back to the spades. Aron almost wishes he had never met the mining engineer, never found out that something called dynamite even existed. He doesn’t want to know that there are balls of fire that can move mountains, when all he has is a spade.

As the days grow warmer, the mud dries out and digging becomes easier. But then the mosquitoes arrive; the air is filled with them in early summer. Clouds of mosquitoes sweep in across the forest, whining around Aron’s ears, crawling up inside his sleeves, or biting right through the fabric of his shirt. His face swells up, his skin itches and throbs from all the bites. The mosquitoes get in his eyes and his nose, even in his mouth, where they taste sweet, like blood.

Sven makes them each a hat of birch bark to protect them from both the mosquitoes and the sun. And then he picks up his spade and carries on digging.

‘We mustn’t give up,’ he says. ‘After all, this is what we wanted, isn’t it?’

Aron doesn’t say anything.

He never wanted to dig in the new country; he wanted to be a sheriff.

When they are given soup during their short break in the middle of the day, hundreds of mosquitoes land on the warm liquid, at first swimming and then slowly, helplessly, sinking. Aron crushes them with his spoon and shovels the lot down. He chews ferociously, with his eyes shut; he wants to murder the mosquitoes. Murder every last one.

Jonas

Jonas was back at Villa Kloss. He wasn’t going to think right now, at least not about Peter Mayer. He was going to work.

He fetched the sander and plugged it into the socket on Uncle Kent’s decking. Then he switched it on and carried on sanding, one plank at a time. Slow and steady, just as his father had taught him. Every scrap of grey had to be removed from the wood, leaving it pale and fresh. Only then would he be able to start brushing in the oil.

Jonas worked on his knees, his forehead shiny with sweat. The sun was burning down and he really didn’t want to think about it — but that name kept echoing through his mind. Peter. Peter Mayer. Mayer. Peter. He knew he couldn’t talk to anyone, but the name Gerlof had given him just wouldn’t go away. The man on the ship, the man who had killed people with an axe.

Peter Mayer. Sold the tickets for The Lion King. Lives in Marnäs.

‘How’s it going, Jonas?’ His father had slid open the glass door and was looking down at him. ‘Are you getting on OK?’

Jonas nodded.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

Jonas didn’t know what to say. He tried to smile, but his father must have seen something in his expression. He stepped outside.

‘Are you missing Mum?’

‘A bit... But it’s all right.’

Jonas carried on sanding.

‘So what is it, then?’ his father said.

Jonas switched off the machine. After a few seconds he said, ‘Stuff’s been happening.’

‘Stuff? What are you talking about?’

‘Something happened... on Monday evening.’

‘Monday? When you were at the cinema?’

Jonas should have kept quiet, but he felt a kind of pressure in his chest when his father stared at him.

‘I didn’t go to the cinema,’ he said eventually. ‘I stayed at home.’

His father came and stood beside him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I went down to the shore and took the dinghy out. And something happened.’

The thing that had happened was too big to keep inside, and he ended up telling his father about everything he had seen out in the Sound. He spoke slowly at first, then faster and faster. He told him about the ship, about the living dead, about the man who had chased him. The man who might be called Peter Mayer.

His father listened carefully. He was a good listener; he had never laughed at anything Jonas had told him. And he wasn’t laughing now.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘So now I know. Thank you for telling me, Jonas.’

That was all he said. He didn’t seem in the least bit disturbed by the story, just thoughtful. After a while, he seemed to reach a decision.

‘Everything’s fine. You can go and play.’

‘I’m working,’ Jonas said. Then he thought about the woman he had spoken to at Gerlof’s house. ‘Are we going to contact the police?’

‘Of course... Soon. I need to think.’

His father looked away, over towards the water, as if he were slightly embarrassed. Then he went back indoors.

Jonas was worried; he had promised Mats that he wouldn’t say anything about the cinema trip to Kalmar, and he had promised Gerlof that he wouldn’t tell anyone about Peter Mayer. ‘Promise not to tell anyone else,’ Gerlof had said, but that was exactly what Jonas had done. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

All he could do was carry on working. Stop thinking.

After an hour he had finished about a fifth of the decking. The wood looked almost new, clean and fresh in the sunshine. No chips.

He was quite proud of himself.

As he straightened up, he saw a big car turn off the coast road. It was Uncle Kent, in a white cap and oversized sunnies. He opened the door and waved.

‘JK, come over here for a minute!’

Jonas made his way over. Uncle Kent got out of the car and was already talking by the time Jonas reached him.

‘Your dad called me a little while ago, JK... He said something exciting had happened to you the day before yesterday.’ Kent crouched down so that they were face to face. ‘He said you were on board a big ship, and you met a guy called Peter Mayer.’

Jonas didn’t say a word.

‘Is this true?’ Kent demanded.

Jonas nodded slowly.

‘Interesting.’ Kent held Jonas’s gaze. ‘In that case, let me explain. We had a ship in the dock at the Ölandic over midsummer, delivering a cargo of fish. It left a couple of nights ago, without informing us. We thought that was very strange.’

Jonas thought about the dead seamen, but still he didn’t say anything.

Uncle Kent went on. ‘And this Peter Mayer: he calls himself Pecka, and he worked at the resort as a security guard last summer... so I’d like to speak to him. But I want to be sure that it really was Pecka you saw on board that ship, JK. Do you think you’d be able to identify him?’

Jonas hesitated, but Uncle Kent smiled reassuringly.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Pecka lives in Marnäs. I have an address for him there, and I’d just like a word with him. But first of all I need to be sure... Could you come up there with me?’

Jonas thought for a moment, then nodded again. He opened his mouth to speak, but Uncle Kent ruffled his hair.

‘Excellent! In that case, we’ll pop up and see him this evening.’ Kent straightened up. ‘There’s a fair on in Marnäs, so it will be really busy. We’ll just have to hope he’s at home.’

Kent got back in the car, and Jonas watched as he reversed out on to the coast road.

There was nothing for it but to go back to his sanding. But things just didn’t feel right to Jonas.

Look for the man from the ship? And speak to him? But what if he had the axe with him?

Lisa

No champagne, no pissed guests. Just a golden sunset and a warm breeze at a little outdoor bar and restaurant in Stenvik.

Lisa wasn’t spinning any discs this Thursday evening. She was sitting on a stool with her guitar resting on her knee and a microphone in front of her. The microphone was the only thing she could see clearly, because the sun was in her eyes.

She wasn’t wearing a wig tonight, because she wasn’t a DJ. She was a troubadour, playing folk songs. It was completely different from spending half the night in the DJ booth. The sound was nowhere near as good, for example — she had nothing more than one small speaker, and the wind coming off the water swept away quite a lot of the music.

She preferred the old Swedish songwriters such as Evert Taube, Dan Andersson and Nils Ferlin, but the audience often demanded more modern masters.

‘Play Ace of Base!’ a girl’s voice yelled out.

‘I don’t know any of theirs,’ Lisa said.

‘What about Markoolio, then?’ one of the guys shouted.

Lisa picked up her guitar. It was after nine, and time to finish off.

‘I’ll play you a song I do know,’ she said. ‘It was written by Tomas Ledin, and it’s all about how short the summer is...’

She was behaving herself this evening. There was no way Lady Summertime could be let loose among ordinary holidaymakers with her long fingers. She was after the fat wallets that belonged to the rich, so that she could give them to the poor. Well, to Silas.

At quarter past nine she had finished the gig, as the blood-red sun hovered above the horizon.

Lisa needed bread and milk, but the shop next to the bar had closed at eight o’clock. It was run by an elderly father and his son; their name was Hagman. The bar itself was owned by her employers, the Kloss family; it was a small but intense workplace: two Finnish waitresses picked their way among the tables, and in the kitchen a Canadian chef presided over pizza dough and jars of pesto. Kent Kloss wasn’t responsible for this place, thank goodness; it was run by Niklas, his younger brother, who kept a low profile and spent most of his time on the till; the staff didn’t need his constant supervision.

Lisa put away her guitar and headed for the exit. Niklas Kloss smiled at her, and she quickly asked, ‘Did it sound OK?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘In that case, I’ll be back on Monday.’

‘Good — I’ll look forward to it.’

He didn’t really seem to be listening; he was looking over towards a big car that had just pulled into the car park and was standing there with its engine ticking over.

The driver got out, and Lisa saw that it was Kent Kloss. He waved to his brother, and Niklas walked towards him.

The wind carried odd words across to Lisa.

‘... former employee,’ Kent said.

‘... don’t want to talk about...’ Niklas responded.

‘... have a chat...’

‘... ought to call...’

‘... rather go round there...’

After a while, Niklas got into the car, looking both grim and stressed. Kent quickly slid behind the wheel and drove out of the car park.

Lisa could see a boy in the back seat, one of the Kloss children; he glanced at Lisa as the car pulled out on to the main road. He didn’t look too happy either.

As she walked back to the campsite, carrying her guitar, the sun had just gone down, leaving only a glow in the sky and making the clouds look like red fire above the horizon. Or streaks of blood.

The coast quickly darkened. Lisa headed towards her caravan, wondering why the Kloss brothers would allow a young boy to be out so late at night.

Jonas

Marnäs lay on the west coast; it had a number of shops and the white, medieval parish church. It was too big to be a village and too small to be a town, but people gathered there anyway. There was an off-licence, a harbour with several fishing boats and a police station that was open for a few hours every Tuesday.

Jonas really liked the shops in Marnäs, but there was no chance of visiting them tonight. It was almost nine thirty; it was twilight and the shops were shut. However, the fair was in full swing and had attracted plenty of people.

The funfair had been set up in the harbour area next to the square, with brightly coloured carousels and stalls selling burgers and sausages. There were lots of cars, and Uncle Kent couldn’t find a space on the square, so he parked in a disabled bay behind the harbourmaster’s office.

‘We won’t be long,’ he said. ‘I’ll just have to pay the fine if we get a ticket.’

Niklas didn’t say anything; he didn’t seem particularly happy this evening. But Uncle Kent carried on talking as the three of them got out of the car: ‘We’ll go over to Mayer’s place and ring the doorbell, see if he’s at home.’ He looked at Jonas. ‘If he’s there, JK, and if you’re sure he was the guy you saw on the ship, then we’ll have a little chat with him, find out what happened. But you don’t need to stay around for that... OK?’

Jonas nodded. His heart was pounding, but he also felt as if he had grown since this morning. He was suddenly at the centre of everything. He was important — he was a witness.

The three of them walked past the harbour and the funfair. Jonas looked at the flashing lights and caught the aroma of grilled sausages and fresh popcorn. He would have loved to look around the stalls, buy some sweets and check out the second-hand videos, but Uncle Kent marched on, shaking his head.

‘Look at all this crap,’ he said. ‘Marnäs is a real magnet for people peddling cheap tat in the summer. It’s all sell, sell, sell.’

Once they had passed the fair, he increased his speed and turned into a narrow side street. He led the way to a couple of apartment blocks north of the harbour, with a view over the dark-blue Baltic.

‘Number eight, that’s where he’s supposed to be living,’ he said. ‘Second floor.’

He opened the door, held it to allow Jonas and his father to go in, then let it close behind them.

The cool stairwell felt eerily silent.

Kent set off up the stairs. ‘Keep behind me, JK,’ he said quietly. He was moving more cautiously now, and didn’t switch on the light. Niklas stayed at the back, as if protecting their line of retreat.

They reached the second floor and saw two doors. MAYER was on a handwritten label on the left-hand door. Jonas’s pulse rate shot up when he saw it; he felt as if the name were leaching evil into the stairwell.

But Uncle Kent didn’t seem in the least concerned. He stepped forward and pressed the doorbell. For a long time.

Jonas was even more frightened when he heard the sound of the bell; he felt as if he were back on board the ship. He noticed a peephole in the door, just like the one they had at home in Huskvarna. Perhaps someone was standing there, spying on them.

Peter Mayer. The man with the axe.

But no one answered the door. Uncle Kent waited, rang again, waited. Eventually, he sighed. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘No one’s home, JK. We’ll have to go back to Villa Kloss.’

Jonas was relieved. A little disappointed, perhaps, but mainly relieved.

They left the building; it was even darker now. The streetlamps around the harbour had come on and the people visiting the fair looked even more shadowy.

Jonas moved a little distance away from his father and his uncle so that he could look at the rides. They ought to let him have a go on something now, maybe the dodgems or the cannonball, but he knew they wouldn’t.

Beside the harbour was Moby Dick, the only pizzeria in Marnäs. Jonas had eaten there with Mats and their father the summer before last. The place was packed tonight, of course. There were tables outside and every one was occupied, with people drinking and laughing and smoking. Sunburnt golfers in white caps and blue polo shirts, sailors in blue jackets, cyclists with helmet hair.

Summer visitors. Jonas couldn’t take his eyes off them.

A tall guy in a black denim jacket was moving between the tables, carrying a takeaway pizza; he had a shaven head and his eyes were darting all over the place.

Jonas stared at him for a long time.

Time had slowed down; his heart was thumping.

He made himself look away after a while, as if everything was perfectly normal — but he was absolutely certain who he had seen. He stopped, turned around and gently tugged at his father’s arm.

‘There,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘It’s him.’

Niklas stopped. ‘Who?’

‘The man from the ship.’

‘You mean Mayer? Where?’

Jonas tilted his head in the direction of the pizzeria, where Peter Mayer had just reached the pavement. He was about to walk past them, heading down towards the harbour.

‘Kent!’ Niklas called out.

‘What?’

‘Over there.’

Niklas pointed, and Kent turned his head. He spotted Peter Mayer and stopped dead.

A second later, Kent took off, straight across the street. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Pecka!’

The man looked over his shoulder and froze for a few seconds. Then he began to move in the opposite direction, faster and faster. Away from the crowd and from Kent Kloss.

‘Hang on!’ Kent yelled. ‘I just want to...’

At that point, Peter Mayer dropped the pizza box and fled — but he was running away from his apartment block, heading west with long strides, away from the lights. He didn’t look back.

Jonas watched as Uncle Kent also broke into a run, following Peter Mayer down the street.

‘I’ll get the car!’ Niklas shouted.

Uncle Kent nodded, and kept on running.

Niklas placed his hand on Jonas’s shoulder. ‘Come with me, Jonas.’

Jonas was intending to obey and took a few steps behind his father. Then he hesitated in the crush on the pavement, and on an impulse turned back. He wanted to see what happened; he decided to follow Uncle Kent. He set off slowly, then began to move faster.

‘Jonas!’

He heard his father calling him but didn’t stop.

He felt good as he ran. He wasn’t the quarry tonight, he was the hunter. A member of the Kloss family.

He moved through the shadowy crowd, but Kent was wearing a pale windcheater and was easy to see. Jonas watched as he ran across the street, heading west. Away from the shops and houses. Jonas could just make out another figure, his shaven head shining.

Jonas ran after them, as third man.

Soon there was no one else around. Jonas passed the last building, then the last streetlamp, and carried on into the darkness.

It was cold here, and pitch black until his eyes adjusted. Jonas blinked and saw grey shadows up ahead.

Uncle Kent was passing the church. Peter Mayer stopped by the roadside, looked around, then disappeared into the birch forest.

Kent leapt across the verge and followed him.

When Jonas reached the same spot, he saw a path leading through the trees, so he, too, leapt over the verge and on to the path.

The deep-green darkness of the forest closed around him with a faint soughing. But he could hear other sounds among the trees: the cracking of twigs. The birches surrounded him like grey pillars; he zigzagged between them and increased his speed.

Suddenly, the forest fell away, and Jonas found himself in a meadow, or an unploughed field. It was covered in grass and illuminated by a cracked light up in the sky — the white moon, which was almost full.

He saw two figures moving in the moonlight, one pursuing the other. They were on the far side of the field, where the forest began again, and both quarry and hunter disappeared among the trees.

Jonas followed them, and found another path. He was tired now, but scared and excited at the same time. Tonight, he wasn’t alone, as he had been on the ship. His father wasn’t far behind, and Uncle Kent was somewhere in the forest.

He carried on along the path, hearing crashing noises in the undergrowth. And now there was also a swishing, like the wind. It was the sound of cars driving past on the main road between Borgholm and the villages to the north.

Jonas listened and kept his eyes on the path so that he wouldn’t get lost.

All of a sudden, he heard a shout; it sounded like Uncle Kent.

He stopped.

Another shout, louder this time.

Then a screech, but not from a human being — he was sure it was car tyres on tarmac.

The sound ended abruptly, then there was silence for a few seconds. Then more shouting, a confusion of voices in the darkness, and car doors opening and closing.

Jonas stood motionless on the path, listening hard.

More cracking and creaking, and heavy breathing. Someone was coming towards him.

A shadow loomed out of the darkness.

‘JK? Are you there?’

Uncle Kent.

‘Yes, I just wanted to see if—’

But Kent interrupted him sharply: ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

Jonas didn’t know what to say.

Uncle Kent strode past him, puffing and panting.

‘Did... did you catch up with him?’ Jonas asked.

But Kent didn’t reply, he just walked across the field and took the path leading back to Marnäs.

Jonas had no option but to turn around and follow him. He still didn’t know what to say, but eventually he caught up with Kent among the birch trees and said, ‘So you didn’t catch him?’

‘No,’ Kent snapped. ‘He’s gone.’

He kept on walking.

At long last they emerged from the forest, jumped over the verge and were back on the road.

In the light of the streetlamps, Jonas noticed that Uncle Kent had acquired a twitch just below his left eye, as if a little muscle there were conducting an exercise session all by itself.

Kent stopped again, turning his full attention on Jonas. ‘Did you see anything back there?’

‘Like what?’

Uncle Kent took a deep breath and set off again. They continued in silence until they heard a shout: ‘Hello?’

It was Jonas’s father. He was waiting for them just past the church, with the car parked at the side of the road.

‘What happened?’ he said.

Kent went up to him, very close, and spoke so quietly that Jonas could barely hear him. ‘There was a car.’

‘A car?’

Uncle Kent nodded. ‘It was heading straight for Mayer.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kent said. ‘I don’t think things went too well.’ Niklas looked worried, but didn’t ask any more questions.

They all got in the car and let out a long breath in the silence. Niklas started the engine. ‘OK... Let’s go home.’

Once they were on the main road, Jonas noticed lights to the south. A short distance away, perhaps a hundred metres, several cars had stopped, and there were people standing around them. He saw flashing blue lights and people in high-visibility jackets moving about on the road.

Niklas indicated left, but Kent shook his head. ‘Not that way. Turn right and we’ll go via Långvik. The coast road is better tonight.’ Niklas turned right.

Jonas looked back. He realized that there must have been a serious accident, but now they wouldn’t be able to see what had happened. If anyone was hurt.

The flashing blue lights disappeared into the distance.

After a kilometre or so, Niklas turned off the main road and on to a narrower track leading to the coast.

Kent leaned back. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘I expect we’ll find out what happened from the news... We’re not going to talk about this.’

‘As usual,’ Niklas said.

Jonas didn’t say anything; he just sat quietly in the back, looking out of the window. They were surrounded by darkness now.

But what did Uncle Kent mean? Were they not going to talk about it to the other members of the family? Or to the police?

Gerlof

Just as Gerlof was getting ready for bed that night, he heard about a fatal accident in northern Öland. It was on the local radio news at midnight:

‘And so to Öland. A twenty-four-year-old man was killed earlier this evening on the B136 just outside Marnäs. The initial police report suggests that he stepped out in front of a car heading south. The victim was taken by ambulance to Kalmar, where he was pronounced dead. The driver, a man in his fifties, is suffering from severe shock...’

The newsreader didn’t name the dead man, and Gerlof’s only reaction was the same as usual: the Department of Transport ought to lower the speed limit on that road. It was wide and straight all the way down to Borgholm, tempting many to drive far too fast. Perhaps he would write a letter to the paper. Suggest they turn it back into a dirt track.

He switched off the radio, then he turned off the light. Tomorrow he would be travelling on that very road, in order to attend a nostalgic lunch in Borgholm.

The next day, he found himself sitting at a long table with a group of men and women of his own age, people who had returned home, experience etched on their faces. They were swapping emigration stories, and Gerlof didn’t want to be left out:

‘My father had a cousin in Böda whose brother emigrated to America. One evening, when this cousin was just about to go to bed, the room was suddenly filled with the smell of death. Both he and his wife were aware of the same appalling stench. Eventually, they managed to get to sleep, but at dawn the cousin woke up and thought he saw his brother standing by the bedroom window — and he realized that his brother over in America was dead.’

He fell silent. A few people around the table laughed at the story, as if it were funny.

Nine men and two women had gathered for the Swedish-Americans’ lunch at the Borgholm Hotel and were enjoying fried halibut with tomato compote.

Gerlof had arrived after a short walk around the town which had once been his home port as the skipper of a cargo ship. These days, he didn’t recognize a single face on the streets, which were packed with tourists.

He had stopped down by the quayside for a little while, remembering the forest of masts that had once dominated the skyline. These days, the jetties were lined with countless modern plastic boats but the harbour itself looked run-down, with gaping holes in the brickwork and huge cracks in the quays themselves.

At least the historic hotel was well maintained, and Gerlof loved the light, airy restaurant. The food was excellent, and the floor was made of polished limestone, which one of his ancestors might have hewn out long ago. Beautiful.

However, he spent most of his time looking at his lunch companions. They spoke in a mixture of English and Swedish; they all seemed to understand both languages. A round of Swedish schnapps was ordered, and their stories quickly grew more bizarre.

‘The food here is good, but when I used to go fishing in Alaska we’d catch halibut weighing two hundred kilos...’

Ingemar Grandin had come all the way from San Pablo, California. One of the ladies was called Nordlof and came from New Haven, Connecticut. Others were from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Boston.

It turned out that only three of them had actually emigrated from Sweden. Their parents had taken them to America when they were only children; the rest had been born in the USA, but their parents were originally from Öland.

None of them looked as if they had driven Al Capone around the streets of Chicago, Gerlof thought, or hijacked a fishing boat.

They moved on to the local patisserie for coffee and cakes, and suddenly the stories took on a more sorrowful tone. Perhaps the schnapps was kicking in. They were no longer talking about how big the new country had been but how hard life had often been for the immigrants.

‘Lots of them used to carry Swedish papers and maps around in their pockets... They were homesick all the time, but they just couldn’t afford a ticket home.’

‘Yes, it was very difficult for those who couldn’t settle in the USA. Endless hard labour. Particularly forestry work — that was crazy, really dangerous.’

‘That’s right — I’ve seen old lumberjacks who’ve lost both arms and legs...’

At the end of the gathering, Bill Carlson gave Gerlof some folded sheets of paper. ‘This is the information you wanted from the House of Emigrants.’

‘Thank you.’

It was a typed list of names and dates. At first, Gerlof was a little confused, but then he remembered that Bill’s cousin had amused himself by collecting the names of local emigrants from the church records. He noticed that it contained names only from the island’s northern parishes, and only from the last hundred years, but it was enough.

He ran his finger down the list, and stopped abruptly:

They had left in May 1931, according to the records. There were a number of later emigrants from both the forties and fifties, when Swedes no longer went by ship to ‘America’, but flew to the ‘USA’, but Aron and Sven must have been among the last of the main wave of emigrants.

The name Aron had caught Gerlof’s attention. It was the name Jonas Kloss had heard on the ship, of course. But the name of the place also rang a bell.

Aron from Rödtorp?

Suddenly, he remembered, and leaned eagerly towards Bill: ‘I recognize this one,’ he said, pointing to the name. ‘I think Aron from Rödtorp was a boy I worked with for a little while, up in the churchyard in Marnäs... He talked about going to America at the time, and the following year I heard that they’d actually gone, he and his father. But I don’t know how they got on over there.’

Bill looked at the list. ‘1931... So they went after the Great Depression. It wasn’t a good time for new Americans; there was so much unemployment, among other things. I should think it was pretty tough for them.’

‘Indeed,’ Gerlof said.

He looked at the group of elderly Swedish-Americans and wondered if Aron Fredh had ever come back home.

The Homecomer

When the Homecomer went back to the arms dealer on the eastern side of the island, he went by car, alone. He parked about fifty metres from Wall’s cottage and waited for a little while, watching and listening. But there wasn’t a soul in sight.

The sun was low in the sky behind the car, making the grassy shore glow bright green, with the deep blue water beyond. It was idyllic, yet something didn’t feel right.

He opened the car door and heard the geese cackling nervously down by the shoreline. Otherwise, all was quiet. He got out and took in the expanse of the Baltic Sea, with Gotland beyond the horizon. And the faded red cottage in the foreground.

‘Hello?’ he called out.

But no one came to the door this evening.

As he approached, he could see that it was ajar. Slowly, he pulled it open a little further and shouted again. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

The geese cackled once more, but that was the only response.

No, this didn’t feel right. The Homecomer moved more stealthily. He took a quick look around the rooms on the ground floor, but soon realized that Einar Wall wasn’t at home. So why was the door open? That didn’t tally with Wall’s caution on his previous visit.

The skiff floating on the water didn’t look right either. The Homecomer noticed it when he stepped outside. It looked as if there was someone in it.

He walked towards it. The wooden boat had been up on the grass the last time he was here, but now it was in the water, with no mooring rope.

It wasn’t a person in the boat but large, brown birds perched on the gunwale. Their weight was making the skiff bob up and down.

Not geese, but birds of prey, with ravens and jackdaws circling around them.

The Homecomer stopped at the water’s edge. The birds flapped their huge wings nervously but didn’t fly away.

He realized they were sea eagles — enormous birds with powerful hooked beaks, leaning down from the gunwale to peck at something in the bottom of the skiff. As the ravens came closer, the sea eagles raised their heads like snakes, then resumed their pecking.

They were eating something. Lumps of meat, presumably.

One of them had got hold of something white and was pulling it upwards, and the Homecomer saw that it was a hand. A lifeless human hand. The bird opened its beak, and the hand fell back into the boat.

The Homecomer stood motionless beneath the vast expanse of the sky for a few seconds, then he waded into the water, yelling at the birds and eventually scaring them off. By that time, he had almost reached the gunwale and could see into the boat.

Einar Wall was lying there on his back, flat out on the narrow wooden planks with an almost empty bottle of Explorer vodka beside him.

The Homecomer recognized parts of the arms dealer’s clothes, but nothing else.

There was nothing else to recognize.

The eagles’ beaks had done their work, and Wall’s face was no longer there.

The Homecomer let go of the gunwale and backed away. He had seen dead bodies before; he was used to it. He made his way back to the shore and stood there with wet shoes, staring at the skiff.

Finally, when he had pulled himself together, he went into the house to try to find what he had come for. The cottage was a treasure chest now.

Wall had boasted that the police had been there, searching for guns, but had found nothing.

The Homecomer set to work, and he had better luck. Guns were his forte; he knew what they weighed; he could almost smell them. Methodically, he went through every piece of furniture in every room, and when he checked a rectangular dowry chest upstairs and saw that it contained old blankets, the weight made him suspicious.

It was too heavy.

The guns weren’t among the blankets; they were right down at the bottom, hidden under a false base.

The first was an old long-barrelled Husqvarna with five boxes of Gyttorp cartridges. The ammunition looked good, but the rifle itself was worn.

The second was a modern Beretta. Beautiful.

The Homecomer held the guns up to the window and studied them one at a time; he liked a weapon that fired well, with reliable ammunition that killed the quarry quickly, if the marksman did his job.

Guns on the island had been very poor when he was a boy and had led to many accidents. In those days, a number of old hunters were still trying to shoot seabirds with muzzle-loading firearms and worse; it often took three or four shots before the bird was dead.

The Homecomer had never needed more than one shot to kill something or someone, not even when he was a boy. The ability to kill instantly was partly about having a good weapon and being stone-cold sober, but it was mostly about remaining calm and having a steady hand.

He carried both guns downstairs. He ought to leave right now, but there was a bunch of keys hanging in the kitchen. Padlock keys.

He picked them up and went out to the boathouse. Many boathouses on the island were secured with nothing more than a piece of rope, but Wall’s was furnished with a steel bar and a sturdy padlock. Had the police checked out here?

After some trouble, the Homecomer found the right key and opened up.

The stale smell of seaweed rushed towards him. He could see why; the place was full of fishing nets, hanging from poles attached to the ceiling.

In one corner he spotted a glass bottle: CHLOROFORM. He put it by the door and continued searching.

Right at the back, beneath piles of old nets that stank to high heaven, he found a couple of wooden boxes marked with a yellow sticker. He carried them out into the light.

The boxes had been carefully nailed shut. He thrust an old fish-gutting knife under the lid and forced the first one open. The contents were exactly what he had expected. He replaced the lid, wrapped his treasures carefully in a blanket and took them over to the car.

He glanced over at the skiff and the birds one more time. The sea eagles were back on the gunwale, bending down to eat. The ravens were waiting their turn. Soon the birds would have torn Wall’s body to pieces, bit by bit. All the Homecomer could do was call the police, perhaps. Anonymously, of course, from a phone box.

He got in the car and drove off.

The New Country, November 1933

Aron is lost. Winter has returned to the new country, and everything is white. Empty and white. Mountains in the distance, forest close by, wide expanses of snow. And then the wide trench, slicing through the landscape like a dark-brown wound.

The mosquitoes have gone now that cold covers the wilderness, but life for Aron and Sven is not much easier.

Their home is a ramshackle hut where weary workers from at least ten different countries gather every night. All the immigrants eat dry bread and a thin meat soup around the iron stove, then fall into bed, often sharing, top to tail.

The hut stinks like an old stable. The labourers stopped washing when the water froze, which was several weeks ago.

Aron hears the wind howling on the other side of the thin wall and thinks about Öland, about the shore and the rocks he used to stand on in the sunshine, about the days when he would go out shooting with his grandfather, about the evenings when his mother would tell him stories, him and his sister, Greta — but these are faint childhood memories.

He is fifteen years old now. He has started to mix up the old language and the new, strange, foreign words that seep into his head and come out of his mouth, faster and faster.

It’s not just that he is older — he has started to change, to turn into a foreigner. There is no mirror in the hut, but he can feel fine hairs beginning to sprout on his cheeks and chin, a downy beard that is gradually getting thicker and stronger.

Every morning he wakes in the cold, surprised that he is still able to move. If the stove has gone out during the night, it is his job to relight it — if there is any wood left. He pushes in a few sticks and manages to get it going. At the same time he hears Sven and the other occupants of the hut slowly beginning to move, coughing and grunting.

One morning an older man (Aron thinks he might be German) two bunks away doesn’t wake up. Someone shakes him, but quickly draws back. The German is as stiff as a board.

‘Heart attack,’ Sven says quietly.

Aron looks at the dead man and thinks of Gilbert Kloss, who collapsed and rolled into a grave on a sunny summer’s day. His heart had stopped, too, but that was from fear.

The German is carried out and buried far away, out of sight, beneath a wooden cross. No one wants to think about him any more. He is dead.

Aron is determined to survive. In spite of the work, in spite of the cold.

Whether the stove is burning or not, the hut never feels warm. All those frozen joints and muscles struggle to thaw out. Icicles hang from the ceiling, frost creeps down the walls. There is a thermometer nailed to one of the huts; it often shows minus twenty-five degrees.

But still they have to go out. Time to work, to break fresh ground. They trudge through the snow beneath the fir trees; they shovel, fell trees, hack their way into the frozen ground, all because the trench must keep on growing.

The long white days in the ditch become routine.

Sven works just as hard as everyone else, but he has almost stopped talking in the cold. Sometimes he takes out his wooden box, checking for the thousandth time if there is any snuff left. Then he mutters something with his head down, and carries on hacking.

Occasionally, he comes to life in the hut in the evenings, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. He stares around wildly and raises his hand to Aron in the darkness, ready to strike if he asks the wrong question — but Aron has almost caught up with Sven and merely stares back. He is tall, and he is too tired to be frightened of Sven, so he stands his ground, his legs apart; he has started to defend himself.

If Sven hits him, he retaliates. It feels good to strike back.

Jonas

‘How are you getting on?’ his mother asked.

Jonas kept the receiver pressed to his ear, not knowing what to say. He had things to tell her, about the ghost ship and the hunt for Peter Mayer, but he didn’t dare speak. He didn’t know who might be listening. Uncle Kent had said they mustn’t talk about what had happened, and he could turn up at any moment. This was his telephone, on a table by the window in his house.

‘Fine,’ he said eventually.

‘Is Dad behaving himself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you homesick?’

‘A bit.’

‘I miss you and Mats.’

Jonas had realized by now that Peter Mayer was dead, but Uncle Kent had been just the same as usual at breakfast, chatting and joking with Mats and their cousins.

Niklas had been less talkative, but then he was always quieter than Kent.

‘Only four weeks to go, then you’ll be back in Huskvarna,’ his mum said.

Jonas was trying not to think about Huskvarna. Four weeks. A whole month.

The line was crackly and his mother’s voice sounded a little tinny, so Jonas asked, ‘Are you at home?’

‘No, I’m in Spain, in Malaga. I told you I was coming here after midsummer — don’t you remember?’

Jonas didn’t remember that at all, but now he knew that he couldn’t go home even if he wanted to. The house was empty; he was stuck here at Villa Kloss.

‘When will you be back?’

‘In a week. I’m going to do some travelling first.’

Jonas heard the answer, but he was barely listening; he had been looking out of the window and had noticed a movement over by the cairn.

The grey-haired man was standing there next to the stones, his hand resting on the cairn. Jonas peered through the glass, but the reflection of the sun on the water in the Sound made the man look dark and blurred.

‘Jonas? Are you still there?’

‘Yes... Yes, I’m here.’

He blinked. And saw the man begin to make his way down. It almost looked as if he were sinking into the ground behind the cairn.

‘Guess what I bought today, Jonas!’

‘Dunno.’

‘A Spanish present. But I’m not telling you what it is...’

Mum went on and on, but suddenly she decided the call was getting too expensive. She would phone again soon. And she loved him.

Jonas wondered if she was alone in Spain, but he didn’t want to ask.

‘See you soon!’

‘OK.’

Slowly, he put the phone down. The ridge was deserted now.

He wouldn’t think about any of it. Not about Mum in Spain, or what had happened in Marnäs, or the cairn ghost.

He would just get on with his work.

Fifteen minutes later he was back on the decking, already hot and pouring with sweat. He could hear the sound of splashing and cheerful voices from the jetty, while he was on his knees working hard to clean each plank. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hopeless. The far end in the northern corner was mouldy and dark grey after years of neglect, and he couldn’t bring back the pale colour, however hard he tried.

He paused and looked over at the ridge. The grey-haired man hadn’t reappeared, but he saw a boat moving around out in the Sound. It was Uncle Kent’s launch, circling in the sun beyond the gill nets.

Urban, Mats and Casper were jumping and diving from the stern. They looked like dark shadows against the sparkling water, but the biggest shadow, Kent, was standing by the gunwale hauling in the line. Someone had just been water-skiing.

Kent had asked Jonas at breakfast if he wanted to join them, but he had said no.

He just wanted to carry on sanding, and to stop himself thinking. Stop himself remembering. But when he closed his eyes he could see Peter Mayer glancing over his shoulder in terror at Uncle Kent before he fled into the darkness. Into the forest and out on to the road.

Jonas wiped the sweat from his brow. Waved a fly away from his ear.

The waters of the Sound sparkled, the launch continued to zoom around in circles.

By the time he had sanded twenty planks, Jonas felt as if he were going to faint; he had to go and cool down.

The pool looked inviting, but he grabbed his trunks and went down to the shore. He took a detour via the cairn to check it out, but no more rocks had fallen down. There was no one in sight. The cairn ghost had gone.

He ran down the stone steps, past the dip and on to the shore. The summer sun was so bright here among the rocks that it could easily blind you. Jonas kept his eyes lowered so that his baseball cap shaded his face.

‘Hi, Jonas!’

Aunt Veronica was waving to him, treading water about ten metres out. She was a good swimmer and would forge along with powerful strokes, her legs kicking strongly.

‘Hi.’

‘How was the fair last night?’

‘Good.’

‘Lots of people?’

‘Yes... quite a lot.’

Jonas didn’t want to think about the fair, or the pursuit in the darkness and the screech of tyres. He slipped off his shoes and stepped out on to the rocks, but almost let out a scream — they were red-hot.

‘Put on some flip-flops, Jonas!’ Veronica shouted.

Jonas didn’t reply; he just gritted his teeth and made himself keep going.

He waited until Veronica had started swimming again, then he changed into his trunks and went and stood by the water’s edge. The air was hot and still, but occasionally a cool breeze blew in off the Sound. Öland was a windy place. Sometimes the winds were as hot as in some far-flung desert, sometimes they were bitterly cold. The surface of the water was also constantly moving, and right now it was full of the foaming backwash from Uncle Kent’s shiny launch. The boat was still whizzing around beyond the gill nets. No one was water-skiing at the moment, but the three boys were sitting in the stern in their trunks. And Kent was at the wheel, straight-backed and in control.

Jonas saw him turn and say something to Mats and their cousins, and they all laughed. Then he caught sight of Jonas, and waved.

‘Hi there, JK!’

He was smiling, as if nothing had happened last night.

‘Why don’t you go out with the boys?’ Veronica called. ‘Have some fun!’

Jonas gazed at the shadowy figures in the boat. At Kent, who had chased Peter Mayer out on to the road, and at Mats and their cousins, who hardly ever told Jonas what they were going to do.

He shook his head. ‘I’d rather stay here.’

Gerlof

‘I heard about the death,’ Gerlof said.

‘Which one?’ Tilda asked.

‘The hit and run. The young man.’

Tilda didn’t say anything, and after a moment he went on, ‘Has there been another death here on the island?’

After a moment, she said, ‘There has, yes.’

‘Oh?’

‘Do you know Einar Wall?’

‘I know who he is,’ Gerlof said. ‘An old fisherman who lives on the east coast, just like you, but to the north of Marnäs.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘I don’t know much more... I should think he must be a pensioner. He’s always been a fisherman and a hunter, but he’s done plenty of other things that were considerably less respectable. He’s the kind of man people whisper about.’

‘So he was a bit of a dodgy character, in other words?’

‘The fish he sold was probably more popular than Einar himself. But I’ve never done any business with him. He’s a good bit younger than me — between sixty and seventy, I’d say.’

‘He was,’ Tilda said.

‘Is he dead?’

‘We had an anonymous tip-off on Friday evening to say that he was lying dead outside his cottage. And he was. We think it happened that day, or the previous night.’

‘How did he die?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

Gerlof knew that he shouldn’t ask any more questions, so he simply said, ‘And the hit and run?’

‘Wall’s nephew. He was hit by a car on the main road... Peter Mayer.’

Gerlof gave a start. ‘What did you say?’

‘Peter Mayer. He was twenty-four years old; he ran out in front of a car the night before Einar Wall died. He was Wall’s nephew; apparently they were very close. So we’re looking into the connection, wondering if one death perhaps led to the other... That’s why I was curious to find out what you knew about Wall.’

Say something, Gerlof thought.

But he didn’t. He should have told Tilda about Peter Mayer some time ago, but he hadn’t got round to it. What could he say now? Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Mayer had been hit by a car just after Jonas Kloss had identified him, but...

‘We can talk more later,’ he said. ‘I have to go. John’s picking me up.’

‘Are you going on a trip?’

‘Not really — we’re just going for coffee,’ Gerlof explained. ‘With a gravedigger’s daughter.’

Not all farmers on the island had been blessed with such extensive property as the Kloss family; Sonja, the daughter of Roland Bengtsson the gravedigger, was married to a retired farmer who had owned no more than half a dozen dairy cows, a few fields of potatoes, and a straw-covered stone barn which housed a small flock of chickens. The farm had been sold, and now Sonja and her husband lived in Utvalla, in a small house on the east coast overlooking low-lying skerries with a healthy bird population. Beyond the skerries lay only the Baltic horizon, like a dark-blue stage floor stretching towards eternity. Or at least towards Russia and the Baltic states.

But Gerlof wasn’t looking at the sea as he eased his way out of John’s car. He was looking north. It wasn’t very far to Einar Wall’s cottage from here; it was probably only a few kilometres away, behind a series of inlets and headlands.

Gerlof had called Sonja and invited himself and John over for coffee. You could do that kind of thing on the island with people you knew, and he had known Sonja for years.

There were suitcases in the hallway; Sonja and her husband were flying to Majorca the following day. However, they were pleased to welcome their guests. Gerlof’s first question concerned their late neighbour.

‘No, we didn’t hear a thing that evening,’ Sonja replied. ‘We didn’t see anything either — there’s a pine forest between us.’

‘Wall was a tricky customer,’ her husband said. ‘We knew he sold fish and game, but I think he sold other things as well. If you were out that way, you often saw strange cars coming and going. The drivers always looked grim — they never waved, which isn’t a good sign.’

‘And he drank, of course,’ Sonja said. ‘I suppose that’s what killed him... His heart probably gave out in the end.’

‘So he had a heart attack?’

‘That’s what we heard — that he was sitting drinking in his boat and he collapsed in the heat.’

‘That sounds plausible,’ Gerlof said.

Silence fell around the coffee table. So far, they had just been chatting, even though the subject matter had been quite serious, but Gerlof really wanted to talk about Sonja’s father.

‘Sonja, I’m not sure whether you know this,’ he began, ‘but I worked with your father in the churchyard when I was young. It was only for a short time, but he was very kind to me.’

‘Oh — when was that?’

‘In 1931, and there was another young boy there, too, whom Roland seemed to be keeping an eye on... I think his name was Aron, Aron Fredh.’

Sonja and her husband exchanged a quick glance. It was obvious they recognized the name.

‘Aron and my father were related,’ Sonja said at last. ‘Dad looked after him from time to time.’

‘So you were also related to Aron?’

‘Distantly, yes. It wasn’t actually my father who was related to Aron’s family; my mother and Aron’s mother, Astrid, were cousins.’

Astrid Fredh. Gerlof made a note of the name.

‘But none of them is still alive?’

‘No, they’re all gone. Astrid died in the seventies; she’d left Rödtorp by then. Aron had a younger sister, Greta, but she had a fall at the home in Marnäs last year and died.’

Gerlof vaguely remembered the incident, but it hadn’t happened on his wing and, unfortunately, falls were far from uncommon among the elderly. You had to be very careful with those shiny floors and rugs.

‘Where did Aron and his family live?’ he asked. ‘On the coast?’

‘They lived over to the west... at Rödtorp, next to the Kloss family’s land. Astrid and Greta stayed there more or less until the end of the thirties, but Aron and his stepfather went to America.’

Gerlof was taken aback — not by the fact that they had gone to America, but by the relationship.

‘Stepfather? So Sven wasn’t Aron’s biological father?’

Sonja glanced at her husband once more. ‘Sven came to the island as a farmhand at the beginning of the twenties,’ she said. ‘Aron and Greta had already been born by then.’

Gerlof noticed that she didn’t mention who their real father was.

After a brief silence, John spoke up. ‘Do you happen to know where Sven and Aron went when they got to America?’

‘Goodness, I’ve no idea. It’s almost seventy years ago, after all.’

‘They didn’t write home?’

‘Not letters,’ Sonja said. ‘But there might be a postcard from them in my father’s collection... Just a minute.’

She left the room and returned with a dark-green album, which she handed over to Gerlof. It was old and worn, with gold lettering on the front: POSTCARD ALBUM.

‘My father inherited it from his father,’ Sonja explained. ‘They both collected postcards, although neither of them received very many over the years. We used to send them to Dad... Our postcards from Majorca are at the back.’

Gerlof slowly leafed through the album. He liked postcards; as a ship’s captain, he had sent many to his daughters from various harbours around Sweden.

The Spanish cards at the back were in bright colours, with blue seas and a yellow sun. As he moved towards the front of the album, the cards were older, more faded and less exotic. They featured views of ‘Gefle Esplanade’ or ‘Halmstad — Grand Hotel’.

But one of them was different, and Gerlof stopped and read the words on the front: ‘Swedish-American Line SS Kastelholm — Carte Postale’. Beneath the text was a picture of a magnificent steamship of the type he had sometimes encountered while sailing the Baltic.

‘This could be it,’ he said, carefully removing the postcard.

There was a short message on the back, written in pencil in a sprawling hand:

It was obviously a card from an emigrant, presumably sent from Gothenburg, but it revealed very little, apart from the fact that Aron could spell. The date was unclear, but Gerlof thought he could make out ‘1931’ over the stamp.

He put down the card. ‘Aron says they’re coming back.’

‘Yes, but they never did. And, as I said, we didn’t hear from them again. I used to visit Greta Fredh from time to time, and occasionally I would ask if she’d had a letter from her stepfather or her brother, but she never had... not a word.’

Unless of course she was lying, Gerlof thought. Out loud, he said, ‘We often heard stories about the emigrants who were successful and could send home plenty of dollars, but all those who ended up in the gutter just disappeared.’

Sonja nodded, looking a little upset. ‘I just hope they had a better life in the USA, because the place they lived in at Rödtorp was just dreadful — little more than a grey shack. And, of course, Sven never had any money. He was a semi-invalid; his foot had been crushed.’

‘So how did he make a living?’

‘He did a bit of everything, as people who didn’t have a farm of their own had to do back in those days. He worked as a miller’s labourer, and went around the flour mills in the area.’

John glanced discreetly at his watch — it would soon be time for his evening rounds at the campsite — so Gerlof put down his cup.

‘Thank you for the coffee; it was nice to talk to you. Could I possibly borrow the postcards for a few days?’

‘We’ll be in Majorca for two weeks, so you might as well hang on to them until we’re back,’ Sonja said.

Gerlof had one more question, but it wasn’t about Aron. It was about the sound of knocking from inside a coffin. However, he didn’t really know what he wanted to ask Sonja. It was her father who had heard the sound, along with Gerlof, and now Roland was lying in the churchyard, too.

In the end, he said, ‘In that case, we’ll head home and let you get on with your packing.’

Jonas

Kristoffer wanted to hang out, so Jonas was back in the Davidssons’ garden. When he walked through the gate, he saw that Gerlof was sitting on his chair with his straw hat perched on his head, just as he should be.

The garden was quite small, but Jonas preferred being here to being at Villa Kloss. He could relax here.

But Gerlof’s voice was sharper this evening. He sounded more like a sea captain. ‘Good evening, Jonas. Come over here for a moment.’

Jonas slowly walked over to join him. Gerlof leaned forward, using his stick for support, and fixed him with a penetrating gaze. ‘Peter Mayer,’ he said. ‘You remember that name?’

Jonas’s heart gave an extra thump. Then he nodded. Gerlof looked so serious.

‘And have you mentioned it to anyone else, Jonas?’

Jonas didn’t know what to say. He wanted to sit down and tell Gerlof everything, absolutely everything, about the trip to Marnäs and Uncle Kent and Peter Mayer running across the field towards the road. And about the shouts and the screech of tyres.

But what would happen then? Yesterday, Casper had actually let him have a ride on the back of the moped, and Jonas knew he couldn’t tell on Uncle Kent. So he shook his head.

‘No. No one.’

‘Do you know why I’m asking you about Peter Mayer?’

‘No,’ Jonas said quickly.

Perhaps rather too quickly. Gerlof waved away a fly, keeping his eyes fixed on the boy. ‘You seem a little tense, Jonas. Is everything all right?’

‘Not really.’

‘What’s the matter?’

Jonas took a deep breath. He had to say something about his fears, so he decided to reveal one of them. ‘The cairn. It’s haunted.’

‘Oh?’ Gerlof didn’t sound in the least bit afraid.

‘I’ve seen the ghost. It actually came out of the cairn.’

‘Did it?’ Gerlof smiled at him. ‘I heard there was a dragon living in there. Twelve metres long from nose to tail, and bright green.’

Jonas didn’t smile back. He was too old for fairy tales, and knew that dragons didn’t exist. There were other things to be frightened of, but not dragons.

Gerlof’s smile disappeared. He leaned more heavily on his stick and got to his feet. ‘Come with me, Jonas. We’re going for a little walk.’

He set off slowly but resolutely, with Jonas close behind.

At the far end of the garden a small path led through the undergrowth and into a meadow. They followed the path for some thirty metres, then Gerlof stopped.

‘Look over there, Jonas.’

Jonas turned his head and saw a square tower of sun-bleached wood in a clearing not far away. He knew what it was — a windmill. There was another one behind the restaurant, but that one was red and looked almost new. This one was derelict, with unpainted walls and wind-damaged sails.

‘You mean the windmill?’

‘No. Over there.’

Gerlof was pointing to the right of the windmill with his stick. Jonas looked, and saw a pile of round stones lying half hidden in the long grass.

‘You see that? Those stones are the cairn... The real cairn, which was raised over some dead chieftain back in the Bronze Age.’

‘The real cairn?’

‘Yes. Your ancestors Edvard, Sigfrid and Gilbert Kloss dug out the cairn in the twenties. They thought there was ancient treasure under the stones. I don’t know if they found anything, but while they were digging they decided the cairn would look better on the ridge, in front of their land... More “National Romantic”.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s something that was fashionable in those days... People liked to worship ancient monuments. So the brothers fetched an ox cart and transported several loads of boulders to the ridge and shifted half the cairn.’

Jonas didn’t say anything, he just listened.

‘So the new cairn opposite Villa Kloss isn’t a grave,’ Gerlof went on. ‘Haven’t you noticed the old bunker set into the rock?’

‘I’ve seen the door,’ Jonas said. ‘It’s down in the dip.’

‘Exactly. But do you think the army engineers would have been allowed to build a bunker under the cairn, if it was a real ancient monument?’

Jonas shook his head.

‘They wouldn’t,’ Gerlof stressed. ‘But because it’s not a real cairn, it was fine.’ He glanced over at the stones again, and added, ‘If there’s anyone who ought to be afraid of the ghost, it’s me... When I was little, I was told that if you walked past here, invisible arms would reach out and grab you, and squeeze the air out of your lungs.’

‘Are you scared?’ Jonas said quietly.

Gerlof shook his head. ‘I think there’s an explanation for most things that seem frightening. In the old days, people used to hear ghosts screaming out on the alvar at night, but it was just hungry fox cubs, sitting in their dens and calling for food.’

Jonas felt a bit better now. Gerlof had an answer for everything.

They walked back to the garden. Jonas checked the legs of his trousers to make sure he hadn’t picked up any ticks from the grass, but he couldn’t see any.

Gerlof sat down and closed his eyes, as if the conversation was over. But Jonas hadn’t finished. ‘I’ve seen someone standing by the cairn. Several times.’

Gerlof opened his eyes. ‘I believe you, Jonas. But that was a real person. A tourist, perhaps.’

‘But he was like you... really, really old. And he just disappeared.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He had grey hair and a white beard. He was dressed in dark clothes. Just like the man in the wheelhouse.’

Gerlof peered up at him. ‘Are you all right, Jonas?’

The boy shook his head.

‘I know you have horrible memories,’ Gerlof said. ‘You’ve had a terrible experience. Something dreadful happened to me one summer, when I was fifteen years old. I saw a man have a heart attack and die right in front of me. But everything passes — that’s the only consolation. We get older, and happy memories push away the horrible ones.’

Jonas wondered when he would find those happy memories.

Gerlof

Gerlof’s grandsons and Jonas Kloss had cycled off to the sweet shop, and Gerlof had gone indoors to avoid the mosquitoes’ evening assembly.

He gathered up some empty glasses the boys had left on the coffee table, then flopped down in the armchair next to the telephone. He was very tired.

He was getting nowhere. Not with Peter Mayer’s death, at any rate.

And the elderly American? What could he do to track him down? He picked up his notebook, licked his finger and started to leaf through the pages. He read through what he had written during his lunch with the Swedish-Americans, and over coffee with the gravedigger’s daughter, paying close attention to every detail.

Speculation about Sven and Aron Fredh from Rödtorp. A question jotted down: ‘Whereabouts in the USA did Aron end up?’ But the line below was blank because, apart from the postcard before their departure, Sonja and her father had never heard from their relatives again.

‘I just hope they had a better life in the USA,’ Sonja had said. ‘The place they lived in at Rödtorp was just dreadful — little more than a grey shack...’

He thought for a little while, then called Sonja. She answered quickly, but sounded stressed.

‘You obviously haven’t left yet,’ Gerlof said.

‘No, the bus to the airport leaves in a couple of hours.’

He got straight down to business.

‘Sonja, I’ve been thinking about something you said when we came over for coffee... You said the Fredh family lived in a grey shack on the coast, at a place called Rödtorp.’

‘That’s right. Astrid Fredh had been given the tenancy of the croft by the Kloss family. It was deep in the forest, where the Ölandic Resort is now.’ Sonja paused, then added, ‘The Kloss family knocked it down, and I don’t suppose anyone remembers the name these days. All the old names are disappearing, one by one...’

‘You’re right,’ Gerlof agreed. ‘But why was the place called “Rödtorp”, which suggests it was red, if it was actually grey?’

Sonja responded with a dry laugh. ‘It had nothing to do with the colour of the paint. It was the way Sven used to talk when he was working in the mills that led people to come up with that name.’

‘And what did he talk about?’

‘How can I put it...? He was an agitator. He used to go on at length about the blessings of socialism. That was what Sven believed in... He had become a committed socialist during his military service in Kalmar during the First World War. When he came to Öland and became a farmhand and worked in the flour mills, he became even more passionate about his views. Some say he became a communist in the end.’

‘So he talked about politics in the mills and on the farms?’

‘Yes, I think he liked to spell out chapter and verse, so to speak. But there was a lot more politics in the air in the thirties than there is now; there were both communist and Nazi summer rallies here on the island. There was trouble from time to time; they used to tear down each other’s flags. And the Kloss brothers wouldn’t tolerate any political talk. Sven quarrelled with them, too.’

Gerlof remembered — the political disputes had been a good reason to stay at sea, where the talk was of wind and weather and cargo rates.

‘Thanks for your help, Sonja. Enjoy your holiday.’

He hung up and went into the bedroom, where the gravedigger’s postcard album lay on the bookshelf. He sat down and found the black-and-white postcard from Aron Fredh. Read the brief message once more, then gazed at the picture on the front. The white ship, SS Kastelholm, at the quayside in Gothenburg. Sweden’s gateway to America.

His eyesight was better than his hearing, and he took a closer look at the picture. Not so much at the ship, but at the quayside and the surroundings. The background was blurred and unfamiliar; a grey morning mist hovered over the water, and the only other vessel in the harbour was a steamship on its way out to sea, with deciduous trees and stone buildings beyond. No derricks, which was a little strange, since his own recollection of Gothenburg in the thirties was of an entire forest of derricks...

Suddenly, he recognized the port with a strange sense of déjà vu, because all at once what had seemed so unfamiliar was very well-known; he had been there many times.

He picked up the phone again.

‘John, have you finished your evening rounds at the campsite?’

‘Yes. Anders has gone off to do some work on the gig; I thought I might give him a hand.’

‘I’ll come with you if you can pick me up,’ Gerlof said.

‘Of course.’

Gerlof rang off, then made another call. To the National Maritime Museum.

John arrived fifteen minutes later, but Gerlof couldn’t wait; he had something to tell his friend before they set off, and drew him on to the veranda.

‘I’ve found something out, John.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Sven Fredh, Aron’s stepfather, was a communist.’

John blinked, his expression vacant. The word ‘communist’ was no longer so loaded these days.

‘Don’t you understand?’ Gerlof went on. ‘Sven was a revolutionary; he was hardly likely to travel to America. Communists weren’t exactly popular there. Immigrants from Europe weren’t really welcome anyway after the Wall Street Crash, least of all troublemakers and “Bolsheviks”.’

‘No, but he could have kept quiet about his views when they got to immigration control in New York.’

‘They never got to New York,’ Gerlof said. He held out the postcard from Aron. ‘This isn’t Gothenburg docks. That’s Stockholm in the background.’

‘Stockholm?’

Gerlof nodded.

‘It’s not easy to recognize the ship’s surroundings, but this evening I suddenly realized it was Skeppsbron in Stockholm. And what was the destination of ships sailing from Skeppsbron in the thirties? Was it America?’

‘No,’ John said. ‘It was Finland. We used to go there sometimes before the war, and we saw them loading.’

‘Exactly, but there were also ships that went further... SS Kastelholm, for example.’

‘She went to America. It says so on the postcard.’

Gerlof shook his head.

‘The Kastelholm was owned by the Swedish-American Line, but they also had European routes. I rang the Maritime Museum in Stockholm just before you arrived, and one of the curators looked up the Kastelholm on their computer database. She sailed the Baltic in the early thirties... all the way to Leningrad.’

John was listening, but looked puzzled.

‘Aron and Sven didn’t go to America,’ Gerlof continued. ‘They went in the opposite direction, to the country that no longer exists... the Soviet Union.’

John stared at him. He was beginning to understand.

‘So the new country wasn’t in the west... but in the east?’

‘Yes. For some Swedes that was the case... for those who dreamed of the revolution and a classless society.’

‘But what happened to them out there?’

‘I don’t know. Those were troubled times in the Soviet Union, and Stalin became increasingly paranoid, so anything could have happened... What do you think became of Aron?’

John didn’t say anything, so Gerlof went on. ‘He certainly didn’t end up working for Al Capone, at any rate.’