The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (17 page)

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.

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 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 …