The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (22 page)

‘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: P
OSTCARD
A
LBUM
.

‘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:

Thank you for everything, Uncle Roland. We have arrived at the docks and will soon be going on board. This is a picture of the ship that will take us from Sweden to America, but we will be coming back.

Look after Mother and Greta. Goodbye.

Love from Aron

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.’

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.’