Echoes From the Dead (32 page)

“Have you got her number?”

“Yes.” Lennart punched in the numbers. “I just want to check where she is. She said she might…”

He stopped speaking, holding the phone to his ear.

“I don’t understand those phones,” Astrid whispered to

Gerlof. “How do you use them?”

“No idea,” said Gerlof, then asked Lennart, “Is she there?”

Lennart lowered the phone. “The subscriber cannot be

reached … it’s just her voice mail.” He looked at Gerlof and added, “You can turn phones off, of course … if you don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Then I’m sure that’s what Julia’s done,” said Gerlof. “She’ll be driving through Smaland now.”

Lennart nodded reluctantly, but still didn’t seem satisfied.

He kept drumming his fingers on the table, and then he stood up abruptly.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I… just need to go and check something.”

Then he picked up his coffee cup and walked away.

Gerlof watched the policeman hurrying toward the door,

and wondered if his daughter and Lennart Henriksson had

some project on the go that he didn’t know aboutbut just

a few seconds later a spoon was tapped tentatively against a coffee cup across the room. A chair scraped, and someone stood up.

Gerlof saw to his surprise that it was John Hagman. Both he

and his son Anders looked equally uncomfortable in their black suits.

John cleared his throat, red in the face, his fingers scrabbling nervously at the sides of his black jacket. Then he began to speak: “I…” he said. “I don’t usually do this sort of thing … not really … But I’d just like to say a few words about my friend and yours, Ernst Adolfsson, and the village of Stenvik. It will be a darker and lonelier place now that…”

An hour later Gerlof was back at the home in Mamasthanks to

Astrid and Gostaand could relax. He ate a late lunch, warmed up for him by Boel. On one of the tables in the empty dining room was that day’s edition of OlandsPosten, and Gerlof noticed a headline on the front page: missing pensioner found dead.

Even more bad news. The article was about the elderly man

who had left his home in southern Oland a week or so earlier, and had now been found in a copse out on the alvar, frozen to death.

The police did not suspect any crime, the paper reported. The man was old and senile, and appeared to have got lost less than a kilometer from the village where he’d lived all his life.

Gerlof didn’t know the dead man, but he still felt the newspaper article was a bad omen.

For the rest of the afternoon he stayed in his room, and didn’t bother going for coffee. He didn’t come out until dinner, which consisted of Oland dumplings, badly seasoned and with far too little meatnot a bit like the delicious dumplings Ella used to make once a month or sobut Gerlof ate a couple anyway.

“Did you manage all right over in the church without me?”

asked Marie as she was serving up his dumplings.

“No problem,” said Gerlof.

“So Ernst Adolfsson is in the ground now?” said Maja Nyman

on the other side of the table.

Of course, Maja was from Stenvik, too, thought Gerlof, even

if she hadn’t lived there for forty years.

He nodded. “Yes, Ernst is resting next to the church now.”

He picked up his fork and began to eat, grateful as ever that his teeth were good. And thank heavens Sjogren had finally settled down.

“Was it a nice coffin?” asked Maja.

“It was,” said Gerlof. “Whitepainted wood, polished and

beautiful.”

“I’d like mahogany,” said Maja. “If it’s not too expensive

. .. Otherwise I suppose it’ll be cheap wood and a cremation.”

Gerlof

nodded again politely, took another bite of his dumplings,

and was just about to say that cremation was definitely

preferable, when somebody touched him on the shoulder. It was Boel.

“Telephone call, Gerlof,” she said quietly.

“In the middle of dinner?”

“Yes. It’s obviously important. It’s Lennart Henriksson… from the police.”

Gerlof felt a sudden icy chill in his stomach, a chill that woke Sjogren from his evening nap and made him seize Gerlof’s joints again. Stress always made his rheumatism worse.

“I’d better take it, then,” he said.

Julia? It was almost certainly about Julia, and it was almost certainly bad news. He struggled to his feet.

“You can use the telephone in the kitchen,” said Boel.

He made his way into the kitchen, leaning on his cane. There was a red plastic telephone on the wall, and Gerlof picked up the receiver.

“Davidsson,” he said.

“Gerlof… it’s Lennart.” His voice sounded extremely serious.

“Has something happened?” asked Gerlof, although he already

knew the answer.

“Yes … It’s Julia. She hadn’t gone to Gothenburg.”

“Where is she?” Gerlof heard the wobble in his voice.

“Down in Borgholm,” said Lennart. “In the hospital.”

“Is it bad?”

“Pretty bad. But it could have been much worse. She’s

knocked herself about a bit. They’re putting her in plaster at the hospital… I’ll go down there and pick her up tonight.”

“What happened?” said Gerlof. “What’s she done?”

Lennart hesitated, took a deep breath, then replied:

“She broke into Vera Kant’s house yesterday evening and fell down the stairs from the upper floor. She was a bit… well, she was very confused when I found her. She kept saying the house is occupied. That Nils Kant lives there.

julia was awakened from the warmth of sleep by a squeaking

noise, and after a few seconds she remembered where she was: in Vera Kant’s big house in Stenvik.

She was shivering. The pain in her broken body had made

her drowsy, and after a long night lying awake on the floor, she had closed her eyes and dreamed about that last summer with Jens, when the sun seemed to shine on Oland without interruption.

When the autumn was far away.

She saw a dusty, dirty floor underneath her, and realized it was daylight.

The squeaking noise was coming from the outside door, which

was being pushed open.

‘Julia?” an echoing voice called out above her.

A pair of hands raised her head and pushed a rolledup jacket or sweater under the back of her neck.

“Can you hear me? Julia, wake up!”

She turned her aching face up toward the ceiling. She could

only use her left eyethe right one was swollen shut.

It was Lennart’s calm voiceshe recognized it even before

she saw that it really was him. He wasn’t wearing his uniform; he was in a black suit and shiny shoes. They were covered in dried; mud from Vera Kant’s garden, but he didn’t seem to care about that.

“I can hear you,” she said.

“Good.” He didn’t sound annoyed, just tired. “Good morning,

in that case.”

“I came in here and … fell down the stairs,” she went on

faintly, lifting her head from the floor. “It was stupid.”

“Gerlof said you’d gone home,” said Lennart. “But I thought

you might be here.”

Julia was lying on the veranda; that was as far as she’d managed to crawl during the night when she’d finally regained consciousness on the kitchen floor, among the remains of her cell phone and the broken lamp. The paraffin had leaked out and ignited, but the fire had gone out on the stone floor.

It had been impossible to stand, because somebody had driven a redhot nail through her right foot. So she had begun to crawl laboriously toward the outside door, just to get out of the kitchen, and in the darkness out on the veranda she’d collapsed again. She could hear the wind blowing outside, and had no strength left to set off out into the night. She had collapsed by the door, constantly terrified that she might hear footsteps approaching from inside the house.

“Stupid,” Julia repeated quietly. “Stupid, stupid…”

“Don’t think about that now. I should have come over last

night, but the meeting …” Lennart stopped speaking, and she felt his hands under her arms. He tried to lift her up, carefully. “Can you stand up?” he asked her.

She hoped he wouldn’t be able to tell she’d been drinking.

The intoxication was still with her like a revolting aftertaste.

“I don’t know … I’ve broken something … some bones.”

“Are you sure?”

Julia nodded wearily. “I’m a nurse.”

And she was, in fact. And the diagnosis she had reached even before she’d started crawling out of the kitchen was a fractured wrist, broken collarbone, and possibly also a broken right foot.

The foot could of course just be very badly sprained, it was difficult to tell. Julia had had patients who’d been unable to put their weight on a sprained ankle for several weekswhile others had broken theirs and walked around almost normally afterward, assuming it would soon get better.

She had no idea what her face might look like. Terrible, no

doubt. Her nose might be bleeding as well, because it felt stuffed up.

“Try and get up, Julia,” said Lennart.

She liked the fact that his voice remained calm, not annoyed, not stressed.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice thick.

“For what?” Lennart lifted her gently under the arms.

“Sorry I came in here without you.”

“Don’t think about it,” said Lennart again.

But Julia didn’t want to keep quiet, she wanted to tell him

everything.

“I was looking for Jens. I saw a light in the window one night and I think … He’s living here.”

“Living here? Jens?”

“Nils …” said Julia. “Nils Kant, Vera’s son. He’s got a sleeping bag upstairs. I saw it. And old newspaper articles.”

“Can you walk?” asked Lennart.

“He’s been digging in the cellar too … I don’t know why. Is that where Jens’s body is, down there? Do you think it might be, Lennart? Has he hidden him down there?”

“Come.”

Lennart began to lead her slowly through the door, out into

the chill wind, and down the steps. It wasn’t easy, she couldn’t put her weight on her right foot, but Lennart supported her all the time.

When they reached the stone path, Julia saw a dark green car parked outside the gate.

“Is that yours, Lennart?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Haven’t you got a police car? You ought to have a police car.”

“That’s my own car… I’ve been to the funeral today.”

“Oh… of course.”

Ernst’s funeral. Julia remembered now. She’d missed it.

The old gate was just as difficult to open as it had been the night before, and Lennart had to leave her balancing on one foot while he dragged and kicked it open enough for them to get through.

She got into the car with enormous difficulty, as if she were ninety years old.

“Lennart,” she said quickly, before he had time to close the door. “Could you just go into the house and take a look? I just have to know that… that I saw what I saw last night. Upstairs and down in the cellar.”

He looked at her for a few seconds. Then he nodded.

“I assume you’ll wait here?” he said.

She nodded. “Lennart… have you got a gun?”

“A gun?”

“Yes … in case there’s anyone there now … inside. I don’t think there is, but…”

Lennart gave a short laugh. “I haven’t got a gun with me, just a flashlight,” he said. “There’s no danger, Julia, I’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.”

Then he closed the car door and got the flashlight out of the trunk. Julia watched him go into the garden and disappear behind the dilapidated woodshed.

She breathed out in the silence of the car, leaned back cautiously in her seat, and stared blankly at the ridge and the gray sea at the end of the village road.

Lennart wasn’t away long, perhaps between five and ten minutes.

Julia had begun to feel anxious as soon as he disappeared, and felt relieved when she saw him coming back through the gate.

He opened the driver’s door, got in, and nodded at her.

“You were quite right,” he said. “Somebody has been there.

Very recently, too.”

“Yes,” said Julia, “and I think”

Lennart quickly held up his hand. “Not Nils Kant,” he interrupted her.

Then he placed a small object in front of her on the dashboard.

“I

found this in the cellar. There were several on the floor

down there.”

It was a snuff tin, one of the round ones that can only be used once.

“Somebody who takes snuff,” she said.

“Yes, he takes snuff… whoever it is who’s been here,” said Lennart, turning the key in the ignition. “And now we’re going to the hospital.”

At the hospital in Borgholm they cut off Julia’s clothes, both her sweater and her pants, and gave her an injection to ease the pain.

A young male doctor came in to examine her, and asked how her injuries had happened.

“It was an accidentshe had a fall last night,” said Lennart, who was standing by the door of the examination room. “Up in Stenvik.”

“On the shore?”

Lennart hesitated only for a second before nodding. “On the

shore, yes.”

Then Lennart left, and the doctor began to palpate her back

and stomach, and to pull at her legs and arms, and the nurses took a series of Xrays. Then they began to apply the wet, cold plaster bandages. Julia didn’t protest, she knew the procedures. She just wanted to get it all over with.

There were more important things to think about. She had

made an important discovery in Vera Kant’s house, she was sure of it.

Nils Kant was alive. He was alive and living in his mother’s old house, just like that man in that horrible Hitchcock film. He was hiding in the house and Jens had crept in there and Kant had been forced to kill him. Unless they’d met in the fog on the alvar.

Perhaps Nils Kant liked walking out there.

Julia didn’t want to stay in the hospital. She asked to borrow a telephone, and she called Astrid in Stenvik. She told her what had happened and asked a question.

Of course Julia could stay with her for a few days, Astrid said.