The Quarry (29 page)

‘Father … are you coming inside?’

He doesn’t seem to hear her at first, then he shakes his head and answers quietly. ‘It’s not the fire’s fault.’

Vendela doesn’t understand what he means.

After almost an hour the fire brigade turns up with two vehicles from Borgholm, but all they can do is prevent the fire from spreading. It is impossible to save the barn.

Several hours after midnight, when the fire-fighters have left but the yard is still thick with smoke, Henry is sitting out on the steps in the cold. He has carried the Invalid back to his room, but refuses to go inside. Vendela goes out to him one last time.

‘Who’s Jan-Erik, Dad?’

‘Jan-Erik?’ says Henry; he seems to consider the question before answering. ‘Well, he’s my son, of course … your brother.’

‘My brother?’

He looks over his shoulder at her. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

Vendela stares at him. She has hundreds of questions, but asks only one. ‘Why doesn’t he have to go to school?’

‘He’s not allowed,’ says Henry. ‘They said it would be a waste of effort. It’s impossible to educate him.’

Then he reverts to staring into the darkness.

Vendela goes back inside and takes herself off to bed. She lies there as stiff as a board.

Perhaps Henry is up all night, because when he wakes his daughter at seven o’clock the next morning, he is still wearing the same clothes.

‘School,’ is all he says. Then he adds, ‘I let you have a lie-in today … No need to do the milking any more.’

Only when Vendela hears his words does she become aware of the smell of smoke in the room, and then she remembers the fire during the night. Then she remembers the Invalid. Jan-Erik.

Henry stops in the doorway as he leaves the room. ‘Don’t you worry about what’s going to happen. I’ve got the insurance policy and a receipt for the premium, so everything will be all right.’

Then Vendela remembers one last thing: the school trip is today. The class is going to Borgholm on the train.

She can go with them. She’s got the money for the fare, after all, and the cows are no longer a problem.

An hour later she is walking across the empty alvar, but gives the elf stone a wide berth, keeping her eyes fixed firmly ahead. She doesn’t want to see it any more, but the questions come anyway.

What did she actually wish for as she stood by the stone the previous day? She can barely grasp what she has done, and she doesn’t want to think about what the elves have done for her.

The children gather, ready to set off for the railway station, all smiles and eager chatter. Vendela does not smile, and she speaks to no one. She can still smell the smoke in her nostrils.

She goes to Borgholm on the train with her class and sits in a carriage with Dagmar and the other girls, but she still feels as if she is back on the alvar. Utterly alone. And she recalls nothing of the visit to Borgholm; in the shadow of everything that happened during the night, the day simply slips away.

When she gets home after the school trip, three hours after the cows would have needed milking, the yard is full of people.

The police are there – two constables from Marnäs are walking around inspecting the site of the fire. The gable at one end of the house has been blackened by the fire, and the barn is gone. All that’s left are the stone foundations. They look like a rectangular swimming pool full of ash, with charred planks of wood and roofing tiles sticking up out of the grey mess. There are three bodies lying beneath the covering of ash, their legs rigid, and the stench of burnt meat hangs over the whole yard.

Rosa, Rosa and Rosa. But Vendela doesn’t want to think about their names at the moment.

The neighbours have also gathered. People from Stenvik and even further afield have come to look at the remains of Henry the widower’s barn, and some of them have actually brought milk and sandwiches for the unfortunate family. Henry smiles and says thank you through gritted teeth, and Vendela bobs a curtsy, her cheeks burning. Then she creeps away. She goes into the empty kitchen and up the stairs, but when she tentatively tries the door of the Invalid’s room, it is locked.

‘Jan-Erik? It’s Vendela.’

No reply, not even laughter. All is silent behind the door.

She goes back downstairs and looks out of the kitchen window.

One of the men who has come from Stenvik is tall and slim, and he is looking around with a thoughtful expression. He speaks sympathetically to her father, then stands by the barn when the police suddenly call Henry over.

Vendela watches through the window as her father shows them around the ruins and points out the dead cows.

The police carry on looking. Henry comes inside to Vendela, who is still gazing out of the window. She sees the tall man from Stenvik come over and speak to the police after a while, pointing towards the barn, then at something down on the ground.

The policemen listen and nod.

‘I don’t know what they’re doing out there,’ Henry mutters. ‘They’re cooking something up between them.’ He looks at Vendela. ‘You’ll have to support me,’ he says. ‘If they start asking questions.’

‘Questions?’

‘If there’s a problem. You’ll do that, won’t you? You’ll support your father?’

Vendela nods.

In the twilight half an hour later the policemen make their way up the steps, bringing the smell of smoke into the kitchen with them. They flop down at the table and look at Henry.

‘Tell us what you know, Fors,’ says one of them.

‘I don’t know much.’

‘How did it start?’

Henry places his hands on the kitchen table. ‘I don’t know, it just started. I’m always unlucky, always. There’s something cursed about this place.’

‘So the fire woke you up?’

One of the policemen is doing the talking, the other is just sitting in silence, staring at Henry.

He nods. ‘At about midnight. And my daughter too.’

Vendela dare not even look at the police officers, her heart is pounding so hard it feels as if it’s trying to burst out of her chest. This is the twilight hour, and the elves will be dancing in circles in the meadows.

‘We think it started in two places,’ says the talkative policeman.

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes. In the east and west gable end. And that’s rather peculiar, actually, because it has rained quite a bit. The ground is damp, after all.’

‘Somebody lit candles there,’ says the other one. ‘We found lumps of wax in the mud.’

‘Oh yes?’ says Henry.

‘And you could smell paraffin as well,’ says the first policeman.

‘That’s right,’ says the other one. ‘I could.’

‘Could we have a look at your shoes, Fors?’

‘My shoes? What shoes?’

‘All of them,’ says the policeman. ‘All the shoes and boots you own.’

Henry hesitates, but the officers escort him into the porch and go through all his shoes. They pick them up one by one, and Vendela can see them studying the soles.

‘It could be this one,’ says the first policeman, holding up a boot. ‘What do you think?’

The other one nods. ‘Yes, it’s the same pattern.’

His colleague places the boot on the kitchen table and looks at Henry. ‘Do you have any fuel in the house, Fors?’

‘Fuel?’

‘Paraffin, for example?’

‘Well, I suppose it’s possible …’

‘A can?’

Vendela listens to her father and thinks about the fire wriggling along like a snake, as if it were seeking out a path across the ground and up the wall of the barn, as if it knew where it was going.

‘A bottle,’ Henry says quietly. ‘There’s probably a half-full bottle of paraffin around somewhere.’

The policemen nod.

‘I think that’s it,’ says the first one to his colleague.

‘Yes.’

There is a brief silence, but then Henry straightens his back, takes a deep breath and says just one word: ‘No.’

They look at him in surprise as he goes on. ‘That’s not it. I had nothing to do with the fire. Anybody could have poured paraffin around. I was indoors all evening, until the fire started. My daughter here can confirm that, she’ll give you her word of honour.’

Suddenly the men are looking at Vendela. Her whole body goes cold.

‘That’s right,’ she says eventually, and begins to lie for all she is worth. ‘Dad was indoors … He sleeps in the room next door to mine and I always hear when he goes outside, but he didn’t go anywhere.’

Henry points at the boot on the kitchen table. ‘And that’s not mine.’

‘It was in your porch,’ says the first policeman. ‘So who else would it belong to?’

Henry says nothing for a few seconds, then he goes over to the stairs. ‘Come upstairs with me,’ he says. ‘I’d like to show you something.’

Gerlof did his best to collect empty bottles into which his little ships could sail – he had a glass of wine with his meal every night. But he had barely touched his model-making since Easter; he hadn’t even started the full-rigged ship. Almost all his time was spent sleeping, sitting in the sun on the grass – and reading Ella’s diaries.

He read them regularly, one page at a time, and then he sat and thought about them.

18
^th
September 1957

I’m quite ashamed of myself – I haven’t got round to writing much lately, but today’s the day! A lot has happened; we went to Oskar Svensson’s funeral in Kalmar, and I’ve had a birthday – I’m 42 now!

Last Sunday we were at my nephew Birger’s confirmation in the church at Gärdslösa; it was very solemn, and Pastor Ek asked some difficult questions.

Gerlof caught the train down to his ship yesterday and set sail for Stockholm this morning; the girls have gone off to Långvik on their bikes, so I’m all alone in the cottage, which can be nice sometimes.

It’s cloudy today and a stiff autumn breeze blew up over the Baltic this morning. I know that Gerlof can ride out a storm, but I pray to God that he will be safe. He will be on the ship for at least two months now.

I’m sitting out on the veranda as I write this. When the girls had gone I came out here and found something strange on the bottom step: there was a piece of jewellery lying on the stone. A brooch shaped like a rose; it looked like silver, but it can’t be silver, can it? It’s probably from the little changeling; I don’t know what to do with it, it just doesn’t feel right.

When Gerlof had finished reading, he thought for a while. Then he got up and went indoors.

He had kept Ella’s yellow jewellery box all these years; it was in the chest of drawers in his room, under his old, faded ensign. He took it out, lifted the lid and stared down at a pile of bracelets, rings and earrings. And some brooches that needed cleaning. One of them was shaped like a rose, with a little red stone in the centre.

Gerlof picked it up carefully.

Had he ever seen Ella wearing it? He didn’t think so.

Jerry and Marika were standing motionless in the hospital corridor, staring at one another.

Per was standing beside them, but he really wanted to be somewhere else. On the other side of the sound, perhaps, out for a long run with Vendela Larsson. But now he was here.

He and Jerry had stepped out of the lift five minutes earlier, and his ex-wife had been waiting.

‘Hello, Jerry,’ Marika said quietly. ‘How are you?’

Marika had met Jerry only once before, but that was a long time ago, the year before the twins were born. She had met Per’s mother Anita several times by that stage and things had gone very well, and she insisted on meeting his father as well. So one weekend when they weren’t far from Kristianstad, Per had driven into the centre and rung the doorbell of Jerry’s apartment.

He had been hoping that no one would be at home.

But Jerry had opened the door dressed in a dark-blue silk dressing gown and leopard-print underpants, and had invited them in for lunch: toast with whitefish roe. Plenty of sparkling wine as well, of course. When they left he had given them the latest issues of
Babylon
and
Gomorrah
as a present – just to destroy the romance.

After that, Marika hadn’t wanted to see Jerry again.

And now, fourteen years later, they were standing here face to face. Per wasn’t sure if Jerry actually recognized his ex-wife. He was just staring at Marika, but then that was what he did with everybody these days.

‘Jerry doesn’t say much any more,’ said Per. ‘But apart from that he’s doing pretty well. Aren’t you, Jerry?’

His father merely nodded, still staring at Marika.

‘Have you been in to see Nilla?’ Per asked.

‘Yes … she’s feeling quite cheerful today. I have to go – the doctor wants to see me. Will you come with me?’