The Quarry töq-3

by Johan Theorin

  It was a gold heart on a silver chain, and I picked it up … but it didn’t make me the least bit happy, because I knew where it had come from. And I was tired of it, tired of these gifts I hadn’t asked for.

  ‘I don’t want any more jewellery!’ I yelled out across the pasture. ‘You can come and take it all back!’

  There was no reply, but after a while there was a movement behind the juniper bushes beyond our land. And then the changeling stepped out in the tall grass and simply stood there, and I hardly recognized him, because his face was clean and his hair had been combed, and he looked really neat and tidy. He was smiling and giggling, and we looked at one another.

  I held out the necklace, not really knowing what else to say. I just didn’t want it. So I opened my mouth, but the changeling suddenly turned and hurried away into the darkness between the bushes.

  I put my shoes on, and hurried after him.

  Did the changeling know he was being followed? I didn’t call out, but he seemed to be waiting for me to catch him up. He wasn’t exactly running, more like lumbering along, and I caught glimpses of his pale shirt and red skin among the bushes. He crossed the road quickly, like a cat, and moved into the shadows by the stone wall; it was obvious he was used to keeping out of sight. He was heading northwards as quickly as he could. But the grass hadn’t yet grown long and lush in the pasture, and I was almost able to keep up with him.

  It took a while for me to work out that he was on his way to the quarry. Why would he want to go there? But he increased his speed, and we emerged on the gravel up above the rock face.

  I could hear singing from over by the shore, and I recognized the words; a man was singing an Öland sea shanty for all he was worth among the piles of stone.

  The changeling slowed down, then turned and looked at me. I held the silver chain high above my head and showed it to him, but he ignored it. He listened to the song coming from over by the sea, then he set off again at full speed.

  The quarry was almost empty, apart from one solitary man way up high. He was the one who was singing – a quarryman who had built himself a little shelter from the wind, or a semicircular wall up by the northern rock face. Only his head and shoulders were visible above the stones.

  The changeling ran straight towards the man, and I saw that it was Henry Fors. I was surprised, I had heard about his troubles and thought he didn’t want to work any more. But there he stood, sheltered from the wind as he polished away at some kind of sculpture, just as if nothing had happened.

  Then everything happened so quickly I couldn’t keep up. The changeling ran along the top of the quarry, and when Henry saw him he stopped singing. He yelled something, but I didn’t hear what it was.

  The changeling held out his arms and kept on running at full speed towards Henry’s little wall. He ran straight into it and knocked it down. The stones rattled and clattered around his legs.

  Henry yelled again: ‘No!’ And then a name, Hans-Erik or Jan-Erik. The changeling was yelling too, but it was more like shouts of joy.

  I stopped and lowered my eyes. Henry carried on yelling, and still the falling stones rattled and crashed.

  I think they had a fight, the man and the boy. And I think the last thing that happened was that one of them was thrown or fell down into the quarry, but I didn’t want to see any more.

  I turned around and ran.

  All I could think of as I ran along the village road was that Henry knew what the changeling was called. They knew one another.

  He had come from the north. Had he come from Henry’s farm? Henry had a retarded son who had burnt down his barn – that was the gossip I’d heard recently.

  When I got back home I sat down on the steps with the necklace in my hand, weeping because I had been too afraid and too much of a coward to help the boy in some way.

  Then I dried my tears and went inside to wait for my girls and Gerlof to come home.

  I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. It was Henry’s burden, and his son’s. I had been stupid enough already, accepting and keeping all the changeling’s gifts, jewellery that was not mine and never would be.

  Ella’s diary ended there, with just a few blank lines left on the very last page. Gerlof lowered the book, ashamed that he had ever opened it.

  He sat there on the lawn, trying to remember how things had been when he got home a few days later, after the storm had abated. Had he noticed that anything had happened? No, Ella had never said much about what went on in the village during the weeks when he was away, and he probably hadn’t asked many questions either. He had been too preoccupied with thoughts of loading up the boat with her cargo before his next voyage to Stockholm.

  Ella’s changeling had fought with Henry Fors. It must have been his son. Gerlof had never seen him, but he had heard the same stories as Ella: that Henry had a mentally handicapped son and had blamed him for burning down the barn. Perhaps entirely without justification.

  At any rate, they had had unfinished business when they met in the quarry that last evening. Some kind of outburst had led to the boy disappearing without a trace, and to Henry’s eventual collapse, from which he never recovered.

  And it was all Gerlof’s fault. He should never have spoken to the police.

  61

  Per was sitting in his cottage watching the sun set over the quarry. One and a half days left until Nilla’s operation.

  He had gone out earlier in the evening armed with a spade and crowbar and tried to do some work on the steps, but hadn’t had the strength left in him to haul the blocks up to the top of the slope. Jesper hadn’t managed to finish the steps on his own, and Per couldn’t do it either. He managed to get only two more steps in place; when the third block tumbled back down on to the gravel, he gave up and went inside.

  He sat down in the living room, feeling utterly exhausted.

  Thirty-six hours, that was two thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes, he worked out. What was he going to do with all that time? Should he go for a run? He hadn’t been running since his last outing with Vendela, but he just couldn’t summon up the energy this evening.

  He switched on the television, but there was some kind of children’s programme on, and he quickly turned it off.

  Silence. The sun was slipping away and the shadows were growing.

  Suddenly the phone in the kitchen rang, and Per jumped.

  Bad news? He was certain it would be, whoever was calling, but he went and answered it anyway.

  A hoarse male voice spoke. ‘Per Mörner?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He didn’t recognize the voice, and the man didn’t introduce himself.

  ‘Nina said you wanted to talk to me,’ he said. ‘I own the Moulin Noir.’

  Per remembered the note he had left at the club in Malmö. ‘I did, yes,’ he said, attempting to gather his thoughts. ‘Thanks for ringing. I just wanted to ask you something about my father … Jerry Morner.’

  ‘Oh, how is Jerry these days?’

  Per had to explain – yet again – that he had lost his father.

  ‘Shit, I’m sorry to hear that,’ said the man. ‘Didn’t his studio burn down as well?’

  ‘Yes, the weekend before Easter,’ said Per. He went on quickly, ‘But Jerry mentioned the Moulin Noir several times before he died, which made me a little bit curious about the place.’

  The man on the phone sounded tired. ‘A little bit curious … You were here last week, weren’t you – what did you think?’

  ‘Well … I didn’t actually go downstairs,’ said Per, ‘but the girl on the till said there was a big surprise waiting down there. Is that true?’

  The man laughed. ‘The big surprise is that there is no surprise,’ he said. ‘Businessmen come in late at night flashing the plastic, thinking they’re going to be able to screw a load of blondes, but the Moulin Noir isn’t a brothel.’

  ‘So what is it, then?’

  ‘It’s a dance club … Although to be fair, the dancers are
all girls, and they don’t wear any clothes. The men sit and watch. And lust after them.’

  Men are good at that, thought Per.

  ‘Did my father own the Moulin Noir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he was involved in the club?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. We did work with Jerry to a certain extent; we used to advertise in his magazines, and Jerry often came here to check out our girls and guys. A few of them did some work for him as well.’

  ‘Guys? So you had male dancers at the club?’

  ‘For a while … Bodybuilders covered in baby oil who danced with the girls and had simulated sex with them. But not any more. There are much stricter regulations about what you can do on stage in Sweden these days, so now we just have girls.’

  ‘But these male dancers – was one of them called Daniel Wellman?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘He used to work for us.’

  ‘The same guy who did some filming for my father?’

  ‘That’s right. Daniel Wellman. He was only with us for about six months, but he worked for Jerry for several years.’

  ‘With a new name,’ said Per, reaching for a pen and a piece of paper. ‘Markus Lukas, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what he called himself,’ said the man.

  ‘It was Jerry who named them,’ said Per. ‘All the guys were called Markus Lukas.’

  ‘Everybody gets a new name,’ said the man. ‘It’s a form of protection.’

  There was a brief pause.

  ‘Do you know how I can get hold of Daniel?’ said Per. ‘Can I ring him?’

  The man laughed again, a weary laugh. ‘That might be tricky.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He’s in the same place as Jerry.’

  Per stared at his pen, poised over the piece of paper. ‘Markus Lukas is dead? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m afraid so … Daniel was looking really rough the last time I saw him. Then he rang me several times during the last year wanting money, but he could hardly speak. He was depressed and angry. He wanted someone to blame. He talked a lot about Hans Bremer … Bremer had told Daniel to keep quiet.’

  Bremer again, thought Per. ‘I think Markus Lukas was after my father as well,’ he said.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me … Towards the end he was begging money from everyone he knew. Then he stopped calling.’

  ‘So what did he die of?’ asked Per, expecting to hear the word cancer.

  ‘Nobody knew, people thought he was on heroin … but last year I bumped into one of the girls who had worked with him at the club and with Jerry, and she told me he’d died a couple of months earlier. She’d been to get herself checked out after that, but she was fine.’

  ‘Checked out?’ said Per. ‘Checked out for what?’

  ‘She wanted to make sure she was clean.’ The man paused, then went on, ‘I don’t know where Daniel picked up the infection, but he thought it was with Jerry and Bremer. He said he was going to sue them.’

  ‘Infection?’ said Per.

  ‘His blood was infected. It happens from time to time in this industry. Daniel died of AIDS.’

  62

  Per slept until nine on the morning of April the thirtieth, but his head was still heavy when he woke up. He could hear the ticking of the wall clock in the kitchen and looked out of the window with a sense of being trapped beneath an immense sky.

  Twenty-four hours to go.

  It was a grey, windy morning on Öland. He wondered how he was going to get through the day, make the time pass as quickly as possible. He wanted to press fast forward so that Nilla’s operation would be over.

  He had one more important call to make, to Lars Marklund, which he did at about ten o’clock.

  Marklund had nothing new to say about the investigation into Jerry’s death, but at least Per was able to tell him that he had found ‘Markus Lukas’, and that his name was Daniel Wellman. He also told him that Wellman had been infected with HIV, and had passed away the previous year.

  Marklund didn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘So you think Wellman was HIV-positive when he was making these films? And that the girls got infected?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Per; in his mind’s eye he could see a procession of young girls disappearing into a dark forest. ‘But the risk has to be significant, surely … I was talking to another of Jerry’s male models a couple of days ago, and he reckoned he’d been with over a hundred women in the studio with my father and Hans Bremer. I’m sure Daniel Wellman had been with a similar number. And always without protection.’

  Marklund remained silent again.

  ‘A high-risk individual,’ he said eventually. ‘We need to track down these girls.’

  ‘I’ve got a few names,’ said Per. ‘Some are alive, and some are dead.’

  ‘Did your father and Bremer know about this … did they know Wellman was infected while he was filming?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Per. ‘Jerry never mentioned it.’

  ‘And now it’s too late to ask them,’ said Marklund.

  He seemed to be keying something in on his computer.

  ‘I’ve found a Daniel Wellman in Malmö,’ he said, then added, ‘But you’re right, he died in February last year.’

  Per caught sight of Bremer’s yellow Post-it note, which he had put beside the telephone. Danielle, he thought. ‘Can I check a disconnected phone number with you?’

  ‘No problem.’

  Per read out the numbers next to Danielle’s name, and asked, ‘Could you check whose number that was?’

  There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

  ‘I don’t need to check … It’s already part of our investigation.’

  ‘So whose number was it, then?’

  ‘Her name was Jessika Björk.’

  ‘Wasn’t she the one who died in the fire?’ said Per. ‘Along with Bremer?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Marklund after a moment. ‘How did you get hold of her name?’

  ‘I found a note with her number on it in Bremer’s apartment,’ said Per. ‘Jessika must have worked for him and Jerry. They called her Danielle.’

  ‘Not recently,’ said Marklund. ‘We’ve spoken to her friends … They said she’d given up that kind of thing seven or eight years ago.’

  ‘So why did Bremer have her mobile number written down? And what was she doing with him in Jerry’s house?’

  ‘Yes, well … we’re working on it,’ said Marklund. ‘Thanks for your help. I’ll be in touch if anything comes up, but we’ll take care of this from now on. You can relax and enjoy the spring on Öland. You will do that, won’t you, Per?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Twenty-three hours to go.

  Per had lunch, then went out into the fresh air. There were small tears in the cloud cover above the village, showing fragments of blue.

  He walked slowly past Vendela’s house, but the Audi was gone and the curtains were closed at the big windows. A car was parked at the other house for the first time in a while – the Kurdin family was evidently back.

  Markus Lukas, Jessika, Jerry, Hans Bremer …

  The names of the dead would not let him go. He went for a long walk south along the coast road, until the tarmac ran out and the dirt track began. The only buildings out here were small stone boathouses above the shore. The water was calm, and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  What did Jerry know?

  Per didn’t really want to think about that question. Had his father known about Daniel Wellman’s condition, but let him carry on filming with the girls anyway? Had Bremer known?

  He walked along the coast for almost an hour before looking at his watch and thinking of Nilla.

  Ten past one. Less than twenty-one hours left.

  He turned back towards the village. By the campsite he saw a poster advertising the fact that Walpurgis Night would be celebrated that evening with a bonfire and a sing-song down by the sea. He noticed
there was already a substantial pile of twigs and branches on the shore ready for the fire.

  Just before he reached the quarry he turned off to the right along the village road and opened Gerlof Davidsson’s garden gate. It was only a week since they had seen each other, but a great deal had happened since then.

  Gerlof was sitting in his chair on the lawn with a blanket over his knees and a tray on the table in front of him. There was also an old notebook on the table. The grass needed cutting, but Per was too tired to offer to do it.

  Gerlof looked up and nodded at him. ‘Nice to see you,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering when you might turn up again.

  Per sat down. ‘I’ve been away quite a bit,’ he said. ‘But everyone seems to be back this weekend.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gerlof. ‘Is there a bonfire tonight?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Per. ‘It looks as if the local council are setting fire to a few twigs and having a bit of a sing-song down on the shore.’

  ‘Setting fire to a few twigs?’ said Gerlof. ‘Let me tell you what we used to do here in the village. We collected all the old tar barrels that had split during the winter, and piled them up in a great big heap. Right on the top we put a new barrel full of tar … then we set fire to the whole thing! The tar in the top barrel melted and ran down into all the others, and we ended up with a bonfire that rose up towards the sky like a white pillar. It could be seen all the way from the mainland, and it drove away all the evil spirits.’

  ‘Those were the days,’ said Per.

  Gerlof didn’t say anything, so Per asked, ‘Is everything all right, Gerlof?’

  ‘Not really. How about you?’

  He shook his head. ‘But maybe it will be … The doctors are going to cure my daughter tomorrow morning.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Gerlof. ‘You mean she’s going to have an operation?’

  Per nodded silently, feeling the blood pounding in his throat. Why was he sitting here? Why wasn’t he at the hospital with Nilla?’