The Quarry

by Johan Theorin

  Suddenly she hears a scream from downstairs. Her aunt shouts at the top of her voice: ‘It’s empty! Everything’s gone, every single thing!’

  When Vendela gets down to the kitchen, her mother’s jewellery box is standing open on the table, and Aunt Margit is as white as a sheet. She has lowered her voice, but she is just as angry. ‘Jan-Erik has stolen all his mother’s jewellery,’ she says. ‘Did you see him do it, Vendela?’

  Vendela shakes her head in silence. Her father is standing next to his sister, looking even more gloomy. ‘I should have locked it away.’

  He gazes blankly at Vendela; she lowers her eyes and goes back to her room to fetch her bags. She knows that Jan-Erik did not take the jewellery, and she doesn’t believe he has run away on the train. She was the one who left him, not vice versa.

  He sat on the grass and waited until he realized she wasn’t coming back. Only then did he get up and walk away from the stone.

  Jan-Erik has gone to the elves. That’s what must have happened. He has gone to the world behind the mist, where the sun always shines.

  When they reach Kalmar an hour later, Henry gets out with his bag in front of the well-lit entrance to the prison.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ is all he says.

  He turns up his collar, grips his bag firmly and leaves Vendela without a word. He walks up to the guard at the gates and doesn’t look back.

  Time passes. When Jan-Erik doesn’t arrive at the station for his journey to the mental hospital, the police are informed, but a retarded teenager on the run isn’t a major issue. The police have other priorities, and he is never found. It is as if Vendela’s older brother has been swallowed up by the ground.

  Time passes, and the little farm belonging to the Fors family is sold that summer.

  Time passes, and Vendela does not visit her father in prison, not once.

  When he finally comes out he is a much subdued man. Late in the autumn he returns to Öland and settles in Borgholm, where he is less well known than in his home village. Henry becomes a labourer, lives in one room with no cooking facilities, and muddles along somehow.

  By this stage Vendela is settled in Kalmar and doesn’t want to go back to Öland. She has a whole new life with Margit and Sven. Soon the children in her class at school forget that she comes from the island, and stop teasing her. Her aunt and uncle have no children of their own, and they are very fond of Vendela.

  Everything works out for the best.

  She is given new clothes, a red bicycle and a record player.

  She is given almost everything she asks for, and no longer has to wish for things.

  She grows up, passes her exams and meets a nice man who owns a restaurant. They have a daughter.

  The memories of Öland slowly fade away, and Vendela hardly ever takes the ferry across the sound to see her father. His little room is always littered with empty spirit bottles, and they have nothing to say to each other when she does visit.

  After Henry’s death at the end of the sixties, she has no reason to go back. She no longer has any family left on the island – just a collection of graves in the churchyard. In her room she has a few objects made from beautifully polished limestone which she inherited from her father, along with an empty jewellery box.

  It is not until she is in her forties, when her marriage to Martin is over and she has married Max Larsson, that Vendela begins to think about her childhood on Öland, and to feel a desire to return there.

  And a growing urge to follow her brother to the elves.

  60

  I don’t want any more jewellery! Ella had written.

  Gerlof had reached the last entries in his wife’s diaries from the fifties. Only four and half pages left to read now.

  The book ended in the spring of 1958, and the final pages were filled with closely written text. Ella’s handwriting had become anxious and untidy, and Gerlof hesitated before putting on his glasses. But eventually he began to read:

  Today is 21st April 1958, but I hardly know how to begin writing. Something awful has happened, and Gerlof isn’t here. He set off north towards Stockholm on his cargo boat the day before yesterday, and he was supposed to be back today. But last night he rang and said that he and John couldn’t get away from the capital because of the wind, and were moored at the quay down below City Hall. There’s a gale blowing up the Swedish coast, almost storm force, but it hasn’t reached the island. It’s just cloudy and cold here; the electric heaters are on all day.

  The girls went off on their bikes late yesterday afternoon to go to the cinema in the community hall. So I was left alone in the cottage. The whole village felt deserted.

  The sun had started to go down and I was sitting sewing when I heard a faint noise from the veranda. It wasn’t a knock, like when the neighbours come to call, just a kind of scraping against the door, so I put down my sewing and went to have a look. There was no sign of anyone, but when I looked more closely I noticed a piece of jewellery lying on one of the steps.

  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 ch
angeling 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.’