Cautiously, she grabbed hold of the wire and pulled it up so that she could wriggle underneath. First her legs, then the rest of her body. The wire seemed keen to shred the back of her head, but she managed to squeeze through and jump down on the other side of the wall.
Now she was in the forbidden forest. It looked old, with lichen-covered ash trees and gnarled oaks among younger birch and elder. An enchanted forest waiting for a princess, for Lady Summertime.
She was only intending to go a short distance. There was a narrow track leading away from the wall – possibly made by hares or deer – and Lisa took a few tentative steps along it. Then she stopped and took a deep breath.
It was so quiet here. Dark and peaceful, with the muted sound of birdsong and the hum of various insects. She carried on down the track, and when she looked back she could no longer see the hotel. The wall she had climbed over was barely visible through the foliage. Forests on the island weren’t tall or extensive but dense and thick with undergrowth; they could hide just about anything.
She heard a twig snap up ahead. It was very distinct, definitely not the product of her imagination, but she couldn’t see any movement. Everything around her was green and brown, leaves and branches trembling in the gentle breeze.
The narrow track gradually widened, and after perhaps fifty metres it ended in a glade with tall, overgrown grass. Lisa stepped out into the light and screwed up her eyes as she turned her face up to the sun. It was almost at its zenith now. She could hear splashing and cheerful shouts from the beach to the south.
The Swedish summer. Tomas Ledin was right, it was short, but that made it all the more intense. Lisa was a city girl; she had grown up in Farsta in a family that didn’t own a summer cottage, but a vague, almost atavistic longing for a rural community had attracted her to the job on Öland for this summer season.
And the money, of course.
When she looked down at the grass she noticed wide grooves – deep tyre tracks. A large, heavy machine had driven through this ancient forest, straight across the glade and over to the trees on the far side.
A small building had once stood there, but the machine must have driven right into it, because now there was nothing left but the foundations and a few grey planks of wood.
Beyond the ruin she saw more trees, and further away the sun glinted on the sea; there was a small beach and a few boulders protruding into the water to form a narrow jetty.
A lost idyll. The family that had lived here once upon a time would have been able to go down for a swim every day …
‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice behind her.
Lisa turned around. A young man was standing in the middle of the glade, staring at her.
He was wearing a black peaked cap, and a shirt and trousers in the same shade of blue as the receptionists’ uniform up at the hotel. He was tall and thin; his forehead was covered in sweat as he strode towards her. Lisa noticed a black two-way radio clipped to his belt, and realized that he was one of the guards. Young and determined.
Lisa had nothing against security guards, but Lady Summertime, the rebel within her, didn’t like them. Uniforms – sooooo boring.
‘What am I doing?’ she said, staring right back at him. ‘I work here.’
‘Where?’
‘At the Ölandic Resort.’
‘Do you?’
‘I’m a DJ at the May Lai Bar.’
The guard stopped a metre away from her.
‘Oh? I haven’t seen you before.’
‘It’s my first day,’ Lisa said. ‘I start tonight – Lady Summertime. Do you want to see my ID?’
He stared at her for a little while longer, then shook his head. ‘I just wanted to …’
Then he glanced over her shoulder and froze. ‘Shit, there’s somebody else …’
He fell silent, and Lisa turned around. At first she couldn’t see anything apart from leaves and shimmering water, but then she saw a shadow against the dazzling sunlight. Someone was standing motionless on the jetty, his back to the beach. An old man in a fisherman’s jumper, straight-backed and sturdy.
Lisa looked at the guard. ‘Can I go?’
He glanced at her, then nodded reluctantly. ‘OK. Go back to the hotel. You shouldn’t be here.’
‘This is part of the resort, isn’t it?’
‘It’s private property – it belongs to the Kloss family.’
‘I see,’ Lisa said.
She had nothing more to say to him, and left the glade without another word. When she looked back for the last time she saw that he was on his way down to the sea and the old man, striding out as before.
Fascist, she thought.
She returned to the track, squeezed carefully under the barbed wire and over the wall, and was back at the hotel.
The glass door was still ajar. She decided to go in and make sure she’d locked the booth before she went back to the caravan to call Silas and grab a few hours’ rest before tonight’s debut as Lady Summertime.
Just as she was about to step inside, she thought she heard something behind her, a short, sharp noise from the forest. An old oak tree coming down? A firework? Lisa stopped in the doorway for a moment, but she didn’t hear anything else.
She went in and closed the glass door behind her.
The Homecomer
The Homecomer was standing out on the makeshift jetty when the guard turned up. The boulders from his childhood, arranged in a row stretching out from the shore – but of course it was a mistake to walk out on to them. It made him too visible, too vulnerable.
He had longed to stand here by this narrow sandy shore almost every day while he was overseas, had dreamed of coming back and walking right to the very end of the jetty. His croft up in the forest was gone, but Kloss couldn’t erase these rocks.
He had sat among the trees for a while, watching the Ölandic dock with Pecka, his young recruit, but the flies had been a nuisance and his leg had gone to sleep. Eventually, he had left the protection of the forest and gone down to the sea, with the Walther still tucked into the waistband of his trousers at the back. He had made sure the safety catch was on.
Tentatively, he made his way along the boulders, and for a few moments he had allowed himself to be drawn back to his childhood, although he didn’t leap from rock to rock like a boy; he took the slow steps of an old man.
Twelve steps, and the Homecomer was standing on the very last boulder. He straightened his back and gazed out across the empty Sound.
The sun was shining, but the water around him was dark and full of shadows; the bright light barely reached the sandy seabed. However, when he looked north he could clearly see the black ship that Pecka had been watching. It was still moored in the dock, and the crew were working flat out. They seemed to be carrying plastic boxes of fish from the ship to a delivery van on the quayside.
In the other direction, to the south, he could hear the sound of the Ölandic’s summer residents enjoying the sunshine, but the bathing area was hidden behind a spit of land. The Homecomer couldn’t see them, and no one could see him.
There was an air of calm about the island. No doubt the visitors who weren’t down on the shore were fast asleep in their tents and chalets, and many of those who had celebrated the shortest night of the year would wake up with gaps in their memory and trembling hands, feeling ten years older on this bright summer’s day.
But the Homecomer was wide awake, and he felt good.
After a while, the van drove away from the quayside. The seamen went back on board, and the Homecomer decided it was time to leave.
‘Hey! You there!’
The voice came from behind him, and he slowly turned around.
‘Yes, you! This is private property!’
A young man was standing on the shore, but it wasn’t Pecka. He was wearing blue trousers and a black peaked cap, and he looked like a park keeper.
‘Private?’ the Homecomer said, standing his ground.
The securi
ty guard nodded. ‘Were you looking for someone?’
No doubt this was a question he usually asked unauthorized persons, but out here it sounded rather odd.
The Homecomer shook his head and stayed exactly where he was. He wondered whether Pecka had seen the guard.
‘I used to live here when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘I used to stand here on the rocks catching pike with a wooden spear … We had a croft in the forest.’
‘Right,’ the guard said. ‘Well, there’s no croft there now.’
‘No, it’s been knocked down.’
The guard wasn’t listening; he seemed to be pondering something.
‘How did you get in here?’
‘I walked.’
‘Didn’t you see the notices?’
‘No.’
‘But what about the fence? You must have seen the fence!’
The Homecomer shook his head – and at the same time he felt for the pistol with his right hand. His fingers touched the butt of the Walther he had bought from Einar Wall.
‘This place used to be called Rödtorp,’ the Homecomer said, holding the security guard’s gaze. He kept the pistol hidden behind his back as he carried on talking. ‘Our cottage was small but cosy … my grandfather built it. I lived there with my mother, Astrid, and my sister, Greta, and my stepfather, Sven. But Sven wanted to travel to the new country, so that was what we did. We sailed from Borgholm and—’
‘I’m sure you did,’ the guard interrupted him, his voice hardening, ‘but you need to come ashore!’
The Homecomer nodded. He set off along the rocks, but he wasn’t quite so steady on his feet now.
He stopped and shook his head. ‘My legs have seized up.’
‘Hang on,’ the guard said wearily. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’
He stepped on to the first rock.
The Homecomer waited for him, holding the pistol behind his back. He could hear the excited screams and joyful shouts of the holidaymakers in the distance.
The guard took five strides and reached the Homecomer.
‘Put your hand on my shoulder and we’ll get you back,’ he said, turning away. Perhaps he was pleased at the thought of being able to help an old man.
‘You’re very kind,’ the Homecomer said, his eyes fixed on the back of the young man’s neck.
He raised the gun, slipped off the safety catch and took aim.
The guard grabbed his radio and began to turn as he heard the sound, but it was too late.
The back of his neck was unusually slender. The line where the skull ended and the vertebrae began was clearly visible.
The Homecomer fired.
The shot echoed out across the water; the guard’s body convulsed and he fell sideways. Down into the water, away from the light, with a cascade of white foam all around him.
The Homecomer watched as the waters closed over the young man and the body disappeared into the darkness.
He looked around, listened. The shot had been a sharp report in the wind, short and hard, with no echo. Trees muffled the sound of a bullet being fired, as he knew very well, and there were plenty of trees around the shore.
Pecka had heard the shot. He had got to his feet among the trees and was staring open-mouthed towards the sea. Slowly, he began to move.
After ten seconds, the guard’s body floated back to the surface, face up. A stream of bubbles was coming out of his mouth, and his arms were moving feebly.
Pecka appeared. He stared at the guard in the water.
‘He’s still alive,’ he said.
The Homecomer crouched down with his arm outstretched, put the Walther under the water and fired into the guard’s head, with hardly a sound.
The bubbles stopped.
Everything went quiet.
‘Let’s get him out,’ the Homecomer said.
Pecka looked at him blankly. ‘What?’
The Homecomer didn’t reply. He looked around; there was no one in sight, which meant that no one had heard the shot. And if there was one thing he knew about, it was taking care of dead bodies.
He bent down and grabbed hold of the man’s belt, then started hauling the body towards the shore.
‘Give me a hand,’ he ordered.
Pecka moved like a sleepwalker, but stepped down into the water and seized the guard’s arms.
They dragged the body to the shore, then pulled it ashore and in among the trees.
‘Shit,’ Pecka said. ‘Shit …’
The Homecomer wasted no time on him. He quickly ripped open the guard’s shirt and removed the wet clothes.
There was an old ditch under the tangle of dog roses, just a few metres away. He got Pecka to roll away all the big stones in order to make it deeper, then they tipped the naked body into the hollow. He covered it with a thick layer of rotting bladder wrack from the shore to contain the smell of the corpse, then topped the seaweed with several layers of stones.
The Homecomer stepped back to admire their handiwork. They had built a little burial cairn in the forest. It wasn’t old like the one in Stenvik; this one was brand new.
‘Have you … Have you done this before?’ Pecka asked.
‘Not here,’ the Homecomer said. But he knew what would happen in the grave from now on; that was nothing new.
The birds wouldn’t be able to detect the stench of the corpse, so they wouldn’t start pecking at it, which was good – but the insects would soon find it. The bluebottles would buzz in among the stones in just a few hours and, since the guard wasn’t wearing any clothes, they would start laying their eggs immediately. When the maggots hatched, they would be hungry. They would break down the body, work their way in until they reached the skeleton, until it no longer stank. In a few weeks all the soft parts would have dried out or disappeared, and in two months only the bones would remain.
And by that time the Homecomer would be gone.
He looked to the north through the trees, away from the grave. The ship was still at the quayside. ‘Have you been keeping an eye on the ship?’
Pecka had been staring at the stones, but he gave a start and answered mechanically, ‘Yes. They’ve all gone ashore. To the restaurant.’
‘Good,’ the Homecomer said. ‘Let’s go.’
With a final glance at the grave, he led the way into the forest, heading back towards the fence. His footsteps were light as he walked along, in spite of his age and what he had just done. He was still capable.
Jonas
It was morning, a lazy Sunday when nothing much seemed to be happening along the coast. Jonas was gazing out from the decking in front of Uncle Kent’s house. The sun was spreading its warmth, and summer was all around him. Boats in the Sound, holidaymakers relaxing on the shore, the odd car passing by. The stony ground above the water was coloured red and blue by the petals of poppies and viper’s bugloss, which were shooting up everywhere.
But something had happened. The door behind him was wide open, and he could hear Uncle Kent’s voice in the middle of a phone call. His uncle usually sounded quite pleased, but today his tone was harsh and angry.
‘Gone?’ Kent said. ‘What do you mean, gone? Was he there in the morning, or did he not turn up at all?’ Pause. ‘He was? So he just cleared off at some point during the day? He’s done it again …’
Pause.
‘I know. We had some trouble with him last season, but Veronica decided to give him a second chance this year. She believed in him. He promised to pull himself together, work harder. And now this …’
Jonas didn’t want to eavesdrop, so he left the garden and went out on to the coast road. He could see the campsite just a few hundred metres to the north, and the jetty where almost everyone in the village gathered to swim and sunbathe when the weather was good. Summer visitors.
The summer visitors were lying there in the sun; the hotter it got, the more of them there were. The shore was covered with a mosaic of red, white and blue beach towels, with thermos flasks, balls, bottles and bicycle baske
ts scattered all around. The summer visitors had lots of stuff, but they hardly ever bothered with any of it. They went for a swim and played Frisbee, but mostly they lay motionless in the sunshine.
Jonas waved away a fly and looked in the other direction. Villa Kloss was the last house in the village, then the coast road narrowed to a dirt track. The Ölandic was a few kilometres away, with its huge campsite and luxury hotel, but the resort was hidden by a series of headlands jutting out into the sea.
Jonas crossed the road and walked out on to the plateau known as the ridge. It was covered in gravel and dropped down into a little hollow above the shore.
And right on the edge of the plateau, straight in front of Uncle Kent’s house, was the rounded burial cairn. It must have been there for a thousand years.
Jonas slowed down as he reached the cairn. He had never dared to come this close when he was little – not on his own. The cairn looked like a hillock, but at close quarters you could see that it was made up of hundreds of big stones, all piled on top of one another. It had been built during the Bronze Age.
Jonas knew that there was a coffin under all those stones – but not a wooden one. One day when they were standing there studying the cairn, his father had told him that it was a sarcophagus made up of solid blocks. The stones and boulders had been piled up on top of the coffin, to protect it from grave robbers.
Suddenly, he heard a rattling sound; he stopped and turned around a few metres from the cairn and saw his cousin Casper on a dark-blue Yamaha, approaching from the south.
Casper was fifteen now – of course he had bought a moped. Or perhaps Aunt Veronica had given it to him.
The summer before last, they had both had bikes and used to race each other on the gravel tracks in the quarry, but Jonas knew there was no chance of that now.
Casper turned on to the plateau and nodded to Jonas. He didn’t get off, but sat there revving the engine impatiently until Jonas went over to him.
‘Cool!’ he shouted.
Casper nodded. ‘Got it back in the spring. What are you doing?’
The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) Page 7
