Then she heard more noises, much closer. The crunch of gravel.
Someone was very close to her, down in the dip. But it wasn’t a man, it was a tall, slender figure. A woman.
‘Lisa?’
Paulina’s quiet voice. Lisa could see her only as a shadow in the darkness, the whites of her eyes shining. She must have left her hiding place and crept along the bottom of the dip; she was only a couple of metres away.
Lisa leaned over and whispered back. ‘Paulina … What are you doing?’
The other girl held out her hand. ‘Listen,’ she said, pointing towards the Sound. ‘Listen to me … Veronica Kloss is down there. She’s fetched the motor launch.’
‘The motor launch?’
Paulina kept her eyes fixed on Lisa. Her Swedish was much better now; she spoke with virtually no accent.
‘The Kloss launch,’ she said. ‘Veronica and Kent are going to shoot Aron Fredh. They’re going to take him out in the boat, attach weights to his body and throw him overboard.’
Lisa was trying to understand. ‘You mean … You mean murder?’
Paulina nodded, then she reached up and grabbed Lisa’s arm. ‘We have to go,’ she said. ‘Right now.’
Lisa blinked. ‘What?’
But Paulina didn’t answer, she just kept tugging at Lisa’s arm.
Eventually, Lisa got to her feet. ‘Is he here?’ she whispered.
Paulina shook her head. ‘Come on!’
‘But why?’
Lisa couldn’t understand what the rush was, but Paulina wouldn’t give up. She pulled even harder, and in the end Lisa dropped her end of the rope, swung her legs over the edge and scrambled down the slope.
Paulina turned away from her briefly, and shouted along the dip in a loud, shrill voice, ‘He’s got a gun! He’s outside the bunker!’
A man’s voice shouted in response, and Lisa saw a white light appear further along the dip. Kent Kloss had switched on his torch.
Lisa jumped down on to the gravel, managing to keep her balance. Paulina gave her a shove.
‘Run!’ she yelled. ‘Now!’
The loud cry galvanized Lisa into action, and she ran. Away from the dip, down towards the water. Paulina was running behind her, pushing her on. Across the gravel, down to the shore.
Behind them, the beam of the torch swept across the walls of the dip and suddenly it picked up a powerful figure in the darkness.
It looked like the old man, Lisa thought. Aron Fredh.
But he wasn’t down in the dip. He was standing up on the ridge, not far from the cairn. And he was holding something in his hand. Something shiny.
The Homecomer
It was time. Aron had left his car in the bathing area car park, at the far end of the inlet. Then he had walked south along the deserted coast road and turned off towards the cairn. He had crept silently through the long grass to the edge of the ridge, just above the entrance to the bunker. The cairn was now on his left, like a broad black cupola in the darkness.
He listened, and heard the throb of a small motorboat out in the Sound. Nothing else.
He moved on, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. Finally, he dropped to his knees on the gravel at the very edge of the rocky outcrop.
Searching in the dark was hard, but after a couple of minutes he found what he was looking for: the end of the pale plastic tube he had run from the bunker and buried a few days earlier. It was sticking out from under a stone, protected from dust and moisture by a small piece of tape.
Aron removed the tape and carefully pulled a little more of the tube free of the gravel. It didn’t look like a fuse, but that was exactly what it was. The modern kind was hollow, like a thin tube, and the inside was filled with highly flammable gunpowder. The fuse wasn’t lit with a match but with a metal spark igniter. It was smaller than a pistol butt, and Aron was already holding it in his hand. He attached the igniter to the fuse, and slowly got to his feet.
He gazed down from his vantage point but saw only darkness. Then he heard a shout, echoing through the dip: ‘He’s got a gun! He’s outside the bunker!’
It was a woman, and he recognized the voice.
Paulina.
Aron understood her warning, but didn’t have time to react or move before the sky was suddenly lit up. A white light was switched on in the dip; it swept upwards in a broad arc and shone straight in his face.
‘Aron!’ a man’s voice yelled.
Kent Kloss. He had a torch in his left hand and a gun in his right hand. An old gun that Aron knew very well. It was his own Walther.
Aron remained standing in the beam of the torch; he knew Kloss could see him. It didn’t matter any more.
He nodded to Kloss, brought his hand into the light and felt the button under this thumb.
‘Drop the gun!’ he shouted. ‘Otherwise, up she goes.’
But he was still too close to the bunker to risk pressing the button, and he hesitated a fraction too long.
‘Fuck you,’ Kloss said.
He raised the gun and fired. The bullet sped upwards in the darkness, and Aron reacted fast. He crouched down and shuffled backwards. He dropped to his knees again, then flattened himself on the ground; the second bullet whistled over his head.
Aron had dropped the igniter and the fuse. He began to feel around, and that was when he heard the crunch of gravel.
Kent Kloss had started to climb up out of the dip.
Where was the igniter? He saw it glinting in the grass but didn’t have time to pick it up.
‘Aron!’ a voice yelled. ‘It’s over!’
Kloss had reached the top and was just a few metres away, waving his torch around. Aron could see that the gun was still in his hand. At any minute, he would spot his target, take aim and fire …
Aron reached out, but not for the igniter. There were plenty of sharp pieces of stone lying around among the gravel, and he picked one of them up.
He turned to face Kent Kloss, raising his arm ready to throw as hard as he could.
He was aiming for the torch.
Lisa
‘Run, Lisa! Don’t stop!’
Paulina was holding on to her arm, and she sounded so determined, so definite, that Lisa simply allowed herself to be dragged along, fleeing blindly through the night, away from the steep rocks and down towards the flat part of the inlet.
Lisa didn’t slow down, but kept catching her toes on the bigger stones sticking up through the gravel; she almost fell several times.
‘Wait,’ she panted eventually.
When they reached even ground, she stopped to catch her breath; she could see the lights of the campsite, perhaps three hundred metres away. She looked back one last time and saw that Aron Fredh had been joined by another figure up on the ridge. Kent Kloss, holding his torch high in the air. They shouted at one another, and then they came together.
Two shadowy figures seemed to merge into one, fighting on the edge just above the bunker.
Paulina had also stopped and turned. She was just as breathless as Lisa, panting and staring up at the ridge, where the beam of the torch was still whirling around.
‘I have to go back,’ she said, taking a step towards the ridge.
‘No!’
‘Yes. He needs help.’
‘Who?’
Paulina didn’t reply, and Lisa grabbed her arm. ‘He’s dangerous!’ she said, although she didn’t really know which of the men she meant.
For a few seconds, they stood there motionless, engaged in a static tug-of-war. Lisa thought she was gaining the upper hand, persuading Paulina to change her mind and stay.
But it was already too late. The beam of light disappeared – had Kent dropped the torch?
It looked as if there was only one figure left. It was moving along the ridge away from the cairn, swaying unsteadily. Paulina stared at it and let out what sounded like a curse, in a foreign language. Then she suddenly shouted, ‘Look out!’ She pushed Lisa to the ground; Paulina was strong, and pra
ctically covered Lisa with her own body.
A few long seconds passed. The entire coast seemed to be waiting.
And then the silence was smashed to pieces, and chaos broke out. The darkness disappeared in a flash of yellow light, and the night was split in two by an enormous explosion.
The Homecomer
Aron had missed the torch with the stone, but he had hit Kent Kloss instead, on the right shoulder, and the sharp blow had made him drop the gun. Aron heard it land somewhere down below.
He didn’t wait; he spun around and crawled along on all fours, away from the cairn, pulling the plastic fuse behind him like an umbilical cord.
The gun was no longer a problem, but Kent Kloss certainly was. He was like a wild animal now, younger and angrier than Aron.
‘Stop right there!’ he yelled. Kloss hurled himself at Aron, gripping his arm, pulling at his jumper. ‘Stop, for fuck’s sake!’
Kloss was growling and swearing, but Aron fought back and managed to pull away. He carried on crawling along the edge. Kloss kicked out at his legs to try to knock him over, but Aron gritted his teeth. He was a soldier now; he could deal with pain. He kept on going.
Just a few more metres … The igniter was lying on the ground, a little metal tube with a round button at one end. He reached out, so close …
He felt a hard blow on his back. Kloss loomed above him, the beam of the torch pointing downwards.
‘Give it up!’ he shouted, lifting his foot to deliver a vicious kick with his leather boot.
Aron grabbed hold of the boot and twisted the other man’s leg like a joystick. Kloss lost his balance, his arms flailing. The torch flew out of his hand and the gravel crunched as he tried to regain his footing, but Aron didn’t give him any time. He punched Kloss in the chest.
‘Shit!’
Kloss screamed and seemed to hover for a second, clawing at thin air, before he fell backwards.
It wasn’t a long fall, only a metre or so down a scree slope, but the landing was hard. Aron heard a dull thud at the bottom, followed by gravel rattling down on Kloss.
Aron was free now and quickly covered the remaining distance along the ridge. He picked up the igniter, which was still attached to the fuse.
Kloss would be back once he had found the gun. Aron didn’t have much time.
He found a small hollow in the ground and lay down, flattening his body. He cupped his hands and held up the igniter. He knew that he was still close to the cairn – dangerously close, in fact.
He bent his head and pressed the button, producing a spark that ignited the thin layer of explosive inside the plastic tube.
The flame burned incredibly fast, faster than the eye could see. Moving at a speed of two kilometres per second, a lightning flash shot along the tube and into the bunker, where the spark ignited a series of detonators inside the hole that had taken Aron several weeks to dig out.
Deep inside the hole lay the main charge. The detonators did their job.
The month of August began with a dull roar over Kalmar Sound.
At quarter to one in the morning there was an explosion, a protracted boom that echoed across the bay. It could be heard as far away as the Småland coast and sounded like a thunderclap.
Aron was dangerously close. He pressed his body down in the hollow, less than fifty metres from the cairn; he had no idea whether he would survive.
The plastic explosive had been placed one metre down in the ground below the centre of the cairn, and the effect when it went up was as if a slumbering phantom had awoken and risen up from the depths of the earth.
Everything inside the bunker was destroyed.
The concrete walls cracked, the cement floor turned into gravel, and the locked metal door splintered into jagged shards that went whirling out into the dip.
The explosion caused a part of the ridge above the bunker to collapse and tumble down on to the shore. A huge rock trundled across the dunes like a steamroller, crushing the Kloss family’s boathouse and everything it contained: fishing nets, deckchairs, life jackets and cool bags.
But the main force of the blast went straight upwards, where there was no concrete – just soft earth, loose gravel and all those rounded stones that Sven Fredh had once piled up to build a cairn on the ridge.
They were lifted from the ground, up into the night sky, scattering through the air as if a volcano had erupted. The smaller stones were carried out over the Sound, plummeting down into the water, where Veronica Kloss was sitting in the family’s motor launch, waiting for her brother Kent to arrive with Aron’s body. Veronica kept her eyes shut and clutched the wheel as she heard the debris raining down on the boat; by some miracle, the boat escaped serious damage.
Aron stayed where he was, flat on the ground with his arms over his head; he could feel metal and stone whizzing past and landing all around him.
But most of the cairn went in a different direction: inland, in a dense shower.
Somewhere above the coast road, gravity took over from the blast, catching the stones one by one and dragging them downwards.
Gravel fell, earth fell. And the stones began to fall, too, like an invisible enemy in the darkness. Many of them headed straight for Villa Kloss, for the nearest house, which was Kent’s.
They came crashing down in his garden, on his freshly sanded decking, in his swimming pool and on to the tiles on his roof.
Niklas Kloss was alone in the house. He was in bed in one of the guest rooms at the back, wide awake following the explosion. The windows had shattered, but as the sound of breaking glass died away he heard something else: a loud hammering on the roof. Tiles broke, rafters gave way.
Niklas lay there frozen in terror, waiting for the ceiling above him to collapse, but it held. Then suddenly the hammering stopped. An echo of the explosion bounced back and forth across the inlet, then that, too, faded away.
Everything went quiet.
In the dip below the ridge, Aron began to move. His clothes and skin were covered in dust, but he raised his head, realizing that he was still alive. Slowly, he got to his feet, thinking about the cheerful man from Esbo who had once taught him how to bury dynamite, how to adjust the angle. And how to set it off.
He glanced over at the coast road, at Villa Kloss, and saw black holes in the ground and in the roof.
The stones from the cairn had come crashing down like cannonballs.
Gerlof
John had been happy for him to stay over, and Gerlof had phoned the residential home to explain his absence. They had gone to bed at about eleven o’clock, but Gerlof hadn’t been able to get to sleep. He kept on thinking about Veronica Kloss.
His thoughts went round and round in circles, but at last he dropped off into a deep and dreamless sleep – until, all of a sudden, the ground shook.
The foundations of John’s little cottage vibrated, as if a tsunami had rolled through the bedrock. The windows rattled and the furniture shifted. Somewhere, a newspaper slid to the floor.
He heard John call out and stumble out of bed in the room next door.
Gerlof raised his head from the pillow and, at the same moment, he heard a dull roar. It was like a thunderbolt, but the sound didn’t come from the sky; it seemed to come from the south-west. From the shore. And it was followed by a series of smaller bangs, as if objects were thudding down.
An explosion?
Gerlof had always been afraid of mines when he was at sea, but he knew this wasn’t a mine.
He heard heavy footsteps. His bedroom door opened, and John appeared. ‘Gerlof? Are you awake?’
‘I am.’
‘Did you hear the bang?’
‘I did.’
They both listened for a moment, but everything was quiet. Very quiet.
John switched on the light, but nothing happened. The power was off.
‘What shall we do?’ he said, moving over to the window.
‘There’s not much we can do,’ Gerlof said. ‘It might have been gas cylinders �
� Can you see any sign of a fire out there?’
John shook his head. ‘It’s pitch dark.’
‘In that case, as I said, there’s not much we can do.’
‘No …’
‘Perhaps you could light some candles,’ Gerlof suggested. ‘And your old stove.’
‘Good idea,’ John said. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
He hurried off to the kitchen. When John used to get stressed at sea, Gerlof had always given him a job to do. It calmed him down.
Gerlof stayed in bed, waiting for someone to phone or come knocking on the door, but everything remained quiet.
Something had happened in his village. Something terrible.
Aron Fredh, he thought. Aron had ramped up his war against the Kloss family, and Gerlof had been unable to stop him.
When he didn’t hear anything else from outside, Gerlof began to sink back into the darkness. He didn’t really want coffee. Not at this time of night.
Much later, after perhaps an hour, the sound of sirens began to approach from the main road, but by then Gerlof was fast asleep once more.
Lisa
Lisa had been pushed to the ground by Paulina, but she saw the explosion split the darkness. And felt it.
The glow was like an intense, golden-red sun on the ridge behind her, a sun that flared up and died away in a second. The next moment, she heard the roar and experienced something that felt like an earthquake. The ground beneath her vibrated, and the entire coast seemed to shake.
Ragnarök, she thought as she tried to crawl forward, away from the chaos. It was impossible, because Paulina was in the way, so she put her arms over her head to protect herself instead.
A shock wave swept over them, then came the debris. The gravel didn’t reach them, but Lisa heard a cascade of tiny stones splashing into the water.
For a few seconds there was silence.
Almost complete silence.
Then came a series of loud noises up on the ridge, along the coast road and over at Villa Kloss. Something large and heavy was crashing down on to the ground, like the irregular beat of a bass drum.
The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) Page 36
