Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

He glanced over to the west, where the water was just visible through the trees.

‘So I knocked on the wheelhouse door, but there was no response. No one was there. I could have gone back to my own ship, but I had a strange feeling. So I walked around the deck and saw that the cargo hatch was partly open. I looked down into the darkness, and they were just lying there. Two fishermen side by side in the hold.’

‘Murdered?’

‘That’s what I thought at first, so I climbed down. They were dead, but there wasn’t a mark on them — just a kind of blue tinge to their faces. That was when I guessed what had happened, and I tried to turn around to climb back up out of the hold. That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up on deck, with John yelling at me. Somehow I had managed to crawl up the ladder before I passed out. I felt terrible... you could say I was one of the living dead by that stage.’

‘So there was poison gas in the hold of this fishing boat?’

Gerlof shook his head. ‘No, just fish... but it was the fish that had killed them. The fishermen had been cleaning their catch below deck, and the guts had started to rot in the summer heat, producing hydrogen sulphide. It had consumed all the oxygen, suffocating them.’

‘Does it happen very often?’

‘Not on modern fishing boats. They have refrigeration equipment and ice to keep the fish fresh. But it used to happen sometimes in the past, in the summer. And on an old ship with fish in the hold, the kind of ship Jonas might have been on last night... it could happen. He said the deck stank of fish, so the men he saw could have been poisoned by hydrogen sulphide.’

Tilda thought about what he had said. ‘So we’re talking about a fatal accident?’ she said.

‘It could have been an accident,’ Gerlof conceded. ‘But I wonder... You have to be in an enclosed space in order to suffocate. And why would they all be below at the same time, on a ship so near to the coast? It’s as if someone forced the crew below deck, then locked them in.’

Tilda didn’t say anything for a moment, then she took out her mobile and moved a short distance away. Gerlof heard her speaking quietly to someone. After a few minutes she was back.

‘I’ve spoken to the coastguard; they had no reports of ships off Öland last night.’

‘What did you say to them?’

‘I just said that a member of the public had seen a ship that appeared to be adrift off the coast near Stenvik. They’re not going to launch a major search, but they did promise to keep an eye open.’

Gerlof picked up his stick and accompanied Tilda to her car.

‘Is this important to you?’ she asked.

‘Not really,’ Gerlof said, then he thought for a second and went on, ‘But someone has to listen to young people. When I was a boy I heard the sound of knocking from inside a coffin up in the churchyard, but my father just laughed when I came home and told him about it. And that’s why I never laugh, whatever strange tales I might hear.’ He looked at Tilda. ‘How are you getting on with your ghosts up at the lighthouses, by the way?’

‘They’re on holiday,’ she said tersely. ‘Just like I shall be, very soon.’

She got in the car and drove off.

There’s nothing more I can do, Gerlof thought as he went back to sit in the garden. The birds were singing, the sun was blazing down. But he couldn’t stop going over what Jonas had told him.

A ghost ship in the Sound, with an elderly American on board.

And a younger man from Africa?

On sunny summer days Öland’s beaches were crowded; there were more tourists than the Homecomer had ever seen, which was a good thing. He could simply walk around like one of them, an old man in shorts and a red T-shirt and sunglasses.

He could also visit the burial cairn in Stenvik without anyone asking what he was doing there. It was an ancient monument, after all, open to everyone. So he parked the Ford he had bought in Stockholm among all the other cars down by the mailboxes in Stenvik, then headed south.

When he looked out over the Sound he could see a number of vessels: small motorboats close to the shore, and a few larger yachts further out, but not one single ship.

In the warm sunshine, with a good night’s sleep behind him, it was difficult to recall exactly what had happened yesterday: boarding the ship, forcing the crew below, blowing a hole in the hull. There was no sign of the ship today.

The Homecomer passed the small campsite down by the water, then headed up towards the ridge. He could stay out of sight of the summer cottages along the coast road, because there was a narrow dip above the shore. It was man-made; it had been hacked out by stonemasons in days gone by as they worked their way down the rock. They had left behind a V-shaped cleft with gravel and broken stones at the bottom. The Homecomer moved cautiously so that he wouldn’t trip.

After a while, he saw the cairn above him; it looked like a large pile of stones up on the ridge. It was closer to the edge than he remembered; the cliff face must have suffered from erosion over the past seventy years.

Time smashed everything to pieces.

A few metres below the cairn there was a metal door set in a concrete frame; it seemed to lead right into the rock almost directly below the cairn. It looked like the entrance to a bunker — perhaps it was a defence post left over from the war?

The Homecomer glanced around, but he was still alone.

The metal door was secured with a heavy padlock and chain. He tugged at it, but to no avail. He would need a pair of bolt cutters.

After a minute or so, he walked away from the bunker and found a narrow flight of stone steps that took him up the hill and on to the ridge. He stood by the cairn for a while, silent and still, thinking of Sven.

Then he turned and looked inland, towards the houses on the other side of the coast road. Two rectangular bungalows with enormous windows and an expanse of wooden decking. Between them he could see a huge blue swimming pool.

He was close to the Kloss family now, just a few hundred metres away, but he could move around out of sight in the dip. And they didn’t know him. No one knew who he was.

Which made everything so much easier.

Aron and Sven are standing on deck with their luggage. They have arrived. The steamer SS Kastelholm is sliding into a large, unfamiliar harbour full of other ships; she slowly heaves to beside a broad stone quay. Aron watches as the city with its tall buildings and wide streets grows before his very eyes. Vast buildings with long rows of narrow windows.

Stockholm was nothing compared to this. Aron doesn’t recognize the name of the city; he just knows they have arrived in America.

The United States. The new country.

Sven carries their bags and tools down the gangplank; they are led through a dark stone doorway where everyone has to stand in line. Eventually, two broad-shouldered men in uniform arrive to interview them, with the help of an interpreter. Aron says nothing; Sven does all the talking. He shows their passports, holds up the spade, smiles at the interpreter and the grim-faced officials.

‘We’ve come here voluntarily.’

‘Of course,’ says the interpreter. ‘But what is it you intend to do here?’

‘We want to work, both of us. We want to build the new country.’

The interpreter confers with the guards, then he says, ‘What is your profession?’

‘We’re agricultural workers. I’ve worked in flour mills, but I’ve spent most of my time growing crops and tending cattle. And my stepson has attended school and helped me in his spare time.’