Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

Sven makes them each a hat of birch bark to protect them from both the mosquitoes and the sun. And then he picks up his spade and carries on digging.

‘We mustn’t give up,’ he says. ‘After all, this is what we wanted, isn’t it?’

Aron doesn’t say anything.

He never wanted to dig in the new country; he wanted to be a sheriff.

When they are given soup during their short break in the middle of the day, hundreds of mosquitoes land on the warm liquid, at first swimming and then slowly, helplessly, sinking. Aron crushes them with his spoon and shovels the lot down. He chews ferociously, with his eyes shut; he wants to murder the mosquitoes. Murder every last one.

Jonas was back at Villa Kloss. He wasn’t going to think right now, at least not about Peter Mayer. He was going to work.

He fetched the sander and plugged it into the socket on Uncle Kent’s decking. Then he switched it on and carried on sanding, one plank at a time. Slow and steady, just as his father had taught him. Every scrap of grey had to be removed from the wood, leaving it pale and fresh. Only then would he be able to start brushing in the oil.

Jonas worked on his knees, his forehead shiny with sweat. The sun was burning down and he really didn’t want to think about it — but that name kept echoing through his mind. Peter. Peter Mayer. Mayer. Peter. He knew he couldn’t talk to anyone, but the name Gerlof had given him just wouldn’t go away. The man on the ship, the man who had killed people with an axe.

Peter Mayer. Sold the tickets for The Lion King. Lives in Marnäs.

‘How’s it going, Jonas?’ His father had slid open the glass door and was looking down at him. ‘Are you getting on OK?’

Jonas nodded.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

Jonas didn’t know what to say. He tried to smile, but his father must have seen something in his expression. He stepped outside.

‘Are you missing Mum?’

‘A bit... But it’s all right.’

Jonas carried on sanding.

‘So what is it, then?’ his father said.

Jonas switched off the machine. After a few seconds he said, ‘Stuff’s been happening.’

‘Stuff? What are you talking about?’

‘Something happened... on Monday evening.’

‘Monday? When you were at the cinema?’

Jonas should have kept quiet, but he felt a kind of pressure in his chest when his father stared at him.

‘I didn’t go to the cinema,’ he said eventually. ‘I stayed at home.’

His father came and stood beside him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I went down to the shore and took the dinghy out. And something happened.’

The thing that had happened was too big to keep inside, and he ended up telling his father about everything he had seen out in the Sound. He spoke slowly at first, then faster and faster. He told him about the ship, about the living dead, about the man who had chased him. The man who might be called Peter Mayer.

His father listened carefully. He was a good listener; he had never laughed at anything Jonas had told him. And he wasn’t laughing now.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘So now I know. Thank you for telling me, Jonas.’

That was all he said. He didn’t seem in the least bit disturbed by the story, just thoughtful. After a while, he seemed to reach a decision.

‘Everything’s fine. You can go and play.’

‘I’m working,’ Jonas said. Then he thought about the woman he had spoken to at Gerlof’s house. ‘Are we going to contact the police?’

‘Of course... Soon. I need to think.’

His father looked away, over towards the water, as if he were slightly embarrassed. Then he went back indoors.

Jonas was worried; he had promised Mats that he wouldn’t say anything about the cinema trip to Kalmar, and he had promised Gerlof that he wouldn’t tell anyone about Peter Mayer. ‘Promise not to tell anyone else,’ Gerlof had said, but that was exactly what Jonas had done. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

All he could do was carry on working. Stop thinking.

After an hour he had finished about a fifth of the decking. The wood looked almost new, clean and fresh in the sunshine. No chips.

He was quite proud of himself.

As he straightened up, he saw a big car turn off the coast road. It was Uncle Kent, in a white cap and oversized sunnies. He opened the door and waved.

‘JK, come over here for a minute!’

Jonas made his way over. Uncle Kent got out of the car and was already talking by the time Jonas reached him.

‘Your dad called me a little while ago, JK... He said something exciting had happened to you the day before yesterday.’ Kent crouched down so that they were face to face. ‘He said you were on board a big ship, and you met a guy called Peter Mayer.’

Jonas didn’t say a word.

‘Is this true?’ Kent demanded.

Jonas nodded slowly.

‘Interesting.’ Kent held Jonas’s gaze. ‘In that case, let me explain. We had a ship in the dock at the Ölandic over midsummer, delivering a cargo of fish. It left a couple of nights ago, without informing us. We thought that was very strange.’

Jonas thought about the dead seamen, but still he didn’t say anything.

Uncle Kent went on. ‘And this Peter Mayer: he calls himself Pecka, and he worked at the resort as a security guard last summer... so I’d like to speak to him. But I want to be sure that it really was Pecka you saw on board that ship, JK. Do you think you’d be able to identify him?’

Jonas hesitated, but Uncle Kent smiled reassuringly.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Pecka lives in Marnäs. I have an address for him there, and I’d just like a word with him. But first of all I need to be sure... Could you come up there with me?’

Jonas thought for a moment, then nodded again. He opened his mouth to speak, but Uncle Kent ruffled his hair.

‘Excellent! In that case, we’ll pop up and see him this evening.’ Kent straightened up. ‘There’s a fair on in Marnäs, so it will be really busy. We’ll just have to hope he’s at home.’

Kent got back in the car, and Jonas watched as he reversed out on to the coast road.

There was nothing for it but to go back to his sanding. But things just didn’t feel right to Jonas.

Look for the man from the ship? And speak to him? But what if he had the axe with him?

No champagne, no pissed guests. Just a golden sunset and a warm breeze at a little outdoor bar and restaurant in Stenvik.

Lisa wasn’t spinning any discs this Thursday evening. She was sitting on a stool with her guitar resting on her knee and a microphone in front of her. The microphone was the only thing she could see clearly, because the sun was in her eyes.

She wasn’t wearing a wig tonight, because she wasn’t a DJ. She was a troubadour, playing folk songs. It was completely different from spending half the night in the DJ booth. The sound was nowhere near as good, for example — she had nothing more than one small speaker, and the wind coming off the water swept away quite a lot of the music.

She preferred the old Swedish songwriters such as Evert Taube, Dan Andersson and Nils Ferlin, but the audience often demanded more modern masters.

‘Play Ace of Base!’ a girl’s voice yelled out.

‘I don’t know any of theirs,’ Lisa said.

‘What about Markoolio, then?’ one of the guys shouted.

Lisa picked up her guitar. It was after nine, and time to finish off.

‘I’ll play you a song I do know,’ she said. ‘It was written by Tomas Ledin, and it’s all about how short the summer is...’

She was behaving herself this evening. There was no way Lady Summertime could be let loose among ordinary holidaymakers with her long fingers. She was after the fat wallets that belonged to the rich, so that she could give them to the poor. Well, to Silas.