Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

Cecilia nodded. ‘He’s German, and his name is Thomas Herberg,’ she said. ‘His wallet was in his pocket, so we were able to identify him.’

No one said a word, so she picked up another picture. ‘And the ship you boarded, the Elia ... could this be her?’

Gerlof leaned forward. The photograph had been taken at an angle from the front, and showed a small cargo ship with a black-painted hull and two wooden structures on deck. He felt quite proud when he saw that it was very similar to the drawing he had done in the boathouse, with Jonas’s help. The big difference was that the ship in the photograph was safely tied up at a quayside.

‘Yes... I think so,’ Jonas said.

Gerlof glanced at Kent Kloss, who had looked at the picture then immediately turned away to gaze out of the window.

‘You got part of the name right,’ Cecilia said. ‘She’s actually called Ophelia , and she’s an old cargo ship from Hamburg.’

She turned the picture over and added, ‘Thomas Herberg was the captain.’

Ophelia , Gerlof thought. Not Elia — but perhaps the crew had painted over part of the name?

‘I have some more pictures,’ Cecilia Sander said, lining up four more. They were photographs of young men, aged between twenty and thirty. They were all staring into the camera with serious expressions, and Gerlof thought the pictures looked like police photographs. He didn’t recognize any of the faces, but Jonas quickly pointed to the fourth man.

‘I recognize him — that’s Peter Mayer. He was the one who suddenly appeared, the one with the axe.’

‘So you know his name? Have you seen him elsewhere?’

Jonas nodded. ‘At the cinema in Marnäs,’ he said at once. ‘When I was little... He was selling the tickets.’

Cecilia Sander made a note. ‘And is that the only time?’

Jonas glanced over at his uncle, who stared back. Then he looked at Cecilia Sander and nodded.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘In that case, I have just one final picture, Jonas. Have you ever seen this person?’

It was an enlarged and slightly blurred photograph of an elderly man with a grey beard; he was wearing a black jacket and staring straight into the camera. Gerlof could see part of a wooden sign behind the man; he recognized it as the name of the unit on the first floor at the residential home in Marnäs, just below Gerlof’s unit.

Eventually, he recognized the man, too: it was Einar Wall, fisherman and suspected arms smuggler. But Wall had lived in a cottage on the coast, not in the home, so why had the picture been taken there? Did he have a relative in Marnäs?

Jonas shook his head. ‘No.’

There was a brief silence as Cecilia Sander finished making notes, then she looked up at Jonas.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’ve finished then. You’ll receive a printed copy of this interview so that we’re all in agreement on what was said here today... And if there’s anything else, I’ll be in touch. Thank you very much, Jonas.’

Jonas gave a brief nod and got to his feet. He almost ran to the glass door leading out on to the veranda; Gerlof could see he was glad it was all over.

It was late on Friday evening, and the Homecomer wiped the sweat from his brow in the cramped kitchen as he tightened the last water pipe. The plastic bucket Rita had brought from the farm was standing beside him; it was empty now.

He and Rita had driven into the Ölandic Resort with the bucket and the high-pressure pump, and no one had stopped them. Presumably they looked like campers — an elderly father and his daughter, or possibly granddaughter.

Unscrewing the pipe work had taken quite a while, giving the two of them time to have a chat. Rita had talked about her family. She had no contact with her parents, and her brother worked in the far north of Norway, so she had come to Öland the previous autumn to try to find a new life. And because of Pecka; they had met at a music festival.

‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Do you have family in the USA?’

‘I never said I was in the USA,’ the Homecomer replied. ‘I was in the Soviet Union.’

‘Which no longer exists,’ Rita said. She didn’t ask any more questions.

At last, everything was done.

‘Here we go,’ Rita said, switching on the pump.

The Homecomer took a step back and listened to the low hum. This was the beginning of the nightmare for the Kloss family.

Everything was heading towards its conclusion now. That was how it felt. Pecka and Wall were dead. His wife was dead, too — and he might not have long left either.

The Homecomer looked out of the window.

He saw the campsite with its rows of tents and chalets, but he was thinking about a prison camp.

Life is work. The sleep of exhaustion and hard work; nothing else.

Aron and Sven are trapped. They are prisoners by night and slaves by day; they are never free. They labour with axes and saws along with Matti, a tall, thin Finn, and Grisha, a short, stocky Ukrainian. They fell fir trees from morning till night and drag the logs down to the river. There are no horses yet — while they are waiting for the horses to arrive, the men have to act as beasts of burden.

Where are they? Somewhere in the north of the Soviet Union, that’s all they know. This is where they were sent, after brief questioning and instant verdicts.

Documents were produced, stamped, copied. Aron could read Russian well enough by now to realize that he and Sven had been convicted of sabotage and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp.

What is sabotage? They have no idea.

But the punishment is work: even more work.

After a few days in a crowded cell near the court, they were transported by night to a train, where they were pushed into a wagon lined with wire cages full of prisoners. They were given a little soup, and the train began to move.

They travelled for hours, perhaps days. The cold got more and more intense. There were no windows in the wagon, just cracks in the walls, but they presumed they were heading north.

There was no toilet either, just a hole in the floor which soon froze over. After that, the prisoners just had to squat down in the darkest corner. After a while, there was a stinking pile there, growing bigger with every visit.

From time to time, the train stopped and more prisoners were hustled into the cages. They were guarded by young men in uniform, soldiers with rifles and sub-machine guns. Aron looked at them, remembering how it had felt to hold his very own gun when he was a little boy.

‘Have you seen the knives attached to the barrels?’ he whispered to Sven.

‘Those aren’t knives,’ Sven said wearily. ‘They’re called bayonets.’

Aron was amazed. ‘So they can use their guns to shoot someone, and stab them as well?’

Sven didn’t reply, he just leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Aron sat alone by the wire mesh, staring at the guns.

Eventually, the train stopped, and this time it didn’t move off again. When the doors opened, it was twilight. The prisoners were brought out on to a snow-covered platform; they were lined up and marched off. Straight into the forest.

Aron’s first sight of the camp was a bundle of clothes powdered with snow in a great big pile by the side of the track. Then he saw a blackened hand sticking out of the pile like a claw and realized he was looking at a heap of dead bodies.

‘They don’t bury people here,’ he said.

Sven didn’t respond, but another prisoner behind them mumbled something in Norwegian; he said the ground was frozen solid.

Everything was frozen here.

The second thing Aron saw was a fence covered in ice, with shadows sitting or lying by some of the posts — enormous chained dogs. Further away, there was a watchtower, three storeys high, overlooking a row of low huts.