Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

‘I also miss the stewed meat we used to have,’ he says. ‘And the apples, the apricots, the potatoes, the sugar, the cream, and those wonderful sweet cherries...’

Aron listens open-mouthed. Dribbling. He had decided not to make any friends, but when Vlad talks about food, he could listen to him for ever.

Vlad has learned to survive in the camp. He has made himself a pair of boots from birch bark, his padded jacket has no holes in it, and somehow he manages to hold on to his sheepskin hat in spite of all the thieves. He also has a stock of paper and his own pen, and he teaches Aron how to write in Russian.

There are many new letters to get to grips with, and some letters that Aron recognizes don’t sound the same here, but slowly he learns the alphabet. He writes a Russian word in the way he thinks it would be written using Swedish letters, while Vlad writes it in Russian. Then they compare.

After almost three years, Russian is the language of everyday life for Aron. He speaks Swedish only with Sven, and those occasions are becoming increasingly rare.

Vlad has somehow managed to hide away a fresh onion, which he shares with Aron. While they are eating he says that he saw Max Hingley being taken away by men in grey uniforms. They were from the secret police, the GPU, and they came in the middle of the night.

‘It was because he was a foreigner.’

Aron stiffens, clutching a piece of onion in his hand. ‘A foreigner?’

‘The secret police assume all foreigners are spies.’

They munch on the onion in silence, and after a moment Aron says, ‘I’m not a spy.’

‘Are you sure?’ Vlad smiles and leans forward. ‘You ought to become a Soviet citizen... you and Sven. You ought to get yourselves Russian passports, then you can travel freely when you’re released.’

‘We don’t want to become Soviet citizens,’ Aron says. ‘We want to go home.’

Vlad nods. ‘But you have to get out of here first. Then you can go home.’

‘Yes, but how do we do that?’

‘You take passports from those who don’t need them.’

At first, Aron doesn’t understand. ‘But surely everyone needs their passport?’

Vlad shakes his head. ‘Not if they’re fitili .’

Fitili means candle wicks. It is the word used to describe those who will soon be extinguished — the dying prisoners.

Aron listens, and thinks things over.

He talks to Sven that night, in the darkness between the bunks when the other prisoners have fallen asleep, when they are snoring and snuffling loudly.

Aron whispers in Swedish, passing on Vlad’s warning and his advice.

‘He means... steal a Soviet passport?’ Sven whispers back when Aron has finished. ‘Turn thief in order to become a citizen? Is that what he said?’

Aron nods. ‘Take a passport. From a dying candle.’

They stare at each other in the darkness, listening to the snores and snuffles.

The interview at Villa Kloss was over; everyone had begun to get to their feet. It took the longest for Gerlof, who was there in his capacity as an independent witness, but he was deliberately being slow. He had remained silent while Cecilia Sander was questioning Jonas, but had kept an eye on Kent Kloss the whole time. The owner of the Ölandic Resort was smiling now, as if he had won a tennis match.

Gerlof wanted to wipe that smile off his face, so as he leaned on his stick for support he looked over at Kent and said quietly, as if he was just chatting, ‘By the way, I saw your dredger passing by Stenvik back in the spring... I presume it was on the way down to the Ölandic?’

In fact, it was John who had seen the dredger out in the Sound, but Kloss didn’t know that.

He nodded. ‘Yes, we had to clear some mud.’

‘From the bottom of the harbour?’

‘That’s right.’

Kloss wasn’t really listening; he glanced at his watch.

‘I know there’s a harbour at the resort,’ Gerlof went on. ‘It started off as a narrow steamboat jetty and was converted into a cargo dock after the war...’

Kloss didn’t say anything; he was already moving away from the table. But Gerlof stuck out his walking stick, almost barring Kent’s way, and asked, ‘Do you use the cargo dock?’

Kloss stopped and looked at him. ‘Well, you say cargo dock — it’s really just an old stone jetty that we’ve shored up with concrete.’

‘And you keep it in working order?’

‘Yes — as I said, we usually do some dredging in the spring; otherwise it just silts up.’

‘So what’s the depth by the jetty?’

‘A few metres... Three, maybe?’

Gerlof waved his stick at the picture of the Ophelia , which was still lying on the table. ‘That’s deep enough,’ he said. ‘I should think the draught of that ship is around two metres. So she could easily have been moored at the Ölandic’s jetty.’

Kent Kloss stared at him. Gerlof definitely had his attention now. He went on, ‘No one down in Borgholm seems to have seen her, and since the waters off this part of the coast are so shallow, there aren’t many other harbours. So was she in your cargo dock?’

Kent Kloss didn’t say anything, but now Cecilia Sander was also beginning to show an interest. She had gathered up her papers, but suddenly she looked at Kent. ‘Was she your ship?’

Kent Kloss turned to face her, and answered tersely, ‘The answer is no. Not really.’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘She wasn’t ours , I do know that... but it’s possible we might have been using her.’ Kloss lowered his gaze. ‘We had a ship in the dock at midsummer, but I don’t remember her name... She was delivering cargo; we’d rented part of the hold.’

‘For what?’ Cecilia Sander demanded.

Kent looked down at his hands and studied his nails. ‘For... food supplies,’ he said eventually.

‘It was fish,’ Gerlof said. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Fish, exactly. They brought fish from the Baltic to our restaurants. They unloaded over the midsummer holiday, then they left.’

‘You must have had some contact with them?’

‘Not since then.’ Kent Kloss shrugged, but Gerlof thought it was an act, that he was making an effort to appear relaxed. ‘And it was our kitchen manager who dealt with the delivery. I didn’t even know what Captain Herberg looked like; all I have is the phone number of the company in Hamburg.’

‘And have you seen the ship’s log?’ Sander asked.

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t,’ Kent said.

Sander jotted something down in her notebook. She nodded to herself, but didn’t seem entirely satisfied.

Gerlof wasn’t satisfied either. A delivery of fish from overseas. Perhaps that sounded logical at this time of year, but was it that simple?

He looked out of the window and saw Jonas on the decking, talking to a middle-aged man in a jacket. The man’s expression was serious and, occasionally, he glanced over towards the house. Jonas’s father, Niklas, Gerlof guessed.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ Cecilia Sander said as she left. She looked straight at Kent Kloss and added, ‘We’ll be working with Customs and Excise and with the coastguard on this case.’

Gerlof followed her outside. The sun had almost disappeared, but the heat was still there. At least Kloss had a big blue pool in which to cool off.

Jonas was already hard at work; he had switched on a small sander and was moving it over the decking with long, even strokes. His father had disappeared.

Gerlof turned and saw Kent Kloss standing by John Hagman’s car. John had wound down the window, and they were talking. They stopped when Gerlof reached the car. Kloss stared at him; the self-assured look was back in his eyes. Just you try , it seemed to be saying.