Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

And then he takes a deep breath and at long last he tells her who he really is. He is not from the Ukraine, and his name is not Vladimir Jegerov.

‘My name is Aron,’ he says. ‘Aron Fredh, and I came here from Sweden in the thirties.’

Mila is still listening, and she does not recoil in horror.

‘I had to change my name and become someone else in order to survive,’ he says eventually. ‘But the executioner is gone now.’

Yes, Vlad is gone. He is dead. Aron is almost certain.

But he and Mila are alive, and twenty-four hours later they become parents.

Their daughter grows into a happy schoolgirl, tall and slender as a reed, with lots of energy. Aron loves his child; he plays with her for hours. When she is old enough, he begins to speak a little Swedish to her.

Mila sometimes goes out with friends from her army days, but Aron spends most of his time at home with his daughter.

He retires in the year she starts school. It feels as if a large part of Vlad’s spirit leaves him on that spring day, never to return.

Aron visits the KGB veteran association occasionally, to catch up with former colleagues, but he grows tired of their melancholy nostalgia and his visits become more and more infrequent. He gains nothing from the quiet conversations, and the fear of being caught up in bonds of friendship has been with him ever since his days with the NKVD.

Aron takes it easy. He lives for the beautiful light over Moscow, for the sun drifting over the river and the parks — and for his wife and daughter.

And yet: one day he would like to show them his home at Rödtorp, and the shore.

‘Kloss has installed a new alarm system,’ John Hagman says.

‘I can understand why,’ Gerlof replies. ‘They’re afraid of Aron Fredh.’

John had picked him up from the residential home on Saturday evening; they had driven down to Stenvik, to John’s little cottage, then on to the campsite, where John had collected the day’s fees from the holidaymakers.

Now they were sitting in John’s car south of the campsite, looking towards Villa Kloss. There were lights on in both houses, but Gerlof couldn’t see any movement at the windows. The sun had gone down and no doubt the alarm was switched on, so he was reluctant to go and ring the doorbell.

‘I understand him a little better now,’ he said. ‘Aron, I mean.’

‘In what way?’

‘I understand what drives him. The Kloss family have taken everything Aron Fredh had left on this island. Everything he has done this summer has been an act of revenge.’

‘They should have spoken to one another,’ John says.

‘Yes, but I presume Aron did that before he left Russia. I should imagine he got in touch and told them he wanted his share of the inheritance, as Edvard Kloss’s son.’

‘An unknown heir,’ John said.

‘Two heirs,’ Gerlof pointed out. ‘Greta Fredh was Edvard’s daughter, and Aron is his son. “Illegitimate children”, as we said in those days, but still with a legal right to Edvard’s land... Land on the coast around Stenvik, worth millions. This was bad news for the family and, even worse, Greta and Aron were entitled to claim their share of the Ölandic Resort.’

‘If I know the Kloss family as well as I think I do,’ John said, ‘they would never agree to that.’

‘No, and I think they made that pretty clear. They’d already demolished Aron Fredh’s childhood home, and his sister, Greta, is no longer alive. Apparently, Veronica Kloss was the last person to visit her the day she died.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Exactly,’ Gerlof said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since I discovered how much the staff at the home trusted Veronica Kloss. She was able to come and go more or less as she wished. And that was why she was able to kill Greta.’

‘Do you know that for certain, Gerlof?’

‘Well, it wasn’t anybody else, at any rate. Greta Fredh was in her bathroom when she fell and broke her neck. And I’m told she always locked the door, so no one could have pushed her over.’

‘But you think Veronica managed to get to her somehow?’

‘Yes,’ Gerlof said. ‘There is a way to make a person fall over on the other side of a door... If they’re light enough, and if you have strong arms. And if the floor is flat.’

John was listening, and Gerlof went on. ‘There’s a long, narrow, plastic mat in the hallway in every room in the home. I think Veronica put the mat in the bathroom, with one end sticking out under the door. When Greta had gone into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, Veronica stood on the other side and yanked the mat away. Then gravity did the rest... Greta fell and broke her neck, and Veronica could simply replace the mat in the hallway and leave the room.’

‘So the murder weapon was a mat,’ John said.

‘It was still in Greta’s room. I told the staff to put it somewhere safe so that the police can take a look at it. There could be fingerprints, or other traces. The mats don’t get washed very often up there.’

‘Did you call your own personal police officer?’

Gerlof sighed. ‘Tilda, yes. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very interested... she just said that fingerprints on a mat don’t really count as proof. I think the only thing that would convince her is a confession from Veronica Kloss.’

‘Not much chance of that,’ John said.

‘No. And that’s why we’re sitting here. Like two owls.’ Gerlof glanced over at Villa Kloss and sighed again. It was almost ten o’clock, and he felt tired and powerless. ‘What can we do?’ he said. ‘This is like one of those old disputes over land; it just gets more and more bitter. We’ve got Aron Fredh on one side, and the Kloss siblings on the other. This could end very badly.’

‘Do you want to go home?’ John said.

‘Yes.’

John started up the car and set off along the coast road, away from Villa Kloss.

‘Perhaps I could stay the night at your place,’ Gerlof said.

‘Of course.’

‘Then we can try and have a word with the Kloss family tomorrow. When it’s light.’

‘Good,’ John said.

But Gerlof didn’t think there was anything good about it.

What am I doing here? Lisa thought in the darkness down by the shore. How did I end up in the middle of all this?

She didn’t really remember; she just knew what she had to do. Kent Kloss had set a trap for Aron Fredh, and she was part of it.

She lay pressed against the rockface above the entrance to the dip; she could hear the rushing of the sea behind her and was vaguely aware that her new friend Paulina was crouching on the edge of the rock on the other side. It was after midnight, which meant it was technically Sunday morning and the month of August had just begun. Lisa and Paulina had already been in position for over an hour.

The moon had risen, but its light didn’t reach into the crevices in the rocks above the shore.

Kent had brought a powerful torch with him, and Lisa and Paulina had their walkie-talkies so they could alert him if anything happened. If someone approached the rocks, they were to press the ‘send’ button twice; if someone entered the dip, they were to press it three times.

Kent had hidden himself further along, somewhere near the bunker, with his camouflage jacket and his torch. Lisa thought he might be armed, too, possibly with a knife. It was just a feeling she had, the way he moved when he crept down from the ridge.

She couldn’t see much at the moment; the area all around her lay in darkness, thanks to Kent. Once the rest of the Kloss family had gone to bed, he had turned off all the lights on the outside of the house and the lighting in the garden.