Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

Going home.

But of course this wasn’t how Aron had expected it to end; he had intended to die on Öland, in the croft by the shore.

There was a cafeteria on the ferry, a small shop and a passenger lounge equipped with tables and chairs. They chose seats over in a corner, where no one could hear them.

Aron sat down carefully; his stomach was hurting. He looked out of the window to the south, as if he could see Stenvik and all the damage he had caused there.

Then he sighed and said to his daughter, ‘I am a cleanser.’

Paulina was silent for a moment, then she said, quietly but firmly, ‘Not any more. You’ve finished with all that, Papa.’

Aron looked at his hands. ‘Cleansing and purging, that’s all I was good at. It was the only thing I was praised for when I was young, so that’s what I’ve done all my life. Apart from meeting your mother and taking care of you.’

‘That was enough, Papa.’ Paulina reached across and stroked his cheek. ‘We’re going home now; we can rest and eat good food. We’re done with this country.’

She was efficient, as usual, focused, just as she had been when she had applied for the post with Kent Kloss — but Aron sensed a calmness in her after a stressful summer, and a kind of forgiveness, too.

He tried to relax. The quayside was empty now; everyone had either boarded the ferry or gone home. The Ford stood there abandoned; he had left it unlocked, with the keys in the ignition, so that anyone could take it if they felt like it.

Slowly, he got to his feet.

‘I’m hungry,’ he lied. ‘Can I get you something?’

Paulina shook her head. He patted her cheek, allowing his hand to linger a fraction longer. Then he walked out of the lounge.

One minute to departure.

It was time to decide; Aron made up his mind. He went over to the locker and took out his bag, then made a beeline for the gangplank. He jumped ashore only seconds before it was removed.

A young sailor was standing on the quay, holding the last hawser. He looked at Aron in surprise.

‘Changed your mind?’

Aron nodded. His stomach wasn’t hurting quite so much now that he no longer needed to hide the pain. The sun was beginning to warm the air, and he was hardly shivering at all.

The sailor threw the rope on board, and the ferry began to pull away. The stretch of open water between the ship and the quayside quickly grew; soon it was too late to jump on to the deck, even if Aron had been young and fit.

He caught a last glimpse of Paulina’s dark hair through the window. Her head was bowed, and she didn’t see him.

The pain he was feeling now was the pain at the thought of never seeing his daughter again. But in her bag was the money Aron had taken from the safe on the Ophelia — over half a million kronor. She would have a good life without him.

Cumulus clouds were beginning to gather above the horizon in the west, grey and hammer-shaped, a forewarning of the bad weather to come in the autumn. A storm was on its way.

He turned his back on the water. There was plenty of time now. His daughter would be stuck on the ferry from Öland to Gotland for several hours.

Taking short steps, he made his way back to the car; he got in and let out a long breath. He threw his bag on the back seat and heard the guns inside clink together. As he thought about them he saw Veronica’s face before him, with that cool expression. He saw her walking around the sunlit lawns at the Ölandic Resort, just as composed and triumphant as Lenin’s widow.

Aron was dying. He didn’t know how many hours he had left — but Veronica Kloss was going to live on.

Was she?

No , Vlad said inside his head. No, she wasn’t.

He started the car and glanced over his shoulder at the bag containing the guns. Then he swung the car around and drove south.

For the second time that summer, Jonas woke up in a boathouse, confused and blinking. But this place had thick stone walls, and he wasn’t in a bed. He was lying on a pile of nets, fishing nets that were soft with age and stank of tar. The wind was howling around the boathouse, and he could hear the muted cry of gulls outside.

He realized that he wasn’t alone. Casper and Urban were over by the wall, wearing pyjamas; when he looked down, he saw that he was in his pyjamas, too.

His cousins seemed as drowsy as he was, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.

Jonas knew he had fallen asleep in the chalet, but he had vague memories of the night: a white angel by his bedside, a sweetish smell filling his nostrils. Then rough hands in the darkness.

He closed his eyes, dozed, waited. Someone had left bottles of water on a stool by the wall, and all three boys had a drink. A thin strip of light was visible through a narrow gap under the door, and eventually Urban got up. He pushed the wooden door with both hands, harder and harder, but it was sturdy and impossible to move. It must be secured from the outside somehow. Urban gave up and went back to his pile of nets.

The three of them sat in silence. Jonas had lots of questions, but no one had any answers. As the light outside grew stronger, Urban and Casper started talking to him.

They both had a headache. So did Jonas.

‘It must have been some kind of drug,’ Urban said quietly. ‘They knocked us out while we were asleep.’

‘I remember someone carrying me,’ Casper chipped in. ‘It was a man... an old man. But he was strong.’

The cairn ghost, Jonas thought.

They sat there in the semi-darkness for a long time. None of them had a watch. All they could do was wait. Jonas leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, listening to the wind and the birds.

Then he heard something else: the sound of a car engine nearby. He raised his head. ‘Can you hear something?’

Casper and Urban listened, looking worried.

‘Is it him?’ Casper whispered.

‘Dunno.’

The car drove right up to the boathouse, then the engine was switched off. They heard slow, heavy footsteps approaching through the grass.

The rattle of a padlock, the sound of an iron bar being removed. The door opened.

An old man stood there looking at them, his expression forbidding. Jonas recognized him; it was the man he had seen by the cairn.

Ten metres behind the man he could see a blue Ford.

The man had a black gun in his hand, pointing at the floor, but from the easy way he was holding it Jonas could tell he was used to it. The gun was a tool. He would take aim in a second if it became necessary.

‘Out you come,’ he said.

Jonas and Casper stood up and stepped out through the low doorway. The light was very bright outside; it felt like afternoon. Urban came out last, but the cairn ghost stopped him with his free hand, looking closely at him.

‘You’re a Kloss, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘And Veronica is your mother?’

Urban nodded.

‘Good.’ The man pointed along the shore. ‘Off you go. There are houses a few kilometres down the coast. Run to one of them and call home. Call your mother and tell her where you’ve been. Tell her to come here as soon as possible. To Einar Wall’s boathouse. Alone.’

Urban looked at Jonas and Casper and opened his mouth. ‘I just want to say—’

‘Shut up,’ the man said. He pointed the gun at Urban with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. ‘Do you want a bullet in the back of your neck?’

‘No, but—’

‘Clear off, then.’

Urban glanced anxiously at Jonas and Casper once more — then he ran, loping across the grass by the shore.

The cairn ghost watched him go.

‘Good.’ He nodded to the two boys. ‘Now it’s just the three of us.’

Jonas didn’t dare say anything, but he suddenly realized that the man was sick. He was swaying slightly, and from time to time he pressed his hand against his stomach, as if he was in pain. His face was shiny with sweat, even though the heat of summer had passed.