Johan Theorin - The Quarry

Per started to run.

The trees thinned out and he hurtled into a sunlit glade.

The sun was shining down like a spotlight into the middle of the glade. Regina was lying there naked on a blanket on the grass; she was wearing a long blonde wig. She was sunburnt, Per noticed, but her breasts were chalk-white.

Markus Lukas, the man who had been driving the car, was also naked. He was lying on top of her.

And Jerry, who was standing next to them holding a big camera, didn’t have any clothes on either. He was snapping away all the time, click click click .

Regina gave a start as Per cried out; she looked at him, then quickly turned her head away.

Jerry lowered the camera and glared at Per. ‘Pelle, what the hell are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Go back and keep a lookout — stick to the job I gave you!’

Per turned and fled through the forest.

Twenty minutes later his father and the other two came back to the car, with their clothes on. Regina had taken off the wig.

Jerry laughed at his son all the way home.

‘He thought we were going to kill her.’ Jerry had turned to face the back seat. ‘Regina, he thought we were murdering you out there in the forest! He was coming to your rescue!’

Per wasn’t laughing.

He looked at Regina, but she refused to meet his eye.

Regina and Markus Lukas.

Per could still remember those two names. His head was full of old memories, and felt very heavy this morning. He lifted it and looked out of the bedroom window towards the two new houses. Nothing was moving over there, but the Larssons’ veranda looked empty. No trace of the party remained.

It had ended fairly soon after Jerry had thrown the magazine on the table. The Kurdins had gone home with their baby, Gerlof Davidsson and John Hagman had also left, and Vendela Larsson had started gathering up the remains of the food. It might have been his imagination, but Per had the feeling his neighbours wanted to see the back of him and Jerry as soon as possible.

He knew more or less what to expect from now on. The neighbours hadn’t said anything yesterday as he thanked them and took his leave, but he knew the questions would come.

The curiosity, the constant curiosity. And the meaningful smiles each time some new acquaintance found out he was the son of the notorious Jerry Morner.

‘ So have you ever been in a porn film then, Per? ’

‘ No .’

‘ Not even one? ’

‘ I’ve never had anything to do with Jerry’s activities .’

‘ Never? ’

‘ No. Never .’

He had become adept at it as an adult, distancing himself and swearing that he was nothing like his father. But why had he kept in touch with Jerry? And why had he been stupid enough to bring him to Öland?

Per would have preferred to stay in bed, but he got up anyway. He wished the sun wasn’t shining quite so brightly this morning. He didn’t want to think about Regina any more.

He didn’t want to think about the neighbours either.

Nobody else in the cottage seemed to be awake. The doors to the twins’ rooms were closed, and when he went into the kitchen he could hear his father’s long-drawn-out breathing from the spare room. It was a mixture of snoring and wheezing.

Per had heard the same sound each time he visited his father in the small apartment Jerry had rented in Malmö in the mid-sixties, before the really big money started pouring in.

The sound was particularly noticeable when he brought women home. Per would lie on his mattress in front of the TV listening to Jerry wheezing in the room next door, interspersed with regular groans and irregular cries or bouts of weeping from the women. He could never sleep on those nights when Jerry was taking photographs or filming, but he didn’t dare get up and knock on the door. If he disturbed his father, Jerry would shout at him, just like that day in the forest.

The bedroom had been Jerry’s workplace during the autumn and winter months when it was too cold to work outside. That was where he took photographs and did his filming, and it also served as his office. He had bought a water bed that filled half the room, and kept the company’s money in a fat envelope underneath it. The bed was both his office and his playroom; he had two telephones next to it, plus a Facit calculator, a drinks cabinet and a projector that he could use to show films on the white walls.

The Swinging Sixties , thought Per. But that’s all over now .

He knocked on the door of the spare room. ‘Jerry?’

The snoring stopped, only to be replaced by coughing.

‘Time to get up, Jerry — breakfast.’

Per turned and saw a black mobile phone lying on the table in the hallway. It was Jerry’s. He noticed that it was switched on, and that someone had called at around seven o’clock that morning. Everybody had been asleep, of course.

He picked up the phone to see if he recognized the name of the caller, but the display showed only NUMBER WITHHELD.

Jerry shuffled out on to the patio quarter of an hour later wearing a white dressing gown he had borrowed from Per. The twins were still asleep, but that was fine — Nilla in particular needed her rest. Besides, Per wanted to talk to his father without the children eavesdropping.

They nodded at one another in the sunshine.

‘Pelle?’ said Jerry, looking at the glass in front of him.

‘No alcohol today,’ said Per. ‘Orange juice.’

As his father sat down, Per caught a glimpse of the white dressing on his stomach. He helped him to butter a slice of toast, and Jerry took a big bite.

Per looked at him. ‘You should have played things a bit cooler yesterday, Jerry.’

His father blinked.

‘You shouldn’t have told the neighbours what you used to do. You shouldn’t have shown them the magazine.’

Jerry shrugged his shoulders.

Per knew that his father had never been ashamed of anything. Not Jerry, he just did whatever he wanted. He had loved his job and had fun all his life.

Per leaned across the table. ‘Jerry, do you remember a girl called Regina?’

‘Regina?’

‘Regina, who worked with you back in the sixties... She used to wear a blonde wig.’

Jerry pointed to his own thinning hair, and shook his head.

‘Yes, I know you turned all your girls into blondes... But do you remember Regina?’

Jerry glanced sideways, as if he were thinking.

‘What happened to her? Do you remember?’

Jerry said nothing.

‘Got old, I suppose,’ he said eventually, and started coughing.

Per let him finish, then picked up his father’s mobile to show him the missed call.

‘Somebody’s trying to get hold of you, Jerry.’

Vendela woke up at about eight o’clock on Maundy Thursday with a dry mouth and a blocked nose. It was probably her imagination, but when she opened the blinds she thought the air outside was yellow with whirling pollen.

Aloysius was sleeping at the foot of the bed, and Max was completely wrapped up in his duvet on the other side of the double bed. His face was turned away, but he was snoring loudly, with his mouth open. It was the wine, of course. He had knocked back glass after glass of red wine last night, despite all the talk of thinking about his heart and cutting back on the alcohol.

He would be like a bear with a sore head when he woke up, so she let him sleep for a while longer.

Today would be the photographer’s final visit to the island, which meant she would have to cook and bake bread before the morning’s photo shoot.

She threw the covers aside, blew her nose as quietly as possible and got up.

When Max lumbered out of the bedroom in a sad-looking dressing gown an hour later, Vendela had taken an antihistamine tablet and was waiting for it to take effect. She had set the dough for two different kinds of artisan bread to rise, and was mixing melted butter and rye flour for another kind. Ally had eaten some chicken-flavoured kibble and was lying under the kitchen table.