Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

“He was a year or so older than me,” Astrid went on, “but we were still in the same class up at the junior school. And he always seemed to be in a bad mood, I never once saw him looking happy. He was always fighting, and he was a big lad. We girls were afraid of him... and so were the boys. Nils was always the one who started a fight, but he always blamed somebody else.”

“I missed him in school, I was older than Kant,” said Gerlof, “but John Hagman told me about the fights.”

“Then he started working in the quarry the family owned,” said Astrid, “but that didn’t go too well either.”

“There was a fight there too. A stevedore nearly drowned.” Gerlof shook his head. “Do you remember one of the boats they used to transport the stone caught fire the night after Nils finished there, Astrid? Isabell, she was called. She’d been blown into the harbor over at Långvik, and the captain was woken by the fire on board. They only just managed to tow her out past the jetty before she went up. ‘Spontaneous combustion’ they said at the hearing, but here in Stenvik plenty of people thought Nils Kant was responsible. And that was when it all started.”

Julia looked at him inquiringly. “When what started?”

“Well... Nils Kant became Stenvik’s very own scapegoat,” he answered. “Anything bad that happened was blamed on him.”

“Not everything,” objected Astrid. “Just all the crimes. Fires and thefts and injured animals...”

“Accidents too,” said Gerlof. “If the windmill sails split or nets broke or boats slipped their moorings and drifted away...”

“He deserved all the suspicion,” declared Astrid. “And he proved it.”

“He had his own story,” said Gerlof. “A strict father who died when he was little, and a mother who constantly told Nils he was better than everybody else in the village. It wasn’t a healthy upbringing.”

Astrid nodded, but remained silent and pensive for a few moments before asking quietly:

“I heard about the accident on the local radio yesterday... When’s the funeral, Gerlof?”

She’d quickly changed the subject, he noticed. Unless Astrid too realized that there was some kind of connection between Nils Kant and Ernst’s death.

“On Wednesday, as far as I know,” he said. “I spoke to John on the telephone this morning, and that’s what he thought.”

“And it’ll be in Marnäs church?”

“Yes,” said Ernst, picking up his coffee cup. “Even if it was that bloody church tower that did for him in the end.”

“Ernst was always so careful,” said Astrid. “I can’t understand what he was doing at the cliff edge.”

Gerlof shook his head, but said nothing.

“Is that everybody?” asked Julia after their visit to Astrid, when they were in the car on the way back to Marnäs.

“Everybody?” said Gerlof.

“Everybody who lives in Stenvik. Have we met everybody who lives there now?”

“More or less,” said Gerlof. “All the real Stenvik people. There are a few who come over on weekends from Borgholm and Kalmar. Probably fifteen or twenty altogether. I don’t really know them very well.”

“What’s it like in the summer?”

“Busy,” said Gerlof. “It’s packed with summer visitors here... hundreds of them. We just get more and more tourists. They keep on building and building. And there are just as many over on John’s campsite every week. We end up with almost more people than actually lived here when I was little. But it’s even worse over in Långvik, where they’ve got the marina and the beach hotel.”

“I remember what it’s like in the summer,” said Julia.

Gerlof sighed. “I shouldn’t complain. They come over from the mainland with money, after all.”

“But it’s difficult to know who’s who,” said Julia, braking to turn off toward Marnäs.

“It’s impossible in the summer,” Gerlof pointed out. “It gets just like the city where you live, people can come and go as they want.”

“They can do that in the autumn too,” said Julia. “I mean, there’s nobody down in Stenvik who can see—”

She suddenly stopped, as if something had occurred to her.

“Astrid usually keeps an eye open,” said Gerlof. Then he noticed Julia’s silence. “What is it?”

“I just remembered... Ernst said he was expecting a visitor. When I met him at our cottage the day before yesterday. He said, ‘You’re welcome to come and have a look at my sculptures, but not tonight because I’m expecting a visitor.’ Or something like that.”

“Is that what he said?” said Gerlof, gazing thoughtfully through the windshield.

“Is this about him too... this Nils Kant?”

“Maybe.”

There was silence in the car. They drove past Marnäs church, and Gerlof was reminded of Ernst’s impending funeral. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

“You know more than you’re willing to tell me,” said Julia after a while.

“A bit more,” said Gerlof quietly. “Not much. We have a few theories, John and I.”

Of course, Ernst had had a number of theories too, he thought sadly.

“This isn’t a game,” said Julia, a little sharply. “Jens is my son.”

“I know that.” Gerlof wished he could ask her to stop talking about Jens as if he were still alive. “And I’ll tell you what I think, soon.”

“Why did you tell Astrid about the sandal?” said Julia.

“To spread the news,” said Gerlof. “Astrid’s bound to pass it on, she’s good at that.” He looked at Julia. “Did you tell the police about the sandal yesterday?”

“No... I had other things on my mind. And why should we tell people about it?”

“Well... it might bring something out. Bring somebody out.”

“Bring who out?”

“You never know,” said Gerlof as they arrived at the residential home.

Julia helped him out of the car again.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know... I might go over to the church.”

“Good idea. There’s a lantern on Ella’s grave; you can take a candle to put in it. I’ve got one up in my room.”

“Okay,” said Julia, going to the door with him.

“And you can have a look around the churchyard too. When you’ve lit the candle on your mother’s grave, go over to the left-hand wall of the church and have a look at the graves there.”

“Right. Why?” said Julia, pressing the button that opened the outside door of the residential home.

“You’ll know when you see it,” said Gerlof.

Julia was standing in Marnäs churchyard looking down at Nils Kant’s grave.

It lay over by the west wall, the last in a long row of graves. The name NILS KANT was etched into the gravestone, and the dates 1925–1963. The headstone was small and unassuming, an ordinary piece of limestone that had probably come from the quarry down in Stenvik. Perhaps Ernst Adolfsson had hewn it out. It was over thirty years old, and patches of white lichen had begun to cover the top.

There was dry, yellow grass growing over the grave, but no flowers.

Julia had been wondering why nobody had mentioned Nils Kant as a suspect when Jens went missing. To provide an answer, Gerlof had sent her here, to the deserted churchyard outside Marnäs — and now she could see that Nils Kant couldn’t have had anything to do with Jens’s disappearance. In 1972 Kant had been dead for almost ten years. The answer to her question was carved into the stone.

So. Another dead end.

Two yards away was another gravestone, also made of limestone, but this one was taller and broader. Names and dates were carved into it: KARL-EINAR ANDERSSON 1889–1935 and VERA ANDERSSON B. KANT 1897–1972. In smaller letters below these names was another one: AXEL THEODOR KANT 1929–1936. That was Nils Kant’s little brother who had drowned, and whose body had been lost in the sound.