Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

“Malm Freight was the exception,” said Gerlof. “Martin Malm was a captain who had the courage to invest in bigger ships. He built up a small fleet of cargo ships that sailed all over the world. He made money, and bought more ships with his profits. Martin became one of the richest men on Öland by the end of the sixties.”

“Did he?” said Julia. “Great.”

“But nobody knows where he got the capital from to start up,” said Gerlof. “He didn’t have any more money than any other skipper, as far as I know.” He pointed at the book. “Malm Freight published this memoir last spring. Turn it over, I want to show you something.”

On the back was a short text explaining that this was an anniversary publication about one of Öland’s most successful shipping companies. Beneath the text was a logo, consisting of the words MALM FREIGHT with a silhouette of three seagulls hovering above them.

“Look at the seagulls,” said Gerlof.

“Right,” said Julia. “A drawing of three seagulls. And?”

“Compare it with this envelope,” said Gerlof, passing her the brown envelope. It had a Swedish stamp with a blurred postmark, and was addressed to him at the Marnäs Home, Marnäs, in shaky handwriting in black ink. “Somebody has torn off the right-hand corner, just there. But there’s still a little bit of the right seagull’s wing... can you see it?”

Julia looked, then nodded slowly. “What is this envelope?”

“The sandal arrived in it,” said Gerlof. “The boy’s sandal.”

“But you threw that envelope away. That’s what you told Lennart.”

“A white lie. I thought it was enough that he was taking the sandal.” Gerlof quickly went on: “But the important thing is that this envelope came from Malm Freight. So it was Martin Malm who sent Jens’s sandal. I’m sure of it. And I think he’s phoned me too.”

“Phoned you?” said Julia. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“He might have phoned.” Gerlof looked out at the big houses. “There wasn’t much to say about it, just that somebody has called me this autumn on a few evenings. It started after I got the sandal. But the person who called never said a word.”

Julia lowered the envelope and looked at him. “Are we going to see him now?”

“I hope so.” Gerlof pointed at the big white wooden house. “He lives there.”

He opened the car door and got out. Julia stayed where she was for a few seconds, motionless at the wheel, then she got out of the car as well.

“Are you sure he’s at home?”

“Martin Malm is always at home,” said Gerlof.

A cold wind from the sound was blowing around them, and Gerlof glanced back over his shoulder at the water. Once again he wondered about Nils Kant — how he’d somehow got across this sound, almost fifty years earlier.

Nils Kant is sitting in a grove of trees on the mainland, looking out across the water to Öland, which is a narrow strip of limestone along the horizon. His expression is full of sorrow, and the sighing of the wind is melancholy in the tops of the pine trees above him. The island on the opposite side of the sound is illuminated by the morning sun; the trees are bright green, the long beaches shimmer like silver.

His island. And Nils will return to it. Not now, but as soon as he can — that’s for certain. He knows he has done things for which no one will forgive him for a very long time, and Öland is dangerous for him right now. And yet none of this is really his fault. Things have simply happened, there was nothing he could do about them.

The fat district superintendent crept up on him on the train and tried to capture him, but Nils was too quick for him.

“ Self-defense,” he whispers toward the island that is his home. “I shot him, but it was self-defense...”

He stops and clears his throat noisily to get rid of the tears.

Twenty hours have passed since Nils jumped off the train out on the alvar. He escaped by making his way quickly south on the island, staying far out on the alvar where he feels at home, avoiding all roads and villages.

A few miles south of Borgholm, where the sound is at its narrowest, he went down to the water through the forest. There he found a half-rotten dried-out tar barrel with the top part cut away, and he placed his few possessions inside it. Nils waited in the forest until darkness fell, then he undressed and pushed the barrel out into the cold water. He wrapped his arms and upper body around it, clinging on tightly, then began to kick his way across the sound, toward the black strip that was the mainland.

It must have taken a couple of hours to get across, but there were no boats in the vicinity when he passed the channel, and nobody appeared to have spotted him. When he finally reached Småland, naked and with frozen legs, he barely had the strength to lift his possessions out of the barrel and crawl in beneath the trees, where he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Now he’s wide-awake, but it’s still early in the morning. Nils stands up; his legs are still aching after the swim, but it’s time for them to get to work again. He isn’t far from Kalmar, he realizes, and he needs to get away from the town. There are bound to be lots of policemen patrolling the streets.

His clothes are dry and he puts on a shirt, sweater, socks, and boots, and slips his wallet into his pocket. He must definitely hang on to the money his mother gave him; without it he’s lost, and won’t be able to stay in hiding.

He no longer has the Husqvarna shotgun — it’s at the bottom of the sound. When he was about halfway between the island and the mainland, he took it out of the barrel, held it by the sawn-off barrels, and dropped it into the water with a feeble splash. And it was gone.

There were no cartridges left in the gun anyway, but Nils will miss its reassuring weight.

He thinks about his rucksack, shot to pieces, and misses that too. He has to carry everything in the pockets of his trousers now, and in a little bundle made from a handkerchief, so he can’t take much with him.

He starts to walk northward in the morning sun. He knows where he’s heading, but it’s a long way, and it takes most of the day. He keeps to the coast, avoiding all villages. He crosses the roads through the forest as quickly as possible; he feels safe among the trees. Twice he sees deer in the forest, so quiet that they surprise him. He can hear people approaching when they’re several hundred yards away, and can easily avoid them.

Nils knows perfectly well where Ramneby is; he’s been there several times while he was growing up, and his last visit was the previous summer. He doesn’t need to go into the village or around it, because the sawmill his Uncle August owns and runs lies to the south of the community.

He can hear the sound of whining saws from far away as he approaches, and soon he can smell the familiar aroma of newly sawn timber mixing with the seaweed from the waters of the Baltic.

Nils creeps cautiously out of the forest in the shelter of a big barn filled with planks of wood. He’s visited the place a few times, but isn’t sure how to get to the office. And he couldn’t show himself in the open anyway. A few hundred yards to the south of the sawmill is Uncle August’s wooden house, but Nils daren’t go there either. There are children there, chauffeurs, servants — people who might tell the police if they see him. He is forced to wait by the barn, concealed by a dense lilac bush whose heavily scented flowers attract countless insects.

Nils’s watch stopped when he was swimming across the sound, but he’s sure that at least half an hour passes before the first people come into view. Three workers from the mill pass the barn laughing, without even glancing in his direction.