Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

“A picture speaks more than a thousand words,” said Ljunger, braking. “Isn’t that what they say?”

The eastern shore of the island was now in front of them, on the far side of a grassy meadow that had turned yellow. The rain was falling over both land and water, a cold rain that really wanted to be snow.

“And the man standing behind Martin Malm is a sawmill worker called Gunnar Johansson. Who later changed his name,” said Gerlof. “Isn’t that right?”

“Not quite, I was a foreman at the mill at the time,” said Ljunger. “But it’s true, I did change my name to Ljunger when I came to Öland.”

He switched off the engine and everything went very quiet. The only sound was the wind and the rain.

“That picture should never have been included in the book,” said Ljunger. “It was Ann-Britt who put it in, I didn’t even know about it until after the book had been printed. But only you and Ernst Adolfsson recognized me. Ernst remembered me from school...”

“He grew up in Ramneby,” said Gerlof. “For me it wasn’t that easy to recognize you. But one thing I am wondering...”

He knew he was close to the end now; Ljunger would kill him, just as he had murdered Ernst.

“... I’m wondering, you were a foreman at the sawmill and you must have heard the stories about August Kant’s terrible nephew Nils. Was that when you got the idea to...”

“I actually met him,” Ljunger broke in.

“Who?” said Gerlof. “Nils Kant?”

“Nils, yes.” Ljunger nodded. “I’d started as an errand boy at the sawmill after the war, and Nils came there, he’d escaped from Öland on the run from the police. He was creeping around in the bushes when he spotted me on the road. He told me to go and speak to August Kant. And I did, but the boss didn’t want to know a thing about his killer nephew. He shoved five one-hundred-krona notes at me to give to Nils, to get rid of him. I pocketed two of them and gave Nils three.” Ljunger was smiling at the memory. “Then I lived like a king on the money for the rest of the summer.”

“So you realized early on that there was money to be made out of Nils Kant,” said Gerlof, looking out through the windshield at the rain.

“Yes,” said Ljunger, “but not exactly how much there was to be made. I had no idea. I thought I might get a few thousand and a free trip across the Atlantic to fetch Nils, maybe, when all the fuss had died down. That was what I suggested to August, once he’d made me foreman at the mill, but the old man turned me down flat. He wasn’t in the least interested in bringing the black sheep of the family home to Sweden.”

He lifted his hand and pressed a button next to the steering wheel, and there was a click in the door beside Gerlof.

“It’s open now,” he said. “Get out.”

Gerlof stayed where he was.

“But you didn’t give up,” he said, looking at Ljunger. “When August said no, you contacted Nils’s mother, Vera Kant, in Stenvik. You made her the same offer. And she said yes, didn’t she?”

Gunnar Ljunger sighed, as if he had a particularly stubborn child sitting next to him. He gazed out through the windshield at the coastal landscape.

“It was Vera who made me discover this beautiful island,” he said. “I came here for the first time in the summer of ’58. I took the ferry across to Stora Rör, then the train north. They were in the process of closing down the railway at that time, and seafaring on Öland was coming to an end too. I suppose many people thought Öland was dying... but I heard people on the train talking about a bridge that might be built. A long bridge, so that people could get off the island when they wanted to. And so that people from the mainland could come here.”

“The rich people from the mainland,” said Gerlof.

“Exactly.” Ljunger took a deep breath. “And then I came up here to northern Öland and discovered the sunshine and all the beaches where you could swim. Plenty of sunshine and water, but hardly any tourists. So I’d been doing some thinking, even before I knocked on the door of Vera Kant’s house in Stenvik.” He sighed. “Vera was sitting there in her big house, all alone and longing for her son. I started talking to her.”

“Lonely and unhappy,” said Gerlof. “But extremely rich.”

“Not as rich as you might think,” said Ljunger. “The quarry was well on the way to closing, and her brother had claimed the family sawmill in Småland.”

“She was rich in land,” said Gerlof wearily. “Land along the coast... beach land.”

He wondered how he was going to die. Did Ljunger have some kind of weapon with him? Or was he going to pick up one of the millions of stones on Öland and simply smash Gerlof’s skull, more or less as he had done with Ernst?

“Vera had a great deal of land, yes,” said Ljunger. “I don’t think anybody in Stenvik actually realized how much land that old woman owned, both north and south of Stenvik. Of course it was worthless as long as she didn’t do anything with it, but the right person would be able to take it over and sell it to people from the mainland... In the fifties there were only a few summer cottages up here, but I knew there’d be a demand for plenty more — and hotels and restaurants too. And when the bridge was built, the prices would skyrocket.”

“So you got Långvik from Vera,” said Gerlof.

“I got nothing.” Ljunger shook his head. “I bought all her land, perfectly legally. At a very low price, of course, and with money I’d borrowed from Vera, but it’s all documented and perfectly legal.”

“And Martin Malm borrowed money from her for bigger ships.”

“Exactly. We’d met when Martin was transporting timber to Ramneby,” said Ljunger, nodding. “I needed reliable people to work with... somebody who would bring Nils’s coffin home from overseas, and later Nils himself. Of course it was going to have to be some time before Nils could come home, because the minute he did, Vera would stop giving me land. I realized that, naturally.”

He smiled at Gerlof with satisfaction. “Let’s go.”

Ljunger opened the driver’s door.

Gerlof looked out through the windshield. He saw a desolate meadow leading to the shore, with the wind and rain pressing the grass down to the darkened ground.

“What’s here?” he asked.

“Not much,” said Ljunger, getting out of the car. “You’ll see.”

“Get out, Gerlof.”

Gunnar Ljunger had closed his own door, quickly walked around the car, and opened the passenger door. He was waiting impatiently for Gerlof to get out.

“I need to put on—” Gerlof began.

But Ljunger reached in with a gloved hand.

“You don’t need a coat, Gerlof.” Ljunger wore his yellow padded jacket, with LÅNGVIK CONFERENCE CENTER in black on the back. “You’re warm now, aren’t you?”

Ljunger was at least fifteen years younger than Gerlof, tall and broad and with plenty of strength in his arms. He gripped Gerlof firmly under the arm and lifted him easily out of the car.

“Come on.”

He slammed the car door, pointed his key ring at it, and pressed a little button. The car doors locked with a quiet click.

For Gerlof this sort of thing was almost like magic. He had his cane with him, but his briefcase was still on the floor inside the car. He took a few uncertain steps, out onto the rain-soaked meadow by the sea, beginning to get an idea of Ljunger’s intentions.

For the first minute it was actually quite pleasant for his body to get out of the sauna-like heat of the car; the wind was oddly refreshing, and it felt as though he didn’t need any outdoor clothes.

But Gerlof wouldn’t survive without his overcoat, he knew that. The cold was crippling out here, only a few degrees above zero. The wind was gusting in off the Baltic, and the drops of rain were like little nails on his face.