Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

The noise swells and swells, and it seems to be coming from every direction.

It’s the car, the brown Volvo, and it comes hurtling between the rocks and the bushes, slithering across the grass before straightening up and aiming at him, aiming directly at Nils. It doesn’t slow down.

Right or left?

The car is growing, it’s so wide. Nils has only seconds to decide, one second — and then it’s too late. He can only watch, with his arm around the boy. There is no protection.

Everything disappears for a while.

Everything falls silent. Cold darkness.

The sounds return like dull echoes. The fog, the cold, and a car engine ticking over.

“Did you get him?” asks a voice.

“Yes... I can see him.”

Nils is lying on his back, stretched out on the grass. His right leg is twisted beneath him at an odd angle, but he feels no pain.

The car is just a few yards away from him, with its engine running. The driver’s door opens. The policeman slowly gets out, his revolver in his hand.

The passenger door on the other side opens too. Gunnar steps out too, but stays by the car, looking out across the alvar.

The policeman steps over to Nils, then stops.

He says nothing, he merely stares.

Nils suddenly remembers the boy in the fog, Jens — where did he go?

He’s gone.

Nils hopes that Jens Davidsson has disappeared, that he got away in the fog and ran back down to Stenvik in his little sandals. A successful flight. Nils wants to follow him, to go back home, but he can’t move. His leg must be broken.

“It’s over” is all he says.

It’s over, Mother. It ends here on the alvar.

Nils is very tired. He could crawl down to Stenvik, but he hasn’t the strength.

The dead are gathering around him, mute gray shadows crowding in.

His father and his little brother, Axel. The two German soldiers. The district superintendent on the train and the Swedish sailor from Nybro.

All dead.

Standing over him, the young policeman nods.

“Yes,” he agrees. “It’s over now.”

The policeman releases the safety catch on his gun with the barrel pointing downward, then he raises it, aims at Nils’s head, and pulls the trigger.

Gerlof had told the story of Nils Kant’s death in a series of slow whispers.

Julia had been forced to lean closer to him in order to hear. But she heard everything, right to the very end.

Now she sat there by his bed, stiff and mute. She does not look at Gerlof.

“This... happened?” she said after a long silence. “What you’ve just told me? It happened... Are you sure about that?”

Gerlof nodded slowly. “Pretty sure,” he whispered.

“Why?” said Julia. “How can you be sure?”

“Well... things Ljunger said to me... when he was waiting for me to freeze to death,” said Gerlof. “He said... this wasn’t just about getting Vera Kant’s money and land. He said it was about revenge too. But... revenge on whom? And who wanted revenge? I’ve been lying here thinking about it... and I could only come up with one person.”

Julia shook her head. “No,” she said.

“Why should Nils Kant be brought home... at all?” persisted Gerlof. “Not for Gunnar Ljunger’s sake. For Ljunger, Nils was more valuable over in South America... He was no danger to Ljunger there, and with each year that passed, Gunnar could get more land out of Vera... The Germans’ treasure was of no significance in comparison to all the land Gunnar could get his hands on.” He took a breath. “But somebody else wanted Nils home... and to let him almost get home to his mother before he was executed. It was to be a fitting punishment.”

Julia shook her head again, but there was no strength in the movement.

“Someone who helped out,” Gerlof went on. “Who helped Gunnar Ljunger and Martin Malm get the coffin to Öland, and who was there when it was opened and examined... Someone who could convince everyone that Nils’s body had come home. A reliable young policeman.”

Gerlof turned his head and looked toward the door.

Julia turned.

Lennart was back. He’d opened the door of Gerlof’s room without her noticing. He came in as if everything were perfectly normal.

“That was my boss on the phone again,” he told them. “They’ve finished their investigations up in Marnäs now, so I can get back to work when I...”

Lennart stopped, seeing their grim expressions.

“Has something happened?” he asked.

“We were talking... about the sandal, Lennart,” said Gerlof. “Jens’s sandal.”

“The sandal?”

“The one you borrowed from me,” said Gerlof. “Did you ever get a reply from your forensic technicians over on the mainland? Did they find anything on it?”

Lennart shook his head. “No,” he said. “No traces... They didn’t find anything.”

“You said you’d sent it,” said Julia, looking at him.

“You did send it, didn’t you?” said Gerlof. “I’m sure we can check... that they got it?”

“I don’t know... maybe,” said Lennart.

He was looking at Gerlof the whole time, but there was no anger in his eyes. No emotions at all. His face was pale, and he slowly lifted his hands and placed them on the back of the chair.

“One thing I was wondering about, Lennart...” said Gerlof. “When did you actually meet Gunnar Ljunger for the first time?”

Lennart looked down at his hands. “I don’t remember,” he said.

“Don’t you?”

“It must have been... ’61 or ’62.” His spoke in a monotone. “In the summer, when I’d just joined the police in Marnäs. He’d had a break-in at his restaurant in Långvik... and I went to take a statement. We started talking.”

“About Nils Kant?”

Lennart nodded. He wouldn’t look at Julia.

“Among other things,” he said. “Ljunger knew... He’d found out I was the son of the district superintendent who’d been shot. A few weeks later he called me. He asked me to come and see him again. He wanted to know if I was interested in trying to find Kant, to entice him back home, so we could bring him to justice for what he’d done to my father...”

Lennart stopped speaking.

“What did you say to him?”

“I said I was interested,” replied Lennart. “I would help him, and he would help me. It was a business arrangement.”

Gerlof nodded slowly. “Did it come to an end a few days ago?” he said quietly. “At Marnäs police station? Were you afraid he’d start telling your colleagues things about you? Who was actually holding the gun, Lennart... the one Gunnar Ljunger was shot with?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“A business arrangement,” said Julia quietly.

She looked out of the window. She could see the twilight out there, but this time, she wasn’t thinking of the twilight.

She was thinking about the fact that Martin Malm had got money for new ships.

And that Gunnar Ljunger had acquired lots of cheap land to sell at a high price.

And that Lennart Henriksson, the man she had come to believe she was in love with, had finally got his revenge on Nils Kant.

All at the price of her son’s life.

“It was just an arrangement,” Lennart told them. “I would help Ljunger and Martin Malm with certain things... And they would help me.”

“So you met in the fog on the alvar... that day,” said Gerlof.

“Ljunger called me that morning and said they were going to the memorial cairn,” said Lennart. “We were to meet there. But I was delayed, and by the time I got there everything had gone terribly wrong... Martin Malm was lying on the ground, covered in blood. Kant had hit him with a shovel. Malm never really recovered... He had his first brain hemorrhage just a few days later.”