The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (9 page)

‘This is part of the resort, isn’t it?’

‘It’s private property – it belongs to the Kloss family.’

‘I see,’ Lisa said.

She had nothing more to say to him, and left the glade without another word. When she looked back for the last time she saw that he was on his way down to the sea and the old man, striding out as before.

Fascist, she thought.

She returned to the track, squeezed carefully under the barbed wire and over the wall, and was back at the hotel.

The glass door was still ajar. She decided to go in and make sure she’d locked the booth before she went back to the caravan to call Silas and grab a few hours’ rest before tonight’s debut as Lady Summertime.

Just as she was about to step inside, she thought she heard something behind her, a short, sharp noise from the forest. An old oak tree coming down? A firework? Lisa stopped in the doorway for a moment, but she didn’t hear anything else.

She went in and closed the glass door behind her.

The Homecomer was standing out on the makeshift jetty when the guard turned up. The boulders from his childhood, arranged in a row stretching out from the shore – but of course it was a mistake to walk out on to them. It made him too visible, too vulnerable.

He had longed to stand here by this narrow sandy shore almost every day while he was overseas, had dreamed of coming back and walking right to the very end of the jetty. His croft up in the forest was gone, but Kloss couldn’t erase these rocks.

He had sat among the trees for a while, watching the Ölandic dock with Pecka, his young recruit, but the flies had been a nuisance and his leg had gone to sleep. Eventually, he had left the protection of the forest and gone down to the sea, with the Walther still tucked into the waistband of his trousers at the back. He had made sure the safety catch was on.

Tentatively, he made his way along the boulders, and for a few moments he had allowed himself to be drawn back to his childhood, although he didn’t leap from rock to rock like a boy; he took the slow steps of an old man.

Twelve steps, and the Homecomer was standing on the very last boulder. He straightened his back and gazed out across the empty Sound.

The sun was shining, but the water around him was dark and full of shadows; the bright light barely reached the sandy seabed. However, when he looked north he could clearly see the black ship that Pecka had been watching. It was still moored in the dock, and the crew were working flat out. They seemed to be carrying plastic boxes of fish from the ship to a delivery van on the quayside.

In the other direction, to the south, he could hear the sound of the Ölandic’s summer residents enjoying the sunshine, but the bathing area was hidden behind a spit of land. The Homecomer couldn’t see them, and no one could see him.

There was an air of calm about the island. No doubt the visitors who weren’t down on the shore were fast asleep in their tents and chalets, and many of those who had celebrated the shortest night of the year would wake up with gaps in their memory and trembling hands, feeling ten years older on this bright summer’s day.

But the Homecomer was wide awake, and he felt good.

After a while, the van drove away from the quayside. The seamen went back on board, and the Homecomer decided it was time to leave.

‘Hey! You there!’

The voice came from behind him, and he slowly turned around.

‘Yes, you! This is private property!’

A young man was standing on the shore, but it wasn’t Pecka. He was wearing blue trousers and a black peaked cap, and he looked like a park keeper.

‘Private?’ the Homecomer said, standing his ground.

The security guard nodded. ‘Were you looking for someone?’

No doubt this was a question he usually asked unauthorized persons, but out here it sounded rather odd.

The Homecomer shook his head and stayed exactly where he was. He wondered whether Pecka had seen the guard.

‘I used to live here when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘I used to stand here on the rocks catching pike with a wooden spear … We had a croft in the forest.’

‘Right,’ the guard said. ‘Well, there’s no croft there now.’

‘No, it’s been knocked down.’

The guard wasn’t listening; he seemed to be pondering something.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘I walked.’

‘Didn’t you see the notices?’

‘No.’

‘But what about the fence? You
must
have seen the fence!’

The Homecomer shook his head – and at the same time he felt for the pistol with his right hand. His fingers touched the butt of the Walther he had bought from Einar Wall.

‘This place used to be called Rödtorp,’ the Homecomer said, holding the security guard’s gaze. He kept the pistol hidden behind his back as he carried on talking. ‘Our cottage was small but cosy … my grandfather built it. I lived there with my mother, Astrid, and my sister, Greta, and my stepfather, Sven. But Sven wanted to travel to the new country, so that was what we did. We sailed from Borgholm and—’

‘I’m sure you did,’ the guard interrupted him, his voice hardening, ‘but you need to come ashore!’

The Homecomer nodded. He set off along the rocks, but he wasn’t quite so steady on his feet now.

He stopped and shook his head. ‘My legs have seized up.’

‘Hang on,’ the guard said wearily. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

He stepped on to the first rock.

The Homecomer waited for him, holding the pistol behind his back. He could hear the excited screams and joyful shouts of the holidaymakers in the distance.

The guard took five strides and reached the Homecomer.

‘Put your hand on my shoulder and we’ll get you back,’ he said, turning away. Perhaps he was pleased at the thought of being able to help an old man.

‘You’re very kind,’ the Homecomer said, his eyes fixed on the back of the young man’s neck.

He raised the gun, slipped off the safety catch and took aim.

The guard grabbed his radio and began to turn as he heard the sound, but it was too late.

The back of his neck was unusually slender. The line where the skull ended and the vertebrae began was clearly visible.

The Homecomer fired.

The shot echoed out across the water; the guard’s body convulsed and he fell sideways. Down into the water, away from the light, with a cascade of white foam all around him.

The Homecomer watched as the waters closed over the young man and the body disappeared into the darkness.

He looked around, listened. The shot had been a sharp report in the wind, short and hard, with no echo. Trees muffled the sound of a bullet being fired, as he knew very well, and there were plenty of trees around the shore.

Pecka had heard the shot. He had got to his feet among the trees and was staring open-mouthed towards the sea. Slowly, he began to move.

After ten seconds, the guard’s body floated back to the surface, face up. A stream of bubbles was coming out of his mouth, and his arms were moving feebly.

Pecka appeared. He stared at the guard in the water.

‘He’s still alive,’ he said.

The Homecomer crouched down with his arm outstretched, put the Walther under the water and fired into the guard’s head, with hardly a sound.

The bubbles stopped.

Everything went quiet.

‘Let’s get him out,’ the Homecomer said.

Pecka looked at him blankly. ‘What?’

The Homecomer didn’t reply. He looked around; there was no one in sight, which meant that no one had heard the shot. And if there was one thing he knew about, it was taking care of dead bodies.

He bent down and grabbed hold of the man’s belt, then started hauling the body towards the shore.

‘Give me a hand,’ he ordered.

Pecka moved like a sleepwalker, but stepped down into the water and seized the guard’s arms.

They dragged the body to the shore, then pulled it ashore and in among the trees.

‘Shit,’ Pecka said. ‘Shit …’

The Homecomer wasted no time on him. He quickly ripped open the guard’s shirt and removed the wet clothes.

There was an old ditch under the tangle of dog roses, just a few metres away. He got Pecka to roll away all the big stones in order to make it deeper, then they tipped the naked body into the hollow. He covered it with a thick layer of rotting bladder wrack from the shore to contain the smell of the corpse, then topped the seaweed with several layers of stones.

The Homecomer stepped back to admire their handiwork. They had built a little burial cairn in the forest. It wasn’t old like the one in Stenvik; this one was brand new.

‘Have you … Have you done this before?’ Pecka asked.

‘Not here,’ the Homecomer said. But he knew what would happen in the grave from now on; that was nothing new.

The birds wouldn’t be able to detect the stench of the corpse, so they wouldn’t start pecking at it, which was good – but the insects would soon find it. The bluebottles would buzz in among the stones in just a few hours and, since the guard wasn’t wearing any clothes, they would start laying their eggs immediately. When the maggots hatched, they would be hungry. They would break down the body, work their way in until they reached the skeleton, until it no longer stank. In a few weeks all the soft parts would have dried out or disappeared, and in two months only the bones would remain.

And by that time the Homecomer would be gone.

He looked to the north through the trees, away from the grave. The ship was still at the quayside. ‘Have you been keeping an eye on the ship?’

Pecka had been staring at the stones, but he gave a start and answered mechanically, ‘Yes. They’ve all gone ashore. To the restaurant.’

‘Good,’ the Homecomer said. ‘Let’s go.’

With a final glance at the grave, he led the way into the forest, heading back towards the fence. His footsteps were light as he walked along, in spite of his age and what he had just done. He was still
capable.

It was morning, a lazy Sunday when nothing much seemed to be happening along the coast. Jonas was gazing out from the decking in front of Uncle Kent’s house. The sun was spreading its warmth, and summer was all around him. Boats in the Sound, holidaymakers relaxing on the shore, the odd car passing by. The stony ground above the water was coloured red and blue by the petals of poppies and viper’s bugloss, which were shooting up everywhere.

But something had happened. The door behind him was wide open, and he could hear Uncle Kent’s voice in the middle of a phone call. His uncle usually sounded quite pleased, but today his tone was harsh and angry.

‘Gone?’ Kent said. ‘What do you mean, gone? Was he there in the morning, or did he not turn up at all?’ Pause. ‘He was? So he just cleared off at some point during the day? He’s done it again …’

Pause.

‘I know. We had some trouble with him last season, but Veronica decided to give him a second chance this year. She believed in him. He promised to pull himself together, work harder. And now this …’

Jonas didn’t want to eavesdrop, so he left the garden and went out on to the coast road. He could see the campsite just a few hundred metres to the north, and the jetty where almost everyone in the village gathered to swim and sunbathe when the weather was good. Summer visitors.

The summer visitors were lying there in the sun; the hotter it got, the more of them there were. The shore was covered with a mosaic of red, white and blue beach towels, with thermos flasks, balls, bottles and bicycle baskets scattered all around. The summer visitors had lots of stuff, but they hardly ever bothered with any of it. They went for a swim and played Frisbee, but mostly they lay motionless in the sunshine.

Jonas waved away a fly and looked in the other direction. Villa Kloss was the last house in the village, then the coast road narrowed to a dirt track. The Ölandic was a few kilometres away, with its huge campsite and luxury hotel, but the resort was hidden by a series of headlands jutting out into the sea.

Jonas crossed the road and walked out on to the plateau known as the ridge. It was covered in gravel and dropped down into a little hollow above the shore.

And right on the edge of the plateau, straight in front of Uncle Kent’s house, was the rounded burial cairn. It must have been there for a thousand years.

Jonas slowed down as he reached the cairn. He had never dared to come this close when he was little – not on his own. The cairn looked like a hillock, but at close quarters you could see that it was made up of hundreds of big stones, all piled on top of one another. It had been built during the Bronze Age.

Jonas knew that there was a coffin under all those stones – but not a wooden one. One day when they were standing there studying the cairn, his father had told him that it was a sarcophagus made up of solid blocks. The stones and boulders had been piled up on top of the coffin, to protect it from grave robbers.

Suddenly, he heard a rattling sound; he stopped and turned around a few metres from the cairn and saw his cousin Casper on a dark-blue Yamaha, approaching from the south.

Casper was fifteen now – of course he had bought a moped. Or perhaps Aunt Veronica had given it to him.

The summer before last, they had both had bikes and used to race each other on the gravel tracks in the quarry, but Jonas knew there was no chance of that now.

Casper turned on to the plateau and nodded to Jonas. He didn’t get off, but sat there revving the engine impatiently until Jonas went over to him.

‘Cool!’ he shouted.

Casper nodded. ‘Got it back in the spring. What are you doing?’

Jonas wasn’t doing anything; he was just standing here by the cairn. But he had to say something.

‘I’m counting stones.’

Casper revved the engine again. Jonas considered asking if he wanted to play, but suspected that his cousin probably no longer used that word.

‘Stones?’ Casper said.

‘Every year some of the stones fall down from the cairn. I’m keeping a check on them.’

That was in fact true; since he was last here at least three big stones had come tumbling down and were lying on the grass, along with others that had been there for several years. Jonas counted them and looked at his cousin.