The Quarry (51 page)

She wanted to call out again, but there was no one there.

The corridor outside her room was long, well-lit and completely deserted. There was a glass door with the word EXIT on it, but it looked very heavy; she didn’t think she’d be able to open it. So she went in the opposite direction, further into the ward.

The long corridor led to a small day room with sofas and chairs. There was a TV on the wall; it was switched on, but the volume was low. There was some kind of race going on, with people running through a maze and shouting to one another.

There was only one person in the room, gazing at the TV screen – a powerfully built man wearing a brown polo-neck sweater. Suddenly Vendela realized it was Max.

He turned his head and caught sight of her. He got up. ‘Hi, you’re … you’re up and about.’

Vendela stared at him. ‘Where are we?’

‘In Kalmar … in the hospital.’

She nodded, still staring at him.

Max looked tired too, but he was alive. Vendela had been certain he was dead, she remembered that – she had stood by the elf stone wishing that his heart would simply give up and stop beating. She had sacrificed her wedding ring for the fulfilment of her wish.

Why hadn’t it happened?

Presumably because there were no elves to grant people’s wishes. She stopped with her drip stand by her side, five metres from her husband. She had walked no more than ten metres, but her legs were trembling.

‘Max … what day is it?’

‘Day? It’s Friday – the first of May.’

‘Is there no one else here?’ said Vendela. ‘No nurses?’

‘Not many. It is a holiday, after all.’

Max didn’t look pleased at the thought that it was the first of May. Vendela remembered he had always hated that particular day.

‘But I can go and get somebody,’ he went on quickly. ‘Is there something you need?’

‘No.’

They stood in silence, looking at one another.

‘What happened?’ she said. ‘I remember I was out on the alvar … did somebody find me?’

Max nodded. ‘Our neighbour from the cottage, Per Mörner. He called the ambulance.’

There was another pause before Max continued, ‘He ended up needing some attention as well … He was hit by a car down in the village. Apparently somebody was trying to run him over.’

‘Who?’ said Vendela. ‘Per?’

Max nodded again. ‘So he’s here in the hospital as well … But he’s going to be OK, according to the nurses. And his daughter’s in here too. She had her operation this morning.’

‘Is she all right now?’ asked Vendela.

‘I don’t know … you can never really tell, can you? Evidently it was a tricky operation, but it went well.’ Max hesitated, then added, ‘And how … how are you feeling?’

‘Fine. A bit tired … but I’m fine.’

She could see that Max didn’t believe her, and why should he? In the end she had done exactly what he was afraid of, and swallowed goodness knows how many tablets.

Yes, she had been ill, but Vendela knew that the darkness had passed – for now.

‘I have to go,’ she said.

She took hold of the drip stand and turned around, slowly and carefully.

‘Do you need to sit down? I can …’

‘No, Max. I have to go and lie down again.’

And she set off. The door of her room seemed a very long way off.

‘Can we talk?’ said Max behind her.

‘Not now.’

‘Where’s your ring?’ he asked. ‘You weren’t wearing your wedding ring when they brought you in …’

Vendela stopped. Slowly she twisted around, a quarter of a turn. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I threw it away.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Because it was worthless.’

Vendela didn’t say any more, she just set off down the corridor again. She was afraid that Max would call out or come running after her, but he didn’t.

When she had almost reached the door of her room, she stopped and looked back one last time.

Max was still in the day room. He had slumped down on his chair, and was leaning forward with his hands on his knees.

Vendela stood and watched him for a moment, then went into her room. She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

She no longer believed in the power of the elves. And yet, in their own way, they seemed to have granted her wish when it came to Max’s heart.

There was a breeze blowing from inland, and it carried with it the scent of some kind of blossom. Cherry, perhaps – or had that already finished flowering? Per didn’t know.

Nor did he know if it was summer on Öland now, or still spring. Early summer, probably. At any rate it was Saturday, 23 May, and almost everywhere in the village was green. The quarry was still grey and almost barren, but even there thin blades of grass had started to show through the gravel. On the heaps of stone, small bushes were sprouting fresh new leaves.

He looked around and thought about how life sometimes seemed to have gone for good, and yet it always came back eventually.

The stone steps had not been rebuilt. They had been removed, and not a trace remained. When Thomas Fall’s body had been recovered and the police had taken away his crushed car at the beginning of May, Per had decided that he didn’t need a short cut down to the shore, so he and Jesper had spent a weekend carrying the blocks back to where they came from and spreading the gravel.

Jesper and John Hagman were shovelling gravel and moving blocks of stone again in the quarry today, but not to build a new set of steps.

‘It was there,’ Jesper had said when Gerlof asked him exactly where he had found the fragment of bone during the Easter weekend. He had pointed to the largest pile of reject stone at the bottom of the quarry – the same pile Per had clung to when Thomas Fall was chasing him. So that was where they were digging.

Per was standing up above them in the garden, busy with a project of his own. He had dragged an old three-legged metal barbecue over to the edge of the quarry and was burning old leaves and papers. It was going quite well, in spite of the bandage around his arm.

The leaves were from the garden, and the papers had belonged to his father. They were the contracts of employment Thomas Fall had stolen when he broke into Jerry’s apartment in Kristianstad – almost two hundred contracts that Fall had taken home with him and kept, for some reason. The police had found them when they searched the house, and copied all the names and addresses. Then the public prosecutor had returned them to Per, who was now the legal owner.

He stood by the fire, flicking through the papers one last time. So many made-up names.

Danielle, Cindy, Savannah, Amber, Jenna, Violet, Chrissy, Marilyn, Tammy …

A series of dream girls. But their real names and addresses were there too, neatly printed beneath the dotted line on which the models had signed to say that they had willingly agreed to be photographed. And when he had leafed through the old contracts the previous evening, he had found one name in particular:
Regina
.

He had looked at that sheet of paper for a long time.

Regina’s real name had been Maria Svensson. It was a very common name, of course, and no doubt the address was an old one, but her personal identity number was written down too. It ought to be quite easy to find her.

‘What are you thinking about, Dad?’

Per turned around and saw Nilla, sitting in her wheelchair on the veranda. ‘Guess.’

‘I can’t … My head’s completely empty.’

‘Is it now?’ He smiled. ‘So’s mine.’

Gerlof was sitting next to Nilla. There was a gap of seventy years between them, but they seemed to be happy sitting side by side in their respective wheelchairs. They were both worn out and a little fragile, but would be fine when the summer came.

Nilla and Jesper knew that their grandfather was dead now, but neither of them had attended his funeral the previous week. Per had been the only representative of the Mörner family.

There had been few flowers on Jerry’s coffin, and the chapel had been almost empty. A couple of cousins had turned up, and then there was a priest and a churchwarden – and a woman of about sixty-five, dressed in black, who had sat on her own right at the back and left quickly as soon as the ceremony was over. But before that she had written her name in the chapel’s visitors’ book, and when Per was alone with the coffin he had gone over to have a look at it.

Susanne Fall
, the woman had written.

Was she Thomas’s mother, saying goodbye?

If Jerry had been Thomas Fall’s father, he hadn’t known about it. Susanne hadn’t told him, but she must have told her son. So Thomas had grown up in the shadow of his notorious father, but unlike Per he had chosen to go and work for him – in secret. Unbeknown to Jerry, he had borrowed the identity of his alcoholic photography tutor Hans Bremer, and had sought employment as a cameraman and director with Morner Art. And he had done very well in the loveless world his father had created.

Thomas had become the son Per had refused to be. But it had ended with a burnt-out studio and a murdered father.

Jerry was dead and buried now, but his granddaughter Nilla was well and had a long life ahead of her – Per had no choice but to believe that on this sunny day.

‘So how are you?’ Gerlof suddenly asked, looking at him intently. ‘Have you started working again?’

Per shook his head. ‘I’m looking for a job.’

‘Oh? Have you given up the market research?’

‘They terminated my employment … they said I’d been making stuff up.’

He looked over at the Larssons’ house. He knew Vendela was there. He hadn’t seen her since she came out of hospital a week ago, but her daughter had been to visit, and Per had seen Vendela taking her new dog out a few times. A terrier.

The Kurdins’ house was all closed up. Per hadn’t seen them since the first of May, but no doubt they would be back for midsummer.

And Max Larsson? His cookery book wasn’t due out until August, but he had already started publicizing it. Per had seen him on various TV programmes over the last week, talking about his eating habits – but there had been no sign of him at the house by the quarry for a long time. He and Vendela seemed to have separated for good.

John Hagman was waving and shouting. They had found something in the pile of stone.

‘What is it?’ Per yelled.

‘Bones,’ John replied.

John and Jesper reached into the hollow they had dug out and started to uncover what looked like human remains.

Per ran down to where they were digging and quickly moved Jesper out of the way. Gerlof slowly wheeled his chair down to join them.

‘Who do you think it is?’ Per asked.

‘It’s Henry Fors’s son,’ Gerlof replied. ‘Henry killed him to save him being sent into care.’

‘Did he? How do you know?’

‘I’m ashamed to say I read about it in my wife’s diary.’

Per carefully began to cover the remains with stones again. ‘Unless he went off with the elves,’ he replied, thinking of the boy he had met out on the alvar.

‘That’s always a possibility,’ said Gerlof. ‘I think we’ll let him be … It isn’t necessary to know everything in this world.’

Per closed his eyes, feeling the heat from the sky reflected by all the stones. He picked up a smooth piece of stone from the makeshift grave and turned his back on the quarry.

Then he wheeled Gerlof back up to the cottage and placed the last contracts of employment – including Regina’s – on the burning coals. It flared up and burnt just as well as all the rest.

When the fire began to die down he turned to Gerlof and Nilla. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to give this stone to Vendela Larsson.’

‘In that case I’ve got something for her as well,’ said Gerlof, picking up something he had on his knee.

It was a large white envelope. As Per took it he heard something rattling inside.

‘What is it?’

‘A few pieces of jewellery,’ said Gerlof. ‘You can give them to Vendela.’

Per didn’t ask any more questions. He went past his cottage and out on to the gravel track, then turned off towards the Larssons’ house and walked up to the front door. He rang the bell, the envelope and the polished piece of stone in his hand.

The thick walls of the house rose above him. As the bell died away he could hear a dog barking excitedly somewhere inside, but no one opened the door.

He rang again. Then he took a step backwards out into the sunshine, feeling the warmth and the breeze on the back of his neck.

The May sunshine makes both the trolls and the elves disappear
, he thought.
They burst like soap bubbles. Only human beings remain, for a little while. We are a brief song beneath the sky, laughter in the wind that ends in a sigh. Then we too are gone
.

In front of Per the latch was suddenly turned, and the door opened.

There are many quarries along the coast of Öland where the trolls (or
trullen
, as my great-uncle Axel Gerlofsson called them) used to get the blame once upon a time if something broke or was stolen. On the alvar there are also elf stones from the Bronze Age where people still place coins or other gifts for the elves. Courses on how to meet elemental beings such as elves have been run in Sweden, but not, as far as I know, on Öland or Gotland, and the places where the quarry and the elf stone are located in
The Quarry
are freely invented by me, as are all the characters and companies in the novel.