The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (7 page)

‘Money?’

‘Who do I talk to about getting paid?’

‘Not us,’ Sune said quickly. ‘Talk to Kloss.’

Lisa recognized the name; someone called Kloss had booked her through the agency.

‘Veronica or Kent,’ Sune went on. ‘They’re over there.’

Lisa saw a group of four adults and four teenage boys on the far side of the maypole. They looked just as happy as all the other families who had been there.

She went to put the guitar back in her car. She had calmed down now, after racing against the clock to get here. She was free now; no more music today.

Just the money
, Silas whispered in her head.

The Kloss family were waiting. She went over to them, directing her biggest smile at the woman nearest to her.

‘Veronica Kloss? I’m Lisa Turesson – you called me last week …’

The woman looked anxious and held up a defensive hand.

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I am not fru Kloss. I am Paulina.’

Her Swedish was hesitant; she sounded Eastern European. Foreign cleaner, Lisa thought, then wished she hadn’t.

The other woman in the group stepped forward. She was in her forties, but her face was unlined. She had attractive dimples.

‘Hi, Lisa,’ she said. ‘I’m Veronica. Well done – thank you!’

‘You’re welcome,’ Lisa said, taking a deep breath. ‘I was just wondering about the money?’

‘We’ll sort that out. You’re going to play some more, aren’t you? In our restaurant and the nightclub?’

Lisa nodded quickly.

‘I’m here until the end of July, but I could do with some cash to be going on with …’

‘Of course,’ Veronica said. She took out her purse and handed over two notes, without asking for a receipt.

Meanwhile, one of the men had come over to Lisa.

‘Kent Kloss – welcome to the village,’ he said. ‘Would you like to join us at the house for a Cosmo?’

‘Sorry?’

‘A Cosmopolitan on our patio?’

Kent Kloss was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, just like the teenagers, and Lisa thought it was hard to make a guess at his age. His face was that of a middle-aged man, but he was smiling like a boy.

‘No, thanks,’ Lisa said. ‘Best not. I’m driving.’

‘So?’ Kloss said. ‘It’s a holiday!’

Lisa put on her best professional smile.

‘Thanks, anyway.’

Veronica Kloss took a key out of her pocket and pointed in the direction of the water.

‘You’re staying down there, on the campsite. We have a number of static caravans for our staff, right by the water. It’s a little primitive, but there’s no charge … and the view is fantastic. Is that OK?’

‘Brilliant,’ Lisa said.

But as she walked back to the car she was overcome with tiredness.

A static caravan.
She had been hoping for a little red chalet by the sea, pretty and cosy.

But, of course, the campsite in Stenvik was just metres from the shore, and the views were stunning.

As she drove in she saw tents and caravans, but there was also a kind of wildness about the place. Campsites were usually neat and well planned, with large, rectangular grass plots, but this was stony and uneven, with lots of bushes and undergrowth. There were no straight roads; the tents and caravans were all over the shop, standing on their own or in groups. Many were old and faded by the sun; a few were new, protected by wooden fences.

She found her way easily following Veronica’s directions and arrived at an old-style caravan, white and rounded, with no fence. It was far from new, but at least it appeared to be clean and rust-free.

She unlocked the door and looked inside. It wasn’t very big: one room with a kitchen area, with a small bedroom beyond, but it had definitely been cleaned. She sniffed and picked up the smell of disinfectant. No mould.

Good. She sat down on the narrow bed and took out her mobile. Time to call Silas, tell him she’d arrived and see how he was feeling.

An impressive fence. Not the highest fence the Homecomer had ever seen, but very robust.

Steel posts supported a green wire mesh. The steel sparkled in the sun, and between each pair of posts was a yellow sign: No U
NAUTHORIZED
E
NTRY
.

The Homecomer took out his wooden box and slowly picked up a pinch of snuff. The warning was absurd, but the fence was worth examining. It was almost three metres high. It wasn’t an electric fence but was topped with four strands of barbed wire. To the left it ran down towards the water, to the right was a dense deciduous forest.

‘They haven’t enclosed the whole area,’ he said.

Pecka was standing beside him, just in front of his girlfriend, Rita.

‘No,’ Pecka said. ‘Kloss has only fenced off the things he wants to protect … The central electricity supply and the dock.’

The Homecomer nodded.

‘And what about Rödtorp?’

‘What’s that?’

‘A little croft, south of the dock.’

‘Never heard of it.’ Pecka didn’t sound remotely interested. ‘But the fence stops just south of the dock, by the bathing area.’

‘Can we get in?’

Pecka nodded.

‘There’s a gate down by the water, but it has a CCTV camera.’

The Homecomer looked up at the fence.

‘It’s too high for me.’

‘We’re not climbing it,’ Pecka said. ‘There are other openings … Come with me.’

He set off among the trees and headed east. It was difficult to get through the undergrowth, but Rita and the Homecomer followed him.

The Homecomer had his gun with him, tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

After perhaps sixty paces they reached a small glade; there was a steel gate in the fence. It was locked, but Pecka pulled a key out of his pocket. He smiled.

‘I “forgot” to hand this in last year when they kicked me out.’

He unlocked the gate, and all they had to do was walk through.

Pecka raised a hand; it was time to be quiet. It was obvious that he knew the area; he walked straight through the trees and led them to a path. He chose the right-hand fork.

The further they got into the forest, the more cautious Pecka became. He moved slowly, and seemed to be listening all the time. He kept on going, and after a few minutes the Homecomer heard a faint rushing sound. He glimpsed the water through the trees.

The sea, and an open area covered in tarmac.

‘This is the dock,’ Pecka whispered.

He and Rita stopped, but the Homecomer kept on going, past the tarmac and on through the forest. The path led through trees and dense undergrowth, and he was astonished – he recognized this place from his childhood, and yet he didn’t.

The trees were new, but the earth and the water and the smells were the same.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of breaking glass beneath his boot.

A piece of an old windowpane.

He looked up and saw the space just twenty metres away. Everything had been cleared.

This was the spot. This was where the croft had stood. But a giant appeared to have stamped all over it, brushed the bits and pieces to one side, then moved on.

The Homecomer looked at what was left for a little while, then backed away. That was enough.

He turned around and increased his speed – and almost bumped into the other two. Pecka and Rita were crouching down in the undergrowth; Pecka was holding a pair of binoculars and looking in the direction of the dock.

The Homecomer saw that there was a small cargo boat moored by the quayside; it looked rusty, possibly abandoned. But then he noticed movement on deck. People were moving around by the hatches leading to the hold, and on the bridge.

‘We know their schedule,’ Rita said. ‘They’ve brought goods ashore for the past two days, and she sails straight after midsummer.’

The Homecomer didn’t say anything, but Pecka nodded.

‘That’s when we’ll do it.’

They carried on watching the boat in the middle of a cloud of buzzing flies, but the Homecomer couldn’t forget the remnants of his childhood, deep in the forest.

The flies are buzzing inside the carriage, the wind is strong as they speed along, and the train whistle blows. Aron has watched the trains crossing the alvar all his life, but he has never been on one. It’s a real adventure, chugging across the island just a few carriages behind the engine, straight through the flat landscape. A journey through emptiness, through the grassy plain that is the alvar, but it’s still exciting. Aron sticks his head out of the window, feeling the wind in his hair. The steam train is moving faster than the odd cars and buses he sees on the road.

Sometimes they travel past a barn, which brings back memories of last summer, when the barn wall collapsed and everything went quiet in the darkness.

The wall had fallen to reveal a black gap underneath, like the opening of an underground crypt. Aron had stood stock still, staring at it. Then Sven had placed a hand on his back and given him a shove.

‘
In you go
,’ Sven had growled, sweaty and stressed. ‘
Get in there and fetch his money.
’

Aron had done as he was told. He had lain down on the grass and wriggled under the wall.

Into the darkness. He had crawled in over the cold ground, in under the hard, wooden wall. A nail had scratched his forehead, but he had ducked and kept on going.

Towards the body.

Edvard Kloss, lying there under the wall.

Trapped. Motionless.

Aron shudders in the cold wind as he gazes out of the train window. He doesn’t want to remember that night.

But the farms alongside the railway line don’t seem to bother Sven. When he sees the farmhands working by the barns, he raises a hand and waves.

‘Do you know them?’ Aron asks.

‘No, but all workers are my brothers. They, too, will be liberated from their back-breaking toil one day!’

After Kalleguta, the railway turns sharply to the west, towards the station in Borgholm. Outside the town the sea appears once again, like a blue ribbon in the west. Aron has never travelled on the ferry to the mainland either; he has never crossed the Sound.

When they arrive they alight from the train at the big stone building, then wander through the straight streets. The black-suited residents of the town glance at Aron and Sven’s simple clothes as they pass by. Aron can hear them speaking quietly behind them.

‘They were gossiping about me,’ Sven says. ‘They know who I am.’

‘Do they?’

Sven nods, his lips compressed into a thin line.

‘They haven’t forgotten my quarrels with those who were out to exploit the poor.’

They carry on down towards the harbour, where a dozen or so small cargo boats and a couple of ferries are moored, with a large yacht in solitary splendour slightly further away.

In the restaurant they each have an omelette, which costs two kronor and fifty öre. Sven has a glass of beer, Aron a soft drink.

After the meal Sven takes a pinch of snuff from his wooden box, the one Aron gave him, and stares gloomily at the bill for lunch. He shakes his head, but pays.

‘In the new country you can eat for free,’ he says when they are back on the street.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. You pay only if you have money.’

In the afternoon they leave the island, crossing the Sound on a steamship. Sven keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the mainland, but Aron turns around and watches as the island slowly shrinks to a greyish-brown strip on the horizon. He feels as if it is sinking into the sea, as if his whole world is disappearing behind him.

Over the past two years Jonas had forgotten how brilliant it was to wake up by the sea. It was a bit like being an astronaut, waking up on a strange planet where the sounds and the air were different.

On Midsummer’s Day, he opened his eyes to the sound of the wind and the cries of the gulls, bumble bees buzzing around the house and bikes rattling by out on the coast road – and, beyond that, the faint rushing of the waves out in the Sound.

Villa Kloss, he thought.

The sounds were strange, yet familiar. Jonas was back in a summer world where his father had brought him ever since he was a little boy. But now he was grown up. Almost. He was nearly twelve years old and no longer slept in Uncle Kent’s big house with his dad but in a little chalet of his own twenty metres away. A guest chalet, consisting of nothing more than a narrow room with white walls and a white wooden floor. His older brother, Mats, and cousin Casper were staying in the other two chalets, but he had this one all to himself for the next four weeks.

Aunt Veronica, his father’s sister, had helped him make up the bed, bringing a faint hint of perfume with her along with the sheets.

Veronica had been wearing a white dress, and had the same bright-blue eyes as his father. Jonas was fond of his aunt, but he hadn’t seen her for almost two years. He hadn’t come over last year, and Veronica hadn’t had time to come and visit them in Huskvarna. Jonas had a feeling that Veronica and his mother didn’t particularly like each other.

‘This is your very own space,’ Veronica had said when they had finished making the bed. ‘Nobody to disturb you – that will be nice, won’t it?’

It was lovely. Jonas had slept, and nobody had disturbed him.

He sat up in bed and looked out of the window. He could see water – the pale-blue swimming pool was only ten metres away.

On the other side of the coast road, the dark-blue Sound sparkled at the bottom of the steep cliffs.

And up there on top of the cliffs, almost at the very end of the plateau, lay the old cairn. The big, rounded grave made of stones, which was haunted. But not now, not when the sun was shining.

Jonas jumped out of bed.

All he could hear were the faint sounds of summer. No voices. When he fell asleep last night, the rest of the family had still been awake, celebrating the shortest night of the year in various ways: Mats and his cousins had gone down to the jetty to see if there were any girls around, Jonas’s father had been working as a chef in the village restaurant, which was also owned by the Kloss family, and Aunt Veronica and Uncle Kent had been sitting on the decking together with Veronica’s husband, who was on a flying visit from Stockholm, and Kent’s new girlfriend, whose name Jonas didn’t know. Uncle Kent had had a new girlfriend every summer, ever since Jonas could remember. They didn’t say much, and they didn’t usually stay around for long.