Gerlof suddenly saw that the object the man was holding was a plastic bottle. A litre bottle containing some kind of red liquid, which he was mixing with a fluid from a smaller glass container. There were strings of some sort attached to the bottle.
‘Are you lost?’ he called out.
The driver shook his head, then put down the bottle and grabbed the wheel with his left hand. Gerlof saw something glint on his wrist.
The man quickly put the car in gear with his right hand, and it moved away.
Gerlof stayed where he was, watching it disappear in the direction of the sea. It slowed down when it reached the coast road and turned right, heading north towards the quarry.
He let go of the gatepost, leaned on his stick and managed to turn around without falling over. He headed back towards his chair, but stopped a few metres away and thought about what the man in the car might have been up to.
He wasn’t happy about what he had just seen. In fact, the situation was so bad that the evening seemed to have grown even colder.
He set off again, but towards the cottage this time. He managed to haul himself up the steps with the help of the iron railing, and went into the living room. He could still remember the telephone number for Ernst’s cottage, and keyed it in with a trembling finger.
The phone rang out twelve times, but neither Per Mörner nor anyone else answered.
Gerlof put the phone down. He blinked and assessed the situation.
Eighty-three years old, with rheumatism and hearing difficulties. And the first butterflies he had seen this year had been a yellow one and a black one.
Things could go well, or they could just as easily go very badly.
Gerlof didn’t know if he could manage it, but he just had to get himself over to the quarry to see if Per needed any help.
67
As Per made his way back towards the coast, the shadows across the alvar were even longer than before. The sun hovered in front of him like a gold disc in a narrow blue strip between the clouds and the horizon.
He was very tired. The last thing he had done up by the road was to call Max Larsson and explain that he had found Vendela unconscious out on the alvar, but that she had come round and was on her way to the hospital in Kalmar. After that he had set off home, heading west.
Less than fourteen hours to go.
He thought about it when he got back to the spot where he had come across Vendela and the boy keeping watch beside her — back by the dense thicket of juniper bushes and the big rock in the centre.
The elf stone.
He had lingered for a while. This was where he and Vendela had sat a few evenings earlier, exchanging secrets. He had told her things about himself and his father that he hadn’t told anyone else, and she had told him that she was the one who wrote most of Max’s books.
Max has nothing against being well known, but I prefer to remain invisible, Vendela had said.
Per had remained by the stone for a few minutes looking at the empty hollows in its surface. Then he had taken out his wallet and placed a note in one of them, with a few coins on top.
Wishful thinking.
He knew what he was doing, but he couldn’t help seeing Nilla’s face in his mind’s eye as he let go of the coins. He couldn’t help making a wish as he stood there by the stone — offering money and praying for a miracle.
He heard a rustling noise from somewhere in the bushes.
He looked around, suddenly afraid that he was being watched. And he was. A pointed, russet-coloured face was staring at him. At first he thought it was a dog with big ears, but then he realized it was a fox. It stood stock still for a few seconds, then it wheeled around and disappeared.
Per set off again, walking away from the stone.
The sun had almost set by the time he got back to Stenvik. There was a breeze blowing off the sea, and he could hear distant sounds from the southern end of the village. Laughter and cheerful shouts. People had begun to gather down on the shore to light the bonfire and to celebrate the end of winter and the coming of spring.
He was just too tired to go down there. He walked up the path to the cottage, took out his keys and unlocked the door. The smell of Vendela lingered in her jacket as he hung it up in the hallway. He went into the kitchen and put some water on to make vegetable soup before driving to see Nilla.
The note he had found in Hans Bremer’s kitchen was still lying by the phone, and he glanced over at it as he chopped some carrots. He looked at the last name: Danielle, whose real name had been Jessika Björk, as it turned out.
Jessika and Hans Bremer had been in touch, despite the fact that she hadn’t worked for him for many years. Why? And why had someone murdered them?
The water was boiling. He added a stock cube, some herbs and the vegetables, and when the soup was ready he ate it at the kitchen table, still pondering.
Arsonists almost always operate on their own patch, Gerlof had said.
Jerry and Bremer knew the studio in Ryd better than anyone else. But neither of them could have rigged up and set off the incendiary devices in the house. Jerry was too old and too ill, and Bremer had been lying upstairs with his hands tied behind his back.
Per pushed his soup bowl to one side and looked over at the window. The sun had gone down by now, but a bright light suddenly fell across the cottage.
A dark-coloured car was driving along the coast road.
Was it a Ford?
He reached for the phone just as the car braked and turned off into the shadows by the quarry. It moved slowly down the track with its lights on, and stopped on the gravel at the bottom. Then it just stayed there.
Per picked up the phone and keyed in a number on the mainland.
A man’s voice answered: ‘Ulf.’
‘Could I speak to Ulrica, please?’
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Per Mörner.’
‘I’ll just check...’
There was a noise at the other end of the phone, and at the same time he saw the car door open down in the quarry. He heard Ulrica Ternman’s voice in his ear: ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, it’s Per Mörner again. Do you remember me?’
There was a brief silence before she answered quietly, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘I know,’ Per said quickly, ‘but I’ve just got one quick question.’
‘About what?’ said Ulrica Ternman, still speaking very quietly.
‘I was just wondering what Hans Bremer looked like.’
‘Bremer? I suppose he was... quite ordinary. He looked a bit like you, actually.’
‘Oh? But he was older than me, I presume?’
‘Younger.’
‘Much younger?’
‘I thought he was old at the time, but then I was a teenager... I suppose he would have been about thirty.’
‘Thirty?’
The driver was getting out of the car now. Per couldn’t see his face; it was too far away, and he was wearing a cap. The man looked around the quarry, glanced over at the houses, then got back in the car. He seemed to be waiting for something.
‘If Hans Bremer was thirty when you saw him in the studio,’ Per went on, ‘then he would have been about forty-five when he died in the fire. But that can’t be right. Hans Bremer had a younger sister, and she’s older than me.’
‘Oh? I really have to go now.’
‘Wait, Ulrica... I just want to say one thing. I’ve just worked it out: the director who took pictures of you and your friends wasn’t Hans Bremer.’
‘He said that was his name.’
‘Yes,’ said Per. ‘But if there’s one thing I’ve learned recently, it’s that nobody in the sex industry uses their own name. Everybody wants to be anonymous, don’t they? Even my father changed his name, from Gerhard Mörner to Jerry Morner.’