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.
Author’s note
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.
Two excellent non-fiction books which influenced the writing of this novel were Flickan och skulden (Guilt and the Girl) by Katarina Wennstam, which deals among other things with sexual morals and double standards, and Porr — en bästsäljande historia (Porn — a Bestselling History) by Mattias Andersson, which is a detailed analysis of the Swedish sex industry.
Johan Theorin