But he didn’t. He had to stay here; he had work to do.
So when Mats and Urban had cycled off down the coast, he went out on to Uncle Kent’s warm, sunlit decking. The planks were waiting. First of all he had to sand them down, then he would apply Chinese wood oil, which had been ordered specially.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of an engine behind him. Uncle Kent drove in and parked over by the garage. He was holding his mobile phone and seemed to be doing a lot of listening, with occasional monosyllabic responses. He was red-faced and sweaty, and when the call was over he sat in the car, looking out towards the Sound.
Then he shook his head and made another call.
Something seemed to have upset Uncle Kent, but Jonas didn’t want to know what it was. Kent didn’t appear to have noticed him, anyway, he was too stressed — after only a minute or so, he reversed on to the coast road and drove off again.
Jonas looked down at the decking. He was no longer on holiday. The previous evening, his father had shown him what to do. ‘Steady, even strokes, Jonas, and make them as long as possible. Keep your hand moving all the time so that you don’t chip the wood.’
Jonas picked up the sander, switched it on and ran it over each plank. It was hard work. The dirt was ingrained in every piece of wood, and he had to go over each one several times in order to bring it back to its original pale colour.
But it was good to be working; it stopped him thinking. About the man with the axe, and the dying seamen.
After perhaps twenty minutes the glass door slid open.
‘Afternoon, Jonas!’
His father emerged, wearing sandals, shorts and a shirt. He blinked up at the sun and waved to Jonas. ‘Everything OK?’
Jonas nodded. His father went and sat on a sun lounger by the pool and closed his eyes.
Did he have a hangover from the party? Jonas couldn’t tell.
He carried on working, but when he had sanded down two more planks and the sweat was pouring down his back, he took a break. He went over to join his father and sat down on the edge of the pool, dangling his feet in the cool water. Niklas smiled at him, and Jonas asked, ‘Did you see the ship?’
Niklas stared at him, then looked out across the Sound. ‘What ship?’
‘A big ship. Last night.’
‘Not last night,’ his father said. ‘But I have seen a few cargo ships passing through the Sound since we arrived.’
Jonas didn’t say any more about the ship. He sat there for a few minutes longer with his feet in the water, until he had stopped sweating, then he stood up. ‘I’d better get on.’
It was easier now; he had learned how to hold the sander.
After a while he got up and stretched, and saw that he was being watched from the other side of the coast road. A grey-haired man with a white beard and sunglasses was standing on the ridge above the shore, staring at Villa Kloss. He was wearing a red T-shirt, but Jonas couldn’t make out his face. Too far away.
He was standing in the middle of the rocks that had rolled down from the cairn, and when Jonas realized that he went cold all over.
He turned to see whether his father had noticed the man as well, but Niklas was lying back on the sun lounger with his mouth open. He had fallen asleep.
Jonas slowly bent down and resumed his sanding, but when he had finished the plank he looked over at the cairn once more.
The man had disappeared.
Gerlof
The birds were singing at the tops of their voices. Gerlof was sitting in the garden with his hearing aid turned up to full volume, and the song in the bushes rose and fell like a summer concert.
Who needed a gramophone when there were blackbirds? Not Gerlof.
It was early evening, but still warm and calm. The entire day had gone, June would soon be over, and he had done very little apart from doze in the sunshine.
He had had a headache, probably due to lack of sleep, so he turned down the opportunity to play mini-golf with his grandchildren and listened to the birds with his eyes closed instead — until he heard the gate opening.
A boy was standing there. Jonas Kloss, his overnight guest, was back.
Gerlof waved and the boy slowly came over to say hello.
‘Is Kristoffer home?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘We were going to play FIFA on his Nintendo,’ Jonas said.
Gerlof had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded anyway.
‘The boys have gone over to the restaurant, but they’ll be back soon. How are you this evening, Jonas?’
‘Fine.’
Just one word. Then silence, until Gerlof asked, ‘Have you thought much about what happened... about the ship?’
Jonas nodded. He was rigid and tense, as if the dead had him in their clutches. And that was probably true; after seventy years, Gerlof still remembered Gilbert Kloss collapsing in the churchyard. He had been a few years older than Jonas at the time, but that day still haunted him. He didn’t want Jonas to be affected the same way, so he leaned forward. ‘Jonas,’ he said slowly. ‘I think I know what had happened to those men you saw on the ship. They weren’t monsters or zombies. They’d been poisoned by gas.’
Jonas stared at him. ‘Gas?’
‘From the fish in the hold. You said you could smell fish on board, but I think the fish had gone rotten in the heat.’
He told Jonas the same story he had told Tilda. Jonas listened in silence and seemed to relax slightly when Gerlof stopped speaking. He started to move away, but Gerlof hadn’t finished.
‘And the man with the axe, Jonas... Have you remembered where you’d seen him before?’
The boy shook his head.
‘I can try to help you if you like. Would that be all right?’
‘OK.’
With some difficulty, Gerlof pulled up another garden chair. ‘Sit down.’ Now they were sitting face to face, and Gerlof picked up his notebook and a pen. He smiled at Jonas. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘Good. In that case, let’s try to travel back in time... Can you conjure up the man from the ship so that you can see his face?’
Jonas nodded, but kept his eyes lowered.
‘Try to think back to where you’d seen him before,’ Gerlof said, speaking more slowly. ‘Imagine you’re going back in time, to the moment just before you saw him.’
‘OK,’ Jonas said again, his head drooping even more.
The garden was suddenly quiet, apart from a lone bumble bee buzzing past their chairs.
Gerlof waited for a few seconds, then asked, ‘What can you see now, Jonas?’
‘A building.’
‘And what time is it?’
‘I don’t know... but it’s summer. Evening.’
‘And you’re standing outside a building. Is it here on the island?’
‘Don’t know. I think so.’
‘What does this building look like?’
‘It’s big.’
‘Is it made of stone, like a castle? Or brick?’
‘Wood. Big planks of wood.’
Jonas was staring at the grass. He wasn’t in a hypnotic trance, he was just concentrating hard.
A wooden building. Gerlof quickly made a note of that.
‘You have to be very careful when you question minors,’ Tilda had said. Gerlof would be careful. And this wasn’t a real interview, he told himself, it was just a chat. He went on, ‘What colour is the building?’
‘Red.’
Most wooden buildings on Öland were red, of course. The whole of Sweden was full of red buildings. Gerlof tried again. ‘So he’s inside a big red building?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you inside, too?’
‘No, but I’m going in.’
‘On your own?’