‘So he had a heart attack?’
‘That’s what we heard — that he was sitting drinking in his boat and he collapsed in the heat.’
‘That sounds plausible,’ Gerlof said.
Silence fell around the coffee table. So far, they had just been chatting, even though the subject matter had been quite serious, but Gerlof really wanted to talk about Sonja’s father.
‘Sonja, I’m not sure whether you know this,’ he began, ‘but I worked with your father in the churchyard when I was young. It was only for a short time, but he was very kind to me.’
‘Oh — when was that?’
‘In 1931, and there was another young boy there, too, whom Roland seemed to be keeping an eye on... I think his name was Aron, Aron Fredh.’
Sonja and her husband exchanged a quick glance. It was obvious they recognized the name.
‘Aron and my father were related,’ Sonja said at last. ‘Dad looked after him from time to time.’
‘So you were also related to Aron?’
‘Distantly, yes. It wasn’t actually my father who was related to Aron’s family; my mother and Aron’s mother, Astrid, were cousins.’
Astrid Fredh. Gerlof made a note of the name.
‘But none of them is still alive?’
‘No, they’re all gone. Astrid died in the seventies; she’d left Rödtorp by then. Aron had a younger sister, Greta, but she had a fall at the home in Marnäs last year and died.’
Gerlof vaguely remembered the incident, but it hadn’t happened on his wing and, unfortunately, falls were far from uncommon among the elderly. You had to be very careful with those shiny floors and rugs.
‘Where did Aron and his family live?’ he asked. ‘On the coast?’
‘They lived over to the west... at Rödtorp, next to the Kloss family’s land. Astrid and Greta stayed there more or less until the end of the thirties, but Aron and his stepfather went to America.’
Gerlof was taken aback — not by the fact that they had gone to America, but by the relationship.
‘Stepfather? So Sven wasn’t Aron’s biological father?’
Sonja glanced at her husband once more. ‘Sven came to the island as a farmhand at the beginning of the twenties,’ she said. ‘Aron and Greta had already been born by then.’
Gerlof noticed that she didn’t mention who their real father was.
After a brief silence, John spoke up. ‘Do you happen to know where Sven and Aron went when they got to America?’
‘Goodness, I’ve no idea. It’s almost seventy years ago, after all.’
‘They didn’t write home?’
‘Not letters,’ Sonja said. ‘But there might be a postcard from them in my father’s collection... Just a minute.’
She left the room and returned with a dark-green album, which she handed over to Gerlof. It was old and worn, with gold lettering on the front: POSTCARD ALBUM.
‘My father inherited it from his father,’ Sonja explained. ‘They both collected postcards, although neither of them received very many over the years. We used to send them to Dad... Our postcards from Majorca are at the back.’
Gerlof slowly leafed through the album. He liked postcards; as a ship’s captain, he had sent many to his daughters from various harbours around Sweden.
The Spanish cards at the back were in bright colours, with blue seas and a yellow sun. As he moved towards the front of the album, the cards were older, more faded and less exotic. They featured views of ‘Gefle Esplanade’ or ‘Halmstad — Grand Hotel’.
But one of them was different, and Gerlof stopped and read the words on the front: ‘Swedish-American Line SS Kastelholm — Carte Postale’. Beneath the text was a picture of a magnificent steamship of the type he had sometimes encountered while sailing the Baltic.
‘This could be it,’ he said, carefully removing the postcard.
There was a short message on the back, written in pencil in a sprawling hand:
Thank you for everything, Uncle Roland. We have arrived at the docks and will soon be going on board. This is a picture of the ship that will take us from Sweden to America, but we will be coming back.
Look after Mother and Greta. Goodbye.
It was obviously a card from an emigrant, presumably sent from Gothenburg, but it revealed very little, apart from the fact that Aron could spell. The date was unclear, but Gerlof thought he could make out ‘1931’ over the stamp.
He put down the card. ‘Aron says they’re coming back.’
‘Yes, but they never did. And, as I said, we didn’t hear from them again. I used to visit Greta Fredh from time to time, and occasionally I would ask if she’d had a letter from her stepfather or her brother, but she never had... not a word.’
Unless of course she was lying, Gerlof thought. Out loud, he said, ‘We often heard stories about the emigrants who were successful and could send home plenty of dollars, but all those who ended up in the gutter just disappeared.’
Sonja nodded, looking a little upset. ‘I just hope they had a better life in the USA, because the place they lived in at Rödtorp was just dreadful — little more than a grey shack. And, of course, Sven never had any money. He was a semi-invalid; his foot had been crushed.’
‘So how did he make a living?’
‘He did a bit of everything, as people who didn’t have a farm of their own had to do back in those days. He worked as a miller’s labourer, and went around the flour mills in the area.’
John glanced discreetly at his watch — it would soon be time for his evening rounds at the campsite — so Gerlof put down his cup.
‘Thank you for the coffee; it was nice to talk to you. Could I possibly borrow the postcards for a few days?’
‘We’ll be in Majorca for two weeks, so you might as well hang on to them until we’re back,’ Sonja said.
Gerlof had one more question, but it wasn’t about Aron. It was about the sound of knocking from inside a coffin. However, he didn’t really know what he wanted to ask Sonja. It was her father who had heard the sound, along with Gerlof, and now Roland was lying in the churchyard, too.
In the end, he said, ‘In that case, we’ll head home and let you get on with your packing.’
Jonas
Kristoffer wanted to hang out, so Jonas was back in the Davidssons’ garden. When he walked through the gate, he saw that Gerlof was sitting on his chair with his straw hat perched on his head, just as he should be.
The garden was quite small, but Jonas preferred being here to being at Villa Kloss. He could relax here.
But Gerlof’s voice was sharper this evening. He sounded more like a sea captain. ‘Good evening, Jonas. Come over here for a moment.’
Jonas slowly walked over to join him. Gerlof leaned forward, using his stick for support, and fixed him with a penetrating gaze. ‘Peter Mayer,’ he said. ‘You remember that name?’
Jonas’s heart gave an extra thump. Then he nodded. Gerlof looked so serious.
‘And have you mentioned it to anyone else, Jonas?’
Jonas didn’t know what to say. He wanted to sit down and tell Gerlof everything, absolutely everything, about the trip to Marnäs and Uncle Kent and Peter Mayer running across the field towards the road. And about the shouts and the screech of tyres.
But what would happen then? Yesterday, Casper had actually let him have a ride on the back of the moped, and Jonas knew he couldn’t tell on Uncle Kent. So he shook his head.
‘No. No one.’
‘Do you know why I’m asking you about Peter Mayer?’
‘No,’ Jonas said quickly.