‘My grandchildren have gone for a swim. My daughters haven’t arrived yet.’
The man seemed to relax, at least until they heard a loud buzzing and a hornet appeared. Gerlof knew that their sting could be dangerous, but they were less aggressive than their smaller relatives. Perhaps their size made them calmer.
The hornet zoomed past, and in the silence that followed Gerlof asked, ‘So how long are you out for?’
‘Twenty-four hours. The probation service releases prisoners in stages. First of all, for just a few hours, then a little longer... if you behave yourself.’
‘And have you behaved yourself? Are you cured?’
The man looked down at his hands. ‘Cured... How am I supposed to know that?’
‘I’m sure you know how you feel,’ Gerlof said. ‘Whether you’re at peace with the rest of the world.’
‘I’ve tried,’ his visitor said. ‘I’ve had the opportunity to talk about... about my thoughts.’
‘So all that hatred is gone?’
The man nodded and looked up. ‘Do you hate me, Gerlof?’
Gerlof looked away. ‘That’s exactly what I’m wondering.’
He met the visitor’s gaze, searching for anger, but he found none. Only weariness. He changed the subject.
‘Niklas Kloss,’ he said. ‘Have you heard of him?’
The man nodded. ‘He’s one of the wealthy Kloss siblings, isn’t he? The owners of the Ölandic Resort?’
‘Yes, but Niklas is the black sheep of the family. He’s been in prison.’
The man nodded again, as if he recalled the story. ‘Not where I was. I’ve never met him.’
‘But you’ve heard of him?’
‘There’s always talk... I know why he was inside. Smuggling... on a massive scale. He was caught by customs with a truck full of spirits from Germany, worth millions. Kloss wasn’t driving, but he was the one responsible. So they say.’
Gerlof picked up on the last three words. ‘You don’t believe it was him?’
‘I think it was more likely to be his older brother, Kent Kloss. But Niklas went down for it; he got a couple of years. That’s all I know.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Gerlof said.
‘No. People have always smuggled booze and tobacco across the Baltic, but the quantities are greater now. It’s difficult to understand who’s going to consume the amount that comes in. It will soon be like medieval times, when Swedes drank several litres of beer every day.’
‘But I don’t suppose it all stays on the island.’
‘No, some of it is probably transported over to the mainland.’
The man fell silent. Gerlof thought that, for a little while, he had felt as if he were chatting to just anyone, as if the man were an ordinary visitor — but every time there was a silence, the tension was there again.
‘It was brave of you to come here,’ he said eventually.
The man didn’t respond, so Gerlof went on, ‘I hope you can come back... To the island, I mean.’
‘That’s my goal,’ the man said. ‘To come home. Prison... that’s not a home.’
Gerlof had made a decision.
‘You asked if I hated you. I think it would be miserable to sit here in the sun, towards the end of my life, hating people.’
The man nodded; perhaps he was relieved. He got to his feet and gazed around the garden. ‘I’ll go back the same way I came, past the old mill... and the cairn.’
‘They’re still there,’ Gerlof said.
He raised a hand to wave, and his visitor was gone.
The Homecomer
It was late in the evening, and the Homecomer was reading the local paper. It was on sale in the shop at the Ölandic Resort, and he had been buying it in order to follow the problems with the drinking water. However, he had found another interesting article in yesterday’s paper. The headline had caught his attention:
He looked at the photograph again and saw an old man leaning on his walking stick among the graves in a churchyard. Marnäs churchyard. The man had told the reporter an old story.
The Homecomer recognized the man after all the years that had passed, and he remembered the open grave.
He shivered, even though it was still warm down by the sea. He could feel the dead reaching out, clutching at him with invisible hands.
Terrifying noises echoed inside his head.
The sound of knocking from inside a coffin.
He had never been back to that churchyard, not in seventy years.
He felt alone. He was alone. Pecka and Wall were dead. Rita had left the island. He missed his wife and his child, but of course there was no way he could see them.
The road was dark and deserted.
The Homecomer didn’t have a telephone of his own, so he was standing in a kiosk. He had called Directory Enquiries to ask for Gerlof Davidsson’s number. He picked up the receiver and keyed it in.
The New Country, November 1936
The Trotskyites are standing in a line, silent and frozen. The wind is bitterly cold, but they are wearing only their dirty underclothes, so that none of them can hide any kind of weapon. Spindly legs, trembling arms. They are not only undressed, their hands are bound with wire. Sometimes a metre-long rope binds two prisoners together, so that when one of them falls his or her neighbour is almost pulled down, too. But not quite.
Vlad has noticed that, when an enemy falls forward, the man or woman attached by the rope always struggles to remain upright, standing with their feet wide apart and fighting to keep their balance. Often, they take a step to one side, as if the enemy who is still alive wants to get as far away as possible from the one who is already dead.
It is strange, Vlad thinks as he lowers the Winchester, that an enemy wants to live as long as possible. Even if it is only for a few extra seconds on the edge of a newly dug grave, where death is already clutching at them.
A deserted gravel pit — this is where the prisoners are transported to from the camp, in a steady stream of trucks. This is where they are lined up and shot, in a forest south of the camp, north of Lake Onega.
The end of the world.
Vlad is happy to get out of the camp, but the battle against the Trotskyites is no easier out here than it is in there. Arctic winds blow across the sand, and the young NKVD guards accompanying him just want to get the day’s work done and go back to the barracks.
Vlad is wearing two freshly laundered linen shirts, a well-worn but warm army greatcoat and sturdy new boots. He is protected from the wind, and the job he has to do makes him even warmer. He raises the rifle, takes aim, fires and lowers it, over and over again.
The guards are standing three paces away, with their guns trained on the prisoners. The most effective method would be to walk right up to each one and place the barrel of the gun against the back of the neck, of course, but operating from a short distance away means that the person firing the shot does not get dirty.
In Vlad’s opinion, it ought to be impossible to miss even from three paces away, if you hold the gun steady. But a guard will move the gun surprisingly often, so that the enemy is hit in the back, or the shoulder, or not at all. The prisoner jerks, but remains standing.
This is bad. Vlad never misses. He is in charge here, which means he is the one who has to step forward and fire a second shot.
On these cold autumn days, many of the prisoners seem to be foreigners, immigrants from the west who came to seek their fortune in the new country: Polacks, Germans, Canadians. A few Americans, some Norwegians and an endless stream of Finns. Sometimes, as Vlad raises his gun, he sees a prisoner turn his head. In spite of the fact that all hope is gone, someone starts pleading for their life, offering love or money, or simply begging for mercy.