‘Oh, I see. Our residents down here tend to spend most of their time in their rooms; the heat makes them very tired. Do you know Blenda?’
Gerlof shook his head again, but the girl had already opened the door. ‘We can go in, I need to check on her anyway... Hi, Blenda!’
Gerlof felt like an intruder, but followed her anyway.
He walked into a small apartment that was almost an exact replica of his own: a hallway with a worn plastic mat, a spacious bathroom with an adapted shower on the left, and a bedroom beyond the hallway. A woman with thin white hair was slumped in an armchair.
Gerlof couldn’t work out whether she was awake or not. The girl chatted away to Blenda, but got no response. She tidied the bed, filled a glass with water and set out several tablets. Then the visit was over.
But Gerlof lingered outside the door. ‘The lady who used to live in this room before Blenda... Greta, wasn’t it?’
‘Greta Fredh, that’s right. She died last summer, when I was filling in over the holidays. It was in the middle of August.’
‘Did she have a fall?’ Gerlof asked, vaguely remembering something Sonja Bengtsson, the gravedigger’s daughter, had told him.
‘That’s right.’ The girl lowered her voice, as if Death might be listening. ‘Greta fell and hit her head in the bathroom. The lock might as well have been glued shut; we had to send for a locksmith to let us in... but by then it was too late.’
Gerlof looked at the door. ‘Did Greta have any visitors? Any relatives who sometimes came to see her?’
The girl thought for a moment. ‘Veronica Kloss used to come and read books and magazines to her... You know, the woman who runs the Ölandic?’
Gerlof nodded. He knew very well. ‘But they weren’t related, were they?’
‘Greta sometimes claimed they were, but she was very confused towards the end.’
‘Any other visitors?’
‘Not as far as I know. Not while she was alive. Her brother was here a couple of times earlier this summer, but I think he was just collecting some of her things.’
Gerlof gave a start. ‘Did this brother tell you his name?’
‘Yes... Arnold.’
‘Aron,’ Gerlof said.
‘Oh yes, Aron. But he didn’t say much; he was very quiet.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Old, but in good shape. Tall and broad-shouldered... He seemed to have lots of energy, even though he must have been getting on for eighty.’ She looked at Gerlof, and quickly added, ‘Mind you, that’s no age.’
‘Age is all in the mind,’ Gerlof responded.
He thanked the girl and set off along the corridor. He saw the name ‘Wall’ on the room next door. Ulf Wall. Who was that? The father of Einar Wall, who had been murdered? Perhaps, because the picture of Einar Wall that the police had shown him seemed to have been taken just here.
Ulf Wall’s door was firmly closed. Gerlof didn’t knock; he kept on going. He was desperate for a cup of coffee, and he could only get one back in his own section.
Jonas
Uncle Kent was wearing a black T-shirt and khaki camouflage shorts; he was almost behaving like a soldier, marching up and down in front of the family and staff at Villa Kloss — and for the first time in days he looked quite pleased with himself, Jonas thought.
‘The alarm is triggered by a motion sensor,’ he said. ‘It’s switched off using a remote control. You have one minute to deactivate it once you step on to our land. It’s also millennium-proof, so it will work after New Year.’
Jonas listened to Kent’s presentation, surrounded by Mats and their cousins, Aunt Veronica, his father, Paulina and a gardener who had only just started working for the family. His name was Marc, and he came from somewhere abroad; he was muscular and very tanned.
They were gathered in the garden at the front of the house, which currently looked like a moonscape. The grass, the shrubs and the viper’s bugloss were gone; everything had been ripped up and replaced with fine gravel. Over the past few days, Jonas had realized what the temporary markers that had appeared the previous week were for.
They had now been replaced by a dozen small posts, buried in the ground with only a couple of centimetres showing. They were made of black plastic, but Jonas thought they looked like the wooden poles in a gill net.
‘Sensors’, that’s what Kent called them. He reminded everyone several times that they were extremely sensitive, then pointed to a panel next to the garage.
‘This is the control panel for the external alarm. You use one code to activate it and a different one to switch it off.’
He pointed towards the house.
‘The control panel for the intruder alarm is on the wall just inside. You open the door and switch it off. It covers the guest chalets as well.’
He gazed at the assembled group. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So now we have both an external and internal alarm to guard against intruders; everyone will be given the codes. Any questions?’
No one said anything. All Jonas wanted to do was slip away.
‘What about the hares?’
Jonas looked around; his father had put up his hand.
‘I’m sorry?’ Kent said.
‘There are hares all over the place at night,’ Niklas went on. ‘Won’t they set off the alarm when they run across the garden?’
‘Yes,’ Kent said. ‘Which is why we’re getting a fence next week. One and a half metres high, all the way round Villa Kloss, with an automatic gate. The hares won’t get over that.’
Aunt Veronica was standing slightly apart from everyone else; she had remained silent so far. She wasn’t in camouflage gear, just a pale-green dress, and now she was shaking her head. ‘I’m not having some kind of Berlin Wall around my part of the property,’ she said.
‘It’s quite a low fence,’ Kent insisted. ‘Even the boys will be able to see over it.’
Veronica stared at him. ‘Our family is not going to hide.’
‘No, but we do need to protect ourselves until things calm down. This isn’t just a petty quarrel between neighbours, Veronica.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ With that, she turned and went back to her own house.
Kent ignored her; he took several small pieces of paper out of his pocket and addressed the group once more. ‘Good, that’s everything, then... Come and collect your copy of the alarm codes.’
Jonas joined the queue; as he was waiting, he looked over at the cairn. It had been quiet there for the past few days; one or two tourists had stopped to gaze at the stones, but there had been no sign of an old man.
‘Can you see anything, JK?’
Jonas turned his head and saw Uncle Kent smiling at him. He was holding out a piece of paper, and Jonas took it. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a thing.’
Kent glanced down at the road. ‘I know someone is watching us,’ he said quietly. ‘An old man who sometimes sneaks into the bunker... But we’re going to take care of that particular problem.’
Lisa
‘Are you feeling all right?’
Lisa was playing her guitar at the restaurant in Stenvik. It was Saturday night, and the place was more or less full; there were a couple of empty tables inside, but the outside tables were packed. Presumably, most people were there for the beer and pizza and the view over the bay rather than for the music, but it didn’t matter.
The odd ‘Yeeaah...’ drifted back to her.
‘Good to be here!’ she said into the microphone.
It was all a bit of a cliché, but it did feel good to be there, even if her voice was starting to sound hoarse after several weeks of shout-outs and singing, constantly trying to make herself heard above the hum of conversation. It was much nicer to be out here in the evening sun by the sea, rather than down in the cellar in the nightclub. Any pleasure in playing Lady Summertime over there had completely disappeared.