‘Comrade Karrek stepped forward in his butcher’s apron. “Let us begin.”
‘My colleagues led the prisoners down into the cellar and over to the brightly lit part of the room, one at a time. I saw that they were soldiers, officers of some kind, but none of them had caps, and some were not wearing jackets. Their hands were bound behind their backs. They were not permitted to speak, but I could see that they were foreigners.
‘Then I had to stop thinking and start counting.
‘As soon as a prisoner entered the room, his legs were kicked from beneath him and he was dragged over to the wall by the logs on his knees. By this time, Comrade Karrek was already moving towards him with his gun raised, and in a single movement he took aim at the back of the prisoner’s neck and fired.
‘Five seconds later, my colleagues lifted the body and took it out through another doorway to a large flatbed truck.
‘The floor was sluiced down and Karrek returned to the shadows. Everything was ready for the next prisoner.’
Aron falls silent, lost in the past.
‘We worked through the night in that cellar. It was like... like a conveyor belt. Or a millstone, grinding away.
‘Comrade Karrek allowed himself a small glass of vodka after every tenth execution. On some nights, my piece of paper was covered in tiny strokes, and Karrek had drunk more than twenty-five vodkas. All I had done was to load guns and count bodies, but after a ten-hour shift I was still completely exhausted.
‘And Karrek’s eyelids would be drooping as dawn broke, when the black work was almost over, but even the very last shots found their mark. Only when the last prisoner had been removed did he take off the stained apron and count the marks on my sheet of paper. The politicians who had planned all this insisted on a final tally each morning.
‘I remember the smell of the forest when we emerged from underground; it was cold and fresh. But the stench of the cellar lingered on our uniforms when we returned to the barracks to wash and to sleep as the sun rose.
‘The stench of gunpowder and blood.
‘Early one morning, towards the end of our black work, a very drunken Karrek talked to us about tjistka, the necessary purge.
‘“Every tjistka is difficult,” he muttered, raising his glass. “But they pass. Soon, all our enemies will be gone, and then we can go home.”
‘And we did.’
Aron has finished his confession to Mila, but of course he has not told her everything.
He hasn’t said anything about Sven.
Or about Comrade Trushkin.
His wife has listened, with one hand resting on her belly. She gazes at him for a long time afterwards, but not with disgust. Only sorrow.
‘It was war,’ she says. ‘You wanted to win that war. You did what you had to do.’
Aron looks away. ‘I was someone else back then,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t myself.’
And then he takes a deep breath and at long last he tells her who he really is. He is not from the Ukraine, and his name is not Vladimir Jegerov.
‘My name is Aron,’ he says. ‘Aron Fredh, and I came here from Sweden in the thirties.’
Mila is still listening, and she does not recoil in horror.
‘I had to change my name and become someone else in order to survive,’ he says eventually. ‘But the executioner is gone now.’
Yes, Vlad is gone. He is dead. Aron is almost certain.
But he and Mila are alive, and twenty-four hours later they become parents.
Their daughter grows into a happy schoolgirl, tall and slender as a reed, with lots of energy. Aron loves his child; he plays with her for hours. When she is old enough, he begins to speak a little Swedish to her.
Mila sometimes goes out with friends from her army days, but Aron spends most of his time at home with his daughter.
He retires in the year she starts school. It feels as if a large part of Vlad’s spirit leaves him on that spring day, never to return.
Aron visits the KGB veteran association occasionally, to catch up with former colleagues, but he grows tired of their melancholy nostalgia and his visits become more and more infrequent. He gains nothing from the quiet conversations, and the fear of being caught up in bonds of friendship has been with him ever since his days with the NKVD.
Aron takes it easy. He lives for the beautiful light over Moscow, for the sun drifting over the river and the parks — and for his wife and daughter.
And yet: one day he would like to show them his home at Rödtorp, and the shore.
Gerlof
‘Kloss has installed a new alarm system,’ John Hagman says.
‘I can understand why,’ Gerlof replies. ‘They’re afraid of Aron Fredh.’
John had picked him up from the residential home on Saturday evening; they had driven down to Stenvik, to John’s little cottage, then on to the campsite, where John had collected the day’s fees from the holidaymakers.
Now they were sitting in John’s car south of the campsite, looking towards Villa Kloss. There were lights on in both houses, but Gerlof couldn’t see any movement at the windows. The sun had gone down and no doubt the alarm was switched on, so he was reluctant to go and ring the doorbell.
‘I understand him a little better now,’ he said. ‘Aron, I mean.’
‘In what way?’
‘I understand what drives him. The Kloss family have taken everything Aron Fredh had left on this island. Everything he has done this summer has been an act of revenge.’
‘They should have spoken to one another,’ John says.
‘Yes, but I presume Aron did that before he left Russia. I should imagine he got in touch and told them he wanted his share of the inheritance, as Edvard Kloss’s son.’
‘An unknown heir,’ John said.
‘Two heirs,’ Gerlof pointed out. ‘Greta Fredh was Edvard’s daughter, and Aron is his son. “Illegitimate children”, as we said in those days, but still with a legal right to Edvard’s land... Land on the coast around Stenvik, worth millions. This was bad news for the family and, even worse, Greta and Aron were entitled to claim their share of the Ölandic Resort.’
‘If I know the Kloss family as well as I think I do,’ John said, ‘they would never agree to that.’
‘No, and I think they made that pretty clear. They’d already demolished Aron Fredh’s childhood home, and his sister, Greta, is no longer alive. Apparently, Veronica Kloss was the last person to visit her the day she died.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Exactly,’ Gerlof said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since I discovered how much the staff at the home trusted Veronica Kloss. She was able to come and go more or less as she wished. And that was why she was able to kill Greta.’
‘Do you know that for certain, Gerlof?’
‘Well, it wasn’t anybody else, at any rate. Greta Fredh was in her bathroom when she fell and broke her neck. And I’m told she always locked the door, so no one could have pushed her over.’
‘But you think Veronica managed to get to her somehow?’
‘Yes,’ Gerlof said. ‘There is a way to make a person fall over on the other side of a door... If they’re light enough, and if you have strong arms. And if the floor is flat.’
John was listening, and Gerlof went on. ‘There’s a long, narrow, plastic mat in the hallway in every room in the home. I think Veronica put the mat in the bathroom, with one end sticking out under the door. When Greta had gone into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, Veronica stood on the other side and yanked the mat away. Then gravity did the rest... Greta fell and broke her neck, and Veronica could simply replace the mat in the hallway and leave the room.’