‘How are things?’ Gerlof asked.
‘Not so good.’
‘Has something happened?’
Per looked down at the grass. ‘My father’s dead … He died in hospital on Sunday night.’
‘What happened?’
‘He got hit by a car.’
‘Hit by a car?’
‘A hit-and-run, in Kalmar.’
‘An accident?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Per sighed. ‘It was a hit-and-run, but Jerry must have known the driver, because he persuaded my father to go with him to a deserted road. Then he just mowed him down and took off.’
‘And who did it?’
‘Who wanted to kill him? I don’t know … A few things have happened recently, his studio burnt down a few weeks ago. It was deliberate, an arson attack.’
Gerlof nodded. ‘So he wasn’t popular?’
‘Not particularly. Not even with me … I’ve often pretended I didn’t have a father, especially when I was younger.’ He smiled wryly. ‘And now I don’t.’
‘Did he have any other children?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Do you miss him?’
Per seemed to consider the question. ‘The priest asked me that today when we were talking about the funeral. I didn’t know what to say. It was quite difficult to love Jerry, but I wanted him to love me … It was important, for some reason.’
The garden was silent.
‘My mother loved him,’ Per went on quietly. ‘Or maybe she didn’t … but it was important to her that I kept in touch with Jerry. She wanted me to write and ring several times a year, when it was his birthday and so on. Jerry never contacted me … but after he’d had the stroke I obviously came in quite handy. He started calling me then.’
‘This profession of his,’ said Gerlof. ‘Photographing men and women without any clothes on. Did it make him rich?’
Per looked down at his hands. ‘In the past, I think … not lately. But the money used to come rolling in.’
‘Money,’ said Gerlof. ‘It can, as St Paul wrote, make people do evil things …’
Per shook his head. ‘I think it’s all gone. Jerry had a great talent for raking money in, but he was just as good at getting rid of it. He hasn’t had anything to do with magazines for several years, since before he had the stroke. In the end he couldn’t even afford to run a car.’
‘Jerry Morner,’ said Gerlof. ‘Was that his real name?’
‘No, his name was Gerhard Mörner … But he decided he needed a new name when he started directing porn films. They all seem to do the same thing in the porn industry.’
‘Hiding behind the name,’ said Gerlof.
‘Yes, unfortunately,’ said Per, looking down at the grass. ‘I’d really like to talk to people who knew Jerry, people who worked with him and are still alive, but even the police can’t find anyone …’
Gerlof nodded thoughtfully. He remembered the magazine Jerry Morner had thrown on the table at the party, and said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Per looked up. ‘What you can …?’
‘I shall do a little bit of research,’ said Gerlof. ‘What were those magazines called, the ones your father published?’
* * *
That same evening Gerlof rang John Hagman down in Borgholm. He chatted about this and that at first, as usual, but after a few minutes he got down to business.
‘John, you once mentioned that your son had a pile of magazines under his bed, and he took them with him when he moved down to Borgholm. You described them, they were a particular kind of magazine. Do you remember?’
‘I do,’ said John. ‘And he wasn’t the least bit ashamed. I tried to talk to him, but he said all the lads read them.’
‘Has Anders still got them?’
John sighed. He often sighed over his son. ‘I expect he has, somewhere or other.’
‘Do you think he might lend them to me?’
John remained silent for a few seconds. ‘I can only ask.’
After quarter of an hour or so, John rang back. ‘Yes, he’s still got a few … and he can get hold of some more if you want them.’
‘Where from?’
‘He knows some junk shop in Kalmar that sells old magazines, everything you can think of.’
‘Good,’ said Gerlof. ‘Tell him I’d be very grateful, if he doesn’t mind; I can pay for them. I’m trying to get hold of two particular magazines.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Babylon and Gomorrah.’
‘That Jerry Morner’s magazines?’
‘Exactly.’
John didn’t say anything for a little while.
‘I’ll have a word with Anders,’ he said. ‘But are you sure?’
‘Sure?’
‘Are you sure you want these magazines? I mean, I’ve seen some of the ones Anders had and they’re extremely … extremely revealing.’
Embarrassed and excited, thought Gerlof.
‘Yes, I imagine they are, John,’ he said. ‘But I don’t suppose it’s any worse than secretly reading someone else’s diary.’
47
Five minutes after raising his voice to Vendela, Max came back into the living room speaking quietly, almost whispering. The fist he had shaken at her was now an outstretched hand pointing at himself, at his own chest, and he had turned into the understanding psychologist.
‘I’m not angry with you, Vendela, you mustn’t think that,’ he said. He let out a long breath and added, ‘I’m just a little bit disappointed. That’s the way I feel at the moment.’
‘I know, Max … There’s nothing to worry about.’
After ten years, Vendela had learned that his annoyance and jealousy went in cycles, and were always worse when he was coming to the end of a book.
She was making an effort to remain calm. It was Friday evening – and the eve of the feast of St Mark, an important day according to folklore.
‘Max, I think I’m going to go out for a little run,’ she said, ‘then we can have a chat later.’
‘Do you have to? If you stay at home we can—’
‘Yes, it’s for the best.’
Vendela went into the bathroom to change. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: a tired soul, a hungry body, and lines of anxiety etched on her forehead. She thought about the tablets that could make her feel better, but she didn’t even open the cabinet.
When she came out, Max was sitting in an armchair by the window with his Friday whisky, which was slightly bigger than his Thursday whisky. Aloysius was lying at the other end of the room, ears pricked towards his master.
Max lowered his glass and looked at her. ‘Don’t go for a run,’ he said quietly. ‘Can’t you spend the evening at home?’
‘I will be spending the evening at home, Max.’ Vendela tied her shoelaces and straightened up. ‘When I’ve been for a run. It’ll only take half an hour …’
‘Stay here.’
‘No, I’ll be back soon.’
Max knocked back his whisky and looked over at Aloysius. Then he stood up and took a couple of steps towards her. ‘I’m going to start thinking about a new book this weekend.’
‘Really? Already?’ said Vendela. ‘What’s this one going to be about?’
‘It’s going to be called Emotions to the Max. Or perhaps even better, Relationships to the Max.’ He smiled at her. ‘Relationships are the most important thing of all, aren’t they? Who we’re with, what we do with them. You and me. You and me and other people. You and other people.’
‘Me and other people … what are you talking about?’
‘You and our neighbour in the little house on the prairie.’ He nodded towards the north. ‘You and Per Mörner, you’ve got a close relationship going on there.’
‘Max, that’s not true!’
He moved two steps closer. Vendela could see that his temples were shiny with sweat, as if the heat before a thunderstorm was building up inside his head. The lightning wo
uld strike at any moment.
‘What’s not true?’ he said, wiping his fingers around his mouth. ‘I mean, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’
‘We haven’t done anything.’
‘But you’ve been out for a run with him.’
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘And the grass on the prairie is dry now, I assume? Dry and soft? You can lie down on it, behind some stone wall?’
‘Stop it, Max,’ she said. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. You sit there brooding about what I might be doing when I go out running, but that’s because you’re really thinking about something else altogether.’
‘Like what?’
‘You know exactly what I mean … You’re thinking about Martin.’
‘No!’
Max moved quickly towards her and Vendela backed away.
If I say the wrong thing now, he’ll hit me, she thought.
‘I’m going out, Max,’ she said quietly, ‘until you calm down.’
Her husband’s shoulders dropped a fraction. ‘You do that,’ he said. ‘You just go.’
Vendela ran. With long strides she ran away from the fairytale palace she had dreamed of once upon a time. Away from Max. She thought of turning off towards the Mörners’ cottage and knocking on the door so that she could speak to a sensible person, but it looked as if it were all locked up. She hadn’t seen Per or his father all week, and the Kurdin family was also away.
She took a wide swing to the west and headed for the alvar. But this far south it was difficult to find her way; her route was frequently obstructed by stone walls she didn’t recognize, or by thorny thickets and barbed wire, and it was a while before the landscape opened out ahead of her.
As the sun went down she could see that the alvar had begun to bloom. The yellowish-brown ground had absorbed the water and was now shaded dark blue with spiked speedwell, wild thyme and pasque flower, dotted with bright-yellow dandelions. Beautiful.
But there was a stillness among all the beauty that felt ominous. When Vendela stopped to catch her breath among all the flowers, she closed her eyes and wished all those around her a happy and peaceful St Mark’s Eve. But she couldn’t feel any warmth or benevolence flowing back in return. She couldn’t see any pictures; there was only darkness.
The elves were not happy.
48
Gerlof was sitting on the lawn in the sunshine when Carina Wahlberg came to visit him on Friday afternoon. John Hagman had been over in the morning and given him a substantial pile of magazines – old copies of Babylon and Gomorrah, stained and torn, and he was just flicking through them.
Gerlof was holding the magazines with his fingertips; most of them didn’t smell too good.
The doctor greeted him cheerily from the gate, and he waved to her. ‘Afternoon, Doctor,’ he said.
She smiled at him and came closer – but stopped dead when she saw the magazines. ‘I came to check your hearing,’ she said, looking down at the pile of magazines. ‘I can see there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight. Would you like me to come back another time?’
Gerlof shook his head. ‘Come and sit down.’
‘You look busy.’
He looked up from the magazine, not smiling. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said.
‘I don’t think anything.’
‘Well, it’s not like that, anyway. I’m eighty-three, and my last girlfriend, Maja up at the home, was about the same age, but she got too ill to spend time with me any more … I haven’t looked at young girls in twenty-five years.’ Gerlof gave this some thought, then added, ‘Well, twenty at any rate.’
‘So why are you looking at those magazines?’ asked Dr Wahlberg.
‘Because I have to.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m conducting an investigation.’
‘Of course you are.’
Dr Wahlberg came over and sat down. Gerlof flicked through the magazines, one after another, and kept talking. ‘I’m trying to come up with something in particular to do with these girls, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for. The whole thing just seems terribly sordid.’
Dr Wahlberg looked at the pictures, her expression anything but cheerful. ‘Well, I can see one thing that’s not good,’ she said eventually, ‘from my perspective.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They’re not using any protection.’
‘Protection?’
‘Contraceptives. The men should be wearing condoms. But I suppose they never do in magazines like this.’
Gerlof looked at her. ‘So you’ve seen them before?’
‘I used to work as a school doctor. Young lads buy them and get completely the wrong idea; they think these fantasies are reality.’
Gerlof looked down at the pictures, nodding thoughtfully. ‘It’s true, they’re not using any protection … But you’re wrong.’
‘About what?’
‘These aren’t just fantasies,’ said Gerlof. ‘They’re very real to those who are being photographed.’
Dr Wahlberg stood up. ‘I’ll go inside and sort out your tablets, Gerlof.’ She turned away, then added, ‘Let me give you a piece of good advice: throw those magazines away as soon as you can. I don’t think you’d want your daughters to find them.’
‘When I’m dead, you mean?’
The doctor wasn’t smiling. ‘When someone has died in their own house or in a care home,’ she said, ‘magazines like this often turn up, hidden under the mattress or in a drawer. It happens more often than you might think. And it’s always upsetting when the person’s child or grandchild finds them.’
Gerlof nodded. ‘These aren’t actually mine,’ he said, ‘but I’ll certainly pass that on to the owner.’
When Dr Wahlberg had gone, Gerlof carried on leafing through Babylon and Gomorrah. There was no variation, just page after page of photos of blonde girls in different sexual positions – he was surprised how tedious it all seemed after a while. Sad and depressing. But he kept on looking.
He suddenly stopped at one of the pictures. It was a colour photo that looked like most of the others: a picture of one of the muscular men, naked among the desks in a little classroom. The man was with a young woman. According to the brief caption she was called Belinda, and was described as ‘a naughty Swedish schoolgirl who has a lesson to learn’.
Gerlof was fairly sure her name wasn’t Belinda. But he looked at the picture for a long time, eventually picking up his glasses and holding them close to the page, like a magnifying glass.
After a minute or so he put them down, got up slowly, and went inside to make a phone call, taking the magazine with him.
He rang Per Mörner on Ernst’s old number, but there was no reply so he tried Per’s mobile.
‘Mörner.’ He still sounded exhausted.
Gerlof cleared his throat. ‘It’s Gerlof – Gerlof Davidsson in Stenvik. Can you talk?’
‘For a little while … I’m just on the way to visit my daughter in hospital. Has something happened?’
‘Maybe,’ said Gerlof. ‘I’ve been looking at some of your father’s magazines.’
‘Oh? How did you get hold of them?’
‘I have contacts,’ said Gerlof, not wanting to mention John Hagman or his son by name.
‘So what did you think?’
Gerlof picked up the copy of Babylon and looked at the front cover. ‘Lots of blonde wigs and sad eyes,’ he said. ‘And it’s all very seedy. Very seedy pictures.’
‘I know,’ said Per, sounding even more weary. ‘But that’s the way it is, and we men buy it.’
‘I’m too old,’ said Gerlof.
‘I’ve never liked it,’ said Per. ‘Jerry was keen on pictures and films like that, but not me. Not at any age. But somebody buys them, after all.’
‘And these men in the pictures, who are they?’
‘Men?’ said Per. ‘There’s only one man … his name is Markus Lukas. Or at least that’s th
e name he uses.’
‘No, there are different men. At least two. You never see their faces, but their bodies are different.’
‘Oh?’
‘And they don’t use any protection, either. No condoms.’
‘No, that’s true. I suppose Jerry thought it wouldn’t look right, it would look silly – you’re very observant, Gerlof.’
Gerlof sighed. ‘Why do they do it, these girls? Do you know?’
‘Why? I can’t answer that,’ said Per. ‘I don’t suppose it makes them feel too good about themselves … but I don’t know.’
He stopped, so Gerlof carried on, ‘I’ve found one of them, anyway.’
‘One of them?’
‘One of the girls in one of the magazines. You did say you wanted to find someone to talk to.’
‘You mean … you recognize one of the girls?’
‘I recognized her sweater.’
‘She’s wearing a sweater?’ said Per.
‘It’s thrown over a chair in the background,’ said Gerlof. ‘She comes from Kalmar, I think. I don’t know her name, but you should be able to find her.’
49
Per was on his way to see Nilla, but had stopped in Borgholm and was just going into the library when Gerlof rang about his discovery in one of Jerry’s magazines. It sounded promising, but Per was intending to search for Markus Lukas in the phone books in the library. The name wasn’t listed in any of the books covering southern Sweden, so he started looking for the name Jerry had mentioned in the car, Moleng Noar.
The name sounded Asiatic, like a Chinese restaurant. He flicked through the Yellow Pages for Malmö, but couldn’t find any restaurants with that name.
Hans Bremer had lived in Malmö, he remembered. He leafed through the section containing residential numbers, reached B and found Bremer, Hans with the address given as Terränggatan 10B.
He noted down the address, then went back to thinking about the name. Moleng Noar.
He picked up his pen and tried out different spellings:
Molang-noor
Mu-Lan Over
Moo Leng Noer
But it was no good, none of those names were in the phone book.
Or could it be a French name, a variation on Moulin Rouge, for example? He tried the French spelling: Moulin Noir. The black windmill.
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