Jonas wasn’t doing anything; he was just standing here by the cairn. But he had to say something.
‘I’m counting stones.’
Casper revved the engine again. Jonas considered asking if he wanted to play, but suspected that his cousin probably no longer used that word.
‘Stones?’ Casper said.
‘Every year some of the stones fall down from the cairn. I’m keeping a check on them.’
That was in fact true; since he was last here at least three big stones had come tumbling down and were lying on the grass, along with others that had been there for several years. Jonas counted them and looked at his cousin.
‘Nine,’ he said, and continued in a confident voice: ‘When thirteen stones have fallen, the ghost will be free.’
‘What ghost?’
‘The one that lives in the cairn.’
The idea had only just come to him, but it sounded really good.
‘What will he do then?’ Casper wanted to know.
He didn’t sound all that interested, but Jonas had to keep going.
‘He’ll go to the houses on the other side of the road and …’ Jonas tried to think of something terrible that could happen. Something really bad. ‘He’ll go into every room and raise his sword, then chop off everyone’s arms while they’re fast asleep. The pain will wake them up, and they’ll see the blood pumping out, and their arms lying on the floor. Most of them will survive, but they’ll never be able to swim again.’
Casper was listening, but didn’t look impressed.
‘Wrong. He’ll take over their bodies while they’re asleep. And when they wake up, they’re possessed.’
‘Possessed?’
‘Possessed by the ghost.’
‘Right.’
‘I saw a film about that kind of thing last winter,’ Casper said. ‘Fallen. It was about a demon who came up from hell and took over people’s souls. He could move from one person to another, and when someone was possessed they had to do whatever he wanted. He turned them all into serial killers, but when the police arrested the murderer, the demon simply transferred into another body. So nobody could catch him.’
Jonas nodded. He hadn’t seen the film, but being possessed by a demon sounded worse than having your arms chopped off. He tried to think of something even more terrifying, but he’d run out of ideas.
He looked down at the cairn. ‘More stones have started to come loose – can you see?’
‘Maybe the ghost is on his way out,’ Casper said. ‘But you could always roll them back.’
‘OK.’
But Jonas was just saying that; he didn’t even want to touch the fallen stones. Anything could happen if he did that.
Casper revved his moped one last time and gazed out across the water. He didn’t even look at Jonas; it was as if he was talking to himself.
‘I was thinking of going up to Marnäs, to meet some mates by the harbour … See what’s happening there.’
He didn’t ask if Jonas wanted to go with him, and Jonas didn’t ask if he could come along, but now Casper looked at him and said, ‘You can use my rubber dinghy if you want. If you’re going swimming. It’s in the boathouse.’
‘OK,’ Jonas said.
Casper swung the moped around and set off along the coast road, increasing his speed so that the rattling got louder and louder until he turned on to the track leading past the maypole and the mini-golf course, heading up towards the main road.
Slowly, Jonas walked away from the cairn.
He remembered that Uncle Kent had promised him a great summer. He had said it was going to be fantastic.
But now he was all by himself on the coast, completely alone. As Jonas watched his cousin disappear, he knew that the next month was going to be terrible.
Lisa
The sun had gone down, and the party was under way.
Lady Summertime gazed out across the room at the crowded dance floor, the bubbling cauldron down below her throne. Hands flew up in the air, hair was tossed around, upper bodies swayed to the beat, forming dark, billowing waves.
‘Summer of love!’ she yelled into the microphone. ‘It’s going to be a long, fantastic summer!’
It was one thirty in the morning, the club was packed and Lady Summertime was running the show with flashing lights and a thumping backbeat. She was completely in charge, in her purple wig, oversized yellow T-shirt, black nail varnish and black leather jacket. Lisa would never wear such clothes, but this was Lady Summertime’s uniform.
She had arrived at seven thirty, and the cooks in the kitchen had provided her with a late dinner. Then she had put on her make-up and her wig. At half past eight, Lisa (Lady Summertime!) had gone into the club and put on a CD with fairly gentle tracks as background music.
People had been a little slow on this Sunday after midsummer, but at about ten o’clock they had started making their way down from the hotel and the campsite, red in the face from too much sunshine and front loading. They had gathered at the bars, both indoor and outdoor, ordering beer and glancing over towards the DJ booth.
At half past ten she suddenly turned up the volume, and everyone jumped.
‘OK, everybody on the dance floor! Right now!’ Summertime shouted, and people did as they were told.
When they had had enough to drink they became more adventurous, raising their hands in the air – they were ready to party.
By eleven the bar was jam-packed and the tables were covered with ice buckets. Lisa stuck to water all evening, but she was probably the only one.
At quarter past eleven the first glass smashed on the dance floor. The shards went everywhere, but the dancing continued.
At half past eleven the first bottle of champagne was emptied on to the floor, sprayed all over the place by the guy who had paid fourteen hundred kronor for it. He was rich – that was obvious from his early suntan. People screamed with laughter in the shower of bubbles, and several credit cards were waved at the bar staff. ‘More champagne!’
By midnight the place stank of booze and sweat. People were dancing with few inhibitions, in sleeveless tops and sweat-drenched shirts. A couple of the boys were wearing nothing but swimming trunks. The girls’ hair was plastered to their faces with perspiration; their make-up had slid off long ago. Lady Summertime had acquired her own little group of cheerleaders, standing immediately below her booth. A forest of fists rose in the air, in time with the music.
‘Summertime! Summertime!’
And she shouted back: ‘Love ya! Love ya!’
After twelve, she put on the Cowley remix of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, pressed the button for a strobe effect on the lighting desk and set the smoke machine going – then Summertime jumped down from the booth and set off on tour among the dancers, right into the middle of the chaos.
It was sweaty, it was smoky, the darkness split by flashing lights.
Summertime became a jumping body among all the others, moving to the beat, raising her fists in the air, allowing a hug here and there, and rejecting a proposition whispered in her ear by some guy in a white shirt. She shook her head, smiling – Summertime was always in control – and after a few minutes she was back in her booth. She turned off the smoke and switched to ‘Situation’ by Yazoo.
‘Summertime! Summertime!’
Her little group was growing. Deafening shouts, hands in the air, stumbling feet, drinks spilling everywhere.
Summertime flicked through her vinyl collection and smiled at the chaos, but suddenly she spotted three guys at the far end of the dance floor. They looked like Greeks or Italians, and were standing very close together, about a metre from the bar. They were whispering and glancing around them, almost furtively.
She mixed in ‘Firestarter’ by Prodigy, and the next time she looked up they had gone.
Booze was knocked back by the bottle, more champagne was ordered. Lisa watched as one guy who was clearly the worse for wear counted out seven thousand-kronor notes to pay his tab;
he passed them over to the bartender with a wave of his hand. ‘Keep the change!’
It was crazy; it was the height of summer.
A security guard appeared at the side of the DJ booth. He signalled to Lisa, and she took off her headphones and leaned forward.
‘We’ve had some trouble!’ he shouted to her. ‘Can you say something? Ask people to be a bit more careful?’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Thieving!’ the guard yelled. ‘Some people have lost their wallets!’
Lisa picked up the microphone, but thought for a second, then shouted back to the guard, ‘I saw three guys just now … They looked a bit dodgy!’
The guard had started to move away, but he stopped. ‘What did they look like?’
‘How can I put it? … Kind of greasy. Mafia types, if you know what I mean. Slicked-back hair and white shirts.’
The guard nodded, his expression grim.
‘OK, we’ll see if we can track them down.’
He made his way through the crowd as Lisa turned down the music and warned people to keep an eye on their possessions and their money. Nobody took any notice; they just carried on dancing.
The club closed at two thirty, and it was all over. Lisa finished with a slow number to calm things down.
‘Thanks, everyone! I love you all – see you tomorrow!’
The security staff took over and started ushering people out. However, the partying continued as everyone dispersed towards the campsite, chalets or the hotel, dancing their way home. Some would catch the night bus, others might decide to sleep under the full moon, or go for a swim.
The place was almost empty, but a guy who was far too young for Lisa hung around the booth, helping her pack away. He was wearing a black jacket and was just as tanned as the kids with rich daddies.
‘Do you recognize me?’ he said.
‘Vaguely. From Stockholm?’
He shook his head.
‘I was there when you picked up the keys. My name is Urban Kloss. I’m the one who owns all this … the Ölandic Resort.’
‘Oh, really?’ Lisa said; she could see that he was twenty at the most. ‘And when did you buy it?’
He stopped smiling, not quite sure what to say. Eventually he said, ‘It’s in the family.’
‘In that case, your family owns the place,’ Lisa said. ‘Not you, Urban. You just work here.’
‘I’m the manager,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘I am, I’m the acting catering manager.’
‘Whatever,’ Lisa said.
Urban smiled at her. He seemed to be enjoying the banter.
‘Do you fancy playing golf sometime? It’s the Ölandic Open next week.’
Summertime smiled back, anything but sweetly. Guys often chatted her up, and she was much better at dealing with them than Lisa was. She shook her head.
‘Balls are delicate; hitting them isn’t such a good idea,’ she said with a yawn. ‘And now I’m heading back to Stenvik with my records and I’m going to bed.’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘It’s fine, Urban, I can—’
‘Let me help you, for fuck’s sake.’
He picked up the bag of LPs and headed off. Lisa locked the booth and followed him, carrying her CDs. The car park was full of people hanging around. Among the Swedish cars there was a Porsche, a BMW, even a Lamborghini. And her Passat.
‘There you go,’ Urban said, turning to face her.
She gave him a brief hug, an ironic hug, and quickly got into the car.
‘Sleep well, Urban.’
If you were wearing a purple wig, giving a guy the brush-off was no problem.
She had split herself into two different people over the last couple of years: one was Lisa Turesson, who played melodic tunes on the guitar and was afraid of most things (like seagulls, wasps and snakes at this time of year), and the other was Lady Summertime, the feisty DJ in the purple wig who yelled into the microphone and got everyone on their feet. Lisa liked Lady Summertime.
She was back at the campsite in Stenvik in fifteen minutes. Everyone seemed to be asleep; there wasn’t a sound, but Lisa’s ears were still ringing from the music.
It was ten to three. The sun rose at about half past four, but the night sky was still dark grey. She could see a few faint lights along the coast in cottages and boathouses, but nobody saw Lisa carry her bag into the caravan and lock the door. She drew the curtains, too.
Then she opened the bag and started flicking through her records. The stolen wallets were hidden at the bottom. There were five altogether and, in spite of the fact that she was super-sleepy, she couldn’t help opening them and counting her spoils.
Mostly credit cards, but a reasonable amount of cash as well. She tipped them out on top of the fridge and counted three thousand-kronor notes and several five hundreds.
Early in the morning, Lisa would go through the wallets looking for scraps of paper with PIN numbers written on them. If she found any, she would drive down to the ATM in Marnäs and take out some money.
But now it was time to go to bed.
By twenty past three she was in a deep sleep. No dreams, no guilty conscience.
It wasn’t Lisa who had taken the wallets, it was Lady Summertime. And it wasn’t Lisa who needed the money, it was Silas.
Gerlof
Midsummer was over, and many people on the island of Öland could now relax; above all, security staff and those who owned campsites or bars.
Gerlof also relaxed. Stenvik was still standing.
His young relative Tilda Davidsson belonged to the group who perhaps felt the greatest sense of relief; she was a detective inspector with the county police in Kalmar but lived with her husband and children by a lighthouse on eastern Öland and seemed to feel that she was personally responsible for keeping an eye on things on the island.
‘So it was a good midsummer as far as the police were concerned?’ Gerlof asked when he spoke to her on Monday.
‘It was no worse than a normal weekend,’ Tilda replied.
‘How did you manage that?’
‘We ran a checkpoint at this end of the bridge. We pulled over as many cars as we could and confiscated all the alcohol.’
‘But surely people will always find booze, if they really want to?’
‘Yes, but we locked up those who’d already had too much, so we avoided any major disturbances.’
‘So everything was quiet?’
‘Well, no, there’s always something,’ Tilda said. ‘We had a couple of cases of GBH, quite a lot of petty thefts, some outboard motors went missing, there was a certain amount of vandalism and five or six drink-driving cases … but it was quieter than it’s been for a long time.’
‘Sounds good,’ Gerlof said.
‘We’ve got a missing person too,’ Tilda went on. ‘A security guard at the Ölandic Resort. But they think he’s probably gone off to the mainland.’
‘He’s disappeared?’
‘We’re looking for him,’ Tilda said.
Gerlof knew that she wouldn’t give him any more information. He could get her to talk about her work, but only up to a point.
‘Perhaps he’d had enough of Kent Kloss,’ Gerlof said. ‘Anyway, you’ll be finishing work soon, won’t you?’
‘I’ve got less than two weeks to go,’ Tilda said. ‘My holiday starts on the sixteenth.’
‘Let’s hope things stay nice and quiet, then.’
‘Absolutely. I hope you have some peace and quiet, too.’
But Gerlof knew that things were never really quiet when there were teenagers around. He was going to be alone with them for the next five days, until Julia returned from Gothenburg.
Ulrik the audiologist came back to Stenvik the day after the midsummer weekend to make the final adjustments to Gerlof’s new hearing aid.
He seemed pleased.
‘Don’t forget to take it off when you go to bed,’ he said. ‘And turn it off at night to save
the batteries.’
He switched on the device, looked up at the trees and the blue sky, and added, ‘I wouldn’t mind working in the country all the time.’
Ulrik was talking to himself, but to Gerlof it sounded as if someone was shouting in his ear. It was almost too loud. He could hear lots of other things, too: a chainsaw in a garden somewhere inland, a moped rattling along the coast road and the faint buzz of a light aircraft.
All at once the outside world was very close. It was as if a volume control in his ears had been slowly turned down over the course of several years and had suddenly been turned back to full strength.
‘I can hear everything,’ he said, blinking at Ulrik in astonishment. ‘Is that normal?’
‘How does your own voice sound? Is it echoing inside your head?’
‘A little bit.’
The audiologist clicked on his computer and the echo diminished.
‘I’m putting on four different programs,’ he explained. ‘That means you can adjust the hearing aid to suit you, depending on the context – whether you’re listening to the birds, chatting to someone, listening to the radio, or you just want to hear more distant sounds.’
‘You mean if I want to eavesdrop?’
Ulrik smiled. ‘In that case, you need to choose the setting for gossip.’
When Ulrik had gone, Gerlof remained sitting in the garden, amazed at all the sounds he could hear. He had regained a lost world.
An ear-splitting screech from the east almost made him jump, but it was only a lovesick cock pheasant wandering around the freshly mown meadow calling for hens.
Suddenly, Gerlof heard two voices from another direction, somewhere to the south. He turned his head but could see only trees behind him. The voices were coming through the forest, possibly from the coast road. Or from the shore? They sounded so close, but Gerlof had experienced this phenomenon before on Öland. Because the island was so flat, voices could sometimes be heard over a distance of several kilometres, if the wind was in the right direction.
He adjusted the hearing aid.
The eavesdropper’s setting, he thought, feeling slightly ashamed of himself.
The voices were much clearer now. A man and a woman were talking; Gerlof couldn’t hear what they were actually saying, but the man sounded calm, the woman more agitated. She was speaking much faster and louder; his responses were slow. It seemed like an intimate conversation between close friends. Friends, or lovers?
The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) Page 8