There was dry, yellow grass growing over the grave, but no flowers.
Julia had been wondering why nobody had mentioned Nils Kant as a suspect when Jens went missing. To provide an answer, Gerlof had sent her here, to the deserted churchyard outside Marnäs — and now she could see that Nils Kant couldn’t have had anything to do with Jens’s disappearance. In 1972 Kant had been dead for almost ten years. The answer to her question was carved into the stone.
So. Another dead end.
Two yards away was another gravestone, also made of limestone, but this one was taller and broader. Names and dates were carved into it: KARL-EINAR ANDERSSON 1889–1935 and VERA ANDERSSON B. KANT 1897–1972. In smaller letters below these names was another one: AXEL THEODOR KANT 1929–1936. That was Nils Kant’s little brother who had drowned, and whose body had been lost in the sound.
Just as Julia was about to turn and leave the churchyard, she caught sight of something small and white fluttering behind the stone on Nils Kant’s grave. She stopped, took a couple of steps, and bent down.
A white envelope was stirring slightly in the breeze, wedged in between the stems of a couple of dried-up roses.
Somebody had placed the roses behind the gravestone not very long ago, Julia realized, because they still had their dry, dark red petals. When she picked up the envelope, she could feel it was damp. If something had been written on it, the ink had been washed away by the rain.
She looked around. The churchyard was still completely deserted. The white church rose up fifty yards or so away, but the door had been locked when Julia tried it, and nobody was moving behind the narrow church windows.
Quickly she stuffed the envelope in her coat pocket and turned her back on the grave.
She went back to her mother’s grave, brushed aside a yellow birch leaf that had blown down onto it during the few minutes she’d been away, and bent down to check that the candle in the little lantern was still burning. It was.
Then she went back to the car to drive the short distance into the center of Marnäs.
When Julia was little, a trip from the summer cottage to Marnäs on the eastern side of the island had been a real adventure. There wasn’t just one kiosk here, there were shops. You could buy toys.
As she drove into the little village now she was mainly grateful for the fact that you could park free of charge — a big advantage over Gothenburg. You could park outside the ICA supermarket, along the short main street, and down by the harbor. Julia chose the harbor. There was a little bar there, the Moby Dick Restaurant & Pub, and the tables by the windows were all empty, just half an hour or so before lunchtime.
There were neither pleasure boats nor fishing boats in the little harbor. Julia got out of the car and went over to the empty concrete jetty that pointed out toward the horizon. She stood there for a few minutes gazing out over the gray sea, its surface crinkled with ripples. Nothing could be seen on the horizon. Beyond it somewhere to the northeast lay Gotland, and on the other side of the Baltic was Eastern Europe, and the old/new countries that had broken away from the Soviet Union — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. A world Julia had never visited.
She turned away and walked along the main street without meeting a soul. She went past a small clothes shop and a flower shop, then came to a cash machine, where she stopped to take out three hundred kronor. The receipt showed that she was short of money as usual, and she quickly crumpled it up.
Above the next door hung a metal sign that said ÖLANDSPOSTEN. In smaller letters underneath it said: The daily newspaper for the whole of northern Öland.
Julia hesitated for a few seconds, then went in.
A little brass bell tinkled above her head as she opened the door. Inside was a small room where the light was good but the air was terrible — it stank of stale cigarette smoke. There was an empty reception desk by the entrance, and behind it an office with two desks covered in newspapers and papers. Two men, not exactly young, sat at humming computers; one of the men had gray hair, the other had no hair at all, and both wore jeans and shirts that needed ironing. There was a nameplate on the bald man’s desk: LARS T. BLOHM. There was no plate on the gray-haired man’s desk, but Julia recognized him as Bengt Nyberg, the reporter who had been on the scene so quickly over at the quarry. Lennart Henriksson had told her who he was.
On the wall hung a long series of news placards; the one on the far left said TRAGIC FATAL ACCIDENT AT QUARRY in thick black letters.
Weren’t all fatal accidents tragic?
“Can I help you?” Bengt Nyberg didn’t appear to recognize her; he was peering at Julia through a pair of thick reading glasses as she came over to the desk. “Was it about an advert?”
“No,” said Julia, who didn’t really know why she’d come in at all. “I was just passing... I’m living down in Stenvik at the moment and... My son has disappeared.”
She blinked. Why had she said that?
“Right,” said Nyberg. “But this isn’t the police station. That’s next door.”
“Thank you,” said Julia, feeling her pulse rate increase, as if she’d said something embarrassing.
“Or do you want us to write about it?”
“No,” said Julia quickly. “I’ll go to the police.”
“When did he disappear?” asked the other man, Lars Blohm. He had a deep, gruff voice. “What time was it? Was it here in Marnäs?”
“No. It didn’t happen today,” said Julia. She could feel her face getting redder and redder, as if she were standing there lying to the two newspapermen. “I have to go now. Thank you.” She could feel their eyes on the back of her neck as she quickly turned and left the office.
Out on the sidewalk she took a shaky breath in the cold air, and tried to relax. Why on earth had she gone there at all? Why had she mentioned Jens? She wasn’t used to meeting people she didn’t know. And it was even worse in a small place like this, where everybody knew everybody else and a new visitor was instantly noticed and became the subject of gossip. She longed for Gothenburg, where people treated each other like trees in the forest and met on the sidewalks without so much as a glance.
In order to escape from the blank windows of Ölands-Posten, she took a few steps, and noticed another sign next to the newspaper office: POLICE, with the blue and yellow police shield above it.
A note was taped to the door beneath the sign. Julia went up the two steps to the door to read it.
Station manned Wednesdays 10–12, it said on the note in black ink.
It was Friday, so the station was closed. What happened if a crime was committed in Marnäs on a day other than Wednesday? There was no note to answer that question.
She looked at the window and saw a shadow moving about inside.
She walked down the steps and just at that moment the door rattled. A key turned, and Lennart Henriksson appeared in the doorway. He was smiling.
“I saw I had a visitor,” he told her. “How are you feeling today?”
“Hi,” she said. “I’m fine... I didn’t think there was anybody here. I read the sign...”
“I know, I have to be here for two hours on Wednesdays,” said Lennart. “But I’m here at other times too. Although that’s a secret — I get more done that way. Come in.”
He was wearing a black uniform jacket with a police radio and a revolver in his belt, so she asked, “Are you on your way out?”