“I’m still in the meeting. And we’re not quite finished yet... it went on a bit. But I was thinking of going straight home afterward.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a couple more steps along the path. Now she could see one corner of Vera Kant’s house. “That’s fine. At least I know...”
“It’s just that it’s the funeral tomorrow, and I have to put in a few hours’ work before that,” Lennart went on. “I don’t really think I can manage to get to Stenvik tonight...”
“No, I understand,” said Julia quickly. “We can do it some other time.”
“Are you outdoors?” asked Lennart.
There was no hint of suspicion in his voice, but Julia was still tense as she came out with the lie in a relaxed voice:
“I’m just out on the ridge. I’m taking a little evening stroll.”
“Oh, right... Will I see you tomorrow? In church?”
“Yes... I’ll be there,” said Julia.
“Fine,” said Lennart. “Good night, then.”
“Good night... sleep well,” said Julia.
Lennart’s voice vanished with a click. Julia was completely alone once more.
Half a dozen steps in front of her, the path came to an end at the bottom of a flight of broad stone steps, leading up to a white wooden door and a glassed-in veranda decorated with ornate carvings that the wind and rain had done their best to splinter and wear away.
The house loomed above Julia. The black windows made her think of the burnt-out ruined castle she’d seen that morning in Borgholm.
Are you there, Jens?
Not even the darkness could disguise the state of decay. The panes of glass on either side of the front door were cracked, and the paint was flaking off the window frames.
The veranda inside was pitch-black.
Julia walked slowly to the end of the path. She listened. But who was she actually creeping up on? Why had she almost whispered when she was talking to Lennart on the telephone?
She realized how ridiculous it was to try and be quiet when nobody could hear — but still she couldn’t relax. She went up the stone steps with stiff legs, her heart pounding.
She tried to reason like Jens, feel as Jens would have if he’d been here the day he disappeared. If he’d gone into Vera Kant’s garden — had he been brave enough to go up the steps to the front door, and knock? Perhaps.
The iron handle on the door to the veranda was pointing downward, as if someone were just opening it from the inside. Julia assumed it was locked and didn’t even bother reaching out for the handle — until she realized the door was slightly ajar. A piece of wood had been hacked or whittled out of the doorframe so that the barrel of the lock had nothing to click into. All someone had to do was open the door and walk in.
So somebody had broken into Vera Kant’s house.
Burglars, perhaps? They came out to rural areas in the winter so that they could work undisturbed in the empty summer cottages. An abandoned property that had belonged to one of the richest women in northern Öland was bound to have been of interest to them.
Or was it someone else?
Julia reached out silently and pulled at the door. It didn’t move, and when she looked down she could see why. A small wooden wedge had been pushed under the door.
Presumably somebody had put it there so that the door wouldn’t be battered by the wind, with the lock being broken. Would a burglar be so considerate?
No.
Julia nudged the wedge out with her foot and pulled at the handle again. The hinges were stiff, but the door opened.
The darkness inside made her feel even more nervous, but she couldn’t turn back now. Curiosity killed the cat.
But the person who had put the wedge there had done it from the outside, so they weren’t still inside the house. Unless of course there was another way out.
Julia walked across the threshold of Vera Kant’s house.
It felt even colder inside than outside, and as dark and still as in a cave. She couldn’t see a thing, and then she remembered that she was carrying the paraffin lamp.
She took a box of matches out of her pocket, struck one, and lifted the glass. The broad wick began to burn with a small, flickering flame, which grew bigger and brighter when Julia lowered the glass over it. There was enough light to illuminate the empty veranda with a thin gray glow, even though the darkness remained, in the form of shadows creeping around the corners of the room.
She raised the lamp and made her way through the veranda toward the inside door. It was closed but not locked, and Julia opened it.
Vera’s hallway. It was narrow and long, with flowery wallpaper faded by the sun, and it was just as empty as the veranda. Julia wouldn’t have been surprised to find a hall stand with Vera’s black coats still hanging there, or a row of narrow ladies’ shoes, but the floor was completely bare. Along the walls and from the ceiling hung white curtains made of cobwebs.
There were four doors leading off the hallway. They were all closed.
She reached out for the nearest door along the long wall, and opened it.
The room inside was small, only a few square yards, and completely empty except for some glass jars on the floor, containing something moldy. A storeroom for cleaning materials.
She closed the door carefully, and opened the next one.
This was Vera’s kitchen, and it was huge.
Julia could see a brown linoleum floor that changed to polished stone in the center of the room, where an enormous black iron stove stood resplendent against the wall. Straight ahead were two big windows looking out from the back of the house, and Julia knew that the summer cottage lay behind the trees, just a few hundred yards away. It made her feel less alone, and gave her the courage to step into the room.
To the left along the wall, a narrow, steep wooden staircase with a rickety banister led to the upper floor. A faint smell of rotting vegetation hung in the dark, motionless air. Dust and dead flies lay in drifts on the floor.
This is where Vera Kant must have stood in the evenings, bending over her steaming pots and pans. This was the room Nils Kant had left with his shotgun hidden in his rucksack one beautiful summer’s day after the war.
I’ll be back, Mother.
Had he promised her that?
There was a half-open door under the stairs, and when Julia took a couple of silent steps toward it, she saw a steep drop on the other side.
It was the staircase down into the cellar. The cellar would be a good place to start if she was looking for...
A dead body, hidden away. But she wasn’t. Was she?
Just a quick look.
Julia could feel the weight of her cell phone in her pocket. Lennart’s number was in the memory, and she could ring him any time she wanted to — some small consolation.
She leaned in through the doorway under the stairs, holding the paraffin lamp up in front of her.
The staircase leading underground was made of rough-hewn planks of wood. At the foot of the steps below was a hard-packed earth floor, black and moist and glistening in the glow of the lamp.
But — something was wrong.
Julia went down a couple of steps so that she could see more clearly. She bent her head to avoid catching it on the sloping ceiling, and stared downward.
The earth floor in the cellar had been dug up.
The patch at the bottom of the steps had been left untouched, but somebody had made little holes all over the place along the stone walls. And there was a spade leaning against the staircase, as if the person who’d been digging had just gone for a short break.
Patches of dried mud from a pair of boots led up the cellar stairs toward her.
Earth was piled up in a little heap along the wall, and a couple of full buckets stood a little further away. Somebody was in the process of methodically digging up the entire cellar.