Gerlof looked at the policeman in surprise.
“Really?” he said.
“The door has been forced. And there were traces upstairs. Newspaper cuttings pinned on the wall, stale food... a sleeping bag. And the cellar has been dug up.”
Gerlof thought it over.
“Have you examined the house?” he said.
“Only briefly,” said Lennart. “My priority was getting your daughter to the hospital.”
“Good. Her father thanks you for that,” said Gerlof.
“This morning I went into Vera Kant’s house again before I came here,” the policeman went on. “Julia was lucky: the paraffin lamp smashed on the stone floor when she dropped it. If it had ended up by the wall, the whole place could have burnt down.”
Gerlof nodded. “But what’s this about the cellar? Have they dug things up? Or buried them?”
“It was hard to see. Dug up, I should think. Or just dug.”
“People who break in don’t usually start digging for things,” said Gerlof. “And they don’t usually stay the night.”
Lennart looked tiredly at him. “Now you’re playing private eye again.”
“I’m just thinking out loud. And I’m thinking...”
“What?” pressed Lennart.
“Well... I’m thinking it must be somebody from Stenvik who’s been in the house.”
“Gerlof...”
“You can do plenty of things up here on Öland without being disturbed. You know that too. There’s hardly anybody around to see you...”
“Do feel free to write a letter to the paper about the shortage of police officers,” said Lennart sharply.
“But one thing people always see,” Gerlof went on quietly, “is strangers. Strangers with shovels, strange cars parked outside Vera Kant’s house — people in Stenvik would have noticed something like that. And they haven’t, as far as I know.”
Lennart thought about it.
“Who actually lives in Stenvik all year round?” he asked eventually.
“Not many people.”
Lennart didn’t speak for a few seconds.
“I might need your help, Gerlof,” he said, and quickly added, “Not as a private eye, but just to check out a few facts. I found something in the cellar.” He put his hand in his pocket. “There were several snuff tins on the windowsill in the cellar and under the stairs. All empty. They’re hardly from Vera Kant’s day.”
He pulled out a snuff tin, along with a notepad. The tin was in a small plastic bag.
“I don’t take snuff,” said Gerlof.
“No. But do you know anybody down in Stenvik who does?”
Gerlof hesitated for a few seconds, then nodded. There was no point in hiding things the police could find out anyway.
“Just one person,” he said.
Then he gave Lennart a name. The policeman wrote it down on his pad and nodded.
“Thanks for your help.”
“I’d like to come with you,” said Gerlof. “If you’re going to see him.” Lennart opened his mouth, and Gerlof added quickly, “I feel fine today, I can walk on my own. He’ll relax and be more ready to talk if I’m there. I’m almost sure of it.”
Lennart sighed.
“Put your coat on, then,” he said “and we’ll go for a little ride.”
“That was a fine speech, John,” said Gerlof. “At Ernst’s funeral, I mean.”
John was sitting on the other side of the table in his little kitchen in Stenvik, and nodded briefly without replying. He leaned back for a few seconds, then forward again. He was tense, Gerlof could see that very clearly, and it wasn’t difficult to see the reason either: the third person at the table was Lennart Henriksson, still dressed in his uniform. It was a quarter to six in the evening, and it was dark outside.
The empty snuff tin was on the table between them.
“So you’re reopening the case?” John asked Lennart.
“Well, I don’t know about reopening...” said Lennart, shrugging his shoulders. “We’d like to talk to Anders, if this actually is his snuff tin. Because that means he’s definitely the person who’s slept at Vera Kant’s house and been digging in the cellar and tacked up several newspaper cuttings about Nils Kant and Jens Davidsson. And we’d also really like to find out where Anders was the day little Jens disappeared.”
“You don’t need to ask Anders about that,” said John. “I can tell you.”
“Okay,” said Lennart. He took out a notepad and pen. “Tell me.”
“He was here,” said John tersely.
“In Stenvik?”
John nodded.
“And you were here too? Can you give him an alibi for that day?”
John shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t remember... but in the evening we were out searching along the shore. Both of us. I do remember that.”
“So do I,” said Gerlof.
Even if many other memories of that evening were very hazy, he had a picture in his head of John and his son, who must have been around twenty at the time, walking side by side southward along the shore.
“And in the afternoon?” said Lennart. “What was Anders doing then?”
“Don’t remember,” said John. “He might have been out. But he certainly wasn’t up near Gerlof’s cottage.” John looked at Gerlof. “There’s no evil in my son, Gerlof.”
Gerlof nodded. “Nobody thinks there is.”
“Anyway, we need to talk to him,” Lennart said. “Is he here?”
“He’s in Borgholm,” said John. “He went down yesterday after the funeral.”
“Does he live there?”
“Sometimes he does... with his mother. Sometimes he lives here with me. He pleases himself. He doesn’t drive, so he catches the bus there and back.”
“How old is he now?”
“He’s forty-two.”
“Forty-two... and he lives at home?”
“It’s no crime.” John pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “And he’s got his own cottage, just behind mine.”
“I think,” Gerlof interjected tentatively, “... that we might say Anders is a little bit special. Don’t you agree, John? He’s kind and helpful, but he’s a little bit different.”
“I’ve met Anders a couple of times,” said Lennart. “He seemed perfectly capable to me.”
John looked straight ahead, his neck rigid. “Anders keeps himself to himself,” he said. “He thinks a lot. Doesn’t talk much, not to me and not to anybody else. But there’s no evil in him.”
“And his address?” said Lennart.
John gave them the address of an apartment on Köpmansgatan. Lennart wrote it down.
“Good,” he said. “Well, we won’t disturb you any longer, John. We’ll get back to Marnäs now.”
The last sentence was directed at Gerlof. He had seen the blind fear beginning to grow in John’s eyes during the conversation. The fear that Authority, circling high above like a bird of prey, had finally spotted him and his only son up in the desolation of northern Öland, and would never let go of them again.
“There’s no evil in my son,” John repeated, despite the fact that Lennart was on his way to the door.
“There’s nothing to worry about, John,” said Gerlof quietly, not sounding in the least convincing. “We’ll have a chat on the phone tonight? Would that be okay?”
John nodded, but he was still looking tensely at Lennart, who stood waiting in the doorway.
“Come on, Gerlof,” he said.
It sounded like an order. Gerlof didn’t even feel like a policeman any longer, more like a lapdog — but he got up obediently and followed Lennart outside. He would really have liked to go and visit his daughter at Astrid’s, but that would have to wait until another time.
Gerlof’s muscles were trembling more than usual as he walked back to his room; the pain in his joints was also worse than usual. Lennart had brought him back to the home.