He could hear the telephone ringing through the door, and didn’t think he’d get there in time, but it kept on ringing.
“Davidsson?”
“It’s me.”
It was John.
“How are things?”
Gerlof sat down heavily on the bed.
John didn’t say anything.
“Have you spoken to Anders?” asked Gerlof.
“Yes. I phoned him in Borgholm. I’ve spoken to him.”
“Good. Maybe you shouldn’t tell him that the police want to—”
“It’s too late,” John broke in. “I told him the police had been here.”
“Right,” said Gerlof. “And what did he say?”
“Nothing. He just listened.”
Silence.
“John... I think we both know what Anders was doing at Vera Kant’s. What he was looking for in the cellar,” said Gerlof. “The soldiers’ treasure. The spoils of war everybody believed they had with them when they came ashore on Öland.”
“Yes,” said John.
“The treasure Nils Kant took from them,” Gerlof went on, “if that’s what happened.”
“Anders has been talking about it for many years,” said John.
“He’s not going to find it,” said Gerlof. “I know that.”
John was silent again.
“We need to go to Ramneby,” Gerlof went on. “To the sawmill and the wood museum. We can go tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow,” said John. “I have to go to Borgholm to get Anders.”
“Next week, then. When the museum is open. And afterwards maybe we can stop off in Borgholm and see how Martin Malm is.”
“Fine,” said John.
“We’re going to find Nils Kant, John,” Gerlof told him.
It was almost nine o’clock that same evening. The corridors of the home were hushed and empty.
Gerlof was standing outside Maja Nyman’s closed door, leaning on his cane. There wasn’t a sound from her room. On the door was a little handwritten note, which said: PLEASE KNOCK! JOHN 10:7.
“ ‘Truly I say unto you: I am the door of the sheep-fold,’ ” murmured Gerlof to himself.
He hesitated for a moment, then raised his right hand and knocked.
It took a while, but eventually Maja opened the door. They had seen each other at dinner a few hours earlier, and she was still wearing the same yellow skirt and white blouse.
“Good evening,” said Gerlof with a gentle smile. “I just wanted to see if you were home.”
“Gerlof.”
Maja smiled and nodded, but Gerlof thought he could see a tense furrow among all the others in her forehead, beneath her white hair. His visit was unexpected.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She nodded a little hesitantly, and stepped back into the room.
“I haven’t tidied up,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter at all,” said Gerlof.
Leaning on his cane, he walked slowly into the room, which looked just as clean and tidy as the last time he’d been there. A dark red Persian rug covered most of the floor, and the walls were full of portraits and pictures.
Gerlof had been in Maja’s room a number of times. They had had a relationship, which had begun a few months after Gerlof’s arrival at the home and ended a year or so later, when the pain of his Sjögren’s syndrome became too severe. After that they had continued a quiet friendship which was still strong. Both of them came from Stenvik; both had been left alone after a long marriage. They had plenty to talk about together.
“How are you feeling, Maja?”
“Fine. I’m keeping well.”
Maja pulled out a chair at the small brown table by the window, and Gerlof sat down gratefully. Maja sat down as well, and a silence fell.
Gerlof had to say something.
“I was just wondering, Maja, if you could tell me about something we talked about once before...”
He reached into his pocket and took out the little white envelope Julia had given him the week before.
“My daughter found this letter in the churchyard, by Nils Kant’s gravestone. I know you wrote it and put it there, that isn’t what I wanted to ask you about. I’m just wondering...”
“I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” said Maja quickly.
“Absolutely not,” said Gerlof. “I didn’t—”
“Nils never gets the best bunch of flowers,” said Maja. “My husband always gets that... I always see to Helge’s grave first, before I tidy Nils’s.”
“That’s good,” said Gerlof. “All graves should be looked after.” He went on: “That wasn’t what I wanted to ask about, it was something else... I remember you once told me you met Nils on the alvar, the same day he... dealt with the German soldiers.”
Maja nodded seriously. “I could see it in his face,” she said. “He didn’t say anything, but I could see something had happened... but he didn’t want to tell me what it was. I tried to talk to him, but Nils fled out onto the alvar again.”
“I understand,” said Gerlof, then paused before continuing cautiously:
“And you mentioned that you got something from him that day...”
Maja stared at him. Then she nodded.
“I’m just wondering if you could show me what he gave you,” Gerlof went on. “And if you’ve told anybody else about this. Have you?”
Maja sat motionless, looking at him. “Nobody else knows anything,” she said. “And it wasn’t something I got from him, it was something I took.”
“Sorry?”
“I didn’t get anything from Nils,” said Maja. “I took it. And I’ve regretted it so many times...”
“A package,” said Gerlof. “You said it was a package.”
“I followed Nils,” said Maja. “I was young and curious. Far too curious... so I stayed hidden behind the bushes and I watched Nils. And he went to the memorial cairn outside Stenvik.”
“The cairn? What did he do there?”
Maja said nothing. Her gaze was distant.
“He dug a hole,” she said at last.
“Did he bury something?” asked Gerlof. “Was it the package?”
Maja looked at him and said:
“Nils is dead, Gerlof.”
“It seems so,” said Gerlof.
“It is so,” said Maja. “Not everybody believes it, but I know. He would have been in touch otherwise.”
Gerlof nodded. “Did you dig up the package when Nils had gone?”
Maja shook her head. “I ran home,” she said. “It was later... after he came home.”
It took a few seconds for Gerlof to understand.
“You mean... after he came home in a coffin?”
Maja nodded. “I went out onto the alvar and dug it up,” she said.
She got up, smoothed down her skirt, and went over to the television in the corner of the room. Gerlof stayed where he was, but turned his head so that he could watch her.
“It was one autumn day in the sixties, a couple of years after Nils’s funeral,” said Maja. “Helge was out in the fields and the children were at school in Marnäs. So I locked up the house and went out onto the alvar on my own, with a garden spade in a plastic bag.”
Gerlof watched Maja struggle to lift a blue-painted wooden chest decorated with red roses from a shelf beneath the TV. He’d seen it before; it was her old sewing box. She carried it to the table and placed it in front of Gerlof.
“I crossed over the main road,” she went on, “and after half an hour or so I got down to the alvar outside Stenvik. I found what was left of the cairn and tried to remember exactly where I’d seen Nils digging... and in the end I did.”
She opened the lid of the chest. Gerlof saw scissors, yarn, and rows of cotton reels, and thought about when he used to mend torn sails. Then Maja lifted up the false bottom and placed it to one side, and Gerlof could see a flat case lying in the secret compartment underneath.