“Is he suspected of anything now?” asked Julia. “Are you after him?”
“No, it’s not a question of being after him,” said Lennart. “We just want to find him, have a chat with him... find out what he’s been doing at Vera Kant’s. He’s guilty of breaking and entering, at any rate.”
So am I, thought Julia.
“Aren’t you going to ask him about Jens?” she asked. “Where Anders was when Jens disappeared?”
“Perhaps,” said Lennart. “Do you think we should?”
“I don’t know,” said Julia.
She couldn’t remember if Anders Hagman had even met her son. But surely he would have? They’d swum over by the jetty in the summer, within sight of the campsite. Jens had run around on the shore all day long in his swimming trunks and a sun hat. Had Anders stood on the ridge watching him?
“Evidently Anders is in Borgholm. We’ll track him down,” said
Lennart. “If we find out anything interesting, I’ll be in touch.”
Gerlof had also called Julia after her accident, but Julia hadn’t let it turn into a long conversation. She was embarrassed. The more she thought about breaking into Vera Kant’s house and her idea that Jens had hidden in there, the more embarrassed she felt.
On Monday morning Gerlof finally came to Stenvik in John Hagman’s car and rang the doorbell. Julia struggled with her crutches to get to the door; she was alone in the house. Astrid was up in Marnäs, shopping.
John was the chauffeur, but he stayed out in the car. Julia could see him slumped behind the wheel, looking pensive.
“I just wanted to call in and see how you were,” said Gerlof, leaning on his cane, out of breath after walking from the car to the house all by himself.
“I’m pretty good,” said Julia, leaning on her crutches. “Are you and John off somewhere?”
“We’re going to Småland,” said Gerlof briefly.
“When will you be back?”
Gerlof laughed. “Boel asked exactly the same question at the home. She’d much rather I stayed in my room from morning till night. But it’ll be this evening, or late this afternoon... We might call on Martin Malm too, if his mind is a bit clearer today than it was last time.”
“Does this have anything to do with Nils Kant?”
“It might have,” said Gerlof. “We’ll see.”
Julia nodded — if he didn’t want to tell her any more, that was fine.
“I heard about Anders Hagman,” she said. “That you told the police about him.”
“I mentioned his name... I don’t think John’s too pleased about it. But they’d have worked out his name anyway, sooner or later.”
“They want to talk to him,” said Julia. “I’m not sure... but it seems as if the police in Borgholm might be on the way to reopening the investigation. Into Jens’s disappearance, I mean.”
“Mmm... but I think they’re on the wrong track with Anders. And of course John thinks so too.”
“Aren’t you going to put them right, then?”
“The police don’t listen to us pensioners, not when they think our ideas are too crazy,” said Gerlof cheerfully. “We’re not reliable.”
“But you never give up. That’s something to admire.”
“Good,” said Gerlof. “We do our best.”
“You keep on looking,” said Julia. “It can’t do any harm.”
That particular comment was ironic, although she didn’t know it — the next time she saw Gerlof he would be dying.
Ciudad De Panamá, April 1963
Panama City in the canal country of Panama.
Tall apartment blocks and dilapidated shacks side by side. Cars, buses, motorbikes, and jeeps. Mestizos, military police, bankers, beggars, buzzing flies, and gangs of sweaty American soldiers along the avenues. The smell of burnt gas, rotten fruit, and grilled fish.
Nils Kant wanders through the narrow streets every day, the soles of his feet burning inside his shoes.
He’s looking for Swedish sailors.
There aren’t any in Costa Rica — at least, Nils has never met any. To be sure of finding Swedes, he has to come here, to Ciudad de Panamá.
The journey south by bus takes six hours. Nils has made five such journeys to the canal area in three years.
In the long canal between the oceans, ships line up to avoid the lengthy journey around Cape Horn. The sailors go ashore to enjoy themselves in the big port. Some stay behind: the bums.
He is looking for the right man among these forgotten sailors: those who gather at the docks when ships from Scandinavia arrive, at the Scandinavian church when they’re handing out food, and who spend the rest of their time within reach of the bars and shops. Those who’ll drink anything that contains alcohol, from cheap Colombian rum to pure spirit distilled from shoe polish.
On the second evening of his fifth visit, he is walking along the cracked cement sidewalks when he sees a shadowy figure clutching a bottle, crouching in a dark doorway a few blocks away from the entrance to the Scandinavian church. Sniveling, fits of coughing, and the stench of vomit.
Nils stops in front of him.
“How are you?” he asks.
He speaks Swedish. It isn’t worth wasting time on anyone who doesn’t understand what he says right away.
“What?” asks the bum.
“I said, How are you?”
“Are you from Sweden?”
The look in the Swede’s eyes is more sorrowful and weary than dull, his beard is unkempt, but the lines around his mouth and eyes are not that deep. This man hasn’t been drinking all that long, despite the fact that he looks as if he’s just about thirty-five — around Nils’s age.
Nils nods. “I come from Öland.”
“Öland?” The bum raises his voice and coughs. “Öland, shit... I’m from Småland... shit. Born in Nybro.”
“It’s a small world,” says Nils.
“But now... I missed the ship going through the lock.”
“Really? That’s a shame.”
“Last year. I missed... the ship was supposed to go through the lock after two days. Up, down. Got arrested here... there was a fight in a bar, I was swigging beer straight from the jug.” The man looks up with a new light in his eyes. “Have you got any money?”
“Maybe.”
“Buy something, then, buy whisky... I know where.”
The man tries to get up, but his legs are too stiff.
“I might be able to go and buy a bottle,” Nils tells him. “One bottle of whisky, we can share it. But you’ll have to wait here. Are you going to wait for me?”
The man nods, and squats down again.
“Buy something” is all he mutters.
“Good,” says Nils, straightening up without looking the man in the eyes. “Perhaps we can be friends.”
Five weeks later in Jamaicatown, which is the name of Puerto Limón’s English quarter:
Tican Hotel it says on the sign, but it’s hardly a hotel, and the lobby is just a cracked piece of wood balanced on a couple of table legs, and a register spotted with mold. A staircase on the outside of the building leads up to a few small guest rooms on the second floor. Nils can hear English being spoken loudly in a building on the opposite side of the street.
He goes silently up the steps, past a fat, shiny cockroach on its way down the wall. He reaches the narrow veranda on the second floor, and knocks on the second door in a row of four.
“Yes, sir!” calls a voice from inside, and Nils opens the door.
For the third time he sees the Swede who says he has come to help him get home.
The Swede is sitting on the only bed in the stifling hotel room, amid a heap of tangled sheets and brown-speckled pillows, his upper body bare and gleaming with sweat. He has a glass in his hand. A small fan is humming away on the bureau next to the bed.