They had reached the factory area now. Gerlof had expected the smell of newly sawn wood in his nostrils and the sight of groups of men in caps carrying planks of wood around between heaps of sawdust — as usual he was stuck in the past. All he saw instead were roads and tarmac between huge gray buildings made of steel and aluminum. There were big signs on them with the name RAMNEBY TIMBER.
“I’ve worked here for forty-eight years,” said Heimersson over his shoulder to them. “Started when I was fifteen, and stayed on. That’s the way things turned out... Now I look after the museum.”
“We come from the village where the owners used to live,” said Gerlof. “In the north of Öland.”
“The owners?” said Heimersson.
“The Kant family.”
“The Kants don’t own this place any longer,” said Heimersson. “They sold it at the end of the seventies, when August Kant died. It’s a forestry company in Canada that owns Ramneby nowadays.”
“The previous owner... August Kant?” said Gerlof. “Did you meet him?”
“Did I meet him,” said Heimersson, smiling as if the question were amusing. “I met him every day. He always drove his MG in... Anyway, here we are. This is the old office, it got too small in the end.”
WOOD MUSEUM said a wooden sign above the door. Heimersson unlocked it, went in, and switched the light on.
“Right... you’re both very welcome. That’ll be thirty kronor each.”
He had gone behind a counter with an ancient, enormous cash register on it.
Gerlof paid for both of them and received two receipts exactly like the one he’d found in Ernst Adolfsson’s wallet, then they went into the museum.
It wasn’t large, just two rooms with a short corridor between them. Some old saws and measuring equipment stood in the center of the room, and there were pictures on the walls. Lots of black-and-white photographs, framed and behind glass, all with labels explaining what was in each one. Gerlof went over to them in silence and stared at group photographs of sawmill workers, at forestry workers with saws in their hands, and at pictures of ships at anchor, their decks covered in piles of timber.
“There are some more recent photos in the other room,” said Heimersson from behind him.
“Right,” said Gerlof.
He would have preferred to look around alone, and noticed that John was carefully keeping out of the guide’s way.
“Our first computer is in there too,” said Heimersson. “That’s progress for you... I mean, computers run all the sawing nowadays. I don’t actually understand how it works myself, but it seems to be very effective.”
“Right.”
Gerlof kept searching among the black-and-white photographs.
“Ramneby exports refined wood all the way to Japan,” said Heimersson. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any business over there?”
“No,” said Gerlof, and added quickly, “But there’s limestone from Öland on the floor of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.”
Heimersson didn’t reply, and Gerlof changed the subject:
“A friend of ours was here last month, actually, here in the museum. Ernst Adolfsson.”
“From Öland?”
Gerlof nodded. “He used to be a stonemason. He was here in the middle of September.”
“Yes, I remember him very well,” said Heimersson. “I opened the museum especially for him, just like I have for you. I enjoyed meeting him. He said he lived on Öland, but that he came from this village originally.”
“From Ramneby?” said Gerlof.
“Yes. He grew up down in the village, before he moved to Öland.”
This was news to Gerlof, who had never heard Ernst talk about the village he came from.
He took a couple more steps, and then he saw it: the picture of Martin Malm and August Kant side by side at the sawmill harbor, standing stiffly in front of a row of younger workers.
A friendly business meeting on the quayside at the sawmill, 1959, said the typed strip of paper beneath the picture, despite the fact that only one solitary man in the group was wearing a friendly smile. The rest of them, Martin and Kant included, were staring at the camera with serious expressions.
1959. So that was several years before Martin bought his first big ship, thought Gerlof.
On this copy of the photograph, which was bigger than the picture in the book, the hand on Martin’s left shoulder could be seen clearly, and that was at least a sign of friendliness. It had certainly never occurred to Gerlof to place an arm around Martin Malm’s shoulder; he wasn’t a person who invited any form of intimacy. But it had been fine for August Kant to do that.
“This is one of our friends,” said Gerlof, pointing at Martin Malm’s face. “A boat captain from Öland.”
“Oh yes,” said Heimersson. He didn’t sound particularly interested. “There were cargo ships here all the time in the old days... They used to take wood to Öland. You haven’t got much in the way of forests there, after all.”
“We did have forests, but they were chopped down by people from the mainland,” said Gerlof. He pointed at the picture again. “And that’s August Kant, isn’t it?”
“That’s the boss, yes.”
“He had quite a well-known nephew,” said Gerlof. “Nils Kant.”
“Oh yes, him,” said Heimersson. “I’ve heard about him — he murdered a policeman. Read about him in the paper, too. But he died, didn’t he? Ran off overseas and died?”
“Yes,” said Gerlof. “But did he ever come here before that?”
“I don’t think the boss was very keen on Nils,” said Heimersson. “He never talked about his nephew. So nobody else talked about him either, not if the boss was around.”
“Perhaps he didn’t want to give away the fact that he knew where Nils was?” said Gerlof.
“Could be, I suppose,” said Heimersson. “But Nils was here when he was running away from Öland, after he’d murdered that policeman.”
“Was he? And did he meet his uncle?”
“I don’t know. But he hung around here for a while... people saw him in the forest.” Heimersson pointed toward the photographs. “Gunnar there was an errand boy like me at the time, and he boasted that he’d met him and got money from him. But then he boasted about a lot of things... I just remember that somebody tipped the police off in the end, told them Nils Kant was here. The cops came and watched the sawmill for several days, just in case he turned up. Everybody was a bit nervous... but we did our jobs, of course. And the murderer stayed well away from us.”
Gerlof felt he could almost see young Nils creeping around the office building over on the far side, crouching low and trying to peep in through the windows to find his uncle August.
“Did our friend Ernst happen to mention this picture from the quayside?” asked Gerlof.
Heimersson thought it over.
“Yes, he did,” he answered. “He stopped at that one. He wanted to know the names.”
“The names?” said Gerlof. “Of the sawmill workers?”
“Yes. And I gave him the ones I remembered. You forget things like that as you get older; for example these days I can’t—”
“Could you tell me the names too?” Gerlof cut in.
He’d got his notebook and a ballpoint pen out of his briefcase.
“No problem,” said Heimersson. “Right, let’s see, from the left...”
There were three men in the row whose names Heimersson couldn’t remember, they were probably sailors, but Gerlof wrote down the rest: Per Bengtsson, Knut Lindkvist, Anders Åkergren, Claes Frisell, Gunnar Johansson, Jan Ekendahl, Mikael Larsson. Then he looked at the list he’d made, but didn’t recognize a single name. He still didn’t know what Ernst had been looking for.