“Lonely and unhappy,” said Gerlof. “But extremely rich.”
“Not as rich as you might think,” said Ljunger. “The quarry was well on the way to closing, and her brother had claimed the family sawmill in Småland.”
“She was rich in land,” said Gerlof wearily. “Land along the coast... beach land.”
He wondered how he was going to die. Did Ljunger have some kind of weapon with him? Or was he going to pick up one of the millions of stones on Öland and simply smash Gerlof’s skull, more or less as he had done with Ernst?
“Vera had a great deal of land, yes,” said Ljunger. “I don’t think anybody in Stenvik actually realized how much land that old woman owned, both north and south of Stenvik. Of course it was worthless as long as she didn’t do anything with it, but the right person would be able to take it over and sell it to people from the mainland... In the fifties there were only a few summer cottages up here, but I knew there’d be a demand for plenty more — and hotels and restaurants too. And when the bridge was built, the prices would skyrocket.”
“So you got Långvik from Vera,” said Gerlof.
“I got nothing.” Ljunger shook his head. “I bought all her land, perfectly legally. At a very low price, of course, and with money I’d borrowed from Vera, but it’s all documented and perfectly legal.”
“And Martin Malm borrowed money from her for bigger ships.”
“Exactly. We’d met when Martin was transporting timber to Ramneby,” said Ljunger, nodding. “I needed reliable people to work with... somebody who would bring Nils’s coffin home from overseas, and later Nils himself. Of course it was going to have to be some time before Nils could come home, because the minute he did, Vera would stop giving me land. I realized that, naturally.”
He smiled at Gerlof with satisfaction. “Let’s go.”
Ljunger opened the driver’s door.
Gerlof looked out through the windshield. He saw a desolate meadow leading to the shore, with the wind and rain pressing the grass down to the darkened ground.
“What’s here?” he asked.
“Not much,” said Ljunger, getting out of the car. “You’ll see.”
31
“Get out, Gerlof.”
Gunnar Ljunger had closed his own door, quickly walked around the car, and opened the passenger door. He was waiting impatiently for Gerlof to get out.
“I need to put on—” Gerlof began.
But Ljunger reached in with a gloved hand.
“You don’t need a coat, Gerlof.” Ljunger wore his yellow padded jacket, with LÅNGVIK CONFERENCE CENTER in black on the back. “You’re warm now, aren’t you?”
Ljunger was at least fifteen years younger than Gerlof, tall and broad and with plenty of strength in his arms. He gripped Gerlof firmly under the arm and lifted him easily out of the car.
“Come on.”
He slammed the car door, pointed his key ring at it, and pressed a little button. The car doors locked with a quiet click.
For Gerlof this sort of thing was almost like magic. He had his cane with him, but his briefcase was still on the floor inside the car. He took a few uncertain steps, out onto the rain-soaked meadow by the sea, beginning to get an idea of Ljunger’s intentions.
For the first minute it was actually quite pleasant for his body to get out of the sauna-like heat of the car; the wind was oddly refreshing, and it felt as though he didn’t need any outdoor clothes.
But Gerlof wouldn’t survive without his overcoat, he knew that. The cold was crippling out here, only a few degrees above zero. The wind was gusting in off the Baltic, and the drops of rain were like little nails on his face.
“Look at this, Gerlof.” Ljunger had gone a short distance along the gravel track beside the meadow and was pointing to a stone wall in front of a small clump of trees. A solitary, stunted tree was growing next to the wall. “Can you see what this is?” he asked.
Gerlof took a few stumbling steps toward him.
“An apple tree,” he answered quietly.
“Exactly, an old apple tree.” Ljunger gripped his arm and pulled him carefully but firmly toward the shore. Once again he pointed. “And over there,” he said, “you can hardly see it, but it’s actually an old gooseberry bush.” He looked at Gerlof. “And what does that mean?”
“An abandoned garden,” said Gerlof.
“Exactly. There are stones from the foundations of the house beneath the grass.” Ljunger looked around. “I found this beach a few years ago. It’s usually peaceful here, even in the summer. You can sit and think and sometimes...” Ljunger looked at the apple tree again. “Sometimes I just sit here and think about this old tree and about the people who used to live here. Why aren’t they still here, when it’s such a lovely spot?”
“Poverty,” said Gerlof, shivering for the first time.
He was trying to hold himself erect in the wind, not to shake or sway. But all he had on his upper body was a thin shirt and an almost equally thin undershirt, and he was beginning to feel the autumn chill penetrating through the fabric.
“Yes, they would definitely have been poor,” agreed Ljunger. “Maybe they sailed away across the Atlantic, like Nils Kant and thousands of others from Öland. But the point is...” He paused again. “The point is that they never saw all the great opportunities here on this island. People from Öland never have.”
Gerlof merely nodded; Ljunger could say whatever he liked.
“I want to get back in the car,” he said.
“It’s locked,” said Ljunger.
“I’ll freeze to death soon.”
“Go home to Marnäs, then.” Ljunger pointed at the wall beside the stunted tree. “There’s a gap in the wall over there. Behind it a path leads north along the shore, past an old open-air dance floor... It’s actually only a couple of kilometers up to the village, as the crow flies.”
Gerlof wobbled in the wind. He didn’t care what happened now; he had something important to say.
“I know, Gunnar.”
Ljunger looked at him without replying.
“Like I said before... I worked it all out on the bus, when I saw that it was you standing behind Martin Malm.”
Ljunger shrugged. “Ernst Adolfsson waved that picture at me too,” he said, “but he started gabbling about a whole lot of other stuff too, old land registrations and so on. I’m not that easily scared.”
“He got there ahead of me,” said Gerlof tiredly. “I thought Ernst told me everything, but he didn’t. What did he want from you?”
“The quarry. He wanted to buy the quarry from me for a pittance, and in return he wouldn’t tell the whole world what he knew about my dealings with Vera.”
“That wasn’t too much to ask, surely?” said Gerlof.
“Don’t say that,” Ljunger snapped. “The land is worthless now, but it could be extremely valuable in the future. A casino set into the hillside on Öland... who knows? So I turned down his offer.” Ljunger looked at Gerlof. “But you old sea captains overestimate your own importance, I think, if you imagine anyone else is interested in things that happened decades ago.”
“You’re interested, Gunnar,” Gerlof had to remind him. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, you and I.”
“I can’t have a load of old farts running around mouthing off about things,” said Ljunger wearily. “You do understand that, don’t you? It’s not just current projects... We’ve got important plans for Långvik that are with the building authorities at the moment. We’re talking about major investments here. Sixty new plots to the east of the village are going to be sold within the next six months — how much do you think that’s going to be worth?”