It was Julia. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.
‘It’s nice and quiet here at the cottage,’ said Gerlof. ‘I think the whole village is pretty quiet... but the people by the quarry have moved in.’
‘What are they like?’
‘Quite pleasant.’ He thought about the magazine Jerry Morner had suddenly thrown down on the table the other night. ‘And slightly odd, in some cases.’
‘Shall we go over and see them?’
‘No, I was at a party over there on Wednesday. That’s quite enough.’
‘So it’ll be just us for Easter?’
Gerlof nodded. He had a young relative up in Marnäs, his brother’s granddaughter Tilda, but she had found a new man back in the autumn and was fully occupied with her new life.
‘So what else have you been up to, then?’
‘I spend a lot of time just sitting here thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘Nothing.’
Julia held out her hands. ‘Do you want to get up?’
Gerlof smiled and quickly shook his head. He didn’t want to get up right now. ‘I’m fine here.’
Sooner or later he was going to have to talk to his daughters about Ella’s diaries, and find out what they knew about her visitor.
29
Up to the point when Nilla collapsed and started coughing up blood at the table, the Mörner family’s Easter lunch had been going very well.
Per had managed to fool himself, and hadn’t realized how ill she was. But he should have sensed something, because she had seemed tired on Saturday morning. She had helped him prepare the vegetables after breakfast, but progress had been slow, and sometimes she just stood there staring at the chopping board.
‘Are you tired?’ he asked.
‘A bit... I didn’t sleep very well last night.’
‘Would you like to go back to bed?’
‘No, it’s OK.’
‘Well, you could go out for a bit later on,’ he said. ‘You could go for a walk along the coast — try to get Jesper to go with you.’
‘Mm-hmm,’ said Nilla quietly as she carried on chopping tomatoes with slow strokes.
Per kept an eye on her and tried to relax.
He had repaired the lower section of the stone steps on Tuesday, and had got into the habit of going to the edge of the quarry every morning and evening to check if it was still standing. He did the same on the morning of Easter Saturday, and the stones were untouched. He would carry on building soon, until the steps reached all the way to the top of the quarry.
The pools of water were starting to dry up down below. In the summer, when the gravel was completely dry, he and Jesper would be able to have some fun down there, playing football perhaps.
Nilla too, of course.
He turned away from the quarry and walked around the house, stopping outside Ernst’s workshop. It was a square wooden box, two metres high, with traces of Falun red paint still visible on the weathered planks. There were small dusty windows on the shorter sides, and a black, creosoted door.
A heavy chain ran from the door to a ring on the wall, but the only thing holding it in place was a large, rusty nail. Per pulled it out and opened the door.
The air inside was dry because of all the limestone dust covering the floor. He had been in here three years ago, when Ernst’s family had come to collect the things they wanted to keep from the workshop. The finished sculptures standing by the door had disappeared that day: sundials, bird baths and lampstands. All that remained were the unfinished sculptures, or pieces that were such an odd shape nobody could quite work out what they were meant to be.
They were clustered together at the back of the workshop. Blocks of stone formed into swollen, headless bodies or heads with deep eye sockets and gaping mouths. Some of them didn’t even remotely resemble people.
Per didn’t go inside to take a closer look; he simply closed the door and went to fetch the paper.
‘So your father is the famous Jerry Morner?’ said Max. ‘I didn’t know him, but I do remember the name.’
Per hadn’t spoken to Max Larsson since the party, but they had bumped into one another by the mailboxes.
‘Really?’
He took a couple of steps away from the mailboxes with the newspaper in his hand, but Max didn’t take the hint. He just smiled, one neighbour to another. ‘Oh yes. Jerry Morner, he was a bit of a celebrity in the seventies. He sometimes gave interviews and appeared on those noisy debates about porn on TV... and of course when I was doing my military service we all read those magazines of his.’ He winked at Per. ‘Well, I say read, but of course they were mostly pictures.’
‘Yes,’ said Per.
‘One of them was called Babylon,’ said Max. ‘Now, what was the other one called? Sodom?’
‘Gomorrah.’
‘That’s it, Babylon and Gomorrah. They were pretty upmarket... But you had to ask for them in the newsagent’s, they never had them out on display.’ He coughed and added, ‘Of course, I don’t read them these days. Are they still going?’
‘No, they’re not around any more.’
‘I suppose videos took over, and now there’s the internet too,’ said Max. ‘Things move on.’
Per didn’t respond.
‘So how did he find the models?’ Max went on.
Per shook his head. ‘I was never involved.’
‘You have to wonder what kind of girls would be willing to do that sort of thing,’ said Max.
‘Haven’t a clue,’ said Per, but a picture of Regina’s smile came into his mind.
‘I mean, you could see their faces quite clearly, and some of them were really pretty.’
Per shrugged his shoulders and set off towards the quarry. He had been nice for long enough now.
‘I suppose they were well paid,’ Max persisted behind him. ‘And it must have been an experience.’
Per stopped and turned around. He decided to go for the Children Test. He’d done it several times before.
‘Have you got children?’ he asked.
‘Children?’ Max looked bewildered, then replied, ‘Yes, I’ve got three from my first marriage.’
‘Daughters?’
Max nodded. ‘One. Her name is Annika.’
‘Max,’ said Per, lowering his voice, ‘what would you say if you found out Annika had worked with my father?’
‘She hasn’t,’ Max said quickly.
‘How do you know? Do you think she’d tell you?’
Max didn’t speak. Per allowed the silence to continue, and set off again. He had gone several metres by the time Max hissed behind him, ‘You bastard!’
Per just kept on walking. He was used to that reaction when he tried to make people see Jerry’s models as people.
But of course, that meant that good relations between the neighbours by the quarry had been destroyed once more.
You bastard.
The comment was in Per’s mind as he prepared the Easter lunch.
Jerry, Per, Nilla and Jesper — three generations celebrating Easter together. It was too cold to sit out on the patio, so he laid the table in the living room, in front of Ernst’s wooden chest. As he set out the plates he stared at the drawings on the chest; he wondered why the troll running into its cave was smiling, and why the princess was sitting weeping. Had the knight not arrived in time to defend her virtue?
‘Pelle?’ said a voice behind him. His father had come into the room.
‘We’ll be eating soon, Jerry. You can sit down... You like Easter eggs, don’t you?’
Jerry nodded and sat down.
‘You can have as many as you like,’ said Per, and carried on setting the table.
Before he went to fetch the children, he turned back to Jerry and added, ‘But no magazines on the table, thank you.’