Besides, I don’t believe in the Swedish tax system. All it does is oppress people.’
Max smiled across the table, but Vendela felt compelled to smooth over the situation. ‘Of course you pay tax here, Max.’
He looked at her and stopped smiling. ‘When I have to, yes. But as little as possible.’
Then he raised his glass, as if everyone around the table was a member of the same financial club, until an equally loud voice chipped in: ‘I’m quite happy to pay tax.’
It was Christer Kurdin.
‘Really?’ said Max. ‘And how do you earn your money?’
‘Internet security,’ said Kurdin tersely.
He had also drunk a fair amount of wine; there was an almost empty bottle of white Bordeaux next to his plate, and he was having some difficulty focusing as he looked at Max.
‘I’m sick and tired of people like you,’ he went on.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Max.
‘People like you who try to get out of paying your taxes … I’m sick and tired of all the fiddling.’
Max lowered his glass. ‘I don’t fidd—’
‘I mean, you drive on the roads in Sweden,’ Christer Kurdin broke in.
‘What?’
‘I presume you drove across the Oland Bridge to get here?’
Max frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Well, our taxes paid for the bridge,’ said Christer. ‘And the roads. And everything else we all use. Schools. Hospitals. Pensions …’
‘Pensions?’ said Max. ‘As far as I’m concerned, pensions are just a joke in this country. And health care.’
‘Health care is no joke,’ said a voice further down the table. ‘Those who work in the health service do a fantastic job.’
Vendela saw that it was Per Morner.
‘Exactly, we get a good service for our money,’ said Christer. He looked at Max and went on: ‘Anyway, if everything’s so terrible in Sweden, why stay here?’
Max stared in silence at his neighbour, as if he were trying to work out exactly what kind of people he’d ended up with here on the island. ‘The summer makes it worth staying,’ he said, emptying his glass.
‘More wine, anyone?’ said Vendela.
Nobody answered, nobody seemed to have heard her, so she drank a little more and listened to the hum of conversation. If she closed her eyes it could almost be music, a series of soloists singing around the table.
For a moment she thought she caught a strange smell coming off the alvar, a burnt smell like rubber or sulphur, but it was probably just her imagination. It was dark out there now. It was dark everywhere. Only their veranda was lit up.
Sitting above the quarry this evening was like sitting by the edge of a pitch-black crater. A slumbering volcano.
Suddenly she heard a loud male voice from across the table. ‘Do any of you newcomers know northern Oland? Anyone lived here before?’
It was their young neighbour again. Christer Kurdin was holding his wine glass and looking up and down the table, as if he didn’t mean any harm with his question. Of course he didn’t mean any harm, he just looked curious.
‘Vendela comes from this area,’ Max said tersely.
Not every conversation died away, but several faces turned towards her. All she could do was nod. ‘I used to live here when I was little.’
‘Here in the village?’ said Marie Kurdin.
‘To the north-east … We had a little smallholding.’
‘That sounds lovely. With cows and geese and cats?’
‘Just hens … and a few cows,’ said Vendela. ‘I used to look after them.’
‘How lovely,’ Marie Kurdin reiterated. ‘The children of today ought to get the chance to look after animals in the country too.’
Vendela nodded. She didn’t want to think about the three Rosas. Such frustration, such a longing to escape. Where had it come from?
Rosa, Rosa and Rosa had been dead for many, many years. Everyone she had known here on the island was dead.
She took another swig of her wine.
Gerlof Davidsson was sitting motionless on the other side of the table, diagonally opposite her. He was smiling and seemed happy, and Vendela leaned a little closer and said quietly, ‘My father was a quarryman here, his name was Henry. Did you know him, Gerlof?’
His expression was kind as he looked at her, but he didn’t appear to have heard what she said. She raised her voice. ‘Did you know Henry Fors, Gerlof?’
He heard her this time. But the name made him stop smiling.
‘I did know Henry Fors … he was one of the last men working down in the quarry. He was very good at polishing the stone. Were you related?’
‘He was my father.’
Gerlof looked grim, or perhaps sorrowful. ‘I see. I’m sorry …’
Vendela understood what he was talking about, and lowered her eyes. ‘It’s a long time ago.’
‘I used to see Henry coming along on his bike in the mornings,’ said Gerlof. ‘Sometimes he would be singing so loudly it echoed out across the alvar.’
Vendela nodded. ‘He used to sing at home as well.’
‘Henry was widowed quite early on, wasn’t he?’
She nodded again. ‘My mother died just a few years after I was born. I don’t remember her … but I think my father missed her all his life.’
‘Did you ever go with him to the quarry?’
‘Only once. He said it was dangerous there – women and children shouldn’t be down in the quarry, it brought bad luck.’
‘They were a bit superstitious,’ said Gerlof. ‘They used to see different signs in the stone, and they believed in ghosts and trolls. The trolls in particular used to cause the quarry workers a lot of trouble. They used to steal their hammers and hide them underground, or make them disappear … but of course it was easier to blame mythical creatures than their workmates.’
‘They used to steal from each other, you mean?’
‘No,’ said Gerlof, smiling at her. ‘I’m sure it was the trolls.’
‘Trolls,’ said a voice beside them. It was the other old man at the table, Per Morner’s father. Vendela couldn’t remember his name: Billy or Barry or Jerry? He had been lost in his own thoughts with a cigarette between his yellowing fingers, but now he looked up and gazed around, his expression full of anxiety.
‘Markus Lukas,’ he said. ‘Markus Lukas is sick.’
23
It was half past ten and Per was sitting in the shadows on the neighbours’ veranda listening to his father’s laboured breathing. He sounded worse than usual tonight – like a man who didn’t have long to live, but who intended to enjoy himself right to the very end.
Jerry actually seemed to be quite happy at the party. Sometimes he disappeared into himself, staring down at his paralysed arm. Then he would come back to life and raise his glass. Sometimes he looked frightened, sometimes he would smile to himself. He seemed to have already forgotten that his business partner Hans Bremer was missing, and that their entire film studio – the whole of Morner Art, in fact – had gone up in smoke three days earlier.
His father’s hacking cough had been heard across the table all evening, but the number of his smiles
