‘A few that I know of … maybe two or three. There aren’t that many guys who can manage it.’
‘Manage what?’ said Per.
Jesslin nodded towards his trousers. ‘You know … getting it up to order, when the camera’s rolling.’
‘Did you know any of the others?’
‘Only one. He came from the Moulin Noir too … his name was Daniel.’
‘Daniel what?’
‘Daniel Wellman.’
‘How do you spell that?’
Jesslin spelled out the name and Per wrote it down. He hoped he was on the way to finding Markus Lukas the troll now.
‘And you did a lot of filming together?’
‘Sure, we went up to Jerry’s studio in Smaland every weekend.’
‘It’s gone now,’ said Per.
‘Gone?’
‘The whole place burnt down a few weeks ago.’
‘How come?’
‘It was deliberate – arson,’ said Per. ‘Somebody had set some kind of timed incendiary devices in the house.’
Jesslin thought for a moment.
‘That sounds like Bremer, he was fond of pyrotechnics … sometimes in the summer we filmed scenes in a clearing in the forest where he’d rigged up a whole load of petrol containers … we were supposed to lie there naked among all the smoke and flames. Bremer had a couple of buckets of water behind the camera just in case anything went wrong, but I was still scared shitless, lying there on a mattress stark bollock naked, surrounded by flames.’ He smiled again. ‘Have you met Bremer?’
‘No,’ said Per. ‘And he’s dead too. He died in the fire.’
‘Oh?’ said Jesslin, still smoking.
‘Didn’t you like Bremer?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Why not?’
Jesslin looked over at the dark window, as if he were recalling difficult memories. ‘I don’t know … personal chemistry, I suppose. Bremer worked fast, and he was really hard on the girls. If they were in pain during filming and wanted to stop, he didn’t give a damn. They just had to turn their faces away so the tears didn’t show, and we’d carry on filming. Finishing the film was all that mattered to him.’
‘To you too, I presume,’ said Per. He thought again how little Ingrid knew about her brother.
‘Of course, I was just as unfeeling as Bremer and Jerry after a while,’ said Jesslin. ‘I just wanted to get the filming done and go home. That job really did dull your perceptions.’
‘And what about the girls who died?’
Jesslin looked at him. ‘You mean Jessika Bjork?’
‘Jessika Bjork?’
‘She used to work at the Moulin Noir with me and Daniel,’ said Jesslin. ‘She was in several films with us – she called herself Gabrielle or something … but I heard from a friend that she died in a house fire a few weeks ago. Very sad – she was a lovely girl. And she wasn’t very old – only about thirty.’
‘In a house fire?’ Per leaned forward on his chair. ‘And you say her name was Gabrielle … Could it have been Danielle?’
‘Sure. Gabrielle or Danielle, I don’t remember.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Oh, a long time ago … ten years maybe. We haven’t spoken often either, we just rang each other now and again. I think Jessika and Daniel Wellman had more contact with one another.’
Per looked at him. Was it Jessika Bjork’s phone number that had been on Bremer’s Post-it note? Maybe, but if so, what did it mean? He felt tired and devoid of any ideas, as if he had a tumour somewhere that was sucking all the nourishment out of his body.
‘I didn’t know about Jessika,’ he said quietly, ‘but Ulrica Ternman had two friends who used to do some work with Jerry and Bremer. They’re both dead as well.’
‘Oh?’ said Jesslin. ‘So there were more?’
Per leaned forward again. ‘Tobias,’ he said. ‘I have to find more people who worked with Jerry. Have you got an address for this other Markus Lukas?’
Jesslin stubbed out his cigarette and shook his head. ‘We were never close friends,’ he said. ‘His name was Daniel Wellman and he lived in Malmo – that’s all I know.’
‘Have you got any pictures of him?’
‘Pictures? There are plenty of pictures in the magazines.’
‘Not of his face.’
Jesslin laughed and stood up. ‘No, the face wasn’t the important thing when it came to the guys … The girls had to look good, not us.’
Per got up too. He had been expecting the vague answers he had received about Markus Lukas, but he still felt disappointed.
Jesslin stopped in the doorway. ‘But if you were to ask me if anyone wanted to get rid of Bremer,’ he said, ‘I’d probably say it was a knight in shining armour.’
‘A what?’
‘A boyfriend who’s recently found out that Bremer filmed his girlfriend years ago. Someone who wants to play the knight in shining armour and protect her reputation.’
Per looked at him and thought about the cheerful voice that had answered on Jesslin’s home number.
‘So what about your reputation, now you’re a father?’
‘No problem,’ Jesslin said quickly. ‘It’s always worse for the girls. They have more to lose if the past catches up with them.’
‘And is that fair?’
‘No,’ said Jesslin, shrugging his shoulders. ‘But it’s the men who hold all the power in the porn industry. They’re the clients, it’s their money, their values. That’s life.’
As Per left the Honolulu and got in the car he was thinking about reputations and values, and how Jerry had stood by the quarry the week before he died, pointing at Marie Kurdin and hinting that he knew her.
He started the car and set off on the long journey home.
57
Vendela was standing tall in front of the elf stone; she could feel evil gathering in the air above her. It was almost midnight, and there were only two days left until Walpurgis Night, when dark powers gathered together. They were at their strongest now.
She had switched on her small torch and placed it in front of her on the stone, the only light in the great darkness.
The spirits and demons, the dark kin of the elves, had woken from their long winter sleep. They had emerged from the deepest caves in the old lands surrounding the Baltic Sea, flown across the wide waters and circled over the solid granite of Bla Jungfrun out in the sound before swooping in across the island, chasing the spring birds from the sky. They were looking down on this flat, narrow island, where the waves surged up over the long shores, and smiled at all the little creatures crawling around below them.
High above the alvar the spirits met to bring down more misery and death on mankind for another year.
Vendela closed her eyes.
And what could mankind do about it? Nothing, apart from lighting a few fires on Walpurgis Night, the eve of May Day. But the light of the fires soon died away, and after that all you could do was lock yourself in your house
