we met today you referred to him by his real name, Gerhard.’
‘Did I?’
Per looked at him. ‘Have you been phoning me?’
Christer Kurdin didn’t reply.
‘Someone’s been calling me,’ Per said slowly. ‘It started after the party … Someone’s been calling and playing something that could be the soundtrack from one of Jerry’s films.’
Kurdin still said nothing; he just stared at Per for a few seconds before turning and calling over his shoulder, ‘Darling?’
‘Yes?’ replied his wife.
‘Could you come here for a moment?’
Marie Kurdin’s heels tapped across the floor as she came back into the living room. ‘What is it?’
‘He knows,’ said Christer Kurdin.
His wife didn’t speak, but she looked Per in the eye.
‘Did you do some filming with Jerry and Markus Lukas?’ Per asked.
Marie shook her head. ‘Of course not.’
She didn’t say any more, but Christer Kurdin lifted his chin. ‘Her younger sister did.’
‘Sara,’ Marie said quietly. ‘She was in one of their films when she was only eighteen … and she fought it with antiretroviral drugs, but she died three years ago. She knew she’d been infected during filming and she told me, but she refused to tell anyone else. She was too ashamed.’
Per understood. ‘So you rang my father … to remind him.’
‘I recognized him at the party,’ said Marie. ‘I knew who he was when he got out that magazine.’
Per couldn’t look her in the eye; he lowered his gaze. ‘He did actually say that he recognized you too. You must have been alike … you and Sara.’
Marie didn’t reply.
He looked into his glass. What was in the beer? It seemed cloudy – had Kurdin put something in his glass when he poured it in the kitchen?
Did Christer Kurdin own a red Ford?
Had he lured Jerry to a deserted road in Kalmar?
Per put his glass down carefully on the table and got to his feet, very slowly. He wanted to ask more questions, but his head was spinning.
‘Must you go?’ said Christer Kurdin.
Per nodded; he thought he could hear girls’ voices echoing in the back of his mind. ‘Yes … I have to go home.’
They looked at him and he felt ridiculous, but the girls were screaming inside his head now and Jerry was in there too, whispering and telling him to leave.
He took a step away from the sofa in the direction of the hallway, then one more. It was fine, he could move. It felt like being back in Jerry’s film studio, in the middle of all the smoke and heat and the smell of burnt human flesh.
The last thing he did was to turn around in the hallway and raise his voice: ‘I don’t think Jerry … I don’t think he knew anything. He didn’t know Markus Lukas was infected. And I’m sorry, I didn’t know, but they’re all dead now …’
He was babbling, and closed his mouth. Christer and Marie Kurdin were standing side by side, still watching him, but he couldn’t look them in the eye. He could only manage one more word: ‘Sorry.’
He fumbled with the front door handle and eventually managed to get out.
63
The elves didn’t come back to their stone.
It had been a cold night for Vendela out on the alvar, but she had curled up inside layers of winter clothes, and had got through it somehow. She had even slept for a few hours, stretched out on the soft grass with the elf stone sheltering her from the wind. Hunger had gnawed at her stomach, but she had coped with that too.
The situation with regard to Max was much worse.
The elves had taken the wedding ring from the stone, and now it was too late for Vendela to retract her wish.
Max was already dead, she was sure of it. She could see it all in her mind’s eye across the alvar: the heart attack striking his chest like a hammer blow. Perhaps it had happened the previous evening, when he was back home sitting at his thinking desk among all the funeral flowers.
Bang, and his heart just stopped. His body slumped forward across the desk and lay there, his head twisted to one side. There was nothing to be done about it now, but Vendela still didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to find her husband in his thinking room.
The elves had gone. But still she waited by the stone, hour after hour.
At some point in the middle of the day, she wasn’t sure exactly when, she heard a rustling noise in the bushes a few metres away and a hare hopped past the stone. It turned to look at Vendela for a few seconds before it disappeared.
A couple of hours later she saw two people some distance away to the west, a man and a woman. They were walking side by side across the grass wearing red windproof jackets and sturdy boots. Neither of them looked in her direction.
Perhaps she was invisible. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty now, she needed nothing.
No, that was wrong, there was one thing she needed.
She reached into her pocket and felt the bottle of tablets.
They were the Danish tablets, the strong ones that made her feel calm and weightless. She had only taken three or four since she came to the island, so the bottle was almost full.
She picked up one of the small tablets and closed her eyes as she put it in her mouth. There was no water, but it was easy to swallow.
After quarter of an hour she hadn’t noticed any effects, so she took another tablet. And then two more at the same time.
When she had taken fourteen tablets she thought she’d better stop – after all, she didn’t want to kill herself. She just wanted to relax and see the elves. And it looked as if they were on their way, because a white mist was creeping around the bushes.
She put the lid back on the bottle and slipped it into her pocket.
It was ten to four. She had been sitting here by the stone almost all day; soon it would be evening.
Vendela leaned back, feeling her pulse beating more and more slowly.
She suddenly remembered that it was Walpurgis Night. The evil spirits had left the alvar, at least for the time being. But the elves were still here.
The white mist quickly settled around her. It blocked out the sunlight, but suddenly she saw a small figure emerge from the juniper bushes.
It was a young boy. He walked across the grass between the drifting veils of mist, and Vendela knew where he had come from.
The boy stopped in front of a juniper bush and looked at her. Vendela smiled and held out her hands, because now she recognized him.
‘Come here, Jan-Erik.’
The boy hesitated for a moment, then he came over to her. He stood by the stone and placed his cool hands on her shoulders. Vendela closed her eyes and relaxed.
When she looked up again a bright, warm gateway had opened up in the grass in front of her. There was no sign of any birds, but she could hear their song echoing beneath the sky.
She stood up and walked through the gateway, hand in hand with Jan-Erik.
