The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (28 page)

aron

aron

Aron!

Faint noises in the darkness, echoing shouts that sound like his name. He can hear them, but he doesn’t want to go back.

Aron opens his eyes. No, he isn’t lying on warm sand, he is lying in the snow among the fir trees. And a huge shadow is looming over him.

‘Aron! Can you hear me?’

It is Sven’s voice, full of energy. He shouts right in Aron’s face. ‘We’re going to do it! We’re going to swap!’

Sven bends down and Aron feels hands on his body. Hard blows that make his broken ribs throb with agonizing pain.

‘Stop it,’ Aron whispers.

But Sven won’t stop.

‘We have to hurry up, Aron … I’ve sent Grisha to get help. They’ll be here soon – we have to hurry!’

Aron feels someone pulling off his clothes. It is Sven, his hands tugging at buttons and laces.

‘We’re swapping over!’

Aron stops listening; he turns his head to the side and vomits. Into the snow, and all over his upper body, which is now naked.

Then he loses consciousness once more.

Aron wakes up to a faint light. He is lying on something soft, but it isn’t snow. He is in a bed.

‘Vladimir Jegerov?’ a voice says beside his bed.

Aron turns his head and sees a nurse. She is pale and thin; she is a prisoner just like him, but at least she works indoors.

The nurse smiles; she has kind eyes.

Afterwards, he can’t remember whether he nods in response to her question, but she goes on. ‘You’ve been in an accident involving some logs, Vladimir. Your right leg is broken, and so is your nose. Your shoulder was dislocated, but we managed to put it back. You were lucky … One of your comrades wasn’t so fortunate.’

‘Who?’

The nurse holds a steaming cup of tea up to his lips.

‘A foreigner,’ she says. ‘A young Swede … The logs rolled over him like a tank. He was crushed to death.’

Vlad, Aron thinks. But he doesn’t say a word, he just sips his tea.

‘You’ll be in here for a while,’ the nurse says. She smiles again, and leaves him.

Every movement hurts, but Aron slowly raises his left hand and feels his face. The shape is different; it is swollen and covered in scabs. Crushed and numb. He lifts the sheet and sees splints on his right leg. He is wearing underpants and felt boots, but they are not his own. They are Vlad’s.

Aron closes his eyes. No point in thinking about it.

Sven did this. He loosened the chain and released the logs. He swapped their clothes.

This was his plan: Aron the foreigner would become Vlad the Soviet citizen.

Someone coughs. Aron turns his head and discovers that he is lying in a crowded hospital hut with at least thirty other men. There isn’t much room, but there are lamps and stoves and it is light and warm.

And the sheets might not be clean but they are
sheets
, and he can’t see any bedbugs. The tea is real, not ersatz. And there is a plate of freshly sliced onion by his bed.

He has heard rumours about this in the camp: that prisoners who are injured or fall seriously ill are very well cared for.

It’s strange, but all he can do right now is rest between the sheets, enjoying the sensation.

He relaxes.

Vlad is dead, but it is Aron who has ended up in paradise.

Lisa hadn’t felt well that morning. She didn’t have a temperature, but she was weak and shaky. Lady Summertime had done her sixth gig at the hotel on Friday night, and it had been extremely lucrative. The club had been packed, she had filled it with smoke and, in the darkness, three wallets and two mobiles had found their way into her bag. However, the credit cards lay untouched; she had been too exhausted to drive down to Borgholm to deal with them.

Lady Summertime had stuck to water all evening, but Lisa was still unsteady on her feet when she got up in the caravan the next morning. It felt like a stomach bug, as if something were in the process of waking up down there. She only had a sandwich for breakfast, but she felt bloated and full. She went down to the shore with her swimsuit and a towel, but she stayed away from the water, dozing in the sun instead.

Several days of shimmering heat had brought crowds of people to the shore, and Lisa felt almost hemmed in by all the beach towels and summer bodies. Kids, clutter and chaos everywhere. The stench of suntan lotion was worse than ever, the holidaymakers yelled and screamed to one another in the water, beach flies buzzed around, trying to get into her mouth. Lisa swallowed and closed her eyes.

By lunchtime, she had had enough and made her way back to the caravan. Several times she stubbed her toes on the stony ground; her feet weren’t cooperating, somehow. Was she dehydrated, in spite of all the water she’d drunk at the club?

Her mobile was lying on the bed; she’d forgotten to take it with her to the shore, and she saw that Silas had called twice. Shit. But she didn’t have the energy to ring him back.

She had a sandwich with no butter for lunch, then got back into bed for a few hours and drifted off to sleep. When she raised her head the interior of the caravan was oppressively hot, even though the sun was quite low over the sea. It was quarter past six; the whole day had gone.

Time to get up, have a shower and head for the May Lai Bar.

She was there by half past seven, but didn’t feel any better. Her case of vinyl albums was as heavy as lead as she trudged down the stairs, panting and pouring with sweat.

Dinner was available in the hotel kitchen, but she didn’t go there. She filled up her water bottle in the ladies’ room, put on her wig and her make-up and emerged as Lady Summertime. A somewhat shaky DJ.

She entered the booth and started the show. No cheerful shout-outs over the microphone tonight. Summertime put on a track without saying anything at all and switched on the disco lights. She had a long shift to get through; all she could do was grit her teeth and look happy.

No, there was no way she could look happy.

But she carried on working, and after nine o’clock the cellar gradually began to fill up. Earlier than usual – a typical Saturday night with lots of people. The temperature was rising, and the bartender was happy to supply anyone who was thirsty with water from his soda pistols.

But the bar staff also seemed to be moving slowly this evening, as if they were sleepwalkers who’d taken too many tablets. And, in spite of the crowd, there wasn’t much action on the dance floor; most people were hanging around at the sides.

Summertime glanced at the tempting wallets and purses sticking up out of the pockets of shorts and jeans, but she didn’t feel up to going after them. She could hear Silas muttering in her head, but this evening she just concentrated on playing music, focused and determined.

She kept on drinking water, but it didn’t make her feel any better. Her stomach was like a gurgling washing machine with worn cogs. It went round and round, refusing to settle.

Summertime swallowed; she could feel her false eyelashes starting to come away because she was sweating so much. She tried to keep her balance at the mixer desk.

At some point after ten o’clock, she just couldn’t do it any more. Her stomach started to bubble, and Lisa knew her body sufficiently well after twenty-four years to realize that an eruption was imminent. Something had to come out, one way or another.

She couldn’t stay in the booth, so with trembling fingers she put on the longest track she had: the Beach Boys favourite ‘Here Comes The Night’, which lasted almost eleven minutes. Then she backed away from the decks. It was OK, hardly anyone was dancing, and she definitely had to get to the ladies’ toilets.

But the door was open and there was a long queue stretching back into the cloakroom – and as Lisa pushed people aside in a panic and forced her way in, she saw a young girl in a white blouse, with an equally white face, leaning over the hand basin and bringing up yellow liquid in a seemingly endless cascade. Into the basin, over her blouse, splashing up on to the mirror. Lisa could hear similar noises from inside the cubicles, a chorus of retching.

She swallowed hard to keep the vomit down, and turned away. It was happening; her stomach could no longer tie itself in knots, and it was ready to get the show on the road.

The apocalypse was coming. Any minute now.

‘Excuse me,’ she gasped. ‘Excuse me, could you move, please … I have to get through!’

Several girls in the queue weren’t listening; the sounds from inside the toilets had made them start throwing up, too. They were bent double, vomit all over their bags and shoes, their hair limp with sweat. It was like a gastric ward in the middle of an outbreak of salmonella. Stinking pools on the tiled floor, revolting smells in the air. Total chaos.

Lisa broke away from the queue and ran for the door. She needed a bush to squat behind, or a car if the worst came to the worst. But the stairs were too far away, she wasn’t going to get there, wasn’t going to make it outside.

The world was spinning, the cramps in her gut were sheer agony. Far away, she could hear the thump of the Beach Boys track, like a beating heart.

She spotted the door to the VIP room next to the stairs and rushed towards it.

‘Hey, you!’ a voice said behind her.

A fucking security guard. But Lisa couldn’t talk now; she simply opened the door, saw a load of suits sitting around the table but, most important of all: an ice bucket. She bent over it and opened her mouth.

It was disgusting, it was embarrassing, but at the same time it was liberating. Just to open her mouth and let it all out.

Behind her she heard ‘Here Comes the Night’ die away; it was followed by a deafening silence.

Unprofessional, Summertime thought. A black mark.

But Lisa was too ill to care. She lifted her head from the rapidly filling ice bucket, took a deep breath, then threw up again.

Jonas was woken late on Saturday night by strange grunting noises from the guest chalet next door. Agonized moans, suppressed groans. Then he heard a thud, a glass door sliding open, then more groaning and coughing behind the chalet.

He listened in the darkness. It sounded like Mats out there; was he sick?

Jonas turned over and tried to get back to sleep, but it was impossible. It was too hot, and the moaning and groaning were still going on outside.

Eventually, he got up and opened the door. The night air was still warm, with not a breath of wind. A slender moon shone down on the Sound.

‘Mats?’ he called out quietly.

He got a groan in response and took a couple of steps away from the door. He saw his older brother crouching in the shadows; Mats was on the grass with his head down, like a defeated footballer. He was a pathetic sight and, oddly enough, this made Jonas feel incredibly fit and healthy. He raised his voice: ‘What’s wrong? Are you sick?’

Mats slowly raised his head. There was a pool on the grass beneath him, a pool that shone in the moonlight. ‘Jonas …’ he said. ‘Can you fetch me some water, bro? From the house?’

Jonas went into Uncle Kent’s house, into the kitchen, and found a bottle of mineral water in the fridge. When he got back, Mats had managed to stand up, but his head was still drooping.

Jonas passed him the bottle. ‘Have you been on the beer?’

Mats shook his head. ‘I’ve been cutting the grass over at Ölandic … I don’t know what this is.’

Then he staggered back into his chalet with the water, without saying thank you. Jonas went back to bed; he still suspected that his brother had been out partying.

But that probably wasn’t true, because when he got up in the morning
everybody
was sick, or so it seemed. Only Jonas and Paulina were up for breakfast. The chalet doors and bedroom doors were closed – total silence reigned in Villa Kloss, for once.

Uncle Kent came into the kitchen after a while, just as Jonas was tucking into a cheese sandwich.

They stared at one another. Jonas hadn’t dared to ask his uncle if he had said the right things during the interview with Cecilia Sander, but she had gone away and hadn’t been in touch since, so surely that meant things had gone well?

‘Good morning,’ Kent said eventually, but his voice was quiet, and Jonas could see that his uncle wasn’t feeling too good either. His face was grey, in spite of his tan.

He didn’t say any more; he opened the fridge and took out a bottle of juice. Grapefruit juice. He looked down at the pale-yellow liquid and seemed to be giving it some thought before finally taking a couple of cautious sips.

The telephone rang; Kent went over and answered it. ‘Yes?’

He listened for a long time, then said wearily, ‘You’re joking. You
are
joking?’

He listened again.

‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, I’ve got some problems with my gut as well … It’s like Montezuma’s Revenge. We’ll have to bring in extra staff.
Someone
must be OK, for fuck’s sake? So bring in whoever you can get hold of. What about the guests?’

There was a protracted silence.

‘Right, well, clean up as best you can. Everyone will have to pitch in … Have we got a suction pump?’

Silence again.

‘OK, I’ll be in right away.’ He sounded exhausted.

He poured the rest of the juice down the sink, then turned to Jonas.

‘JK, if your aunt turns up, tell her we’re in a hell of a mess. There’s some kind of gastric epidemic over at the resort. It’s affecting the staff, and the guests too, apparently. The toilets are starting to get blocked, so I have to get over there. Tell Veronica she can reach me on my mobile.’

Jonas nodded. ‘Mats is sick too,’ he said. ‘He’s been throwing up.’

‘
Everybody
’s sick,’ Kent said. ‘Aren’t you, JK?’

Jonas shook his head.

‘But you might be,’ Kent said. He threw a final poisonous glance at Jonas, as if the whole thing were somehow his fault, then he was gone, lumbering towards his car.

Jonas made himself another sandwich. It was a bit odd, but he felt perfectly fine. He wondered whether to go over and see Kristoffer.

Tomorrow was the beginning of a new working week. The decking would soon be finished, beautifully sanded and stained dark brown with Chinese wood oil. Then he would get paid. And in a week’s time he would start work over at Aunt Veronica’s house, which would mean he was slightly further away from both the cairn and Uncle Kent.