Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin

Author:Johan Theorin [Johan Theorin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2009-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

17

‘I’VE ALWAYS BLAMED my mother,’ said Julia. ‘She went for a lie down and fell asleep that afternoon.’ She blinked the tears away and went on: ‘I’ve blamed my father even more . . . Gerlof, that is . . . Because he went down to the sea to mend his nets. If he’d been at home, Jens would never have left the house – Jens loved his grandfather.’

Julia snivelled and sighed.

‘I’ve blamed them for many years,’ she said, ‘but it was actually my fault. I left Jens and went to Kalmar to meet a man – although I knew it was a waste of time. He didn’t even turn up.’ She stopped speaking, then added: ‘It was Michael . . . Jens’s father. We’d split up and he was living in Skåne, but he’d been talking about catching the train and coming up to see me . . . I’d thought we might be able to try again, but he wasn’t interested.’ She snivelled again. ‘So of course Michael was absolutely no help either when Jens disappeared, he was still in Malmö . . . But the main person who was to blame was me.’

Lennart sat in silence on the opposite side of the table, listening – he was a good listener, thought Julia – and letting her talk. When she fell silent, he said: ‘It was nobody’s fault, Julia. It was simply, as we say in the police . . . a series of unfortunate circumstances.’

‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘If it was an accident.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Lennart.

‘I mean . . . Unless Jens went out and met somebody who took him away.’

‘But who?’ said Lennart. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Julia. ‘A madman? You know more than I do about these things, you’re a policeman.’

Lennart shook his head slowly.

‘Such a person would need to be disturbed . . . extremely disturbed,’ he said. ‘And they would almost certainly have come into contact with the police already for other violent crimes. There was nobody like that on Öland at the time. Believe me, we looked for suspects . . . We knocked on doors, we went through our records.’

‘I know,’ said Julia. ‘You did what you could.’

‘Our assumption was that he went down to the water,’ said Lennart. ‘It’s only a few hundred metres, and it would have been easy to get lost in the fog that day. Many people who have drowned in Kalmar Sound have disappeared for ever, both before and since . . .’ He stopped. ‘It must be difficult for you to talk about this, and I don’t want to . . .’

‘It’s fine,’ said Julia quietly. She thought for a moment, then added: ‘I didn’t think it would be a good thing to come here in the autumn and face it all again, but it has been. I’ve started to get over Jens . . . and I know he isn’t coming back.’ She made an effort to sound absolutely certain: ‘I have to move on.

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