The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) Read Online Free

from three days to three years, but Gerlof assumed that
Swallow
would remain by the boathouse for a few weeks before Anders and John set to work on her.
    He sighed and looked around. His village, the best place in the whole world. The wide bay with its deep blue waters. The row of boathouses. The old cottages and the new houses. The lush summer greenery of Öland in the background, so different from the treeless coastal landscape when Gerlof was a little boy. He had spent his childhood here in the bay before going off to sea as a teenager, eventually returning as a grown man to build a summer cottage for his family.
    The road came to an end on the southern point, and that was where the village also ended. The coast was more dramatic over there, with a steep cliff leading down to flat, wide rocks along the shoreline and a burial cairn, known as a
rör
in the local dialect, up on the ridge above the water.
    The finest summer cottages were also at the southern end of the village, lining the coast road. Last of all, completely separate, were the two houses belonging to the Kloss family.
    The Kloss family. The three brothers, Edvard, Sigfrid and Gilbert. Edvard and Gilbert had died at almost the same time; only Sigfrid had lived to a decent age. He had inherited his father’s land and turned it into a holiday complex, which was now run by his grandchildren.
    ‘Have the Kloss gang arrived yet?’ Gerlof asked.
    ‘Indeed they have. Their place is already packed with cars, and people are out on the golf course.’
    The Kloss family’s holiday complex lay a few kilometres south of the village, and was called the Ölandic Resort, but John always referred to it as ‘the Kloss place’. He regarded it as competition, in spite of the fact that his shop in Stenvik was no more than a shoebox in comparison. The Ölandic Resort had everything – a golf course, a campsite, a range of shops, a nightclub, a swimming pool and an entire holiday village.
    In Gerlof’s opinion, the Kloss family owned far too much, but what could he do?
    All these rich residents bothered him. He did his best to avoid them. Them and their boats and swimming pools and chainsaws – all those new acquisitions making a racket in the countryside. Frightening the birds.
    He looked out across the bay.
    ‘You know, John, sometimes I wonder … is there anything that’s improved on the island over the past hundred years? Anything at all?’
    John gave the matter some thought.
    ‘Nobody goes hungry these days … And the roads aren’t full of potholes.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ Gerlof conceded. ‘But are we happier these days?’
    ‘Who knows? But we’re alive. That’s something to be happy about.’
    ‘Mmm.’
    But was it? Was Gerlof really happy to have lived to a ripe old age? These days, he took one day at a time. After some seventy years he could still remember Gilbert Kloss collapsing with a heart attack at his brother’s grave.
    Everything could come to an end at any moment, but right now the sun was shining.
Sol lucet omnibus
– the sun shines on everyone.
    Gerlof decided to enjoy this summer. To look forward to the new millennium. He was due to get a hearing aid, so soon he would be able to sit in his garden listening to the birds.
    And he would be more friendly towards visitors in the village. Or at least he would try. He wouldn’t just mutter when he came across a tourist, and he would answer the people from Stockholm when they spoke to him.
    He nodded to himself and said, ‘Let’s hope we have nice quiet, well-behaved visitors this year.’

The Homecomer
    The fisherman’s cottage had thick walls, and small dark rooms that smelled of blood and booze. The odours didn’t bother the old man standing by the doorway; he was used to both.
    The smell of booze came from Einar Wall, the owner of the cottage. Wall was in his sixties, bent and wrinkled, and he had obviously made an early start on his midsummer celebrations; a half-empty bottle stood beside