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

said, handing out the guns. Rita was given a small Sig Sauer, Pecka a Walther, and the old man both a Walther and the automatic.
    ‘Will you be needing plastic explosives as well?’ Wall asked.
    The old man who had come home looked up.
    ‘Have you got some?’
    ‘I brought some back last winter,’ Pecka said proudly. ‘From a road construction project in Kalmar. Fuses, detonators, the lot.’
    Wall looked equally pleased.
    ‘It’s all carefully hidden and locked away,’ he said. ‘Nobody will find it. The cops were here back in May, but they left empty-handed.’
    ‘We can take a couple of charges,’ the old man said. ‘What about payment?’
    ‘Afterwards,’ Wall said. ‘Do your job and take care of the safe, then we’ll split everything later.’
    ‘We’ll need balaclavas as well, Einar,’ Pecka said. ‘Did you get them?’
    Wall didn’t ask any questions. He simply opened a cardboard box underneath the table and took out a packet of rubber gloves and several grey balaclavas with holes cut out for the eyes.
    ‘Burn them when you’re done,’ he said.
    The old man looked at them and said, ‘I don’t need any protection.’
    ‘You’ll be recognized,’ Pecka said.
    The man shook his head.
    ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he said, gazing out of the cracked window. ‘I’m not here.’

The New Country, May 1931
    The journey begins one sunny summer’s day, eleven months after the death of Edvard Kloss. Aron has almost stopped thinking about that night. About the wall that fell down, about Sven giving him a shove. ‘
In you go! Get in there and fetch his money
.’
    Sven had been Aron’s new father for just a couple of years, but he did as he was told. Otherwise he might face a beating.
    They don’t talk about that night, just about the trip. It feels as if they have been preparing for today all through the spring, but everything they are taking with them still fits into one suitcase each.
    Sven has brought the old snuffbox made of apple wood. Aron wants to bring something as well, something precious.
    ‘Can I take my gun to America?’
    Aron has his very own single-barrel shotgun, which he fills with pellets so that he can shoot partridge and seabirds.
    ‘Of course you can’t,’ Sven says. ‘They wouldn’t let you on board the ship.’
    So Aron has to leave his shotgun behind. It was given to him by his grandfather, who is a huntsman himself; he told his daughter, Astrid, that the boy is a pretty decent shot. That sounds good, ‘a decent shot’.
    And indeed he is; he was only ten years old when he shot his first seal. It was lying on an ice floe that came drifting towards the island one cold, sunny spring day. The seal raised its head, Aron raised his gun and when he fired the seal’s body jerked, then lay still. He had hit the back of its neck and broken its spine. It was over a metre long and provided over twenty kilos of blubber.
    ‘But I need a gun,’ Aron says. ‘How am I supposed to be a sheriff without a gun?’
    Sven laughs; it sounds like a dry cough.
    ‘We’ll find you a new one when we get there.’
    ‘Do they have shotguns in the new country?’
    ‘Lots of them. They have everything there.’
    Aron knows one thing they don’t have in the new country: a waiting family. His mother, Astrid, and his sister, Greta, are staying behind in Sweden, and saying goodbye to them is hard. Greta is only nine, and gazes at her brother in silence. His mother clamps her lips together.
    ‘Stay out of trouble,’ she says. ‘Look after yourself.’
    Aron nods, then he picks up his bag and goes with Sven, taking long strides to stop him from turning back.
    The day of their departure is dry and sunny.
    They walk side by side along the dirt track. Sven has longer legs, but he limps with his right foot, so Aron is able to keep up with him.
    ‘You’re off to the new country in the west,’ his mother had said, ‘the country they call America. You’re going to work hard over there for a