The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) by Johan Theorin Page A

older boys, and the younger ones were boring.
    Hiding away inside Villa Kloss wasn’t an option, because the adults were having a party. If he could have disappeared without a trace for the evening, he would have done just that.
    ‘Hi there, you two!’
    Their father came into the big room. Jonas thought he was looking at his two sons as if they were no more than recent acquaintances, in spite of the fact that they had seen him several times over the past few years.
    ‘So you’re off to the cinema in the big city tonight?’
    Jonas didn’t say a word.
    ‘Are you catching the bus to Kalmar, Mats?’
    ‘Urban’s driving.’
    ‘OK. Stay off the beer, in that case.’
    Mats looked up at the ceiling, then down at his father.
    ‘But I expect you’ll be having a few drinks at the party tonight, Dad? Knocking them back?’
    ‘No,’ Niklas said, but he couldn’t look his son in the eye. ‘Have you ever seen me drunk, Mats?’
    ‘Mum has. She says you were often drunk when you were married.’
    Jonas stared at the floor, wondering where everyone else was. Please let Veronica come in …
    Niklas looked at Mats.
    ‘That was a long time ago. Before you were born. In our first apartment. We had a few parties that got a bit out of hand. And Anita … Anita wasn’t always sober back then either. I could tell you a few tales about her.’
    ‘Don’t start badmouthing Mum.’
    ‘I’m just telling it like it was, Mats.’
    Jonas got up, slowly and silently. If he moved very carefully, perhaps no one would notice him. Like a ghost, he drifted towards the glass door leading to the veranda; he was almost there when the call came.
    ‘Jonas?’
    He stopped, turned around – and saw that Dad had found a smile somewhere and plastered it on.
    ‘Fancy a swim?’
    The sky was blue and the air dry and warm outside, but Jonas still felt chilled to the bone. And alone, in spite of the fact that he was walking next to his father. There was no trip to the cinema in Kalmar to look forward to tonight, just loneliness.
    They walked across the baking-hot coast road and out on to the ridge. Niklas didn’t speak until they were passing the burial cairn. He pointed to the stones and said, ‘People think there’s treasure buried beneath the cairn. You know it’s an ancient grave, don’t you?’
    Jonas nodded. ‘We learned about the Bronze Age in school. It came between the Stone Age and the Iron Age.’
    ‘Exactly. So there’s a Bronze Age chieftain buried here, just like King Mysing in his burial mound in the south of the island. But you’re not scared, are you?’
    ‘Not me,’ Jonas said.
    Not at the moment, anyway, he thought; not when the sun was shining and his dad was here. The cairn was completely harmless right now. But he didn’t like being out here in the evening, when it became a portal to another world, and the ghost came out and turned people into killer zombies.
    His dad had said something, asked a question as they started down the stone steps leading to the water.
    ‘What?’ Jonas said.
    ‘Is Mum OK?’
    ‘Yes … I suppose so. She spends a lot of time working.’
    ‘Good,’ his dad said. ‘It’s good that she’s got a job.’
    He looked as if he wanted to ask more questions about Mum, so Jonas hurried down the steps.
    They could hear cheerful cries from the jetty further north, but the shore down below Villa Kloss was empty and red-hot. The waves lapped gently against the flat, greyish-white rocks. Niklas pointed to a row of thick poles extending a couple of hundred metres straight out into the water, just to the south of the bathing area.
    ‘I see the fishermen have laid their gill nets this year, too. There must be some eels left in the Sound …’
    A limestone boathouse near the bottom of the steps housed the sun loungers and swimming gear belonging to the Kloss family. It was padlocked, but Casper had given Jonas the combination.
    Casper’s rubber dinghy was in there, along with a couple of plastic