Authors: Camilla Ceder
The
ghost people who populated the land of transition had a particular character:
they were restless, rootless.
Transient.
Maya was like
that now, in exile.
Set
them free
was the thought that came into his head. Free the ghosts from
their fear, that's the most humane thing to do. Something told him that was the
real meaning of the story, if there was a meaning in comics.
Another
white coat approached seeking eye contact.
'I'm
waiting for my gran,' he said in a voice that sounded unfamiliar.
Why
was it so fucking difficult to be left in peace? He could feel the panic
lurking just beneath the surface once again. Whitecoat nodded but didn't seem
completely satisfied. Just as he was about to say something, the pager in his
belt went off and he hurried away.
Sebastian
suddenly felt afraid: perhaps his mother's doctors had put out a call for him
all over the hospital? Perhaps his description had been e-mailed to all staff:
If you see a nervous fairly ugly fifteen-year- old in a denim jacket, jeans and
a red sweatshirt, with his face covered in zits, please send him back to his
mum and her two sickly-sweet doctors on the psychiatric ward.
He
was filled with rage at the false concern that only partly masked the
accusations still visible in the eyes of the Samaritans. It was true of them
all.
The old bags from social services, the doctors, the
counsellors, the teachers.
Their contempt for Solveig because she
constantly failed to cope with her own children and the crap in her life,
because she kept on cracking under the pressure, always ended up washing her
dirty linen in public - none of this was any guarantee that they wouldn't
despise him at the same time.
Sebastian, the boy who lacked
any normal protective instinct towards his sister.
He
forced himself to think about it now.
He
had known it was dark, that they were miles from anywhere that night.
That the place was full of drunken idiots.
If it hadn't been
for the band he would never have gone there, mixing with all those farm boys
who shared a single brain cell.
If
only Krister hadn't gone on about it so much.
Krister, who thought death
metal was a joke, just like all the others he hung out with. Nobody they knew
dressed like that or hung out with other death metal freaks. Nor did
Sebastian,
and Krister had only wanted to go to the party
because they sold strong beer to fifteen-year-olds without checking their ID.
He
always gave in to Krister, to everybody. He had no backbone, no clear will of
his own. He blew this way and that, following the path of least resistance.
So
it was his fault that Maya was lying in that bed, regardless of his protests
that he hadn't asked to be saved, that he was perfectly capable of taking care
of himself and that he could do without Solveig's cloying oppressive anxiety,
which was nothing but egotism when it came down to it. The logic was simple.
But
the thought had crossed his mind. As Maya set off on her bike and rode out
through the gates, he had heard one of the Neanderthals - the one whose mate
had had a go at him earlier - shout something nasty, something filthy after
her.
Sebastian
had hidden on the dark staircase leading up to the first floor and watched
through a small window as she pedalled away. That was why he had to take the
blame this time: because he had just sat there with the feeling that she might
never make it to the main road. He hadn't stopped her despite the fact that she
had been raped and killed over and over again on the cinema screen in his mind.
But
she hadn't been raped. The doctors had said this several times, as if it might
make Mum and Sebastian
feel
better. She had no
physical injuries apart from the wound to her head, which she had sustained
through falling on to a sharp stone which had crushed her skull. The police
investigation had proved this.
Maya
had scratches on her face and hands from running through the trees.
Nobody
could yet explain what had made Maya run like that, straight into the dark
forest. However, Sebastian thought he knew what she had felt as she ran. If he
didn't put every ounce of strength he had left into keeping it at bay, he could
easily allow his own body to be filled by her panic until it imploded.
He
kept this insight into Maya's panic during her final minutes locked deep inside
his body. He stored a lot of things in that locked room. Sometimes he thought
about what would happen on the day he chose to take out the key, open the door
a fraction and wait for the great flood.
Woe betide
anyone who was standing in the way; he could only hope that he or she deserved
to be there. Because evil people did exist, that much was certain. Whatever the
doctors and the police said, he was convinced that Maya was lying there as a
result of evil.
Why
would she have thrown down the bike and run into the forest if she hadn't feared
for her life? No, it was pure fear that had made Maya tear her hands and cheeks
on the frozen branches. He was quite sure of that. Once again he had to drive
the fear out of his own body. It must not take over. He crept back to the dark
waiting area and sank down on to the sofa.
In
general, accusations and guilt ran off him like water off a duck's back; he had
acquired a thick covering of waterproof feathers in order to survive life with
Solveig. In order to avoid becoming like Maya, who got into arguments with her
all the time, and who had been ready to kill Solveig more than once. He had
decided at an early stage that he was not going to join in. He had had to live
with the fact that his punishment had been a withdrawal of love and a permanent
place as silver medallist when it came to his mother's favours.
A
nurse with clattering clogs and rattling keys came into the waiting area and
switched on a floor lamp. Its soft glow reached Sebastian's shoes.
He
couldn't sleep here at the hospital, of course. That would attract attention,
even if he could easily imagine sitting here on this shabby sofa for the rest
of the evening, staring into space. The only thing he really missed was his
Walkman. To be able to hide behind a wall of death metal would be a release
right now; nothing else could make him tear himself away from the indefinably
meaningless failure that was Sebastian himself.
Solveig
reacted nervously to outfits inspired by horror, black and white make-up and
other things that reinforced the association with violence and blood and death.
That was the whole point.
That just for a little while you
didn't have to think about the fact that even the creators of extreme music
were just a gang of ordinary lads.
He
couldn't go home, that much was certain. Maya's bag was still in the hallway.
Maya was lying in a room somewhere like a cabbage. The doctors were already one
hundred per cent certain that she would never be anything but a cabbage. And
nothing he said to himself about his responsibility or guilt would ever change
the fact that Solveig thought it was his fault.
It
was his fault, therefore he couldn't go home. He would have liked to go to
Maya, except she was surrounded by a whole troop of healthcare staff. He would
have liked to explain to her, to tell her why he had
reacted
as he did when she came to fetch him that evening.
And how important the music had become to him: it was the thing that made him
forget. There were to be no bridges between the two lives, no links between his
refuge and school, his mother, the pointlessness of it all. She ought to have
understood, if anyone could. If there was a risk you might be found, then it
was no longer a refuge. If only he could talk to her.
It
was likely that Solveig would not be sleeping at home tonight; experience told
him that the hospital
staff were
unlikely to let her
out in her current state. She would end up in the unit for crazy people, and
she would probably stay there for a while. In other words, the apartment would
be empty.
He
decided to go home, have a sleep and pack his most important possessions
tomorrow morning. To be on the safe side he would leave as soon as he woke up,
so he wouldn't be caught unawares if Solveig came home earlier than expected.
He just couldn't cope with seeing her.
When
everything had settled down he would come up to the hospital at night, when
there was only one nurse on duty. He would ask if he could sit with Maya for a
while. She was his sister after all; what could they say? And it wasn't as if
Maya would notice any difference between night and day.
It
would all sort itself out, as long as he kept out of Solveig's way.
2007
'I'll
have to ask you for the surname as well, Inspector,' said the man with a voice
that suggested he had a terrible cold, or perhaps it was the result of many
years' smoking or even the phone line. Tell thought about Marlon Brando in
The Godfather,
but he concluded that any similarities between Brando and Knut
Jidsten, one of Olof's foster- fathers, ended there. After dogged detective
work he had managed to track Jidsten down to a little village north of
Ostersund.
'I
think we must have had about thirty placements here over a period of
twenty-five years. And that's not counting the ones who were only here for a
few days. We were the local emergency foster home for a few years at the
beginning of the 90s,' he explained. 'But it all got too much. Our own kids
just couldn't cope with all the coming and going.'
Tell
stretched and tried to recline his desk chair even further, which turned out to
be impossible as he was already virtually lying with his feet on the desk.
They
had spent a depressing morning on the telephone and computer without achieving
any significant results. Together with Sofia Frisk, Gonzales had set up a
system to list all the proud owners of Jeep Grand Cherokees in the area. The
details were then passed on to two constables from Kinna, who had been given
the uninspiring job of contacting the owners for an initial check and to
establish if they had an alibi. It was a time-consuming task. So far nothing of
value had turned up, apart from the news that Kasper Jonasson, who was well
known to both the drugs squad and the violent crimes unit, was driving a Jeep
these days. He had spent the relevant evening, night and morning at the
Radisson Hotel. It was his younger brother's twenty- fifth birthday, and
fortunately for Jonasson lots of people
were
able to
confirm his presence.
They
also checked car rentals within a hundred-kilometre radius of Gothenburg and
Borås. Tell was more inclined to believe that the murderer had hired or
borrowed cars - judging by the forensic report, it seemed likely that two
different vehicles of the same make and model had been used in the murders. No
Grand Cherokee had been reported stolen in the weeks leading up to the murders,
and the search had been extended to the whole of western Sweden.
Their
work was made easier by the fact that comparatively few rental firms offered a
Grand Cherokee, but they still had to ring up and ask. This consisted mainly of
listening to themselves asking the same question over and over again, speaking
to bored assistants who never turned out to have been on duty at the time in
question, who had no access to details of previous rentals, or who had to wait
for permission from their boss before revealing anything at all.
They
also contacted petrol stations within the same area. That was even worse.
Partly because they got the impression that at least ten people covered a
single day.
And partly because every single employee appeared
to have an average age of seventeen.
Tell's experience told him that
teenagers were aware of nothing apart from the displays on their mobiles and
the music on their iPods. Most of the larger petrol stations had CCTV cameras,
and they would no doubt end up going through every single tape. Ostergren had
promised Tell that if the tapes were brought to the station, she would try to
find people to carry out this deathly dull task.
'Get
Bärneflod to go through them,' Beckman had said. 'He's too idle to lift his
arse off the chair anyway.'
Well
yes, but there was a considerable risk that he would simply fall asleep.
'Pilgren,'
said Tell, attempting to scratch his ankle without tipping over backwards.
'Olof Pilgren. He came to you in 1975. He was eleven then and-'
'Olof,
yes, of course,' Jidsten broke in. 'Olof lived here for several years, until…
80 or 81
,1
should think.'