Little Star (21 page)

What the fuck happens now?

The forest was not large. Sooner or later Theres would reach a track, someone would see her, someone would…it was impossible to work through all the links in the chain. Just one cold fact remained. They were fucked, big time.

Jerry looked around and caught sight of something blue on the edge of the forest. The unopened tube of Kalles Caviar had been thrown a couple of metres in among the trees. Next to it lay the bag containing the sliced loaf, also unopened. Only the sleeping bag and the torch were missing. Perhaps she had taken them with her.

Before long the shit would really hit the fan. But for the time being he was here in this silent glade in the middle of the forest, where no bastard had any questions or accusations to throw at him. He took the bread and the tube of caviar and sat down on the ground in the middle of the glade, squeezed a generous amount of caviar on a slice of bread, slapped another slice on top and tucked in.

He closed his eyes and chewed. His body felt doughy after a night in the cells, and the sticky mess he was swallowing didn’t help. He dreamed of just sitting there, disintegrating, rotting away and turning into the formless mass he felt like. Becoming one with nature in the silent stillness.

Then came the hiccup. He had swallowed too quickly.

He hiccupped and hiccupped, and couldn’t stop. Then came the sobs, competing with the hiccups to make his body jerk as he sat there. So much for his quiet absorption into the earth. He put his head between his knees. Suddenly he threw caution to the winds, flung his head back and yelled, ‘THERES! THEERRREESS!’

The bellow stopped both the sobbing and the hiccupping. Without any real hope he listened for an answer. None came. However, there was a rustling sound among the leaves a couple of metres from where he was sitting. His mouth hanging open, he saw a hand shoot up out of the ground. The only thing his tired brain could come up with was the poster for some zombie film, and his instinctive reaction was to shuffle backwards half a metre.

Then his brain made the right connections and he crawled forward to help Theres out. She wasn’t just covered in leaves. With the help of the axe she had hacked away and dug herself a hole, crawled into it wrapped in the sleeping bag, then scooped earth and leaves over her until she was invisible.

Jerry dug away a considerable amount of earth with his hands until his sister lay exposed in her blue cocoon. He wondered what she would have done if he’d been kept in custody for a week. Would she just have stayed in her hole? Maybe she would. He unzipped the sleeping bag and helped her to crawl out. She was still clutching the axe.

‘You’re just too fucking much, you are,’ he said.

Theres looked around carefully, examining the trees as if they might attack her at any moment, and asked, ‘Big people gone?’

‘Yes,’ said Jerry. ‘They’ve gone now. All gone.’

During the next few weeks
Jerry was constantly afraid that the apartment would be searched. He didn’t know how the police operated in cases like these, but in the TV series he’d seen, house searches happened all the time. If the police knocked on the door and wanted to search the place, they were fucked. There was nowhere to hide Theres.

But nobody knocked on the door; nobody rang the bell. The only thing that happened was that Jerry was called in for questioning again. When he got home Theres was still there, and the apartment appeared to be untouched. Perhaps it wasn’t like the TV after all.

Many people that Jerry had never seen before came to Lennart and Laila’s funeral, drawn no doubt by curiosity thanks to all the articles in the press. ‘Bestial murder of Swedish chart toppers.’ Lennart and Laila should have seen the headlines. In spite of everything, they had ended their career as chart toppers.

It was only when the funeral was over that Jerry began to come down to earth, gather his thoughts and try to look clearly at the situation. Up to that point his mind had been constantly fixed on the murder, and he had gone to the computer several times a day to Google news and comments relating to his parents.

Theres didn’t make much noise. When he tried to ask her why she had done what she had done, she refused to talk about it, but it did seem as if she realised that what she had done had hurt Jerry;
perhaps she was even ashamed of herself.

Jerry had no idea what actually went on inside her head, and he was scared of her. He put away every knife, tool and sharp object in a locked cupboard. At night he made up a bed for her on the sofa in the living room and double deadlocked the front door so she couldn’t get out. Then he locked the door of his own room. He still found it difficult to drop off because he was afraid she would manage to get in while he was asleep and vulnerable. She was his sister, and she was a total stranger.

She never made any demands; in fact, she rarely spoke at all. She spent most of her time sitting at the desk, aimlessly tapping the computer keyboard or simply staring at the wall. It would probably have been more trouble looking after a hamster. More trouble, but less worry. A hamster didn’t have the ability to turn into a wild lion with no warning.

Theres caused him practical problems in only one respect, and that was her food. She refused to eat anything other than jars of baby food. That would have been fine, except that every single person in Norrtälje seemed to know the man whose parents had been murdered. It might have been his imagination, but Jerry had the feeling people were looking at him everywhere he went.

He didn’t dare go into the local supermarkets and put twenty jars of baby food through the checkout. Someone might start to put two and two together. He tried to solve the problem by buying a couple of jars here and there, but Theres got through at least ten jars a day, and it was too time-consuming to spread his purchases like that.

He considered buying in bulk over the internet, but gave up on that idea. His name had been mentioned all over the place, and a hundred jars of baby food on his account, a box with his name on the address label might also raise eyebrows somewhere.

He tried to get Theres to eat something different, he tried to explain the problem to her, but that did no good. When he stopped buying baby food to see what would happen, she stopped eating. He thought hunger would eventually make her see sense, but after four
days she hadn’t eaten anything, and it was starting to show in her face. He was forced to capitulate and set off on a long expedition to stock up on pureed chicken casserole and meatballs.

At some point in the middle of all this, Jerry began to seriously despair. The locked doors, the difficult shopping expeditions, the constant fear. The way Theres had come to dominate his existence without saying or doing anything.
Why the hell had he got into all this?

He realised he was going to have to hand her over sooner or later. A great big anonymous basket on the steps of the youth psychiatric service. Then he would be free to live his own life again. Without fear or anxiety.

But for the time being, the food problem had to be solved. Jerry took the only course of action he could think of and rang Ingemar. They hadn’t been in touch since Jerry had explained that he was finished with the cigarette business after the incident with Bröderna Djup. When Jerry asked if he was still in a position to get hold of just about anything, Ingemar was up for it straight away.

‘As long as we’re not talking about drugs…shoot. What do you need?’

‘Baby food. Can you get hold of baby food?’

It was a point of honour to Ingemar that he never asked about the goods he supplied, but from the silence that followed Jerry’s question, it was clear that his principles were being severely tested. However, the only thing he eventually said was: ‘You mean that stuff in jars? Stewed meat, that kind of crap?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how many do you want?’

‘A hundred, maybe.’

‘Jars? I’m not exactly going to make a fortune on this, you know.’

‘I’m offering you the retail price. Eleven kronor a jar.’

‘Twelve?’

And so it was agreed. When Jerry hung up, he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He had made a decision. When the
hundred jars were gone, he would hand over Theres. It was a nice even number and it felt right. Another two weeks, approximately.

Ingemar turned up with the jars and Jerry paid him. When Ingemar asked if he would be needing any more, Jerry said no. Then he carried in the two boxes himself. The labels on the jars were in some kind of East European language, and each one contained something that was presumably meat stew. Theres didn’t seem to care, she shovelled down the contents with the same joyless single-mindedness she always displayed when she was eating.

Since the keyboard was one of the few things that seemed to interest her, Jerry had started teaching her to use the internet, and that evening they had something resembling a pleasant interlude together as they sat side by side at the computer, and Jerry demonstrated how to get onto different sites and forums, how to set up an email account and so on. Perhaps it was because he had set a definite end date for their relationship that he felt more relaxed.

During the night Theres became ill. As Jerry lay there trying to get to sleep, he heard a long drawn-out whimpering from the living room. He hesitated before getting up and unlocking the bedroom door, as always alert to any changes in Theres that might suggest a shift in her mood.

He didn’t need to worry. Theres was hardly in a state to harm anyone. The room stank, and when Jerry switched on the light he saw Theres flat out on the sofa, her face greenish-white. She had thrown up all over the floor, and one hand was waving feebly.

‘What the fuck, sis…’

Jerry fetched cloths and a mop, cleaned the floor and gave Theres a bucket to throw up in. As he headed back to his room, Theres whimpered behind his back. He stopped, sighed, and sat down in the armchair. When he had been sitting there for a while, something struck him.

He picked up one of the jars of baby food, unscrewed the lid and sniffed at the contents. He wrinkled his nose. Not that baby food
normally smelled good, but surely it shouldn’t smell like
this,
for fuck’s sake? Behind the smell of stale meat there was an undertone of…acetone. Something suffocating, fermented. He turned the jar around to look for the sell-by date, but it had been rubbed out until it was illegible.

Theres was writhing as her stomach contracted with cramp, emitting a damp croaking noise. Sweat poured down her face and a trickle of dark green bile seeped out between her lips and stuck to her chin. Her head drooped helplessly over the edge of the sofa.

Jerry ran into the kitchen and fetched a towel and a bowl of water. He wiped Theres’ face, dabbing her forehead with the cool water. Her skin was hot and her eyes shone like marbles. She was shivering, and a new kind of fear nudged its way into Jerry’s body.

‘Listen, sis, you can’t be this sick. You just can’t, you hear me?’

He couldn’t take her to hospital. She had no patient number or ID card or anything, and he might as well go straight to the police station and turn himself in. Of course he could just dump her there, but then again someone might see him, and in any case he couldn’t put her on the back of his motorbike in this fucking state and how was he supposed to…

Theres’ transparent gaze fixed on his and she whispered, ‘Jerry…’ before her body contracted in a series of fresh cramps, twisting the damp sheets around her thin legs. Jerry stroked her head and said, ‘It’ll be OK, sis, it’ll be OK. You’ve just got a bit of a bad stomach, nothing serious.’ Presumably he was trying to convince himself.

He fetched her a drink of water. Five minutes later she brought it back up. He changed her bedclothes, which were soaked through and stinking. Two hours later they were just as wet. He got her to swallow an Ibuprofen tablet, which came straight back up. He chewed his nails until his fingertips hurt, and didn’t know what to do.

Towards six o’clock the dawn began to breathe on the windows and found an exhausted Jerry slumped in the armchair next to Theres, staring blankly at her skinny body as it lay on the sofa curled up into a question mark. Her breathing was jerky and shallow and her voice
was so weak Jerry could barely hear her when she said, ‘Little One bad. Made them dead. Mum and Dad. Little One soon dead now. That’s good.’

Jerry sat up and rubbed his eyes with the damp hand towel he had changed several times during the night. He leaned closer to Theres. ‘Don’t talk like that. You didn’t kill them because you’re bad. I don’t know why you did it, but it’s nothing to do with being bad, I do know that. Why do you say you’re bad?’

‘You’re sad. Because Mum and Dad got dead. Little One bad.’

Jerry cleared his throat and adopted a firmer tone of voice: ‘Right. Stop calling yourself Little One, stop saying you’re bad, and stop calling them Mum and Dad. Pack it in.’

Theres was once more gazing into emptiness. When she said, ‘Little One soon be dead’, Jerry’s anger flared up. He placed his hand over her head and squeezed her temples between his thumb and middle finger.

‘Stop it!’ he said. ‘It’s
I will soon be dead.
I! And you’re not going to die. You can fucking forget that. I’m looking after you. If you die I’ll kill you.’

Theres frowned and did something he had never seen before. She
smiled.
‘You can’t do that. When you’re dead you’re dead.’

Jerry rolled his eyes. ‘It was a joke, stupid.’

The subtle lightening of the atmosphere in the room came to a sudden stop: ‘Mum and Dad got dead. Then. Little One got them.’

Despite the fact that Theres was obviously no threat, Jerry backed away from her slightly. ‘What the hell are you talking about, and stop saying Little One, what do you mean you
got them?’

‘I got them. They’re mine now.’

‘They are not yours! They’re not even your parents, will you stop talking like that!’

Theres closed her eyes and her mouth and rolled over so that she was lying with her back to Jerry. Her narrow chest rose and fell jerkily as she breathed. Jerry leaned back in the armchair and sat there listening to her breathing; he tried to get to sleep, but without success.
He asked the question straight out: ‘Why did you do it?’ But there was no answer.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep combined with being shut in the apartment, but during the course of the morning Jerry got more and more irritated. He had known for a long, long time that there was something seriously wrong with Theres, and that she could hardly be held responsible for her actions. However, he still couldn’t cope with her lack of emotion when it came to what she had done.
I got them.

That’s probably something you might come out with if you’ve bagged a couple of ducks with a shotgun. Not when you’ve killed two people—who just happened to be Jerry’s parents, regardless of what he thought of them.
I got them.

Theres seemed to have improved after her dreadful night. She was still pale and couldn’t even keep a sip of water down, but she sat up on the sofa with a couple of pillows behind her, flicking through an illustrated Winnie-the-Pooh book Jerry had had when he was little. In his confused state Jerry thought she looked shamelessly
smug
as she sat there.
I got them.

Jerry stood by the unit housing all his videos with his arms folded, looking at her as she studied the nice, brightly coloured pictures without the slightest concern for all the grief she had caused. Without considering what he was doing he selected
Cannibal Holocaust
and said cheerfully, ‘Shall we watch a film?’

Without looking up from the book, Theres asked, ‘What’s a film?’

You’ll see,
thought Jerry, inserting the tape in the video player. If he did have a thought in his head it was something to do with getting Theres to realise that killing wasn’t just tra-la-la and
I got them,
but a seriously unpleasant business.

The film began, and people were chopped up and slaughtered with screams and tears, internal organs were removed and bodily fluids spurted. Jerry noticed that what had happened to his parents had made him more sensitive, and he no longer took any pleasure in the images. From time to time he glanced at Theres, who was sitting on
the sofa watching the bloodbath, her face completely expressionless.

When the film was over he asked her, ‘What did you think? Lots of people died, didn’t they? Pretty gruesome.’

Theres shook her head. ‘They weren’t really dead.’

Jerry had always thought
Cannibal Holocaust
was one of the better splatter films. It felt and looked real. Since Theres was totally unfamiliar with the phenomenon of film, he had thought she would see it as a pure documentary, which fitted in with his somewhat unclear aim.

‘What do you mean?’ he said, stretching the truth. ‘Of course they were really dead. You could see that, couldn’t you? I mean, they got hacked to pieces.’

‘Yes,’ said Theres. ‘But they weren’t dead.’