Little Star (22 page)

‘How do you know that?’

‘No smoke.’

Jerry had prepared a number of responses to possible objections in order to get her to understand at last, but this was so unexpected that all he could say was, ‘What?’

‘There was no smoke. When they smashed the heads.’

‘What are you talking about? There’s never any smoke.’

‘Yes. There’s a little bit of smoke. Red.’

Theres had approximately the same expression on her face as when Jerry had said, ‘If you die I’ll kill you.’ She looked suspiciously amused, as if she knew that Jerry was teasing her, and would soon admit it. Then he realised what she was talking about.

‘You mean blood,’ he said. ‘There was loads of blood, all the time.’

‘No,’ said Theres. ‘Stop it, Jerry. You know.’

‘No, I don’t know. It just so happens that I’ve never killed anyone, so I don’t know.’

‘Why have you never killed anyone?’

Jerry didn’t really know how he had expected Theres to react to the film. With tears, perhaps, or screams, or a refusal to watch, or fascination and lots of questions. This hadn’t been among the possible alternatives.

Acidly he said, ‘I don’t know, I suppose the opportunity never came up.’

Theres nodded, her expression serious. Then she said, as if she was explaining something to a slightly backward child, ‘Blood comes later. First smoke. Just a bit. Red. But then it’s gone. You can’t find any more. But you get that little bit. That’s love. I think.’

There was something about the way she spoke. With the monotonous, soporific voice of someone reading out the stock market prices, she listed dry facts that brooked no contradiction, and for a moment Jerry started to believe that what she said was the truth. Then a minute or so passed in silence, and the spell was broken. Jerry looked at Theres. Beads of sweat had started to break out along her hairline. He plumped up her pillows and shook the blanket, told her to lie down and rest. When she was settled he perched on the edge of the sofa.

‘Sis,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked you this before, but now I’m asking you again. Just say all that stuff about smoke and so on when somebody dies is true. And say I’ve got it inside me as well. Are you thinking of trying to take it?’

Theres shook her head and Jerry asked the obvious follow-up question. ‘Why not?’

Theres’ eyes grew misty and she blinked a few times, but Jerry couldn’t let her fall asleep until he had an answer. He shook her shoulder gently and she said, ‘I don’t know. It says stop.’

Her eyes closed and Jerry had to be content with her answer. He went and lay down to try and sleep off the worst of the woolly mess inside his head, but sleep wouldn’t come. After half an hour he got up, took a cold shower and went out to buy some baby rice.

She has to eat something, after all.

On the stairs he met his neighbour, Hirsfeldt—an elderly man whose neat clothes were in sharp contrast with his face, which was strongly marked by his fondness for alcohol. He peered at Jerry in the harsh morning light as it bounced off the concrete. ‘Has somebody moved in with you?’ he asked.

Jerry’s stomach went cold. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘But I can hear them,’ said Hirsfeldt. ‘You can hear everything in this building. I can hear somebody throwing up like a sick calf, and it’s not you.’

‘It’s a friend—she’s not very well, so I’m letting her stay with me for a few days.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Hirsfeldt in a tone which implied that he didn’t believe a word Jerry said. Then he tipped his exaggeratedly elegant hat. ‘My condolences on your loss, by the way. A terrible business.’

‘Yes. Thank you,’ said Jerry, hurrying off down the stairs. When he had covered two flights he looked up through the gap between the landings and thought he could see a tiny bit of Hirsfeldt’s coat by his door. As if he were standing there listening.

Jerry gave up the idea of walking to the big supermarket, and quickly headed for the local shop. He didn’t dare leave Theres alone for too long. What if she woke up and did something while bloody Hirsfeldt was sniffing around the letterbox? Why couldn’t people just mind their own business?

He’d planned on buying ordinary baby rice, but they’d run out, so he had to buy Semper’s organic baby rice, one year and up. When he put the box on the conveyor belt, the checkout girl gave him an odd smile. He’d seen her several times before, she’d seen him, and she was bound to know who he was. If it hadn’t been for the incident with Hirsfeldt he wouldn’t have been particularly bothered, but now he felt like a hunted animal as he hurried home with the baby rice in a plastic bag.

Theres was still asleep, and Jerry flopped down in the armchair to catch his breath. When she woke up he put the TV on very loud to drown out any possible suspicious noises. He couldn’t stop himself from going over to the window a couple of times to peer down at the street.

The day passed against the backdrop of repeats and ad breaks on TV4. Theres lay on the sofa, following everything with dull eyes. He tried feeding her a couple of spoonfuls of baby rice. Then he sat on the armchair, hugging his knees and waiting anxiously for the poor attempt at nutrition to come back up again. When it didn’t, he was absurdly pleased and gave her a little more. She’d had enough then, but at least she didn’t throw it up.

The incidents with Hirsfeldt and the checkout girl had brought things to a head. Jerry could no longer amble along pretending everything would be fine. Unfortunately, he was much too tired to be able to come up with any kind of strategy. He fed Theres a few spoonfuls of baby rice from time to time, was pleased when she kept it down, wiped her sweating brow and sat with her as fresh cramps racked her body from time to time.

For Jerry, the hours that passed in their little bubble were dominated by two strong impressions. The first was claustrophobia. The room felt smaller than usual, the walls were closing in around him and outside the walls were watchful eyes. He shrank into himself, compressed down to a stock cube whose sole function was to feed and care for Theres.

However, the claustrophobia was balanced by a new discovery: the joy of caring for another person. It was deeply satisfying to support Theres’ head with his hand as he brought the spoon to her lips, then watched her swallow and keep down the food he had given her. He got a warm feeling in his chest when she sighed with relief as he wiped her hot face with a cool, damp towel.

Or maybe it wasn’t quite such a pretty picture. Maybe it was all about power, the fact that she was completely dependent on him. No one had ever depended on him for survival, but Theres was very clearly in that position now.

Nobody even knew she existed. He could press a pillow over her face and nobody would say a word.

But did he do that? No, not Jerry. He made her baby rice and moistened towels and changed sheets. He was there for her, looking
after her. He had such power over her that he didn’t even need to exert it. Jerry was a terrific guy, for a change.

Idol
started at eight o’clock. When some girl pitched up and started melodramatically wailing, ‘Didn’t we almost have it all’, Theres lay on the sofa and sang along in a weak voice. Jerry’s eyes grew moist, no thanks to the girl on the screen.

‘Bloody hell, sis,’ he said. ‘You could do a much better job than her. You can sing the crap out of the lot of them.’

Later in the evening Theres took a turn for the worse. The cramps were coming more frequently, and when Jerry took her temperature the thermometer showed 40.3. By midnight she was too weak even to lift her head to vomit, so Jerry had to sit by her, poised with a towel. He might have fainted with exhaustion if the fear hadn’t kept him awake.

He dragged his mattress into the living room and lay down on the floor beside her. He no longer cared if Hirsfeldt called the cops or if the checkout girl was spying on him from the bushes, he just didn’t want Theres to die. He’d never seen anyone this ill. If Ingemar showed his snout in Norrtälje again, Jerry would knock it down his throat.

He might just have dropped off for a moment when he heard Theres whisper, ‘Toilet.’

He carried her to the bathroom, then sat in front of her holding onto her shoulders to stop her falling off the toilet. She was so hot his palms were covered in sweat. It was impossible to understand how her little body could produce so much heat. Her head was drooping, and suddenly she gave up the last vestige of resistance and went limp.

‘Sis? Sis? Theres!’

He lifted her head. Her eyes had rolled back so that the whites were showing, and a dribble of saliva trickled from her motionless lips. He put his ear close to her mouth and could hear the faintest sound of breathing, a puff of desert heat against his ear. He picked her up and carried her back to the sofa, bathed her with cloths soaked in cool water, then lay down beside her and took her hand.

‘Sis? Sis? Don’t die. Please. I won’t hand you over. I’ll look after
you, do you hear me? I’ll sort it out somehow, but don’t die. Do you hear me?’

Jerry curled up on his mattress without letting go of her hand; he lay there staring at her mouth in the semi-darkness, because only her lips moving from time to time indicated that she was still alive. Jerry fixed his gaze on them and realised something he should have grasped long ago:
Don’t die. You’re all I’ve got.

Perhaps five minutes had passed, or it might have been an hour. Perhaps he was asleep and dreaming, or perhaps he was awake and really did see what he saw. If he was dreaming, then he dreamed that he was lying on a mattress next to Theres holding her warm, lifeless hand when her mouth opened a couple of centimetres. A first he was pleased, because it was the clearest sign of life for a couple of hours. Then he saw the thin curl of red smoke beginning to emerge from her lips.

Panic hammered a nail into his chest and he leapt to his feet. Crazed with exhaustion and fear, he grabbed the damp towel and threw it over her mouth, over her face, to stop the smoke escaping. He pressed the fabric against her lips, shaking his head dementedly.

It’s not like this, this isn’t what happens, this isn’t happening.

A few seconds passed and he expected to see the red smoke begin to seep through the fabric. Then he realised what he was doing. He ripped away the towel and placed his ear to her mouth. He couldn’t hear or feel anything, and he banged his temples with both hands until brass bells started reverberating in the back of his head.

I’ve killed her. I’ve killed her. I’ve suffocated her.

Theres opened her eyes and Jerry screamed and staggered backwards, knocking over the coffee table which went crashing to the ground. She held her hand out to him. Jerry took a couple of deep breaths and regained control of himself. He took her hand and whispered, ‘I thought you’d died. Just now.’

Theres closed her eyes and said, ‘I was dead. Then I wasn’t dead.’

Someone knocked on the wall. Hirsfeldt was awake.

During the night the fever began to abate, and by morning her temperature was down to 38 degrees. Theres was able to drink water, and even managed a little of the apricot puree left in the fridge. She sat up in bed and managed to hold the spoon herself. Jerry had slept for a couple hours, and felt so relieved he had to express it in some way. When he stroked her cheek she didn’t look at him, didn’t give the slightest hint of a smile. But nor did she move her head away.

An hour or so later Jerry was sitting at the computer searching for property to rent.

After a couple of days
spent exchanging emails and making phone calls, Jerry gave Theres detailed instructions on what she could and couldn’t do during his absence, then set off for Stockholm to check out an apartment in Svedmyra.

It was a three-room apartment, 82 square metres, in an area that turned out to be so quiet and peaceful that you could have heard a pin drop on one of the many glassed-in balconies.

Jerry plodded slowly from the subway station and tried to get a feel for the place. It felt…finished. Maybe things had happened here once upon a time, maybe young lads in caps had run around feeling trendy among the three-storey brick buildings, but that was long ago. The lads had hung up their caps, and had their feet up with the cat and the TV these days.

When Jerry had checked out the discussion pages on different areas, there was one expression that had come up a few times, presumably posted by older people:
running up and down the stairs.
They complained that there was always somebody running up and down the stairs. Jerry had a feeling that Svedmyra was a place where there wasn’t a great deal of running up and down stairs. Enough said.

The apartment was on the top floor, and wasn’t much to get excited about. Two bedrooms with a view of some pine trees, a large bathroom with a washing machine and a living room with a kitchen area. The contract was one hundred and forty thousand kronor, and the black market agent had assured Jerry that the last person he’d
heard of who got an apartment here through legal channels had been on the housing list for twelve years.

The minor and major criminals Jerry had come into contact with over the years would usually have been easy to pick in a line-up, but the agent looked so smart and trustworthy that Jerry became quite suspicious. Suit, neatly combed hair; ingratiating teeth.

If the agent had been a wide boy in a track suit and a gold chain, Jerry would have found it easier to cough up the fifty thousand he had brought with him for the deposit. In the circumstances, however, he refused to pay more than twenty-five. The agent went on at length about the fake contracts that had to be sorted out, the papers that had to be signed and so on, but Jerry stood his ground.

He took another walk round the apartment as the agent laid it on with a trowel, getting more and more annoyed. Jerry saw how he could have his computer desk next to the broadband outlet there, put the bed there, which room Theres would have and so on. He liked the place. When the agent said he wasn’t prepared to do a deal unless Jerry paid a deposit of at least forty thousand, Jerry said he wasn’t prepared to move from twenty-five, but that he would pay an extra ten on top once the whole thing had gone through. One hundred and fifty thousand in total.

Twenty-five one-thousand-kronor notes changed hands, and they shook on it.

Sitting on the subway and then on the bus to Norrtälje, Jerry was quite pleased with himself. If he’d been conned, then it wasn’t the end of the world. He had a good three hundred thousand tucked away from his internet poker.

But he hadn’t been conned. A week later he was able to collect the keys, sign the contract and hand over the rest of the money for the apartment where he would be living with his daughter, according to the official version.

The move itself was a problem. Jerry didn’t have all that many possessions, but there were a number of things he couldn’t carry down the
stairs by himself. The bed, the sofa, the bookcases. Among other things. There was no one he could ask for help, and even if Theres could have carried one end, he didn’t dare let her be seen like that in Norrtälje.

He would have to use removalists.

On the designated day he explained to Theres that a couple of men would be coming to help them move their things to Stockholm. She was terrified, her eyes darting all over the apartment in the quest for a place to hide. Jerry coaxed her into the bathroom, where she locked herself in.

Quarter of an hour later the doorbell rang, and outside stood two lads who made Jerry shrink on the spot. Now he understood the name of their company, Twin Transport. Two identical lads aged about twenty-five wearing overalls towered above him. Both were over two metres tall. Jerry’s hand disappeared inside a huge paw as they said hello.

They emptied the bedroom and kitchen in no time, and Jerry soon abandoned any attempt to help when he realised this was a smooth ballroom dance, with furniture and boxes as props, and he was only getting in the way. The only thing he insisted on carrying down himself was the computer. He had recently upgraded to the latest Mac, and he wanted to make sure the box containing the computer didn’t get squashed.

The huge removal van was no more than a third full and only the sofa in the living room remained, as Jerry carefully placed the box next to the bookcase and made sure it was safe. The twins stood watching him with their arms folded, smiling indulgently. Jerry followed them up the stairs. As they were approaching his floor he heard a door close; presumably Hirsfeldt, being nosey until the last possible moment.

Mats (or it might have been Martin) stopped in the doorway and said, ‘Hello?’ When Jerry caught up with them he saw through the gap between their backs that Theres had emerged from the bathroom for some reason, and was standing in the hallway, her fists clenched
by her sides, staring wide-eyed at the twins.

The big people,
Jerry thought. If Theres had strange ideas about adults, the sight of the twins was unlikely to help much.

Jerry said quietly, ‘My daughter. She’s a bit…different.’

As if to confirm his statement Theres began slowly backing away into the living room. When the twins cheerfully moved towards her, she held her hands up in front of her for protection as she continued to walk backwards.

‘Theres,’ said Jerry, who couldn’t get past the massive backs, ‘Theres, they’re not dangerous. They’re helping us.’

Theres moved into the almost empty living room. She cast a panic-stricken glance at the balcony door, and for a moment he thought she was going to throw herself out.

‘Theres. What a lovely name,’ said one of the twins, distracting her sufficiently to stop her making a dash for the balcony door before that particular escape route was blocked. Instead, like the very small child she resembled at that moment, she threw herself on the sofa and pulled the blanket over her head.

Mats and Martin looked at one another, grinned and said, ‘OK, kid—here we go.’ Before Jerry could stop them they each picked up one end of the sofa. Incapable of coming up with a better solution, he dashed out onto the landing and positioned himself so that he was blocking the view from the spy hole in Hirsfeldt’s door as Mats and Martin carried the sofa downstairs. He didn’t dare to imagine what Theres must be feeling as she lay there quivering under her blanket, unceremoniously carted out of her safe haven.

When the twins had placed the sofa in the van and Jerry had managed to persuade them to stop trying to coax Theres out, he sat down beside her and whispered, ‘Sis? Sis? Everything’s fine. I’m here and they’re not dangerous, I promise.’ He fumbled under the blanket and found her hand, squeezed it. A gesture that would have been unthinkable just a week ago.

When the twins had brought down the last of the boxes and were ready to set off, Theres refused to leave her cocoon. Jerry tried to get
up, but she squeezed his hand harder and hissed, ‘Don’t go. Don’t go.’

Jerry weighed up the situation, then asked the twins: ‘Is it OK if we ride with you? In the back?’ The twins shrugged and said well, it was against the rules really, but…Jerry seized the moment and said they could add an extra couple of hours to the invoice. It had been cheaper than he expected anyway, because the twins had worked so fast.

He dug out another blanket and wrapped himself in it, then found the torch in one of the boxes. When the doors closed and he switched on the torch, he thought it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. They could avoid the midnight taxi ride Jerry had been planning to get Theres out of Norrtälje without the risk of being spotted by anyone he knew.

When Jerry was young, he had had the usual fantasies about leaving Norrtälje and returning many years later to great acclaim, giving major interviews to the local press. He’d given all that up long ago, and resigned himself to becoming quietly embalmed in his desolate apartment.

Even though he was now travelling in a dark removal van like a thief in the night, at least he had finally escaped. Good or bad? Difficult to say, but as the van bumped along and Jerry tried to visualise the places they were passing, he felt a small stirring of excitement. He was on his way. At last.

When they had been on the road for about quarter of an hour, Theres poked her head out. She looked around the dark interior, and Jerry swept the beam of the torch around to show her no dangers were lurking. She said something and Jerry had to lean closer to hear her over the roar of the engine. ‘What did you say?’

‘The big people,’ said Theres. ‘When are the big people going to make Little One dead?’

‘Listen, sis…’ Jerry moved closer to her, but Theres retreated into the far corner of the sofa. When Jerry shone the light on her he saw that she was at least as terrified as she had been up in the apartment. He switched off the torch to avoid dazzling her, and spoke into the darkness.

‘Sis, this whole business with the big people—it’s all just made up. It’s not true. It was just some crap Dad made up because…because he didn’t want you to run away.’

‘You’re lying. The big people have hate in their heads. You said it too.’

‘Yes, but that was just so that you’d…forget it. But nobody’s going to kill you. You don’t need to be scared.’

They sat in silence in the darkness for a long time. The sound of the engine was soporific, and Jerry might have fallen asleep if he hadn’t started to feel really cold. He wrapped the blanket more tightly around him and stared at a thin strip of light along the bottom of the doors. The feeling of being on the way had been replaced by a sense that he was being
transported,
like a piece of furniture or a pig, and his good mood evaporated. When they had travelled so far that he could tell from the sound of the engine that they were driving along a street with buildings on either side, Theres said, ‘Are the big people nice?’

‘No,’ said Jerry. ‘That’s going a bit far. That’s not what I said. Most of them are nasty bastards, if they get the chance. I’m just telling you they’re not going to kill you. Or hurt you.’

Jerry added silently:
unless they’ve got something to gain from it.

When the doors opened Jerry was blinded by the white winter light. Theres had crawled back under her blanket, and Martin and Mats were waiting outside with their arms folded.

‘It’s the third floor, isn’t it?’ said one of the twins, pointing at Theres. ‘I think you’d better try and get the girl to go up with you. It was a bit of fun once, but…’

Jerry asked them to back off a little and leaned over Theres, whispering where he thought her ear might be, ‘Come on, sis. Everything’s fine. I’ll hold your hand.’ A few seconds passed and Jerry had begun to consider carrying Theres wrapped in the blanket, when a hand emerged. He took it and gently folded back the blanket, then led her out of the van.

She walked with her head bent, as if she expected a devastating
blow to the back of her neck at any moment. When it didn’t come, she stole a quick glance at the twins. They waved in unison with exactly the same expression on their faces, like something out of a cartoon. Jerry wondered if they lived together as well.

He held his head high as they walked towards the door, because there was no longer anything to hide, and he didn’t want it to look as if there might be. There were always watchful eyes. Here comes a father with his daughter to take over their new apartment, nothing odd about that. Theres, however, was playing her role very badly, and her fingers were squeezing his hand like pincers.

She relaxed slightly once they were inside the small lift, and looked around in confusion when they came out onto the landing; she couldn’t understand how they had got there. Jerry unlocked the door of their apartment and left it open, then led Theres to her new room.

‘This is where you’re going to live,’ he said. As Theres looked suspiciously around the completely empty room, he added, ‘With furniture, and stuff, of course. We’ll have to buy a bed and…’

Theres went and sat on the floor in the corner, drew her knees up to her chin and looked as if she wasn’t entirely displeased with the current state of the room. Jerry heard a bang and a muffled curse from the stairs and said, ‘Listen, they’re bringing the furniture up now, so…’

Theres hugged herself even more tightly and stayed where she was, unassailable. A minute or two later the twins came lumbering in with the sofa, and Jerry asked them to put it in Theres’ room. She would have to sleep on it until he managed to get a bed. The girl followed the movements of the two big men with her eyes wide open, her fingers constantly intertwining. The twins seemed to have accepted that they couldn’t make any contact with Theres, and placed things in her room in silence.

Each time they came in Theres slackened the grip around her knees a fraction, and by the time they brought in the last two little boxes containing her clothes, she was on her feet.

‘So,’ said Mats, or Martin, looking around the apartment where the paltry furnishings echoed in the emptiness. He seemed to be
searching for something positive to say, but had no success. Instead he finished off with, ‘There we are, then.’

‘Yes,’ said Jerry. ‘There we are.’