Little Star (41 page)

Just about a week after
the album was released, Teresa got an email from Max Hansen. The message said, ‘Read these and think carefully. June 26. Confirm.’

Attached were a number of newspaper articles about Lennart and Laila, a copy of the estate inventory showing Jerry as the heir, the ID information on Angelika Tora Larsson, and a copy of Theres’ application form for
Idol.

Max Hansen wanted to show that he had everything stitched up, and even though it didn’t come as a surprise that he knew what he knew, it had the desired effect. The very thought that he could ruin their entire lives with one click of the mouse was abhorrent, and for the first time Teresa was really frightened. She sent a long message to Theres, going through various scenarios and weighing up their options, and came to the conclusion that it would probably be best if Theres said that she would perform at Skansen. At least that would buy them the time until then to come up with something.

The
something
was a given. The problem was how they could get close enough to Max Hansen to carry it out, then get away without being discovered. Teresa was filled with longing. The man in the shop had been thrown into her path, she had done what she had done and hadn’t felt good about it until afterwards. Max Hansen was a different matter altogether. She was looking forward to it, and this time she was going to enjoy it from beginning to end. If she got the chance.

Her fingers had begun to itch in an unpleasant way, and from time to time she had a hungry feeling in her stomach. Her awareness of life had begun to be sullied by images forcing themselves on her unannounced. She could become fixated by the back of someone’s head on the bus, imagining a tool in her hand, yearning to strike a blow. When she was alone in the library with the librarian one afternoon, she worked out ways of killing her. Ask for some unusual book, follow her down to the storeroom. A brick, a length of pipe. Bang on the head, bang again. Again. Open. And then the red smoke, to taste it, to get close again.

She had continued to throw away three Fontex tablets a day, picked up a new prescription and carried on throwing them away. She had been for follow-up meetings at the psychiatric unit and had played her role effectively; they felt she was so well she ought to be able to come off her medication by the summer.

But she knew that her normal behaviour was nothing to do with being ‘well’ in the usual sense of the word. She was secure and harmonious, yes. She was happy with both herself and her life, yes. So far so good, ticking the boxes on the psychiatrist’s list. But the
reason
for her excellent results was something only she and Theres knew about. The fact that she was a murderer, that she was a wolf, that she had cast normal human considerations aside.

If she had explained all this in the doctor’s pleasant office, she would have been locked up for the foreseeable future rather than being pronounced more or less fit and well. Teresa knew that she was not well in the conventional meaning of the word, but she was perfectly fine on her own terms, and that was what mattered.

The problem was…the abstinence.

It got so bad that she could sit at the kitchen table watching Olof shovelling down sandwiches as he read some games magazine, and she would find herself studying the back of his neck, glancing from his hairline to the marble rolling pin and back again. One day when Maria wasn’t very well and spent the day at home on the sofa listening to old Dean Martin records, Teresa stood gazing at her mother, lying
there with her eyes closed, as her fingers caressed the knob on the end of the poker.

That kind of thing.

Regardless of how good Teresa was feeling these days, and regardless of the fact that Dean Martin was singing that you couldn’t go to jail for what you were
thinking,
she would have liked to pass on these particular fantasies. But they forced their way in, and she couldn’t shake them off.

When Teresa picked Theres up in Svedmyra four days after Max Hansen’s message, they still hadn’t come to any decisions. It was just two weeks until June 26, and Teresa had checked the news on the internet every morning, fearing that Max Hansen would have gone public with what he knew. It hadn’t happened yet, but the feeling in Teresa’s stomach told her it wouldn’t be much longer.

They talked on the subway and they talked on the bus to Djurgården. Whispering, because there were a lot more people now than when they had come out here the first time. Their conclusion was that they would say yes to Max Hansen. Whether Theres would actually turn up on the day was another matter. Teresa certainly had no intention of being Max Hansen’s mouthpiece and trying to persuade her.

As usual they had turned up a while before the others, and as they approached the place near the wolf enclosure they could see three men sitting there. On previous occasions other people had got there before them, and the entire group would then use the simple and effective method of staring at the intruders until they moved away.

The men were in their twenties, and had no blankets, beer or musical equipment with them, so Teresa presumed it wouldn’t be too long before they left. For the time being she and Theres spread the blankets out a little further up, sat down and carried on talking.

Three shadows fell over their spot. They had been so absorbed in their conversation that they hadn’t noticed the three men coming over. As soon as Teresa looked up at them she could see that something
was wrong, in spite of the fact that the light was behind them, and immediately afterwards came the scent, clear and unmistakable:
threat.

All three men were standing with their hands in the pockets of baggy tracksuit tops, and they had arranged themselves so that Theres and Teresa were trapped between them and the fence.

The one in the middle crouched down. Beneath his thin trousers Teresa could see the contours of pumped-up leg muscles; his upper arms were as thick as her thighs.

‘Hi,’ he said, nodding at Theres. ‘You’re Tesla, aren’t you?’

Theres, who appeared completely unmoved by the attitude of the men, nodded and came out with her usual response, ‘We. I sing. Teresa writes the words.’

‘Yeah, right.’ said the man. ‘Because you’re such a pretty girl.’ He nudged Teresa’s shoulder, as if she were something in his way. ‘Why would you bother with a bag of spanners like her otherwise?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Theres.

‘No. It does look that way, like you don’t really get it.’

‘What do you want?’ said Teresa. ‘Get lost. We haven’t done anything to you.’

The man pointed at Teresa. ‘You. Shut the fuck up. It’s her I’m talking to.’ He gestured to one of the other men, who came and crouched down next to Teresa, while the first man went over to Theres.

The man who was now so close to Teresa that she could smell the mouthwash on his breath held up his big hands, showing her the weapons at his disposal. He looked less than intelligent, bordering on mentally challenged, and Teresa had no doubt that he did exactly as he was told. Out of the corner of her eye she could see some of the other girls approaching, but they were some distance away.

‘You sing well,’ said the first man, towering over Theres. He pointed into Skansen. ‘And you’re going to sing here in a couple of weeks, aren’t you?’ When Theres didn’t reply, he said it again, but with greater emphasis.
‘Aren’t you?’

When the men first came over Teresa had quickly considered the
possibility that they had something to do with Max Hansen, then dismissed the idea as being too over the top. But it was actually true. He had found himself some muscle to carry out what his written threats had failed to achieve.

When Theres still didn’t reply, the man grabbed her under the arms and lifted her with no effort, pinning her up against the fence with her face on a level with his, her feet dangling several centimetres off the ground. Teresa tried to get up, but her gorilla placed his heavy hands on her shoulders, pressing her down while snorting as if he were calming a horse. The girls had broken into a run, but they were still at least a hundred metres away.

The first man pulled Theres closer, then thrust her back against the fence, making the wire netting rattle.
‘Aren’t you?’
Theres drew back her lips, exposing her gums, and the man laughed. ‘Growl as much as you want—are you going to do as you’re told, or what? I need an answer!’

He shook Theres so that her head banged against the fence. Tears of rage scalded Teresa’s eyes as she scratched the gorilla’s arms: she was making no more impression than a swarm of midges. She would have kicked, screamed, fought to the very last drop of blood,
and she couldn’t even get to her feet.
It was unbearable.

‘Yes!’ she yelled. ‘Yes! She’ll be there! Leave her alone! Let go of her!’

The man who was holding Theres nodded. ‘I want to hear it from you, little girl. I’m asking you nicely—now are you going to do what you’ve been asked to do?’

The two Annas, Miranda, Cecilia and Ronja had arrived. The third man walked towards them, his arms raised. ‘OK, OK. Let’s just stay here girls, nice and calm now.’

Ronja aimed a kick at his kneecap, but he kept his balance, grabbed hold of her and threw her down on the grass. The other four stood irresolute, staring at Theres who nodded and said, ‘Yes. I’ll sing.’ Two seconds later her teeth had closed on her attacker’s eyebrow.

His roar brought everything to a stop. His friends, completely
paralysed, followed what was happening over by the fence with their mouths agape. The man spun around as if he were dancing with Theres, at the same time trying to push her away. When he succeeded it was at the expense of a few grams of body weight. Theres spat something out of her mouth and blood poured down into the man’s eye as he held her at arm’s length.

He bellowed like an injured animal, and hurled Theres at the fence with all his strength. She bounced against the wire and fell head first on the ground. As the man gathered himself to deliver a kick to her stomach, the one who had been holding on to Teresa shouted, ‘We weren’t supposed to hurt her!’

The man came to his senses, pressed one hand to his injured eyebrow and contented himself with tipping Theres over onto her back with the toe of his shoe, whereupon he grabbed hold of her crotch with his other hand and hissed, ‘You need to be bloody careful from now on. I might come back and play with you again one of these days!’

Then they left. They were followed by curses and empty threats, mainly from Ronja and Teresa, but they left. All the girls gathered around Theres, whose lip had split. Her mouth was smeared with a mixture of blood and saliva, and no matter how she struggled, a billowing mass of arms and hands covered her, stroking and wiping and supporting. Only when she put her arms over her head and shouted, ‘Stop touching me!’ were the helpful limbs withdrawn, and the girls stood with their hands empty, not knowing what to do with them.

‘Fuck!’ said Ronja. ‘Fucking hell, fuck fuck fuck! There were
more
of us!’

She ripped off a low-hanging branch and started whipping the tree trunk as curses poured from her lips and her body jerked as if she were having a fit. Teresa thought she might flip into real hysteria, but after a minute or so she threw down the branch, hit herself on the head with clenched fists a few times, then lowered her hands and exhaled.

The rest of the girls had arrived, and they all stood around with their heads lowered during Ronja’s outburst, some of them stroking their piece of wolf skin as if to console something within themselves, to apologise. When Ronja came and sat down on the blanket, her hands still shaking, Teresa said, ‘OK?’

Several times they had discussed spending a whole weekend together, and now it had become absolutely essential. They could talk and identify themselves with wolves as much as they liked, but when it really mattered they had not acted as a pack, but had splintered into individual, frightened little people. It could not be allowed to happen again.

Beata’s parents had a little place in the forest outside Åkersberga. They wouldn’t be going out there until July, and Beata knew where the key was. The problem was that it was a good five kilometres from the nearest bus stop. However, it turned out that both Anna L and Ronja had passed their driving test, and that Anna actually had a car.

None of the others had thought of themselves as the kind of group where someone had a driver’s licence, but when it turned out to be the case, a heady feeling of liberation quickly took hold. They had a place to be, they had a way of getting there. Together they had resources and opportunities which they lacked when they were alone.

Teresa was sitting as close to Theres as possible without touching her while the others made plans for the coming weekend. Times, food, sleeping bags and so on. Theres seemed unmoved by the incident with the men, and only her swollen lower lip bore witness to the fact that something had happened. She didn’t join in the discussion until the question of food came up. The girls were discussing pasta and yoghurt when Theres said, ‘I don’t eat that kind of food.’

As usual, the slightest utterance from Theres brought all conversation to a halt. Everyone turned to her, some with an embarrassed expression as if they were ashamed of having forgotten about her for a few minutes.

Cecilia asked, ‘So…what do you eat, then?’

‘Stuff in jars. It’s called Semper. And Nestlé.’

‘You mean like…baby food? Why do you eat baby food?’

‘I’m little.’

‘We’ll sort it,’ said Teresa. ‘No problem.’

There was a brief silence as the group digested this new information. Then Linn looked around and stated with unusual firmness, ‘In that case, we’ll all eat the same thing.’

Some laughed with relief at this elegant way of slicing through a knotty problem, and the planning took another direction. What flavours, what size jars, how many, and who could do the shopping?

By the time they parted, everything was decided. The following Friday afternoon they would take the subway, the Roslagen line, then the number 621 bus to Grandalsvägen in Åkersberga. Then Anna L would run a shuttle service in her car to transport them to the cottage next to Lake Trastsjön. They would bring sleeping bags and bedrolls, they were going to eat baby food for two days and they were going to become a real pack.