Authors: Johan Theorin
Jan lowers his gaze. ‘I can’t choose.’
‘But you must,’ Rössel says. ‘Atonement or revenge? Look out at the road; soon we will come to a fork. You have to choose now.’
Jan blinks.
He looks out at the dark road. He closes his eyes.
Choose now
, he thinks.
53
JAN HARDLY NEEDS
to press down on the accelerator or move the steering wheel – the Volvo obeys him anyway. It glides along on the crown of a black highway. Away from St Psycho’s. Heading east along the open road.
He and the Secret Avenger sail past Swedish towns and villages that sound a bit like a nursery rhyme: Vara, Skara, Hova, Kumla and Arboga. The coniferous forest grows denser on either side of the road.
During the journey Jan tells the Secret Avenger about the revenge he wreaked on the Gang of Four. He thinks he knows what happened now.
It was early summer, fifteen years ago … you had gone off with your caravan, travelling around the inland forests. You were looking for a good place to camp … A fairly remote spot, as usual. And suddenly you came to a small lake deep in the forest. The only sign of human life was a little tent on the other side of the lake
.
You went for a walk to get to know the area, then settled down inside your caravan. Perhaps you had a few drinks as twilight fell. A few more drinks, and you started to feel curious about who actually was in the tent. So you took a stroll over there
.
It turned out to be three boys celebrating the end of the school year. You told them you were a teacher, in order to try and establish some kind of rapport. They laughed at you, called you a paedo. So you lumbered
back
to your caravan and drank even more. And after midnight you went back to the tent, but this time you were carrying a knife …
The Secret Avenger doesn’t say anything. He merely listens as Jan describes his attack on two of the boys, and how the third boy tried to get away along the road – but the Secret Avenger got into his car and eventually caught up with him.
‘I don’t remember any of that,’ says the Secret Avenger, ‘but you could well be right.’
‘Yes.’ Jan nods to himself. ‘But one of them is still around.’
‘Still around,’ says the Secret Avenger, brandishing the razor. ‘For the time being.’
Jan drives and drives; he doesn’t stop until they are approaching Nordbro. He pulls into a car park and switches off the engine, and they sleep in the car for a few hours. No one disturbs them.
The light slowly creeps over the horizon. It is dawn, then morning.
Jan wakes behind the wheel; he rouses the Secret Avenger and starts the car.
It is half past nine when they reach the town where Jan grew up. The streets are icy and deserted. It is Saturday morning.
The car heads towards the town centre, until Jan brakes and steers left at a sign marked NORTH. He knows where they are going; he turns the wheel and the car glides through the town as if it were on rails. No one can stop them now.
And then they have arrived. A sign says, CAUTION – CHILDREN PLAYING! This is an ordinary residential street, and this is where Jan’s enemy lives with his wife and his little boy.
Number seven. A brown box just like all the rest.
Jan pulls up on the opposite side of the street. From here you can see in through the kitchen window of number seven. There is a light on, but the only person visible is a woman in a dressing gown. She is sitting at the breakfast table with her head bowed.
Torgny Fridman’s wife knows nothing about fantasies. She carries on eating, alone.
‘We missed him,’ the Secret Avenger says.
Jan starts the car again, and this time he follows the signs to the town centre. Inside his head he can hear the pounding of drums.
They park on a side street close to Fridman’s shop. Jan does everything right; he buys a parking ticket, then adjusts his jacket and runs a hand through his hair so that he will look neat and tidy.
The Secret Avenger pulls his hat down over his eyes and reaches out his hand. ‘Give me the car keys … Just in case we need to make a quick getaway.’
Jan hands them over. Together they walk along the street, around the corner and into the ironmongery. The doorbell jingles cheerily as they walk in, but no one turns to look at them. It is still early, and there is only one customer in the shop.
And an ironmonger. Torgny Fridman is standing behind the counter showing the customer a range of leaf rakes. He picks up the rakes one by one and makes ridiculous little movements to demonstrate how they should be used.
Jan silently heads off to the right, towards the bigger tools made of iron and steel. They are weapons, every single one of them. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the Secret Avenger walking towards the hunting knives.
There are seven large axes left; the wooden shaft on this one is almost a metre long. Jan reaches out and picks it up. He feels the weight of the steel.
The fantasy about the final battle against the Gang of Four has been played out so many times inside his head, but the Secret Avenger has always taken the leading role. Until now.
Jan walks up to the counter with the axe and waits calmly while the other customer pays for his rake and leaves the shop. It takes a minute or so, then at last Jan is standing in front of Torgny with the axe in his hand. Torgny smiles, just as he would at any customer.
Jan is not smiling. He has spent enough time kow-towing to Torgny in his life.
‘I’ve gone for this one,’ he says, placing the axe on the counter.
Torgny nods. ‘Good choice,’ he says. ‘Are you planning to chop some wood before the winter sets in?’
He doesn’t have time to say any more, because suddenly there is the sound of feet running across the floor behind Jan. Small feet.
‘Daddy! I’ve finished the cats, Daddy!’
Jan turns his head and sees the little boy, Torgny’s son, racing towards them with a colouring book in his hand.
‘Good boy, Filip,’ Torgny says. ‘Daddy won’t be long!’ He nods to Jan again, and asks the usual question: ‘Will that be all?’
‘No.’ Jan places one hand on the axe. ‘Don’t you remember me?’
Torgny looks unsure. ‘I don’t think I—’ he begins.
But Jan interrupts him. ‘Jan Hauger.’
Torgny shakes his head. ‘That will be three hundred and ninety kronor, please.’
He has picked up a bag for the axe, but Jan keeps his hand on it.
‘I wanted to die rather than face you and your friends again.’
A kind of mask begins to fall from Torgny’s face as Jan goes on. The shopkeeper’s mask is disappearing, and behind it there is confusion. Jan wants to lure out the fifteen-year-old Torgny, the bully who must still be in there somewhere.
He carries on talking, as if he were addressing a child. ‘You and your gang burned me with cigarettes.’
Torgny listens, but says nothing.
‘Then you locked me in the sauna and turned up the heat.’
The shopkeeper opens his mouth at last. ‘Are you saying I did that?’
‘You and three others.’
‘But why?’ Torgny asks.
Jan doesn’t answer the question. The drums are pounding.
‘I know you remember me,’ he says instead. ‘It was you, Peter Malm, Niklas Svensson and Christer Vilhelmsson.’
Torgny nods, and Jan continues: ‘Your friends … the ones who died in the forest.’
‘I remember,’ Torgny says. ‘I know what happened.’
Jan glances sideways. He senses that the Secret Avenger is standing somewhere behind him.
‘Christer stabbed Niklas and Peter to death,’ Torgny goes on quietly. ‘In their tent.’
Jan stares at him.
Torgny raises his voice slightly and begins to speak more quickly. ‘They’d gone camping during the last week of the school year. I wasn’t with them so I don’t know everything, but there was some sort of quarrel. Peter started it; he always wanted to push people, try to break them. Christer couldn’t handle it … In the end he snapped, and he had a knife with him. He killed Niklas and Peter while they were asleep, then Christer took off through the forest and ran straight in front of a car.’
Jan shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t Christer Vilhelmsson who killed them. It was …’
‘It
was
Christer,’ Torgny insists. ‘He always hung around with us, but he got picked on the whole time. He was right at the bottom of the pecking order.’
‘
I
was at the bottom of the pecking order,’ Jan says.
‘No.’ Torgny shakes his head. ‘You were nothing to us. You just happened to get in the way.’
Jan opens his mouth to speak, but suddenly turns around. The Secret Avenger has disappeared.
Torgny is also looking around the shop. ‘Filip? Where’s Filip?’ he asks.
Jan lets go of the axe and backs away from the counter. He bumps into someone, another customer, but he doesn’t stop. He breaks into a run.
Out into the autumn chill. There are more people on the streets now, with unfamiliar faces.
Jan spots his Volvo as it pulls out of its parking space. He can see the Secret Avenger sitting behind the wheel, and a little head is sticking up on the seat beside him. A five-year-old boy.
Jan picks up speed. He races across the road, shouting and waving, but the Secret Avenger doesn’t even glance in his direction. The car moves out into the traffic and away from Jan.
‘Rössel!’
The child in the passenger seat seems to hear Jan’s shout; he turns his head and looks back, but the car doesn’t stop.
Jan knows where the Secret Avenger is heading: to the bunker by the lake. He is taking the boy to the room with the concrete walls, and he is going to lock him up inside it. Not for two days this time, but for much longer. Weeks, months, perhaps for ever. This was what Jan had fantasized about, wasn’t it? The final revenge on the Gang of Four: stealing away one of their children.
‘Rössel!’ he yells. ‘Stop!’
People are looking at him, but he doesn’t care. He runs along the pavement as fast as he can. He sees the Secret Avenger slow down and stop, but only for a red light. The Volvo is indicating right; soon it will turn off and disappear for ever with Torgny’s son. Without a trace.
There is nothing Jan can do, and now he is regretting everything. Regretting everything he has been fantasizing about for so long. He closes his eyes, with just one thought in his head:
wrong choice
.
54
JAN IS DRIVING
the car, looking out at the motorway through the windscreen. He has fantasized about one route through the night, but he has made a different choice. He will not go back to Nordbro with Rössel, he will not go and see Torgny, he will not take away his son.
It was a fantasy that he allowed to play out to its conclusion, but all desire for revenge has left him now. He knows that every violent fantasy ends in the same way when it becomes reality: with fear and regret and loneliness.
He and Rössel have been travelling along the motorway for almost an hour, and they have reached the suburbs of Gothenburg. Rössel has directed him here, and when Jan chose the route the razor was removed from his throat.
‘I knew you would make this choice,’ Rössel says. He is still sitting in the back seat like a king; then he leans forward. ‘We’re on the right road. We’re going out into the forest … we’re going to find a grave there. That’s what I promised.’
‘Yes,’ Jan says. ‘But what about afterwards? Are you going back to the hospital?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I mean, there are psychologists at St Patricia’s, aren’t there? They can help you.’
Rössel bursts out laughing. ‘
Psychologists
,’ he says, sounding as if he is talking about vermin. ‘Psychologists want answers they can’t
have.
They ask about my childhood, whether there’s a history of mental illness in the family … They want to find a good reason why I used to travel around with my caravan in the summer picking up teenagers, but there are no reasons. The world is incomprehensible … So do you know why I did it?’
‘No,’ says Jan. ‘And I don’t want to …’
‘I took them because I was evil, of course,’ Rössel goes on. ‘Because I am the son of Satan, and I want to be the master of life and death … Or maybe it was just because the ones I chose were defenceless and drunk, while I was strong and sober. Or then again, maybe I’m innocent, who knows? Only time will tell.’
Jan wants to stop this, and looks in the rear-view mirror. ‘Were you ever in the forests around Nordbro?’ he asks. ‘Did you ever camp up there?’
‘Nordbro? No, I never went that far north.’
Jan wonders if Rössel is lying. Probably not. Perhaps the truth lies in the simple answer that came from Jan’s subconscious, put into words by a fantasy figure; perhaps one member of the Gang of Four killed two of the others.
The world is incomprehensible, and dark. So Jan keeps on driving, his hands gripping the wheel. But the petrol gauge is dipping into the red zone – he didn’t think of this before they set off. He sees a Statoil sign beside the motorway, and points to it. ‘We need petrol.’
There is no reply from the back seat. When he looks in the mirror he sees that Rössel is leaning back with his eyes closed; the razor is beside him, and he has one hand on the tear-gas canister.
Jan turns off for the service station, slowly pulls in between two HGVs and stops by a pump under the stark neon light.
He takes his credit card from his wallet and steps out into the cold. As he moves away from the car he feels the plastic loops pressing against his stomach. The restraints he took from Carl and hid under his jumper – they’re still there. Would he use them on Rössel if he got the chance?
And if a patrol car slid into the petrol station now, would Jan
alert
the police? If he did, Rössel would be taken into custody and Jan would be free.
But Lilian’s brother would never be found.
And that is why they are here.
Jan unhooks the nozzle and tries to think, glancing into the car every few seconds. Rössel’s head and face are hidden by the roof of the car, but he can see the body in its grey trousers on the back seat. It is completely motionless. Has Rössel really fallen asleep?