The Invisible Man from Salem (11 page)

‘Can I go now?'

I wave my hand wearily.

‘You know who you need to talk to, right?' he says, walking away, his coat flapping behind him as he walks into the sunshine and takes a look around.

‘No.'

‘Course you do.'

‘No.'

But I do. Felix disappears round the corner and I'm left alone with the cigarette in my hand.

I need to talk to Sam.

SAM IS NOW TOGETHER
with the owner of Pierced, the most famous piercing studio south of Mälaren. His name is Rickard, but he calls himself Ricky. Besides countless piercings, he's had Sam tattoo Carl Orff's ‘O Fortuna' on his back, in the original Latin. This is a man who, perhaps for obvious reasons, I have never really been able to take seriously, even though I've only heard stuff and have never actually met him.

Sam and I met at a party in a flat on Nytorgsgatan. I'd just started working under Levin at the city police, and I was there to catch up with old friends who I no longer had anything in common with. It seemed pointless, yet I felt duty-bound to do it. Sam was there for the same reason. It was summer, and her skin was tanned. Her hair was streaked with highlights in a range of lighter shades. A fat pencil bound it into a loose bun on her neck, and locks of her curly hair were hanging loose. Her shoulders were covered in tattoos — sharp black lines, icy blue and steely grey. She was standing on her own with a milky-white cocktail in her hand and a look on her face that, more than anything, showed her intense desire to be somewhere else entirely.

Later that evening, she came over to me in the kitchen, where I was mixing myself a drink, and we started talking because the alcohol had got her in a better mood. She was easy to talk to, once she'd dropped her guard and let me into her world. She was attentive, and could listen without losing concentration, without being passive or withdrawn.

She is, to this day, the best conversation partner I have ever had. Sam has the ability to get the best out of me. Unfortunately, she also brings out the worst in me.

‘I own a tattoo parlour,' she said. ‘It's over on Kocksgatan.'

‘Kocksgatan,' I repeated and finished off my drink.

‘I have to go there now.'

‘Now? Are you going to work now?'

It was way past midnight.

‘I forgot my house keys,' she slurred. ‘I've got my work keys and my house keys on different key rings.'

‘How … impractical.'

I was also slurring, involuntarily.

That night we had sex in the tattoo parlour, standing against her big brown sofa meant for waiting customers. Trousers round ankles, me with one hand against her chest, the other gripping her hip tightly. Her hair in my face, the smell of hairspray and ink, her nails on my skin, the realisation that this was something I hadn't felt for a long time.

Two weeks later, we became an item. It was Sam that asked me, and I laughed because I found the question itself so youthfully innocent. Soon we were sharing everything, apart from a flat. We spent very few nights apart. As often as possible, we would stay in and watch a film or bad TV series. We went out for dinner, we went to the cinema, we took long walks along Söder Mälarstrand. We had sex in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening. In bed, in the shower, on the floor, on the kitchen table, in Sam's tattoo parlour again, in the toilets at Sergel Cinema, in the Katarina lift, in the middle of the night against the fence along Monteliusvägen, with all of Stockholm laid out beneath us. The months whizzed past and we exchanged keys, and soon I moved in with her on Södermalm, renting out my flat on Chapmansgatan.

It was about a week after we met that Sam found out I was a policeman. I didn't tell her, because I was afraid she would back off. In fact, she'd suspected it right from the start, she told me later. I should have known. I'd claimed to be a salesman — couldn't think of anything better to say. Afterwards it felt pretty silly.

Sam lived on the fringes of the underworld. Dangerous men appreciate good tattoos, and Sam knows what she's doing. The tattoo artist is like the local hairdresser, who knows a lot about the world her customers inhabit, simply through her job. And Sam had nothing against it, nor did she have any desire to get more involved. We perched on each other's outer limits, and I think that's why we were drawn to each other.

Then she got pregnant. We weren't sure at first, but we decided to keep the baby. We bought a ring each, not for an engagement but to have a tangible mutual bond until the baby arrived. That was the beginning of the happiest seven months of my life. We were expecting a boy; we were going to call him Viktor, after Sam's granddad. One night we were in a car on the way home from a party. Sam was driving, and I was sitting next to her, radio on, and I remember someone singing about asking the world to dance.

It was winter, and it turned out that the driver of the car in front of us had such high levels of alcohol in his blood that he really should have been unconscious. Then something happened, and Sam gasped and wrenched the wheel. I still don't know what it was, can't remember. The road was slippery, and there were patches of ice everywhere. The world turned upside down as the car flipped over. Everything went black until I opened my eyes and saw a clear, starry sky. I was lying on my back on a stretcher, and my head was pounding. Every breath brought sharp pains to my torso, as though someone were pushing nails through me. I had four broken ribs. Next time I came round, I was lying under a bright white light at Södermalm Hospital. When I asked about Sam, they told me she was still in theatre. She was going to be okay; it was Viktor they were trying to save.

They couldn't. Sam had lost a lot of blood, and Viktor had sustained serious internal injuries. I was alone when they told me. Sam was still in a recovery room, coming round from the anaesthetic. I remember how bright the light was, how cool it was in the room, how there was a little wooden flag on the table next to me.

The man in front of us, the one who had lost control of his car, was convicted of reckless driving. He was given a six-month suspended sentence. I never told anyone, but late one night about a year later, I looked him up, knocked on his door, and when he opened it I hit him with a knuckle-duster. He offered no resistance.

Viktor's death caused an irreparable crack in our relationship. We stuck it out for a year. But then, as things got worse and life itself seemed to become painful, rows began to erupt — eyeball to eyeball, flying crockery versus flying crockery, back to back in the dark. Spectacular rows about nothing, yet simultaneously about everything that mattered. We tried to paper over the cracks by having sex, which just made things even worse.

Sam and I were one another's first refuge, the first person we would turn to when something went wrong, and she knows the darkest corners of my soul. And I know her. I know she's scared of the dark. The walls of her studio are plastered with posters for
Fight Club
,
The Godfather
, and
Pusher
, but her favourite film is actually
Some Like it Hot
. I know that she has a tattoo on the inside of her thigh, two doves, which sit so high that one of the dove's wingtips strokes her groin. I know that Sam's mother was abused by Sam's father.

But while Viktor's ghost tore away at us, we buried ourselves in our jobs. Whereas this had worked pretty well in the past, perhaps because Sam and I had kept our relationship secret from so many, it now merely created new points of conflict. She rubbed shoulders with the underworld. She got to hear things. When word got out that she was seeing a cop, she didn't just get fewer customers; she got threats from several of them. Sam was outwardly calm, but I could tell that she was shaken. As was I, feeling that it was my fault.

‘You should give it up,' I said. ‘Try something else.'

‘Why should I give up my job? Why not you?'

‘It's easier for you.'

‘It isn't easier at all,' she hissed. ‘You don't love being a cop. I love what I do.'

‘You love tattooing serious criminals?' I screamed back. ‘Noble work, Sam.'

‘You have to twist everything I say,' she said, her voice breaking with a mixture of rage and bitter disappointment.

And so it went on, day after week after month.

‘You're not going to split up, surely?' one of Sam's friends asked over coffee.

‘Not today,' Sam answered.

WE SPLIT UP
two weeks after I'd given her a little necklace with black cubes on it, in an attempt at reconciliation. Around her neck it looked a lot like someone had her in a snare, but she liked it. I moved back to Kungsholmen and Chapmansgatan, and a year later I was involved in what was to become the Gotland affair.

She rang me after seeing the explosion of media coverage; she wanted to know how I was coping with it all. I didn't want to talk just then, but I did call back later. It turned out to be a call full of silence and unspoken words. Maybe that was why, a few days later, I called her again. This time I was high. Sam put the phone down, and I didn't ring back — at least not for a few days. Then I called again. I don't know why; I think I just wanted to hear her voice. It reminded me of how everything had once been so straightforward, so promising. I'd turned thirty without anything dramatic happening, but perhaps now the consequences of being an adult had arrived. I still dream about Viktor.

‘SAM,' SHE ANSWERS
sharply when I call.

I don't know what to say. So I say nothing, and I'm ashamed of myself.

‘Hello?' she says wearily. ‘Leo, you have to stop calling me. Are you high?'

‘No.'

‘I'm going to hang up now.'

‘No, wait.'

‘What, Leo? What do you want?'

Someone moves in the background — a naked man, in bed, trying to get his girlfriend to stop talking to the man who may still love her. At least that's what I convince myself I am hearing.

‘I miss you,' I say quietly.

She says nothing, and it cuts me up inside.

‘Don't say that,' she says.

‘But I do.'

‘No.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Stop calling here, Leo.'

‘I'm not high. I've stopped.'

She scoffs.

‘You haven't.'

‘I have.'

‘What do you want?'

‘I told you. I miss you.'

‘I'm not going to say it back.'

We breathe out, and we do so simultaneously. I wonder what that means.

‘I need to see you,' I say.

‘What for?'

‘I need your help.'

‘With what?'

I hesitate.

‘Did you hear about the woman who got shot at Chapmans-gården?'

‘Yes.'

‘Something doesn't add up. I think you can help me.'

‘Are you serious?'

‘Deadly serious.'

‘Tomorrow, around twelve maybe?' she says, hesitantly. ‘I've got a customer at ten, and I won't have time before then.'

‘Thanks. Good.'

‘Good,' she says.

I wonder what she's thinking.

‘Are you happy?' I eventually ask.

Sam puts the phone down, and this time I don't call back.

IT'S NOW LATE EVENING
. I'm surrounded by darkness. From my balcony, I can see the building where
BAR
is located, and I think of Anna, who wanted me to call her. Maybe I should. It might be good for me. Then I think that I ought to go to Salem again, and the thought of it makes me feel terrible. I hear a report about the investigation on the radio. Rebecca Salomonsson's parents in Eskilstuna have been informed of her death. I wonder how they took that news. Losing one another hurts. It's cold out on the balcony, and I smoke one last cigarette. My phone vibrates in my pocket as I walk back in: an anonymous text.

i see you, Leo

I flop onto the sofa, and reply:

who is this?

I hear you're looking for a murderer

tell me who you are
, I send.

I pop a Serax from the blister pack lying on the coffee table, swallow it, and take a deep breath.

guess
, comes the reply.

is this a joke?
I ask.

no

A car starts up, down on the street. I go out onto the balcony and I see it pull away, the city's lights reflected in its dark, glossy paintwork, the back lights glowing red, the inside dimly lit by the light from a mobile phone.