The Invisible Man from Salem (24 page)

‘Now, in retrospect, I wish I could say that I knew all along, but I didn't. It was no more than a hunch, a flash of insight into how things might turn out for him. And that flash came just at the point in our conversation when he almost started to become transparent in front of me. There was nothing behind his facial expressions or the look in his eyes, just more facial expressions, other looks, none of them any more false or more genuine than the other.'

Levin goes quiet and sits there a while, before shaking his head, standing up, and brushing off his trousers with the palm of his hand. ‘Sorry about this rambling, Leo,' he says, visibly embarrassed. ‘I'm getting old.'

‘Did you see anything else in that box in Westin's room that could give any clues as to where … or who he is today?'

Levin shakes his head.

‘I'm not sure; my memory lets me down these days, Leo. But I don't think so.'

‘No signature, no initials, nothing?'

‘Nothing. As far as I remember.' He clears his throat. ‘I remember his language.'

‘His language?'

‘I remember that he was very eloquent. That's unusual among kids on the estates.' He blinks rapidly. ‘Yes, that's right. I remember one other thing, but it might not have anything to do with John Grimberg. That robbery I was telling you about, the unsuccessful one, when he popped up during the investigation …'

‘Yes.'

‘The detectives thought that the robbery was linked to drugs, like most things in this town are. The robbery was apparently instigated because a kilo or two of heroin had disappeared, and the victims of this theft had to pay their debts to their suppliers. They were desperate, I suppose, which isn't really that surprising. When desperate people need to get their hands on a lot of money, fast, it often ends in a robbery. The heroin was found later at the home of a woman called Anja, I think her name was. She wasn't much to look at, as they say, but she was light-fingered, and she knew one of the people convicted of the robbery. That's how they found her, via her contact network. Somehow Anja had managed to lift the consignment, with the intention of using some of it herself and selling the rest, climbing a rung or two in the hierarchy. She was arrested for possession with intent to supply, and she was sentenced to jail; I can't remember if was two or three years in Hinseberg Prison.'

‘When was this? You said “about a year later” before.'

‘Oh,' Levin says. ‘It must have been … maybe 2002 or 2003, I can't quite remember. Anyway, the detectives thought that she must have had someone else, not necessarily an accomplice in that case, but someone who was close to her and who moved in the same circles. Because Anja had no one — her parents were dead, and she had no family of her own. And when they checked through her phone, which was of course stolen, they found a number they couldn't trace.'

‘You suspect it was him.'

‘That's right. Someone had made a list of Anja's known contacts; it was in her file, and someone had written “JG?” on it. There were a lot of relevant people with those initials around at the time, men and women — Johan Granberg, Juno Gomez, Jannicke Gretchen. But I had a feeling that it might have been him.'

‘What gave you that feeling?'

‘Hard to know. Intuition, maybe.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘In the Forest Cemetery.' Levin looks downwards. ‘She hung herself in her cell at Hinseberg. It was in the papers.'

‘I didn't start reading the papers until I was thirty.'

This makes Levin laugh. Then he looks at me.

‘You should tell all this to Gabriel.'

‘Birck?'

‘Yes.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Leo.' Levin 's expression is grave. ‘You may be in danger. In more than one sense.'

‘Yes, maybe.'

Levin looks up and examines an advertising hoarding on one of the external walls:
DO YOU WORRY ABOUT WHAT YOUR DOG GETS UP TO? KEEP TRACK OF YOUR DOG ON YOUR SMARTPHONE!

‘Keep track,' Levin says thoughtfully. ‘Not surprising that people want to disappear. Not surprising that in a society like ours, people hate the police, they don't trust us. Ten thousand or twenty thousand police won't make a difference. It's the wrong job, at the wrong time. In the wrong system, in the wrong part of the world.' He breathes out, heavily. ‘So his sister died young,' he says, more quietly. ‘You knew each other, you and her?'

‘Yes. He thought her death was down to me.'

‘Was it?' Levin asks, with no visible emotion, as though his interest in the answer were purely professional.

XIX

Towards the end of the summer holidays, someone sprayed one of the doorways in the centre of Salem with black spraypaint.
FUCKING NIGGERS GO HOME
, read the text, written in spiky, uneven letters, and framed with swastikas. The next day, a well-known skinhead was seriously beaten, close to Rönninge High School. Neither of the two perpetrators were Swedes. I knew it, since that's how it always worked. The events made the press, but the story was soon dropped. There was nothing to suggest that the skinhead who'd been beaten had written the graffiti on the doorway, but that was neither here nor there. Three days later, a black kid got kicked in the face. His name was Mikael Persson, born in Sweden but with an Egyptian father. Another few days passed and another skinhead was assaulted near the water tower in Salem. The victim had a shaved head, denim jacket, and combat trousers, and was a member of the Swedish Left Party and several anti-racist organisations. His assailants didn't know that. They thought he was a neo-Nazi, because he looked like one.

These events coloured the end of the summer, although their effect on me was only fleeting. Julia and I split up after that time when Grim came home while we were in her bed. It wasn't something we talked about and then decided upon. The ending just crystallised of its own accord, unsaid yet unmistakeable.

At first I kept away from Grim, too; just the thought of him made me think of Julia, which made me heartbroken. I'd never known pain like it, and for four days I didn't talk to a soul, not even my parents. They got worried, and went and got my brother, which just made things worse. On the fifth day, I realised that I couldn't deal with this on my own. I needed someone, and the only person I could contemplate was Grim. I couldn't tell him, but he could distract me. When I called him, he sounded worried.

‘I've been trying to get hold of you,' he said. ‘Why don't you answer? Has something happened?'

‘Sorry. Nothing. I've been ill.'

‘Ill?'

‘Just the flu. But today's the first day with no fever.' I hesitated. ‘Shall we meet up?'

GRIM NOTICED THAT
something was wrong, I could tell. We didn't need to do anything; the only thing I felt was the need to have him close by. To not be alone. He understood that. We spent time in hidden-away parks, or on forgotten benches — me with a book or music, and Grim with his ID cards. He practised non-stop, but since his time at the summer camp, Klas was much stricter about what he got up to in his room, so he had to practise in other places. We sat at my place several times, and for a while my desk was more Grim's than mine, until my dad noticed and asked in a nervous voice what we were doing. We used our fake IDs and went to Wednesday Club on Södermalm, got drunk on cocktails, and giggled at the forbidden nature of it all when the barman wasn't looking.

I wondered how Julia was getting on. If this was even affecting her. After a while, probably so that I could deal with everything, I convinced myself that this was easy for her. But my friendship with Grim had been saved. Perhaps it would all work out in the end. I thought about what Julia had said that time, that if she could travel in time she would go forwards, to see how everything turned out. I was starting to understand what she meant. The uncertainty, this feeling of having lost something, perhaps for nothing, was almost the hardest part.

One day, I had my bedroom window open. So did someone else, nearby, because I could hear N.W.A.'s ‘I Just Want to Celebrate' through distorted speakers. I went over to the window and felt the warmth of the sun. Julia was down there, out walking with a friend, a blonde girl called Bella. I'd met her a couple of times that summer, with Julia. They were laughing about something, and Julia seemed to be happy.

I tried to focus on the fact that I'd got Grim back, but all I could think of was how I'd lost Julia.

Something was boiling, deep, deep inside me.

It was then, in those last few days of the summer holidays, that I saw that Tim was back in Salem.

TIM NORDIN
was a year younger than me, and the first time I saw him he was sitting on his own by a playground on the outskirts of Salem. I was thirteen at the time, and I was so angry I was close to tears. Soon the rage turned to shame, and I didn't want to go home. Vlad and Fred had been more aggressive, more threatening, than usual. It was one of the few occasions when I'd tried to fight back, and it had resulted in one of them putting a knee in my guts. That humiliation of attempting yet failing to resist was worse than not doing anything; it made everything feel even more hopeless. It was like a confirmation that I was weak. Whenever I hadn't tried to fight back, I could always tell myself that I could have, if I'd wanted to — however childish that may seem.

I'd managed to get away, and after struggling to get some air in my lungs, I started wandering around aimlessly. When I saw Tim at the playground, something burned inside me. Something forced its way out of me — the need to fight back against powerlessness, humiliation.

I went over to Tim, who didn't seem to have heard me. He was a wiry little kid; he wore a cap with the peak facing backwards, and baggy clothes that were too big, to make him seem bigger than he was.

‘Hello,' I said when I got within a couple of steps of him.

He didn't respond.

‘Hello.'

Tim still didn't look up. The rage burned inside me and I looked around. We were alone. I took the last paces over to him and smacked his cap off. That made him jump and pull his earphones out.

‘Why don't you answer when I'm talking to you?'

‘Sorry,' he said and waved the earphones demonstratively. ‘I didn't hear.'

He was scared. I could see that in his eyes, alert and dark, dark brown. His thin face, with its sharp little chin and thin lips, made his eyes look round and unnaturally large.
He's actually scared of me
, I thought to myself again.

‘What are you doing here?' I said.

‘Nothing,' he said and bent over.

‘What are you doing?'

Tim stopped.

‘My cap.'

I smiled.

‘It's not your cap.'

‘I got it from …' he began, but didn't complete the sentence.

‘From your mum?' I mocked. ‘Did you get it from your little old mum?'

He looked at me, without reacting.

‘Answer me!' I screamed.

Tim nodded silently and looked away. I picked up the cap, scrunched it up, and stuffed it into the back pocket of my jeans. On the bench beside him was an orange-yellow peel, and I was standing so close to him that I could smell clementine or orange on his fingers.

‘A purple cap,' I said. ‘Purple. Are you bent?'

‘Eh?'

‘ “Are you bent?” I asked. Are you deaf, too?'

He shook his head.

‘What are you shaking your head at?'

‘I'm not deaf,' Tim said quietly.

‘Well, answer me then. Are you bent?'

He shook his head again.

‘Eh?' I said and leant in to him. ‘Louder.'

‘I'm twelve,' he whispered. ‘I don't know what I am.'

I laughed at him.

I DIDN'T HIT HIM THEN
. That would come later. As I left, I passed a building site. I chucked the purple cap in a skip, making sure that it fell so far that Tim wouldn't be able to reach it even if he did notice it, which was unlikely.

I felt relieved, as though I had deserved restitution and had got it, which may be why my conscience never reacted.

For two years I used Tim Nordin as a tool to purge myself with, to feel superior, just as Vlad and Fred had used me, I suppose. Maybe that's how it was — everything just a reaction to something that had happened earlier. Someone always ended up in the firing line, everyone turned on someone else, and I was neither better nor worse than any of them. I just was.

Then something happened that caused Tim Nordin to move away from Salem. Maybe it was to do with his family; I don't know. He disappeared, and I didn't give it a lot of thought. I never told anyone what I'd done, and I don't think Tim did either. After that, nothing, until Julia mentioned him when we were sitting up on the water tower.

NOW HE WAS BACK
, taller but just as wiry. He walked past the Triad one morning when I was sitting having breakfast. I didn't recognise him at first, from so far away, but as my eyes followed him, it was obvious that I was watching someone who didn't want to be seen. Tim always walked like that. The trouble with trying not to be visible is that the effort it takes is so obvious, and itself becomes visible.