Let the right one in (19 page)

Mr. Avila ended the lesson and went to his office while they put the equipment away. Oskar folded out the wheels under the pommel horse and wheeled it into the storage room, patting it like a good horse that had finally allowed itself to be tamed. He put it up against the wall and then walked to the changing room. There was something he wanted to talk to Mr. Avila about.

He was stopped halfway to the door. A noose made from a jump rope went over his head and landed around his stomach. Someone held him in place. Behind him he heard Jonny's voice saying, "Giddy up, Piggy!" Oskar turned so that the loop slid over his stomach and lay against his back. Jonny was standing in front of him with the ends of the jump rope in his hands. He waved them up and down.

"Giddy up, giddy up."

Oskar grabbed the rope with both hands and pulled the ends out of Jonny's grip. The jump rope clattered onto the floor behind Oskar. Jonny pointed to the rope.

"Now
you
have to pick it up."

Oskar picked up the jump rope in the middle and started to swing it above his head so the handles rattled against each other, yelled, "here it comes" and let go. The jump rope flew off and Jonny instinctively put his hands up to shield his face. The jump rope fluttered over his head and smacked against the wall bars behind him.

Oskar walked out of the gymnasium and ran down the stairs, the sound of his heart hammering in his ears. It had begun. He took the stairs three at a time, landing with both feet on the landings, walked through the changing rooms and into the teacher's office.

Mr. Avila was sitting there in his gym clothes, talking on the phone in a foreign language, probably Spanish. The only word Oskar could make out was "perro," which he knew meant "dog." Mr. Avila made a sign for him to sit down in the chair opposite his desk. Mr. Avila kept talking, repeating "perro" a few more times. Oskar heard Jonny walk into the changing room and start talking in a loud voice.

The changing room had emptied out before Mr. Avila was done talking about his dog. He turned to Oskar.

"So, Oskar. What do you want?"

"Yes, well, I. . . about these training sessions on Thursday."

"Yes?"

"Can I go to them?"

"You mean the strength training class at the swimming pool?"

"Yes, those. Do I have to sign up or ..."

"No need to sign up. Just come. Thursdays at seven o'clock. You want to do it?"

"Yes, I... Yes."

"That is good. You train. Then you can do pull-up bar . . . fifty times." Mr. Avila mimed pulling up on a bar in the air. Oskar shook his head.

"No. But... yes, I'll be there."

"Then I see you Thursday. Good."

Oskar nodded, about to leave, then he said:

"How is your dog?"

"Dog?"

"Yes, I heard you say'perro' on the phone just now. Doesn't that mean dog?"

Mr. Avila thought for a moment.

"Ah. Not 'perro.'
Pero.
That means 'but' in Spanish. As in 'but not me.'

That is
pero no yo.
Understand? You want to join the Spanish class too?"

Oskar smiled and shook his head. Said the strength training would do for now.

The changing room was empty except for Oskar's clothes. Oskar pulled off his gym clothes and stopped short. His pants were gone. Of course. That he hadn't thought of this in advance. He checked everywhere in the changing room, in the toilets. No pants.

+

The chill nipped his legs as he walked home in his gym shorts. It had started to snow during gym class. The snowflakes fell and melted on his legs. In his yard he stopped under Eli's window. The blinds were drawn. No movement inside. Large snowflakes carressed his upturned face. He caught some on his tongue. They tasted good.

+

Look at Ragnar."

Holmberg pointed in the direction of Vallingby plaza, where the falling snow was covering the cobblestones in gossamer. One of their regular alcoholics sat on a bench in the square without moving, wrapped in a large coat, while the snow slowly made him into a poorly proportioned snowman. Holmberg sighed.

"We'll have to go take a look if he doesn't move soon. How are you doing?" So so.

Staffan had put an extra cushion on his chair in order to assuage the pain in his lower back. He would rather be standing, or most of all, lying in his bed, but the report of last night's events had to be entered into the homicide register before the weekend.

Holmberg looked down at his pad and tapped his pen on it.

"Those three who were in the changing room. They said that the guy, the killer, before he poured the acid over his face, that he had shouted 'Eli, Eli,' and now I'm wondering ..."

Staffan's heart leaped in his chest and he leaned across the desk.

"He said that?"

"Yes, do you know what. . ."

"Yes."

Staffan sat back suddenly and the pain shot up like an arrow all the way to the root of his hair. He grabbed the edge of the desk, straightened up, and put his hands over his face. Holmberg looked closely at him.

"Damn, have you seen a doctor?"

"No, it's just. . . it'll be fine in a minute. Eli, Eli."

"Is that a name?"

Staffan nodded slowly. "Yes... it means... God."

"I see, he was calling out to God. Do you think he was heard?"

"What?"

"God. Do you think God heard him? When you consider the circumstances it seems a little ... unlikely. But you're the expert. Hm."

"They are the final words that Christ uttered on the cross. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"
Holmberg blinked and looked down at his notes.

"Yes, that's right."

"According to the gospels of Matthew and Mark."

Holmberg nodded and sucked on the end of his pen.

"Should we include this in the report?"

+

When Oskar got home from school he put on a pair of new pants and went down to the Lover's kiosk to get himself a newspaper. There had been talk of the killer getting caught and he wanted to know everything. Clip articles for his scrapbook.

There was something that felt slightly different when he went down to the kiosk, something that wasn't how it normally was, even if you overlooked the snow. On his way home with the newspaper he suddenly thought of it. He wasn't keeping a lookout. He just walked. He had walked all the way down to the kiosk without keeping an eye out for someone who would be able to hurt him.

He started to run. Ran home all the way with the paper in his hand while the snowflakes licked his face. Locked the front door from the inside. Went to his bed, lay down on his stomach, tapped on the wall. No reply. He would have wanted to talk to Eli, tell her.

He opened the newspaper. The Vallingby Pool. Police cars. Ambulance. Attempted murder. The man's injuries had made identification difficult. A picture of Danderyd where the man had been hospitalized. A rundown on the first murder. No comments. Then submarine, submarine, submarine. The military on high alert. The door bell rang.

Oskar jumped off his bed, walked quickly into the hall.

Eli, Eli, Eli.

He hesitated with his hand on the door handle. What if it was Jonny and the others? No, they would never come to his house like this. He opened. Johan was outside.

"Hey there."

"Yeah... hey there."

"Want to do something?"

"Sure ... like what?"

"I don't know. Something."

"OK."

Oskar put on his shoes and coat while Johan waited for him on the stairs.

"What Jonny did back there was pretty shitty. In the gym."

"He took my pants, right?"

"Yeah, I know where they are."

"Where?"

"Back there. Behind the pool. I'll show you."

Oskar thought—but didn't say out loud—that in that case Johan could have made the effort to bring him the pants when he came over. But Johan's generosity did not extend that far. Oskar nodded and said, "Great." They walked over to the pool and got the pants, which were hanging on a bush. Then they walked around and checked things out. Made snowballs and tried to hit a specific target on a tree. In a container they found some old electric cables that they could cut and use as slingshots. Talked about the murderer, about the submarine, and about Jonny, Micke, and Tomas who Johan thought were dumb.

"Completely retarded."

"But they don't do anything to you."

"No, but still."

They walked to the hotdog stand by the subway station and bought two
luffare
each. One
krona
apiece; a grilled hot dog bun with only mustard, ketchup, hamburger dressing, and raw onion inside. It was starting to get dark. Johan talked to the girl in the hot dog stand and Oskar looked at the subway trains that came and went, thinking about the electric wires that ran above the tracks.

They started walking toward the school where they would go their separate ways, their mouths reeking of onion. Oskar said:

"Do you think people kill themselves by jumping onto those wires above the tracks?"

"Don't know. I guess so. My brother knows someone who went down there and pissed on a live track."

"What happened?"

"He died. The current went up through the piss into his body."

"No way. So he
wanted
to die?"

"Nah. He was drunk. Shit. Think about it..."

Johan mimed taking out his dick, peeing, and then starting to convulse. Oskar laughed.

Down by the school they said good-bye, waved. Oskar walked homeward with his newly recovered pants tied around his waist, whistling the signature melody to
Dallas.
It had stopped snowing but a white film covered everything. The large frosted windows of the swimming pool were brightly lit. He would go there Thursday evening. Start training. Get strong.

+

Friday evening at the Chinese restaurant. The round, steel-rimmed clock on one wall looks completely out of place among the rice paper lamps and golden dragons. It says five to nine. The guys are leaning over their beers, losing themselves in the landscapes depicted on the placemats. The snow continues to fall outside.

Virginia stirs her San Francisco a little and sucks on the end of the stirrer, which has a little Johnnie Walker figure on the end.
Who was Johnnie Walker? Where was he walking with such determi-
nation?

She taps her glass with the stirrer and Morgan looks up.

"Giving a toast?"

"Someone should."

They had told her about it, everything that Gosta had said about Jocke, the underpass, the child. Then they had sunk into silence. Virginia let the ice cubes in her glass clink, looked at how the dimmed ceiling lights reflected in the half-melted cubes.

"There's one thing I don't get. If all this that Gosta says really happened, where
is
he? Jocke, I mean."

Karlsson brightened, as if this was an opportunity he had been waiting for.

"Exactly what I have been trying to say. Where is the body? If you're going..."

Morgan held up a finger in front of Karlsson.

"You do not refer to Jocke as 'the body,' understood?"

"Well, what do I call him?
The deceased?"

"You don't call him anything, not until we know for sure."

"That's exactly what I've been trying to say. As long as we don't have a b— ... as long as they haven't. . . found him, we can't." "Who's 'they'?"

"Who do you think? The helicopter division in Berga? The police, of course."

Larry rubbed one eye, making a low clucking sound. "That's a problem. As long as they haven't found him they aren't in-terested and as long as they aren't interested they won't find him."

Virginia shook her head. "You have to go to the police and tell them what you know."

"Oh yeah, and what exactly do you think we should tell them?" Morgan chuckled. "Hey, lay off all this shit with the child murderer, the submarine,

and everything, because we're three merry alcoholics and one of our drinking buddies has disappeared and now another of our drinking buds tells us that one night when he was really high he saw... does that sound good?"

"But what about Gosta? He was the one who saw it. He's the one who

..."

"Sure. But he's so damned unstable/insecure. Shake a uniform at him and he'll collapse, ready to be admitted to Beckis. He can't take it. Interrogations and shit." Morgan shrugged. "No chance there."

"But do we really do
nothing7."

"Well, what the hell do you suggest?"

Lacke, who had had time to down his beer while the conversation was going on, said something too low for them to hear what it was. Virginia leaned toward him and put her head on his shoulder.

"What did you say?"

Lacke stared into the foggy ink-drawn landscape on his placemat and whispered: "You said that we would get him."

Morgan thumped the table with his hand so the beer glasses jumped. Held out his hand like a claw.

"And we will. But we need something to go on first." Lacke nodded like a somnabulist and started to get up.

"Just have to .. ."

His legs gave way and he fell headfirst across the table. The loud crash of falling glass made all eight restaurant patrons turn and stare. Virginia grabbed hold of Lacke's shoulders and helped him up in the chair again. Lacke's eyes were far away.

"Sorry, I. .."

The waiter hurried over to their table while frenetically rubbing his hands on his apron. He bent down to Lacke and Virginia and whispered furiously: "This is a restaurant not a pig sty!"

Virginia gave him the widest smile she could muster while she helped Lacke get to his feet.

"Come on, Lacke. We're going to my place."

With an accusing look at the other men, the waiter quickly walked around Lacke and Virginia, and supported Lacke on the other side in order to show his patrons he was just as concerned as they that this disturbing element be removed.

Virginia helped Lacke put on his heavy overcoat, elegant in an oldfashioned way—which he inherited from his father who had died a few years earlier—and ferried him to the door.

Behind her she heard a few meaningful whistles from Morgan and Karlsson. With Lacke's arm over her shoulder she turned to them and made a face. Then she pulled open the front door and walked out. The snow was falling in large, slow flakes, creating a space of cold and silence for the two of them. Virginia's cheeks turned pink as she led Lacke down the park path. It was better like this.