The Merman (10 page)

The teacher had started bringing out the vault boxes from the equipment room when I entered the gym. Caroline Ljungman and her clique were passing a basketball back and forth. Jessica gave me an angry stare as I walked past. Jonas Bengtsson, the class football star, was dribbling a ball in front of an enthusiastic audience of lads. The smells made me feel ill as usual; the stench of ingrained sweat, of the fear of ball games and unpractised exercises, of old scornful laughter and floor burns, of rubber mats, leather, climbing ropes and greasy Roman rings.

Gerard and his gang were doing stretches by the wall bars. It seemed like they were waiting for me. I tried to ignore them, but it was like the terror had taken me over again. As if it had been visiting somebody else over the weekend, but now it was back, rested, fresh and ready for new challenges. When Gerard waved me over, I didn't dare do anything else.

‘I heard from Ola that you've started scrabbling some money together,' he said. ‘You're doing well, Ironing Board.'

He winked at me as he placed one foot on a bar, extended his leg and stretched his body forwards.

‘I think I've got enough already.'

‘How'd you manage that? Sucking off old blokes for money?'

Peder grinned.

‘Do you know what the ideal girl looks like, Gerard? One metre tall, flat head and no teeth. So you've got somewhere to put your drink while she's sucking you off.'

‘That sounds more like a description of your mum, to be honest.'

That shut him up. Gerard turned to me again:

‘Did you have anything nice to talk about with L.G.?'

‘What?'

‘You two were standing there talking outside the teachers' lounge. Like old mates there... Shooting the breeze.'

I didn't understand what he was fishing for, so I said nothing.

‘Ola saw you when he came out of the test. He said you were having a serious conversation, isn't that right, Ola?'

The henchman nodded decisively as he spoke:

‘It fucking well looked like he was about to start pawing at her, Gerard. L.G. might be a paedo, and Ironing Board looks like a five-year-old.'

‘I don't like this,' said Gerard, taking his foot off the bar. ‘Come on, you can tell us a little about your conversation... Oh, and move back a bit, I'm not going to lie but there's something about the way you smell, I can't take it.'

I noticed that people were staring at us. Jennifer, who had been one of my worst irritants in primary school and who constantly goes round slouching because she's ashamed of being so tall. Markus Larsson, the class clown who's also known as ‘The Vulture' or ‘Filter Specialist' because he's always cadging fags off people in the smoking area. Nicke Wester, the music freak in the Clash T-shirt and a badge with a crossed-out picture of Eurovision songstress Carola Häggkvist. It was as if I were suddenly seeing Gerard through their eyes, in a totally new light. He was shorter than I usually imagined, his cheeks rosier in a childish way, hardly any hair on his arms and legs. Eyes light brown, hair blond. He did not have a sturdy build like his minions, and his hands were like a girl's. I couldn't help wondering what he had done. What was that kettle of fish that Jessica was talking about, that was about to get blown open?

‘Let me tell you one thing, Ironing Board. I actually started to believe what you said last Friday, that you weren't the one who blabbed. I started to think, okay, it's not her, it might be somebody else.
You sounded
plausible
, is that the word? So I thought: I'll let her pay so her brother will be left alone, she might actually be okay, that chick... but now, when Ola's seen you with L.G., I'm starting to doubt that.'

‘I was asking him about Tommy... if he knew where Tommy is.' Gerard started to do some more stretches, now his other leg. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Patrik Lagerberg circling round us with his gelled yuppie hair. It took only a single glance from Gerard to make him skedaddle over to the other side of the gym.

‘That's what you claim, sure. But you might be lying. People do that sometimes. Make up things about other people. About me, for example. That I would burn kittens alive, for example. Somebody apparently told L.G. that. And also told him a whole load of other stuff while they were at it. Worse things. Which got me thinking.'

He put his foot on the floor, leaned his upper body towards the wall and started stretching his calf muscles.

‘Things you can't know, Ironing Board. But I didn't realise that before late last Friday, after I'd been up in the headmaster's office. It was only then that I realised it couldn't have been you.'

I glanced at Peder. But he did not move a muscle. Ola did not betray anything either: the same ice-cold expression, as if they were carved out of stone.

‘But you could have said that about the cat. And maybe somebody else told about all the rest? That's entirely possible. But when you're standing talking to L.G. during recess, it's like I get confused. I don't know what to believe. I don't know where I've got you.'

He sighed and pushed a strand of hair off his forehead. He had long eyelashes, like a girl.

‘I don't know anything. But an agreement is an agreement. So I want my money. See you by your locker after our free period.'

He waved me off with the back of his hand, as if I were a fly, and carried on with his stretches.

I tried to avoid them for the rest of the lesson, tried to avoid thinking and planning altogether. Tried to avoid attracting the fear
which had temporarily snuck into a corner behind the wall bars. I stuck close to the teacher, pretended to be interested as he explained how to improve my vaulting technique, queued obediently at the various stations, laughed when the others laughed, when somebody didn't make it up onto the vault or landed with their arse right on top and had to wriggle down the other side; I pretended to be impressed when Petter Bengtson did a back flip on the crash mat; pretended to commiserate with Mats Ingelstad who shied away like an unruly dressage horse when faced with an obstacle that was too high; cast critical glances at Lilian and Sandra, who constantly chattered about what they were going to wear to school and who had decided the previous night to wear identical leotards and who now resembled two little versions of a keep-fit instructor from TV; laughed at Markus the joker, who was another one whose voice hadn't broken and who attempted to conceal that fact by speaking in a low voice, unnaturally low in his throat. I became one of the crowd, basically, because it was so much easier to exist there.

Exactly as promised, Gerard turned up by my locker five minutes before the end of our free period.

He was on his own, and something told me Ola and Peder had been given orders to stay away.

‘Show me what you've got,' he said.

I opened my locker and took the Walkman out. He looked at it briefly.

‘Where'd you get hold of that?'

‘Mum gave it to me on Saturday. It's brand new. The price tag is still on it. It's a genuine Walkman.'

‘Do you think I'm blind? What else would it be, a toaster? And what am I supposed to do with it? I'm not even interested in music. Music is for faggots like Nicke Wester. How much money have you got together?'

‘Five hundred. The tape player cost twelve hundred, so that makes seventeen hundred in all.'

‘Give me that.'

I handed him the envelope. He didn't even open it, just stuffed it into his back pocket without counting the notes.

‘How's your brother doing?'

‘Fine.'

‘Just wondering. It can't be easy being in the remedial class and stuff. A little retarded, hard to grasp things. And incontinent, is that what it's called, when you piss yourself?'

I didn't reply, and just felt round to find where the fear was. In my neck, it seemed; it was completely stiff.

‘And your dad in the slammer. Isn't that right? Nobody to look after you, like, nobody to look up to. And your mum is round the off-licence pretty much every day, she's like a regular customer there, isn't she?'

He leaned against the lockers and stared at a spot on my left shoulder. Then the reached out and plucked something off: a single hair.

‘Honestly, Ironing Board, who do you think you are? If we assume it wasn't you, I mean... There were only six of us by the newsagent's kiosk, after all.'

‘It
wasn't
me... '

‘You won't know that for sure until I've decided. And I haven't yet. Tell me, who seems more nervous, Peder or Ola?'

I was hoping the bell would ring; I didn't want to get drawn into anything else, didn't want to get any more tangled up in what Gerard and his gang had in mind. I didn't want him to touch me again, to remove any more strands of hair from my clothes. There were only two lessons left: Home Economics and English, and I wasn't going to be in either one. I had other plans.

‘What did you think of lunch?'

‘Huh?'

‘Minestrone soup. Even though it's Monday. Peder hardly ate anything. I was shovelling it in. Five open-faced sandwiches with cheese as well. And salad. I didn't taste anything odd. Did you?'

‘No.'

He took the Walkman out of my hand. He pressed Play, even though there was no tape in it, and then Stop.

‘Peder wasn't hungry. He thought it tasted strange... Isn't that a sign of nervousness? I've changed my mind, by the way: I'll take care of this for you. You nicked it, right? Your stupid slag of a mother would never be able to afford a Walkman. And like I said: a thousand kronor by Friday.'

‘You just got five hundred!'

‘I don't remember that. My mind is just a blank.'

‘You've got it in your pocket.'

‘I've made a deduction. You were talking to L.G. That has a price. And tomorrow I've got to go up to the headmaster's office again. A big meeting with the school administration and the welfare officer. Even my dad has to go. Between you and me, Ironing Board, I'm just laughing at all this. What the hell are they going to do? Tell me how to live my life? What's right and wrong, what you can and can't do. I don't give a damn... I've never given a damn about any of it.'

He looked at me, completely emotionless, as if all this were just a sort of business arrangement, any old thing. And then I suddenly remembered his parents, from school prize days and events over the years: the nervous little couple who always drove up in posh cars, impeccably dressed, but seemingly terrified of their own existence – and Gerard's expression when he caught sight of them, a look of shame, almost of disgust.

‘I'll get my money by the weekend,' he said in a friendly voice. ‘If you want to quibble, we'll make it two thousand straight away. And it's not just about you and me, is it?'

He nodded towards the window that looked out onto the schoolyard. I followed his gaze. Several Year Sevens were standing in the smoking area, huddling against the wind. On a bench by the basketball hoop sat my brother, prodding a pile of leaves with his foot. He was on his own, as usual. He was wearing his Stan Smiths.

‘Remember when we learned about the Second World War last term... what the Germans did with all the retards... ' He placed a
hand on my shoulder. ‘Nobody else would be sad, Ironing Board, only you.'

I stood there facing the window as Gerard disappeared down the corridor. My brother looked awesome in his new trainers. I had given him the jeans, too; they were a little big for him, but at any rate they were a real brand name. He was beaming from ear to ear until he realised it was a bribe, that I really did want him to go to school as usual, despite what had happened. It took a great deal of persuasion to get him to come. I explained how important it was that we didn't stay away like scaredy-cats, because that would only sharpen their bloodlust.

Somebody went over to him outside and said something. A lad in his class who suffers from a load of strange tics and is basically unable to keep still. I saw my brother perk up and nod. Maybe he got a compliment on his clothes. I felt like going out to him and keeping him company for a while, and I might have done it too, if I hadn't had other things to think about.

T
ommy's house stood behind a dense hedge that protected it from the winds off the sea. It was a two-storey detached house with fibre-cement cladding and a grey brick-built annexe, which the family let out to tourists in the summertime. To the left was a driveway leading to the garage and a shed, where they would tinker around with boat engines. There used to be another house on the plot, an old farmhouse, but Tommy's dad had it torn down when the family built their new house in the Sixties. He was part of the Celes family and was born in the village. Tommy's mum came from Träslöv, a fishing community some thirty or forty miles north. Through his father, Tommy was related to almost everyone in Glommen. The families had intermingled for generations, and everyone kept track of which branches they belonged to.

I parked my bike by the gate and went up the gravel path. People freely came and went in each other's houses down here. Nobody locked their doors, not even in the summer when the place was full of holidaymakers. Tommy had said there were never any break-ins in Glommen; there was no reason to break into an unlocked house.

I rang the doorbell. When no one opened the door, I went in.

The bed was made in his room upstairs. His schoolbooks lay on the desk. A pair of jeans hung over one arm of the chair. Dirty tube socks littered the floor. I spent a while looking at a picture hanging above his desk. It showed a fishing boat on its way into Glommen harbour. It was the family's previous boat. Tommy's dad had painted it. When he retired, he took up painting in his leisure time. I sat down on the bed and wondered what to do. Wait until he got home, or start searching?

It struck me that he might be in the basement. His brothers had built a games room down there, with a ping-pong table and a little bar with beer taps. Tommy would sit down there and play video games sometimes, but if his mum or dad suddenly came home it could be awkward if they found me somewhere other than in his room. To say nothing of how weird I would feel if his brothers found me in the basement. They didn't frighten me, but there was something that made you not want to end up alone with them.