After trudging through deep snow for five minutes, we reached a wall. Thomas must have done a recce in advance, or else he was familiar with this place too, because he immediately went over to a pine tree and clambered up onto the wall. I followed him, and we perched there shining the beam of our torches at a considerably more opulent home than the previous one.
‘Okay,’ Thomas said. ‘This is more of a risk. I don’t know this house as well.’
‘No convenient childhood friends?’
The question was meant to be ironic. The property looked as if it was in the twenty million kronor bracket, with a large covered swimming pool. I’d never even been close to a place like this. Either Thomas didn’t pick up on the irony or he chose to ignore it. ‘I’ve been here a couple of times, but that was years ago.’
We lowered ourselves from the wall, dropping the last couple of metres and rolling over in the snow. Thomas plodded along the edge of the pool while I went to look for a ladder to secure our escape route. There was a separate garage, big enough to house two tractors. A snow shovel was propped against the wall, with a ladder hanging above it. The street below was in darkness, and I could see lights in only one or two houses. No doubt everyone was in Hawaii.
The ladder had frozen onto its hooks; I freed it with some difficulty and carried it on my shoulder up to the house, where Thomas was fiddling with the lock on the French doors. I put down the ladder, leaned it against my body and waited.
Thomas swore quietly as he tried to force the lock with a screwdriver, but he couldn’t do it. I got the impression that he wasn’t all that skilful, and had just been lucky or had prior knowledge last time. After a couple of minutes he angrily shoved the screwdriver in his pocket, turned to me and shook his head. I nodded, grabbed hold of the ladder
Monster
lowered it like a lance and took a couple of rapid steps towards Thomas. When he realised what I was about to do, he half-screamed, half-whispered, ‘No, for fuck’s…’ But even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have stopped the impetus. The end of the ladder crashed into the French doors, which shattered into hundreds of shards. The noise was so brutal in the silence that it sounded as if something had smashed inside my head. Then nothing.
‘There you go,’ I said.
Thomas stared at me with a mixture of anger, disbelief, and…was there a spark of fear too?
‘What the fuck…What if they’d had an alarm?’
‘Apparently they don’t,’ I said.
We listened. We couldn’t hear anything, but what did I know about alarm systems? Maybe a silent signal was passed to a security firm. Anyway, my action felt absolutely right, and I wanted to keep on destroying things, so I said, ‘I can go inside.’
As if Thomas sensed my intentions he held up his hand. ‘You stay here, you fucking lunatic, and keep watch.’ He kicked away a few pieces of glass from the bottom of the door and went in. I considered going after him, but instead I followed our footprints back to the wall and propped the ladder against it. Then I went over to the garage and gazed down the drive, where a solitary light illuminated a pair of closed iron gates. Inside the house I could see the beam of Thomas’s torch flickering over the walls.
I wasn’t thinking about anything. My hands were itching.
After a few minutes a car drove along the street, but as far as I could tell it didn’t have a security logo. Maybe it was just a neighbour who’d heard the sound of breaking glass, or seen the light of Thomas’s torch. The car stopped by the gates and the driver’s door opened. I took out the walkie-talkie: ‘Someone’s coming. Can you hear me?’ Thomas answered, ‘Okay. Let’s get out of here.’
By this stage the man who had got out of the car had opened the gates. He was middle-aged, wearing a suede jacket and a checked cap with ear flaps. He still hadn’t noticed me, because his attention was focused on the house. Thomas had switched off his torch.
The snow had been cleared from the drive, so the man was able to make rapid progress. I knew what I was going to do. I clicked my head torch onto full beam, grabbed the snow shovel and went towards him. As I had expected he held up his hands to shield his eyes from the dazzling light; there was no way he could see my face.
I had originally intended to use the shovel as a threat. After a few steps I had decided to hit the man with it, but when I saw him standing there blinded and defenceless, I changed my mind yet again. As the distance between us diminished I ran the palm of my hand along the aluminium edge. It was sharp, and if I struck hard it should be enough to separate the man’s head from his body. Possibly. I gripped the handle more firmly and moved the shovel to the side so that I could swing it in an arc.
However, the man must have been able to see enough to perceive the threat. I had just tensed my muscles to begin the movement that would end his life when he spun around and ran back to the gate. I started to follow him, then stopped because a no had flashed inside my head.
A month earlier I would have been devastated, terrified at what I had been about to do, an act that would have changed who I was beyond repair. As I stood on the drive and watched the man leap into his car, I simply thought something along the lines of: Oh dear, I got a little bit carried away there. No big deal.
I walked back to the house and found Thomas standing with his arms folded. Presumably he had seen everything, because he slowly shook his head when I put down the shovel and switched off the torch.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ he said. I interpreted this as an expression of admiration rather than a question, so I didn’t answer. What could I possibly say?
*
The balance of power between Thomas and me shifted that night. The way he looked at me and spoke to me changed. Maybe it was because he thought I was crazy, and the respect he showed me was the respect with which you treat a mad dog. Whatever—it was still respect, and there was a certain wariness in the way he addressed me.
I should have been pleased. Ever since I first met Thomas I had felt that same respect for him, regardless of his political views, and without admitting it to myself I had striven to win his admiration. Now that I had it, to some extent, I felt nothing; and maybe that was a prerequisite. The train clattered along on the Lidingö line, and my strongest feeling was a sense of dissatisfaction, gnawing at my gut like hunger. We had passed through several stations when Thomas asked, ‘Could you do me a favour?’
‘No problem.’
‘Could you stop smiling like that?’
I hadn’t even been aware that I was smiling, but when Thomas pointed it out I realised my cheeks were hurting. Perhaps it was an involuntary reaction, like when a hyena laughs after missing its prey. I relaxed my cheek muscles and said, ‘I’ll smile however I fucking like.’
Thomas shrugged and lifted his rucksack onto his knee. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask what we got?’
‘What did we get?’
‘Nice of you to ask. Next to nothing. If they had any good stuff, it was locked away. Some small change. Here.’
He glanced around, then held out a hundred-kronor note and a fifty-kronor note, which I waved away. ‘Keep it.’
Thomas looked almost hurt. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
‘You’ve already asked me that.’
‘And?’
‘Stop asking.’
Thomas glared at me and I could see that he wanted to punch me, shake me, throw me down on the floor. That was okay. No problem. But he resisted, and peered into his rucksack instead.
‘I picked up a few bits and pieces that might make a few thousand. But I presume you’re not interested?’
‘Wrong.’
When I didn’t say anything else he closed the rucksack and put it back on the floor. We spent the rest of the journey into town staring out of the window. The hunger barked and screamed.
*
There was no suggestion of going for a drink that night. We parted company at the central terminal after Thomas had looked closely at me and actually
said, ‘John? Take care of yourself.’ I said I would, and chose the Åhlén’s exit so that I could walk home via Drottninggatan and Hötorget. The hunger was there all the time—or maybe that’s not the right word. Maybe lust is better. A growing bubble of lust that would have to burst at some point.
I cut across the square, kicking a lump of ice in front of me. It was gone midnight, and there were very few people out and about on this bitterly cold night. I shivered and flapped my arms around my body to try to get warm. I was missing my duffel coat. I put on my head torch and dazzled the driver of a cab coming towards me on Kungsgatan. He swore at me, but drove on.
As I approached the window of Dekorima, I could see that Santa had finished his task. A completed Still Life with Oranges and Carnations now filled his canvas, and he was facing the street with a satisfied grin, as if to say Look what I can do. I stared at him and the bubble grew much bigger.
I turned down Tunnelgatan and rummaged around among the building materials until I found a piece of iron piping about three metres long. I picked it up and went back to the shop window. I opted for the double grip like a pole vaulter and aimed at Santa’s head as I hurled the pipe at the display. For the second time that evening my head was filled with shattered glass, and the bubble burst. Pieces of the broken window rained down on the pavement, and though I hadn’t managed to decapitate Santa, the pipe hit him smack bang in the middle of his face, and he fell onto his easel, sending carnations and brushes and tubes of paint and all the other crap crashing to the floor.
As I let go of the pipe and ran towards the Brunkeberg Tunnel, a siren began to scream. Dekorima had an alarm system. Far behind me I could hear someone yelling, ‘Hey! What the hell are you doing?’, but I kept on running, past the builders’ huts, without looking back.
It wasn’t until I tugged at the handle of the door leading into the tunnel that I remembered it was locked at this time of night. I was about to turn and run up the steps when I caught a glimpse of movement in the darkness inside.
I switched on my head torch and shone the beam through the reinforced glass, but after a couple of seconds I heard running footsteps behind me. I threw myself over the railing and dashed up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan. When I reached the top I glanced over my shoulder and saw that my pursuer had stopped halfway up and was leaning against the railing. A shudder ran right through me when I thought about the fact that what I had seen in the tunnel was now directly under my feet, and I jogged off towards St Johannes Church. It rose up from the ground like a mountain, blocking out the sparkling, starlit sky. My heart was pounding, hot and red inside my cold skin. I sat down on a step that lay in deep shadow, out of the moonlight, and gazed out across the snow-covered gravestones, shining pale blue beneath bare chestnut trees.
Human beings are layered and we are capable of harbouring contradictory emotions, but on different levels. I was at peace and in uproar. I was calm and my pulse was racing. The sight of the churchyard was a balm and a source of anxiety. What had happened at Dekorima gave me tranquillity; what I had seen in the tunnel worried me.
Before I draw any conclusions, I will tell you what I saw during those few seconds when the beam of my torch lit up the dark interior of the tunnel. I saw a slim person slowly walking in the direction of Birger Jarlsgatan. The figure was wearing a grey jacket with the hood pulled up. Next to the person was what I first thought was a dog, but when I saw the long, swishing tail, the shape of the body and the way it moved, it seemed to me that it resembled a tiger. A black tiger, hard to make out in the faint light.
That is what I saw. I immediately dismissed the idea of a tiger, because it was hardly possible, but I was convinced that the figure I had seen walking away from me was the child. Judging from the build and height it could easily have been a twelve-year-old, and the figure was also limping in a way that was painful to watch, as if the legs had broken
been broken
then healed and broken again until all that remained were these shattered crutches that just about provided enough support. When the child and the animal saw the light of my torch, they stopped and turned around. That was when I jumped over the railing, but I did have time to see the shape of the animal’s face, its nose, its eyes. It was a tiger. I also saw that the child’s hood was drawn up so tightly that it completely covered the face. Then I fled.
I sat by the church door, shivering. Over by the steps someone came up onto Döbelnsgatan and looked around, presumably searching for me, but I was safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t see me, and after a little while he gave up and disappeared back down the steps.
I took off both jumpers and swapped them over so that the pale red one was on the outside. I would get sick if I sat on the cold stone any longer, so I got up and took a detour via David Bagares gata. My teeth were chattering when I finally turned into Luntmakargatan via Apelbergsgatan. Even though I’d changed my jumpers around I didn’t dare risk checking out what was happening at Dekorima; I went straight home.
Once indoors I put on my dressing-gown over the top of my clothes and wrapped myself up in a blanket. It was five minutes before my fingers loosened up enough to hold a pen.
*
The policeman left the child dying in the tunnel. He survived against all the odds, his bones healed to a certain extent and now he walks in there at night. And the tiger? The tiger? Did it spring from the child? From the rock? Is the tiger…Sigge? That sounds like a children’s book, for fuck’s sake. Sigge Tiger. I sensed that it was old, more than old. Ancient.
What do they do together, the tiger and the child? Where do they go when morning comes?
Did the child actually survive?
Did the child survive?
*
I had set the alarm for the following morning so that I could be there when the tunnel opened at seven. It was still dark when I went out, dressed in my duffel coat. I glanced over at Dekorima and saw that the window had been boarded up with a sheet of plywood.
At two minutes to seven a man in blue thermal overalls arrived and unlocked the tunnel doors. He stared at me for quite some time as I stood there bobbing up and down. I had the feeling that he recognised me from the night before, and I turned my face away. As soon as he opened the door and set off to unlock the other end, I followed him in.
Did the child survive?
There was no sign of either the child or the tiger inside the tunnel, which had been locked all night. The man in the blue thermal overalls was moving away from me; he was exactly where I had seen the child. He had switched on the light, and I had a clear view all the way to the door leading to Birger Jarlsgatan. There was nowhere to hide.
I walked slowly, carefully examining the walls, but there were no doors or openings, no possible way out. When I reached the far end I turned back, this time staring up at the ceiling.
Every thirty metres there was a grille covering an opening that presumably led to ventilation shafts. I reached up as high as I could with my right hand, and when my outspread fingers were about five centimetres below the grille I could feel a stream of warm air coming through the grubby, sticky iron bars.
How does he get up there?
If I really thought the child was hiding in the ventilation shafts, it wasn’t hard to come up with a solution. A stool or a ladder that was lowered down, then pulled back up again. I walked the length of the tunnel and counted eight grilles. The last one was close to the spot where I’d had contact with the rock. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was cleaner than the others. As if it had been handled.
And the tiger, the ancient tiger? Was it some kind of field-creature, something that had come out of the rock, or an aspect of the child? When I tried to think about it, my thoughts slid away like an object going out of focus. For the moment I consigned it to the scrap heap and concentrated on the child.
I wrapped my arms around my body and let out a hissing sound, ‘psst’, which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when I remembered standing below the tree
house in the woods and making exactly the same sound. I clenched my jaws tight shut to prevent myself from screaming if an answer should come out of the darkness, if a pair of eyes should appear behind the grille. But there was no answer, and I didn’t repeat my call; I left the tunnel.
The air must have been drawn into the ventilation shaft somewhere before being warmed by the rock and flowing out into the tunnel. As the faint glow of dawn crept across the sky and the stars began to fade, I wandered around looking for the opening. Much to my relief, I didn’t find it.
*
‘You didn’t actually answer the question. You didn’t say whether you’ve seen or heard a child in the other place.’
Elsa had just lifted the pot of coffee off the hotplate and was pouring us each a cup. I noticed that she had to hold it with both hands, because they were shaking.
‘Ginger biscuits,’ she said, nodding towards a basket on the table. They were standard shop-bought heart-shaped biscuits, so Elsa clearly wasn’t the kind of granny who did lots of baking. Or she was no longer that kind of granny. I picked up a heart, placed it on the palm of my hand and pressed with my index finger. It snapped into three pieces. I couldn’t remember why you were supposed to do that, what it meant.
‘It’s hard for me to know,’ Elsa went on eventually.
‘Either you noticed the child or you didn’t. Yes or no.’
‘What’s with the tone of voice?’
Despite her trembling hands, the frailty I had seen in Elsa on my last visit had disappeared, and the regal manner had returned. I backed off.
‘Sorry. Recently I’ve…’
‘Yes?’
‘Changed.’
‘Everyone changes,’ Elsa assured me. ‘When they begin to associate. Have you changed for the worse?’
‘I don’t know. It feels good, but when I look at what I’m doing, I’m not so sure.’