A short distance away stands Kalle, his arms dangling by his sides. He is looking into the camera as if he has just been caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. He is fourteen years old, 163 centimetres tall, and he weighs seventy kilos. He wears his suit like a prison cell into which he has been forced with an electric cattle prod. In spite of the fact that he had shaved in the morning, his face is shadowed with stubble. His hair is thick and red.
A changeling. No other possible explanation. A mix-up on the maternity ward. But a DNA test has been carried out: Kalle is the biological son of Emeritus Professor Sture Liljewall. Sometimes genetics goes out of the window and that’s the end of it.
Ten years had passed since the photograph was taken; Kalle was now twenty-two centimetres taller and thirty kilos heavier. He wore his hair in dreadlocks, usually caught up in a knot at the back of his neck. He had a full beard which he trimmed with scissors to keep it around five centimetres long. He was, to put it simply, a bear of a man.
Kalle carried within him a great pain, contained in the space of a hand’s breadth beneath his right collarbone. No, there was no tumour or anything lurking there, he’d had it checked out, but that was exactly where it started to hurt when life came over him. A black heart, pumping a feeling of powerlessness through his body. When it happened he hammered on the drums until the sweat was pouring off him, which usually worked. Sometimes he had to drink a lot of beer.
Life is for living. Kalle had worked that out a couple of years ago. It’s not necessarily obvious, it wasn’t obvious to Kalle, but for that very reason he had defined it in his own mind: I want to live. There was no need to say any more.
Kalle had been working as a humper for Tropicos for about a year when his father rang and offered him the chance to earn a bit on the side. He didn’t put it quite like that. The possibility of supplementing your income somewhat, or something along those lines. A few things needed moving. Technical apparatus.
‘Haven’t you got people who do that sort of thing?’ asked Kalle.
‘Do you want the job or not?’
‘I was just wondering.’
‘Well don’t. It’s a driver we need. Three hundred kronor an hour plus expenses. Cash in hand.’
‘Wow. I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff.’
‘Do you want the job or not?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Sure. OK.’
Kalle was given a time and place, and the conversation ended with no fond farewells. He wasn’t all that keen on working for his father, but the money sealed the deal. He had a small monthly salary to remain on standby for whenever Tropicos might need him, plus he was paid for every job. Over the past few months it had been only a couple of times a week. It was five years since the group had appeared in the Swedish charts, and although they had their circuit, there weren’t many new jobs.
Kalle got by, but no more. While he was waiting for Funkface to break through—which to be perfectly honest he didn’t believe would ever happen—a couple of thousand extra would go down very well.
He borrowed the small van, the one they used only for transporting equipment (he didn’t think it was a good idea to turn up in the bus with the name of the band airbrushed along the side with palm trees and a sunset) and presented himself at the goods entrance to the Karolinska Institute at nine o’clock in the evening.
In the loading bay stood seven metal boxes, their surfaces a matt sheen. In contrast to Tropicos’ battered sound system, these boxes looked as if they had never been used. Not a scratch. Each roughly one cubic metre.
Kalle switched off the engine and got out. A door opened and a man with small hands and small glasses emerged. He nodded to Kalle and gestured in the direction of the boxes, then folded his arms. Kalle estimated that he could probably throw the man about four metres. Tempting thought. Instead he set to work and loaded the boxes into the van. Some were light, a couple weighed in the region of eight kilos. They were so well packed that there wasn’t the slightest rattle from inside as he put them down.
When everything was loaded, Kalle stood beside the van and folded his arms too. The man hopped down from the loading bay and got in the van without a word. Kalle stayed where he was for a few seconds—two metres up in the air, smack! Head first on the tarmac—then slid in and started the engine.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The Heath.’
‘Where those dying people are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are we actually going into the—’
‘Yes.’
Kalle put the van into gear and set off with an unnecessary jolt. The man put on his seatbelt. After a couple of minutes they were on the E4, and the man didn’t say a word. Kalle switched on the CD player and ‘Monkey Woman’ by King Kong Crew boomed out. When the man still didn’t say anything, Kalle turned up the volume and they funked their way along the E4, turned off onto the E18 and eventually onto the gravel track across Järva field.
As the approached the gates of the compound, the man touched Kalle’s arm and pointed first at the CD, then dab-dab-dab with his finger at the floor. Kalle pretended not to understand; he looked at the floor as if he were searching for something, then shook his head.
‘Turn it down,’ said the man.
Kalle slowed down. A guard came out of the booth next to the gates.
‘What?’
‘Turn it down!’ said the man more loudly, looking annoyed. Kalle turned it down. He’d got a reaction. Point made. The man opened the door and got out of the van, went over to the guard. He took a piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it over. The guard looked at the paper, at the van, at Kalle. He didn’t seem very happy. He gestured at the man and went back into his booth. The man stayed put.
Kalle stared at the compound beyond the gates.
So this is what it looks like.
There must be hardly anyone in Sweden who hasn’t heard of the Heath, but after the events of 2002 very little was known about what actually went on in there. The living dead, or the reliving as they were called, had escaped and managed to take the lives of around a hundred people before being captured and returned to the Heath in an unconstitutional joint operation between the police and the military. Since then the area had been closed to the public.
The official version was that they were undergoing rehabilitation, that the reliving were carrying out some form of therapeutic work, but for one thing no journalists were admitted to the compound, and for another public interest had waned since the situation had stabilised. The Heath had been left to its fate, and as long as the dead didn’t get out, hardly anybody cared about what happened there. The relatives who complained had given up, in the majority of cases.
Kalle just found the whole thing unpleasant. If he’d known the job involved a trip to the Heath, he might well have opted out. As he lived only a couple of kilometres away, he had once taken a stroll down there to look at the fence surrounding the half-finished living accommodation; his interest didn’t extend any further. But now he was here, he found he was curious after all. His heart was beating a little faster.
What does it look like in there?
The strange thing was that his companion also seemed nervous. He stood there moving his feet up and down on the spot, rubbing his hands together. A light drizzle had begun to fall, and in the floodlights the man looked trapped, alone in a deserted field.
Kalle sounded the horn and the man jumped. Oh yes, he was nervous all right. Kalle grinned as the man waved a hand to shut him up. He almost felt sorry for the jumped-up little bastard.
The guard came out and handed back the paper. Evidently everything was in order, but Kalle could tell from the guard’s body language that he wasn’t happy about the situation. He would have preferred to tell them to turn around. Instead he went back into his booth, and as the man got in the van the gates silently swung open.
Kalle drove through.
‘Which way?’
The man pointed
. ‘Turn right up there.’
There wasn’t a single street lamp, and the beam of the headlights swept over bare concrete walls, was reflected in lifeless windowpanes. It looked like a ghost town, appropriately enough, and Kalle’s foot was ready to hit the brake at any moment if a zombie should come staggering out in front of the car. He wasn’t feeling too good, there was a kind of buzzing noise in his head, a cacophony of voices in a room far away.
After a couple of turns they drove into an area with floodlights mounted at regular intervals on the front of the buildings. The lights were all directed towards the centre, and a large building unlike those surrounding it. It looked more like an oversized cottage than anything else, and perhaps it had once been intended as a laundry and community centre. There was a similar place where Kalle lived, and the Kurdish Society held parties there. The party atmosphere was distinctly lacking here, though: a number of guards were positioned around the building, and the windows were covered with both shutters and bars. It looked a lot like a prison.
‘Here?’
‘No. Keep going.’
The guards by the entrance looked at them expressionlessly as they drove past. A couple of images that didn’t belong to him flashed through Kalle’s head: two children jumping into a bed, a huge tree falling into the sea.
He had heard of this: people sometimes found they had the ability to read minds in the proximity of the reliving. He realised there must be a lot of them contained inside the building. He turned to the man by his side, but the only thing he managed to pick up was some kind of series of mathematical calculations.
He’s shutting me out. He’s doing it on purpose.
The man turned to face him, and for the first time there was the hint of a smile on his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
Even as he spoke the series of numbers continued to flow. Kalle blinked and tried to concentrate on the road. It wasn’t that easy, it was like driving through a storm of whirling pine needles, but the phenomenon faded as they moved away from the building.
After a few more twists and turns they reached an area without lights, and the man beside him suddenly said, ‘Here. Stop.’
Kalle looked around. The only difference between these buildings and the others they had passed was that here there were lights on in a couple of basement windows. The thought field was once again no more than a distant rushing sound.
The man got out, went over to the door and knocked. It opened and he slipped through. Kalle leaned against the steering wheel and thought things over. There was something shady about all this, that was obvious. Not completely shady, because they’d got through the gates, but a bit on the shady side.
Dad…
In what way was Sture Liljewall mixed up in all this?
His father’s life and work had always been a mystery to Kalle. In one way it was very simple: he couldn’t understand why it was necessary for professors of philosophy to exist. People who think. Well yes, that’s all well and good, but as a profession? His father never appeared in public, and Kalle didn’t have a clue what he did all day. Unlike his sister. She wrote controversial articles sometimes, articles Kalle didn’t like, but at least he could get his head around them.
You bang on your drums, you clean offices, you write stupid articles. OK. But his father…
Then there was the other thing. The thing Kalle had never been able to put his finger on. He didn’t like his father. Sture was stiff, cold, analytical. That’s one thing. But on top of that…on top of that there was something wrong about him. Kalle wasn’t analytical by nature, he hadn’t tried to define the problem, but the feeling was there. A slight insanity.
A Trivial Pursuit question Kalle remembered for some reason:
When the poet Geijer died, what was found under his bed?
Answer: A pair of brand-new, unused ice-skates.
That feeling, only worse. That there was something under the bed that couldn’t be explained. Something in the wardrobe, something in the deepest recesses of the brain. Something not right. That kind of thing.
When the basement door opened, Kalle got out of the van. He had thought things through, and he no longer felt it was strange. This place, this darkness fitted perfectly with his father, and the word for it was depressing.
The man who emerged from the basement was different from the one who’d been in the van. This man was dressed in a shirt and jeans, and even held out his hand.
‘Hi. Are you Sture’s son?’
‘Yeah.’
They shook hands. Kalle gave an extra little squeeze, and the man responded. Then they unloaded the boxes together.
The basement was much bigger than it looked from the outside. The walls were brilliant white, and there was a smell of fresh paint. In one long wall there were two metal doors with round windows, which also looked brand new. The room was illuminated by a couple of portable floodlights on the floor. When they had carried the boxes in, Kalle looked around.
‘What is it you do here?’
‘Nothing. Yet.’
‘So what will you be doing?’
The man looked at Kalle for a couple of seconds, then said, ‘I don’t want to be unpleasant, but you don’t know about this place, OK? If anyone asks, you’ve never been here.’
‘Like that, is it?’
‘Mm.’
Kalle looked around again. With this new information, the room took on quite a different character. He smiled as he saw Q from the James Bond films walking around testing stuff.
‘Do you want me to…sign anything?’
The man tilted his head to one side. ‘Do you want to?’
‘No, it’s fine—I’ll keep quiet.’
‘OK. Good.’
The man held out his hand to say goodbye. Kalle took it, and this time he looked into the man’s eyes. He recognised that expression.
I’m sitting at the computer. I turn around. Dad is standing there. He’s looking at me.
That look. Searching. Evaluating. But here there was something more, something that belonged to this place, like a finger feeling its way across a soft membrane, trying to find a way in, into his head.
Kalle squeezed the man’s hand even harder, a piece of cartilage moved and the finger inside his head jerked in pain.
‘Bye,’ said Kalle, and went back to the van.
He took the longer route around the outside of the compound to avoid driving past the community centre again. The security guard at the gates glanced at the van and opened up.
How the fuck do they avoid going crazy in there?
When he was perhaps a hundred metres from the gates, Kalle stopped the van and let the engine idle as he leaned back and let out a long breath. The whole expedition had taken no more than two hours, and he was completely exhausted.
Six hundred. Is it worth it?
He closed his eyes, enjoying the silence inside his head. After a couple of minutes he was calm. Just as he pressed down the clutch to put the van into gear and drive off, there was a knock on the passenger door. He let out the clutch, reached over and opened the door.
A girl was standing outside, perhaps a couple of years younger than him. Her medium-length hair lay plastered to her head with the rain.
‘Hi. Can I have a lift?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Rissne.’
‘Jump in.’
The girl got in and closed the door behind her. Kalle glanced sideways at her. While the interior light was on he had noticed that she had red hair.
He put the van into gear. ‘Is it natural? Your hair?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The one per cent club.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes. So the chances of us meeting are…one in ten thousand.’
‘Are they?’
‘I don’t really know.’
They considered this in silence as they bounced across the field heading for the E18. Kalle thought it was a shame she wasn’t going to…Bagarmossen, for example.
He would have liked to drive her home.
‘Do you live there? In Rissne?’
‘Mm. You can drop me by the turn-off.’
‘I live in Rinkeby, but I’ve got nothing…I could drive you home.’
‘OK. Valkyriavägen 13.’
Kalle nodded. The monolithic apartment blocks of Rissne were rising ahead of him. Kalle knew Valkyriavägen, because Totto who played bass in Funkface lived on Odalvägen, which was the next road. What are the odds on that?
As they turned off for Rissne the girl asked, her eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead, ‘So what were you doing out there?’
Kalle thought about the man in the shirt and jeans. You’ve never been here. But then he could hardly deny it. He shrugged.
‘Moving some stuff. What about you?’
‘What kind of stuff?’
Kalle sighed and glanced at her. ‘I’m not really allowed to talk about it.’
‘OK, who are you working for?’
‘No, listen, seriously. What were you doing there?’
There was a brief silence as Kalle turned into Valkyriavägen. Number thirteen was at the far end.
‘Trying to get a feeling,’ she said eventually. ‘About what’s happening.’
‘In there?’
‘Yes.’
Kalle pulled up outside her door. He switched off the engine. The rain was pattering on the roof of the van. He might be a big man, but he was incredibly feeble when it came to this kind of thing, and a little bud of relief burst into flower in his breast when the girl asked, ‘So have you got a phone number?’
‘Yes. Have you?’
They both had phone numbers. They swapped. When the girl opened the door and the interior light came on, Kalle took the opportunity to have a good look at her. Her face was round, like his, but the bones beneath the skin were more prominent. And then there were the freckles, of course. Thin body, she probably weighed less than half as much as Kalle.
‘Hang on,’ he said as she was about to close the door. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Flora. See you.’
The door slammed shut and Kalle watched her walk away with long, determined strides.