‘Excuse me, Sir, but I am just so afraid of the killer.’
He would probably also have been able to squeeze out a few tears, if it came to that. They would have let him go, no doubt about it. But he had not been caught, and now the knife was tucked into the hiding place next to his scrapbook.
He needed to think.
Could it be that his game had in some way caused the murder to happen? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t completely rule out the idea. The books he read were full of things like this. A person’s thoughts in one place causing an action somewhere else.
Telekinesis. Voodoo.
But exactly where, when and above all how had the murder been committed? If it had involved a large number of stab wounds on a prone body he had to seriously consider the possibility that his hands possessed a terrifying power. A power he would have to learn to control.
Or is it…the tree. . .that’s the link.
The rotten log that he had cut. Maybe there was something special about it, something that meant that whatever you did to the tree…spread further.
Details.
Oskar read all of the articles on the murder. A photograph of the policeman who had been to their school and talked about drugs appeared on one page. He was not able to comment further at this stage. Technical experts from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science had been called in to secure evidence from the crime scene. One had to wait and see. There was a picture of the murdered boy, taken from the school yearbook. Oskar had never seen him before. He looked like a Jonny or Micke. Maybe there was now an Oskar in the Vällingby school who had been set free.
The boy had been on his way to handball practice at the Vällingby gym and never come home. The practice had started at five-thirty. The boy had probably left home at around five o’clock. So at some point in between—Oskar’s head started to spin. The time matched up exactly. And the boy had been murdered in the forest.
Is it true? Am I the one…?
A sixteen-year-old girl had found the body around eight o’clock in the evening and contacted the police. She was described as being treated for ‘extreme shock’. Nothing about the state of the body, but if this girl was in a state of extreme shock it indicated the body had been mutilated in some way. Usually they only wrote ‘shocked’.
What was the girl doing in the woods after dark? Probably nothing interesting. Been picking pine cones or something. But why wasn’t there anything about how the boy had been murdered? The only thing they offered was a photograph of the crime scene. Police tape demarcated an ordinary wooded area, a hollow with a large tree in the middle. Tomorrow or the next day there would be a photo in this place, lots of candles and signs about ‘WHY?’ and ‘WE MISS YOU’. Oskar knew how it went; he had several similar cases in his scrapbook.
The whole thing was probably a coincidence. But what if?
Oskar listened at the door. His mum was doing the dishes. He lay down on the bed and dug out the knife. The handle was shaped to fit the hand and the whole thing weighed three times as much as the kitchen knife he had used yesterday.
He got up and stood in the middle of the room with the knife in his hand. It was beautiful, transmitted power to the hand holding it.
The sound of clinking dishes came from the kitchen. He thrust a few times into the air. The Murderer. When he had learned to control the power Jonny, Micke and Tomas would never bother him again. He was about to lunge again, but stopped himself. Someone could see him from outside. It was dark now and the light was on in his room. He looked out but only saw his own reflection in the glass.
The Murderer.
He put the knife back in its hiding place. This was only a game. These kinds of things didn’t happen in reality. But he needed to know the details. Needed to know them now.
Tommy was sitting in an armchair with a motorcycle magazine, nodding his head and humming. From time to time he held the magazine aloft so Lasse and Robban who were sitting in the couch could see a particularly interesting picture, with a caption about cylinder volume and maximum speed. The naked light bulb in the ceiling was reflected in the shiny pages, throwing pale cat’s eyes over the cement and timber walls.
He had them sitting on pins and needles.
Tommy’s mother was dating Staffan who worked in the Vällingby police department. Tommy didn’t like Staffan very much, quite the opposite, in fact. A know-it-all, oily-voiced kind of guy. And religious. But from his mum Tommy got to hear this and that. Things Staffan wasn’t really allowed to tell his mum and things that his mum wasn’t really allowed to tell Tommy, but…
That was how, for example, he had heard about the state of the police investigation into the radio store break-in at Islandstorget. The break-in that he, Robban and Lasse had been responsible for.
No trace of the perpetrators. Those were his mum’s exact words: ‘No trace of the perpetrators.’ Staffan’s words. Didn’t even have a description of the getaway car.
Tommy and Robban were sixteen years old and in the first year of high school. Lasse was nineteen, something wrong with his head, and he worked at LM Eriksson in Ulvsunda, sorting metal parts. But he had a driver’s licence. And a white Saab 74 that they had used a marker to alter the plates on before the break-in. Not that it mattered, since no one had seen the car.
They had stashed their bounty in the unused storeroom across from the basement storage area that was their meeting place. They had removed the chain with metal cutters, supplied it with a new lock. Didn’t really know what to do with all the stuff since the job itself had been the goal. Lasse had sold a cassette tape to a friend at work for two hundred but that was it.
It was best to lie low with the goods for a while. And not let Lasse handle any selling since he was…a little slow, as his mum put it. But now two weeks had gone by since the caper and the police had something else to occupy them.
Tommy kept turning the pages of the magazine and smiling to himself. Yup, yup. A whole lot of something else to occupy them. Robban was drumming his fingers against his thigh.
‘Come on, let’s hear it.’
Tommy held up the magazine again.
‘Kawasaki. Three hundred cubic. Fuel injection and—’
‘Get a grip, man. Tell us.’
‘What…the murder?’
‘Yes!’
Tommy bit his lip, pretended to think it over.
‘How did it happen?’
Lasse leaned his tall body forward, folding in the middle like a jackknife.
‘Uh. Let’s hear it.’
Tommy put the magazine away and met his gaze.
‘Sure you want to hear it? It’s pretty scary.’
‘Phft. So what.’
Lasse looked all tough, but Tommy saw a flash of concern in his eyes. You only had to make an ugly face, talk in a funny voice and not agree to cut it out to make Lasse really scared. One time Tommy and Robban had used Tommy’s mum’s make-up to make themselves look like zombies, unscrewed the light bulb and waited for Lasse. It had ended with Lasse shitting himself and giving Robban a black eye under his dark blue eyeshadow. After that they had been more careful about scaring Lasse.
Now Lasse was sitting up in his seat and crossing his arms as if to show he was ready to hear anything.
‘OK, then. So…this wasn’t your usual murder, you understand. They found the guy…strung up in a tree.’
‘What do you mean? Was he hanged?’ Robban asked.
‘Yeah, hanging. But not by his neck. By his feet. So he was hanging upside down in the tree. By his feet.’
‘What the fuck—you don’t die from that.’
Tommy looked long at Robban as if he had made an interesting point, then he continued.
‘No, you’re right. You don’t. But his neck had been cut open. And that’ll kill you. The whole neck, sliced open. Like a…melon.’ He pulled a finger across his neck to show the path of the knife.
Lasse’s hand went up to his neck as if to protect it. He shook his head slowly
. ‘But why was he hanging like that?’
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tommy pinched his bottom lip and made a thoughtful face.
‘Now I’ll tell you the strange part. First you slice someone’s neck open so they die. You’d expect to see a lot of blood, right?’ Lasse and Robban both nodded. Tommy paused for a while in the midst of their expectation before he dropped the bomb.
‘But the ground underneath…where the guy was hanging. There was almost no blood at all. Just a few drops. And he must have gushed out several litres, hanging up like that.’
The basement room was quiet. Lasse and Robban stared straight ahead with a vacant look until Robban sat up and said, ‘I know. He was murdered somewhere else and then brought there.’
‘Mmm. But in that case why did the killer bother to hang him up? If you’ve killed someone you normally want to get rid of the body.’
‘He could be…sick in the head.’
‘Yeah, maybe. But I think it’s something else. Have you ever seen a butcher’s shop? What they do with pigs? Before they butcher them they drain all the blood. And do you know how they do that? They hang them upside down. From a hook. And cut their throats.’
‘So you mean…what, the guy…that he was planning to butcher him?’
‘Aaaah?’ Lasse looked uncertainly from Tommy to Robban to Tommy again to see if they were pulling his leg. He found no indication of this, and said,
‘They do that? With pigs?’
‘Yeah, what did you think?’
‘That it was some kind of machine.’
‘And that would be better, in your opinion?’
‘No, but…Are they alive then? When they’re hanging up like that?’
‘Yeah, they’re alive. And kicking around, screaming.’
Tommy made a noise like a screaming pig, and Lasse sank back into the couch staring at his knees. Robban got up, walked a few steps back and forth and sat down again.
‘But it doesn’t make sense. If the murderer was going to butcher him there would be blood everywhere.’
‘You’re the one who said he was going to butcher him. I don’t think so.’
‘Oh. And what do you think, then?’
‘I think he was after the blood. That that’s why he killed the guy, in order to get the blood. I think he took it with him.’
Robban nodded slowly, picked away at the scab of a large pimple in the corner of his mouth. ‘Yeah, but why? To drink it, or why?’
‘Maybe. For example.’
Tommy and Robban sank into their respective inner reenactments of the killing and what had happened thereafter. After a while Lasse raised his head and looked at them. He had tears in his eyes.
‘Do they die fast, the pigs?’
Tommy met his gaze with equal seriousness.
‘No, they don’t.’
‘I’m going out for a while.’
‘No.’
‘Just out into the courtyard.’
‘And nowhere else, do you hear?’
‘Sure, sure.’
‘Do you want me to call for you when…’
‘No, I’ll be back in time. I have a watch. Don’t call for me.’
Oskar put on his jacket, his hat. He paused as he was putting his boot on. Went quietly back to his room and took out the knife, tucked it inside his jacket. Laced up the boots. He heard his mum’s voice again from the living room.
‘It’s cold out there.’
‘I’ve got my hat.’
‘On your head?’
‘No, on my feet.’
‘This is no joking matter, Oskar, you know how it is…’
‘See you in a while.’
‘…your ears…’
He walked out, looked down at his watch. A quarter past seven. Forty-five minutes until the program started. Tommy and the others were probably down in their basement headquarters but he didn’t dare go down there. Tommy was all right, but the others…They could get strange ideas, especially if they had been sniffing.
So he went down to the playground in the middle of the yard. Two big trees, sometimes used as a soccer goal, a play structure with a slide, a sandpit and a swing set consisting of three tyre-swings suspended from chains. He sat down in one of the tyre swings and rocked gently to and fro.
He liked this place at night. Hundreds of lighted windows all around him on four sides, himself sitting in the dark. Safe and alone at the same time. He pulled the knife out of the holster. The blade was so shiny he could see windows reflected in it. The moon.
A bloody moon…
Oskar got up, snuck over to one of the trees, talked to it.
‘What are you looking at, you fucking idiot? Do you want to die?’
The tree didn’t answer and Oskar carefully drove the knife into it. Didn’t want to damage the fine smooth edge.
‘That’s what happens if you so much as look at me.’
He turned the knife so a small wedge of wood popped out of the trunk. A piece of flesh. He whispered, ‘Go on, squeal like a pig.’
He stopped, thought he heard a sound. He looked around, holding the knife by his hip. Lifted the blade to his eyes, checked it. The point was as smooth as before. He used the blade as a mirror, and turned it so it reflected the jungle gym. Someone was standing there, someone who had not been there a moment before. A blurry contour against the clean steel. He lowered the knife and looked directly at the jungle gym. Yes. But it wasn’t the Vällingby killer. It was a child.
There was enough light for him to determine that it was a girl he had never seen before. Oskar took a step towards the jungle gym. The girl didn’t move, just stood there looking at him.
He took another step and suddenly he grew scared. Of what? Of himself. He was moving towards the girl with his hand tightly closed around the knife, on his way to stab her with it. No, that wasn’t true. But that was how he had felt, for a moment. Wasn’t she scared?
He stopped, pushed the knife back in its holder and put it back inside his jacket.
‘Hi.’
The girl didn’t answer. Oskar was so close now that he could see she had dark hair, a small face, big eyes. Eyes wide open, calmly looking at him. Her white hands were resting on the railing.
‘I said hi.’
‘I heard you.’
‘Why didn’t you answer?’
The girl shrugged. Her voice was not as high as he would have expected. Sounded like someone his own age.
There was something strange about her. Shoulder-length black hair. Round face, small nose. Like one of those paper dolls in the Family Journal. Very…pretty. But there was something else. She had no hat, and no jacket. Only a thin pink sweater even though it was cold.
The girl nodded in the direction of the tree that Oskar had cut.
‘What are you doing?’
Oskar blushed, but she probably couldn’t tell in the dark.
‘Practising.’
‘For what?’
‘For if the murderer comes along.’
‘What murderer?’
‘The one in Vällingby. The one who killed that guy.’
The girl sighed, looked up at the moon. Then she leaned forward again.
‘Are you scared?’
‘No, but a murderer, that’s like…it’s good if you can—defend yourself. Do you live here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Over there,’ the girl gestured to the front door next to Oskar’s. ‘Next door to you.’
‘How do you know where I live?’
‘I’ve seen you in the window before.’
Oskar’s cheeks grew hot. While he was trying to think of something to say the girl jumped down from the top of the jungle gym and landed in front of him. A drop of over two metres.
She must do gymnastics or something like that.
She was almost as tall as he was, but much thinner. The pink sweater fit tight across her chest, which was still comple
tely flat without a hint of breasts. Her eyes were black, enormous in her pale little face. She held one hand up in the air in front of him as if she were warding something off that was coming towards her. Her fingers were long and slender as twigs.
‘I can’t be friends with you. Just so you know.’
Oskar folded his hands over his chest. He could feel the contours of the knife through his jacket.
‘What?’
One corner of the girl’s mouth pulled up in a half-smile.
‘Do you need a reason? I’m just telling you how it is. So you know.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
The girl turned and walked away from Oskar, towards her front door. After a couple of steps Oskar said, ‘What makes you think I’d want to be friends with you? You must be pretty stupid.’
The girl stopped. Stood still for a moment. Then she turned and walked back to Oskar, stopped in front of him. Interlaced her fingers and let her arms drop.
‘What did you say?’
Oskar wrapped his arms more tightly around him, pressed one hand against his knife and stared down into the ground.
‘You must be stupid…to say something like that.’
‘Oh, I am, am I?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. But that’s just how it is.’
They stood still, about half a metre between them. Oskar continued staring into the ground. A strange smell was emanating from the girl.
About a year ago his dog Bobby had gotten an infection in one paw and in the end they had to have him put down. The last day Oskar had stayed home from school, lain next to the sick dog for several hours, and said goodbye. Bobby had smelled like the girl did. Oskar screwed up his nose.
‘Is that strange smell coming from you?’
‘I guess so.’
Oskar looked up at her. He regretted having said that. She looked so…fragile in her pink top. He unfolded his arms and made a gesture in her direction.
‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
The girl frowned, wrinkling up her face and for a moment she looked much much older than she was. Like an old woman about to cry.