Something decisive had happened to him that day in the hotel room with Tora Larsson. It had been terrible, but when he closed his eyes and stroked the smooth surface of the scars, he realised he missed it. This was what he wanted to experience again.
This is not good. Pull yourself together, Max.
He weighed up his options, and considered them one by one. There was Jerry and the contract and legal procedures, the use of intermediaries or a straight Tesla copy, letters he could write, phone calls he could make. In the end, Ockham’s Razor won out: If several possibilities exist, choose the simplest.
He needed Tora Larsson’s music. She didn’t want to give it to him. When you were on the downward slope anyway, the solution was obvious.
He bought a scruffy second-hand Canada Goose jacket, a pair of thermal trousers and a warm hat. Then he started to watch the front door of Tora’s apartment block. This was a tricky exercise, because there wasn’t anywhere to hide, and it would arouse suspicion if people saw him wandering up and down the street for too long.
Ockham again. He bought a six-pack of beer and sat down on a bench a hundred metres from the door. Because he was in full view, he became invisible. An old drunk that nobody wanted to look at. He couldn’t manage more than a few hours a day, but he had Robbie in his pocket: his luck had to be in at some point, for fuck’s sake.
During the course of five mornings he saw neither Jerry nor Tora leave the apartment. What he did see was girls going into the apartment block; sometimes he caught a glimpse of them or Tora up at the window. He came to the conclusion that Jerry wasn’t home.
Sometimes his mobile rang. Girls he had made a half-hearted play for ages ago or more recently, old acquaintances who wanted to check out the situation. Presumably the word was out that he was the man behind Tora Larsson, and he had become someone it might be worth keeping in touch with. He could hear the clink of crockery or the murmur of conversation in the background when they called from restaurants or cafés, the impersonal, obsequious tone in their voices.
He sat on his bench and shivered, held the phone well away from his ear and said Hi and How’s it going and Cool, and he despised every last one of them. They were little pack animals, lemmings gathering kudos as they hurtled towards the abyss, squeaking as they ran.
He raised his can of ice-cold beer to Tora Larsson’s window. He loathed her and he respected her. As he sat here on his bench and she wandered around her apartment, there was a bond between them, an invisible trail of blood running from his feet to her door, through her letterbox and into her body. A shudder ran down his spine as he thought about it.
Finally, on the sixth day, Tora came out with the freak. Max gripped his beer can with both hands and stared down at the ground as if he was too drunk to look up when they walked past him, just a few metres away. He watched them disappear in the direction of the subway and waited a few minutes before entering the building and taking the lift up to her apartment.
With stiff hands he took Robbie out of his pocket and pressed him to his forehead. Then he tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked. He just stood there for while staring into the wide-open apartment as if he was afraid a trap might suddenly slam shut. He just couldn’t be this lucky.
He steeled himself and slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind him. Quietly he said, ‘Hello? Anyone home?’ No reply and no time to lose. He headed for the computer in the living room and bit his lower lip when he saw that it was switched off. He started it up, whispering, ‘Come on, come on, come on, please…’
His luck was out. He needed a password to get into the system. He tried ‘Tora’ and ‘Tesla’ and a number of other words. Finally he hammered in ‘fuckinghell’, but that particular curse didn’t work either. He shut down the computer and went hunting.
In a bag in the hallway he found what he was looking for. He recognised the cheap MP3 player from his second meeting with Tora. He started to sweat in his thick jacket as he scrolled through the playlists, and under ‘Theres’ he found ‘Fly’ along with another twenty or so songs. He put the earphones in and was able to confirm that he had struck gold.
Theres?
He slipped the MP3 player in his pocket and stood by the door, unsure what to do next. The girls had gone off somewhere on the subway; he was bound to have some time left.
Theres?
This was probably his only chance to find out something about the girl who had come to rule his life. He undid his jacket so that he could cool down, locked the door from the inside and started searching the apartment with fresh eyes.
In the drawer of the bedside table next to what was presumably Jerry’s bed, he found a folder with documents relating to the sale of a house. Jerry had inherited it from his parents, Lennart and Laila Cederström. The estate inventory indicated that they had both passed away on the same date. Max vaguely recognised the name Lennart Cederström, but couldn’t place it. Something to do with music. He stored the name in his memory.
In the desk drawers he found more rubbish, the kind you might expect. Old bills and guarantees, documents from Idol and the very first letter he had sent. What struck him as he went through rental agreements and bank statements was that there wasn’t a single document anywhere relating to Tora. Nothing from any school or authority, no mementoes.
Her own room was spartan, like a cell in a refugee hostel. A CD player, a few CDs and Bamse the Bear comics. A bed. On the bedside table lay an ID card. Max picked it up and studied it carefully.
Angelika Tora Larsson. So far, so good. But there was absolutely no chance that the girl in the photograph was the Tora he knew. He held the card up to the light, looked at it side-on. Someone had altered it. The card was battered and scratched, but it was obvious that something had been done to the numbers indicating the date of birth.
Angelika. Tora. Theres.
He wasn’t one jot closer to understanding who the girl calling herself Tora Larsson actually was, but two things he did know. One: there was something very suspect going on here. And two: he ought to be able to use it to his advantage.
He had been in the apartment for over an hour, it was almost eleven o’clock and he decided not to tempt fate any longer. Before he left he checked that everything looked just the same as when he arrived. He closed the door behind him and listened to make sure no one was coming up the stairs, then hurried down and out into the street. As he headed for the subway he noticed that there were a couple of police cars parked outside the shop, right next to the bench where he would no longer need to sit. He was done here. He had found what he was looking for, and a lot more.
As soon as he got home he poured himself a large celebratory whisky. Then he transferred the songs from the MP3 player to his computer, and sat down to listen to them.
Gold. Pure gold. Five of the songs were definitely in the same class as ‘Fly’, and the rest were perfectly OK. The lyrics weren’t always that brilliant, but he couldn’t think of many Swedish artists who wouldn’t be proud to be associated with this album.
Yes, album. He had already started thinking about it like that. The files that were now on his computer would have to be run through the desk a few times, the production had to be sorted out and they needed to be tidied up a bit, but he had everything he needed for a real smash.
However, there was a problem. Tora Larsson would never agree to the project, and he didn’t know what she might do when she found out what he was up to. It was a dilemma, to put it mildly.
With the help of the computer Max started checking the information he had found in the apartment. He soon discovered that no one with Tora’s ID number existed. However, Angelika Tora Larsson did exist, and she had the same number if you altered just one digit.
Max found the really juicy information when he did a search on Lennart and Laila Cederström. He read the articles about the Swedish pop stars who had been brutally murdered, their son Jerry, and the strange room the police had discovered in the cellar. He put this together with
what his back knew about Tora’s capacity for violence, and suddenly his dilemma was no longer a dilemma.
He no longer had a problem; it was Tora Larsson who had a problem. He could do exactly what he wanted, and she wouldn’t be able to say a word.
On Monday morning Teresa went to school. Heads turned to look at her as she got on the bus. She went straight to the back, and sat with her feet in their Doc Martens on the back of the seat in front of her. People looked at her and sniggered. As soon as she looked them in the eye, they looked away.
Eight members of her class had arrived before her. They were standing around waiting for the first lesson to start. One of them was Karl-Axel, the documentary film maker. Teresa was completely calm inside as she met his gaze from some distance away. She walked steadily along the corridor, the boots giving her footsteps weight and power.
When she was a couple of metres away from the group, Karl-Axel grinned and said, ‘Morning Teresa’, then grabbed the side of his cheek and pulled it in and out a couple of times so that it made a smacking, slurping noise. A couple of the lads gave a dirty laugh.
Teresa could have sat down right at the end of the bench outside the classroom and ignored the whole thing. Someone would say how disappointing it was that stuffed cabbage leaves weren’t on the lunch menu today, someone else would say they hoped she hadn’t eaten too much for breakfast. Something along those lines. She could have sat there with her eyes firmly fixed on the floor, pretending she couldn’t hear them. But she had thought the situation through, and it just wasn’t an option.
Instead she grinned back at Karl-Axel as if he done something really clever, then took a step forward and kicked him in the groin. The boots had a reinforced steel toe-cap, and her aim was more or less perfect. Karl-Axel went down as if a stopper had been pulled out, doubled over on the floor and started shaking before he even worked out how to yell. His mouth was opening and closing, and all the colour had left his face. Teresa leaned over him.
‘What are you saying? What is it you’re trying to say, Karl-Axel?’
Something between a squeak and a whisper emerged from Karl-Axel’s mouth, and Teresa thought she heard him say, ‘Only joking…’ She placed her foot on his cheek, pressed his face down on the floor and turned to the others.
‘Anyone else feel like joking?’
Nobody volunteered, and Teresa removed her foot. The sole had left a pattern on Karl-Axel’s cheek. His body jerked as he pressed his hands to his groin, making inarticulate hissing noises. She looked at him and felt no pleasure. He was just a scared, pathetic little boy, and she actually regretted kicking him quite so hard.
But there was nothing she could do about that. Teresa sat down on the bench and folded her arms, waiting for this minor incident to be over. There would no doubt be more, but she had gone back to her idea about simplicity, and her plans for the day were simple. As soon as someone said or did something derogatory about her, she would kick them. The girls on the shin, the boys on the cock, if possible. That was all.
Several more students arrived, and Karl-Axel was still refusing to get up. Whispered conversations took place as the new arrivals were told what had happened.
Agnes arrived only a minute or so before the lesson was due to begin. By that time Karl-Axel had managed to struggle up into a sitting position, leaning against the lockers. She tilted her head to one side and asked, ‘Why are you sitting there?’
Karl-Axel shook his head, and Patrik said, ‘Teresa kicked him. Between the legs. Really fucking hard.’
Agnes turned to Teresa with the hint of an ambiguous smile on her lips. At first Teresa thought it was a kind of approval, but when Agnes didn’t sit down next to her as usual, she suspected it was just for want of anything else to do.
Teresa’s plan succeeded beyond all expectation. Everyone in the class avoided her, but nobody said anything else during the course of the day. Not even Jenny managed to come out with a spiteful comment when Teresa was within earshot. She concentrated on her inner wolf, and remained unmoved.
It was only during the lunch break that her defences wobbled. Nobody came to sit by her, but as she sat there with her lunch she could feel the eyes on her, hear the whispers. What was Dirty Teresa going to do with the food? What was Puky Teresa going to stick in her mouth now?
She looked at her plate, on which two pieces of crumbed fish lay next to four potatoes with a few slices of tomato around the edge. A lump rose from her stomach, stuck in her throat and turned to nausea. She could kick anyone who stood in her way, but she couldn’t eat this.
She thought about getting up, going over to the slop bucket, scraping all the food off her plate and leaving the dining room. Everybody laughing behind her back. Oh what fun they would have.
Smoke rose from the plate. The quarry’s flank ripped open, the steaming blood meeting the cold air. She cut a piece of potato and bit through the skin. Her jaws tensed as she chewed through muscle and sinew. The dying twitches of the crumbed fish, then the bite that extinguished all life. The red juice of the tomatoes, running down her throat. Not a scrap would be left for the crows.
When she got up and carried her empty plate over to the counter, the white skeleton she handed over had been scraped clean. A successful hunt, a meal which would keep the body alive for the rest of the day. She had won.
And so it went on. Day after day Teresa went to school in her red boots, fearing nothing and no one. Nor did she feel any longing or regret. When she met Micke, she nodded to him and he nodded back. There was nothing to say, and she was done with emotions. They had died along with her childhood, spilt in red pools on a cement floor.
She could have grieved, but did not do so because her emotions had been replaced by perceptions. Her senses were at full stretch; liberated from her brain’s struggle with itself, Teresa experienced every impression with much greater intensity.
She could walk down corridors and enjoy the murmur of voices behind closed doors, the colours of the cupboards and the walls, the smell of paper, cleaning materials and drying clothes. She could enjoy all the impressions that, taken together, made her a part of the world, someone who was walking around and who was alive. Such an obvious fact that she had managed to ignore for fifteen years: she was alive.
Therefore, she did not grieve for what she had lost, but instead rejoiced at what she had gained and what she had become. It was that simple. It may not have showed on the outside, but she was happy.
On Tuesday evening she spent a while exchanging emails with Theres, making plans for the weekend’s meeting with the other girls. They settled on Sunday at twelve o’clock, but as Jerry was back it couldn’t be in Svedmyra. They could meet outdoors, but where? They would give the matter some thought; nothing was decided.
Teresa surfed various sites on wolves, read some new posts on the forum, and ended up on an auction site where someone was selling a wolf skin. The starting price was six hundred kronor; the auction was due to end in a couple of hours, and so far nobody had put in an offer.
She looked at the photograph of the grey pelt, laid out on an ordinary kitchen table. Once upon a time it had been part of a real wolf, the hunter of the forest. Muscles had worked beneath that fur, it had rubbed up against other coats, loped across the snow and howled beneath the stars. If someone bought it, it might end up on the floor in front of a fire, something soft for the kids to sit on.
Without giving it any further thought, Teresa put in a maximum bid of one thousand kronor. Five minutes later she went back and raised it to two thousand. That was all the money she had in her account. She had given the bits of paper from the metal cash box to Theres.
She lay down on her bed and read some Ekelöf. The rapport she had felt when she came out of hospital was no longer there, and she caught herself thinking Ekelöf was weak. A weakling. A little worm of a writer. But still. She read these lines several times:
The silence of the deep night is great
It is not disturbed by the rustle of the p
eople
eating one another here on the shore
It was the word ‘rustle’ she liked. That was all. A rustling sound as flesh is consumed.
She put down the book and lay with her hands behind her head, missing her MP3 player. She didn’t like the idea that Max Hansen might be sitting wearing her earphones at this very minute, listening to the songs she and Teresa had made together. She didn’t like it at all. It was like knowing there was a pig in the wardrobe, a snout snuffling around among your clean clothes.
Her mobile rang, and when Teresa answered she expected to hear that slimy voice from the depths of the sty, but it was Johannes. After a few introductory phrases he asked how she was, and she said she was absolutely fine.
‘It’s just that I’ve got a feeling you’re…I don’t know, that you’re not there, kind of.’
‘I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m here.’
‘So why are you avoiding me, then?’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes, you are. Do you think I haven’t noticed?’
‘What does it matter? You don’t want anything to do with me.’
There was a long sigh at the other end of the phone. Then Johannes said, ‘Teresa, just stop that. You’re my oldest friend. Don’t you remember what we said? That we’d be friends. No matter what.’
Teresa had a strange, rough feeling in her throat, but her voice sounded perfectly normal when she replied, ‘We said a lot of things. When we were little.’
‘Are you thinking about anything in particular?’
‘No.’
Johannes gave a snort, as if he were smiling at some memory. ‘I just thought about that time…when we were lying in the cave, do you remember? When we said we were going to be dead?’
The rough feeling in her throat had begun to take on the form of a lump, and Teresa said, ‘Listen, I’ve got things to do.’