‘Ow, damn!’
Jonny let go of him and Oskar fell to the ice. He stood up by the edge of the hole, holding the stick in both hands. Jonny grabbed his shin.
‘Fucking idiot. Now I’ll fucking…’
Jonny approached him slowly, probably not daring to run because he was afraid of falling into the water himself if he pushed Oskar like that. He pointed at the stick.
‘Put that down or I’ll kill you. Get it?’
Oskar clenched his teeth. When Jonny was a little more than an arm’s length away Oscar swung the stick against his shoulder. Jonny ducked and Oskar felt a mute thwack in his hands when the heavy end of the stick struck Jonny square on the ear. He fell to the side like a bowling pin, landing outstretched on the ice, howling.
Micke, who had been a couple of steps behind Jonny, now started to back up, holding his hands in front of him.
‘What the hell…we were just having some fun…didn’t think…’
Oskar walked towards him swinging the stick from side to side through the air with a low growl. Micke turned and ran back to shore. Oskar stopped and lowered his stick.
Jonny lay curled up on his side with his hand pressed against his ear. Blood was trickling out between his fingers. Oskar wanted to apologise. He hadn’t meant to hurt him so bad. He crouched down next to Jonny, steadying himself on the stick and he was about to say ‘sorry’ but before he had a chance, he saw Jonny.
He was so small, curled up into a foetal position, whimpering ‘owowowow’ while a thin trickle of blood ran down inside the collar of his coat. He was slowly turning his head back and forth.
Oskar looked at him in wonder.
That tiny bleeding bundle on the ice would not be able to do anything to him. Couldn’t hit him or tease him. Couldn’t even defend himself.
I could whack him a few more times and then it’s all over.
Oskar stood up, leaned on the stick. The rush was ebbing away, replaced by a feeling of nausea that welled up from deep inside his stomach. What had he done? Jonny must be really hurt to be bleeding like that. What if he bled to death? Oskar sat down on the ice again, pulled off one shoe and removed his woollen sock. He crawled over to Jonny on his knees, poked the hand that he was holding to his ear and pushed the sock into it.
‘Here. Take this.’
Jonny grabbed the sock and pressed it to his wounded ear. Oskar looked up over the ice. He saw a person on skates approaching. A grown-up.
Shrill screams from far away. Children, screaming in panic. A single high, penetrating shriek that after a few seconds was joined by others. The person who had been on his way over stopped. Stood motionless for a second, then turned and skated back.
Oskar was still kneeling beside Jonny, felt the ice melting, dampening his knees. Jonny had his eyes shut, whimpering from between clenched teeth. Oskar lowered his face closer to his.
‘Can you walk?’
Jonny opened his mouth to say something and a yellow and white-coloured liquid gushed out from between his lips, colouring the ice. A little landed on Oskar’s hand. He looked at the slimy drops that quivered on the back of his hand and became really scared. He dropped the stick and ran towards land to get some help.
The children’s screams from next to the hospital had increased in volume. He ran towards them.
Mr Ávila, Fernando Cristóbal de Reyes y Ávila, enjoyed ice skating. Yes. One of the things he most appreciated about Sweden was the long winters. He had participated in the Vasa cross-country ski race for ten consecutive years now, and whenever the waters of the outer archipelago froze solid he drove out to Gräddö Island on the weekends to skate out as far towards Söderarm as the ice cover allowed.
It was three years since the archipelago had last frozen, but an early winter such as this one gave him hope. Of course Gräddö Island would be crawling with skating enthusiasts if the waters froze but that was in the daytime. Mr Ávila preferred to skate at night.
With all due respect to the Vasa race, it did make one feel like one of a thousand ants in a colony that had suddenly decided to emigrate. It was quite different from being on the open ice, alone in the moonlight. Fernando Ávila was only a lukewarm Catholic, but even he could feel in those moments that God was near.
The rhythmic scrape of the metal blades, the moonlight that gave the ice a leaden gleam, above him the stars vaulted in their infinity, the cold wind streaming over his face, eternity and depth and space in all directions. Life could not be bigger.
A little boy was tugging on his pants leg.
‘Teacher, I have to pee.’
Ávila woke from his skating reverie and looked around, pointed to some trees by the shore that grew out over the water; the bare network of branches fell like a shielding curtain towards the ice.
‘You can pee there.’
The boy squinted at the trees.
‘On the ice?’
‘Yes? What is wrong with that? Makes new ice. Yellow.’
The boy looked at him as if he was crazy, but skated off towards the trees.
Ávila looked around and made sure none of the older ones had wandered too far. With a few quick strokes he took off to get an overview of the situation. Counted the children. Yes. Nine, plus the one who was peeing. Ten.
He turned the other way and looked in towards Kvarnviken, stopped.
Something was happening down there. A group of bodies approaching something that had to be an opening in the ice, the spot marked by small straggly trees. While he stood still, watching, the group broke up. He saw that one of them was holding a stick.
The stick was swung and one boy fell down. He heard a howl. Turning around, he checked his own group one last time, then set off swiftly towards the figures by the hole. One of them was now running towards land.
That was when he heard the scream.
The piercing scream of a child from his group. The ice spurted up around his blades as he made an abrupt halt. He had managed to ascertain that the kids by the hole were older. Maybe Oskar. Older boys. They would manage. His charges were younger.
The scream increased in intensity and when he turned and skated towards it he heard more voices join in.
Cojones!
Something happened in the exact moment when he was not there. Dear God, let the ice not have given way. He skated as fast as he could, the snow whirling around his blades as he sprinted towards the source of the scream. He saw now that many children had gathered, were standing and screaming hysterically in a choir of sorts, and more were on their way. He saw also that an adult was moving down towards the ice from up by the hospital.
With a few final strong strides he arrived next to the children, and stopped so hard a fine ice-dust sprayed over the children’s jackets. He did not understand. All the children were gathered next to the network of branches, looking down towards the ice, and shrieking.
He skated closer.
‘What is it?’
One of the children pointed down towards the ice, to a lump that was frozen into it. It looked like a brown, frozen clump of grass with a red line on one side. Or a run-over hedgehog. He leaned down towards the clump and saw that it was a head. A human head frozen into the ice so that only the top of the head and forehead were visible.
The boy he had sent off to pee here was sitting on the ice a few metres away, sobbing.
‘I-I-I ra-a-an into it.’
Ávila straightened up.
‘Get away! Everyone goes back onto land now!’
The children seemed as if they were also frozen in place in the ice, the little ones kept crying. He took out his whistle and blew into it sharply, twice. The screams stopped. He positioned himself behind the children in order to herd them towards the shore. The children went. Only a fifth grader stayed where he was, leaning down towards the clump, full of curiosity.
‘You too!’
Ávila gestured to him with his hand, indicating he should come over. Once they were on land he said to the woman from the hospital,
‘Call the police. An ambulance. There’s a body frozen into the ice.’
The woman ran back up to the hospital. Ávila counted the children on land, saw that one was missing. The boy who had discovered the head was still sitting on the ice with his face in his hands. Ávila glided out to him and lifted him up by his armpits. The boy turned around and put his arms around Ávila, who lifted the boy as gently as if he were a fragile package and carried him to shore.
‘Can I talk to him?’
‘He can’t actually talk…’
‘No, but he understands what is said to him.’
‘I would think so but…’
‘Just for a little while.’
Through the fog that clouded his vision Håkan saw a man in dark clothes pull up a chair and sit down next to his bed. He could not make out the man’s features, but there was probably a serious expression on his face.
The last few days Håkan had been floating in and out of a red cloud scored through with lines as thin as hairs. He knew that they had anaesthetised him a couple of times, operated on him. This was the first day he was fully conscious, but he did not know how many days had passed since he first came here.
Earlier that morning Håkan had been exploring his new face with the fingers on his feeling hand. A rubber-like bandage covered his whole face but from what little he was able to make out after painfully exploring the contours protruding under the bandage with his fingertips, he concluded he no longer had a face.
Håkan Bengtsson no longer existed. All that was left of him was an unidentified body in a hospital bed. They would of course be able to connect him with the other murders, but not to his earlier or present life. Not to Eli.
‘How are you feeling?’
Oh, very well, officer, thank you. Couldn’t be better. It feels as if someone has applied burning napalm to my face but other than that I can’t complain.
‘Yes, I understand that you can’t speak, but perhaps you can nod if you hear what I am saying? Can you nod?’
I can, but I don’t want to.
The man next to his bed sighed.
‘You tried to kill yourself by doing this, so clearly you are not completely…gone. Is it hard for you to raise your head? Can you lift your hand if you hear me? Can you lift your hand?’
Håkan disconnected himself from all thoughts of the policeman and instead started to think about the place in Dante’s Hell, limbo, where all the great souls from Earth without knowledge of Christ went after death. Tried to imagine the place in detail.
‘We would like to know who you are, you see.’
Which circle did Dante himself go to after death—?
The policeman pulled his chair even closer.
‘We’ll find that out, you know. Sooner or later. You could save us some legwork by communicating with us now.’
No one misses me. No one knows me. Go ahead, try.
A nurse came in. ‘There’s a telephone call for you.’
The policeman stood up, walked over to the door. Before he walked out he turned around. ‘I’ll be back.’
Håkan’s thoughts now returned to more significant matters. Which circle was he destined for? The circle of child murderers? That was the seventh circle. On the other hand, maybe the first circle. Those who sinned for love’s sake. Then, of course, the sodomites had their own circle. The most reasonable thing would be to assume you went to the circle that represented your worst crime. So if you had committed an absolutely terrible crime, you could thereafter sin away all you liked with the crimes punished in higher circles. It couldn’t get worse. Like murderers in the USA who were sentenced to three hundred years in prison.
The different circles whirled in their spiral patterns. The funnel of hell. Cerberus with his tail. Håkan imagined the violent men, the bitter women, the proud ones in their boiling pots, in their fire rain, wandering among them, looking for their place.
One thing he was completely sure of. He would never end up in the lowest circle. The one where Lucifer himself chewed on Judas and Brutus, standing in a sea of ice. The circle of traitors.
The door opened again, with that strange, sucking sound. The policeman sat down next to the bed.
‘Hello again. It seems like they’ve found another one, down by the lake in Blackeberg. Same rope, in any case.’
No!
Håkan’s body flinched involuntarily when the policeman said Blackeberg. The policeman nodded. ‘Apparently you can hear me. That’s good. We can assume you live in the western suburbs then. Where? Råcksta? Vällingby? Blackeberg?’
The memory of how he had disposed of the man down by the hospital raced through his head. He had been sloppy. He had screwed up.
‘OK, then I’m going to leave you alone. You can think about if you want to co-operate. It’ll be easier that way. Don’t you think?’
The policeman stood up and left. In his place a nurse came in and sat down in the chair, keeping watch.
Håkan started to toss his head from side to side, in denial. His hand went out and started to tug on the tube to the respirator. The nurse quickly jumped up and tore his hand away.
‘We’ll have to tie you up. One more time and we’ll tie you up. Understood? If you don’t want to live that’s your business but as long as you’re here our job is to keep you alive. Regardless of what you have or haven’t done. Got it? And we will do what we have to in order to get through this even if it means putting restraints on you. Do you hear me? Everything will be better for you if you co-operate.’
Co-operate. Co-operate. Suddenly everyone wants to co-operate. I am no longer a person. I am a project. Oh my God. Eli, Eli. Help me.
Oskar heard his mum’s voice as soon as he was in the stairwell. She was talking to someone on the phone, and she sounded angry. Jonny’s mum? He stopped outside the door and listened.
‘They’re going to call me and ask what me what I’ve done wrong…oh yes, they will, and what do I say? Sorry, but you see, my boy doesn’t have a father and that…but live up to it then…no, you haven’t…I think you should talk to him about this.’
Oskar unlocked the door and stepped into the hall. His mum said ‘That’s him now’ into the receiver and turned to Oskar.
‘They called from school and I…you’ll have to talk to your dad about this because I…’ She talked into the receiver again. ‘Now you can…I am calm…it’s easy for you to say, sitting out there…’
Oskar went into his room, lay down on his bed and put his hands over his face. It felt like his heart was beating in his head.
When he reached the hospital he had initially thought that all the people running around had something to do with Jonny. But it had turned out that wasn’t it. Today he had seen a dead person for the first time in his life.
His mum opened the door to his room. Oskar removed his hands from his face.
‘Your father wants to talk to you.’
Oskar held the receiver to his ear and heard a distant voice reciting the names of lighthouses and wind strength, wind direction. He waited with the receiver to his ear without saying anything. His mum frowned and looked questioningly at him. Oskar put his hand over the earpiece and whispered, ‘The marine weather report.’
His mum opened her mouth as if to say something but only came out with a sigh and let her hands drop. She walked out into the kitchen. Oskar sat down on the chair in the hall and listened to the marine weather report along with his dad.
Oskar knew his dad would remain distracted by the radio if he tried to start a conversation now. The sea report was holy. Those times he was at his dad’s, all activity in the house came to a stop at 16.45 and his dad sat down next to the radio while staring absently out over the fields, as if to check that what they were saying on the radio was true.
It was a long time since his dad had been at sea, but old habits died hard.
‘Almagrundet northwest eight, towards evening turning to the west. Good visibility. The Åland Sea and Archipelago area northwest ten, towards ev
ening warning for gale-force winds. Good visibility.’
There. The most important part of it was over.
‘Hi Dad.’
‘Oh, it’s you. Hi there. We’re going to have gale-force winds here towards evening.’
‘Yeah, I heard.’
‘Hm. How are things?’
‘Good.’
‘You know, your mum just told me about this thing with Jonny. That doesn’t sound so good.’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘He got a concussion.’
‘Yeah, he threw up.’
‘That’s a common side effect. Harry…yes, you’ve met him…he took the lead weight in the side of the head once and he…well, he lay there on deck and was sick like a calf after that.’
‘Was he OK?’
‘Sure he was…well, he died last spring. But that wasn’t anything to do with that. No. He got better real fast.’
‘Good.’
‘And we’ll have to hope the same goes for this boy too.’
‘Yes.’
The voice on the radio kept reciting names of various sea regions; Bottenviken and all the rest. A couple of times he had sat at his dad’s place with an atlas in front of him and followed all the lighthouses as they were named. For a while he knew all the places by heart, in order, but he had since forgotten them. His dad cleared his throat.
‘Yes, your mum and I were talking about it…if you wanted to come out and see me this weekend.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘So we could talk more about this and about…everything.’
‘This weekend?’
‘Yes, if you feel like it.’
‘I guess so. But I have a little…what about Saturday?’
‘Or Friday night.’
‘No, but…Saturday. Morning.’
‘That sounds good. I’ll take an eider duck out of the freezer.’
Oskar pressed the mouthpiece closer and whispered: ‘Preferably without shot.’
Let the Right One In Page 20