And his head was pushed down further. And strangely enough he thought, Better this. Than an eye.
After two minutes Micke started to feel really uncomfortable.
It seemed like…like they really wanted to…He looked around at the other boys but no one seemed prepared to do anything and he himself only said a half-muffled, ‘Jonny…what the hell?’
But Jonny didn’t seem to hear him. He was absolutely still, on his knees next to the pool with the tip of the stiletto directed into the water, at the refracted white shape moving down there.
Micke looked up at the shower rooms. Why the hell wasn’t the teacher back yet? Patrik had run to get him, why wasn’t he coming? Micke withdrew further into the corner, next to the dark glass door that looked out onto the night, folded his arms across his chest.
In the corner of his eye he thought he saw something fall down from the roof outside. Something banged on the glass door so hard it rattled in its frame.
He stood on tiptoe, peeked out of the window of regular glass at the very top and saw a little girl. She lifted her face up to his.
‘Say “Come in”!’
‘W…what?’
Micke looked back at what was happening in the pool. Oskar’s body had stopped moving but Jimmy still leaned over the edge, holding his head down. Micke’s throat hurt when he swallowed.
Whatever happens. Just make it stop.
A banging on the glass door, harder this time. He looked out into the darkness. When the girl opened her mouth and shouted at him he could see…that her teeth…that there was something hanging from her arms.
‘Say that I can come in!’
Whatever happens.
Micke nodded, said almost inaudibly, ‘You can come in.’
The girl pulled back from the door, disappeared into the darkness. The stuff that was hanging from her arms shimmered for a moment, and then she was gone. Micke turned back to the pool. Jimmy had pulled Oskar’s head out of the water and taken the stiletto back from Jonny, moving it near Oskar’s face, aiming.
A speck of light was visible in the dark middle window and a split second later it shattered.
The reinforced glass didn’t shatter like regular glass. It exploded into thousands of tiny rounded fragments that, after flying out into the hall, over the water, glittering like myriad white stars landed with a rustle at the edge of the pool.
Epilogue
Friday
13 November
Friday the thirteenth…
Gunnar Holmberg was sitting in the empty principal’s office, trying to get his notes in order.
He had spent the whole day at the Blackeberg school; studying the scene of the crime, talking with students. Two technicians from downtown and a bloodstain analyst from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science were still securing evidence down by the pool.
Two youths had been killed there last night. A third…had disappeared.
He had even talked to Marie-Louise, the class teacher. Had realised that the missing boy, Oskar Eriksson, was the same one who had raised his hand and answered his question about heroin three weeks ago. Holmberg remembered him.
I’ve read a lot and stuff.
Also recalled that he had thought the boy would be the first out to the police car. He would have taken him for a spin in it, maybe. If possible, bolstered his self-confidence a little. But the boy had not shown up.
And now he was gone.
Gunnar scanned his notes from his conversations with the boys who had been at the pool last night. Their accounts basically matched up, and one word had turned up frequently: angel.
Oskar Eriksson had been rescued by an angel.
The same angel who, according to the witnesses, had ripped Jonny and Jimmy Forsbergs’ heads off and left them in the bottom of the pool.
When Gunnar told the crime scene photographer, who used his underwater camera to eternalise the image of where the two heads had been found, about this angel, he had said, ‘Hardly one from heaven, in that case.’
No…
He looked out the window, tried to think of a reasonable explanation.
In the schoolyard the flag was at half mast.
Two psychologists had been present for the boys’ questioning since several of them were showing worrying signs of talking too light-heartedly about what they had witnessed, as if it were a film, something that had not happened in real life. And that was what one would most like to believe.
The problem was that to a certain extent the bloodstain technician corroborated what the boys had said.
The blood had left traces in such places (ceiling, beams) that the immediate impression was that its course had been made by someone who was…flying. It was this one was now trying to explain. Explain away.
And would probably succeed in doing.
The boys’ gym teacher was in intensive care with a serious concussion and would not be available for questioning until tomorrow at the earliest. He would probably not give them anything new.
Gunnar pressed his hands against his temples so his eyes narrowed, glanced down at his notes:
angel…wings…the head exploded…the stiletto…trying to drown Oskar…Oskar was completely blue…the kind of teeth like a lion…picked Oskar up…
And the only thing he managed to think was, I should go away for a while.
‘Is that yours?’
Stefan Larsson, the conductor on the Stockholm–Karlstad line, pointed to the bag on the luggage rack. You didn’t see those much these days. A real old-fashioned…trunk.
The boy in the compartment nodded and held out his ticket. Stefan punched it.
‘Is someone meeting you at the other end?’
The boy shook his head.
‘It’s not as heavy as it looks.’
‘No, of course. What have you got in there, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘A little bit of everything.’
Stefan checked his watch, punched the air.
‘It will be evening when we arrive, you know.’
‘Mmm.’
‘The boxes. Are they also yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look, I don’t mean to…. but how are you going to manage?’
‘I’ll get help. Later.’
‘I see. Right. Have a good trip, then.’
‘Thanks.’
Stefan pulled the door to the compartment shut, and walked to the next one. The boy seemed like he knew what he was doing. If Stefan had been sitting there with that much luggage he would hardly have looked so happy.
But then, it’s probably different when you’re young.
Sources
'Love Trouble' by Siw Malmkvist, translated by Laurie Thompson.
'Last of the Famous International Playboys'
Words and music by Stephen Street and Stephen Morrissey.
Copyright © 1989 EMI Music Publishing and Warner/Chappell Music.
All rights reserved.
'Let the Right One Slip In'
Words and music by Gary Day, Stephen Morrissey and Alain Whyte.
Copyright © 1992 Warner/Chappell Music, Multiplay Music Limited, Sony
Music Publishing (UK) Limited.
Lyrics reproduced with permission of Warner/Chappell Music, Hebbes Music
Group Pty Ltd, Music Sales Limited.
All rights reserved.
Every effort lias been made to trace the original source material contained in this book. Where the attempt has been unsuccessful, the publisher would be pleased to rectify any omission.
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Let the Right One In Page 48