The Circle (Hammer)

by Elfgren, Sara B. ,Strandberg, Mats

  But someone catches her. When she opens her eyes she’s looking straight into Max’s concerned face. She’s sitting on the steps, leaning against the wall, and he’s so close to her that she’s breathing in his exhalations. And he hers? She has a strange taste in her mouth, which probably means she has bad breath.

  ‘Are you all right? Should I get the nurse?’ he asks.

  She turns away so that she can breathe again. ‘I’m all right, I just haven’t eaten anything,’ she mutters.

  At once she becomes aware that people have gathered and are staring at her.

  Max opens his briefcase and pulls out a banana. She takes it and tries to stand up, but black spots swirl in front of her eyes.

  ‘Eat this first,’ Max says.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I can manage now.’

  But Max stays where he is.

  Minoo starts to panic. She can’t imagine eating anything in front of Max while he’s watching her so closely, especially not some phallic fruit. She starts peeling it, so slowly that she hopes he’ll get bored and wander off. But he doesn’t budge.

  She raises the banana to her lips. No, she can’t do it. She breaks off small pieces instead, pops them into her mouth, hopes her hands aren’t too dirty. Can’t he just go away?

  ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to Rebecka. You were friends, weren’t you?’ Max asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Minoo says, her mouth full of banana.

  Max looks as if he wants to say something else, but instead he sits down next to Minoo and puts an arm around her.

  There’s something about the way he does it, so totally natural, that makes her cry for the first time since Rebecka died. The warmth of his arm melts the lump in her throat and releases the tears. Someone catcalls at them. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care that she probably looks like a depressed baboon as she scrunches up her face and sobs, holding a half-eaten banana.

  Please don’t say anything, she thinks. There’s nothing to say and if you try it’ll just ruin the moment. This is the only thing that helps.

  And Max remains quiet. The bell rings and the students around them disappear into their classrooms. Max’s arm stays put. His breathing is calm and steady.

  After a while she wipes away the tears with her sleeve. She’s probably got mascara all over her cheeks. ‘I have to wash my face,’ she says.

  ‘Take as much time as you need,’ Max says, and gets up.

  He heads up the stairs. Just as he’s about to walk out of sight, he turns and flashes Minoo a small smile. She nods, as if to say she’s okay. Once he’s out of sight she sniffles and stands up on her weak legs.

  21

  WHEN THE ASSISTANT principal, Tommy Ekberg, returns from lunch, Anna-Karin is standing outside his office, waiting for him. He starts when he sees her. Then he smiles warmly. ‘Well, hello there,’ he says.

  Adriana Lopez’s closest subordinate is a short man with a shiny bald head and a bushy moustache. He’s wearing a loud shirt with a psychedelic pattern. His stomach hangs over the top of his slightly too-tight jeans.

  ‘I thought maybe you could let me into the principal’s office,’ Anna-Karin says.

  He looks at her in astonishment. He opens his mouth to say something.

  Just do it, Anna-Karin commands.

  Tommy Ekberg gives a little sigh of resignation. He takes out the huge set of keys that has permanently distended the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Now?’ he asks, rattling them.

  Anna-Karin nods. He walks ahead of her towards the principal’s office.

  And then go back to your desk and think about something completely different until you’ve forgotten that you ever did me this favour, she commands, staring intently at the back of his neck. Afew flakes of dandruff bob in the fluff that encircles his bald spot.

  ‘Okey-dokey, whatever you say. Your wish is my command!’ he answers jauntily, as he unlocks the door. He throws it wide and gestures invitingly. ‘I’ll go back to my desk now and think about something else.’

  Anna-Karin shuts the door behind her. Then she walks up to the window and pulls down the blinds. The room darkens and she turns on the desk lamp with the dragonflies on the shade.

  The desk is bare and polished. She turns on the computer – a prehistoric PC. The screen flickers to life. A sluggish humming starts from its interior and the image of a sunset fades into view. As does a window requiring a password. Anna-Karin knows too little about Adriana Lopez to hazard a guess at what it might be. She switches it off

  She walks over to the bookshelf, takes down a few binders at random and flips through them. They’re full of class schedules, financial reports, letters of application and payslips. Nothing of interest.

  Suddenly she hears footsteps outside the room. Panic hurtles towards her like a runaway freight train. But she steels herself, thinks of Rebecka. Rebecka, who only wanted the best for everyone, who was one of the few who were always nice to Anna-Karin. Who had tried to hold the group together. Anna-Karin feels guilty when she thinks of how she ignored her calls and messages. She’s going to make up for it now.

  She catches sight of a black handbag in an armchair. It’s the one the principal usually has slung over her shoulder when she arrives at school in the morning.

  Anna-Karin’s hands are sweaty. So sweaty that her fists would probably drip if she clenched them. The BO ho.

  She walks up to the handbag, as if she were afraid it might bite her. She lifts it by the shoulder strap. It’s heavy.

  Anna-Karin pours the contents carefully on to the coffee table. Among the makeup, Tampax and Kleenex there is a black Filofax, and a key-ring with ‘Hermès’ inscribed on it. Anna-Karin looks around the room. It seems almost too simple. What if Adriana Lopez isn’t attending council meetings today?

  Maybe she’s walked into a trap.

  Anna-Karin resists the impulse to run out of the office. Instead she wipes her hands on her jeans and opens the clasp on the Filofax.

  The principal’s handwriting reflects her character: restrained and perfect. Anna-Karin flips through it. Her meetings with Elias and Rebecka have been entered. But she finds no pentagrams, no notes about killing them.

  Anna-Karin holds her breath as she flips to today’s date. Sure enough, this afternoon she has a meeting at the town hall between one and four p.m.

  She continues flipping through the pages. On Friday there is a single entry: Train to Stockholm 5.42 p.m. Booking reference XPJ0982U. And on Sunday: Train to Engelsfors 1.18 p.m.

  That means the principal will be away all weekend. That her house will be empty. And that’s where they have to look if they’re to stand any chance of finding something that explains who Adriana Lopez really is.

  Anna-Karin fishes up the key-ring from the table. It jingles a little as she puts it into her pocket.

  Vanessa is curled up on the sofa. Wille’s laptop is so hot against her thighs it almost burns her.

  ‘Christ, you really pound away at those keys – you’re going to break it,’ Wille says.

  ‘Your computer’s already broken,’ says Vanessa. ‘The fan’s bust.’

  ‘Since when did you become a computer expert?’ Wille scoffs.

  Vanessa grits her teeth. Just let me save the world in peace.

  Minoo has got them all to set up alternative email addresses that they can use when they chat. Vanessa isn’t sure how necessary that is. Would an ancient evil really have learned how to use the Net?

  But who’s to say which security measures are necessary? Rebecka had died. Each time Vanessa remembers, it’s like a slap in the face.

  ‘What are you doing that’s so secret? Are you surfing porn?’ Wille asks.

  He moves closer to her on the sofa.

  ‘Can’t you leave me alone for five minutes?’ She shoves him away.

  Ida has taken over the discussion on the screen with her constant nitpicking. She’s demanding they take a vote on whether or not to break into the principal’s house this weekend. When she doesn’t
get an answer within half a second, she resends the question, over and over again, like a disruptive five-year old.

  I’m in favour, Vanessa types, and is met with everybody else’s agreement.

  Wille crawls closer and tries to put his head in her lap.

  ‘Stop it, you wanker! Can’t you let me breathe?’ Vanessa says.

  ‘But what’s so important?’ Wille whines.

  ‘It’s private!’

  Wille crawls back to the other end of the sofa.

  ‘You’re chatting to your other boyfriend,’ he says.

  He tries to sound like he’s kidding, but she isn’t fooled. She can’t be bothered to answer. He starts prodding her thighs with his sock-clad toe. On the screen Minoo asks if they should take Nicolaus with them. The thought of having him there during a break-in makes Vanessa smile. Wille misinterprets it, of course, and thinks she finds him funny despite herself.

  ‘Come on, tell me who it is!’ he pleads. ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me!’ His big toe prods her thigh so hard that the computer bounces in her lap. She logs out of the chat and slams it shut with a bang.

  She tries to glare at Wille, but he’s looking so good right now that she loses her train of thought. His hair is all over the place and his smile exuberant. He’s wearing the grey track suit bottoms she likes, even thought they’re ugly and baggy.

  ‘Vanessa?’ Wille’s mother, Sirpa, calls from the kitchen. ‘Would you like to stay for dinner?’

  ‘Yes, please!’

  Sometimes Vanessa wishes Sirpa were her mother. Sirpa is always kind and considerate and she makes the best food Vanessa’s ever tasted. She doesn’t nag or criticise.

  ‘What’s for dinner, Mum?’ Wille shouts.

  ‘Spaghetti Bolognese.’

  Wille looks at Vanessa and whistles.

  I love him, Vanessa thinks. None of that other stuff matters. We’re going to be all right.

  Because there is ‘other stuff’, a down-side to Wille’s childish charm. He still lives with his mother. He has no job. Of course, there are hardly any jobs to be had in the town, but that’s not the point: the point is that he seems happy with things as they are. He makes a bit of money dealing for Jonte in Engelsfors and the even smaller backwaters hidden in the surrounding forest. He squanders it on clothes, computer games, and presents for Sirpa. Wille likes to buy nice things for his mother. And Sirpa is always happy and teary-eyed when he gives her an expensive perfume or a new radio for the kitchen. The notion that he ought to be contributing to the rent or buying food instead doesn’t occur to either of them.

  But when Vanessa sees Wille in moments like this, she feels there’s hope for him. She just has to get him to realise he’s too good to be hanging out with the likes of Jonte and his gang of losers. Too good to get stuck in Engelsfors for ever.

  Minoo logs out and puts the computer to sleep.

  She had been expecting Ida to cause trouble but she still feels frustrated.

  Minoo’s mother had taught her that all people have their ‘explanation’: a combination of chemistry, inheritance, childhood experiences and learned behaviour. Even when Kevin Månsson was terrorising everyone at nursery, her mother was explaining that there was probably a reason for it.

  Minoo wonders if Ida can be explained. Did her parents bully her in the way she bullies other people? Or does she think she’s being funny when she’s mean? Does she know how much she hurts people? She must – right?

  It dawns on her that she’s never really talked to Ida properly. Only when the whole group’s been together, and it’s obvious that nobody likes her. Maybe it’s not so strange that she had become instantly defensive. Perhaps they hadn’t given her a chance to be anything but a bitch.

  Minoo picks up her mobile and calls Ida. The phone rings at the other end. Minoo’s relieved: Ida isn’t going to answer. But then a ring is cut short and there’s rustling in the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  Minoo considers hanging up.

  ‘Hello?’ Ida repeats impatiently.

  ‘Hi, it’s me … Minoo.’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’

  Ida groans. ‘No. I’m thrilled to hear from you.’

  Minoo regrets having called her on the spur of the moment. She should have prepared herself, laid out a strategy.

  ‘Are you just going to huff into the phone or what?’ Ida sighs.

  ‘Can’t we stop this?’ Minoo says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know we can never be friends –the five of us, I mean – but do we have to argue all the time?’

  ‘If someone argues with me, I argue back.’

  Talking to Ida feels like banging your head against a wall. A particularly hard one.

  ‘But it isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Minoo responds.

  ‘Why don’t you say so to Fatso, the slut and the junkie?’

  It’s as if a bolt of lightning just struck her head. ‘Can’t you stop being so fucking immature?’ Minoo shouts.

  Ida giggles and Minoo knows she’s lost.

  ‘I’m speaking the truth,’ Ida says calmly. ‘If people can’t take it, it’s not my problem.’

  ‘You know what?’ Minoo says. ‘I hope you’re next. The world would be a much better place if you were dead.’

  She hangs up and comes close to smashing her phone against the wall. Instead she throws it on to the bed where it bounces. She wishes she was the kind of person who could rip down curtains, throw glasses and plates, topple bookshelves, tear down entire houses to vent her anger.

  She was trying to hold the group together for Rebecka’s sake, and instead she had said the worst thing she could possibly say. Not even Linnéa or Anna-Karin, both of whom has much more reason to hate Ida, has said anything like that to her: the one thing no one should ever say to another person.

  22

  MINOO’S BODY IS pumping with adrenalin as she makes her way to Adriana Lopez’s house, which is about ten minutes’ walk from school in an area known as Lilla Lugnet.

  Here, the houses are spaced further apart and there are more empty plots. The blackened ruin of a burned-down house is waiting to be demolished. It looks eerie in the moonlight. Rumour has it that there was an underground swinger’s club in the basement. Supposedly married couples used to meet up there at night to share partners and bodily fluids. A jealous woman was said to have set the place on fire. Apparently a few people had died in the flames, and their spirits can be heard some nights, moaning and sighing with pleasure and pain.

  Minoo shivers and zips her jacket to her chin. When she passes the charred remains of the house, she realises she’s pricked up her ears but she can’t hear any randy ghosts.

  Her heart nearly stops when a black-clad figure steps out of the shadows at the edge of the property. Minoo is about to run when the figure raises its hand in greeting.

  It’s Linnéa.

  They walk down the street together. Minoo is painfully conscious of each and every window they pass, the curious eyes that might follow them. She’s starting to regret having agreed to break into the house with invisible Vanessa.

  The general understanding was that Minoo would come along since she’s the ‘cleverest’ of them. Flattery had won over fear. How desperate for affirmation can you get? she wonders. She becomes aware that Linnéa is smiling. ‘What’s so funny?’ she whispers.

  ‘I was just thinking that this probably isn’t your kind of weekend activity.’

  Minoo knows she’s a bit of a goodie-two-shoes, but she hates other people to point it out. ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘Relax – we know she won’t be back until tomorrow,’ Linnéa whispers. She looks excited. As if she were on an adventure.

  They turn on to another road and glimpse Ida crouching in the bushes as look-out. If she sees anyone coming she’ll warn Anna-Karin, who is standing guard closer to the house. Anna-Karin is invaluable since she can get passers-by to choose a different route. But they hadn’t dared coun
t on Ida, which is why she’s been given a task that’s somewhat redundant.

  Minoo is relieved she can’t see Ida’s face in the shadows. She hasn’t been able to look her in the eye since the phone call.

  ‘Couldn’t she have stayed at home?’ Linnéa mumbles.

  ‘We have to do this together,’ Minoo says, and feels like a massive hypocrite.

  The street they walk along is narrow, the houses fewer and older. Anna-Karin is standing on a little stretch of public land between two high fences. She looks at Minoo and Linnéa nervously as they pass.

  ‘Look,’ Linnéa murmurs, nodding at Nicolaus’s car, which is hidden in the shadow of a big tree.

  He’s waiting there in case they have to make a quick getaway. He doesn’t like the plan, but he knows there’s no other way.

  They continue for another ten metres and there, at the end of the street, is the principal’s house.

  The property is surrounded by a freshly painted white wooden fence, which almost glows in the dark. The garden is overgrown in a way that seems intentional. A flagstone path starts at the gate, continues under a tall birch tree and leads up to the front door. The white wooden house has two floors and is adorned with elaborately carved cornices. Two of the upstairs windows are set with an abstract pattern of stained glass, like church windows.

  The handle on the gate presses down and the gate opens by itself. Minoo’s heart nearly stops before she realises Vanessa is standing beside it, invisible.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Vanessa whispers. She’s trained herself to be heard but not seen for tonight. Minoo nods, facing the spot where she thinks Vanessa is standing.