The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  What were you doing while I was in the car with Dad? Where were you? Were you alone? I do this a lot nowadays, choose an early memory and think about it, about those early years, before we met. When we were strangers.

  IX

  When morning arrives, I’m sitting there in the flat, sleepless and red-eyed. The early-morning radio is playing some kind of insane jazz to resurrect any corpses that may have forgotten about the radio before collapsing. It’s heavy and angry and it never seems to end, just rising and falling in hasty snippets. Sam. I’m going to meet Sam. Her voice has stayed in my head since our conversation yesterday. I’d almost forgotten how it sounded — how husky yet smooth it is.

  I look at my phone.

  I hear you’re looking for a murderer

  Someone wants to make themselves known. I’m supposed to know that someone’s watching me.

  The psychologist I’ve been seeing for a while is well known; his face often crops up in the media. I don’t know how I ended up here; I just know I’m not the one paying for it. To begin with, I went to a psychologist who specialised in treating police officers recovering from trauma, but after a while I was referred to another. This one has tanned skin, silver-flecked stubble, and a square jaw. He often talks about his upcoming projects: appearing in a television series about mental health, talks in high schools, the book about his childhood that he’s planning to write. And then: ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good. I suppose.’

  ‘Summer’s nearly over.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Autumn’s on its way.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say, looking down at my phone, flipping between the picture of Rebecca Salomonsson’s motionless face and the anonymous texts.

  ‘Are you waiting for something?’

  ‘Eh?’

  He looks at my phone.

  ‘Could you put that away?’

  ‘No.’

  He smiles and carefully stretches out his arms, leans back. He does everything at my pace. He claims that’s how we move forward. The truth is that I haven’t said anything significant for at least a month. At first he was interested in me, probably because he knew about my background, but his interest soon cooled off. During our meetings I smoke and drink water. I lie when he asks why I’m there, what I think my problems are. Sometimes I shout at him; sometimes I cry; mostly I don’t say anything. The hour often passes in silence. Sometimes I’ll sit there for the whole session; other times, I’ll just get up and leave the room without a word.

  This time, I leave the psychologist’s room after forty-five minutes.

  THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT this city. Something about the way the besuited barista smiles at the well-dressed, but no one else; something about the sharp elbows on the underground. Something in the way we never make eye contact, about how we’re never going to see each other. Everyone’s waiting for God to invent something new, something to make it all easier to bear.

  Most things in Stockholm used to be something else. Everything can be re-used, renewed. Nothing has any real substance. Buildings that used to be apartments have been turned into shops, and vice versa. The restaurant a short distance from police HQ on Kungsholmsgatan used to be a hairdresser’s. A goth-shop on Ringvägen is located in a former strip club. A strip club on Birger Jarlsgatan used to be an antique shop.

  I stand on Södermalm and watch as the lunchtime rush chokes Götgatan until all the traffic is at a standstill. Clumps of pedestrians wait on the pavements by every red light. I’m wearing shades, because I always wear shades before and after visiting my psychologist. I head off to the small streets east of Götgatan, and take a Serax when I see the S TATTOO sign. Sam’s studio used to be a 1950s convenience store.

  The original door has been replaced with a black Plexiglas pane behind thick bars. It’s closed but unlocked. Inside, in the chair, sits a young man with vomit-green hair and piercings in his face, topless, leaning forward with his eyes closed, as though he’s asleep. Sam isn’t there.

  But then she appears from a little alcove in the wall furthest from the entrance. She’s holding a bottle of red ink, and I involuntarily take a deep breath, raising my hand to knock on the door.

  With one hand on the door handle and the other resting on the doorframe, Sam is standing there in front of me, her expression suddenly darker, her jaw muscles straining.

  Behind her, the green-haired young man lifts his head and looks inquisitively at us.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Are you going to keep those on?’

  ‘Eh?’ But then I remember, and I take my shades off. ‘No, I’ve been to see my psychologist.’

  ‘Right,’ she says, apparently confused, and looks down at the little strip of concrete floor that separates us. She lets go of the door. ‘I’m with a customer. You’ll have to wait.’

  ‘That’s fine, I’m not in a hurry.’

  Inside S TATTOO there is a strong smell of sterilising fluid and ink. I sit down on the large dark-brown leather sofa. It’s worn and frayed. The sofa is in the corner of the studio by the hole in the wall where Sam stores her supply of ink, needles, bandages, antiseptic soap, book-keeping ring-binders, and everything else. As well as film posters, the walls of S TATTOO are adorned with photos on the theme of body parts. Backs, shoulders, necks, faces, hands, stomachs, chests, and thighs — all of them tattooed by Sam.

  She’s wearing a pair of dark jeans and a white shirt. A snake’s tail is just visible, winding its way along her forearm and continuing on under the shirtsleeve onto her upper arm. She puts on a new pair of disposable gloves, and carries on filling in the youngster’s back tattoo — a creature from the underworld with the face of a bull and the wings of a dragon, in black, red, and yellow. The electric needle looks and sounds like a dentist’s drill, and Sam controls the speed with a foot-pedal.

  The young man’s face goes from pale to bright red and back to pale again; he’s holding on to the chair as if he’d go flying off if he let go.

  ‘I think we’re going to need another sitting,’ Sam says calmly. ‘The only thing I’ve got left to do is to fill in the other wing.’

  ‘Hmm.’ His face is white, his eyes wide open, his lips dry. ‘That’s okay.’ He looks embarrassed.

  He leaves S TATTOO, and Sam is standing there with her back to me. It looks like she’s watching him, but I doubt it. She takes a deep breath and turns around, walks past me into the storeroom, and comes back with two cans of pop. She sits on the sofa, as far away from me as she possibly can. She opens her can and takes a swig, and I’m struck by the fact that Sam looks even better now than she did a year ago.

  ‘I need your help,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve noticed.’ She looks at the clock on the wall. ‘I’ve got ten minutes.’

  I pull my phone out and go to the picture.

  ‘Do you recognise her?’

  Sam looks at the picture, then looks at me.

  ‘You are unbelievable. How the hell can you just flash a dead woman in my face without any warning?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I just … sorry. Can you have a look and see if you recognise her?’

  Sam puts her hand out. When I pass her the phone, my fingers touch hers.

  ‘You’re blushing,’ I say.

  ‘I’m hot. And upset by this.’

  She studies the picture, resolute, blinks slowly with her lips drawn to a thin line, and frowns. It’s hard to look at a picture of a dead person. She hands back the phone as though she wants nothing to do with it. Our fingers touch again.

  ‘Rebecca,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it?’

  I move closer to her. In her face I see glimpses of the past: I remember what Sam looks like when she laughs. When she cries. When she’s asleep. I remember that her face looks peaceful then, l
ike a child’s.

  ‘How do you know her name?’

  ‘I met her once, a few months back, at a party. She was there trying to sell. But I didn’t get her name then; I didn’t find that out till yesterday.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that. Even you just sitting here is risky.’

  Threats had started coming in when it became known that Sam Falk was seeing a cop, and there were fewer customers. But that also meant that others came instead — those who’d previously gone elsewhere. Once it had all blown over, Sam’s finances were more or less back where they had been in the first place. Then we split up, and I don’t know what’s happened since then, other than that she still hears things.

  ‘She died in my block, Sam,’ I say, looking at her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She went out with Miroslav Djukic. Does that name sound familiar?’

  Sam raises an eyebrow.

  ‘They were together? I thought he was dead.’

  ‘He is. But you know who he was?’

  ‘Not much more than that. A dosser from Norsborg.’

  ‘Felix thought she might have been staying with one of his friends.’

  ‘I don’t know people like that anymore.’

  I nod along, although I know that’s not true.

  ‘Can you tell me anything else about her? Anything at all?’

  Sam bites her bottom lip. This has always had the effect of distracting me, and when she notices my stare she stops abruptly.

  ‘Do you know where she lived?’ I ask.

  ‘No, just that she didn’t live at Chapmansgården.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘A couple of months ago I had a customer who would sometimes spend the night there, when her boyfriend got violent. She told me that no one can live there; it’s not that sort of place. You can sleep, get fed and a change of clothes, but it’s not exactly a place you’d call home.’

  I scratch my cheek. I do that when I’m thinking. At least that’s what Sam once told me.

  ‘Something doesn’t add up — I just can’t work out what it is.’

  I tell her what I know about Rebecca Salomonsson, and how illogical her death seems, how efficient the perpetrator has been.

  ‘And according to Felix,’ Sam says when I finish, ‘there was no one who wanted to do her any harm?’

  ‘Not as far as he knew. He covered himself, naturally, by explaining that he doesn’t know everything.’

  ‘Has it occurred to …?’ Sam stops herself.

  She bites her bottom lip again. I look down.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘This might not be about her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This might not be about a person; this might actually be about a place.’

  ‘You mean Chapmansgården?’

  ‘There are loads of little hidden-away places in this town, indoors and out. Alleyways, parks, junkie neighbourhoods, basements. People like Rebecca Salomonsson have a tendency to be in those sorts of places. If it was about her, why not just get rid of her in one of them? Why Chapmansgården, where the risk of being caught is so much greater?’

  ‘Maybe they were in a hurry,’ I say. ‘Maybe they were chasing her?’

  ‘Do you just get into bed if you’re being chased?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Especially not if you’re in such an open place, like Chapmansgården,’ I add. ‘Anyone can walk straight in.’

  Maybe the question is not why she died. The question might be why she died at Chapmansgården. Or perhaps why did someone die at Chapmansgården. Something stirs, in a dark corner of my chest. I know this feeling: the problem isn’t solved, the question hasn’t been answered, but the process has moved on. It’s a theory for consideration, something to work on. Work, that’s the word on my mind. It feels good.

  The door to S TATTOO swings open, and a middle-aged woman walks in and looks around.

  ‘I’ve got a fortieth-birthday present,’ she says, hesitantly.

  ‘A Chinese dragon, if I remember rightly?’ says Sam.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Maybe we could start with something a bit smaller.’

  The woman smiles, seems grateful.

  ‘Just a sec,’ Sam says and turns to me again. ‘No news about Gotland?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondering.’

  ‘Sometime in the middle of July I gave up trying to find out what happened. No one knows why those boxes were full of toys. No one knows what actually happened. The jeep that disappeared — no clues. As far as I know, I mean. If they weren’t trying to stitch me up, that is.’

  Sam raises her eyebrows.

  ‘Why would they want to do that?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very plausible.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asks.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m going back to work after the New Year.’

  ‘That’s a while away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She seems empathetic, but there’s something more in her eyes. She suddenly looks vulnerable.

  ‘Have you met someone?’

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘but I could if I wanted to.’

  I’m not trying to hurt her, but when I see the pangs of guilt in her eyes I can’t help feeling that she deserves it.

  ‘I understand,’ she says.

  ‘Are you happy?’ I ask. ‘With him?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ She gets up from the sofa. ‘Go now. I have to work.’

  I’m having trouble figuring out what she’s thinking. Then someone calls my phone, from a withheld number. I think about the text messages, wonder if it’s the sender contacting me, and I answer the call, still sitting on the sofa.

  ‘This is Leo.’

  ‘I need you at the station as soon as possible.’

  Birck. Shit. Sam looks puzzled, turns to look at the clock on the wall. She has crossed her arms underneath her small breasts, pulling her shirt taut over them.

  ‘I’m on leave.’

  ‘You’re suspended. But a number of things have turned up, and we need to interview you again.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘You know how we work, Leo. We can talk about that here.’

  I look at the clock.

  ‘I can be there in half an hour.’

  ‘We look forward to it,’ Birck says, and the sarcasm lingers on the line long after the call has ended.

  ‘Call me,’ is the last thing I say to Sam. ‘If you hear anything else,’ I add when I notice her confusion, and she nods, blushing.

  X

  The film was showing at the Rigoletto. I would rather have gone to Haninge or Södertälje, but, according to her, the Rigoletto was the only cinema worth seeing films at, as well as the one with the biggest auditorium. As we sat in front of the screen, I could see what she meant. It was as big and as wide as a tennis court.

  When we met up outside I didn’t know how to act, or what to say. Julia smiled when she saw me, and I swallowed, several times, and when she put her arm around me and gave me a long hug, I felt her lips touch my earlobe.

  Julia wanted popcorn and I paid, even though she wanted to pay herself. She held the box in her lap and I ate some of it, just reaching over the chair and taking some. Even a simple thing like that felt intimate.

  It’s moments like this that I’ll remember forever, I thought to myself. Our teachers and our parents never tired of telling us how certain things felt life-changing now, but would seem silly and exaggerated in a fe
w years’ time, but they had missed something. They’d forgotten what it was like to be sixteen. They didn’t understand us. That went for everything: we no longer spoke the same language. Everyone was scared of our generation. We were like foreigners to them.

  I thought about the film that Grim and I had made a day or so before, how distracted I’d been, and how I’d struggled not to smile the whole time.

  ‘You’re too happy,’ Grim said, looking up from behind the little camera. ‘You’re not supposed to be happy in this scene. You need to be oppressed, yeah? Just like I was.’

  ‘I get it,’ I said, but however hard I tried, the scene still turned out badly.

  Because I was happy. I was neither quiet nor withdrawn, yet I always felt like I was. Dad said that was normal, but I didn’t know what he meant. Now I didn’t feel like that anymore. Suddenly I felt invincible.

  Julia was looking at me for ages. Then she opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself as the lights dimmed and the heavy red curtains opened, and I remembered nothing from the first half of the film: all I could think of was what Julia had been about to say but I didn’t dare ask about.

  AT SOME POINT during The Saint, Julia put her hand on my thigh. It was there long enough to send a jolt through me, but she suddenly whipped it away, and went stiff in the seat next to me. She leant over, and I felt her breath in my ear.

  ‘Sorry. I meant to put it on your hand.’

  I put my hand out in the darkness, and she carefully placed her palm on the back of my hand. Now that we were touching, it was even more difficult to think, impossible to watch the film. After a while she started stroking my hand carefully with her fingertips, as though she were exploring it — the downy hairs, the veins, and the knuckles. I didn’t know what to do, so I took a deep breath and hoped that she wouldn’t notice. My heart was threatening to strangle me, as though it were now in my throat and about to pop out of my mouth and into my lap.

  AFTERWARDS WE WALKED THROUGH a warm Stockholm towards Central Station. She put her hand in mine.