The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘It was very uncomfortable. I don’t know what he got out of it, but he looked over at Dejan, gave him a quick nod, and said, “Let’s do this.” So I sat Dejan down in my chair and he showed me the tattoo. A black, two-headed eagle, big as a fist, and level with his heart. It’s a well-known motif, but this time it was apparently something to do with his homeland.’

  ‘Albania.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Dejan Friedrichs,’ I say. ‘Could that have been his name?’

  ‘I never heard his surname.’

  Dejan Friedrichs. I was after him once, for an arson attack on a pub on Sveavägen. The owner had declined the offer of protection from one of the cartels, and the price of independence turned out to be a licence for someone to set fire to the premises. I never interviewed Dejan, and I don’t think he could ever be tied to the attack, but I had a feeling that it was him. He earned a living as an assassin for Silver, who ran parts of the Stockholm underworld at the time.

  ‘It sounds like him,’ I say, and sip my coffee.

  I wonder why he introduced himself as Grim. He should have been using another name by then. Maybe he still used it informally?

  From the corner of my eye, I notice that Anna is doing her best to appear not to be listening. Sam makes me think more clearly, makes me more focused. I feel awake and alert in her presence.That’s the way it’s always been, as though the pieces fall into place.

  ‘So Grim sat on the sofa and fiddled with his phone, and I started work on the tattoo, anaesthetising, cleaning, and so on, but I was pretty sure that the result wasn’t going to be great, definitely not worth fifty thousand. So when I was about halfway through I suggested to Grim that I take the first twenty-five thousand and that would be plenty, but he said we had a deal, and deals are not to be broken.’

  ‘Did they seem to know each other well? Him and Dejan?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I got the impression that Dejan was a client. Grim was on the phone pretty much the whole time. When you’re sitting in the studio, working intensively — I was incredibly tired, don’t forget — when you’re sitting there just working, it’s like you’re in a world of your own, and although I wasn’t listening, I just suddenly heard his voice right behind me. It sounded as though he was sorting out all kinds of stuff at the same time. I think he was trying to help the guy leave the country. Money was mentioned, too, in those calls. Something had run into difficulties, and Grim sounded annoyed, hung up and rang someone else, told them it was going to cost more than he’d thought. That sort of thing. It sounded hectic, like he had a deadline to make, and I was getting quite worried because Dejan’s tattoo wasn’t professionally done. It was an amateur job, probably done in the clink, and it was uneven in the skin. I had to scrape, scrape like fuck. I wouldn’t have wanted to be there when the anaesthetic wore off. The guy looked completely flogged, but Grim didn’t seem to be bothered. Oh yeah, I remember him taking a pill while I was busy with Dejan. It wasn’t exactly the kind of packet you get at the chemist’s. I remember that.’

  She looks at me as though this means something.

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  ‘Anyway, I was finished; it was about half-two in the morning, and I’d taken care of the wound and all that. It was so deep that I could see his chest muscles, can you imagine? Mental. I gave both of them instructions about how to take care of the wound. I supplied them with things that might help him through the first few days. Grim gave me the remaining twenty-five, and thanked me for a successful collaboration. Just as he was leaving, he leant over to me and said something, something I didn’t know what to make of.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Sam clears her throat, drinks some more beer. Her eyes flit between me and her feet.

  ‘He whispered that I smelt like an old friend.’

  She goes quiet for a moment, and Anna has finished counting the till and is now dusting off the bottles covering the wall behind her, one at a time.

  ‘I took it to mean that he trusted me,’ Sam went on. ‘As if I were one of his friends. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes.’

  That wasn’t what Grim meant. For a second, I’m back in Salem. I’m sixteen, watching my friend fake his mum’s handwriting; he’s standing in the playground at Rönninge High, holding up his first home-made ID card. Coming back from the young offenders’ summer camp, able to copy bankcards without it registering in the ATM — that must have been how it started. For over ten years, he’s only been recorded in the Whereabouts Unknown register … He’s not dead, but he doesn’t exist either.

  Suddenly I fall into a heap in front of Sam, and she grabs my arm, holds me up.

  ‘Leo,’ she says, looking worried. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ I mumble, and turn to Anna, ask her for a glass of water.

  Forty-eight hours have passed since Rebecca Salomonsson was found dead. Those critical first few days are about to run out. The perpetrator is about to dissolve, disappear. At that moment, I receive another text from the unknown number.

  I think you should watch the news

  XIV

  SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD STABBED AT CAMP, SERIOUSLY INJURED.

  Julia stood in front of the telly in my room with the remote in her hand, and read the headline on teletext. She’d just called my name. I was in the bathroom when she did so, and I wrapped the towel around me and came out, and stood next to her. The sun was shining outside. It was my parents’ last day at work, and it was the first time I’d had a shower with someone.

  ‘It’s that camp,’ Julia said, surprisingly composed. ‘Outside Jumkil. It’s the camp he’s at.’

  She searched, perhaps subconsciously, for my hand as she read. Once she’d found it and I felt her grip, I realised it was deliberate.

  At a summer camp for boys between fifteen and twenty, a seventeen-year-old boy had been stabbed. Both police and ambulance had attended. The boy had been taken to Uppsala University Hospital and was being treated in intensive care. His condition was serious, but stable.

  Something knotted itself deep in my stomach, and I struggled to breathe. ‘Oh my God,’ I heard my voice say.

  ‘Call them,’ she said and got the phone. ‘Call them. Here’s the number.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if y—’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t dare. If he was okay, we should have heard something. He should have been in touch.’

  I dialled the number. The engaged tone bounced back. I rang again, and got the same tone.

  ‘Ring again.’

  Julia stared at the telly with a neutral expression. At the fifth attempt, I heard the ringing tone. Someone — a man — answered and, as calmly as I could manage, I said that we had seen the news on teletext and we wanted to make sure that our friend was okay. When I said his name, the man confirmed that Grim wasn’t injured, but that he’d been very upset by the incident, since it was his friend.

  ‘It was his friend who got stabbed?’ I said. ‘Who?’

  ‘No, no,’ the man said, ‘John is friends with the boy who held the knife.’ He went quiet. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that,’ he added. ‘Don’t spread it. Everything here is just upside down right now.’

  THE CAMP WASN’T SUSPENDED because of the incident. They said it was important for everyone to work through what had happened together. That same day, Julia and her parents went to Jumkil to see Grim. The following day, Julia and I went, after Julia had asked if he wanted to see me. He didn’t really want to, but he did it for my sake. I needed to see him, needed to check that he actually was all right. And I missed him.

  According to Julia, Grim seemed shaken. He hadn’t said much when they’d seen him, but the psychologist who was now working full time at the camp had explained that Grim was still in shock. Barely forty-eight hours had passe
d.

  ‘John never says that much,’ Julia said on the bus on the way there. ‘But, I don’t know, something is different. I’m hoping it’s just the shock.’

  I searched for her hand, but this time she moved it away, looked out the window. Light summer rain was falling. The townscape was slowly making way for greenery, which grew ever thicker the closer we got to Jumkil. Julia was fiddling with her necklace.

  JUMKIL YOUNG OFFENDERS’ INSTITUTE was a square, light-grey building, two storeys high. It was just visible between the trees as the bus swung round a tight bend. I only caught a glimpse of it, but I still noticed the fence, which made it look more like a prison. The bus stop was a couple of hundred metres further on, and rather than going back down the road towards the institution, we walked down a narrow gravel track towards the summer camp. Julia seemed distracted, walking with her hands in the pockets of her thin cardigan, her gaze fixed on the treetops or the sky.

  The youth summer camp at Jumkil comprised five red wooden buildings with white window frames, arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. It didn’t look like the sort of place where someone could get stabbed and sustain life-threatening injuries, but then most things are not what they seem. It was run by three youth workers. They were all men, ten years older than me, broad shouldered, with tattooed arms and warm smiles. ‘Role model’ wasn’t quite the right phrase, but that was the first thing I thought. One of them introduced himself without smiling, and showed us to one of the five houses.

  The surroundings were warm and inviting; but as Julia and I approached the threshold, I had the sensation you’d get from a formal visiting room. There was something about the compulsory nature of the place — the fact that Grim had been ordered to participate in the camp — that made it feel uncomfortable.

  ‘We don’t actually have a visiting room,’ the youth worker said, ‘but we’ve made a common room into a temporary one. You’re from Salem, aren’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then you know how it is. The only positive thing about coming from a place like that is that everyone’s got their eye on you. If you do put a foot wrong, we can help you back on track. That’s what we’re trying to do here.’

  ‘By giving them knives?’

  ‘It was a table knife. He’d stolen it, and sharpened it himself.’ The youth worker shrugged. ‘I’ll be outside. Let me know when you’re done.’

  The common room was a mess of tables and chairs, not in any particular order; there was a pool table and a dartboard, but no darts. A big TV on one wall was silently showing music videos. On a noticeboard there were flyers and leaflets from various organisations. I recognised several from Rönninge High because they’d visited and told us about their work against crime and drugs.

  Grim sat reading at one of the tables. He had changed during the three weeks he’d been away. He was tanned, but he’d shaved his head. Instead of his mop of blond hair, he only had short, straw-coloured stubble left. As we walked in, he smiled weakly and put the book down.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Julia and I sat down at the table, which was covered in carved doodles, spiky and uneven, as though they’d been made with keys or something. Some had been coloured in with pencil. I felt the carvings with my fingertips. Grim looked like a boy who’d suddenly got very old.

  ‘How are things?’ I asked.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Only a week left now.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Pretty good deal,’ I attempted. ‘Nicking the travel kitty gets you a month out in the country.’

  Grim chuckled, but the laugh never reached his eyes.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He sniffed the air. ‘You smell good.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘It reminds me of the smell of our place,’ he said.

  ‘Sometimes your sense of smell isn’t as good as you think,’ Julia mumbled, and I was sure she was blushing, but I couldn’t see because she was sitting next to me.

  ‘That’s not what people say around here,’ Grim said.

  ‘Do you get cred for your sense of smell?’ I asked.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Grim said with a smile, rubbing his hand across his stubbly head. ‘Just that … it’s okay here.’

  ‘Your mate got stabbed the other day,’ I said.

  ‘He wasn’t my fucking mate,’ Grim hissed, and a dark shadow shrouded his eyes. ‘Jimmy’s my mate.’

  ‘Jimmy?’ I said.

  ‘The one who did the stabbing.’

  JIMMY WAS A PALE, wiry guy with long brown hair, Grim explained. His dad drank too much, and his mum was even worse. She didn’t live with them anymore; she’d moved in with a Finland-Swede from Botkyrka who supplied her with drugs. Jimmy was also the victim of bullying at school. So one day he’d had enough and was halfway through smashing this kid’s face in with a staple gun before anyone could stop him. That was how he’d ended up at the camp. An alliance had formed between five of the campers, led by a guy called Dragomir, an ice-hockey player from Vällingby. To begin with, Jimmy had kept out of the way, as had Grim. That’s how they’d found each other. ‘Found each other’ — those were the words Grim used.

  ‘We didn’t do that much,’ Grim said. ‘We just talked mostly, about lots of different stuff.’

  After a week, it had emerged that Grim had a unique sense of smell. He had, for example, found the cupboard containing the petty cash — money that he and Jimmy had split. The others soon found out. They took Jimmy’s share of the money, but let Grim keep his. Grim then split his share with Jimmy, without telling anyone.

  ‘But I didn’t stand up for him,’ he said, and seemed ashamed. ‘Not in front of the others. I was with them more than with him, even if we did meet up and talk about stuff in secret.’

  About two weeks into the camp, Grim was walking across the yard one evening after playing basketball in one of the buildings, which was kitted out as a fully functioning sports hall. Behind one of the houses he could hear a group trying to keep their excited voices down. He saw Dragomir’s silhouette and several others standing around him.

  ‘It’s time, you little slag.’

  Grim went over to the huddle and looked down at what was waiting in the centre of it: straight brown hair and Jimmy’s terrified face.

  ‘Not my hair,’ he whispered. ‘Please, not the hair.’

  Dragomir was holding clippers, which started buzzing intensively.

  ‘Shall we play hairdressers?’ Dragomir asked, and held them up towards Grim.

  ‘I looked Jimmy in the eye,’ Grim went on. ‘Shook my head, and took a couple of steps back. Once my back was turned, I heard the rasping noise of the clippers as they worked their way through his hair.’

  Grim had tears in his eyes. That surprised me. Julia stretched her hand out towards her brother’s, but he moved it away. I looked at his shaved head.

  ‘Is that why you …?’

  ‘After that,’ he said, rubbing his eyes quickly, blinking a couple of times, ‘a day or so later, he was sitting in the dining room, and I asked if I could sit next to him. He just shrugged, but I was happy that at least he hadn’t said no. There were still little tufts of hair here and there; it looked awful, and I asked him if he wanted me to sort it out. He just looked at me and smiled, shook his head like it really didn’t matter anymore. I’m sure he had a table knife, but at the end of lunch I noticed that he was eating with just a fork. He must’ve hidden it away at some point during lunch, right in front of me. A few days later, he put that knife in Dragomir’s stomach, in the same place where they’d shaved Jimmy’s hair off. That’s what happened,’ Grim concluded. Silence fell, and it was heavy.

  WE LEFT JUMKIL that evening.
/>   ‘See you in a week,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that’ll be the end of the quiet life.’

  He knew. I was sure of it. He had smelt her on me. I think he’d smelt me on her, too, but he didn’t say so, at least not so I heard it.

  ‘It will be good to get you home,’ Julia said, and stroked his back. At first, her touch made him tense up, but then he let her carry on.

  ‘WHAT HAPPENS IF you put twenty kids together, all with similar problems to John, if not worse?’ Julia muttered, on the bus journey home. ‘This is what happens. People get hurt, and the people they’re supposed to be helping come away from there much worse than when they arrived. It’s insane. I don’t understand what Social Services are thinking.’

  ‘I think he knows,’ I said quietly. ‘About us.’

  ‘He doesn’t know it. He just suspects it.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘He’s my brother. I know how he works.’

  ‘What happens if he finds out? Shouldn’t we tell him instead?’

  Julia didn’t answer. I asked her if everything was all right, and she met my gaze and smiled, said that, yes, everything was all right. Even though I suspected that it might not be true, I chose to believe it.

  Me and Grim could talk about everything. Everything except Julia. He’d often asked if I was interested in someone, or insinuated things about some girl we knew. I always answered him vaguely. When it came to Julia, I couldn’t predict how he might react if I told him.