The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘I like your top,’ I said.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone like Jumper?’

  Julia didn’t answer; she drank. I carried on instead: ‘At school, when we walked past each other … you said you were confused. You meant that you were confused about school …’ I looked at her. ‘Right?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, with a faint smile. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I don’t say so, I’m asking.’

  ‘And I’m answering.’

  I leant towards her, about to say something, but I was interrupted by Grim, who was back, and who sank down beside us.

  A while later, everything started spinning around me, and when I got up to go over to the bushes for a piss, it was like the whole recreation ground was sloping. All the shadows, sitting there with their bottles and cans, went blurry round the edges, and I stumbled on something, but I got up again.

  When I woke up, I was lying sideways across a bed. I still had my clothes on. I moved my head to see what time it was and it really hurt, made me close my eyes. I was at home, at least.

  My hand reached for something — water — but the bottle on my bedside table was too far away. I rolled over and grabbed it. It was empty. It was then, as I looked at the empty bottle, that I noticed my hand. It was covered in red spots.

  I REMEMBERED GETTING UP to go for a piss in the bushes. I remembered the fear I felt that I couldn’t explain. After that, everything was shrouded in mist until I woke up. I looked at my hand and tried to recall whether I’d eaten anything before I went home. The red might be ketchup or tomato sauce. I lifted my hand to my nose to smell it, but couldn’t detect anything other than the faint whiff of cigarette smoke that clung to my skin. I got out of bed, and tried to work out whether I had pains anywhere other than in my head. I didn’t.

  WHEN I CAME BACK from the bushes, Grim and Julia had gone. I asked someone we’d been sitting with where they’d gone, and he mumbled something about them having fallen out.

  ‘Why did they fall out?’

  ‘Fucked if I know.’

  I’d gone to look for them, nervous. I remember the track that played again and again that night, ‘I Just Want to Celebrate’, and how the nausea twisted up inside me, and how I hobbled away from the recreation ground, with bright spots sweeping across my field of vision, and wondering if someone had put something in my bottle.

  I WENT for a shower. I’d left the window open in my room to let a bit of air in. I wondered where my parents could be, but then I remembered the flyer I’d seen on the kitchen table — something about an August flea market in Rönninge. I was home alone and scrubbing my hands to get rid of the red. Slowly, it dawned on me: it must be blood. Under the water it dissolved quickly, and streaks of red ran down and turned pink against the white bathtub. As I washed my face, my top lip throbbed. It was tender and a bit swollen, and that’s how it came back to me.

  I’D GIVEN UP looking for Grim and Julia, and tried to find someone else instead — anyone. A girl was standing leaning against a lamppost not far from the rec, and I walked over to her. I couldn’t remember what I asked her, but I could still feel her body against mine. She was small and skinny, like Julia. I must have pushed myself against her. She pushed me away, and I tried again, but this time I got a smack in the face. Maybe from her, maybe from someone else; that sequence was unclear. I fell to the ground, I think, not from the smack, but because of my bad balance. Then: someone laughing, mockingly. Humiliation, how it twisted inside me.

  I lay there, ashamed, until they’d gone, and after that I headed home. Somewhere along the way, I met Tim. It seemed like he was on the way home, too. Had he been on the rec? I hadn’t seen him.

  I stopped him.

  ‘So you’re back,’ I slurred.

  We stood on the pavement, in the gloom between two streetlamps. Tim seemed sober. He smelt healthy, like fabric softener.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home.’ He squinted. ‘What’s happened to your lip?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It looks like you’ve been hit.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I screamed, and he stared at me. ‘You knew Julia, didn’t you? Julia Grimberg.’

  Hearing the name surprised him. Something flickered in his eyes.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Instead I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him backwards, forcing him to take a step back.

  ‘Let me go,’ he said. And then, quieter: ‘You will regret it if you don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘If you don’t let me go.’

  I remembered that I laughed. Not at him, but everything else. How absurd everything was, how complicated it had got. I laughed at the fear I felt, laughed at Grim. At Julia. And then I hit Tim, again and again. Once in the face, in the stomach, between his legs. He offered no resistance, just lay there looking at me with an empty stare, which is what provoked me even more. That look reminded me of Grim’s and there was something unsettling about the whole thing.

  It might have been the hangover, or Julia, or Grim; maybe it was Tim’s blank stare and his equally empty, meaningless threats. Probably all of those things. I bent double in the shower, gasping for air.

  It is the year 2000. Mum has been dead for a year. I’m twenty-one and I’ve left Jumkil Young Offenders, I’m living in the tunnels under the city, along with the others. They don’t trust me and I don’t trust them. I daren’t sleep, worried they’ll take my stuff. To stay awake I take speed, just like everyone else. I’m rarely out in daylight and that affects my eyes, my vision is cloudy. I steal phones for a living, run around with a rucksack full. When I do eventually fall asleep I wake up with no possessions, no phones. I have to start from scratch on a comedown from the speed. Doesn’t go too well. One guy refuses to let go of his bag and I nearly kill him. Afterwards I don’t remember anything, those images don’t come back until much later.

  I leave the tunnels and move in with a friend in Alby. His name is Frank, he’s a smackhead and he gives me my first bowl. I love it and I leave the speed behind, sleep on a mattress. He’s got this girl there and she’s fit and she’s nice to me. When he’s not home we have sex. For some reason she has to leave the country a few months later and I help her, make her an ID card she can use.

  She gets on a train and I never see her again.

  The day before she leaves I’m lying on the floor, high, half-leaning against one of the cupboards. I’m out of it and I can’t focus, just see Frank has something in his hand and he crouches down in front of me. He asks me if I’ve done this before.

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘These.’ He waves one of the cards in front of me.

  ‘A few times.’

  Frank says I’m good. He asks if I can do it again, for some more gear. I say yes, but that I need the materials and the tools and that I’m wanted for a robbery and I don’t dare leave the house. Frank sorts what I need, steals it from warehouses. He comes back with the wrong stuff several times and has to take it back. He says that seems weird.

  Later he introduces me to the guy known as the Man With No Voice, Josef Abel. Through him I get to know someone who you must know. Silver. He’s the same age as me but far more powerful. Silver asks me to help him with a guy who needs to lie low for a while. I do it in exchange for heroin. Soon Silver tells me about a friend who runs a company, but the company’s about to go under. He asks me if I would take on the company in exchange for a payment. It’s a lot of money, which I can buy a shitload of junk with. So I say yes to the money and the company, and in exchange, he says, a few people might come and ask questions.

  I end up as a front for the company without realising what that entails. The law on limited companies means that it’s the shareho
lders who are ultimately responsible for the company. I’ve got fuck all to do with it but it turns out I’m the one liable when the company ends up going bust a few months later. The debt is half a million and all my gear is gone. It’s the first time I ever think about topping myself. It’s around then that I realise it would be a good time to pull off the ultimate trick, the greatest illusion of all: to disappear.

  XX

  Time, I’m running out of time. The feeling is unmistakeable, but I don’t know what to do about it. Levin has disappeared into the building, and I walk around Kungsholmen with my hands in my pockets. I’m trying to think.

  Recollections of this morning — the reporters on the doorstep — come back to me, and for some reason I can’t shake them. That feeling of being watched and hunted grows inside me, and I turn around, time and again, convinced that someone is following me. I slip into a café, a hole-in-the-wall place on a side street near Kungsholmen Square, and I choose a seat where I can see the window and the door. Out on the street, an old woman is dragging an equally old man along the road, as though they are in a hurry to get somewhere. The man seems to be resisting, until I realise that he just can’t walk any faster.

  My phone rings. I recognise the number. It’s a Salem number. I put the phone to my ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Leo, it’s Mum. I … How are things?’

  ‘Good. Has something happened to Dad?’

  ‘No, no.’ She clears her throat. ‘No, all’s well here. We were just wondering, we read about what has happened and … I just wondered if everything’s okay.’

  I close my eyes.

  ‘Everything is fine.’

  ‘Is it? Because …’

  ‘It’s no big deal. Just a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Because I was thinking, what with everything that happened in the spring, you know.’

  I haven’t told them any details, those few times I’ve been to Salem. In fact, I’ve stayed away as much as possible just to avoid that.

  ‘Micke’s worried, too.’

  ‘Tell him it’s all okay.’

  She sighs.

  ‘Mum, it’s okay. Honestly.’

  ‘Oh well, if you say so. It was nice to see you the other day,’ she says instead.

  I do my best to keep talking to her a bit longer, but before long the stress falls down onto my shoulders again and I finish the call. I drink some water and it goes down wrong, making me cough.

  Rebecca Salomonsson was robbed. She went to Chapmansgården to sleep, and someone ended her life by going in there and shooting her. She had Julia’s necklace in her hand. I try to work out whether there’s a connection between the robbery and her death, but I don’t get anywhere. I try to imagine Grim as the perpetrator, but it doesn’t fit. He would never be that careless.

  My phone vibrates.

  have you worked it out yet?

  I hesitate.

  grim?

  yes

  My pulse is racing.

  we need to meet, I write.

  yes

  where are you?

  soon

  what does that mean?

  I stare at my phone. It is mute and black, until it lights up and the ringtone vibrates through. It’s Birck. I don’t answer, and carry on waiting instead. When nothing happens, I send another text.

  hello

  Still nothing, until Birck rings again. I ignore it and drink some more water. A bus slows down and pulls up at the bus stop. A big advert covers one side of the bus: a middle-aged woman and an equally middle-aged man, both flawlessly beautiful, and the words YESTERDAY’S SKILLS, TOMORROW’S LIABILITY — KEEP YOUR CV UP TO DATE. In one corner of the café, a dad is sitting with his child, a boy. The boy says something that makes him laugh. I look away. He’s the age Viktor would have been.

  The phone rings for a third time and I give up. I answer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you answer?’ Birck says. ‘I was about to file a missing person’s report.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  In total, five hundred and thirty-six tips about the murder of Rebecca Salomonsson have been received and registered. It often takes far too long for the police to wade through that number of tips, for obvious reasons. People are unreliable. The details they give must be verified, either by comparing them to one another, or to cold, objective facts, like forensic evidence. I’ve done it myself, for a short time towards the end of my training. In cases of homicide, the tips are prioritised but it is still very time-consuming. The aim is to get through the witness reports within the critical first seventy-two hours.

  It is only now, a little more than sixty hours since the crime, that they’ve finished doing it on the Rebecca Salomonsson case, and a few have proved to be of some interest.

  ‘More specific witness testimonies described a man who was like … well, like you.’

  Birck clears his throat.

  ‘Someone is trying to stitch me up,’ I say. ‘I think I’m starting to grasp who it —’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We got lucky this time. It turned out that one of the witnesses recognised him. She’s a former whizz-whore who now earns a living as a bartender, and by coincidence she often works at the bar where a certain Peter Koll likes to drink expensive Spanish liqueur.’

  ‘Koll? Spelt like Koll as in —’

  ‘As in Kollberg, yes. The similarities end there.’ Birck clears his throat, again. ‘We’re pretty sure that it is him. There’s just one problem.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk to us.’

  ‘Well, I never.’

  ‘You don’t understand what I mean. I … shit, hold on.’ I hear Birck struggling with something and clicking on his computer. ‘Right. Should work now. Listen.’

  First a rasping noise, then the background noise caught by a microphone. I push the phone harder to my ear.

  A voice with a slight and hard-to-place foreign accent:

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  Then Birck’s voice:

  ‘Who do you want to speak to then?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Who do you want to speak to then?’

  ‘I have been instructed to only speak to one person.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Must I ask every question twice?’

  ‘Junker.’

  ‘Leo Junker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And who gave you these instructions?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Who gave you these instructions?’

  ‘…’

  Birck clicks the mouse button again, and the sound stops.

  ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and I,’ he says.

  IT’S ONLY A SHORT WALK to police HQ, but as I step out into the street a taxi stops at the junction and drops off a passenger. I raise my hand, climb into the car, and try to collect my thoughts during the two-minute journey.

  I’m now more used to answering questions than asking them, but there is a subtle elegance to a well-executed interrogation. It is pretty much always about providing the officer in charge with a bureaucratically correct piece of the puzzle ahead of the trial. The protocol must be followed; everything needs to be recorded, transcribed, and approved by the interviewee. It then needs to be labelled, added to the documents, and archived. In the digital archive, there are years and years’ worth of sound recordings, of people just talking. To listen to all of them would take lifetimes.

  ‘PETER ZORAN KOLL,’ Birck says, as he moves through HQ half a step ahead of me. ‘Thirty-six years old, born in what was then Yugoslavia, but raised in Germany
. His parents fled the war. He came to Sweden in 2003; his first conviction was in May 2004, for illegally possessing a firearm. Since then, suspected of more than twenty crimes, basically everything apart from rape and treason, but never convicted of anything other than petty offences that carry suspended sentences or a tag. He …’

  Birck stops, and looks me up and down. His face is close to mine, and I can smell his breath, a sour mixture of mint and coffee.

  ‘Are you high, Leo?’

  ‘Me? Er, not anymore.’ I blink. ‘I think. No.’

  Birck breathes out, his cheeks clenched.

  ‘I can’t have someone high in an interview.’

  ‘I’m not high, I told you.’

  Birck looks at me, sceptical.

  ‘You can’t have a suspended officer in the interview either,’ I remind him. ‘Strictly speaking, I mean.’

  ‘You’re coming in,’ he says frostily. ‘You’re coming in, but you keep your mouth shut.’

  I shrug. He keeps walking and I follow him. ‘Do you know anything about this guy?’, he asks.

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘Koll is the type of criminal who does as he’s told. Provided you can afford to pay his prices.’

  ‘So he’s a consultant?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Birck calls the lift and waits. He looks worn out; his clear eyes are bloodshot, and his skin is paler than yesterday.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘if you don’t know who he is, how come he wants to talk to you?’

  ‘He’s been instructed to.’

  ‘Yes,’ Birck says impatiently, ‘but by whom?’

  The lift arrives. One of the chief constable’s secretaries steps out, professionally uninterested and with a serious demeanour.

  ‘I think I know why she died,’ I say.

  Birck looks at me as the lift doors close and the metallic-grey cube starts moving upwards.

  ‘I’m listening. Why?’

  ‘Because of me.’

  Birck keeps staring. I think he’s trying to work out if I’m joking or not.

  ‘A further analysis of the prints on the necklace,’ Birck says slowly, ‘revealed that your print was very old.’