The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  Koll pauses for effect.

  ‘Yes?’ I say.

  ‘You’re never going to find him. There are too many Daniel Berggrens. So,’ he says, lowering his voice to a whisper, ‘you need to find Josef Abel. An old man. He can help you.’ Koll scans the closed door behind me. ‘But don’t say this to your colleague. It mustn’t be recorded.’

  ‘Josef Abel,’ I say. ‘How do I find him?’

  ‘Go to Åby. Ask around. There’s only one Josef Abel. The Man With No Voice.’ Koll hesitates. ‘I’m only saying this because I don’t like him. You understand?’

  I study him carefully.

  ‘So you haven’t been instructed by him, by Berggren, to tell me exactly this?’ I ask. ‘It’s not the case that this is all part of it?’

  Koll smiles weakly.

  ‘You’re not stupid, are you?’

  ‘So I’m right?’

  ‘You can be clever and still be wrong, you know.’

  ‘Am I wrong about this?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Yes, I think to myself. There’s something about this contrived situation, a suggestion that he’s watching me the whole time, shadowing me. As though I’m following an invisible, predetermined path right into a trap. Koll’s right. I am scared.

  ‘Am I wrong?’ I attempt, again, and strain to hide the fact that my hands have started shaking again. ‘Are you dropping him in it, or is this part of the job?’

  ‘Who knows?’ is the only answer I get out of him, and he refuses to say any more, even though I’m putting the pressure on. I end up grabbing Koll’s shirt and raising my clenched fist towards his face to get him to talk, but that’s as far as I get. The door opens behind me, and Birck comes rushing in and grabs me, and he’s much stronger than me.

  XXI

  I stood outside the gates of Rönninge High School that Monday at the end of August. It was a beautiful day, I remember. I was waiting for Grim, who’d said that he would come to the early lesson.

  ‘Leo,’ said a voice behind me, and as I turned my head I saw Julia walking towards me.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘I tried to call you yesterday.’

  ‘Did you?’ I said, surprised.

  ‘There was no answer.’

  I couldn’t remember the phone ringing, but then again the whole weekend was like a thick white fog.

  ‘Weird,’ was all I said.

  We started walking in silence. As long as we did that, it felt like we had everything under control, as though everything was okay.

  ‘Do you remember Tim?’ she said. ‘I’ve mentioned him before. I thought I saw him on Friday.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Salem, on our way home. But it was from a distance, and I was quite pissed.’

  ‘I … how was that? Seeing him? After all this time, I mean.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I think. I’m glad he’s back, even if we didn’t know each other that well at the end. It still feels good having him here, somehow.’

  ‘Well, that’s good then,’ I forced out.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said, stopped, took a step towards me. ‘I … first of all, I think John already knows about us. Not suspects, knows. And then, I …’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got English now.’

  ‘I’ve got R.E.’ I hesitated. ‘We can walk in together anyway?’

  We carried on, and from the corner of my eye I saw Tim walking ahead of us and through the entrance. It must have been his first day at school, his first day back here. He seemed nervous or stressed, but he was probably just late. Seeing him gave me this stabbing sensation. I could just about see a black eye, like a print. But I knew there was more: aches in his stomach from those blows; the spinning, streaking pains in his ribs; and the dull ache between his legs. And the other pain, the pain that doesn’t show. The one in his heart.

  Julia didn’t see him. Halfway across the schoolyard, she put her hand in mine and held it there until we went separate ways down the corridors. We’d been seen by many; Grim wasn’t one of them, but by that point I’m not sure I would’ve cared if he had been.

  THE LUNCH BREAK. Sometimes it was only forty-five minutes, but it was usually ninety. One-and-a-half hours. We used to spend that time eating, not in the school but at the burger stand round the corner, and smoking cigarettes or listening to music.

  That lunchtime, Julia and I ate at the burger stand. We talked about the party on the rec, and she told me how she’d started feeling ill while I was away. She had wanted to stay and wait for me, but Grim had taken her home to the Triad. She’d thrown up pretty much all the way home.

  ‘You were drinking fast,’ I say.

  ‘I was nervous,’ she muttered. ‘What happened later, after we’d left?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, and drank some pop. ‘I went home, too.’

  Our lockers were at opposite ends of the school, and Julia didn’t know which one was mine. I didn’t know which was hers. We went to mine first.

  I remember this: there weren’t many people in the corridor. Outside, the sun was shining brightly, and there were twenty minutes left of the lunch break. Some people were standing by their lockers; others were sitting on the worn-out benches. The common-room telly was broken. The screen had been smashed in a fight late that spring. I showed Julia my locker, and she noted the number, asked me to open it.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘I want to see what you’ve got in there.’

  ‘It’s not tidied.’

  ‘Surely that doesn’t matter.’

  I started opening the locker, took the padlock off. Just as I opened it and peered in to see just how bad it was, someone screamed, and in that same instant I heard Julia’s voice.

  ‘Leo, watch out.’

  She grabbed my shoulder so hard that it turned me around. Julia was standing in front of me and my eyes met hers, clear and warm, and then, bang, her grip tightened on my shoulder, before her hand went limp and fell away.

  ‘Ow,’ she whispered.

  More screams. Something metallic fell to the floor; I looked up. Tim Nordin was standing five or six lockers away with his arms hanging by his sides, and a toy gun on the floor in front of him. He stared at me, his black eye almost shining. Then he turned around and ran, through the corridor and down the steps. I looked around, trying to work out what had happened, where the bang had come from. I couldn’t make the connection between the toy gun and the scene playing before my eyes: Julia collapsing; more screams. Everything stopped. I could smell burning.

  I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t even know what to do. I picked her up and put my arms around her, pressing as hard as I could on her back. I tried to stop the flow of blood, but I could feel it running between my fingers, forcing its way out in waves. I could feel her heart against my chest, at first very, very hard and fast, but soon slower and slower, weaker and weaker. I don’t think I cried.

  I DON’T REMEMBER what happened after that. I can’t even remember how I got to the hospital in Södertälje. I didn’t go in the ambulance. Julia had been hit in the back, on the left side, somewhere around the heart. That’s how it looked, anyway, but all the blood made it hard to say where the wound was. The ambulance was there, I’ve since found out, after just a few minutes. That’s what gave me hope — that it came so quickly. At least school nurse Ulrika said it should. She got to us before the ambulance arrived.

  When Ulrika came, she took Julia from me, and shortly afterwards we heard the ambulance sirens. Julia’s forehead was shiny and her skin was pale, but she was breathing. It was strained, as though an invisible weight were lying on her chest. My jeans were flecked with red.

  I BLINKED, and found myself at the hospital. Grim was there, somewhere. Klas and Diana, too. Julia was in theatre. The bullet had miss
ed her heart, but had ripped apart several major arteries. They struggled to repair them, but she had lost so much blood that they couldn’t say whether she would survive the strain of the operation.

  A police officer, a woman who said her name was Jennifer Davidsson and that she was a detective inspector, wanted to talk to me. She wondered if it would be okay to ask a few questions. I only remember small details from that conversation, me saying that the police had arrived quickly. The inspector told me that Tim Nordin had made his way from the school to the police station in Rönninge and handed himself in. He admitted that he’d shot someone. But he had hit the wrong person.

  ‘He said that he was aiming for …’ she began and then hesitated. ‘Well, you. Do you know why that might be?’

  ‘I used to … He was … I bullied him.’

  I knew deep down that I had done something much worse, but at that moment I wasn’t capable of explaining it.

  ‘That doesn’t make what he’s done okay.’ She put her hand on my shoulder, where Julia had grabbed me, and I pushed it away. ‘I’m going to see if I can find you some new clothes,’ she said quietly.

  I was still wearing my flecked jeans, my red-splattered top. I nodded. The inspector looked at me for a long time.

  ‘She might have saved your life. And maybe you have saved hers.’

  After that, she didn’t say any more.

  I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE to get used to the noise, the lights, the commotion that is a hospital, since that day. Sitting there in one of the many waiting rooms, waiting for my parents, it seemed bizarre that this was just another workplace. People came, got changed, did their jobs, got changed again and went home, cooked meals for their kids, and watched telly with their families. Like factory work. Absurd, that they had people’s lives in their hands.

  I’d got some new clothes — Adidas tracksuit bottoms and a too-big T-shirt that the inspector had gotten hold of. The school had been closed. People were worried that Tim Nordin might not have acted alone, that maybe he’d made a pact with someone else, that others might be at risk. The police assured everyone that nothing pointed to that, but the school was closed anyway.

  A nurse took me into a treatment room, measured my blood pressure and took my pulse, and checked that I was okay physically. Then she said that someone would soon be along to talk to me.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘He’ll give you information about things that can make it easier after this kind of … after what you’ve been through.’

  ‘Oh, right. Okay.’

  I sat there on the trolley. She left me alone. Julia had been in theatre for over two hours. The door opened after a while, and my parents and my brother rushed in. I didn’t say very much. They asked what had happened, but at that moment the door opened again and a white-haired man came in. He asked them to go and talk to the police for a little while. Once they were satisfied that I wasn’t hurt, they nodded and left.

  The man was a psychologist, and he asked matter-of-fact questions. I answered as best I could, because I liked him. He gave me a load of leaflets and brochures, and said he’d be back.

  ‘Do you know how she is?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  I wondered if I’d already asked him that. I asked everyone I saw.

  BACK IN THE WAITING ROOM. Three hours since the operation started, and still nothing from anyone. The scene in the corridor was playing on repeat in my head. The shot that echoed between my temples. The warmth of her blood on my hands.

  Someone sank, silently, into the chair next to mine. I turned my head.

  ‘Hi,’ Grim said.

  His voice sounded absent, had an almost mechanical ring.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Not about Julia.’ He looked up at the clock. ‘She’s having an operation. But I’ve heard something else.’ He avoided looking at me. ‘Like it was you he was after.’

  I glanced over at his fingers, which were solidly knotted together, as though he was bracing himself.

  ‘Tim. Is that right?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Why was he after you?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘If it turns out that he did it because of you, and if she dies … I will never forgive you.’

  ‘I understand that,’ I said, looking at my hands.

  ‘You had a … you were together, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded slowly.

  An hour-and-a-half later, Julia Grimberg was pronounced dead on the operating table. The time of death was 5.27 p.m.

  XXII

  Because Tim Nordin had intended to shoot me, and had missed, he was convicted of attempted murder, aggravated manslaughter, and weapons offences. The prosecutor had wanted a custodial sentence because of the premeditated nature of the crime, but the court sentenced him to secure care under the supervision of Social Services.

  I remember the trial like a sort of grey mist. As the intended victim, I was in the defence team’s line of fire, and in the end I was sure I was going to faint. Since we were both minors and the crime was so serious, it was all conducted in closed sessions. Behind those doors, the past was unravelled.

  It came out that I had tormented Tim Nordin for two years.

  It came out in front of everyone, except Julia Grimberg. She was dead.

  And I had lost my best friend.

  He banned me from going to the funeral. There were no photographs, so I couldn’t even see what it had been like. It was only then — several weeks later — that the shock started to recede and I realised I would never see her again.

  I couldn’t stay in school. It was impossible. I switched to a school in Huddinge. Grim changed schools, too, but he went to Fittja. Shortly after that, the Grimbergs left the Triad and Salem. I don’t know where they went — possibly Hagsätra. Just before they moved, I’d tried to get back in touch with Grim, without success. The only one who would talk to me when I called was Diana.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘His hatred towards you is … so strong right now.’

  She sounded surprisingly composed and normal, I remember thinking. Perhaps this was just what was needed to shake Diana out of her depression, to let her move on. That was a horrible thought.

  And wrong. I later heard from someone in the triad that Diana Grimberg was being cared for at a psychiatric unit in Södertälje after a failed suicide attempt. She was probably going to be staying there for a long time. Grim’s dad drank more than ever, got sacked, and ended up unemployed.

  NOT LONG AFTER THAT came the anger. I wanted to hurt Tim Nordin. I wanted to hurt Vlad and Fred, who’d hit me, left me wanting to do the same — and then I found Tim. I wanted to hurt whoever had hurt them. After a while I could see that there was no point; the chain was infinite. I would never be able to find where it all started, never find the source. The original force that had set everything off might never have existed. I didn’t want to hurt someone, I realised; I wanted to hurt everyone.

  I tried to find out where Vlad and Fred lived. I spent several nights wandering around with a knife inside my coat, looking for them. I went from one estate to another without finding them. I alternated between a feeling of unbearable shame and guilt, and a feeling of being the victim of injustice. Was it my fault? Was it my responsibility? Tim was the one who’d held the gun. Julia had stepped in between us. I hadn’t done anything, but was I innocent? I was the one who’d started on Tim; if I hadn’t done that, he would never have gone so far. And I was the one who Julia was in love with, the one she wanted to protect. I was the common denominator. But if it hadn’t been for Vlad and Fred … I was tying myself in knots, confusing myself. There was no end to it.

  That’s when I realised I needed help. I looked up the white-haired man who’d talked to me at the S
ödertälje Hospital. His name was Mark Levin — apparently, he’d said so the first time we met — and he could see that I needed to start treatment and therapy straight away. He took it upon himself. I only started feeling better when Julia had been dead for six months, but I hadn’t been to her grave yet. Mark Levin reckoned I wouldn’t be able to move on until I’d done that.

  I DREAMT ABOUT HER, almost every night. It went on for years. It surprised me, just how much I could bear and yet still be able to stand on my own two feet. The thought of what we are actually capable of living with scared me, but maybe when it gets unbearable the brain switches off, and the grief comes up in your sleep. When your defences are down. Losing Julia felt like losing something fundamental, one of the elements. As though the air had disappeared, and all that was left was a gasping for something that wasn’t there.

  When I set out to visit Julia’s grave for the first time, it was the end of February and it was cold — so cold that new record lows were being reported every day. All over Stockholm, homeless people and animals died because they couldn’t cope with the strain and they couldn’t make it inside in time. Despite that, there was only a dusting of snow on the ground as I passed through the gates and made my way over to the new part of the cemetery where Julia lay. I saw fresh footprints in the snow, and I felt strangely reassured by the knowledge that I wasn’t alone there. It was the middle of the day, and the sky above me was white and matte like paper. From a distance, I noticed a shadow standing by one of the graves. It was a woman wearing a long brown coat, whose hair was the colour of wire wool. I walked past, and further along there was another person. As I looked down at the ground, I saw that the footprints in the snow led to him — another shadow, with a shaved head and a thick black jacket with a fur-trimmed hood.