Fire, page 36
She blows some of the dust off the gloomy little cone-creature and puts it back where it came from. It’s safe enough on its shelf. Linnéa knows that Ingrid can’t ever bring herself to get rid of anything.
‘Didn’t you want that white lace fabric that was just delivered?’ Ingrid asks. ‘With those stains it will never sell and you dye everything black anyway.’
‘Thanks,’ Linnéa says. ‘Love it.’
It is utterly mysterious how Ingrid keeps the shop going since there are hardly ever any customers. Rumour has it that she lives off a big inheritance after her husband, who won a serious sum of money on a lottery ticket, died. The story is that Ingrid’s adult children don’t want to know about her any more. And that she was one of the steady visitors to the secret swingers’ club in Lilla Lugnet before the house burned down.
But all Linnéa needs and wants to know about Ingrid is that she has always treated her well.
A piercing signal cuts the silence and Linnéa is so startled she drops the torch. It bounces on the counter, falls to the floor. And goes dark.
‘Christ Almighty,’ Ingrid says. ‘Whoever is calling at this time?’
Linnéa lifts the receiver of the old-fashioned telephone on the wall.
‘Ingrid’s Hidey-hole.’
No response.
‘Hello?’ she says.
The line goes dead.
Linnéa looks at Ingrid and shrugs.
The next moment there is a ringtone from Linnéa’s bag. She swears, starts rummaging. Her mobile stops and then starts again just as she picks it up. It’s Minoo. What new shit has hit the fan?
‘Has something happened?’ Linnéa says immediately.
‘Yes, it has,’ Minoo replies.
‘Was it you who phoned the shop just now?’
‘What shop?’
Linnéa sighs.
‘Never mind.’
She looks apologetically at Ingrid, picks up one of the hurricane lamps and goes through to the storeroom as she listens to Minoo starting to tell her about Ida’s evening in the centre.
‘I can’t say it’s a surprise,’ Linnéa says when Minoo reaches the end of the story. ‘But what you said is right. We must wait. One evil power at a time.’
‘But there’s something else,’ Minoo says.
‘Aha?’
Linnéa absently examines a table cluttered with collectors’ china plates decorated with pictures of European royalty.
‘Can’t you come here?’ Minoo says. ‘When the power is off the newspaper office goes crazy and Dad doesn’t come home for hours. So we’d be on our own. If you can make it, that is. It would be great if you could come.’
Linnéa can’t think what Minoo might want, but she sounds really upset.
‘Right, I’ll come,’ she says. ‘As soon as I can.’
Linnéa plays the torchlight over the front of Minoo’s house and confirms that it looks exactly the way she had imagined it. A large, detached villa on two floors. Several tall trees which lean protectively over the neat garden.
She goes rigid for a moment when she hears the rat-tatat of a moped engine start up on the road behind her. She thought she heard the same sound when she came out of Ingrid’s Hidey-hole. Is somebody following her?
You’re just paranoid, she tells herself. Let go.
A last drag on her cigarette. She throws it away and goes along to ring the doorbell.
Minoo opens the door.
‘Come in.’
She’s holding a four-armed candlestick. The candle flames flicker in the wind.
Linnéa steps inside, pulls off her coat of leopard-patterned fake fur and hangs it up among all the dark coats and jackets on the hall stand. Seemingly, the entire Falk Karimi family have the same boring taste in clothes.
Minoo leads the way into the living room. A pale brown teapot, two matching cups and saucers, sugar and milk, are set out on the table by the sofa. Two kinds of biscuits on a plate. Lit candles everywhere. Whatever this is all about, clearly it isn’t so bad that Minoo was put off organising a tea party.
Linnéa sits down on the sofa, scans the room.
It looks tasteful, impeccable. Nice, but anxiously restrained. Only the books are likely to tell you something about the personalities of the people who live here.
Minoo pours tea for two.
‘I’m not sure how to tell you this,’ Minoo says as she pushes a cup across.
She sits down on the sofa, too, and turns to Linnéa.
‘Do you remember when Vanessa could suddenly hear you inside her head? The time Max held you prisoner in the dining area?’
‘Yes,’ Linnéa says.
She cautiously sips her tea. Tries not to show how nervous this is making her.
‘You didn’t know that you did it, right? That you sort of cried out to her?’
‘No, I didn’t. Why are you asking about this?’
Minoo bites her lip.
‘It happened again. This Monday. But it was me who heard you this time. Heard your thought, that is.’
Linnéa almost spills the tea.
‘Impossible,’ she says. ‘You must have imagined it.’
It is impossible, she repeats inwardly.
Surely it is? That time, with Max, she was so desperate, so certain she would die.
‘You thought about Vanessa,’ Minoo says. ‘You were thinking that you … that she …’
Linnéa puts her cup down on the table with a bang. Tea splashes on to the saucer.
‘Linnéa …’ Minoo says.
Linnéa gets up. Her heart thumps against her chest wall, so hard it will break her ribs any time now.
‘I need to go home,’ she says.
So, this is what it feels like when someone reads your mind. No wonder the others felt so awful when they found out about her magic power.
‘Please, don’t go,’ Minoo says. ‘You need to talk about this.’
‘I need to nothing,’ Linnéa replies and walks into the hall, fumbling in the dark to find her fake fur coat.
Minoo catches up with her and grabs her arm.
‘I truly believe you need to talk. Just like when you told me last spring that I had to tell someone about the black smoke. And you were right. What I’m trying to say is, I understand if you don’t want to talk to me about Vanessa, but you must talk to somebody. Open up to someone. If you don’t, it might bubble out of your head again.’
Linnéa can hardly follow all this because Minoo is speaking so quickly.
‘Next time, maybe it’ll be Vanessa who hears your thoughts,’ Minoo continues. ‘Is that really the way you want her to find out?’
‘I don’t want her to find out at all!’ Linnéa snarls.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I haven’t got a chance!’
The words hang in the air between them. Silent, they face each other in the dark hall.
‘Shall we go back and sit down again?’ Minoo suggests.
The tea has cooled down long ago, when Minoo swallows the last mouthful in her cup. She tries to look as if she doesn’t think what Linnéa has just told her is strange in the slightest.
In fact, she doesn’t think it is. But it’s weird that Linnéa has told her any of this. Now, Minoo isn’t sure how she should deal with this huge confession. This is a fragile moment. She feels awkward and is worried that Linnéa might misunderstand.
‘What I don’t get is, how can you bear listening to all this,’ Linnéa says and rubs her forehead.
She is avoiding Minoo’s eyes.
‘I asked you,’ Minoo says.
‘Perhaps you got more than you asked for. I need a smoke now.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Minoo picks up a couple of blankets and an ashtray and they go outside to sit on the front steps. Just as they settle down, the street lamps whir for a moment and start up again. The lamps inside the house also come on and the windows create lit rectangles on the grass. The mist is crawling out of the ground.
‘You want one?’ Linnéa says and waves the packet of cigarettes at Minoo.
‘No, thanks.’
‘I guessed,’ Linnéa says with a grin.
‘Nice of you to keep reminding me of what a wholesome person I am,’ Minoo says and smiles back.
Linnéa lights her cigarette and inhales deeply.
‘Not all that wholesome. You seduced a teacher, for instance.’
‘And was punished for it,’ Minoo points out. Linnéa laughs.
Their eyes meet and Minoo feels a sudden, overwhelming wave of warmth for Linnéa.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ Linnéa says seriously.
‘I know what it’s like to love somebody and not be able to mention it to anyone. Thank your lucky stars you’ve got better taste than me.’
Linnéa laughs a little again.
‘Not usually, believe you me. You’d weep if you saw my list of exes. It’s so typical that when I care for someone who makes sense, she doesn’t want me. I’ve got to try to stop falling in love. For my own good.’
‘Good luck,’ Minoo says ironically.
It slips off her tongue so naturally and then, abruptly, she has to look away.
Good luck.
That’s what Rebecka said, that autumn day when they met in the fairground. Same words, same ironic tone, when Minoo had said she would stop loving Max.
‘Hello?’ Linnéa says. ‘Where did you disappear to?’
‘I was just reminded of Rebecka,’ Minoo says.
Linnéa looks searchingly at her.
‘A shame I never got to know her better,’ she says. ‘And it’s a shame, too, that you never got to know Elias. He would have liked you.’
Surely there can’t be a better compliment, coming from Linnéa.
‘I knew him, just for a few seconds. The time I liberated him from Max.’
Linnéa nods.
Minoo thinks about the child Elias, a classmate of hers in primary school. It is only a faint memory. His hair, so blonde it was almost white, and the look in his eyes, always on his guard, that he kept throughout life.
Linnéa stubs her cigarette out and gets up.
‘I’d better go home now.’
She folds the blanket she had wrapped herself in and hands it to Minoo.
‘Are you absolutely sure that you know what Vanessa feels?’ Minoo asks. ‘She always comes across as if she likes you very much.’
‘She does, I suppose, but as a friend. And you must have noticed that she likes men very, very much.’
‘Perhaps it simply hasn’t dawned on her yet.’
‘I don’t want to hope for anything,’ Linnéa says. ‘Then it hurts even more.’
Minoo nods. She knows exactly what Linnéa means. On the other hand, she isn’t so sure that Linnéa is right about Vanessa.
51
When Linnéa is nearly back in her part of town, she feels so tired she is almost sleepwalking.
But it is the right kind of tiredness. A load is lifted off her mind and, for the first time, she understands how heavy a burden the secrecy about her feelings for Vanessa has been.
The fog has swallowed up a large part of Linnéa’s block of flats. It looks as if it is rising up from among the clouds. Someone in the area is throwing a party. The music is very loud, hard and aggressive. The sound echoes between the walls and grows more intense the closer Linnéa gets. She even recognises the tune now, Elias used to like it.
At the front door, she hears the sound of glass breaking above her. Fragments are raining down from the sky. She just manages to wrap her arms protectively around her head when the largest shards hit the ground just next to her.
It must be that bunch of total idiots who have made Diana give her hell.
Linnéa tugs the door open. The music fills the entire stairwell, bouncing off the walls as she steps into the lift. As it crawls upwards, she checks each landing through its window, trying to work out where the party is being held.
The music comes closer. The heavy beat thumps so hard that Linnéa’s heart seems to follow the rhythm.
The lift chugs past the fifth floor. Sixth. On the seventh floor, the music is howling at her. And she realises where it is coming from.
Someone is in her flat.
She isn’t frightened but her fury is overpowering. A jerk as the lift stops, a click from the automatic lock. Linnéa throws the door open and runs to the landing.
Her flat is definitely the source. She pushes the door handle down, but the door is locked. She finds the keys, unlocks it with shaking hands.
She steps inside the hall. The music is so loud it makes her ears hurt. She stumbles on an empty bottle, picks up the stench of alcohol. Walks into the living room.
The sofa cover has been slashed all over and cream-coloured stuffing bulges from the tears. All her pictures have been torn down, scrunched up, ripped to pieces. The lamps have been knocked over but are still on. Bathed in their blood-red light, Erik stands in front of the broken windows. He has a baseball bat in his hands.
Erik.
Splinters of glass glitter all over his black sweater. He looks straight at her.
You fucking cunt.
The hatred in his thought paralyses her. And transforms her fury into fear.
Now, two guys, no, three, are entering from the bedroom and the kitchen. Kevin stares emptily at her. He seems almost in shock. Robin and Rickard pull balaclavas down over their faces, but she has seen them already and they know it. Their panic-stricken thoughts rush into her head.
Fuck it, where did she come from?
It’s fucked up. We’re in deep shit now.
Got to deal with it … deal with it …
We should’ve kept the balaclavas on, I should’ve stood guard, why don’t they ever listen to me …
Erik’s grip on the baseball bat tightens and he smiles at her. Kevin’s terror is almost as palpable as Linnéa’s own.
No, no, no, he’s totally lost it, he’s sick …
Rickard screams something, but Erik pulls the balaclava down over his face and starts walking towards her and her paralysis won’t lift, she stands there as if frozen stiff even though panic is burning inside her body. She meets Robin’s eyes and registers that he is making up his mind, that he will side with Erik.
We’ve no choice. We’ve no fucking choice.
Erik raises the baseball bat and at last, at last the world starts to turn. And she can control her body.
Linnéa runs from the flat, slams the door behind her and turns the key in the lock before she starts down the stairs. Opening the lock from inside the flat takes a special twist. It might gain her a few extra seconds.
She runs downstairs two steps at a time, holding her hand close to the handrail, terrified of slipping.
The music roars in the stairwell and her own footsteps echo against the concrete, she can’t hear if someone is closing in. But suddenly Erik’s thought is there.
That bitch won’t get away!
Third floor. Second. First. Any time now, a kick in the back or a push between the shoulder blades, a crash as the baseball bat slams into her skull.
The thought fills her with such dread that she takes half the last flight in one long leap and when the soles of her boots slap loudly against the green concrete floor, she stumbles and drops her bag.
… I’ll kill you, you fucking slag, you cunt, I’ll fucking kill you …
She throws herself against the street door. A rush of cool night air. She runs into the mist. Now she can hear their steps behind her. The adrenalin is like petrol flowing through her veins and she runs faster than ever before in her life.
Robin thinks the whole thing has gone completely off the rails and he’ll never do anything Erik says ever again, he’ll never … He is afraid now, afraid of what will happen if they don’t catch her, afraid of what will happen if they do.
Erik has stopped thinking altogether. He is hunting, that’s all.
Linnéa runs into Storvall Park, crossing the damp lawns in the hope that the mist will hide her. Robin is somewhere off-course behind her, on her right, Erik somewhere on her left.
She leaves the park and carries on running down the abandoned Engelsfors streets.
‘Fucking … twat,’ Erik pants behind her and his voice sounds close, far too close.
‘Help!’
She screams with lungs that have little air left.
No one responds. Engelsfors is a silent creature, indifferently observing passing events. And her mobile is inside the bag she dropped in the stairwell.
She screams again. Wordlessly this time. She sees the light from a TV screen in a flat but no one comes to the window when she cries out and she must keep running, running.
Anna-Karin’s house isn’t far from here, but Robin could simply cut her off before she gets there. And even if she does reach the front door … what if it’s locked?
No alternative, only running. Straight ahead.
A taste of blood in her mouth.
Linnéa runs.
Anna-Karin is sitting on the bed in her room. She senses the soft bulk of the mattress, the tightness of the stretched elastic in the waistband of her pyjama bottoms, but she is seeing through the eyes of the fox. Hidden in the mist, they have dared to sneak up close to the illuminated facade of the manor house.
Several cars are parked on the gravelled area in front of the house. Over the last few days, a steady stream of strangers has been arriving. Anna-Karin wishes she could see what’s going on in there, behind the closed shutters.
She senses, too, how alert the fox is to the voles. They are pottering around by the overgrown shrubbery and his wish to hunt them is so strong it feels like her own.
Later, she promises him. Later.
Obediently, the fox stays put.
The doors open and Viktor comes out on the front steps. He walks down and across the driveway. Kicks at the gravel. Stops, and bends to inspect one of his shoes.
And suddenly straightens up again, as if he has heard something not even the fox’s sensitive ears could pick up. Viktor shuts his eyes and seems to pull himself together before going back inside, shutting the door behind him.
All is quiet again.
