But Virginia forced her way past him and for one second the trembling back of a cat was pressed against his face. Then she was out in the stairwell where the cats" hissing was amplified like excited whispers while she ran toward the edge of the landing and- Nonono- Lacke tried to reach her in time to stop her, but like someone convinced of a soft landing or someone who doesn"t care if she crashes, Virginia relaxed and toppled forward, let herself fall down the stairs. Cats that were caught underneath her howled as she rolled and bounced down the concrete steps. Damp crunching sounds as slender bones broke, heavier thuds that made Lacke cringe when Virginia"s head- Something walked across his foot.
A small gray cat that had something wrong with its hind legs dragged itself out into the stairwell, sat down on the top step, and howled sorrowfully.
Virginia came to rest at the bottom of the stairs. The cats that survived the fall left her and went back up the stairs. Went into the hall and started to groom themselves.
Only the little gray one stayed where it was, mourning the fact that it had not been able to take part.
The police held a press conference Sunday evening.
They had chosen a conference room at the police station with room for forty people, but it had turned out to be too small. A number of reporters from European newspapers and television stations turned up. The fact that the man had not been recaptured during the day made the news more sensational, and a British journalist gave the best a.n.a.lysis of why the whole thing had attracted such attention.
"It"s a search for the archetypal Monster. This man"s appearance, what he"s done. He is The Monster, the evil at the heart of all fairy tales. And every time we catch it, we like to pretend it"s over for good." Already, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, the air in the poorly ventilated room was warm and humid, and the only ones who did not complain were the Italian TV team who said they were used to worse conditions.
They moved the event to a larger room and at exactly eight o"clock, the Stockholm district"s chief of police came in, flanked by the commissioner who was spearheading the investigation and who had questioned the Ritual Killer in the hospital, as well as the patrol leader who had directed operations in Judarn forest earlier that day. They were not afraid of being torn limb from limb by the reporters, because they had decided to throw them a bone.
They had a photograph of the man.
The investigation of the watch had finally yielded results. On Sat.u.r.day a watchmaker in Karlskoga had taken the time to go through his index file of outdated proof-of-insurance forms and had come across the number the police had asked him and other watchmakers to try to locate. He called the police and gave them the name, address, and phone number of the man who was registered as the buyer. The Stockholm police entered the man"s name into their register and asked the Karlskoga police to go to the address to see what they could find.
There was some excitement at the station when it turned out that the man had been prosecuted for attempted rape of a nine-year-old, seven years earlier. Had spent three years locked up in an inst.i.tution, deemed mentally ill. Was thereafter determined to be recovered and subsequently released.
But the Karlskoga police found the man at home, in good health. Yes, he had had a watch like that. No, he couldn"t remember what had happened to it. It took a couple of hours of interrogation at the station in Karlskoga, reminders that there were conditions under which a psychiatric certificate of good health could be subject to reevaluation, before the man recalled who he had sold the watch to.
Hakan Bengtsson, Karlstad. They had met somewhere and done something, he couldn"t remember what. He had sold him the watch, at any rate, but he had no address and could only give a vague description of him, and could he please be allowed to go home now?
There was nothing on Hakan Bengtsson in the police records. There were twenty-four Hakan Bengtssons in the Karlstad area. About half of them could immediately be disregarded because of age. The police started to call around. The search was simplified by the fact that the ability to speak immediately disqualified someone as a viable candidate. Toward nine o"clock in the evening they were able to narrow the list to a single person. One Hakan Bengtsson who had been a Swedish teacher at the high school and who had left Karlstad after his house burned down under unclear circ.u.mstances.
They called the princ.i.p.al of the high school and were told that yes, there had been rumors about Hakan Bengtsson ... liked children a little bit too much, you could say. They had the prinic.i.p.al go to the school on a Sat.u.r.day evening and produce a photo of Hakan Bengtsson from the school archives, taken for the school catalogue in 1976.
A Karlstad police officer, who needed to be in Stockholm on Sunday anyway, faxed over a copy and then started driving up with the original late Sat.u.r.day night. It reached the Stockholm headquarters at one o"clock Sunday morning, that is to say, about a half hour after the man in question had fallen from his hospital window and been declared dead. Sunday morning was devoted to verifying through dental and medical records from Karlstad that the man in the snapshot was the same man who, until the preceding evening, had been bound to his hospital bed, and yes: it was him.
Sunday afternoon there was a meeting at the station. They had counted on slowly being able to unravel what the dead man had done since leaving Karlstad, see if his deeds were part of a larger context, if he had left more victims strewn in his wake.
But now the situation had changed.
The man was still alive, was on the loose, and the most important thing at this point appeared to be locating where the man had lived since there was a small chance he would try to return there. His movements toward the western suburbs seemed to indicate as much.
Therefore it was decided that if the man was not apprehended before the press conference one would turn to the somewhat unreliable but oh so many-headed hunting dog, The General Public.
It was possible that someone had seen him during the time when he still looked like he did in the photo and maybe had some sense of where he had lived. And anyway, of course it was only a secondary concern. One needed a bone to throw the media.
So now the three police officers were sitting there at the long table up by the podium, and a ripple went through the a.s.sembled journalists when the police chief-with the simple gesture that he well knew was the most effective, theatrically speaking-held up the enlarged school photo of Hakan Bengtsson, and said: "The man we are looking for is called Hakan Bengtsson and before his face was damaged he looked ... like this."
The police chief paused while the cameras clicked and the flashes transformed the room into a stroboscope for a while.
Of course there were copies of the grainy picture on hand to be pa.s.sed out among the journalists but, above all, the foreign papers were most likely to prefer the more emotionally expressive staging of the police chief with the murderer-so to speak-in his hand.
When everyone had gotten their photos and the investigative team had reported on their activities, it was time for questions. The first one came from a reporter from Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Nyheter, the big morning paper. the big morning paper.
"When do you expect to apprehend him?"
The police chief took a deep breath, decided to put his reputation on the line, and said: "Tomorrow at the latest."
Hey there."
"Hi."
Oskar went in before her, straight to the living room in order to get the record he wanted. Flipped through his mom"s thin record collection and found it. The Vikings. The whole group was a.s.sembled in something that looked like the skeleton of a Viking ship, misplaced in their shiny costumes.
Eli didn"t come in. With the record in his hand he went back into the hall. She was still standing outside the front door.
"Oskar, you have to invite me in."
"But. . . the window. You have already .. ."
"This is a new entrance."
"I see. OK you can ..."
Oskar stopped himself, licked his lips. Looked at the picture on the alb.u.m cover. The picture had been taken in the dark, with a flash, and the Vikings glowed like a group of saints about to walk onto land. He stepped toward Eli, showed her the alb.u.m.
"Check it out, they look like they"re in the belly of a whale or something."
"Oskar..."
"Yes?"
Eli stood still, with her arms hanging by her side, and looked at Oskar. He smiled, went up to the door, waved his hand in the air between the door frame and the door jamb, in front of Eli"s face.
"What? Is there something here or what?"
"Don"t start."
"But seriously. What happens if I don"t do it?"
"Don"t. Start." Eli gave a thin smile. "You want to see? What happens?
Do you? Is that what you want?"
Eli said it in a way that was clearly intended for Oskar to say no: the promise of something terrible. But Oskar swallowed and said: "Yes. I do. Show me."
"You wrote in the note that..."
"Yes, I know. But let"s see it. What happens?"
Eli pinched her lips together, thought for a second, and then took a step forward, over the threshold. Oskar tensed his whole body, waiting for a blue flash, or for the door to swing forward through Eli and slam shut or something like that. But nothing happened. Eli went into the hallway, closed the door behind her. Oskar shrugged his shoulders.
"Is that all?"
"Not exactly."
Eli stood still, in the same way as she had outside the door, her arms along her sides and her eyes glued to Oskar"s. Oskar shook his head.
"What? There"s nothing . . ."
He stopped when he saw a tear come out of the corner of one of Eli"s eyes; no, one in each eye. But it wasn"t a tear, since it was dark. The skin in Eli"s face started to flush, became pink, red, wine-red, and her hands tightened into fists as the pores in her face opened and tiny pearls of blood started to appear in dots all over her face and throat. Eli"s lips twisted in pain and a drop of blood ran out of the corner of her mouth, joined with the pearls emerging on her chin and, growing larger, trickled down to join the drops on her throat.
Oskar"s arms became limp; he let them fall and the record fell out of its sleeve, bounced once with its edge against the floor, then fell flat onto the hall rug. His gaze went to Eli"s hands.
The backs of her hands were damp with a thin covering of blood and more was coming out.
Again he looked Eli in the eyes, didn"t find her. Her eyes looked like they had sunk into their sockets, were filled with blood flowing out, running along the bridge of her nose over her lips into her mouth, where more blood was coming out, two streams running out of the corners of her mouth down over her throat, disappearing under the collar of her Tshirt where dark spots were starting to appear. She was bleeding out of all the pores in her body.
Oskar caught his breath, shouted: "You can come in, you can . .. you are welcome, you are ... allowed to be here!"
Eli relaxed. Her clenched fists loosened. The grimace of pain disappeared. Oskar thought for a moment that even the blood would somehow dissolve, that it would all sort of not have happened once she was invited in.
But no. The blood stopped running, but Eli"s face and hands were still dark red, and while the two of them were standing in front of each other without saying anything, the blood started to coagulate, form darker stripes and lumps in the places it had flowed, and Oskar picked up a faint hospital smell.
He picked the record up off the floor, put it back in its sleeve and said, without looking at Eli: "Sorry, I... I didn"t think..."
"It"s alright. I was the one who wanted to do it. But I think I should probably have a shower. Do you have a plastic bag?"
"Plastic bag?"
"Yes. For the clothes."
Oskar nodded, went out into the kitchen and dug a plastic bag with the logo ICA-EAT, DRINK, AND BE HAPPY on it from the recess down below the sink. He walked into the living room, put the record on the coffee table, and stopped, the bag crinkling in his hand.
If I hadn"t said anything. If I had let her.. . bleed.
He scrunched the bag into a ball, let go of it, and the bag jumped out of his hand, fell to the floor. He picked it up, threw it into the air, caught it. The shower was turned on in the bathroom.
It"s all true. She is... he is.. .
While he walked toward the bathroom he smoothed out the bag. Eat, drink and be happy. He heard splashing from behind the closed door. The lock showed white. He knocked gently.
"Eli..."
"Yes. Come in ..."
"No, it"s just... the bag."
"Can"t hear what you"re saying. Come in."
"No."
"Oskar, I-"
"I"m leaving the bag here for you!"
He laid the bag outside the door and fled to the living room. Took the record out of its sleeve, put it on the playing table, turned the record player on, and moved the needle to the third track, his favorite. A pretty long intro, and then the singer"s soft voice began rolling out of the speakers.
The girl puts flowers in her hair as she wanders through the field. She will be nineteen this year and she smiled to herself as she walks. Eli came into the living room. She had fastened a towel around her waist. In her hand she had the plastic bag with her clothes. Her face was clean now and her wet hair fell in tendrils over her cheeks, ears. Oskar folded his arms across his chest where he stood next to the record player, nodding to her.
Why are you smiling, the boy asks then when they meet by chance at the gate I"m thinking of the one who will be mine says the girl with eyes so blue The one that I love so.
"Oskar?"
"Yes?" He lowered the volume, inclined his head toward the record player. "Silly, isn"t it?"
Eli shook her head. "No, this is great. This This I really like." I really like."
"You do?"
"Yes. But Oskar ..." Eli looked like she was going to say more, but only added an "oh well" and undid the towel knotted around her waist. It fell to the floor at her feet and she stood there naked a few feet away from him. Eli made a sweeping gesture with her hand over her thin body, said: "Just so you know."
... down to the lake, where they draw in the sand they quietly say to each other; You my friend, it is you I want La-lala-lalala...
A short instrumental section and then the song was over. A mild crackling from the speakers, as the needle moved toward the next song, while Oskar looked at Eli.
The small nipples looked almost black against her pale white skin. Her upper body was slender, straight, and without much in the way of contours. Only the ribs stood out clearly in the sharp overhead light. Her thin arms and legs appeared unnaturally long the way they grew out of her body: a young sapling covered with human skin. Between the legs she had ... nothing. No slit, no p.e.n.i.s. Just a smooth surface. Oskar pulled his hand through his hair, let it rest cupped against his neck. He didn"t want to say that ridiculous mommy-word, but it slipped out anyway.
"But you don"t have a ... willie."
Eli bent her head, looked down at her groin as if this was a completely new discovery. The next song started and Oskar didn"t hear what Eli answered. He pushed back the lever that raised the needle so it lifted from the record.
"What did you say?"
"I said I"ve had one."
"What happened to it?"
Eli chuckled and Oskar heard himself what the question sounded like, blushing a little. Eli waved her arms to the side and pulled her lower lip over the upper one.
"I left it on the subway."
"Don"t be stupid."
Without looking at Eli, Oskar went past her to the bathroom to check that there were no traces.