I Am Behind You (14 page)

Carina shakes her head wearily. ‘Surely you could at least speak to her. Ask her.' She catches Isabelle's eye and her tone darkens: ‘Otherwise I'll be back later.'

Isabelle holds her gaze calmly. Carina's nose is so short and flat that it wouldn't make much noise if she smashed it against the wall. On the other hand her front teeth do stick out, so they would probably provide a satisfying crunch. Isabelle tilts her head to one side and smiles.

Carina stomps off angrily towards her own caravan, but something in the line of her back and shoulders tells Isabelle that there is a hint of fear there too.

In her peripheral vision Isabelle sees a blond head disappear from the window. Molly has been listening. Of course.

*

Benny is on full alert in his basket, watching Cat's silhouette against the awning. Cat's long tail sways as she casually rubs against the canvas, moving closer to the opening.

Benny's muscles are trembling, shudders of displeasure chasing across his skin. Cat moves like water, like Snake. The shadow on the awning suggests that Cat has grown
even bigger
than before. Bigger than any Cat Benny has ever seen. A very dangerous Cat.

The shadow reaches the opening and Cat's head appears. It is no bigger than before, and some of the tension leaves Benny's body.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Cat slinks into the awning. Benny's mistress doesn't notice her; she is still listening to the sounds from her box. Cat's ears are pointing straight up and her tail swishes from side to side as she takes possession of the awning, a little bit at a time.

Suddenly that's it. Something snaps inside Benny and a reflex over which he has no control takes over. He leaps out of his basket and hurtles towards Cat as the corners of his mouth are drawn up, exposing his teeth, and a series of short, sharp barks comes from somewhere deep in his throat.

Cat jumps and almost falls over, but before Benny can get to her she has turned and shot out of the tent. She races across the campsite with Benny after her.

‘Benny! Benny!' his mistress shouts, but Benny has eyes and ears only for Cat, who is running towards her own caravan. Benny's nose is still sore, and he is itching to get his teeth around Cat's neck.

Shortly before she reaches her own caravan, Cat stops dead, spins around, makes herself huge and growls, almost like Dog. Benny stops too, and barks. Cat moves towards him, and Benny backs away. Cat keeps on coming. Benny stops. Cat stops too.

They stand five metres away from one another, each equidistant from their own caravan. They threaten, Cat hisses, Benny barks. They both know the battle is over for the time being. The five metres between them constitutes a no-man's-land, a possible target for future skirmishes. But not right now.

They do what they have to do, then they go home. His mistress is standing outside when Benny returns.

‘Bad dog!' she says, and Benny knows exactly what that means. ‘Bad dog!'

Benny gets into his basket. He doesn't usually like it when Mistress says those words to him, but right now he couldn't care less. Regardless of what Mistress thinks, he is a good dog.
Good boy
, as they say.

*

‘Look, Mummy.'

The drawing in Molly's hand represents nothing. It is merely a series of chaotic spirals, wavy lines in black ink.

‘Lovely,' Isabelle says. ‘Listen…'

‘Do you like it?'

‘Yes. I need to…'

‘Do you really like it?'

‘Be quiet, please. Did you take the hoses?'

‘What hoses?'

‘You know what hoses.'

‘No.'

Molly's eyes are wide open. There is not the slightest twitch of an eyelid, not the hint of a blush on her cheeks: her whole face is the very picture of innocence and honesty. Isabelle doesn't know why she even bothered to ask.

Perhaps Molly has taken the hoses, perhaps not. Trying to find out by asking her is a complete waste of time. Isabelle might be a good liar, but she is a rank amateur compared with her daughter. Whatever proof of Molly's guilt might emerge, she will continue to insist that the opposite is true with that same utterly credible conviction.

Sometimes Isabelle almost allows herself to be fooled, just like most other people. She is almost ready to accept that perhaps Molly really has forgotten, perhaps she really doesn't know what she is supposed to have done. Almost.

In a case like this, where there is no proof, it is impossible to determine whether Molly is telling the truth or not, so Isabelle drops the subject and turns her attention back to Molly's drawing, or whatever you might call it. She has pressed so hard with the pen that the ink has gone through the paper, and there is a ghostly image of the drawing on the next page, a dark blob.

‘What's it supposed to be?'

Molly opens her eyes even wider in a slightly exaggerated indication of surprise. ‘Can't you
tell
?'

‘No, Molly. No, I can't.'

‘But it's us!' Molly smiles and nods. ‘It's you and me, Mummy!'

*

Majvor has never seen Benny behave like that, chasing after a harmless little cat. She would never hit him as Donald sometimes does, but she has given him a real telling off, and she hopes he is ashamed of himself. Although he doesn't look as if he is, sitting there in his basket having a good wash.

Oh well. At least the incident got her on her feet, which is probably a good thing. She has been spellbound by the radio for the last quarter of an hour, song after song reminding her of the good old days. She wonders what station it is, whether it's possible to pick it up…at home?

There is no sign of anyone else. Majvor runs a hand over her stomach and frowns. It's not that she is hungry, or lonely, but there is an emptiness in her belly and her chest that she can't quite put into words. It's as if the field has moved inside her body.

Majvor is no fan of weird ideas. As a general rule she believes that people think too much, and that this is at the root of much of their unhappiness. The thought that the field has moved inside her is definitely a weird idea, and Majvor cuts it off before it can upset her, thinks about something real instead.

A party, with lots of cakes.

The empty space between the caravans, the lack of people, doesn't feel right. A party would bring everyone together. Majvor could bake a huge batch of cinnamon buns, then they could put a big table in the middle, covered with a gingham cloth, and everyone would sit around sharing the buns while they were still warm. With milk to accompany them.

Majvor walks around the outside of caravan, thinking it over. Is it possible? Yes, she has the ingredients, and the oven will do if she bakes two separate batches. They must have a table and enough chairs between them. The only problem is the gingham cloth, because it has to be gingham. Preferably red and white, but blue and white will do at a push. She doesn't have one herself, but perhaps someone else does?

She pauses at the back of the caravan, picturing the cloth as she stares at the cross painted on the wall. She is just about to go and ask
Carina if she has a suitable cloth when she stops dead.

A cross? Why is there a cross?

She can't recall ever having seen it before. The two intersecting lines are approximately six centimetres long. When she rubs her finger over them, a little of the paint comes off. If it is paint. The grainy pigment on her fingertip is more like…blood. Dried blood. But she's not sure.

Majvor goes round the back of Carina's caravan on her way to see her neighbour. Sure enough, she finds an identical cross. The gingham cloth is temporarily forgotten as she hurries over to the caravan belonging to the two farmers. The cat is lying in the window, and follows Majvor with her eyes as she passes by. Soon Majvor can add a third cross to her list.

Isabelle is leaning against the doorframe of her caravan. Majvor nods to her. Isabelle nods back, looking slightly puzzled as Majvor continues around the corner, where she is able to establish that there are in fact four crosses. One on each caravan. She stands there, trying to interpret this discovery, until she hears Isabelle's voice behind her.

‘Excuse me, but what are you doing?'

Majvor turns around and points out the cross to Isabelle. ‘This,' she says. ‘There's one on each caravan.'

Isabelle shrugs. ‘So?'

‘Don't you understand?' Majvor says, pointing to the simple symbol. ‘We are marked.'

*

With every kilometre Peter has driven, with every cane he has pushed into the ground, the map on the GPS has become clearer and clearer. But it is no longer showing Vällingby. He is now travelling through the area around Linköping. Soon he will be eleven years old, and his belief in God will come to an end.

Peter always had to use a false name when he started training with a new football team to minimise the risk of his father finding him and
his mother, but they still had to move twice during that first year.

As far as the development of his skills was concerned, this was not a disadvantage. As the new boy he had to make an extra effort so that he would be accepted, and with the talent he already had, this quickly made him a star. However, even though he laughed and celebrated with his teammates, he rarely felt genuinely happy.

His other hobby was guns. He could spend hours daydreaming over the Hobbex catalogue's pictures of air rifles that were made to look like real guns. A copy of
Guns & Ammo
, found in a well-stocked newsagent's, provided even more food for his imagination.

By this stage he was nine years old. He and his mother had been living in Norrköping for just over six months with no sign of his father. Peter was playing for one of IFK Norrköping's youth teams, and seemed to have a very promising future; he was already playing alongside ten-year-olds.

After another year in Norrköping, Peter and his mother had begun to lower their guard and relax. Peter had stopped looking out for his father on his way to school every morning, and his mother no longer jumped when the telephone rang. Perhaps God had finally led them to safety.

Because God was with them.

After the night when He had saved Peter's mother from the hammer, Peter had started to say his evening prayer with sincerity and conviction. He thanked God, he asked God for advice, he placed his troubles in God's hands. God never gave a clear response, but Peter felt His presence, and every time they had to move and Peter was forced to leave new-found friends yet again, there was consolation in the knowledge that God was with them in the removal truck.

God didn't even object to Peter's interest in guns, although Peter was aware of His displeasure when it came to his gun-related fantasies. Then again, God wasn't the type to turn the other cheek if someone was mean to him.

Jesus was a different kettle of fish. Peter had no interest in Jesus, in spite of his mother's best efforts. And that business of God and Jesus
somehow being the same just seemed like an unnecessary complication. God was the main man as far as Peter was concerned.

Until the summer when he was eleven years old, that is.

Peter stops the car and picks up a cane from the passenger seat; this is number fifteen. Before he gets out he glances at the GPS, which now claims that he is in the vicinity of Slite. As soon as he realised where he was heading, he tried to veer off, but to no avail. The GPS simply adapts itself to his driving, the map turns, and however hard he tries to get away, his destination always lies straight ahead of him. He has stopped fighting it.

Peter shudders as he puts his foot on the grass. He rubs his arms and blows, looking down towards his mouth. No, it isn't cold enough for his breath to form a mist, but it can't be far off.

The atmosphere around him has a strange, concentrated quality. As if the air were thicker, tougher than usual, as if it were in the process of turning into water. He waves his hand in front of him and can almost make out ripples in the air. It is difficult to breathe.

He gazes out across the field, screwing up his eyes to sharpen his focus. It could be his imagination, or something created by the saturated air, but he thinks he can see a change on the horizon. He would like a brighter light, a sign that the sun is somewhere below, but what he might be seeing is the exact opposite. A line of darkness. He hopes it is his imagination.

He looks behind him; he can still see the last cane he inserted. He walks in front of the car, takes a couple of steps, then pushes in the next one.

When he lets go he feels something tickling his palm. He looks down and sees that the cane is not a cane. The thing that tickled him is a fletch, and the cane is an arrow. He crouches down and runs his index finger across the smooth surface and up over the feathers.

It looks just like the arrow he had when he was eleven years old. No. It is the same arrow.

Just over two years had passed since the last time his father came hammering on the door, and during that summer's caravan holiday they decided to risk a few days on Uncle Joel's farm.

Uncle Joel had taken over his parents' place in Slite just outside Linköping, and it was okay for Peter and his mother to put their caravan on what had once been grazing land.

Peter got a pet rabbit that summer, and Uncle Joel helped him to make a wooden hutch and a run so that Diego could be outside without being watched all the time. At first he had called the rabbit Maradona, but that was difficult to say, so Peter had settled on Diego instead. Besides which, it seemed unreasonable to keep
Maradona
in a hutch and feed him on dandelion leaves, but with Diego it was fine.

One of the sad things about having to keep a low profile was that they hardly ever dared visit the friends and relatives Peter's father knew. Not that Peter thought it was all
that
much fun to visit Aunt Margaret or his mother's former work colleagues, but he had missed Uncle Joel.