I Am Behind You (29 page)

Lillemor nodded at his confusion and said calmly: ‘So off you go, and close the door behind you. If you know what's good for you.'

If you know what's good for you.

That same evening Lennart plucked up more courage than ever before and told his father everything, except the bit about the distorted appearance of the room. The business of the key had been on his conscience anyway, and the blow his father delivered felt like a kind of penance. When he got up from the floor with his ears ringing and the imprint of his father's hand on his cheek, his father asked as if nothing had happened: ‘Did she really say that?
If you know what's good for you
? She threatened you?'

‘Yes,' Lennart said, trying to stand up straight. ‘And there's no… Dad, she couldn't
possibly
have known about the key. It's just like when Mum said that Östlund's Karin had…'

His father interrupted him. ‘Be quiet.' He sat there for a while with his head in his hands, then he looked up. ‘Well. That's a shame.'

The next time Lillemor turned up, Lennart's father sent her away and told her not to come back. As she left she gave Lennart a long look, a look that said,
you'd better hope that our paths never cross again, if you know what's good for you
, then she got into her silver Volkswagen Beetle and disappeared out of their lives.

Lennart has had a feeling about Molly, a feeling he couldn't put his finger on until she spoke those words. She reminds him of Lillemor. The look in her eyes, the smile, the air of calm, and something else, something hard to define, a kind of
distortion
. Everything around her
is slightly skewed, as if the eye has been unable to focus for a moment.

Lennart gets up and hurries out of the caravan; he is suddenly afraid to leave Olof alone with Molly. He shakes his head at his own stupidity. Those things happened over forty years ago, but

If you know what's good for you

he still feels as if it has started snowing in his belly. He shivers as he steps outside and to his relief finds Molly and Olof standing side by side.

‘Look at this, Lennart,' Olof says. ‘You won't believe your eyes.'

Molly kneels down, hands resting on her thighs, beaming at their little garden.

‘What a pretty flower!' she exclaims, stroking the pelargonium's dark green leaves with her fingertips.

No, Lennart doesn't believe his eyes. It looks as if the pelargonium has grown, which is ridiculous; it's only a little while since they planted it. Anyway, the flower is glowing with rude health, so they must have been wrong about the soil being toxic. Then Lennart glances at the rest of their plantation. If there had been a chair nearby, he would have slumped down on it, but instead he links his hands behind his head and simply stares.

The first pale green buds of the potato leaves have begun to peep out of the ground, and right next to them he can see a couple of slender dill shoots. A process that would normally take something in the region of ten days has taken just over an hour.

‘What the hell…' he whispers.

Molly wags her finger at him. ‘No swearing. It's naughty.'

The whole thing is so bizarre that Lennart can't help clutching at the only straw he can find. Narrowing his eyes, he looks at Olof: ‘Have you done this? Is it some kind of joke?'

‘When would I have had time? It's crazy, isn't it?'

Lennart shakes his head, utterly bewildered. The only time he has seen something grow like this is when they use those time lapse films on TV; he finds them slightly unpleasant, but this is a hundred times worse, because this is
for real
.

Lennart looks out at the empty field, spreads his arms wide and says, with an anger directed at everything and nothing: ‘But this doesn't make any sense! There ought to be a
jungle
here if…' he waves at their rapidly growing plants, ‘… if this is what's happening!'

‘It's very strange,' Olof agrees.

‘It's more than strange,' Lennart says, so loudly that Molly tenses and jumps to her feet. ‘It's completely…
unnatural
!'

Olof goes over and places his hand on Lennart's shoulder. ‘Calm down, Lennart. Calm down. You're frightening the girl.'

It is obvious that Lennart and Olof have widely different perceptions of Molly's character, but Lennart takes a deep breath, allows his arms to drop and nods to Olof to indicate that he is calm, in spite of the cold front in his belly now spreading and covering large parts of his body.

He looks at Molly, convinced that it wasn't the fact that he raised his voice that made her leap up. Quite right. The girl's eyes are screwed up in concentration as she peers out at the field behind Lennart, and her nostrils are twitching as if she is sniffing the air.

‘Molly,' Olof says, but the child merely shakes her head and quickly walks away from them, out into the field. Olof hurries after her, telling her to stop, but Lennart stays where he is long enough to see Stefan hurry down from the roof of his caravan, rush inside and come straight out again clutching his son's hand. He drags the boy to their car, pushes him into the passenger seat, then runs around to the driver's side.

‘Stefan?' Lennart shouts. ‘What's going on?'

Either Stefan doesn't hear or he decides to ignore him, because five seconds later he has started the car and set off in the opposite direction from Molly and Olof.

The girl has broken into a run now; Olof is lumbering after her as best he can, but he is falling further and further behind, still shouting to her to stop. Lennart looks down at the glorious pelargonium, swears to himself, then sets off after them.

*

Isabelle's tongue is a lump of meat in her mouth, so swollen that it seems to fill the entire cavity. She would like to stuff her face with snow, ice, ice cream to cool down the burning, throbbing pain that is bringing tears to her eyes. Now that Carina is no longer the avenger, destroying all before her, Isabelle feels nothing but hatred towards her.

Isabelle's lips are numb, and as they approach the white figure she feels something trickling from the corner of her mouth. She wipes it away and discovers that it is not blood, but saliva. Her mouth is watering.

She is intimately acquainted with the meaninglessness of life, more so than most. Just as some people have genes that make them good at maths, while others have a high pain threshold or can draw a perfect circle freehand, Isabelle is gifted with two defining qualities: her beauty and her constant terror over the emptiness of her existence.

Just as someone who is capable of multiplying two-digit numbers in their head cannot be called a mathematical genius, so someone who says that ‘life seems a bit empty sometimes' cannot be compared with Isabelle when it comes to her capacity for experiencing the futility of life, every second and with every fibre of her being.

She doesn't know when the realisation struck her; it has been there for as long as she can remember. Everything is an illusion, a pretence, an
as if
, and its only purpose is for life to continue until it is over. When the bookmark angels she had made were passed around her father's guests to cries of delight, when some boy told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world, she knew exactly what to say and how to behave, but nothing touched her, because these people were just as empty and unreal as her.

Only extreme horror films evoke a response and create an illusion of being in the moment, with the lower bar set around the level of
Hostel
. The sight of people being hunted down, tortured and slashed to pieces with close-ups of plenty of gore can give her peace of mind, temporarily at least. The French wave is her favourite—
Frontiers
,
Inside
,
Martyrs
. She has spent many sleepless nights watching those films over and over again. As dawn approaches, the madness is lurking.

Paradoxically, it is her illness that has kept her comparatively healthy. The hyperthyroidism has given a direction, a partial goal to her days. She has to eat to avoid intense physical discomfort. Without this discomfort she might just have sat down in an armchair and faded away. There is nothing for her in the world anyway.

Hence the saliva. The white figure does not belong to the same conceptual world as everything that Isabelle perhaps renounced even before she could talk; it is the first indication that her feeling is justified. There is another world, a world that is purer and more real. Isabelle has understood what the white figure wants, and she intends to oblige.

They have now caught up with the figure, which keeps on moving, its dark eyes fixed on the horizon. Isabelle's eyes caress its perfect white skin, its body unmarked by human degeneration.

‘What shall we do?' Carina asks; for some incomprehensible reason her voice is trembling.

Isabelle makes a two-part gesture which means:
Drive a bit further. Then stop.

Carina turns to her and nods, fear shining in her eyes. ‘Yes. We have to stop it. Before it reaches the camp. And the children.'

‘Mm-hm,' Isabelle says.

Carina speeds up and drives a couple of hundred metres beyond the figure, then stops, leaving the engine ticking over. Isabelle indicates that she should turn it off, which she does. She seems to have lost any capacity for taking the initiative, which suits Isabelle perfectly.

They get out of the car and go round to the boot. Isabelle takes out the heaviest rounders bat. When Carina reaches out for it, Isabelle points to the other one. The flat one. The girl's bat.

Carina leans over and Isabelle considers whacking her right away, but decides the angle isn't right. She needs a clean blow to the back of the head to avoid any difficulties. Then there's the bleeding. Even
if Isabelle manages to crack Carina's skull, there is no guarantee that there will be much blood. She will need to open a vein, and she lacks the tools for such an operation.

Hang on a minute.

Her emergency make-up bag in the glove compartment also contains a pair of nail scissors. For her
toenails
. She takes care of, or fails to take care of, her fingernails with her teeth. The scissors should do the job of opening up the jugular vein.

‘Should we wait here, or what?' Carina says, glancing nervously towards the figure, which is approaching across the grass.

‘Mm-hm,' Isabelle says, studying her head. It's probably best to hit her really hard if she's going to bring her down with a single blow. But…She mustn't kill her, because then her heart will stop beating and the blood won't be pumped out. Then again, surely there will be some blood? When she strikes the blow? Isabelle blinks a couple of times.

Jugular vein. Nail scissors.

Absolutely. That's the way. But it is as if she has forgotten one detail: that
she
is the one who is going to do it. Isabelle Sundberg, who was so well placed for the Rodebjer contract. She was going to
call
them, that's what she was going to do.

She no longer wants to call them, the contract is no longer important, it never was. So is the alternative to smash Carina's skull, to open the vein, get the blood out?

Yes? That's right, isn't it?

They are standing next to the car clutching their bats, waiting for the white figure, which is getting closer and closer. Isabelle is slightly behind Carina, at exactly the right angle and the right distance for a direct hit that would send the ball flying into the forest, if there was a ball and if there was a forest.

‘Shit,' Carina says when the figure is perhaps twenty metres away from them. ‘I'm so fucking scared.'

Isabelle lowers the tip of the bat to the ground so that she can get a decent swing. She fixes her gaze on the back of Carina's head and waits for a sign, a word of exhortation.

‘Mummy!'

Molly is racing across the field, with the two farmers lumbering along behind her, and when Isabelle narrows her eyes she can see the outline of the camp. She didn't know they were so close. She lifts up the bat and holds it in her arms, squeezing it tightly.

*

Majvor isn't quite sure how it happened, but she seems to be alone in the camp. Stefan came in and dragged his son away before they had even started the attack on the Death Star, and when Majvor stepped out of the caravan she saw Lennart and Olof shambling across the field after Molly, just as Stefan drove off.

So.

Majvor looks at the spot where her own caravan stood, and it is a sorry sight. What used to be the floor of the awning is now a lonely expanse of wooden decking, with upturned chairs, tables and plant pots. It needs tidying up, and guess whose job that will be?

The sound of Stefan's car fades away, and all is quiet. Majvor hears a noise she can't identify, a quiet smacking and slurping coming from somewhere nearby. She bends down to look under Stefan's caravan, but her back is so stiff that she has to get on her knees to see properly.

Benny. It's a while since she thought about the dog, but he is lying here with that cat he was barking at before. The cat yawns, apparently not in the least bothered by the proximity of her former arch-enemy, while Benny carries on chewing.

What's he chewing?

For a moment Majvor imagines that Benny is chomping away at the cat's tail. She crawls forward and takes a closer look. There are a few scraps of black rubber between Benny's front paws, and Benny is determinedly destroying the larger piece in his mouth. A hose, or what was once a hose.

‘Benny,' Majvor says, and he looks up at her. ‘Have you made a new friend?' Benny snorts and shakes his head, then resumes his
chewing, as if the question is too stupid to warrant an answer. With some difficulty, Majvor gets to her feet.

So.

Funny how things can change. Yesterday evening she and Donald had sat there peacefully watching the music festival from Skansen, then Donald went off to talk to Peter while Majvor read the latest instalment of the serial in her magazine. Now Peter, Donald and the magazine have gone, and she is standing here all alone in the middle of a field. How did that Gunnar Wiklund song go?