Let the Old Dreams Die (42 page)

After a couple of turns they drove into an area with floodlights mounted at regular intervals on the front of the buildings. The lights were all directed towards the centre, and a large building unlike those surrounding it. It looked more like an oversized cottage than anything else, and perhaps it had once been intended as a laundry and community centre. There was a similar place where Kalle lived, and the Kurdish Society held parties there. The party atmosphere was distinctly lacking here, though: a number of guards were positioned around the building, and the windows were covered with both shutters and bars. It looked a lot like a prison.

‘Here?’

‘No. Keep going.’

The guards by the entrance looked at them expressionlessly as they drove past. A couple of images that didn’t belong to him flashed through Kalle’s head: two children jumping into a bed, a huge tree falling into the sea.

He had heard of this: people sometimes found they had the ability to read minds in the proximity of the reliving. He realised there must be a lot of them contained inside the building. He turned to the man by his side, but the only thing he managed to pick up was some kind of series of mathematical calculations.

He’s shutting me out. He’s doing it on purpose.

The man turned to face him, and for the first time there was the hint of a smile on his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

Even as he spoke the series of numbers continued to flow. Kalle blinked and tried to concentrate on the road. It wasn’t that easy, it
was like driving through a storm of whirling pine needles, but the phenomenon faded as they moved away from the building.

After a few more twists and turns they reached an area without lights, and the man beside him suddenly said, ‘Here. Stop.’

Kalle looked around. The only difference between these buildings and the others they had passed was that here there were lights on in a couple of basement windows. The thought field was once again no more than a distant rushing sound.

The man got out, went over to the door and knocked. It opened and he slipped through. Kalle leaned against the steering wheel and thought things over. There was something shady about all this, that was obvious. Not completely shady, because they’d got through the gates, but a bit on the shady side.

Dad…

In what way was Sture Liljewall mixed up in all this?

His father’s life and work had always been a mystery to Kalle. In one way it was very simple: he couldn’t understand why it was necessary for professors of philosophy to exist. People who think. Well yes, that’s all well and good, but as a profession? His father never appeared in public, and Kalle didn’t have a clue what he did all day. Unlike his sister. She wrote controversial articles sometimes, articles Kalle didn’t like, but at least he could get his head around them.

You bang on your drums, you clean offices, you write stupid articles. OK. But his father…

Then there was the other thing. The thing Kalle had never been able to put his finger on. He didn’t like his father. Sture was stiff, cold, analytical. That’s one thing. But on top of that…on top of that there was something
wrong
about him. Kalle wasn’t analytical by nature, he hadn’t tried to define the problem, but the feeling was there. A slight insanity.

A Trivial Pursuit question Kalle remembered for some reason:

When the poet Geijer died, what was found under his bed?

Answer: A pair of brand-new, unused ice-skates.

That feeling, only worse. That there was something under the bed that couldn’t be explained. Something in the wardrobe, something in the deepest recesses of the brain. Something not right. That kind of thing.

When the basement door opened, Kalle got out of the van. He had thought things through, and he no longer felt it was strange. This place, this darkness fitted perfectly with his father, and the word for it was
depressing
.

The man who emerged from the basement was different from the one who’d been in the van. This man was dressed in a shirt and jeans, and even held out his hand.

‘Hi. Are you Sture’s son?’

‘Yeah.’

They shook hands. Kalle gave an extra little squeeze, and the man responded. Then they unloaded the boxes together.

The basement was much bigger than it looked from the outside. The walls were brilliant white, and there was a smell of fresh paint. In one long wall there were two metal doors with round windows, which also looked brand new. The room was illuminated by a couple of portable floodlights on the floor. When they had carried the boxes in, Kalle looked around.

‘What is it you do here?’

‘Nothing. Yet.’

‘So what will you be doing?’

The man looked at Kalle for a couple of seconds, then said, ‘I don’t want to be unpleasant, but you don’t know about this place, OK? If anyone asks, you’ve never been here.’

‘Like that, is it?’

‘Mm.’

Kalle looked around again. With this new information, the room
took on quite a different character. He smiled as he saw Q from the James Bond films walking around testing stuff.

‘Do you want me to…sign anything?’

The man tilted his head to one side. ‘Do you want to?’

‘No, it’s fine—I’ll keep quiet.’

‘OK. Good.’

The man held out his hand to say goodbye. Kalle took it, and this time he looked into the man’s eyes. He recognised that expression.

I’m sitting at the computer. I turn around. Dad is standing there. He’s looking at me.

That look. Searching. Evaluating. But here there was something more, something that belonged to this place, like a finger feeling its way across a soft membrane, trying to find a way in, into his head.

Kalle squeezed the man’s hand even harder, a piece of cartilage moved and the finger inside his head jerked in pain.

‘Bye,’ said Kalle, and went back to the van.

He took the longer route around the outside of the compound to avoid driving past the community centre again. The security guard at the gates glanced at the van and opened up.

How the fuck do they avoid going crazy in there?

When he was perhaps a hundred metres from the gates, Kalle stopped the van and let the engine idle as he leaned back and let out a long breath. The whole expedition had taken no more than two hours, and he was completely exhausted.

Six hundred. Is it worth it?

He closed his eyes, enjoying the silence inside his head. After a couple of minutes he was calm. Just as he pressed down the clutch to put the van into gear and drive off, there was a knock on the passenger door. He let out the clutch, reached over and opened the door.

A girl was standing outside, perhaps a couple of years younger
than him. Her medium-length hair lay plastered to her head with the rain.

‘Hi. Can I have a lift?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Rissne.’

‘Jump in.’

The girl got in and closed the door behind her. Kalle glanced sideways at her. While the interior light was on he had noticed that she had red hair.

He put the van into gear. ‘Is it natural? Your hair?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The one per cent club.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes. So the chances of us meeting are…one in ten thousand.’

‘Are they?’

‘I don’t really know.’

They considered this in silence as they bounced across the field heading for the E18. Kalle thought it was a shame she wasn’t going to…Bagarmossen, for example. He would have liked to drive her home.

‘Do you live there? In Rissne?’

‘Mm. You can drop me by the turn-off.’

‘I live in Rinkeby, but I’ve got nothing…I could drive you home.’

‘OK. Valkyriavägen 13.’

Kalle nodded. The monolithic apartment blocks of Rissne were rising ahead of him. Kalle knew Valkyriavägen, because Totto who played bass in Funkface lived on Odalvägen, which was the next road. What are the odds on that?

As they turned off for Rissne the girl asked, her eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead, ‘So what were you doing out there?’

Kalle thought about the man in the shirt and jeans.
You’ve never been here.
But then he could hardly deny it. He shrugged.

‘Moving some stuff. What about you?’

‘What kind of stuff?’

Kalle sighed and glanced at her. ‘I’m not really allowed to talk about it.’

‘OK, who are you working for?’

‘No, listen, seriously. What were you doing there?’

There was a brief silence as Kalle turned into Valkyriavägen. Number thirteen was at the far end.

‘Trying to get a feeling,’ she said eventually. ‘About what’s happening.’

‘In there?’

‘Yes.’

Kalle pulled up outside her door. He switched off the engine. The rain was pattering on the roof of the van. He might be a big man, but he was incredibly feeble when it came to this kind of thing, and a little bud of relief burst into flower in his breast when the girl asked, ‘So have you got a phone number?’

‘Yes. Have you?’

They both had phone numbers. They swapped. When the girl opened the door and the interior light came on, Kalle took the opportunity to have a good look at her. Her face was round, like his, but the bones beneath the skin were more prominent. And then there were the freckles, of course. Thin body, she probably weighed less than half as much as Kalle.

‘Hang on,’ he said as she was about to close the door. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Flora. See you.’

The door slammed shut and Kalle watched her walk away with long, determined strides.

What was it called? Twin souls.

One in a million. The kind of story that keeps you going, the kind you remember. You get together, and you can never part
because you have to be true to the incredible chance that led you to meet in the first place.

One in a million.

Kalle was humming to himself as he turned the van around and headed for Rinkeby, thinking that six hundred was a pretty decent amount. He would happily have done this particular trip for free.

The following day he had a job with Tropicos—the opening of a shopping centre in Norrtälje. Mario the Magician, Fame. Balloons for the kids and Tropicos for the more mature customer. They were just going to play the twenty-minute set, which meant their four chart hits plus a track from their latest album, which had come out two years ago. Tropicos weren’t quite as hot as the name might suggest, but they could still charge a reasonable fee because they were…reliable.

In addition, Roland the lead singer still had a little stardust on his shoulder pads. He sometimes turned up on the odd game show on TV, and his divorce a year earlier had preoccupied the weekly gossip magazines for a month or so. That was the level of his fame.

The amplifiers and other equipment were already at the venue, so all Kalle had to do was transport the instruments and the band members who weren’t driving themselves. That was the usual routine these days, and he only needed to get the big bus out of its garage in Haninge for a longer trip about once a month. There was some talk of selling it.

On this occasion he had the instruments and microphones, plus Roland and Uffe, the bass player. As usual Uffe was sitting in the back sucking on the chewing tobacco under his top lip while flicking through the sports section, while Roland sat in the front with Kalle.

It would be overstating the case to say they were friends, but Roland and Kalle had discovered a level of communication that suited them both. A month ago Funkface had opened for King Kong
Crew at Mosebacke, which meant Kalle had been unable to drive Tropicos that evening, so they had hired another driver. Roland said afterwards that it felt as if something was missing the whole time, that it wasn’t as much fun without Kalle.

So they got on well together, even though they didn’t exactly open their hearts to one another. For example, Kalle knew very little about the reasons behind Roland’s divorce after twenty years of marriage.

Roland pointed to the mobile phone which for once Kalle had placed on the dashboard.

‘Are you expecting a call?’

‘Yes…no. Maybe.’

‘A girl, then?’

Kalle overtook a Toyota that was moving particularly slowly and was able to confirm his prejudices once again: an old man in a flat cap.

‘I don’t really know.’

‘You don’t know if it’s a girl?’

Kalle grinned and said nothing. After a while Roland asked, ‘Bit of a sensitive issue?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Serious, maybe?’

‘Mm.’

‘OK.’

They talked about food instead; it was a mutual interest. Roland talked about the advantages of using soft drinks in cooking, particularly Trocadero, which went very well with coriander. Kalle wasn’t really there, somehow. Yes, he was waiting for that call. Of course she’d asked for his number first, but maybe he could ring her?

As so often happened, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was something about Flora. He’d felt it as soon as she got into the van:
I like her.

That didn’t necessarily mean a great deal; Kalle found it easy to like people (with the exception of academics), but there was something special about her, something you didn’t often find. A seriousness, perhaps. A kind of gravity. Something that responded to the call from the dark materials within Kalle’s own breast.

The gig was the same as usual. Cheerful songs, good reception, applause that quickly died away among the shops. A couple of drunks dancing. A child crying because the bunny rabbit balloon Mario the Magician had given him had burst. Pack up and drive home. Not bad. Not sad. A job.

On the way home his mobile rang. Kalle’s heart leapt and Roland burst out laughing when Kalle dropped the phone in his eagerness to take the call. When he managed to pick it up he could see from the display that it was his father. He sighed. ‘Kalle speaking.’

‘It’s Daddy.’

(Kalle couldn’t understand why his father persisted in using this peculiar phrase, always uttered in a regretful tone.)

‘Yes?’

‘Your services are needed tonight. A few things to be moved within the compound.’