Little Star (48 page)

Walking around spraying water on teenage girls who have got a bit sweaty, but who mostly just laugh and think it’s cool, telling people who are already pretty calm to calm down just a little bit more and stop trying to move forward. It’s very rare that Joel has to take a hard line or remove anybody.

But tonight there’s something wrong. When that Tesla walked on stage and started singing, you could have heard a pin drop in the audience at first. What a voice! People stood there with their mouths just hanging open, like they were bewitched. Joel took the opportunity to have a bit of a breather, drink some water and do some stretches while he enjoyed the song himself.

Then he hears the scream. It comes from somewhere in the seated area, oddly enough. He is dazzled by the lighting rig as he scans the
audience and sees that some people have got to their feet. In the middle of the live broadcast, for fuck’s sake! He waves angrily at them to sit down, but they take no notice. Instead more people stand up, and he hears more screams.

Inappropriate noises
and
inappropriate movement. His job, among other things, is to prevent exactly this, and he looks around to see if he can pinpoint the source of the problem.

Something is going on behind one of the close-up cameras, over by the VIP seats. If there is anywhere he would expect things to be perfectly calm, it’s in that area. A-list or B-list celebrities sitting like lighted candles, just waiting for the camera to focus on them. But now there are screams and movement and the place is full of people getting up and
running.

Joel scuttles along below the stage where the little girl is still standing and singing, in spite of the fact that the music has stopped. When he reaches the VIP seats the entire area closest to the stage is already empty, apart from two people. Joel catches sight of something on the ground, and stops dead.

Fucking hell.

Robert Segerwall, that old guy who used to be big on TV, is lying in a pool of what must be blood, and blood is still pouring out of a wound or a hole in his temple. Joel is about to hurl himself towards Segerwall, but then realises he can do more good elsewhere.

Prioritise, Joel. Prioritise.

What he at first took to be a quarrel is a struggle for life and death. He recognises Robert Segerwall’s wife, but not the young girl she is fighting with. Or whatever you would call it. The older woman is tearing at the air, trying to scratch the girl’s face, but Joel can see that this is a battle she is going to lose. In one hand the girl has a long knife, in the other a drill.

Joel doesn’t get there in time. Just as he takes his first stride towards them, the hand holding the knife shoots out. Joel couldn’t have done it better during his training with the elite Coastal Rangers. The blade slices across the woman’s neck and she
staggers backwards, her hands pressed to her throat.

At last she seems to realise that flight is the only possibility. As she is trapped between the young girl and Joel, who is moving forward, she wobbles up the steps leading to the stage, blood gushing down over her chest.

Prioritise.

He has to stop this girl before she does anything else. He reaches her in two rapid strides and twists the knife out of her hand. She gets in one blow to his head with the drill before he knocks it out of her hand. He locks her arms behind her back, yelling, ‘What the fuck are you doing, are you insane?’

The girl relaxes in his grasp and says calmly, ‘I am not insane. I am sane. I am perfectly sane.’

So I say thank you for the music, for giving it to me.

As Eva Segerwall takes the last step onto the stage, there is unfortunately nothing left within her to let her know that her dream has finally come true.

It is twenty-three years since she set aside her ambitions as a singer to support her husband in his TV career. But oh, what dreams she had! To hear Bosse Larsson say her name one day, to tread the boards here in Solliden beneath the birch trees, to stand on this very stage!

And now she is standing here, incapable of savouring it. Her life is pouring out through her throat, splashing around her feet as she staggers towards the angelic figure standing behind the microphone, still singing.

For a second their eyes meet, and Eva becomes even more afraid than she already was. There is no help to be found there. The big blue eyes gaze at her without sympathy, they do not even seem to notice the cascades of blood covering her light summer dress. She coughs up more blood and totters, on legs which are about to give way, towards the left, past the stage entrance, past the empty seats where the orchestra were sitting, past the flower arrangements and out onto the jetty.

And there she sees an escape route at last. Through misty eyes she sees the waters of Mälarviken glittering far below. She throws herself in that direction but hits an invisible wall, falls backwards and just lies there, gives up.

I’ve been so lucky

I am the girl with golden hair

I want to sing it out to everybody

What a joy! What a life! What a chance!

The orchestra had stopped playing long ago; Theres stood alone on the Solliden stage and sang the final verses a cappella, even though there was no longer anyone listening. Down below her feet there was utter chaos.

Thirty or so people lay dead or dying on the seats and on the ground. A woman had managed to escape onto the stage with blood pouring from her throat and had run into the Perspex screen protecting the stage from the wind coming off Mälarviken. She was just lying there in a heap on the jetty, over by the standing area. Theres put the microphone back in its stand, went over to the woman and drank her.

Some members of the group had been grabbed by security guards or other adults, some had been knocked over and trampled underfoot as the audience panicked and fled, some were still standing or crouching next to their latest victim, sucking up their life.

Theres went right to the end of the jetty, threw back her head and
howled.
For a moment everything stopped as the heart-rending sound froze the summer evening to solid ice. Then the other girls answered. Bloody faces looked up and teeth were bared, the girls who had been
caught filled their lungs with air, and Linn, who was lying next to the barrier with a broken leg, dragged herself into a sitting position and joined in.

The same howl rose from fourteen throats, a rising and falling note with a single message.

We exist. Be afraid of us.

Then more guards arrived, more capable hands to help drag away and render harmless the wild animals that had insinuated themselves in among human habitation.

Teresa had managed to get to the side of the stage, and as the other girls were running away or being captured, she called Theres over. Together they ran towards the wolf enclosure. They passed groups of people standing, sitting or lying at what they judged to be a safe distance from the danger. Moans and weeping from both children and adults filled the air.

Teresa saw a man with his arms around two people who were presumably his wife and son, and a thought struck her. A detail they had never mentioned when they were planning for this day.

‘Jerry?’ she asked. ‘Is he here?’

Without slowing down Theres replied, ‘I told him he wasn’t allowed to come.’

Presumably he had seen it on TV, presumably he knew by this stage what had happened. But he hadn’t been here, there was no risk that he was one of the dead. In some way that was a relief.

They ran, and the people allowed them to pass. A young voice yelled, ‘She’s the one who was singing!’ but that was all they knew. Theres and Teresa ran side by side until they reached the enclosure.

Before the show began, when everyone was gathered in Solliden, Teresa had used the bolt cutters to make a hole about the size of a door in the fence, so that their grey sisters and brothers would have the opportunity to join in.

None of them had taken that opportunity, but as if the wolves had sensed the atmosphere of the hunt that pervaded the area, several
of them had emerged from their lairs and hiding places and were now warily circling the area near the breach, baring their teeth and growling. Teresa looked at them and shook her head.

‘They didn’t come to us.’

Theres stood with her neck extended, watching the shaggy figures that were watching her. Then it happened. At first Teresa couldn’t work out what was tickling the back of her hand. When she looked down she saw that it was Theres’ fingers, fumbling for hers. She grabbed Theres’ hand and held it tightly. They stood for a long time, side by side in front of the door, squeezing each other’s hands.

Then Theres said, ‘In that case, we will go to them.’

‘Thank You for the Music’

Music and Lyrics by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus

Printed by permission of Universal/Union Songs Musikforlag AB,

Stockholm, Sweden.

With special thanks to ABBA, for inspiration.