The Circle (Hammer) Read online

  He tries to keep thinking about Linnéa. Like when he was little, and thought he could escape his nightmares if he could just hold on to one bright thought as he drifted off to sleep.

  Forgive me.

  He doesn’t know whether those words came from him or the voice.

  And that’s when he feels the pain.

  2

  WHEN SHE REGAINS consciousness, she’s lying huddled in the corner where they had left her.

  It’s pitch dark in the cell. Her whole body aches.

  She sits up, pulls her legs under her smock and wraps her arms around her knees. She still can’t hear anything from her right ear and there is a throbbing ache behind her eye, which is sealed shut with pus and coagulated blood.

  Footsteps echo outside and the heavy door opens. Torchlight fills the room and she looks away when she sees her scarred feet bound together with a thick chain. Two guards wrench her up from the floor and tie her hands behind her back while the torchbearer looks on. The rope cuts into her wrists, but she refuses to let them see how much it hurts.

  The man with the torch saunters forwards with an arrogant smirk. He has no teeth and his breath smells of rotten flesh. The heat from the torch sears her face as he brings it closer.

  ‘Today you’re going to die, harlot,’ he says, and strokes her face with his free hand, letting it continue down towards her breasts.

  Seething hatred fills her, makes her strong and hard.

  ‘I curse you,’ she hisses. ‘Your prick shall fester and fall off! My lord Satan will come for you on your deathbed, and demons will torment you for all eternity.’

  The man pulls away his hand as if burned.

  ‘God spare us,’ mumbles one of the guards.

  It gives her a little consolation to see them so frightened.

  Someone pulls a sack over her head, and she is dragged through the labyrinthine passageways.

  A gate opens on creaking hinges.

  Outside. There is the fresh smell of dew. She braces herself for the hateful baying of the mob, but all she hears is birdsong. The red light of dawn filters through the weave of the sackcloth over her head. A cuckoo caws to the south. It is a death knell. A deep, animal instinct takes over. She has to flee. Now.

  Driven by panic, she rushes forward blindly. The iron shackles knock against her ankles as she runs. No one tries to stop her. They know there’s no need. She doesn’t get far before she falls headlong on to the damp ground. The guards laugh and call out behind her.

  ‘Looks like she’s in a hurry to get to her lord Satan,’ she hears the toothless one shout.

  Powerful hands lift her underneath her arms and someone else grabs hold of her feet. They toss her roughly through the air. She soars for a moment before slamming on something hard and getting the breath knocked out of her. A horse snorts and the world sways back and forth. She’s lying in a cart, that much she can work out.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ she whispers.

  Nobody answers.

  Just as well, she thinks. We are all alone in death.

  Minoo is woken by her shivering. She’s freezing, as if she had slept with the window open all night. She’s having trouble breathing – it feels as if something big and heavy is sitting on her chest.

  She pulls the covers up to her chin and curls into a ball. She’s had many nightmares, but never one that had such a physical effect on her. Never has she felt so relieved to see the familiar yellow and white striped wallpaper of her room.

  After a while she starts to breathe more easily and the warmth slowly returns.

  She checks her mobile. Almost seven o’clock. Time to get up.

  She climbs out of bed and opens the wardrobe. She wishes she had some kind of distinct style instead of the same lame jeans, tops and cardigans every day. She pulls down a navy blue long-sleeved shirt from a hanger and is disgusted with herself. She’s so awfully … harmless. She hasn’t even changed her hairstyle. Ever. But what would people say if she suddenly came to school in something different? The alternative crowd at school, those whose style she secretly admires, would think her a wannabe.

  Plus she hates buying clothes. She feels like an illiterate in a bookshop. On other people clothes look ugly or attractive; she can see whether or not they suit the person wearing them. But when she’s flipping through a catalogue or standing in a shop, she only ever makes safe choices. Black. Dark blue. Long sweaters. Jeans that aren’t too tight. Nothing too low-cut. No patterns. Clothes are a language she understands, but can’t speak herself.

  She takes her outfit with her as she steps out into the corridor. The door to her parents’ bedroom is shut and in the bathroom, her father’s razor is lying in a pool of water next to the sink. Minoo guesses he’s already at work. Her mother’s towel is damp so she must be up, too, even though it’s her day off.

  Minoo lays her clothes on a stool, climbs into the bath and pulls the shower curtain closed. Suddenly she catches a whiff of smoke. She holds a wisp of her long black hair up to her nose and sniffs it.

  She has to shampoo her hair twice to get that inexplicable smell out. Afterwards she wraps it up in a towel turban and brushes her teeth. Her eyes wander to the old framed map of Engelsfors that hangs beside the mirror. Last year she actually thought that her parents would let her go and stay with Aunt Bahar in Stockholm and go to high school there. She hates to see that map every morning and be reminded that she’s still stuck here. In Engelsfors. Pretty name, shitty town. Out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by deep forests where people often lose their way and disappear. Thirteen thousand inhabitants and high unemployment. The steel works closed down twenty-five years ago. The shops in the town centre stand empty. Only the pizzerias survive.

  The national road and the railway form a partition through the town. To the east lie Dammsjön Lake, petrol stations, workshops, the shuttered factory and a few depressing high-rise blocks of flats. To the west lie the town centre, the church and vicarage, streets of terraced houses, then the long-abandoned manor house and the fancy upmarket detached houses by the idyllic canal.

  It is here that the Falk Karimi family lives in a light-grey functionalist two-storey house. The walls are covered with expensive wallpaper, and most of the furniture has been shipped in from designer boutiques in Stockholm.

  Minoo’s mother is sitting at the kitchen table when she comes down the stairs. The newspapers her father pores over in the morning are lying in a neat pile on the table. Her mother is immersed in a medical journal, with her usual breakfast – a cup of black coffee – next to her.

  Minoo pours herself a bowl of strawberry yoghurt and sits down across the table from her mother.

  ‘Is that all you’re going to eat?’ her mother asks.

  ‘You’re one to talk,’ Minoo retorts, and gets a smile in response.

  ‘Yogurt, porridge, sandwich, yogurt, porridge, sandwich. It gets pretty tedious after a while.’

  ‘But coffee doesn’t?’

  ‘One day you’ll understand.’ Her mother smiles. Then she suddenly gets that look in her eyes, the one that bores straight to the core. ‘Did you sleep badly?’

  ‘I had a nightmare,’ Minoo says. She tells her about the dream and how she had felt when she woke up. Her mother feels her forehead.

  Minoo recoils. ‘I’m not ill. It wasn’t that kind of shivering.’

  Minoo recognises her mother’s switch into ‘doctor mode’. Her voice becomes serious and professional, her body language more formal. The change had been evident even when Minoo was small. Her father had nursed her as a parent would when she was ill, spoiling her with sweets and comics, but her mother had been like a doctor on a home visit.

  Once, that had made Minoo sad. Now she suspects it’s a defence mechanism. Perhaps without it her parental concern, combined with professional understanding of human ailments, would be impossible to handle.

  ‘Was your pulse rapid?’

  ‘Yes … But it passed.’

  ‘Difficulty breath
ing?’

  Minoo nods.

  ‘It might have been a panic attack.’

  ‘I don’t get panic attacks.’

  ‘It’s not unlikely that you would, Minoo. You’ve just started year eleven. It’s a big adjustment.’

  ‘It wasn’t a panic attack, Mum. It was connected to my dream.’

  It sounds strange when she says it, but that was exactly how it felt.

  ‘It’s unhealthy to bottle up your feelings,’ her mother says. ‘They’re going to come out one way or another. The more you try to control them, the more uncontrolled their eventual release.’

  ‘Have you switched from being a surgeon to a psychologist now?’ Minoo teases.

  ‘I once considered becoming a psychiatrist,’ her mother answers a little pointedly. Then something shifts in her eyes. ‘I know I haven’t been a very good role model.’

  ‘Stop it, Mother.’

  ‘No. I’m a typical overachiever. I don’t want to pass that on to you.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ Minoo mumbles.

  ‘Tell me if it happens again. Promise?’

  Minoo nods. Even if her mother can be a little too intense at times, it’s good to know that she cares. And for the most part, she understands Minoo.

  God, how sad, Minoo thinks, swallowing the last spoonful of yogurt. My mother is my best friend.

  Vanessa is woken up by the smell of smoke.

  She throws off her duvet, runs to the door and yanks it open.

  But the living room is still and quiet. No flames licking at the curtains. No noxious black clouds billowing from the kitchen. The coffee-table is still strewn with pizza boxes and beer cans from yesterday. Their German Shepherd, Frasse, is asleep, basking in a pool of sunlight on the floor. Her mother, Nicke and her little brother, Melvin, are already in the kitchen having breakfast. A perfectly ordinary morning at Törnrosvägen 17A, fifth floor, first door to the right of the lift.

  Vanessa shakes her head, and that’s when she realises that the smell is coming from her. Her hair stinks like it had when she was small, after she had stood staring at the stupid May Day bonfire on Olsson’s Hill.

  She crosses the living room, walks through the kitchen, where Melvin is playing with two spoons, tapping them on the table. Sometimes he’s just so cute. It’s unbelievable that he got half his genes from Nicke.

  She tosses her nightshirt on to the bathroom floor and turns on the shower. The pipes cough and a stream of ice-cold water spurts out. The shower has been a nuisance ever since Nicke had insisted on replacing some of the pipes himself and putting in a new mixer tap. Her mother had objected, but she always gives in to Nicke in the end.

  Vanessa steps into the shower cubicle and is almost scalded before she manages to find the right temperature. She washes her hair with her mother’s coconut shampoo. The mysterious smoke smell is still there. She pours out another thick blob and lathers her hair a second time.

  When she gets back to her room, wrapped in her dressing-gown, she switches on the radio. The commercials make everything sound a little more normal. She angles up the blinds and at once her mood improves. T-shirt weather! She wants to get out into the sun as quickly as possible.

  ‘Turn that down!’ Nicke hollers, from the kitchen, in his best cop voice.

  Vanessa ignores him. It’s not my problem if you’re hung-over, she thinks, as she rolls deodorant under her arms.

  Once dressed, she grabs her makeup bag and goes to the full-length mirror propped against the wall.

  She’s not there.

  Vanessa stares into the empty mirror. She raises her hand and holds it in front of her. There it is, clear as day. She looks in the mirror again. Nothing.

  It’s a while before she realises she’s still asleep.

  Vanessa smiles. But if she’s aware that this is a dream, she should be able to control it.

  She puts down her makeup bag and goes into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  No one reacts. She really is invisible. Nicke is sitting there, half asleep with his head in his hands. He reeks of stale beer. Her mother, who looks just as tired, is listlessly chewing on a ham sandwich while flipping through a catalogue from a place called the Crystal Cave. Only Melvin turns his head as if he’s heard something, but it’s obvious he can’t see her.

  Vanessa stands next to Nicke. ‘Hung over today?’ she whispers in his ear. No reaction. Vanessa giggles. She feels oddly exhilarated.

  ‘Do you know how much I hate you?’ she says to Nicke. ‘You’re such a fucking loser that you don’t even know what a fucking loser you are. That’s probably the worst thing about you, that you think you’re so incredibly perfect.’

  Suddenly she feels something wet and rough against her hand. She looks down. Frasse is standing there, licking her hand.

  ‘Wha’ Fasse doing?’ Melvin asks, in his perky voice.

  Her mother looks at the dog, who is licking thin air. ‘You never know what Frasse is doing,’ she answers. ‘He’s probably chasing flies or something.’

  ‘Don’t make me come in there and smash that fucking radio,’ Nicke shouts, at Vanessa’s room.

  Vanessa giggles and lets her gaze wander across the kitchen. Nicke’s favourite mug is standing on the counter, a big blue one emblazoned with ‘NYPD’ in white lettering and the police logo. He probably thinks that being a policeman in Engelsfors is somehow similar to patrolling the streets of New York.

  Vanessa knocks the mug on to the floor with a sweeping motion. It splits in two with a satisfying crack. Melvin jumps and starts crying. Immediately she feels a little guilty.

  ‘What the hell?’ shouts Nicke, and gets up so forcefully that his chair tips over.

  ‘Shame you can’t blame it on me,’ Vanessa says triumphantly.

  Nicke stares straight at her. Their eyes meet. The shock sends little jolts of electricity down her spine. He can see her.

  ‘Who the hell else would I blame it on?’ he hisses.

  Melvin is bawling and Nicke lifts him up, stroking his tousled chocolate-brown hair. ‘There there, buddy, it’s all right,’ he says comfortingly, while glaring at Vanessa.

  ‘Vanessa, what are you doing?’ her mother says, in her weariest voice.

  Vanessa can’t answer her. Is she still dreaming? If not, what’s going on? ‘Could you see me the whole time?’ she asks.

  All of a sudden her mother looks wide awake.

  ‘Have you taken something?’

  ‘You guys are such dicks!’ Vanessa shouts, and rushes out into the hall.

  She’s scared now, scared to death, but she’s not going to show it. Instead she steps into her trainers and grabs her bag.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere!’ her mother shouts.

  ‘So I should miss school?’ Vanessa slams the front door behind her with a bang that echoes up the stairwell.

  She hurtles down the stairs, out through the front door and across the street to the number-five stop where she just makes it on to the bus.

  Thank God she doesn’t know anybody on board. She sits at the very back.

  There are only two possible explanations for this insane morning. One is that she’s lost her mind. The second is that she’s been sleepwalking again. When she was younger it happened quite often. Her mother loves to embarrass Vanessa by telling people that she once squatted on the hall carpet and peed. Vanessa still remembers how it felt to be in that state between sleep and waking. But deep down she knows this was something completely different.

  I must have been sleepwalking, she decides. The other explanation is terrifying.

  Vanessa looks out of the window, and when the bus heads into a tunnel, she catches sight of her reflection in the glass. Two unmade-up eyes stare back at her.

  ‘Oh, God.’ She rummages in her bag.

  All she finds is an old tube of lip-gloss. Her makeup bag is still lying on the floor at home. Vanessa hasn’t gone to school without makeup since she was ten and has no desire to start now. One traum
a is enough for this morning.

  The bus continues through deserted industrial areas. Her mother often goes on about how the old steel works was the pride of the town when she was a child, that then you could feel proud to come from Engelsfors. Vanessa doesn’t understand what there was to be so proud of. The town must have been just as ugly and boring then as it is now.

  The bus drives across the railway lines and enters the western part of the town. Outside the window, the area her mother mockingly refers to as the ‘Beverly Hills of Bergslagen’ rolls into view: large houses in bright colours set among well-tended gardens. It’s as if the sun shines a little more brightly on this side of town. This is where the people with money live. Doctors. The few successful retailers. The descendants of the mill proprietors. There’s still a way to go to her school, which is oddly distant from the town centre.

  Like a prison, isolated from the rest of civilisation.

  3

  ANNA-KARIN IS LONGING for the autumn.

  She’s standing by the gates looking out across the playground, where summer-clad students are milling around. Tanned arms, legs and cleavages everywhere. All she wants is to crawl into her scruffy old duffel coat, pull on a woollen hat and Grandpa’s knitted mittens.

  Today she’s wearing a baggy tracksuit jacket, an extra-large T-shirt and jeans. It’s already over twenty degrees, but she’d rather be hot than displaying skin. She doesn’t want to get too hot, though. Now she’s standing with her arms held a little out from her sides so she doesn’t get sweat patches under her arms. In year seven somebody shoved her so she spilled water all over her shirt. Erik Forslund, who was standing next to her, immediately shouted that she had sweaty boobs. ‘The BO Ho’ was such a popular nickname that it had stuck until year ten. She has no intention of giving anyone the opportunity to use it now, too.

  The playground is emptying. Anna-Karin joins the flow, head bowed, arms folded protectively across her breasts. She’s started wearing a bra that’s supposed to make them look smaller, but in the mirror you can’t see any difference.