The Circle (Hammer) Read online

  ‘It’s him,’ says a panting voice.

  Ida Holmström is with her constant shadows, Julia and Felicia. Together they form a blonde version of Huey, Dewey and Louie.

  ‘It’s Elias Malmgren,’ Ida continues.

  ‘How do you know?’ asks Gustaf.

  ‘We heard some teachers talking,’ Julia says.

  Ida gives her a murderous look, clearly upset at being interrupted. This is her moment. She looks at Gustaf with puppy dog eyes. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’

  Before Rebecka and Gustaf got together, Ida treated her like she didn’t exist. The day after term ended she had called and asked Rebecka if she wanted to go swimming in Dammsjön Lake. As if they had been friends for ever. Although Rebecka realised the absurdity of the situation, she didn’t dare refuse – because she’s terrified of Ida.

  ‘I don’t understand how anyone can just kill themselves,’ Felicia mumbles.

  Ida nods. ‘It’s so incredibly selfish. I mean, like, think of his parents.’

  ‘He must have been depressed,’ Rebecka says, feeling an instant urge to smack herself for sounding so wimpy.

  ‘Of course he was depressed,’ Ida says. ‘But everyone’s got problems. It doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself. If everyone felt that sorry for themselves, there wouldn’t be anyone left.’

  ‘I think he was gay,’ Felicia says.

  ‘Yeah – I read they often commit suicide,’ Julia adds.

  ‘He was being bullied, for fuck’s sake,’ Gustaf cuts in.

  Ida meets his gaze and flashes her most charming smile. ‘I know, G …’

  Rebecka struggles to suppress a grimace. ‘G’ is a nickname Ida came up with. No one else uses it.

  ‘… but seriously,’ she continues, ‘nobody was forcing Elias to dress like that and wear makeup to school.’ Julia and Felicia nod as Ida continues, encouraged by their support. ‘I mean, he could have made more of an effort to fit in and act more normally. I’m not saying it was his fault he was bullied, but he didn’t do much to stop it either.’

  Rebecka stares at Ida, whose expression seems full of anticipation as she looks at Gustaf.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ida,’ he says. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of being a bitch all the time? Take a day off once in a while.’

  Ida flutters her eyelashes. Then she lets out a forced laugh. ‘God, you’re so funny, G.’ She says and turns to Julia and Felicia, who look at each other uncertainly. ‘Men have such a raw sense of humour.’

  Rebecka grabs Gustaf’s hand. She’s proud of him, but it’s gnawing at her that she didn’t say anything.

  Minoo and Linnéa are sitting in the principal’s office on the threadbare dark-green sofa. The principal is in the next room, where the assistant principal usually sits, and is speaking to a uniformed police officer.

  Linnéa flips her phone in her hand as if she’s waiting for a call. Minoo tries not to stare at her. Linnéa’s body language is screaming that she doesn’t want to be bothered.

  The room is surprisingly small. A shelf is packed with different-coloured binders. A few tired-looking potted plants stand in the window. The white and green checked curtains are stained and the windows need washing. Papers are stacked in neat piles on the desk next to an ageing computer. The chair is ugly but, no doubt, ergonomic. The only thing that stands out is a lamp with a dragonfly-patterned glass mosaic shade.

  It’s the first time Minoo has ever been to the principal’s office. You’re only ever called there if you’re in trouble or if something terrible has happened.

  When Minoo was at primary school, she used to day-dream about something dramatic happening – that the school would catch fire, or that everyone would be taken hostage by a bank robber on the run. The older she got, the more she saw how childish that was. But it is only now that she knows how far from reality her fantasies were.

  The things that are awful in reality are nothing like the things that are awful in movies. It’s not exciting. It’s just scary, horrible and dirty. Above all, you can’t turn it off. Minoo already knows that the image of Elias will haunt her for the rest of her life.

  If only I’d shut my eyes, she thinks.

  ‘I’ve seen a dead person before,’ Linnéa says suddenly. Her eyes are fixed on her phone, which she’s still flipping between her ink-smudged fingers. Each nail is neatly painted neon pink.

  ‘Who?’ Minoo asks.

  ‘I don’t know what her name was. It was an old lady. A drunk. She had a heart attack and died. Just like that. I was, like, five.’

  Minoo doesn’t know what to say. It’s so far removed from her own life.

  ‘You never forget something like that,’ Linnéa mumbles.

  Her eye makeup is a mess. It strikes Minoo that she herself hasn’t cried. Linnéa must think she’s the most insensitive person in the world. But Linnéa just looks at her. ‘We were in the same class in year seven, weren’t we?’

  Minoo nods.

  ‘What’s your name again? Minna?’

  ‘Minoo.’

  Linnéa doesn’t say her name. Either she can’t be bothered or she takes it for granted that Minoo knows it. And why wouldn’t she? Everyone was always talking about Linnéa Wallin.

  ‘Girls,’ they hear the principal say, and Minoo looks up. Adriana Lopez’s clean features show no sign of emotion. ‘The police want to speak to you,’ she continues.

  Minoo glances up and is shocked when she sees the hatred with which Linnéa looks at Miss Lopez.

  The principal seems to have noticed it, too, because she stops short. ‘You were Elias’s friend, weren’t you?’ she asks.

  Linnéa stares at her in silence until the principal turns away and mutters something to the police officer now entering the room.

  ‘You can stay,’ he answers, and they sit down.

  The police officer, whom Minoo recognises as Vanessa Dahl’s stepfather, struggles to find a comfortable position on the folding plastic chair. Eventually, he swings one leg on to the other with his foot perched on his knee. It doesn’t look especially dignified.

  ‘I’m Niklas Karlsson. I’ll start by taking your names.’

  He pulls out a little notepad and pencil – Minoo notices that the end is chewed. A police officer who chews pencils. A rodent in uniform.

  ‘Minoo Falk Karimi.’

  ‘I see. You, of course, I recognise,’ he says to Linnéa.

  It may have been meant in a friendly way, but it didn’t sound like it. Minoo’s whole body tenses when she sees Linnéa squeeze her phone until the plastic cracks.

  Don’t say anything, she thinks. Please, Linnéa, don’t do anything stupid. You’ll only make things worse for yourself.

  ‘I realise this must be terrible for you,’ Niklas says, and goes back to playing the sympathetic police officer, ‘and crisis counselling is available.’

  ‘We’re bringing in a team of psychologists,’ the principal says. ‘You can see one straight away.’

  ‘I’m already seeing a psychologist,’ Linnéa says.

  ‘I see. Well, that’s good,’ the officer says. ‘Did you know Elias?’

  ‘No,’ Minoo mumbles.

  Niklas looks at Linnéa. It’s obvious he’s trying to hide his contempt for the black-haired girl with streaked eye-liner. ‘But you two were friends?’ he says to her.

  ‘Yes,’ Linnéa answers, and lowers her gaze.

  ‘Elias had problems, I understand.’

  A nod is her only answer.

  ‘And he’d tried to commit suicide before.’

  ‘Once,’ Linnéa says, her voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘I see,’ the officer says. ‘Then perhaps there’s nothing more to say about it. Naturally the pathologist will examine him. But the situation does seem fairly straightforward.’

  There is something so condescending about his voice that Minoo wants to scream. If Elias had been murdered, and the murderer had made it look like suicide, the police would miss it. Because that’s how things are in th
is stupid town. You’re only what everyone thinks you are.

  ‘I see,’ the policeman says again, and stands up. ‘Can you get yourselves home?’

  Minoo hasn’t thought that far ahead. ‘I’ll ring my mum,’ she says.

  ‘How about you?’ the principal asks Linnéa.

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  But the principal hasn’t finished. Minoo can see that she’s groping for words. Even before she starts talking, Minoo knows she’ll say something about Elias, and that it will be so terribly wrong.

  ‘Linnéa,’ she begins. ‘I’m so very sorry about Elias. He seemed to be a very special person.’

  Linnéa’s voice is hoarse and tense when she answers. ‘Then why didn’t you tell him that?’

  The principal is rooted to the spot. Her mouth is half open, but nothing comes out.

  ‘Now, let’s keep calm, all right?’ the police officer says, glancing at the principal protectively.

  Linnéa gets up and leaves the room without a word.

  Minoo looks at the principal uncertainly.

  ‘You can go now,’ Miss Lopez says.

  Minoo walks back to her classroom to collect her bag. The chairs have been put on top of the desks. Specks of dust swirl in the light falling through the window. She walks up to her desk, but her bag isn’t there.

  ‘Minoo?’

  She turns.

  Max is standing in the doorway with it. ‘I held on to this for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  When he hands her the bag, their hands brush against each other, and Minoo nearly drops it. Her arms have gone limp again.

  How can I feel like this when I’ve just had such a horrific experience? she wonders.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Max asks softly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Minoo says, surprised by the effortless honesty of her answer.

  He nods understandingly. ‘When I was your age, someone close to me committed suicide.’

  His voice is calm, but he clenches his fist. A certain kind of pain never goes away.

  ‘I didn’t know Elias,’ Minoo says, ‘but Linnéa did.’

  Suddenly she feels Max’s hand on her shoulder. The heat burns right through the fabric of her shirt. ‘If you ever want to talk,’ he says, ‘you know where to find me.’

  ‘Okay.’ She doesn’t dare say any more. She isn’t sure that her voice will hold up.

  ‘I’m really sorry. No one should ever have to see what you saw. Look after yourself now,’ he says, and gives her a little squeeze before he lets go.

  Suddenly Minoo notices that she’s shaking. Panic takes hold of her, digging its sharp claws into her chest, making it hard to breathe. ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’

  She rushes out of the classroom and down the stairs. The sunlight blinds her when she throws open the doors and runs out into the playground. Linnéa is sitting cross-legged, smoking, by the front entrance.

  Minoo’s heart is pounding and she’s so short of breath she has trouble speaking. She looks towards the street and sees her mother’s red car. She can make out her familiar profile through the windscreen.

  ‘Do you want a lift?’ she finally manages to say.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Why were you running?’

  ‘I – I don’t know. I just felt I had to get out of there.’

  Linnéa flicks her cigarette away. ‘He didn’t kill himself,’ Linnéa says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I spoke to him just before it happened. He was going to come over to my house later that night. He wanted to talk—’ She stops herself. ‘We’d had an argument. But we weren’t … There was something he wanted to tell me … He wouldn’t have just …’ Linnéa doesn’t finish her sentence.

  She can’t admit to herself, Minoo thinks, that her best friend abandoned her. ‘Why didn’t you say anything to the police?’ she asks instead.

  ‘The police.’ Linnéa snorts. Suddenly her gaze is hard and unforgiving.

  ‘Well, shouldn’t you tell them?’ Minoo says.

  ‘What the hell would you know about anything? You’ve always lived in your cosy house with your cosy family.’

  Minoo meets her gaze. She’s ashamed because she knows it’s true. At the same time, she thinks that perhaps Linnéa’s truth isn’t the only truth. If Minoo has mainly experienced the lighter side of life, Linnéa has mainly experienced the darker side. Is the one truer than the other?

  Linnéa smiles scornfully. ‘Aren’t you going to run to Mummy now?’

  Minoo feels a sudden flash of anger. ‘I feel sorry for you,’ she says, and walks towards the car.

  ‘Well, fucking don’t!’ Linnéa shouts after her.

  5

  ANNA-KARIN GETS UP, staggers down the aisle of the lurching bus and resolutely aims for the door. She is so tired of being afraid that someone is going to say something nasty to her as she walks past. Or, even worse, that she’ll hear a stifled snigger. When neither happens, she hears echoes of previous insults in her head. Voices that whisper how fat she is and how she stinks of manure.

  But today no one even looks up. Everybody on the bus is whispering, but not about her. Today nobody’s talking about anyone except Elias.

  The bus takes a final curve and stops with a jolt that causes her to stumble. She feels her stomach drop in the tenth of a second when she thinks she’s going to fall and make everyone laugh, but she regains her balance without anyone noticing. The doors open and she steps down on to the soft verge.

  She takes a few deep breaths as the bus disappears down the road. As soon as she sees the cow pasture, her lungs double in size. She can breathe freely.

  The gravel crunches beneath her feet as she walks up to the house. When she reaches the field she goes over to one of the big, brown-eyed animals. ‘Hello, my beauty,’ she mumbles, as Grandpa always does.

  The cow’s big tongue licks her hand when she holds it out. Flies are buzzing around its warm coat. Yes, it smells of manure, and she loves it. Anna-Karin is a completely different person at home. Her back straightens and her fear of sweating disappears. She can think about other things than whether or not the angle of her head gives her a double chin, or if her breasts are jiggling beneath her shirt in a way that might invite comment.

  She reaches the front garden. Two red-painted wooden houses, one with two floors and the other just one, built at right angles to each other. The barn and a few smaller buildings stand further away.

  Anna-Karin goes up to the two-storey house and opens the front door. She takes off her shoes and plucks Pepper out of her pocket. He’s fallen asleep and moves a little as she gently lays him in a basket in the hallway. She’s made it nice and cosy with the remains of an old rag carpet.

  Loud peals of laughter can be heard coming from the living room. Anna-Karin looks in and sees her mother lying on the sofa. She’s fast asleep, with her mouth wide open. There’s an American living room on the TV screen. Anna-Karin considers taking the remote and turning down the volume, but she doesn’t want to risk waking her mother and being shouted out.

  Instead she tiptoes into the kitchen. She takes out a box of chocolate balls from the refrigerator and a bag of French rolls from the breadbin on the counter. She hollows out the little white rolls, places a chocolate ball in each one and flattens them into patties. She eats them standing at the counter, with gulps of milk. The full sensation in her stomach makes her feel nicely drowsy.

  Anna-Karin looks towards the kitchen window through which she can see Grandpa’s house. She spots the hunched figure inside and waves. Grandpa gestures for her to come over. Anna-Karin eagerly leaves the house with the hysterically laughing TV personalities.

  Grandpa’s front door leads into a tiny hall where one of his work overalls hangs on a hook. To the left you can see into the kitchen. Nearest the door stands a bluish-grey wooden bench. This is where Grandpa’s friends usually sit when they visit, before it’s time to move to the kitche
n table for coffee. That’s where Grandpa is sitting now, looking out of the window as he slurps a cup of coffee.

  Anna-Karin doesn’t like coffee, but she loves the smell. Grandpa’s little house always smells of coffee, newly chopped firewood and animals. Today it also smells of the freshly ironed clothes that lie folded neatly in a basket by the bedroom door.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ Grandpa says.

  ‘Hello,’ answers Anna-Karin. She sits down at the table.

  Grandpa is wearing a red and green checked shirt and corduroy trousers. He always takes off his overalls before he comes inside. He doesn’t want to bring dirt inside.

  He gazes at her inquisitively. ‘Back already?’

  ‘They let us out early.’

  ‘Really?’

  It’s an opening to say more, but Anna-Karin’s throat tightens. She doesn’t want to talk about Elias, doesn’t even want to think about him.

  Suddenly she wishes she were a little girl again. When she’d fallen and hurt herself, it was always in Grandpa’s lap that she’d wanted to sit. Now she wants to go back to that time. Then maybe she’d have the courage to cry, to let out all the stuff that has stuck and hardened in her chest. Anna-Karin hasn’t cried properly since primary school. There’s just too much to cry about. Now it’s as if a manhole cover is blocking her tears.

  ‘Has Mama been out today?’ she asks.

  ‘Don’t think she was quite up to it.’

  ‘She’s out of bed anyway,’ Anna-Karin says, and feels the hard, bitter anger inside her.

  ‘Mia doesn’t have it easy,’ Grandpa says.

  Anna-Karin regrets having brought it up. Officially her mother has taken over the farm, but Grandpa still does most of the work. Some days she loads everything on to him. Still Grandpa never has a bad word to say about his daughter.

  Sometimes Anna-Karin is seized by terrible pangs of guilt because she’s so angry with her mother. She understands that she’s probably depressed, that she didn’t want to take on the farm and is stuck with it. But at the same time it seems as though she lives to complain. Because what would she do without it? She’s always the one who’s most wronged, who suffers most, is the most deserving of sympathy in the whole world. That’s how it’s been for as long as Anna-Karin can remember.