The subway car emerges from the tunnel and into the autumn darkness between rusty fences, yellow grass and concrete. The suburbs. Klara looks out at the lit windows of the concrete buildings and realizes she’s never been here. She has never been to any of Stockholm’s suburbs, even this summer when she was directly involved in what was going on out here.
When the train stops in Bergort, she exits onto a barren and windswept platform bathed in yellow electric light. She stops at one of the grey, graffitied pillars holding up the ceiling. There, behind layers of new graffiti and stickers, she sees it: a fist enclosed in a star. The riots of the summer have ended, but the symbol remains.
It’s a quarter to eight, and she takes the stairs down from the platform, past the little grocery store where a few freezing kids are drinking Red Bulls and smoking, their puffy jackets buttoned all the way up and their hats pulled low. They look at her with interest as she walks by. She continues towards the small square, where she sees a pizzeria, an ICA supermarket, a pharmacy, a Middle Eastern food store. Otherwise, just grey concrete, brightly coloured balconies of corrugated metal, Somali flags in the windows, a forest of satellite dishes and kick bikes thrown into the bushes.
She hunches slightly against the wind as she walks across the square. She’s almost there now. At the end. They put the puzzle together, she and George, and have reached what might be the truth.
But she also knows that truth is only a small part of the story. That it’s fragile and easy to manipulate. The manipulation that got Gabi arrested, got Jacob to smuggle terrorist plans to Europe. It’s up to her now. And only her. She has to get the actual truth in order to break through everything else, so that the truth saves rather than destroys them.
Bergort feels completely deserted tonight. The weather has kept most of the kids indoors, in front of their computers and PlayStations. She thinks of Gabi and George. Of Grandma. Of Grandpa in his coffin. And for the first time in as long as she can remember, she feels up to the task at hand.
The buildings are lower near the edge of the small asphalt path that leads towards something that looks like a large square cage or enclosure. She can just make out one soccer goal and as she gets closer she sees the other one. Camp Nou.
She stops and looks upward with a pounding heart, then slowly makes her way towards the fence. It takes a little while to find the entrance, but as soon as she does, she doesn’t hesitate, just bends down so as not to hit her head and takes a few steps onto the coarse plastic surface.
The field is empty. She looks at the time on her phone. Just before eight. She turns around and listens, but all she hears is the wind whining through satellite dishes and rusty chicken wire. Slowly she walks into the darkness towards the centre of the field and touches the artificial grass with fingers stiff from the cold.
Something rustles behind her and she freezes in place. Then she straightens and turns around. Someone has stepped through the opening in the fence. Not just one person, she realizes, but two.
And neither of them is Gabriella.