61

Sara didn’t know his name, only that people called him Acetone, and with good reason. He’d been standing right behind her as she called her parents, she didn’t know how long for, and now he was smiling, exposing teeth that would have worked as a cautionary tale in any dentist’s waiting room. A smile that was triumphant and sarcastic all at once.

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ she said, for want of anything better.

It was a lie, and they both knew it.

‘That’s why you’re so happy now then,’ he said. His breath hit her as it always did, a pit of infection and rotting teeth, mixed with the sharp smell that had given him his name. Why him? Of all the people around, why him?

She didn’t want to give up. At least not deep down. But sometimes deep down is so very inaccessible.

‘You don’t look too well,’ he continued.

‘I’ve had a bad day.’

‘I can see that. It’s a shame we can’t trust each other any more. Otherwise I would’ve been able to help you.’

She noticed that she’d already opened negotiations with herself. Quite honestly, she seemed to be saying, didn’t she deserve a bit of a rest? Hand on heart, how many people could say they’d had as tough a day as she’d had?

Sometimes deep down can fuck off.

‘How about a swap?’ she heard herself ask.

‘Do I look like a pawnshop?’ he said.

‘You know what I think you look like.’

It was automatic, snide paths so well-trodden that neither of them needed to give their answers any thought. A ritual that would always lead to the same thing: first he would say no, and in the end they’d agree and then she would end up losing on both counts.

‘What will you give me for a brand-new computer?’

Half an hour later Sara Sandberg boarded the train that had just arrived at Stockholm Central Station. She had half an hour until it would leave again, and that half-hour would be enough.

She just needed to feel human again. One last time and then never again. She’d stop for good, tackle her problems, go home and become who she really was.

She’d traded the computer. Stuck inside was the CD that was at the root of it all, but Acetone was going to make sure she got it back because why wouldn’t he? He was a dealer, sure, but not a bad person, and she’d made him swear on his life. With the CD in her hand she would finally track them down, Mum and Dad, the only parents she’d ever had, and they’d understand and forgive and then it would all be over.

Everything was going to be fine, she knew that now. She just needed to feel human again. One last time.

When Lars-Erik Palmgren opened his eyes, his first thought was that he was floating. Straight ahead was a pitch-black sky, and then in the middle a series of thin white dots materialised from out of nowhere, falling slowly towards him like sedate shooting stars. It was the dry chill of ice crystals on his face that told him where he was. The hard stuff underneath him was tarmac, the stars were tiny snowflakes, and the thing causing him so much pain everywhere was his own body.

On each side of the sky, the stalls towered over him, topped with flat roofs, and of course the kid must’ve been waiting on one of them. Palmgren had been attacked from above, and he couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a moment, but it was a moment too long.

He tried to get up, but couldn’t. He felt the pain of the ground against his legs, his arms, everywhere he’d hit without being able to break the fall; the knee pushing down on his chest, preventing him from getting up. The kid was sitting on Palmgren’s left-hand side, his skin unshaven and pocked, wearing a worn black jacket with a colourless hood sticking out from underneath it and covering his shoulders like a miniature cape. Above all though, he had breath that cut through the winter cold, and despite their faces being at least a metre apart, Palmgren had to concentrate on not turning away when the face above him opened its mouth.

‘I heard what happened,’ said the breath. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Palmgren said in little more than a hiss.

‘There was nothing wrong with the stuff I sold her. She took too much, too quickly, fucked if I know.’

The answer ran like a chill through Palmgren’s body. ‘Who?’ he asked, although he knew full well.

The kid hesitated, and Palmgren peered into the dark, trying to avoid the falling snow and only half succeeding. He needed to turn the situation around, but how? There was no doubt that this assailant was much quicker than he was, and besides, he already had the upper hand. Ten years earlier, Palmgren would’ve been able to grab the attacker’s leg, tugging and twisting at once surprised him before he had the chance to react, but today? He was only going to get one chance, and if he didn’t succeed the kid already had his foot in a great position to deliver a kick in the face. At best, he’d be knocked out. At worst he’d be left lying there with a broken neck.

He debated with himself for half a second. Decided against it.

‘I can help you,’ he said instead, despite not knowing whether it was true or whether the youngster was even interested in any kind of help. ‘Tell me, who are you? What are you doing here?’

‘I just want to keep my word, that’s all. I know she used to stay out here.’

‘Keep your word?’

‘She made me promise.’

‘Promise what?’

‘To give her what was stuck in the computer.’

Palmgren felt his body go rigid. ‘Have you got the CD?’ The pressure on his chest increased, pressing him even harder into the ground.

‘I don’t know anything about anything,’ the kid said in a voice that hardened and caused him to breathe out even more of his infected air towards Palmgren. ‘All she said was that it was important. She was going on about the power cut, said that she was the one who’d made it happen.’

‘Why did she think that? Did she say anything else?’

‘I don’t know any more. I don’t want to get involved.’

‘Listen to me,’ said Palmgren, and he felt a searing pain in his chest as he raised his voice. ‘I’m as far from Drugs Squad as you can get. I’m in the military. Not even that, I’m part of a staff who sit around planning what to do if a foreign power threatens this country. I don’t give a damn what you sell or to whom, all I’m interested in is whether Sara said anything to you.’ The kid didn’t answer. ‘And I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but right now there’s a terrorist attack in progress against almost a hundred nuclear power stations around the world. And if Sara knew anything about that, then please, please, tell me.’

The kid stared at Palmgren.

‘I’ve done my bit now,’ he said. ‘That’s all I can do.’

And then, for a second, he seemed to hesitate. He looked around, halfway between Palmgren and the black sky above, a head turning in all directions to judge distances and bearings.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said eventually.

‘About what?’ said Palmgren, and as he spoke felt the air leaving his lungs as the youth pushed down with his knee, his ribs creaking and his whole body trying to curl up with pain. All he could manage was to shift onto one side and then lie there on the sparkling white ground, rolled up like a felled striker in the penalty area, his chest pounding whilst the sprinting feet disappeared between all the boarded-up tombola stands and away out of sight.

Palmgren rolled onto his back. When his lungs had finally assured themselves that they were back in action, they allowed him to sit up. Elbows on the ground, then just the palms of his hands, and in the end he was able to raise himself. Breathless, tender, but otherwise okay. He could no longer see the youngster, in any direction. The question was where he’d gone, who he was, and–if he did have Sara’s CD–how they were going to find him again.

Not till he hauled himself upright did he look down and see the shiny disc that the kid had left lying on the ground next to him.

The police hadn’t seen the little car stopping at the end of the bend, but when the HGV behind slammed on its brakes, beeping and flashing, they couldn’t miss it. The urgency of this manhunt had made them nervous, and as seconds turned to minutes, they started to move towards it, cautiously and with weapons drawn.

And when they caught sight of the silhouette in the headlights of the HGV, none of them dared take any chances.

‘Police!’ they screamed. ‘Hands on your head! On your knees!’

They ran with arms crossed, torches propped under their weapons, shouting their orders in English with the words of the wanted bulletin echoing around their heads. Potential terrorist. The man they were looking for was involved in what was happening across the rest of the world, in country after country where, unlike Poland, nuclear power was used. He was dangerous, possibly armed, and all of them felt the buzz of adrenalin and fear.

‘Down on the ground! Hands where we can see them!’

When they got there he was already sitting perfectly still alongside the little Fiat, hands on his head just as they had ordered, far too paralysed to offer any resistance. They manhandled him away from the car, pushing his arms and legs onto the tarmac so that he could pose no threat. He was wearing a black padded jacket, with a fur-lined hood that had glided up over his head, and it was only when they rolled him over that they could see who it was–or rather, who it wasn’t.

The face peering out from the hood belonged to a man with a reddish beard. He was thirty, tops, with pale skin, steel-framed glasses, one lens with a horizontal crack in it, perhaps caused by their recent manoeuvre, perhaps not. Either way, he was clearly petrified. And definitely not the grey-haired, middle-aged man they’d seen in their pictures.

‘I was just going to ask if she needed help,’ he said in breathless, rolling Polish. ‘She was in my way.’

He nodded towards the lorry–towards the open door of the cab he’d just jumped out of. And when the police turned their torches on the little Fiat they saw a bald woman sitting inside.

‘There’s something wrong with the engine,’ she said. ‘Do you think you could give me a bump-start?’

After the police had worked out who everyone was–a young Polish trucker heading for the Baltics and a woman from Warsaw undergoing chemo–only the formalities remained. With an empty look in her eyes, Rebecca looked on as the police worked their way around her little car. They peered carefully through the windows, bending down and covering every corner, as if maybe there might still be a square centimetre that they hadn’t seen and in which a fully grown man might be able to hide. The back seat, passenger seat, boot–even the flimsy mat on the floor.

They didn’t manage to find a terrorist anywhere. No Swedish perpetrator curled up hoping to avoid detection. And when the police walked past her passenger door without noticing that it wasn’t quite closed, she knew that she’d made it.

Rebecca Kowalzcyk was alone again. Now it all was down to her: to get herself to Sweden and to tell the people who needed to know.