Watching You(83)

Then Anton sees Sam. He smiles his typical Anton grin and calls out, ‘Well hello there! Come and say hi to your friend!’

Sam would rather have turned on his heel and fled before William saw him, but it’s too late now. All Sam can think as he moves through the curtain of girls is: It’s almost the summer holidays. All this crap will soon be over. But it isn’t over for Anton. Not by a long shot. He passes something to Sam, and it takes a few moments before Sam realises that it’s a towel, a damp towel.

‘Whip him!’

And only then does Sam see how badly William’s been whipped. And he suddenly sees the boathouse before him; he sees the girl’s tongue push at the duct tape, hears her wild screaming that cuts off abruptly after he takes off like a frightened rabbit through the grass that reaches up to his chest. And he whips and lashes out, and he sees William’s body shrink with pain, but not a sound emerges from his lips. He looks up for the first time and meets Sam’s gaze.

Sam goes closer, is standing very close now, and whispers: ‘That was for the boathouse, you fucking lunatic.’

Unknown forces propelled Sam into a sitting position. He stared blindly across the boathouse until his vision returned. And in his field of vision was Molly Blom. She took a photograph from the printer and held it up in front of him. It showed Simon Lundberg’s crouching skeleton.

‘It’s me he’s after,’ Berger said groggily.

Blom stuck the photograph to the whiteboard and looked at him. But she didn’t say anything.

Berger stood up, climbed out of the sleeping bag and went on: ‘He hates me more than I remembered. I’d sanitised my memories.’

‘That’s how we survive,’ Blom said. ‘What did you dream?’

Blom was wearing her army trousers and tracksuit top again. But she looked slightly different. Berger ignored the impression and stumbled over towards the whiteboard. He stood there, looking at the pictures of William Larsson’s victims.

‘Were you there at the goalposts?’ he asked.

Blom went on looking at him with penetrating intensity. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘William was tied to the post,’ he said. ‘It was after the boathouse, early summer. There was gang of girls. Were you one of them?’

Blom shook her head.

‘I kept to myself as much as I could until the end of term,’ she said.

‘I think the rest of your friends were there,’ Berger said. ‘And I whipped his cock. With a damp towel.’

‘William?’

‘Yes. Bloody hell.’

For the first time he met her gaze. There was a hint of sympathy in there.

He wasn’t sure he wanted her sympathy.

Then she nodded, as if to break the silence, once and for all, and gestured towards Berger’s largely naked body.

‘Go and have a wash,’ she said. ‘There’s shampoo out there.’

Then he saw what was different about her. Her hair was still wet.

He stood under the protruding roof for a while, looking out at the curtain of rain shrouding the whole of Edsviken. Then he let out a deep sigh, snatched up the bottle of shampoo from the railing and took three steps down the ladder until a stabbing pain spread up through his body from his big toe. Then he jumped in. The water came up to his navel. As if in a flash of lightning it was like he could see his brain, every minuscule activity in any given moment. He lowered the rest of his body under the water and felt through the paralysing cold – more clearly than ever – that William wanted something from them. He wanted to talk to them. He wanted to tell a story. And that story ended with a great deal of pain and a great deal of death.

Death as a full stop.

But then his lungs told him a different story, about having to get out of the icy cold, and as he broke the surface a different name was in his mind. And a realisation. As he washed he tried to get the meandering impulses in his brain to pin the realisation down.

A few minutes later he stormed inside, wrapped in a towel, and called out: ‘Anton.’

Blom was standing looking at the seven victims. He saw her quickly brush a tear from her eye before turning towards him.

‘What?’

‘Anton,’ he repeated. ‘Worst bully in the class. Do you remember him?’

‘I wasn’t in your class, as you know. I was in Year 8 when you were in Year 9.’

‘But you remember the Lucia celebration? When they glued the Lucia crown to William’s hair?’

He watched as she was transported back in time through years that she really didn’t want to revisit.

‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. ‘It was three Year 9s.’

‘Anton, Micke and Freddan,’ Berger said. ‘Anton was the one who told William to sing.’

‘Ah. “Come on then, sing, for fuck’s sake, don’t be shy.”’

‘Word for word, no less,’ Berger said.

‘I remember far too much,’ Blom said. ‘What about Anton?’

‘He was the one who tied William to the goalpost and pulled his trousers down, and then got the girls there somehow, to watch his humiliation.’

‘And he asked you to join in?’

‘I saw red,’ Berger said. ‘Maybe I was whipping myself, deep down. Trying to whip the cowardice out.’