The Key (28 page)

Minoo looks at the wax figures seated in front of her. Only when she looks really closely can she see that they are breathing.

She stands in front of Erik. Looks into his eyes. He doesn’t even blink. Her distaste for him is so strong it makes her dizzy. She emphatically does not want to know what’s in his head. But, if what Walter said is true, if she is that powerful, surely she can handle it?

Vanessa takes her hand and makes them both invisible. Then, Minoo releases the black smoke. It makes her feel serene.

She puts her hand on Erik’s forehead and observes the weave of his memories.

Darkness. Minoo feels Erik kissing somebody. Moist, slow kisses. He gets a rise. R & B in the background. Erik fumbles with his bedside lamp, switches it on. Says that he wants to see her. Julia is screwing up her eyes against the light. Erik pulls her top off; she is wearing a white lace bra. She has passable boobs, not as nice as Ida’s, but Julia is more willing to do stuff. He grabs her left breast hard. She pushes his hand away but she likes it well enough. She’s just pretending, he’s sure of that. He kisses her before she gets to say anything.

Back in time.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Helena says. ‘I’m backing you one hundred per cent. You were here all night. No one is going to believe Linnéa, even if she survives.’ Helena hugs him. Her perfume smells nice, sweet and flowery. Erik is relieved. It’s all going to be OK.

‘We didn’t want to hurt her, of course,’ he says, trying to make his tone of voice quite worried but without sounding like a wimp. ‘She caught us at it. I didn’t want her to call the police. She might have ruined everything for us all …’ Helena caresses his back. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘Not to worry.’

Back in time.

He swings the baseball bat. It feels so good in his hands, so heavy. Linnéa’s scream gives him a high. She is proper scared of him now; he owns her and she knows it.

Back in time.

Erik turns up the volume. Linnéa’s playlist is perfect for when you destroy, mangle, crush. He is going to wipe out every trace of that psychotic whore to the sound of her own music.

Back in time.

Erik looks at Helena, wondering if he had heard her right. ‘What was that?’ he says. ‘Do you mean you want us to wreck her flat?’

‘Correct,’ Helena says as she hands him a key. ‘We’ve waited far too long. Time to teach her a lesson.’ That football-mad thick-head Rickard stands behind her and nods.

Minoo starts to collect all the images in Erik’s memory of the evening that include Rickard. She unravels the weave, ties the threads together, hides Rickard away. Then she moves on, forward to the very latest memories, and makes Erik forget he has seen her, Vanessa and Anna-Karin here, in the principal’s office.

The black smoke is still whirling as Minoo opens her eyes and takes her hand away. She moves to Kevin, and Vanessa follows her, still holding her hand firmly.

‘Hurry,’ she says.

Kevin’s red-rimmed eyes are shiny with tears. As Minoo puts her hand on his forehead, she feels nothing but a mild interest, neither hatred nor compassion.

Kevin stands on the makeshift stage in the gym and looks at Helena who is bathed in light. She holds an envelope containing the results of the vote. It has to be him; no one has been more loyal. She pulls a card from the envelope and her smile widens. ‘Erik Forslund!’ she almost screams. Thunderous applause. Kevin feels his face go hot but he tries to smile. Fucking Erik. Erik who always gets stuff. First Ida, and now this.

Back in time.

Music at top volume. He watches Robin and Erik run after Linnéa. They’ll kill her. Erik is a total psycho. ‘What shall we do?’ Kevin says. ‘Phone the police?’ Rickard hesitates for a moment. ‘No,’ he says. ‘If something happens, it isn’t my fault, it’s Helena’s.’ He picks up Linnéa’s laptop, lifts it above his head and smashes it against the floor. The music stops. ‘Sod Linnéa, she’s only got herself to blame. It’s not my fault,’ Rickard mumbles, and stamps hard on the laptop.

Back in time.

Kevin drives through Engelsfors on his moped. He thinks maybe he has lost sight of Linnéa, but then he spots her. Minoo sees her own home. There she is, letting Linnéa in. Kevin drives off, hoping that Linnéa will stay at Minoo’s place all evening. What he and the others are going to do is exciting, but he is scared as well, scared of the police and even more scared of his dad and what he might do if he hears about it.

Minoo has little idea of time but feels that she works faster now. It seems easier to find and hide all the memories that link Rickard to that evening’s events.

When she opens her eyes, she hears Vanessa again. Has she been talking all this time?

‘Linnéa thinks that Tommy is on his way here, bringing Nicke and a policewoman. If she has to, Anna-Karin can probably keep them away, but hurry up!’

Minoo places her hand against Robin’s forehead.

Linnéa sits astride the railing of the bridge. She is in tears. All Robin wants is for her to jump. For this to be over soon. He can’t take any more. Why won’t she jump?

Minoo sets to work with the memory weave.

She has just completed her task when something catches her attention. She has found a thread that is glowing strongly.

She follows it, senses the terror this memory holds.

Robin is getting out of the shower, wrapping the towel around his hips. He notes a word that is written in the condensation on the mirror.
CONFESS
!

Forward.

A marker pen is floating in the air, next to a wall, and then Robin hears the moist, rasping sound as it starts writing a word in spiky, hate-filled letters on the light-blue wallpaper.
CONFESS
!

Forward.

The stairwell in the school. Linnéa has tripped; she is lying at Robin’s feet. She is looking at the hand he is holding out to help her up. He is so frightened. He must confess. But what will happen when he does?

Forward.

Robin stares at his computer screen. Words are sliding across it. The keys depress themselves in a series of soft clicks.
DEAR MUM, DAD AND ADDE. I AM SORRY THAT YOU WILL FIND ME LIKE THIS BUT I CANNOT STAND LIVING WITH WHAT I KNOW. ERIK FORSLUND AND I TRIED TO MURDER LINNÉA WALLIN. PLEASE FORGIVE ME. IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. IT IS JUST THAT I CANNOT LIVE WITH THE GUILT. NOT ANY MORE. ROBIN
. A suicide letter. Robin turns, looks around the room. He is terrified out of his mind. Then he leaps forward and slams the lid of his computer shut.

Vanessa calls Minoo’s name. She opens her eyes, and looks at Vanessa who is disturbing her concentration.

‘They’re here now,’ Vanessa says. ‘Should Anna-Karin …?’

‘I’ve finished,’ Minoo says, and retracts the black smoke.

Vanessa nods, just as the door to the office opens.

Minoo jumps, before she remembers that she and Vanessa are invisible.

‘… you were to wait in here with them!’ Tommy Ekberg says.

Behind him, Petter Backman enters with Nicke and a policewoman with short dark hair.

‘Yes, you did,’ Petter says tonelessly. ‘I just … felt like … it seemed a good idea to leave, that’s all.’

Nicke snorts. Arms crossed on his chest, he examines Kevin, Robin and Erik in turn.

‘Righto,’ he says. ‘What do you lot have to say for yourselves?’

The wax dolls blink. Anna-Karin must have released them.

‘These guys are trying it on with some fucking awful joke that’s gone wrong,’ Erik says.

‘We tried to kill her,’ Robin says.

Kevin snivels and Nicke looks contemptuously at him.

‘You’d better come along to the station,’ his colleague says. ‘We need statements from all three of you.’

Erik gets up and looks menacingly at the others.

‘Let’s go. You’ll have a chance of making assholes of yourselves in front of the police as well.’

Minoo observes him and feels sick. She has been inside his mind now; she knows what it feels like to
be
Erik. How cold his mind is, and how capable of what can truly be called evil.

He will never confess.

Vanessa hears the rumble of thunder. The world outside Linnéa’s flat is washed in a strange, greyish-blue light. She is sitting on the sofa with her arm around Linnéa’s shoulders. On the opposite side of the sofa table, Anna-Karin and Minoo sit on chairs.

Minoo seems like the real Minoo again, with her intelligent eyes and her pimples partially covered with badly applied concealer. But Vanessa will never forget the look in Minoo’s eyes that moment in Tommy’s office. She can’t describe it to herself. The only word that comes anywhere near is ‘contempt’, but that isn’t right either. It felt as if, to Minoo, Vanessa was too unimportant for her even to feel contempt.

‘Could Robin have gone a little mad?’ Anna-Karin asks. ‘If he had, he might have hallucinations that made him think he saw all that. And memories of hallucinations would look real to you as well, wouldn’t they, Minoo?’

‘Or, someone was there, someone Robin didn’t see. Someone invisible, is what I mean,’ Minoo says, glancing quickly at Vanessa.

It takes a second or two for Vanessa to see what Minoo means. She straightens up.

‘Do you really think I’d run around spooking Robin without telling the rest of you?’

‘Sorry,’ Minoo says, and her ears go bright red. ‘I thought, you know, that since it was Linnéa he had been going for—’

‘I see,’ Vanessa says and suddenly feels ashamed. ‘I didn’t but I ought to have. Fuck it, I’m so stupid. I should’ve thought of it myself.’

‘No, don’t say that,’ Linnéa says evenly. ‘It’s good that you didn’t. We don’t want to have the Council at our throats again.’

Vanessa looks at her impassive face, the ink-stained hands that are twisting in her lap. Linnéa has been like this ever since they got here.

‘But, in that case, who could it have been?’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Surely it must have been an air witch. Like Vanessa? Or could it have been an earth witch? Who could’ve made him believe he saw things?’

‘Perhaps we should ask ourselves
why
instead,’ Minoo says. ‘Who, except us, would have a reason to make Robin confess?’

An all-too-familiar, annoying face turns up in Vanessa’s mind. But it can’t be him.

‘It must be someone who hates Erik and Robin for real,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Or else someone who is really fond of Linnéa.’

He has helped us before, Vanessa reflects. And he saved Linnéa’s life that time.

‘It could be Viktor,’ she says.

Minoo stares at her.

‘Do you really think that’s possible?’

‘I met him in the schoolyard this morning,’ Vanessa says. ‘He said he was leaving school for good. He seemed shifty, somehow. As if he was trying to get out of saying something.’

They hear the first true thunderclap. It is followed by hail. Vanessa watches the little white grains bouncing on the outside windowsill.

‘But, do you think Viktor could do the things Robin saw? Anna-Karin asks. ‘After all, he’s a water witch.’

‘We haven’t got a precise idea of what powers Viktor really has,’ Minoo says, speaking loudly to be heard above the hailstorm. ‘And he has said himself that his powers have grown stronger here in Engelsfors. Besides, we know it isn’t the first time he has shown a taste for revenge. Do you remember what he did in that chemistry lesson, to get back at Kevin? The thing with the acid and water? And that was just for a skirmish.’

Vanessa looks at Linnéa, wondering if she is even listening.

‘What do you think?’ Vanessa asks her. ‘Could it be Viktor?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘There’s something about all this that doesn’t make sense.’

‘That just about sums up Engelsfors,’ Minoo says.

The thunder rumbles again and the hail is turning to rain.

‘What matters is that they’ve been caught,’ Anna-Karin says.

‘Erik will never confess,’ Linnéa says.

‘Oh, yes, he will,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘And the judge will give him a very tough sentence. And Robin, too. I’ll see to that.’

She looks determined. Vanessa feels both touched and worried.

‘If you use your magic power like that you’ll be breaking the laws of the Council again.’

‘I don’t care,’ Anna-Karin replies.

‘I can’t let you run that risk,’ Linnéa says.

‘Maybe it won’t be necessary anyway,’ Minoo suggests. ‘Robin and Kevin have confessed already. And Viktor is a witness to Linnéa’s state when he found her.’

Linnéa’s mobile rings on the table and she reaches for it. Answers the call. Vanessa hears a woman’s voice but can’t distinguish the words. Linnéa’s answers are so monosyllabic that Vanessa can’t even guess what the caller wants.

‘Fine,’ Linnéa says in the end. She switches the mobile off, then sits for a while, clutching it so hard it creaks worryingly.

‘Who was that?’ Vanessa asks.

‘That was Diana. The police will be here shortly. They want to question me. So you had better leave.’

‘I’ll stay,’ Vanessa says.

‘You don’t need to,’ Linnéa says, still in that toneless voice.

Vanessa wants to scream that she’s an idiot.

‘Yes,’ she says instead. ‘I need to.’

The storm dies away as suddenly as it had built up. Linnéa lies curled up on the sofa with her head in Vanessa’s lap. She keeps her eyes closed while Vanessa caresses her hair.

Linnéa wishes she could press a pause-button and stop time at this moment. Escape what will happen next. Soon, Diana will arrive with a police person in tow. Soon, Linnéa will be made to tell them everything.

The doorbell rings.

‘Don’t open it,’ Linnéa whispers.

She feels Vanessa’s lips against her temple.

‘You can get through this. And I will be here for you, all the way.’

Reluctantly, Linnéa sits up and leans back in the corner of the sofa while Vanessa opens the door.

She hears Diana and another woman in the hall. At least it isn’t Nicke. Linnéa looks at the panther on the floor next to the sofa, strokes the china head and fingers its glued-together edges.

She forces herself to look up when they come into the room.

‘Hello, Linnéa,’ Diana says.

The pity in her voice makes Linnéa wince. She looks at the policewoman instead. She is tall and looks like someone who swims several miles every morning. Her chestnut hair is pulled back in a ponytail.