The Invisible Man from Salem (36 page)

I scream, I think, and my heart is beating so fast that my hands are shaking. The shot rings out and seems to echo over Salem. The bullet bounces off the concrete next to me, so close that I can feel it cleave the air as it bounces past. Grim's eyes flash back and forth between me and the pistol. I think he regrets it, that he realises he shouldn't have fired.

‘You're not listening to me,' he says, calmer.

‘I am listening to you. But you're not really making any sense.'

I get my phone out, simultaneously swiping the screen to unlock the keypad.

‘Put it away.'

‘No.'

‘Put it away, now.'

‘Let her go, and I'll put the phone away.'

Grim laughs, blankly.

‘You're not the one who gets to decide here.'

‘I know that,' I say, and look down at the phone.

‘What are you doing? Put the phone down.'

I put the keylock on again, and put the phone down next to me. I struggle to get up — first one knee, then the other, and eventually I'm standing on my feet. My head is spinning; it feels heavy. I look for a chance to get close enough to him to reach him, close enough to disarm him. He's only using one hand — the other one is stuck to the weapon — but those seconds where I could make an attempt are too short, too risky. I'm afraid of Sam being hurt.

Grim looks at the phone, unsure, and waves the pistol.

‘Throw it over.'

‘If you want it, you'll have to come and get it.'

He doesn't dare. He'd have to bend down.

‘You really don't get it, do you?'

He goes over to Sam, takes a tight hold of her plait, and pulls her up. Sam says nothing. Instead she's breathing noisily and laboriously, as though fighting against the panic.

We're in the middle of the roof. He pushes her in front of him, towards the edge of the roof, and Sam struggles, but the grip on her plait is hard to resist. She's holding her injured hand to her chest and is gripping it tightly with the other one; she can't use them to fight back. A shiny film of sweat covers her face, and she avoids my stare. As they get closer to the edge, she shifts her centre of gravity, like she's scared of burning herself on an invisible flame.

He pushes her again, so close to the rim that the point of Sam's shoe is now sticking out over the edge. I stretch out my arm, as if to break her fall. Grim just stares at me, until I take it down. I can smell his aftershave.

‘She's innocent,' I say. ‘She's done nothing wrong.'

‘Like that makes a difference? Do I get anything back because of the difference? Do I get my life back, my family? Myself? Eh?' He stares at me. ‘Answer!'

‘No. But this won't give you anything back either.'

‘All that matters are the consequences. And the consequences are the same. We will both have lost something.'

‘It's not fair,' I whisper.

‘Fair?' Grim looks confused. ‘Do you think the world is fair?' Holding onto her plait, he pushes Sam in the back, forcing her to lean over the edge. ‘Get back,' he says, looking at me.

I take a step back.

And then he lets go of her plait.

TIME SLOWS TO A CRAWL
, as though gasping for air in vain, and I see Sam fall forwards, outwards, as Grim backs away. I throw myself towards her and grab hold of her coat, pull her to one side, and we fall on top of each other, Sam beneath me. I'm lying on her injured hand, but the adrenalin seems to be blocking out the pain because she doesn't say anything. Instead she looks at me, surprised, and then starts retching.

Behind me, I hear Grim pulling the tube of pills out again; I can hear it rattling in his hands.

XXIX

‘You're sick in the head,' Sam says after several deep breaths to control the retching.

‘That's probably very true,' Grim says, and wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I think you would be, too.' He looks at me. ‘And it's your fault.'

‘Please, Grim …' I start.

‘It will soon be over, Leo.'

He might let me live. Maybe I'm just supposed to see Sam die. Or perhaps he's going to let us both live. He might be about to kill himself. Or he's chosen this place to give himself an escape route: if something doesn't go according to plan, he can always throw himself off. That might be why we're here. I don't know; anything's possible, Grim seems so unpredictable.

‘You are right,' I say. ‘You've lost your mind.'

Grim looks at Sam, who's still lying on her back, staring back at him. As I turn towards the centre of Salem, to see it one last time — weird, I think to myself, that this seems like an important thing to see; maybe it meant more than I realised — there's a flash of blue. Then it's gone. I can almost see the block I grew up in.

‘What's your name?' I ask.

He looks up.

‘Eh?'

‘Daniel Berggren, Tobias Fredriksson, Jonathan Granlund. That's as far as I got.'

‘Ah-ha.' Grim furrows his forehead slightly, and in that instant I see Julia's face, her expression in his. ‘It's not possible to get far enough to find that out.'

‘That's why I'm asking.'

He seems to be contemplating for a moment, before shaking his head.

‘Were you trying to stitch me up?' I ask instead. ‘For Rebecca's murder?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I just don't get wh—' I begin, but I don't know where to go with it because I just don't understand. All I know is that I have to try and spin this out. ‘You've followed me. You've sent me text messages. The necklace in her hand, which put me at the scene of the crime, was that … you could have done things differently.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I don't know, but something more … watertight. I don't know. What you did was never going to be enough to get me convicted. And yet you seem to have planned it all so carefully. I just can't make sense of it. Were you just trying to fuck things up for me, or what? I just don't get it.'

‘I have no answer,' Grim says and looks at me, his eyes darting about. ‘I can't explain it. But it all makes sense to me.'

‘But not to anyone else.'

‘I don't give a shit — this isn't about anyone else.'

‘No, that's what I'm starting to think.'

‘What do you mean?'

I take a deep breath. My head is throbbing.

‘Do you remember the party at the rec?' I say.

‘Eh?'

‘The weekend before she died, there was a party on the rec.'

‘Oh. Yes.'

‘Everything you said back then about Julia, or about all of you … it scared me. I got so fucking scared, for some reason. I can't remember if I'd been scared of you before, but I don't think I had. I think that was the first time. That was what made me have a go at Tim on the way home. And that was what made Tim … yeah. Do what he did. It would never have happened if you hadn't been so fucking overprotective, if you hadn't taken it upon yourself to try and keep it all together.' I have to make a real effort not to look away. ‘It is your fault that she died. It is your fault that your life turned out the way it did. Not mine. If you are going to take anyone's life, it should be your own, just like you wrote.'

Grim looks at me with glassy eyes, and I wonder how much time is passing, wonder what he's thinking.

‘You're wrong,' he says.

‘I don't understand how you can take it this far, just to … well, what? Just for the sake of doing something? I don't buy that. This isn't going to make anything right; you're just pushing yourself towards your own destruction. Everything you've built up, I don't know how extensive that is, but everything you've built up is going to be fucked by this. You're not going to have anything left.'

‘Good,' Grim shouts. ‘That's what I want. Don't you get it? I prefer nothing. None of this means anything. The only thing that meant anything to me, I lost a long time ago. My whole life has been changed by that.'

‘Why did you bother killing Rebecca Salomonsson? Why didn't you just let her go to the police?'

‘She deserved it.'

‘I think you're actually doing this to hurt yourself, not to get at me. You know full well what it would mean, being guilty of conspiracy to murder. You would never get away with it. This isn't about her, or us. This is all about you — so that you won't have any other way out. You know that it's your fault that it turned out like this.'

‘You are wrong!' he screams, and bends down to grab hold of Sam's plait.

In that movement, as he bends himself over her, reaching for the plait with one hand and holding the pistol in the other, I take a step to one side and throw myself at him. Grim tries to get the nose of the pistol up to her temple, but my shoulder cracks against his ribs and he stumbles backwards. We fall to the roof. Grim's body is hard and bony underneath me. The smell of his aftershave, again. I think it's the same aftershave he's always used. And sweat. I notice for the first time just how bad Grim smells.

Half lying underneath me, he grabs my hair while I try to prise the pistol out of his hand. He lets go and hits me in the side instead; the blows make me gasp for air. He writhes quickly and powerfully, he's much stronger than me, and I'm about to fall off him, and then, any second, I think to myself, the shot will come and I'm going to die.

It comes, unintentionally, when Grim touches the trigger and it passes me, up towards the sky. From the corner of my eye, beyond Grim, who I'm lying on top of, I see the coil of rope straighten to a taut line. Grim stops for a second before he cranes his neck. Someone else is on the way up.

IT ALL HAPPENS QUICKLY
: a heavy, black shoe seeking purchase against the roof; I see the beginning of a leg, equally black. Someone is trying to haul himself up.

I'm thrown off Grim, and fall on my back. My neck jerks backwards, followed by a cracking sensation inside it, a shooting pain that reaches up towards my ears and down across my shoulders.

Grim is standing over me, the barrel of the pistol like a never-ending black tunnel, just darkness followed by darkness. I strain to keep my eyes open, not to blink.

The shot is like a heartbeat. It's a weird sound, not one but two, which are bound together and follow one another. For some reason, Grim misses. There's a great bang on the concrete right by my ear, searing pain, and then the world goes quiet. I'm deaf in one ear. Grim stiffens, and grabs his arm before his leg collapses underneath him to the sound of another explosive bang that seems weirdly disorientating because I only hear half of it.

Someone screams — I don't know who — and as he falls, Grim pushes off with his good leg and grabs my shoulder; his eyes are glossy and wide. I smell his odour, the sweat and the aftershave in a sharp, sour mix, and I don't understand what he's trying to do until I realise that he is falling and I'm being dragged outwards, towards nothing, only thin air. He releases the pistol mid-movement, and it flies past me, out over the edge.

THE EDGE OF THE ROOF
is cutting into my ribcage. I'm lying flat, pressing against it. My arms are outstretched, one in his armpit and the other on his injured shoulder. He stares at me, hanging there, his face contorted and purple-red. Grim is holding on tight, and gravity is pulling my jacket tighter and tighter around my neck.

‘Let go,' he hisses. ‘Let go of me.'

But, as if he realises that he's lost, that I'm not going to fall, he lets go himself, and the only thing stopping him from falling is me. He is too heavy. I'm going to drop him.

‘Let me go now,' he screams. ‘Let me fall …'

I try to lift him, pull him back up, but it's impossible. I'm starting to get cramp in my hands, and I'm struggling to breathe. With his uninjured arm, he tries to make me let go. When it doesn't work, he throws his head forward and bites my wrist. A shadow appears in my peripheral vision and crouches down. Two arms reach out, and a voice tells me not to let go.

Grim's bite breaks the skin. I can't see the wound, but the area around his mouth is spattered with a shiny red colour which is smeared over his lips. I feel nothing, no pain. The two arms grab hold of Grim, start pulling him up.

‘No,' he screams, and his voice cracks, sounds erratic, like he's a teenager again. And then: ‘No. No,' until the noises coming from his throat become meaningless, just sounds.

On one of the dark-clothed arms I read the word
POLICE
, embroidered in gold capital letters.

XXX

The first unit to arrive at the scene by the water tower was made up of an unlikely and — considering the task in hand — unsuitable pair: Dan Larsson and Per Leifby. Larsson comes from Vetlanda, and was sent to Stockholm by his father, a retired superintendent. He couldn't stand having his waster of a son around Vetlanda, and Larsson has been in Stockholm ever since. As if that isn't enough, he's also scared of heights. His partner Per Leifby, who, unlike Larsson, actually comes from Stockholm, supports Hammarby and isn't racist, but has expressed concerns about immigration — something widely known throughout the force. In addition to that, he is also scared of using firearms.