His face, arms and hands are trampled underfoot as he hears a high-pitched whining noise-it sounds like a camera flash charging-coming closer to his ear.
No, Sing Along at Skansen is not Kalle Backstrom’s scene, he was quite clear on that point after enduring a song by The Ark, some old farts’ song, and now that kid who was on MySpace. He only came because Emmy was supposed to be here. And now he can’t get hold of her!
He has spent the last ten minutes standing next to the portable toilets fifty metres behind the back row of seats, texting. He asked Emmy where she is, and she told him she was down the front. Whereabouts down the front, he asked her, and now he’s waiting for the reply.
OK, OK. If necessary he’s going to push his way through the crowd just so he can stand next to her and rub himself up against her. She’s the prettiest girl in the class, and when she said, ‘Are you coming to Skansen on Tuesday?’, he might have misinterpreted it slightly. As if it was a date. But she was here with three girlfriends, and he hasn’t even managed to find her yet.
He is standing there staring at his phone, using the power of the mind to try and make a reply from her appear, when he realises something is going on. People are screaming and waving their arms in the air down at the front, and one or two are running past him. He lowers his mobile and stands on tiptoe so that he can see better.
The crowd in front of him is
He can’t understand what is going on, and stands there with his mouth open as the wave approaches. When it is just a few metres away he finally comes to his senses, hurls himself into one of the toilets and locks the door. Thousands of footsteps in headlong flight thunder past outside the door, and the toilet shakes as bodies fall from the horde and crash into the thin plastic walls.
He sits down on the seat and carries on texting, searching for Emmy, but there is no reply.
‘Event Security’ it says on the back of Joel Carlsson’s red T-shirt. That’s the name of the company he works for, and that has been his job description for the last ten years. Event security. A friend at the gym put him in touch with them, and he’s stayed because he enjoys his job. Particularly when it comes to Sing Along at Skansen.
Rock concerts can be hard work: overheated venues, loud music and kids getting crushed and passing out. At sports events there are the drunks and hooligans to deal with. Sing Along is like a holiday by comparison, and within the company this particular job is allocated as a reward for long and loyal service.
Walking around spraying water on teenage girls who have got a bit sweaty, but who mostly just laugh and think it’s cool, telling people who are already pretty calm to calm down just a little bit more and stop trying to move forward. It’s very rare that Joel has to take a hard line or remove anybody.
But tonight there’s something wrong. When that Tesla walked on stage and started singing, you could have heard a pin drop in the audience at first. What a voice! People stood there with their mouths just hanging open, like they were bewitched. Joel took the opportunity to have a bit of a breather, drink some water and do some stretches while he enjoyed the song himself.
Then he hears the scream. It comes from somewhere in the seated area, oddly enough. He is dazzled by the lighting rig as he scans the audience and sees that some people have got to their feet. In the middle of the live broadcast, for fuck’s sake! He waves angrily at them to sit down, but they take no notice. Instead more people stand up, and he hears more screams.
Inappropriate noises
Something is going on behind one of the close-up cameras, over by the VIP seats. If there is anywhere he would expect things to be perfectly calm, it’s in that area. A-list or B-list celebrities sitting like lighted candles, just waiting for the camera to focus on them. But now there are screams and movement and the place is full of people getting up and
Joel scuttles along below the stage where the little girl is still standing and singing, in spite of the fact that the music has stopped. When he reaches the VIP seats the entire area closest to the stage is already empty, apart from two people. Joel catches sight of something on the ground, and stops dead.
Robert Segerwall, that old guy who used to be big on TV, is lying in a pool of what must be blood, and blood is still pouring out of a wound or a hole in his temple. Joel is about to hurl himself towards Segerwall, but then realises he can do more good elsewhere.
What he at first took to be a quarrel is a struggle for life and death. He recognises Robert Segerwall’s wife, but not the young girl she is fighting with. Or whatever you would call it. The older woman is tearing at the air, trying to scratch the girl’s face, but Joel can see that this is a battle she is going to lose. In one hand the girl has a long knife, in the other a drill.
Joel doesn’t get there in time. Just as he takes his first stride towards them, the hand holding the knife shoots out. Joel couldn’t have done it better during his training with the elite Coastal Rangers. The blade slices across the woman’s neck and she staggers backwards, her hands pressed to her throat.
At last she seems to realise that flight is the only possibility. As she is trapped between the young girl and Joel, who is moving forward, she wobbles up the steps leading to the stage, blood gushing down over her chest.
He has to stop this girl before she does anything else. He reaches her in two rapid strides and twists the knife out of her hand. She gets in one blow to his head with the drill before he knocks it out of her hand. He locks her arms behind her back, yelling, ‘What the fuck are you doing, are you insane?’
The girl relaxes in his grasp and says calmly, ‘I am not insane. I am sane. I am perfectly sane.’
As Eva Segerwall takes the last step onto the stage, there is unfortunately nothing left within her to let her know that her dream has finally come true.
It is twenty-three years since she set aside her ambitions as a singer to support her husband in his TV career. But oh, what dreams she had! To hear Bosse Larsson say her name one day, to tread the boards here in Solliden beneath the birch trees, to stand on this very stage!
And now she is standing here, incapable of savouring it. Her life is pouring out through her throat, splashing around her feet as she staggers towards the angelic figure standing behind the microphone, still singing.
For a second their eyes meet, and Eva becomes even more afraid than she already was. There is no help to be found there. The big blue eyes gaze at her without sympathy, they do not even seem to notice the cascades of blood covering her light summer dress. She coughs up more blood and totters, on legs which are about to give way, towards the left, past the stage entrance, past the empty seats where the orchestra were sitting, past the flower arrangements and out onto the jetty.
And there she sees an escape route at last. Through misty eyes she sees the waters of Malarviken glittering far below. She throws herself in that direction but hits an invisible wall, falls backwards and just lies there, gives up.
I’ve been so lucky
I am the girl with golden hair
I want to sing it out to everybody
What a joy! What a life! What a chance!
The orchestra had stopped playing long ago; Theres stood alone on the Solliden stage and sang the final verses a cappella, even though there was no longer anyone listening. Down below her feet there was utter
