response, whereupon the conversation would continue.
It became her new favourite, and Lennart let her keep it, because she allowed him to remove all the rest. It enabled her to move about more as well. She was once again brave enough to set off on small journeys of discovery, but always with the drill in her hand.
Lennart had to smile as he watched her sneaking around the cellar with the tool at the ready, as alert as the sheriff waiting for the black hats to ride into town. She couldn’t sleep unless she was clutching the drill.
The girl had reached the age of seven by the time she showed an interest in the drill’s normal function. Each day she came one step closer to Lennart as he stood at the workbench in the cellar. She didn’t protest when he picked her up and sat her on the bench; instead she clutched the drill to her chest and watched what he was doing.
He had just finished yet another nesting box, and showed it to the girl. She had been staring intently at it while he was working, but looked away when he held it up in front of her. That was normal.
Lennart picked up the new drill he had bought after he let the girl keep the old one. Just for fun he revved the motor a couple of times, pretending that his drill wanted to talk to hers. She wasn’t interested.
He had a size 10 bit in the chuck, and Lennart finished off the box as he usually did. ‘Right, now we’re going to drill the entrance hole. This is where the birds will go in and out. Cheep, cheep. Birds.’
The girl watched as Lennart drilled out the hole, then sat staring at it as if she were waiting for something. When Lennart lifted her down from the bench, she growled and walloped him across the shoulder with her drill. He put her back and she leaned close to the hole, whispering, ‘Cheep, cheep,’ as she continued to stare at it.
A feeling of sorrow plummeted through Lennart’s stomach. He decided to make an exception.
Early next morning he took the girl out into the hallway. When he opened the front door, her eyes widened. She struggled to free herself from his grip, and filled her lungs with air ready to scream. Lennart just had time to say, ‘Ssh! SSH! They can hear us!’
The girl’s mouth snapped shut and her little body began to shake as Lennart cautiously opened the door and pretended to peer out into the garden. ‘Quiet,’ he said. ‘Careful. Not a sound.’
He bundled the girl out through the door, but had to pick her up in order to get her to the nearest tree where there was a nesting box. Her body was clenched, as hard as ice.
It was a May morning, and the birdsong was cascading through the shrubs and trees. Lennart lifted the girl’s head towards the box, which was exactly the same as the one he had made the previous evening.
Suddenly her mouth opened and she relaxed in his arms. A robin emerged from the hole and sat there for a moment looking around with rapid, jerky movements before it flew away. The girl followed it with her eyes and a dribble of saliva ran down her chin.
Lennart had no idea how she might interpret what she had just seen. Did she think drilling holes made the birds appear, or disappear, or did she in fact understand perfectly?
He put her down on the ground and said, ‘The birds live in there, they fly around-’
But he had hardly begun the sentence before she raced back to the house and slammed the front door behind her.
By February 2000 greed had got its claws into Jerry after all, and it was all Apple’s fault. The Power Mac G4 with the 500 MHz processor was finally due for release after the initial hassle with Motorola, and was going to cost around thirty thousand kronor. So far, so good. He had the money, he’d started to save a year ago when he picked up the first rumours.
But then there was Cinema Display. Along with the release of the new G4 there was to be a 22-inch flat screen with the best definition and the slickest design ever. And that would cost around thirty thousand as well.
The dumpy iMac on Jerry’s computer desk suddenly felt like something from the stone age. He’d started messing around with Cubase 4 for writing songs, but it was so slow. He wanted to upgrade to 4.1, he wanted to run it through the 500 processor and he wanted to see it on that big, flat screen.
It became an obsession. Jerry imagined that when he had that silver chassis standing underneath his desk and that stylish screen with its transparent frame sitting on top, everything would be
But to achieve this state of bliss some fancy footwork would be required. He had to sell more cigarettes. He had already doubled his order with Ingemar in December, and in January he took one hundred and fifty cartons, and also put the price up by ten kronor from the previous month.
The demand from his regular customers couldn’t meet Jerry’s supply, however gallantly they puffed away. Mats, who ran the billiard hall, had discovered Jerry’s activities, and he now dealt from home. He asked his regulars to spread the word among their connections that there were cheap fags available at Jerry’s address.
The connections duly turned up, and soon their connections came as well. By February Jerry had managed to scrape together twelve thousand kronor in addition to the thirty thousand he already had, and placed another big order with Ingemar.
A week or so later he had a visitor at the billiard hall. A guy of his own age came in-shaved head, tribal tattoo snaking up his neck beneath the biker jacket-and leaned on the bar. He looked Jerry in the eye and informed him that his business activities would cease immediately.
Jerry pretended he didn’t understand; he wondered aloud what the visitor’s problem with the billiard hall was, and explained that he wasn’t actually the owner. If he wanted it shut down, he would have to speak to Mats. The guy didn’t even crack a smile; he just said that Jerry had been warned, and if he carried on, things could get very nasty.
Jerry’s hands were shaking slightly when the man left, but he wasn’t really scared. He’d heard about a gang who had got together in the offenders’ institution in Norrtalje; they called themselves Broderna Djup after the singing group, which was an incredibly stupid name for a criminal organisation, and was one reason why Jerry didn’t take the threat seriously. Besides which, there was nothing to suggest that this guy really did belong to some kind of gang. He was probably a free agent like Jerry himself, but with a slightly harder attitude.
Jerry was a bit more careful about checking the spy hole in the door before he opened it, but he kept on selling his cigarettes. No slap-head pumped up on steroids was going to come between him and his Cinema Display, his heart’s desire.
He had only fifty cartons left of the latest delivery when his life was once again kicked in a new direction. One evening at the beginning of March, the doorbell rang. Jerry got up from the infinitely slow download of a web manual on creating homepages and went to look through the spy hole.
Outside stood a friend of a friend whose name he didn’t know, but who had bought from him a couple of times before. He opened the door. As soon as he saw the expression on the man’s face close up, he realised something was wrong. From behind his back the man produced a long metal shoehorn and despite the fact that Jerry didn’t understand what the danger actually was, he moved to shut the door. Too late. The shoehorn had been shoved into the opening and it was impossible to close the door.
Then he heard running footsteps on the stairs, and seconds later they were in. The man with the shoehorn whispered, ‘Sorry, no choice,’ and took off.
There were three of them: the guy who had been in the billiard hall and two more who at first glance were barely distinguishable from him. Same shaved heads, same jackets.
They took the sacks of cigarettes. They forced Jerry to show them where he kept his money, and took that as well. Then they took Jerry. Calmly and politely they led him down the stairs to a waiting car. Jerry was numb with fear, and it didn’t even occur to him to scream. Half-slumped in their arms he noticed they had a Volvo 740. A real hick’s car. However, the reason for it soon became apparent. The car was equipped with a tow bar.
They drove Jerry down to the gravelled car park next to the Lommar swimming pool. Beneath the sign that announced
