With the help of the computer Max started checking the information he had found in the apartment. He soon discovered that no one with Tora’s ID number existed. However, Angelika Tora Larsson did exist, and she had the same number if you altered just one digit.
Max found the really juicy information when he did a search on Lennart and Laila Cederstrom. He read the articles about the Swedish pop stars who had been brutally murdered, their son Jerry, and the strange room the police had discovered in the cellar. He put this together with what his back knew about Tora’s capacity for violence, and suddenly his dilemma was no longer a dilemma.
He no longer had a problem; it was Tora Larsson who had a problem. He could do exactly what he wanted, and she wouldn’t be able to say a word.
On Monday morning Teresa went to school. Heads turned to look at her as she got on the bus. She went straight to the back, and sat with her feet in their Doc Martens on the back of the seat in front of her. People looked at her and sniggered. As soon as she looked them in the eye, they looked away.
Eight members of her class had arrived before her. They were standing around waiting for the first lesson to start. One of them was Karl-Axel, the documentary film maker. Teresa was completely calm inside as she met his gaze from some distance away. She walked steadily along the corridor, the boots giving her footsteps weight and power.
When she was a couple of metres away from the group, Karl-Axel grinned and said, ‘Morning
Teresa could have sat down right at the end of the bench outside the classroom and ignored the whole thing. Someone would say how disappointing it was that stuffed cabbage leaves weren’t on the lunch menu today, someone else would say they hoped she hadn’t eaten too much for breakfast. Something along those lines. She could have sat there with her eyes firmly fixed on the floor, pretending she couldn’t hear them. But she had thought the situation through, and it just wasn’t an option.
Instead she grinned back at Karl-Axel as if he done something really clever, then took a step forward and kicked him in the groin. The boots had a reinforced steel toe-cap, and her aim was more or less perfect. Karl-Axel went down as if a stopper had been pulled out, doubled over on the floor and started shaking before he even worked out how to yell. His mouth was opening and closing, and all the colour had left his face. Teresa leaned over him.
‘What are you saying? What is it you’re trying to say,
Something between a squeak and a whisper emerged from Karl-Axel’s mouth, and Teresa thought she heard him say, ‘Only joking…’ She placed her foot on his cheek, pressed his face down on the floor and turned to the others.
‘Anyone else feel like joking?’
Nobody volunteered, and Teresa removed her foot. The sole had left a pattern on Karl-Axel’s cheek. His body jerked as he pressed his hands to his groin, making inarticulate hissing noises. She looked at him and felt no pleasure. He was just a scared, pathetic little boy, and she actually regretted kicking him quite so hard.
But there was nothing she could do about that. Teresa sat down on the bench and folded her arms, waiting for this minor incident to be over. There would no doubt be more, but she had gone back to her idea about simplicity, and her plans for the day were simple. As soon as someone said or did something derogatory about her, she would kick them. The girls on the shin, the boys on the cock, if possible. That was all.
Several more students arrived, and Karl-Axel was still refusing to get up. Whispered conversations took place as the new arrivals were told what had happened.
Agnes arrived only a minute or so before the lesson was due to begin. By that time Karl-Axel had managed to struggle up into a sitting position, leaning against the lockers. She tilted her head to one side and asked, ‘Why are you sitting there?’
Karl-Axel shook his head, and Patrik said, ‘Teresa kicked him. Between the legs. Really fucking hard.’
Agnes turned to Teresa with the hint of an ambiguous smile on her lips. At first Teresa thought it was a kind of approval, but when Agnes didn’t sit down next to her as usual, she suspected it was just for want of anything else to do.
Teresa’s plan succeeded beyond all expectation. Everyone in the class avoided her, but nobody said anything else during the course of the day. Not even Jenny managed to come out with a spiteful comment when Teresa was within earshot. She concentrated on her inner wolf, and remained unmoved.
It was only during the lunch break that her defences wobbled. Nobody came to sit by her, but as she sat there with her lunch she could feel the eyes on her, hear the whispers. What was Dirty Teresa going to do with the food? What was Puky Teresa going to stick in her mouth now?
She looked at her plate, on which two pieces of crumbed fish lay next to four potatoes with a few slices of tomato around the edge. A lump rose from her stomach, stuck in her throat and turned to nausea. She could kick anyone who stood in her way, but she couldn’t eat this.
She thought about getting up, going over to the slop bucket, scraping all the food off her plate and leaving the dining room. Everybody laughing behind her back. Oh what fun they would have.
Smoke rose from the plate. The quarry’s flank ripped open, the steaming blood meeting the cold air. She cut a piece of potato and bit through the skin. Her jaws tensed as she chewed through muscle and sinew. The dying twitches of the crumbed fish, then the bite that extinguished all life. The red juice of the tomatoes, running down her throat. Not a scrap would be left for the crows.
When she got up and carried her empty plate over to the counter, the white skeleton she handed over had been scraped clean. A successful hunt, a meal which would keep the body alive for the rest of the day. She had won.
And so it went on. Day after day Teresa went to school in her red boots, fearing nothing and no one. Nor did she feel any longing or regret. When she met Micke, she nodded to him and he nodded back. There was nothing to say, and she was done with emotions. They had died along with her childhood, spilt in red pools on a cement floor.
She could have grieved, but did not do so because her emotions had been replaced by
She could walk down corridors and enjoy the murmur of voices behind closed doors, the colours of the cupboards and the walls, the smell of paper, cleaning materials and drying clothes. She could enjoy all the impressions that, taken together, made her a part of the world, someone who was walking around and who was
Therefore, she did not grieve for what she had lost, but instead rejoiced at what she had gained and what she had become. It was that simple. It may not have showed on the outside, but she was
On Tuesday evening she spent a while exchanging emails with Theres, making plans for the weekend’s meeting with the other girls. They settled on Sunday at twelve o’clock, but as Jerry was back it couldn’t be in Svedmyra. They could meet outdoors, but where? They would give the matter some thought; nothing was decided.
Teresa surfed various sites on wolves, read some new posts on the forum, and ended up on an auction site where someone was selling a wolf skin. The starting price was six hundred kronor; the auction was due to end in a couple of hours, and so far nobody had put in an offer.
She looked at the photograph of the grey pelt, laid out on an ordinary kitchen table. Once upon a time it had been part of a real wolf, the hunter of the forest. Muscles had worked beneath that fur, it had rubbed up against other coats, loped across the snow and howled beneath the stars. If someone bought it, it might end up on the floor in front of a fire, something soft for the kids to sit on.
Without giving it any further thought, Teresa put in a maximum bid of one thousand kronor. Five minutes later she went back and raised it to two thousand. That was all the money she had in her account. She had given the
