the same. Hilding pushed his cards into a heap and went to the john. Dickybird picked up his cards one by one. Crap cards. Bekir dealt like an old maid. They picked new cards, he swapped all except one, king of clubs, useless but he never gave up all his cards, on principle. The four new ones were crap too. No points. He put out king of clubs, two of hearts, and four and seven of spades. Last trick. Dragan played queen of clubs, and since the ace and the king had both gone he slapped the table in triumph. The matches were his, worth a hundred quid each. He reached out to grab them, but Dickybird raised his hand.
'Hi you! What do you fucking think you're doing?'
'The pool's mine.'
'No way. I haven't shown.'
'The queen is high.'
'Nope.'
'No? What the fuck?'
He put his last card down. King of clubs.
'There.'
Dragan started waving his hands about.
'What the fuck! The king went before.'
'Too bad. Here goes another one.'
'You can't have two fucking kings of clubs.'
'Can't I? Seems I can.'
Dickybird pushed Dragan's hands away.
'That's my lot now. Goes to the top card. You owe me, girls.'
He laughed out loud and banged on the table. The screws in the guards' box, three guys who passed most of their working time chatting, turned round to place the source of the noise. They watched as Dickybird threw a pile of matches high in the air and tried to catch them in his mouth. They shrugged, turned away.
Hilding walked along the corridor from the toilet. He moved slowly, but seemed more alert than before. He was holding a sheet of paper.
'Hi there, Wildboy, listen to this, who do you think scooped the whole fucking pot? Who's sitting here with thousands of smackers owing to him, eh?'
Hilding wasn't listening; instead he showed Dickybird the paper.
'Look at this, you should read it, Dickybird. It's a letter. Milan got it today. He showed it to me in the crapper. Thought I'd better tell you. It's from Branco.'
Dickybird collected the matches, put them into a matchbox.
'Oh fuck off, sweetie. I can't be arsed reading letters that aren't to me.'
'I think you should. And Branco thinks you should.'
Dickybird stared at the sheet of paper in his hand, turned it over, tried to give it back.
'Forget it.'
'OK, just read the last bit. From there.'
Hilding pointed and Dickybird looked.
'Errr… I…' He cleared his throat. ''I hold… hope…' My eyes aren't right today, they're aching something awful. Hilding, you read this shit.'
He carried on rubbing energetically while Hilding read the last few lines.
'It says, 'I hope there are no misunderstandings about where Jochum Lang fits in. He is my friend. Here is a piece of good advice for you. You treat him nicely. Signed Branco Miodrag.' And I recognise the handwriting.'
Dickybird had been listening in silence, standing very still. Now he held out his hand, took the letter and made his eyes follow the ink pattern of the signature. A Serb or some other fucking wog. He threw the letter on the floor, then the matchbox, and stamped on the lot. He looked up and towards the cell doors in the corridor, then met the eyes of the men around him. Hilding slowly shook his head. Skane did the same, and so did Dragan and Bekir. Dickybird was bending to pick up the paper with the black imprint of the sole of his shoe when he heard a cell door open at the far end of the corridor.
It was like the guy had been hanging around inside, just waiting for the right moment. Jochum walked towards the still half-kneeling Dickybird.
'Fuck's sake, Jochum, no need for any papers. You don't need to show me nothing. We thought we'd just fool around a bit.'
Jochum kept walking past him, not looking his way, but just as he passed he whispered something, and it sounded like a shout in the silence.
'You had a letter then,
The nursery school was called The Dove. It had always been called The Dove, but the reason why was unclear. There were no living birds anywhere near. Was it Dove as in Love or as in Peace? No one knew, not even a redoubtable lady from the local council who had been around for ever, or at least ever since The Dove had opened, the first modern day- nursery school in town.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon, normally the time for outdoor play, but the school had shut itself off from the onslaught of the heat and the children were allowed to stay inside. It had become obvious a while ago that their small bodies couldn't cope in the open playground. With thirty degrees in the shade, it must have been fifteen more in the full sun.
Most of the twenty-six children didn't want to go outside, but Marie did. She was bored with playing Indians and having her face painted, because none of the others were any good at painting; they did lines and picked colours like brown or blue. She thought red rings were great, but nobody else liked them, they just didn't want to do rings at all. She almost kicked David when he said no, he didn't want to, but then she remembered he was her best friend and you weren't meant to kick your best friend, not for little things anyway. So she changed into her outdoor shoes and went outside to play because the pedal-car was free. It was bright yellow.
She drove for quite a long time, twice round the house, and three times round the play-shed, and up and down the long path, and then she tried it inside the sandpit but the silly car wouldn't do it, so she kicked it like she'd wanted to kick David and said nasty things to it. But it didn't move. And then a dad came, the one who'd been waiting on the bench all day. Her daddy had nodded to him, like saying hello. The dad seemed nice. He asked if it was OK to lift the car, and she said yes please and then he did. She said thank you and he smiled, but then he looked sad and said did she want to look, there was a tiny dead baby rabbit next to the seat and it was such a shame.
Officer in charge of the interrogation Sven Sundkvist (SS):
Hello there.
David Rundgren (DR): Hello,
SS: My name is Sven. What's yours? DR: I… (inaudible)
SS: Did you say David?
DR: Yes.
SS: That's a nice name. I've got a son who's almost your age. Two years older. His name is Jonas.
DR: I know someone called that too.
SS: Do you like him?
DR: He's one of my friends,
SS: Do you have lots of friends?
DR: Yes. Quite a lot.
SS: That's very good. Brilliant. Is one of your friends called Marie?
DR: Yes.
SS: Did you know that I wanted to talk to you about Marie especially?
DD: Yes I did. We're to talk about Marie.
SS: Brilliant. Do you know what I want to do first? I'd like you to tell me how school went today.
DD: OK.
SS: Nothing unusual happened?
DD: What?
