‘Can we come in? It’s cold out here.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Your dog. A Dobermann. Is it missing?’
‘I haven’t got a dog.’
‘According to the tax office you do.’
‘It’s the old man’s dog.’
Johan looks at the boy’s hands. Small dots of red.
‘I think you’d better come with us,’ he says.
‘Can I put a top on?’
‘Yes—’
Without warning the boy takes a step back and slams the door with full force.
‘Shit,’ Borje shouts, rattling the door. ‘You check the back and I’ll take the front.’
They draw their weapons, split up, sticking close to the wall, their jackets catching on uneven planks.
Johan crouches, creeps under the windows along the terrace; the stained green planks creak beneath his feet. He reaches his arm up and tests the handle of the terrace door.
Locked.
Five minutes pass, then ten. Silence from inside the house, no one seems to be moving in there.
Borje sticks his head up, tries to see through the window into what must be a room. Darkness within.
Then Borje hears a noise from the door beside the garage, and it flies open and the boy races out with something black in his hand. Shall I take him? Borje has time to think, but he doesn’t shoot him, instead starts chasing the boy as he sprints off down the road between the houses.
Borje chases the boy towards the centre of town and the Motala River, then into a street off to the left. There are children playing in a garden. His heart is racing fit to burst but with every step he gets a bit closer.
The boy is growing in his vision in front of him. The gardens seem to get bigger then smaller in turn to each side of him. His shoes drum on the gritted streets, left, right, left. The boy must know these streets like the back of his hand.
Tired now.
They’re both running slower.
Then the boy stops.
Turns round.
Aims the black thing at Borje, who throws himself to the ground, towards a heap of snow.
What the fuck is he doing, the idiot, does he know what he’s forcing me to do?
The heaped snow is sharp and cold.
Before him Borje Svard sees his wife, motionless in bed, his dogs, excitable as he approaches their run; he sees the house and the children far away in distant countries.
He sees a boy before him, holding a gun aimed at him.
Torturing dogs. A child. The Dobermann’s taped-up mouth.
Fingers closed around a trigger. The boy’s, his own.
Aim for the leg. The shin. Then he’ll go down, and there’s no vein to tear open so he won’t bleed to death.
Borje fires and the sound is short and powerful and before him on the road the boy collapses, as if someone had pulled his legs out from under him.
Johan heard the noise from the front of the house and rushed round.
Where did they go?
Two directions.
Johan runs upwards and then left. Are they round that corner?
Heavy breathing.
Cold in his lungs, then he hears the shot.
Shit.
And he runs towards the direction of the sound.
And he sees Borje creeping towards a body lying in the middle of the gritted street. Blood is running from a leg, a hand clawing at the snow, reaching for the wound. The boy’s black hair like an array of shadow on the white snow.
Borje gets up, kicks something black away from the body.
