‘What do you think of the picture?’

The man pointed to the TV screen.

‘I don’t understand,’ Ylva said.

‘A bit grainy, but it’s on maximum zoom. You might not appreciate it now, but just wait a few days, a week. It’ll be different then. I bet you’ll be setting your watch by it. Just sitting there, staring, without being able to do anything. But that isn’t a problem for you, is it? To just stand by and do nothing, I mean.’

Ylva looked at him, not moving.

‘What are you talking about?’

The man struck her across the face with the back of his hand. It was sudden and completely without warning. Ylva’s cheek burned, but it was more her surprise at the violence than actual pain that made her gasp.

‘Don’t play stupid,’ the man said. ‘We know exactly what happened. Morgan told us. Confessed on his deathbed. In great detail. We’d blamed ourselves until that day. And in fact it was you lot. The whole time, it was you.’

Ylva was shaking. Her eyes were warm and she blinked furiously. Her lower lip trembled.

‘Do you think it hasn’t haunted me?’ she said feebly. ‘A day doesn’t go by without me—’

‘It haunts you?’

The woman had come in through the door.

‘It haunts … you?’ she repeated as she walked over to the bed and stared down at Ylva, who automatically cowered.

When she eventually looked up, it was with pleading eyes.

‘If I could change one thing in my life,’ she tried, ‘just one …’

‘Morgan only had a few days left,’ the man said. ‘That made me so angry. That he got away with it so lightly. I suppose you’ve read about Anders?’

Ylva didn’t understand.

‘The hammer murder in Fjallgatan,’ the man said. ‘No? Well, I guess it’s easy to exaggerate your own importance when you’re part of something. But it got its own tag: “the hammer murder”. The papers really went to town on it.’

Mike and Ylva had met at work. Naturally. That was where people usually met, in a sober state and with a function to fulfil. Mike had just started at the pharmaceutical company in Stockholm. Ylva worked in the marketing department and had been asked to interview him for the company’s internal magazine.

Neither of them fell head over heels, but they were attracted to each other, and had a good time together. Mike’s childhood had been happy compared to Ylva’s. Unlike him, she’d never met her biological father, and her mother was a heavy drug user. When she was six, Ylva was placed with foster parents and, following some very stormy years in her teens, she decided to leave home. She hadn’t been in touch with them since.

Mike wanted to explore the Stockholm archipelago that his dad had always spoken about with such enthusiasm, so he bought a six-metre sailing boat and they spent the next three summers on it. Mike read the navigation charts. Ylva held the rudder. They had sex in every natural harbour between Furusund and Nynashamn.

When Ylva got pregnant, they promised each other that, no matter what, things would be just the same as before. Nothing would stop them, certainly not a small child that they could easily take with them.

By the time Sanna was six months old, the boat had been sold and the money invested in a flat.

A year later, Mike was offered a better job in his home town and, to his mother’s delight, moved down to Skane with his family.

Having a small child meant change, a significant transition to a new phase in life. From public transport to a car, from evenings out to dinners with friends, from a mattress on the floor to a double bed and no time to lie in it. The porn films that they’d enjoyed so much were cleared out after Ylva, half asleep, had helped Sanna, then three, to put in a DVD and instead of Gummi Bear cartoons, they ended up in the middle of a blow job.

Ylva had lurched forward and turned off the TV.

‘What was that?’ she’d asked, embarrassed.

‘Ice-cream!’ Sanna suggested, an obvious association.

It was another life, very different from the summers on the sailing boat. But it was a good life.

8

‘No, no, no, it’s Morgan who’s dead,’ Jorgen Petersson said. ‘I remember because I was ashamed of how glad I felt when I read the notice. Cancer of the pancreas, dead within a couple of months.’

Calle Collin nodded.

‘Quite possibly,’ he said, ‘but Anders is dead now, as well.’

‘How did he die?’

‘He was murdered.’

‘Cool.’

‘No, I’m serious. The hammer murder up at Fjallgatan. The papers were full of it. That was Anders.’

‘The hammer murder?’ Jorgen repeated, while he searched his memory in vain.

Calle nodded.

‘Never heard about it,’ Jorgen said. ‘When did it happen?’

‘About six months ago.’

‘You mean murdered, as in killed on purpose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who by?’

Calle shrugged. ‘Don’t think it’s been solved.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I didn’t know it was him until a few days ago.’

‘Was it a fight or something like that?’

‘No idea.’

Jorgen was silent for a moment. ‘Jesus.’

‘Exactly.’

Jorgen let out a long breath. ‘I can’t say that I’m sorry.’

Calle turned his face away and held a hand up to his friend. ‘That’s pushing it.’

Jorgen took a drink of beer and then put the glass down.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to admit, it couldn’t have happened to a bigger bastard.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Calle said. ‘People change.’

‘Do they?’

Calle didn’t answer. Jorgen looked at the class photograph, nodded to himself.

‘Morgan and Anders, dead,’ he said. ‘Then there’s only Johan and Ylva left. The Gang of Four reduced to a dynamic duo.’

‘The Gang of Four?’ Calle snorted. ‘Johan lives in Africa,’ he continued.

‘Africa?’ Jorgen exclaimed. ‘What’s he doing there?’

‘What the fuck do I know? What do Westerners do in the Third World? No doubt he’s wandering around in weird clothes and half-cut most of the time.’

‘Sounds just like the archipelago,’ Jorgen said. ‘What does he do?’

Calle leaned back in his chair.

‘How should I know? I haven’t seen him in twenty years. What’s with the obsession? Do you really go around

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