It seemed like they were back where they had been before, except it didn’t look exactly the same. Had the windows been moved? Can you move a window like a table or a chair?
Mommy was out there. She thought about Mommy, but it was hard without getting sad.
“Have you slept?”
She tried to say she had slept, because she thought that’s what he wanted her to say. But no sound came out and she had to try again, and then it worked. After that she coughed. She was sweating.
“Sit still,” he said, and took hold of her shoulder with one hand and held the other to her forehead. He mumbled something she couldn’t hear. Then he said a bad word. “You’re hot,” he said again, and she coughed again. He shouted something to someone else, and she heard an answer.
“The kid’s got a fever.”
Someone said something from somewhere else.
“I said the kid’s sick!”
She heard something that sounded like another bad word.
He left and she thought about how her dress was a little damp under her arms and along her back because she was so hot. She lay down on the mattress and that felt good, so she closed her eyes. It sounded like the man was back, but she didn’t want to look up. Then he took hold of her again.
“You have to sit up and drink this,” he said.
She didn’t want to, but he lifted her.
“You have to drink this while it’s hot,” he said, and she opened her eyes and saw the cup. “Then you can lie down again.”
She took a sip but her throat hurt when she swallowed. Then it felt a little better, but when she tried to drink again it hurt.
“Does it hurt?”
She nodded.
“Do you have a sore throat?”
She nodded again.
“It’ll feel better afterward,” he said.
She said that she wanted to lie down. He laid her down and took the cup with him. She closed her eyes. She started to dream.
25
It was the second day of what the city’s tabloids had been calling, among other things, “Terror!” Two hundred thousand issues had been sold, and there was nothing strange about that. Gothenburg
“What did you say?”
“Surveillance department. We’re supposed to have our ear to the ground. To be monitoring developments. Be a step ahead.”
“Who could have seen this coming?” Halders raised his hand toward Ullevi and the drama that was still unfolding out there.
“I was mainly thinking about Varvaderstorget.”
“How’s Stalnacke doing?”
“He lost a lot of blood,” Ringmar said, “but he’ll pull through. He’ll be able to walk.”
“The question is whether he’ll be able to take a piss again, let alone be able to-”
“We can’t exactly have people everywhere, can we?” Ringmar interrupted.
“And now we’re going to spread our resources even more thinly.”
“We’re going to bring in the ones who shot Stalnacke.”
“That seems like a concrete assignment,” Halders said. “Something you can really sink your teeth into.”
“How do you mean?”
“The murder at Delsjo is going cold. You know it is. It’s going cold, no matter what Winter says.”
“The cars,” Ringmar said. “That’s something.”
“A shot in the dark,” Halders said, “but okay. A Ford Escort. That’s concrete all right. But more to the point, it’s a hell of a lot of work.”
Ringmar seemed to prick up his ears when the megaphone bawled again outside. “It’s awful,” he said.
“What is?”
Ringmar gestured at the window but didn’t answer.
The friendly match between Sweden and Denmark, scheduled for that evening at Ullevi Stadium, had to be postponed. The management of the Swedish Football Association had made discreet inquiries with the police about whether the “incident” might be over in time but had been given no guarantees.
The man on the bus was a Kurd, and the boy at his side was his son. After seven years in Sweden, they were going to be deported. The boy had lived in Sweden for six years. The Migration Board was certain the man and his family were from northern Iran, and that’s where he was going to be deported to. Turkey was an alternative. The man claimed that he risked being imprisoned or even put to death in both countries, in different ways, for different reasons. Different forms of execution. The state authority, which an increasing number of people dubbed the Emigration Board, displayed pride and emotional zeal for doing what is right and proper. When the man arrived, he was given another name and another nationality because he feared being sent back to the terror. But he had lied, and now he was going to be deported.
Winter stood at the edge of the mass of onlookers. Maybe someone ought to put up some bleachers, he thought. Charge admission.
He knew that the man sitting in that bus, a hundred yards away, had committed an emergency lie to make it into Sweden. Maybe he’d left a job as a consultant and a seven-room house in Diyarbakir or Tabriz just because he felt like trekking through Syria with his family before hopping a cruise to Scandinavia. Perhaps the family was just having a hard time explaining why they didn’t want to return to the fertile land they had left behind. There is no room here in any case. Sweden is too built up, Winter thought. The forests are full of towns and densely populated villages.
He closed his eyes and saw a forest in front of him. Water glittered between the trees. Everything was green to his unseeing eyes. He saw a path and someone walking along that path. He recognized himself. He was holding a child by the hand.
He opened his eyes again and everything was black and white. The asphalt was black beneath his feet, and it turned increasingly white as he raised his gaze toward the bus, which stood right in the sun. It must be 120 degrees in there, he thought. Not even a man who’s grown up in the hottest country in the world could hold out for much longer. It must be a question of hours, perhaps minutes. Let there be an end to it.
A small negotiating team moved toward the bus. The people all around were very quiet. A helicopter hovered overhead. Winter heard radio and TV reporters speaking nearby. He heard the events taking place in front of him described to him.
Ringmar said something. He’d come outside and seen Winter and was standing next to him.
“What?”
“I think this will be over soon,” Ringmar said.
“Yes.”
“We might also have a lead on the shooters at the square.”
“Was it an internal settling of scores?” Winter asked.
“Depends on how you look at it. Essentially, it’s the same desperation we’re experiencing here,” Ringmar said.
