of me every other day until I learned to hit back. The bastard walked out when I was fifteen, but look at me!’ He gestured towards his chest with his thumb. ‘I didn’t end up a fucking criminal! I’ve worked since I was sixteen, hauled my way up the ladder, paid my taxes and looked after myself, and for what? So I can support someone like him?’
His mouth was spraying little bits of saliva and food, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘What’s up?’
Henke was peering in from the balcony. She tried to signal to him to take it easy, not provoke Dag, just let him burn himself out, then everything would calm down. But he didn’t seem to get it. Anyway, Dag wasn’t about to let him get away lightly this time.
‘Well, your sister and I were just discussing if it wouldn’t make sense to put your alcoholic mother in a home so we didn’t have to put up with you coming round here every five minutes.’
His tone of voice was so arrogant and provocative that she already had an idea of what was going on. She made another attempt to catch Henke’s eye and make him understand. Stop him from rising to the challenge that had been thrown in his face. But he didn’t seem to get it, or else he was simply ignoring her.
‘Really, Dagge?’ he said mockingly instead, emphasizing the nickname that he knew Dag hated. ‘Wouldn’t it make sense for us to bury her in the same patch of forest as your “missing” dad? That way we could keep all the violence in the family. I mean, you’re pretty good at that!’
Dag threw himself across the table and Henke didn’t have time to take more than a couple of steps back before Dag was on him. He tried to resist, but his opponent was considerably larger and much more aggressive. After just a few seconds Henke was on the floor, curled up with his hands over his face to protect himself. But Dag was on top of him, wrapping his arm round Henke’s neck and dragging him upwards. Rebecca could see Henke’s face turning white.
‘Stop it, Dag!’ she cried. ‘Stop, for fuck’s sake, you’re strangling him!’
She tried to loosen the arm round Henke’s neck.
The blow came out of nowhere, he must have let go of Henke with the other hand because she was suddenly flying backwards across the little kitchen table.
‘You little bitch!’ she heard him roar as her back hit the floor. Cutlery, plates and food everywhere. Her cheek was burning, her face felt numb and she was seeing stars.
Somewhere far away she heard Henke whimper and she tried to get to her feet.
For some reason the door had opened, unless Henke had never closed it, because all of a sudden the fight had moved out onto the balcony. Dag had got a fresh grip of Henke’s head and she could see that her little brother was almost finished. His legs suddenly went limp and he stopped struggling, but Dag didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘You’re not so fucking cocky now, are you, you little fucker?!’ he roared, his face bright red, as he tightened his grip.
And suddenly she realized that Henke was going to die. That Dag was going to murder her little brother, right there, out on their balcony.
‘Stop!’ she screamed as loudly as she possibly could. Her voice sounded terrible, as if it came from deep within her chest rather than her throat.
Maybe it was the unusual tone of voice that jolted Dag out of it and made him realize he was going too far? Because just as she launched herself at him with all the force she could muster, he let go of Henke. Let him fall to the ground like a rag doll, and took an unsteady step backwards. Towards the balcony railing.
She hit Dag full in the chest. Even if she did weigh almost seventy kilos the collision wouldn’t usually have moved him at all, at best it would have made him sway a bit.
But this time he must have been off balance, or else the force in her tackle was far greater than she had realized. Either way, he stumbled backwards across the balcony with his arms reaching for something to grab hold of, something to help him keep his heavy body upright and stop him from falling.
Then his back hit the metal railing …
She would never forget that sound. A shrieking, grinding sound of metal mixed with a sigh from the concrete as it reluctantly released its grip on the far too few steel bolts.
And suddenly the railing was gone.
She was lying on the floor of the balcony, Dag just a metre away, balancing right on the edge. In his eyes that accusing look, as if he had already realized how it was going to end. That she wouldn’t lift a finger to save him. Wouldn’t even try. Because deep down she had already begun to celebrate, begun to rejoice that her love for him, just like he himself, would soon be dead.
That she would finally be free!
‘It’s your fault!’ the look in those eyes said in farewell before they, and he, disappeared over the edge.
And she knew that they were right.
It’s winter, dark, and in this dream Henke is waiting beside a brightly lit shop window. He doesn’t know who or what for. He just knows that he has to wait. For someone to come. Someone important.
The street is lined with bare, jagged trees as cars drive past almost soundlessly on the white roadway. Older models, he realizes, as if he’s gone back in time.
He stamps his feet on the snow-covered ground to keep warm.
Then he hears a church-clock chime further down the street and he realizes where he is. Sveavägen, diagonally across from the Adolf Fredrik Church.
At the junction of Tunnelgatan.
And suddenly he sees them coming towards him. A couple walking arm in arm. The man in a winter coat and fur hat, the woman in a coat and some sort of shawl. He recognizes them immediately. The Prime Minister and his wife. He runs his hand over his jacket and feels the object in his pocket, then turns towards the shop window and lets them pass.
Then he spins round and takes a couple of strides to catch up with them.
He knows what he has to do.
Ten minutes or so had passed since Dag fell from the balcony, but she remembered nothing of what had happened during that time. She is sitting in the kitchen with a female police officer in her forties. She looks kind, Rebecca finds herself thinking.
From down below there are blue lights flashing, lighting up the whole of the courtyard. She isn’t crying, she hasn’t done any of that, and she won’t either, she knows that already.
‘Can you bear to tell me what happened?’ the police officer says, and just as she opens her mouth to talk, she hears Henke’s voice from the living room.
‘It was me who did it!’ he says, loudly and clearly. ‘We were fighting and I pushed him, then the whole thing collapsed and he went through the railing. It was my fault.’
He’s got the gun in his hand, a large, silver-coloured revolver with a laser sight on top. The red dot is right in the middle of the man’s back.
Just squeeze, and …
But they seem to have noticed him, because they stop.
