fifty seconds later, she was still trying to suppress the annoying impulse to smile.
Are you really sure you want to enter?
When the bell on the door of the stuffy little shop started playing the opening notes of the theme to Star Wars, Magnus Sandström – or Farook Al-Hassan as he now called himself – gave no indication of having heard it. He just carried on reading the crumpled copy of Metro spread out on the counter in front of him, scarcely bothering to glance up at the visitor.
‘Salaam-Aleikum, brother HP,’ he muttered from the corner of his mouth.
‘Hi, Manga,’ HP grinned as he sauntered towards the counter. ‘Anything interesting in the paper today? Let me guess: the recession’s getting worse, Hammarby lost again, and some nutters blew something up somewhere, probably in Baghdad, Bombay, or maybe Timbuktu?’
‘Portugal,’ Manga sighed, looking up reluctantly.
‘Huh?’
‘The nutters blew something up in Lisbon – an empty luxury yacht, to be precise. No-one knows why. But you got two out of three. Hammarby are bloody useless these days.’
He folded the paper and straightened up with a sullen look on his face.
‘And you know perfectly well that I want to be called Farook now,’ he added flatly.
‘Of course I know, Mangay-boy! If you insist on turning yourself into a second-class carpet-seller, that’s your decision.’
He nodded demonstratively at Farook’s middle-eastern trousers, silk waistcoat and long shirt.
‘Just don’t expect me to buy into that bullshit. You were Manga when we started school, when we used to smoke your mum’s fags behind the Co-op, and when you lost your virginity to that fat Finnish girl in a tent at Hultsfred. So that’s who you are to me, regardless of whatever you, your wife or your latest god think, okay?’
Manga/Farook sighed again. There was no point arguing with HP when he was in this mood, he knew that from experience. Better to change the subject completely, that usually worked. HP was usually fairly easily distracted.
‘And to what does my humble little shop owe the honour of this visit, young Padwan?’ he said instead, holding out his hands to indicate the cramped space.
The shop consisted of some thirty square metres of worn cork-matting, plus a couple more hidden behind a shabby bead-curtain behind the counter. Practically every available surface, as well as several that weren’t, from floor to ceiling, was packed full of things, mainly computers and electronic components and accessories. Cases, hard-drives, cables, print cartridges and various USB gadgets jostled with printed signs for various games and all sorts of discontinued products. A worn-out air-conditioning unit above the door was fighting a noisy losing battle against both the summer heat outside and the warmth generated by the countless machines within the shop.
At the back of the shop two computers were whirring, ostensibly for demonstration purposes, but in practice this area was used as an internet café, as indicated by the neat lettering of the printed sign hanging askew above the grimy coffee-machine. The machine bore another sign offering free coffee to paying customers, but there was at present a distinct absence of these.
As usual, the lighting was subdued, mostly provided by the various screens spread around the shop. Together with the feeble fluorescent strip-light above the counter, these made up the only opposition to the sheets of paper taped across the barred window that effectively blocked out all sunlight.
HP pulled the mobile phone out of his inside pocket. With a triumphant gesture he slapped it on the counter in front of Manga.
Game over, mothafucker!
But instead of giving up and admitting everything, Manga merely adjusted his dark-framed glasses and leaned forward with interest.
‘A new mobile … pretty cool design. Haven’t seen one like that before. Found or bought?’ he summarized as he looked up again.
‘You tell me, Manga,’ HP grinned, but without quite achieving the degree of triumph he was hoping for in either the comment or the smile.
The confidence he had felt when he slapped the phone on the counter had vanished. This wasn’t turning out the way he’d expected. Manga had never been able to keep a straight face, even when it didn’t really matter. When they were younger, Manga had let HP and the others down more than once, and he had been expecting him either to confess at once, or to make a pathetic and embarrassing attempt at denial. But neither had happened, and his hastily improvised Plan B, which involved staring angrily at Mangalito, met with the same meagre response.
Not a hint, not a blink or a twitch of the eye – none of the things that usually happened to a little geek when he was out of his depth. And his voice passed the test too …
‘Huh … what you talking about, brother?’
HP tilted his head and made a last, half-hearted attempt.
‘So you’re telling me you don’t know anything about the little practical joke someone played on me on the train from Märsta half an hour or so ago?’
‘Nope, not a clue, scouts’ honour,’ Manga said, raising two fingers to where his hairline had once been.
‘Do you feel like initiating me into the mysteries of the Märsta train over a cup of Java?’ he asked, taking another look at the mobile, evidently keen to get to know it better.
‘Sure,’ HP muttered.
So what the fuck was really going on?
‘Well, if you don’t have any questions, we’re done here.’
Rebecca shook her head and was out of the sofa before the psychologist had time to stand up. She knew that debriefing was important and that it was just standard procedure after an incident like the one she had been involved in earlier, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
She didn’t like talking in confidence to strangers, she’d had more than enough of that growing up. Even though she couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old when it started, it hadn’t taken her long to work out the ‘right’ answers. Wide-open eyes, a childlike smile, just enough confidentiality for the lies to sound sincere. It had worked well then, and it was surprisingly easy to use the same technique, with only modest adjustments, in the adult world.
‘Thanks, Dr Anderberg, I’m a bit shaken, but basically I’m fine,’ and a few more similar standard-issue clichés. The same wonky smile and shy eye contact, that usually worked. But today it felt unusually difficult. Her words rang slightly false, and the performance wasn’t as convincing as usual. She was having trouble keeping track of her thoughts and concentrating.
The composed feeling she had had in Runeberg’s office had suddenly vanished without a trace.
Her thoughts kept racing away and she was having trouble keeping
