LITMIR.BIZ

       63

       monday, december 14: afternoon

      The day is bitterly cold, the sky open and blue. People are moving silently, lost in their own worlds. Tired children are on their way home from school. Kennet stops outside the 7-Eleven on the corner. There’s a special offer on coffee and a saffron Lucia bun. He goes inside, and as he joins the queue his cell phone rings. It’s Simone.

      “Have you been out, Sixan?”

      “I had to go to the gallery. Then I had a job to do.” She stops abruptly. “I just got your message, Dad.”

      “Have you been asleep? You sound—”

      “Yes. Yes, I slept for a little while.”

      “Good,” says Kennet.

      He meets the assistant’s tired eyes and points to the sign advertising the special offer.

      “Have they traced Benjamin’s call?” asks Simone.

      “I haven’t had a reply yet. This evening at the earliest, they said. I was just going to give them a ring now.”

      The assistant is waiting for Kennet to choose which Lucia bun he would like, and he quickly points to the biggest one. She puts it in a bag, takes his crumpled twenty-kronor note, and waves in the direction of the coffee machine and cups. He nods, walks past the grill where the sausages are turning, and manages to extricate a cup from the dispenser while continuing his conversation with Simone.

      “You spoke to Nicky yesterday?” she says.

      “He’s a very nice kid,” he says.

      “Did you find out anything about Wailord?”

      “Quite a lot.”

      “Like what?”

      “Hang on a minute.”

      Kennet removes the steaming coffee cup from the machine, snaps on a lid, and takes it and the bag containing the bun over to one of the small round plastic tables.

      “Are you still there?” he asks, sitting down on a wobbly chair.

      “Yes.”

      “I think this is about a group of kids who are shaking Nicky down for his money and telling him they’re Pokémon characters.”

      Kennet notices a man with tousled hair pushing an oversize buggy. A big girl in a pink snowsuit—too old to be pushed, Kennet thinks—reclines inside, sucking on a dummy with a tired smile on her face.

      “Does this have anything to do with Benjamin?”

      “The Pokémon boys? I don’t know. Maybe he tried to stop them,” says Kennet.

      “We need to talk to Aida,” Simone says resolutely.

      “After school, I thought.”

      “What do we do now?”

      “I’ve actually got an address,” says Kennet.

      “For what?”

      “The sea.”

      “The sea?”

      “That’s all I know.” He takes a sip of the coffee, breaks off a piece of the Lucia bun, and pops it in his mouth.

      “Where is the sea?”

      “Close to the Frihamnen,” says Kennet as he chews, “out on Loudden.”

      “Can I come with you?”

      “Are you ready?”

      “Give me ten minutes.”

      Gathering up his coffee and the rest of his bun, Kennet heads out into the very cold afternoon to pick up his car by the hospital. A cyclist darts through traffic, slaloming in between the cars. As he stops at the crossing, Kennet feels as if he has overlooked something important, as if he has seen something crucial but failed to interpret it. The traffic thunders past. He can hear a rescue vehicle somewhere in the distance. He takes a sip of coffee and watches a woman waiting on the other side of the road, her dog trembling on the end of a short leash. A truck passes just in front of him, and the ground shakes with its considerable weight. He hears someone giggling and has just registered that it doesn’t sound genuine when he feels a hard shove in his back. He takes several steps out into the road to avoid losing his balance, turns, and sees a ten-year-old girl looking at him, her eyes open wide. She must be the one who pushed me, he just has time to think. There’s no one else there. At the same moment, he hears the screech of brakes and feels an incomprehensible force hurl itself at him. Something like a gigantic hammer knocks his legs out from under him. There is a cracking sound at the back of his neck. All at once his body is soft and faraway, in free fall, and then there is darkness.