During the course of five mornings he saw neither Jerry nor Tora leave the apartment. What he did see was girls going into the apartment block; sometimes he caught a glimpse of them or Tora up at the window. He came to the conclusion that Jerry wasn’t home.
Sometimes his mobile rang. Girls he had made a half-hearted play for ages ago or more recently, old acquaintances who wanted to check out the situation. Presumably the word was out that he was the man behind Tora Larsson, and he had become someone it might be worth keeping in touch with. He could hear the clink of crockery or the murmur of conversation in the background when they called from restaurants or cafés, the impersonal, obsequious tone in their voices.
He sat on his bench and shivered, held the phone well away from his ear and said Hi and How’s it going and Cool, and he despised every last one of them. They were little pack animals, lemmings gathering kudos as they hurtled towards the abyss, squeaking as they ran.
He raised his can of ice-cold beer to Tora Larsson’s window. He loathed her and he respected her. As he sat here on his bench and she wandered around her apartment, there was a bond between them, an invisible trail of blood running from his feet to her door, through her letterbox and into her body. A shudder ran down his spine as he thought about it.
Finally, on the sixth day, Tora came out with the freak. Max gripped his beer can with both hands and stared down at the ground as if he was too drunk to look up when they walked past him, just a few metres away. He watched them disappear in the direction of the subway and waited a few minutes before entering the building and taking the lift up to her apartment.
With stiff hands he took Robbie out of his pocket and pressed him to his forehead. Then he tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked. He just stood there for while staring into the wide-open apartment as if he was afraid a trap might suddenly slam shut. He just couldn’t be this lucky.
He steeled himself and slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind him. Quietly he said, ‘Hello? Anyone home?’ No reply and no time to lose. He headed for the computer in the living room and bit his lower lip when he saw that it was switched off. He started it up, whispering, ‘Come on, come on, come on, please…’
His luck was out. He needed a password to get into the system. He tried ‘Tora’ and ‘Tesla’ and a number of other words. Finally he hammered in ‘fuckinghell’, but that particular curse didn’t work either. He shut down the computer and went hunting.
In a bag in the hallway he found what he was looking for. He recognised the cheap MP3 player from his second meeting with Tora. He started to sweat in his thick jacket as he scrolled through the playlists, and under ‘Theres’ he found ‘Fly’ along with another twenty or so songs. He put the earphones in and was able to confirm that he had struck gold.
Theres?
He slipped the MP3 player in his pocket and stood by the door, unsure what to do next. The girls had gone off somewhere on the subway; he was bound to have some time left.
Theres?
This was probably his only chance to find out something about the girl who had come to rule his life. He undid his jacket so that he could cool down, locked the door from the inside and started searching the apartment with fresh eyes.
In the drawer of the bedside table next to what was presumably Jerry’s bed, he found a folder with documents relating to the sale of a house. Jerry had inherited it from his parents, Lennart and Laila Cederström. The estate inventory indicated that they had both passed away on the same date. Max vaguely recognised the name Lennart Cederström, but couldn’t place it. Something to do with music. He stored the name in his memory.
In the desk drawers he found more rubbish, the kind you might expect. Old bills and guarantees, documents from Idol and the very first letter he had sent. What struck him as he went through rental agreements and bank statements was that there wasn’t a single document anywhere relating to Tora. Nothing from any school or authority, no mementoes.
Her own room was spartan, like a cell in a refugee hostel. A CD player, a few CDs and Bamse the Bear comics. A bed. On the bedside table lay an ID card. Max picked it up and studied it carefully.
Angelika Tora Larsson. So far, so good. But there was absolutely no chance that the girl in the photograph was the Tora he knew. He held the card up to the light, looked at it side-on. Someone had altered it. The card was battered and scratched, but it was obvious that something had been done to the numbers indicating the date of birth.
Angelika. Tora. Theres.
He wasn’t one jot closer to understanding who the girl calling herself Tora Larsson actually was, but two things he did know. One: there was something very suspect going on here. And two: he ought to be able to use it to his advantage.
He had been in the apartment for over an hour, it was almost eleven o’clock and he decided not to tempt fate any longer. Before he left he checked that everything looked just the same as when he arrived. He closed the door behind him and listened to make sure no one was coming up the stairs, then hurried down and out into the street. As he headed for the subway he noticed that there were a couple of police cars parked outside the shop, right next to the bench where he would no longer need to sit. He was done here. He had found what he was looking for, and a lot more.
As soon as he got home he poured himself a large celebratory whisky. Then he transferred the songs from the MP3 player to his computer, and sat down to listen to them.
Gold. Pure gold. Five of the songs were definitely in the same class as ‘Fly’, and the rest were perfectly OK. The lyrics weren’t always that brilliant, but he couldn’t think of many Swedish artists who wouldn’t be proud to be associated with this album.
Yes, album. He had already started thinking about it like that. The files that were now on his computer would have to be run through the desk a few times, the production had to be sorted out and they needed to be tidied up a bit, but he had everything he needed for a real smash.
However, there was a problem. Tora Larsson would never agree to the project, and he didn’t know what she might do when she found out what he was up to. It was a dilemma, to put it mildly.
With the help of the computer Max started checking the information he had found in the apartment. He soon discovered that no one with Tora’s ID number existed. However, Angelika Tora Larsson did exist, and she had the same number if you altered just one digit.
Max found the really juicy information when he did a search on Lennart and Laila Cederström. He read the articles about the Swedish pop stars who had been brutally murdered, their son Jerry, and the strange room the police had discovered in the cellar. He put this together with what his back knew about Tora’s capacity for violence, and suddenly his dilemma was no longer a dilemma.
He no longer had a problem; it was Tora Larsson who had a problem. He could do exactly what he wanted, and she wouldn’t be able to say a word.
On Monday morning Teresa went to school. Heads turned to look at her as she got on the bus. She went straight to the back, and sat with her feet in their Doc Martens on the back of the seat in front of her. People looked at her and sniggered. As soon as she looked them in the eye, they looked away.
Eight members of her class had arrived before her. They were standing around waiting for the first lesson to start. One of them was Karl-Axel, the documentary film maker. Teresa was completely calm inside as she met his gaze from some distance away. She walked steadily along the corridor, the boots giving her footsteps weight and power.