Then you can try shouting and banging on the door for a little bit longer, until you eventually give up. Your hands are aching and smarting; they are full of splinters from the coarse wood of the sauna door.
Fumble around and realize that you can actually see a little bit in the darkness — a faint strip of light is showing underneath the door, and there is a tiny shimmering patch in an air vent just below the ceiling. So you are not completely blind. You can see your hands in front of you like patches of pale grey.
You reach out and climb upwards. The heat increases as you get closer to the ceiling. Suddenly your fingers are touching something, something cylindrical, with a smooth metallic surface.
A beer can. Here in the near darkness it is impossible to see what brand it is, but you can hear the liquid slopping about when you pick it up. It feels as if it is about half full, but when you bring it up to your nose a sour, disgusting smell emanates from the little hole in the top. Someone has left it on the bench in the sauna; it could have been there for days, or even weeks.
Put the can down. Sit on the top bench and think. Try to think. How are you going to get out?
Don’t expect anyone in the Gang of Four to come back and open the door; that’s not going to happen.
Don’t expect your parents to come looking for you either. They were supposed to be going away with your younger brother, to stay with some aunt. They might ring you, but when you don’t answer they will just assume you are at a friend’s house — even though you don’t have any friends that you might visit. They live in a dream world where their son is happy at school, and you don’t want to wake them from their dream.
No. You just have to assume that you are trapped in here, presumably until Monday morning. At least it was meatballs with mashed potato for lunch in the school canteen today, and you sat at a table all by yourself and ate ten of them.
You won’t get any more food until Monday.
You should be pleased that you don’t have any clothes. Standing naked in the shower room was horrible, you felt like a little frozen piglet out there, naked and surrounded by the Gang of Four in their new sweatshirts and expensive jeans. But in here you won’t miss your clothes at all.
It is pretty hot up on the wooden bench. Frying tonight. The heat rises, and you are sweating more and more.
Climb down and sit on the lower level with your feet on the floor. It’s a little bit cooler down here.
Sit there and bow your head.
Don’t think, just wait.
Close your eyes.
Carry on waiting.
Raise your head and wonder whether you might run out of air. It is difficult to breathe... is that because of the heat, or is there some other reason? You once read a story about someone who was buried alive in a coffin, and almost died from lack of oxygen. A sauna is a kind of coffin.
You take a deep breath and sniff the air — does it smell bad? Not yet. Fresh air is probably coming in through the gap at the bottom of the door, and through the vent up by the ceiling. Not much, but you hope it will be enough.
Lie down on the bench.
Close your eyes.
Don’t think.
Just wait.
Wait...
Wake up with a start!
Have you been asleep?
It is still dark. How much time has passed since they shut you in? You have no idea. You have a watch with a luminous face that your grandmother gave you for your tenth birthday, but it is in the pocket of your trousers in the changing room.
Unless of course the Gang of Four really did take your boots and clothes with them and chucked them in the pond.
The sauna is still switched on.
The sweat is pouring off your body in the heat. You are incredibly thirsty.
Slide down on to the floor and crawl over to the bucket; it is there so that people can throw water on to the hot stones and fill the sauna with steam. There is actually a little water left in the bottom.
Don’t be too hasty. You have no idea how long this water has been standing here. Every explorer knows that stagnant water can be poisonous, but in the end you scoop up a little and have a drink. It’s not good. It’s lukewarm and it tastes stale, but you have another drink. And another.
Then you put down the bucket, because you need to ration your resources.
‘Ration your resources’: that sounds like an adventure story with a hero, but you are no hero. You are completely powerless, you cannot breathe. You curl up on the floor and wait and wait and wait. The gym is a short distance away from the school, on the outskirts of town — nobody passes here by chance.
You cannot hear a thing apart from a slight rushing sound in your ears, and from time to time a faint clicking from the heater. You get to your feet and bang on the door anyway, you shout and bang and shout. The door is thick and solid; it doesn’t move a millimetre.
Then you curl up again, but the floorboards are getting hotter and hotter. Underneath the benches there is a cement floor which should be cooler, but you don’t want to crawl in there. You know how filthy it must be. Thousands of people have sat on the benches up above, year after year, their sweat trickling down on to the floor. They have spat through the gaps in the benches, dropped their snuff, shed hairs and flakes of skin.
But you have to get away from the heat, and eventually you crawl in there anyway. You are a naked little piglet, crawling in among the damp filth beneath the benches. And it is cooler. It’s dirty, but you can breathe.
You wait on the cement floor, dreaming of a friend. A tough guy. A man who begins to realize that something is wrong. Perhaps you arranged to meet at a restaurant in town — why haven’t you turned up? You don’t know his name, and you don’t have any paper to draw his picture, but you start to conjure up this man inside your head.
He is known as the Secret Avenger. The Secret Avenger chooses not to reveal himself, he blends into his surroundings. If you look carefully you will see him there, but in a crowd he is invisible.
You know that the Secret Avenger has grown tired of waiting. He gets up from the table, pays for his whisky and decides to go looking for you. He transforms himself. He becomes the Righteous Avenger, with burning eyes and fists of steel. You know exactly what he looks like. Be careful, Torgny!
You lose consciousness, then come round.
You are not sweating as much now, but you are just as thirsty as before. You crawl over to the bucket and drink a little more water. By the sound of it there are perhaps ten or eleven gulps left in the bottom of the bucket. You drink three, then lie down on the cooler cement once more.
You close your eyes, dreaming in the darkness. Time passes. Sometimes you raise your head and you really believe that the Secret Avenger is on his way, that he has somehow tracked down the Gang of Four and beaten them up in order to find out what they have done with his best friend — but most of the time you know that no one is coming to save you.