The sound of the city is different in the summer, too. Birdsong that is almost painful in May and early June sounds like normal and pleasant interval music now. The cars are not in such a hurry between end-of-term celebrations, overtime work and suburban shopping. Instead, they roll slowly along the streets in a sort of proud parade to manifest what every genuine Stockholmer feels: Stockholm is best in the summer. That’s when the hundreds of thousands of ‘newer’ Stockholmers travel home to their provincial roots and are seen as rich and successful ‘homecomers’ for a few weeks. While there, they can subject their old cottages to an extreme makeover, they can push up the prices at local knick-knack auctions, grill Flintstone pork steaks and piss in the water at public bathing beaches to their hearts’ content. And the permanent local residents can moan and grumble about the people from the capital. Indeed, country folk need their images of the ‘Stockholmers’. That they are in actual fact mirror images of each other is of lesser importance.
When Titus reaches the Old Town, he decides that he deserves a cup of coffee. He needs to think. He walks up to Stortorget and goes into the café in the Grillska building. With a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun on his tray, Titus sits at a window table and looks out onto the square and the old Stock Exchange.
The last few weeks have been eventful. For starters, he has written a copious amount. Most of it has been top-notch stuff. He knows that when he reads through the material in a week or two, it will be easy to decide what is up to standard. He has absolute pitch. When it comes to text, he can trust himself 100 per cent.
The Best Book in the World is beginning to acquire a structure that he really likes. The variation of a thriller with elements of fact works better than he could have imagined. The bits with Håkan Rink’s hunt for Serial Salvador are snappy and hard-boiled. They always end with an exciting cliffhanger. The sections with facts occupy at most one or two pages each time, and serve as comfortable resting places in the midst of the action. He has already managed to incorporate the most common subjects that the bestselling non-fiction and reference works usually deal with: from crash slimming to self-help. The language is almost impertinent in its accessibility. Sometimes he wonders if it really can be so lucid and easy to read when the theme is so intellectual. You can’t help but go on reading and reading, to keep finding out what happens next. Titus is pleased with himself: this is exactly what he wants to achieve. Language is communication, not an art form in itself. The work of art is that which remains inside the reader’s head. A unique picture that only exists in a single copy.
But best of all is nevertheless that Astra forced him to sober up. He feels bright and energetic. The poison has left his body. In a purely chemical sense, I have conquered the abuse, he thinks. His body no longer screams for poisons. What remains are figments of his imagination: he can still find himself looking in the fridge for a beer or feeling in his pocket for a fag. The force of habit is powerful, but these remnants are no worse than he can brush aside with the help of another figment of his imagination: the reward image where he is lying there enjoying life on a warm young female body. Better to be obsessed than dependent.
He feels the calm returning to his body. It has been quite a while since he has been away from his computer for such a long time. It doesn’t feel totally wrong to be out on the city streets again. Cafés. People-watching. Relaxing.
That unpleasant Doctor-Rolf feeling is losing its grip. What an idiot. What a pathetic life. What a repulsive attitude towards people. At the same time, it was quite interesting to hear what he had said about Tourette’s syndrome being just an imaginary illness.
What if he was right? What would that mean in Lenny’s case?
CHAPTER 21
Dark Clouds Appear
When he steps out of the lift and in through the door to his flat, Titus immediately gets an unpleasant sensation of somebody having been there. Hard to say why. Does it smell funny? Or is it simply that a neighbour is making weird food and the smell is spreading through the ventilation system?
No, somebody has definitely been here. Titus looks around. Since it is a one-room flat with a kitchen alcove he doesn’t even have to leave the hall to see everything. Besides, nowadays it is well cleaned. He bends down to look under the sofa-bed. No uninvited guest there, anyway.
He opens the flat door again to check the stairs, and hears someone running down them. The entrance door slams shut with a smothered heavy sound and silence falls again. Who the hell was that? Titus rushes to the window to try to see. Not a soul outside the front door. A long and shambling figure is just going round the corner. Black jeans. A studded belt glistens. Lenny? Gone. Titus could have sworn it was Lenny.
He jerks the window open and shouts out:
‘Lenny! Lenny! Come back, damn it! What the hell are you playing at?’
A white-haired lady on a balcony shakes her head and takes a slurp from a dainty coffee cup. Oh, it’s him again. That drunken writer. All he can do is booze and take drugs. But keep the laundry room in the cellar clean? Not a chance! Yes, that’s him.
Titus charges down the stairs to try to catch up with Lenny. When he gets round the corner where Lenny disappeared, he sees a completely empty street before him. He has disappeared into thin air.
Although he has started to feel that he is in fairly good condition from all the spinning at the gym, Titus is seriously out of breath after that short sprint. He leans against the wall and pants heavily.
What the hell…? Was it Lenny? Or was he seeing things? But surely it had been Lenny? Fuck! What was he after?
Titus runs up to the flat again to check if anything has been stolen. He can’t find anything amiss. There isn’t much to steal. Who wants a pile of pizza cartons? At the same time, that unpleasant sensation is still evident. Somebody has been there.
Then he sees it.
Oh, shit! He was right after all!
The desk by the window. The computer. The lid has been opened. He never leaves the lid up when he has a rest. That is something that has been imprinted since he was a little boy. A lid should always be put down again after use, and that’s that. He might have been something of a careless fellow for the greater part of his life. But lids? No, he has put them down as far back as he can remember.
So Lenny has been there sneaking around. Has he got inside the computer? Has he managed to get past the breathalyser lock?
Titus blows into the tube and waits for the computer to start up. A message appears on the screen:
Hello Titus! A little while ago, you or someone else started me incorrectly. This means hibernation for a further one hour, twenty-two minutes and forty-three seconds. Please come back a little later!
The figures flick past on the counter. After a few moments, the screen goes blank.
What the fucking hell, thinks Titus. Lenny has tried to force his way into my computer! That can only mean one thing: he is after my manuscript!
But how has Lenny found out about The Best Book in the World? There are only four people in the whole world who know about the idea: Titus himself, Astra, Evita Winchester and Eddie X. Who talked? It could hardly be Astra or Evita – they have everything to lose from revealing something. They would never jeopardise good sales. He himself has hardly met a soul for weeks. Besides, he has been stone cold sober.