Bad Blood

11

The minibus imitated the gliding flight of a bat through the rainy night. Its night vision was turned on; its perception of space was perfect.

Although maybe bats don’t glide.

And was it really night vision they had?

He wished he hadn’t had that last whiskey.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Damn, Matte broke down up there.”

“Fuck, isn’t that the leaning tower? Did you drive us to Spain, you bastard?”

“Italy! Italy! I long for Italy, the lovely beaches of Italy…”

“Shut up!”

“It’s the gas tower-the only thing that’s leaning is your head.”

“The leaning brain of Skarpnäck.”

“The leaning minibus of Frihamnen. What curve-taking skills!”

“Where the fuck are you going? Matte!”

He looked over his shoulder.

It was an awful mess back there. It would take the whole morning to clean up after them. The bottles were mixed up with their bandy sticks, and the hazy figures seemed to be throwing themselves on top of each other in a sad, homoerotic cluster of snakes.

“Gärdet,” he said. “You live there, Steffe. As you may recall.”

“But you drove around all of fucking Gärdet! We shouldn’t have let you drive.”

“Says the man who blew the driving test six times.”

“Come on, try to go the right way. I know you’re from Nynäshamn, but you must have been to Stockholm once or twice.”

“Or heard of it.”

“The king lives there. Maybe that’ll help.”

“Does he really live in the palace? Or is it Drottningholm? Trick question.”

“What the hell? Are you going to send him fan mail?”

“ ‘Dear King, can you send a lock of Victoria’s pubic hair to a pining bachelor with roots in the working class of Säffle?’ ”

“Take a right. A right, you moron!”

“Dumbass!”

He got tired of it all and turned left out of pure spite. A general bellow spread through the minibus.

“Psycho!”

“Dipshit!”

“Idiot!”

The minibus glided on along a little dark road that split into four; he randomly chose one of them, and it seemed like the bus might be stopped at any second by a sudden iron fence and a severe, macho Latino border guard with a cigar in the corner of his mouth.

That didn’t happen. Instead, he could see a Volvo station wagon fifty yards away. Exhaust was rising from its tailpipe. The car was blocking the road.

He braked until they were almost standing still. They were thirty yards from the car when he saw a man next to it. He was in full motion. His head was covered by a balaclava. He shoved something into the back of the car, threw himself around the side, and roared away with shrieking tires. When the smoke settled, Matte noticed something lying on the ground. A large package with alarming contours.

Three of the guys who were somewhat sober leaned forward, above him.

“What the fuck was that?”

“A burglary?”

“Fucking hell! What have you gotten us into, Matte? Let’s split.”

He let the bus slowly glide up to the blanket-wrapped package. The headlights made the rain come alive. It whipped at the blanket.

He stopped the bus and went out into the storm. They followed him. He bent down and started to unwrap the blanket.

A face stared up at him. Chalk-white, with surprising facial features under the ruptured eyes. The rain beat against the eyeballs. The eyelids made no effort to avoid the drops.

They recoiled and stared silently at the white face that stuck out of the dripping blanket, shining through the night.

“Shit!” someone whispered.

“Let’s split,” someone else whispered.

“We can’t just leave him,” he said.

Someone grabbed the lapels of his jacket and brought his face close. “Yes. We can. Do you hear me, Matte? This has nothing to do with us.”

“You’ve been drinking,” someone else said soberly. “Think of the consequences.”

They went back to the minibus. The mood was different now.

He remained standing there for a moment, observing the corpse with reluctant fascination. It was the first time Matte had seen a dead person.

He returned to the driver’s seat. The bus was dripping with rain that would eat its way into the upholstery and make it mold. But that was the farthest thing from his mind as he turned the key in the ignition.