Peter stops with his hand on the door handle. Rests his forehead gently against the door, as if he were trying to hear how the house is breathing, if anyone’s awake inside. Not long ago, when she thought he was asleep, he heard Kira talking on the phone to someone in the kitchen: “For twenty years he’s said that next year it will finally be my turn to focus on my career. Next year. Does he really think he’s the only person driven to find out how good he can be at something?”
For twenty years Peter has told himself that he’s doing this not for his own sake but for other people’s. He became a professional hockey player in Canada so he could provide for his family. He took the job as general manager in Beartown because the family needed a safe place after they’d lost Isak. He fought for the club because he was fighting for the town. Because Beartown Ice Hockey was the pride of the community, the only way for this whole chunk of the country to remind the big cities that there were still people living here. That they could still give them a thrashing.
But he isn’t sure anymore. Maybe he’s just being selfish? He tries to stop thinking about the death notice. He’s always been prone to worrying, anxious about everything from bills to whether the coffee machine is switched off, but tonight is something different. Tonight he’s scared.
He’s just put the key in the door when a metallic click makes him start. A car door swings open out in the street.
* * *
A black-clad man gets out and walks toward him.
* * *
Two cars are driving through the forest. One of them drives all the way to the kennels, and a man in a black jacket that can’t possibly be fastened over his muscular chest gets out. He shakes Adri’s hand. Adri was in high school with him half a lifetime ago and has nothing against him, except for the fact that he’s less sharp than someone suffering from rheumatism handling a disposable camera. Once she had to explain to him that south on the map didn’t actually mean a downward slope and on another occasion that islands didn’t float on the sea but were actually fixed to the ocean floor. He doesn’t have many branches on his family tree. He’s got himself a new tattoo on his hand, she notices, a spiderweb so uneven that it practically forces her to ask, “What the hell . . . did you lose a bet or something?”
“What?” he answers uncomprehendingly, and stares at his hand, clearly not struck by the fact that it looks as though whoever did it was working in the dark.
Someone once called him “Spider” at school because he had long, thin, hairy legs. He was the sort of boy who didn’t care what anyone called him, as long as they knew who he was, so he embraced the insult. He’s gotten himself at least a dozen spider-themed tattoos since then, all of them apparently done by drunks sitting on top of a tumble drier.
Adri shakes her head wearily and opens the boot of Spider’s car, which is full of boxes of liquor. Adri notes that the other car is waiting as usual where the road ends, at the edge of the forest. The driver is sitting inside it so he can warn them if any unwelcome visitors are approaching, but the passenger gets out. Adri has known him for many years, too, and—unlike Spider—he definitely isn’t an idiot. That’s what makes him dangerous.
His name is Teemu Rinnius. He’s not particularly thickset, and he’s not particularly tall, and his hair is so neat that his best friends call him “the accountant,” but Adri has seen him fight and knows that beneath that hair his head is made of concrete. His kick is so hard that in this town it’s the horses that are frightened of standing behind him. When he was younger, he and his little brother were so notorious that the hunters used to joke, “You know why you should never knock the Rinnius brothers off a bike? Because it’s probably your bicycle!” Now that he’s older they no longer tell jokes about him, and if anyone from outside comes to the town asking for Teemu Rinnius, even the smallest child has the sense to answer, “Who?”
Teemu isn’t wearing a black jacket; he doesn’t need one. He opens the back door of the car and lets out two dogs. He bought them from Adri as puppies, so if anyone asks what he’s doing here this evening, he can say he’s thinking of buying another one. He has no delivery schedule, no fixed routine; Adri gets a phone call a couple of hours in advance, then he shows up once it’s dark. She calls him “the wholesaler,” half affectionately, half mockingly. She herself is the retailer. Two cars can’t go from door to door in Beartown dropping off bottles of drink without attracting suspicion, whereas everyone knows that all the hunters in the area usually drop in at the kennels from time to time to check out the puppies and drink coffee. Perhaps they come a little too often, those hunters, especially before major holidays. But if you ask anyone around here about Adri, they’ll all say the same thing: “She makes very good coffee.”
The men in black jackets always have two cars, and Teemu never sits in the one containing the drink. There are police investigations that claim that he’s the leader of a “violent hooligan gang known as the Pack, who support Beartown Hockey.” There are plenty of stories of their influencing the club’s affairs, that highly paid players on the A-team who don’t perform well enough have voluntarily torn up their own contracts, but there’s never been any proof. And naturally there’s no proof that the Pack is involved in the organized smuggling of alcohol or trading in stolen cars and snowmobiles, either. There has never been any proof that the Pack has ever threatened anyone, the way criminal networks everywhere usually have to do in order to establish their violent credentials. Police investigations claim that the Pack don’t need to do that because they use hockey games to advertise themselves. The theory goes that anyone who has seen the black jackets packed in the standing area of the rink, or who has heard what they’ve done to fans of other teams that have challenged them, would understand the seriousness of the situation if they appear on the doorstep.
But obviously that’s all nonsense. Rumor and exaggeration by city types who’ve seen too many films. If you ask almost anyone who lives in Beartown about the Pack, they’ll just reply, “What pack?”
When Adri lifts the last crate of drink from the back of the car she notes that there’s a large ax under it. She rolls her eyes.
“Seriously, Teemu, don’t you think it looks a bit suspicious, having an ax in the trunk when every cop in the district has seen pictures of that councillor’s car in Hed?”
There aren’t many people who dare take that tone with Teemu, but he merely looks amused. “Adri, think about it: after what happened to that poor woman’s car in Hed, wouldn’t it look more suspicious if we didn’t have axes in our cars?”
Adri bursts out laughing. “You’re such an idiot. Except you’re not.”
Teemu smiles. “Thank you kindly.”
* * *