We can say what we like about Teemu Rinnius, because he says whatever he likes about us. In his experience every discussion of violence reveals how hypocritical almost everyone is. If you were to ask him, he’d say that most men and women aren’t violent and that they believe this is because their “morals” stop them. Teemu has one word for them: “Liars.” Would they really not be violent if they could? When other drivers mess around with them? When people mess around with them at work? When people mess around with their wives in the pub or their kids at school or their parents in nursing homes? How many thousands of times does the average mortgage-paying Labrador owner dream of being the sort of person who really doesn’t give a damn? Teemu is convinced that ordinary people’s lack of violence has nothing to do with morals and that they would be only too happy to hurt people if they thought they could get away with it. The only reason they’re not violent is that violence isn’t an option for them.
They can’t fight, they don’t know anyone with the strength or the weight of numbers or the influence. If they did, they’d get out of their cars and lay into the idiot blowing his horn, beat up the dad at the parents’ meeting who insulted their family, push that cocky waiter up against the wall and force him to eat the bill. Teemu is sure of that.
When he and Vidar were young, the brothers learned to hate one phrase more than all the others. They got called plenty of things: “Skint bastards!” “Thieves!” But it was “Whore’s kids” that hit them hardest. And it showed, so all the kids at school used that one more than the others. Teemu and Vidar had the same mother but different fathers, and when one brother is blond and the other dark, it’s an open invitation in every schoolyard. They fought until everyone shut up, but some words never stop echoing inside. Whore’s kids. Whore’s kids. Whore’s kids. Whore. Whore. Whore.
* * *
Now Teemu and Vidar are standing in the rink next to Spider and Woody. Spider, who got whipped in the shower with wet towels and called a “queer” when he was little. Woody, who was prepared to get onto a plane as a teenager to fight anyone he could find in the country where his cousin had been raped, before Teemu dragged him back home.
They’re no saints, they haven’t got hearts of gold, and most of the worst things said about them are true. But when Woody went to Teemu back in the spring to say the Pack should stand up against Kevin Erdahl, the best player their cherished club has ever seen, Teemu agreed with him, because he knew what people were calling Maya Andersson at school.
* * *
And now the red fans at the other end of the rink are chanting “QUEERS! SLUTS! RAPISTS!”
* * *
The Hed fans don’t know any of this. They’re just trying to shout the worst insults they can think of, anything they think will hurt, that will get under the skin of anyone with a bear on his or her chest. They succeed. As soon as the shower of dildos starts to hit the men in black jackets, eight of them set off down the stands. They take their jackets off, and eight other men in white shirts pull the jackets on and take their places. The security guards never notice Teemu, Vidar, Spider, Woody, and four others disappearing into a corridor, through a door, down into the basement.
* * *
Violence isn’t an option for most people. But the Pack aren’t most people.
* * *
Leo Andersson is twelve years old, and he’ll never forget when he heard Teemu Rinnius turn to Spider and say, “Get the guys. Just the hard core.” And how Teemu gave an almost invisible signal with a short nod, and seven men immediately set off behind him. The hard core, the central unit within the Pack, the most dangerous of them all.
Leo saw other men put their black jackets on and block the guards’ view as the hard core left the stand and ran toward a door in a dark corridor beside the janitor’s storeroom. There is a basement beneath the rink in Hed, most people don’t even know it exists, but a couple of weeks ago there was trouble with the lights and a group of electricians was brought in. One of them had to go down into the basement because he said there was a circuit breaker down there. The janitor didn’t think for a moment that there was anything suspicious about that. The electrician was careful not to show his bear tattoo.
* * *
Leo Andersson will never forget how much he wished he could have gone into that basement with them. Some boys dream of becoming professional hockey players. They stand and watch and wish they could be out on the ice. But some boys have other dreams. Other idols.
* * *
They head through the corridor in the basement of the arena. Eight of them. The very toughest of them. Nothing should be able to stop them, but one man does. He’s standing on his own in the middle of their path. He has no friends with him, no weapons, and he’s jammed a broom through the handles of the doors behind him to stop anyone opening them from the other side. Benji has locked himself into a corridor with them of his own volition.
* * *
He didn’t want to come here. There was just nowhere else he’d rather be.
* * *
He cycled from the campsite to the rink in Hed, through the snow with the wind in his eyes. When he crept inside, the game had reached the final minutes of the second period, and all eyes were on the ice. Benji looked up at the scoreboard. 4–0 for Hed. He heard the chanting, saw the red sea of hate on one side and the black jackets on the other. He saw the shower of dildos. While everyone else looked on in shock, Benji just looked around for a way to get down through the stands. As soon as Teemu and Vidar and six others took their jackets off, Benji already knew where they were going.
He had been in that basement before. He played hundreds of away games and tournaments in the Hed arena while he was growing up, and no one is better than Benji at finding quiet corners in rinks where you can smoke a bit of dope in peace.
So he knows you can use the basement to get all the way from one standing area to the other. To appear in the midst of the enemy. Like a bomb.
* * *
Teemu stops halfway through the basement. The men around him stop, too. Woody and Spider are ahead of the others on one side of Teemu, and his younger brother, Vidar, is on the other. Teemu stares at the eighteen-year-old blocking the narrow corridor and gives him a single chance. “Get out of the way, Benji.”
Benji slowly shakes his head. He’s wearing battered shoes, gray tracksuit pants, and a white T-shirt. He looks small. “No.”
Teemu’s voice is implacable: “I’m not going to tell you again . . .”
Benji’s voice is trembling; they’ve never heard it do that before. “I’m the one you want to beat the crap out of. No one else. So get going. Here I am. Some of you will get past me, I know that. But some of you won’t.”
The silence that follows has sharp claws. Teemu’s voice sounds momentarily muffled, then he snarls, “We treated you like one of us, Benji. You’re a fucking . . . liar . . .”
Benji replies, moist-eyed, “I’m a fucking fag! Say it like it is! If you want to beat someone up, here I am! If you go up into the Hed stands, the ref will call off the game and Hed will win. Don’t you see that’s what they want? If you want to beat the crap out of a fag, here I am! Hit me!”
Teemu’s knuckles are white when he replies, “Get out of the way. Don’t force me to—”