“It never will bite anyone! And it saved you from Sam!” growls Elsa.
Britt-Marie looks as if she’s about to say something. But she leaves it. Because she knows it’s true. And Elsa is going to say something, but she also leaves it. Because she knows that Britt-Marie actually returned the favor.
She looks into the flat through the mirror.
“Why did you put the razor in the wrong drawer?” she asks.
Britt-Marie brushes, brushes, brushes her skirt. Folds her hands.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, even though Elsa very well sees that she does.
“Kent said it was always in the first drawer. But you said it was always in the second drawer. And then after he’d gone, you put it in the third drawer,” says Elsa.
And then Britt-Marie looks distracted for just a few moments. Then something else. Alone, perhaps. And then she mumbles: “Yes, yes, maybe I did. Maybe I did.”
Elsa tilts her head.
“Why?”
And then there’s a silence for an eternity of fairy-tale silences. And then Britt-Marie whispers, as if she’s forgotten that Elsa is standing there in front of her: “Because I like it when he shouts my name.”
And then Britt-Marie closes the door.
And Elsa stands outside and tries to dislike her. It doesn’t go all that well.
29
SWISS MERINGUES
You have to believe. Granny always said that. You have to believe in something in order to understand the tales. “It’s not important what exactly you believe in, but there’s got to be something, or you may as well forget the whole damned thing.”
And maybe in the end that’s what everything, all of this, is about.
Elsa finds her Gryffindor scarf in the snow outside the house, where she dropped it when she charged at Sam the night before. The green-eyed policewoman is standing a few yards away. The sun has hardly risen. The snow sounds like popcorn popping as she walks over it.
“Hello,” offers Elsa.
Green-eyes nods, silently.
“You’re not much of a talker, are you?”
Green-eyes smiles. Elsa wraps the scarf around herself.
“Did you know my granny?”
The policewoman scans along the house wall and over the little street.
“Everyone knew your grandmother.”
“And my mum?” Green-eyes nods again. Elsa squints at her. “Alf says you were best friends.” She nods again. Elsa wonders how that would feel. To have a best friend who’s your own age. Then she stands in silence beside the policewoman and watches the sun come up. It’s going to be a beautiful Christmas Eve, despite everything that’s happened. She clears her throat and heads back to the front entrance, stopping with her hand on the door handle.
“Have you been on guard here all night?”
She nods again.
“Will you kill Sam if he comes back?”
“I hope not.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not my job to kill.”
“What is your job, then?”
“To protect.”
“Him or us?” Elsa asks reproachfully.
“Both.”
“He’s the one who’s dangerous. Not us.”
Green-eyes smiles without looking happy.
“When I was small your grandmother used to say that if you become a police officer, you can’t choose who to protect. You have to try to protect everyone.”
“Did she know you wanted to become a policewoman?” asks Elsa.
“She’s the one who made me want to become one.”
“Why?”
Green-eyes starts smiling. Genuinely, this time.
“Because I was afraid of everything when I was small. And she told me I should do what I was most afraid of. I should laugh at my fears.”
Elsa nods, as if this confirms what she already knew.
“It was you and Mum, wasn’t it—the golden knights who saved the Telling Mountain from the Noween and the fears. And built Miaudacas. It was you and Mum.”
The policewoman raises her eyebrows imperceptibly.
“We were many things in your grandmother’s fairy tales, I think.”
Elsa opens the door, puts her foot in the opening, and stops there.
“Did you know my mum first or my granny?”