*
The dad is still sitting in the kitchen. The whisky bottle is open but untouched. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. The mom comes home, looks at her husband, stops briefly in the hall, and looks at one of the pictures on the wall. A framed family photograph. It’s hanging crookedly, the frame is smashed, and there’s glass on the floor. One of the dad’s hands is bleeding. The mom says nothing, just sweeps the glass up and disposes of it. Then she goes out into the garden. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. When Kevin goes to collect the pucks she grabs his arm. Not hard, not in anger, just enough to force him to turn around. She looks him in the eye and he lowers his gaze, her fingers take hold of his chin and force his face up again. So that the son has to look at his mother. Until she knows.
This family doesn’t lose. But they will know.
*
The Andersson family are sitting in their kitchen. All five, including Ana. They’re playing a childish card game. No one’s winning, because they’re all trying to let everyone else win. The doorbell rings again. Peter answers it. He stands there in silence, just staring. Kira follows him, but stops when she sees who it is. Last comes Maya.
Kevin’s mother stands outside the house, broken, seemingly drowning in her own clothes. Her legs are shaking, struggling until they give way beneath her. They’ve told her that too much time has passed for the police to use anything as reliable evidence. The girl should have taken photographs, she shouldn’t have showered, she should have reported the incident at once. Now it’s too late, that’s what they said. But the bruises are still visible on the girl’s neck and wrists. Kevin’s mother can see them. The marks left by strong fingers forcing her. Holding her down. Stopping her from screaming.
She sinks to her knees at the girl’s feet, reaches out her hand as if to touch her, but her trembling arms can’t reach. Maya stands there empty for a long time, just looking on. She closes her eyelids, stops breathing, her skin is mute, her tear ducts so numb that her body doesn’t feel like it’s her own. Then, with infinite care, she reaches out her fingers, as if she were picking a lock, and strokes the woman’s hair soothingly as she sobs uncontrollably against the girl’s legs.
“I’m sorry . . . ,” Kevin’s mother whispers.
“It isn’t your fault,” Maya replies.
One of them falls. The other starts to climb back up.
45
Bang-bang-bang.
There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Amat is standing by the window in Zacharias’s bedroom and sees the first of them making their way between the buildings. Hoods over their heads, their faces hidden behind scarves. Zacharias is in the bathroom. Amat could ask him to come out with him. Or he could hide here all night. But he knows that the hooded figures out there are looking for him, he knows that more of them are on their way. They stand up for each other—that’s what a team is built on, and their hate now isn’t about what they believe Kevin has or hasn’t done. It’s about Amat going against the team. They’re an army, and they need an enemy.
So Amat creeps out into the hall and puts his jacket on. He’s not going to let Zacharias get beaten up for his sake, and he can’t risk anyone trying to break into his mom’s apartment in their hunt for him.
When Zacharias comes back into the room, his best friend is gone. Out of loyalty.
Bang. Bang.
Ann-Katrin is standing at the kitchen window when the young men come through the trees. Lyt at the front, with a further eight or nine behind him. Some are from the juniors’ team—she recognizes them—and a few are older brothers, even bigger. They’re all wearing hoodies and dark scarves. They’re not a team, not a gang, they’re a lynch mob.
Bobo goes out into the snow to meet them. Ann-Katrin stands in the window and watches her son stand with his head bowed while Lyt lays his hand on his shoulder, explains the strategy, gives him orders. All his life Bobo has wanted just one thing: to be allowed to belong to something. His mom watches her boy try to explain something to Lyt, but Lyt is way beyond reasoning now. He shouts and shoves Bobo, presses his index finger to his forehead, and even from the window his mother can read the word “betrayal” on his lips. The young men pull their hoods over their heads, mask themselves with their scarves, disappear among the trees. Ann-Katrin’s son is left standing there alone, until he changes his mind.
Hog is bent over an engine when Bobo comes into the garage. His dad half gets up, and father and son glance at each other without either of them properly looking up. The father bends over the engine again without speaking. Bobo fetches a hoodie and a scarf.
Bang.
Filip is eating dinner with his parents. They don’t say much. Filip is the best back on the team; one day he will be much more than that. When he was little and hopelessly behind boys the same age as him in every measure of physical development, everyone kept waiting for him to stop playing, but the only thing he never stopped doing was fighting. When he was the weakest on the team, he learned to compensate by reading the game and always being in the right place at the right time. Now he’s one of the strongest. And one of the most loyal. He would have been a force to be reckoned with, dressed in a hooded top and a scarf.
The restaurant in Hed isn’t particularly good, but his mother insisted that they come here tonight, right after the meeting, the whole family. They stay until it closes. So when the boys—boys Filip has never been able to say no to if they ask for something—knock on the door of the family’s house, Filip, just as he always is in hockey, is in the right place at the right time. Not at home.
Bang.