Ove nods to himself as he sits there in the Saab looking at Rune’s garage door. He can’t remember when he last saw it open. He turns off the headlights of the Saab, gives the cat a poke to wake it up, and gets out.
“Ove?” says a curious, unfamiliar voice.
Suddenly an unknown woman, clearly the owner of the unfamiliar voice, has stuck her head into the garage. She’s about forty-five, wearing tatty jeans and a green windbreaker that looks too large for her. She doesn’t have any makeup on and her hair is in a ponytail. The woman blunders into his garage and looks around with interest. The cat steps forward and gives her a threatening hiss. She stops. Ove puts his hands in his pockets.
“Ove?” she bursts out again, in that exaggerated chummy way of people who want to sell you something, while pretending it’s the very last thing on their mind.
“I don’t want anything,” says Ove, nodding at the garage door—a clear gesture that she needn’t bother about finding another door, it’ll be just fine if she walks out the same way that she came.
She looks utterly unchastened by that.
“My name is Lena. I’m a journalist at the local newspaper and, well . . .” she begins, and then offers her hand.
Ove looks at her hand. And looks at her.
“I don’t want anything,” he says again.
“What?”
“I suppose you’re selling subscriptions. But I don’t want one.”
She looks puzzled.
“Right. . . . Well, actually . . . I’m not selling the paper. I write for it. I’m a journalist,” she repeats slowly, as if there were something wrong with him.
“I still don’t want anything,” Ove reiterates as he starts shooing her out the garage door.
“But I want to talk to you, Ove!” she protests and starts trying to force herself back inside.
Ove waves his hands at her as if trying to scare her away by shaking an invisible rug in front of her.
“You saved a man’s life at the train station yesterday! I want to interview you about it,” she calls out excitedly.
Clearly she’s about to say something else when she notices that she’s lost Ove’s attention. His gaze falls on something behind her. His eyes turn to slits.
“I’ll be damned,” he mumbles.
“Yes. . . . I’d like to ask y—” she begins sincerely, but Ove has already squeezed past her and started running towards the white Škoda that’s turned in by the parking area and started driving down towards the houses.
The bespectacled woman is caught off guard when Ove charges forward and bangs on the window and she throws the file of documents into her own face. The man in the white shirt, on the other hand, is quite unmoved. He rolls down the window.
“Yes?” he asks.
“Vehicle traffic is prohibited in the residential area,” Ove hisses and points at each of the houses, at the Škoda, at the man in the white shirt, and at the parking area.
“In this Residents’ Association we park in the parking area!”
The man in the white shirt looks at the houses. Then at the parking area. Then at Ove.
“I have permission from the council to drive up to the houses. So I have to ask you to get out of the way.”
Ove is so agitated by his answer that it takes him many seconds just to formulate some swear words by way of an answer. Meanwhile, the man in the white shirt has picked up a pack of cigarettes from the dashboard, which he taps against his trouser leg.
“Would you be kind enough to get out of the way?” he asks Ove.
“What are you doing here?” Ove blurts out.
“That’s nothing for you to worry yourself about,” says the man in the white shirt in a monotone voice, as if he’s a computer-generated voice mail message letting Ove know that he’s been placed in a telephone line.
He puts the cigarette he’s shaken out in his mouth and lights it. Ove breathes so heavily that his chest is pumping up and down under his jacket. The woman gathers up her papers and files and adjusts her glasses. The man just sighs, as if Ove is a cheeky child refusing to stop riding his skateboard on the sidewalk.
“You know what I’m doing here. We’re taking Rune, in the house at the end of the road, into care.”
He hangs his arm out the window and flicks the ash against the wing mirror of the Škoda.
“Taking him into care?”
“Yes,” says the man, nodding indifferently.
“And if Anita doesn’t want that?” Ove hisses, tapping his index finger against the roof of the car.
The man in the white shirt looks at the woman in the passenger seat and smiles resignedly. Then he turns to Ove again and speaks very slowly. As if otherwise Ove might not understand his words.
“It’s not up to Anita to make that decision. It’s up to the investigation team.”
Ove’s breathing becomes even more strained. He can feel his pulse in his throat.
“You’re not bringing this car into this area,” he says through gritted teeth.
His fists are clenched. His tone is pointed and threatening. But his opponent looks quite calm. He puts out the cigarette against the paintwork of the door and drops it on the ground.
As if everything Ove had said was nothing more than the inarticulate raving of a senile old man.
“And what exactly are you going to do to stop me, Ove?” says the man at long last.
The way he flings out his name makes Ove look as if someone just shoved a mallet in his gut. He stares at the man in the white shirt, his mouth slightly agape and his eyes scanning to and fro over the car.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot about you.”
Ove only manages by a whisker to pull his foot out of the way of the wheel as the Škoda moves off again and drives down towards the houses. Ove stands there, in shock, staring after them.
“Who was that?” says the woman in the windbreaker behind him.
Ove spins around.
“How do you know my name?” he demands.
She takes a step back. Pushes a few evasive wisps of hair out of her face without taking her eyes off Ove’s clenched fists.
“I work for the local newspaper—we interviewed people on the platform about how you saved that man. . . .”
“How do you know my name?” says Ove again, his voice shaking with anger.
“You swiped your card when you paid for your train ticket. I went through the receipts in the register,” she says and takes a few more steps back.
“And him!!! How does HE know my name?” Ove roars and waves in the direction in which the Škoda went, the veins on his forehead bulging.
“I . . . don’t know,” she says.
Ove breathes violently through his nose and nails her with his eyes. As if trying to see whether she’s lying.
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen that man before,” she promises.
Ove rivets his eyes into her even harder. Finally he nods grimly to himself. Then he turns around and walks towards his house. She calls out to him but he doesn’t react. The cat follows him into the hall. Ove closes the door. Farther down the road, the man in the white shirt and the woman with glasses ring the doorbell of Anita and Rune’s house.
Ove sinks onto the stool in his hall. Shaking with humiliation.
He had almost forgotten that feeling. The humiliation of it. The powerlessness. The realization that one cannot fight men in white shirts.