Axel had wavy blond hair, blue eyes, white teeth, and a ready smile. Even when he was in primary school, all the girls had asked if they could be his girlfriend, and it had been the same ever since. With all his teachers, apart from the PE instructor, he had a simple and respectful relationship. How could he not care about his studies? He was far from being without talent.
Hanna Brodin was seventeen years old. She was 175 centimeters tall, beautiful, well built, in good shape. She had long dark hair, brown eyes, white teeth, and a broad smile. Because she had been top of her class since primary school, she had a simple and excellent relationship with her teachers. Even though the boys had been asking to be her boyfriend for just as long, and in every conceivable way.
The most recent to have tried was Axel, and because her mom had gone off to a conference with her new workmates, they had ended up back at hers the first time they were alone together, just the two of them. Axel had made the anticipated moves, but she was as familiar as him with the game they had just embarked upon and had blocked all his moves without any problems.
And because they were each equally interested in the other, it had all taken a very long time.
‘What about a night swim?’ Axel said. ‘First of the year.’
‘Won’t it be a bit cold?’ Hanna said. ‘Besides, I don’t know where my bathing suit is. Mom and I have hardly had time to unpack yet.’
‘I was thinking of skinny-dipping,’ Axel said with a smile.
‘Well, I don’t want to miss that,’ Hanna said, smiling back. ‘But if it’s too cold, you’ll be swimming alone.’
Then Axel had taken her to his favorite swimming spot. His and his friends’, to be strictly accurate. It was only a couple hundred meters from the house. A large, softly rounded area of rock that tumbled straight into the waters of the Ulvsundasjön. Isolated and discreet, perfect for sunny days, soft crevices with a lot of undergrowth if you wanted to get intimate with someone. Perfect for diving, since the water was four meters deep right up to the rocks.
Axel had kept his promise. He threw off all his clothes and dived into the water from the rocks, headfirst.
Hanna had sat down on the rocks to watch him. Midnight, but bright enough to see, and she could fill in the details herself.
I bet he’s done this before, thought Hanna, who still liked what she saw. Boys, she thought. A bit too predictable sometimes.
Axel had done this many times before, and always from the same spot. A suitably large gap in the rock two meters above the water, a couple quick steps, push off hard, body taut, arms outstretched, palms pressed together, then just a ripple on the surface, a scarcely audible splash as he disappeared into the water. Then a big kick with both legs, back arched, arms outstretched — that was all he had to do to complete the perfect dive into the water and come back up to the surface.
But not this time, because suddenly his hand had touched something. Something soft, large, wrapped in cloth or maybe tarpaulin, something swaying and drifting at the bottom, invisible because of the dark water. Axel used his hands. Felt along it, found a handle, then another, reached down, felt a wheel, then another wheel.
A golf bag, thought Axel, who had an uncle who was a dentist but who would rather spend all day playing golf if it were up to him. He used to use his nephew as his caddy, offering him a beer after the eighteenth hole and giving him a few hundred-kronor notes as they parted, winking at him and telling him not to say anything to his sister. And not to waste the money on nonsense like schoolbooks, or any other books either, come to think of it.
Axel had always kept his promises. There were an awful lot of girls in the world, more than there was enough money for if you wanted to do something fun that cost money. What sort of idiot would throw a golf bag in the water? His uncle’s bag contained clubs that were altogether worth as much as a secondhand car.
What the hell is he up to? Hanna thought in irritation. He must have been down there for at least a couple minutes now, she thought. Just as she was standing up to take off her top, he had resurfaced, waving to her.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Hanna said, annoyed.
‘Some idiot’s chucked a golf bag in here,’ Axel said. ‘Hang on, I’ll show you,’ he said, and vanished under the surface once again.
It wasn’t stuck to the bottom. How could it be, since there was nothing but smooth rock down there until you got twenty meters out? He grabbed the handles and pulled it upward, letting it float under the surface as he swam the ten meters to where the water suddenly got shallower. He didn’t really need to go up for air as he did so. Then Hanna had helped him drag the bag up onto dry land. Only now did he realize how heavy the bag was.
‘What do you mean, golf bag?’ Hanna said. ‘I think it looks more like one of those carts paperboys drag round with them when they deliver the morning papers.’
Shit, Axel thought.
‘Congratulations, Axel,’ Hanna said with a smile. ‘You are hereby the owner of two hundred waterlogged copies of Dagens Nyheter.’
Shit, Axel thought. All the pent-up energy, no sex all evening, only a couple gestures in that direction, and now he had made a fool of himself. What was he going to do with the cart now? he wondered. Take a look, he thought, and then drag it up somewhere and dump it in the bushes.
First he undid the bag, opening the fabric lid. Whatever was inside filled the whole bag and was wrapped in black plastic. He felt it with his hands. Hard, round, definitely not golf clubs, nor newspapers either, for that matter. Then he had torn open the plastic to see what it was.
‘Will there be a reward?’ Hanna wondered, squatting down on the rock. This is all a bit childish, she thought.
‘Shit!’ Axel shouted, leaping away from the bag. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ he screamed, waving his hands desperately in the air.
‘What are you doing?’ Hanna said, starting to get really annoyed now. ‘Practicing for an Oscar or what?’
‘Fuck!’ Axel said. ‘There’s a body in the bag.’ Then he ran off to get his clothes. Completely naked as well, he thought.
‘What the fuck do we do now?’ Axel said, with a nod toward the bag that was still over by the shore. He had no intention of taking another look just to be sure, and the easiest thing would be just to walk away. At least he wasn’t naked anymore. But he was so cold he was shivering. Not to mention his johnson, which suddenly looked like he’d spent all winter in icy water.
‘Let’s just go,’ Axel suggested. ‘Let’s just go,’ he repeated.
‘Are you mad?’ Hanna said. ‘We have to call the cops, surely you can see that?’
Then Hanna Brodin, seventeen years old, had dialed the emergency number, 112, on her phone and got through to the police control room. There hadn’t been any problems, because she sounded just like people like her sounded when they called to say that they’d just found a body in the water.
‘Is it floating in the water by the shore?’ the female radio operator had asked. Poor girl, she thought. Bodies in the water are never nice; she knew that from personal experience.
‘It’s in a bag,’ Hanna said.
‘In a bag in the water?’ the radio operator clarified. What’s she saying? she thought.
‘It was in the water. The bag, I mean. But my boyfriend dived in to go swimming, and that’s when he found it. And we pulled it ashore and looked inside. He looked. Not me.’