'What do you think? Handsome or what?'
'Horrid horrid cap-man. I want to go home.'
His cock is hard. He calls the shots. He comes up close, pushes his penis at their faces.
'Looks good, eh?'
He shouldn't have wanked. He did it twice this morning. He can only manage two more times, probably. He does it in front of them, his breathing quickens. He kicks the fat blonde when she looks away for a moment, empties himself in their faces, on their hair, it gets messy when they shake their heads.
They're crying. Whores always cry, all the fucking time.
He undresses them. Their tops have to be cut first, now that their hands are tied to the hot pipe. They're younger than he'd thought, no sign of tits.
He pulls everything off except their shoes. Not the shoes. Not yet. The fat blonde slag has got pink shoes, shiny, like patent leather. The brunette is wearing white trainers, like for playing tennis in.
He bends over the fat blonde whore. He kisses her pink shoes on top, near the toes. He licks both of them, starting at the toe, all along the shoe, the heel too. He takes them off. Her little whore's feet are gorgeous. He lifts one of her feet, she almost tips over backwards. He licks her ankle, her toes, sucks a little on each one. He glances up at her face, she's crying quietly.
He feels an urgent desire.
She always wakes when the newspaper arrives. Every single morning. It falls on the wooden floor with a sodding awful thump. Then there're two more thumps, next door, and then the next one along. She has tried to catch him, tell him to stop, but has been too late every time. She caught sight of his back quite a few times. He's young, with his hair in a ponytail. If she gets hold of him she'll explain how people feel at five o'clock on Sunday mornings.
She can't go back to sleep now. She twists and turns, she's sweating. Must go back to sleep, should sleep, but no, it can't be done. She never used to have this problem, it's different now, her thoughts attack her at once and by six o'clock she's really tense, to hell with the paperboy and his ponytail.
The Sunday version of Dagens Nyheter feels as weighty as the Bible. She starts reading part of it in bed, looking at the words and then more words; there are too many. Nothing makes sense to her. Lots of in-depth reports about interesting people, she ought to read them but feels too tired to get her mind round it all. She makes a careful pile, she'll tackle it later. She never does.
She is restless. All these hours. Read DN, then coffee, do teeth, breakfast, make bed, wash up, teeth again. It's not even half past seven yet, a Sunday morning in June with beams of sun piercing the Venetian blinds. She turns her head away, can't face the light yet, too much summer out there, too many people holding other people's hands, too many people sleeping close to other people, too many who're laughing, making love. She can't face any of them, not just now.
She walks down the steps to the basement, to the store. It's dark down there, lonely and untidy. She knows she's got at least two hours of work ahead, sorting and packing. It'll take her to half past nine. Not so bad.
The first thing she notices is that the padlock has been forced. And the padlocks on either side as well, on both 32 and 34. She'd better find out who owns them; after seven years in the house she wouldn't even recognise her neighbours. But now they've got forced padlocks in common. Now they can talk to each other.
The next thing she notices is the bike. Or rather, that the bike isn't there. Jonathan's expensive five-geared black mountain bike. And to think that she was going to sell it; it should have been worth at least 500 kronor. Now she's got to phone him, he's with his father, but better tell him now so he'll have time to calm down before he comes to stay with her.
Afterwards she cannot explain why she didn't see them. Why she was worrying about the owners of pens 32 and 34, about Jonathan's bike. As if she did not want to see, was unable to see. When the police asked what she had noticed first on entering the pen, wanting her crucial first impressions, she started laughing hysterically. She laughed for a while, started to cough and then explained, with tears flowing down her cheeks. Her first reaction had been that Jonathan would be upset, because his black mountain bike was gone and he wouldn't be able to spend the money he'd get from-selling it on the PlayStation game he wanted. It cost at least 500 kronor.
Of course, she had never seen death before, never come across anyone so still, looking at her without breathing.
That's what they did. They looked at her. They were lying on the cement floor with their heads propped up on upturned flowerpots, like rigid pillows. Two little girls, younger than Jonathan, no more than ten years old. One blonde, one dark. There was blood all over them, on their faces, chests, thighs, between their legs. Dried blood everywhere, except their feet; their feet were so clean, almost as if they had been washed.
She had never seen them before. Well, maybe. They lived nearby, after all. Sure, she might have seen them. In the shop, maybe, or in the park. Always so many children in the park.
They'd been on the floor in her storage pen for three days and two nights, that's what the police doctor said. Semen had been sprayed all over them, in vagina and anus, on chest and hair. Vagina and anus had received what the doctor called sharp trauma. A pointed object, probably made of metal, had been repeatedly forced inside, causing severe internal haemorrhaging.
They might have been in the same school as Jonathan. Crowds of girls there, all looking alike, girls do, alike as a thousand sisters.
They were naked. Their clothes had been arranged in front of them, just inside the door of the pen. One piece of clothing after another, lined up like exhibits. Jackets folded, trousers rolled up, T-shirts, panties, tights, shoes, a hair- ribbon, everything was very neatly and precisely placed with about two centimetres between each item. Just about exactly two centimetres apart.
The girls had been looking at her. But they had not been breathing.
ABOUT NOW
I
Putting on a mask always made him feel very silly. A grown man hiding behind a kid's mask ought to feel silly. But he had watched other men doing it, playing at being Winnie the Pooh or Uncle Scrooge McDuck with some kind of dignity, as if the mask didn't bother them. I'll never get the hang of this, he thought, never get used to it. Won't ever turn into the kind of father I wanted for myself once, the kind I was determined to be one day.
He kept touching the thin, garishly coloured plastic membrane that covered his face. It was held on by a rubber band that fitted tightly round the back of his head and had become tangled in his hair. It was hard to breathe, each breath smelled of saliva and sweat.
'You must run, Daddy! You're not running! You're standing still! Big Bad Wolf's always running!'
She had stopped in front of him, looking at him with her head tilted back, bits of grass and earth scattered in her long blonde curls. She was trying to look cross, but angry children don't smile and she did; she was smiling with the beaming face of a child who has been chased by the Big Bad Wolf, round and round a house in the small town. Chased until her dad couldn't stand it any more, wanted very much to be somebody else, someone who didn't wear a mask with a wolf's plastic tongue and teeth.
'Marie, I can't hack it any more. Big Bad Wolf has to sit down and rest for a bit. The Big Bad Wolf wants to become small and kind.'
She shook her head.
'One more time, Daddy! Just one more.'
'That's what you said last time.'
'This is the last time.'
You've said that before too.'
'It's the last time. For sure.'
'Sure, sure?'
'Sure.'
I love her, he thought. She's my daughter. It didn't happen immediately, I didn't understand at first, but now I do. I love her.