The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,138
are all missing.
She wants to hug him, but doesn’t dare. She’s afraid of hurting him. Afraid he won’t want her hug.
‘Grandpa … It’s me. Anna-Karin.’
Grandpa looks at her silently. It’s impossible to tell whether or not he recognises her.
Only now does she realise she’s crying for the first time since primary school. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all my fault,’ she whispers, and sniffles. ‘I’m sorry.’
Grandpa blinks a few times. He seems to be trying to focus. Her mother had said he was so heavily medicated he was completely out of it.
‘They told me it was dangerous,’ she continues, ‘but I never thought it could be dangerous for anyone but myself. Least of all you. But I’ve stopped now.’
She takes his hand, careful not to disturb the needles.
‘I should never have started in the first place. I should have listened to the others. I know that now, but it’s too late. I’ve ruined everything. Grandpa, you’ve got to get better. Please. Please.’
Grandpa blinks again. He opens his mouth and manages to say a few words. She can barely make them out, but he’s speaking Finnish. She’s heard the language now and then throughout her childhood, but never learned it.
‘Can you say it in Swedish, Grandpa?’
‘They said on the radio that war was coming,’ Grandpa says slowly. ‘Everyone has to choose which side they’re on.’
‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘You mustn’t worry, just get better.’
Grandpa shuts his eyes and nods weakly. ‘My father said, “If we don’t do something now, we’ll have to live with the shame for the rest of our lives.”’
Anna-Karin strokes his head as he drifts off to sleep. His hair is thin and silky. His forehead is cool, almost cold.
‘He’s your grandfather, isn’t he?’ a nurse says, as she enters the room.
Anna-Karin nods and wipes away her tears with the back of her hand.
‘I know he looks awful …’ The nurse explains what all the wires, pumps and needles are for. Anna-Karin feels a little better when she understands what they’re doing for him. These people have a plan for how they’re going to keep him alive, make him better.
‘He’s improving,’ the nurse says. ‘It may not look like it, but he is.’
Anna-Karin meets her gaze for the first time. Even if she hadn’t seen her picture in the paper, she would have recognised her. Rebecka’s mother is an older copy of her daughter. She smiles at Anna-Karin, a smile that is also Rebecka’s. She’s lost her daughter yet she’s trying to comfort Anna-Karin. What if she knew that Anna-Karin is among those who could find Rebecka’s murderer but has decided to do nothing? If we don’t do something now, we’ll have to live with the shame for the rest of our lives.
Minoo has almost fallen asleep when she hears a mysterious sound in her room, a rhythmic buzzing. She can’t tell where it’s coming from.
The old fear rouses her and she sits up wide awake, sure she’s going to see black smoke coiling along the walls and across the floor towards her bed …
But the room looks normal. And now she realises where the sound is coming from. Her mobile is vibrating on the bedside table.
‘Hi,’ Linnéa says, when she answers.
Minoo switches on her little green bedside lamp. ‘Hi.’
‘Thanks for helping me today,’ Linnéa says.
‘No problem.’
‘Robin and Erik are such fucking arseholes. That was one good thing about Anna-Karin exerting her power over the school –that everyone hated them. I’m sorry they read out that bit from my diary. It wasn’t about you. Well, it was, but I was having a bad day.’
Linnéa speaks quickly, as if she feels she has to apologise but wants to get it over with. Is it even an apology? Minoo feels a painful twinge when she remembers what it said about ‘M’: She gives me a headache.
‘Let’s forget about it,’ she says, and wishes it was that simple.
‘Okay. I’m calling because I have to tell you something,’ Linnéa says. ‘I can read the Book of Patterns now, too.’
‘Since when?’
‘Just a minute ago. And I’ve found something. I’m sitting here now, looking at it through the Pattern Finder. And now that I’ve found it, I can’t understand why I didn’t see it all along.’
Great, Minoo thinks. Pretty soon that damn book will be transmitting to everybody except me. ‘What’s it say?’
‘It’s hard to explain. I’m not sure I understand it. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. You’re probably the only one who can work out what it means.’