Part 15 (1/2)

Yes. The appearance of swimsuits has changed over the thirty years since he and Maria were kissing behind the changing rooms, but the bikini Amanda was wearing not only had the same pattern, it was exactly the same.

And now it's lying at the bottom of the pool.

The lights in the house are switched off, only the floodlights over the pool are s.h.i.+ning. Frank looks around and tries the gate. It isn't locked. He slips through, walks up four stone steps and stands by the edge of the pool.

There is the fresh smell of chlorine. The artificial light on the tiles and the still water give the whole experience a dreamlike character. Blue tiles make the water blue, make his skin blue. He ought to be nervous-breaking and entering isn't his thing, his place is just outside the property boundaries-but he feels strangely calm. As if he is antic.i.p.ating a revelation.

He walks to the edge and looks down into the water.

The bikini is lying on the bottom, undulating slowly like an aquatic plant in the current of circulating water. In the blue light the yellow dots are green. Frank closes his eyes and rubs them hard.

So who were the people who were here?

While he is still ma.s.saging his eyelids, the feeling from earlier in the day returns. Something is piercing his head. Thin needles are being forced through his skin, his skull, penetrating deeper and deeper, moving around, searching. He wants to press his eyes tight shut against the pain, but instead he opens them.

At the very second his eyes open, the pressure disappears from his head, but he just has time to see. A number of threads, as fine as cobwebs, are floating between his head and the surface of the water. He just has time to see them before they melt away, or become invisible.

He blinks, fumbles in the air with his hand outstretched, but the threads are gone and the surface of the water...the surface of the water is covered in notes. He drops to his knees. Hundreds of thousand-kronor notes cover the entire pool like a lid. He shuffles forward.

The notes are real. Just a real as the picture he was waiting for, the bikini he was searching for. Frank puts his hands on his knees and laughs. Now he understands.

It's all in my mind.

He laughs, shakes his head and sobs out loud. Because it's tragic at the same time. The fact that his dream, the thing he wants most in the whole world, comes down to this. Pieces of paper.

Perhaps he knows exactly what he's doing, perhaps not. He reaches down towards the water to pick up a note. As soon as his fingers touch the surface of the water, the notes disappear. Something clamps onto his skin, and in a reflex movement he tries to pull back his hand, but it is impossible. His hand, his arm are slowly sucked down into the water, and Frank follows. When his face is just a couple of centimetres from the surface, he catches a glimpse of the thing that is pulling him.

It's one of those creatures that lives down at the bottom. In front of its mouth dangles something that looks like a precious stone, s.h.i.+mmering in every colour imaginable.

Finally the will to live takes over. Frank screams, braces himself with his free arm and tries to haul himself out of the water. The creature offers stubborn resistance, but Frank is fighting for his life, and he is stronger. One centimetre at a time he regains his arm. The creature has vanished, become one with the water again. Only the precious stone, the rainbow spot is still visible. It is pulsating.

'Frank?'

She clings to his arm. Maria. She is wearing her polka-dot bikini. He had forgotten how pretty she was. How could she ever have been interested in him?

'Frank, come on...'

Frank relaxes, opens his mouth to say that she doesn't exist. That she is just one of a series of dreams that never came true. Before he has time to speak she gives a start and he loses his balance, falls into the warm water.

The creature resumes its proper form and swallows him.

When the pool man arrives in the morning to carry out his weekly cleaning duties, he sees something on the bottom and fishes it out with his net.

A mobile phone.

He shakes the water out of it and tries switching it on. Doesn't work. He throws it in the bin and checks the water in the pool. It really is filthy. Full of fibres and fluff, discoloured. He makes several sweeps with the net, brings up sc.r.a.ps of fabric and...nails.

What the h.e.l.l have they been doing?

The water still looks terrible. He decides to change the lot, and opens the valve. The water in the pool slowly runs away. After half an hour, it's empty.

The water continues on its way down to the purification plant. After pa.s.sing through a number of filters and cleansing processes, it slips back out into the sea via enormous pipes. There it disperses, merges with the greater water and remains the same.

Subst.i.tute.

When Matte rang me it was the first time I'd heard from him in twenty-two years. It's a strange feeling, picking up the phone and there on the other end is a person you a.s.sumed was...well, maybe not dead, but gone. A person you will never b.u.mp into again. Gone.

'Hi. It's Mats. Mats h.e.l.lberg.'

'Matte?'

'Yes. How are you?'

'Fine. Fine. What about you?'

A three-second pause. During that time a number of different scenarios flickered through my mind. I knew something had gone wrong in the autumn of 1982. Something that meant Matte couldn't come back to school. That was the last I heard. Something had gone wrong, and presumably it was still a problem. So the pause made me feel uncomfortable.

'There's something I have to tell you. Can we meet?'

'I don't know...'

'Please. It's important. You're the only one I could call.'

'So what's it all about?'

Another pause. I looked at the clock. Six Feet Under was due to start in two minutes, the last episode of the season, and I didn't want to miss a second.

'Have you never wondered what happened?'

'What?'

'To me.'

'Well yes, but-'

'It's not what you think. It's not even close to anything you might think. Can we meet?'

In the autumn of '82 there had been a great deal of speculation in my cla.s.s about what had really happened. Matte had killed someone, Matte had gone completely crazy and was in some loony bin. After Christmas he was as good as forgotten. Life went on. I suppose I thought about him from time to time because I was the person who'd been closest to him, as far as it was possible to be close to someone like Matte. But even I forgot about him. As you do, I told myself.

And yet my conscience was p.r.i.c.king me. Not because of what I did or didn't do when we were thirteen, but because I hadn't thought about him. So I said, 'Yes, OK. When and where?'

'Can you come over here tomorrow? To my place?'

'Where do you live?'

He gave me the address of an apartment in Rcksta. I immediately thought it must be something the hospital had organised for him, and it turned out I was right.