Part 18 (1/2)

Matte rewound a few seconds, pressed Play.

The radio voices...the words...

I could hear it clearly this time. I was able to make out the words. The voice shouting in the background was calling: 'All you children! Come in! Welcome!'

Matte stopped the tape, pressed the eject b.u.t.ton, took out the tape and showed it to me.

'This is the tape I got from her. The same one.'

'But...what does it mean?'

Matte came and sat down in the armchair again, placing the tape on the table next to the photograph. He sat there for a while with his hands on his knees, not speaking. Then he pointed at the photograph.

'I'd hoped that would confirm what I've been thinking. And it has.'

I leaned forward, but Matte placed his hand over the photograph.

'Wait. One thing at a time. So eventually I reached her. And as I said: I no longer had any thoughts. So I prodded her in the back. And the same thing happened as in school. No reaction. But I wasn't afraid anymore, I was...nothing. So I walked around her and looked at her face. She had a face, but...how can I put this...she wasn't in it. She wasn't there. It was quite dark in the room by this stage, just the lights from outside s.h.i.+ning in, but I looked at her eyes and it was as if they were made of gla.s.s. Open. But empty. And then...I don't know why I did it, but it was probably for the same reason as a dog licks its b.a.l.l.s.'

'Which is?'

'Because it can. So...I unb.u.t.toned her blouse to...to see what she looked like. Or to get a reaction. I don't know. I was pretty much out of it.'

Matte pointed to several spots on his chest, his stomach.

'There were holes. Spread irregularly all over this part of her body. Twelve holes, as deep and wide as...I could get two fingers inside.'

'Matte. For G.o.d's sake, that's...'

'I know. I know. Do you think I don't know? But there's nothing I can do about it. That's the way it was. I examined her head. There were a couple of holes there too. There were probably more, but by that stage I'd lost it completely. What happened next...I don't remember at all.'

Matte hadn't drunk any tea. Now he filled his cup with the tepid liquid in the pot and knocked it back in one go. I noticed that his hand was shaking. He pointed at the photograph.

'Now you can look. Use the magnifying gla.s.s. Look at her feet. Hang on.'

He got up and switched on the main light, then stood with his arms folded, looking at me encouragingly. I picked up the magnifying gla.s.s and studied the photograph.

She was wearing the blouse with the big leaves on it. The only odd things I could remember about her were that vaguely unpleasant feeling, and the fact that she always wore the same clothes. And then of course there was the business with the tape, but then that was...

It's possible to rig that kind of thing, of course. If you want to. But why?

I looked at her feet. There was nothing strange about her feet. Ordinary feet in a pair of white trainers. Matte's gaze was burning into the back of my neck.

I realised he was crazy, one way or another. He'd got some kind of fixed idea, had-what's it called?-rationalised something he'd done, whatever it might be. Created a reason.

I shook my head slowly.

'Matte, I-'

'Look at the gra.s.s. Underneath her feet.'

I looked at the gra.s.s underneath her feet. Then I looked at the gra.s.s under Ulrika's, Kenneth's, Staffan's and my own feet. Then I looked at the gra.s.s under her feet again.

It was standing up.

The gra.s.s underneath our feet was flattened down, of course. Underneath hers it was standing up. As if she weighed nothing.

Something round and sticky descended through my throat and landed in my stomach. This was my photograph. It had been down in my cellar. There wasn't a cat in h.e.l.l's chance that anyone could have tampered with it, as someone could have tampered with the tape.

As if he had read my thoughts, Matte picked up the tape and shook it demonstratively.

'You could take this to anyone who's an expert in that kind of thing, and he'd tell you n.o.body has done anything to this tape in twenty years.'

'But...is that voice...her voice on the original?'

My own voice sounded weird, as if I were speaking through a piece of fabric. Matte shook his head.

'No. I've checked. The other sounds are there, the other voices, but that particular voice...on the original it's a man's voice. But the interesting thing, the really interesting thing...you saw the gra.s.s?'

I nodded and whispered, 'What did you do?'

Matte waved the question away.

'I'm getting to the interesting bit. I've got a theory, you know. As you've perhaps realised I've spent that last twenty years in different...places. In order to become whole, or whatever it is you're supposed to become. Functioning. I saw the way you looked at my apartment when you arrived, and no, I haven't a clue. I've just tried to... simulate a life.

'But I've met a lot of people in the places where I've been. And Vera isn't the only one, let me tell you. I think she was quite special because of her extreme...incompleteness. But they're everywhere. People who are lacking something. Or a lot of things. And I don't even know if they are people, they might be something else.

'In fact, they probably are something else. They're here instead of someone else, they slip in through that gap and...I'm not sure, but I think there are more and more of them around.

'I checked with the school last week, by the way. It took a while and they weren't exactly thrilled about it, but they dug out lists of everyone who's worked there since the place was built. Teachers, subst.i.tute teachers, the lot. Salary records. And apart from a headmistress at the end of the fifties, no one called Vera has ever worked in that school. Not even for one day.

'I presume they'd forgotten to book a subst.i.tute teacher for us, and she slipped in through the gap. That's what I think.'

I picked up the magnifying gla.s.s again, looked at the photograph. There was no doubt about it. Now that I knew, it just looked insane: the gra.s.s standing up under her feet, the shadows falling differently around her.

I just couldn't take it in. I scrubbed my face hard with my hands, as if to rub away a sticky crust.

'What do you mean? What do you mean, more and more of them? Why are there more and more of them?'

'Why does a dog lick its b.a.l.l.s?'

'Because it can.'

'Yes.'