Aleksandr doesn’t look entirely convinced, at times during her explanation he actually looked at her as if she was trying to get him to smell a fart she was particularly proud of. But he goes back out onto the ice, fetches the puck, and skates back to the center circle, more slowly this time, thoughtfully. The hardest thing in hockey is to change your perception. The hardest thing to change your perception about is yourself.

  He sets off, Peter is waiting by the blue line, and afterward the former general manager will say it felt like Zackell had brought on a different player. Just as they meet and Peter is prepared for the collision, Aleksandr vanishes into thin air. It looks like he takes the puck with him as he stumbles. It looks like luck.

  Peter flails in the air before collapsing onto his backside, yelling at the pain in his groin, and ends up lying in an embarrassing heap for several minutes. When Aleksandr has fired the puck into the goal he turns around and hears a clattering sound on the ice. The car keys. Zackell is already walking toward the door of the ice rink.

  For the first time in a very long time, Aleksandr loves something about hockey again.

  63 Abattoirs

  Tails pushes the two sets of accounts across the kitchen table and says, with a degree of uncertainty that he usually tries to hide with stupid jokes:

  “I’m trusting you here, Kira. If you’re going to sit on the committee…”

  “You don’t appoint the committee, Tails, the club’s members do that…,” she interrupts.

  “Don’t worry about the members, I’ll take care of that!” he interrupts in turn.

  “Is that why you’re here, sweaty and scared, because you’ve taken care of everything so well so far?” she wonders derisively, shaking his self-confidence so much that the ceiling lamp sways in the draft.

  “I just need to know that you’re a lawyer first and foremost right now. That everything is… confidential.”

  Kira looks at him for a long time.

  “Are you worried I’m going to talk about what I see in these files to someone outside this house, or someone inside it?”

  “Both.”

  “Okay. So let me ask as a lawyer: once you’ve shown me all the problems and I get to work, what do you want to happen then?”

  Tails instantly gives a practiced response:

  “I want to make Beartown Hockey an elite club again! The most logical way to do that is to get the council to shut down Hed Hockey. Pull their old ice rink down and invest in Beartown instead. We’re going to build a state-of-the-art training facility here, as part of Beartown Business Park! Twice the income and half the costs: the council gets one A-team instead of two, one junior team, one administrative team…”

  Kira nods slowly, and thinks bitterly: “And one general manager instead of two. And one caretaker. And one cleaner.” Because that’s typical of men like Tails, they’ll exchange anything for growth without sparing a thought for what happens if their dreams come true. Fire staff if necessary, recruit stars from outside so there’s no longer space on the team for local boys, raise ticket prices so that the most faithful supporters can’t afford to attend games. Without realizing that one day the club will be so successful that Tails himself will be left out in the cold.

  But she replies like a lawyer:

  “And to achieve that, you need to prove to the council that Beartown is superior, in terms of both sports and finances? That the brand is so strong that it would be madness to try to start a new club under a new name?”

  Tails grins and exclaims:

  “See, didn’t I SAY?! I could have gotten other lawyers, but I need the BEST!”

  The compliment passes her by and she leans forward and fixes her eyes on him.

  “What have you done, Tails?”

  His grin is working on autopilot:

  “Well, I haven’t… murdered anyone! But you know what journalists are like, they’ve done some digging in our accounts, and who has spotless accounts? I bet not even you do!”

  That hurts, even though he doesn’t realize it. She hasn’t told anyone about her financial problems with her own business. Not even Peter. Her eyes waver as she repeats:

  “What have you done, Tails?”

  The grin vanishes. He nods toward the files. She opens the top one and only has to read a few pages before she looks up and shakes her head, half in sympathy and half in accusation:

  “Dear God… is this really right? You’re on the brink of collapse? I mean, I knew things were tough financially while Peter was general manager, but didn’t the factory step in as sponsor and solve all this?”

  Tails nods disconsolately.

  “Yes, but their money came with conditions. We were supposed to be good for their brand. And do you know how much it costs to run a hockey club? Above all, a hockey club like ours?”

  “What does that mean?”

  He throws his arms out, working himself up.

  “The girls’ team, like you saw on the video. The breadth of our investment, and our equal opportunities youth program. Our new declaration of values and the cost of developing those. All our social projects. Everyone only sees the A-team, but we’ve even got a preschool in the ice rink, Kira! The whole district’s kids learn to skate with us! The media who are scrutinizing us now are the same media who pressed us to develop the whole of this politically correct castle in the air, all they write about is how we aren’t ‘inclusive’ enough, but who’s going to pay if everyone’s going to have access to everything? No one wants to admit that everything we do beyond the A-team is a luxury! And if we’re going to be able to afford a girls’ team, the A-team needs to win games first. We need to bring in money from sponsors. That’s what makes the whole thing work. It’s like my dad used to say: everyone wants to eat meat, but no one wants to work in an abattoir.”

  Kira looks over at the folder closest to Tails.

  “What’s in that one?”

  He clears his throat.

  “All the things no one else is allowed to see.”

  “The abattoir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me. Show me everything.”

  So he does.

  * * *

  Peter doesn’t see the woman until he’s dragging himself off the ice. She’s sitting on her own, at the very top of the stands. Aleksandr sees her as well and suddenly smiles a smile that probably only she ever sees.

  “Mom?” he mumbles in surprise.

  She waves halfheartedly and he waves back as if it’s unusual, them waving to each other in this setting. As for his dad, he glares at her with a mixture of shock and anger. Peter has seen this before, the ice rink so easily becomes the preserve of just one parent, the other is at best left to spectate, and at worst ends up as an intruder. It actually takes Peter a little longer than it should to understand that if both the father and Aleksandr are surprised to see his mother here, then there’s only one person who could have invited her.

  The mother gestures to her son that she’ll see him outside. Aleksandr nods and sets off toward the locker room at once. His dad calls after him, but in his eagerness to recapture his authority he ends up shouting the wrong name, his old name, so his son pretends not to hear. His dad shouts louder and starts to follow him, but Peter takes his arm.

  “Let me… sorry… can I speak to him?”

  The dad snaps, half in anger and half in despair:

  “Sure, sure, you try! But no one can reason with him! No one! Especially not when his mom’s here!”

  He stomps off toward the stands like an aggrieved child.

  “Aleksandr?” Peter calls when they’re alone in the players’ corridor.

  The twenty-year-old turns around with soft, almost fragile movements.

  “Yes?”

  “Good session,” Peter says, holding out his glove.

  Aleksandr clenches his fist and taps it to Peter’s.

  “Thanks. You too.”

  “I’m too old for this sort of thing, I won’t be able to walk for weeks…” Peter smiles.

  Aleksandr’s tongue probes the inside of his cheek nervously.

  “I didn’t know I was so easy to read. You took the puck so easily.”

  “Not that last time, I didn’t stand a chance!”

  Aleksandr looks almost embarrassed.

  “I was… testing a new thing. Didn’t know if it was going to work. My old coach hated it when I tried new things, but that one out there said a load of stuff about a fucking mongoose. I don’t even know what that is…”

  “A bit like a meerkat, I think.”

  “What the fuck’s a meerkat?”

  Peter bursts out laughing. He looks back toward the ice and the stands.

  “How many clubs have been here to look at you?”

  “Fifteen, maybe.”

  “So why aren’t you playing for any of them, then?”

  “They don’t want me,” Aleksandr mumbles awkwardly.

  Peter smiles.

  “You’re being easy to read again now. I think you said no to them. Unless your mom said no.”

  The twenty-year-old’s tongue wanders around his mouth.

  “Okay. Honestly? I only do these tryouts because she wanted me to! I wanted to give up hockey! But Dad’s decided everything I’ve ever done in my life and Mom asked me to give her the chance to decide for once…”

  “And you’d do anything for your mom?”

  Aleksandr nods.

  “She’s done everything for me.”

  “But she doesn’t usually come to the rink?”

  The twenty-year-old shakes his head, looking down at the floor.

  “No. This is kind of mine and my dad’s world. Well, it used to be.”

  “Is it your mom who’s Russian? Is that why you changed your name?”

  The answer is defiant but brittle:

  “My name was always Aleksandr but Dad only let her give me that as a middle name. He didn’t want people to think I was foreign.”

  Peter leans on his stick, longing to take his skates off.

  “What did he do to your mom?” he asks quietly.

  “He had an affair!” Aleksandr replies so quickly that it seems to shock even him.

  Peter nods sympathetically.

  “Then I can understand why you’re angry…”

  “Angry? ANGRY? He was with a crazy bitch who was seven years older than me. She could have been my big sister. He broke Mom’s heart!”

  Peter nods, more sadly than with any confidence.

  “Do you know what, Aleksandr? I think you used to like playing hockey when you were little because it made your dad proud. And I think you enjoyed humiliating me out on the ice today because you were humiliating him at the same time. But I think you should find some other reason to play.”

  Aleksandr sounds breathless even though they’ve been standing still for several minutes.

  “Should I play for you instead? In Beartown?”

  Peter laughs.

  “Not for me. I don’t even work for Beartown Hockey anymore.”

  “So why are you here, then?”

  Peter replies before he has time to consider how stupid it might sound:

  “Because I wanted to mean something, I suppose. Because I wanted to be a good person. Do good things. And hockey is the only thing I know where I can make the world a bit better. That’s why I can’t let go of it. Maybe your mom can see that you’re the same, and maybe that’s why she can’t quite let you give up.”

  Aleksandr clutches his stick as if he’s briefly considering breaking it against the wall, but instead he takes a deep breath and looks at Peter, and asks in a quiet voice:

  “Is she good? That coach?”

  “Zackell? She’s kind of crazy in every other respect,” Peter replies honestly.

  Aleksandr starts laughing.

  “Damn? Talk about a hard sell!”

  “But she’ll get the best out of you,” Peter says, just as honestly.

  The boy’s gaze flickers.

  “You think?”

  Peter nods.

  “She’s the only coach who’s been here who realized that it wasn’t your dad who decides where you play. And not you either.”

  For the first time, Aleksandr looks younger than his twenty years, much younger. He smiles cautiously, almost expectantly.

  Outside in the parking lot his mother, who has turned down every other coach who has been here, is shaking hands with Elisabeth Zackell. Not because this coach has promised to make her son a winner like all the others. But because she’s promised to set him free.

  * * *

  Kira isn’t concerned about what the word “corruption” means, that isn’t her job, but she is thinking a lot about the word “embezzlement.” It’s a treacherous concept, just like the people who do it, because it always starts with little things. A few rounded corners become shortcuts, a small loophole becomes grafting, dishonesty becomes criminality. The first of these are often not even illegal, just favors and payback, friends helping friends. The coach of Beartown’s junior team, for instance, barely gets any wages, because the club wants to avoid paying tax and national insurance, so instead the coach receives payment in the form of one of the sponsors renovating the coach’s son’s summer cottage. Is that illegal? Maybe not. But it’s a door that’s been left ajar. Up in the A-team, the club signs all new players’ contracts in April, but they don’t officially start until August, so the player can claim unemployment benefits all summer and the club doesn’t have to pay their wages. Some of the players drive cars that are never taxed because the local car dealer registers them as “demo models” and just happens to allocate them for “test drives” for the length of the hockey season. Other players live rent-free in apartments owned by the council’s housing association, and even if the club officially “pays” the rent, no money is ever transferred. In return, members of the housing association’s board get to sit in the best seats at all hockey games. Is that embezzlement? A line that has been crossed? Maybe not. But that door is no longer merely ajar.

  At the end of every season the club arranges a dinner for “the friends of Beartown Hockey,” where the players and committee celebrate with sponsors and local politicians and their families, their children play on a bouncy castle, and everyone goes home talking about “a sense of local cohesion.” Soon afterward the local politicians decide that all local sports associations should be allowed to rent the ice rink at a “zero tariff” next year. This is officially described as a “broad subsidy to promote public health,” but by sheer coincidence it turns out that only one association gains from this. The hockey club books all the slots, suddenly discovers that it has “overbooked,” and sells the excess slots to local businesses that want to hire the ice rink for “events.” In conjunction with these “events” the business also hires “staff” in the form of a caretaker and cleaner from a limited company owned by the club. These “events” hardly ever actually take place, but the invoices look genuine, and the businesses can use income they don’t always want to declare to shift money into a hockey club whose accounts no one ever asks any questions about. The same sponsors might occasionally, over a beer in a hunting lodge, suggest that instead of plain sponsorship, “materials” might be bought for the club that the businesses can write off from their own activities. It’s a conjuring trick: replacement parts for an industrial business are turned into equipment for a hockey club, red numbers become a gray zone, dirty money becomes clean. None of which is actually illegal, or at least it doesn’t feel illegal, and in a hockey club full of sensitive individuals, that’s all that counts.

  But then every decision, every contract, slips closer and closer to being a criminal act: the club has debts and asks the council for more money, but the council is concerned about what voters will think. So instead the club finds a new sponsor, a consultancy firm registered abroad, which for some mysterious reason agrees to pay off all the debts. The consultancy firm is owned by a local construction company in Beartown, whose largest client by far just happens to be the council. During the year that follows the company adds some “unspecified costs” to all its invoices for council construction projects, and in that way the council has suddenly sponsored Beartown Hockey with taxpayers’ money without it being visible. The administrator at the council who authorizes payment of all the construction company’s invoices without any questions also gets a bonus: because of his “extensive experience of sustainability issues,” he has been brought in as an “adviser on environmental matters” to the board of a white goods company whose owner just happens to be the cousin of the owner of the construction company.

  Kira looks through line after line of the files, only pausing to rub her eyelids with the palms of her hands.

  “Let me guess, Tails. This construction company is the same one that’s going to build this ‘Beartown Business Park’ that you keep going on about? All the crooks in the same boat?”

  He clears his throat.

  “You know how it is, we’re a small town, we need to stick together, it isn’t…”

  She looks up and he falls silent, embarrassed. The worst thing about the files is that Kira can see how ingeniously it has all been constructed: the old guys at the hockey club and the construction company and the council know perfectly well that this could never be entirely hidden, so they haven’t even tried. They’ve just made everything so complicated to explain and so easy to explain away that no one would be bothered to listen if the journalists tried. It isn’t a big crime, just thousands of small ones, and as long as everyone can blame everyone else, no one would be punished.

  But then Kira turns a page and the angry outburst comes so abruptly that Tails manages to hit the bridge of his nose with his coffee cup.

  “Hang on, why is MY company listed as one of the sponsors?”

  “Before you get angry…,” Tail begins, but of course it’s too late.

  “Are you mad? We expressly said NO to the invitation to sponsor the club!”