“Shall I teach you a trick? The way we’re lying now, I used to lie like this when I was little. I used to climb in through that window the night before I was going to play a game, but you mustn’t tell the caretaker!”

  Alicia nods and promises.

  “Then what?” she wonders.

  “Then I would lie here and look up at the roof and think, ‘Now I’m alone in the world.’ I sort of memorized the silence. Because I’ve never been scared when I’m alone, only among other people.”

  “Me too.”

  Benji hates the fact that the child knows exactly how that feels. She’s too young for that. But he tells it like it is:

  “No one can hurt you when you’re alone.”

  Her fingers clutch his a little tighter now, the bear beneath them, eternity above them. Her thin voice asks, exhausted:

  “Then what?”

  He replies slowly:

  “Then when I played the game and got nervous, I would just look up at the roof and think that I was on my own in the rink again. And then everything went quiet inside my head. I was suddenly able to shut out all other sound. I felt completely alone, and then nothing was dangerous. Everything was fine.”

  Alicia lies there without saying anything for several minutes. She hurts so much in so many different places inside her, but there and then she doesn’t feel anything, because Benji is lying next to her and it’s autumn and a new hockey season is about to begin and everything can still be okay. The roof above her is endless and nothing is dangerous. It isn’t until Benji feels her fingers relax in his that he realizes she’s fallen asleep. He carries her all the way back to Sune’s. Puts her to bed on the sofa and falls asleep on the floor next to her.

  The next morning Adri tells him that they’ve found rat poison wrapped in liver pâté all over Sune’s yard. Not in any of the neighbors’, just here. Neither of the Ovich siblings can put a single word to their darkest thoughts just then, but they don’t need any philosophical principles, they only need instinct to know that the simplest explanation is often the truth: Beartown’s and Hed’s supporters have just embarked on war with each other, everything is vengeance for previous vengeance, and everyone knows that Bang was the mascot for the whole of the green club. His picture was even in the paper, under the headline “the team dog.” If you really want to hurt Beartown, and are too cowardly to attack a human being, then this is what you do.

  Benji’s voice isn’t agitated, it isn’t threatening, what he says is merely a statement of fact.

  “I’m going to kill them. Every last one of them.”

  On other occasions Adri would have protested, but not now. When the Ovich siblings get in the car to drive home, Sune stands at the kitchen window thinking that someone has just made those two their mortal enemy, and it would be hard to think of a more dangerous decision to take in this forest.

  He feels something move by his pant leg and he’s about to reach down to pat Bang’s head before all the loss and despair hit him and he almost starts crying. Then Alicia tugs his pant leg again and puts her little fist in his big hand and asks:

  “Can we make jam sandwiches?”

  Of course they can.

  As many as she wants.

  80 Banging

  When Mumble leaves Ruth’s grave in the churchyard in Beartown on Tuesday night he takes the bus home to Hed as if nothing has happened. Matteo stays where he is, hidden in the darkness, wishing he could pretend the same thing. He wishes desperately that he could kill Mumble with his bare hands, but Matteo is only fourteen and Mumble is a man. He wouldn’t stand a chance. We will say in hindsight that boys like him commit their crimes because they want to feel powerful, but that isn’t right, he just wants to stop feeling powerless.

  He starts to cycle home through the town but his tires slip on the snow and he falls several times. The chain comes off again and he cuts himself when he tries to put it back on. Blood trickles down the back of his hand but he’s so cold and wet that he doesn’t even notice at first. He’s whimpering with frustration and fury, but what good does that do? He drags his bicycle home, so tired that he doesn’t really notice which route he takes. When he reaches the row houses he hears an old man calling his dog. They’re out for their evening walk, used to having the streets to themselves, Matteo doesn’t bother to hide but they still don’t notice him.

  “Bang! Come here! Yes, that’s right, come here! Good boy! Now let’s go home and have some liver pâté!” the old man declares cheerfully.

  Matteo knows who he is. His name is Sune, and he used to be the coach of Beartown’s A-team. He knows who the dog is too, it’s been in the paper, everyone in Beartown loves it.

  Matteo doesn’t feel powerful, he just wants to stop feeling powerless, just for a single moment. He thinks about the green jacket Mumble was wearing in the churchyard, Sune has one just like it, he’d like to take something from them so that they know how it feels. Because he’s sure they’d mourn the dog more than they ever mourned Ruth. In the town of bears, girls are worth less than animals.

  Matteo drags his bicycle all the way home, creeps over to the neighboring house with the elderly couple, and thinks about trying to open their gun cabinet again, but drops the idea and instead goes into their storeroom. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he sees the warning signs on two small boxes on a top shelf.

  It’s early Wednesday morning by the time he heads back toward the row houses and identifies Sune’s yard. On the way back he passes Alicia, who bangs on Sune’s door and wakes him up because she wants breakfast. They go to the shop and when they come back she hugs Bang with her whole body and lets him off his leash in the yard, and that’s the last time she sees the dog.

  81 Warnings

  Thursday morning arrives in Beartown and Hed and everyone wakes up angry. It’s exactly a week since the storm but it feels like months. Two years have passed since the last outbreak of violence between the towns that led to someone’s death, but soon we won’t be able to say that. We’ll have so many excuses, we always do, we’ll say that the conflict between the towns is complicated and that nothing is black and white in situations such as this. We’ll sigh in a rather patronizing way, explain that the hatred between two communities and two hockey clubs is nothing new, it goes back generations. We’ll say it isn’t about hockey but differences in culture, differences in traditions, differences in how the towns made their livings right from the outset. We’ll talk about the council’s priorities and financial resources and which industries the district could actually survive on. We’ll mention jobs and how the authorities don’t understand that the only thing ordinary people in places like this really want is to be left in peace. To govern themselves, live in freedom, hunt in their own forests, fish in their own lakes, and keep what is produced rather than shipping everything down south. We’ll give careful accounts of how many of the local disputes are actually often the result of political decisions made in the big cities, by people who have never set foot in the district. In Beartown it will be said that those bastards at the other end of the main road are jealous and in Hed it will be said that those bastards beyond the trees are self-satisfied hypocrites who think they’re better than everyone else. Someone will mention the fight between the boys in the ice rink, someone else will talk about cars being vandalized in Hed, then the accident at the factory will be mentioned, and then even the most sensible voices will be raised beyond the bounds of reason. What starts as a discussion of the working environment and safety at the factory will soon descend into political slogans and when one side claims that they’re discriminated against, the other side will cry: “So don’t come and work here, then! Go and steal jobs in your own damn town instead!” Everyone knows someone who knows someone who either knows the young woman who got caught in the machinery or the young woman who is on maternity leave and whose shift it originally was. Everyone knows either the brothers who hit the young men in the parking lot at the hospital or the young men who got hit. Everyone in Hed has met a bastard from Beartown at a wedding or a hockey game sometime, and everyone in Beartown has met an asshole from Hed in an ice rink or at work. All the worst things we believe about one another can always be proved with a story we’ve heard from someone who heard it from someone else.

  We’ll say that this has long historical roots. Deep cultural causes. That the antagonism has been passed down for generations. That you can’t understand it if you’re not from here. We’ll say it’s complicated, oh, so very complicated, but of course it isn’t really at all. Because if Ramona had been here she would have said it like it is: “It’s not bloody complicated at all. Just stop killing each other, you damn fool idiots!”

  * * *

  But now we no longer know how to stop ourselves.

  * * *

  “But it was only a dog.”

  * * *

  Of course no one actually says that, but it feels to Sune as if all his neighbors are thinking it. Everyday life just carries on out in the street while he sits in a million pieces in his kitchen. When he collects the mail someone goes past and says “sorry for your loss,” but that isn’t what he wants them to feel sorry about. He wants them to feel sorry about his life, and the fact that he’s going to have to see it out now without that ill-disciplined, unruly little monster. Without paws on the edge of the bed and bite marks on his wrists. How’s that going to work? Who’s going to eat all the liver pâté in the fridge? He receives a few text messages and phone calls from the committee of the hockey club and a couple of coaches of the youth teams, all very sorry, but not as if it had been a person. They’re sad that Sune is sad, of course, but they don’t really understand his loss. Because of course it was only a dog. It’s so hard to explain that it’s more than an animal when you’re that animal’s human. Perhaps it takes more empathy than most people are capable of. Or more imagination.

  For that reason, it’s both unexpected but also entirely logical that when the doorbell rings and there’s someone standing outside with tears in his eyes, it’s Teemu. Behind him stand a dozen men in black jackets. They hand over an enormous wreath of flowers, the sort you put on a coffin, and Teemu says:

  “The guys wanted to share their condolences. Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “That’s very kind. But it was only a dog.”

  Teemu pats him hard on the shoulder.

  “It’s never only a dog. It’s family. Everyone knows how much you loved him. We loved him too. Damn it, he was Beartown’s team dog…”

  One of the men behind him, with tattoos on his neck and hands and probably on most of the skin in between, says with a tremble in his voice:

  “I know I didn’t know him that well, but I’m really going to miss him. He felt like part of the club!”

  Sune stands there with the floral wreath in his hands and loss on his cheeks and doesn’t know what to say. But if anyone can understand the unbridled, unreasonable love you can feel for an animal, it’s probably men who have been told all their lives that they love something more than they should: “But it’s only hockey.”

  The Pack feels precisely everything, precisely all the time. They know that the extent of grief isn’t measured by what you’ve lost but by who you are. They have imagination. So much imagination, in fact, that the very thought of losing something they can’t live without makes them lethal.

  “Coffee,” Sune says without a question mark, and leads the way into the house.

  The black jackets follow him and they drink coffee. One of the men notes that the tap in the bathroom is dripping, so he fixes it. Another washes the mugs. A third dries them. When they go, Teemu leaves an envelope full of cash on the kitchen counter.

  “Not much,” he says quietly.

  “Keep your money, I…,” Sune begins, but Teemu raises his hand disarmingly.

  “Not for you. For Alicia. We know he was her dog too.”

  As he is leaving Sune says:

  “Teemu… we don’t know each other that well, you and I, and I know you’re angry… you should know that I’m pretty damn angry myself but… don’t take revenge because of the dog, okay? He wasn’t all that keen on people fighting. And I don’t want Alicia to be either.”

  “Revenge? Who from?” Teemu asks, ostensibly not understanding at all.

  That’s when Sune knows with absolute certainty that someone in Hed is going to pay dearly for this.

  * * *

  Back at the kennels Benji and Adri Ovich feed the dogs, then eat their own food in silence standing at the kitchen counter, then they do weight training for the rest of the day in the gym Adri has built in the barn. Benji’s weaker than he used to be, his big sister notes, but she also notes other things: when he first came home from his travels last week his eyes were lighter, as if they had gone pale in the sun on sandy beaches, but now they’re dark again. He looks stronger, but also harder. Before he had to catch Alicia in the schoolyard yesterday and tell her what had happened to her beloved dog, Benji moved around Adri’s house in a way that reminded her of a wounded bird. Today he’s moving like a wounded bear. Yesterday he was vulnerable, today he is explosive.

  82 Skates

  Peter spends the morning baking bread and hoping that his phone’s going to ring. He prods it every five minutes to make sure the battery hasn’t died, but it remains obstinately silent. Kira doesn’t even seem to have noticed that he isn’t at the office. That’s how important he is to the business. He has trouble finding the words to express how this makes him feel: Hurt? Angry? Inadequate?

  He bakes so much bread, damn, such a lot of bread, the whole kitchen counter is covered by the time he’s done. Then he goes and grabs his green jacket and walks to the ice rink. He might as well, seeing as no one else needs him, the thirteen-year-olds are going to play a game and he can’t think of a more entertaining age for hockey than that. At that age everything is still just raw talent and potential. All dreams remain intact.

  It’s still early when he reaches the rink, not many people, but a few old guys are wandering about. They look up when he steps in and say:

  “Okay, Peter! We heard about that new player… Alexander? Is that his name? Is he any good?”

  Peter smiles:

  “We call him ‘Big City.’ And yes, he’s good. You’ll see.”

  The old guys like that, of course.

  “ ‘Big City’? Well, that’s easy enough to remember. And Amat is back? Could they make a good pairing?”

  Peter nods happily:

  “Zackell knows what she’s doing.”

  It feels almost like old times for a short while. The old guys slap him on the back and declare:

  “Don’t be so damn humble, Peter, everyone heard that you went down with Zackell to recruit the new guy! And if Amat comes back, you’re bound to have had something to do with that as well! Everyone wants you back as general manager, you should know that whenever you get tired of making coffee for your wife or whatever it is you do in that law firm over in Hed…”

  Peter does a really good job of trying to laugh as if that’s a funny joke. A really, really good job.

  When he sits down in the stands the caretaker comes and sits next to him. That’s when Peter finds out about Sune’s dog and about the black jackets who are on their way here to watch the game.

  “Should probably get ready for trouble,” the caretaker mutters anxiously, and then it really does feel like old times again.

  A bit too much.

  * * *

  Kira and her colleague are sitting in their office beneath teetering heaps of open folders on top of more open folders.

  “What do you think?” Kira asks, exhausted.

  “I think it works to our advantage that this is so damn complicated that no normal person will understand what Peter has done wrong,” her colleague replies in an attempt to be positive, which doesn’t really work seeing as Kira understands exactly what Peter has done.

  “Looking the other way when a crime is committed can be just as bad as actually committing it,” she says.

  Her colleague is right, a lot of what the club has done can be dismissed as legal bagatelles by a good lawyer, that’s why Kira is so angry with Peter for signing those documents concerning the training facility. They lie there like fingerprints on a murder weapon. Because everyone can understand this: you can’t steal millions of taxpayers’ money and sell air and let the council buy a building that doesn’t exist. That makes you both immoral and a criminal.

  “Have you told Peter you know all about this yet?” her colleague wonders.

  Kira shakes her head.

  “No. He’ll just say he didn’t understand what he was signing. And I’ll believe him. I’ll… choose to believe him.”

  Her colleague smiles weakly.

  “I’ll believe him too. He may be a bit of an idiot, your husband, but he isn’t this stupid.”

  Kira sighs.

  “Stupidity is not reading things before you sign them. How smart is that? I don’t know if I can argue that he hasn’t committed a crime by claiming that he’s this naive…”

  Her colleague slowly nods her head.

  “Do you want to know what I think? I don’t think the newspaper will dare publish this. People would hit the roof if they tried, they see Peter as some sort of damn saint… and IF they publish it, maybe they won’t need a scapegoat? Maybe they’ll focus all their criticism on the committee and politicians rather than on a specific person…”

  Without wanting to know the answer, Kira asks:

  “But what if they do need a scapegoat?”

  Her colleague looks unhappy.

  “Then Peter would be perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  Kira tries to reply, but there’s too much of a sob in her throat. She hopes that Tails will find a way to rescue Hed Hockey, that he can find enough allies to stop the local paper, and she hopes that all this will be enough to conceal what Peter did. Because even she probably isn’t going to be able to bury this.