Sirens can be heard from the road, here and there is the sound of children crying, but also relaxed conversation and even the occasional laugh. Johnny walks back to the van ahead of Hannah, Tobias doesn’t see them so he turns to his siblings and blurts out excitedly:

  “Did you see the pistol? Did you see the looks on all the Beartown bastards’ faces then? Did you see how they shat themselves? Now they know they can’t fuck with us!”

  But Tess is standing a yard away, next to Bobo, and she just shakes her head sadly and whispers:

  “No. Now they just think that they have to get pistols too.”

  Hannah doesn’t hear that. Johnny pretends he hasn’t heard it. But he hopes that Tess is wrong. Dear God, how he hopes.

  89 Truths

  It’s late Thursday evening and all the black jackets from Beartown are sitting in the emergency room at the hospital in Hed. Teemu broke two fingers on someone’s jaw, and a couple of his guys have broken noses from someone’s fist or elbow. They’re in a ridiculously good mood, despite or perhaps precisely because of that, joking and singing inappropriate songs. Above all, they’re teasing Peter, seeing as the former general manager had to come here with his split eyebrow, and the nurses quickly decided to put everyone from Beartown in a separate room so that there wouldn’t be any more trouble with anyone from Hed. Every time a nurse comes to call someone in, all the members of the Pack beg her to “take the boss first!” Then they nod toward Peter, wide-eyed, and whisper: “Please, don’t take us foot soldiers first, help the Godfather! He’s the one who gives the orders!” Peter pleads with Teemu to shut them up, but Teemu is laughing too much to be able to stop them.

  “You lot don’t take anything seriously, you really don’t take anything in life seriously…,” Peter mutters.

  “Well, we’re not the ones who pick fights with firemen and get threatened with pistols, so maybe you should try taking life a bit less seriously?” Teemu grins back at him.

  It isn’t easy for Peter to argue against that, it really isn’t. One of the men in the Pack receives a phone call, nods to Teemu, who immediately gets up and walks off into a corner with him, where they talk quietly. Perhaps it’s about the men in the Hed stand, perhaps it’s about Lev, Peter will never know because that’s when his name is called by a nurse and he gets led away to have his eyebrow patched up. The doctor asks what happened to him and Peter says he “ran into a post.” Considering how solid that fireman was, it doesn’t altogether feel like a lie. The doctor sends him home without any ceremony when he’s finished, there’s a long queue this evening and no time for small talk.

  When Peter returns to the waiting room Teemu grins:

  “Welcome back, Godfather! How does it feel?”

  “Like I’ve run into a post,” Peter smiles.

  Teemu puts his hand on his shoulder and asks quietly:

  “Listen… I’d like to open the Bearskin for the guys tonight. Just my closest guys. Have a few beers and… well, you know… like old times. Is that okay with you? I promise we’ll clean up after!”

  “You’ve got the keys to the Bearskin, haven’t you?” Peter wonders, not really understanding, and not sure how to respond to what Teemu’s saying.

  “I know. But I don’t want to do it if you’re not okay with it. There’s… there’s no one else I can ask for permission.”

  So Peter nods. Teemu nods back, slowly. Then one of the guys behind him hands over a bouquet of flowers and Teemu passes it on to Peter.

  “For me? Wow. You didn’t have to…,” Peter begins, but Teemu stops him making a fool of himself by quickly whispering:

  “Not for you. For your wife.”

  “For… Kira?”

  Teemu nods.

  “The guys heard that she’s helping the club as a lawyer now. That there’s a bit of fuss with some reporters and Kira’s agreed to help. The guys wanted to say thank you.”

  Peter blinks uncomprehendingly.

  “Kira? Helping the club? Where did you hear that?”

  He didn’t need to ask, of course, because the answer is so obvious:

  “You know. People talk.”

  * * *

  Kira is sitting in the car in the parking lot outside the hospital, waiting for Peter. They dropped Maya, Ana, and Leo off at home in Beartown first, partly because Leo was sick in the car, and partly because Ana gave Peter so much advice about what he ought to do “next time he gets in a fight” that it would have been unbearable to have her in the car all the way to Hed. Kira’s glad about that now, because young men in black jackets have parked their cars around hers as protection against any rush from Hed supporters, and she’s happy she doesn’t have to explain that to the children. The Pack that used to threaten Peter’s life when he was general manager, and whose black jackets Kira managed to tear Leo away from wanting to be a part of with her fingernails bleeding, they’re now her protectors? She can’t even explain that to herself. But these are strange times. Terrible times.

  Her phone rings and she answers, almost relieved when she sees her colleague’s name.

  “I heard about the fight! Were you in the rink? Are you okay?” exclaims her colleague, who sounds like she’s drunk something like a dozen glasses of wine.

  “Yes, fine, Peter split his eyebrow so we’re at the hospital.”

  “Split his eyebrow?”

  “He says he ran into a post.”

  Her colleague says nothing for a few moments.

  “An awful lot of shit seems to happen to you.”

  Kira sighs.

  “Don’t even start. How are you?”

  “Fine! I’m at home! Quite drunk! I’ve found something we can use if Peter gets charged!”

  Kira sits bolt upright in her seat.

  “What?”

  “We say someone forged his signature! Seriously, have you seen your husband’s signature? It looks like a small child’s.”

  She’s right. Before Peter went off to the NHL he had to sign so many autographs that he learned to write it really simply so he could do it quickly. Anyone could probably imitate it after a few minutes’ practice.

  “You’re a genius!”

  Her colleague sighs:

  “I am, aren’t I? But… well… you know, it would be seriously against the law to lie about that, of course. You and I could both end up in prison if we tried. But it’s… a last resort. If everything else goes wrong.”

  Kira nods, with tears in her eyes.

  “Thanks.”

  “Anything for you, you know that.”

  Kira takes a sudden, shaky breath.

  “Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing? In purely moral terms? Defending Peter like this?”

  Her colleague breathes softly over the line, not as if she’s hesitating but as if she’s trying to find the right words.

  “You know, Kira, all my thoughts about morals and ethics boil down to one single thing: not if it concerns your family. You can have a thousand principles, but not if it concerns your family. That’s what you protect first and foremost, above morals, even above the law. Family first. You’re loads of things, but you’re a mother first. A wife first.”

  Kira leans her head against the steering wheel.

  “Thanks. Again. I know I’ve said thanks before, but thanks again.”

  Her colleague sounds almost insulted.

  “You’re my family too.”

  * * *

  Peter walks dizzily out of the hospital, and goes past Kira’s car twice before he recognizes it. Then he tries to get into the driver’s seat and Kira just chuckles:

  “There’s no way I’m letting you drive! You’ve got more bandages than a mummy!”

  So he lumbers around to the other side and gets in the passenger seat. Kira is furious, of course, but that’s as it should be. She gets angry when she’s scared. She’s the sort of person who shouts at her children when they get hurt, that’s how they know she loves them.

  “It was a damn hard post,” Peter tries to joke, putting one hand to his eyebrow.

  Kira glances at him without starting the car. Her tone is gentle but the words cut straight through his skin:

  “It’s okay with me if you don’t always tell me the truth. But don’t try to lie. You’re a bad liar, because you haven’t had much practice, and I love that about you. That’s why you’re the only person on the planet I can trust.”

  The whole of Peter’s face hurts when he screws his eyes shut.

  “It was… an accident. I ran straight into a guy from Hed, I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want you to misinterpret it…”

  Her anger appears out of nowhere, as if it’s been carbonated:

  “MISINTERPRET it? Look around you! Are THESE our friends now?”

  She gestures toward the black jackets in the cars to the right and left of them. To be honest, the question is directed at herself as much as him. She’s hated the hooligans for so long but right now she’s glad they’re at Peter’s side, because that might just scare off the reporters, and how is a lawyer supposed to reconcile herself to that?

  Peter looks simultaneously embarrassed and focused. As he hands over the flowers, he says with a mixture of accusation and apology:

  “I got these from Teemu and his guys. They said you’re working as a lawyer to help Beartown Hockey now, and they wanted to thank you. Do you maybe feel like telling me what that’s all about?”

  Only then does Kira realize. The men in the black jackets aren’t there to protect Peter, they’re there to protect her.

  “I…,” she begins, fully prepared to launch into an excuse, because if there’s one thing about herself that she’s ashamed of, it’s the fact that she’s such a good liar.

  But then she looks her husband in the eye and he looks the way he did the first time he walked into her parents’ restaurant more than twenty years ago, after losing a stupid hockey game that was the biggest of his life. She remembers everything she fell in love with: a boy looking for something, a good father, a decent man. So she tells the truth. Everything. All in one go.

  “Tails came to the house the other day, when you went with Zackell to look at Aleksandr. I think maybe that was his idea all along. He needed you out of the way so he could talk to me…”

  Then she takes such a deep breath that it makes her giddy, and then she tells him about being offered a seat on the committee. About the work her firm would get regarding Beartown Business Park, how that’s a way for Tails and the other sponsors to bribe her and bind her closer to the club. Make her as dependent on the town’s interwoven network of favors and counterfavors as everyone else, so that she’d have to save the club at the same time as saving Peter.

  “Saving… me?” Peter whispers, barely audible, sounding so pathetic and shocked that his larynx can hardly say the words.

  Kira tells him calmly and factually about all the contracts she’s seen, all the gaps in the accounts, the training facility that doesn’t exist, and all the documents concerning it that have Peter’s signature at the bottom.

  “What you’ve all been doing at that club in the past few years, darling, it’s… I don’t even know which words to use… it’s basically money laundering. Corruption. In legal terms, it definitely counts as accounting crimes and ‘disloyalty to principal.’ The local paper has brought in a reporter from outside to dig into the whole thing, and sooner or later he’s going to find all the things you’ve hidden. Considering how much council money is involved… bloody hell, darling… you could end up in prison!”

  She runs out of air before she runs out of words. Her fingers are vibrating against the steering wheel even though the engine’s switched off. Peter sits beside her, deathly pale, falling thousands of miles straight into a black hole. His whole identity crumbles. He’s sweating, hyperventilating, wants to open the window but is scared all the secrets inside the car would just fly out. In the end he feels so ill that he leans his head against the glove compartment. A few minutes pass before he manages to say:

  “The training facility? I… I didn’t know what I was signing, darling, I know it sounds like a lie now, but if I’d known it was illegal I’d never… never! I thought I was just doing Tails a favor… I signed hundreds of documents when I was working for the club, and when he called after I’d left I felt guilty and thought… oh God, darling, I didn’t think at all. I’m such an idiot. I’m such an IDIOT! He said it was all okay with the council, that they just needed a ‘big name.’ I just trusted that he…”

  “I know,” Kira whispers, but he isn’t listening, he’s too busy questioning every decision he’s ever made.

  She’s thinking that the most incomprehensible thing about both him and Tails is actually how surprised they are that reporters are even looking into this: as if they were little children in the middle of a game who turn around in shock to find that someone’s been standing watching them the whole time. Who do they think they are? What do they think reporters do? Did no one at the club have a plan for what to do if everything was uncovered?

  Peter gasps:

  “I can’t believe I’m such an idiot. I can’t BELIEVE it. I just… I mean, I knew that some aspects of the players’ contracts were a bit of a gray area. That the board and the sponsors might be fiddling things. But I always pretended not to know. I told myself that I knew nothing about finance, I should just focus on the hockey. But darling, I… I would NEVER do anything illegal, not on—”

  “I know! I know! I know you’re innocent!” Kira interrupts, suddenly harder.

  His voice become little more than a gasp:

  “How? How do you know that? Even I don’t know that!”

  Her eyes are exhausted, her cheeks wet, her lips dry.

  “Because I know you. I have so many secrets from you, but you have hardly any from me. I’ve started seeing a psychologist again, I haven’t told you because I thought I could just sort everything out myself. A while back the psychologist asked me how I feel, and I said it was as if I was drowning, and he asked what was stopping me, and I said ‘my husband.’ I said… you. Because I see land in you, darling. I get air from you. And you’re the worst liar I know. That’s how I know you haven’t committed any crimes on purpose.”

  “I love you, you’re the only… you and the children… you’re the only…”

  “I know.”

  They can hardly see each other now, no matter how hard they blink.

  “What are we going to do? I have to go to the police and confess everything, I have to…,” he begins desperately, but she shakes her head.

  “No. I’ve spoken to Tails. He’s talking to all his contacts right now, all the sponsors and politicians. We’re going to sort this.”

  “How?” Peter sobs.

  The look in her eyes may be broken, but her voice doesn’t waver at all when she replies:

  “I don’t know yet, but you need to trust me, I’ll find a way.”

  “You can’t stop the reporters if they…,” he whispers.

  Kira looks out through the window, at the men in black jackets, and wonders silently what she’s capable of. How far she’s prepared to go. Then she hears herself say:

  “We’re going to persuade the newspaper not to write about this. Or we create a situation where they no longer want to.”

  “The newspaper OUGHT to write about this, I made mistakes… I mean, they’re RIGHT…,” Peter replies.

  “This isn’t about being right,” Kira says.

  “What is it about, then?” he sniffs.

  She doesn’t even have an answer to that. Because what is it about? Being on the right side? Convincing yourself that you’re fighting for the right things? Or is it just about survival? When all is said and done, is that all we’re capable of? Trying to win at any cost? She doesn’t know, she’ll be wondering about that for the rest of her life, but for now she just says:

  “Protecting our family. Above everything else. You and me and the children. That’s the only thing that matters now. I’m going to find a way to fix this, you have to trust me.”

  “I trust you,” he whispers.

  She moves her hand incredibly slowly, as if the movement might break her arm, reaching out her fingers until they find his. She smiles a smile that’s as brittle as it is defiant, a small sign of resistance against the chaos:

  “And when this is over, darling… then I sure as hell want a bloody holiday. I want just one morning when no one asks me for help, okay? I want a hotel breakfast and those silly little glasses of fruit juice and croissants. Damn it, I want CROISSANTS, darling. Okay?”

  He manages to smile, just about, but promises with all his heart. She drives them back to Beartown, keeping hold of his hand the whole way.

  90 Inheritance

  The caravan of vehicles full of Hed supporters arrives home through the forest. Families from the seated part of the stands turn off toward their residential areas, but the young men from the standing area turn off the other way, toward the Barn. They have a few bruises and broken noses that will have to be patched up at the hospital, but most of the damage is superficial enough to be drunk away. The pub they know only as the Barn survived the storm surprisingly well compared with the roof of Hed’s ice rink, as if God had to choose between letting his people watch hockey or get drunk afterward. If you forced the clientele there to make the same choice this evening, they wouldn’t have found it so damn easy either.

  * * *

  Hannah no longer drinks at the Barn, she’s a grown-up now, she drinks at home in the kitchen. Johnny is sitting opposite her. She has wine in her coffee cup, he has whiskey in a glass that she can’t bring herself to tell him is actually a tea light holder. Tess went upstairs to put Ture to bed, and fell asleep next to him. Tobias went out like a light in his room with all his clothes on, as if his body sleeps better the more stress it’s been subjected to. It’s starting to get late, it’s pitch-black outside the windows, yet they can still hear the sound of banging from the yard. Ted is out there, firing pucks in the light of all the flashlights he could find. The neighbors for miles around must be able to hear, but even the least tolerant of them doesn’t show up to complain this evening. Perhaps they have more important things to worry about, perhaps they’re just taking pity on a thirteen-year-old whose match was called off and who now has to get rid of the adrenaline some other way.