“I should have seen it coming. We should never have gone to the game in the first place,” Johnny chastises himself.

  “No one could have known it was going to get out of control like that,” Hannah says tersely, but he can hear her teeth grinding, like the little hiss when a fuse is lit.

  “I don’t know Lev, if that’s what you’re about to ask. I picked up Bengt’s tires there and we had a chat, that’s all. Teemu has been threatening him about some debt, that’s why Lev came to our defense.”

  “Defense? Is that how you see it?” she counters.

  “How do you see it?” he asks sullenly, even though he can tell it’s a trap.

  “He made everything worse! It was a hockey game between kids, and he had a pistol on him! Where do you think we live? Some war zone?”

  Johnny sighs. Spins his glass. He’s realized now that it’s a tea light holder but she can drop any idea that he’s going to admit that. It’s cheap whiskey anyway and a bit of wax is hardly going make much difference.

  “I can talk to him…”

  “The person you need to talk to is Tobias! Did you see his eyes? He looked like…,” Hannah splutters, stopping herself before she says “like you.”

  Because that’s the truth about their eldest son. He looks like his father when he gets angry. Johnny stares down into his glass and lets the whiskey roll from one side to the other.

  “He handled himself well. The first thing he did was go and get his little brother. Isn’t that what we’ve taught him?”

  Hannah sighs into her wine. Yes, it is. It’s exactly what they’ve taught him. So what’s she so angry about? Does she even know? Exhausted and resigned, it slips out of her, as if she’s merely testing the thought out loud:

  “I’ve hated the idea of Tess choosing to move to another town to study for so long. Today is the first time I hope she does. That she moves a long way from all this. I want her world to be… bigger.”

  “There’s plenty of violence out in the world too. There are idiots who fight everywhere,” Johnny snorts.

  “Yes. But out there at least she’d escape the sort of violence that gets passed down the generations,” Hannah replies, and at that Johnny raises his chin and whispers, hurt:

  “Because I’m the sort of person who wants to beat people to death?”

  Hannah shakes her head.

  “No. Because there have been moments in the past week when I’ve wanted to.”

  The silence shrinks the kitchen, swallowing all the oxygen. Johnny contemplates making a lame joke, saying that Tess couldn’t possibly inherit any tendency to violence from her mother because Hannah is so useless at fighting, but now isn’t the time for that. He understands what she means. He drinks his whiskey, kisses his wife’s head, goes upstairs and tucks Tess and Ture in, then goes and sits on the floor beside Tobias’s bed. His son is snoring loudly but his heart is beating slowly. There’s fresh snow on the window and Johnny feels ancient. Like all parents, he just dreams of his children having things a bit better than him, a bit easier, but there’s no way to protect them against the world. We can’t even protect them from themselves. So he closes his eyes and thinks that if Hannah is right, if the boy in this bed really is going to turn out like his dad, then there’s only one thing for Johnny to do.

  * * *

  To become better.

  * * *

  Ted fires puck after puck, harder and harder, and somewhere inside he’s so surprised that no one has come out and yelled at him to stop, that when he sees his mother out of the corner of his eye, he lets go of his stick without even arguing. He’s drenched with sweat even though the night is ridiculously cold. His mother is wearing Tobias’s jacket and Tess’s woolly hat, and Ted’s fairly sure the shoes are his old ones. He’s about to say he’ll stop and go inside and go to bed when she blinks hard at him and asks:

  “Can I join in?”

  He lets her.

  91 Traces

  When we tell this story afterward, it will probably be obvious that it’s a slow chain reaction where everything happens one thing at a time. But for some of the people involved it will always feel as if almost all the important things happened at once, out of nowhere, within the space of a few hours.

  The night is extremely cold, and when Friday morning comes the editor in chief is out before the snowplows. She pads to the office in the dark. She looks over her shoulder at first, still a little paranoid about thinking she’s seen black jackets everywhere in recent days, but she’s alone on the streets. No one except journalists are awake. It’s the day after the trouble at the ice rink and she knows that two of her reporters are already in the office writing articles about it. When she took the job here and met them for the first time, they both introduced themselves as sports reporters, but one of them turned out to work on the news desk and the other is responsible for the family pages, but the joke at her expense was pretty simple: here everyone works on sports, so you may as well get used to it. She probably hasn’t, not quite yet.

  When she got out of bed this morning her dad still hadn’t gone to bed. They relieved each other like two factory workers. He sat up all night, hunched over her kitchen table, surrounded by papers and files, most of which she had never even seen before.

  “What’s this? I thought you were going to try to work out the details of the trouble at the game yesterday?” she wondered, but her dad just waved her away as if she were a little girl again.

  “This is more important. Look at this! All these documents show how taxpayers’ money has been paid out in fake grants and illegal loans in connection to various council construction projects in the past ten years. Do you remember when the council here got delusions of grandeur and applied to host the skiing world championship? Look at all these payments wealthy businessmen in the area made to this construction company. I think these are bribes to politicians. Above all, to this politician, the woman who leads the biggest party on the council! And look here, who do you think works for the construction company? Her husband and her brother!”

  The editor in chief made coffee and tried to make sense of her dad’s papers.

  “Dad… you may be right, perhaps this is a big scandal… but what does this have to do with our investigation into the training facility and Beartown Hockey?”

  “This is much more important than Beartown Hockey! That investigation is NOTHING compared to this!”

  She stared at him in surprise.

  “Can I ask where you got these documents from?”

  “I did my job, found a source, don’t worry about that…”

  His eyes crossed with tiredness. It was impossible to get any more sense out of him. So she told him to go and get some sleep.

  Now she’s padding through the snow, unable to stop worrying about something he said: “This is much more important than Beartown Hockey.” They’ve spent all week digging into the club and Peter Andersson, but now he’s suddenly changed track in the course of one night? She’s worrying so much that it makes her distracted and she’s just staring down at the ground ahead of her instead of looking up. When she reaches the offices of the newspaper she doesn’t see the men standing in front of her until she’s too close to run. She turns and tries anyway, almost instinctively, until she sees that they’re not wearing black jackets. They’re wearing red ones.

  “Hi!” one of them says, holding out a large fist, and she catches a glimpse of the tattoo of a bull on his lower arm beneath the sleeve of his jacket.

  She doesn’t shake his hand, but she doesn’t knock it aside either. One of the other men smiles amiably. He has a big black eye, presumably a souvenir from the fight in the ice rink.

  “We’re just here to keep an eye out! We heard that those bastards in the Pack over in Beartown have been threatening you and your staff. Don’t worry, there’s no need to be concerned, we’re here to take care of things now.”

  The editor in chief looks from one to the other in confusion, then exclaims:

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What threats?”

  The first man winks at her as if they’re sharing a big secret.

  “We get that you can’t say anything. But we got a tip-off that you’re investigating Beartown Hockey, and that the crazies in the Pack are trying to stop you. Don’t let them! Everyone knows they’re all crooks, the whole lot of them, I hope you really stick it to them! We’re going to have guys here to make sure nothing happens to you.”

  The editor in chief doesn’t know what to say. For heaven’s sake, she’s barely even awake yet, so how much weirder can today get before the sun has even risen? Quite a lot, it turns out.

  “You’ve got to be kidding…,” she mumbles as she walks into the office and sees who’s sitting at her desk, leaning back comfortably.

  “Good morning!” Richard Theo says cheerfully.

  The editor in chief sighs.

  “Okay. Did you change your mind about looking for a job? Perhaps I could employ you as a cartoonist?”

  Theo smiles, rather impressed by her immediate instinct for conflict. Plenty of people are like that the first time they meet him, but they tend to be more cautious the second time.

  “I won’t take up much of your time, I promise. I’m sure you have a lot to do after the incident yesterday.”

  She smiles.

  “The ‘incident’? Interesting choice of words. It was hooligans rioting.”

  He looks surprised.

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t describe it like that at all. I was there. I was never concerned for my own or anyone else’s safety. A few young men on both sides just let their frustrations get the better of them, that’s all, the sort of thing that happens everywhere. Even in the big cities, I be-lieve?”

  This last remark is so pointed that the editor in chief softens slightly.

  “The last time you were here, you said you were worried about violence between the two clubs’ supporters. Now you’re saying they’re all good friends?”

  Theo holds his arms out apologetically.

  “I just don’t want things to be misinterpreted. For people to read something in the paper that they misunderstand. Because that could LEAD to violence, don’t you think?”

  “We’re going to report what happened…,” she begins.

  “Peter Andersson had his eyebrow split yesterday, did you hear that?” he interrupts quickly.

  “No… no, I didn’t know that,” she admits.

  “It was purely by accident, I can assure you! He collided with another man in the commotion. But naturally there are people in Beartown who would prefer to see it as him being attacked. You know how popular Peter Andersson is in Beartown. There are lots of people who want to protect him. Yes… speaking of that… there are evidently lots of people who want to protect you as well? I saw your friends outside!”

  He adjusts his tie over his perfectly ironed shirt. The editor in chief is irritated by how sharp he looks so early in the morning.

  “If you’re referring to the men by the door, I don’t actually know…,” she begins.

  “Of course not. But they seem to be under the impression that you need protection. I wouldn’t want that to be misinterpreted either.” He nods.

  The editor in chief feels a chill creep down her spine when she starts to realize what’s going on. Who has been spreading the rumors that got the men at the door to show up.

  “What are you trying to say?” she hisses, hating his relaxed smile.

  “If you write about Peter Andersson straight after he has, according to some rumors, been attacked and assaulted by Hed supporters, the same Hed supporters who are now standing guard at your door, don’t you think it might look like you’ve… chosen a side?”

  “Don’t threaten me, Richard. I’m a journalist. That’s a bad idea.”

  “Threaten you? That isn’t my intention! Oh, you’ll have to forgive me!” he exclaims with such an expression of extreme despair that it looks almost genuine.

  He stands up. She tilts her head to one side.

  “Was that all? You came here so early in the day just to say that?”

  He pretends to think, as if he’s forgotten something, then slaps his forehead gently and theatrically, and adds:

  “Now that you come to mention it: I’ve actually got a tip-off for you! Have you heard that Hed Hockey has got a new sponsor? Perhaps you’re familiar with the fact that the owners of the factory sponsor Beartown Hockey? Now another proprietor has put money into Hed!”

  The editor in chief’s curiosity gets the better of her caution.

  “Proprietor of what?”

  “Your proprietor.”

  He’s so pleased when he says this, like a dad cleaning out the bank in a game of Monopoly. He says the name of the company, and of course the editor in chief knows perfectly well what it is. They own the company that owns her newspaper.

  “Why would they want to sponsor a hockey club all the way out here?” she asks, uncomfortably adjusting her clothes to hide her cold shudder.

  “An old friend of mine from my student days is on the board. I called and told him that Hed Hockey is having financial trouble and that it would be a good deed if the owner of the local paper sponsored them. Because that’s what we do around here. We help each other. Don’t we?”

  She replies through tightly clenched teeth:

  “Does your friend know that half the newspaper’s subscribers live in Beartown?”

  Theo shakes his head.

  “No, no, he doesn’t know anything about hockey. He thinks it’s just a sport.”

  Her lips disappear beneath each other in a mixture of anger and resignation.

  “So you think I won’t dare to investigate Beartown Hockey now, because it will look like I’m only doing it because the newspaper is sponsoring Hed?”

  His self-assurance is repugnant:

  “No, no, you misunderstand. I think you won’t investigate Beartown Hockey because you’ve just been given a far better story to publish instead.”

  “What’s that?”

  Theo pulls his elegant coat onto his shoulders and raises an eyebrow.

  “Hasn’t your dad told you?”

  He walks out through the door and disappears before she has time to reply. The men with bull tattoos are still there when she runs home. By the time her dad wakes up she has already been through the whole argument with him in her head so many times that she can’t be bothered to do it in real life.

  “So you sold out our investigation of Peter Andersson for another story?” she merely says disconsolately.

  “A much… better story,” he retorts, still not properly awake, but she can see that he feels ashamed.

  “I didn’t think this of you, Dad. I didn’t think you’d back away from a fight.”

  Her dad looks at her for a long, long time. She sees tears begin to well up and is so shocked that she has to sit down. He says:

  “I picked a fight we can win, kid. I called an old colleague of Richard Theo’s and… he’s dangerous. Properly dangerous. He’s crushed people’s careers just for the fun of it. I don’t scare easily but, damn it, what happens to you when I leave here and a man like him is now your enemy? He isn’t like the other men here. He’s smarter. He’s got a completely different set of contacts. He won’t send hooligans to frighten you, he’ll send lawyers who will wreck your entire life. People like him come after you with everything they’ve got, and they don’t stop until they’ve taken everything and everyone you love away from you…”

  “When I was little, you always said that a journalist without enemies is a journalist who isn’t doing his job, Dad.” Her voice is shaking with disappointment, and he’ll never quite get over that.

  “But you’re too young for enemies, kid. Too young for enemies like THIS. You have too much ahead of you. And I… damn… I’m too old for fighting. At least with men like Richard Theo. The documents he sent me, kid, they’re not small fry. He gets what he wants, everywhere. Do you know how much money he’s already rustled up for Hed Hockey by barely so much as snapping his fingers? Think about what he could do to you… don’t let your career die out here in the middle of nowhere because of pride. Please. Don’t be like me, don’t try to fight the whole world at once. Wait until you’re in a bigger newsroom with more backup, and go for him then if you want to. But I came here to help you, and this is the best way I can do that. So do you want my advice? Take the story he’s offering you. It’s a better story than the one about Peter Andersson. He’s just one man, without much power at all, but what Richard Theo has given us concerns extensive corruption all the way up to the very top of the council…”

  “And if that turns out to be nothing but lies?”

  “Then we carry on digging into Beartown Hockey, we can…”

  His daughter hides her face with her hands.

  “No. No, we can’t, Dad. They’ll have covered all their tracks by then. It’s already too late.”

  All the energy drains out of her. She slumps down across the table. This is what it feels like to lose.

  92 Islands

  Darkness falls and Friday starts to draw to a close. Benji barely leaves any footprints in the snow as he moves between the trees. That always used to surprise people who encountered him on the ice, the combination of agility and strength. Adri always says it’s incredible that someone so agile can be so bad at dancing, and he always replies that it’s incredible that someone can be so bad at cooking as she is yet still be so fat. Then she hits him really hard, and perhaps that’s what she’ll miss most of all. She and Alicia and Sune are up at the kennels now looking at the new puppies, Benji set out from home with no real idea of where he was going, so he’s heading down toward the lake. He has no real dreams he’s longing to fulfill, so he makes do with seeking out company. Big City is sitting on a folding chair outside the campervan, wrapped in a sleeping bag, he’s learned how to make a fire and is happy when Benji appears because that means he has someone to show that off to.