Chapter 106
Sander had Killian’s blood on his hands.
It mixed with his own blood, which slowly seeped from the wound in his hand.
Before long, he couldn’t tell which had come from his body and which was Killian’s.
He turned around to look at Killian’s body over and over, convinced he would find it had vanished again, as though his friend were never more than a mirage.
Cameras flashed around him again and again like icy heartbeats. They had documented the blood and the bruises on his neck.
Sander sat on the floor in the kitchen and looked around for Felicia, but he couldn’t find her.
Instead, there was Killian’s backpack. No one had taken it. With care, he opened the bag.
—
Stuff. Just stuff. And yet: this was the worst part, as if its sole purpose were to torture him. Torture someone who could both remember and imagine. Were there more belongings of Killian’s, somewhere? It seemed reasonable; this backpack was small and didn’t hold much. Even so, he had his doubts.
This was what had belonged to Killian.
One pair of jeans, black. Lee. A hole in the left knee.
One T-shirt, dark gray. No, it had once been black but had faded badly. Traces of print across the chest: I Just Came for the Food. Killian’s sense of humor.
Two pairs of underwear. Bjorn Borg brand, threadbare. Holes in the crotch.
Socks.
A Nokia phone, an old model with buttons. Powered off, the battery dead. Slightly banged up at the edges and with a faded sticker on the back: a colorful mayflower, maybe put there by the phone’s former owner. Or did Killian buy mayflowers for the annual fundraiser? Maybe he did.
A phone charger.
A bar of beige soap the size of a pack of cigarettes, wrapped up in a sticky plastic bag. Lemon-scented.
An unlabeled bottle. Sander unscrewed the cap. Acetone.
A brown comb with skinny, closely spaced teeth. Strands of blond hair were still stuck in it; it still had a smell. Killian’s hair. Sander gently pulled one out and placed it in his palm. It was hardly visible, as fine and pale as it was.
A well-used wooden toothbrush. A tube of Colgate, half-full. How were Killian’s teeth? He hadn’t noticed.
A razor, Gillette. Pretty dull. Tiny grains of sand in the blades. No, hair. Killian’s. Tiny, tiny bits of hair. The last time he shaved must have been just before the funeral.
A plastic bag containing one last, unopened beer, Spendrups Premium Gold. Where had the beer come from? Not the state liquor store.
An open, creased box of Beyond Thin condoms, the kind handed out for free by the Association for Sexual Education, sixteen out of thirty left. Could he have a child somewhere?
A bracelet made of light-brown leather, a little worse for wear. Soft from rubbing against his skin. Like mine, Sander thought, only lighter brown. The same clasp. They must have been made at the same time. In the winter of 1999, he made one for each of us.
No ID. No credit cards. No diary. Nothing. But: nine hundred and fifty kronor, cash, rolled up and secured with a purple rubber band. Hundred-kronor bills and smaller.
A hardcover book, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, in the new Swedish translation published just recently.
It was heavily dog-eared up to page 218.
Sander couldn’t remember seeing Killian with a book, much less a hardcover one.
A gift? Tucked in the middle of the book was a small bundle of papers and photographs.
In that bundle:
A piece of paper carefully torn out of a graph-paper notebook, much-thumbed; on the paper, an ink drawing of a cabin.
The measurements carefully printed in Sander’s handwriting.
In the floor, a hatch with an arrow pointing to it, and a label: Beer Bunker.
Killian’s writing. They had made a blueprint?
Yes, maybe. Way back in his memory, faintly, he could see their heads close together over a table, Killian propping his hand on his forehead. Yes. He remembered now.
Clippings of obituaries, several of them, Linda and Sten Persson’s among them. Others, too, but with names Sander didn’t recognize. From the years 2007, 2009, 2015.
A photograph: A vast sky. Treetops. It looks hot.
They’re all there, together. Down by the lake where they liked to grill.
Mikael, Pierre, Jakob, Killian. And Sander.
Smoke from the firepit. Killian isn’t wearing a shirt, and he has an arm around Sander’s shoulders.
They’re both smiling. Who took the picture? He doesn’t recall.
A photograph: Felicia. A portrait, must be from the fall of 1999.
She’s wearing a T-shirt and an unzipped black down coat.
He remembers that; it was the same coat she wore all that winter.
Looks like it was taken in the forest somewhere.
Maybe they were on a walk together. Killian is the photographer. She’s beaming.
A photograph: Killian’s mother and father, before the divorce.
It was taken by a real photographer in town, maybe Gote Karlsson himself.
They’re kneeling, and between them, on a chair, Killian is a pink, round blob in pastel overalls.
All three of them are laughing. Each parent is touching Killian. Rock-a-bye baby.
A photograph: A woman of around thirty, blond, unfamiliar. She’s standing outside in a city. This picture looks more recent; that’s all he can say about it.
A photograph: Killian and Sander. Eleven or twelve.
They’re outside the school, must have been school picture day.
Killian is wearing a bow tie; Sander’s hair has been wet-combed.
Mom took this picture, Sander remembers.
Killian is half a head taller than him. It’s bright; they’re squinting into the sun.
A photograph: Another one of the two of them, but they’re older.
Must have even turned eighteen already. On the road that runs through Skavboke, Killian in black jeans and a white T-shirt; Sander in pale blue jeans and a flannel.
One blond head, one dark. They’re walking side by side, laughing at something.
What was it? No idea. Sander doesn’t remember the occasion.
Maybe Felicia was holding the camera? They look inseparable.