‘OK, maybe once in a while. And more often when we were little kids. But nowadays you never have time.’
Knutas leaned back on the sofa. The room began slowly spinning around. He took several deep breaths, blinked away a tear. Lina was silent, her face still buried in her hands.
This conversation with Nils wasn’t going to end with the family reconciliation that he had hoped for. He was shaken to the core by his son’s scorn.
‘But why didn’t you say anything?’ he ventured. ‘Why didn’t you tell us that you were there?’
‘Because I didn’t want to.’
‘Didn’t want to? Don’t you realize how serious this is? You’re a witness, for chrissake!’
‘Take it easy,’ Lina protested. ‘You’ve been a police officer for seventeen years, Anders. You, of all people, should understand how hard it can be for someone to admit that he saw something but either couldn’t or didn’t dare intervene.’
Nils glared at his father.
‘You’ve just made it horribly clear that the only thing you care about is your job.
Nils’s face was rigid with anger, and his eyes flashed as he looked at Knutas.
‘Why should I tell you anything? Give me one good reason!’
He leaped up and ran out of the room.
A few seconds later the front door slammed.
IN SPITE OF the long workday, Johan didn’t feel tired, and he had no desire to go home to the empty house in Roma. Emma had gone with Elin to visit her parents on the island of Fårö. They were sitting in front of the fireplace drinking Irish coffee when he phoned. Emma complimented him on his report, which she’d watched on the news, and hearing her praise made him happy.
Pia had left the editorial office right after they had finished, presumably to go and see her sheep farmer. The relationship seemed to be serious. Usually she wasn’t so enthusiastic about her boyfriends.
Johan sat in front of his computer, spending the next few hours aimlessly surfing the Internet. Then he found himself pulling up the website for the Solo Club. They were open. Of course he’d already done several reports from there about the assault case, but he’d never visited the club in the evening when it was actually filled with young people.
It was just after ten o’clock when he left the TV building. He walked through town, heading for the harbour. He found Skeppsbron swarming with teenagers, and many of them looked younger than eighteen.
A long queue had formed outside the Solo Club, where it had all happened just a couple of weeks ago. The guy at the door recognized Johan and waved him through. Inside, the noise level was deafening and the dance floor was packed. He was surprised to see what the young girls were wearing. Many of them were scantily clad, to say the least, in minuscule tops and shorts that barely covered their bottoms. Some of them wore only lacy knickers with a top, and one big-busted girl was dancing around in her bra. Johan could hardly believe his eyes. Was this the latest fashion for teenage girls? It was alarming, and that alone made it worthy of a news report. The boys wore more familiar attire, most of them jeans and a T-shirt. A few were going around shirtless.
Johan ordered a beer and stood at the bar. It wasn’t long before several girls who didn’t look older than fourteen or fifteen came over to order Cokes. One of them wore only a bra and a pair of mini-shorts. He leaned towards her, forced to shout to be heard over the music.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ he asked.
She giggled and stared at him, uncomprehending. Her eyes were almost invisible behind a thick coating of mascara. Her face was covered with tanning cream, her lips were smeared with a white ointment, and her hair stuck out every which way, sticky with hairspray. A typical fourteen-year-old.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you out in public in your underwear?’
She tittered uncertainly, and then moved away and went back to talking to her friends. Johan saw one of them take a little bottle out of her bag and pour something into her Coke. So that’s how it’s done, he thought. Lots of the kids in the club were noticeably drunk. He signalled to the bartender.
‘Has this place changed since the assault happened?’
The bartender shrugged.
‘Not really. The first couple of weeks it was kind of quiet, but now there are just as many people as before, and they’re all just as drunk. As if it never happened.’
‘How can you make sure that kids under eighteen aren’t drinking?’
‘We can’t. All we can do here at the bar is ask for a valid ID before we serve anybody alcohol. But there’s nothing we can do about it if the kids drink before they get here, or if they hide the booze in the shrubbery and then go outside, supposedly to have a smoke, or if people outside the club sell them alcohol.’
‘There must be some kids who smuggle booze inside, right?’