The Falling Detective by Christoffer Carlsson Page A

inside his coat.
    â€˜Wanna beer?’ Michael shouts from the kitchen.
    â€˜No whisky?’
    â€˜Oh yeah.’
    Michael emerges with a couple of fingers of scotch in two round tumblers.
    â€˜Jesus, look at the state of you,’ he says, and hands one to Christian.
    â€˜I didn’t sleep very well.’ Christian looks up. ‘I bet you did?’
    â€˜Yes, why?’
    â€˜Well, considering …’
    â€˜I didn’t do it for the hell of it. I had to. You know that.’
    â€˜Yeah. But … didn’t you feel anything?’
    Michael takes a swig, with a determined expression on his face.
    â€˜If you weren’t the one asking, that question would make me fucking furious.’ He puts the glass down. ‘What the fuck do you think? Course I fucking did. But some things …’ He hesitates. ‘I learnt that inside. Some things just have to be done. And this was necessary. Everything could have been fucked otherwise.’
    Christian wants to stand up and walk out, but he can’t. So he sits there.
    They got to know each other at parties. That’s how it worked back then; maybe it still is. Every time they met, Michael had a new phone — always a Nokia. Christian didn’t have one but, before long, Michael gave him one of his.
    â€˜You can have that,’ Michael said. ‘It’s got Snake. But if you break my record, you’re in deep shit.’
    It took Christian a week to break the record. He didn’t mention it. He swapped his glasses for contacts and took Accutane for his acne, three a day. Six months later, his skin was clear and smooth, and since that day he hasn’t had so much as a pimple.
    Christian didn’t know much about his new friend. He worked out that he wasn’t from Stockholm, because when he’d had a few, a completely different accent would spout from his lips. It was warmer, more rolling, and fuller than his normal voice.
    â€˜Where the hell are you from anyway?’ Christian asked, laughing.
    â€˜Borlänge.’
    â€˜And where the fuck is that?’
    â€˜In Dalarna.’
    â€˜That’s in Norrland, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Dalarna is in the middle of Sweden. Norrland starts about five hundred kilometres north of Dalarna.’
    â€˜Well, how did you end up here, then?’
    â€˜Mum got divorced and met a new bloke who lived here. I must have been six or seven when we moved down.’
    â€˜Did you want to move?’
    Michael shrugged, smiling.
    â€˜When you’re little, I suppose you don’t want things to change. But it wasn’t too bad.’
    Michael’s mother and her new partner both worked in insurance. They were the kind of family who could afford to own their own home.
    Christian himself was born in Stockholm, growing up first in Bredäng and later Hagsätra. His mum worked behind the till in one of the shops by the square, and his dad … well, only his dad really knew what had happened to him, and Christian would probably have given him a smack if he’d ever had the good fortune to bump into him. He’d left when Christian was ten, and they never heard from him again. His mum just said that he was living somewhere on the west coast, with some woman, but apart from that they never talked about him.
    That might have been the precursor to Christian falling out with his new friend for the first time. Afterwards it was difficult to say what it had been about.
    Every time he thought about his dad, even now, years later, Christian recalled that betrayal: how he’d woken up one morning and discovered that there were only three people in the apartment. How his dad’s big Fjällräven rucksack, the one he used to take on their motoring holidays down in SkÃ¥ne, was missing. Christian’s mother was lying awake in bed, crying. It was a Tuesday — he even remembered that. Anton was in his room, and when Christian asked why dad wasn’t