The Falling Detective by Christoffer Carlsson Page B

home, he looked uninterested.
    â€˜Dunno. Don’t care either.’
    Anton and his dad had never seen eye to eye. They were too much alike — at least that’s what Mum put it down to, maybe because that was easiest.
    â€˜What happens if he never comes back?’ Christian asked.
    â€˜I think he’ll be back,’ Anton said, matter-of-factly. ‘Now, get out of my room.’
    â€˜But come on, would it have been better if they’d stuck it out and been unhappy and argued and fought?’ his new friend wondered.
    It was now early evening, and they were sitting on a bench close to Hagsätra’s recreation ground. Autumn had arrived, and the grass on the pitch in front of them was covered with frozen dew. Lone runners ran round and round, coldly illuminated by the strong floodlights, their breath chugging ahead of them like thin white smoke.
    Sometimes, late in the evening, Christian would run there himself. He’d been doing it for years — couldn’t even remember when he’d started. Had he been eleven? Maybe twelve? Down here it felt like the vault-roof of the sky above was further away, and that running lap after lap had some kind of purifying effect.
    â€˜They could have sorted it out,’ Christian said. ‘If he’d had the bollocks to stay and fight for it, then they wou—’
    â€˜You don’t know that.’
    â€˜Yes, I do know that. They’d had problems before, but they’d always sorted it out.’
    They were fifteen, and both believed that they understood everything. In fact, they understood nothing.
    Later, Christian looked for his wallet in the pockets of his jeans, but couldn’t find it. They had shared a bottle of spirits that Michael had got cheaply, out in Salem, and at first Christian thought he’d got too drunk and lost it somewhere. He did his best to look for it in the darkness, but it wasn’t there.
    â€˜Weird, eh?’ he slurred. ‘I was fucking sure I had it with me.’
    â€˜You must have left it at home,’ Michael slurred back, taking a swig from the bottle. ‘I haven’t seen it since we came out.’
    They were both tipsy, and Christian was starting to enjoy the sensation of tilting over. Focusing took a while. Michael climbed down from the bench to go for a piss behind one of the dugouts. He swayed, reeled over to one side, and hit the ground. He laughed, and so did Christian.
    The fall had caused something to glide out of Michael’s jacket pocket: a wallet. Christian noticed it from the corner of his eye, squinting as Michael tried to get to his feet.
    â€˜What the fuck …’ Christian began as he leant forward to pick it up.
    He opened it. It was his.
    â€˜What is this?’
    â€˜Your wallet.’
    â€˜You said you hadn’t …’ The three hundred-kronor notes were missing. ‘Where’s the money?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜You nicked my fucking wallet!’
    Michael managed to stand up and laughed, dismissively.
    â€˜I was going to give it back to you later, when you’d got properly paranoid.’
    Something about his tone of voice made Christian not believe him.
    â€˜Are you a fucking benefits-scrounger, or what? Who the fuck does a thing like that? Give me my fucking money!’
    The next minute, Christian was lying on his back next to the bench. His cheek was throbbing, and his jaw ached like hell.
    â€˜What the fuck?’ Christian hissed as he struggled to get to his feet.
    He leaned against the bench for support, and once he was standing up he grabbed Michael’s jumper and jumped on his friend, pushing him over and then clenching his right fist.
    It must all have been over in seconds, but it felt much longer: they found themselves on the ground below the bench, hitting each other in the face, kneeing each other wherever they could reach. Christian managed to bust his friend’s eyebrow, and his