The Invisible Man from Salem by Christoffer Carlsson

what it was, can’t remember. The road was slippery, and there were patches of ice everywhere. The world turned upside down as the car flipped over. Everything went black until I opened my eyes and saw a clear, starry sky. I was lying on my back on a stretcher, and my head was pounding. Every breath brought sharp pains to my torso, as though someone were pushing nails through me. I had four broken ribs. Next time I came round, I was lying under a bright white light at Södermalm Hospital. When I asked about Sam, they told me she was still in theatre. She was going to be okay; it was Viktor they were trying to save.
    They couldn’t. Sam had lost a lot of blood, and Viktor had sustained serious internal injuries. I was alone when they told me. Sam was still in a recovery room, coming round from the anaesthetic. I remember how bright the light was, how cool it was in the room, how there was a little wooden flag on the table next to me.
    The man in front of us, the one who had lost control of his car, was convicted of reckless driving. He was given a six-month suspended sentence. I never told anyone, but late one night about a year later, I looked him up, knocked on his door, and when he opened it I hit him with a knuckle-duster. He offered no resistance.
    Viktor’s death caused an irreparable crack in our relationship. We stuck it out for a year. But then, as things got worse and life itself seemed to become painful, rows began to erupt — eyeball to eyeball, flying crockery versus flying crockery, back to back in the dark. Spectacular rows about nothing, yet simultaneously about everything that mattered. We tried to paper over the cracks by having sex, which just made things even worse.
    Sam and I were one another’s first refuge, the first person we would turn to when something went wrong, and she knows the darkest corners of my soul. And I know her. I know she’s scared of the dark. The walls of her studio are plastered with posters for Fight Club , The Godfather , and Pusher , but her favourite film is actually Some Like it Hot . I know that she has a tattoo on the inside of her thigh, two doves, which sit so high that one of the dove’s wingtips strokes her groin. I know that Sam’s mother was abused by Sam’s father.
    But while Viktor’s ghost tore away at us, we buried ourselves in our jobs. Whereas this had worked pretty well in the past, perhaps because Sam and I had kept our relationship secret from so many, it now merely created new points of conflict. She rubbed shoulders with the underworld. She got to hear things. When word got out that she was seeing a cop, she didn’t just get fewer customers; she got threats from several of them. Sam was outwardly calm, but I could tell that she was shaken. As was I, feeling that it was my fault.
    â€˜You should give it up,’ I said. ‘Try something else.’
    â€˜Why should I give up my job? Why not you?’
    â€˜It’s easier for you.’
    â€˜It isn’t easier at all,’ she hissed. ‘You don’t love being a cop. I love what I do.’
    â€˜You love tattooing serious criminals?’ I screamed back. ‘Noble work, Sam.’
    â€˜You have to twist everything I say,’ she said, her voice breaking with a mixture of rage and bitter disappointment.
    And so it went on, day after week after month.
    â€˜You’re not going to split up, surely?’ one of Sam’s friends asked over coffee.
    â€˜Not today,’ Sam answered.
    WE SPLIT UP two weeks after I’d given her a little necklace with black cubes on it, in an attempt at reconciliation. Around her neck it looked a lot like someone had her in a snare, but she liked it. I moved back to Kungsholmen and Chapmansgatan, and a year later I was involved in what was to become the Gotland affair.
    She rang me after seeing the explosion of media coverage; she wanted to know how I was coping with it all. I didn’t want to talk