The Invisible Man from Salem Read Free

now, busy cordoning off parts of the road, diverting traffic and pedestrians. The police wave people on forcefully and irritably. Bright white light from large searchlights illuminates the tarmac. A big tent is unloaded from a van, as a precaution in case it starts raining.
    ChapmansgÃ¥rden’s open window is swinging and bumping gently in the wind. Inside I can see heads sweeping past — Gabriel Birck, a forensic technician, and Matilda. Under the window the pavement is waiting to be inspected; I want to study it more closely, but the commotion in front of the house hides it from my view.
    I look at my phone instead. A new day started half an hour ago. I hear the humming noise of a nearby bar, and music coming through its open windows. I put the cigarette out, turning my back on Chapmansgatan.
    A LITTLE STRIP of pale tarmac links two of the larger streets on Kungsholmen. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s short enough that you could kick a ball from one end of the street to the other. In one of the buildings jammed along it there is a wine-red door. Written on it, in faded yellow paint, is a single word: BAR . I open it and see a head of blonde, tousled hair resting on the bar. As the door slams behind me, the head lifts slowly and the wavy hair falls down into a centre parting. Anna looks up, her eyes half-closed.
    â€˜Finally,’ she mumbles, as she runs her hand through her hair. ‘A customer.’
    â€˜Are you drunk?’
    â€˜Bored.’
    â€˜A bit of advertising on the door would get more people in.’
    â€˜Peter doesn’t want advertising. He just wants to get rid of the place.’
    BAR is owned by an uninterested thirty-something entrepreneur, whose father bought the premises in the early Eighties, turned it into a bar, and owned the place until he died. BAR was left to Peter, who, in accordance with his father’s wishes, was not allowed to sell it for five years. That was four-and-a-half years ago; so, barring Armageddon, Anna has six months left behind the taps.
    BAR is the sort of place you would only find if you were looking for it. Everything in here is made of wood: the counter, the floor, the ceiling, the empty tables, and the chairs that are strewn about the place. The lighting is warm with a yellow hue, making Anna’s skin seem browner that it really is. She carefully dog-ears a page in her thick book and then closes it, pulls out a bottle of absinthe from a cupboard, grabs a glass, and pours what I guess is supposed to be a 20-ml measure but is in fact significantly more. It’s illegal to sell the stuff, but a lot of what goes on in bars tends to be illegal.
    â€˜It’s quiet in here.’
    â€˜Do you want me to put the music on? I turned it off — it was annoying me.’
    I don’t know what I want. Instead I sit on one of the bar stools and drink from the glass. Absinthe is the only spirit I can cope with. I only drink occasionally; but when I do, that’s what I choose. I found this place early this summer; I’d been on my way home, high, and I stopped to light a cigarette. I needed to lean against the wall to keep still enough. Everything in my vision tugged leftwards the whole time, making it impossible to focus. When I finally did, and saw the word BAR on the wine-red door across the road, I was pretty sure it was a hallucination, but I stumbled over the road anyway and started banging on the door. After a while, Anna opened the door, baseball bat in hand.
    I don’t know how old she is. She could be twenty. Her parents own a mansion in Uppland, just north of Norrtälje. Fifteen years ago, Anna’s father had started an internet business at exactly the right time, and then sold it just before the bubble burst. He invested the money in new companies, which he allowed to expand. It’s this sort of manoeuvre that makes people rich nowadays. Anna fluctuates between needy self-interest and enormous