“Was it your daughter who was raped?” Zackell interrupts.

Peter and Sune clear their throats uncomfortably. Zackell looks confused. “Wasn’t she? Raped, I mean. By a player the two of you had nurtured?”

Peter replies in a quiet voice, “Is that why you’re here? As Richard Theo’s PR coup? A female hockey coach in what used to be a violent men’s club? The media will love it.”

Zackell stands up impatiently. “I’m not going to talk to the media. You can do that. And I don’t give a shit about Richard Theo’s PR coup. I’m not here to be a female hockey coach.”

Peter and Sune glance at each other.

“What do you want to be, then?” Sune asks.

“A hockey coach,” Zackell replies.

* * *

Sune scratches his stomach. As he always says, we only pretend hockey is complicated, because it isn’t really. When you strip away all the nonsense surrounding it, the game is simple: everyone gets a stick; there are two nets, two teams. Us against you.

* * *

There’s a sound from the garden, and Sune looks up and grins, but Peter is too distracted by his own thoughts to recognize the noise at first.

“I—” he begins, trying to sound like a grown man, a general manager, a leader.

But the sound interrupts him again. Bang! The boy Peter used to be, the dreamer, would have recognized the sound at once. He looks quizzically at Sune. Bangbang-bang! comes from the garden.

“What’s that?” Peter asks.

“Oh, yes! Did I forgot to say?” Sune grins, the way you do when you haven’t forgotten a damn thing.

Peter gets up and follows the noise, out through the terrace door. At the back of Sune’s house stands a four-and-a-half-year-old girl, firing pucks against the wall as hard as she can.

“Do you remember when you used to come here and do the same thing, Peter? She’s better than you were. She could already tell time when she got here!” Sune informs him happily.

Peter follows the pucks’ movement toward the wall, and is thrown back in time, a whole lifetime. It’s a simple game, really. The girl misses one of her shots and gets so angry that she hits her stick against the wall as hard as she can. It snaps, and only then does she spin around and catch sight of Peter. He sees the child shrink instinctively. All of Peter’s childhood shatters inside his chest.

“What’s your name?” he whispers.

“Alicia,” she replies.

Peter sees her bruises. He used to have similar ones. He knows she’ll lie if he asks how she got them; children are so incredibly loyal to their parents. So Peter crouches down and promises her with all the despair of his childhood shaking in his voice, “I can see that you’re used to getting hurt if you make a mistake. But hockey will never treat you like that. Do you understand what I’m saying? Hockey will never hurt you.”

The girl nods. Peter fetches another stick. Alicia carries on firing pucks. Behind them Sune says, “I know you’ve already decided to save the club, Peter. But it can be useful to be reminded of who you’re saving it for.”

Peter blinks up at the old man, more than he needs to. “You’ve coached the Beartown A-team all my life. Are you suddenly prepared to surrender the job to a . . . stranger?”

He does his best to hide the fact that “stranger” wasn’t his first choice of word. Sune’s breathing sounds labored as he replies, “I’ve always known that Beartown Ice Hockey is more than a club. I don’t believe in targets and tables, I believe in signs and symbols. I think it’s more important to nurture human beings than to foster stars. And so do you.”

“And you think that this Elisabeth Zackell in your kitchen thinks the same?”

Sune smiles, but his chin moves slowly sideways. “No, Elisabeth Zackell isn’t like us. But right now that might be what the club needs.”

“Are you sure about that?” Peter wonders.

Sune pulls at his belt; his failing heart has made his trousers too big. Of course he doesn’t want to give up his job; no one wants to do that. But he has given his life to the club, so what sort of leader would he be if he wasn’t prepared to swallow his pride when the club’s at risk of dying?

“When the hell can you be sure of anything, Peter? All I know is that the bear is supposed to symbolize the best of this town, but there are people around who want to bury it as a symbol of our worst qualities. And if we let those bastards get away with it, if we let them transfer all the money to Hed as soon as it suits their purposes, what signal are we giving the kids in this town then? That we were only a club? That this is what happens if you dare to stand up and tell the truth?”

“In what way is Zackell different from you?” Peter asks.

“She’s a winner,” Sune says.

The men can’t find any more words. They just stand there watching as Alicia fires pucks against the wall. Bangbangbangbangbang. Peter goes into the bathroom, turns the tap on, and stands in front of the mirror without looking at it. When he comes out, Zackell has already put her boots on.

“Where are you going?” Peter wonders.

“We’re done, aren’t we?” Zackell says, as if she has just employed herself.

“Surely we need to talk about the team?” Peter points out.

“I’ll put more coffee on,” Sune says, pushing past them into the kitchen.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Zackell says.

“You don’t drink coffee?” Sune hisses.

“I told you that when I got here.”

“I assumed you were joking!”

Peter stands between them, rubbing his eyelids with his palms. “Hello? The team! When are we going to talk about the team?”

Elisabeth Zackell looks as though a very small Elisabeth Zackell is running around inside the big Elisabeth Zackell’s head, trying to find the correct switch. “What team?” she asks.

* * *

The game may be simple, but people never are. Bang bang bang.

15

Vidar Rinnius

It won’t be long before the staff at Beartown School hold their first planning meeting in advance of the autumn term. They will discuss budgets and teaching plans and the rebuilding of the gym, as usual. But then a teacher will ask about a pupil named Vidar who has suddenly appeared on the register for one class. The headmaster will clear his throat uncomfortably. “Yes, he was a pupil here before, and now he’s joining us again. We’ve only just been informed . . .” The teacher will wonder where this pupil has been in the meantime. Has he attended a different school? “Well, Vidar has been in . . . an alternative educational system,” the headmaster will concede. “You mean youth custody?” the teacher will ask. “I think it’s more of a . . . clinic,” the headmaster will say. The teacher seems neither to understand nor to care about the difference.

A teacher toward the back of the room will whisper, “Assault and drugs charges. He tried to beat a police officer to death!” Another will snap, “I don’t want that psychopath in my class!” Someone will ask, in a louder voice, “Wasn’t Vidar given a longer sentence?” but will get no answer. Another will ask nervously, “Vidar? What’s his surname?” The headmaster’s eyelashes will flutter like a hummingbird’s wings when he replies, “Rinnius. Vidar Rinnius. He’s Teemu Rinnius’s younger brother.”

* * *

Elisabeth Zackell scratches her head. It’s hard to tell if her hair has been fashioned by a stylist or by mistake. She steps out through Sune’s door in shoes made for freezing temperatures and feet at least two sizes larger and lights a cigar. Peter follows her, clearly worried now. “What are you doing?” he asks.

Zackell, evidently not very good at reading people’s intentions, assumes he means the cigar. “This? Oh . . . I don’t know. I’m a vegan, I don’t drink alcohol or coffee. If I didn’t smoke, no normal person would ever trust me,” she says, not as a joke but as if she’s given the matter serious consideration.

Peter sighs deeply before he starts to cough. “You can’t just show up here and take for granted that you’re going to get the job of coach without telling me what you’d do with our team!”

Zackell fills her mouth with smoke and tilts her head to one side. “The team you’ve got right now?”

“Yes! That’s the team you’d be coaching!”

“What, your A-team? Hopeless. A bunch of has-beens who are too old and useless for anyone else to want them.”

“But can you make them good? Is that what you’re saying?”

Zackell chuckles. Not in a friendly or charming way, just patronizingly. “No. Dear me, no. There’s no way of making a useless team good. I’m not Harry Potter.”

Peter gets smoke in his eyes and loses his temper. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

Zackell pulls a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket. She blows the smoke away from Peter, hesitantly, as if she doesn’t really want to apologize for smoking and instead regrets that he doesn’t smoke. “Are you angry?”

“I’m not . . . angry,” Peter says, pulling himself together.

“You look a bit angry.”