“Well I’m not . . . just leave it, okay?”

“I’ve been told I’m not good at dealing with . . . people. Feelings, stuff like that,” Zackell concedes, but her face is still completely expressionless.

“You don’t say? I can’t think why!” Peter says sarcastically.

Zackell hands him the sheet of paper. “I’m a good coach, though. And I’ve heard that you’re a good general manager. If you can get the names on this list to give me their all on the ice, I can make a winning team out of them.”

Peter reads the names: Bobo. Amat. Benji.

“They’re just teenagers. One of them is only sixteen years old. You’re going to build the A-team out of them?”

“They’re not going to build the A-team. They’re going to carry it. That one’s the new team captain,” Zackell says, cutting him off.

Peter stares at her, then at the name she’s pointing at. “You’re going to make him captain? Of the A-team?”

She replies as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “No. You’re going to. Because you’re good with people.”

Then she hands him another piece of paper. On it is the name “Vidar.” Peter takes one look at it, then exclaims, “NOT A CHANCE!”

“So you know Vidar?”

“Know him?! He . . . he . . .”

Peter starts shaking and actually turns right around, like a crazy egg timer. Sune is standing in the doorway with coffee. Zackell turns down the proffered cup but is given it anyway. Sune grins at the note. “Vidar? That boy, yes. He probably can’t play in your team. For . . . geographic reasons.”

Zackell’s voice is matter-of-fact rather than smug when she replies, “I’ve been assured that he’s being released soon.”

“From the clinic? How’s that happening?” Sune splutters.

Zackell doesn’t say “Richard Theo.” She just says, “That’s not my problem. My problem is that I need a goalie, and he seems to be Beartown’s best goalie.”

Peter is literally hugging himself with anger. “Vidar is a criminal and . . . and a psychopath! He’s not playing on my team!”

Zackell shrugs her shoulders. “This isn’t your team. It’s mine. You asked me what I want? I want to win. And I can’t do that with a few old A-team players no one else wants. You have to give me more than that.”

“What?” Peter grunts, leaning disconsolately against the wall of the house.

Zackell blows out a cloud of cigar smoke. “A gang of bandits.”

* * *

Teemu Rinnius walks into the Bearskin. Ramona leans over the bar and pats him tenderly on the cheek. He’s carrying two bags of groceries, one of them largely filled with cigarettes. When Holger left her, Ramona stopped going out. Teemu has never criticized her for that; he’s just made sure she’s never gone short of anything. So she very rarely criticizes his life choices. Morals can always be debated, but the two of them know that most people are only trying to get through the day. As Ramona usually says, “Everyone’s wading through their own shit.”

Teemu can look almost harmless, with his neatly combed hair and clean-shaven chin. And Ramona can look almost sober, if you get there early enough in the morning.

“How’s your mother?” she asks.

“Okay, she’s okay,” Teemu says.

His mother is always tired, Ramona knows that. She’s rather too fond of sleeping pills and difficult men. Once Teemu got old enough, he was able to throw the men out, but he’s never been able to do anything about the pills. In his blue eyes he carries all the lives he wishes his mother could have had, and perhaps that’s why Ramona has allowed herself to care more about Teemu than all the other men who have wandered into and out of the Bearskin over the years. But today those blue eyes are lit up with something else as well: hope.

“Vidar just called! You know what he said?” he exclaims.

There are police investigations that claim that Teemu Rinnius is lethally dangerous. There are plenty of people who say he’s criminal. But there’s one pub in Beartown where he’ll only ever be a little boy, uncertain and eager.

“What is this? Some sort of quiz? Just tell me, boy!” Ramona snaps impatiently.

Teemu laughs. “They’re letting him out! My little brother’s coming home!”

Ramona doesn’t know what to do with her feet and ends up dancing around in circles twice before she gasps, “We need better whisky!”

Teemu has already put a bottle on the counter. Ramona hurries around the bar and hugs him. “This time we’re going to take better care of your brother. This time we’re not going to let go!”

The old bartender and the young fighter laugh. Today the pair of them are too happy to ask themselves: Why is Vidar being released so early? Whose hand is turning the key?

* * *

Politics is an endless series of negotiations and compromises, and even if the processes are often complicated, the foundations are always simple: everyone wants to be paid, one way or another, so most parts of all bureaucratic systems work the same way: give me something, and I’ll give you something. That’s how we build civilizations.

Richard Theo is very fond of his car; he drives many thousands of miles each year. Technology may be good for a lot of things, but it leaves evidence. Emails, text messages, phone messages, they’re all a politician’s worst enemies. So he drives a long way to talk quietly about things no one will ever be able to prove.

Peter Andersson is right. Theo called Elisabeth Zackell because he recognized her PR value. A female coach in a club known for violent masculinity. Theo also understands the value of winning, so when Zackell had gone through the list of Beartown Hockey’s A-team players, Theo asked what she needed. She replied, “First and foremost? A goalie. There was a junior here a couple of years ago with good stats, Vidar Rinnius. He seems to have vanished. What happened to him?” Theo knows nothing about hockey, but he understands people.

It was simple to find out which treatment center Vidar was in: over the years Theo has been a good friend to people working in various authorities and public bodies. So he called Zackell and asked her, “How much do you really want Vidar?” Zackell replied, “If you can promise me him and I can find three more good players in Beartown, I can win.”

Richard Theo had to cash in a few personal favors. It cost him some more promises and plenty more driving in the car. But Vidar Rinnius will soon be released, considerably earlier than expected. No laws have been broken, no rules have even been bent. The only thing that has happened is that Richard Theo has become friends with the chair of the right committee, and that the case happened to be given to a new adviser, who considered that Vidar’s “treatment requirements needed to be reevaluated.”

Vidar was only seventeen when he was arrested for assault and possession of narcotics, so he was sentenced to treatment in a secure clinic. Bureaucracies can be complicated things, mistakes can be made, and, hand on heart: Shouldn’t treatment requirements be reevaluated from time to time? Considering the acute shortage of places in treatment centers, wouldn’t it actually be politically irresponsible to leave a youngster in there any longer than necessary?

In his statement, the new adviser declared that Vidar Rinnius had been a promising hockey player before he was sent to the clinic and that his rehabilitation to a “prosocial life” would be improved if “the youth in question was given the opportunity to resume meaningful occupation in a more open setting.” Normally his release would have been handled more gradually, via other facilities and homes, but such things can be reconsidered if he has access to a “secure, stable home.” So an apartment in the Hollow, owned by Beartown’s communal housing association, was found to be vacant. Naturally, Richard Theo had nothing to do with that, because that would have been corruption. And obviously the adviser on Vidar Rinnius’s case wasn’t from Beartown, because that would have looked suspicious. But the adviser’s mother-in-law, who passed away recently, was from there. The adviser’s wife has inherited a small lakeside property, and in a few months’ time an application may well, entirely coincidentally, be submitted to the council, requesting permission to build a number of small holiday cabins on the plot. Ordinarily applications of that sort are rejected out of hand, because construction so close to the water isn’t permitted, but on this occasion the adviser will be fortunate enough to have his application granted.

* * *

One signature on a sheet of paper in return for a signature on another one. Bureaucracy in action. Elisabeth Zackell gets her goalie, Teemu Rinnius gets his little brother back, and Peter Andersson will get dangerous enemies. And, last of all, Richard Theo will get everything he wants. Everyone wants to get paid; the only difference is the preferred currency.

* * *

When Peter leaves the row house, Sune and Zackell walk the little girl, Alicia, home.