The Spyder Spook

Frans Balder always thought of himself as a lousy father.

He had hardly attempted to shoulder the role of father before and he did not feel

comfortable with the task now that his son was eight. But it was his duty, that was how he saw it. The boy was having a rough time living with his ex-wife and her bloody partner, Lasse Westman.

So Balder had given up his job in Silicon Valley, got on a plane home and was now standing at Arlanda airport, almost in shock, waiting for a taxi. The weather was hellish. Rain whipped into his face and for the hundredth time he wondered if he was doing the right thing.

That he of all self-centred idiots should become a full-time father, how crazy an idea was that? He might as well have got a job at the zoo. He knew nothing about children and not much about life in general. The strangest thing of all was nobody had asked him to do it. No mother or grandmother had called him, pleading and telling him to face up to his responsibilities.

It was his own decision. He was proposing to defy a long-standing custody ruling and, without warning, walk into his ex-wife's place and bring home his boy, August. No doubt all hell would break loose. That bloody Lasse Westman would probably give him a real beating.

But he put that out of his mind and got into a taxi with a woman driver who was dementedly chewing gum and at the same time trying to strike up a conversation with him. She would not have succeeded even on one of his better days. Balder was not one for small talk.

He sat there in the back seat thinking about his son and everything that had happened recently. August was not the only – or even the main – reason why he had stopped working at Solifon. His life was in turmoil and for a moment he wondered if he really knew what he was getting himself into. As the taxi came into the Vasastan neighbourhood it felt as if all the blood was draining from his body. But there was no turning back now.

He paid the taxi on Torsgatan and took out his luggage, leaving it just inside the building's front entrance. The only thing he took with him up the stairs was an empty suitcase covered with a brightly coloured map of the world, which he had bought at San Francisco International. He stood outside the apartment door, panting. With his eyes closed he imagined all the possible scenarios of fighting and screaming, and actually, he thought, you could hardly blame them. Nobody just turns up and snatches a child from his home, least of all a father whose only previous involvement has consisted of depositing money into a bank account. But this was an emergency, so he steeled himself and rang the doorbell, fighting off the urge to run away.

At first there was no answer. Then the door flew open and there was Westman with his piercing blue eyes and massive chest and enormous fists. He seemed built to hurt people, which was why he so often got to play the bad guy on screen, even if none of his roles – Balder was convinced of this – was as evil as the person he played in real life.

"Christ," Westman said. "Look what we have here. The genius himself has come to visit."

"I'm here to fetch August," Balder said.

"You what?"

"I'm taking him with me, Lasse."

"You must be joking."

"I've never been more serious," he tried, and then Hanna appeared from a room across to the left. True, she was not as beautiful as she had once been. There had been too much unhappiness for that and probably too many cigarettes and too much drink as well. But still he felt an unexpected wave of affection, especially when he noticed a bruise on her throat. She seemed to want to say something welcoming, even under the circumstances, but she never had time to open her mouth.

"Why should you care all of a sudden?" Westman said.

"Because August has been through enough. He needs a stable home."

"And you think that you can provide that, you freak? Since when have you done anything except stare at a computer screen?"

"I've changed," he said, feeling pathetic, in part because he doubted that he had changed one little bit.

A shiver ran through him as Westman came towards him with his mighty bulk and his pent- up rage. It was crushingly clear that he would have no means of resistance if that madman let fly. The whole idea had been insane from the start. But the strange thing was that there was no outburst, no scene, just a grim smile and then the words, "Well, isn't that just great!"

"What do you mean?"

"That it's about time, isn't it, Hanna? Finally some sense of responsibility from Mr Busy. Bravo, bravo!" Westman clapped his hands theatrically. Afterwards that is what Balder found the most frightening – how easily they let the boy go.

Perhaps they saw August only as a burden. It was hard to tell. Hanna shot Balder some glances which were difficult to read and her hands shook and her jaw was clenched. But she asked too few questions. She should really have been cross-examining him, making thousands of demands, warning him and worrying that the boy's routine would be upset. But all she said was:

"Are you sure about this? Will you manage?"

"I'm sure," he said. Then they went to August's room. Balder had not seen him for more than a year and he felt ashamed. How could he have abandoned such a boy? He was so beautiful and strangely wonderful with his curly, bushy hair and slender body and serious blue eyes, engrossed in a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of a sailing boat. His body seemed to cry out

"Don't disturb me!" and Balder walked up to him slowly, as if approaching an unknown and unpredictable creature.

He nonetheless managed to get the boy to take hold of his hand and follow him out into the corridor. He would never forget it. What was August thinking? What did he imagine was happening? He neither looked up at him nor at his mother and of course he ignored all the waving and the words of farewell. He just vanished into the lift with Balder. It was as simple that.