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"What do you mean?"

"Aha. So now my testimony is wrong as well, is it?"

They've come to Borg from town and are just trying to do their jobs as best they can.

"My list has been destroyed."

"We need to know if you got a good look at the perpetrator," the other policeman attempts to say.

"We've already said we're sorry about that. Really sorry. But as we've already explained now several times we have to question all the witnesses on the scene," the other policeman tries to say.

"I see you're not at all concerned about stomping in with muddy shoes on a newly mopped floor, I see that. It must be very nice for you."

"You asked for my testimony. My list is destroyed. None of this was on my list when I left home this morning, so now my entire list is in disarray."

But Britt-Marie is possibly just slightly irascible. That is how you get when people shoot at you.

"That's not quite what we meant," says the first policeman.

"We can appreciate that you're in shock, but we need our questions answered," one of the policemen tries to explain.

Admittedly it is not the two policemen's fault, it really isn't.

"But you really don't remember anything else? Any distinguishing characteristics?"

"It would be a great help to us if you could describe the perpetrator," one of the policemen asks.

"Of course I can do that," hisses Britt-Marie.

This is the moment when the police decide to go back into town.

"He had a pistol!"

"And how would you describe him?"

"Isn't a pistol a distinguishing characteristic?" wonders Britt-Marie.

Britt-Marie does not think this is the best of days to roll about in your wheelchair, grinning at people, she certainly doesn't. But Somebody makes sure she drinks her beer and eats a bit of pizza, and then she hands over her car keys.

"Careful with mop, Britt-Marie, expensive mop for God's sake!" She grins.

Britt-Marie mops the floor again. So hard that in the end Somebody has to stop her.

The police emit synchronized sighs. Britt-Marie exhales very pointedly back.

"I should like to inform you that I have perfectly good vision. I've spoken to my optometrist about it. He's an excellent optician, you should understand. Very well brought up. He doesn't walk around indoors with muddy shoes."

"So you pulled the wool over my eyes? You lied to my face?" Britt-Marie says in an injured tone of voice.

"No. I absolutely don't know at all."

"But Britt, you know, let me put question to you: how do you feel about blue car?"

"Yes," Somebody admits.

Somebody guiltily rubs her hands in her lap.

"The car is ready many days. But if Britt has no car: can't drive off and leave Borg, huh?"

Somebody shrugs. "I like you. You're, what's-it-called? A breath of fresh air! Borg is boring without Britt, huh?"

Somebody shrugs, ashamed of herself.

Britt-Marie doesn't have a particularly good answer on hand for this, it has to be said. So Somebody fetches another beer and calls out, as if in passing:

Then they spend a fairly lengthy amount of time on the soccer pitch, arguing about this, because Somebody is quite persistent about explaining that she could without any trouble respray Britt-Marie's car the same color as the new blue door. It wouldn't be any trouble at all. In fact, Somebody is almost a hundred percent sure that at some point she registered a paint-shop business with the local authority.

"Might I ask why you did that?"

"What do you mean by that?" pants Britt-Marie.

"I was under the distinct impression that the car had not been repaired yet!" Britt-Marie bursts out.

"Ah, you know. Been ready many days, huh, but… you know."

Vega keeps calling Sami without getting an answer. Britt-Marie tries to convince her that Sami may not have heard news of the robbery, but Vega tells her that this is Borg. Everyone knows everything about everyone in Borg. So Sami knows and Sami isn't answering because he's busy tracking Psycho down and killing him.

In the end Britt-Marie gets so worked up about this that she takes her notebook and tears out her list for the whole day, and starts one completely fresh. She has never done this in her whole life, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

She walks back through Borg with Vega and Omar, because Britt-Marie has by this point consumed half a can of beer, meaning it's quite out of the question for her to get behind the wheel. Especially not in a car with a blue door. What would people think? Omar stays absolutely silent until they get home, which is more minutes of silence than Britt-Marie has ever heard from him since they first got to know each other.

Under these circumstances, Britt-Marie can't bring herself to leave the children on their own, so she goes up to the flat with them and starts making dinner. They have it at exactly six o'clock. The children eat staring down at their plates, as children do who have learned to expect the worst. When Britt-Marie's telephone rings the first time they bounce up, but it's only Kent so Britt-Marie doesn't answer. When Sven calls a minute later she doesn't answer either, and when the girl from the unemployment office calls three times in a row she switches off the telephone.

Vega calls Sami again. Gets no answer. That's when she starts washing up, without anyone having asked her, and then Britt-Marie realizes the situation is really serious.

Omar mumbles from the table:

"The hell you know about it?" Vega says.

Then he picks up his plate in the dishwasher. Voluntarily. Which is the point at which Britt-Marie understands something extremely drastic has to be done, so she concentrates on breathing in and out half a dozen times, and then she hugs the children hard. When they burst into tears she does the same.

When the doorbell finally rings they're stumbling over one another to get there. None of them gives a second thought to the fact that if this was Sami coming back he would just have opened the door with his key, so when they tug at the door handle only to find the white dog sitting outside, Omar feels disappointed, Vega is angry, and Britt-Marie anxious. Because these seem to be their most basic emotions in life.

"I'm sure nothing serious has happened," says Britt-Marie.

"Sami is never late for dinner. He's a dinner-Nazi."

"You can't come in with dirty paws," Britt-Marie informs the dog.

Britt-Marie absorbs this information and then her eyes wander all the way back to Bank.

Next to it stands Bank, and next to her stand Max, Ben, Dino, and Toad.

"What training?" asks Britt-Marie.

"Don't mention it," mutters Bank impatiently and makes a gesture at her wrist, as if she was wearing a watch: "What about training?"

Britt-Marie patiently puts her bandaged hand in the other and turns her eyes to Ben. He smiles and nods encouragingly.

"How dare you!" protests Britt-Marie instinctively.

The dog glances at its paws, and seems overwhelmed by a lack of self-confidence.

"Hi there, Rambo!"

"Ha. Very nice of you to say so."

"You scared off the robber," explains Toad. "Like Rambo. That means you're an ice-cool motherfucker!"

"And that's, like, good."

Bank points her stick, gently poking Britt-Marie in the stomach.

"The training!" answers Max, who's wearing his national hockey team jersey and dancing up and down as if he needs the bathroom.

Max looks as if he's working his brain hard to bring clarity to what these two separate things could feasibly have to do with each other. Then he comes to the only possible logical conclusion: "Did the robber nick the ball?"

"I assumed it was self-evident that it had been canceled. In view of the circumstances."

"The robbery, my dear."

"What circumstances?"

So they play. In the yard outside the apartment block, between the refuse room and the bicycle stand, using three gloves and a dog as the goalposts.

Britt-Marie uncomfortably rocks back and forth from her heels to her toes.

"I'm sorry?"

"If he didn't nick the ball we can still play, can't we?"

The group gathered on the landing takes this conclusion into consideration, and when none of them seems able to come up with any rational line of argument to oppose it, there's not much else to do.

Max tackles Vega just as she's about to score, and she takes two swings at him with both fists. He backs off. She roars: "Don't touch me, rich kid!" They all shuffle away. Omar avoids the ball as if it's frightening to him.

"No," says Sami.

"Lucky for Psycho. But mainly lucky for you, Sami."

The black car stops on the road just as Toad has hit one of the goalposts on the nose for the third time, and it's refusing to take part anymore. Omar rushes into Sami's arms, and Vega turns around and marches into the house without a word.

"You're still coming tomorrow, aren't you?"

"Lucky for Psycho!" yells Toad excitedly, waving his thumb and index finger like a pistol, then cutting this activity short when Britt-Marie gives him a look as if he just refused to use a coaster.

Bank pokes Sami's stomach with her stick.

"Did you find him?" asks Bank.

The goalpost is having some sweets from Bank's pocket and getting scratched behind its ears as Sami draws closer.

She heads for home with Max, Dino, Toad, and Ben in tow. Before they go around the corner Ben stops and calls out to Britt-Marie:

"Hey there, Bank," he says.

"Coming to what?" Britt-Marie wants to know, and is met by a collective stare from the group as if she's lost her reason.

"Ha. Ha. Obviously I will. Obviously."

"To the cup! Tomorrow's the cup!" thunders Max.

He laughs. She doesn't laugh. So he stops laughing.

She sits in the kitchen until Sami comes out of Vega and Omar's bedroom.

"I'm not a gentleman," he says with a smile.

He raises his eyebrows. She closes her fingers around her handbag.

"I don't want to stick my nose in, because I'm certainly not the sort of person who does that, but if it's true that you were intending to do away with this Psycho tonight for the sake of Vega and Omar, I should like to clarify to you that it's not suitable for a gentleman to run around doing away with people."

Britt-Marie stands up, collects herself, and informs him coolly:

Britt-Marie brushes her skirt so they don't see she's got her eyes closed and is sucking her cheeks in.

"They're sleeping," he says with a somewhat forced smile.

"No, but you could become one!"

She doesn't say anything about how it will be her last day in Borg. They don't say anything either.

"Ah, drop it, I wouldn't have killed him. He's my best friend. He's just so fucking sick in the head, you get what I mean? He owes people money. The wrong kind of people. So he's desperate. He didn't think Vega and Omar would be there."

"Right," says Britt-Marie.

"I'd like you to know that you're certainly not the only one with tendencies to live a wild, irresponsible existence. I smoked any number of cigarettes in my youth."

"Sorry. I need a cig," says Sami with a sigh, and only then does Britt-Marie realize his hands are trembling.

"I'm certainly not," she says defensively. "I've just had a long day."

"That's not to say you're not important as well!" Sami corrects himself.

She goes with him onto the balcony, coughing dubiously and not at all demonstratively. He blows the smoke away from her and apologizes.

He starts laughing.

"I didn't think you were a smoker."

"Okay, okay," he smirks, handing her one and lighting it for her.

"I should like to ask if you have any more cigarettes," says Britt-Marie without blinking an eye.

She takes slight, shallow puffs. Closes her eyes.

"Sorry, is this bothering you?"

He laughs out loud, and she feels it's more at her than with her, so she goes on to clarify her statement:

"For a period in my youth I was actually employed as a waitress!"

And so they drink whiskey and smoke. Britt-Marie tries to blow some smoke rings, because she knows she wished she could do this at the time when she was working as a waitress. The chefs knew how to do it. It looked so very relaxing.

She nods with emphasis, just to underline that she's by no means just making this up off the top of her head. Sami looks impressed and gestures at her to take a seat on an upside-down drinks crate.

"You want a whiskey, Britt-Marie?"

Britt-Marie's common sense has obviously locked itself in its room, because suddenly Britt-Marie hears herself saying:

"Yes, absolutely, you know what, Sami? I would like one very much!"

"Dad didn't leave, we chased him away, me and Magnus," Sami tells her without any preamble.

"Who's Magnus?"

"He likes 'Psycho' better, people don't get as scared of a 'Magnus,' " says Sami with a grin.

"Ha," says Britt-Marie, but it's actually more of a "huh?" than a "ha."

"Dad hit Mum whenever he'd been drinking. No one knew about it, you know, but once Magnus was picking me up to go to soccer training when we were small, and he'd never seen anything like it. He comes from a right nuclear family, his dad worked for an insurance company and drove an Opel, sort of thing. But he… I don't bloody know. He saw me step in between Mum and Dad, and I got a hiding from Dad as usual, and then out of fucking nowhere Magnus was standing there yelling, with a knife at Dad's throat. And I don't think I got it until then, that not all kids lived like we did. Not all kids were afraid every time they came home. Omar cried. Vega cried. So, you know… it felt like that was enough right there. See what I mean?"

"Where's your mother, Sami?"

"Just away for a while, she'll be coming back soon," Sami attempts.

"Magnus helped chase Dad away. You don't find friends like that just anywhere."

Sami empties his glass. Scratches his head.

Britt-Marie collects herself and points her cigarette at him menacingly.

"I may be many things, Sami, but I'm no idiot."

"She's dead," he admits at last.

Britt-Marie coughs smoke through her nose. Sami pats her helpfully on the back and fetches water for her. Then stands by the balcony railing, peering over the edge as if he's measuring the distance to the ground.

Exactly how long it takes Britt-Marie to get absolutely clear about the whole story, she can't say. Night has fallen over Borg, and she thinks it may be snowing. When Sami, Vega, and Omar's father left, their mother took on more driving work with the trucking company. Year after year. When the trucking company fired all its drivers she started working for foreign companies, whenever she could find them, to the best of her ability. Year after year, as mothers do. One evening she got caught up in a traffic jam, got delayed, and her bonus hung in the balance. So she drove through the night in bad weather, in a truck that was too old. At dawn she met an oncoming car, the driver of which was reaching for his cell phone, so that he'd veered onto the wrong side of the road. She swerved, the tires of the truck lost their purchase on the road in the rain, and the whole thing overturned. There was a deluge of blood and glass, and three children sat waiting two thousand miles away for the sound of a key in the front door.

Sami pats her on the arm understandingly, as if he's the one to console her and not the other way around.

It may sound paltry and less than you might expect. But it's all she's got.

"We never informed anyone that Dad cleared off. He must be abroad somewhere, but he's still registered at this address. We had his old driving license, so Omar bribed a truck driver at the petrol station to go to the police in town pretending to be him and signing some papers. We got a couple of thousand on Mum's insurance. No one else ever asked anything about it."

Britt-Marie has to refill her glass before she manages to say:

"I am so very, very sorry, Sami."

"And you?"

Sami lights her another cigarette, then one for himself.

"But… how… I mean… the authorities," Britt-Marie starts, in a welter of disconnected thoughts.

"Vega's afraid, even though she mainly seems angry. Omar is angry, though you'd probably think he was afraid."

"I don't have time to feel things, I have to take care of them."

"She was a bloody good mum. She was a warrior," whispers Sami.

"But you can't just… Good God, Sami, this is not Pippi Longstocking, is it! Who will take care of the children --"

"I will. I will take care of them," he says simply, cutting her short.

"As long as I can. I get the fact they'll catch us out pretty soon, I'm not an idiot. But I only need a bit of time, Britt-Marie. Just a bit. I have plans. I just have to show that I can support them financially, you understand? Otherwise they'll take Vega and Omar and put them in some fucking children's home. I can't let them do that. I'm not the type that just walks out."

"For… how long?"

"Thanks," he says and puts his hand on her shoulder.

"They might let you take care of the children. If you explain it exactly as it is, they might --"

"We can show them your cutlery drawer! We can explain that you have the potential to become a gentleman!"

She leans against him.

"Look at me, Britt-Marie. Criminal record, unemployed, and mates with people like Psycho. Would you let me take care of two children?"

"And Sven knows everything?"

"I was under the impression that one became a policeman because one believed in rules and regulations."

"He knows everything."

After a considerable amount of reflection she adds:

"I think Sven became a policeman because he believes in justice."

Britt-Marie's eyes blink very hard as they stare at his shirt. It's a curious thing to do. A grown woman on a young man's balcony in the middle of the night, just like that. What on earth would people think about that?

"He's the one who took the international call from the police who found the truck. He came here to give us the news. Cried as much as we did. It's like having a parent in the army, you know, when your mum drives a truck. If someone in uniform comes to your door you know what it's about."

Britt-Marie straightens up. Wipes her face down.

"We're going to need more whiskey. And if it's not too troublesome, I should like to ask for a bottle of window-cleaner as well."

"Under present circumstances I could see myself making do with any old brand."

"So… Sven…"

Sami runs his hands over her hair to calm her.