A Man Called Ove: A Novel

The man in the white shirt just continues shaking his head as he pushes past her. And only then does he see the shadow rising up behind her.

“And so will I,” says Ove.

“And I will,” says Parvaneh.

“And me!” say Patrick, Jimmy, Anders, Adrian, and Mirsad with a single voice as they push their way into the doorway until they’re falling over each other.

The man in the white shirt stops. His eyes narrow into slits.

Suddenly a woman wearing beat-up jeans and a slightly too big green windbreaker turns up at his side with a voice recorder in her hand.

“I’m from the local newspaper,” Lena announces, “and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The man in the white shirt looks at her for a long time. Then he turns his gaze on Ove. The two men stare at one another in silence. Lena, the journalist, produces a pile of papers from her bag. She presses this into the man’s arms.

“These are all the patients you and your section have been in charge of in recent years. All the people like Rune who have been taken into care and put in homes against their own and their families’ wishes. All the irregularities that have taken place at geriatric residential care where you have been in charge of the placements. All the points where rules have not been followed and correct procedures have not been observed,” she states.

She does so in a tone as if she were handing over the keys of a car he’d just won in the lottery. Then she adds, with a smile:

“The great thing about scrutinizing bureaucracy when you’re a journalist, you see, is that the first people to break the laws of bureaucracy are always the bureaucrats themselves.”

The man in the white shirt does not spare a single look at her. He keeps staring at Ove. Not a word comes from either of them. Slowly, the man in the white shirt clamps his jaws together.

Patrick clears his throat behind Ove and jumps out of the house on his crutches, nodding at the pile of papers in the man’s arms.

“We’ve also got your bank statements from the last seven years. And all the train and air tickets you’ve bought with your card and all the hotels you’ve stayed in. And all the Web history from your work computer. And all your e-mail correspondence, both work and personal . . .”

The eyes of the man in the white shirt wander from one to the other. His jaws so tightly clamped together that the skin on his face is turning pale.

“Not that there would be anything you want to keep secret,” says Lena with a smirk.

“Not at all,” Patrick agrees.

“But you know . . .”

“. . . once you start really digging into someone’s past . . .”

“. . . you usually find something they’d rather keep to themselves,” says Lena.

“Something they’d rather . . . forget,” Patrick clarifies, with a nod towards the living room, where Rune’s head sticks out of one of the armchairs.

The TV is on in there. A smell of fresh-brewed coffee comes through the door. Patrick points one of his crutches, giving a little poke at the pile of paper in the man’s arms, so that a sprinkling of snow settles over the man’s white shirt.

“I’d especially take a look at that Internet history, if I were you,” he explains.

And then they all stand there. Anita and Parvaneh and that journalist woman and Patrick and Ove and Jimmy and Anders and Adrian and Mirsad and the man in the white shirt and the three nurses, in the sort of silence that only exists in the seconds before all the players in a poker game who have bet everything they’ve got put their cards on the table.

Finally, after an interval that, for all involved, feels like being held underwater with no possibility of breathing, the man in the white shirt starts slowly leafing through the papers in his arms.

“Where did you get all this shit?” he hisses, his shoulders hoisted up around his neck.

“On the InterNET!” rages Ove, abrupt and furious as he steps out of Anita and Rune’s row house with his fists clenched by his hips.

The man in the white shirt looks up again. Lena clears her throat and pokes helpfully at the pile of paper.

“Maybe there’s nothing illegal in all these old records, but my editor is pretty certain that with the right kind of media scrutiny it would take months for your section to go through all the legal processes. Years, maybe . . .” Gently she puts her hand on the man’s shoulder. “So I think it might be easiest for everyone concerned if you just leave now,” she whispers.

And then, to Ove’s sincere surprise, the little man does just that. He turns around and leaves, followed by the three nurses. He goes around the corner and disappears the way shadows do when the sun reaches its apex in the sky. Or like villains at the ends of stories.

Lena nods, self-satisfied, at Ove. “I told you no one has the stomach for a fight with journalists!”

Ove shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Don’t forget what you promised me.” She grins.

Ove groans.

“Did you read the letter I sent you, by the way?” she asks.

He shakes his head.

“Do it!” she insists.