Free The Merman by Carl-Johan Vallgren

jeans?’ he asked.
    â€˜Under my other ones.’
    He gave a whistle.
    â€˜What a pro. So what do we do now?’
    â€˜We carry on until we’re done.’
    As we cycled off towards the Kronan shopping centre, I pondered my next move. Cheap or expensive stuff? There were pros and cons with each. Something like bottles of Date perfume, for example, I’d be able to sell with no effort at all. Almost all the girls at school used that. Most mornings in the common room you could hardly breathe for all the Date Anna or Date Natalie the girls had been spraying over themselves. They were in the department stores and were easy to nick. The problem was that theywere cheap and wouldn’t bring in more than a tenner for a bottle, which meant that I’d really have to make an effort to accumulate a sizable amount.
    Brand-name clothes were a completely different matter. The school snobs were mad for Pringle and Lacoste. They had them at Johansson Brothers, but the shop assistants there kept a close eye on everything that cost over a hundred kronor. Maybe, I thought, it might be worth the risk if my brother went in first and attracted their attention, asked some stupid question about autumn fashions or if he could please use the customer toilet. If I was lucky, nobody would notice me, I could hide behind an older customer, sneak over to the Lacoste sweaters in the corner and get hold of one before they could react.
    Actually, I didn’t like nicking stuff. I only did it in emergencies. I could sort of see Dad in myself whenever I stole something, and I didn’t like the idea that we might be similar; that we might feel the same things or think the same way.
    There were other ways of getting cash that I found preferable. Like returning empty bottles to collect the deposit, or hunting for certain types of magazines in skips. There was a junk shop down by the docks that paid a krona apiece for old copies of girlie mags or worse stuff. Skips are full of that kind of thing. If people only knew what their old men read when nobody’s looking. But if I spent a whole week going through all the skips in town looking for porn mags, I wouldn’t get seven hundred kronor. It was quicker with clothes and gadgets.
    â€˜Where to now?’ my brother asked.
    I had made my choice:
    â€˜Kullens Shoes... ’
    Kullens was located in Schubertvägen on the other side of the railway line. They had brand names: pricey trainers and women’s shoes, and a weak point in the building itself that could be exploited. I wondered which would be better: smart shoes or trainers? A pairof Stan Smiths would be easy to flog at school. The lads were mad for them, you could see loads in the schoolyard – ten, fifteen kids, all wearing identical white trainers. With smart shoes I was a bit less sure, especially about what was in fashion just then. The Dobber jeans might bring in fifty kronor, and a pair of shoes the same. The problem was that we didn’t have time to get hold of much more before the shops closed, and we were nowhere near seven hundred kronor. I needed to get hold of more expensive stuff. Unfortunately Gerard wasn’t particularly interested in fashion. It was hard to imagine him in a Lacoste shirt or a lambswool sweater from Lyle&Scott. He might be interested in gadgets, maybe a digital watch. But it was risky. If I got caught, life would be really terrible.
    The customer rush at Kullens was over. I wandered among the shelves, trying to seem as if I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I picked up a pair of trainers in passing, pretended to look at the price tag and put them back. Finally one of the shop assistants came up, a young girl with a gap between her front teeth.
    â€˜Are you after something special?’
    â€˜Some wellies, actually. Preferably with a lining.’
    â€˜They’re further back. Check on the shelves behind the children’s shoes.’
    I nodded in