Bäckström was on the third day of his weeklong imprisonment. The camp to which he had been transported was a former summer camp for children up in Roslagen. A number of barracks-like buildings scattered on a forested hill above a wind-blown reed cove. Complete with a rotted pier and a broken rowboat shipwrecked on the embankment. Paper-thin walls in the buildings where they were staying. Iron beds made for poor children, with banana-shaped bedstead bottoms and old horsehair mattresses from the days of the Second World War. Beds that you had to make yourself. Beds that were lined up in hovel-like rooms you were expected to share with another brother in misfortune.
Although Bäckström had luck. He wound up with a colleague from the traffic police in Uppsala who seemed relatively normal and just like him had escaped all these years until yet another new female police chief sank her claws in him. Besides his roommate had had the foresight to hide a suitcase with beer and aquavit under a nearby outhouse before he registered at reception.
Once there you were lost. Bäckström realized this as soon as he came up to the counter and talked with the attack dyke running the check-in.
“Cell phone,” she said, looking dictatorially at Bäckström. “All course participants must turn in their cell phones.”
“I didn’t think you could bring your cell phone with you,” Bäckström lied with an innocent expression. “I mean, they are extremely annoying if you’re going to be at a course and have to concentrate.” Hope the piece of shit doesn’t ring while I’m standing here, he thought. Especially as he’d stuffed it in his briefs as soon as he got on the bus they drove up in.
“You left your cell phone at home,” said the receptionist, looking at him suspiciously.
“Of course,” said Bäckström. “I mean, it’s extremely annoying if you’re going to be at a course and have to concentrate. A good initiative you’ve taken, I think.” Now suck on that, you little sow, he thought.
“Did you bring along any alcoholic beverages?” asked the receptionist as she glanced at Bäckström’s heavy suitcase.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” said Bäckström, shaking his round head. “Never have, actually. Both my mother and my father were strong opponents of intoxicants, so that’s never been of interest to me. I had that with me from childhood, so to speak,” added Bäckström, with a pious expression. “What I mean is that if you absorb such an important message while you’re still a child, then—”
“Room twenty-two, second building to the left, second floor,” the dyke interrupted, banging the key on the counter.
“Although I missed that bit with the phone,” said his colleague after they had finished the introductory greeting ceremonies between old constables.
“Too fucking depressing, actually,” he added. “I know a lady who lives only six miles from here, when for once I have the old lady at a safe distance.”
“It’ll work out,” said Bäckström, pulling in his gut and fishing his cell phone out of his underwear. “Who the hell doesn’t make mistakes? Personally I thought they had a bar at this place. I mean, who the hell runs a conference hotel without having a big fucking bar?” And my good malt whiskey, which I have in my little suitcase, I do not intend to share with some country sheriff from traffic in any event, he thought.
“Here they apparently do. The ones running the place seem to be some of those anthropologists. Did you see the menu?” His colleague sighed, shaking his head. “Vegetarian shit, all the way through.”
“It’ll work out,” said Bäckström. “It’ll work out. What do you think about a little checking-in shot, by the way? Then you can take the opportunity to call that broad you were talking about and ask if she has a younger girlfriend.” Who wants to sample the Bäckström super-salami, he thought.
Sure. It had worked decently for three days. Despite all the fairies babbling uninterruptedly about gender issues and equality and how you became a liberated man and not just a useless prisoner of your own sex, and why someone who had a cat was a better person than the bastard who stuck to an ordinary dog.
Despite group therapy and relaxation exercises and a crazy old hag who held forth on Rosen therapy and human energy fields and following your inner voice so as to find the way to a higher consciousness, free from inhibiting male hormones and hereditary prejudices.
Despite the food, which was a real Christmas banquet for both guinea pigs and chaffinches with its groaning abundance of mineral water and salad and birdseed and nuts and cleansing root vegetables and unseasoned soy patties and fruit and hot water with milk and decaffeinated coffee for the most daring, who really wanted to get turned on before going to bed.
Bäckström had not betrayed his true sentiments and agreed with everything, and already during the first group discussion he had initiated the dialogue by firing off a juicy fart right in the chocolate kisser of the queer leading the discussion. Fridolf Fridolin, the Stockholm police department’s own psychologist, as well as gender sensitivity manager at the agency. Small, round, and rosy, complete with a Manchester jacket and down on his upper lip.
“There’s a lot of talk about equality and gender issues among our fellow citizens these days, but how serious is this, when we—”
“Fellow citizens?” Bäckström interrupted with raised hands. “Why do you say ‘fellow’? Are all citizens supposed to be guys? Is that what you mean?”
“I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström,” said their discussion leader, smiling nervously.
“Bäckström,” said Bäckström. “I thought we agreed that we should call one another by our first names, and personally I know for sure that during our introduction I said that my friends always call me Eve. Never Bäckström, never even Evert. My friends call me Eve,” said Bäckström, nodding challengingly at his blushing victim.
“Excuse me, Bäck…Eve. Excuse me. Eve.”
“I forgive you, Frippy,” said Bäckström. “It was Frippy you wanted to be called?”
“Fridolf. It was my dad who—”
“Your dad,” said Bäckström accusingly. “But you must have a mom too? What did she used to call you?”
“Little Frippy, although that was—”
“You’re forgiven, Little Frippy,” said Bäckström with a dignified expression.
On the evening of the third day things really went downhill. First the aquavit ran out. Almost, at least, for he had had the foresight to save a drop of his own. Then he and his colleague from Uppsala came extremely close to being caught in the act as they were sneaking home to the hotel after the usual evening orgy at the hot dog stand up by the highway. Once in the safety of the room he listened to his voice messages. GeGurra had called and cursed and sworn like a sailor. Not the least bit like a silver-haired elderly art dealer. More like an ordinary tramp, actually, and it was all apparently that dyke Holt’s fault. As soon as he had been admitted to the gender sensitivity asylum, she had thrown herself on the old homo and evidently scared the shit out of him.
“You gave me your word of honor, Bäckström,” GeGurra repeated on the voice mail. “I look forward to hearing what you have to say in your defense.”
She’s trying to cheat me out of the cash, and now it’s a matter of being quick, thought Bäckström. He packed his little bag, put on a tie, wandered down to reception, pulled on the tie until his skull felt like it was going to burst, eased up on the tie so as not to die for real, and staggered into reception.
“I think I’m having a heart attack,” Bäckström hissed, sitting down on the floor, staring at the dyke receptionist with round eyes and waving his hands in front of his very red face.
Then everything had gone like a dance. The dyke receptionist called the emergency number while she sponged Bäckström’s forehead. To be on the safe side he had assumed a horizontal position on the floor. He was taken by ambulance to the emergency room in Norrtälje. Was admitted for observation overnight by a real Swedish doctor and not some quack in a violet turban. Private room, newly made bed, Finnish blonde who was apparently the night nurse and had a weakness for a real constable from the big city. She came in several times and chatted with him before he finally had a little peace so he could consume the last drops from the bottle he’d brought with him and get the beauty sleep he so heartily needed.
The next day he took a taxi home. Put on sick leave, with a referral to Karolinska in Stockholm to follow up on possible allergies, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and a few other goodies that worried the dear doctor up in Norrtälje.
Now, Holt, thought Bäckström as soon as he closed the door and fetched a cold pilsner from the fridge. Now this is war.