Two days to go. The kitchen window is wide open, I’m shaking with cold as I crawl about with a bucket of soapy water, scouring the floorboards with a brush. My damp knees are aching but I only have a little bit left to do. I straighten my back and bend down again, keeping one of my eyes clamped shut against the smoke, and grunting when ash from my cigar tumbles over the clean floor. The eleven chimes from St Stefan’s Church break through the sound of my scrubbing and, before long, the bells of Johannes join them from the south. On the eighth chime I put one foot on the floor and on the ninth I stand up, taking the cigar out of my mouth: ‘Harry Kvist in a magnificent comeback.’
I mop up the remaining water with a rag and wring it out over the bucket. My cracked cuticles sting. I have to get myself down to the Toad, and make arrangements for my bare-knuckle fights. Only a few more weeks till the first dust-up. I should invite Hasse, the shoeshine boy, to show him how it’s done. No one has ever knocked me down.
‘Never taken a count.’
Maybe I should start going for runs, work on my fitness a bit. Until I knew better I thought it would be enough to take Dixie out for long walks, but she limps along so slowly that it’s impossible to keep up a decent pace without strangling her.
I shake the rug out of the window. Dust, dog hair and crumbs rain down into the courtyard. I whip it up and down a couple of times, making a cracking sound. A black alley cat darts off, her belly dragging against the ground. A smell of fried herring wafts on the wind from some neighbour’s kitchen.
I lay out the rug on the floor and admire my handiwork. Doughboy shouldn’t lack for anything. It’s been six months since he was allowed to move into the cell next to mine. I kept my eye on him from the moment I first saw him, and I couldn’t have done otherwise – a beautiful lad like that.
It was less than a week before the kid started running errands from the kitchen staff to a gang of bootleggers on the East Wing. After a few days of running back and forth with corn gruel – which can be fermented with yeast – he started trying to sneak a share of the goods for himself. If I hadn’t stepped in at that point and taken him under my wing, he would have found himself in trouble.
When love entered the picture it felt as natural as putting my left foot forward in the boxing ring. We spent the nights in an ecstasy of desire, moulding one another according to our passions, but after two weeks there was no longer any need for this: each of us knew exactly what we wanted. The last six months, which are usually so slow and tedious, flew by.
Every morning I woke with joy in my breast, my blood warm, a silky smooth feeling in my heart. Soon after the debacle of the mashing operation, he started making rat traps using shoe soles from the cobbler’s workshop and steel springs, which he sold to the other prisoners. There’s no doubt about it, the lad knows what he’s about, and I’m sure he’ll be handy around the cigar shop.
I walk out of the kitchen, lift the mattress and pick up a pair of trousers which have been in the press to sharpen up the creases. I make the bed with clean linen. There’s a growing mountain of dirty laundry. Christ knows what I’ll do with my dirty laundry now that Beda’s gone west. I’ll have to find a new washerwoman. The main thing is that it’s clean and tidy here for Doughboy when he’s released in two days’ time. That is, if I dare trust him and his promises.
Unfortunately you can’t always trust smooth-cheeked cabin boys. The same old story repeated itself to damnation during my years at sea: first I’d sit with one of them, wasting time and money for a half-eternity in some dingy drinking hole in a port somewhere; then we’d set up a meeting for later on in some dark corner or alleyway, but they’d rarely show up as agreed; and when they did some of them would make the mistake of trying to rob me. The first few times I set to worrying, imagining they’d been shanghaied or thrown in jail. I’d spend hours looking for them in bars and whorehouses, but it wasn’t long before I started wising up and would slope off back to my ship instead, cursing under my breath.
But there ought to be a difference between a couple of hours propping up a bar and several months in the slammer. We were able to talk when the screws weren’t listening; we told each other all there was to tell. I know everything about Doughboy: I know about his drunken father and his dead sister looking down on him from heaven. In a way he reminds me of myself when I was young, although in my case it was my twin brother that died, and I never saw hide nor hair of my father, drunk or sober.
‘He’ll probably keep his promises. Where else would he go?’
I speak these words to myself to soothe my uncertainty. I take the hanger with Doughboy’s serge suit from the kitchen door handle. It’s black with wide lapels and it smells spanking new. I remove a couple of hairs from the shiny cloth, then hang it up again and run my hand over it.
The soot-speckled windows could do with a going-over but that will have to be done in the spring, after I’ve removed the inside windows so they can be opened. Maybe we can give each other a hand with it. I put on my hat and go downstairs to give Lundin a lift to the bank.
The stairwell smells of lunchtime. I grip hold of the old banister, polished smooth by trouser seats and coarse working hands. On the way down I caress the glistening wood with my scarred hand.
‘With this twelve hundred today, you’ll owe me three thousand, one hundred and thirty-six kronor and fifty öre.’
‘It’s been worse.’
I steer the hearse down Birger Jarlsgatan. Outside the pawnbrokers on Norrlandsgatan, the Monday queue stretches a good way along the street, exposed to the cutting wind. The sky hangs like a lead roof over the city. Most of the women have tied shawls tightly around their heads. Someone has already opened an umbrella, even though it hasn’t started raining yet. Next Friday, when it’s time to get their rags out of hock with the old man’s pay packet, they’ll all see each other again. They stand about nattering, most of them seem to be acquainted. I take my eyes off them and change down a gear.
Lundin gets out his nickel-plated snuff tin and taps it with his finger.
‘If your figures add up, my brother, you’ll have to pay off the debt in weekly instalments of around two hundred and eighty kronor. And after that you’ll be paying me about sixteen kronor a day.’
‘For all eternity?’
‘Amen.’
I take a left into Stureplan. We pass the Hotel Anglais, and the wheels thump against the double tram tracks. A newly made coffin, required for the following day, thumps around in the back.
In the middle of the triangular plaza, a customer is sitting in a hut, having his shoes polished. That would be a good spot for my boxing talent from outside the City Library. A hut of his own to lock up at night. I glance at Lundin, who’s kneading himself a decent wad of tobacco with a shaky left hand. He shoves it under his lip.
‘Maybe we should get it all down on paper?’
‘By God, yes, of course we should. You pick up the funds this evening and I’ll arrange it. Have you spoken with the widow again?’
‘Haven’t had time.’
‘But it’s yours if you want it? The shop?’
‘Got till Wednesday morning.’
Lundin rearranges the snuff in his mouth with his tongue: ‘So the Devil got you in order at long last. Who would have thought it?’
I brake to let two elegant youths in brushed top hats cross the road in front of the Royal Dramatic Theatre. They’ve carefully done up all the buttons of their overcoats; I can’t tell if they’re wearing waistcoats.
Birger Jarlsgatan merges into Nybroplan. Crates, kegs and piles of birch wood fill the quays. Some of it’s being loaded onto ships, some of it’s coming off. Stevedores are running up and down the gangplanks. A sack of potatoes or brown beans has split and scattered its contents over the muddy paving stones of the quay. A couple of lads with pale noses are crawling about on all fours, trying to salvage what they can. Lundin seems to have dozed off.
I turn right and then left where a faded metal sign nailed into a façade announces the beginning of Kungsträdgårdsgatan. In the summer months, Kungsträdgården with its trees and wooden benches is the cauldron in which much of the city’s gossip is both boiled and salted; I often sit there in the sun, feasting my eyes on bare-breasted sailors walking under the trees with a swing in their step. Now it is almost deserted here apart from a couple of loud-mouthed lasses, who perhaps haven’t understood that the weekend is over yet, stumbling about in the slight shadows of the lime trees.
A tall lad, hanging about outside the bank, lets his tongue whip across a cigarette paper. I glance at him as I brake. He’s wearing plus fours, with a big beret on his head. Possibly a waiter with the Monday off. He leans nonchalantly against the wall, one of his boot soles also resting against it. I hold my breath; there’s a tickling sensation in my crotch immediately followed by a mouldering guilt.
Doughboy just cannot get out of prison quick enough. I need the angular outline of a bloke in my bed as soon as possible.
Lundin wakes up with a start, coughing. He nods at the fuel gauge, I nod back at him, acknowledging that I will have to fill up.
‘Don’t you bloody forget now, the automobile has to be back for the funeral tomorrow morning, nine o’clock at the latest.’
He peers up at the flint-grey sky, steps out into the traffic and hurries towards the bank. I release the clutch and continue on my way, to pick up Elin. We’re on the trail of the Rymans. The steering wheel shudders as the engine splutters and chokes, but I press the accelerator and pick up speed, passing the statue of Charles XII at the southernmost end of the park. He’s pointing stoically towards the Russians, but the pigeons have gone for the warrior king in a big way and covered him in shit.
I stifle a yawn. The shoulder holster with the Husqvarna chafes against my ribs. I adjust it. On the corner of the Norr Bridge stands a lone angler with his line in the water, and a faded leather cap on his head. The skin of his creased face hangs loosely like the folds of a turkey’s throat. I don’t know if I’ve seen him before or if I am having some sort of dark premonition. I shudder in my seat and turn right by Gustav Adolf’s Square to make my way back to Sibirien and Standards.
I’ve turned up Sveavägen and I’m just nearing the columns of the Handels High School when I catch sight of a back that I feel I recognise. I step on the brakes, move to the kerb and crawl along behind the kid. Damn, surely that’s him? The worn jacket, the stained beret and the shiniest boots in town. He’s limping, but he’s running all the same, even if the pace leaves something to be desired.
I smile to myself, thinking of my future as a boxing trainer. It’s been almost fifteen years since I last set foot in a boxing club. Maybe they’ve forgotten all about me by now. I pull up alongside the shoeshiner. He’s sweating, his head hanging low between his shoulders, but he keeps pushing himself on.
I’m just about to wind down the window and encourage him to keep it up for the last hundred metres, when Hasse looks up at his finish line. He sucks in his lower lip and picks up speed, his cheap boots clattering against the pavement. I remember my glory days, pull away and leave him behind. If I had strength enough to knock out one well-prepared opponent after another back in those days, then surely I can also squeeze a bit of information out of a postman like Ryman?
The great windows of Saluhallen Market let in the washed-out late-autumn sunlight, illuminating the lunchtime rush. Business is brisk after the morning’s wholesaling, and everywhere you can see women bargaining for flowers and root vegetables. From time to time the whistles of the steam trains can be heard through chattering voices, pulling into and leaving Central Station. The massive siding is only a stone’s throw to the north.
Mrs Ryman brushes off discarded leaves and stalks from her stall with her slim hand. Her greyish apron is stained with soil. She’s thrown a man’s jacket with a frayed collar over her shoulders. Her features are unmoving, frozen on her face. Maybe it’s the loss of her father that’s turned her to stone.
Elin and I are inside the market’s own Restaurant NORMA, watching her through the window. We sit next to each other, so we have a clear view. The café is half-full of people eating their lunch. Elin slurps her coffee without taking her eyes off the florist. Mrs Ryman sits behind the table, her hands clasped in her lap.
‘Stina works in the fish market next door.’
Elin’s cup clinks as she puts it back on the saucer. I tear my eyes away from Mrs Ryman. Elin is wearing a navy-blue casual dress. A fashionable colour, she claims. Her shoes are brown, like the leather gloves lying on the table.
‘Who?’
‘Stina. My flatmate.’
‘Explains why you smell of herring.’
Elin bites her lip, folds her bun wrapper down the middle and then into a triangle, before she starts drumming her fingers gently against the tabletop.
‘What do you think of my hat? It’s new.’
I glance at her cloche hat with its blue band.
‘It suits you. And Mrs Ryman?’
‘She’s waiting. We’re waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘It’s almost one. I bet her old man comes to see her if he finishes his round early.’
‘Another drop of coffee?’
Elin nods.
‘I wish I had a cigarette to go with it.’
I grunt, peering again at Mrs Ryman from under the brim of my hat. Just then I see a small, thin man in a uniform approaching her stall with sprightly steps. He’s carrying a black-lacquered postbag. The strap has worn a smooth diagonal line across his chest. His small eyes are too close together, and there’s something bird-like about his face. For the first time since we caught sight of her, Mrs Ryman breaks into a smile as she stands up and runs her hands over her apron. He gently touches her arm in greeting, but no more.
‘Will you bloody look at that.’
‘What did I tell you?’
Elin gives me a wry smile. I fumble about in my inside pocket for the leather cigar case.
‘And now?’
‘More waiting about.’
I grunt as I take out a Meteor.
‘That’s my speciality.’
‘I’ll bet it is.’
‘No one beats me on that score. Patient as a bloody night fisherman.’
The Rymans are each tucking into a sandwich. Sitting beside one another, their eyes seem to be looking right into the café through the plate-glass window. I quickly look down, covering my eyes with the brim of my hat, and, out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Elin is doing the same. Another locomotive yells out a warning signal from the siding. I whisper: ‘Did they see us?’
‘What bloody difference does it make?’
I let out a hoarse, involuntary cough. The sound explodes like dynamite through the premises. I clear my throat: ‘No, of course, what do they know about us? What do we do afterwards, when they’re done?’
I strike a match and get the cigar going. Elin brushes crumbs off the table.
‘I suggest we split up if they go their separate ways. You take the husband and I’ll have a word with the wife?’
‘Okay.’
Elin touches up her lipstick and blots her lips on a tissue, then checks the result in a mirror.
‘Go easy on the poor sod, and meet me later by the car?’
‘Of course.’
We remain there in silence, and when the gaunt Mr Ryman at long last takes his farewell of his wife with a cursory nod, I pick up my cigar case from the table. With a parting wink at Elin, I follow him out of the café.
I take off my tie, roll it up and put it in my trouser pocket. Ryman walks out of the back door and cuts through salesmen, lorries and porters. I keep about ten metres behind. His uniform hat is an excellent marker.
At the north end of Saluhallen market, some blokes are unloading big blocks of ice. Just as I’m passing, one of the blocks hits the floor with a crunching sound. Fragments of ice fly through the air like transparent shrapnel.
Ryman turns around.
For a second or so I get the idea that he’s staring right at me. I slow down, look the other way and start rooting about in my pockets. Ryman carries on, but he seems to be moving faster now. We emerge into the heavy traffic of Vasagatan and turn off towards Central Station. I’ve let the distance between us increase a bit. Ryman steps aside for a man pushing a cart of flour sacks, touching the brim of his uniform hat as if he knows him.
If he’s on his way to the central Post Office depot, a little further up on the other side of the street, I don’t have a lot of time to play with. I crack my finger joints and quicken my pace. When I’ve almost caught up with him, I take a quick look around me. Two wrinkled old bats, with wicker baskets hanging from the crooks of their arms, are waiting to cross Vasagatan. Wrapped in aprons, scarves, cardigans and shawls, they both look like colourful versions of Karloff’s mummy. On the other side of Bryggargatan, a tramp has laid out his wares on a blanket: boot straps, safety pins and other bric-a-brac. In a telephone box behind him stands a copper; he gives himself away with his uniform trousers. I have to go easy here, for the sake of Ida and Doughboy if no one else.
I follow Ryman as he crosses Bryggargatan. Once we’re on the opposite pavement, I glide up on his right side. He’s just about to turn his head when I grab his ear, slap my other hand over his mouth and drag him along behind me. The heavy Husqvarna bangs against my ribs. Ryman’s postman’s boots bump along the pavement, a couple of muted shrieks of anguish slipping through my right hand.
I kick open the first door on the left and toss Ryman inside, following him into the gloomy stairwell. If I’m not mistaken, this was where the editorial department of Stockholms Dagblad used to be. I feel as if I can still hear the thumping of the presses, and the reek of printer’s ink in the air. Maybe another newspaper has moved into the premises.
I put my left hand around Ryman’s throat and press him up against a wall from which most of the plaster has fallen. He collapses like a pocket knife when I give him a sharp jab in the stomach. I straighten him up again and take a firm grip on his testicles. He knocks my hat off with his left arm. He’s as weak as a fly. I chuckle.
‘You ought to calm yourself down,’ I say, gripping even harder on his crown jewels. ‘You want me to tear off your balls?’
I consider whether I should snap his collarbone with my right. It’s easily done with shorter blokes, because you can punch from above, doesn’t cause a lot of damage, but hurts enough to persuade them to betray their own mothers if that’s what’s required. No need for it this time, though: Ryman’s already whining piteously. I have him exactly where I want him. Limp as a midshipman after a litre of vodka and two hours with the harbour whore.
‘A couple of months ago you buried your father-in-law. The undertaker was Lundin on Roslagsgatan. Do you remember?’
‘The Mora grandfather clock,’ hisses Ryman. By now his mug is as red as his ear. He gags for air. His gob is moving like the mouth of a babe on the breast. I slacken my grip on his throat.
‘What are you on about?’
‘That heirloom. You can take it if you want.’
I grip hold of his jaw, pull his face forward and drive my elbow into his solar plexus, all while squeezing even harder around his balls.
‘On the way to Lundin you saw something. A black car. Didn’t you?’
‘I don’t remember. Is it my brother-in-law what sent you?’
‘Compose yourself! Think about it. A black car. A couple of men carrying out a body, or taking a large man away?’
‘I remember! I remember!’
‘Start with the car. What model was it? Do you remember a number plate?’
‘The car was black.’
I squeeze even harder. It’s not entirely unpleasant feeling the weight of the seed-basket in my hand. Work and pleasure at the same time. Ryman whines like a street dog outside the abattoir.
‘My wife. My wife thought it was suspicious.’
‘What was, that the bloody car was black?’
‘Those blokes.’
‘Description?’
‘They took out a body, a woman I think. They threw her into the car.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘Both of them wearing black.’
‘Poplin coats?’
He shrugs, terrified.
‘Anything that stood out?’
‘One was smaller than the other.’
I sigh and tense my jaw.
‘That’s all I know. I swear.’
I glance briefly into the street before I look into Ryman’s eyes again. I’ve been in this game for long enough to register the slight glint in his iris. He’s preparing himself for some desperate attempt to escape. It’s not a question of courage, only the dumb despair that absolute panic gives rise to. Inexperienced people can come up with all kinds of nonsense when they’re in a tight spot.
I let go of his balls and block the knee that comes flying towards my crotch. Then I pile an uppercut into his chin. There’s a crunching sound as his teeth snap together, and the back of his head thumps into the wall. The postman goes out like a candle in the wind and collapses on the floor.
A little cloud of pulverised plaster hangs in the dark air where his head was a moment earlier. I clutch my aching right fist, grunting to myself.
Ryman lies on his side, red blood flowing out of his broken gob. His uniform cap has rolled into a corner by the stairs. One of his feet is twitching. Blood and dust from the floor are all over his bird-like face. I resist the urge to search him for his wallet. Can’t be bothered.
‘This codger won’t be waking up for a while. You have dynamite in your fists, Kvisten, even if some might say you’re thick as two short planks.’
I disappear out the door before I’m caught red-handed. Calmly I walk back to the car on Norra Bantorget, as agreed. I sigh loudly, dusting off my hat and pressing it down over my cropped Långholmen hair. I doubt Elin has had any more success than me, which wouldn’t leave us very much to go on. Just as well. I think we have taken this as far as it’ll go. It’s time to drop it.
There’s no Elin waiting for me in the car. I turn up my collar and make myself comfortable in the driver’s seat. In the square, the tram tracks glitter, green rivulets running between cobble-stones, rubbish and horse manure. There’s a large crowd waiting at the bus stop for the number 56. The queue for the hot dog stand of the bloke who was knocked down by Prince Gustaf Adolf ’s car a couple of years ago is almost as long. His sports car skidded, they said. Good for business, but not so good for the hot dog man himself, who was left with his legs all twisted at the end of it all. I let out a sigh so long that it seems it will never end.
I push my hat forward and close my eyes. In my dream I hear Doughboy calling out my name. An old woman, so badly disfigured by chickenpox scars that you’d think someone must have tortured her with a fistful of cigarettes, is keeping him prisoner. I can’t help him.
Despite the icy air I wake bathed in sweat like an old carthorse when the car door is opened.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Elin smoothes the back of her coat and gets into the passenger seat. She’s bought a bunch of flowers wrapped in brown paper. I catch the smell of hyacinths.
I shake my head to chase away the images from my dream and clear my throat: ‘Must have nodded off.’
The sweat stings where the prison fleas have ravaged me. Elin takes off her gloves and puts them on top of the dashboard.
‘The old man was taken by lung fever. One week he was fit as a fiddle and the next he was dead. Seventy-six years old, but still. Life is hard to fathom.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Her father. Apparently he had a cat. It was meowing so pathetically after he died. That was how they found him. Hadn’t been fed for days, poor little thing.’
For the second time in two days I burst out: ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Had coffee.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Did you find out anything yourself?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘I found out quite a bit. She sketches in the evenings, goes to classes at the Workers’ Association.’
‘Really?’
‘I think she’s got a good memory.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
Elin takes a deep breath. From the dairy on Tunnelgatan a girl, her long hair all tousled with sweat and dust, comes running with a jug of cream. An emaciated horse hitched to a cart slowly raises its head and follows her with pleading eyes as she passes. The nag should have been sent for slaughter long ago.
‘Just like we thought, the Rymans were on their way back from Lundin’s when they brought out my mother. The car had Stockholm plates. She was sure it was a Rolls-Royce. Her brother has a car workshop.’
‘But he doesn’t have the Mora clock.’
‘What was that?’
‘Go on!’
‘There were four blokes involved, but two of them were standing on the other side of the window with Petrus and she didn’t get a good look at them.’
‘And the other two?’
I pick up my notebook and the pen.
‘She remembers them as looking very different. She even joked about them being like Laurel and Hardy.’
‘One large bloke and one smaller?’
‘One of them looked like an old boxer. A big fellow. With a smashed nose like yours. And a bushy white moustache.’
I stop writing. That bloke is an old acquaintance: the same man who cut Petrus’s throat at Konradsberg and later assaulted me outside Lundin’s. Now his ashes rest in consecrated ground one fathom down, with the remains of a fourteen-year-old lad.
When my day comes I wouldn’t mind a similar resting place.
‘And the other one?’
‘Short and slim. About one metre sixty-five tall, about the same height as her husband. He had a hooked nose, and he was a bit slow, had trouble keeping up with the others, he was following behind.’
‘And they didn’t find it at all odd to see them there?’
‘As far as they were concerned everything was in order. There’s another detail, you see: there was a constable in uniform patrolling up and down Ingemarsgatan.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘She couldn’t say. He was quite far away and she only saw his back.’
‘Someone from the Ninth District. You said they were on their way back from Lundin’s?’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘So they saw nothing on their way there? Did they hear anything?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Shots, for example.’
‘She probably would have mentioned that.’
I hum to myself as I jot some notes. At last the number 56 bus comes chugging along. Passengers alight and get on.
‘So, you had coffee with her?’
I think about Ryman’s bleeding, unconscious body in the dark stairwell. Someone should have found him by now. I hope I didn’t cause any lasting damage.
I start the motor car and put it in first gear. After checking behind me, I pull out and drive off towards Vasagatan, heading for the electrically lit King’s Bridge to Kungsholmen.
‘We had two cups, drank ’em from the saucer with sugar lumps. Sweet buns too.’
I rub my chin and root out a cigar from my coat. I push down the accelerator; the tyres sing as we cross King’s Bridge.
Elin holds onto her new hat as the hearse sways from side to side. In the back, the coffin rattles about. A rhythmic thumping of wheels against the welds in the track can be heard as a fast train pulls into Central Station from the north.
‘What was that?’
Elin leans towards me.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said something.’
‘Did I? I don’t think so.’
Women have got something wrong with their hearing, I’m sure of it. I spin the steering wheel and turn right. On the corner of Scheelegatan and Fleminggatan, the number 2 tram has collided with a horse-drawn carriage. A shiny brown mare lies on her side breathing heavily, with distended nostrils. Her right back-hoof scrapes against the paving stones. One of the wagon’s shafts has broken off and pierced deep into her side. Life is slowly draining out of her, filling the gaps between the cobblestones with blood.
The gawping passengers press their hands and pale faces against the misted windows. The driver limps back and forth in front of the horse in his dusty leather boots, tears running into his beard as he slaps his cap against his thighs again and again.
Elin gasps and I slow down. As I turn the steering wheel to overtake the wagon lying halfway across the lane, I see a motorcycle policeman unbutton the holster of his service pistol. Just as I’m turning into Agnegatan by the old lunatic asylum, I hear the shot, to put the animal out of its misery. It echoes all over the block. Elin flinches in the passenger seat. I take a deep puff on my cigar.
‘Not like in the cinema, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Makes more of a noise than you think. It would have been heard halfway across Sibirien.’
‘I read a serial in the Sunday supplement of Social-Demokraten once: the murderer muted the sound of the shot with a pillow.’
‘We’ll have to ask Hessler the copper about that,’ I say, pointing at the large police headquarters building looming up ahead of us. We park and go into the lion’s den, waiting for a while in a room filled with secretaries and clerks before the head of the spirit-smuggling unit can receive us.
A constable in uniform leads us through an anteroom full of typists clattering away at their machines, then a hall dominated by a gigantic oak table surrounded by chairs. None of the group of dumb coppers sitting there pretending to work has the energy even to look up.
‘There’s more brass here than on Karlavägen when the May Day parade goes by,’ I mutter to myself.
Hessler has his own office at the back of the hall. He’s been promoted since the last time I saw him, as if he didn’t already rake in enough, including bribes from the gangster syndicates organising vodka smuggling. The chief constable is in uniform sitting behind his desk, which is crammed with piles of documents and papers, all of exactly the same height. There are a few crow’s feet around his blue eyes and the well-trimmed little moustache on his thick upper lip is shot through with grey streaks. He’s pulling a comb through his pomaded hair when we walk in, but stands up when he sees Elin. He gives me a meaningful pursed-mouth glance as they shake hands. He turns to me.
‘Harry. Been a while. Three years?’
‘That’s right.’
The last time we saw each other was in the remand cells at the bottom of the building. Hessler was drunk and in need of some company. I get out my notebook from my pocket and he breaks into a smile. I’ve never been able to make head or tail of the bloke.
‘Eighteen months at Långholmen. Intimidation, wasn’t it?’
Hessler sits back down behind his imposing desk and drums his fingertips together. Elin chooses the chair on the right.
‘The plaintiff was only twelve years old.’
‘Old enough to hear the truth. And see his old man escape through the kitchen window.’
‘And may I ask who the lady accompanying you is?’
With a nod at Elin, Hessler straightens his back in his chair and folds his hands. The smile is beginning to sag, like a pair of old braces.
‘Miss Johansson. A client.’
Elin’s chair scrapes. Hessler leans towards me.
‘Harry, it’s bad enough just my talking to you.’
‘It’s all in order.’
‘But mightn’t it be better if Miss Johansson waited outside?’
‘You have my word that you can speak in front of her.’
‘This is men’s business.’
‘Damn it, Hessler!’
I take the cigar out of my mouth and raise my voice. Hessler averts his eyes and adjusts one of the paper piles in front of him. Elin’s chair scrapes again. I daren’t look at her. Maybe by now she has unpicked the truth about who I am, maybe it’s quite clear that Hessler and I have a past.
I rifle through my notebook and clear my throat: ‘It’s about a car with a Stockholm registration, a Rolls. Ten fifty-eight.’
Hessler nods stiffly: ‘One moment.’
He stands up, slides his hands over his uniform trousers and leaves the room. I look around for an ashtray but can’t find one. I hold the cigar vertically to balance the tower of ash. Carefully I drop the notebook back into my inside pocket.
‘What a bloody stuffed shirt!’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be in his debt for this, not you.’
I sigh when I think of it, then strike the ash off into the cupped palm of my hand.
‘Ask him about the pillow when he comes back.’
‘The pillow?’
‘If a pillow can smother the sound of a shot. Like in that serial.’
‘Ask someone else.’
‘Why?’
‘He who has no debts is a rich man.’
‘A bit late for that. You said so yourself just now.’
She’s getting on my nerves, and I’m about to reply when the door behind us creaks. I sit there with the ash in my hand. I feel Hessler’s weak fingers on my shoulder. He leans forward next to my ear, smelling faintly of hair tonic and flat pilsner.
‘Nothing, Harry.’
Hessler squeezes my shoulder, then takes his hand away. He goes around the desk, pinches the creases of his trousers and sits down again with a smile on his face.
‘Nothing?’
‘The number plate in question doesn’t exist. These things happen.’
I close my fist around the pile of ash in my hand.
‘What about checking for similar plates on a Rolls?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I don’t have that much time.’
Surreptitiously I let the ash sprinkle over the rug between my fingers.
‘What do you mean?’
I stand up and put my cigar in my mouth. Elin moves forward in her chair, her hands on her handbag.
I button up my coat and I’m just about to leave when she stops me with one hand on my lower arm.
Hessler twists slightly in his seat: ‘I’ll be here till late. If you come by in a couple of hours, I may have something for you, Harry.’
‘I’ll see.’
‘Our informers are going on about some kind of comeback for you. A series of illegal matches arranged by Lindkvist at the Toad?’
‘Not worth your while thinking about it.’
‘Is it possible to silence a gun by using a pillow?’
Hessler recoils at the sound of Elin’s voice. His little moustache trembles, a fleeting smile. He stands up for the second time, comes round the desk and holds out his arm towards the door. He doesn’t even look in her direction.
‘To some degree, but it’s not as effective as with a Maxim silencer.’
Elin stands up and buttons her own coat. She takes her leather gloves in her right hand.
‘What’s that?’
‘Miss is obviously not very familiar with firearms. A Maxim silencer is a device that’s screwed onto the barrel of the weapon. It makes the sound of a shot no louder than, for instance, the pop of a champagne cork.’
‘A champagne cork?’
‘Ah, there’s a phrase that Miss understands. Watch out for that one, Harry. She seems to have expensive tastes.’
The joke tumbles out stillborn from Hessler’s pilsner-stinking gob. He isn’t even smiling about it himself as he ushers us towards the door with outstretched arms. Elin slaps her gloves into her left palm.
‘The cheek!’ she hisses.
‘Yes, quite incredible, isn’t it? Apparently the American secret police have been using them for ten years,’ says Hessler.
‘The chief constable should watch his behaviour,’ Elin goes on.
Hessler reaches the door. He turns to me and looks into my eyes: ‘I’ll be staying here till eight or nine tonight. Ten if I have to. If you telephone me I’ll make sure they let you in.’
The door creaks and Hessler strokes his ridiculous moustache. He smiles foolishly at me. I let Elin out first.
We pass through the hall full of the blank-faced coppers and then the second room, the typewriters chattering louder than a shoot-out in the gangland war of ’23. I lead the way, sticking my cigar in my mouth and buttoning up my coat on the way out.
At the desk nearest the far door, a brunette stands up abruptly when she catches sight of me. She must be a bit over twenty. Her thick woollen dress is dark green. From her left shoulder some five white buttons seek their way diagonally across her modest-sized bust, down towards her slender waist. She’s slightly under medium length, possibly about one metre seventy. For a moment she looks as if she’s prepared to run out of the door, but she stays at her post, her eyes gazing down at her desk. Maybe I had to rough her up at some point in the past? I rarely have to work over women, though, and I think I’d have remembered it.
I slow down. She runs her hands over her skirt and takes a breath so deep that I can hear it over the chattering typewriters. Full lips, broad hips. The sort of filly that sometimes makes me want to reconsider my ways.
I touch the brim of my hat as I pass. She meets my gaze with her brown eyes and smiles stiffly. The scent of a musky perfume finds its way into my many-times broken nose, and then the door shuts behind me and Elin.
Still thinking about that typist, I wander back to the car with Elin clattering along behind me on her heels. The hearse is parked by a run-down building on Bergsgatan. The car seats are ice cold.
‘Loathsome person, that Hessler.’
I stifle a yawn in the driver’s seat: ‘So we’ve come to the end of the road.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That was the last lead. Time to let this thing go.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘The day after tomorrow I’ll be the owner of a cigar shop. I also plan to train a couple of lads to box, if I have the time.’
‘The day’s not done yet.’
‘We have nothing else to go on.’
Elin frowns, then comes to life suddenly and slaps me hard on the thigh. I jump in my seat.
‘Petrus’s school!’
‘Which one?’
‘Asplunden Institute for the Deaf, Mute and Blind. So you’re forgetful and dozy, it seems! It’s just around the corner.’
Why the hell doesn’t that woman give it a rest? I grip the steering wheel, and snap: ‘I’m tired and I’ve a lot to get done by Wednesday. There’s a funeral tomorrow.’
‘Do me this last favour. Then you will have more than kept your promise to Mum.’
I grunt in response. Darkness falls as a polluted rain comes down over the city, already overflowing with water. A gang of sparrows mob a radio aerial on the building above.
‘This’ll be the last thing I do. After that you’ll have to go on alone, if you have anything else to work with, which I doubt.’
The smell of herring and perfume washes over me as Elin leans forward and pinches my cheek, like I was some lad in short trousers. My knuckles turn white around the steering wheel, my scars glowing red against the white. Elin warbles: ‘You’ll see, Kvist. I have good instincts and, as the last few days have proved, I’m usually right.’