A few drops of rain fall against the windshield as we drive across Norr Bridge and the foaming waves of Strömmen. The black Rolls goes around Gustav Adolf’s Square and bolts up Malmskillnadsgatan through the light rain. I follow at a distance, with my headlights turned off. Somewhere beyond Brunkebergsåsen there’s a lightning strike. The massive, sooty steel skeleton of the telephone mast is lit up for a moment. We reach the large triangular plaza and pass the house of mourning where Lundin and I picked up the foundry-man Wernström earlier today. The Rolls slows down and turns right, I follow suit.
I bring the hearse to a halt. The Rolls turns right again and parks on the north-eastern corner of the plaza, with its nose pointing at the palace a few hundred metres to the south. The hearse is partially hidden from their view by the hundreds of bicycles parked between us.
For a few seconds everything is quiet; all I can hear is the rain, which drums against the bodywork of the car with increasing strength. A wet dog runs across the road with its tail between its legs and takes cover under a pushcart a few metres in front of us. The tarts have fled the plaza, but I see one of them standing in a doorway further down the street, her shawl draped over her head. She peers up at the dark skies.
Even though we’re about twenty metres away, I can clearly hear the door of the Rolls slamming. The raindrops on the windscreen blur the outline of the black-clad heavyweight, but I’m fairly sure that he’s the skin-headed bloke, the one who looks like a bull. As he hurries around the car, he’s opening an umbrella. He holds it out when he opens the back door. Elin puts her hand on top of mine, which is still gripping the steering wheel. She squeezes it hard.
The passenger is so tall that the other bloke has to reach up with the umbrella, but even so his head is obscured by it when he gets out. His overcoat is trimmed with an oversize fur collar.
Flanked by the man with the umbrella, the passenger crosses the road and disappears into the house next to the offices of the Telephone Company. The street number is written in yellow on a grubby black glass plate over the door: 24. Elin gasps for air. The interior of the Rolls lights up for an instant when someone inside lights a cigarette.
‘Did you see him?’
Elin’s voice is shaking.
‘Hardly. You?’
‘Not quite, but… it’s him all right. But why? With those thugs.’
‘You’ve heard the gossip, haven’t you?’
‘Was it really him?’
‘I think so. You saw him yourself.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest.’
I stare at the ground floor of number 24. Several of the windows are lit up, white, but a couple of the rooms lie in darkness, so the line of windows is as gappy as a six-year-old’s teeth. The rain grows heavier. The droplets on the windows are eaten up by rivulets running vertically down the glass. Under the pushcart, I see the stray still lying there with its tail between its legs, trembling with fear. I take the Husqvarna out of my shoulder holster, open the magazine and slot it back into position.
‘Ellinor.’
Elin’s voice is so faint that I can hardly make it out. I look over at her. Her hands have wilted in her lap. Her jaws are churning as if she’s chewing on an old bit of bread.
‘What’s that?’
‘She turns twelve this spring.’
There’s a stabbing feeling in my heart, my heart moves up one level, my temples are thumping. Elin looks out of the side window before going on: ‘I was no better myself. No better than Mum.’
‘I see.’
‘I think she’s having a good life. She’s living with a family on Lidingö. In a green house with white-painted corner posts. Sometimes in the summers I take the bicycle and pass by. Once I think I saw her… on her way to the garden bower.’
Elin’s voice cracks. I squeeze my pistol hard.
‘She looked quite well, maybe a little pale. I wonder if they give her enough food to eat, but I suppose they do – I mean, they have a house and everything?’
‘I’m sure they do.’
The plaza is lit up by a bolt of lightning; the clap of thunder follows almost at once. The rain picks up even more. In the Rolls, the cigarette has gone out.
I put my hand in my left pocket and get out the pack of Bridge and the box of matches I bought earlier at the tobacconist’s. I put these in Elin’s lap. Her mouth trembles slightly.
‘There’s still time. Tomorrow you’ll go to find your daughter.’
Elin nods, and swallows, smiling cautiously.
‘And you, Harry?’
‘Did I ever tell you about the sailor who boxed a circus bear?’
Elin leans her head back against the seat and stares up at the ceiling. Her hair falls back, and for the first time I notice she’s missing her right ear. A dark hole, surrounded by flaming red skin, goes right into her skull. No wonder her hearing’s worse than an artillery soldier’s. I refocus on the Rolls.
‘Another time. Leave the car outside Lundin’s. I’ll make it home under my own steam.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t bloody know. But I won’t pull my punches.’
Carefully I open the door. Elin puts her hand on mine and squeezes it.
‘Will I see you again?’
‘Maybe as early as tomorrow. But swing by Lundin’s and remind him to walk Dixie if you don’t.’
I tip my hat in farewell and slip out into the driving rain.
Hidden behind the bicycles, staying hunched down, I run across to the vaulted entrance of the Telephone Company. I dart into the shadows and press myself against the wall, before cautiously peering around the corner. The rainwater is gurgling in the gutters.
The stuttering engine of the hearse, once it starts, can hardly be heard over the sound of the storm. A match is struck in the driver’s compartment, but it goes out almost at once. A hand cups itself around the glow of the cigarette. Elin reverses carefully into Beridarebansgatan. Half a second later she’s headed off northwards.
The passenger door of the Rolls opens. A little skinny bloke jumps out and quickly scans the area. I draw my head back into the shadows. Carefully I cock my pistol. By the time I dare stick my hat back out into the rain he’s gone. From my angle diagonally behind the car, I can’t tell whether he’s gone back into the vehicle or the house.
I leave the shadow and follow the wall towards the car until I can take cover behind one of the bare trees a short distance from the corner. From here I can see both the car and the door of number 24 where the other two went in. If I look up I see the red-and-green neon NK clock rotating hazily through the rain, about fifty metres above the telephone tower, a slap in the face for Klara district and its poverty and misery. The rain sings its gloomy song in the corner drainpipe.
I put an unlit cigar in my mouth to assuage my need to smoke. No more than ten, fifteen minutes have gone by when the door of number 24 opens again.
The sturdy bloke holds up the umbrella to screen the tall passenger. The lanky figure supports himself against the other’s shoulder as they take a couple of unbalanced steps on the slippery paving stones. In his other hand he’s got a cigarette holder with a glowing cigarette in it. I crane my neck.
According to the signs, number 24 is situated in a block known as the Thunderclap, and by now the thunder is simultaneous with the lightning. The bolts of lightning hound each other across the dark sky. Even the ground under my feet is shaking.
The storm booms like an anchor chain on its way into the locker. The rain hammers against my hat brim. For a moment the lanky bloke in front of me looks up at the sky. There’s another crash. The lightning gives a milk-white sheen to his oval spectacles. The tips of his curled moustache point directly upward. Just like on the inauguration podium on Väster Bridge a week ago, his large horse-like teeth show when he smiles.
I’m still shaking when the rear lights of the Rolls disappear down the hill, back towards the castle. I take a couple of tremulous breaths and try to get my limbs under control, standing there with my head lowered, under the tree branches. It feels like the rain is cutting me into fine pieces.
Yet another peal of thunder wakes me up. I look around and quickly shuffle across Malmskillnadsgatan. I cock my pistol with my thumb, open the door of number 24 and slip inside.
My eyes quickly grow accustomed to the darkness. The stairwell smells of decaying wood, cigarette smoke and turpentine. The floor is covered in cracked flagstones. A well-used flight of stairs with a banister polished from years of use leads up. Somewhere on the first floor there’s a weak light shining. I throw away the drenched cigar, shake the water off my hat and light a fresh Meteor to calm my nerves.
Quietly I start up the stairs. On the second floor there’s a lone bulb burning on the ceiling. From higher up in the house, I hear a faint noise. It’s intermittent, a sort of guttural weeping. It hardly sounds human even. The windowpanes rattle whenever a crack of thunder is heard. I peer down into the street: no people, no motor cars.
I follow the eerie noise up the next flight of stairs. I hesitate for a moment on the third floor, and grip my pistol. I am not quite sure if it’s a sound of crying I’m hearing. Far below, a door opens and closes. I take a couple more drags on my cigar and then wedge it in my mouth. Holding the pistol in front of me, I stalk up another flight of stairs to the top floor of the building. Again, there’s a single light bulb spreading a jaded yellow sheen over the dirty corridor. Rat droppings are scattered along the skirting boards. Four of the doors are shut, with surnames on the doors, but the fifth is unmarked. The sound is coming from behind a peeling stairwell wall. I realise that someone is sitting on the attic stairs, blubbering.
I recognise a secret vagabond’s mark scraped with a knife by the frame of the fifth door, meaning that no one is going to open it when you knock. I raise my Husqvarna and shoot the door open, then peer into the dark single-room flat. The cigar falls out of my mouth in amazement.
Heavy drapes hang over the windows, and a floor lamp with a tasselled shade gives off a faint glow. Nonetheless I can make out a couch placed in the middle of the room, with a white blanket of some kind on it, and a pair of silk cushions gleaming slightly.
The floor is graced by a Persian rug, the walls with pictures of naked youths posing in all sorts of provocative positions: a twisted temple of Eros.
Closest to the door are a pair of men’s shoes. The leather has cracked in several places, but someone has filled it with shoe polish and soot.
In the space of a second, the memories of my own meeting places come flooding back: public lavatories, dirty third-class bathhouses, mouldering berths and crappy back lanes in dingy harbour towns, always ducking and diving to avoid insults and the watchful eyes of the police, those guardians of public morality.
The guttural sobs behind the stair wall bring me back to reality. I tread on my cigar and turn around. I cross the corridor, press myself to the wall and follow it to the corner, and peer up. There, curled up by the attic door, ten steps up, sits a young lad, rocking back and forth with his face in his hands. His hair is standing on end. He’s wearing a light-green shirt with the buttons done up wrong, and a pair of sturdy trousers. One of his socks has a hole over his big toe. On a step below him lies a coin.
I clear my throat but don’t get a reaction.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Are you from the Asplunden Institute?’
I climb a few steps. The coin is a two-krona piece.
I raise my voice: ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear what I’m saying?’
My shadow falls over the lad when I take another step. He looks up with a hunted expression, and a few awkward sounds press themselves out. He’s about twenty years old; his eyes are close together, greyish blue. He presses himself against the door. His green shirt breast is soiled with a thick goo.
Royal blood may be blue, but royal seed is as white as any other.
I put my Husqvarna back in the holster and slowly offer him my hand. I pick up the coin and sit on the step below. For half a second I stare at the engraved portrait of the King.
‘With the People for the Fatherland,’ I read, and hand him the coin. He snatches it from me.
‘The Asplunden Institute?’
I move my lips as much as I can, and shape my hands into the angle of a roof. I point at him, feeling like a proper idiot.
‘Asplunden?’
‘He can’t hear you.’
A voice with a strong Gotland accent makes me flinch. I quickly get to my feet. Seven steps below stands one of the thugs in his poplin overcoat – the big bloke with the weak chin and the waxed moustache. His eyes glitter with malevolence in his wedge-shaped face. He’s attached one of those cylindrical silencers to his pistol, the kind that Hessler mentioned. It’s pointing at the lad.
‘You can’t get away. The others are waiting below. You followed us in that hearse. We’re starting to recognise it.’
‘This deaf whippersnapper here isn’t doing you any harm.’
The youth makes some pathetic sounds, grasping for my coattails. The Husqvarna is calling for me in its holster.
‘He’s practically dead already. You too. The only difference is that he hasn’t realised it yet.’
‘Damned rat!’
‘Where is she?’
‘Who?’
‘Your female companion.’
‘You’re off your head.’
Hessler was quite right, the shot doesn’t make much more noise than a champagne cork. The lad’s head is thrown backwards into the attic door, in a spray of blood. He bounces forward hard and slides down the steps on his stomach.
The thug changes position; I draw my Husqvarna with a sound of steel rasping against leather. Without taking aim I let off three or four quick shots from my hip. The sound of the shots reverberates in the narrow stairwell, making my eardrums throb with pain. Despite the close range I miss. Shooting has never been one of my strengths. The copper ducks back around the corner, letting off another shot as he does; the bullet strikes the door behind me.
My eyes fill with tears from the acrid cordite. My ears are screaming. I fumble behind me with my left hand, and find the blood-spattered door handle.
I throw myself through the attic door and slam it behind me. My steps ring out as I back down a narrow passage between walls of wooden planks. I fire a few more times at the door. The bullets go right through the wood. I turn around and run into the dark labyrinth of the attic, holding my left hand in front of me.
There’s a smell of old dry timber. The rain is hammering down on the roof overhead and my heart beats wildly. Fumbling, I go around one corner and then another. I hear the attic door being opened, and I press myself against a dividing wall of planks by a storage unit, my pulse strong against the butt of my pistol. I have two bullets in the magazine, one in the barrel and none in reserve.
A clap of thunder shakes the attic. Dust falls from the roof beams. I gasp for air. There’s a click somewhere, and the lights come on, dazzling me.
A floorboard groans on the other side of the wall, to the right. I hiccup with tension. As quietly as I can I move away from the sound, turning into a gloomy passage where the ceiling lights have gone. The tenants have made short shrift of the walls here, stripping them for firewood. My coat sleeve catches on a nail sticking out of a joist. I rip it free and move on.
I sneak past a brick chimney stack where a tramp has made himself a nest to take advantage of the warmth. I can make out a blanket, a couple of empty green bottles and some old newspapers to sleep on. I come to a junction. Somewhere behind me I hear another floorboard creak.
I peer first to the right and then left. At the far end of the corridor, I catch a glimpse of a ladder leaning against the wall. There’s a hatch in the sloping ceiling. I withdraw into the dark passage again.
‘You’re surrounded! You have nowhere else to go!’
The voice echoes through the narrow space. These coppers will never leave me alone. Tiptoeing back into the darkness, I fetch two empty bottles from the tramp’s nest by the chimney stack. I place them across the passage about thirty centimetres apart by the junction.
Carefully I place the ladder against the wall next to the trapdoor and climb up. The hatch is locked with two sturdy bolts. The first of them I can open without any trouble, but the second one seems to have caught. I thump it a couple of times with my left hand to try and loosen the dust and dirt.
‘There’s no point trying to get away. We know you now, Kvist. We know where you live, how you work, we know your whole smutty background.’
The voice is closer now. I hit the bolt with the pistol butt and at last it moves. The hatch whines as it opens. The last thing I hear as I heave myself onto the slippery-as-ice copper-covered roof is a man coming at full speed across the floorboards.
I slide down the green-scarred wet copper but quickly grab onto the edge of the hatch with my left hand; then, pulling myself back up, on my stomach. I point my pistol into the opening, taking aim at the dark junction a few metres away.
The rain is everywhere. It freezes my hands, makes my fingers cramp up. It runs down my neck, and my spine like ice water. It even finds its way into my boots.
My heart hammers against the cold, wet copper.
The rain is falling so hard against the roof that it’s difficult to tell whether the clattering of shoes in there has stopped. I give the ladder a shove with the pistol, it bounces against the wooden wall, then slams into the floor.
The metal edge of the hatch cuts into my left hand; my fingers have already grown numb. Water drips into my face from the brim of my hat, making me blink. Inside, the man kicks one of the bottles and I see a shadow. The Husqvarna recoils in my hand as I squeeze the trigger. My slippery hand loses its grip on the edge but I catch hold of it again.
The man returns fire. I hear two muted shots, and see a puff of smoke. The bullets whizz over my head. I fire my last-but-one bullet before my wet, aching left hand slips and loses its hold on the metal edge.
Helplessly I slide down the copper roof.
*
Although the roof is not especially steep, its wetness makes it as slippery as glass. Water sprays all around me and I tense every muscle in my body as I slide down between two bevelled ridges about two centimetres high, and try to get some purchase by wedging my boots against them. I glance over my shoulder and see the drop approaching at a terrifying speed. Six floors down I see the ground; any fall here would mean certain death.
I pinch onto one of the ridges with my left hand and jam my right foot into the gutter. It groans under my weight but holds up. I refuse to look down, there’s a fluttering feeling in my stomach. Instead, I rise to my feet. Just as my pursuer sticks his head out of the roof hatch, I start to run across the roof towards the Telephone Company some twenty metres away. I don’t know how many times I slip and almost fall into the courtyard below, but I reach the black roof of the next building, and keep moving. My steps are almost silent, drowned out by both the driving rain and the thunder and the thumping boots of the goon on my heels. He yells something at me but I can’t hear what he says. Above me, the enormous telephone tower rises up, with its abundance of criss-crossing steel beams. Again, a flash of lightning illuminates the skeleton of the tower like an X-ray. I stuff the Husqvarna in my pocket and run across the roof until I reach its far corner.
I jump up and start to clamber over the steel beams like a spider. Suddenly my right hand slips off the wet metal, and my boot steps into thin air, leaving me dangling by my left hand. It feels like my arm is being wrenched from its socket. I shout into the darkness as the stitches in my side split and the wound opens.
A bullet hits the metal above my head and showers me with sparks. I don’t hear the shot, but I feel a burning sensation on my scalp. Warm blood begins to pool above the sweatband inside my hat, and mixes with the cold rain dripping onto my face. A steel splinter must have gone through the fabric.
With a stinging pain in my side, I swing my body and manage to get hold of the metal frame with my right hand, then find a foothold for my boot. I make my way crab-like around the corner of the tower, and start climbing up the outside. I’m gasping with exertion, and my sopping wet clothes hardly make it easier. Vertigo rips through my stomach.
Through the girders I see a network of platforms and ladders on the inside of the steel construction. I slowly climb closer until I can throw myself forward onto a platform.
I climb ladder after ladder, aiming for the illuminated NK clock at the top of the tower, my wet hands gleaming alternately red and green as it turns. All around me, church towers boom ominously, striking midnight over the waterlogged city. Twelve hours to go until Doughboy. Nearly there, if I can just come through this still alive. A coughing fit forces me down on my knees.
I spit out a lump of phlegm, compose myself and look down. My head starts spinning at once. The black-dressed heavyweight is crawling up after me through the framework of the tower, and soon he reaches the ledge below mine. He’s gained on me, but is moving more slowly now. I take aim at his back with my pistol, then I change my mind. The angle is awkward, a mass of steel girders makes the shot difficult, and I am trembling with adrenaline, excessive sobriety and cold. One bullet left.
I shove the Husqvarna back into my pocket and keep going, breathing heavily. The sound of steps behind me spurs me on to keep climbing until I reach the eighth and final ledge. From here, there’s a ladder leading up to the system of narrow walkways that forms the roof, on which the massive clock sits slowly spinning. The shifting colours of the neon light glide slowly across the steel girders. I glance over my shoulder and then climb the ladder.
I step onto a walkway around the square top of the tower. I run anticlockwise to the north-eastern of the four turrets, cylindrical cages clinging on to the massive construction like babies to a sturdy farmer’s wife. The clock, as tall and wide as four men, slowly turns sweeping its green beam of light towards me, but it can’t reach me as I hurry on to the next turret, and then the next. There’s nowhere to take cover up here. I reach the north-western corner just as I hear the sound of approaching steps.
One damned bullet. Shivering, I stop by the steel balustrade. Maybe I could climb over and get down on the outside of the girders? I put my pistol in my pocket and grip the railing with both hands. The wind is so strong that it sends my soaking wet coat flapping behind me like a cloak.
There’s a sucking feeling in my belly. The grey city below is swimming in black water.
The palace hardly looks much bigger than a sandbox. The intersecting streets of Vasagatan and Kungsgatan look like communicating trenches on a battlefield; you can still see one or two undaunted soldiers on night patrol. The night-time trams, like glow-worms, slowly make their way through the storm. A flash of lightning illuminates Kungsholmen, turns dark windowless gables white and lights up the golden top of City Hall, with its three crowns. My head is reeling from the height, my stomach turning, I can’t move from here.
I take the Husqvarna out of my pocket. I move forward a couple of metres, then lie flat on my stomach. Through a fine mesh of metal I see my pursuer place his foot on the first rung of the last ladder. The neon light colours his face blood-red. He struggles up with his pistol in his hand.
‘Come on then, you bastard. Come to Kvisten.’
I take aim at the top of the ladder some ten metres away. As he climbs through, the side of the clock is towards him so that he ends up in shadow while I’m bathed in green light. I blink blood and sweat out of my eyes. The man in black looks around for me and finds me at once, where I’m lying in wait for him. He raises his pistol and fires two shots in quick succession. Blue smoke whirls up in the wind. The quiet, dry thuds sound like when Lundin knocks together a couple of sections of a coffin with his swaddled wooden club, back home in the workshop. One of the bullets whizzes off in the night; the other hits the steel in front of me and ricochets away, throwing up sparks. I feel the vibrations through the metal and open my eyes. Infinitely slowly, sweeping like the unhurried movement of a scythe, the red beam lights the man up from behind. He drops to his knees, grasping his pistol in both hands and taking aim. I think I have him in my sights now. The recoil rips through my painful shoulder when I fire my last bullet.
They haven’t got me beat yet.
The man’s face grimaces in the red light and the pistol drops out of his hand. It bounces and disappears. He falls backwards onto the walkway, his legs moving as if he’s trying to get some purchase against the steel.
I stand up. My body is shaking with cold and adrenaline.
Holding my hat on my head, hunched over in the wind, I creep along the walkway towards the man from Gotland. He’s breathing in fits and starts. He looks me straight in the eyes, his hand clamped against a point between his right shoulder and pectoral.
‘Where are the other two, you bastard?’
He clamps his jaws together, hard. I lean over him, grab his collar and pull him up close to my face.
‘What are their names?’
He closes his eyes, coughing blood, and tries to smile.
‘Answer me, you swine!’
I pull him along by the collar, and haul his upper body into the opening above the ladder like a sack of potatoes. He groans loudly. I’m panting from the effort.
Grabbing his legs, I send him down towards the ledge, three or four metres below. The steel vibrates as he slides down the rungs of the ladder like bale of hay on a ramp. With a dull thud he hits the platform below head first, then lies there, writhing among some old porcelain fuses that have been left there. I climb down after him.
Dirt has mingled with his blood, covering his whole face in a brownish-black, coarse-grained muck. His nose is flattened, and in the green light sweeping over the platform, I see a couple of his teeth glinting. I take him by his collar again and drag him to the next ladder.
‘Where are the others?’
His body catches on something, maybe the rusty head of a rivet or similar, and I have to tug at him to get him free of it. I push his body halfway into the opening over the next ladder.
‘Another seven floors to go but I could do this all night.’
I give his arse a shove and he falls headlong down the ladder. He hits the ledge below with his shoulder first, but then he bounces, slips under the side railing and plummets soundlessly to his death.
‘God damn it, Kvisten.’
I sit down in the opening, my feet on one of the ladder rungs, peering down into the darkness until vertigo squeezes my innards. I get out a snuff handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my face. Then I fold it into a small square, take off my hat and press it against my scalp. There’s a small hole with blackened edges, just above the grey silk band, but the wound can hardly be very deep. I lean my head back and hold the handkerchief in place against it by pressing down my hat.
I want to check the corpse for identity papers and ammunition, so I climb back down the ladders, feeling increasingly relieved the closer I get to the ground. The thunderstorm is slackening off now, and the rain too. Every movement I make causes me pain.
On trembling legs I reach the final platform, the Husqvarna jolting my hipbone every time I take a step. I peer down and can just about make out the black body lying on its side on the roof below. As I hurry down the last ladder, a pistol is stuck through the rungs in front of my face before I reach the bottom. The small, bird-like man comes out of the shadows: ‘Did you forget about us?’
Us? I hear a scuffing sound behind me. My head collapses; the whole world shrinks into a red-glowing drop of molten glass. The pain shoots from the back of my head down my spine, and a feeling of weightlessness comes over me.
The last thing I see before the darkness sweeps over me is Doughboy standing on his own in his shirtsleeves outside the gates of Långholmen. He scratches his flea-bitten neck and wonders where I’ve gone.