Cardell stands on Castle Hill and stares at his own shadow, stretched long and thin by the morning sun shining low against his back. Out at the Quayside, the linden trees are leaning in the wind, and each time it grows stronger, dry leaves are torn from the branches and carried up in a great whirlwind, only to float down over the worn roofs that stand crowded together in poverty at the Meadowland. Bearing the coming winter in mind, Cardell is reminded of those fistfuls of earth that will be strewn over the lids of coffins. Soon the cold will tighten its grip around the city and start to squeeze, and before the season shifts, many come of dust shall to dust return, just as soon as the ground has thawed enough to receive their remains.
Down by the street corner, a group of journeymen are making a noise. They are all so drunk, they’re swaying on their feet and have to brace themselves against the building from time to time. One of them is in a worse state than the others, soon made the object of their merriment. With an open mouth and vacantly staring eyes, he tries again and again to raise himself out of the gutter, only to lose his balance and fall back again. His companions laugh themselves silly at his efforts. Finally he resigns himself and sprawls on the ground, his body inert, burbling like a child. A disappointed silence spreads at the fact that the play appears to be over, before one of the journeymen steps closer on unsteady legs, unties his trousers, and lets his urine pour out over the fallen. Soon the others join him, and their laughter echoes down the alleyways.
Indebetou House appears different now to before. The building remains as it was, slanted and askew, drafty and neglected. The general level of chaos is also the same, the disorder as palpable, but under the new police chief, the mood has shifted. Magnus Ullholm crawls before power, and in his service, the chief duty of the police is to listen to informants and trace malicious rumors to their source. If the source can’t be identified, they take the next best thing: better to punish an innocent than allow a crime to go unavenged. It’ll serve as a warning to others, and now that it has grown too cold and risky to sleep under a bare sky, there is no lack of vagabonds who will confess to anything you like in exchange for a sheltered corner in a prison cell. Nor do they lack for witnesses willing to accuse others of any crime at all, merely to satisfy a grudge.
Cardell forces his way in through the shivering police constables and sergeants, with their shiny badges around their necks, laden as they are either with bundles of paperwork or freshly caught sinners. Here the smell of hangovers hovers as thick as fog. Yesterday’s wine has soured into stains on shirts and trouser legs, the sharp odor of vomit stings the nostrils. He makes his way up the stairs. When Cardell enters his office, Isak Blom takes an alarmed jump back caught in the act of stuffing his stove with paper.
“Cardell, you just about gave me a stroke, damn it. Come in and close the door.”
The plump secretary returns to his task, the papers that have been laid on the embers bursting into flame with a crackle, Blom rubbing his hands to the warmth.
“What logs we have to burn are not enough by far. In this way I can clean up the office and don’t have to be cold, though it’s a little like pissing yourself: a momentary comfort, soon regretted. My only hope is that I’ll be far away from here the day someone comes to take an inventory of the archives.”
Cardell shakes his shoulders to drive some blood into his limbs.
“What’s happening in this city? I’ve seen my share of drunkards, but rarely so many this early in the day.”
“Ah, you haven’t heard? Malla Rudenschöld’s punishment was not as well received by the people as our good Baron Reuterholm had convinced himself it would be. What you see is the baron’s latest maneuver to curry favor with the commoners, whose displeasure he now fears as much as our late King Gustav did. The baron has ordered every pub to let the journeymen booze as much as they like, with the Crown footing the bill.”
“Is the man out of his mind? If people are allowed to drink for free, the whole city will go under before the week is out.”
Blom shrugs. He closes the stove door and crawls up in his chair, raising the collar of his coat up to his ears.
“Let us hope that Reuterholm’s frugality and the kingdom’s poor finances will turn off the tap before then. Well, speaking of money, have you come for yet another handout?”
“Quite the opposite.”
Cardell stands with his back to the tiles of the stove and leans his weight into its warmth.
“I have come to relinquish my post, if that is the right term for our agreement.”
Blom reaches into the desk drawer and takes out a half-filled bottle and two cups. He raises an eyebrow at Cardell, gets a nod in answer, fills both cups, and pushes one across the desk while emptying his own. Cardell throws his head back and tosses the drink down his throat to spare himself from as much of the taste as possible. It can’t be entirely avoided—the spirits are cheap and impure—but its strength can’t be faulted, and its comforting heat fills his chest. Blom carefully replaces the stopper in the bottle.
“I will show you the respect of not pretending to be surprised. The fact is that I have been expecting your visit.”
Blom leans into the back of his chair and knits his fingers together over his belly.
“Your companion came up here yesterday in a very agitated state of mind. He made a scene on the stairs, and if I had not come to his aid, I think the patience of the constables would have worn thin and they would have clapped him in irons until he calmed down. He did what he could to convince me to reassign the mandate of the police authority to him alone.”
“Emil was here?”
“It wasn’t easy to grasp what he wanted. He was both upset and—if I am not mistaken—scared. Time and again he stopped speaking to listen out for something, and I asked myself if I was growing deaf since I couldn’t hear what it could be. But there was nothing there. I don’t know what you were thinking when you decided to go into partnership with someone like that. Or rather, of course I do. They are very similar in appearance, him and his brother, isn’t that right? Tell me, has he told you much of his background?”
“Not a lot. I don’t know much more than what you yourself have told me. He was in bad shape when I first ran into him, drinking with abandon.”
Blom nods.
“I have kept myself informed about young Mr. Winge ever since we last saw each other, from acquaintances who stayed on in Uppsala longer than I did, and who saw what happened later. Do you know that there is a third Winge, a sister older than the brothers? Hedvig, if my memory serves, a particularly willful and headstrong woman, if my sources are to be believed. Emil had a breakdown, as I said before, and in the end Hedvig Winge came to collect him, probably after receiving a message from one of her brother’s professors. She took him to the Oxenstierna, in the shadow of the cathedral, and left him there to rot.”
Cardell indicates his incomprehension with a shrug.
“A madhouse, Cardell. She put him in the madhouse.”
Blom sees Cardell grow pale, and gives him the bottle while slapping his own shoulders to quell a shiver.
“If there is anything I would like to read in the story of Emil Winge, it is the chapter about his escape. You know, Cardell, that in those places the security is tighter than any prison. It’s one thing if a robber contrives his escape, but no one wants a lunatic loose in the street: the deeds of a thief are the fruit of necessity, or greed, and can be somewhat predicted, but what the mad will do, no one can say. Not for nothing are madhouses called tombs of the living. Casanova’s escape from a lead-lined cell can hardly have been more dramatic than Emil’s, and I will tell you one thing, Cardell. The fact that Emil Winge managed to pull that off is the only evidence I need that he is his brother’s equal in cunning.”
“So you agreed to his request. Is that what you are trying to say?”
Blom makes a dismissive gesture.
“Dear God, no! When he did not want to accept my refusal, I told him to go to hell, and when that did not have the intended effect either, I had to ask a constable to show him the door. He’s out of his mind, anyone can see that. I had heard as much beforehand. He made something of a spectacle of himself the other day. As you know, Cecil was known and respected here, and at first many thought that the Ghost of Indebetou was living up to his name when they first laid eyes on his little brother. Emil Winge wandered up and down the Quayside, right outside here, gesticulating wildly and raving as if to another. But there was no one else there.”