Jochum Lang was not asleep. The last night was always the worst.
It was the smell. When the key turned in the lock for the last time, it always hit him: the small cells all smelt the same. It didn’t matter which prison it was, even in the police cells, the walls and the bed and the cupboard and the table and the white ceiling smelt the same.
He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a fag. Even the air pressure in the cells felt the same. That sounded plain fucking stupid and he couldn’t tell anyone, but it was the truth that every cell in every prison and every jail had the same air pressure and it wasn’t like in any other room.
He felt like belling the security desk – he always belled on the last night inside – so he went over to the metal plate with the intercom and pressed the red Call button long and hard.
Fucking screw took his time.
The red lamp went on and the central security desk replied.
‘What’s up, Lang?’
Jochum bent forwards to speak close up into the pathetic microphone.
‘I want a shower. Get this fucking smell off.’
‘Forget it. You’re still locked up in here. Like the rest.’
Jochum hated the lot of them. He had done his time, but these little shits had to show who was on top to the bitter end.
He went back to the bed, sat down and looked around the cell. He would give them ten minutes and then try again. They usually gave in after the third or fourth try, came along to open up and stood aside just enough for him to push past. With only one night left, he obviously wouldn’t want to do anything out of order, but once outside they might meet him anywhere in town, and sometimes it was wise not to have too much shared history with inmates.
He got up, walked about. A couple of paces to the window, a few more back to the metal door.
He packed as slowly as he could, cramming two years and four months into a plastic carrier bag. Two books, four packets of fags, soap and toothbrush. Radio and the pile of letters. An unopened packet of tobacco. He put the bag on the table.
He belled again. The fucker still took his time. Irritated, he put his mouth close to the microphone and growled. His breath misted the metal surround.
‘I want my clothes.’
‘Seven o’clock, mate.’
‘I’ll wake the whole fucking wing.’
‘Whatever.’
Jochum banged on the door. Someone banged in response on a door on the other side of the corridor. Then another. Quite a noise. The screw was faster this time.
‘Lang, you’re creating a disturbance.’
‘That’s right. Like I said.’
The duty officer sighed.
‘So you did. Look, I’ll have you escorted to the sacks and the desk to check your stuff out. Then back you go. You won’t get out until seven.’
The corridor was empty.
No one was up and about. The others, with years to wait behind their locked doors, had fallen quiet again. Who had any use for the dawn? He walked through the unit, along a corridor with eight cells on each side, passed the kitchen, passed the room with a billiard table and a TV corner. The screw was right in front of him, a little runt with a thin back. He could easily do him over, ten minutes after he’d finished his time – he’d done it before.
The screw unlocked the main unit door and led the way through the long underground corridors where Jochum had walked so many times before. The store was located next to the central security desk, behind the wall with CCTV monitors. Being there meant getting out. Just wandering among the hundreds of hessian sacks that smelt of the cellar, then finding the right one – opening it, trying on the clothes. Too small, they were always too small. This time he had put on seven kilos, bigger than ever. He had worked out regularly and bloody hard. He looked around. No mirrors. Rows of cardboard boxes with name tags, the belongings of the lifers who had no digs outside and kept what they owned boxed up in a storeroom at Aspsås prison.
He had taken the Karl Lagerfeld bottle back with him. The screw hadn’t noticed or else didn’t give a fuck either way. Jochum hadn’t smelt like a free man since they stripped him on Day One. No alcoholic fluids allowed in the unit. He undressed and, standing naked in the middle of his cell, emptied the aftershave over his shaved head, its contents flowing over his shoulders and torso and dripping down over his feet and on to the floor, the powerful scent stripping off his prison coating.
Ten to seven. The screw was punctual.
The cell door opened wide. Jochum grabbed his carrier bag, spat on the floor and walked out.
All he had to do now was change into the tight clothes he had just tried on, collect the release money, a pitiful three hundred kronor, and the one-way train ticket, tell the screw to go to hell as the gate slowly swung open, and walk out, bag in hand, giving the finger to the guard at the security camera. And turn sharp right, to the nearest stretch of wall, open his flies and piss against the concrete greyness.
The wind was blowing outside.
At the far end of the ground floor of the police headquarters, the dawn chorus was competing with Siw Malmkvist. As ever. Ewert Grens had served in the force for thirty-three years and had an office of his own for thirty. His cassette player, a present for his thirtieth birthday, had been around for almost as long. It was one of those large, lumpy things which combine a mono speaker and a tape deck. Every time he moved office he would carry it himself, cradled in his arms. Ewert only played Siw Malmkvist. A home-made rack held his collection of all her recordings, Siw’s entire repertoire, in different orders on different tapes.
This morning it was ‘Tunna skivor’ (1960), the Swedish version of ‘Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool’. He was always the first one in and turned the sound up as high as he liked. The odd bod might complain about the noise, but as long as he acted the sour old bugger they let him be, on the whole, left him to it. He kept life at bay behind his closed door, buried in his investigations while Siw belted out Sixties pop.
His mind was still caught up in yesterday. It had been good to see Anni in her crisply ironed dress, her hair neatly combed. She had looked at him more often than usual, almost made contact. As if, for a few moments, he was more than just a stranger sitting beside her and holding her hand.
And later that morning, Bengt’s nice home, so full of life. Breakfast with messy kids and kind looks. As always, he had been full of gratitude. As always, he had nodded and smiled, while Bengt and Lena and the kids treated him like a member of the family, just as they always did. Yet he had felt lonelier than ever and that bloody awful feeling was still hanging around him now.
He turned up the volume and started pacing up and down on the worn linoleum. He had to think about something else. Anything but that. No doubting today, not any more. He had made a decision, chosen this place, this job. If the working life of a policeman meant missing out on some of the good things in life, so be it. That was how things had panned out. One day followed the other, making it thirty-three years in the end. No woman and no children and no real friends, just his long, devoted service, due to end in less than ten years from now. When it ended, he would cease to be.
Ewert looked around the room. The room was his only for as long as he put in the hours. When he retired this would become someone else’s office. On he paced. Limping, his large, heavy body turning at the bookshelf and then at the window. He was not good-looking, he knew that, but he had been powerful, intense and brooding. Now he was just angry most of the time. He pulled his fingers through what had once been hair and now was grey, cropped tufts.
That song.
The tears I cried for you could fill an ocean,
But you don’t care how many tears I cry.
And so, for a while, he forgot. It was morning now and his mind turned to the piles of documents on his desk, reports to be read and investigations to be completed. He had to deal with them, come what may.
A knock on the door. He ignored it. Too early.
Whoever it was opened the door.
‘Ewert?’
It was Sven.
Ewert didn’t say anything, he simply pointed at his visitor’s chair. Sven Sundkvist came in and sat down. He was one generation younger than his colleague, a slightly built, straight-backed man with pale, short hair. Apart from Bengt Nordwall, Sven was the only one in the police house whom Ewert didn’t detest. The lad had a good head on his shoulders.
Sven said nothing, because he had realised long ago that Siw’s songs were Ewert’s past, another, happier time that Sven knew nothing about. He sensed how powerful these memories were, though.
No one spoke. Only the music.
A buzzing noise as the tape came to an end and then the snap when the elderly machine’s Play button popped up.
Two and a half minutes.
Ewert stood still, cleared his throat and spoke for the first time that day.
‘Yes?’
‘Good morning.’
‘What?’
‘Good morning.’
‘Morning.’
Ewert walked over to his desk, his chair. He sat down, looked at Sven.
‘And what do you want? Apart from saying good morning?’
‘You know, don’t you, that Lang gets out as of today?’
Ewert made an irritated gesture.
‘Yep. I know.’
‘That’s all. I was actually on my way to an interrogation. The heroin addict who flogged washing powder.’
A second passed, maybe two. Ewert suddenly hit his desk with both hands. Sheets of paper showered on to the floor.
He hit the desk again. Now that the documents had scattered, his hands slapped against wood.
‘Twenty-five years, Sven.’
She was lying under the car.
He stopped, he jumped out, ran over to her motionless body, over to the blood that was gushing from somewhere in her head.
The piles of papers were all over the floor. Sven could see that Ewert was clearly caught up in thoughts he had no intention of sharing with anyone. He bent down and randomly picked up a few of the scattered documents and read out loud.
‘“Trainee teacher, found naked in Rålambshov Park,”’ he read aloud. ‘“One leg broken below knee. Both thumbs broken. Criminal Act Not Confirmed.”’
He started on the next sheet of paper, his finger following the lines.
‘“Insurance office worker, found in Eriksdal Wood. Knifed in the chest, four times. Nine potential witnesses. No one noticed anything. Criminal Act Not Confirmed.”’
Ewert felt the anger, the rage. It started in his stomach and made his whole body ache. It had to be released. He waved at Sven, to make him move out of the way. Sven moved over. He knew.
Ewert took aim and kicked the waste-paper basket across the room. Its contents rained down everywhere. Silently and almost automatically, Sven started to make a pile of the empty tobacco tins and coffee-stained paper cups.
When he had finished he went on reading aloud.
‘“Suspected grievous bodily harm. Criminal Act Not Confirmed. Suspected manslaughter. Criminal Act Not Confirmed. Suspected murder. Criminal Act Not Confirmed.”’
Sven had interrogated Jochum Lang more times than he could remember. He had used every technique recommended in the college textbooks and quite a few others besides. Once, a few years ago, he had almost managed, he had just about won his trust through showing him that he could cope with anything, no matter how shitty, if he wanted to open up. If Jochum talked, Sven would listen. Regardless. Jochum had taken this on board, but backed away just when he seemed ready and carried on as before, asking for fags, staring out the window. Later he clammed up totally, admitting nothing, not even to taking a dump now and then.
Sven turned to face his boss.
‘Ewert, these papers that you flung all over the floor – I could go on for ever.’
‘Enough.’
‘“Intimidation of court witnesses, aggravated abduction . . .” He’s under suspicion on twenty different counts.’
‘I said, enough.’
‘Found guilty on only three occasions. Short sentences. The first time . . . Let’s see. Yes, for “causing serious injury”.’
‘Shut the fuck up!’
Sven jumped, didn’t recognise the face of the man who was shouting at him. Ewert was often loud and aggressive in Sven’s presence, but his anger was normally directed at someone else. This time was different.
Ewert turned away, marched over to the cassette player. The ancient apparatus started up again, playing the same tape.
Yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool.
I told myself it’s best that I forget you.
Ewert listened and Siw’s voice cooled his rage. I can’t take much more, he thought. It could all end here and now. At this moment in time. Jochum Lang was one of those villains who had kept him at it for thirty-three years, nose to the grindstone and never a thought of stopping, of drawing breath, until the sentence had been pronounced. If he couldn’t nail scum like him by now, he might as well give up. Drop it, go home and dare to live. During the last year, thoughts of this kind had bothered him; he dismissed them, but they came back, more distinct, more often.
Sven sat down in front of him, touched his chin, pulled his fingers through his blond fringe.
‘Look, Grens . . .’
Ewert raised his finger.
‘Shush.’
Another minute.
And there are no exceptions to the rule.
Yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool.
Sven waited. Siw stopped singing. Ewert looked up.
Suddenly Ewert spoke.
‘What is it, then?’
‘Look, it’s just a thought. Aspsås prison. And Hilding Oldéus. You know who I mean, that emaciated junkie. The one I’m about to question.’
Ewert nodded. He knew exactly who Hilding Oldéus was.
‘We know Oldéus was inside at the same time as Lang,’ Sven went on. ‘And we know they got friendly, as friendly as anyone can get with a lunatic hard man like Lang. Hilding crawled to him, produced some home-brew early on; it had been hidden in a fire extinguisher. They were nearly put in the slammer at one point when a guard caught them at it, pissed out of their heads.’
‘Right. Hilding laid on the brew and Jochum gave him protection in return.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And what was your idea?’
‘After questioning Oldéus about the washing powder, then we’ll talk about Lang. Let him help us get him.’
The music had stopped. No more Siw. Ewert looked around the room, though there wasn’t much to see. It was small and, apart from the cassette player and the tape rack, totally impersonal. Everything was regulation issue. Pale wood furniture, bits and pieces identical to the furnishings in the Inland Revenue offices on Göt Street and the National Insurance building in Gustavsberg. Impersonal or not, he spent more time in the room than anywhere else, from dawn to dusk, and later too. Quite often he didn’t go home at night, preferring to sleep on the sofa by the window. It was small in relation to his big body, but it didn’t matter. Oddly enough, he slept well here, much better than in his proper bed. Here he escaped the sleepless nights, the endless hours battling with the dark that plagued him in his own flat, where he could never find peace. Sometimes he didn’t go home for weeks on end, without understanding what kept him away.
‘Oldéus and Lang, eh? I don’t think so. They exist in parallel worlds. Oldéus is hooked on heroin. It’s all he wants. Lang is a criminal, not a junkie, even if he has pissed classified substances at Aspsås once or twice. And that’s that. They have nothing in common, not outside.’
Sven shifted about in the visitor’s chair, then leaned back and sighed. Suddenly he seemed tired.
Ewert looked intently at his friend.
He recognised what it was: resignation, hopelessness.
He thought about Oldéus. He had no time for people like that, small-time junkies who picked holes in their noses. Life was too short and there were too many idiots.
‘OK. What the fuck. One nutter more or less. We can always ask him about Lang. Can’t do any harm.’
A shiny brand-new car crept towards the large gate in the grey wall. The kind of car that would smell of leather upholstery and pristine wooden dashboard if you opened one of the front doors.
Jochum Lang spotted it as soon as he had passed through central security and started to cross the yard. He hadn’t talked to them and hadn’t asked for a car, but he understood all the same: they would be waiting outside, that was part of the deal.
He nodded a greeting and the man at the wheel nodded in response.
The engine ticked over while Jochum gave the finger to the security camera and pissed against the concrete wall. No hurry, the car was waiting and nothing disturbed his ritual. All the time in the world to finish having a piss, show the finger again and drop his trousers down, as the gate slowly swung shut behind him. Somehow, he wasn’t really free until he’d done it, pissed on the wall, shown the guards his arse. He knew it was childish and pointless, but with his freedom came the urge to prove that none of those bastards could humiliate him any more and that, after two years and four months, he was the one who’d do the humiliating.
He walked over to the car, opened the passenger door and got in. They stared at each other in silence, without knowing why.
Slobodan looked older. At thirty-five his long hair was already going grey at the temples, he’d grown a thin moustache that was also tinged with grey, and there were new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Jochum tapped lightly on the windscreen.
‘New car. Traded up, I see.’
Slobodan looked pleased.
‘Sure thing. What do you think?’
‘Too flash.’
‘It’s not mine. It’s Mio’s.’
‘Last time you were driving one you’d just nicked. Started it up with a screwdriver. Suited you better.’
The car moved off smoothly, just light pressure on the gas.
Jochum Lang took the train ticket from his trouser pocket, tore it up and threw it out the window, shouting abuse loudly in a broad Uppsala dialect, roaring about what he thought of the prison service’s parting gifts, not fit to wipe the shit off your arse, and let the pieces blow away in the strong wind. Slobodan was talking on his mobile, which had been ringing for a while. He accelerated, leaving the gate and the high, grey wall behind them. Then, after a minute or two, the rain started up, the windscreen wipers going slowly at first, then faster.
‘I’m not picking you up because I wanted to. Mio asked me to do it.’
‘Ordered you.’
‘Whatever. He wants to see you as soon as.’
Jochum was a big man, broad-shouldered, who took up a lot of car space. Shaved head, a scar from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. Some poor sod had tried to defend himself with a razor. Jochum talked with his hands, waving them about when he was upset.
‘Look, last time I did something for him, I ended up here.’
They left the narrow prison drive and moved out on to a wider road that was quite busy already, people on the way to work.
‘You took the rap, sure. But we looked after you, and your family. Right?’
Slobodan Dragovic turned to Jochum smiling, showing off poor-quality dental work, as he answered his phone, which was ringing again. Jochum stared silently straight ahead, absently following the wipers as they spread the water over the windscreen. Right enough. A total screw-up when he’d done a cash collection and that fucking witness who should’ve known better, who talked and pointed until the court passed a sentence. He followed the paths of the raindrops, thinking that he knew all the hazards, but shit happens, that’s true enough. Mio was always close at hand, watching him with borrowed eyes and ears every morning when he woke up and looked around his cell, looking out for him, looking out, that’s what they did.
The gleaming new car gathered speed on its way through the landscape as it changed from rural to urban, and then through the northern suburbs, on towards central Stockholm.
Suspects were questioned in a room below the custody cells.
Wasn’t much of a room, really.
Filthy walls, which had been white once, a heavily barred window at the far end, a worn pine table in the middle of the floor and four plain wooden chairs, straight out of some school canteen.
Sven Sundkvist, interview leader (IL): Please remain seated. Hilding Oldéus (HO): Why the fuck are you picking up innocent people?
IL: Mixing amphetamines with washing powder, you call that innocent?
HO: Don’t know what you’re on about.
IL: Crap drugs. Cut. So far we’ve got three users with corroded veins. They gave us your name.
HO: What the fuck are you talking about?
IL: And you were in possession.
HO: Wasn’t mine.
IL: We took the bags of white powder from you at the time of your arrest. All six were sent to the labs.
HO: Weren’t fucking mine.
IL: Twenty per cent amphetamine, twenty-two per cent Panadol Extra and fifty-eight per cent washing powder. Oldéus, sit down.
Ewert Grens opened the door and went in. He had to pass through eight locked doors to get here, but hadn’t even noticed. His mind was on the reports, and he could still hear Sven’s voice reading aloud, ‘causing serious injury’, over and over in his head. And he saw the police van that hadn’t stopped in time, him holding her in his arms until the paramedics put her on a stretcher and carried her off, away from him.
He was fighting Sven’s voice, trying to rid himself of the words, and looked up briefly into the harsh overhead light. Then he concentrated on the man sitting opposite Sven, noted his thin face and how a finger was scratching nervously at a wound on one nostril, the drops of blood trickling down towards his mouth and chin.
IL: DSI Ewert Grens enters at oh nine twenty-two.
HO: [inaudible]
IL: What was that, Oldéus?
HO: Wasn’t fucking mine.
IL: Stop messing about. We know you sold cut speed on the Plain.
HO: Know fucking everything, don’t you?
IL: We arrested you there. With the bags full of washing powder.
HO: Wasn’t fucking mine. Some guy handed it to me when I got there. What a cunt, passing on crap like that. I’ll sort him when I get out of here.
Ewert Grens (eg): You’re going nowhere.
HO: What? Fucking pig.
IL: Plenty of people who’d like to get hold of you, Oldéus. And if just one customer who bought that shit off you reports it, we’ll charge you with attempted murder. That’s you inside for between six months and eight years.
Hilding got up, walked jerkily about in the tight space, suddenly stopped and struck out with one arm, lowered it and walked on a few more steps, stopped again and started speaking incoherently. He rambled on, his head first shaking, then tossing from side to side. His thin body, that was screaming for heroin, that ate and spewed, was disintegrating as they watched.
Ewert looked at Sven. They had seen all this before, of course, and knew he might sit down again and tell them all they wanted to know. Or he might lie down on the floor in the foetal position and shake himself unconscious.
EG: Six months at least. Up to eight years. But you’re in luck. We’re in a good mood today. What if the impounded bags got lost?
HO: What the fuck d’you mean, lost?
EG: Well, there are things we’d like to hear more about. Tell us about a friend of yours called Lang. Jochum Lang. You know him.
HO: Never heard of him.
Hilding’s face was twitching violently. He grimaced, his eyes rolled back, his head turned this way and that. He scratched the wound. He was terrified. Jochum’s name clawed at his mind and he wanted to shake it off, dump it, he didn’t want it.
Not here. He was about to protest when someone knocked on the door. A woman detective put her head in. Ewert couldn’t remember her name, but she was a summer locum, Skåne dialect.
‘Sorry to interrupt. It’s for you, Superintendent. I think it’s important.’
Ewert waved her inside.
‘Don’t worry. This is all going to hell anyway. This little smack head seems to be in a rush to get out and die.’
Sven nodded when she glanced at him. She walked towards the table to stand behind Hilding. He got up, pointed at her, thrust his crotch at her lamely a few times.
‘Got yourself new pussy, Grens? Pig’s pussy, eh!’
She swung around, slapped him hard with the flat of her hand.
He lost his balance, stumbled forward holding both hands against his cheek, which flared bright red.
‘Fucking pig!’
She stared at him.
‘Inspector Hermansson to you. Get out. Now.’
Hilding, one hand covering his flushed cheek, kept swearing while Sven took a firm grip on his arm and escorted him out of the room.
Surprised, Ewert glanced at Sven, then turned to his young female colleague.
‘You’re Inspector Hermansson?’
‘That’s right.’
She was young, maybe twenty-five, no doubt in her eyes. She showed nothing. Neither surprise nor anger, unfazed by being called ‘pig’s pussy’, unexcited by having dealt a violent blow to Hilding’s face.
‘Something important, you said?’
‘The central switchboard called. You’re needed at an address in the Atlas district. Völund Street. Number three.’
Ewert took note and searched his memory; he’d been there before, not long ago.
‘It’s somewhere along the main railway line, isn’t it? St Erik’s Square area?’
‘That’s right. I checked it on the map.’
‘What’s up?’
She had a sheet of paper in her hand, torn from a police notebook, and she looked at it quickly, didn’t want to make a mistake. Not in front of Ewert.
‘Our local colleagues have forced entry, following a report of serious physical abuse in a flat on the fifth floor.’
‘And?’
‘It’s . . . quite urgent.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There’s a problem.’
It was one of the older properties in a good area and had been carefully restored. Each street door was flanked by well-kept lawns with small trees dotted about, despite the lack of room, and narrow borders glowed with red and yellow flowers.
Ewert Grens got out of the car and scanned the long façade with its rows of windows. Turn-of-the-century building, the sort where you could hear your neighbours, their heavy steps in the kitchen, when they turned up the volume for the news, when they went out to put something in the rubbish chute. He looked at the windows with their expensive curtains. Flat after flat where people lived and died, only a breath away from their neighbours. But they never met, never knew anything about the person next door.
Sven Sundkvist, who had parked the car, joined him.
‘Völund Street. Looks expensive. Who can afford to live here?’ he muttered.
Eight windows on the fifth floor. Violence had broken out behind one of them. Ewert compared them. They all looked the same, the same damn curtains, the same damn plants – different colours, different patterns, but still the same.
He snorted in the general direction of the decorous façade.
‘I don’t like physical abuse cases anywhere, but it’s worse in this sort of place. Which is as a rule where they happen.’
He looked around. An ambulance and two police cars with their chilly blue lights rotating. Maybe ten or so curious neighbours standing about near the parked cars, not crowding in on the place, decent enough to show a little proper respect, something that didn’t always happen. The street door was held open by a rope tied to a bicycle rack. Ewert and Sven walked along the flagged path and into the lobby. Large wrought-iron numerals set into the wall near the doorway said ‘1901’. So it was built at the turn of the century. Satisfied, Ewert nodded to himself and started to study the list of tenants’ names. Four of them on the fifth floor: Palm, Nygren, Johansson, Löfgren.
Couldn’t be more Swedish. Only to be expected, given the kind of place it was.
‘Do you spot anybody familiar, Sven?’
‘No.’
‘They don’t exactly put it on show.’
‘You?’
‘No idea.’
Pretty poor lift, narrow with a folding grid gate, room for three, no more than 225 kilos. A uniformed policeman stood guard, an older man whom Ewert hadn’t seen around for a long time.
I always forget how many idiots there are in the force, he thought. Like this one. If you don’t clap eyes on them day in and day out, these sad bastards fade from your mind.
He smiled grimly while he observed the man.
Legs well apart, the stance of a cop on the telly, a cop with an important mission, keeping an eye on things as the music builds up, with lots of long notes from the string section. He might even click his heels if you asked him a question, and he’d almost certainly spell words aloud when working on a report. In short, the sort who should be allowed to guard lifts, but not much else. That sort.
The constable didn’t return Ewert’s smile, because he sensed the contempt. He deliberately addressed Sven when he started on his account.
‘We were called about an hour ago, sir. An extremely drunk pimp. And a badly beaten prostitute.’
‘That so?’
‘Yes. Some neighbours phoned the police, but by then he’d already beaten her black and blue. She’s unconscious. She needs to go to hospital. And there’s one more in there. Another prostitute, by the look of her.’
‘Beaten up too?’
‘Don’t think so. He didn’t get round to her, I suppose.’
Ewert listened in silence while Sven talked to the idiot guarding the lift, but eventually he couldn’t take it any more.
‘Alerted an hour ago! Exactly what are you waiting for?’
‘We aren’t allowed in. Apparently it’s Lithuanian . . .er, territory.’
‘What? When someone is being physically abused, you go straight in!’
Five bloody flights. Ewert had a problem breathing, every step cost him. He should have used the lift, but his temper had flared up and he had run past that flaming imbecile on guard duty. He heard voices discussing the case above him, getting louder as he climbed. Two ambulance men and a paramedic seemed to be conducting a case conference on the fourth-floor landing. They exchanged brief nods as he passed them. Only one more flight.
He was gasping for breath and out of the corner of his eye he saw that Sven was catching up with light steps. Ewert couldn’t give up now and forced his legs to move. They didn’t want to. He could hardly feel them.
There were four doors on the top-floor landing. One of them had a gaping hole in the panel and was guarded by three uniformed men. He didn’t recognise any of them, but further back he saw the familiar face of Bengt Nordwall, in civvies like himself and Sven. Barely twenty-four hours had passed since Ewert and Bengt had met on that rain-sodden morning outside the happy family home where Ewert had been given breakfast and caring attention. It was rare for their paths to cross at work, and Ewert stared at his friend, feeling almost let down.
They shook hands briefly, as was their habit.
‘What are you doing here?’ Ewert asked.
‘Russian. The guy in there doesn’t speak anything else.’
Bengt Nordwall was one of a handful in the force who could speak Russian. He went on to explain a little more.
‘A pimp was beating the shit out of one of his whores and she kept screaming to high heaven. When the police arrived they broke the door down and came face to face with that lowlife you can see over there.’
Bengt pointed at a man just inside the doorway, apparently standing watch over the badly damaged door. He was in his forties, short and fat and flabby. His shiny grey suit looked expensive, but didn’t suit him and didn’t fit him either.
‘Then he waves his diplomatic passport at the lads and claims that the flat is Lithuanian territory and that the Swedish police have no right of entry. He won’t hand over the woman and refuses to admit our medic. Or any other doctor, except one from the Lithuanian embassy. The victim seems to be well beyond saying anything, but the other woman in there has shouted abuse at the pimp, calling him “Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp” in Russian. He doesn’t like it one bit, but for as long as we’re around, he doesn’t dare do anything except shout back at her.’
Sven had stopped a few steps down, by the rubbish chute between floors four and five. He was just finishing a call on his mobile and waved at Ewert to catch his attention. He closed his phone, came up the remaining steps, looking at Ewert as he spoke.
‘I’ve just been talking to the housing association that’s responsible for this place. The flat belongs to a Hans Johansson, which fits with the board downstairs. It’s not a regular sublet.’
Ewert Grens turned to look at the man in the shiny suit, who claimed that his diplomatic status gave him the right to beat up women, and at the same time held out a hand towards the three uniformed men behind Bengt.
‘One of you lot, hand over a truncheon. Right, Mr Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp, try waving your diplomatic credentials this time.’
As he approached the door, the smartly suited man demonstrated that he intended to block the way by taking a few steps back and holding both his arms out to the side. Ewert walked on until he was close enough to ram the tip of the truncheon into a vulnerable gap in the unbuttoned jacket, which made the body standing in his way double up. The Lithuanian representative hissed something in Russian and collapsed, clutching his belly with both hands. Ewert called out to the doctor and the ambulance men on the floor below, then waved at the officers to follow him and marched on, through a long hall and an empty sitting room.
At first he couldn’t quite take in what he saw in the next room.
The bedspread was red and a woman was lying on it naked, with her back towards the door, but there seemed to be no difference between her body and the top of the bed, the red colours blending.
He had not seen anyone so badly beaten for a very long time.
The light is always the same in the Söder Hospital casualty department.
Early morning and late, lunchtime and afternoon, evening and night, the light stays on and on.
A young doctor, tall and thin, let his tired eyes follow the string of lamps in the corridor ceiling as he accompanied a patient trolley. He was trying to focus and listen properly to what the nurse was saying. This must be the last patient on his shift, then he could go out into the other light, the kind that changed with time.
‘Unconscious female, almost certainly subjected to a beating. Head injuries, a broken arm and probably internal haemorrhaging. Laboured breathing. I’ll call the trauma team and ITU.’
The young doctor stared at her. He had had enough, didn’t want to hear any more about how people went about exterminating each other.
‘She needs an airway.’
He nodded, but stayed by the woman on the trolley for a moment, just a few more seconds, on his own. It had been a long day, and for some reason he had seen more young people than usual, his own age or younger. He had mended their damaged bodies as best he could, knowing that none of them would carry on living as they had until now. They would always carry today inside them, wouldn’t be able to let go, regardless of what showed externally.
He studied her face. Somehow she didn’t look Swedish. From somewhere not very far away, though. She was blonde and probably pretty. She reminded him of someone, but he didn’t know whom. The ambulance staff had jotted down some details and he pulled the notes out of the plastic pocket. He learned that her name was Lydia Grajauskas, or at least that was what another woman had stated, the one who was in the flat where the abuse had taken place.
He looked at her.
All these women.
What had the expression on her face been while he beat her?
What had she said?
Green- and white-clad staff came hurrying along and sought some kind of confirmation from the doctor with the dark, exhausted eyes, indicating that they were ready to start. The patient was wheeled into the trauma room, expertly lifted on to a theatre trolley and wired up for monitoring her pulse, ECG and blood pressure. They opened her mouth to introduce a tube into her stomach and sucked away its contents. She became less human, less of a body, more statistics and graphs, it was easier then, easier to deal with.
Had she actually said anything?
Or screamed? What do you scream when someone is beating you?
He, of the tired eyes, couldn’t bring himself to leave her.
He wanted to see . . . What? He didn’t know what he wanted to see.
One of his colleagues had now taken over and was standing about a metre away carefully moving the woman they knew was called Lydia Grajauskas, turning her light body on its side to inspect the blood-soaked, shredded skin.
The sight upset him.
‘Hey, somebody! I need a hand.’
The tired young doctor stepped forward and saw what the doctor beside him had seen.
He counted.
When he reached thirty he stopped.
The stripes were red and swollen.
He sensed the tears coming and forced himself to hold them back. It happened from time to time. The obligation to stay professional took a physical effort. Must see her as statistics, as a set of graphs. I don’t know her, I don’t know her; it didn’t do the trick, not this time. Today there had been too much of this pointlessness he couldn’t understand.
This torn, red mess.
He said it out loud, maybe to hear what it sounded like, maybe to inform everyone, he couldn’t be sure which.
‘She’s been flogged!’
He repeated it more slowly, in a quieter voice.
‘She has been flogged. Multiple injuries. From the back of her neck all the way down to her behind. Her skin is . . . has been lacerated.’
The flat was lovely, he had to admit it. High ceilings, sanded floorboards and a tall tiled stove in every room. A home like this ought to be peaceful. Ewert Grens had settled down on one of the four folding plastic chairs in the kitchen. With Sven and two technicians in tow, he had investigated all the rooms now.
Who was the woman called Lydia Grajauskas? Who was her friend, who said her name was Alena Sljusareva? And who was the would-be Lithuanian diplomat, who said the flat was foreign territory and was known as Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp for short?
After the beaten Grajauskas woman had been carried off on a stretcher and before the technicians turned up on the scene, the other one, Sljusareva, had disappeared. Both women were prostitutes and came from one of the Baltic states, or possibly Russia. He had come across the sort before. The story was always the same. Some guy with the gift of the gab would arrive in the village and target girls with promises of work and good money in a Scandinavian welfare state. Young and poor, the girls would bite on the bait. The moment they accepted the false passports, they were transformed from hopeful teenagers into supposedly horny female slaves. Their passports cost money, of course, and the debt was too big for them to pay off outright. It had to be recovered from their earnings. A few of them would try to refuse, but would promptly be taught a lesson and would learn with time what a beating could mean. The girls were raped, over and over again, until they bled. With a gun pressed to their heads, they would be told to do it again and again – spread your fucking legs and do it, you’ve got to pay for your passport and the sea crossing. If you won’t fuck them, I’ll take you up the arse again! He, the persuader, who had beaten them and raped them at gunpoint, would sell them on afterwards, three thousand euros for every teenage girl shipped from east to west, who had learnt to groan with desire whenever someone penetrated her.
Ewert sighed and looked up when Sven came into the kitchen. He was ready to report on the contents of a cupboard they had missed the first time round.
‘Not a damn thing there either. No personal belongings at all.’
Several pairs of shoes, a couple of dresses and quite a few sets of bra and panties. And bottles of perfume and plastic toilet bags containing assorted make-up, a box of condoms, dildos and handcuffs. That was all. They had found nothing in the flat that couldn’t have been predicted if you started with the assumption that their life stories were all about sexual penetration.
Impatient, Ewert flapped his arms about.
‘These children without faces.’
These girls did not really exist. They had no identity, no work permit, no life of their own. They breathed, cautiously, inside a fifth-floor flat with electronic door locks in a big city which was very different from the one they had left.
‘Ewert, do we know how many of them we’ve got here in Stockholm?’
‘As many as the market demands.’
Ewert sighed again and bent forward to finger the wallpaper. The pimp had beaten her in here and her blood had congealed on the flowered pattern. In fact blood had splashed all over the place; even the ceiling was dotted with red spots. He was angry and tired and felt like shouting, but found himself whispering instead.
‘She’s here illegally. She’ll need to be guarded.’
‘She’s being operated on now.’
‘I mean afterwards, in the ward.’
‘It will take another couple of hours, the hospital tells me. Before she’s done.’
‘Sven, please get a guard for her. I don’t want her to disappear.’
Outside the house with the imposing façade the street was silent and empty.
Ewert examined the windows in the house opposite. Nothing new there; they looked as blank and as orderly, with the same sort of curtains and flowerpots.
He felt deeply ill at ease.
The beaten woman, the pimp in the shiny suit and Bengt and the rest of his colleagues, waiting for nearly an hour while she lay unconscious and bleeding.
He felt chilly and tried to shake it off, together with the bad feeling, but did not know how to get rid of something like that.
It was half past ten in the morning. Jochum Lang served himself from the breakfast buffet in Ulriksdal Inn. Typical Yugo tactic: treat someone to something expensive and then start talking business. They had driven through the northern suburbs, heading straight for the talk that was due to start any time soon. One more piece of omelette. A cup of coffee to follow. Might as well make use of the mint-flavoured toothpicks too.
Lang let his eyes sweep over the breakfast room, all white tablecloths and heavy silver-plated cutlery and conference delegates eating their fill. Women with red cheeks were lighting cigarettes, men sitting as close to them as they could, after pouring themselves yet another cup of coffee. He laughed at the encounters and expectations; he didn’t do things like that, never had done, had never understood the point of such a predictable game.
‘So what’s on your mind?’
They hadn’t exchanged more than a word or two on the way, since Slobodan had met him at the gate of Aspsås prison in the shiny car and Jochum let himself be driven away, had sat in the leather passenger seat and thrown away the shreds of the standard one-way train ticket.
Now the two of them were waiting and watching each other across the beautifully laid breakfast table in the expensive restaurant ten minutes from the centre of Stockholm.
‘Some business of Mio’s.’
Jochum, with his large shaved head, sunbed tan, scarred cheek, remained stubbornly silent, just sat there taking up space.
Slobodan leaned forward.
‘He’d like you to have a word with a guy who is selling our goods cut with washing powder.’
Jochum waited. He said nothing. Not until Slobodan’s mobile phone, lying in the middle of the table, rang and he reached out for it. Then Jochum grabbed his wrist.
‘You’re talking to me. Do the rest of your fucking business some other time.’
A flash of defiance in his eyes.
Slobodan withdrew his hand, just as the ringing stopped.
‘Like I said, this guy sells bad shit. And one of the buyers was Mio’s niece.’
Jochum picked up the salt cellar from the starched tablecloth waste between them, rolled it over the table, watched it go over the edge of the table and roll across the floor towards the window.
‘Mirja?’
Slobodan nodded.
‘Mio never bothered about her before. A smack head whore.’
Muzak flowed from wall-mounted speakers, lift music. The women with red cheeks laughed and lit fresh cigarettes, the men undid the top buttons on their shirts, tried to hide their ring fingers as best they could.
‘I think you know the bloke.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘Look, it was cut with washing powder. And it was ours. Don’t you get it?’
Jochum didn’t comment and leaned back in his chair. Slobodan had gone red in the face.
‘That little creep is ruining our street cred. The story that punters were mainlining fucking Persil will do the rounds in no time.’
Jochum was starting to get fed up with the whole place: the conference women’s smoke, the smell of cooked breakfasts, the too-polite waitresses. He wanted to get out, out into the daylight, to another day. This posh scene might be everything that some people longed for in Aspsås, but it wasn’t his idea of the good life. On the contrary. The more years he spent inside, the more he resisted any kind of fancy pretence.
‘Get on with it. Tell me what I’m supposed to do, for fuck’s sake.’
Slobodan responded to his impatience.
‘No fucker’s going to sell washing powder in our name. So, a few broken fingers. An arm, nothing more. That’ll do.’
Their eyes met. Jochum nodded.
The muzak piano played worn-out pop. He got up, made for the car.
The morning had almost passed, but Stockholm’s Central Station was still yawning, still not quite awake. Some people were in transit, some were snatching a little sleep. Always room for those who struggled with loneliness. It had been raining since midnight, and the homeless had sought shelter in the massive doorways, tried to lie down on the benches in the hall that was as large as a football pitch. They had to keep moving to avoid the security guards, hiding in amongst the hurrying crowd of travellers carrying bags and suitcases and paper cups of café latte steaming under plastic lids.
Hilding Oldéus had just woken up.
A couple of hours’ kip in the middle of the day. He looked around.
His body ached from the hard bench. Some sodding guard had been prodding him non-stop.
No food, not since the morning, when one of the cops had given him a couple of custard creams at the joke hearing. Not that it made him grass on Jochum.
He wasn’t hungry now. Not randy either.
He was, like . . . nothing.
It made him laugh out loud. Two old bags stared at him and he gave them the finger. He was nothing. Had to get more kit. Then he could carry on being nothing and shut them all out and have no feelings.
He got up. He smelt of piss, his hair was greasy and matted and the wound on his nose was coated in dried blood. He was thin and filthy and twenty-eight years old, closer to the other side than ever before.
Hilding walked slowly towards the escalator that wasn’t working. When it rocked too much he clung to the black rubber railing. The left-luggage lockers were down a concrete corridor. The door was opposite the johns, where some cow demanded five kronor every time you needed to take a leak. Not fucking likely. Stood to reason you pissed in the metro tunnel instead.
Olsson was tucked away at the back as usual, somewhere between boxes 120 and 150. He was asleep. One foot was bare, no sock, no shoe. The fucker could afford shoes, no problem, but who cares about fucking shoes.
He was snoring. Hilding pulled at his arm and shook him a little.
‘I want some cash.’
Olsson was still half asleep and stared vacantly at him.
‘You hear? I need cash. Now. You were going to settle last week.’
‘Tomorrow.’
Olsson wasn’t his real name. Hilding had no idea what it was, but he knew it wasn’t Olsson. They had been stuck in the same drug rehab place once, down in Skåne.
‘Olsson, you heard. One fucking thousand, right now! Or did you take all the shit yourself?’
Olsson sat up, yawned, stretched.
‘Hilding, lay off. I haven’t got any!’
Hilding scratched the wound. The bastard didn’t have any money. Just like that cow at the Social Services. Like his sister. He’d phoned her and begged for money again, like he had a few days ago from the metro platform. Same again: she’d stuck to the same old tune, like It’s your choice, it’s your problem, don’t try to involve me.
He started on the wound again, the crust came off and it bled quite a lot.
‘Got to get some cash, you fucking cunt. Get it?’
‘I haven’t got none. Tell you what I’ve got. Information, well worth a thousand.’
‘What fucking info?’
‘Jochum Lang is looking for you.’
Hilding couldn’t leave the wound alone. He sighed and tried to make out that he didn’t swallow.
‘So what? I don’t give a shit.’
‘What does he want you for?’
‘I don’t know. Meet up? We did some time together in Aspsås.’
Olsson’s cheek twitched upwards, over and over, making his eye open and close. He was caught in his junkie tic.
‘Worth a thousand, wasn’t it?’
‘I want my cash.’
‘Haven’t got it.’ Olsson patted his anorak pocket. ‘But I have got some smack. Powder.’
He pulled the plastic bag from its hiding place and held it up for Hilding to see.
‘One gram, what about it? Take it and we’re even.’ Hilding stopped scratching.
‘A gram?’
‘Fucking strong too.’
Hilding reached out, waved his hands around, slapped Olsson.
‘Let’s see.’
‘Pure heroin. Real strong.’
‘I’ll take a quarter now. I’ll just shoot up a quarter. OK?’
The train to Malmö and Copenhagen was late, the loudspeakers in the ceiling filled the hall, fifteen minutes more to go, sit down on your seats, keep waiting. From somewhere else, café noises, the smell of brewing coffee and greasy pastries sneaked about and clung to everything. They didn’t notice, didn’t notice the great space around them filling up with commuters hurrying to their platforms – young people with rover tickets and huge, flag-covered rucksacks, families travelling at inconvenient times on the special saver tickets that the businessmen despised. All that passed them by. Jerkily they walked to the photo booth near the main entrance. Olsson stood guard; he was to stop anyone wanting to get in and make sure that Hilding didn’t OD and flake out. Hilding sat on the low folding seat and drew the curtains. He was shaking and his legs showed, so Olsson moved over a little.
The spoon was in the inside pocket of the raincoat.
He filled the spoon with white heroin powder, added a few drops of citric acid on top, cooked the mixture over the flame of his cigarette lighter, then mixed it in the water and drew the solution up into his syringe.
He had lost a lot of weight. It used to be enough to take the belt into the third or fourth hole, but now he got to the seventh. He pulled it tight, and enough was left to go one more time round his arm. The leather cut deep into the flesh.
He bent forward and grabbed the end of the belt between his teeth to keep the ligature tense, looked for a vein at the elbow. Nothing there. He prodded with the tip of the needle, pushed it against stringy, tough cartilaginous bits, past them and into the big hollow that had formed inside his arm where innumerable injections had eaten away the substance of his body.
He searched about, tried, tried again, and then suddenly felt the wall of a vessel give way under the needle.
He pulled back and smiled. Usually it wasn’t this easy. Last time he had had to find a track in his neck before he could shoot up.
The thin stream of blood was held suspended in the transparent fluid inside the plastic wall of the syringe for a moment, then dispersed into a spreading plume, like the petals of a red flower opening. It was so pretty.
Hilding collapsed, unconscious, within a second or two.
He fell forward from the seat, became easily visible below the curtain. He had stopped breathing.