Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  The laundry looks the same as the last time I was here: a large square room five or six metres wide. Across it runs a counter of dark wood. There’s a sharp smell of starch and ammonia. For an instant I feel the vodka wanting to come back up. In a corner lies Petrus’s broom with the worn bristles pointing at us.

  I drag the man a bit further and he rolls onto his side. His dark hair is greying at the temples and thinning on the crown of his head. A straight nose cleaves his grimacing face. He’s well dressed but under his waistcoat his cravat’s come undone and his watch-chain curls over the floor. I stand on the pocket watch and snap off the chain with my hand.

  ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Don’t hit me!’

  His voice is shrill, desperate. A walkover.

  ‘I’ll beat you to death if you don’t tell me your name.’

  In my stupor I stumble over my words. I smack my lips clumsily to soften up my mouth.

  ‘Kullberg. John Kullberg.’

  ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve purchased the shop. With the intention of opening a delivery firm.’

  ‘And when did you buy it?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  I bend down and grasp his collar. He raises his hands to protect his face. I pull him up onto his feet and dust him down. He’s wearing a thick tweed suit and galoshes on his feet. He whines and bends down to pick up his pocket watch.

  ‘Where do you keep the keys to the bedroom downstairs?’

  I point to a door behind the counter.

  ‘These are business premises and according to the health and safety authorities cannot be used as a dwelling.’

  ‘Either bloody way they slept down there, the two of them. Do you know a murder was committed here?’

  The man twists and turns and fingers his broken watch.

  ‘I was told that people around here didn’t know about it.’

  ‘Every snotty-nosed kid knows. Well? The keys?’

  ‘It’s probably open.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘But who’ll lock the front door?’

  ‘There’s nothing here to steal.’

  ‘What about homeless people?’

  ‘Wait outside, then, for Christ’s sake!’

  The man twists again, still shaking. I wait until he’s gone, then I open the counter. A swelling thumps to life under my eye. Bruised by a bloody old codger. Wouldn’t have happened if I’d been sober. Harry Kvist in another amazing comeback.

  The back door glides open without a sound. Another door behind it leads to the shed in the courtyard, where the boiling pots and mangles are kept. I go down the dark staircase and enter the small cellar room.

  I light a match and find the light switch. The lamp doesn’t work. The stench of piss and mould finds its way into my misshapen nose. The match head burns my fingertips, I shake it out and light another. The shorter wall of the little room is covered in tarred pipes. Behind one of the welds is a large, black wet patch on the cement wall.

  Along both of the longer sides are narrow cast-iron beds. Again I blow out my match. A cellar rat darts over my feet. I flinch and drop the box of matches. It hits the floor somewhere in front of me. A surging sound comes from one of the pipes.

  ‘Damn it.’

  Through the door above comes a faint light.

  I wait a while but my eyes don’t adjust to the dark. My knees click as I go down on all fours. I fumble over the coarse concrete floor. In the end I find the matchbox. As I get up I kick something. A bucket falls over with a clattering sound. The sharp smell of month-old piss assaults my nostrils. Again my stomach turns but I’m not someone who wastes vodka unnecessarily. I light another match and breathe through my mouth.

  Between the beds lies a zinc bucket which has been used as a chamber pot. The bed linen is disordered. I check one of the mattresses. It’s lumpy to the touch, stuffed with rags and other cast-offs, but there’s no blood on it. I hold up the sheets in the flickering glow of the flame. They’re completely white. I toss them back and throw aside the match. It hisses and goes out on the floor.

  Yet another match, forming a shivering ball of light. I lean over the other bed. On the pillow are a couple of scattered, rust-red drops, and that’s all I find. I stare at them. Possibly Beda died here, but no skull was ever crushed in this bed. I’ve worked over a couple of blokes in my day, and I know what a damned nasty mess results when you make a proper job of it. I curse as the flame burns the tips of my fingers again.

  My steps echo as I go up the narrow stairs. In the shop the sudden light blinds me, like when you’re released after several days in a dark solitary cell. Little Doughboy appears in my head, and I slow my steps. The greying bloke is standing outside with his broken pocket watch in his hand. I let him wait a few minutes more.

  The cash register has been emptied of money. In a cardboard box on a shelf underneath is a pad of carbon paper. Squinting so I can focus my eyes, I look through a dozen receipts at the top. There seem to be several different handwriting styles. I know Beda’s handwriting and she has not written these. The topmost receipt is dated the seventeenth of September. Ström, the junk dealer, apparently handed in a shirt and overcoat. The slanted pencilled letters seem to be leaning against each other on the grey-hued paper. I copy everything into my notebook and lift the hatch in the counter with a thump. I open the door. A northerly wind raging down the street hits me square in the face. It stinks of winter. I turn to Kullberg, who’s working on reacquiring his dignity by firmly clenching his jaw. I go back and talk to him.

  ‘Who sold you this property?’

  ‘Miss Johansson.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘She inherited it from her mother.’

  ‘Inherited?’

  ‘And I certainly didn’t think that I’d be assaulted the first time I came to look it over.’

  ‘You looked like a burglar.’

  I pull the elastic strap off my wallet.

  ‘But you said yourself that there was nothing here to steal,’ he complained.

  I hand over two five-krona bills: ‘So you can have your pocket watch repaired.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to call the police about you!’

  The wrinkles around his mouth deepen when the measly old bloke purses his lips, but he takes the money. The vein in my forehead starts to throb. I feel like putting my feet on the bastard’s neck again. This time I’ll make sure that he puts his teeth against the edge of the pavement. I clench my fists: ‘Listen: not a soul saw what happened here. It was a mistake, the whole thing. Get lost now!’

  I get out another five-krona bill and tuck it into the breast pocket of his overcoat: ‘Welcome to Sibirien.’

  THURSDAY 21 NOVEMBER

  ‘Six days left. Six miserable days.’

  With an aching head, I mutter to myself as I help Lundin lug out a black, pre-manufactured coffin from the little workshop inside the funeral parlour. It’s an early November morning: ice crystals on the windows and a pair of thick woollen socks in my boots. I’m wearing a black suit and white shirt with a black silk cravat, and I also have a very nice blue shiner under my left eye.

  Lundin has lent me a bowler hat that’s a size too small for me. He unbolts the front door of the funeral parlour and hunches over as he backs out into the street.

  The hearse is a black-painted Chevrolet ambulance. It has three side windows and double doors at the back. They creak when Lundin puts his knee under the coffin and opens them with one hand. I push the coffin in. There’s a dull thudding sound as Lundin tries to slap some life into his old legs. He’s been working on them since morning coffee.

  ‘Damned hangover I have this morning.’

  Lundin’s breath is steaming. I nod, pushing back the tight bowler hat with my finger. I crack my finger joints and smack my lips, my mouth as dry as if I’ve been serving half a crew of sailors through the night. Again I think about Doughboy, the taste of him burns on my palate.

  ‘And now?’<
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  ‘You go up to Nisse’s Eva and pick up the pastries and the cake. I’ll stow the other stuff. The sheets, the bands, the runners, the porcelain and the pastries have to fit inside the coffin.’

  ‘Where’s the body?’

  ‘By St Eriksplan. The caretaker is called Ola Petterson. Let’s get moving so we don’t get caught in that.’

  I follow the direction of Lundin’s gnarled, snuff-yellow finger, raising my eyes to the black-grey clouds building up overhead. I grunt and Lundin limps off. I cross Roslagsgatan and pant my way up the hill towards the bakery in Ingemarsgatan. Cold air tears at my throat. Eighteen months have made me forget how badly a proper hangover can floor a bloke.

  Under the sign of the golden bun outside the bakery lies a knee-high, tousled crossbreed of some kind, trembling with cold. The bitch has a suppurating wound across her nose. She whines and shakily gets to her feet when I hold out my hand. I show her I don’t have any food. While I’m scratching behind her ear, I peer in through the shop window. There’s a pleasant smell of freshly baked bread.

  On one side of the brown wooden counter, on the black and white floor, is a jumble of tables and chairs. On the counter are slanted copper troughs of biscuits and rows of pastries. A variety of loaves stick out their noses from the shelves behind the counter, like the tips of shells in an ammunition store.

  I straighten up. Just as I’m about to go in through the door, emblazoned with the words PASTRIES, A VARIETY OF TARTS, NAME-DAY CAKES, a little girl comes darting along. She’s wearing dirty woollen tights and, just like the little maid I met outside Långholmen Prison, she’s folded her wool socks over the top of her worn boots. Her scarf, knitted from all kinds of cast-offs and snippets, flaps by colourfully as she slinks in just ahead of me. I grunt and catch the door just before it closes.

  ‘Five öre’s worth of pastry crumbs, please!’

  The little girl raises herself onto her toes, exposing her worn soles, and holds up her coin over the countertop. Apart from Nisse’s Eva we are the only people in there.

  Nisse’s Eva has just the sort of chubbiness that a cheerful baker’s wife should have, and her cheeks are red. There’s a little flour speckled over the sleeves of her black dress. She looks at me with big green eyes.

  ‘Can you wait a moment, Kvisten?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  It’s hot in there. I take off my bowler and run my hand over my short hair. Nisse’s Eva scrapes the crumbs out of some empty baking trays, filling a newspaper cone and handing it to the girl, who receives it with a curtsy. The baker’s wife turns to me, mopping the sweat on her brow with the arm of her dress.

  ‘How can I help you, Kvisten? Looking very gloomy today.’

  ‘Lundin’s order.’

  ‘Is that so. Did you bring payment?’

  ‘I assumed it would be billed.’

  ‘Lundin already has twenty cakes in our books! You’ll have to tell him, Kvisten, he has to come in and pay up without delay.’

  ‘I will.’

  Eva disappears through a door behind the counter, returning before long and lining up the order in front of me. The cake is decorated with the initials of the dead man, a master mechanic. The pastries are wrapped in black silk paper with tasselled ends, and decorated with crucifixes and pictures of the Redeemer. I nod, and Eva packs it all into cartons. Outside, the rain starts falling against the window.

  ‘Maybe you haven’t seen our new electrified cash register, since you’ve been gone so long?’

  ‘Have to be another time. In a hurry.’

  ‘But it’s right here. A Patterson. From America. It won’t cost you anything to have a look.’

  The baker’s wife pushes over the cartons and gestures towards the machine at the other end of the counter.

  ‘Another time.’

  Nisse’s Eva pulls a sour face, I take the cartons under my arm, the doorbell tinkles, I’m back in the street. The rain is now interspersed with large, wet snowflakes melting against the cobblestones. The street cur has abandoned the bakery and is lying in the middle of the right-hand lane of the road. Possibly she was on her way to seeking shelter somewhere, but gave up halfway. I whistle for her, her head moves sluggishly. For a fraction of a second her brown eyes meet mine, then she dismisses me. I hunch my head between my shoulders and continue down the hill.

  Lundin meets me at the car with a brass candelabrum in each hand. Carefully I put the bakery cartons in the wooden casket, leave the carrying straps on top and close the lid. Lundin closes the doors.

  ‘Nisse’s Eva wants to be paid.’

  ‘They’re taking it in vodka.’

  ‘Shall I bring it up to them?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘I have to make a call.’

  ‘Long distance?’

  ‘Police station.’

  ‘Please do. I’ll add it to the bill.’

  I dig out the cigar case from my inside pocket, open the lid, fiddle with a Meteor, bite off the end and get it going. The black windowpanes of the laundry are staring at me from the other side of the street. They’re trying to tell me something, I’ll be damned if I know what. My breast fills with sorrow.

  The foyer of the undertaker’s consists of a desk, a couple of dusty plants as tall as a man and a telephone mounted on the wall. When the cool voice of the telephonist answers, I ask for the police station, and then, when I get to the next operator, the smuggling unit: ‘This is Chief Constable Hessler, how can I help you?’

  ‘Open your mouth wide and swallow when you’re told.’

  For a moment there’s a silence, apart from the faint voices from crossed lines.

  ‘H-Harry…?’

  ‘Have you met someone else, Hessler? I’ll get jealous if you have!’

  Lundin shuffles out of the refrigerated mortuary with a couple of vodka bottles in his arms. The ration book allows for extra supplies of booze at funerals, and he often takes a part of his payment in vodka, which he sells on. He keeps the bottles in a child’s coffin in there. I think he does it on purpose, to stop me helping myself. He disappears outside. Over the door is a wall hanging embroidered with the words ‘All Things in Their Place’.

  ‘You mustn’t call me here,’ whispers the chief constable.

  ‘What about at home, then?’

  ‘Damn it, Harry!’

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you’d been released. I don’t think I can—’

  ‘That’s what you said the last time, and in two seconds you were on your knees in my living room. Listen to me: on the eighteenth of September there was a murder in Roslagsgatan. The victim: Beda Johansson. The alleged perpetrator is her son, Petrus Johansson.’

  ‘That’s a completely different unit. I don’t know what they’re working on down there.’

  ‘Where’s he banged up? I was going to send him a postcard.’

  ‘A postcard?’

  ‘Put a call through to Lundin this afternoon. Vasa 7160.’

  I hang up. Hessler responds best when you keep him on a tight leash. Lundin opens the door and calls out to me that I have to get in the car and drive. I press my bowler down over my head, fold my overcoat over my arm and walk out. It’s stopped raining. The hearse coughs like an old man with TB.

  I steer the heavy crate down Odengatan, past the library, and smarten up the pace on the incline by Vasa Church. At the yellow-striped pedestrian crossing, I stop for a nanny pushing a pram with a woven basket. She’s wearing a starched hood of white fabric over her head, and under the almost full-length cape there’s a hint of a grey uniform. I speed up again, muttering to myself: ‘Only Ström saw them removing Beda’s body, although it was in full daylight.’

  I pick up more speed.

  ‘People weren’t around, because they were at work. Damn it, my bloody hand is killing me.’

  ‘And then there’s the letter.’

  I get out Beda’s letter from my pocket and let it flutter in the wind.
I’ve already read it out to Lundin, over morning coffee.

  ‘Couldn’t it have been the jumble dealer who did it?’ Lundin asks indifferently.

  I sense him watching me out of the corner of his eye. I remove the cigar from my mouth. Behind us, the bells of Vasa strike ten times. The Plaza is showing a film called Do Not Desert Me. The undertaker tries to get rid of the pain in his left hand by flicking it up and down.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Under one of Vasa Park’s bare trees, a gang of ragged fellows are standing about in a tight cluster, trying to warm themselves up. Homeless, thirsting for compassion, work and vodka. Lundin keeps his eyes on them as we pass. He opens and closes his hand a few times. His accounts book lies in his lap.

  ‘It may very well have been Ström who was paying up every month to secure Petrus’s future: Beda did mention something to that effect in her letter. You’ve heard the rumours. Maybe he’d had enough of shelling out for the boy.’

  ‘All the talk about that damned bloke eating rinds and crusts for breakfast while keeping ten thousand in banknotes and silver under a floorboard in his junk shop?’

  ‘You know what I’m getting at.’

  ‘People like to prattle, it’s all a lot of blasted nonsense – that much is true at least.’

  ‘Will you at least admit that they look similar. Blond, tall. The same sloping forehead.’

  From Sigtunagatan, two horses pulling a wagon clatter into the traffic. I brake abruptly. Lundin puts a hand against the dashboard. The load is thoroughly lashed with coarse rope, without a tarpaulin, and so tall that it almost reaches up to the overhead tram cables. I crane my neck, put my foot down and overtake.

  ‘There’s one or two other tall blond blokes in this country. Wasn’t the father supposed to be a sailor? Why else was she called Sailor-Beda?’

  ‘Worth looking into. Ask someone to check the Parish Registry for the father’s name.’

  Lundin takes out a pen and makes a note in his accounts book. I say: ‘There’s a sister. Maybe she did it? What’s the street number again?’

  ‘I never heard anything about any sister. Park there on the other side of the square, by the haberdasher’s.’