Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Who do you think it could be?’

  It’s a man’s voice; a neutral tone, almost bored.

  ‘One of the nuts in the laundry has got hold of a uniform. It’s happened here before, before your time,’ someone answers in an unmistakable Småland accent.

  ‘Oskarsson?’

  The bathtub rocks again as the person stands up. A corner of the sheet bunches up slightly, letting in a chink of light. Again I hear steps and the rattling of keys.

  ‘You think that bastard would pull off something like this? I doubt it.’

  The door opens and closes. As calmly as I can, I catch my breath. The sound of my beating heart seems to echo between the enamelled sides of the bathtub.

  Gradually the noise dies away and soon all I can hear is the ticking second hand of my pocket watch, and the rain, which starts to fall against the windows. I am struck by an almost paralysing nervous exhaustion.

  Even though I need a piss I decide to wait until nine o’clock before I get out of the bathtub. What I should do after that I just don’t know. On the one hand I want to go back down to the isolation cells, deck that guard and find the right key. On the other hand I wouldn’t mind just blowing off the whole damned thing, find a way out and lie low until it’s time to meet Doughboy outside the gates of Långholmen. I check my watch again and shift my legs.

  When my watch shows nine, I quietly get up. The rain has picked up in intensity, striking the window and drowning out the sound of my pissing into a drain in the corner. I button up Wallin’s uniform trousers, go to the door and put my ear against it. Pressing down on the door handle, I open it carefully and peer through the crack.

  One flight of stairs below there’s a window; maybe I can open it and get out that way. As far as I remember there were no bars on it. Otherwise I’ll have to hurry back through the corridor, get out via the main entrance and make a run for it across the lawns. What Elin will say when I come sloping along with my tail between my legs, I couldn’t give a blind fuck about. Maybe I can persuade Wallin to contact Petrus instead. Shouldn’t cost me much more than another litre.

  I have my own business to think about now, whatever promises I have made. I slip out of the doorway and stop to listen again, hauling up a Meteor from my pocket and putting it between my lips to calm a raging need to smoke, which is flowing through my body.

  As quietly as I can I go to the stairs leading down to the ground floor.

  Every third step I stop and listen as hard as Job must have done for the voice of God. With only another five steps to go, I hear steps quickly approaching from the basement. Someone is jogging up from the cellar and the isolation cells. It’s too late to turn back. I press myself against the wall and clench my fists, at the ready. I have the better position if they come up the second flight. There’s nothing worse than fighting someone uphill.

  I take a deep breath and hold it while he hurries past just below, a squat bloke of about fifty, entirely dressed in black apart from a white shirt. His profile is flattened, not unlike my own, and there’s a scar running through his eyebrow. His bushy white moustache is not unlike Lundin’s. In his hands he’s holding a handkerchief that was once white, but is now soaked with something red. The blood has spattered a good way up his starched shirtsleeves. My muscles stiffen. Even though he’s only in sight for a few seconds, I know for certain that I have seen him recently, somewhere else.

  Agile as a cat I dart around the corner and tumble down the stairs to the basement. A couple of the steps have red-coloured half-footprints on them. I press my sweaty hands against the door and peer inside. The guard’s cubicle is empty but Petrus’s door is ajar.

  I press down on the door handle and swing the door open. Curled up and with my fists raised, I move gingerly towards the cell, all the time with my left foot before my right.

  A pale streak of light is shining through the gap in the doorway. I push it open, then draw breath. The red gore has shot up against the walls and run onto the floor. Strapped onto his bunk, his wound looking like an extra grinning mouth, Petrus lies with his throat cut from one ear to the other.

  Once more I have failed to keep a promise to someone I cared for.

  Immediately I set off in pursuit of the man with the scar. The sound of my running fills the corridors. Again there’s a cacophony of angry yells and sharp whistles against a background chorus of the wails and weeping of the lunatics. When I catch sight of the man in black, he’s already running too. He has quite a head start on me, but I think I’m faster than him. I can’t do ten kilometres in forty-five minutes any more, but I’m in better shape now than when they banged me up.

  We’re getting close to the main entrance when a young warder comes charging in through the door. He’s a wiry type with a birthmark like a tear under one eye. He places himself in the path of the man in black and spreads his arms as if inviting an embrace. The poplin coat of the black-dressed man makes a slapping sound in the gloom as he slams into the youth with his shoulder. The youth cracks the back of his head into the door frame with a sharp smacking sound, and he’s out of play before he’s even hit the floor.

  Outside, the rain is bucketing down. I slip and hit my knee on the imposing front steps leading down to the lawns, but I’m quickly back on my feet. The black figure still has a lead of twenty or so metres, and he almost disappears in the darkness, but I can hear the gravel crunching under his feet on the way to the main entrance. I grit my teeth and pick up speed. The raindrops lash my face under the peaked cap, cleaning the sweat off.

  My lungs are screaming for oxygen. I bite my lip hard to give my muscles an extra push. I keep gaining on him, but when he jumps clumsily over the boom by the sentry box, there’s still a gap of ten metres at least between us. I take a couple of long strides before leaping over in turn. In the street-lit yard I see him slowing down. The door of the sentry box opens just as I’m hurdling over the barrier, like some Swedish Jesse Owens.

  ‘Start the car!’ I roar, through the rain. ‘Elin! Start the car for Christ’s sake!’

  I wave my arm over my head towards Lundin’s hearse, at the same time as the man in front of me reaches a jet-black Rolls-Royce. He fumbles frantically in his pockets, unlocks and opens the door, then throws himself into the driver’s seat on the right.

  Just as the engine rumbles to life I take a huge leap and land at the stern end on the rain-drenched footplate of the luxury crate. I fumble for the handle of the back door and grip onto it at the same time as the car roars off, gravel smattering under the wheels like a double-barrel of lead. The door flies open and I lose my grip on the slippery door handle. For an instant I find myself in a state of weightlessness before I hit the ground hard, spinning round. Pain shoots through my worn-out shoulder joint. I raise my eyes and stare at the disappearing Rolls. A1058. I’m almost sure that the plate said A1058.

  At that moment the hearse comes thundering along. I get up on all fours as Elin skids to a halt, no more than half a metre from my head, so that the gravel flies into my face; I give it a wipe with my coat sleeve as I’m getting up. The door opens and I crawl into the passenger seat next to Elin.

  ‘What on earth…?’

  ‘Drive!’

  I whip out my notebook and aniline pen as Elin releases the clutch. Some way ahead of us the back lights of the Rolls disappear as it turns up towards the Väster Bridge.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Elin turns on the double windscreen wipers and changes gear. I catch my breath as I write down the registration number.

  ‘That swine in the Rolls just sliced up your brother. And killed him.’

  FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER

  Three times, Elin hammers the base of her palm against the top of the steering wheel, as if this might make the old ambulance pick up speed while it drags itself across the Väster Bridge. The Rolls has already increased its lead, and it’s disappearing over the other side of the incline.

  ‘Damn it,’ she curses quietly to herself. ‘God damn,
damn.’

  She whacks the steering wheel again. I peer at her. She’s taken off her beret and her hair is glowing red in the darkness of the front compartment. She turns the wheel and overtakes an old crate.

  The rain spatters against the bodywork. Between the lanes you can see the gleaming-wet rails of the number 4 tram.

  We reach the top of the span, there’s no sign of the Rolls. I glimpse the dark rocks where I was standing with the cheering people of Söder just a few days ago. Further ahead, the twin steeples of Högalid Church can be seen. I crane my neck and peer down at Långholmen Prison to the right. Doughboy is waiting for me in there. Five more days.

  We pick up speed a little as we start to move downhill, and the sound of the engine rises by a few octaves. I lean back and light a Meteor. In the flaring light of the match, I see Elin’s green eyes, seething with anger.

  I take the cigar out of my mouth: ‘There’s no point. Not with this car. The Rolls is too quick.’

  Elin thumps the steering wheel again and leans forward. She overtakes wildly again.

  ‘Maybe the bastard will get a flat tyre. Or crash,’ she hisses, her anger picking up steam.

  ‘Or we will. Slow down.’

  ‘What was that?’

  Elin turns her head towards me. Her mouth hangs open, as if this might help her hear what I am saying. I’m starting to think that she’s even deafer than her brother was.

  ‘Slow down!’

  ‘Never.’

  On Långholmsgatan, close to the abutment, a little girl is leading Blind-Pyttan home. Pyttan is wearing dark glasses and a hat with a floppy brim. Every day they tour the streets of Söder from the saltwater to the freshwater side, the blind woman calling down a rain of five-öre pieces with her pure voice and heart-rending songs. People say that God took her sight but compensated her with a remarkable voice.

  I close my eyes and massage the broad base of my nose. Inside, I can see Petrus’s throat sliced open, the red goo over the sheets, the blood all over the floor and walls. I press my fingers so hard against the bridge of my nose that it hurts. The car slows down and I open my eyes. We turn into Hornsgatan. On the corner, a couple of slum sisters from the Salvation Army 4th Division stand under an awning. One of them is playing a guitar, the other shaking a collections box. The black bands of their bonnets are fluttering in the wind.

  Elin shakes her head; she sounds desolate now: ‘Why would anyone want to do anything like that?’

  ‘If we knew that we’d have solved the case.’

  ‘It has to be the father.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man in the letter, it must be him who’s behind all this.’

  ‘If there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s this: never assume more than fuck all about anything.’

  ‘It’s always a man.’

  I grunt: ‘But not always a father.’

  ‘Talk louder, please.’

  ‘Makes no damned difference.’

  The November evening has more or less cleared the city’s inhabitants off the streets, and there’s not much traffic. The rain sings its gloomy song in the gutters of Hornsgatan, and the stray dogs have taken refuge under carts and in doorways. Reluctantly, the streetlights penetrate the shadows.

  We drive past the place where Maria, the covered market, used to be in the olden days. I slide my hand over my coat and feel the letter still there. I used to take my daughter there on Saturdays, if we could allow ourselves some toffee from the sweet stand. The place used to smell of raw meat, freshly harvested vegetables and the wood shavings scattered in the passages between the stands. One time Ida accidentally got her toffee stuck in her hair, and we borrowed a pair of scissors from the barber’s opposite to cut it out. Emma was angry with me when we came home that time, but soon enough she was laughing about it. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have kept one of Ida’s sticky locks in a box of matches. Something to remember my girl by.

  I take a deep puff and exhale a leaden cloud in the driver’s compartment. There are some memories that quickly fade away, while you end up lugging others around with you like a yoke. Elin coughs pointedly.

  I get out my notebook and start humming as I write down a detailed description of the murderer, underneath his registration plate number: busted nose, scar through his eyebrow, moustache and a black poplin coat.

  We cut through half of Södermalm lengthwise, passing the church and the Palace cinema in silence, turning off down into Slussen and its new roundabout. Elin suddenly starts sobbing and leaning over the steering wheel. She wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. I daren’t look; I keep my eyes averted and stare out of the side window. Her crying soon stops as suddenly as it began.

  ‘I got a couple of boxes of clothes, letters and other things from… Mother. I can look through it and see if I find anything that could help.’

  ‘Do that.’

  ‘For some reason I’ve been avoiding it.’

  ‘It’s natural.’

  ‘Kvist, are you sure about the number plate?’

  ‘More or less. Hessler can help us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My friend at the police can trace it.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe the murderer got our number as well?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You should be careful.’

  I grunt by way of an answer. Elin steers the hearse along Vasagatan, past the Central Station. On the other side lies the exclusive Hotel Continental. Only three years ago I was dining there with the film star Doris Steiner; I even drove around in a sixteen-cylinder 1930 Cadillac for a few weeks. Now I’m rattling about in a hearse with this woman. I glance at Elin. Life: it’s as simple as a square boxing ring. When you’re in it, you can only fight like hell and hope you’re still standing when you hear the gong.

  Elin drives past Lennartsson’s reputable shoe shop and Norra Bantorget. She continues up Dalagatan to the north and eventually stops in front of a glass-panelled oak door not far from Matteus’s Church. The car doors creak; my cigar fizzles out in the gutter and bounces into a drain. I fold up my coat collar and Elin puts on her beret.

  ‘It would be unseemly for me to invite you in, Kvist.’

  The rain drips onto my coat from the brim of my hat.

  I shrug: ‘All the same to me.’

  ‘Stina, the woman I share the flat with, starts work early. She might already be asleep.’

  ‘I have a funeral tomorrow but I’ll be in touch after that.’

  I offer my hand. Elin takes it, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘I stink of your awful cigars.’

  ‘That’s not the worst you’ve been through today.’

  Elin gives a barely audible snort. With a cursory nod she goes to the front porch and pushes it, only to find that the caretaker has already locked up. She gets out a key from her handbag. I wait to make sure she gets inside all right. I catch myself eyeing her up.

  ‘You’re gawping worse than a schoolboy.’ The fire is back in her voice. I prefer it to her weeping.

  The door closes behind her. The rain keeps coming down. I shake my head and fumble for a Meteor. When she hits the light switch inside the stairwell, I can see that for some reason she’s smiling slightly. I frown, and push my hat down over my eyes. There’s a minor waterfall bucketing down over the road. The match rasps against the phosphorus strip and flares up as red as her hair. I shield the flame with my hand and get the cigar going. I run my eyes across the dripping house fronts with their hopeless rows of empty windows. The November wind roars in the cavities of the inset basement windows as if trying to compete with the din of the rain.

  It’s still raining when I turn into Roslagsgatan. The lantern outside Lundin’s funeral parlour is broken. The boys from the gang often turn it out with a well-aimed kick at the pole, which makes the gas mantle collapse like cigarette ash.

  I park on the other side of the street and get out
of the car. My body is aching after all the evening’s knocks and falls. Both the uniform and the coat will have to be cleaned. I look up. For an instant I stare at the dark windows of the laundry.

  An unexpected wave of nausea convulses my stomach. I spit between my boots.

  The drains are greedily sucking in the rainwater. I jump across the streaming gutter and amble across to the other pavement. A great tiredness is surging through my limbs, now that I’m so close to my bed. Lundin’s sign screeches in the wind. Weathervanes and chimney cowls spin restlessly. There’s a rattling sound from around the corner on Ingemarsgatan, as if someone just kicked an old tin can. Probably rats, digging about in the mound of rubbish that often builds up there.

  I pause and turn my gaze to the laundry. A thought darts so quickly through my head that I don’t have time to catch it. I stand there for a moment to see if it comes back. It doesn’t.

  ‘I’m worth a nightcap. What a damned Friday night.’

  I’m deep in thought, but I still have time to notice a series of sounds that don’t belong in a deserted autumn evening street: the clattering noise comes again from Ingemarsgatan, then a series of quick, light steps, followed by the unmistakable sound of an Italian flick-knife being opened – my brain kicks into gear.

  I twist my body and turn towards the noise. A dull pain radiates from my left side. The blade of the knife flashes as it’s drawn back for a second strike. I jump backwards, flicking a punch with my right hand and barely dodging the knife as it swings again. I’m rocking back on my heels and the force of the punch is lost, but at least I land it, hitting my opponent just below the scar that runs through his eyebrow: an old acquaintance, it seems.

  His hat is knocked off. He stumbles backwards, pulling an ugly face.

  ‘So you were going to kill two blokes on the same night, were you?’

  I fire off a double left jab. He rolls his head away from the first but rather than chasing his ugly mug with my fist, I let number two land in the same place, so that he whacks his head right into it when he sways back, and his cold blue eyes open wide with surprise. He’s had a bit of schooling but he’s never boxed at any high level. For half a second I’ve got him in the bag. He stands there with his feet far apart. I can see his brain struggling to reengage with his body’s muscles.