I look at the coffin at the front. One of them ran into a tram, the other ran into me. The outcome was the same.
The pastor stops preaching. A pair of water-combed churchgoers, stiff and God-fearing, shift in their seats. Their pew creaks in response. Someone blows their nose loudly. Lundin’s fingers drum gently against his Book of Psalms. The first organ tones of ‘Children of the Heavenly Father’ resound between the walls, and Lundin and I lean our heads together to pick up our conversation where we left off. The pastor gives the last psalm everything he’s got. The little congregation murmurs along. Lundin’s breath, soured by schnapps and coffee, wafts into my face from only a few inches away.
‘So we’re agreed, then?’ he says. ‘We played cards all night?’
‘At my place. Mainly poker.’
‘Who won?’
‘I did.’
‘Hardly credible.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘So I won, then?’
‘Okay.’
‘And if they open the coffin?’
‘We deny all knowledge.’
Lundin coughs, scraping his foot against the floor. He leans towards me and goes on: ‘And the dog food?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The bucket of slop for your bitch!’
‘Her name’s Dixie.’
‘Is there anything left in it?’
‘Just a bit in the bottom.’
‘How much or how little is hardly very significant.’
‘It’s boiled to shreds.’
‘Can they establish its blood group?’
‘Don’t ask me.’
The music stops. After some further words, the pastor gestures for the next of kin to come forward. The congregation stirs all along the pews.
Everyone takes a turn around the coffin. The mother curtsies, and the father bows. Those with bouquets in their hands lay them down. Farewells are mumbled. A sob or two echoes through the chapel.
The parents are the first to walk back down the central aisle. The father’s fat face is scarlet, as if his starched collar is a size too small. He squeezes a snuff handkerchief in one hand. His wife supports herself on his other arm. She hasn’t cried a tear. I nod appreciatively at her. I can’t stand women when they start crying. I’ll go along with anything to make them stop.
Outside, the bells start up. The few fellow mourners stumble along behind the parents, looking disconcerted and confused. This was no funeral to write home about, not as heart-rending and beautiful as it’s meant to be when some poor sods bury their little darling.
‘Let’s get a bloody move on.’
Lundin stands up with a certain heaviness; I do the same. There’s a bit of muttering and bickering among the pall-bearers. I step into the central aisle and let my eyes wander towards the square doorway of the chapel, the doors of which are wide open to the falling dusk.
The church bells fade away. We gather around the coffin, our bowler hats in our hands. My palms are sweaty.
‘Where the hell’s the sexton who’s working the hydraulics?’
Lundin looks around. I see the tension in his face. The furrows on his brow are deeper than ever. Outside, I hear a car door closing. A chill runs through my bones. I turn around. The man in the doorway, an old acquaintance of mine, is wearing an elegant overcoat and a bowler hat. His name is Berglund, a detective superintendent. He has the same little grey moustache as the last time I saw him. I hate him. As far as I can tell, the feeling is mutual.
Fear churns inside me. I’m trembling. I think about Doughboy. I think about the suit I’ve promised him. I think of him in that damned cigar shop.
Berglund has brought along two uniformed constables.
They keep their hands on the hilts of their sabres as they come down the central aisle. Berglund already has the cuffs ready in his hand. A dog barks twice. Lundin passes his hip-flask around the bearers. The blokes raise it to the coffin before they take a pull at it. Lundin imbibes another mouthful as it comes back. I lean towards him, my eyes fixed on my newly polished shoes.
‘There’s a suit in my name waiting at Standards. Would you be good enough to pick it up?’
‘Certainly I can.’
‘It’s for Doughboy. He should come by the funeral parlour looking for me in four days.’
‘I’ll see to it.’
Berglund and the other coppers are halfway down the central aisle now. He’s smiling, that same old stiff grin. Somewhere beneath the coffin there’s a clicking sound. The hydraulic lift huffs and puffs. The wooden base trembles.
‘And give him my best too.’
Lundin raises his eyebrow quizzically: ‘What?’
With a scraping sound, the coffin slowly sinks through the opening in the stone floor. I seem to feel the heat of the oven under the soles of my shoes. Sweat flows from my prison haircut and down over my brow.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What should I say?’
‘Just give my best to Doughboy.’
‘Here come the pigs now.’
The pall-bearers scatter and head for the exit, avoiding the detective superintendent’s path as you would a sharp reef in open water. Anger surges through me, the vein on my forehead pulses and my nails dig into my palms.
Berglund stops in front of us. His handcuffs dangle like a hangman’s noose in his hand. Lundin tries to barge in between us, but I push him aside. The policeman grins, his lips cracked from the cold: ‘You’ll have to accompany us to Kungsholmen, Kvist.’
The detective superintendent’s voice is taut and high-pitched.
‘What’s this about?’
‘An assault on Roslagsgatan, apparently Kvist was involved.’
‘Like hell I was.’
One of the constables grunts. At last Berglund’s copper’s grin fades. He leans towards me and lowers his voice: ‘Kvist obviously feels at home with all the sodomites at Långholmen,’ he hisses. ‘He’s hardly had time to be released before he has to crawl back inside.’
SUNDAY 24 NOVEMBER
I’m shuffling back and forth in my socks, between the graffiti-covered walls of the remand cell. To keep warm and make the time go by, I practise a bit of gentle shadow-boxing. When my inner tension becomes unbearable, I give my muscle memory free rein, releasing lightning-quick combinations, mixing all sorts of punches, going in low, then high. It gives me a momentary relief.
‘Harry Kvisten Kvist in a magnificent comeback.’
I shiver, double my jab and release a heavy right at chest height. Then withdraw quickly and accidentally put my heel on the rim of the plate I just put down by the heavy wooden door. It clatters. The remnants of my breakfast porridge splash over the floor. I lower my fists.
The cell doesn’t measure much more than five square metres, with a barred window at the short end. Under the window a latrine bucket spreads its stink. Along one of the long walls, there’s a bunk bolted into the stone, on it a mattress stuffed with compressed wood shavings. If you’re lucky you get a blanket of uniform cloth. I’m rarely lucky, I’m just not the type. Not this time either.
I scrape at a couple of the night’s flea bites and resume my pacing. They still haven’t interrogated me. This is how they work. First you have to sit alone all night in your own thoughts, you have to get your thoughts all in a tangle, your nerves taut as violin strings. It’s hard not to fall into it. You scare yourself, like a horse.
The faces of the dead tumble through my consciousness: Beda, her skin as wrinkled as a dry apple, laughing with her toothless mouth; Petrus, the large-hewn bloke with the mind of an urchin, blushing under his blond mane of hair; the man in the poplin coat, his eyebrow scar, his ice-cold blue eyes and the splashes of blood on his face.
My plan, and Lundin’s also, must have gone wrong. Some curious neighbour who saw the knife fight probably took the chance to avenge an old injustice.
I let my fists explode in the air before me, a furious flurry of blows. A sour exhalation
for every punch. Hooks and uppercuts, my whole arsenal in action. The wound in my side smarts. Sweat breaks out, makes the flea bites sting. My shoulders go numb.
Panting, I back into the wall, sink down on the floor with my knees in front of me, burying my face in my hands.
Doughboy comes into my mind, and for a moment I feel the temperature of my blood rise. The worst time of the day for the Långholmen convict is the moment between work and bed, when there’s time for thinking and yearning. But the worst of all is the day off, Sunday. Wherever you look, your eyes collide with the damp grey walls.
The only human contact is the prison chaplain, who makes his weekly visit only to tell us again that we’re all sinners. Well, at least it’s Doughboy’s last Sunday on the inside.
They bring another dollop of porridge before two uniformed screws cuff me and bring me up through the system of stairwells in the large police headquarters, fairly empty on a Sunday. With heavy steps I allow myself to be shepherded through a bare corridor. Visual memories of Doughboy flash through my head like lightning. Doughboy with his neck full of raw, scratched flea bites. Those smooth fingers of his. His soft mouth.
One of the screws shoves me between the shoulder blades: ‘Get a move on!’
Somehow that boy gave me a new lease of life. Cleaned out my polluted innards. For the first time in years, something other than fury pulsed through my blood. I promised him a new suit and a warm bed with proper bolsters. Now that I’ll fail to keep my promise, rage is once again pounding in my veins.
‘You can go to hell!’
We enter something more like a meeting room than one of the small chambers where interrogations are usually held. The room is dominated by an oblong table with some ten chairs around it. In the middle is an empty but dirty ashtray. A row of windows runs along one of the walls.
The screws press me down into a chair. The stitches over my ribs smart; I groan, keeping my mouth closed.
There’s a click when one of the handcuffs is released, only to be locked again with a rattling sound. They’ve shackled me to the back of the chair.
‘The hell’s the point of that?’
‘Orders.’
I grunt by way of an answer. Something warm is running down the ridges of my ribs. At least one stitch has gone, maybe more.
On the table in front of me, someone has placed a thick file, a notepad and a pack of Carat cigarettes. I crane my neck to get a better view. On top of the file lie an elegant fountain pen, a torn-off cinema-ticket stub, an enamelled tiepin with a swastika, two fifty-öre pieces and a gas-metre counter.
‘Apparently the criminal division has picked someone up for the murder of that pedlar,’ one of the screws says to the other, who sighs wearily.
‘They must have stumbled across the right person, I suppose.’
‘A vagrant.’
‘One-way ticket to Långholmen. At least he’ll have a roof over his head.’
The first screw gurgles, a laugh of sorts. I close my eyes. I hope with all my heart that Doughboy has the sense to seek out Lundin and get his suit, when I’m not there waiting for him.
‘Didn’t Berglund say half past?’
‘He’ll come.’
‘Why do we both have to wait here?’
The bunch of keys hanging from the screw’s belt rattles when he takes a couple of steps. The whisper that follows is too low for me to make it out. One of them stifles a laugh.
‘Well, you can always hope,’ adds the comedian.
I sit in silence on my chair, while the blood drips down my side. Using one arm, I try to pull the jacket around me so the blood can’t be seen, but it’s difficult when I’m locked to the chair. I clench my fists behind my back. I’d do anything for a last cigar.
The door opens and closes. I look up. Berglund saunters into view with the same damned smirk on his mug as always. The screws linger: it’s the final round, my opponent is keeping his seconds in the ring. Outside the ring there’s no justice. Inside there’s no difference between one man and another. Two blokes can meet there on equal terms.
Berglund sits down opposite me. He’s wearing an impeccable charcoal-grey three-piece suit and holding a leather briefcase in his bony fingers. His nails are short, perfectly white against his fingertips. There’s a click as his briefcase is opened; Berglund picks up the little items from the top of the file and puts them away. He leaves his bag on the table, caresses his grey moustache with an affected gesture and then drills his gaze into me: ‘So, we meet again.’
‘We wouldn’t if it was up to me.’
Berglund chuckles and opens the file. I keep repeating my alibi in my head: poker with Lundin in my kitchen; Lundin won. Drank vodka and sugared soda. A short evening walk with Dixie. Early to bed. If the coffin made it into the oven, I might still be in with a chance.
Berglund puts on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles: ‘Harry Kvist, born on the thirtieth of December 1898 in Torshälla parish.’ He lifts my file, as if gauging its weight: ‘Quite a bundle.’
One of the screws laughs but stops short when Berglund gives him the eye. The detective superintendent purses his mouth slightly and hauls out his timepiece. The lid opens with a click. He scrutinises the watch face and then snaps it shut.
‘Your name comes up in a dozen different investigations, and your bail was once paid by the Swedish consul in France. You have been sentenced for your anti-social tendencies. We have here a fine of seventy-five Swedish kronor for deviant behaviour in 1924, a prison term for assault in 1925, and another in 1928. To which we must add the most recent stretch for illegal intimidation.’
‘I’m not a lucky man. I learned that early on.’
My vest is sticking to my skin. The gold mussel in his hand clicks again as he opens it; then he closes it with a snap, before gripping his pen.
‘You and I met for the first time when you figured in a murder investigation concerning a certain Zetterberg, on Kungsgatan. Some three years ago, that was. The case remains unsolved to this day. I looked through the investigation this morning and some of the documents seem, highly mysteriously, to have gone missing from the file. For instance, I am quite certain that I interrogated you on a few occasions between Christmas and New Year in ’32.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m not the sort to forget. And this is the reason for the presence of these constables here today.’
‘My memory is not what it used to be.’
‘Your old friend Oskar Olsson is the head of the city police corps now. He’s not here to make sure you’re comfortable, Kvist.’
Berglund leans back in his chair and tucks his thumbs into his waistcoat. He lowers his chin to his chest and stares at me over the top of his spectacles.
‘So you were released from Långholmen around the 20th. Which would usually mean you were let out around lunchtime, as I understand it?’
‘What has that to do with anything?’
‘Anything?’
A little rivulet of blood seeks its way down under the lining of my trousers. They took my belt when they locked me up. I strain to keep smiling at him.
‘You mentioned an assault?’
‘Be good enough to answer the questions. What did you do after you were released?’
‘Went and gawped at the King, but I don’t know if he’d back me up if I said I was there.’
‘What are you going on about?’
‘The opening of the bridge. Bloody bad weather, but plenty of people anyway. A load of kids, singing away.’
‘And then?’
‘I went to the Toad. It’s a betting shop…’
‘And after you got home? To Sibirien? On the evening of the 20th?’
‘There was a house party next door. There always is, every November.’
‘How long did you stay?’
‘I went home early, but I can’t remember what time it was.’
‘Did you see anyone on your way home?’
‘I bumped into Rickardsson
. That’s one of Ploman’s blokes.’
‘I know them, all right.’
‘You have a very colourful circle of friends, Detective Superintendent.’
‘I know of them.’
Berglund bends over his notepad. His pen scrapes across the paper. He looks up: ‘No one else?’
I think. My muscles relax, I release my neck with a click, a honey-sweet feeling of peace spreads through me, and a sense of calm blows like a soft breeze through my veins. I feel a little smile coming on. I lean towards Berglund until the chain rattles and I come to a stop.
‘No one.’
Berglund rifles through his papers and finds the one he wants, then pushes up his glasses with his finger. I can’t stop smiling.
‘We have had an assault reported by a certain John Kullberg. On the given date at nine in the evening, Mister Kullberg without any apparent reason was attacked by a man of your description outside business premises at Roslagsgatan 48.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘A man not even known to Kullberg beat him so badly that he received a fracture to his rib, and when the victim duly attempted to escape, he was kicked in the crotch.’
‘Most likely I was sleeping off the vodka.’
Berglund sighs and leans back again in his chair.
‘Kvist, I know that in your time you were known as a technician, but I’m inclined to believe that you’ve become a damned slugger. Kicking a man in the crotch!’
The commissioner shakes his head like a giddy old bat.
‘Any witnesses?’
‘So, you have hardly been out of prison for eight hours before you have a punt at a man who was not even known to you. And you end up with a black eye to prove it.’
‘So… no witnesses, then?’
‘I suppose a nancy boy like you, Kvist, actually likes being in prison.’
‘Remove these handcuffs and fetch my damned coat with my cigars.’
Berglund tucks his thumbs back into his waistcoat, and sighs. He nods at the screws.
‘Well, Kvist had better be bloody clear about one thing. We’ve got our eyes on you. If you make the slightest false move, we’ll have you back inside before you know it.’
Down for the Count Page 16
