Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  We carry the things into the flat. The widow watches us in silence. From time to time she makes a movement, as if intending to help us, but every time she draws back, crestfallen. Lundin goes up to the corpse.

  ‘You want us to cut him?’ Lundin opens his cut-throat razor.

  ‘That’s the same suit he was married in, fifteen years ago.’

  The widow points at a black suit hanging over the gable of the bed. ‘It’s the only one that’ll do. He should go into the ground decently.’

  There’s a sob in her voice. She takes a couple of shaky breaths.

  ‘We’ll cut it open on the back, it’s not a problem.’

  ‘Kjell will have his watch, but you can put it in that snuff tin on the table.’

  She points at a bark tin on a crocheted cloth on the bedside table. Lundin taps her on the shoulder with his free hand.

  ‘You go out to your children and we’ll take care of the rest. Should we cut him?’

  ‘He was called unawares, and hadn’t decided anything.’

  ‘We’ll do it just to be on the safe side.’

  The widow nods tersely and leaves us. I slam the zinc bucket down next to the bed. The foundry-man’s wiry muscles are stiffened by death; his fingers are knotty, and his nails outlined by soot. We’re a few hours early. Lundin sighs, kneads himself a ball of snuff from the tin on the table, then puts it in the coffin.

  I force the arm straight like you do with the arm of a jumper frozen on the clothesline. Working together we manage to get the foundry-man’s hand into the bucket, and Lundin slashes his wrist with the knife. The blood is thick and grainy, almost like porridge, and it flows slowly. Very slowly the dead man opens his hand.

  ‘I’ll take care of the swaddling, and you arrange the room. We don’t have much time if I’m to get to my doctor’s appointment as well.’

  I spit out my cigar stub. It bounces against the foundry-man’s fingers and lands with a sizzle in the zinc bucket. Lundin wipes the knife on a towel. There’s a rasping sound on the dead man’s cheek when Lundin starts shaving him without lather. I unpack the things we brought in the coffin.

  I cover all the furnishings, also pictures, mirrors and windows, with white sheets that I tie together with broad black ribbons. Lundin wrestles with the corpse and its clothes, his cough shattering the silence of the flat. I fetch the table and put it at the long end of the room and throw a white sheet over it. In the middle I arrange black runners and piles of plates and cutlery, and set up the paraffin candles at either end. In the kitchen, the widow has burst into tears. She sobs loudly.

  One of the sons comes into the room. He’s a freckled lad with ginger hair, about seven or eight. He’s wearing dark turn-ups and a black silk waistcoat. He stands in a corner and covers his ears with his hands. I line up the glasses on the table.

  ‘Will you give me a hand putting him in?’

  Lundin’s coarse voice cuts through the silence. On my way through the room I stop in front of the boy. I get out my wallet, put it in my mouth, take hold of his lower arms and force his little cold hands down. He’s almost as stiff as his father. I get out a faded cinema ticket.

  ‘Tarzan.’ I hold the ticket out. He stares at it; I nod. ‘It’s yours.’ He takes it. I continue: ‘Now go and take care of your mother.’

  *

  By the time the black-dressed old girls show up, we’ve got Wernström tucked into his wooden box. It’s up on three kitchen chairs, surrounded by cut sprays of spruce. As you’d expect, they arrange a spread of brawn, herring gratins, cold stuffed cabbage rolls and a fresh cheese decorated with raisins in the form of a crucifix. The widow herself contributes a piece of roast veal.

  The blokes from the union knock on the door, and set up their association’s bold red banner in a corner. A smell of food fills the room. The pall-bearers are going to miss the toast in honour of the dead man.

  The blokes knock back their sixth of a gill and a couple of the old girls have one too. The pall-bearers show up in the doorway, and to their disappointment they have to line up with their bowler hats held in both hands like black beer-guts against their stomachs.

  Lundin points at the pall-bearers with his schnapps glass and leans in towards me: ‘You go on the front left again.’

  I nod. The ginger-haired lad is standing a little apart from the other urchins outside the kitchen, clutching my cinema ticket in his hand.

  Heavy with veal and cake, and with awkward feet, we carry the coffin down the stairs. Those of us at the front have to keep our carrying straps short. They dig into our shoulders and necks. In front of us walks the elder of the union blokes, carrying the red silk banner. The rolls of fat on his neck are covered in white hairs. He stumbles, totters and curses. Someone behind me laughs.

  ‘Let’s not drop the coffin on top of him, lads.’

  Pall-bearer’s sense of humour.

  Outside it’s still drizzling. I and the right-hand number one have to get inside the hearse to get the coffin in. The spruce smells good in here. Gently we put down Wernström on the floor.

  The funeral guests line up opposite each other, in two open charabancs. They take cover under umbrellas and blankets. The widow and her sons travel in a carriage with a hard top. The wet black horses give off a sharp smell. I put my hand on the muzzle of one of them. I think it’s Loke. He throws his head back, tossing his mane at the rain-heavy sky. Lundin nods at me.

  The hearse starts after a bit of coughing. I release the clutch and carefully pull out into Beridarebansgatan. In my rear-view mirror I see the driver of the two-horse carriage at the front smack his long reins over the rumps of his horses, and the cortège is set in motion. The iron-shod wheels rumble against the street. By the ochre-coloured house next door, the chicken lies in a pool of blood. It’s been run over. Its white feathers have spread across the wet cobblestones like the foam of a storm swell.

  Still unsteady on my feet a couple of hours later, after funeral schnapps and psalms, and with the church bells ringing in my ears, I park outside the undertaker’s on Roslagsgatan. I give Lundin a parting nod and wander northwards up the street towards Wallin’s place, with his uniform under my arm, until I’m standing outside his house.

  On the other side of the road, the Jewel comes walking along, her black dress fluttering in the wind under her unbuttoned coat, a mourning veil over her hat. Her arms hang lifelessly and she stumbles now and then as if she’s drunk.

  Wallin still has the blinds rolled down on the first floor. Maybe he’s worked through the night and is sleeping. I wait until the Jewel has passed, then hurry across the road. I don’t have much time to pick up Elin and get to the police station before most of them go home.

  The stairwell smells strongly of smoke: there must be a blocked stove or ceramic wood-burner somewhere. It’s as dark as the inside of a sack. I stop outside Wallin’s door. My cough echoes between the walls, I gob on the floor between my shoes and knock.

  I put my cigar in my mouth, try the door handle. The door glides opens with a creak. I step into the hall.

  ‘Wallin? It’s Kvist! I’ve come to give you the uniform.’

  There’s a crunching under my feet as if some plaster’s fallen from the ceiling. I stumble over a pair of shoes and almost land on my face. I fumble for the light switch.

  ‘As dark as a goddamned bat roost. Are you sleeping it off, you bloody drunk?’

  Carefully I feel my way along the wall into the flat, but I knock into something that starts to sway back and forth, like a sandbag. I gasp and instinctively put my fists up. The package containing the uniform thuds onto the floor.

  ‘What the hell?’

  I take the cigar out of my mouth, blow on the glowing end and hold it up. In the orange light I catch a glimpse of Wallin’s swollen, unshaven face. His lips have formed themselves into a distended purple ring, and his eyes stare blankly although they’re nearly popping out their sockets. His body turns slowly on the end of a clothesline hanging from a hook in the
ceiling. I squeeze his arm.

  He’s been dangling there for a good while.

  The hearse rattles in the powerful wind as Elin and I sit in the front seat, on Bergsgatan, keeping a lookout. It’s about an hour since I found Wallin. I think about him and that damned Rolls we were following up Roslagsgatan yesterday. We turned off before we saw where it stopped. I lost my nerve. I’ll be damned if I haven’t become lily-livered, now that Doughboy is almost within reach.

  I look over at Elin. Maybe I should try to sort this out on my own. Do what I do best without having to worry about her safety. Outside, six constables are ushering a group of dirty tatterdemalions along the pavement towards one of the back entrances to the police station. A florid-faced bloke, wearing trousers with braces and a laddered thick jumper, limps along at the front. His trouser legs have frayed and he leans on a knotty branch as he walks. Behind him is a tart in a soiled dress. Her colourful shawl flaps behind her in the wind. Men, women and children drift half-heartedly along the pavement like flotsam on a grey sea. The coppers try to hurry the gathering along by slapping at them with the sides of their sabres and their black batons. They’ve probably just raided one of the slums or gone around the harbour lifting tarpaulins.

  ‘How long are we supposed to sit here?’ Elin puts her NORMA food box on the dashboard and carefully wipes her lips.

  ‘It takes as long as it takes. It’s part of the job.’

  ‘Private detective.’ Elin snorts. ‘I can’t understand how you put up with it.’

  ‘Strong bladder, strong fists, the rest takes care of itself.’

  On the other side of the street the tart turns round towards one of the coppers and yells something, her mouth wide, stabbing her finger in the air. With a savage grin the copper grabs her wrist and hurls her forwards; she stumbles, struggling to hold her skirts down, and falls to the pavement.

  Elin drums her fingers on the instrument panel: ‘What do you think about that letter from the palace?’

  ‘I’ve already said, three or four times.’

  ‘Mum’s letter, with some sort of demand in it, was sent on the 3rd, but it took more than three weeks for her to get a reply.’

  ‘They must have a lot to get on with. Polishing the crown jewels and arranging balls.’

  ‘And then it takes another three weeks before she’s murdered.’

  ‘It might not be connected.’

  ‘A coincidence?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your mother had a lively imagination. She talked about the King, his family and other important people as if they were neighbours. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wrote them letters too.’

  ‘I have a headache. There’s a thunderstorm coming, mark my words.’

  An imposing black car comes up the little hill from the police headquarters. Elin holds her breath, but it’s not the right make.

  I look away from the building and across at her: ‘What difference does it make to you?’

  Elin takes her black clutch bag from between the seats. She opens it with a clicking sound.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says, irritably.

  ‘A month ago you didn’t even know she existed.’

  There’s a jingling of keys, coins and hatpins as Elin roots about in the bag. She lowers her voice: ‘I want justice.’

  She finds a lipstick and adjusts the rear mirror.

  ‘Justice?’

  ‘If you had a family of your own, you might understand.’

  Elin paints her lower lip first, then her top lip, and presses them together. I look out of the side window and bite back a curse. I wonder just how long it takes for a letter to cross the Atlantic these days. I find a half-smoked cigar in my pocket.

  ‘We should have hired a different motor car. Following them again in the hearse is suicide, pure and simple.’

  Evening has come and darkness has fallen over the rain-drenched city. Schoolchildren with satchels on their shoulders pass by, as do women holding baskets of groceries for supper. As the working day comes to a close, secretaries in dresses, draughtsmen, caretakers and clerical staff in suits follow. A little later, the dispatch companies spew out their delivery boys, and the factories and construction sites their workers: squat blokes with blue overalls stained by bricks and mortar. When I was put away in Långholmen, during the Depression, construction seemed to have stopped altogether. Everywhere one saw concrete skeletons of buildings, as if there had been a war; but now it all seems to have started up again. Last of all you see the street musicians emerging from buildings and hurrying to their pitches; these are their most lucrative hours.

  Light after light goes out in the police headquarters, and before long there’s only a handful still burning.

  Elin has dozed off, her mouth agape. Her light snoring fills the interior of the car; I keep my eyes on the police station. The wind is blowing so hard that I can hear its windows rattling. I check my pocket watch for the hundredth time. It’s now only fourteen hours until Doughboy is released. If something’s going to happen, it better happen soon. I should have given this case up long ago, but now it’s too late. Damned women and their obstinacy.

  Briefly I entertain the thought that the Rolls is parked on Roslagsgatan, and that the men in black have my house under surveillance. The easiest thing might be to go and have a look. But I’ve hardly finished the thought before I see a black car in my side mirror. Elin protests sleepily as I push her head down into my lap and duck down over it.

  The hearse trembles in the draught of air as the big Rolls swishes by. I stick my nose up above the dashboard and bring the motor stuttering to life.

  Dark, ragged clouds blow across the moon. We drive behind the Rolls at a safe distance, travelling up Hantverkargatan.

  The sentries around Belzén’s headquarters give us curious looks, but apart from that the city lies deserted. Up in Fridhemsplan, the car makes a detour around a couple of apartment buildings before it heads south. For a second I get the idea that we are on our way to Konradsberg, the asylum, to kill another lunatic or two, but the Rolls continues towards Väster Bridge.

  The darkness of Rålambshov Park surrounds us, and for the second time in recent days we follow the Rolls towards the apex of the bridge. The wind-tormented city lies exposed down below, like a knocked-out whore surrounded by symbols of authority: the church steeples, the City Hall and the telephone tower all seem to loom over her menacingly. In the black waters of Mälaren, about thirty metres below, reflected lights glitter like pearls scattered from a broken string.

  I look over the water at the stone walls of Långholmen: ‘That’s the way the world is.’

  ‘What are you muttering about?’

  ‘I was just reminded of the world’s injustice.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  I point: ‘I said the same thing on that rock there a week ago. I stood there gawping at the inauguration ceremony for the bridge.’

  ‘You’re raving.’

  ‘The King was speaking. His party included those four blokes in poplin overcoats.’

  ‘Damn! And you only mention it now?’

  ‘My memory’s not what it used to be.’

  A powerful gust of wind rocks the car, Elin gasps. My grip on the steering wheel tightens. A couple of splashes of rain hit the windshield.

  ‘The same blokes that the Rymans saw outside my mother’s?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I nod.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Bad things.’

  On the downward slope I glance at the island to the right. The grey prison walls can be glimpsed in the darkness; a light shines in one of the guard towers. Somewhere in the midst of all that, Doughboy has just gone to bed, his last night of captivity. Maybe he’ll dream of his new suit. Involuntarily I press my right shoe down on the accelerator.

  When the car in front of us turns into Hornsgatan, I can see there are three people inside it, two in the front seat and one in the bac
k. Elin steadies herself with a hand against the dashboard when I make a sharp left.

  ‘Why on earth would the superintendent of the Asplunden Institute socialise with those types?’

  ‘Bridge evenings?’

  ‘Very funny, Harry.’

  ‘Do you know who Ploman is? The gangster?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘He keeps a mute street girl he won in a game of cards.’

  ‘Bloody lovely gentleman.’

  ‘Mute girls don’t gossip. Some say she was like that from the start, others say Rickardsson cut off her tongue with a cut-throat razor.’

  Elin flinches: ‘Rickardsson?’

  ‘He lives on Roslagsgatan. We saw him yesterday outside Ström’s. There’s nothing especially wrong with him apart from that.’

  ‘And what does that have to do with the Asplunden Institute?’

  ‘That’s what we have to find out.’

  By New Slussen the car in front of us suddenly accelerates. I peer up at the Tyska Church; it’s almost a quarter past eleven. I pick up speed. In the distance, the sound of thunder falls in with the growling of the motor. Thirteen hours until Doughboy.

  We roll down towards Old Town and Skepps Bridge at high speed, windscreen wipers squeaking. All the noise of the quays in the daytime – rattling winches, rolling wheelbarrows, steam whistles and swearing – stopped several hours ago. Now everything is calm apart from the flapping of the flags in the wind. The long-necked cranes have stopped their pecking at the innards of the ships. Only a handful of nocturnal swingers are out and about on this night, which seems to be gearing up for a proper autumn storm.

  The road loops around the oldest district of the city. The narrow alleys hide the sailors’ bars and whorehouses in their gloom. In front of us, the red tail-lights of the Rolls fade in the night. Before long, the car has disappeared round a bend in the road.