‘Don’t lose them now, for Christ’s sake!’
I change up and stamp angrily at the accelerator. The corpse-crate protests and slowly picks up speed. I chew the end of my cigar. In front of us the road straightens and we pull up towards Logård Quay where the Norrland steamers are waiting to go into their winter berths.
‘They must have swung left on the hill in front of the Royal Palace.’
The massive palace soon comes into view, its wings on either side jutting out like the paws of a lion lying in wait.
As I turn the wheel, I hear the distant rumbling of thunder once again.
The headlights of our motor car reflect off the golden trimmings on the uniforms of the castle guards, standing along the walls of the palace. Guard duty won’t be very pleasant tonight.
The cobbles make the entire vehicle shake as I accelerate up the hill. I scan the open area in front of Storkyrkan. Nothing.
‘Damn it!’
I turn around the corner and take the car along the edges of the outer courtyard. There are no vehicles in it. I swear again and thump the steering wheel with the palm of my hand.
‘Where did they get to?’
‘Christ knows.’
I put my arm across the back of Elin’s seat and reverse out, then turn around. After driving across Palace Hill I stop and carefully reverse the car in behind the Royal Telegraph Office. We are screened off by the low wall running down the hill. I turn off the engine.
‘What now?’
‘More waiting. We’ve hardly done much else.’
‘Can’t we be seen?’
I open the door. Keeping one hand on my hat, to stop it being whisked off, I circle the hearse to make sure it doesn’t stick out of the shadows. It doesn’t.
The shop signs are banging like pistol shots. The wind roars in cellar window alcoves. I’m just about go back into the warmth when I hear the faint sound of an engine through all the noise. A flash of lightning lights up the obelisk up on the hill. I throw my cigar on the ground and put my boot heel on it, then slide onto the driver’s seat of the hearse and hunch down.
My heart beats hard; a clap of thunder rattles the windows overhead. Even though it’s dark and the Rolls passes at a distance of ten metres, I’m quite sure of what I see: there’s a fourth man in the back seat. A tall, gangly type, his oval spectacles glittering in the gloom of the passenger compartment.
TUESDAY 26 NOVEMBER
A few drops of rain fall against the windshield as we drive across Norr Bridge and the foaming waves of Strömmen. The black Rolls goes around Gustav Adolf’s Square and bolts up Malmskillnadsgatan through the light rain. I follow at a distance, with my headlights turned off. Somewhere beyond Brunkebergsåsen there’s a lightning strike. The massive, sooty steel skeleton of the telephone mast is lit up for a moment. We reach the large triangular plaza and pass the house of mourning where Lundin and I picked up the foundry-man Wernström earlier today. The Rolls slows down and turns right, I follow suit.
I bring the hearse to a halt. The Rolls turns right again and parks on the north-eastern corner of the plaza, with its nose pointing at the palace a few hundred metres to the south. The hearse is partially hidden from their view by the hundreds of bicycles parked between us.
For a few seconds everything is quiet; all I can hear is the rain, which drums against the bodywork of the car with increasing strength. A wet dog runs across the road with its tail between its legs and takes cover under a pushcart a few metres in front of us. The tarts have fled the plaza, but I see one of them standing in a doorway further down the street, her shawl draped over her head. She peers up at the dark skies.
Even though we’re about twenty metres away, I can clearly hear the door of the Rolls slamming. The raindrops on the windscreen blur the outline of the black-clad heavyweight, but I’m fairly sure that he’s the skin-headed bloke, the one who looks like a bull. As he hurries around the car, he’s opening an umbrella. He holds it out when he opens the back door. Elin puts her hand on top of mine, which is still gripping the steering wheel. She squeezes it hard.
The passenger is so tall that the other bloke has to reach up with the umbrella, but even so his head is obscured by it when he gets out. His overcoat is trimmed with an oversize fur collar.
Flanked by the man with the umbrella, the passenger crosses the road and disappears into the house next to the offices of the Telephone Company. The street number is written in yellow on a grubby black glass plate over the door: 24. Elin gasps for air. The interior of the Rolls lights up for an instant when someone inside lights a cigarette.
‘Did you see him?’
Elin’s voice is shaking.
‘Hardly. You?’
‘Not quite, but… it’s him all right. But why? With those thugs.’
‘You’ve heard the gossip, haven’t you?’
‘Was it really him?’
‘I think so. You saw him yourself.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest.’
I stare at the ground floor of number 24. Several of the windows are lit up, white, but a couple of the rooms lie in darkness, so the line of windows is as gappy as a six-year-old’s teeth. The rain grows heavier. The droplets on the windows are eaten up by rivulets running vertically down the glass. Under the pushcart, I see the stray still lying there with its tail between its legs, trembling with fear. I take the Husqvarna out of my shoulder holster, open the magazine and slot it back into position.
‘Ellinor.’
Elin’s voice is so faint that I can hardly make it out. I look over at her. Her hands have wilted in her lap. Her jaws are churning as if she’s chewing on an old bit of bread.
‘What’s that?’
‘She turns twelve this spring.’
There’s a stabbing feeling in my heart, my heart moves up one level, my temples are thumping. Elin looks out of the side window before going on: ‘I was no better myself. No better than Mum.’
‘I see.’
‘I think she’s having a good life. She’s living with a family on Lidingö. In a green house with white-painted corner posts. Sometimes in the summers I take the bicycle and pass by. Once I think I saw her… on her way to the garden bower.’
Elin’s voice cracks. I squeeze my pistol hard.
‘She looked quite well, maybe a little pale. I wonder if they give her enough food to eat, but I suppose they do – I mean, they have a house and everything?’
‘I’m sure they do.’
The plaza is lit up by a bolt of lightning; the clap of thunder follows almost at once. The rain picks up even more. In the Rolls, the cigarette has gone out.
I put my hand in my left pocket and get out the pack of Bridge and the box of matches I bought earlier at the tobacconist’s. I put these in Elin’s lap. Her mouth trembles slightly.
‘There’s still time. Tomorrow you’ll go to find your daughter.’
Elin nods, and swallows, smiling cautiously.
‘And you, Harry?’
‘Did I ever tell you about the sailor who boxed a circus bear?’
‘Don’t think so.’
Elin leans her head back against the seat and stares up at the ceiling. Her hair falls back, and for the first time I notice she’s missing her right ear. A dark hole, surrounded by flaming red skin, goes right into her skull. No wonder her hearing’s worse than an artillery soldier’s. I refocus on the Rolls.
‘Another time. Leave the car outside Lundin’s. I’ll make it home under my own steam.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t bloody know. But I won’t pull my punches.’
Carefully I open the door. Elin puts her hand on mine and squeezes it.
‘Will I see you again?’
‘Maybe as early as tomorrow. But swing by Lundin’s and remind him to walk Dixie if you don’t.’
I tip my hat in farewell and slip out into the driving rain.
Hidden behind the bicycles, staying hunched down, I run
across to the vaulted entrance of the Telephone Company. I dart into the shadows and press myself against the wall, before cautiously peering around the corner. The rainwater is gurgling in the gutters.
The stuttering engine of the hearse, once it starts, can hardly be heard over the sound of the storm. A match is struck in the driver’s compartment, but it goes out almost at once. A hand cups itself around the glow of the cigarette. Elin reverses carefully into Beridarebansgatan. Half a second later she’s headed off northwards.
The passenger door of the Rolls opens. A little skinny bloke jumps out and quickly scans the area. I draw my head back into the shadows. Carefully I cock my pistol. By the time I dare stick my hat back out into the rain he’s gone. From my angle diagonally behind the car, I can’t tell whether he’s gone back into the vehicle or the house.
I leave the shadow and follow the wall towards the car until I can take cover behind one of the bare trees a short distance from the corner. From here I can see both the car and the door of number 24 where the other two went in. If I look up I see the red-and-green neon NK clock rotating hazily through the rain, about fifty metres above the telephone tower, a slap in the face for Klara district and its poverty and misery. The rain sings its gloomy song in the corner drainpipe.
I put an unlit cigar in my mouth to assuage my need to smoke. No more than ten, fifteen minutes have gone by when the door of number 24 opens again.
The sturdy bloke holds up the umbrella to screen the tall passenger. The lanky figure supports himself against the other’s shoulder as they take a couple of unbalanced steps on the slippery paving stones. In his other hand he’s got a cigarette holder with a glowing cigarette in it. I crane my neck.
According to the signs, number 24 is situated in a block known as the Thunderclap, and by now the thunder is simultaneous with the lightning. The bolts of lightning hound each other across the dark sky. Even the ground under my feet is shaking.
The storm booms like an anchor chain on its way into the locker. The rain hammers against my hat brim. For a moment the lanky bloke in front of me looks up at the sky. There’s another crash. The lightning gives a milk-white sheen to his oval spectacles. The tips of his curled moustache point directly upward. Just like on the inauguration podium on Väster Bridge a week ago, his large horse-like teeth show when he smiles.
I’m still shaking when the rear lights of the Rolls disappear down the hill, back towards the castle. I take a couple of tremulous breaths and try to get my limbs under control, standing there with my head lowered, under the tree branches. It feels like the rain is cutting me into fine pieces.
Yet another peal of thunder wakes me up. I look around and quickly shuffle across Malmskillnadsgatan. I cock my pistol with my thumb, open the door of number 24 and slip inside.
My eyes quickly grow accustomed to the darkness. The stairwell smells of decaying wood, cigarette smoke and turpentine. The floor is covered in cracked flagstones. A well-used flight of stairs with a banister polished from years of use leads up. Somewhere on the first floor there’s a weak light shining. I throw away the drenched cigar, shake the water off my hat and light a fresh Meteor to calm my nerves.
Quietly I start up the stairs. On the second floor there’s a lone bulb burning on the ceiling. From higher up in the house, I hear a faint noise. It’s intermittent, a sort of guttural weeping. It hardly sounds human even. The windowpanes rattle whenever a crack of thunder is heard. I peer down into the street: no people, no motor cars.
I follow the eerie noise up the next flight of stairs. I hesitate for a moment on the third floor, and grip my pistol. I am not quite sure if it’s a sound of crying I’m hearing. Far below, a door opens and closes. I take a couple more drags on my cigar and then wedge it in my mouth. Holding the pistol in front of me, I stalk up another flight of stairs to the top floor of the building. Again, there’s a single light bulb spreading a jaded yellow sheen over the dirty corridor. Rat droppings are scattered along the skirting boards. Four of the doors are shut, with surnames on the doors, but the fifth is unmarked. The sound is coming from behind a peeling stairwell wall. I realise that someone is sitting on the attic stairs, blubbering.
I recognise a secret vagabond’s mark scraped with a knife by the frame of the fifth door, meaning that no one is going to open it when you knock. I raise my Husqvarna and shoot the door open, then peer into the dark single-room flat. The cigar falls out of my mouth in amazement.
Heavy drapes hang over the windows, and a floor lamp with a tasselled shade gives off a faint glow. Nonetheless I can make out a couch placed in the middle of the room, with a white blanket of some kind on it, and a pair of silk cushions gleaming slightly.
The floor is graced by a Persian rug, the walls with pictures of naked youths posing in all sorts of provocative positions: a twisted temple of Eros.
Closest to the door are a pair of men’s shoes. The leather has cracked in several places, but someone has filled it with shoe polish and soot.
In the space of a second, the memories of my own meeting places come flooding back: public lavatories, dirty third-class bathhouses, mouldering berths and crappy back lanes in dingy harbour towns, always ducking and diving to avoid insults and the watchful eyes of the police, those guardians of public morality.
The guttural sobs behind the stair wall bring me back to reality. I tread on my cigar and turn around. I cross the corridor, press myself to the wall and follow it to the corner, and peer up. There, curled up by the attic door, ten steps up, sits a young lad, rocking back and forth with his face in his hands. His hair is standing on end. He’s wearing a light-green shirt with the buttons done up wrong, and a pair of sturdy trousers. One of his socks has a hole over his big toe. On a step below him lies a coin.
I clear my throat but don’t get a reaction.
‘Are you all right?’
Nothing.
‘Are you from the Asplunden Institute?’
I climb a few steps. The coin is a two-krona piece.
I raise my voice: ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear what I’m saying?’
My shadow falls over the lad when I take another step. He looks up with a hunted expression, and a few awkward sounds press themselves out. He’s about twenty years old; his eyes are close together, greyish blue. He presses himself against the door. His green shirt breast is soiled with a thick goo.
Royal blood may be blue, but royal seed is as white as any other.
I put my Husqvarna back in the holster and slowly offer him my hand. I pick up the coin and sit on the step below. For half a second I stare at the engraved portrait of the King.
‘With the People for the Fatherland,’ I read, and hand him the coin. He snatches it from me.
‘The Asplunden Institute?’
I move my lips as much as I can, and shape my hands into the angle of a roof. I point at him, feeling like a proper idiot.
‘Asplunden?’
‘He can’t hear you.’
A voice with a strong Gotland accent makes me flinch. I quickly get to my feet. Seven steps below stands one of the thugs in his poplin overcoat – the big bloke with the weak chin and the waxed moustache. His eyes glitter with malevolence in his wedge-shaped face. He’s attached one of those cylindrical silencers to his pistol, the kind that Hessler mentioned. It’s pointing at the lad.
‘You can’t get away. The others are waiting below. You followed us in that hearse. We’re starting to recognise it.’
‘This deaf whippersnapper here isn’t doing you any harm.’
The youth makes some pathetic sounds, grasping for my coattails. The Husqvarna is calling for me in its holster.
‘He’s practically dead already. You too. The only difference is that he hasn’t realised it yet.’
‘Damned rat!’
‘Where is she?’
‘Who?’
‘Your female companion.’
‘You’re off your head.’
Hessler was quite right, the shot doesn’t make muc
h more noise than a champagne cork. The lad’s head is thrown backwards into the attic door, in a spray of blood. He bounces forward hard and slides down the steps on his stomach.
The thug changes position; I draw my Husqvarna with a sound of steel rasping against leather. Without taking aim I let off three or four quick shots from my hip. The sound of the shots reverberates in the narrow stairwell, making my eardrums throb with pain. Despite the close range I miss. Shooting has never been one of my strengths. The copper ducks back around the corner, letting off another shot as he does; the bullet strikes the door behind me.
My eyes fill with tears from the acrid cordite. My ears are screaming. I fumble behind me with my left hand, and find the blood-spattered door handle.
I throw myself through the attic door and slam it behind me. My steps ring out as I back down a narrow passage between walls of wooden planks. I fire a few more times at the door. The bullets go right through the wood. I turn around and run into the dark labyrinth of the attic, holding my left hand in front of me.
There’s a smell of old dry timber. The rain is hammering down on the roof overhead and my heart beats wildly. Fumbling, I go around one corner and then another. I hear the attic door being opened, and I press myself against a dividing wall of planks by a storage unit, my pulse strong against the butt of my pistol. I have two bullets in the magazine, one in the barrel and none in reserve.
A clap of thunder shakes the attic. Dust falls from the roof beams. I gasp for air. There’s a click somewhere, and the lights come on, dazzling me.
A floorboard groans on the other side of the wall, to the right. I hiccup with tension. As quietly as I can I move away from the sound, turning into a gloomy passage where the ceiling lights have gone. The tenants have made short shrift of the walls here, stripping them for firewood. My coat sleeve catches on a nail sticking out of a joist. I rip it free and move on.
I sneak past a brick chimney stack where a tramp has made himself a nest to take advantage of the warmth. I can make out a blanket, a couple of empty green bottles and some old newspapers to sleep on. I come to a junction. Somewhere behind me I hear another floorboard creak.
Down for the Count Page 24
