The Quarry töq-3

by Johan Theorin

  He went back to the phone book, and this time he was in luck. There was actually an advert for the Moulin Noir; it was a night club in Malmö, open from two o’clock in the afternoon until four in the morning; SHOW EVERY HALF-HOUR, it said.

  A sex club. It couldn’t be anything else.

  Had Jerry owned the club? He hadn’t mentioned it to Per, but nothing would surprise him.

  He wrote down the address. He would go to Malmö today, but first he would stop off at the hospital. Six days to go until the operation.

  Per couldn’t get in to see Nilla straight away; there were nurses with her taking samples for more tests. He had to sit and wait until they had finished.

  The waiting room wasn’t empty; there was one other person there. A woman of about sixty-five was sitting on the sofa opposite him with her head bowed, clutching a folded woollen sweater. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to wait with someone else, and it was always awkward – each knowing why the other was sitting there, but neither having the strength or the inclination to acknowledge it.

  They were relatives, and they were waiting for news. Perhaps the woman opposite him was taking a break from all the major and minor symptoms floating around the ward.

  Per ought to sign himself off work on the grounds that he had a sick child to care for; if he’d had the strength, he would have done so. But Marika had said she was signed off work at the moment, and he didn’t know if both parents could claim at the same time. There was bound to be some regulation about that. In the meantime he would just have to carry on making stuff up.

  The woman suddenly looked at him. ‘Are you Nilla’s dad?’

  Per nodded.

  ‘I’m Emil’s grandmother … he’s talked about Nilla.’ Her smile was slightly strained. ‘It seems as if they’ve become quite good friends.’

  ‘That’s right …’ In spite of the fact that he was afraid of the answer, he asked, ‘How are things with Emil?’

  The woman stopped smiling. ‘They’re not saying much … all we can do is wait.’

  Per nodded again, but didn’t say any more.

  Everyone was waiting. There was nothing to say.

  Eventually he was allowed in.

  Nilla was lying in the darkness holding her lava stone; she raised a hand to wave at him. It was probably his imagination, but Per thought that the arms protruding from her hospital gown were thinner, that her chest had somehow collapsed.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not so bad.’

  ‘Are you in any pain?’

  Nilla looked down at the black stone. ‘Not right now … not much.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m so tired of all the horrible stuff. Of the pain, of the doctors and nurses always wanting me to describe it. They keep on asking me where the pain is, and what it feels like. Is it a stabbing pain, or does it sting, or is it more like a cramp? It’s like some kind of exam, and I’m no good at it.’

  ‘It’s not an exam,’ said Per. ‘You can answer however you want.’

  ‘I know, but when I say the pain is like a black cloud up above me, growing and sucking up the white cloud I’m sitting on, they stop listening … it’s too weird for them.’

  They were both silent for a few moments.

  ‘Nilla, I have to go away for a little while.’

  ‘Go where? Is it to do with Granddad?’

  Per shook his head. He still hadn’t told Nilla her grandfather was dead. That could wait.

  ‘I’m going down to Malmö … there’s something I have to do. But I’ll be back tomorrow night.’

  50

  It was just an ordinary weekend in the city when he reached Malmö. Cars crawling around the roundabouts, ferries setting sail for Denmark, people enjoying their leisure time as they walked by the water in the spring sunshine, pushing their baby buggies.

  It had taken Per almost four hours to drive down from Kalmar. He reached the city centre at about three o’clock and parked a few blocks away from the central station, where the hourly parking charge was lower. Then he found his way to the back street where the Moulin Noir lay.

  It wasn’t a place that went out of its way to advertise its presence; there was just a small, cracked sign above the entrance with the words MOULIN NOIR – SEX SHOP & NIGHT CLUB. The windows were painted black and protected with iron bars – Per guessed that the anti-porn lobby would sometimes gather here with placards and rotten eggs. But at the moment the entire street was deserted.

  He stopped a few metres from the door, where a white handwritten notice proclaimed OVER 18s ONLY! Despite the fact that he didn’t know anyone in Malmö, he checked one more time to make sure nobody could see him.

  Dirty old man, he thought. Then he straightened his back and went inside.

  He found himself in a long, narrow shop, just as quiet and deserted as the street outside. The sharp, lemony smell of some kind of cleaning product hung in the air, but the vinyl floor still looked grubby. The shelves lining the walls were stocked with films and magazines wrapped in plastic, but there were no copies of Babylon or Gomorrah. The gap Jerry’s defunct magazines had left in the market had been filled long ago by his colleagues.

  On the glass counter at the far side of the room stood an old metal till, and behind it a woman was sitting on a tall bar stool filing her nails. She was about thirty, dressed in a tight black dress and high, shiny leather boots. Her eyes were black with kohl and her hair was long, red and glossy, but it looked like a wig. Per assumed that most things were fake in this establishment.

  Behind the counter was a staircase leading down to the cellar, with a beaded curtain at the bottom. Per could hear the thump of music and a woman’s long-drawn-out moans, but the tone was metallic and tinny, like a film soundtrack. It was almost exactly the same as the background noise he had heard on the telephone on two occasions, but he still didn’t know who had called, or why.

  Per went over to the woman. She put down the nail file and smiled at him.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi there, darling. Would you like to go down into the den of debauchery?’

  ‘Maybe. How much is it?’

  ‘Five hundred.’

  That was three hundred kronor more than Per had on him.

  ‘Five hundred,’ he said, ‘just to get in?’

  ‘Not just to get in, darling,’ said the woman, smiling even more broadly. ‘You get a big surprise down there!’

  ‘Do I indeed. And is it worth five hundred?’

  She winked at him. ‘Men usually seem to think so.’

  ‘Have you worked here long?’

  ‘Quite a long time,’ she said. ‘Are you going to …’

  ‘How long?’

  He was trying to ask questions in the same firm tone as Lars Marklund, the police officer.

  The woman stopped smiling. ‘Six months. Are you going to pay?’

  ‘Who owns this place?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Some guys.’ She held out her hand with its long, red nails. ‘Five hundred, please.’

  Per took out his wallet to keep her interested, but didn’t open it. ‘I’d like to speak to one of the owners.’

  The woman didn’t respond.

  Eventually he opened his wallet and took out the two hundred he had, along with a piece of paper. ‘Ring me!’ he wrote underneath his telephone number, and signed it ‘Per Mörner ( Jerry Morner’s son)’.

  He handed over the piece of paper and the two hundred-kronor notes. ‘These are for you,’ he said, ‘and you don’t even have to let me in. But give the note to one of the owners … the one who’s been here the longest.’

  The woman took the money, but looked bored to death again. ‘I’ll see … I don’t know if he’s coming in tonight.’

  ‘Give it to him when he does come in,’ said Per. ‘Will you do that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She quickly tucked the money away, then folded his message and put it next to the till. Then she adjusted her position on the high stool, ti
tivated her hair, and appeared to forget that Per existed.

  He took one step to the side, listened to the music and glanced at the staircase. He thought about Regina again, and got the idea that she was waiting for him in the cellar. Perhaps Jerry and Bremer were sitting down there too, two corpses with a cigar between their lips and a hand on her thigh. All he had to do was pay, and he could go and have a look.

  But he turned away and went back outside.

  A room in a cheap hotel by the motorway to the north of the city was waiting for him, but first of all he drove over to Terränggatan. It was a sudden impulse – he just wanted to see where Hans Bremer had lived.

  Terränggatan was a gloomy place even in the spring sunshine, he thought. Number 10 was a grey five-storey building on an equally grey, cracked street. An old van with a trailer was parked outside, half-full of packing cases.

  The name BREMER was still there at the entrance to 10B, and the door was open. The lock appeared to be broken.

  There was an unpleasant smell in the echoing stairwell, as if someone had poured sour milk all over the floor. Per went up to the second floor. The door with Bremer’s name on it was ajar, and he could hear banging and crashing from inside.

  He opened the door and was assailed by an even nastier smell.

  ‘Hello?’ he called.

  ‘What do you want?’ a voice said wearily.

  A middle-aged, grey-haired woman was standing in the kitchen doorway watching him, her arms folded. Behind her a teenage boy wearing his baseball cap back to front was busy disconnecting an old TV and tying up the cables.

  Per’s head was suddenly empty – what did he actually want?

  ‘Hi, I just thought I’d call in,’ he said. ‘I was a … a friend of Hans.’

  The woman looked even more worn out. ‘Oh? One of his drinking buddies, were you?’

  ‘No,’ said Per, and decided to stop lying. ‘Actually, we weren’t friends, but he used to work with my father. And I was in the area, so I thought I’d just come and see where he lived.’

  The woman didn’t appear to be listening to his explanations. She didn’t invite him in, but turned and disappeared into the apartment, so he followed her and asked, ‘Were you his wife? If so, may I offer my—’

  ‘Hans never married,’ the woman interrupted him. ‘I’m Ingrid, his younger sister. New tenants are moving in at the end of the month, so we’re just clearing the place out.’

  There wasn’t much to clear out, Per thought as he walked through the narrow hallway. There was no bed in the bedroom, just a mattress, and the yellow-painted walls were bare. Bremer seemed to have put all his time and energy into producing films and magazines with Jerry, and none into interior design.

  His sister had gone into the kitchen and was packing cutlery and pans into a box. The kitchen was just as empty as the bedroom: a rickety table and two chairs over by the window, and a few postcards on the fridge, faded by the sun. There was no sign of any films or magazines – nothing that might have given away what Bremer did.

  ‘Since you’re here …’

  He looked up to see Ingrid pointing at him.

  ‘… you might as well give me a hand to empty the cupboards,’ she said. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Well, no, I really ought to …’

  ‘You can stay for a little while, surely? Then you can help Simon with the boxes.’

  So Per found himself standing on a chair, gathering up plates and piling them in boxes. Up and down, up and down.

  When he picked up a stack of soup bowls from the bottom shelf, he caught sight of a piece of yellow paper behind them. It was a little Post-it note that had presumably dried out and fallen off the inside of the cupboard door. There were four telephone numbers in shaky handwriting in pencil, each with a name in front of it:

  Ingrid

  Cash

  Fountain

  Danielle

  The first number was Bremer’s sister’s, no doubt. One of the others should have been Jerry’s, but he didn’t recognize any of them.

  ‘Finished?’ said Ingrid behind him.

  ‘Nearly.’

  He slipped the note in his pocket and went back to the crockery.

  When he had finished in the kitchen, he started carrying boxes downstairs, and it turned out there was actually quite a lot of stuff in the apartment. It took almost an hour to get everything out.

  Bremer’s sister didn’t say much while they were working, and neither did Per.

  ‘Do you know how your brother died?’ he asked when they had finished and were standing out in the street in the sunshine.

  Ingrid wiped her brow. ‘The police said there was a fire … He’d gone to meet some dodgy character, and the house burnt down.’

  ‘Was there a quarrel?’

  ‘A quarrel? I don’t think so. I imagine they were sitting around smoking and drinking … That’s what Hans usually did.’

  A small-time gangster, with a finger in lots of different pies – that was how the police had described Hans Bremer to Per. ‘But … did he have any enemies?’

  Bremer’s sister shook her head. ‘The police asked me the same question … No, he didn’t have any enemies. But people did take advantage of him, I know that.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He lent people money, he was always ready to help out … Hans was too kind, and he had no real friends, only drinking buddies. If you don’t have any friends, you can’t have any enemies, can you?’

  Per wasn’t at all sure about that, but he simply asked, ‘Was one of his friends called Markus Lukas?’

  ‘Markus Lukas? Not as far as I know.’

  ‘I heard that Hans and Markus Lukas worked together … Your brother worked hard, didn’t he?’

  Ingrid shook her head again. ‘Hans worked as little as possible. He always said he had plenty of money, but nothing ever came of it.’

  Per nodded. He realized Bremer’s sister hadn’t had a clue what her brother did; he had lied to her.

  Silence and lies. Business as usual when you were dealing with Jerry.

  51

  Max was bright red in the face; he looked as if a heart attack was imminent.

  ‘He’s thirteen years old, Vendela!’

  ‘What does it matter how old he is, Max?’

  ‘Thirteen! That’s the equivalent of an eighty-year-old in human terms!’

  ‘So? He’s eighty years old and healthy!’

  The argument between Max and Vendela on Monday evening had been exclusively about Aloysius and his health. They had argued about the same thing several times before, but their discussions always went round in circles, and they had tired of every other topic.

  ‘He is not healthy!’

  ‘He is, Max. He’s up and about much more often, and he’s walking better.’

  ‘He’s blind!’

  When they had started to repeat themselves they had both given up and walked past each other across the echoing stone floor. Max had shut himself in his thinking room, and Vendela had chosen the kitchen. Aloysius had stayed out of the way during the quarrel, but had taken Vendela’s side by padding after her and rubbing his nose against her legs.

  This was not the right thing to do, she had said so to Max many times. You should never simply storm off after a quarrel without sorting it out. He had even included that particular piece of advice in one of his books.

  Vendela wiped a few breadcrumbs from the stainless-steel worktop and sighed. They weren’t going to get anywhere, she realized. They either had to give up, or go for counselling – but the problem was that Max was a trained psychologist, and always knew best. He refused to see other therapists; he didn’t believe in them.

  Vendella went into the bathroom, but didn’t take a tranquillizer. She drank a glass of water, felt a little fuller and longed to be out on the alvar. She started to change into her tracksuit.

  Five minutes later she was ready. She patted Aloysius and opened the front door. ‘Won’t be long!’ she
shouted.

  There was no response from the thinking room.

  She ran straight to the elf stone this Monday evening, with long strides and tightly clenched fists. She stumbled a few times on tussocks of grass and hidden stones, but stayed on her feet. At last she was there.

  Vendela had no money or jewellery with her. She had nothing to offer the elves, but she wanted to be here anyway. She had run here four days in a row now; she didn’t have to listen to Max out here.

  She placed her palms flat on the stone and tried to relax. Loud voices reverberated inside her head, the memory of the quarrel. But this evening there was no solace to be found.

  Things had got much worse since her last visit, and sorrow hung heavily over the kingdom of the elves. Vendela could see clear pictures in her head when she closed her eyes: the king of the elves sitting on his throne weeping for his ailing queen, blue blood trickling from his eyes.

  Vendela felt that no one had any time for her. She turned and ran westward once more.

  When she got home, there were no lights on in the house. The Audi had gone, and the front door was locked. Max must have gone off somewhere, but the spare key was under one of the plant pots. Vendela unlocked the door and went inside.

  ‘Hello?’ she shouted.

  The echo of her call died away, and there was no reply. Vendela hadn’t expected an answer from Max, but why hadn’t Aloysius barked, or come pattering across the floor?

  ‘Ally?’

  No response, but when she went into the kitchen she saw a note stuck on the fridge:

  Gone home – taking Ally to the vet to get him checked over, will be in touch.

  Love and kisses

  Max

  Vendela ripped down the note and threw it away.

  She went around the house, looking in every room until she was certain Ally wasn’t there. Then she sat down in the enormous living room and stared through the enormous windows, out on to the deserted quarry.

  Max had gone back to Stockholm and taken their dog with him. There was nothing Vendela could do.

  She closed her eyes.