by Per Wahlöö
‘What happened after that?’
‘We carried on working as usual. Public cleansing was one of the exceptions.’
‘And the epidemic? What was there to see?’
‘I heard rumours that thousands and thousands of people were in hospital. That people were dying like flies. And they needed blood donors. And so …’
‘And so?’
‘Well, a week or so after the first announcement, the TV and radio went off the air and we were ordered to stop work. And then we got this other notice. There was no danger any longer, they said, but we were to lay in supplies of food and water and stay at home. And they needed blood donors.’
‘Did you volunteer?’
‘To give blood? No. I heard of some people who did, but …’
‘But what?’
‘They never came back.’
‘Have you been out since then?’
‘Oh yes. They only brought in the total curfew a week ago, last Wednesday. The day before that, the water was cut off. The electricity had gone a few days before that, on the Saturday.’
‘How did you receive all these communications?’
‘Leaflets were delivered.’
‘Who delivered them?’
‘Soldiers and nursing staff. And then they went round in loudspeaker vans shouting nobody was to go out and blood donors were urgently needed, and to only take orders from doctors and medical professionals.’
‘Did the buses go on running?’
‘No, no. The buses stopped long before that. At the same time as they gave up publishing the newspapers.’
‘How many people are there left here?’
‘Don’t know. A few.’
‘Where are the rest?’
The man gave Jensen a long stare. Eventually he said:
‘Don’t you know?’
‘No. Where are they?’
‘I’ve no idea. No idea at all.’
‘When did they move out?’
‘They didn’t move out,’ said the woman. ‘They were taken.’
‘Taken?’
‘It’s odd that you don’t know. We thought it must be the same all over the city.’
‘Were they all taken at the same time?’
‘First it was the children. That was the evening before the state of emergency and curfew came in. A bus turned up outside here. I saw it from the window.’
‘What sort of bus?’
‘An ordinary red, public service bus. There were four of them in it. Two men and two women. They went from door to door and took all the children under twelve. There weren’t very many round here.’
‘Didn’t you open the door?’
‘Oh yes. It was the last time we opened the door to anybody. One of the women, it was. She wanted to take him with her.’
The man gestured towards the boy.
‘But we refused. Then she got angry and said that if she’d been able to, she’d have taken him from us by force. She even tried it, but I kicked her out.’
‘Why did she want the child?’
‘She said it was in his own best interests. She said we didn’t fully appreciate the situation. She said that if they’d been allowed to, they’d have taken us, too.’
‘Who was this woman?’
‘Don’t know. We’d never seen her before. Some sort of nurse, I think. She didn’t say. But she had some kind of uniform on. Green overalls.’
‘Where were they going to take the children?’
‘To a safe place,’ she said. ‘When I asked where, she said she didn’t know. We didn’t dare let him go.’
‘What about the others round here?’
‘Lots of them went. I saw them putting them on to the bus and driving away.’
‘How many children were there?’
‘Twenty-five, maybe thirty.’
Jensen did a rapid calculation. That would have been virtually all the children in a district like this.
‘Poor parents,’ said the woman. ‘What monsters, taking the children.’
‘And you don’t know who these people were?’
‘No.’
‘Did they have armbands?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Were any of the children ill?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘And what happened after that?’
‘The next day they brought in the curfew. The state of emergency. The children had gone by then.’
‘But other than that, people were still here in their flats?’
‘Yes, but nobody went out. The next morning, it was the Thursday of last week, three ambulances and four buses came charging in to the car park down there with sirens and the whole works.’
‘What kind of buses?’
‘Army ones, I think. There were several doctors or healthcare workers with white coats, and then there must have been a dozen sanitation soldiers. I recognised the uniforms. I was in the medical corps when I did my military service.’
‘No police?’
‘We didn’t see any, but we were only peering out of the window, trying not to be seen. Oh, you asked about armbands. Well this lot had blue armbands. All of them. A woman doctor or nurse in a white coat shouted through a megaphone that everybody who wasn’t sick had to be evacuated because of the epidemic. We were going to a place where there wasn’t such risk of infection. She said we didn’t need to take anything with us, because we’d soon be back and everything we needed would be provided where we were going. We just had to get down there quickly, and leave the doors of our flats open so they could be sprayed with disinfectant. And then we’d be vaccinated. She said it was on the orders of some chief or other.’
‘The chief medical officer?’
‘That’s right. Loads of people went down voluntarily and got on the buses.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘No … we’d been petrified ever since what happened to the children. We stayed here.’
‘Did anything else happen?’
The man looked at his wife, not sure how to go on.
‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘When people stopped coming out, no matter how much they shouted, the doctors and sanitation soldiers went up the staircases …’
‘Go on.’
‘I went out on to the landing,’ the man said uncertainly. ‘And I … well, I heard them at some of the locked doors, and they smashed them down and hauled out the people who’d stayed behind. So we opened our front door and hid in the wardrobe. They didn’t find us.’
‘I had my hand over his mouth the whole time,’ said the woman, looking at the boy. ‘I was afraid I was going to suffocate him. But then, after about half an hour, we heard the sirens again and the motor engine noise as they drove off. Then we thought it would be safe to come out.’
‘And nobody’s been here since then?’
‘Not until you came,’ said the man. ‘But ambulances drive past every so often. They collect up anyone they find outside and take them away.’
‘We mustn’t go out,’ said the woman, squeezing the child’s hand.
‘Is it just you in this block now?’
The man and woman exchanged doubtful glances.
‘Did you hear the question?’ said Jensen.
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘I heard.’
‘Well?’
‘No, there are some others here. They must have done the same as us. Hidden. We never see them, but we hear them.’
‘The sound really carries here,’ the woman said apologetically.
Jensen still had his eyes fixed on the man.
‘One more thing,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Why didn’t you obey the evacuation order when so many other people did? And why didn’t you let the child be taken to a place of safety?’
The man shifted his weight to the other foot and looked round nervously.
‘Answer the question.’
‘Well, I went on working longer than most people, and …’
‘And?’
‘Er, I knew the blokes at work who were on the trains and trucks that collected the rubbish from the main hospital and that big detoxification unit. They said …’
He stopped.
‘What did they say?’
‘That anyone who went into hospital caught it and died. Blood donors and anybody else.’
‘But your colleagues didn’t catch it?’
‘No, they were never let into the actual buildings.’
‘So it was all just rumour?’
‘Yes,’ the man said.
Jensen studied his notebook for a while. Then he said:
‘What had happened earlier. Before the epidemic?’
They looked at him, confused.
‘Nothing,’ said the man. ‘I was working.’
‘There were disturbances. The election was postponed, wasn’t it?’
‘So I heard. But we didn’t see anything about it on TV or in the papers.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Only that they were putting off the election because there were antisocial elements trying to sabotage it.’
‘Were there any of these antisocial elements at your own place of work?’
The man shrugged.
‘Well, I don’t really know. The police came for a few people.’
‘What sort of police?’
‘Don’t know. But someone said they were the secret police.’
‘There’s no such thing as the secret police.’
‘Oh. Isn’t there?’
‘No. How many were arrested?’
‘Only a handful. And a few others made themselves scarce.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you interested in politics yourself?’
‘No.’
‘Do you usually vote?’
‘For the Accord? Yes, of course.’
The woman shifted uneasily.
‘That’s not true,’ she said quietly.
The man gave her a miserable look.
‘If I’m being honest, we don’t bother these days. But that’s not a crime, is it?’
‘No.’
The man gave a shrug.
‘Why vote?’ he said. ‘It’s all beyond us, anyway.’
Jensen closed his notebook.
‘So you didn’t witness any of these disturbances yourself?’
‘No. I only heard rumours.’
‘What sort of rumours?’
‘That lots of people got so incensed with the socialists that they beat them up.’
‘When?’
‘At demos and so on. But I expect they only got what they deserved.’
Jensen put away his notebook and pen.
‘Do you know who smashed the window of the supermarket down there?’
‘Yes, it was the same lot as came for the children. They broke into the shop and took loads of stuff out to the bus. Stuff they sold in the shop, I mean.’
The boy said something incomprehensible. The woman tried to shush him.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Jensen.
‘He’s asking if Mister Policeman’s got a bang-bang,’ she said, blushing. ‘He means a gun.’
‘No, I haven’t got a gun.’
Jensen looked at the open bag of sweets in the child’s hand and said:
‘Don’t forget to pay for that when things get back to normal again.’
The man nodded.
‘Or there could be unpleasant consequences.’
Jensen moved towards the door. The woman went after him and said, quiet and hesitantly:
‘When will things get back to normal?’
‘Don’t know. You’ll be safest indoors until further notice. Goodbye.’
No one in the flat said anything more.
Inspector Jensen left. He closed the door carefully behind him.
CHAPTER 15
There was not much to see on the way to the Sixteenth District police station. The streets of the inner city lay empty and the whole city centre looked completely deserted. All the shops were locked and barred, as were the snack bars where the private food industry syndicates that had won contracts from the Ministry of Public Health used to serve up their scientifically composed but far from tempting set meals. The only sign of any kind of care and loving attention to detail were the names of these food outlets. They were invariably called ‘Culinary Paradise’, with subheadings such as ‘The Dainty Morsel’, ‘Chef’s Delight’ or ‘Eats and Treats’. The windows displayed fake, plastic food, and alongside them and inside the premises there were notices distributed jointly by the Ministry for Public Health and the group of companies that ran the restaurants. Most of these said ‘Chew your food well, but do not occupy your table for too long. Other citizens are waiting.’ This concise message encapsulated the primary interests of both parties. During his long period of illness Jensen had had problems with his digestion, and had only patronised such places on rare occasions. He knew, however, that the food was cooked centrally and sent out pre-portioned. A few years before, the operation had been rationalised so that all the outlets in the city served only a single daily dish, a move that had generated significant savings, that is to say, greatly improved profitability, for the conglomerate producing the food. The standard dishes were allegedly geared to popular taste and were devised by a group of experts inside the Ministry of Public Health. A typical dish might consist of three slices of meat loaf, two baked onions, five mushy boiled potatoes, a lettuce leaf, half a tomato, some thick, flour-based sauce, a third of a litre of homogenised milk, three slices of bread or crispbread, a portion of vitamin-enriched margarine, a little tub of soft cheese, coffee in a plastic cup, and a cake. The next day it would be the same thing again, but with boiled fish instead of the meat. The whole lot was served on hygienically packed plastic trays, covered in plastic film. The profit motive had dictated that almost all the private companies in the business had gradually been sucked up by the big food industry conglomerates.
Those who made a study of solidarity issues had long since discovered that when hundreds of thousands of people ate exactly the same food at exactly the same time, the result was an enhanced sense of security and a collective sense of belonging. The bosses of this socially useful production chain were not resident in the country. They had been living on islands in more southerly climes for many years. There were regular features on them in the weekly magazines. These would have pictures of them relaxing on yachts or standing by white marble balustrades with palm trees and surf-fringed beaches in the background.
The streets were dotted with carelessly parked cars, and there were military vehicles abandoned at some of the major crossroads, just as at the airport. Most of them were tanks or armoured cars. In some places, windows had been smashed and walls bore bullet marks, but there was no evidence anywhere of direct destruction or serious damage. Jensen saw no living people, and no dead bodies. Nor did he come across any ambulances or other motor vehicles, but as he negotiated the maze of intersections at the city hall, he saw a column of trucks moving along highway seven. They had full loads on the back, covered with tarpaulins, and to judge by their direction of travel they were heading for the central detoxification unit. The convoy had no escort.
Fifteen minutes later he was at the Sixteenth District station. He turned through the arch and saw his own police car parked in the usual place, though not as neatly as he would have done it himself. On checking he found that the doors were not locked and the key was in the ignition. Inspector Jensen gave a slight shake of the head. He had always thought the head of the plainclothes patrol slipshod and imprecise in his actions. His reports left a good deal to be desired, as they were often unfocused and cluttered with irrelevant detail. He would never contemplate recommending the man for a position of higher command.
The doors to the police station were also unlocked. The large reception area with its old-fashioned decor and fittings was deserted, an
d there was nothing to indicate any human presence, living or dead, in the station as a whole. He looked about him, and then went calmly up the spiral staircase to his office, hung up his outdoor things, and sat down at his desk for the first time in three months. Glanced at the electric wall clock. It had stopped, for the first time in fifteen years.
The untidiness of the desk was plain to see, and it annoyed him. Pens, pencils and sheets of paper were lying all over the place. He opened a drawer and found the same thing there. It took him a good quarter of an hour to restore order around him. Then he went to the filing cabinet, took out the log that was supposed to be kept by the duty district inspector, opened the large, paper-bound volume in front of him on the desk and began to study it. He went back to his own last day on duty and read the final entry, signed by himself.
Handed over command, 10.00.
Further down the same page, his successor had written:
Have arrested 39 of the 43 on list I was given. Plainclothes from some security service came to get them for questioning. Jensen seems to have messed up somehow, but then he was ill.
The entry was typical of the man’s inability to express himself. Jensen wrinkled his nose, not at the impertinence of the comment but at the clumsy, unclear way it was worded.
He read on. The entries for the first week were merely numbers of drunks apprehended and sudden death incidents. For example:
48 alcohol abuse cases this evening. Two killed themselves.
Then the man had clearly realised this was an unfortunate choice of words, crossed out ‘killed themselves’ and wrote ‘died suddenly in the cells’ instead.
A few days later:
Still haven’t been sent a new doctor. Difficult.
Jensen glanced through a few more pages and found the following entirely misplaced comment:
New doctor came today. Heard Jensen’s as good as dead and going to be cremated over there. No point bringing the body home, says the head of personnel at HQ. The lads here are collecting for a decent, realistic-looking plastic wreath.
On the twenty-first of September, a Saturday, there was an entry completely out of keeping with the rest.
Whole force out to protect a demonstration march from agitated civilians. Went fine, but mood very heated.
And a week later:
More demo trouble. Much worse than last time, but we more or less coped. Manpower from lots of districts involved. Aggravating for police officers, forced to take the demonstrators’ part against nice, law-abiding citizens.
