by Per Wahlöö
After a pause, Jensen asked:
‘Do you know what’s happened?’
‘Parts of it.’
‘What, then?’
‘Something terrible.’
‘I’ve already worked out that much.’
‘Unfortunately also something that’s a completely logical consequence. It’s a long story. Very long.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I haven’t got time right now. And anyway, you know almost as much as I do. If you give yourself time to think it through.’
‘I’ve been away for over three months.’
‘True enough. Quite a bit has happened in that time. But all the essentials happened before you left. Long before.’
He busied himself with his flexes and contacts for a while. Looked up and said:
‘Do you know your way around this stuff?’
‘No.’
‘We’ll just have to do the best we can, then.’
There was a crackle from the equipment. A voice crystallised out of the rush of the ether.
‘Vehicle twenty-seven here. Can you hear us?’
‘Of course I can. What is it?’
Jensen recognised both the voice and the lazy drawl. The woman who had been speaking to the men in the white coats.
‘The main hospital is in contact with an ambulance,’ he said.
‘You should have shot them.’
‘I’m not armed. And anyway, they showed their ID.’
‘You should still have killed them.’
The police doctor turned down the radio conversation. Looked quizzically at Jensen.
‘How much do you actually know?’ he said at length.
‘Very little.’
‘I don’t know everything either. I didn’t get back until yesterday. To the city, I mean. There are things I don’t understand any more than you do.’
‘Where were you before that?’
‘Out in the country. In the forest.’
‘Were you in hiding?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were arrested, weren’t you?’
The police doctor gave him a long look.
‘No, I wasn’t arrested.’
Jensen said nothing.
‘Thanks to you,’ said the doctor.
‘You mean you escaped?’
‘Yes. I never went down those stairs. I stopped outside the door and heard you ring the duty officer. So I went up to the roof and scrambled over to the building next door. I ran away.’
‘Then I ought to arrest you.’
The police doctor shook his head.
‘There are no police any more. Only you. As far as I know. And as far as I know, there’s no government to give you orders, either. Or me, for that matter. No one who can order us to behave like idiots any longer.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
The man flicked a switch on the control console.
‘There we are,’ he said. ‘This is working now, anyway. We might need it later on.’
‘You’re talking in riddles,’ said Jensen.
‘Yes. And what’s more, I haven’t time for it. Every ten minutes, someone dies. Needlessly. And not far from here.’
‘The epidemic?’
The police doctor nodded. He went towards the door. Stopped and turned round. His eyes were bloodshot, he was in need of a shave and looked very tired.
‘Jensen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you in touch with your … the people who sent you on this mission?’
‘No.’
‘Are you interested in politics?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know anything about politics?’
‘No more than most people.’
‘Good. I want you to help me with something.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve got someone down there in the car. A man. He’s in a pretty bad way. It would be useful if you could look after him until I get back. Come on.’
Jensen nodded and went down to the jeep with him.
‘Help me carry him,’ said the police doctor. ‘There’s a sofa in the room next to yours, isn’t there?’
‘Yes there is.’
‘Let’s put him there.’
The man looked thirty or so. He was lying on the back seat of the jeep, wrapped in a blanket. His skin was pallid and his cheeks were hollow. There was nothing to indicate he was conscious. As they carried him up the spiral staircase, he felt very light. When they had put him down on the sofa, the doctor threw back the blanket and Jensen saw that the man was disabled. Both legs were missing below the knee.
‘Shouldn’t this man be in hospital?’
‘He’s just come from there,’ said the doctor.
Jensen looked at him enquiringly.
‘He’s asleep now, but he’ll wake up soon. I gave him an injection. When he perks up, you can talk to him. I’m sure there’s plenty he can tell you. Mentally there’s nothing wrong with him.’
The doctor shrugged.
‘Strangely enough,’ he said.
‘You can interview him,’ he added in a sarcastic tone.
‘Who is he?’
‘A good friend. If he’s in pain, give him one of these tablets. They put him to sleep for an hour. But the pain goes. He may need to take them at pretty frequent intervals. And make sure he gets something to drink, if there is anything. If you have to go out, leave the tablets where he can reach them and give him something to read.’
‘But what if anybody comes?’
‘Nobody’s going to come here. There isn’t anyone in the city centre. Yet. Are you going to carry on with your so-called investigation?’
Jensen nodded.
‘In that case I’ve got a tip-off for you. The Steel Spring.’
‘The Steel Spring.’
‘Yes. Find out what it means. You can always ask somebody. You could try the Ministry of the Interior or the secret police. Or the party offices.’
‘There’s no such thing as the secret police.’
‘No. You’re right. But there used to be. I’ve got to go now.’
He looked at his watch.
‘I’ll be back this evening, by about seven.’
‘One more thing,’ said Jensen.
‘What?’
‘There’s a dead woman in one of the cells. You should take a look at her.’
‘Perhaps I should.’
They went down to the arrest suite. The alcoholic had dozed off on his bunk but was shaking under his blankets.
‘Who’s that poor devil?’ said the police doctor.
‘Alcoholic, third-timer.’
‘Why don’t you give him a bottle from the confiscation store?’
‘It’s against regulations.’
‘There are no regulations any more, Jensen. And this man’s freezing.’
They moved on to the cell where the dead woman was, opened the steel-barred door and went in. The police doctor gave her a cursory look and ran the tip of his index finger along the skin of her stomach.
‘The epidemic?’ Jensen asked curiously.
‘Yes. The illness. She died of it. Look how the skin’s almost transparent. The genitals unnaturally swollen.’
‘What’s the illness called?’
‘I don’t know.’
He paused and then said:
‘It’s a new invention.’
‘Is there a cure?’
‘No. If you’d taken a blood sample from her just before she died, it would have looked like cream.’
‘Is there a vaccine?’
‘No.’
‘Aren’t you afraid of catching it?’
‘No.’
The police doctor looked gravely at Jensen.
‘This illness isn’t infectious,’ he said.
CHAPTER 18
The man on the sofa shifted uneasily and opened his eyes. Thirty-five minutes had elapsed since the police doctor had climbed into the jeep and driven off. Jensen p
ulled his chair up closer and caught the man’s uncomprehending eye.
‘You’re at the main station in the Sixteenth District. My name’s Jensen.’
He made a move to get his ID badge from his breast pocket, but stopped himself and let his hand fall back. Instead he said:
‘Do you want something to drink?’
The invalid nodded, moistening his lips with his tongue.
‘Yes please.’
His voice was clear and youthful.
‘Your friend brought you here. He’ll be back later. Are you in pain?’
The man shook his head. Jensen opened one of the bottles of fizzy drink and poured it into a plastic cup. The man took it and drank. His hands shook.
‘Have you always been disabled?’
‘What? Oh, that. No, not at all.’
‘How long?’
‘I don’t really know. What day is it? Today, I mean.’
‘Wednesday the fourth of December.’
‘Oh, I see. It’s cold here.’
Jensen went for another blanket. Spread it over the man.
‘Does that feel any better?’
‘Yes, thanks. What was it you were asking?’
‘What have you been through?’
‘It’s a long story. You know what’s happened as well as I do.’
‘No.’
The invalid gave him a curious look and said:
‘Who are you, anyway?’
Jensen took out his service badge.
‘Police. Inspector Jensen. Sixteenth District.’
‘I hate the police.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘How can someone like you ask that? What are you planning to do with me?’
‘Nothing. Look after you until your friend comes back.’
The man on the sofa seemed as confused as ever.
‘Fourth of December,’ he said to himself. ‘So it’s been more than a month.’
‘Since what?’
‘Since the second of November.’
‘What happened on the second of November?’
‘Don’t you remember? Are you mad?’
‘I wasn’t here. I didn’t come until the day before yesterday.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re trying to trick me.’
The man turned his head away, lay with his face to the back of the sofa.
‘What am I trying to trick you into?’ asked Jensen.
The other man gave no reply and Jensen did not repeat his question. Outside, the rain had turned to snow. Big, wet snow-flakes plastered themselves against the windowpanes. At length, the man on the sofa said:
‘You’re right, of course. What could you trick me into?’
Renewed silence.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I’m trying to find out what’s happened.’
‘I can only say what happened to me personally.’
After a brief pause he added:
‘And to some people I know.’
Jensen was silent for a while. Then he said:
‘You know the police doctor for the Sixteenth District, for example.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you known him long?’
‘For some years, yes. Five or six at least.’
‘How did you get to know him?’
‘We were members of the same club. Or society, if you like.’
‘What sort of society?’
‘A district political society.’
‘A communist league?’
‘More like socialist. At least that’s what we called it.’
The man turned his head.
‘It’s not illegal,’ he said suddenly. ‘Political clubs aren’t illegal.’
‘No.’
‘Demonstrating isn’t illegal either.’
‘Not at all. Who said it was?’
‘Nobody. But still …’
He broke off and looked Jensen in the eye.
‘Is it true you weren’t here on the second of November?’
‘Yes. It’s true. What did you do in your political society?’
‘We discussed various issues.’
‘And what conclusion did you reach?’
‘That prevailing social practices were and are to be condemned. That the whole thing needed to be torn up.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the so-called Accord has never been anything but a bluff. It came into being because the old, supposedly socialist movement was losing its hold on employees and the working classes. And at that moment, the social democrats sold their voters lock, stock and barrel to the right wing. They entered into the grand coalition, or Accord as it later came to be known, just because a handful of people wanted to cling to power. They abandoned socialism, made successive changes to their party programme, and delivered the whole country up to imperialism and the formation of private capital.’
‘You can hardly remember all that,’ Jensen said indulgently. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty. But I’ve studied these questions long and hard. To stop the country turning socialist, the social democratic party and the trade union movement deserted their most fundamental ideological principles. The leaders at the time had been in power for so long that they couldn’t imagine losing it. What’s more, they had discovered that even the labour movement and its mouthpieces could be run on a bourgeois-plutocratic model, with an eye to financial profitability for the few. The Accord’s most deeply held principle was that everything had to make a profit. That was why this phantom political combination was entered into and its true nature hidden behind a hypocritical façade of clichés about higher living standards, mutual understanding and security. That everything was getting better all the time.’
‘Things did get better,’ said Jensen.
‘Yes, in material terms, for a while. The individual was physically nannied but intellectually and spiritually neutered. Politics and society became something abstract, of no concern to the individual. And to lure people into all this, they showered them with carefully censored crap in the papers, and on the radio and TV. Until they had almost an entire nation of sheep, until people only knew they had a car and a flat and a TV set and were unhappy. Knew it was more tempting to commit suicide or drink themselves to death than to go to work.’
‘Do you feel like a sheep?’
‘I said almost. There were groups of politically active individuals, and once the low-water mark was reached, they started to grow again. More and more people realised that what the so-called theorists of the Accord philosophy called standard of living and peaceful revolution was nothing other than a criminal attempt to make people accept the universal meaninglessness that had resulted from a crazed political and sociological experiment. It’s amazing it took so long for everyone to see it. All you had to do was look about you. It was meaningless to work, meaningless to learn anything except a few technical operations. Even the physical aspects of life became meaningless: eating, sex, having children.’
‘You didn’t come up with all that by yourself,’ said Jensen.
‘No, I didn’t. I’m mainly quoting what others have said and written. But I understand it well enough to see how bad things are.’
‘If we can stick to the facts for a moment,’ said Jensen. ‘What else did you do in your political club? Did you organise demonstrations?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did you hope to gain by them?’
‘We were working to make people understand their own situation. To crush Accord society. It was only once we’d blown the Accord apart that we could get at our arch-enemies.’
‘Which arch-enemies?’
‘Well, social democracy, which had betrayed the labour movement and sold out to capitalism. And then the capitalist system as a whole.’
‘And how were you able to do it?’
‘There weren’t all that many of us, but on the other hand, numbers kept growing. At first the police were the only ones who took any notice of
the demonstrations. The vast mass was entirely indifferent to them, as expected. People had been rendered entirely apathetic by the attempt to impose standardisation on them by all available means. Gradually even the police stopped opposing us, on the orders of the government I assume. We interpreted it …’
‘Yes? How did you interpret it?’
‘We interpreted it as a positive development. We thought that the people pulling the strings had taken fright and wanted to avoid drawing attention to our actions at any cost. They succeeded to the extent that the vast majority of people still didn’t take any notice of us, although our numbers were swelling and we demonstrated more and more often. The only thing that seemed to annoy people was our obstructing the traffic. But the police soon started helping us with that, too, and directed the protest marches to their destinations as smoothly as they could. We saw that as a sign of fear, too. Of the regime seeing its main role, as usual, as that of not distressing people, not waking them up from their dream world of material affluence and strictly contained anxiety.’
‘Did your organisations make any headway in elections?’
‘In a way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well we didn’t get all that many votes, but more and more people abstained from voting. Even that, the fact that political ignorance was growing at the same rate as boredom and suppressed dissatisfaction, showed us that we were right. Of those who did take part in the elections, almost all of them voted for the Accord, of course.’
‘Why?’
‘From sheer force of habit. They or their parents had once upon a time learnt to vote either for social democracy or for the right-wing parties. And we had no propaganda resources to call on, either. But we carried on campaigning even though our shouts fell on deaf ears, right up until …’
‘Right up until?’
‘Right up until everything changed.’
‘And when was that?’
‘Some time in September.’
‘What changed?’
‘I don’t know. The people, maybe … The first time I noticed anything was on the twenty-first of September.’
‘What happened on the twenty-first of September?’
‘I’ll try to tell you.’
He screwed up his eyes and grimaced with pain.
‘Is it hurting?’
‘Yes, there’s this pain in my legs.’
The man on the sofa writhed convulsively. Groaned.
Jensen took the tube the police doctor had given him, shook out one of the white tablets and poured out another fizzy drink.
