Clinch

by Martin Holmén

  Senior Constable Hessler sits with his legs crossed in one of the visitors’ chairs in front of the desk. He’s in uniform, smoking a cigarette between his slim fingers. He turns his head and smiles as I come into the hall, but remains seated. His hair is perfectly coiffured as usual.

  I hang up my coat and go into the room. The ashtray with the hula dancer is full of cigarette butts. Either he’s nervous or he’s been waiting a very long time.

  I grunt at him by way of a greeting, loosen my tie, then put the bottle on the desk and turn the label towards him. Hessler shakes his head.

  ‘I don’t partake any more. You know that.’

  A dark finger of smoke arrows between us like a Cape dove when he stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray. On my way into the kitchen, I run my hand through his hair to rough it up a bit. By the time I come back with a schnapps glass, he’s tidied it and lit himself another cigarette.

  I sit in the armchair and fish out a Diplomat from my breast pocket, then change my mind and open the desk drawer. It catches halfway but a Meteor rolls into view. I light it. Hessler coughs.

  ‘Nice.’ He nods at the ship in the bottle on the windowsill behind me, then his earlobes flush.

  I take a deep puff. ‘We had a donkey man who was a master at making those.’

  Hessler crosses his legs the other way. ‘It’s nice and warm here, Harry. Lovely to have a warm apartment in the winter.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Hessler!’

  He goes silent for a few moments before he exclaims: ‘I’m here about the Zetterberg case.’ His ears are completely red now.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to telephone me?’

  ‘Yeah, well… it’s better this way. You never know if some operator is sitting there, listening.’

  ‘Right. What are they saying about me on Kungsholmen?’

  ‘Olsson thinks someone else killed Zetterberg, but Berglund… well, he thinks it was you.’

  I snort and fill my glass with schnapps. ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘Blast it, Harry!’ Hessler crumples his cigarette in the ashtray so violently that the air is filled with little flakes of ash. ‘It can’t have been you! It wasn’t you, was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Did you know,’ Hessler goes on, lowering his voice, ‘he’s been convicted under the eighteenth paragraph?’

  For an instant I see Zetterberg’s signet ring in front of me. The thin hand dangling from the stretcher.

  ‘Haven’t we all?’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Speaking of which, how’s the wife? And the children?’

  ‘Damn it, Harry!’

  ‘Just wondering.’ I raise my hands defensively.

  Hessler snaps his mouth shut and caresses his ludicrous moustache with his thumb and forefinger. We sit in silence.

  ‘The blokes are busy with that axe. There’s an owner’s mark engraved into the handle. Half the force is going around the building sites asking about it.’

  ‘And the bowlegged girl? Sonja?’

  ‘Do you remember when we met the first time, Harry?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘You didn’t muck about, you just took me in your arms!’

  ‘Sonja?’

  Hessler gives off a little sigh. ‘Am I too old for you now, Harry?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it!’

  ‘Every day.’ Hessler purses his lips. His silly moustache arches over them. ‘Every day I train with chest expanders and weights in the police station cellar.’

  It’s my turn to sigh. I look up at the ceiling. ‘Sonja?’

  ‘Gone with the wind. All the usual sources are keeping their mouths shut.’ Hessler twists and unbuttons his uniform jacket. He gets out a pile of papers and waves it in front of me.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Documents about Zetterberg and the murder scene.’ He remains seated, the notes in his lap. ‘They have to be returned by this evening.’

  The neighbour is playing jazz again, at high volume. Out in the yard, the door of the potato cellar slams. Someone whistles ‘A Cross for Ida’s Grave’. My chest feels heavy.

  Hessler drops his voice again. ‘I’m taking a hell of a risk for you, Harry.’

  I nod, then stand up and throw my jacket over the back of the armchair. I pick up the cigar from the ashtray and re-light it.

  ‘Can I see?’

  Hessler hands over the documents. Quickly I leaf through them; there’s a crime scene investigation and a pathologist’s report. I read a bit and then look up.

  ‘So the murder weapon is a thirty-centimetre axe, a so-called bricklayer’s axe, which was found in Vasagatan. They haven’t managed to get any fingerprints from the birch handle, but the hairs on the edge matched Zetterberg’s after being examined under a microscope?’

  ‘Most likely the murderer wore gloves.’

  In the street, the number 6 tram rattles by. I open the postmortem protocol from the Karolinska Institute and read: ‘The deceased died of significant wounds to his scalp and skull as a result of traumatic violence. Nothing in the nature of the wounds contradicts the supposition that they were caused by the axe mentioned in the police report.’

  ‘Someone really wanted to kill him.’

  ‘I understand that some people think I did it. The blood in the hall was type B.’

  ‘The same as yours, Harry?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I have to get back to the station shortly. Before someone misses the documents.’ Hessler crosses his legs and clears his throat quietly.

  ‘One moment.’ I take a puff on the cigar and go back to the crime scene investigation.

  I whistle. This is no simple robbery. ‘Almost ten thousand kronor found in the apartment?’

  ‘I’m taking a hell of a risk with this for you, Harry…’

  ‘Ten thousand. A lot of bread.’

  I unhitch my braces and chuck down my drink.

  Hessler inhales and leans forwards on the chair, whispering: ‘There’s more about that in the personal investigation. Every month someone paid five thousand kronor into Zetterberg’s account.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘The neighbour said he was a taxi driver or something like that.’

  ‘He hasn’t declared any income in years.’

  I nod and give the senior constable an appreciative smile as a reward, then pour myself another schnapps.

  ‘Hessler, my friend, you’re not completely bloody useless.’

  I toss down the contents of the glass. Hessler smiles ingratiatingly.

  I keep thinking about the money. Five thousand per month. That’s more than a bishop makes. There’s really only one murky business that turns over sums of that size. Zetterberg must have been involved at a relatively high level in organised liquor-running. And I mean definitely, as definitely as ‘amen’ in church. He was a gangster. I nod at Hessler.

  There’s a thump when the senior constable throws himself down on the floor in front of me. He puts his hands on my hips. I can feel him trembling as I pop my fly open.

  Questions are teeming in my head now. Luckily enough I know someone who ought to be able to come up with some answers: Belzén in Birka. The smuggling king of Kungsholmen.

  Kungsholmen, Gloomholmen, Povertyholmen: a backwater with winding, soot-stained streets bordered by workshops, small factories, military barracks and heavy industry. Here, dilapidated apartment buildings coexist with low-slung wooden houses and shacks. In the day there’s a cacophony of slamming and noise, but it’s absolutely silent at night.

  I’m wearing a grey woollen suit with wide lapels and a matching waistcoat. The weight of the little bolt cutter in the inside pocket of my coat causes the latter to have a certain lopsidedness. In the grainy evening light further down Hantverkargatan, a cattleman leads a black-spotted cow towards Rålambshovsparken. From a workshop behind me comes the sound of whining la
thes, spluttering machines and regular hammer beats. It feels as if it might start raining at any moment. Two pensioners carefully prod the ground ahead of them with their walking sticks as they cross the street arm in arm. Everything smells of horse manure, kidney beans and poverty.

  A little lass in a teddy coat and wool gloves slips out of a doorway on my right. She has turned down her socks over her boots and her hair is held by a blue bow on her head. A window upstairs opens and someone whistles shrilly.

  ‘Your sandwiches!’

  The girl stops, looks up and catches a package wrapped in newspaper. She heads off, running towards Kartagos Hill. A detachment of ice-clearers come along the road. They carry long saws and large icicles on their shoulders.

  Between two houses in the quarter known as Kulsprutan is a red-painted fence with three rows of barbed wire and spy mirrors at the top. There’s a black garage door in the fence. Behind the barbed wire, the head of a bloke wearing a fox-fur hat bobs up and down, like a bright yellow buoy. Nothing in the street evades his notice. For instance, he seems very interested in the cigar I take from my inside pocket. I identify strongly with him, as if I’ve met him somewhere before, but I can’t remember where.

  On every corner of the block some school-age urchin has been posted to warn the lookout about approaching goons or other enemies. With their sharp wolf whistles they could probably even wake the dead in the morgue further down the street.

  The fuel in the gold lighter has run out. I sigh, put it in my pocket and meet the guard’s eye. Neither of us smile.

  A Norwegian pony comes trotting along. The guard and I follow the two-wheeled cart with our eyes. Broom handles and shovels stick out like swaying masts.

  ‘Make way for the whore taxi!’ the man holding the reins yells at me, revealing a line of broken teeth, and sticks out his chest. The dustmen often give the street girls a lift home at dawn if they can have a little squeeze in return.

  Set into the façade beside the garage door is a modest door with sun-bleached curtains in the window and two signs. One of them says, JESUS IS COMING – ARE YOU READY? and the other says, LINDWALLS TRANSPORTATION AND CARRIAGE RENTAL. Somewhere inside sits Belzén from Birka. It’s been seven years since we last saw each other. That was when, for the first and last time in my career, I agreed to take a dive.

  Everything had gone to hell for me. Quite simply, I needed the money. I used to drink a fair amount in those days. When Räpan picked me up, I was standing cap in hand at the Salvation Army or Filadelfia, exchanging psalm singing for soup. Räpan represented the Söder villains who, in those times, controlled the quays of both Söder and Norr Mälarstrand. The match would be held on neutral ground in Klara.

  It was the usual arrangement: two blokes with bare torsos were supposed to pummel each other until one of them could no longer get up. No gloves. I had gone about fifty such fights without defeat, and for a few months I’d no longer been of any interest, I was too good. According to the agreement with Räpan, I had to stay on my legs for ten minutes, go easy on my right, and then collapse. On that one occasion I had no problems with it. I was getting a hundred and fifty kronor for a couple of shiners.

  Most likely someone spilled the beans. Three days before the match, everyone was suddenly betting against me, and then, one day before the fight, I had another proposition: from Belzén in Birka. Belzén wasn’t much cop in those days, just a short, semideaf, small-time gangster running a couple of illegal drinking dens and gambling dives up in Birkastan. He was willing to advance me a fair sum of money if I didn’t take a dive, and just did what I always do instead. The odds against me were pretty high. Long after, I found out that Belzén himself had put ten thousand on me in various betting shops. Räpan and the Söder villains would give me a hiding, of course, but I was getting a hiding anyway. I thought it sounded like a good idea.

  The match didn’t take much longer than a pissing break. That same night I was able to get my hands on two thousand cold. A day later, Räpan and a couple of underlings got hold of me. They worked me over with a pickaxe handle and a chain, before Räpan took to my little finger with a blunt pair of pincers and a sledgehammer. I clearly remember his flushed face as he leaned over me and promised that the next time he’d take my whole hand.

  There was no next time. Some fifteen minutes later, Räpan and his Söder gangsters were liquidated. This was the opening shot in a long series of confrontations. When the smoke finally settled about a year later, thirty people had lost their lives.

  I press down the door handle of Lindwalls and step into a minimal office. The walls are bare except for a four-year-old calendar and a faded map of the inner city. A young woman in a plaid dress and nicely fixed blonde hair is sitting on a little desk, painting her nails red. She looks like a voluptuous version of Tutta Rolf. On the desk is a floral-patterned cup and saucer. Behind her is a solid metal door. There’s a smell of good coffee and nail varnish.

  ‘Sorry,’ says the woman without looking up. ‘Everything’s fully booked.’ She puts her little brush back in the bottle on the desk. She flaps her hands in front of her and smiles with satisfaction.

  ‘Belzén. Give him Kvisten’s regards.’

  She stops flapping her hands. ‘Blow,’ she says, and holds them out. She has one of the most dangerous jobs in town, but she keeps her style. I can’t help but admire her.

  I do as I’m told.

  ‘You got a match?’

  She flaps her hands in the air one last time, then leans back across the desk and opens the drawer. The fabric of her dress tightens around her body and swells over her breasts like the leather stretched across a couple of boxing gloves. She gets out a box of matches and gives it a shake. I catch it as it comes flying.

  ‘One moment.’ The fabric makes a scarcely noticeable sound against the top of the desk as she slides off. She presses a bell beside the door behind the desk. It takes a while before the lock clicks and she goes inside.

  The first drag of the cigar sends a pleasurable shiver through my body. The fragile porcelain of the cup rattles slightly against the saucer as the heavy door open and shuts again. I straighten up.

  ‘Wait by the door to the side,’ says the secretary. She goes round the desk and sits on the chair, scrutinising her nails again and curling her upper lip. I put the cigar in the corner of my mouth and squint with one eye. She pulls out the drawer, gets out a nail file and pulls the bottle of nail varnish a little closer. She looks at her nails and says: ‘By the garage door. Don’t keep him waiting.’

  I doff my hat just slightly and put my paw on the door handle. Damned women, always making themselves so difficult.

  A silver-haired man with a cap on his head and a shotgun on his shoulder receives me inside the garage door. He’s wearing rubber Wellingtons. His face is wrinkled as an old apple. Most of them don’t live this long. Up on the ramp the man in the fox-skin hat stares at me. He has a heavy-calibre rifle in his arms. He’s about the same age as myself, with a cleft palate. Several trucks are parked in the yard. Everything stinks of alcohol. There’s been a leak somewhere. The trawlers go out and meet the Estonian and German booze ships just outside territorial waters. In the archipelago, ten-litre cans of pure alcohol are reloaded into fast Italian motor boats, which take them into town. A significant part of it ends up here, where it is diluted to the proper strength and decanted into beer bottles.

  The old man nods at me. I hold out my arms. I get the feeling that the harelip is staring at my cut-off little finger.

  ‘I’ve got bolt cutters in my inside pocket.’

  ‘You need that for?’ The old man’s voice is not much more than a wheezing.

  ‘I’m picking up a couple of bicycles later. Could come in handy.’

  ‘Leave them here.’

  I haul out the bolt cutters and put them at my feet before I stretch out my arms again. The old man gives me a pat down with his liver-spotted hands and gestures towards the trucks.

  We go to a blue-painted do
or at the far end of the courtyard. The cigar is killed under the heel of my boot. The old man nods at me to walk on ahead. The cold double barrel seeks its way through my layers of clothes and finds a point in the middle of my spine. If you took a swarm of shot there, your heart would jump clean out of your chest.

  There are no windows inside the high-ceilinged premises. Up above, naked lightbulbs hang in rows. Wooden crates piled one on top of another form a narrow corridor through the warehouse. They are printed with words in languages I do not understand. Our steps echo between them in waves.

  At the far end of the gloomy corridor is another door leading into a large, bare office. At the other end of the room, at a desk made of some light-coloured wood, sits Belzén of Birka. The girl sits on the desk, smiling, with another cup of coffee in her hand. Behind the boss is a massive man, standing more than two metres tall in his socks. I’ve seen his lumpy boxer’s nose somewhere before, but can’t remember where.

  The giant comes to meet us with a wooden chair in one hand. He puts down the chair a good distance from the desk. I’ll have to yell for Belzén to be able to hear me. I sit down. The girl comes forward and gives me the cup of coffee. The double barrels find their way between my shoulder blades. The man behind me cocks both barrels. The coffee tastes as good as it smelled in her office.

  Since the last time I saw him, the thin man behind the desk has got himself a pair of spectacles. He’s wearing a blue waistcoat and a bow-tie. A long, thin scar runs from his stiff jet-black hair, past a bushy eyebrow, down into his dark beard. His enemies say that he has a good deal of gypsy blood in him. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know.

  ‘Kvist,’ says Belzén. ‘It wasn’t exactly yesterday.’ He folds his hairy hands together on the desk. He smiles and looks really quite docile.

  ‘Any chance of a tot of booze in the coffee?’ I raise my cup. ‘If you have any going spare, I mean.’