Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  ‘If only I could afford a ticket to Motala.’

  ‘What the hell are you going to do there?’

  ‘My sister is married to a farmer in Bråstorp. He has pigs and cows and is chairman of the dairy cooperative.’

  ‘A regular lord, then.’

  ‘Horses too.’

  Her voice breaks. She clasps her stomach.

  ‘It’s crying inside me,’ she screams. ‘I can feel it. It’s crying!’

  I grunt and catch a scent in the air. I think it’s the familiar smell of blood. With the cigar in the corner of my mouth, I roll off a few sluggish uppercuts into the air while glaring at the radio set. I should put a sales advertisement in Social-Demokraten next time I let a radio get involved in a private detective gig. If no one goes for it I’ll have to lug the damned thing to Ström the junk dealer.

  Evy calms down and catches her breath.

  ‘Do you have children?’

  My mouth fills with tobacco flakes as I near enough bite my cigar in two. I take it out of my mouth and spit on the floor.

  ‘None of your bloody business.’

  ‘Please, be honest.’

  ‘America. A daughter.’

  I drag the glob of spit over the linoleum floor with my shoe. The woman inside the surgery has stopped howling. All is quiet.

  ‘So you know.’

  ‘Never hear from her.’

  A headache grinds deep inside my skull. I scrunch up my eyes and massage the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘You must know.’

  The ache is only getting worse. Once, off the coast of Africa, I was drunk during the day and fell asleep on a pile of hawsers in the forepeak. Afterwards you could have peeled my skin off in large strips, and I had a headache for three whole days. I learnt that it’s good to get a few Pilsners under your belt when it’s hot so as not to get dehydrated.

  I walk over to the sofa and sit down. I take off my hat and use the brim to fan myself. I haven’t had a chance to properly tame my hair since I got out of Långholmen Prison in November but for once I don’t give a damn. Evy is rubbing her hands together.

  ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’

  ‘Ida.’

  ‘That’s a pretty name. How old?’

  I count to myself quietly. It doesn’t take long.

  ‘Sixteen in a couple of months.’

  My head shakes involuntarily. Her number was almost up before her life had barely begun, from sheer poverty, in a clinic similar to this one. Maybe it would have been better that way. My hand is trembling as it brings the cigar to my mouth.

  The memories have largely burned to ashes, and I tend to force the rest out of my head with schnapps, but they are flaring up more often these days, and in the most inconvenient of situations – like now.

  Evy shakes me out of my thoughts.

  ‘Why haven’t you written to each other?’

  Typical nosy bloody woman. I did send a picture of myself when I wrote a line to America last autumn, but no answer came. The cigar crackles as I consume a whole centimetre of tobacco. I glance at the doctor’s door. I swallow.

  I have taken thousands of knocks both in training and in the boxing ring. I have been persecuted and mocked for my relations with men, and have been beaten by the screws at Långholmen Prison. In this shit line of work I have been stabbed, bitten and slashed, and I probably have more stitches than a mainsail.

  Still, nothing can hurt a man like remorse.

  I pull the elasticated strap off my wallet, flip it open and look inside. Wirén gave me an advance of 450 kronor to pay Jensen. What the hell can that puff-guts do about it? Demand his money back?

  I sigh. Frankly, I am starting to feel too weak for work.

  I turn to Evy.

  ‘So what does that bloody ticket to Motala cost?’

  I open the door and step headlong into a wall of heat. I stop for a moment to scratch myself.

  I hear the faint sounds of traffic coming from Folkungagatan, and crickets that have started their monotonous song. I put down the radio, take my tie out of my trouser pocket, flip up my collar and tie a double Windsor knot.

  An elegant gentleman comes sauntering along the pavement with a wide grin plastered across his face. He is wearing a straw hat, pale summer suit and light leather shoes. His beard is fluttering in the dazzling weather. Perhaps he is on his way to amuse himself at the cheap, seedy brothel behind the Navigation School.

  The wealthy man gives me a look and crosses the street. I am used to it; they never forget. Some stare at me as if I’m a freak and whisper behind my back; occasionally someone dares to shout abuse at me, others avoid me like the plague.

  No big deal.

  I walk down Tjärhovsgatan with the radio on my right shoulder. I stop at a crossing and look at the queue of workaday men at the tram stop farther down towards Slussen. They are waiting quietly and soberly in the heat.

  With my left hand I fish out my Viking watch. It’s still not working. I could really do with that Pilsner. I calculate how I can make time for both a beer and a measurement at Herzog’s.

  I jog over to the other side of the street. The edge of the radio is thumping on the muscle between my shoulder and neck. There’s a beer café called the Stone Angel opposite the rectory that usually serves a tankard that doesn’t taste quite as much like stale sawdust and laundry soap as what some other places offer up.

  If I cut through the cemetery I might bump into Gabrielsson and get the chance to tell him about my recent good deed. Maybe it’ll buy me a place at the Lord’s feet. Salvation is probably reserved for those with enough dough to afford good deeds.

  ‘Whereas the hungry take the cage lift down below,’ I mutter to myself.

  I could also finally pay off a portion of my debt to the rector. He has always looked out for me – a good Samaritan when my need was greatest. We met in Buenos Aires a long time ago. I wasn’t much more than a cabin boy. The memory makes me chuckle.

  He won’t want a Pilsner. Not so early in the day and with a service to give tomorrow.

  I walk back along the ditch bank. The air is thick and hard to breathe. The sun is blazing directly in my face. I tilt the brim of my hat over my eyes and breathe heavily. I swap shoulders.

  Fifteen years ago I could skip rope for an hour, do another half-hour on the punchbag, spar twelve rounds and finish off with a hundred push-ups. Not any more. Far from it. My body has given up on me, destroyed by violence and hard labour, all before forty. Every joint has nearly seized up and they creak reluctantly with every step I take. My lungs are clawing me apart from the inside out; sometimes it’s so bad that I think I’ll cough my guts up. This bloody dust will be the death of me.

  In the vaulted gate of the cemetery wall, there is a crowd of poor people standing there, mumbling with their heads huddled close together. A slip of a lad in short trousers has a nosebleed and is holding his hand up to his face but none of the adults can be bothered to help him. He is well behaved. I clear my throat; the cluster of people parts like water for Moses and my feet touch consecrated ground.

  The pebbles on the path grumble under my feet. I walk a few metres, stop and explore my pockets with my free hand. With some effort, I light my final cigar with the old one. I mash the butt under my heel with a crunching sound.

  Several metres along the path a sparrow has fallen victim to a cat. Its grey down moves back and forth gently in the barely perceptible breeze. Along the left row of crosses on the graves walks a hunched figure, pulling up dandelions.

  I look up at the church with its mighty dome. The emergency lights have stopped, but to the left of the building a black police car rears its ugly head. Straight ahead of me, in the dim light between the flights of steps up to the church, I see a couple of rows of brass buttons.

  My nerves are prickling with unease but I trudge up to the church as calmly as I can. Some drunk has vomited in the green grass by a grave in the night. The flies tear themselves away
from the yellow-brown sludge and whirl up in the air as I pass. I take a deep breath through my mouth.

  Constables emerge from the shadows, with pallid complexions not unlike those of the whores in the doorways of Norra Smedjegatan. I shield my face with the brim of my hat and turn the corner around the church. I gasp and stop. A torrential stream of sweat runs down my spine and for one second I forget about the weight of the radio on my shoulder.

  Two men are standing outside the west entrance. Facing me is a middle-aged copper in full uniform. He is pasty white despite the heat and looks like he has just forced down a piece of bad meat.

  The other one is a slim bloke. A holster sits on his belt holding a revolver. He has a broad-brimmed straw hat and grey hair that cuts across his neck with an exemplary sharp edge. He is wearing a Prussian blue suit with a waistcoat. This year’s colour, so I read. His jacket is slung over one arm.

  He says something to the uniformed constable, who stiffens and salutes. The pale git nods at me over the other’s shoulder and slouches away towards the verdigris copper door. It slams shut with a bang as the well-dressed man turns around.

  I look over the familiar wrinkles, the gold-rimmed glasses and the ridiculous thin moustache. He is wearing a light shirt with iron-grey stripes and a white collar. A blue-headed silver pin sticks through his tie knot, matching his cufflinks and reflecting the colour of his eyes. As always, whenever our paths cross, a malicious grin lights up Detective Chief Inspector Alvar Berglund’s face.

  ‘Well, shit, if it isn’t the city’s worst slugger visiting the world beyond prison walls. Has Kvist gone and become a radio trader?’

  Berglund’s melodic Norrland lilt is audible in his voice. He juts out his chin and rests his hand on the butt of his revolver for a brief moment. I put the radio down by my feet, roll my shoulders and crack my knuckles. I shift my weight and look around. It is so fucking easy to act tough when you’ve got a firearm and the law to back you up.

  ‘Like hell am I a slugger. Boxing Monthly! magazine called my style elegant and technical.’

  ‘Long time ago now.’

  ‘Surely Olsson is still the chief of police? He can vouch for it.’

  Berglund is smiling even wider. One minute alone with the bastard and I could squeeze the life out of him. He takes a cigarette from a Carat carton and packs the tobacco down by tapping the end against the box. The back door opens and the pale-faced constable pokes his head out.

  ‘You’re needed inside, Inspector. They can’t get him free.’

  Berglund nods and looks back at me. He shifts his weight to his other leg. The door shuts. Berglund puts the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pats his pockets. His voice falters as he speaks.

  ‘I always thought that a poof like Kvist would catch fire if he set foot on consecrated ground. Maybe he’s here for the confirmation candidates?’

  The church bells pound out their thunderous song with four chimes, as if the Lord Himself were joining in the conversation. A murder of crows on a tree takes off and darts into the sky.

  Hatred sings in my veins. The blood vessel in my forehead is throbbing with rage. I have half a mind to pick up the apparatus between my feet and smash it over his head, see if I can’t tune into the police radio that the coppers have been bragging about so much in the papers lately.

  Two, three.

  The final strike rings out. I clear my throat and spit.

  ‘Little boys? Like hell. I’m a good friend of the rector himself.’

  ‘Of Gabrielsson?’

  I knock the ash off my cigar with my forefinger and stare at the spot where his scrawny neck disappears into his well-starched collar. His loose jowls wobble below his chin. Three years ago I managed to wedge a handcuff chain around that neck and if some fucker hadn’t knocked me senseless with a baton, Berglund would have burnt in Gehenna.

  I salivate at the memory, and swallow. The inspector takes the cigarette out of his mouth. The official grin fades and his moustache curves downward. Behind the glasses there is a glint in his eyes and Berglund takes on an air of importance again.

  ‘Well, if that’s the case, by all means, go in. The priest is at the altar but you will have to forgive him if the conversation is somewhat one-sided. He seems to take his vow of confidentiality deadly seriously.’

  Berglund laughs drily and puts the unlit cigarette back in the packet. The pebbles crunch under the inspector’s costly summer shoes as he walks to the door. I lift the radio with both hands and follow behind. The headache is back and I need a Pilsner more than anything but it feels urgent that I see Gabrielsson.

  Berglund turns to me with one hand on the door. I put the radio down.

  I poise the index finger of my left hand against my thumb and flick the glowing tip off the half-smoked cigar. It travels through the air like a firefly. I put the butt in my trouser pocket and follow Berglund through the door.

  Katarina wraps me up in her coolness. I breathe out, I breathe in. A familiar scent mixes with Berglund’s Aquavera but I can’t quite place it.

  The Detective Chief Inspector goes first and our steps echo against the stone floor. Farther ahead in the church I hear murmuring voices. We turn to the right and emerge behind the altar.

  My eyes wander upward, over the immense organ loft with its gilded pipes and the pompous chandeliers in the cross vaults, but then a strange noise brings my gaze plunging down like a shot bird.

  First iron clinks against iron, then a shrill sound screeches through the large room. It sounds like a hinge in need of oil.

  ‘Fucking hell, it’s stuck fast!’

  ‘Stubborn as a fly on sugar.’

  Between the pews, on the aged oak floorboards before the altar, stands a black cluster of motionless men gathered in a semicircle with their backs to me. A couple wear civilian clothes, some are uniformed. To the side, by the font where my daughter Ida was christened, stands an older man dressed in a white coat similar to the one I just saw Jensen wearing.

  ‘Make sure the brace board is in place.’

  ‘Is that a seven-inch nail?’

  ‘You have to work the bastard out. Pull it one way, then the other.’

  A murmur moves through the group, metal clinks against metal again and the screeching sound cuts through the grey silence of the church.

  Berglund clears his throat.

  ‘Gentlemen!’

  The men stop what they are doing and a dozen heads turn towards us.

  ‘A good friend of the rector would like to pay a visit.’

  My eyes dart down to my shoes as I feel the coppers’ eyes sting my skin. I force myself to look up and plaster a smile on my face. The old cigar butt dissolves into crumbs in my pocket.

  ‘The day after payday and half the force in church?’

  Nobody laughs. One of them swings a huge crowbar onto his shoulder. Berglund’s steps echo on the timber and the black-clad crowd opens up a gap for me. I crane my neck and gasp.

  The dark sinkhole of men reveals a pale body. Its naked limbs are lurid against the floorboards. It is angular and knotty from old age, and the skin is stretched taut across the ribs. Its thick white shock of hair is flecked with red like the feathers of a newly beheaded chicken.

  I feel as if I’ve been struck with a hefty right hook. A shudder courses through my limbs. I take an involuntary step forward and accidentally bump my shoulder into one of the men. The colours become more vivid, then fade. I shut my eyes tight, then open them again.

  Priest Gabrielsson’s face has frozen in a twisted expression with his teeth, yellow with age, showing through his bloodless lips. Someone has driven a substantial rail spike through his skull. Blood and brains have run down into his eye sockets, which now resemble small tar pits. The rector is lying with his arms stretched out, like Jesus Christ, with his bony feet crossed and pierced with iron.

  Gabrielsson’s genitals seem to have shrivelled from lack of blood supply and in his grey chest hair the red has coagulated like winter fr
ost on a tuft of grass. On the floor above his head is a vivid Star of David drawn in blood. It is his blood, but it feels as if it were my own.

  I sink down into a squat in the quiet semicircle of men and take off my hat. I reach out my hand and run my index finger over a black trickle that has dried into a dark and grainy stain on the wooden floor. Everything he has ever thought, felt and experienced flowed out of him several hours ago. I shut my eyes again. My brain is trying to process it all. Hatred burns in my veins like petrol.

  My Husqvarna pistol has been at the pawnshop for some weeks now.

  It is time to set it free.

  SUNDAY 19 JULY

  Lundin the undertaker turns the page of his newspaper with difficulty. His iron hand-prosthesis rattles. The cut-throat razor scratches gently as I drag it at an angle across his sunken cheek. I clean off the soap and white hairs in a bowl of water sitting among the plates on the kitchen table. I stretch out his skin between my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Synagogues on Wahrendorffsgatan and St Paulsgatan too. And they threw a flaming torch into the Jewish jail on Klippgatan. People have changed beyond recognition since the priest’s murder.’

  His iron hand clinks. The ache in his hand got out of control last Christmas, and the doctor removed it and replaced it with a remarkable construction complete with knuckles and a pair of leather straps to attach it. Obviously it is completely useless and he has refused medical help ever since. He says that otherwise he will end up looking like a total fucking robot.

  ‘His name is Gabrielsson. Was.’

  I sigh. The little kitchen smells of shaving soap, coffee and gas.

  ‘We have go back to the riots surroundings the abolition of the Jewish laws in 1838 to find anything comparable,’ Lundin reads aloud.

  I have to struggle to hold the razor still.

  ‘And why would they be so fucking stupid as to daub their own symbol at the murder scene?’ I hiss.

  Under the table Dixie growls in her sleep. A single fly drones around a plate of lard. The rhythmic sound of a carpet beater in the courtyard comes in through the window. It weaves in with musical notes when the jazz boy a couple of floors up starts abusing his trumpet. People say he has the gift. By which they mean communication with the spirit world rather than musicianship.