Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Gabrielsson was a known anti-Nazi,’ I say. ‘He wrote in to newspapers kicking up a fuss all the time. Now hold still.’

  I work the razor around the undertaker’s bushy moustache with small strokes and for a brief moment I manage to get him to shut up, but he’s soon off again.

  ‘They’re not really like us though, in their thoughts or deeds. And those little caps too. No one knows how they stay in place. There are no two ways about it: they crucified the black-frock just like they crucified Christ once upon a time, you mark my words.’

  ‘I’m going to call my friend Senior Constable Hessler. He usually knows what’s going on.’

  ‘And they breed like rabbits, despite cutting off half their penis at birth.’

  ‘Lundin, go to hell. You’re talking about them as if they were Gypsies or Finns, or downright bums.’

  ‘At least ten kids per woman and I don’t have a single one.’

  ‘Jesus Christ was a Jew as far as I remember, and they have the most generous opening hours in the city. Didn’t the tailor just book me in for a measuring? You heard for yourself. Even on a Sunday. What the hell difference does it make how many children they have? Hold still.’

  Lundin brushes some crumbs off the table with his good hand. He turns his head and stares out of the window. I snatch the razor’s edge away from his skin so as not to cut him.

  ‘I don’t give a shit about death. If you’ve got nobody to take over when the day comes, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve scrimped.’ Lundin’s voice is thick and he clears his throat. ‘I had the odd offer through the years, in my youth, but it was never to be. It’s a crying shame.’

  I angle his head up towards the light and scrape away some leftover beard hairs from high up on his cheekbone.

  ‘Do you remember that week last autumn when you assisted me in the funeral parlour? That was pleasant, wasn’t it, brother?’

  I glance out into the courtyard. The carpet beating has ended. Tablecloths and sheets billow lazily on the clothes lines in a gentle breeze.

  ‘When we cut up that bloke so he would fit in the child-size coffin? Delightful memory.’

  ‘He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster,’ Lundin quotes the Scriptures.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You may not be the most logical, brother, but you have always got stuck in when it came down to it.’

  ‘Hire an assistant. You’ve got that Olympian, your cousin’s kid.’

  ‘My nephew. Haven’t seen him for years and years. And he was something of a slacker before he discovered his talent for shooting.’

  ‘I can track him down. That’s my job.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’ Lundin stares vacantly ahead. ‘Not long to go before the August building inspection. Nilsson says that his cooker is kaput and I think the Good Templars have broken a windowpane, though they’re trying to hide it.’ He sighs heavily, gathers his strength and continues. ‘And let’s not forget: I would still like to know who stole timber from the attic to use as firewood last winter. Haven’t I always been generous with the heating, damn it?’

  ‘You sure have.’

  I moisten a towel in the water and wipe off the shaving cream. A drop of blood trickles down to the tip of his chin, gleaming like a ruby. Lundin looks at himself in the vanity mirror on the table and laughs without a trace of joy.

  ‘Not long now.’

  I don’t know what to say in response. Instead I pour water into a pot on the hob and feed a gas token into the meter. It soon begins to boil and I fill up the washing-up bowl and place the dishes inside. Lundin takes another snifter from the bottle and sucks his moustache. He mumbles something but the sound is drowned out by the clatter of dishes.

  ‘What are you muttering about now?’

  Lundin is staring out the window.

  ‘I just said I’m glad that my brother’s back.’ He tucks the schnapps bottle under his arm, and unscrews the lid. ‘It’s not like last winter when you took every act of kindness to be nothing more than an unwelcome interruption to your damned brooding.’

  I continue rattling the dishes. Every time last autumn or winter comes up in conversation, I feel a hollowness in my stomach and a sudden wave of nausea. The sensation reminds me of being a child and going hungry for too long.

  ‘I was completely lost.’

  I shake the water from my hands. Lundin cups his hand behind his ears.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Just quit your damned blathering.’

  I go over to him, lay his arm around my shoulder and pull him up to his feet. Dixie, the half-blind old bitch, wakes up and starts to whimper. I shuffle off with Lundin towards the entrance of the funeral parlour.

  With a twinge of bad conscience I stare out across the foyer. A thick layer of dust lies over the desk, the wall mirror and the dead palm leaves, but I can clean another day.

  Lundin grumbles as he arranges himself upright in his chair and then turns on the radio. It hisses as he sets the frequency. I check that the chamber pot is in place under the desk.

  ‘I’ll put your blankets in the cold room so they’ll be cool for tonight.’

  ‘Just forget about that damned dead priest.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Lundin nods, tired, and puts on his top hat. The radio crackles as he tunes into the news.

  ‘A telegram received in London around midnight describes the entirety of Spain as a blazing inferno and details a bloody scene of individual acts of violence as well as outright battles.’

  I walk over to the wall-mounted telephone and request the police station from the operator girl. The line crackles.

  ‘Large parts of Malaga are burning. New battles have broken out in La Línea, and from Gibraltar we have heard hammering machine guns and the thunder of artillery all night.’

  Lundin fumbles with his top shirt buttons and grunts a few incoherent words. A new operator answers with a vacant tone.

  ‘Get me the Anti-Smuggling Section, sweetheart. Chief Constable Hessler.’

  ‘Violent fires rage in Fascist-controlled Seville, bombed by government aircraft during the night,’ the radio continues to rasp.

  ‘The sergeant has been dismissed with immediate effect.’

  I am taken aback by the girl’s monotone voice. I lean closer to the mouthpiece, and a shiver runs down my spine.

  ‘He’s gone?’

  ‘Effective immediately. As of yesterday.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Unfortunately that is not information I am able to give, sir.’

  I turn the crank once round and end the conversation. I face Lundin and grope around my pockets for a cigar.

  ‘In domestic news, this year’s general survey of the so-called vagabond community shows that between fifty and sixty thousand of these vagrants populate our streets during summertime. This is substantially fewer than the more severe years we have seen previously.’

  Lundin has spilt snuff all over the desk. He is sleeping with his chin on his chest, dreaming about all the clients he might have had, if only people hadn’t stopped coming. It is months since the last time the doorbell rang. His moustache flutters when he exhales. His face is slack and drooping.

  I bite the end off a Meteor and think about Hessler. It was only November when I saw him last, in relation to my client Elin Johansson and a particularly tricky case. He had risen above the cheap snoops and got his own office and desk. Now he has been dismissed. Something doesn’t add up. Since he has a propensity for strong liquor, and often personally confiscated a portion of police seizures of smuggled vodka, I could search for him in the city’s bars, if I could be bothered. He has probably already made a fool of himself in one of the harbour pubs. He’ll be sitting there staring at the sailors and dockers. After all, that’s how we met once upon a time.

  I walk over to Lundin, who has jolted out of his sleep. He stares at me like a drunk. I fasten his top two shirt buttons and tie his black ti
e around his thin neck. He smells of breakfast’s coffee grounds, and vinegar. Occasionally I soak his bedlinen in sabadilla vinegar, strong enough to take your skin off, and powder it with insecticides to combat the lice infestation. The smell reminds me of the poorhouse of my childhood and every time I put him to bed it makes my stomach turn. Still, I endure. With so little time left he doesn’t need more things to complain about.

  Once I am finished clothing him, his chin finally falls down to his chest again. Not enough coffee in his post-breakfast schnapps. I take his brass tin, prise out a pinch of snuff and lay it out for him on the edge of the table for later.

  After another conversation with Herzog the tailor on Biblioteksgatan, I strike a match, puff life into a cigar and whistle to Dixie. She pricks up her ears, trying to locate the sound. Half-blind, she takes a few shaky steps in the right direction before sitting back down on her rump. She wags her tail listlessly a couple of times. I sigh, wedge the cigar in the corner of my mouth and pick her up. Her little dog heart flutters against my shirt front as I carry her outside to take a piss. I know I really ought to take the bitch to the park and put a bullet in her head. Put an end to her suffering. I can’t do it. Especially not on her birthday. In fact today she is having three porters instead of two.

  I heard there are seven dog years to one human year. It sounds like bullshit but it’s the honest truth. I sat there trying to work out the numbers in a notebook for an entire afternoon but never managed to get the figures to add up. For simplicity’s sake we celebrate every seventh week.

  The morning is about as hellishly hot as a log burner. I set Dixie down on the pavement and look around. Roslagsgatan is virtually deserted. The number 6 tram groans up from the south, heading towards the turning point up at the customs office. Rickardsson the gangster comes strolling from the north with his thumbs in his waistcoat like he owns the fucking place. My lungs sting from cigar smoke.

  He’s a stocky, ugly fucker but impeccably dressed, with his jacket slung over one shoulder. One of Ploman the smuggler king’s top men. Known for his ruthlessness.

  Dixie carefully sniffs along the wall before crouching down and pissing against it. When she was younger she used to cock her leg like a male but that was before she had problems with her hips. If you press on her rear end she whimpers like a ship dog in a storm.

  Rickardsson fixes his eyes on me and starts smirking long before he reaches me. He puffs out his chest to appear stronger than he is. This cocky bastard always seems to want to compare muscle and stares at me wherever I go. I glance at his belt but he appears unarmed. He eyes the waistband of my trousers as well and stops in front of Dixie.

  ‘Hot enough for Kvist? You’ve sailed the seven seas so you’ve got something to compare it with.’

  The gangster rocks from foot to foot. I stare and take a drag on my cigar. I don’t look away. Neither does he.

  ‘So hot my damn watch has stopped. Old man Ström claims to have stopped drinking water completely. Says it’ll only come straight out the pores again anyway.’

  I nod in the direction of the junk dealer farther up the street.

  ‘Thought I’d pay a visit to Lundin.’

  I take a sidestep and stand half in front of the funeral parlour door.

  ‘He isn’t doing well. Hasn’t seen a corpse in months.’

  Rickardsson removes his thumbs from his waistcoat and thrusts out his broad chest.

  ‘Oh, I just wanted to talk for a minute, for old times’ sake.’

  ‘You can’t demand a percentage of money that the old man doesn’t have.’

  Rickardsson takes out a silver snuff tin from his trouser pocket and offers me some. The box glints in the sun. I shake my head. He presses his fat lips together but doesn’t keep them shut for long.

  ‘What a lovely little dog Kvist has there.’

  ‘Dixie.’

  ‘A miniature schnauzer, right? Wonderful company in the evenings.’

  ‘Just what the hell are you getting at?’

  An ache shoots through my skull.

  ‘No fun being alone, is it? Could be very different though, couldn’t it?’

  Rickardsson gives me a look. I quickly pick up the bitch and hold her tight under my arm. The vein in my forehead is throbbing. My muscle fibres tighten like harp strings. Rickardsson grins.

  ‘Tell Lundin that I’ll stop by tomorrow instead.’

  He raises his hand to his forehead in a parting gesture and turns back the same way he came. I follow his broad shoulders with my gaze and scratch Dixie behind the ear. Damned thug.

  The number 6 tram comes rattling along the street, heading back towards the city, and I open the door and put Dixie back inside. Birthday or not, the world is just too cruel for her today. I start jogging in the direction of the Frejgatan stop.

  I swing up onto the back platform of the tram just as it starts rolling away. I work my way through the carriages until I reach the front car, where smoking is allowed. The wheels screech against the shifting grooves of the track and my thoughts return to Gabrielsson. To revenge.

  When I visited him to get information for a case last year, someone had drawn a big swastika on the rectory door, which seems like a much more feasible clue than the Star of David. But who the hell cares about politics? I might read the sports pages but I tend to skip the national news.

  We roll through the dead city, where every last sod seems to be hiding at home in the shade. The sun casts its glare on the wide-open windows and is reflected all over the streets. The quiet reminds me of Långholmen.

  There is nothing I hate more – apart from the pigs, heights and dentists – than a fucking self-nark. Everyone knows, even abroad they all know, all the way down to Turin I would wager, about the shoddy conditions of this city’s correctional institution. Still, there are blokes who are released from the jail complex and then want to get straight back in. The institutional air has stifled their spirit and made them feel out of place in the outside world, until finally they rough someone up and squeal on themselves for the sake of quiet company, stagnant routine and clear rules.

  We roll on, past the scorched plant beds and bone-dry cement horse troughs. Stockings and underwear are hung out to dry on the windowsills. We pass the spice stalls and clothes shops at the northern end of Regeringsgatan. I am disgusted with myself at the thought, but it has crossed my mind: there have been a couple of occasions this past six months when even I have felt the desire for a cell. Maybe they finally got me after all.

  I shudder, but somewhere, happiness flows into the midst of sorrow.

  Finally something to do. Something to focus on. Something other than my damned brooding.

  I am late out, and in this line of work the trails go cold pretty quickly, but I am convinced that Detective Chief Inspector Berglund and his boys have drawn hasty conclusions. It wasn’t the Jews, the poor devils. They have no motive as far as I can see.

  Not that I need to understand why; I just need to know who.

  ‘Good enough for me.’

  Maybe Herzog the tailor has something to say on the matter. Then as soon as I’ve been measured for my summer suit I can get started.

  Footwork and hard fists, like before.

  I dig out my timepiece and tap on the glass. The hands still aren’t moving.

  ‘So do we want pockets and fittings? Knöpfe, ja?’

  I listen to the little tailor’s peculiar accent through the rhythmic sighs of the treadle sewing machine. I blink at him and give up on the mental arithmetic. Herzog is peering at me over the sun visor he uses to protect his eyes from his bright desk lamp. He has a red measuring tape around his neck. The lapel of his waistcoat is covered with pins.

  I want to explain to him that the details are more a question of price than anything else. The down payment alone has virtually cleaned me out. I just nod sheepishly instead and stroke my chosen fabric on the table in front of me. According to the tailor it is supposed to be lighter than air. If I am not mistaken it i
s called mausgrau. I don’t know what that means but it could be a whole lot worse.

  I take out my watch, then put it back.

  ‘I show, you wait. Where did I put my file?’

  Herzog raises his bushy eyebrows and looks around the workshop. He shouts something in German to his assistant, who is sitting with his back to us at one of the sewing machines. The boy shrugs his shoulders and mumbles in response.

  Herzog mutters to himself. He turns around, searches the workbenches, ironing boards and other tools, and lifts up a roll of fabric. When he doesn’t find what he is looking for, he walks over to the row of fabric-filled wardrobes that cover the far wall of the workshop.

  I stare idly out the window. A young lady passes outside in black riding attire. She is holding her skirt a good half-metre above the ground with one hand, revealing a shiny pair of boots. In the other hand she is holding a riding crop.

  Two Östermalm gentlemen stroll past with their chests puffed out like generals or bigwigs of some sort. Both are dressed in light suits and straw hats. One has a twisted moustache and is holding his walking stick like a baton in his fist. They are gesticulating and seem to be absorbed in a heated discussion.

  I shut my eyes and am immediately transported back into Katarina Church. I can see the bony rector lying on the floor, as bloody and naked as the day he entered the world. I imagine I can hear the squeaking sound when the coppers tried to pull the rail spikes out of him with a crowbar. I take a deep breath through my nose. The tailor’s shop smells of steam-pressed wool.

  As soon as Herzog comes back I will ask him about that bloody Jewish star above Gabrielsson’s head.

  I open my eyes and look back up towards Biblioteksgatan. For a brief moment it feels as though time outside is standing still. Right in front of me, very close, on the other side of the shop window, a youth is standing on the pavement. He stares straight at me with a wild look in his eye. Along his jawline is a flaking row of lice bites. His hand is hanging by his side in an oversized cheviot jacket, like a deformed dead weight. His right hand is high above his head, holding a brick.