Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  Red cartridges with brass yellow caps. I feed them into the double barrels as we pick up speed. Frenzied screams and curses come from the buildings around us. I close the shotgun and glance in the side mirror. A boy of about ten years old runs straight out into the street. His short trousers flap above his knees, his Vega cap blows off and for a moment he hesitates mid-step.

  My breath catches in my stinging trachea. I grab hold of Ma’s sturdy forearm but I don’t have time to warn her. I screw up my eyes and wait for a thump that doesn’t come. I see the boy sneak into a doorway to the left of us.

  I rest the shotgun’s barrels on the ledge where the windscreen was. The tyres screech as Ma backs around the corner and up to Fleminggatan. At the junction I catch sight of the other side of Fridhemsgatan, up towards the school and the timber district. The man in the bowler hat who passed our car half an hour ago is loping along so fast that the road dust is whirling around his Chaplinesque feet. He is still carrying his violin case but is trying to open it on the fly.

  Something doesn’t add up.

  We stop opposite the Cadillac parked about fifteen metres farther down the road. The southerly wind blows straight into the driver’s cab. Far away, above Lake Mälaren, some pale-grey clouds are forming at last.

  Hiccup, who is a head taller than both of Ma’s sons, stands a little behind them. He has put a feedbag with cut-out eye holes over his head. The straps are tied in a neat bow around his neck. He looks like an executioner. Nix has tied a handkerchief over his face. Svenne Crowbar hasn’t bothered.

  Ma struggles with the gearstick and we reverse another few metres. She probably hasn’t driven in years. Stubborn bitch. She should have let me drive. Still, if we pick up speed we can be at Belzén of Birka’s place in a few minutes.

  My eyes oscillate between the three gangsters on one side of the street and the workers’ home on the other. Two men are standing there in shabby suits with bowler hats askew. They look as if their eyes are about to pop out of their heads.

  Ma manages to get into first gear and get the van moving. Svenne Crowbar waves his machine gun in the air. He has a gaping, idiotic smile on his face. Behind him, like an enormous shadow, Hiccup approaches with the bag over his head. He raises his large-calibre revolver and makes it flash in a cloud of powder and noise. He shoots Svenne in the neck: an execution.

  A shining bouquet of red and white spills from Svenne’s grinning lips. The machine gun drops from his hands and his body falls forward, with his arms stretched up in the air, like a surrendering soldier. Nix has time to turn around before the second bang. Hiccup’s bullet meets him smack in the forehead. Fragments of skull and brain slop red, grey and amber across the Cadillac’s shining white bonnet. Nix slumps on the car and falls on his side. A wisp of blue smoke rises from the revolver in Hiccup’s hand.

  He moves quickly for a man of his size, plunging forward and picking the machine gun up off the pavement. Ma’s words from Sunday echo in my mind: ‘Ten shots per second.’ A whole fucking armed platoon in one man.

  I point the shotgun in his direction and let rip without taking aim. The Cadillac bodywork takes most of the barrage, but the display window of Vilan’s café behind it shatters with a crash. The van speeds towards Hiccup. On the other side of the road the two men are ducking down with their hands over their heads. Pale terror dances silently across their faces.

  Hiccup takes cover behind the bulletproof car but soon pops up again like a fucking Punch puppet. He rests the butt on his shoulder. The gun hammers out lead so quickly that all the bangs seem to condense into a single angry blast. Ma flinches in the driver’s seat as bullets ricochet around the cab. I fire my second shot and the Cadillac’s front wheel bursts, throwing up a cloud of road dust. Hiccup ducks down again. As we race past I see the feedbag bobbing behind the window like an unusually ugly fish in an aquarium. He works his way towards the back end of the car.

  Ma sounds the horn. Hiccup blasts out his hammering scorn in another three short bursts of lead behind us.

  That fucker tricked us all. Bullets fly all around us and hit the back doors of the van with muffled bangs.

  The sky-blue nose of a tram comes into view down at the St Eriksgatan crossing. A stray bullet shatters one of the side windows and the driver accelerates. I click open the smoking shotgun and take out the cartridges.

  ‘Belzén of Birka,’ Ma growls.

  She has tears in her eyes. Her fingers whiten around the large steering wheel. A deep-red stain is seeping from her belly through her dress and white apron. She floors the accelerator. We are approaching the crossroads with breathtaking speed.

  ‘Look out, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Kvisten drinks, I drive, like I said.’

  I probably would have given my other little finger for a drop of schnapps.

  I brace my feet against the floor as we approach the crossing. A woman in the rear carriage of the tram presses her hands against the window. The glass bead on her hat pin is green. A bloke with bad teeth emits a silent, wide-mouthed scream and another ducks down in his seat. The van’s bonnet is still ajar and trembles in the wind. If it flies up now it will obscure the windscreen.

  And then we are toast.

  The tram struggles forward like a caterpillar. Ma turns a hard right onto St Eriksgatan in the nick of time. Her hands slip on the blood-drenched Bakelite, but she finds her grip again. The bonnet remains in place but we’re in the wrong lane. I glance down the street ahead of us. About fifty metres away, level with the plant beds at the next intersection, are two motionless rubbish trucks.

  The modern kind.

  Suddenly Ma swings back left to avoid an oncoming car. We’re heading back towards the tram again. The passengers run from the windows. We are going to crash.

  ‘Fucking occultist!’

  Right at the back, a boy is cadging a ride on the tram’s back coupler. His greasy hair shines in the evening light. He has a satchel on his back. He presses forward to avoid the van.

  I gasp for breath. Ma treads on the pedals like she’s playing a church organ. We miss him by a thumb’s width.

  ‘Slow down, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Language!’

  ‘Slow down!’

  ‘You’re going to the States. That was the agreement.’

  A patrolling police officer blows shrilly on his whistle. Ma swerves into the left lane and I drop one of the shotguns shells on the floor. I look over at her. She is pale and coughing. I lean towards her and press my hand against her doughy stomach. She pushes it away.

  ‘Keep your hands to yourself.’

  I obey and open the cylinders of the revolvers, shaking the empty shells onto the floor before reloading with fresh lead.

  ‘That fucking Belzén!’

  Ma hits the steering wheel with her palm. I remember the look Hiccup gave his boss when we were planning the hijack yesterday. This is the second time in a dozen years that that half-deaf gangster has started a full-scale war. It worked for him last time and he managed to take control of the whole of Kungsholmen. Ma and her Östermalm men helped him and gained ten per cent of his income for ever more. Maybe he has grown tired of paying out. Maybe he has got bigger plans.

  The sounds of emergency sirens slices through my ears. I glance in the side mirror and see a black Volvo with flashing lights. My voice is little more than a whisper.

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Berglund?’

  ‘Think so.’

  Bastard copper. For years you’ve chased me around like a hungry hound, sniffing, always ready to arrest me and take another decent bite out of my limited time. Enough now. Time is up for one of us. The tomb door stands wide open. Death refuses to wait.

  Ma pushes the speedometer over the eighty-kilometre-per-hour mark as we pass the perfume factory. My sweat-coated skin dries in the wind. My calloused hands grope for the shotgun cartridge that ended up on the floor.

  ‘Use the pistols instead. Fire straight through the metal.’
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br />   I put an unlit cigar in the corner of my mouth and take the revolver in my left. I’ll have to climb out onto the running board. That’s hardly going to help my crummy aim. I push down the handle and open the door.

  I grip around the door pillar with my right hand and place my shoe on the wide rubber-coated steel board that runs between the mudguards of the van. I lean out, and my new hat blows off.

  God damn it.

  Bad omen.

  There’s Berglund in the passenger seat, his lips curving downward beneath his moustache. He is holding his revolver in his right hand. The driver is hanging over the wheel with his face right up close to the glass. Emergency lights tear through me with their red flashes, over and over again.

  Behind the houses, running along the other side of the canal, I see a big plume of locomotive steam. We are travelling at the same speed as the train. The van speeds straight along Fleminggatan, past the old fire station and lunatic asylum, with me hanging on to the side. We are approaching police headquarters but hopefully Berglund hasn’t had time to stop and call for reinforcements.

  My bloodstained clothes flap around my body as the van swerves to overtake. Berglund is about twenty metres behind us when I cock the trigger and squeeze out my first shot. The revolver recoils. I shoot again.

  The second bullet bores through the summer evening and hits the centre of the windscreen. It passes between the two men. Encouraged by my sudden good aim, I fire another couple of shots. I miss but the Volvo slows down a little and steers into the blind spot behind the van.

  I hear two bangs. One shot hits us in the rear and the other causes sparks on the pavement about half a metre from the right back tyre. They are trying to hit the wheels.

  Such a dirty fucking trick.

  Typical coppers.

  The squad car swerves into sight again. Berglund is holding his revolver outside the side window. I take aim. The front sight trembles over the bastard’s face and for one second I think I’ve got him. I smile as I move my finger to the trigger.

  The first time I met the Detective Chief Inspector was in December 1932, when he tried to lock me up for a murder I didn’t commit. Not long after that he brought me in on shaky accusations of threatening behaviour and chucked me in Långholmen for eighteen months.

  My finger moves half a millimetre.

  Finally, last autumn, he interrogated me over an assault, but I got away scot-free. Only now do I remember the tiepin that was among his paraphernalia on the table at the time: an enamelled trinket with a black swastika.

  A gang of yelling boys run along the pavement in our wake. They’re the same ones I saw earlier and the largest of them is still holding the flat cat in his fist.

  ‘Shit!’

  I daren’t shoot, not with those kids in the field of fire. Berglund’s revolver casts its tongue of fire along the police car. The black bodywork sparks. The bullet meets the swinging door behind me. I push myself flat against the car. The sweaty fingers of my right hand are aching and slipping on the metal. I duck back into the cab. Ma is hunched forward over the steering wheel.

  ‘Can’t get them.’

  ‘Go for the bonnet or tyres.’

  I turn my head to look forward. There isn’t much traffic on Fleminggatan. We are approaching the turrets of City Hall and King’s Bridge. I swing back out of the car and fire off the revolver’s last shots in quick succession. One hits Berglund’s side mirror and the other whistles clean past the car.

  So much for my good aim.

  We speed past the district court and police headquarters and their mess of law, violence and power.

  A hostile area.

  I toss my revolver onto the seat and fumble to get the other one out of the shoulder holster. Ma overtakes a horse and carriage. The sweat-lathered mare flinches and clops nervously to the side. Foam flies from her mouth. The driver standing on the footboard tugs on the double reins. I see the policemen being jostled from side to side in their front seat. Just then, the airspeed forces the bonnet of the van to fling open.

  The car tyres screech as the cop car swerves around the horse and carriage. The bonnet flaps as the van lurches but it still won’t shut. Ma stands up with one foot on the accelerator and bangs it with her fist.

  It eventually slams shut.

  We are approaching the end of the road. Ma slows down slightly. Either we turn right and drive towards Belzén of Birka’s headquarters or we turn onto King’s Bridge and risk ending up in the Klara district’s maze of alleys and crowds.

  Ma opts for the bridge. The tyres complain as the car turns sharply. The front door hits me hard in the back, sending the cigar flying out of my mouth.

  The sole of my left shoe slips off the running board, and before I know it my heel is scraping along the pavement. My right arm is stretched to its limit but my sweaty fingers are holding fast. Inside the car Ma is struggling with that damned gearstick.

  My muscles are shaking with strain when I manage to haul myself up. I take a deep breath of road dust and petrol fumes.

  A boat passes under the King’s Bridge coughing diesel just as the police car turns the corner. They can’t be more than fifteen metres behind us. The white-puffing locomotive whistles on its way towards Central Station. We move like quicksilver over the bridge as the canal flows serenely in the summer heat. The sunset is golden-yellow with streaks of pink and red, like piss after a particularly tough fight. I squint at the sun and take aim. It’s time to put a stop to these devils.

  My arm whips like a snake as the revolver explodes four times in rapid succession. I aim at the tyres. My only hit gets the bumper. Berglund responds with a shot that flies past my head so close that I think I can feel the wind from it.

  Two bullets left.

  Somewhere nearby swells the sound of a marching band. Brass instruments wail into the wind and drums roll faster than Hiccup’s machine gun. I realise too late where we are headed. I don’t have time to warn Ma. She turns right onto Vasagatan, which leads past Central Station.

  The bloody Olympians and spectators.

  I pull myself close into the van, cock the trigger and stretch my arm out at full length. The filth are gaining on us. They are about ten metres behind. I aim at the driver. I would have preferred to see Berglund’s brains splattered across the back seat but I’ve got no choice. I have to stop them now. In a few seconds it will be too late.

  Ma blasts the horn. The marching band stops abruptly with a shrill trumpet note. People are screaming. I cock the trigger and hold my breath.

  My arm wavers as we decelerate. The lead disappears into nowhere.

  One bullet. No more.

  I turn my head.

  ‘Fucking athletes.’

  Garlands have been hung over Vasagatan with colourful paper streamers and Swedish flags drooping from flagpoles. There are so many people crowded in front of the station’s grand entrance that many are standing far off in the street to witness the spectacle. The blue-uniformed orchestra disperse before us in a flurry of shining instruments. One youth trips over an abandoned bass drum, falls and smacks himself bloody against the paving stones. Outside the vaulted entrance to the large station people are fighting to get to safety.

  We speed towards the crowd. I want to close my eyes but can’t. Ma is honking the horn the whole time and the squad car’s shrill siren is sounding behind us. Men in their Sunday best clutch children in sailor outfits, a pair of shiny black taxicabs try to plough a passage through the throng, women scream, pimps and pickpockets plunge into the muddle on the pavement. Some are trampled, a couple fall to the ground. Three women, garishly attired in traditional costumes with yellow aprons, drop the bouquets of roses in their arms and leap out of the way. A horse rears, neighs and tries to jump free from its shafts.

  Three metres in front of us a woman grabs a tiny tot from a pram. The baby’s white chemise with a lace collar flaps in the flurry. The mother clutches her child close to her bosom and turns her back to us to act as a shield.
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  As we veer left we clip the pram with the right mudguard. It lifts off the ground and flips over in the air. I pull in my head as the pram misses someone’s head by half a metre and smashes onto the police car’s bonnet. The cops duck in their seats.

  The van jolts as we plough through a sea of abandoned flagpoles, handbags and musical instruments. I cast my eyes across the mess of people. They are running around like a flock of sheep that can smell a wolf, billowing here and there in an unruly throng.

  We catch sight of each other at the same time. For about a second, this one moment blocks out all sounds, and times stops. Lundin’s skinny form is leaning on Hasse. The undertaker is standing as still and stiff as a statue in the middle of the crowd that is now little more than a blur.

  Hasse is holding one hand out in front of him, stopping people who come too close. As usual, the old man is dressed in a black suit and cylindrical top hat, but with a floral waistcoat that I have never seen before, perhaps bought specially for the occasion.

  Our eyes meet. A smile breaks through his bushy moustache. I raise my revolver hand straight up into the air. He takes off his hat and swings it over his head twice before throwing it straight upward. Without thinking I shoot my final shot into the sky. The bang acts as a starting shot. The noise levels return to normal and Lundin is swallowed up by the crowd.

  With a thumping heart I swing back into the cab. I grope on the floor as the bell begins to ring at Tegelbacken level-crossing barrier. That makes a right turn impossible.

  We pass Central Station. I look at Ma and load the sawn-off shotgun. Her eyes are half-closed. She is leaning forward with one hand on the steering wheel and the other pressed against her stomach, pale as a linen cloth. We are no more than a few blocks away from my getaway car but have to shake Berglund before we can make the switch.

  ‘Two shots left,’ I say and close the shotgun.

  ‘More in the back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’