Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Ammunition.’

  ‘How in the hell am I suppose to get them?’

  ‘You’re going to the States.’

  ‘So lose them.’

  ‘They took your daughter from you.’

  For a moment the only sound is our heavy breathing.

  ‘Slow down and keep the car straight.’

  I open the door again, stick out my head and place my left foot on the seat. I shove the short-barrelled shotgun into my belt. With my forefinger and thumb I pinch the centimetre-high strip that runs around the roof and place my right shoe in the fork where the car door meets the frame.

  My eyes water in the wind. I tense every muscle in my body and heave myself up. The roof is hot from the sun. The wind rages in my hair and clothes. The tyres are bouncing on the cobblestones. I slip around but begin to worm my way towards the back of the van.

  My heart is pounding against the metal and the shotgun is digging into my hip. I creep along, bracing first one foot against one side of the strip, then the other. The van lurches and sends me flying over to one side. My head slides over the edge of the roof.

  I meet Berglund’s gaze just before he begins to reload. The police car can’t be more than five metres behind us now. I peer down at the van’s door handle. Somewhere deep inside I can still feel Lundin’s presence: his smile and his floral waistcoat, his hat flying through the air.

  If for no other reason than for that old goat’s sake.

  I shuffle my way a little farther and peek over the edge. I reach my left arm down as far as I dare.

  Not far enough.

  The gun hammers against the roof as I struggle to free it from my belt. Using the shotgun as an extension of my right arm, I push the handle. The barrels slide off the chromed metal. A few centimetres farther to add some force.

  That’s it.

  One back door flies open. It almost shuts again but I stick the barrels in between to stop it. The force of it thunders into my hand.

  I slide out even farther and look up. Berglund fires. The bullet hits the vehicle about ten centimetres from my head. I flinch, Ma turns slightly, and I start to slip slowly but inexorably over the edge.

  My heart stops, as if to prepare for the wild pounding of panic. I flail in the air.

  I grab hold of the door’s top edge, the metal cuts into my palm and my shoulder joint is stretched to the limit. My right shoe scrapes along the ground before flying off completely. I heave myself up and try to swing my legs up to reach the bumper. My whole body is vibrating as I hang from my left arm off the inside of the door, with the police motor roaring behind. They are going to ram me. Terror rages like a parasite in my blood system.

  I raise the shotgun with my right. It’s a lousy angle.

  The barrel is moving around with each shift of the door. The weapon blasts, producing a cloud of smoke. The lead hits smack in the front of the police car.

  A billow of steam immediately rises from their bonnet. The cooling system has sprung a leak and water is flooding out over the overheated engine. They drop back a couple of metres. I try to aim straight at the windscreen and fire my last shot. Most of the swarm of lead disappears over the top of the bastard car. I drop the shotgun.

  The van lurches again, the back door almost slams shut and I finally reach the bumper with my left foot, then let go of the damn door and manage to tumble in among the crates in the cargo compartment. My muscles scream for fuel, it feels like I’m taking a footbath in hydrochloric acid and my heart is pounding so hard it might split my chest open.

  It can’t have taken more than a few seconds to climb from the cab to the roof and into the back.

  It felt like an age.

  I glance over my shoulder and see that the front window of the police car is now nearly completely fogged up with steam. They are still tailing us. I can only see their outlines in the front seats. I open the other door as well, turn around and slam my fist straight through the lid of the nearest crate.

  With bloody knuckles I brush away a few thin splinters of wood and plunge my hand into the straw. I feel around and find a rounded object. I pick it up. I smile.

  Ploman mentioned some sort of bomb attack. I am holding in my hand three tightly bound sticks of dynamite with a short fuse.

  I fumble for my matches as I try to keep my balance. Maybe Berglund can see me through the fog, or maybe he just knows what the cargo compartment contains and understands where this is going. The Detective Chief Inspector leans back in his seat, draws up his legs and kicks against the windscreen with both feet to get an unobscured view.

  The fool is in a panic. I am no longer in a hurry, and crouch down as the Centralpalats sweeps past.

  This I want to see.

  Let the fucker sweat.

  I find a Meteor, put it in my mouth, wedge the dynamite under my arm and light a match. I puff on the cigar and observe the show.

  Front row.

  The very opposite of a tragedy if ever I saw one.

  I am trembling with excitement. Hatred for the police sticks like tar to my nerves as I wave the sticks of dynamite in the air. Berglund kicks again. The driver’s mouth opens as he screams something. Maybe he is trying to warn the Detective Chief Inspector. But he doesn’t brake.

  Their windscreen falls out with a crash and the 100°C steam flows straight into the front seat.

  Finally.

  The screams drown out the sirens. The hair on Berglund’s head is curling up, and he lets go of the weapon to bring his scalded hands to his head. He looks as if he wants to rip the reddening skin off his face in strips. He leans his head back and roars with pain. Blisters are coming up already on his narrow lips. I laugh at him.

  We all die one day.

  The police car accelerates further and passes Centralpalats. I put a cigar in the corner of my mouth and bring the dynamite fuse to the glowing tip.

  It crackles and flashes like a sparkler. The only thing that remains is to throw the bundle into their front seat.

  I am not bowing to your sort any more.

  Never again.

  The fuse is burning fast and I raise my arm to throw it. The van lurches sharply to the right and back again. I stumble backwards and drop the dynamite. Pain shoots through my ribcage. I gasp for air and kick at the bundle of explosives, trying to get the bastard through the door. I can’t reach it. The end is burning down and branching into three parts; its crackling changes tone.

  I stare at the police car, whose driver seems to have floored the accelerator again. Their front seat is filled with steam. I kick clumsily at the explosive a second time but still can’t reach it. Within two seconds we will be flying in the air.

  Everywhere, since my twin brother and I split our mother in two at birth, misfortune has followed me around like a hungry dog. But there have been occasions when my miserable luck has saved my life.

  For some reason I was sent to bed without supper that evening at the poorhouse. Maybe I was starving again and had stolen sugar from the box on the mantelpiece. Maybe it was some other mischief. Either way, the matron served the other paupers jellied veal for supper but mistook the bottles and poured sabadilla vinegar over the food instead of regular vinegar.

  I lay awake all night listening to the paupers screaming and crying, and I thanked my lucky stars for my transgression. Two of the older ones and one young child were dead before dawn. The story was hushed up.

  The van turns at the Rödbodstorget small square and tram stop, and the dynamite slides slowly towards the edge. For a moment it teeters there, perfectly balanced. The end crackles and sparkles one last time before the bundle hits the street. I get up on my knees and see the explosives disappear under the police car.

  Everything is in the Lord’s clear light of the summer evening. Over the engine’s humming I hear the tremulous bells of St Clara ring out a blood wedding. The road dust rises and falls under the police car, as if the street itself was gasping in suspense. The faint pink glow of the sunset plays on the b
lack lacquer. The beauty of the world makes me gasp.

  ‘And so you die at last, you dirty pig.’

  Soon your old lady will be weeping and the priest will be reading over your cold flesh.

  Not a day too soon.

  With an ear-deafening bang the dynamite explodes under the back end of the Volvo. The vehicle stands almost vertically on its front wheels and the back doors flap open. The car looks like the head of a black dog sniffing the street. It is about to swallow us up whole. At the same moment, the fire reaches the petrol tank.

  Another explosion: projectiles with white tails shoot up into the air from a burning sea and dark skies. We are surrounded by the sound of smashing windows.

  The whole high-summer heatwave concentrates into one single powerful hot blast that throws me back on the floor of the van, as limp as a scarecrow in a storm.

  Debris rains down onto the van.

  Everything is reduced to the simple palette of unconsciousness.

  White, black and red, and black again.

  FRIDAY 24 JULY

  Darkness.

  The smells of burnt flesh and rubber and petrol sting my nose. My broken rib feels like it has penetrated my flesh, radiating agonising pangs throughout my ribcage. My ears are ringing. A hand wipes something wet off my face.

  ‘Now Kvist has to wake up and stand up.’

  The order sounds distant, as though travelling through the long mouthpiece from the bridge to the engine room. I struggle to do as I am told. My eyelids flutter, and the familiar feeling of blood sticking in my eyelashes spurs me on, makes me feel calm. The evening light filters in, flowing like rivulets through the blackness. Slowly I pull myself out of nothingness and into merciless reality.

  My head is resting on Ma’s knee. She has one arm under my neck. I run my fingers over my forehead. Doctor Jensen’s stitches have gone.

  Shit.

  I try to swallow but my lips won’t obey.

  With a groan I force myself to raise my foggy head and open my eyes. Ma’s face is as sooty as a coal miner’s. Her hand reaches for my neck to support my head. She is sitting on her backside with her legs outstretched and me in her arms. In the middle of all the grime, her eyes are shining with tears. There is some sort of affection there. She breathes heavily as she takes out her red-splattered church handkerchief and presses it to my forehead. It has long been impossible to tell whose blood is whose.

  Some fucking getaway.

  I blink, cough, take the handkerchief and crawl out of her arms on all fours. One foot on the street, then the other. The sirens are blaring ever nearer and drowning out the searing tones in my ears.

  Where the fuck is my shoe?

  I wobble and stare at the devastation where the street opens onto the small square. The dynamite cartridges have bitten substantial chunks out of the frame of the police car and scattered fragments over the street. A sooty, black skeleton remains, still smoking. A charred pile is slumped over the dashboard: the driver.

  There is no visible trace of Berglund. I grunt, disappointed, and pat my jacket in search of a cigar. Then, near the car’s right front rim, I catch sight of a severed leg. It’s a blackened calf with the shoe pointing straight out at a ninety-degree angle, like the chopped hook of a swastika.

  Angry blood and a stubborn mind are a dangerous combination, but there was spunk in the Detective Chief Inspector, I’ll give him that.

  ‘Now Kvist had better make haste. The last stretch is always walked alone.’

  I turn around to see Ma holding out Ploman’s brown Borsalino hat. The copper-coloured hat band glows in the fading sun.

  ‘A man shouldn’t go without a hat, even if Kvisten does look like hell.’

  I hear the sirens howl up by Central Station. There are a lot of them. An approaching storm that cannot be ridden out.

  ‘Damn it.’

  With one shoe I take two hobbling steps back to Ma where she is sitting with her hand pressed against her stomach. Her wedding ring glitters on her finger among the red slime. Her entire apron is wet with blood. She has wiped her face clean but the soot has set into her wrinkles.

  ‘Give me a machine gun and I’ll hold them off for a while.’

  Ma gestures to the van. I put on Ploman’s hat and offer her my hand.

  ‘The getaway car is just a few blocks away,’ I say. She shakes her head slowly and opens her mouth as if to protest but I interrupt her: ‘No arguments.’

  Her hand trembles as she takes mine. She looks me in the eye. Her gaze is crooked and she looks like she has been on the receiving end of my right fist. She gets to her feet with a whimper.

  Seventy-five metres, maybe even less.

  With one arm around the old woman’s waist, I stumble into the side street. I pinch the gash on my forehead with my other hand, and blink to loosen the sticky clumps in my eyelashes.

  Blood seeps into my shirt cuff. The sirens are hacking the world into pieces. Ma takes off her filthy bonnet and tosses it in a doorway.

  We stagger past the Hotel Stora Rosenbad. The reflection in the window is of a couple of struggling swine, sooty and bloody, their clothes in shreds.

  More and more sirens, even louder now, seem to be coming from all directions.

  I push Ma into the doorway of number 6 and follow behind. I brace her against the oak door and poke my nose out. Opposite us is a seedy café with tobacco-stained curtains. I hazard a peek around the corner. The police cars are speeding past the Herkulesgatan junction. I try to grab her substantial midriff again but she pushes my arm away.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you fucking can.’

  ‘My time is running out.’

  ‘Almost there.’

  ‘Kvist can take care of himself.’

  ‘Nearly there now.’

  I drag her back out onto the pavement. She is shaking all over. Suddenly the sirens are wailing directly behind us. Someone is shouting orders but I can’t hear what they are saying. I put on my sunglasses, push the hat down on my forehead and wrap my jacket around my free hand.

  About thirty metres ahead of us, I see the brown roof of the Dodge poking out between two parked cars. I force my legs to run. The round isn’t over yet.

  ‘Almost there.’

  A sigh, then a sudden dead weight on my arm: Ma’s legs give way as she snuffs out like a candle in the wind. I manage to grab her before she hits the ground and hold her up. We are so soaked in blood that red drops are spraying around us as we walk.

  There’s nothing for it.

  I let Ma sink down to the ground, grab her by her armpits and drag her to Paddan, Lindkvist’s illegal gambling den.

  My ribs smart as I slam open the door to the courtyard entrance way and drag her over the cobblestones towards the pump in the middle of the yard. The sun has melted away the pump’s green colour. Flakes of paint and rust drip like tears around the stone cover. I position her head under the tap, the handle squeaks as I heave it up and a rattling sound comes from somewhere along its long throat.

  Damn.

  Not a drop.

  This fucking summer.

  I finally manage to light a cigar, kneel at Ma’s side and look around. The evening smells of horse shit, printer’s ink and blood. I have known Lindkvist for a long time. His gambling den has failed. The black shutters hang crooked on their hinges, covered in pollen and dust. A handwritten note on the door flutters slightly in the breeze but from this distance I can’t see what it says.

  Now I recall that Lindkvist was already aware of the fact that Ploman and his entourage were National Socialists last autumn. I visited after being released from Långholmen and offered to settle the bookmaker’s debts but the cowardly bastard didn’t dare change collector.

  I roll up my jacket and lay it under Ma’s head. Her eyes flicker. I pat her firmly on the cheek.

  ‘Kvisten is here. Right here with you.’

  Her apron pocket is gaping open so I reach my hand in and grope around the bloodbath u
ntil I eventually produce the glass jar. The sodden lid slips in my hand but I get it open. Fingers crossed, the powder will work like the smelling salts Albertsson used to force in my nostrils between rounds.

  I press her cheeks to open her mouth. I pour a couple of proper doses right down her throat. Just then I hear the police siren getting closer and louder.

  Fuck. The blasted entrance-way door. Just as open and welcoming as the door to Långholmen if I don’t get a move on.

  Not again.

  Another stint would kill me. It would eat away at all that I am. All that I have managed to reclaim.

  Pushing off the paving stones in the courtyard, I slip and fall forward. My knees throb and the sound of the siren wrenches closer. Ma whimpers as I crawl over her legs before managing to pick myself up. How many seconds do I have?

  Two?

  One?

  I lurch forward and bang one half of the double doors with my right. There isn’t much power left in my fist. Maybe that’s why the bastard has the gall to hit back. My body roars with pain as I am thrown to the ground and roll into the door. It slams shut just as the police whine past.

  The burning tip of the Meteor flicks off in the fall, but I pick it up with my fingertips and push it back on the top of the cigar and take a hacking puff. I see the bloody heap by the water pump start to stir. I get up, hobble back and kneel down beside her.

  ‘Kvisten should have some too; it’ll help with the pain.’

  Ma wheezes and grimaces. Slimy white froth is oozing from her mouth. I hesitate but unscrew the lid from the jar and shove half a teaspoon into my own mouth. A simultaneously sweet and abrasive taste of unripened bananas fills my gob. I work up some saliva, swallow and take a deep drag.

  ‘Now Kvisten has to listen.’

  Her voice is very hoarse. I wipe her chin with the cuff of my sleeve.

  ‘I’m driving you to Doctor Jensen. He’ll stitch you up.’

  ‘There’s no time for that.’

  She shuts her eyes.

  ‘The car is ten metres away.’

  I slur on the lie. My lips feels numb. A shudder moves through my body and seems to cure my limbs as it goes. Ma gasps for air.