Clinch (11 page)

‘No, but check around. The old gossip girls will know all about it.’

I write down the information in my notebook before I open the newspaper. The international competition for amateurs against Poland ended 8-8. Vangis Eriksson won the heavyweight title with a knockout.

The detonation rolls like thunder across the open sea. The vibrations run through me, sending ripples to a corner of my newspaper.

I wander down Götgatan until I come to a small gathering of people on the corner of Bondegatan. There used to be a cinema
here, but nowadays the bottom floor seems to be some sort of warehouse. A dark woman wearing a soiled stripy pinafore and a man’s jacket stands pointing at some cement medallions on the façade.

I stop. Slightly to one side stands an elegant, greying gentleman with a goatee and spats. He sticks out among these Söder locals. I have a sense that I have seen him before, but I can’t place him. It’s odd how certain memories take off and fly away right away, while others have to be lugged about like heavy putting shots.

The smell of malt from St Erik’s brewery further up the street hangs over the area. I give an urchin a poke with my elbow. He’s a pale-faced kid of about ten, with a big bandage around his throat and two water-filled buckets at his feet. Copper for the drinking water and zinc for the rest.

‘What’s happened here?’

‘Signe spilled a lick of coffee over herself,’ says the pinafore woman in a shrill voice. She has a foreign accent. When she turns around I can see that her eyes are swollen red with tears under her joined eyebrows. ‘Even during the war we had enough to go round!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, back then we used chicory, of course! Not real coffee! But still!’

The boy fidgets. Maybe the old nag is his mother.

‘We roasted acorns too, they fetched five öre for a half-kilo. Me and the kid next door picked them like mad.’ A worker of more or less my own age has involved himself in our conversation. Sweat has painted clean stripes on his dirty face at some point today. Friday pay-day’s half-litre bottle sticks out of the pocket of his tatty coat. He’s got a unica box in his hand.

‘Acorns? Pffft! And now she’s offering coffee to our Lord the Father.’ The woman puts up two fingers and makes the sign of the cross across her bust.

‘Gas,’ says the wage slave, swilling his saliva and gobbing between his dirty boots. Both of his upper front teeth are missing.

‘Damn if I believe that.’

‘Straight up, sir. The son put it on.’

‘Acorns,’ mutters the bag. ‘Not Signe. Never.’

I get out another Diplomat, bite off the end and light it with a match.

‘I’m looking for a carpenter here on Bondegatan. Ljungström.’

‘Bloody rubbish.’ The worker snorts. ‘Excuse me, mister! You mean old Ljungström? The builder. Dalecarlian?’

‘Precisely.’

The flame goes out in a thick cloud of smoke, and the singed matchstick ends up on the pavement.

‘Avoid that one. Ljungström needs fifteen hammer strokes on a two-inch nail and still the sod ends up all crooked. The best carpenter in Söder is Jakobi, on Nytorget.’

‘Still, it’s Ljungström I’m after.’

‘I don’t know his street number but the district is called Timmermannen.’

I nod and get a Diplomat from my coat pocket. The wage slave inclines his head slightly as he takes it. His hand is rough and callused as it touches mine, and for a moment we measure each other up. He raises his eyebrows and nods affirmatively.

People move out of the way as I make my way through the little crowd. On the other side of the lane, two street urchins sit tightly pressed together in a doorway: a boy and a girl. The girl has wrapped a blue scarf around her head. Her dirty brown curls hang down over one eye. The boy holds a piece of string in his
shaking hand. On his forehead, a set of red, clawed flea bites are fighting for space. The string leads to a forked twig, holding up a wooden fruit box, under which the December wind stirs among some breadcrumbs. The city pigeons of Söder are hard currency in these times.

I find the name almost at once while searching the doorway of a yellow building with badly applied pointing further up the street. I look around a few times. Over the course of the day I’ve had a vague feeling that I’m being watched, and I wonder if the goons have put a tail on me. They wouldn’t need much of a reason. I shake off my unease and push the door open.

It’s two floors from the top. My new boots are chafing a bit. On the way up I have a coughing fit, and I spit on the stairs. In front of the door marked ‘Ljungström’ lies a folded-up jute sack on which to wipe one’s feet. I give the door a decent tap with the joint of my forefinger.

The apartment smells of liquid soap. The wife of the house has the same slanted eyes as her daughter, and she could be anything between forty and sixty years old. She has a scarf wrapped around her head, and she wipes herself on her apron before she shakes hands, with a little curtsey. From inside the flat there’s a loud sound, like a window being slammed.

I peer over her shoulder. In the hall, some rag rugs have been rolled up and left on a firewood bin. A big bed is folded up against the wall. Most likely they rent out the hall. There’s a scrubbing brush on the floor. They’re normal, subservient people; poor and hardworking. For a moment I think of the lady on Kungsgatan yesterday. This one couldn’t possibly be anywhere near as angry.

‘I’m looking for your husband.’

‘He’s down in the workshop. In the yard.’

Her Dales dialect doesn’t sound quite right. I nod, touching the brim of my hat in acknowledgement, and I’m just about to leave when she grips my arm with surprising strength. I look down at her wrinkled hand.

‘Tell him to come in and eat. I can heat it up for him.’ Her voice breaks and her grip tightens.

At least they have a wall-mounted clock; I can hear the seconds ticking by in there.

Her eyes seem in danger of welling over. I nod, alarmed, then free myself of her grip, back out into the stairwell and quickly close the door on her and her weeping.

The courtyard isn’t paved. The weather has hollowed it out and created small hills and valleys in the gravel. If it rained, one would have to jump the pools on the way to the shithouse in one corner. Between a couple of cowering, knotty trees runs a tangle of empty washing lines.

Two filthy little girls disappear into the house dragging a basket of firewood. One industrial worker in four is unemployed. There’s certainly no shortage of waitresses or seamstresses sewing pockets or buttonholes at a piece rate. In a few years, they may find positions as maids in Östermalm, with a weekly wage corresponding to what Sonja pulls in from one half-impoverished bloke. That is, if they’re prepared to work from daybreak to late at night.

I need a snifter. I take out my half-litre and look around.

At the far end of the yard, under a bare apple tree, is a small peeling shed with a roof of tar paper and a lopsided, rectangular window.

I walk up to it and knock on the door. It glides open. The lock is broken. I step into the gloom.

The little workshop smells of timber and resin. The earth floor is covered in wood shavings. A variety of tools lie scattered across
the workbench, including chisels with handles of black string and a handsaw. On the far wall are two pictures. One of the King, smiling. The other of Christ on the cross, not smiling. Under the pictures is a wooden chair with a broken back, a spade without a handle, and an old dowry chest. A small, unpainted chest, about a metre in length, rests on two sawhorses. A wood-cutter’s axe has been left on the lid to stop the rats getting in.

On another broken chair sits a man, his chin slumped against his chest. He’s wearing clogs without socks, rough-spun trousers and a workman’s shirt, yet he doesn’t seem cold. His dirty, callused hands are curled up in his lap. A mottled light seeps in through the window, illuminating his legs.

I take off my hat and find myself an overturned three-legged stool by the door. I pinch my front creases and sit next to the carpenter, who doesn’t notice me. We remain silent for a while. I rest my lower arms against my thighs, my hat balancing on one knee. My boots squeeze my feet even though I’m not moving, my overcoat is tight across my shoulders. I send Sonja a thought, then straighten my back, clear my throat and glance at him. There’s a clicking sound when I break open the screw-top lid. A mouthful of schnapps tumbles through my body. I have another. A crack runs diagonally across the dirty pane of glass. It holds together, but only just. I tap his shoulder with the neck of the schnapps bottle.

‘Just bought schnapps.’

He takes it and, after putting away a decent gulp, sends it back. I wave my hand dismissively, and he helps himself to another. I feel the heat of his fist when I get the bottle back.

‘My condolences.’

He glances quickly at me. I keep looking straight ahead. It’s best that way. He looks back down at his clogs.

‘She’s gone, now I have no one to follow me,’ he mumbles.

I pick up some of the wood shavings from the floor and crumble them between my fingers. They smell good. I have another sip. My stomach has grown accustomed now. The schnapps is warming. Looking at him once more, I realise I can’t ask about Sonja.

‘Your wife is waiting upstairs with the food.’

I stand up. He remains seated, shaking his head. I dust my hat.

‘No one to follow me,’ he repeats.

I take a deep breath: there’s no air in here. The carpenter shakes his head. With a nod, I put the bottle on the small chest in front of him. The bag rustles when I get out my old overcoat. I drape it over his shoulders and pat him on the shoulder a couple of times. I don’t want to see him cry.

One of the girls is still out there in the yard. Quickly she pulls her finger out of her nostril when I leave the shed. It’s growing dark now. The afternoon smells as if it’s going to snow again. The wind sighs softly, like a paraffin flame under a tin lampshade.

I hop across the yard and reach the door. The rusty handle feels rough through my thin Nappa leather gloves.

My new hat is pushed back when, momentarily, I rest my forehead against the door. The coldness of the handle is a comfort to my trembling hand.

‘There’s a policeman waiting up there,’ says Lundin when I look in, for the usual reason, about an hour later. He offers me a bottle of Skåne Akvavit and I take it.

‘Who?’

‘Nervy type. At least you’re properly dressed, my brother.’

I nod. So it’s neither Olsson nor Berglund. Lundin makes another entry in his ledger.

‘Did anyone call?’

‘Wernersson. Did you find her?’

‘I found her father. You got anything other than aquavit?’

‘Did he know her whereabouts, then?’

‘It wasn’t the right moment to ask.’

Lundin nods and pockets his accounts book. ‘Sneaky little whore.’

‘Mind your language.’

‘She did it, and you know it.’ He caresses his moustache.

‘Who?’

‘She killed him. That’s why she’s keeping her head down.
Cherchez la femme
.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘
Let us go down and create confusion in their language, so that the one does not understand what the other is saying
.’

‘What are you going on about?’

‘It’s from the scriptures.’

‘The other bit.’

‘French.’

‘I heard that much. What does it mean? And have you got anything else? OP at least, if it’s got to be aquavit.’

‘It means she killed him.’

‘Do you have anything else?’

‘Don’t keep the lawman waiting.’

Lundin points upwards with his chin. I sigh and drop the bottle into my inside pocket. Lundin pulls at his lapels and puts his hand on the door to the ice room. I nod goodbye to him and walk out.

The soles of my new boots dampen the sound they make on the stairs.
Social-Demokraten
is lying outside the door. At the top of the front page someone has scrawled four digits in blue ink. It looks like a telephone number. For a short moment I’m left
standing with my hand on the door handle before I take a deep breath and go inside.

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?’