Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Must be twenty years.’

  ‘Must there still be a bottle on the table for us to put aside the formalities?’ he says, then sighs when I answer with a grin:

  ‘Rector, surely you must know where that can lead. But if you buy a jug for next week, we’ll see.’

  His self-assurance deserts him, then he recovers. ‘It was just the once. Harry,’ he whispers, reaching out and squeezing my arms. The old man’s strength surprises me. Something glimmers in his eyes. For a few moments I just stand there, before I turn around and leave. There’s a Meteor between my lips even before the heavy front door has had time to close. I bite off the end and spit out the tobacco flakes on the pavement. A match scrapes; my fingers tremble as I draw life into the cigar.

  Light falls across the paving stones from the beer café, the Stone Angel, on the other side of the street. Along Högbergsgatan a brown autumn leaf is whisked along in the wind, as weightless as a lie. I turn up my collar. Keeping my cigar in my mouth, I pull the strap off my wallet and check its contents.

  I need a proper dinner. I need a couple of drinks.

  I need a bloody plan.

  It ends up being more than a couple of drinks, and by the time I tumble out of the tram at the end of the line in Sibirien, it’s past ten. I take out a quarter of contraband which has been tapped into a beer bottle. There’s a plopping sound as I pull out the cork. The vodka glow swills around in my belly like burning cinders.

  There’s a light rain. I shuffle down Roslagsgatan. Darkened by moisture she cuts a furrow through the northern districts of the city. The streetlights are reflected in the cobblestones. A couple of black shadowy figures move along, hugging the house walls to avoid the rain and wind. The number 6 tram rattles back into the city, empty as a church on a hot summer’s day.

  A figure comes out of the shadows and walks into my field of vision. It’s Wallin, a drinker. He walks up to me. When his daughter drowned herself in the sea about ten years ago, he started drinking openly, without any care, and they say he can smell vodka at a hundred paces. Life and death shook him up too hard. It can happen to the best of us.

  The brim of his hat is dripping with rain, and translucent droplets are clinging to the worn fabric over the shoulders of his coat.

  ‘Fancy a drop?’ I say, offering him the bottle.

  ‘Oh yes, certainly.’

  Wallin snatches the bottle and takes a gulp. The vodka seeps from the corners of his mouth. He wipes his beard stubble with the sleeve of his coat.

  ‘Damned weather we’re having.’

  Wallin passes back the bottle. He offers me his snuff tin but I shake my head.

  ‘November.’

  From an inner courtyard somewhere a dog starts howling, as if it’s being beaten. On the other side of the street, Rickardsson passes with his collar turned up, on his usual evening walk.

  He doesn’t look in our direction. Wallin and I stand there drinking until the bottle is empty: ‘Thanks for that, Kvisten.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s good to have a bit of company.’

  Wallin keeps his balance, heading north. Only when I hear his door slam behind him do I remember that he works at Konradsberg Asylum. I should have asked him if he’s seen Petrus.

  I get out my notebook and scrawl down his name in sloping letters before continuing homeward. Halfway there the vodka slams into my skull like a fierce right-handed punch. My field of vision narrows, and before long it’s as if I’m looking at the world through a porthole. I stumble, grunt to myself and lean against a house wall.

  Screwing up one eye, I peer at Beda’s old laundry in the brick building opposite my own. I look around. Roslagsgatan is as clean as a saucepan before Friday payday. A cat meows somewhere.

  ‘Maybe Kvisten should have himself another little look.’

  I’m slurring. I struggle up to my flat, find an old Fenix lantern, fill it up with paraffin and then go back outside. Like an old lamplighter I amble across the street in a tremulous circle of light. I press down on the door handle a couple of times, then lower the wick of the lantern and put it down on the pavement. I back off a bit and look around again.

  No one’s about.

  ‘Harry Kvisten Kvist in a magnificent comeback,’ I mutter, then take a deep breath, and hurtle towards the door, bracing myself with my shoulder. I hit it full force. The pain makes me close my eyes. There’s a crashing sound as the wooden door frame splinters around the locking bolt, and before I know it I’m lying on the dusty floor of the laundry.

  I crawl back on all fours and snatch up the lantern. The door closes with a slam. I sit with my back against it, knees drawn up to my chin, listening in the dark.

  The laundry still has an ingrained smell of starch and lye. I let a minute or so go by before I get out a Meteor from my red-leather cigar case. I turn up the flame in the lantern, open the cover and light the cigar. I close my eyes, puffing away. After a few minutes I stand up and brush myself down, all the while swaying back and forth.

  ‘Let’s see, then.’

  Petrus’s old broom still lies there, flung in a corner. I lean it up against the wall, open the hatch in the counter and go through. When I hold up the lantern, the bars over the window form a faint striped pattern against the wall.

  I follow the counter to the right until I reach a door. I open it and go through into the heart of the laundry. The smell of lye and soda gets even sharper.

  In the middle of the room are four cement basins in a line, for soaking. They measure about a square metre each. Next to them are two large zinc vats on wheels. On a shelf along one of the walls are cartons of various chemicals, a couple of washboards and some old pressing irons.

  I examine the irons carefully, turning them this way and that, but I find nothing unusual there. Nor do I see any sign of a stone mangle anywhere.

  ‘Both Ström and Lundin were mistaken about that. Maybe that copper fed Ström a tall story.’

  My voice echoes hollowly between the walls. I stumble through the premises, shining my lantern at both walls and floor.

  ‘Nothing here except rat shit.’

  My inebriation churns inside. I sigh heavily and gob on the floor. She wouldn’t have liked that, Beda.

  All of a sudden I recall an incident about a dozen years ago when I first moved here to Roslagsgatan: everything had gone to hell and I suppose in those days I was staring into the bottom of a bottle too often. Dead drunk, I had fallen asleep in a snowdrift and picked up a nasty lung fever. Every evening for two weeks, when everyone else had turned their back on me, Beda brought me some hot food and lit the ceramic stove before night set in. I don’t know why. Maybe because I was bed-bound and had no choice but to listen to her nonsense.

  I smear my gob with the sole of my shoe, walk out of the room and move closer to the cellar stairs. Keeping my handkerchief pressed to my nose, I descend to the sleeping area.

  There’s still a stink of old piss from the bucket I kicked over last night. I gag into the handkerchief and try to control my impulse to vomit.

  My stomach calms down. For a few seconds I stare at the droplets of blood on the pillow before I lower my lantern and examine the floor. The zinc bucket rattles as I kick it under one of the beds. If this floor was ever covered in blood, it’s all been cleaned up now.

  I bend over one of the beds, then the other. I check the sheets and mattresses again but find nothing of interest.

  The pipes sigh. I raise the lantern and look at the coarse cement wall. I reel as I take a step closer and put my hand against the wall. Something feels amiss; my heart leaps and skips a beat.

  In the middle of the large damp patch around the pipes by the head end of the beds, I see a small hole in the porous concrete.

  ‘I’ll be damned.’

  I put the lantern on the bed and open my penknife. The damaged wall does not put up much resistance. I cup my hand under the hole and flick out a small object with the tip of the knife.

  A bullet.

 
FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER

  The sun still hasn’t hauled itself up over the haughty brick façade of City Hall as I park Lundin’s hearse on Norr Mälarstrand, but a couple of half-hearted rays are reflecting off the three golden crowns at the top of the tower.

  In front of the yellow walls of Karolinska Institute, a street sweeper is slowly making his way along the pavement. The whispering sound of the broom against the paving stones is punctuated by the tread of his wooden-soled work boots. His blue eyes flash cheerfully under his cap when he catches sight of something outside the entrance to the morgue. He leans his broom against the cast-iron railing fence that surrounds the buildings, picks up a long cigarette butt and carefully inserts it into his trouser pocket to dry it out.

  Shivering from my hangover, I light a fresh Meteor and stay at the steering wheel for a moment, smoking, my head thumping, missing Doughboy. He fills my life, he blocks out my miserable existence, and I can’t think of anything else. Wherever I look I see that boy’s eyes and I seem to have been swept up in an enchantment. Only once I know he really means those pretty words and solemn promises, smuggled to me by couriers on little bits of paper, will I be able to breathe easily again.

  ‘Five days, that’s nothing, get a hold of yourself, you silly bastard.’

  My vodka-hoarse voice sounds pathetic. When blokes are crowded in with other blokes and their physical urges take charge, in prison or at sea or in a navvies’ barracks, there’s a certain way of seeing things; but this can change as quick as a flash once there are women in the frame. I’ve seen it more than once.

  The heavy car door slams so hard that a homeless dog on the other side of the road scarpers with its tail between its legs. I cough to get some kind of lubrication into my bone-dry throat. I roll the gob around my mouth and finally let it fall between my black boots.

  I drop the car keys into my trouser pocket and, at the same time, double-check that the bullet I dug out of Beda’s wall last night is still there. I put on my leather gloves and stick the cigar in my mouth as protection against the smell.

  I’m wearing a three-piece woollen suit with wide lapels and a white-collared shirt. I’m hoping that picking up the corpse this morning won’t be too much of a messy affair.

  The stiff-house is squeezed in between two hospital buildings down one of the wings. The entry telephone buzzes angrily. I have to pace about for a good few moments by the scarred green door before a bloke comes to open it.

  ‘From Lundin’s, you say? We have him in the locker. Please, come in, come in! Have you brought a cart with you?’

  The man in front of me smiles, showing the snuff-blackened gaps in his teeth. He’s wearing a grey caretaker’s coat, stained with red. Gaunt, with long white hairs sprouting from his knotty fingers, and a chaotic pattern of thin veins covering his cheeks and nose.

  ‘These days we’re on four wheels,’ I say, gesturing towards the hearse.

  ‘And maybe a bit more horsepower?’

  ‘Should be capable of carrying a load of your tenants to their graves, if push comes to shove.’

  ‘But today you’re only picking up one of them, is that right? Örjan Nilsson, fourteen years old, tram accident?’

  ‘Correct,’ I say, handing over the bundle of documents that Lundin gave me over morning coffee.

  ‘Well come in, then,’ says the caretaker and steps aside.

  The smell of autumn is more noticeable indoors than on the outside. It reminds one of damp moss, old trees and rotting flowers. The caretaker rattles a bunch of keys, standing in front of a white-painted, peeling door with a sign on it, Open Weekday Mornings 9–10. He finds the right key. I breathe through my mouth. The door creaks.

  ‘I hope you’ll excuse us, sir. I can’t remember ever having so many bodies here.’

  I take a deep puff on my Meteor before clamping the cigar into my mouth once more, and taking a look around. The lockers are arranged down the long wall: rectangular doors with chrome handles, three up and ten across. The other side of the room is fully tiled in white.

  From hooks hang various items of clothing and other belongings, bags and hats. Mostly old junk.

  ‘In years gone by we were allowed to pile the corpses up along the house wall when it was below zero, but now they have to stay in here even when it gets overcrowded. We’re under orders.’

  The caretaker gestures at a double row of bunks running down the middle of the room. I have another puff, letting the smoke rinse every corner of my gob before expelling it from the corner of my mouth. I cough.

  Those that have already been autopsied lie silent under their blood-stained sheets. Here and there, washed white skin can be seen sticking out from beneath the soft undulations of the material.

  ‘They say he was run over by the number 5 on Karlbergsvägen. When they took him away they had to carry his brain along with them, swilling around in a bowl. No open coffin for him, you might say.’

  I nod, letting my eyes skim over the dead. I recognise the swollen corpses of the drowned from my years at sea, shapeless piles of human flesh, green and black from decomposition, sometimes so far gone that it’s difficult to see whether they were once men or women. Their hair is slicked back over their temples, always dark as if it never had time to dry properly. They spread their stench through the room. The combination of my hangover with the smell of corpses makes the hair on my arms stand up. I want to double up with nausea.

  On the bunk to my right lies a suicide who was cut down from a rope, a purple necklace etched into her skin. On my left is an old woman, still dressed and in a foetal position as if she froze to death. I’m breathing shallowly, I start to gag.

  The caretaker points at a locker in the middle of the room. Our steps echo desolately against the grey floor tiles. On the next bunk lie two naked men piled one on top of the other, as if someone had attempted a macabre joke. If so, then surely the caretaker’s son would have to be the prime suspect. As far as I’ve heard, he stands outside the stiff-house in the evenings, selling craniums and other skeletal parts to superstitious old women, or exhibiting naked female body parts to his classmates for a backhander.

  ‘No one said anything about a bowl.’

  Revulsion is passing through my body like an icy northerly wind.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Lundin never mentioned anything about bringing my own bowl. Can I borrow one? For the brain?’

  The caretaker smiles and puts his hands in his coat pockets, swaying back and forth on his feet.

  ‘There’s no need for a bowl. All the spill is sewed into the stomach once the doctor’s done.’

  I grunt with relief, and manage to take a couple of proper breaths.

  ‘There’s a fair amount of blood, isn’t there? When someone gets their skull crushed?’

  ‘You must know how people bleed from the head? I see you’ve been slugged once or twice yourself. A boxer, right? So, imagine the amount of fluid when the whole cranium collapses.’

  ‘What about gunshot wounds? Do they bleed a lot?’

  ‘Depends, but often not. Look here.’

  We stop by a man of my own age. With a cleft palate under his blond moustache, he looks as if he’s smiling slightly, as if he dared to grin at the face of the Grim Reaper in his last few tremulous seconds of life. Even in death, his young body looks hardened by physical labour; muscles are sharply chiselled into his pale pink flesh. His sex lollops halfway up his left thigh. I get warm about my ears. I grip hold of the bunk with my scarred hands, the nausea on the verge of overwhelming me. For some reason I feel a strong sense of identification with the dead man; possibly he’s someone I’ve run into at some point.

  ‘Do you know about Belzén in Birka, the smuggler further up the street? This is one of his boys. The police cut him down last night, down here on the quay.’

  The hole in his almost square chest muscle is smaller than a shirt button. My little finger tingles.

  ‘Sure, I know Belzén all right.’

&nb
sp; I fumble through the memories inside my hung-over skull, but I don’t get anywhere with the corpse in front of me. The caretaker nods thoughtfully.

  ‘When the heart stops beating you don’t get a lot of blood flowing out of a hole like that. More or less nothing. Not like having your head cave in on you, at least. Why do you ask?’

  The caretaker rests his hand on the handle of one of the lockers, not far from the head of the dead man.

  ‘It’s good to know.’

  ‘If I had a krona for every curious person I’d met, I’d be living in Solomon’s palace by now. Anyway, here he is.’

  The caretaker pushes the handle down; the bolt slides away without a sound, but the door screeches as it opens. With a whining sound the caretaker pulls out the gleaming stretcher, a slight bevelled edge all around it. The boy is swaddled in white, the sheet draped smoothly over the outline of his already rigid body.

  ‘You want to reverse the car in?’

  ‘No need. How much could he weigh?’

  ‘I’ll help you. You take the head end. You want a look?’

  ‘I’ve seen corpses before.’

  ‘Fourteen years old.’

  ‘Still a bloody corpse.’

  For a moment I think of Doughboy; the way he tastes. The dead boy was not many years younger. No, damn it, I don’t want to see him. The old man laughs, a croaking sound. I grip the sheets with both my hands and close one eye when I get smoke in it. He doesn’t weigh a lot, but he’s ice cold and stiff in my arms.

  The caretaker walks backwards and kicks the doors open with his wooden heel. The November sun has managed to drag itself over the top of City Hall, and now disperses its hazy light over the metropolis. The wind has picked up slightly. A few tired autumn leaves are rustling along the pavement. I fill my lungs with fresh, smarting air.

  There’s a thud when, with joint effort, we heave the boy’s corpse into the back of the hearse.

  Slowly I drive back to Sibirien with the fourteen-year-old boy and all the other junk rattling about there in the back. I go via St Erik Bridge and before long I’m passing the triangular square, Odenplan, in the middle of which stands Guido the Italian, with a bunch of balloons flying from his hand. In the sunlight, his dark, alert eyes look like globules of gleaming syrup. A couple of kids stand there, stooped over his suitcase, which is filled with firecrackers, poppers and bird whistles. My hangover has given me the hiccups; I swallow back a mouthful of sour bile and grimace, listening to the body in the back sliding across the floor as the number 15 tram screeches across the siding ahead of me and I step on the brake. The lad’s head comes to rest against the driver’s cabin with a slight thump. I fumble with a new cigar. Thinking about Gabrielsson, what he said about my daughter yesterday and how I should write her a letter and explain myself, I scoff out loud: ‘Damned black-frocks, always sticking their noses in.’