Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  I peer first to the right and then left. At the far end of the corridor, I catch a glimpse of a ladder leaning against the wall. There’s a hatch in the sloping ceiling. I withdraw into the dark passage again.

  ‘You’re surrounded! You have nowhere else to go!’

  The voice echoes through the narrow space. These coppers will never leave me alone. Tiptoeing back into the darkness, I fetch two empty bottles from the tramp’s nest by the chimney stack. I place them across the passage about thirty centimetres apart by the junction.

  Carefully I place the ladder against the wall next to the trapdoor and climb up. The hatch is locked with two sturdy bolts. The first of them I can open without any trouble, but the second one seems to have caught. I thump it a couple of times with my left hand to try and loosen the dust and dirt.

  ‘There’s no point trying to get away. We know you now, Kvist. We know where you live, how you work, we know your whole smutty background.’

  The voice is closer now. I hit the bolt with the pistol butt and at last it moves. The hatch whines as it opens. The last thing I hear as I heave myself onto the slippery-as-ice copper-covered roof is a man coming at full speed across the floorboards.

  I slide down the green-scarred wet copper but quickly grab onto the edge of the hatch with my left hand; then, pulling myself back up, on my stomach. I point my pistol into the opening, taking aim at the dark junction a few metres away.

  The rain is everywhere. It freezes my hands, makes my fingers cramp up. It runs down my neck, and my spine like ice water. It even finds its way into my boots.

  My heart hammers against the cold, wet copper.

  The rain is falling so hard against the roof that it’s difficult to tell whether the clattering of shoes in there has stopped. I give the ladder a shove with the pistol, it bounces against the wooden wall, then slams into the floor.

  The metal edge of the hatch cuts into my left hand; my fingers have already grown numb. Water drips into my face from the brim of my hat, making me blink. Inside, the man kicks one of the bottles and I see a shadow. The Husqvarna recoils in my hand as I squeeze the trigger. My slippery hand loses its grip on the edge but I catch hold of it again.

  The man returns fire. I hear two muted shots, and see a puff of smoke. The bullets whizz over my head. I fire my last-but-one bullet before my wet, aching left hand slips and loses its hold on the metal edge.

  Helplessly I slide down the copper roof.

  *

  Although the roof is not especially steep, its wetness makes it as slippery as glass. Water sprays all around me and I tense every muscle in my body as I slide down between two bevelled ridges about two centimetres high, and try to get some purchase by wedging my boots against them. I glance over my shoulder and see the drop approaching at a terrifying speed. Six floors down I see the ground; any fall here would mean certain death.

  I pinch onto one of the ridges with my left hand and jam my right foot into the gutter. It groans under my weight but holds up. I refuse to look down, there’s a fluttering feeling in my stomach. Instead, I rise to my feet. Just as my pursuer sticks his head out of the roof hatch, I start to run across the roof towards the Telephone Company some twenty metres away. I don’t know how many times I slip and almost fall into the courtyard below, but I reach the black roof of the next building, and keep moving. My steps are almost silent, drowned out by both the driving rain and the thunder and the thumping boots of the goon on my heels. He yells something at me but I can’t hear what he says. Above me, the enormous telephone tower rises up, with its abundance of criss-crossing steel beams. Again, a flash of lightning illuminates the skeleton of the tower like an X-ray. I stuff the Husqvarna in my pocket and run across the roof until I reach its far corner.

  I jump up and start to clamber over the steel beams like a spider. Suddenly my right hand slips off the wet metal, and my boot steps into thin air, leaving me dangling by my left hand. It feels like my arm is being wrenched from its socket. I shout into the darkness as the stitches in my side split and the wound opens.

  A bullet hits the metal above my head and showers me with sparks. I don’t hear the shot, but I feel a burning sensation on my scalp. Warm blood begins to pool above the sweatband inside my hat, and mixes with the cold rain dripping onto my face. A steel splinter must have gone through the fabric.

  With a stinging pain in my side, I swing my body and manage to get hold of the metal frame with my right hand, then find a foothold for my boot. I make my way crab-like around the corner of the tower, and start climbing up the outside. I’m gasping with exertion, and my sopping wet clothes hardly make it easier. Vertigo rips through my stomach.

  Through the girders I see a network of platforms and ladders on the inside of the steel construction. I slowly climb closer until I can throw myself forward onto a platform.

  I climb ladder after ladder, aiming for the illuminated NK clock at the top of the tower, my wet hands gleaming alternately red and green as it turns. All around me, church towers boom ominously, striking midnight over the waterlogged city. Twelve hours to go until Doughboy. Nearly there, if I can just come through this still alive. A coughing fit forces me down on my knees.

  I spit out a lump of phlegm, compose myself and look down. My head starts spinning at once. The black-dressed heavyweight is crawling up after me through the framework of the tower, and soon he reaches the ledge below mine. He’s gained on me, but is moving more slowly now. I take aim at his back with my pistol, then I change my mind. The angle is awkward, a mass of steel girders makes the shot difficult, and I am trembling with adrenaline, excessive sobriety and cold. One bullet left.

  I shove the Husqvarna back into my pocket and keep going, breathing heavily. The sound of steps behind me spurs me on to keep climbing until I reach the eighth and final ledge. From here, there’s a ladder leading up to the system of narrow walkways that forms the roof, on which the massive clock sits slowly spinning. The shifting colours of the neon light glide slowly across the steel girders. I glance over my shoulder and then climb the ladder.

  I step onto a walkway around the square top of the tower. I run anticlockwise to the north-eastern of the four turrets, cylindrical cages clinging on to the massive construction like babies to a sturdy farmer’s wife. The clock, as tall and wide as four men, slowly turns sweeping its green beam of light towards me, but it can’t reach me as I hurry on to the next turret, and then the next. There’s nowhere to take cover up here. I reach the north-western corner just as I hear the sound of approaching steps.

  One damned bullet. Shivering, I stop by the steel balustrade. Maybe I could climb over and get down on the outside of the girders? I put my pistol in my pocket and grip the railing with both hands. The wind is so strong that it sends my soaking wet coat flapping behind me like a cloak.

  There’s a sucking feeling in my belly. The grey city below is swimming in black water.

  The palace hardly looks much bigger than a sandbox. The intersecting streets of Vasagatan and Kungsgatan look like communicating trenches on a battlefield; you can still see one or two undaunted soldiers on night patrol. The night-time trams, like glow-worms, slowly make their way through the storm. A flash of lightning illuminates Kungsholmen, turns dark windowless gables white and lights up the golden top of City Hall, with its three crowns. My head is reeling from the height, my stomach turning, I can’t move from here.

  I take the Husqvarna out of my pocket. I move forward a couple of metres, then lie flat on my stomach. Through a fine mesh of metal I see my pursuer place his foot on the first rung of the last ladder. The neon light colours his face blood-red. He struggles up with his pistol in his hand.

  ‘Come on then, you bastard. Come to Kvisten.’

  I take aim at the top of the ladder some ten metres away. As he climbs through, the side of the clock is towards him so that he ends up in shadow while I’m bathed in green light. I blink blood and sweat out of my eyes. The man in black looks around for me and finds me at once, whe
re I’m lying in wait for him. He raises his pistol and fires two shots in quick succession. Blue smoke whirls up in the wind. The quiet, dry thuds sound like when Lundin knocks together a couple of sections of a coffin with his swaddled wooden club, back home in the workshop. One of the bullets whizzes off in the night; the other hits the steel in front of me and ricochets away, throwing up sparks. I feel the vibrations through the metal and open my eyes. Infinitely slowly, sweeping like the unhurried movement of a scythe, the red beam lights the man up from behind. He drops to his knees, grasping his pistol in both hands and taking aim. I think I have him in my sights now. The recoil rips through my painful shoulder when I fire my last bullet.

  They haven’t got me beat yet.

  The man’s face grimaces in the red light and the pistol drops out of his hand. It bounces and disappears. He falls backwards onto the walkway, his legs moving as if he’s trying to get some purchase against the steel.

  I stand up. My body is shaking with cold and adrenaline.

  Holding my hat on my head, hunched over in the wind, I creep along the walkway towards the man from Gotland. He’s breathing in fits and starts. He looks me straight in the eyes, his hand clamped against a point between his right shoulder and pectoral.

  ‘Where are the other two, you bastard?’

  He clamps his jaws together, hard. I lean over him, grab his collar and pull him up close to my face.

  ‘What are their names?’

  He closes his eyes, coughing blood, and tries to smile.

  ‘Answer me, you swine!’

  I pull him along by the collar, and haul his upper body into the opening above the ladder like a sack of potatoes. He groans loudly. I’m panting from the effort.

  Grabbing his legs, I send him down towards the ledge, three or four metres below. The steel vibrates as he slides down the rungs of the ladder like bale of hay on a ramp. With a dull thud he hits the platform below head first, then lies there, writhing among some old porcelain fuses that have been left there. I climb down after him.

  Dirt has mingled with his blood, covering his whole face in a brownish-black, coarse-grained muck. His nose is flattened, and in the green light sweeping over the platform, I see a couple of his teeth glinting. I take him by his collar again and drag him to the next ladder.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  His body catches on something, maybe the rusty head of a rivet or similar, and I have to tug at him to get him free of it. I push his body halfway into the opening over the next ladder.

  ‘Another seven floors to go but I could do this all night.’

  I give his arse a shove and he falls headlong down the ladder. He hits the ledge below with his shoulder first, but then he bounces, slips under the side railing and plummets soundlessly to his death.

  ‘God damn it, Kvisten.’

  I sit down in the opening, my feet on one of the ladder rungs, peering down into the darkness until vertigo squeezes my innards. I get out a snuff handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my face. Then I fold it into a small square, take off my hat and press it against my scalp. There’s a small hole with blackened edges, just above the grey silk band, but the wound can hardly be very deep. I lean my head back and hold the handkerchief in place against it by pressing down my hat.

  I want to check the corpse for identity papers and ammunition, so I climb back down the ladders, feeling increasingly relieved the closer I get to the ground. The thunderstorm is slackening off now, and the rain too. Every movement I make causes me pain.

  On trembling legs I reach the final platform, the Husqvarna jolting my hipbone every time I take a step. I peer down and can just about make out the black body lying on its side on the roof below. As I hurry down the last ladder, a pistol is stuck through the rungs in front of my face before I reach the bottom. The small, bird-like man comes out of the shadows: ‘Did you forget about us?’

  Us? I hear a scuffing sound behind me. My head collapses; the whole world shrinks into a red-glowing drop of molten glass. The pain shoots from the back of my head down my spine, and a feeling of weightlessness comes over me.

  The last thing I see before the darkness sweeps over me is Doughboy standing on his own in his shirtsleeves outside the gates of Långholmen. He scratches his flea-bitten neck and wonders where I’ve gone.

  WEDNESDAY 27 NOVEMBER

  ‘What’s the time?’

  My voice echoes in my head. I have a nagging feeling I’m repeating myself. This probably isn’t the first time I’ve regained consciousness.

  ‘The time is good morning.’

  The sharp voice is followed by a swift left and a right to my body. I wince with pain, the wound in my side thumps like a steam hammer, and at least two of my ribs have gone to hell. There’s a rattling sound; my whole body sways like a punchbag. I wiggle my toes to try to get a foothold. The metal of the manacles cuts into my wrists. I am hanging naked by a chain suspended from the ceiling. It’s cold, but I’m covered in sweat.

  Finding the floor with the tips of my toes, I breathe again. Slowly I open my eyes and look around the blurry room.

  Gradually my vision recovers some of its sharpness. I am in some kind of dusty warehouse or barn. The only furniture consists of a dining table with four chairs. In a corner lie an old broom and a couple of vegetable crates. The hemp sacks nailed over the windows filter the daylight of all its gold, leaving only the dust. It’s morning.

  The skinny little weasel with the hooked nose sits at the table. In front of him he has a cup of coffee and a couple of shot glasses. His poplin coat hangs over the back of a chair.

  ‘He can’t take much more. He’s finished. Time for the ending. Or should we call it “the final reckoning”?’ The little man has a strong Söder dialect. He laughs drily.

  ‘Like hell he is. I know what he’s about. Pour me another shot of vodka.’

  The sharp voice rings out behind me. There’s a soft thudding as he goes for my kidneys, like when you pound beef between two flat stones. I roar with pain and the chain rattles.

  The bloke behind me grabs my hips and spins me half a turn anticlockwise. He follows through with a straight right, directly into my knife wound. I pull up my knees towards my belly but straighten them again when I feel the agony in my wrists.

  The big bloke, the one who looks like a bull, grins in my face. Somewhere nearby a boat sounds its steam whistle. I’m not far from the water.

  ‘The asylum worker Wallin helped you get into Konradsberg. Andersson called and said he was followed from there by man and a woman… in a damned hearse, of all vehicles. Which is registered to Lundin’s, a funeral parlour. Ten minutes later he let us know he was going to sort out the problem on his own, and told us where he was leaving the car. We only have two questions: what happened to Andersson and who is the woman?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Damned stubborn, aren’t you? Four times you’ve woken up and four times you’ve denied all knowledge.’

  He whacks me hard on the head a couple of times. It feels as if the thunderstorm from earlier is erupting again inside my skull.

  ‘Leave his bloody head alone. He’ll only pass out again.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing! Well? Who is the woman? Don’t you think we saw you last night? If we weren’t shepherding the old man, we would have nabbed you right off.’

  ‘There’s no woman.’

  ‘Oh sure. Actually that would make sense, what with you being a fucking homophile, Kvist. Worse than the old man, even.’

  Again he raps me on the head with his knuckles. Harder, this time. Without any prior warning I throw up. There’s a splashing sound when some of the brownish-yellow gastric juices hit the bloke on his arm, and over his leg. For a moment the big brute stands there, his mouth agape, his teeth full of black fillings.

  ‘Crafty fucker!’

  Little droplets of saliva hit my face when the bloke screams with anger. I retch and spit in his face. The punch comes in from
the left, I can’t guard myself. Again my head collapses and at last I can get some sleep.

  ‘Did she see him?’

  The voice sounds tinny, like he’s talking to me through a long pipe. I’m gasping with pain. I think about Ida and my letter. I think about Doughboy. I think about Elin and her Ellinor. But mostly I think about Ida. I force myself to open my eyes.

  ‘Answer me! Did she see who he was?’

  ‘I don’t know… don’t know…’

  The bull-necked man sticks his thumb in the wound in my side and wiggles it about. He might as well have stuck a white-hot iron bar into me. I scream, my jaws clamped together. Tears run down my cheeks. My legs are kicking, as if I’m treading water.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ll find her anyway?’

  Sweat covers my body like a sticky shell, making every cut sting. All my muscles vibrate. I am fighting to climb out of the deep well I’m trapped in.

  ‘What… what’s the time?’

  ‘At that fucking deaf school she introduced herself as Elin. Is that her real name?’

  ‘A tart. I hired a cunt for five kronor.’

  I’m slurring my words.

  ‘Damned nonsense!’

  In the corner of my eye, I see the slap coming but I can’t do anything to avoid it. I try to brace against it with my neck muscles, but I don’t have the power. My head is snapped to one side, then the other. My field of vision shrinks. It feels as if my hands are about to be torn off whenever the chain sways.

  ‘He’s had enough.’

  ‘Like hell he has!’

  ‘We’ll find her soon enough. Take him down and bring the car, I’ll sort it out in the usual way.’

  A short silence: a chair scrapes the floor. Someone sighs deeply. The chain rattles, my wrists burn, and then I collapse onto the floor like a rag doll. The acrid smell of sweat and spew enters my nose. I lie curled up, shaking like the dog I saw yesterday in the rain. The floorboards flex slightly as someone walks over them. The dust on the floor rises and sinks as if the wood was breathing.