Box 21

by Anders Roslund

  At this point the Lithuanian suddenly interrupted his story to bemoan the tragic fate of the girl. Then he shook hands with them and walked off, disappearing among the queues of suitcases lined up at the check-in counters. Ewert and Sven followed him with their eyes for a long time, both of them with the feeling that he had done what he set out to do and had expressed in words a series of events which for some reason had clearly moved him, and so had tried to unload some of it on the two Swedish policemen.

  Ewert stopped looking at the cassette player for a moment and glanced along the queue of stationary cars. Still as long as before. In the driver’s seat, Sven was twitching restlessly, revving the engine now and then.

  ‘Ewert, we’ll be late.’

  ‘Not now. I’m listening. To Siw.’

  ‘I promised. I promised this time.’

  Today was Sven’s forty-first birthday. When he left in the morning, Anita and Jonas had still been asleep, they had all agreed to celebrate later on. He had taken the afternoon off, promised to be back home by lunchtime. His birthday. On his birthday, at least, he wanted to make sure that he was allowed to take his Anita in his arms, the woman he had loved since they met in senior school, and to be next to Jonas and hold his hand hard enough to make him protest.

  For almost fifteen years they had waited for a child, for Jonas.

  They had agreed early on to try to create a life that was a combination of them both, but failed and failed. Anita had been pregnant three times. The first time she had a still birth after seven months: an induced labour in a hospital bed, complete with pushing and contractions and pain. Afterwards, with their dead baby girl next to her, she had wept in his arms. The next two pregnancies ended in late miscarriages, tiny hearts that suddenly stopped beating.

  Their shared longing was something he could feel any time. For years it had tainted everything they did together, robbing them of pleasure and almost suffocating their love for each other. Until one day, almost eight years ago to the day, when they had travelled to a small town some twenty kilometres west of Phnom Penh. The representative from the adoption bureau had met them at the airport and taken them on a journey through an unknown landscape.

  And then there he was, waiting for them, lying in a simple little bed in the local orphanage. He had arms and legs and hair, and was already called Jonas.

  ‘I should be sitting on the bus back home.’

  ‘You’ll make it.’

  ‘Or be waiting at the bus stop at Slussen. At the very least.’

  ‘You’ll get there soon.’

  He had promised. This time too.

  He remembered it well, his fortieth. It had been a very hot day and his birthday cake had gone sour in the back seat of a police car. A five-year-old girl had been raped and tortured and dumped in a wood near Strängnäs. He had promised, had been on his way home to the table, all set for his little party, and it had been hard to explain to Jonas on the phone why someone would hurt a child with a knife and why it meant that he had to wait for his dad to come home.

  He wanted to be with them so much.

  ‘I’ll turn on the blue light. Fuck the rules. I want to get home.’

  Sven glanced at Ewert, who shrugged. He stuck the plastic dome on the roof of the car and waited for the siren to kick in. Then he pulled out of the queue, crossed the double white lines and zigzagged between cars that were trying to get out of his way into some space that hadn’t existed before. In a minute or two they were clear of the hold-up and the three sets of lights.

  Sven accelerated towards the centre of town. That was when the emergency call came through.

  They missed it the first time. What with the siren and Siw’s singing, it was drowned out.

  A doctor had found Hilding Oldéus’s dead body on a staircase, near the ward where he was being treated for a heroin overdose.

  Oldéus had been badly beaten. Difficult to identify. The doctor, a woman, had said that he had had a visitor; she had taken him in herself. Her voice had sounded very weak, but her description of the visitor was clear. He had been tall, heavily built, shaved head, sunbed tan, a scar running from the corner of his mouth to his temple. That was why the emergency call had been for Grens and Sundkvist.

  Ewert stared straight ahead. There was something like a smile on his face.

  ‘Twenty-four hours. Sven, twenty-four hours was all it took.’

  Sven looked at him.

  He was thinking about Anita and Jonas, who were waiting, but he said nothing. He just changed lanes to get to Väster Bridge and on to Söder Hospital.

  She was sitting at the back of the bus. It was almost empty now, with an older woman a couple of rows in front of her and a woman with a pushchair in one of the centre seats. That was it. Alena Sljusareva would have preferred to hide among lots more passengers, but most people had got off two stops before, at Eriksdal Sports Complex – the athletic type, off to some event.

  The bus turned off the ring road and drove on, past the Söder Hospital Casualty reception. She had been there a year or so before, with Dimitri trailing her. Someone who had wanted extras had lost his cool and done things they hadn’t agreed on. Up a small slope, a half-turn to the bus stop right in front of the main hospital stairs: the end of the journey.

  She looked around. If someone was watching out for her, that person was keeping a low profile.

  She tipped her umbrella forward to cover her face. It was bucketing down.

  In the entrance hall she cautiously scanned the walls, hung with artwork made of metal, glanced at the hard benches full of people with paper cups of coffee and then quickly looked down the four corridors.

  No one took any notice of her at all. They were all preoccupied with getting better.

  She went to the kiosk, bought a box of chocolates, a magazine and a bouquet of flowers already wrapped in transparent plastic. She was obviously going to see someone who wasn’t well; she was one of the people who popped in to visit during their lunch break. One of the many.

  The lift to the surgical wards was the one furthest away. The long corridor wormed its way into the interminably large building; she met recent admissions, off to some test or other, and slowly fading long-stay patients, and lost souls who didn’t know what was going on and never would. Every now and then new corridors opened up, going this way or that, all identical to the one she was in. Too many corridors, she didn’t like them.

  The lift was waiting for her with its door open. She had to go right to the top, all seven floors. Alone in the tight space she watched someone in the mirror, a twenty-year-old wearing an oversized raincoat, someone who wanted to go home, nowhere else, just home.

  The door opened. She hid behind her shield, kept a firm grip on the box of chocolates and the bouquet of flowers. A doctor passed her in a hurry and vanished through a door halfway along the corridor. Two patients walked towards her, in the usual plain hospital clothes with plastic bands around their wrists. She glanced at them quickly and wondered how long they had been there, if and when they would ever leave.

  The TV room was on her left. She heard the sound of the news as she approached, a burst of music that was trying to sound important. She spotted the guard, who stood near the door, his arms crossed on his chest. Green uniform, truncheon at his side and a holster for the handcuffs. He was looking at the patients on the sofa: two boys, wearing their own clothes, and next to them a woman. Her face was badly damaged and one of her arms was in plaster. Her eyes were fixed unseeingly on the news presenter. Alena wanted to meet those eyes – just a moment would be enough – but the woman on the sofa sat motionless, isolated from the world around her.

  A few more paces carried Alena past the guard and the people on the TV sofa. The corridor ended here. The door facing her had a toilet sign and a disabled symbol. She stepped inside and locked herself in.

  She was shaking, her legs felt weak and out of control, and she leaned forward, letting go of what she was holding to support herself against the wall.

  Again, she saw some
one reflected in the mirror, someone who wanted to go home. Just wanted to go home.

  Alena put her shoulder bag on the lid of the toilet seat. She had wrapped the plastic bag tight round its contents, trying to make the package as small as possible. Pulling it out, she weighed it in her hand before putting it into the waste-bin. She saw the tap, swore at herself as she turned it on and flushed the toilet. Noises which had to be there, in order not to be noticed. The paper towel dispenser was nearly empty, but she got out a wad, scrunched the towels up one by one and hid the plastic bag underneath them.

  Lydia hurt everywhere.

  Her body punished her every time she moved. A little earlier she had asked the Polish nurse for a couple of morphine tablets.

  She sat on the TV sofa next to the two boys, whom she had seen before and smiled at several times but never talked to. She didn’t actually want to know them, there was no point. She wasn’t interested in the news broadcast and didn’t understand a word anyone said. The guard didn’t take his eyes from her.

  From the corner of her eye she had noticed the woman walking past, holding a box of chocolates and a bouquet.

  Ever since, her breathing had been laboured.

  She waited for the sound of the toilet door opening again

  and for the woman’s footsteps to pass and fade away. She wanted to close her eyes, to lie belly down on the sofa and sleep through it all, only waking up when it was all over.

  It didn’t take long. Or maybe it did. She wasn’t sure.

  The woman opened the toilet door. Lydia heard it perfectly clearly. Shutting out the noisy TV programme was no problem. She only registered the sounds from the corridor. The woman’s steps came closer; she picked up the moving shape without turning her head, barely an awareness of the passing body, a glimpse of a person walking swiftly back in the direction she had come from.

  Lydia stole a glance at the man in the green uniform.

  He had noted the passing visitor but no more. He didn’t get up to follow her, and her presence passed out of his head the instant she left the ward.

  Lydia let the boys know she wanted to get up from the sofa and passed them. Then she looked at the guard, nodded to him, pointed at her bladder and then in the direction of the toilet. He nodded. It was fine for her to go to the toilet. He would stay here.

  She locked the door, sat down on the lid and took several deep breaths.

  It must never happen again.

  She got up. Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp had kicked her hip and she limped a little. She turned on the tap and let the water run. She flushed the toilet twice. She went over to the bin and with her good arm, removed the top layer of paper towels.

  Lydia recognised the plastic bag, an ordinary supermarket carrier. Inside was everything she had asked for. The handgun, the ammunition, the Semtex, the video, the ball of string. She didn’t know how Alena had managed to do what she wanted, but she had. She had gone to box 21 at the Central Station, evaded the policemen who presumably guarded number 3 Völund Street, and got through the two locked doors to the cellar.

  She had done her bit.

  Now it was all up to Lydia.

  Almost all the patients wore white, baggy items of regulation hospital clothing. Lydia’s long white coat had been much too large to start with, but she had asked for an even bigger one. It flapped round her body, which didn’t exist. In one coat pocket she had a roll of white hospital tape. First she secured the gun with it, after winding tape twice round her waist, and then the Semtex. Gun to the right, plastic explosive to the left. The video and string she left in the bag, which she pushed down inside her panties, adjusting them to make sure it was secure.

  One last look in the mirror.

  Her battered face. Cautiously, she fingered the many large bruises round her eyes. Her neck was a thick roll of white bandage around a supporting collar. Her left arm hung there, stiff with plaster.

  It would never happen again.

  Lydia opened the toilet door and limped out. Just a few steps along the corridor. The guard saw her, but she shook her head at the TV sofa and pointed towards her room. She wanted to get back to bed. He understood, nodded. She moved slowly, making signs to show that she wanted him to follow her to her room. He didn’t get it. She tried again, pointing at him, then at herself and then the room: he was to come with her, she needed his help. He raised his hand, understood, no need to explain any more. He mumbled ‘OK’ and she thanked him by curtseying as well as she could manage.

  She waited for him to get safely inside her room, until she could hear him breathing behind her.

  Then everything happened fast.

  Still with her back to him, she pulled at the tape that held the gun on the right-hand side of her ribcage. Then she swung round. She showed him the gun, and released the safety catch in one quick movement.

  ‘On knee!’

  Her English was clumsy, and heavily accented. She pointed with the muzzle of the gun to the floor.

  ‘On knee! On knee!’

  He stood still in front of her. Hesitated. What he saw was a young woman who had been admitted to Casualty yesterday, still unconscious. She limped, had a plaster cast on one arm and a bruised face. The sagging coat made her frail, like a nervous bird.

  Now she was threatening him at gunpoint.

  Lydia saw him hesitate, raised her arm and waited.

  She had been only nine years old.

  Death had been on her mind then. She had never thought of it before, at least not like that. She only had nine measly years behind her, when a man in uniform, not that different from the man in front of her now, had held his gun to her head and screamed Zatknis, zatknis! with his spit spraying into her face. Dad had been shaking and crying and shouting that he’d do anything they wanted, just take the gun away from his daughter’s head.

  Now she was pointing a gun at another person. She pressed it to the man’s head, the way others had done to her. Lydia knew exactly how it felt, knew the hellish fear that tore at your insides. Just a little extra pressure from the finger on the trigger and, from one moment to the next, your life would be over. She knew he’d had time by now to think of everything ending: no more smells, tastes, sights and sounds, no more sensations of being touched, no more being with others in any way. Everything will carry on as before, only I won’t be there. I’ll have ceased to be.

  She thought of Dimitri and his gun, which he had pressed against her head more times than she could count, and of his smile, which was just like the smile on the face of that military policeman when she was nine, and like the smiles of all the men who had later gone down on her, invaded her, forced their way in.

  Lydia hated them all.

  She stared at the guard and knew how he felt, understood what having a gun against your head was like, and kept it there, holding her arm raised high and glaring at him in silence.

  He sank to his knees.

  Then he clasped his hands behind the back of his neck.

  Again Lydia used the gun to point; he was to turn his back to her.

  ‘Around. Around!’

  He didn’t hesitate this time, turned round on his knees until he was facing the door. She grabbed the gun by its muzzle, aimed with the handle at the back of his head and hit out as hard as she could.

  He fell over forwards, unconscious before he hit the floor.

  She pulled out the bag, carried it just like any ordinary shopping bag and hurried out of the room, down the corridor towards the lifts. It took a minute or so before one came. People passed her, but didn’t see her, absorbed as they were by their own journeys.

  She stepped inside and pressed the lowermost button. Standing there, she didn’t think of anything in particular. She knew what she had to do.

  All the way down. And when the lift stopped, she stepped out and walked along the bright white corridor towards the mortuary.

  Jochum Lang was sitting on one of the seats by the entrance to Söder Hospital when Alena Sljusareva walked past him. He didn’t see her, because he didn
’t know her. And she didn’t see him, because she didn’t know him either.

  Jochum felt uneasy and was trying to shake it off. It was a long time since he had beaten up someone he knew.

  It’s his own fault. He’s only got himself to blame.

  He just needed a few minutes alone, that was all, just a sit-down, to think things through and try to get a grip on why he felt so tense.

  Hilding had clung on to the lift doors. All the time he was weeping and pleading and calling Jochum by his first name.

  Sure, Hilding was a fucking addict, at it all the time. And he would keep at it until his emaciated body couldn’t take any more. He had his kit and he would do anything, grass on anyone, to get another hit. On the other hand, he had no enemies, there was no real hate, and no purpose in life whatsoever, except messing up his blood with Class A substances in order to shut off all the feelings he didn’t want to have.

  Jochum sighed.

  This time had been unlike any other, somehow. Before, it had made no difference whether he knew who they were or not, or if they had wept and pleaded for their lives.

  None of it mattered a shit, not really.

  It’s his own fault.

  The hospital entrance hall was a strange place. Jochum looked around. People were moving about all the time, some sentenced to stay, others relieved to get out. No one laughed here, it wasn’t that kind of place. He didn’t like hospitals at all. They made him feel naked and vulnerable, powerless, unable to control other people’s lives.

  He got up. The doors opened automatically for him. It was still raining; small lakes had formed on the tarmac, floods of water trying to find somewhere to go.

  Slobodan was waiting in the car, a few metres away from the bus stop. He was parked in the taxi zone, two wheels up on the kerb. He didn’t turn round when Jochum opened the car door, he had seen him coming out.

  ‘Took your bloody time.’

  Slobodan looked ahead, turned the key and revved the engine. Jochum grabbed his wrist.

  ‘Hold it.’

  Slobodan stopped the engine and turned to Jochum for the first time.