Clinch

by Martin Holmén

  Drunk as I am, at first I mistake the hammering, believing it to be Lundin nailing down the lid of yet another poor man’s coffin. But soon enough I realise that someone is thumping at the door.

  Goon knocking.

  Two men in black suits and sturdy overcoats are standing outside the door. The younger of them is a pale sod, with ginger tufts of hair sticking out from beneath his bowler hat, and a downy, sparse moustache. The older of them has tired brown eyes and a receding chin. A thickset type, he stands slightly behind his colleague. These are no normal goons, but they are still goons. I can smell it.

  ‘Harry Kvist?’ The elder of them holds up his silver badge. Number 26, Criminal Division.

  I stagger backwards into the cramped, dark hall. Narrow spaces are good if you get too many of them coming for you at the same time. They close in fast. I narrow one eye. My right punch flies through the gloom. I don’t know if it’s the drink or the older man’s lack of a chin, but I miss by a couple of millimetres. His stubble rasps against the top of my hand.

  The other goon hits me hard across the left knee with a wooden baton. The blow sends me reeling.

  ‘Too low!’ I drawl. ‘Too low, damn it!’

  The older one jabs at me with his right, but I duck and reappear on his starboard side. The baton comes flying from port. I hide my chin behind my shoulder and press my fist against my temple and ear. My hand shrieks as if it’s broken. It isn’t, it’s just full of old bits of bone.

  I fall backwards to the floor with both the goons on top of me. The younger of them straddles me at once. He lands his right fist on my eye and immediately follows this up with a baton blow across the top of my head. A lovely, pure flash of pain cuts through my intoxication. I shake my head to see if I’m bleeding. I try to resist but my muscles won’t do as they’re told. I think I’m smiling. I can’t feel my legs.

  ‘The swine is drunk and all.’

  They heave me onto my side and clap my hands in irons behind my back before dragging me out of the flat and down the stairs, each goon firmly gripping one of my upper arms. They’ve hung my jacket over my shoulders and pressed down my hat on my head. My feet, thumping on every step, seem to wake some life into my legs again.

  The cracked leather seat in the back of the squad car is cold against my hands. The motor splutters and starts; we steer into Roslagsgatan. I am also spluttering.

  Outside, the dark city flickers by rapidly. I close one of my eyes. The dairy company’s new automated illuminations have been switched on. A man has loaded several long planks across the saddle and handlebars of his bicycle, and is sitting on these, pedalling with his knees pointing out. Droves of unemployed blokes are hanging about by Vasaparken.

  My breathing feels heavy. I make a wheezing sound and cough again. A group of dockers are hanging about outside Restaurant NORMA, close to the Atlas wall, the scene of a notorious murder of a whore in March. They gesticulate wildly, as if in dispute about something.

  I look at the two short-cropped necks in front of me. Something in the car smells of old sweat. In the middle of St Eriksplan, a cluster of street missionaries stand together, immersed in prayer and holding hands. The blue neon of the tobacconist’s shines like phosphorescence. Its glow envelops the members of the congregation, their eyes closed, and transforms them into a sickly little bunch.

  The vehicle lurches all over the place, and I have difficulty staying upright in the bends. These goons are not the normal, beat-patrolling drunks with sabres, and they don’t take me to the Ninth District station house, which would have been the closest. The car banks hard to the left towards Kungsholmen, and I tumble into the door on the right. My hat falls off. The leather seat creaks as I fly around. There’s a thumping pain under my left eye, and I wonder if they’ve opened the fracture in my zygomatic bone that ‘The Mallet’ Sundström gave me in 1922.

  ‘You think I’m afraid of goons, you bastards?’

  It doesn’t sound convincing. My mouth is well oiled with schnapps and the words come slithering out in any old way they like. The younger policeman in the passenger seat turns round quickly. The first baton blow comes in from the side. I pull my face back. The second attempt is also directed at my head. From above, this time. The baton thumps against the ceiling. The shoulder is the only possibility. I throw my head and body to the left, let the blow roll down towards my elbow. The jacket they’ve hung over my shoulders glides off. The pain is bracing, sharpening the senses.

  ‘Take it easy!’ the policeman at the wheel yells at his colleague. He purses his mouth under the moustache.

  I laugh, cough, and laugh again. ‘I could drink twice as much and still be quicker than you, you bloody swine!’

  It’s true. With my hands free I could go fifteen rounds against him without taking a single punch. The greenhorn’s baton moves a little, but he manages to control himself.

  We go across the bridge to Kungsholmen and turn abruptly to the left. A girl is watching her reflection in a window, the hem of her skirt under her coat stiffened with the dirt of Fleminggatan. The Strand is showing a film starring Harold Lloyd.

  What the hell do the goons want? I turned the kid onto his side in Bellevue, surely he can’t have choked on his own blood? Or frozen to death? And I didn’t go in so bloody hard when I was collecting the bicycles. In the end, whatever it’s about, it’s bad news for Kvisten.

  I watch the greenhorn relaxing his jaw slightly in the passenger seat. The other goon, the one without a chin, who’s driving, starts whistling ‘A Sailor’s Grave’. I snort. I’ll eat my hat if we’re not heading for Kronoberg, where the goons have their headquarters.

  By a wood pile along one of Fleminggatan’s walls, a boy is holding a run-over rat by the tail, swinging it menacingly at his friends. The grey-black rat sways slowly back and forth like a sooty, rain-soaked flag. When the boy notices me looking, his eyes flash devilishly, and the dead rat is flung against my side window.

  ‘Damned whelps!’ hisses the ginger-haired goon as the boys make a run for it.

  A thick string of blood crawls across the window like a red caterpillar.

  They leave me sitting barefoot in the piss-stinking cell for a good while before they come to get me. Two different constables put me in handcuffs, this time in front of my body. I have to walk with my arms hooked into theirs, and my hands on my waistband to hold them up, because they took my braces as soon as I got here. I limp along without making any trouble.

  My body, my head and my knee are all aching from the earlier rough treatment. A decent-sized swelling simmers below my left eye. My head is throbbing. The sharp scents of the cell seem to have impregnated my shirt and trousers. Several times I am almost overwhelmed by the impulse to vomit, and I tighten my sore muscles when the policemen’s grip on my arms grows more insistent.

  We go sideways through the doorway into the tobacco-reeking interrogation room. Without removing my handcuffs, they put me on a little wooden chair in front of a table. The room is not much bigger than the corner of a boxing ring. It has no windows. I have a feeling I’ve been here before. The constables walk out.

  I need a cigar. My thoughts gnaw at me despite my thumping head. It has to be the boy. Surely he couldn’t have frozen to death in the park? Anyway, I didn’t leave any fingerprints in the sports car, and the rain should have taken care of footprints.

  The door opens behind my back. An elderly man with a moustache the colour of a certain kind of driftwood pinches the front creases of his trousers and takes a seat on the other side of the table. The waxed tips of his moustache point upwards, in the style of Kaiser Wilhelm or the King. His well-tailored suit almost exactly matches the colour of his moustache. His necktie is slightly droopy. He removes his gold-rimmed spectacles and gets out a white handkerchief. In silence, he polishes every millimetre of the lenses. His handkerchief is embroidered with a red monogram but I can’t see what it says.

  Someone yells on the other side of the wall and a few muted thuds can be heard.
Quick footsteps sound up and down the corridor outside. A bloke starts groaning.

  The man makes eye contact and nods, with a smile. For an instant, the tips of his moustache seem to point directly up. I smile back and grunt.

  ‘My name is Alvar Berglund, I’m a detective chief inspector. We have a few questions for you.’

  Berglund puts on his spectacles. I wheeze. Berglund produces a fountain pen and a notebook from a briefcase and arranges these items in front of himself. First he puts the pen on top of the book, then he changes his mind and puts it to the right of it, before excusing himself and swiftly leaving the room.

  My chair scrapes across the floor as I push it against the wall to my left. I lean my head on the yellow-painted surface, closing my eyes and trying to cross my arms over my chest. The handcuffs cut into my skin. I breathe heavily with my mouth open.

  Suddenly my heart leaps. I open my eyes.

  The damned gold lighter. Engraved and everything. It’s still in my trouser pocket at home.

  ‘So,’ says Berglund after coming back and sitting down and making himself and his spectacles comfortable. ‘We’re wondering about your whereabouts last night, between eight and a quarter past nine?’

  He smiles and twists the left side of his moustache. His shirt-sleeve is ornamented with a cufflink of gold with two crossed fasces over three crowns. I lift my handcuffed hands and massage the base of my nose with my forefinger and thumb. The pain darts around my head when I accidentally brush against my swollen eye.

  ‘Between eight and a quarter past nine?’

  ‘Exactly. In the evening.’

  ‘I must have been at home. I came home before eight.’

  Berglund nods and makes a first note on the white sheet of paper before he goes on: ‘I see. Did you meet anyone after nine?’

  I stretch my neck first to the left, then the right.

  ‘No, I was alone. I did the crossword in Social-Demokraten.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Berglund and adds: ‘It got the better of me.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Did you know that one about the loser at Breitenfeldt?’

  ‘Tilly? Everyone knows that, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right. I’ll remember that. Tilly.’ Berglund’s pen rasps across the paper. ‘How many years of schooling did you have?’

  ‘Two.’

  The dust lies thickly on the glass lampshade dangling over the table. Up in a corner of the room the ceiling has cracked. My headache has changed; it’s grown duller and more persistent. Soon we’ll be there. With Leonard. I know how these bastards work.

  ‘What were you doing before you came home that evening?’

  ‘Working. I had a job down on Kungsgatan.’

  ‘And what do you do?’ His spectacles slide down a bit when he quizzically raises his eyebrows. Does he take me for an idiot?

  ‘You know,’ I answer quickly.

  Berglund chuckles tersely and leans back. ‘Certainly. So you met Zetterberg?’

  He notes that I flinch slightly.

  ‘The suicide,’ I mutter.

  ‘How’s that?’ Berglund scrutinises me.

  Is all this about the suicide who diddled me out of my four hundred and fifty?

  ‘Yes, I met him.’

  I smack my lips to get some saliva flowing. It feels as if someone put cotton wadding against the roof of my mouth. The nausea comes over me again. I cough drily. The boy is probably alive. At least that’s something.

  ‘Why did you go to see Zetterberg?’

  ‘To collect a debt. It was a job.’

  ‘And who hired you?’

  I could have predicted that one. Berglund smiles again. What was that backwater called again? I fumble with my recall of the name. Sometimes I forget the simplest things. I’ve seen the same in many retired boxers, punch-drunk types with more stitches in them than a football, who can hardly tell right from left any more.

  I close my eyes and again press thumb and forefinger against the top of my nose. Slowly the letter reappears in my mind. The paper is lined, the letter is written in ink without splodges, and the handwriting is forwards leaning…

  ‘It was about a payment for a car… A certain farmer, Elofsson, in… Ovanåker parish.’

  The relief spreads a warmth inside, like a slug of booze in my stomach.

  ‘I see.’

  Berglund makes another annotation. I lean back in my chair and cough. The handcuffs rattle as I clench my hands in my lap.

  ‘Did he kill himself? Zetterberg?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Berglund glances up before he goes on with his notes.

  I shake my head. On two occasions I’ve seen it happen. Both times it was prisoners throwing themselves off the top-floor walkway at Långholmen. Like icicles of prison grey, they fell through the air and were shattered against the stone floor.

  ‘Just for the sake of accuracy,’ Berglund goes on, smiling and leaning forwards. ‘Did this Elofsson telephone you or did he write?’

  ‘He wrote a letter.’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘I burned it when I heard of Zetterberg’s death.’

  ‘But you’re certain of the name and the address?’

  ‘The name I am absolutely sure of; the address, almost sure.’

  ‘Do you own a light brown overcoat?’

  ‘No, if your boys had let me dress myself properly, you would have seen that my overcoat is black.’

  ‘I see.’ Berglund writes. ‘Would you object to my sending a courier for the coat, to verify this?’

  ‘No, do as you wish,’ I say, thinking about my reserve capital, seventy-five kronor folded between the octagonal plates in the kitchen cupboard, my best china. The pistol in the wardrobe and the notebook would probably be even worse.

  ‘One moment.’

  Berglund stands up, brushes down his trousers and walks out of the room. I hold up my hands. Is it the hangover or tension that makes them tremble? I stand up and pace back and forth across the tiny space. Zetterberg: why do they care about Zetterberg?

  ‘The bloke puts his head in the oven, the goons go in full strength, and I lose out on a new pair of shoes,’ I mutter hoarsely. A lump of phlegm blocks my throat, and I clear it with some coughing.

  I lift my hands again. They’re shaking even worse now.

  I bend down and squeeze my knee. It’s badly swollen. Berglund comes back in, but he stops in the doorway when he sees that I’m standing up, and eventually has to squeeze past me. We find ourselves face to face, he averts his eyes. Just like Zetterberg, he uses Aqua Vera. At the tip of one eyebrow, a slight scar spreads the wrinkles vertically. We sit down. The sound of the chairs scraping against the floor cuts through my cranium, as when my schoolmates used to pull their nails across their slates.

  ‘What was your impression of Zetterberg? So you would have been there…’ Berglund moves his finger over his notes. ‘… At around eight o’clock?’

  ‘More like half past six, or maybe seven.’

  ‘How did Zetterberg seem to you?’

  ‘Accommodating.’

  ‘In what sense do you mean?’

  ‘The whole thing was a misunderstanding about the payment date. We arranged it. He said he’d go to the bank the next day.’

  ‘I see.’ Berglund smiles. ‘Did you see anyone after your little rendezvous?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘After your meeting. Did you see anyone after your visit?’

  ‘I went straight home.’

  ‘You didn’t buy anything? A newspaper? Some groceries for dinner?’

  ‘No. But I saw that bowlegged whore. Vanja.’

  Berglund makes a note. ‘Vanja. Where and when exactly?’

  ‘We had spoken earlier while I was waiting for Zetterberg, and we bumped into one another when I left the house. She was walking between Klara Norra and Målaregatan. It must have been around seven. She said she was a dishwasher on Drottninggatan.’

  ‘How do you kn
ow she was a tart?’

  ‘A girl on her own who approaches a bloke she doesn’t know? What would you say, chief inspector? And if she wasn’t, then she was the first dishwasher I ever met who had dirty fingernails.’

  Berglund nods, makes a note and then rings a bell attached under the table. The high-pitched tone of it makes me jump. The door opens at once and a uniformed constable comes into the room.

  ‘Ask Linder to run a check on a prostitute by name of Vanja. Check the ledgers for assumed identities and run her through the register for nicknames too.’

  The door closes behind me, and Berglund goes on: ‘This Vanja, can you say with absolute confidence that she saw you?’

  ‘It was dark but she saw me. I believe she even greeted me when I was on my way out.’

  ‘Appearance?’

  ‘Blonde, slanted dark eyes, almost like a Chinese, seventeen or eighteen years old, with a black coat. A bit bowlegged.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Like someone in the cavalry. Too many men, perhaps? Or scurvy?’

  ‘Anything else?’ Berglund makes notes.

  ‘Dales accent. Liked Madeira wine.’

  Berglund nods and makes more notes. ‘The chances of finding her in our records are good. We keep the street ladies under close scrutiny.’

  The door behind me opens. I do not turn around.

  ‘Could the chief inspector come out for a moment?’

  Berglund nods, closes his notebook and takes it with him when he leaves the room.

  I go back to massaging my swollen knee. Even though the girls change names more frequently than their underwear, there shouldn’t be a problem finding her. Even if they haven’t nabbed her yet she’s bound to have a couple of cautions. I lean back and sigh with relief.

  ‘And I managed to keep the kid out of all this!’ I chortle. ‘Not bad going for a one-legged horse, Kvisten!’

  The goons most likely didn’t leave me fifteen öre for the tram when they went through the wallet. It’ll be a long, cold walk home to Sibirien.

  The door opens, two uniformed goons come barging in and I feel a heavy hand on my shoulder. The physical touch sends an electric flash through my head, and I breathe in abruptly.