Clinch

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Harry Kvist,’ Berglund says ceremoniously behind my back. ‘You are hereby formally under arrest for the murder of Gunnar Zetterberg, and attempted arson. You will be transferred at once to the remand prison.’

  One of the goons grabs my arm and the other takes me by the shirt collar. They get me up on my feet and turn me around, so that I’m standing eye to eye with Berglund.

  ‘The only Vanja to be found in our registers found the Lord and became a Salvation Army soldier several years ago,’ he continues, monotonously.

  My mouth opens, I snatch my arm away. Berglund raises his hand.

  ‘I don’t read Social-Demokraten, but I find it hard to believe that there was a clue about Breitenfeldt in the crossword the day before yesterday.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake! I can’t keep tags of all the crossword clues!’

  ‘We’ve also telephoned both the district police superintendent in Bollnäs and the parish constable in Ovanåker to check on your statement,’ Berglund goes on and adjusts his bow-tie. ‘It’s strange,’ he says with a sudden smile, ‘but there isn’t and never has been a farmer by name of Elofsson in that part of the country.’

  I’m shivering under the blanket. All I can hear is the continuous pacing in the corridor outside, and the wheezing of my bronchial tubes. Every time the guards get close to my sturdy cell door of green-painted wood, I raise my head and listen. The bunk is bolted to the wall. A chain hangs from an overhead eyelet and runs down the brick wall.

  Apart from the table without chairs under the little window, my bunk is the only furniture in the room. The bucket by the door fills the whole cell with its stench. The sound of footsteps grows and diminishes by turns. The rules do not allow singing, whistling, or any other form of noise. Those steps are all that I have. The screws here don’t use the same silent moccasins as at Långholmen.

  I fumble at the back of my neck and scratch myself. The wall lice have given me a proper pummelling in the night. It’s still dark outside the bars. I need a cigar. I stand up and pace about in the cell to warm myself up.

  ‘One thing’s for sure, Kvisten knows how to wait. I’ve never done anything else. I’ve waited for orders in prison and instructions at sea. For the bloke in the bunk overhead to be done with himself. Or outside the damned schnapps company with the ration book in my hand.’

  My voice echoes desolately between the walls. I lie back down on the mattress stuffed with pressed sawdust. For the hundredth time I read in the gloom what’s been carved into the cell door: What one knows, no one knows. What two know, the goons know.

  A purposeful stride in the corridor stands out from the usual shuffling, coming closer and then stopping. I raise my head. There’s a click when someone hits the light switch outside. I cover my eyes with the palm of my hand. The swelling under my left eye burns. The slot in the door slides open, then closes again. The substantial lock is opened with a hollow snap, like when you break some poor bastard’s finger. I squint at the light, heave myself up into a sitting position with the help of the chain and slide my feet off the edge. The screw is a young lad with a sparse blond moustache. In that big hat of his, he looks like a country bumpkin, holding a plate of smooth porridge with a spoon in it.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  I’m still squinting. The screw looks at me with empty eyes. I sigh and take the plate.

  ‘Surely I have a right to half an hour of exercise in the yard? You even get that at Långholmen.’

  The porridge kid checks that the door is locked behind him by tugging at the handle. I shovel down a spoonful of the lukewarm porridge. It tastes every bit as bad as I remember it. I eat with ravenous appetite.

  I stand up, put the plate beside the door and go over to the dirty little window. I push the table out of the way, grab the bars on the inside of the window and pull myself onto my tiptoes. It’s still dark but I can make out a hint of light on the wall out there. At Långholmen they served rye porridge made with milk at half past five. This must be later.

  The remand prison is at the bottom of the police station. From here, an underground passage leads to the town court. The alley of sighs. I’ve walked it before. Maybe I’ll be the first man facing the bar today. I scratch my back: damned lice!

  The eighteenth paragraph. The homophile paragraph. They’ve taken me for it twice before. If I name the boy as my alibi I’ll go to Långholmen either way. He would deny it to the hilt. All I have to show for our adventure in Bellevueparken is the kid’s gold lighter. Hardly top-notch evidence.

  And Sonja then, the tart? Sonja? Vanja? I stand up and rub my back against the wall.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Kvist! It was Sonja.’ I gave them the wrong name yesterday. I smile. No wonder they couldn’t find her in the register.

  I could do with a decent bath with hot water and soap. A shave is also called for. I let rip with a couple of upper cuts into the air. Kvisten won’t go down so easily. Never had to take a count. A pale strip of daylight comes in through the window.

  In the end, when they finally come to fetch me, they don’t take me to the town court. Instead they lead me up the stairs and place me in yet another cramped interrogation room. It’s furnished exactly as the last one was, and it stinks just as much of tobacco, but there are more cracks in the ceiling, and I’m fairly sure that I’m in an entirely different part of the building. My shirt sleeves are rolled up and my jacket hangs over my shoulders. The handcuffs are so tight around my wrists that my hands are throbbing. The man who makes his entrance soon after is also a new acquaintance. He’s a large-hewn bloke, his face marked with smallpox scars. His black trousers finish above his ankles and his stomach oozes over his waistband. More than half of his white cuffs stick out of his jacket sleeves.

  I know him from the newspapers. His name is Oskar Olsson and he’s the head of the Criminal Division.

  Olsson hangs his overcoat on the back of the chair and puts his bowler hat and stick on the table. I’ve read about that stick in a biographical portrait in Fäderneslandet or maybe one of the other gossip rags. Apparently it once belonged to Dahlman, the city’s – and the nation’s – last executioner.

  The inspector runs his hand over his short, grey-speckled hair. He looks like a captain I served under, to and from La Boca. A wicked bastard whose trousers once fell down in front of the men while he was going hard at one of the young midshipmen with his belt. I wonder what it will take to make Olsson lose his trousers.

  Without looking at me, he stuffs a straight-stemmed pipe with tobacco from a pack of Farmer’s Blend, lights a match and gets it going.

  ‘Your name is Harry Kvist and you’re hardly an angel, are you?’ The smoke dribbles from his mouth, and he points at me with the pipe stem. ‘You were cautioned for an indecent and immoral act after an incident in the third-class section at the Svea Baths in 1924, and you were detained for the same crime the year after. On this occasion it concerned an incident at the old urinal near Sturegatan in Humlegården and you were ordered to pay a fine of seventy-five kronor. You have faced charges for assault on five occasions but you have only been found guilty of two of them. The first conviction was for a brawl with an abattoir worker and the second was about an intermezzo with a toilet porter at some public conveniences in Nybroplan.’

  ‘A damned blackmailer.’ I try to inhale a wreath of pipe smoke through my nose without him noticing.

  ‘For these two episodes you served two sentences at Långholmen,’ Olsson goes on, as if he hasn’t heard me. ‘It could have been a good deal more, because your name has turned up in many more reports and investigations, mainly into assaults and intimidation, but you have been lucky. Until now.’

  Olsson puts the pipe between his lips, hauls out my notebook from his inside pocket and slaps it on the table. I rub my beard stubble. Olsson removes the pipe from his mouth.

  ‘One assumes the people in this book would have a thing or two to say about you.’

  ‘On the second to last page you’ll find the
details of Zetterberg’s debt. My fifteen per cent.’

  ‘The only thing written here are the figures. All they prove is that you can’t count.’

  What the hell does he mean? My fists start pulsating under the table. Olsson taps the notebook with the stem of his pipe.

  ‘Zetterberg was convicted of drunk driving on the eighteenth.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I think you two were seeing each other. Was that why you beat him to death? Had he met someone else?’

  ‘I never touched him. In any sense of the word.’

  I force a smile. Olsson picks up his stick and strikes it hard at the table, like a schoolmaster smacking his pointer at the lectern. I try to laugh but something gets caught in my throat. A coughing fit rips at my lungs.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ splutters Olsson. ‘Do you own or have access to a short-handled axe? A so-called mason’s axe?’

  ‘Should I shut my mouth or answer the question?’

  ‘Shut your mouth! Answer the question!’

  ‘No, I don’t even know what it is.’

  ‘But sometimes you use weapons in your so-called work?’

  ‘No, I believe in using my own two hands. I suppose I’m a little old-fashioned that way.’ I hold up my scarred hands.

  ‘So you don’t own and have never owned a short-handled axe?’

  ‘Absolutely I do, it’s at home by my fireplace. I use it to split kindling.’

  ‘I heard that you’re limping, what’s happened?’

  ‘You should keep your boys on a shorter leash.’

  ‘Why did you lie about Elofsson?’

  ‘I didn’t, I obviously made a mistake.’

  ‘And the tart?’

  ‘Got that wrong as well. Her name was Sonja, not Vanja.’

  ‘You’re changing your mind?’

  ‘Hardly a crime, is it.’

  ‘Do you own a brown overcoat?’

  ‘I’ve already answered that. Don’t you talk to each other in this construction site?’

  Olsson knocks over his chair as he rises abruptly, throwing a big shadow over the table as he grabs the edge of it and shoves it against my ribs. I push my chair back and get to my feet in the nick of time. The metal cuts into my wrists as I grab the edge of the table. The jacket slips off my shoulders. Somehow I regain my balance. A sense of calm envelops me, my heart slows and transports the feeling throughout my body. I grin at him.

  Olsson stares at me, keeping the extinguished pipe between his bared teeth. At any moment now he’ll bite off the stem. His face is a deep scarlet. There’s an absolute silence and for a moment I fancy I hear the second hand of Olsson’s watch whipping along. The table vibrates with our exertions. My hands pulsate with every beat of my heart. The veins on my lower arms are swelling under my skin. The table doesn’t move one way or the other.

  Finally Olsson lets go and sinks down on his chair again. I do the same. The inspector is breathing heavily and his hand trembles as he tries to relight his pipe. I cough loudly. In the end he puts away both the pipe and his matches and rings the bell under the table. A constable comes in at once.

  ‘Take the swine back to his cell,’ orders Olsson and meets my eyes for the first time since our tug of war. ‘Considering you’re a bloody homophile you’re certainly damned tough.’

  A couple of hours later, evening has set in. Two uniformed goons are driving me the short distance to the crime scene. A deluge is hammering at the roof of the car and the raindrops run down the windows.

  ‘The hell I have to go there for, and to do what, I don’t know.’

  ‘Shut it back there!’

  ‘I never said anything.’

  ‘Idiot.’

  I have been given back my shoes, braces and overcoat, but neither wallet nor cigars. The handcuffs chafe my skin. The leather-upholstered seats creak complainingly as my lice-bitten back rubs against them.

  ‘Hildur wants me to go with her to visit the family farm in Östergötland.’

  The younger of the goons in the passenger seat is doing the talking. His thin, pointed features do not match his deep voice. Bony, well-tended hands; I noticed them when he was putting me in the cuffs.

  ‘Don’t bloody do it. It’ll make it official, you know! You haven’t knocked her up, have you?’ The older of the two goons glances at his colleague as we drive onto Kungsbron. He has a sharp profile, a strong jaw and hooked nose.

  ‘No bloody way! I make her drink a glass of warm stout every time.’

  ‘And remember what I said about the squirter? They’re devious, they forget. That’s how they snare you. That’s what my old bird did, I’d bet my right arm on it.’

  Below, a fast-moving cargo train pounds out of Central Station. The locomotive sounds its whistle. We pass the covered market.

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Mark my words. And now I’m stuck with Lilly, Anna on the side, and five snotty kids. On a police salary! No, you watch out. Watch out bloody carefully.’

  The younger colleague nods as we drive past the Palladium. Between the goons’ heads I see the yellow sign of the Carlton and I’m reminded of Leonard and Bellevueparken. The constable at the wheel glances at me in his rear-view mirror and raises his eyebrows at my pious smile. I lift up my hands, rub my bristles and close my eyes. The boy’s touch has burned into me, in the same way that the city seal used to be branded into the foreheads of repeat offenders.

  Berglund and Olsson meet us on the stairs. Both are wearing decent overcoats. Berglund’s Ulster has a fur-trimmed collar and his newly polished kid-leather boots show themselves at their best against the white marble floor. He smiles and offers his hand; Olsson only raises Dahlman’s stick to the brim of his bowler hat. I flinch. Olsson smiles.

  ‘Should we free the prisoner from his handcuffs?’ The older constable straightens up as he’s talking.

  ‘I think we’ll leave them on for the time being,’ says Olsson, stuffing his pipe. He keeps smiling. ‘And you’d better come up with us as well.’

  We follow the smell of smoke as we go up the stairs in silence. Berglund is polishing his glasses again.

  The whole sixth floor is still sealed off. Just by the stairs, our company has to take a long step over a sizeable pool of congealed blood. From this a wide trail of blood leads to Zetterberg’s door in an almost unbroken line. We stand on the other side of it, shoulder to shoulder, like a group of farmers inspecting their land.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Berglund turns round and looks at me over the rims of his glasses. Olsson looks at me over Berglund’s head. Does he think I can’t see him? I shrug.

  ‘A hell of a lot of blood. Someone hit him hard on the head or cut him open with something sharp.’

  ‘Yes.’ Berglund caresses his moustache.

  ‘He moved very slowly,’ I go on. ‘He crept or dragged himself to the stairs where he bled dry. Unless someone dragged him.’

  ‘Why would someone drag him?’

  ‘Why are you asking me?’

  The two goons exchange a glance. Olsson nods towards the corridor while he strikes a match and gets his pipe going. I tighten my fists until my nails cut into my palms.

  Berglund makes a gesture towards Zetterberg’s flat. He and one of the older goons follow me while the other constable and Olsson stay behind. We reach the double doors. Berglund throws out his hand.

  ‘As you can see, Kvist, there’s no damage here. Possibly, Zetterberg let the perpetrator in voluntarily.’

  ‘Possibly.’ I remember how I pushed Zetterberg into the flat. The sound when he fell and dragged a chair with him.

  Berglund presses down the door handle and invites me to go in first. We step into the smell of smoke. Berglund turns on the ceiling light in the hall. I feel his eyes on my back.

  The floor is covered in crushed mirror glass and blood. The chair and the mirror are still lying there, overturned in the hall, but the mirror lies the other way around, with its back agains
t the floor. Zetterberg must have crawled out from beneath it at some point. There are still some pointed shards of glass in the frame. Along one wall, large bloodstains have been ringed with chalk and, just above floor level, there’s a rust-brown handprint. I point at it.

  ‘It’s Zetterberg’s.’ Berglund doesn’t take his eyes off me.

  ‘The blood?’

  ‘Two different blood groups. We’re working on the hypothesis that Zetterberg tried to defend himself and that the mirror was broken during the fight. The murderer cut himself on the glass, or Zetterberg caused him some kind of injury.’

  ‘Which would rule me out, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Unless it was a question of a nose bleed or similar?’

  ‘You’ll have to tap me for some, quite simply.’

  ‘And if it matches the evidence?’

  ‘I still didn’t kill him.’ I wonder if I dare ask Berglund for a cigarette. After all, we’re supposed to be on good terms.

  ‘Go inside,’ he says. ‘No need to tiptoe around. All the evidence has been secured.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘A whole lot of various ones, but none on the murder weapon.’

  ‘What did he use?’

  ‘What makes you think it’s a man?’

  ‘That’s what you said.’

  Berglund doesn’t answer. He gestures into the spacious apartment. I walk through the hall towards the kitchen. They asked me about an axe. What was it they called it? A mason’s axe? I feel like asking if I can have a look at it.

  The decent-sized kitchen lacks both a table and chairs. Most likely there’s a dining area through the closed doors on our right. The stainless steel draining board has a double sink with a splash guard of glass. The taps suggest the sod had it piped in both hot and cold. On the draining board are a couple of big cognac balloons. On an enamelled shelf there’s a washing-up brush and a yellow dishcloth. There is also a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. When I met Zetterberg he wasn’t wearing them. Maybe the murderer rinsed himself off here and then forgot them?