You took the rap, sure. But we looked after you, and your family. Right?
Slobodan Dragovic turned to Jochum smiling, showing off poor-quality dental work, as he answered his phone, which was ringing again. Jochum stared silently straight ahead, absently following the wipers as they spread the water over the windscreen. Right enough. A total screw-up when hed done a cash collection and that fucking witness who shouldve known better, who talked and pointed until the court passed a sentence. He followed the paths of the raindrops, thinking that he knew all the hazards, but shit happens, thats true enough. Mio was always close at hand, watching him with borrowed eyes and ears every morning when he woke up and looked around his cell, looking out for him, looking out, thats what they did.
The gleaming new car gathered speed on its way through the landscape as it changed from rural to urban, and then through the northern suburbs, on towards central Stockholm.
Suspects were questioned in a room below the custody cells.
Wasnt much of a room, really.
Filthy walls, which had been white once, a heavily barred window at the far end, a worn pine table in the middle of the floor and four plain wooden chairs, straight out of some school canteen.
Sven Sundkvist, interview leader (IL): Please remain seated. Hilding Oldéus (HO): Why the fuck are you picking up innocent people?
IL: Mixing amphetamines with washing powder, you call that innocent?
HO: Dont know what youre on about.
IL: Crap drugs. Cut. So far weve got three users with corroded veins. They gave us your name.
HO: What the fuck are you talking about?
IL: And you were in possession.
HO: Wasnt mine.
IL: We took the bags of white powder from you at the time of your arrest. All six were sent to the labs.
HO: Werent fucking mine.
IL: Twenty per cent amphetamine, twenty-two per cent Panadol Extra and fifty-eight per cent washing powder. Oldéus, sit down.
Ewert Grens opened the door and went in. He had to pass through eight locked doors to get here, but hadnt even noticed. His mind was on the reports, and he could still hear Svens voice reading aloud, causing serious injury, over and over in his head. And he saw the police van that hadnt stopped in time, him holding her in his arms until the paramedics put her on a stretcher and carried her off, away from him.
He was fighting Svens voice, trying to rid himself of the words, and looked up briefly into the harsh overhead light. Then he concentrated on the man sitting opposite Sven, noted his thin face and how a finger was scratching nervously at a wound on one nostril, the drops of blood trickling down towards his mouth and chin.
IL: DSI Ewert Grens enters at oh nine twenty-two.
HO: [inaudible]
IL: What was that, Oldéus?
HO: Wasnt fucking mine.
IL: Stop messing about. We know you sold cut speed on the Plain.
HO: Know fucking everything, dont you?
IL: We arrested you there. With the bags full of washing powder.
HO: Wasnt fucking mine. Some guy handed it to me when I got there. What a cunt, passing on crap like that. Ill sort him when I get out of here.
Ewert Grens (eg): Youre going nowhere.
HO: What? Fucking pig.
IL: Plenty of people whod like to get hold of you, Oldéus. And if just one customer who bought that shit off you reports it, well charge you with attempted murder.
Thats you inside for between six months and eight years.
Hilding got up, walked jerkily about in the tight space, suddenly stopped and struck out with one arm, lowered it and walked on a few more steps, stopped again and started speaking incoherently. He rambled on, his head first shaking, then tossing from side to side. His thin body, that was screaming for heroin, that ate and spewed, was disintegrating as they watched.
Ewert looked at Sven. They had seen all this before, of course, and knew he might sit down again and tell them all they wanted to know. Or he might lie down on the floor in the foetal position and shake himself unconscious.
EG: Six months at least. Up to eight years. But youre in luck. Were in a good mood today. What if the impounded bags got lost?
HO: What the fuck dyou mean, lost?
EG: Well, there are things wed like to hear more about. Tell us about a friend of yours called Lang. Jochum Lang. You know him.
HO: Never heard of him.
Hildings face was twitching violently. He grimaced, his eyes rolled back, his head turned this way and that. He scratched the wound. He was terrified. Jochums name clawed at his mind and he wanted to shake it off, dump it, he didnt want it.
Not here. He was about to protest when someone knocked on the door. A woman detective put her head in. Ewert couldnt remember her name, but she was a summer locum, Skĺne dialect.
Sorry to interrupt. Its for you, Superintendent. I think its important.
Ewert waved her inside.
Dont worry. This is all going to hell anyway. This little smack head seems to be in a rush to get out and die.
Sven nodded when she glanced at him. She walked towards the table to stand behind Hilding. He got up, pointed at her, thrust his crotch at her lamely a few times.
Got yourself new pussy, Grens? Pigs pussy, eh!
She swung around, slapped him hard with the flat of her hand.
He lost his balance, stumbled forward holding both hands against his cheek, which flared bright red.
Fucking pig!
She stared at him.
Inspector Hermansson to you. Get out. Now.
Hilding, one hand covering his flushed cheek, kept swearing while Sven took a firm grip on his arm and escorted him out of the room.
Surprised, Ewert glanced at Sven, then turned to his young female colleague.
Youre Inspector Hermansson?
Thats right.
She was young, maybe twenty-five, no doubt in her eyes. She showed nothing. Neither surprise nor anger, unfazed by being called pigs pussy, unexcited by having dealt a violent blow to Hildings face.
Something important, you said?
The central switchboard called. Youre needed at an address in the Atlas district. Völund Street. Number three.
Ewert took note and searched his memory; hed been there before, not long ago.
Its somewhere along the main railway line, isnt it? St Eriks Square area?
Thats right. I checked it on the map.
Whats up?
She had a sheet of paper in her hand, torn from a police notebook, and she looked at it quickly, didnt want to make a mistake. Not in front of Ewert.
Our local colleagues have forced entry, following a report of serious physical abuse in a flat on the fifth floor.
And?
Its . . . quite urgent.
Anything else?
Theres a problem.
It was one of the older properties in a good area and had been carefully restored. Each street door was flanked by well-kept lawns with small trees dotted about, despite the lack of room, and narrow borders glowed with red and yellow flowers.
Ewert Grens got out of the car and scanned the long façade with its rows of windows. Turn-of-the-century building, the sort where you could hear your neighbours, their heavy steps in the kitchen, when they turned up the volume for the news, when they went out to put something in the rubbish chute. He looked at the windows with their expensive curtains. Flat after flat where people lived and died, only a breath away from their neighbours. But they never met, never knew anything about the person next door.
Sven Sundkvist, who had parked the car, joined him.
Völund Street. Looks expensive. Who can afford to live here? he muttered.
Eight windows on the fifth floor. Violence had broken out behind one of them. Ewert compared them. They all looked the same, the same damn curtains, the same damn plants different colours, different patterns, but still the same.
He snorted in the general direction of the decorous façade.
I dont like physical abuse cases anywhere, but its worse in this sort of place. Which is as a rule where they happen.
He looked around. An ambulance and two police cars with their chilly blue lights rotating. Maybe ten or so curious neighbours standing about near the parked cars, not crowding in on the place, decent enough to show a little proper respect, something that didnt always happen. The street door was held open by a rope tied to a bicycle rack. Ewert and Sven walked along the flagged path and into the lobby. Large wrought-iron numerals set into the wall near the doorway said 1901. So it was built at the turn of the century. Satisfied, Ewert nodded to himself and started to study the list of tenants names. Four of them on the fifth floor: Palm, Nygren, Johansson, Löfgren.
Couldnt be more Swedish. Only to be expected, given the kind of place it was.
Do you spot anybody familiar, Sven?
No.
They dont exactly put it on show.
You?
No idea.
Pretty poor lift, narrow with a folding grid gate, room for three, no more than 225 kilos. A uniformed policeman stood guard, an older man whom Ewert hadnt seen around for a long time.
I always forget how many idiots there are in the force, he thought. Like this one. If you dont clap eyes on them day in and day out, these sad bastards fade from your mind.
He smiled grimly while he observed the man.
Legs well apart, the stance of a cop on the telly, a cop with an important mission, keeping an eye on things as the music builds up, with lots of long notes from the string section. He might even click his heels if you asked him a question, and hed almost certainly spell words aloud when working on a report. In short, the sort who should be allowed to guard lifts, but not much else. That sort.
The constable didnt return Ewerts smile, because he sensed the contempt. He deliberately addressed Sven when he started on his account.
We were called about an hour ago, sir. An extremely drunk pimp. And a badly beaten prostitute.
That so?
Yes. Some neighbours phoned the police, but by then hed already beaten her black and blue. Shes unconscious. She needs to go to hospital. And theres one more in there. Another prostitute, by the look of her.
Beaten up too?
Dont think so. He didnt get round to her, I suppose.
Ewert listened in silence while Sven talked to the idiot guarding the lift, but eventually he couldnt take it any more.
Alerted an hour ago! Exactly what are you waiting for?
We arent allowed in. Apparently its Lithuanian . . .er, territory.
What? When someone is being physically abused, you go straight in!
Five bloody flights. Ewert had a problem breathing, every step cost him. He should have used the lift, but his temper had flared up and he had run past that flaming imbecile on guard duty. He heard voices discussing the case above him, getting louder as he climbed. Two ambulance men and a paramedic seemed to be conducting a case conference on the fourth-floor landing. They exchanged brief nods as he passed them. Only one more flight.
He was gasping for breath and out of the corner of his eye he saw that Sven was catching up with light steps. Ewert couldnt give up now and forced his legs to move. They didnt want to. He could hardly feel them.
There were four doors on the top-floor landing. One of them had a gaping hole in the panel and was guarded by three uniformed men. He didnt recognise any of them, but further back he saw the familiar face of Bengt Nordwall, in civvies like himself and Sven. Barely twenty-four hours had
passed since Ewert and Bengt had met on that rain-sodden morning outside the happy family home where Ewert had been given breakfast and caring attention. It was rare for their paths to cross at work, and Ewert stared at his friend, feeling almost let down.
They shook hands briefly, as was their habit.
What are you doing here? Ewert asked.
Russian. The guy in there doesnt speak anything else.
Bengt Nordwall was one of a handful in the force who could speak Russian. He went on to explain a little more.
A pimp was beating the shit out of one of his whores and she kept screaming to high heaven. When the police arrived they broke the door down and came face to face with that lowlife you can see over there.
Bengt pointed at a man just inside the doorway, apparently standing watch over the badly damaged door. He was in his forties, short and fat and flabby. His shiny grey suit looked expensive, but didnt suit him and didnt fit him either.
Then he waves his diplomatic passport at the lads and claims that the flat is Lithuanian territory and that the Swedish police have no right of entry. He wont hand over the woman and refuses to admit our medic. Or any other doctor, except one from the Lithuanian embassy. The victim seems to be well beyond saying anything, but the other woman in there has shouted abuse at the pimp, calling him Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp in Russian. He doesnt like it one bit, but for as long as were around, he doesnt dare do anything except shout back at her.
Sven had stopped a few steps down, by the rubbish chute between floors four and five. He was just finishing a call on his mobile and waved at Ewert to catch his attention. He closed his phone, came up the remaining steps, looking at Ewert as he spoke.