Authors: Johan Theorin
The elves were not happy.
Gerlof was sitting on the lawn in the sunshine when Carina Wahlberg came to visit him on Friday afternoon. John Hagman had been over in the morning and given him a substantial pile of magazines – old copies of
Babylon
and
Gomorrah
, stained and torn, and he was just flicking through them.
Gerlof was holding the magazines with his fingertips; most of them didn’t smell too good.
The doctor greeted him cheerily from the gate, and he waved to her. ‘Afternoon, Doctor,’ he said.
She smiled at him and came closer – but stopped dead when she saw the magazines. ‘I came to check your hearing,’ she said, looking down at the pile of magazines. ‘I can see there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight. Would you like me to come back another time?’
Gerlof shook his head. ‘Come and sit down.’
‘You look busy.’
He looked up from the magazine, not smiling. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said.
‘I don’t think anything.’
‘Well, it’s not like
that
, anyway. I’m eighty-three, and my last girlfriend, Maja up at the home, was about the same age, but she got too ill to spend time with me any more … I haven’t looked at young girls in twenty-five years.’ Gerlof gave this some thought, then added, ‘Well, twenty at any rate.’
‘So why are you looking at those magazines?’ asked Dr Wahlberg.
‘Because I have to.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m conducting an investigation.’
‘Of course you are.’
Dr Wahlberg came over and sat down. Gerlof flicked through the magazines, one after another, and kept talking. ‘I’m trying to come up with something in particular to do with these girls, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for. The whole thing just seems terribly sordid.’
Dr Wahlberg looked at the pictures, her expression anything but cheerful. ‘Well, I can see one thing that’s not good,’ she said eventually, ‘from my perspective.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They’re not using any protection.’
‘Protection?’
‘Contraceptives. The men should be wearing condoms. But I suppose they never do in magazines like this.’
Gerlof looked at her. ‘So you’ve seen them before?’
‘I used to work as a school doctor. Young lads buy them and get completely the wrong idea; they think these fantasies are reality.’
Gerlof looked down at the pictures, nodding thoughtfully. ‘It’s true, they’re not using any protection … But you’re wrong.’
‘About what?’
‘These aren’t just fantasies,’ said Gerlof. ‘They’re very real to those who are being photographed.’
Dr Wahlberg stood up. ‘I’ll go inside and sort out your tablets, Gerlof.’ She turned away, then added, ‘Let me give you a piece of good advice: throw those magazines away as soon as you can. I don’t think you’d want your daughters to find them.’
‘When I’m dead, you mean?’
The doctor wasn’t smiling. ‘When someone has died in their own house or in a care home,’ she said, ‘magazines like this often turn up, hidden under the mattress or in a drawer. It happens more often than you might think. And it’s always upsetting when the person’s child or grandchild finds them.’
Gerlof nodded. ‘These aren’t actually mine,’ he said, ‘but I’ll certainly pass that on to the owner.’
When Dr Wahlberg had gone, Gerlof carried on leafing through
Babylon
and
Gomorrah
. There was no variation, just page after page of photos of blonde girls in different sexual positions – he was surprised how tedious it all seemed after a while. Sad and depressing. But he kept on looking.
He suddenly stopped at one of the pictures. It was a colour photo that looked like most of the others: a picture of one of the muscular men, naked among the desks in a little classroom. The man was with a young woman. According to the brief caption she was called Belinda, and was described as ‘a naughty Swedish schoolgirl who has a lesson to learn’.
Gerlof was fairly sure her name wasn’t Belinda. But he looked at the picture for a long time, eventually picking up his glasses and holding them close to the page, like a magnifying glass.
After a minute or so he put them down, got up slowly, and went inside to make a phone call, taking the magazine with him.
He rang Per Mörner on Ernst’s old number, but there was no reply so he tried Per’s mobile.
‘Mörner.’ He still sounded exhausted.
Gerlof cleared his throat. ‘It’s Gerlof – Gerlof Davidsson in Stenvik. Can you talk?’
‘For a little while … I’m just on the way to visit my daughter in hospital. Has something happened?’
‘Maybe,’ said Gerlof. ‘I’ve been looking at some of your father’s magazines.’
‘Oh? How did you get hold of them?’
‘I have contacts,’ said Gerlof, not wanting to mention John Hagman or his son by name.
‘So what did you think?’
Gerlof picked up the copy of
Babylon
and looked at the front cover. ‘Lots of blonde wigs and sad eyes,’ he said. ‘And it’s all very seedy. Very seedy pictures.’
‘I know,’ said Per, sounding even more weary. ‘But that’s the way it is, and we men buy it.’
‘I’m too old,’ said Gerlof.
‘I’ve never liked it,’ said Per. ‘Jerry was keen on pictures and films like that, but not me. Not at any age. But somebody buys them, after all.’
‘And these men in the pictures, who are they?’
‘Men?’ said Per. ‘There’s only one man … his name is Markus Lukas. Or at least that’s the name he uses.’
‘No, there are different men. At least two. You never see their faces, but their bodies are different.’
‘Oh?’
‘And they don’t use any protection, either. No condoms.’
‘No, that’s true. I suppose Jerry thought it wouldn’t look right, it would look silly – you’re very observant, Gerlof.’
Gerlof sighed. ‘Why do they do it, these girls? Do you know?’
‘Why? I can’t answer that,’ said Per. ‘I don’t suppose it makes them feel too good about themselves … but I don’t know.’
He stopped, so Gerlof carried on, ‘I’ve found one of them, anyway.’
‘One of them?’
‘One of the girls in one of the magazines. You did say you wanted to find someone to talk to.’
‘You mean … you recognize one of the girls?’
‘I recognized her sweater.’
‘She’s wearing a sweater?’ said Per.
‘It’s thrown over a chair in the background,’ said Gerlof. ‘She comes from Kalmar, I think. I don’t know her name, but you should be able to find her.’
Per was on his way to see Nilla, but had stopped in Borgholm and was just going into the library when Gerlof rang about his discovery in one of Jerry’s magazines. It sounded promising, but Per was intending to search for Markus Lukas in the phone books in the library. The name wasn’t listed in any of the books covering southern Sweden, so he started looking for the name Jerry had mentioned in the car,
Moleng Noar
.
The name sounded Asiatic, like a Chinese restaurant. He flicked through the Yellow Pages for Malmö, but couldn’t find any restaurants with that name.
Hans Bremer had lived in Malmö, he remembered. He leafed through the section containing residential numbers, reached B and found
Bremer, Hans
with the address given as Terränggatan 10B.
He noted down the address, then went back to thinking about the name.
Moleng Noar
.
He picked up his pen and tried out different spellings:
Molang-noor
Mu-Lan Over
Moo Leng Noer
But it was no good, none of those names were in the phone book.
Or could it be a French name, a variation on Moulin Rouge, for example? He tried the French spelling:
Moulin Noir
. The black windmill.
He went back to the phone book, and this time he was in luck. There was actually an advert for the Moulin Noir; it was a night club in Malmö, open from two o’clock in the afternoon until four in the morning; SHOW EVERY HALF-HOUR, it said.
A sex club. It couldn’t be anything else.
Had Jerry owned the club? He hadn’t mentioned it to Per, but nothing would surprise him.
He wrote down the address. He would go to Malmö today, but first he would stop off at the hospital. Six days to go until the operation.
Per couldn’t get in to see Nilla straight away; there were nurses with her taking samples for more tests. He had to sit and wait until they had finished.
The waiting room wasn’t empty; there was one other person there. A woman of about sixty-five was sitting on the sofa opposite him with her head bowed, clutching a folded woollen sweater. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to wait with someone else, and it was always awkward – each knowing why the other was sitting there, but neither having the strength or the inclination to acknowledge it.
They were relatives, and they were waiting for news. Perhaps the woman opposite him was taking a break from all the major and minor symptoms floating around the ward.
Per ought to sign himself off work on the grounds that he had a sick child to care for; if he’d had the strength, he would have done so. But Marika had said she was signed off work at the moment, and he didn’t know if both parents could claim at the same time. There was bound to be some regulation about that. In the meantime he would just have to carry on making stuff up.
The woman suddenly looked at him. ‘Are you Nilla’s dad?’
Per nodded.
‘I’m Emil’s grandmother … he’s talked about Nilla.’ Her smile was slightly strained. ‘It seems as if they’ve become quite good friends.’
‘That’s right …’ In spite of the fact that he was afraid of the answer, he asked, ‘How are things with Emil?’
The woman stopped smiling. ‘They’re not saying much … all we can do is wait.’
Per nodded again, but didn’t say any more.
Everyone was waiting. There was nothing to say.
Eventually he was allowed in.
Nilla was lying in the darkness holding her lava stone; she raised a hand to wave at him. It was probably his imagination, but Per thought that the arms protruding from her hospital gown were thinner, that her chest had somehow collapsed.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not so bad.’
‘Are you in any pain?’
Nilla looked down at the black stone. ‘Not right now … not much.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m so tired of all the horrible stuff. Of the pain, of the doctors and nurses always wanting me to describe it. They keep on asking me where the pain is, and what it feels like. Is it a stabbing pain, or does it sting, or is it more like a cramp? It’s like some kind of exam, and I’m no good at it.’
‘It’s not an exam,’ said Per. ‘You can answer however you want.’
‘I know, but when I say the pain is like a black cloud up above me, growing and sucking up the white cloud I’m sitting on, they stop listening … it’s too weird for them.’
They were both silent for a few moments.
‘Nilla, I have to go away for a little while.’
‘Go where? Is it to do with Granddad?’
Per shook his head. He still hadn’t told Nilla her grandfather was dead. That could wait.
‘I’m going down to Malmö … there’s something I have to do. But I’ll be back tomorrow night.’
It was just an ordinary weekend in the city when he reached Malmö. Cars crawling around the roundabouts, ferries setting sail for Denmark, people enjoying their leisure time as they walked by the water in the spring sunshine, pushing their baby buggies.
It had taken Per almost four hours to drive down from Kalmar. He reached the city centre at about three o’clock and parked a few blocks away from the central station, where the hourly parking charge was lower. Then he found his way to the back street where the Moulin Noir lay.
It wasn’t a place that went out of its way to advertise its presence; there was just a small, cracked sign above the entrance with the words MOULIN NOIR – SEX SHOP & NIGHT CLUB. The windows were painted black and protected with iron bars – Per guessed that the anti-porn lobby would sometimes gather here with placards and rotten eggs. But at the moment the entire street was deserted.
He stopped a few metres from the door, where a white handwritten notice proclaimed OVER 18s ONLY! Despite the fact that he didn’t know anyone in Malmö, he checked one more time to make sure nobody could see him.
Dirty old man
, he thought. Then he straightened his back and went inside.
He found himself in a long, narrow shop, just as quiet and deserted as the street outside. The sharp, lemony smell of some kind of cleaning product hung in the air, but the vinyl floor still looked grubby. The shelves lining the walls were stocked with films and magazines wrapped in plastic, but there were no copies of
Babylon
or
Gomorrah
. The gap Jerry’s defunct magazines had left in the market had been filled long ago by his colleagues.