To the Top of the Mountain (3 page)

‘They’re waiting out there,’ Kerstin said, sighing.

‘Yeah, yeah. The next man to be held to account,’ said Paul, also sighing.

2

SKY.

How long had it been since he had seen it?

In Sweden, there are fifty-seven prisons with over four thousand places. They are divided into six security classes, of which class F prisons are open institutions and classes A to E are closed. Of these, class A prisons are the most secure, with the most dangerous inmates, and in Sweden there are two: Hall and Kumla.

Now he was looking directly at the sky, actually looking, not from behind bars. He glanced back to the gates which had closed behind him, and for a moment it felt as though he had left his body and become one with the sky; he saw the flat landscape below him, the whole of southern Närke county with its square green, brown and golden fields. The prison looked like nothing more than two square fields among all the others.

He couldn’t see the walls.

Dissolved by perspective.

Then he was down again.

Back to earth.

His feet on the ground.

He turned round once more. The walls were completely bare. Nothing behind them, nothing sticking up. Only walls. Grey. Grey walls.

He moved off. A smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

He walked towards the van that stood waiting. Ticking over. The sound of freedom. Freedom was a metallic-green van.

He stopped. Stood for a moment. Gentle, warm summer wind against his newly shaved cheeks. The sun. Morning heat. Asphalt quivering in the distance.

He glanced towards the van. Hands protruding from it. Waving. No sound yet. The sound didn’t reach him. The movements within. Like a foetus. An egg about to hatch. Preserved movements. Future events. Many quick steps coming together at one point.

Step one. Wallet out. Pitiful banknotes. Three forty an hour basic pay. Also a small device which looked like a miniature calculator.

He took it out. Weighed it in his hand. Held it up towards the van.

The waving stopped. The sound disappeared before it had reached him. Future movements were put on hold.

A single button, slightly raised. Red. Almost luminous.

He pressed it, smiled faintly and climbed into the van.

A fiery blaze rose up behind the walls.

High, high up towards the sky.

No longer only walls behind him.

As the van gathered speed, the sound still hadn’t reached him.

3

‘
SO YOU’RE ON
the committee for the Bajen Fans club?’

The man was in his thirties, and squinting as though the light in the darkened interrogation room was blinding. Behind his hangover, something else was going on. Watchfulness. The feeling that they would always be the accused.

‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Committee member.’

‘What is the Bajen Fans club, exactly?’ Kerstin Holm asked.

‘Not a violent organisation if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘No one’s suggesting that, not by any means. But a Hammarby supporter committed a terrible act of violence in a known Hammarby haunt, in the presence of at least one committee member from Bajen Fans. So it’s relevant for us to ask.’

He looked sullen. Remained silent. Glanced over to Hjelm, who was trying to look as though he was awake.

‘I know roughly what it is,’ said Hjelm. ‘An independent supporters’ group. Something that grew out of the Hammarby tribe in the early eighties.’

‘There you have it,’ said the man, with obvious pride. ‘We organise trips to the away games and our clubhouse on Grafikvägen is open on Thursdays and before every home game. We’re the ones making sure it
doesn’t
degenerate into violence. We stand for the only bloody bit of carnival colour in this monochrome country, and that’s why suspicion automatically falls on us.’

‘The
club
isn’t suspect.
You
are, Jonas Andersson from Enskede,
you
. You’re suspected of withholding the identity of the Kvarnen Killer.’

‘The Kvarnen Killer . . .’

‘The papers’ name for you-very-well-know-who.’

Jonas Andersson from Enskede met Hjelm’s eye without hesitation.

‘I was bloody well sitting there pressing a jumper to the guy’s mashed head. I knew right away it’d be us who’d get the blame.’

‘Did you see the perpetrator?’

‘No.’

‘Where were you?’

‘In a group by the wall, a little way from the door. It was crowded and there were loads of people and I didn’t see anything.’

‘You didn’t see anything?’

Hjelm hung up his boots. It was the fourth time that day he had uttered those words. Kerstin Holm saw him throw in the towel and picked up the baton. To mix a few metaphors.

‘Let’s make it easy,’ she said, pushing a sheet of paper in front of Jonas Andersson from Enskede. ‘Here’s a sketch of Kvarnen. When did you arrive, what did you see, and where?’

‘I was standing here, against the wall where the door is, with about ten people who were aiming to grab some seats over towards the corner. We got there at quarter past nine and we’d already had a fair bit to drink. So we were standing there, pressed up against the wall.’

‘OK. Had that group at the bar already arrived then?’

‘The bar was bloody busy. I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. It was packed, rowdy and noisy. A haze of disappointment. A 2–2 draw with Kalmar, at home. Last place confirmed. Everyone was pretty unhappy. Then suddenly it went quiet for a few seconds, the silence building like a little hole in the crowd. Then he was lying there. With a mashed head. I ran over and helped that Smålander hold the jumper to his head. It was all soft inside. Really fucking nasty. The only thing I saw was a whole load of people rushing for the door.’

‘A whole load of people?’

‘Yeah, twenty people escaped for sure before the bouncers turned up. They’d probably been off doing drugs.’

‘Twenty Hammarby fans?’

‘Others, too. Some managed to get out even though the bouncers were there. Talked their way out, probably, but I didn’t really see.’

‘So what you saw was a flood of people heading for the exit?’

‘I guess. Not what you’d expect. People normally react kind of like that group of dolled-up birds over in the corner did, screaming in panic and stuff like that. But quite a lot of people just rushed straight out.’

‘OK. Can you try to take us through where everyone was, using the sketch?’

Jonas Andersson caught his breath and groaned. He started pointing vaguely at the sketch, beginning with the row of tables by the window.

‘The group of girls at two tables over in the corner. Three of them panicked and got hysterical. The third table, nearest the door: a group of IT types. They were all still there afterwards. The next row: a group of Hammarby fans in the middle, next to some kid who was reading. Staring right down into his book. On one side of them, by the wall, a gang of Slavs. On the other side, nearest us, a group of bookish-looking students. Then on the row nearest the bar: the Hard Homo. Two couples taking up one table, and the Hard Homo squashed onto the same table. On the next table: some drunks. Closest to us, a bit of a mixture. Then the table next to the door, along the wall here, a tough-looking group, not exactly skinheads but almost. They cleared out, all apart from one.’

‘This is getting complicated now. The tough guys, how many of them were there?’

‘We were standing next to them, tried talking to them, but they didn’t say a word, just sat there, pushed us if we got too close – one of them was even listening to music. Not the one who stayed behind, though. Slaphead. With a moustache. Five, there were five of them. One stayed behind.’

‘Who else? The Hard Homo? The drunks?’

‘They stayed. You’ve got their names. The Hard Homo is Sweden’s bravest fag. Always got his eye on someone from the tribe. We’re used to it now. He was just staring at that kid with the book, though. I didn’t recognise the drunks, but they were the usual. Alcoholics, culture and media types, the kind who love their artsy Södermalm area. Probably haven’t done a blind thing for culture these past thirty years.’

‘And next to the reader, you said “a gang of Slavs”?’

‘Yeah, three or four Slavs. Yugoslavs. They were talking. The guy with the book was sitting right next to them, he got pushed closer to them by the Hammarby tribe.’

‘How do you know they were Yugoslavs?’

‘They looked like they were. They disappeared, all of them.’

Kerstin Holm paused. Passed on the baton. Hjelm had returned. Recovered. He was ready again.

‘So that entire group of “three or four Slavs” rushed towards the exit as soon as Anders Lundström got the beer mug to the head?’

‘Yeah. There was something dodgy about them, that’s for sure.’

‘You saw a lot for someone who didn’t see anything,’ said Hjelm with a vague feeling of déjà-vu.

‘I’m on the committee,’ said Jonas Andersson, looking up. ‘I always try to keep an eye on what’s going on. I’m just really bloody sorry that I was focused on the wrong things. I want to get the bastard just as much as you. He’s ruined years of good work.’

‘The drunks,’ Paul Hjelm said carelessly to the four grizzled men dressed in worn-out corduroy jackets, each with flowing locks and greyish-white beards of various lengths.

‘What do you mean?’ said the one to the right.

‘Pardon?’ said the one to the left.

The two in the middle looked like they had been stuffed by an eager amateur taking a night class in taxidermy.

Hjelm pulled himself together and turned the tables.

‘Did any of you gentlemen see anything of what the drunks by the bar in the Kvarnen were up to during the course of yesterday evening?’

‘Unfortunately, at the time and place in question, we were deep in conversation about acutely important matters.’

‘Dare I ask which important matters these were?’

‘Of course you may dare,’ said the one on the right. ‘
Quod erat demonstrandum
.’

‘A self-answering question,’ said the one on the left.

The two in the middle leaned gravely towards one another, as though the seams were about to burst and the stuffing come out.

‘Let’s be serious now,’ said Paul Hjelm.

‘We are the Friends of Vreeswijk, Cornelis Vreeswijk’ said the one on the right. ‘Sweden’s finest balladeer. We were having our annual meeting.’

‘We’re trying to gain support for a Cornelis museum in the middle of Medborgarplatsen,’ said the one on the left. ‘The hope is that we’ll be able to convince the Muslims to sing his “Agda the Hen” from the top of the minaret.’

‘No, “Felicia, adieu”,’ exclaimed the second from the right.

‘No, “Lasse small blues”,’ retorted the second from the left.

Following this, the duo in the middle fell silent.

‘The multicultural society,’ said the one on the right, with a visionary glint in his eye.

‘Did you see anything at all?’

The duo in the middle came back to life.

‘“Grimaces . . .”’ said the mid-left soberly.

‘“. . . and telegrams”,’ the mid-right finished for him equally soberly.

‘You saw grimaces and telegrams in Kvarnen yesterday evening?’ asked Paul Hjelm, starting to think about claiming his pension. But the bright orange envelope containing information on the new pension system which had recently come through his letter box at home just outside of Stockholm made the thought impossible. He had miscalculated by thousands of kronor per month. Like all other Swedes of his generation.

The duo in the middle leaned forward over the table and simultaneously interrupted his ill-humoured thoughts about his pension.

‘1966,’ said the mid-left confidently.

‘An unsurpassed single,’ said the mid-right equally confidently.

‘My moral sensibilities greatly enjoyed hearing such ambitious plans for partner swapping as those going on at the neighbouring table,’ said the one on the left, as the duo in the middle slumped back as though someone had let go of the strings.

‘And
my
moral sensibilities equally greatly enjoyed the multicultural conversation which was going on at the table beyond that,’ said the one on the right.

‘Can I just ask if you know why you’re here?’ said Hjelm, wondering where Kerstin had gone. ‘Fled the field’ was the term which came to mind.

‘You can, yes.’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Do you know why you’re here?’ asked Paul Hjelm silkily.

‘Unfortunately not,’ said the one on the right. ‘We expect to be questioned by the police authorities every now and then. It’s in the nature of our societal role.’

‘Outsiders,’ said the one on the left solemnly, nodding.

‘So you don’t even know that someone was killed in Kvarnen yesterday?’

They fell silent. Exchanged surprised glances over the heads of the middle duo, who were now completely out of it.

‘Naturally, we will do all we can to support you in your operation. But, unfortunately, we did not notice the event in question.’

‘Next to us, two not-exactly-youthful pairs were deep in an increasingly lively discussion on partner swapping. And behind them, the multicultural exchange.’

‘Besides which, we were pleased that Kvarnen was the venue for both listening to music and reading on a late Wednesday evening.’

‘Ovid. The blind king who murdered his wife.’

‘And then his mother. A significant cultural figure.’

‘I assume that you’re alluding to Oedipus and Orestes respectively,’ said Paul Hjelm.

‘Exactly. Or Ovid, as he was also called.’

‘Local variations.’

‘And the music?’

‘An entire table over by the door, enjoying . . . could it have been a jazz concert? One of them had earphones.’

‘I recognised their way of listening. Attentively. Like jazz. Or a ballad. Cornelis.’

‘“Letter from the Colony”,’ sputtered the middle duo, instantly lapsing back into insignificance.

Hjelm stared at them, one after another, from left to right. He was having difficulty concentrating. He groaned slightly and fixed his eyes on the notes in front of him. ‘Multicultural exchange’ it read in a scrawl that didn’t seem to be his own.