Clinch (21 page)

When we come out of the club the temperature has fallen to ten below. The car has survived without any bangs or scrapes, although it is parked almost in the middle of the lane. I don’t
make a note of the address but I try to remember the house and the cast-iron balconies. Doris hums the last song the jazz quintet was playing.

‘My rheumatism always gets worse in the winter,’ she says, as I drive along Karlavägen for the second time that evening.

‘We live on the wrong side of the world.’

‘We often go somewhere warm over the Christmas holiday, me and my family, but not this year. Ludvig has too much going on, he says.’

I grunt. The street lies deserted and I turn on the full beam by pressing a button above the horn. There’s not a skid mark left from the crazy car chase on Karlavägen just a few hours ago.

I shouldn’t have clocked Leonard in Bellevueparken. That must be why he cleared off as if he had a fire up his butt. I don’t even know why I decked him.

We don’t talk much on the way home to Sibirien. Only when we turn back into Roslagsgatan do I notice that Doris no longer has her furs.

Dixie has been walked. She lies contentedly at my feet. The flat is quiet, apart from a blazing wood fire in the hearth. We’re sitting at the kitchen table. I’ve taken off my jacket and shirt. I blow at the Husqvarna’s recoil spring and thread a page of rolled-up newspaper through it.

Doris is busy with her own things. She opens a little bottle of brown liquid and holds it under her nose. She lets a drop fall on her finger, and puts it in her mouth. She smiles. Her long fake eyelashes flutter.

Dixie spins around and lies on her other side, across my feet. Her body warmth feels good against my socks. Doris gets out a
little case of dark wood from her handbag on the table. Inside is a cylinder and a plunger in glass and steel, as well as two needles embedded in purple silk. She gets it all out and goes to rinse it in water.

‘Do you have any spirit?’

‘In the cupboard. I’ll have one myself.’

I nod her in the right direction. The cupboard doors slam. She opens the bottle and fills two schnapps glasses with Kron. I put the recoil spring down and pick up the silver-grey pistol muzzle. I tear another page out of yesterday’s newspaper. There’s a snap when I open the lid of the gun oil.

Doris gives me one of the glasses and sits back down opposite me.

I knock back the drink. Doris dips one of the needles in her glass of schnapps. She removes her shoes, stands up and unclips one of her stockings, then sits down to roll it off. Dixie gets up and shuffles out of the kitchen.

The top of Doris’s foot is flecked with little purple scars.

‘This is strong stuff.’ She sits at the table and sucks some of the contents of the bottle into the syringe. ‘I’ll pass out for ten minutes but it’s not dangerous.’

‘As long as you know what you’re doing.’

Doris holds the syringe up against the lamp and slowly presses the air out. The glass makes a deadened sound when she flicks it with her nail. She pushes back the chair and puts up her bruised foot, gives the pin-pricked skin on top of her foot a good rub, then taps it gently to get the blood going. After dipping her forefinger in the schnapps glass and rubbing it into a spot just below her ankle, she injects herself and the skin sags for a moment under the downward pressure of the needle before it goes in.

‘Damn!’

She retracts the needle, again puts the tip of the needle against her skin and jabs it in. This time she hits it right. She tenses her lips and draws a few drops of blood into the cylinder before slowly injecting the contents into herself.

She rolls up her stocking halfway and puts her shoe back on. Her lips open. She exhales and straightens her back, still with the syringe in her hand. The stocking hangs like boot lining under her knee. For a moment she looks as if she wants to say something. Whatever it is, it remains unsaid.

She may as well have walked smack-dab into my right-handed punch. First her head falls hard backwards and then bounces against her breast. The empty syringe rolls away over the table. She takes a long breath.

Dixie’s claws come rattling across the floor; she lies down under Doris’s chair. Meanwhile, Doris’s arms hang down limply. I hold my breath for as long as she does. When at last she exhales, I reach across the table, take her schnapps glass, knock back its contents, then stand up and walk round the table. Dixie is growling under the chair. I reach down and Dixie sniffs my hand and then licks it. I lift Doris’s face up and give her a little shake. Her eyes are half closed, a thread of saliva hangs from her mouth. I wipe it off with my hand.

‘The best china,’ she slurs with a dark, dragging voice. I bend down and slide my arms under her knees and around her back. The white silk of her dress is soft against my hands. ‘And my best little brother.’ My back protests when I pick her up, despite the fact that she hardly weighs anything. Dixie follows as I carry her mistress over to the sleeping alcove.

‘It’s itching. It’s itching so terribly. Can you scratch me, Father?’ Her voice is still unnaturally deep. I start shivering.

I lay her on the bed and prop up her head with the down pillow. She’s breathing calmly. Dixie jumps up and lies at the foot of the bed. I check my pocket watch. Ten minutes, she said.

I’ve just put the Husqvarna together and checked that it works by cocking it, when I hear Dixie’s claws against the cork mat. Doris’s heels give off an irregular sound as she staggers about in there. It reminds me of the endless nights spent tapping the walls between the cells at Långholmen. She kicks off her shoes. I hear them striking the wall with a couple of dull thuds.

Soon she comes slowly into the kitchen again. She’s swaying alarmingly, and her eyes are glazed. I put my pistol down on the table and stand up in the nick of time. I catch her when she trips on the rag rug. Her body is limp and pliant. She laughs emptily. I heave her onto the chair and push it tight up against the table.

‘Harry, you bastard.’ Her voice is still as dark. Her head rolls languidly from side to side, like a boxer when the neck muscles have stopped working, just before he goes down. She grabs the big conch shell in the window. It smashes against the floor.

Her head stops. The fake eyelashes on the left side have come away and hang drunkenly. She’s lost one of her absinthe-green earrings. Her pupils are as small as one of the needle pricks in her foot.

‘You bastard. I think you’ve given me crabs.’

Before I have time to react I’m staring into the black barrel of the Husqvarna. It points all over the place but it’s not the first time she’s held a pistol. My fingers, gripping the edge of the table, turn white. I wish I hadn’t sat down. She’s slow. I’m quick, but I’m not as quick as I used to be.

‘Doris, for Christ’s sake! Let’s calm things down. There’s a bullet in the chamber.’

She makes a hollow laugh. ‘You like your pistol, don’t you!’

‘Christ’s sake, Doris!’

‘Lucky for you… I don’t… share a bed… with my husband.’

The sentence ends up too long and she makes a mess of it. The weight of the pistol makes her hand start shaking. I sigh and close my eyes, thinking about my daughter, Ida. I think about Lundin, Beda and the vicar, Gabrielsson. I think about Dixie. I think about my Ida.

There’s a gentle click when Doris cocks the trigger. I still have my eyes closed. My fingers firmly clutch the edge of the table. Every little muscle in my body is tensed up. Thoughts are racing through my mind: I wonder if she has finally understood who I am. Maybe it dawned on her at the bar earlier that evening.

I wait. She doesn’t squeeze the trigger. I drum up enough courage to start breathing again.

At long last I open my eyes when the Husqvarna slams onto the table. Her chin drops limply onto her breast, her hair gives a sudden shake, and her arms dangle from her shoulder sockets. I snatch up the pistol, release the cock with my thumb and flick the safety catch.

‘It’ll be such a long time till we see each other again. I don’t want to leave you, Harry. Not tonight,’ she slurs into the cleavage of her white evening dress.

I put the Husqvarna in my lap. Doris manages to lift her arm and put her hand in front of me on the table. I stare at her bony fingers and green nail varnish.

‘You have to get on with your Christmas preparations at home. And what would your husband say?’

‘Ludvig? He’s nothing to be concerned about. Nothing at all.’

‘Well you can’t stay here. I also have things to do. I’ll drive you home.’

I stand up and take a stiff pull of the schnapps bottle. Doris
lays both her arms on the table and buries her face in them. Dixie fusses along behind me while I’m collecting Doris’s clothes, which I leave by the door. I clip the leather leash to Dixie’s collar, the one with the red stones. She stands on her hind legs and waits, her front paws on the door.

By the time I’ve come back into the kitchen with her shoes, Doris has straightened up. My knees click as I squat by her feet. Her silk stocking is soft in my hand as I slowly roll it up. I fumble with the eyelets before finally managing to fix the stockings over her thighs. Doris takes my hand and guides it up between her legs. I feel her pubic hairs through the flimsy fabric of her panties.

‘Harry…?’

‘Not now. We need to get you home.’

‘I don’t care about myself. We can do it the way you like it. Any way you like,’ she drawls. I grunt and put the white, high-heeled shoes on her feet. She sobs and draws breath. ‘My earring. I can’t possibly go home without my earring.’

I look up. She’s tugging at her earlobe. Her fake eyelash flutters.

‘You’ve already got half your belongings here as it is. It’ll be fine.’

‘Out of the question. Ludvig would know something was up.’

I sigh and manage to do up the ankle straps with their tiny buckles. Doris’s breathing rattles as she struggles for air again. I stand up and walk out of the room. The green earring is between the pillows in the bed. I put it in my pocket.

I go out into the hall and put on my overcoat and hat while Dixie is jumping around my legs. I bend down, throw Doris’s coat over my shoulder and thread the loop of Dixie’s leash over my wrist.

When I come into the kitchen again, Doris has almost fallen asleep over the table. I poke her and she slowly lifts her head. One of her fake eyelashes is still hanging loose.

‘Hold still a second,’ I say, and pull it off between my thumb and forefinger. She doesn’t react.

I slide one arm under her knees and the other around her back. She puts her arms around my neck while I carry her out of the flat and down the stairs. Resting her face against my chest, she sighs with satisfaction, like a child.

‘You’re a headstrong bloke, Harry,’ she whispers hoarsely once we’re in the street. ‘That’s what made me give in to you at first. You didn’t give up when I played hard to get; you kept chasing me.’ She sighs again. She must have me confused with someone else.

I get the car door open. Dixie jumps in and curls up below the passenger seat. I heave Doris in and drape the coat over her. There’s a cold draught. When I close the car door I notice a big patch of saliva and lipstick on my white shirt piece.

Doris sobs all the way to Karlaplan, but she starts coming out of it as we turn off Narvavägen on the roundabout. She gets out a cigarette. We’ve hardly met a soul on the way, but when we turn into Linnégatan by the garrison building, we pass a Norwegian pony harnessed to an unused cart. The creamy yellow animal stands immobile in the cold under a streetlamp as though it were sleeping. There’s no sign of a driver. The scene fills me with disquiet.

‘I hope Bengta makes a better job of the Christmas food this year.’

I’m startled by the sudden sound of Doris’s slovenly voice. I stare at her, sitting there staring out of her window. Her reflection is bright when she lights her cigarette.

‘Bengta?’

‘The maid.’

‘Didn’t you say you always go away for Christmas?’

I turn into Strandvägen. We pass the red-brick monstrosity of the English Church, with the slanted gravestones scattered across its churchyard.

‘I didn’t go with them last year. I was ill, you see. Here it is.’

Doris points to a big dark villa rearing up behind a high white wall exactly where Nobelgatan and Strandvägen meet. I veer off towards the waters of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken, so we can come around at the front.

‘You can park in the street.’

I slow down. The white wall looks as if it’s just been re-painted. Quietly we glide past a pair of cast-iron gates. On each of the gates is a lit-up golden numeral: a two and a one. I peer through the bars. I remember walking past this house on the way to the World Exhibition a few years ago and wondering who lived here.

From the gates there’s a path leading up to the front steps. It has not been properly cleared of snow, and it’s bordered by lit lanterns, which make the surrounding crusted snow glitter at regular intervals. Four Greek columns around the main entrance hold up a terrace. The four-storey house is steeped in darkness. The small mullioned windows are entirely surrounded by Virginia creepers.

I stop behind an elegant company car, a Rolls Royce, some three or four metres to the left of the gates. When the sound of the powerful engine dies, the compartment is filled with silence. Doris crushes her cigarette in the ashtray but remains seated. Between the trees along the water’s edge one can make out the snow-covered ice of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken. Cut spruce branches have been thrown down in the snow to define the edges of the ice rink, but it’s been a few days since someone last cleared the snow.

I glance at Doris, who’s staring at the coat in her lap. I get out, walk round the car, and open her door. Dixie jumps out onto the ice-covered pavement, twitching her cropped ears. I offer Doris my hand, and she gets out laboriously. She puts on her coat and I give her Dixie’s leash. Doris straightens her back with a sigh, sooty black rings of mascara standing out around her eyes. She pats her hair.

‘See you on Christmas Day, Harry. Take care of yourself till then.’ She leans in towards me and misses my mouth.

I peer up at the dark house while fishing for a Meteor in my pocket. ‘It’s only a couple of days.’

Doris nods, turns around and heads for the gates, swaying slightly as she goes. Dixie whines and slides along behind her for a metre or so, before getting up on all fours. Doris’s right heel abruptly folds inwards when she steps on a patch of ice. She mutters indistinctly and continues through the gate while scratching her shoulder.

I look around. The spiky auras of the stars are shredding the black December night. Across the ice, I see the radiant lights of Sirishov, where Wallenberg lives, in the darkness. The imposing house is even bigger than the Steiner’s place. Wallenberg and Steiner could more or less call out to each other across the water if they wanted to. I don’t read the business pages very attentively, but for some reason I don’t think either of the finance magnates would want to do that.

I have probably a two-hour walk ahead of me through the dead city. I take a few steps and glance up at the house again. Then I recoil.

On the top floor, a dark figure is standing in a dimly lit room. He’s a short, squat bloke, his outline hazily defined by the light behind him. His face is faintly illuminated when he
draws on a cigar. He seems to be looking directly at me. I think he’s smiling.

I put my Meteor in my mouth and look down at my shirt, while fumbling with the buttons of my jacket and overcoat. Doris’s lipstick gleams over my chest like the bull’s eye of a marksman’s target.

It’s about ten o’clock at night a few days later, and it’s been some time since the snow was last brushed off the statue of Berzelius in the little park in front of Bern’s Club. By Nybroplan, the pavilion with Aerotransport’s travel agency has been closed. On the quays of Strandvägen, the bent silhouettes of the cranes lean over the ice. This is where the Roslag skiffs usually reverse in stern first to unload firewood. The snow has stopped falling for a while, and the sky is clear and starry.

It’s the day before Christmas. In the famous song, this was the spot where the guardsman and the Stockholm maid first met, but that must have been in summer. Now the park lies deserted. When the bugle sounds in a few hours and the sentries stop the sailors from going back to Skeppsholmen and the garrisons have closed for the night, the whole place will be crawling with recruits looking for somewhere to spend the night. Not for nothing is the pontoon linking Berzelii Park with Skeppsholmen known as the Last Hope. Probably Zetterberg used to hang around here a good deal.

I sit on my bicycle between Mille’s granite sculpture of playing bears by the east entrance to the park wearing an oversized beret, long johns, baggy trousers with an elastic waistband, a singlet, a shirt and a knitted tennis jumper under my sports blazer and overcoat. And still I’m cold.

A bloke in a top hat in a group heading towards Bern’s stops and asks for a light. His cigar smells more expensive than my own. Although there’s a lull now, it’s been snowing heavily all day. I counted six snowmen as I cycled through the park earlier. Under Tornberg’s clock, at the front of the Royal National Theatre, a well-dressed gentleman paces back and forth, rubbing his hands together. In the distance is a green urinal with a glass ceiling. It’s of the French model, with walls that do not quite reach the ground. A couple of plain-clothes goons, public decency officers, have been circling the urinal since I arrived fifteen minutes ago. They walk up to it at regular intervals, get down on all fours and look under the wall. They almost always work in pairs: recruits from the Svea Life Guards, horse guardsmen from K1 and the boys from the Marine Corps are rarely cooperative.

But the goons don’t seem willing to give up on this one. In Humlegården there are more pissoirs and they’re warmer too. I throw my leg over the bike and start pedalling, still with the cigar in my mouth. The pistol jangles against my ribs with every push of the pedal. I think about Doris at home, just a few hundred metres away, busy with Christmas preparations. It’s a relief to be rid of her for a few days. I’m doing a couple of jobs for Wernersson and, as usual, I’m having Christmas luncheon with Lundin. When we see each other again, she may be in better spirits and also willing to do without the syringe.

It doesn’t take long. By the side of the telephone booth, a short distance in under the bare trees, I can make out the urinal on the corner between Humlegårdsgatan and Sturegatan. I smile to myself. I have many happy memories from here. The snow billows around me as I apply the brakes.

Really it’s more of a rank-smelling wooden house than a urinal. The frozen, gold-glittering spike of water in the gutter has been
perforated at various points by jets of body-warm urine. Bill posters have been put up on the ceiling, all slightly wonky. They’re so old that it’s no longer possible to read what’s written on them. The messages on the walls, carved with knives, are easier to decipher. Here, swastikas sit alongside spiteful remarks and pick-up lines. One of them says,
I fornicate better with my thing than the King
.

I’m on my way out when I run into Göteborgs-Olga.

‘Oh, Kvisten!’

Göteborgs-Olga is wearing an overcoat with a broad belt that’s done up a touch too tight. His hair spills out from under his hat and almost reaches his collar. Like nearly all park queens, he uses a female nickname. He tells everyone that he works at the theatre, but as far as I know he’s nothing more than an unpaid prompter.

‘Wasn’t exactly yesterday!’ He pushes the flat of his hand into my chest.

‘Olga!’ I stop. ‘You old bitch!’

‘Bitch
yourself
!’ Olga points his finger at me and throws back his head, laughing so hard that he drops his hat.

I bend down and pick it up. I’ve missed this place.

‘Oh, Kvisten, always
such
a gentleman!’ Olga smiles and opens his eyes wide while he puts the hat back on his head. ‘Tell me now! Why are you loitering here in midwinter?’

‘I’m looking for a bloke. By name of Zetterberg.’

‘Oh it’s
always
like that! Bloke looking for a bloke and the girl has to go home on her
own
!’ Olga puts his fists on his hips and struts about a bit in the snow in front of the urinal. In the background, a man who seems in a hurry suddenly stops as he’s making his way into the park, and turns around.

‘Have you ever met someone called Zetterberg? One of his eyes is a different colour from the other. Elegant type, bit of a snob, between thirty and forty. A large signet ring of gold.’

‘Elegant, you say? You
know what
? In that case I’d rather do without!’

‘Well, I’ll make a loop round the park and ask about.’ I squeeze his arm.

‘Oh but do let
me
come with!’ Olga puts his arms around me. ‘I can show you Humlan in her winter clothes.’ He whispers into my ear: ‘I know all her hiding places, every nook and cranny!
Come
, let me be your Virgil!’

He tugs at my arm and I push him away. I don’t know who Virgil might be, but I assume that Olga prefers it in the Greek manner. I doff my cap by way of a farewell, and stroll off into the park.

I walk round Humlegården for about half an hour, seeking information. I wander between the Royal Library and the gentlemen’s toilets, up around Linné’s statue and down the sheer, icy slopes of Klara Hill where the kids have compacted the snow with their sledges. On spring evenings, bluebells and crocuses fill the slopes and there are considerably more friends about. But in spite of all, I do run into the odd acquaintance. The hoar frost lies thick on the branches of the trees. There’s not a sod anywhere who’s heard of someone called Zetterberg.