The Quarry

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 Malmo 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 Malmo … there’s something I have to do. But I’ll be back tomorrow night.’

50

It was just an ordinary weekend in the city when he reached Malmo. 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 Malmo, 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.

On the glass counter at the far side of the room stood an old metal till, and behind it a woman was sitting on a tall bar stool filing her nails. She was about thirty, dressed in a tight black dress and high, shiny leather boots. Her eyes were black with kohl and her hair was long, red and glossy, but it looked like a wig. Per assumed that most things were fake in this establishment.

Behind the counter was a staircase leading down to the cellar, with a beaded curtain at the bottom. Per could hear the thump of music and a woman’s long-drawn-out moans, but the tone was metallic and tinny, like a film soundtrack. It was almost exactly the same as the background noise he had heard on the telephone on two occasions, but he still didn’t know who had called, or why.

Per went over to the woman. She put down the nail file and smiled at him.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi there, darling. Would you like to go down into the den of debauchery?’

‘Maybe. How much is it?’

‘Five hundred.’

That was three hundred kronor more than Per had on him.

‘Five hundred,’ he said, ‘just to get in?’

‘Not just to get in, darling,’ said the woman, smiling even more broadly. ‘You get a big surprise down there!’

‘Do I indeed. And is it worth five hundred?’

She winked at him. ‘Men usually seem to think so.’

‘Have you worked here long?’

‘Quite a long time,’ she said. ‘Are you going to …’

‘How long?’

He was trying to ask questions in the same firm tone as Lars Marklund, the police officer.

The woman stopped smiling. ‘Six months. Are you going to pay?’

‘Who owns this place?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Some guys.’ She held out her hand with its long, red nails. ‘Five hundred, please.’

Per took out his wallet to keep her interested, but didn’t open it. ‘I’d like to speak to one of the owners.’

The woman didn’t respond.

Eventually he opened his wallet and took out the two hundred he had, along with a piece of paper. ‘Ring me!’ he wrote underneath his telephone number, and signed it ‘Per