sleeping body.
24
At a quarter past eleven Waldemar Ekenberg pulls up outside a run-down workshop on the Tornby industrial estate.
It has finally stopped raining, but the low, drifting clouds almost seem to be licking the shabby corrugated roof, where large flakes of red-brown plastic paint are flapping in the wind.
There is no sign above the two large, black garage doors, but Waldemar knows what’s concealed inside: a car mechanic’s workshop where no cars are ever repaired. The entire thing is a front for laundering money from various criminal activities. But the man behind it, Brutus Karlsson, is a smart bastard that they’ve never managed to get for anything worse than actual bodily harm.
Waldemar gets out of the car.
Walks calmly towards the workshop and knocks on one of the doors, hears steps approaching within.
It makes sense to use someone like Brutus, use him to get information. Several times he’s actually pointed Waldemar in the right direction, when they’ve had a case involving one of his competitors. Brutus Karlsson’s honour among thieves goes no further than people on the same side as him.
‘Open up!’ Waldemar shouts. ‘Open up!’
Brutus will recognise my voice, he thinks, and there’s a mechanical sound as the door slides up.
‘You?’ Brutus Karlsson says. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
The man in front of him, in jeans and a leather jacket, is short but broad-shouldered, and Waldemar knows perfectly well that there’s violence in that body. There are rumours that Brutus Karlsson was behind several severe beatings in the underworld. Amongst other things, he’s supposed to have crushed the spine of some bloke from Poland.
Brutus Karlsson’s face is broad, and there’s a scar across his nose that doesn’t sit well with his blond hair.
‘Can I come in.’
A question, yet not a question.
Behind Brutus Karlsson in the shabby garage stand three men of Slavic appearance. They’re all wearing Adidas tracksuits and seem to have very little to offer society.
Waldemar steps inside.
The garage door closes behind him.
In the centre of the workshop stands a table surrounded by six chairs. There are a few tools on a workbench, but there’s no smell of oil or petrol, just damp.
Waldemar thinks it’s best to get straight to the point.
‘Jerry Petersson,’ he says. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’
Karlsson looks at him.
‘And who the hell is that?’
‘You know who,’ Waldemar says, taking a step closer to him.
The three Slavs move closer, their eyes darkening, and Waldemar sees one of them clench his fists.
‘So you come waltzing in here with your arrogant pig’s attitude, asking about some fucking bastard?’ Karlsson says.
‘Jerry Petersson.’
‘I know who he is. Don’t you think I read the papers?’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
Waldemar takes a quick step forward and takes a firm grip of Karlsson’s jaw with one hand.
‘Stop playing so fucking tough, you little shit. Do you know if Jerry Petersson had any dealings with anyone on your side of the law?’
The Slavs hesitate, waiting for a signal from Karlsson, and with his free hand Waldemar pulls his pistol from the holster beneath his jacket.
‘OK, OK,’ Karlsson says in a slurred voice. ‘I can assure you of one thing. Petersson had nothing to do with anyone on this side anywhere around here. If someone like him had been involved, I’d have known about it. Let go, for fuck’s sake.’
And Waldemar lets go, takes a step back and puts his pistol back in the holster, and as he is snapping it shut he realises his mistake. One of the Slavs flies at him and Waldemar feels a fist hit him over one eye, and he falls to the filthy grey-painted floor of the workshop. The three Slavs hold him down, their breath smells sourly of garlic and all he can see is their unshaven cheeks.
Karlsson’s scarred face above Waldemar.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are? Coming here like this. Throwing your weight about. Do your colleagues even know you’re here?’
And Waldemar feels fear grip his stomach, no one knows where he is, anything could happen now.
‘They know where I was going. They’ll be here if I’m not back within an hour.’
Karlsson gestures with his head, and the Slavs let go of Waldemar.
‘Get up,’ he says.
Then Waldemar is standing facing him, the Slavs in a circle around them.
An arm flies out and Waldemar ducks instinctively, but the blow hits him on the cheek. Then another, to his left eye.
‘What the fuck are you doing, beating up a cop?’ Waldemar shouts.
‘Listen,’ Karlsson says. ‘I’ve got enough shit on you to get you put away. I can dig out a dozen men you’ve beaten up in the course of your duties.’
Two quick punches.
A burning pain and Waldemar spits, realises he has to get out of there, have a cigarette.
‘Fuck off now, pig,’ Karlsson says, and behind him Waldemar hears the door rattle, and thinks, fucking hell, how long before I can retire?
Malin and Zeke have picked up the car from outside Hamlet, and now they’re waiting outside a room in Aleryd Care Home while the nurses change Ake Petersson’s incontinence pad.
Zeke didn’t ask about the car and Malin was glad he didn’t, the last thing she wants is a stern lecture.
From inside the room they hear groaning, but no whining, no cross words. The walls of the corridor are painted white, stencilled with pink flowers. A clock with a white face and black hands sticks out from the wall. It says 2.20, and Malin can feel the pizza she’s just eaten at the Conya pizzeria churning in her stomach. But the fat has soothed her hangover and she can’t feel any grimier than she already does. Must go to the gym, she thinks. Sweat all the crap out.
Thank God Zeke hasn’t mentioned what she told him yesterday, about leaving Janne again.
The smell here.
Ammonia and disinfectant, cheap perfume and excrement, and the odour that slowly dying old people give off.
A man in a wheelchair is staring out at the rain through a window at the end of the corridor. It stopped a while ago, but not for long. How much can it actually rain?
Then the door opens. A young blonde nurse shows them in. In the bed, its top end propped up, sits a thin man with a chiselled face, and Malin thinks that he looks like his son, his dead son, and what would have happened if Tove died, if she had died in the flat in Finspang more than a year ago?
Everything would be over.
But in the man’s watery, grey, alcoholic’s eyes there is no grief, just loneliness. He has one hand clenched into a stroke-victim’s claw, his right hand, so maybe he can still talk, but what if he’s mute, what if he has trouble distinguishing dreams from reality? What do they do with the conversation then?
One of his eyes, on his lame side, seems blind, fixed in its socket, a broken, rigid camera, only capable of
