Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

“They say one of the condemned refused his drink and told them he’d come back for it. Of course, he didn’t.”

“My wife... she’s in that way.” The youth’s voice could hardly be heard.

“How far along?”

“Seven months.”

“Let’s drink to her health. Skål! ”

Both men throw back their drinks. Hickan pulls at a corner of the sackcloth and opens it, revealing a revolver. It’s black with a grip made from light wood. Right beneath the drum there’s something stamped in Cyrillic letters as well as the year: 1915 . Hickan places his huge hand over it.

“Do you know why Belzén trusted you with this job?”

“Because I know every bay and inlet in all the islands and know all the good hiding places.”

“Like pretty much every other inhabitant of the archipelago.”

“So why did he trust me?”

“Because your brother vouched for you. He’s worked for us for years. It’s the only way to get into our little organization. Would you say that you’ve let him down?”

“Perhaps I have.”

“As well as us?”

“Maybe so.”

Hickan runs his hand over the hard contours of the revolver. Outside it is starting to rain. The first drops hit the dirty pub windowpanes. Night has fallen.

“I have two daughters myself. The youngest just started elementary school. It seems like yesterday when I held her in my arms for the first time.”

Hickan holds up his huge hand. Between the middle finger and the ring finger, a wide scar runs all the way down his palm. He laughs.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them. A man who can’t take care of his family is not a real man at all.”

The rain is picking up. It hits the tar-papered roof with an intense clatter, like the riveting machines had made earlier. The revolver scrapes against the tabletop as Hickan pushes it toward the youth.

“Don’t you agree?”

The youth smiles quickly and he puts his hand on the revolver. Hickan nods.

“It’s a Nagant. You have seven bullets, no more, no less.”

The youth nods eagerly. He takes the revolver and stuffs it under his belt, pulling his shabby jacket tight around his body. He clears his throat. “I won’t disappoint Belzén again.”

“Make sure you don’t.”

“Who’s the mark?”

“One of our own. A piece of crap brazen enough to steal an entire truckload right from under our noses. We’ll send you his name in a few days.”

“I don’t know if I—”

“As we see it, you don’t have a choice.”

The youth nods and pulls his wallet from his pocket. Hickan raises his huge palm.

“No, it’s on the house.”

The youth nods, pushes the chair away from the table, and stands up. The two men shake hands.

“So, you’ll hear from me in a few days.”

The youth pulls up his collar and with his fist outside his coat he leaves the pub. Hickan fills his glass and rolls himself another cigarette. He doesn’t notice the cockroach climbing up one of the table legs.

Almost immediately, the bartender and the girl come back in through the back door. The girl is carrying the tomcat in her arms. The rain has left dark patches on their clothes and has plastered their hair to their heads. The bartender runs his hand over his walrus mustache, shakes the liquid from his hand, and then makes his way across the sawdust. He has a slight limp. He sits down across from Hickan and brushes his hand over the table before he starts to speak.

“You scared away all my other customers!”

“They’ll be back.”

“So, did you tell him the Hamburg Cellars story?”

“Works every time.”

The bartender’s laughter echoes throughout the bar. He’s missing a few of his upper teeth. He runs his hand through his hair. The cockroach climbs over the edge and stands on the table, its long antennae sweeping back and forth.

“As I told you, I contacted Belzén a few days ago. We’re running out of inventory and I need a delivery as soon as possible.”

“I understand. Unfortunately, we have a break in our supply lines at the moment.”

Hickan picks up his newspaper and rolls it tightly and laughs. “That kid?”

He raises the newspaper over his head. “We can stand to lose a few hundred liters overboard. But his brother is a piece of crap...” Hickan smashes the cockroach with his newspaper, then turns it over to survey the mangled remains. He wipes them off on the edge of the table as he lowers his voice. “Did he really believe he could make off with one of our trucks? And get off scot-free?”

The bartender laughs and twirls his mustache. “So they’ll both learn a lesson.”

“It was Belzén’s idea. Business is business.”

The bartender nods, pulls the cork from the bottle, and fills both glasses.

Outside the bar, the youth sees Rörstrandsgatan is nearly deserted. The factory workers have all hurried home through the rain. An old woman with a scarf over her hair waddles out of the general store at the corner of Birkagatan. She peers up at the rainy sky. From the wicker basket under her arm the necks of milk bottles with their patent corks and rolled-up cones of newspaper poke out.

The youth with the cleft palate walks along, his collar up and his shoulders bent. A horse and open wagon go past. Empty beer bottles rattle, while the ragged hooves plod along on the cobblestones. From down near Sankt Eriksgatan Square, a streetcar bell rings. The youth glances around as he crosses the street. A train blows its horn on its way to Central Station.

Behind him, the city is cloaked in darkness from the rain and smoke from kitchen fires. He comes upon a lamplighter, an old man wearing a moth-eaten military coat and carrying his long pole over his shoulder. The guy stops by one of the square gas lanterns to light it. The gas socket hisses and its tongue of flame flares in vain against the glass, unable to escape. The yellow light reveals the old man’s wrinkled face, reflected in the puddles below.

The youth lets his gaze follow the row of streetlights that look to him like lighthouses out in the archipelago leading the way into the city. He puts his hand into his coat, clutches the cold revolver, and sticks out his chest before continuing south.

His upper lip, cleft in two, gapes as he smiles.

Translated by Laura A. Wideburg

Gröndal

I was busy with another murder when my cell phone rang unexpectedly. In media res or in flagrante delicto or whatever the proper technical term may be. The victim was a young woman, yet another of all these young women who have to die, and unfortunately she also had a rather striking resemblance to my famous ex, Anette. I had my priorities, so I ignored the call. Not answering the phone makes one look busy and important these days, I told myself, and kept my hands hovering over the keyboard. I’m a writer.

That’s another thing I kept telling myself. A crime writer. I knew that status was far from reality. At the moment, I was a minor criminal who’d worked in advertising. I was nobody.

Still, these were my words on the smudged laptop screen:

The victim was a woman of around twenty years old. Commissioner Almqvist studied her naked body, and thought she was, or rather had been, everything a modern man could reasonably, or unreasonably, desire in a young woman. She was thin, but not unnaturally so, and her breasts were larger than you’d expect with a body like hers. Large, light-blue eyes, which could no longer see. Oval face, narrow nose, small mouth. A bit above average in height, in good shape, but not too muscular. The paleness of the corpse was the only flaw, except for marks from one or more hard punches to her left cheekbone. Otherwise, light-blond hair which you could tell was natural from both her partially shaven pubic area and the roots of her hair. Someone had cut off the victim’s long hair and used it to tie her to a wooden chair — the chair was an Eva design by Bruno Mathsson, something Almqvist knew, since his wife had an expensive interest in classical Scandinavian functionalism. A catheter was inserted below her left breast, which appeared to have been used to empty the blood from her body. Almqvist had, as the expression goes, never seen anything like it.