Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

I saw a missed call from Rebecka and rang her back. A commuter train slowly pulled out of the station, a lit worm on the way north.

“I need to know who saw John this evening,” I said.

“Are you out in the city now?”

“I’m at the station. Who saw him?”

She didn’t respond. She knew the answer; actually, this meant my assignment was over. Everything depended on silence. If she had broken that silence, she’d be in big trouble now. I wonder if she understood this, really understood what it meant.

“I’m going home,” I said. “Nice to have met you.”

“Wait!” she shouted.

“For what?”

“John was the one,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“John was the one who called.”

“So you’re telling me that your missing John called and let you know where he was?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was worried.”

“Ha-ha.”

“It’s not a joke. Somebody’s after him. Somebody’s looking for him.”

“I’m looking for him.”

“He doesn’t know about you.”

“So what made him think this?”

“We didn’t... he didn’t have a chance to tell me. He hung up. He’d called from a prepaid mobile phone. It’s dead now.”

It’s always the past, I thought. Nobody can ever escape the shadows of the past. It was a banal thought, but still true.

Perhaps she really was crazy, my client Rebecka. Perhaps John only existed in her mind. But if there were a real John wandering around the streets of Birkastan and somebody else was following him, I’d be out half a million Swedish kronor.

“So I won’t go home,” I said. “Where are you?”

“A pizzeria on a side street. The only place that’s open.”

“Degiulio’s. You’ve been following me.”

“No,” she lied.

“I’ll meet you there,” I said.

John lived on Drejargatan, on the second floor. As soon as Rebecka had left my office I’d gone straight there and rung the doorbell. Nobody opened. The last name Beijer was on a sign on the apartment door. Nothing else. Now I was standing there once more. I rang the bell again. It was pretty late. John’s wife ought to be home if she were in Stockholm, but nobody opened the door.

I took out my skeleton key. The lock clicked and I pushed the door open. The lights of the city illuminated the hallway like a spotlight. I could smell the silence. I took my gun from my shoulder holster, followed the artificial light down the hallway into a room, glimpsed the contours of something, walked closer, saw it was a body. She lay on the sofa with an arm over the side as if she were resting, waiting for nightfall, but night was over for her, and day too, and all the other days forever and ever, amen. One day we all will die, but we have to live those remaining days and nights still left us. Her big day had already arrived. I touched her arm and it was cool, not cold; she’d died today, shot in the throat. The wound resembled a scarf which should protect from the cold, but it was warm in the room. From the heat, I saw condensation collecting on the window facing the street; I saw the woman’s face, still beautiful even in its death grimace, and I didn’t even know her name.

John, I thought. John, did you do this?

In the small V-shaped park between Drejargatan and Birkagatan, I saw a shape sitting on one of the benches. I knew there were ten benches altogether. They were green in the daylight.

“Who’s there?” the silhouette asked. I recognized the voice.

“Kempinsky,” I said.

“What are you doing out here this late?”

“And what are you doing, Arne?”

“Just waiting to go to bed.”

I walked closer. Arne was one of the homeless guys in our neighborhood. He was visible now, under the light of the streetlamp, the skin of his face already showing the tightness that makes alcoholics in the last stage of the disease start to appear Asian.

“If things ever calm down around here,” Arne said. “No privacy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m staying up here,” he said.

“What do you mean by if things ever calm down ?” I asked.

“People coming and going,” he said. “Damned traffic.”

“Under the bridge?” I asked.

“Where else?”

When I got back to Degiulio’s, Maria had already placed the chairs on top of the tables. She was alone in the restaurant.

“Was there a woman here?” I asked. “She was supposed to wait for me.”

“Nobody’s come in since you left,” she replied. “Since you left the last time, I mean.”

“Yeah, I come and go.” I called Rebecka’s number. No answer. I didn’t leave a message either. I stepped outside again.

The arches beneath the Sankt Eriksgatan Bridge are a popular spot for the homeless to sleep. Walking twenty yards in, I was overwhelmed by the stench of urine and shit and filth, dust and damp cement, illness, death. I saw not a single person; only God and the devil knew what was hiding in the shadows. Nothing moved. The place was lit by naked bulbs from a few fixtures built into the walls; the cast was blue like a dead iris. A toilet of broken porcelain — Rörstrand — stood in the middle of the shitty cement floor. Yet another incomprehensible tableau that spoke to me. In the distance, I could see discarded gym equipment twisted in awkward positions.

Graffiti covered the bare walls. Rough pictures, rough words, messages from a world beneath the underworld. There’s a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure, ’cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.

A word can have more than two meanings, I thought, words are just the surface layer. I walked over to read something resembling a headline: EXTRA! EXTRA! Entire Cat Family Missing! Has the Collector Struck Again? It meant nothing to me. It was a joke or maybe it wasn’t a joke. It was a headline that fit this environment. The Collector existed in the real reality’s unreality. Everything smelled like paranoia here, fear, desperate words, desperate situations, but the answers were not there, just the insane questions. Ozzy Osbourne had searched his entire life and what did he find? I can’t see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind. He was singing my song too, one of the blind seers.

I thought I heard something to my left. I turned. Could be a cat, could be the Collector. Hundreds of painted faces covered the walls over there, like a Warhol work, all black-and-white, men and women. It was as if I had stepped into an art gallery, and perhaps I had, as it had been months since I was down here last, and everything around me might have been classified as art while I was aboveground. They all seemed to watch me, their eyes following me, the old optical trick painters have played with for thousands of years. I walked closer. One of the faces farthest to the right was a little bit smaller than the others; it had a different black-and-white nuance. It was still, but not as still as a painting. I saw the outline of a body and a pair of shoes on the ground.

“John?” I said.

No answer. The eyes stared at me. They seemed less real now, as if they were part of the collage. I blinked, and the face was still there when I glanced again. I felt the weight of my Colt Peacemaker in my holster, as I always did when my senses were on full alert, when things were reaching their end. Perhaps this was not the best weapon for my purposes, but it was the fourth version of the SAA, adapted to a new world.

“Peter Kempinsky here,” I said. “You can come out.”

“Who the hell are you?” the face asked. It flowed out from the shadows. “Why are you persecuting me?”

He was a few yards away. A man my age, about my height, wearing a suit like mine, nice features, we could have been friends if it weren’t for Rebecka.