‘I said, enough.’
‘Found guilty on only three occasions. Short sentences. The first time… Let’s see. Yes, for “causing serious injury”.’
‘Shut the fuck up!’
Sven jumped, didn’t recognise the face of the man who was shouting at him. Ewert was often loud and aggressive in Sven’s presence, but his anger was normally directed at someone else. This time was different.
Ewert turned away, marched over to the cassette player. The ancient apparatus started up again, playing the same tape.
Yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool.
I told myself it’s best that I forget you.
Ewert listened and Siw’s voice cooled his rage. I can’t take much more, he thought. It could all end here and now. At this moment in time. Jochum Lang was one of those villains who had kept him at it for thirty-three years, nose to the grindstone and never a thought of stopping, of drawing breath, until the sentence had been pronounced. If he couldn’t nail scum like him by now, he might as well give up. Drop it, go home and dare to live. During the last year, thoughts of this kind had bothered him; he dismissed them, but they came back, more distinct, more often.
Sven sat down in front of him, touched his chin, pulled his fingers through his blond fringe.
‘Look, Grens…’
Ewert raised his finger.
‘Shush.’
Another minute.
And there are no exceptions to the rule.
Yes, everybody’s somebody’s fool.
Sven waited. Siw stopped singing. Ewert looked up.
Suddenly Ewert spoke.
‘What is it, then?’
‘Look, it’s just a thought. Aspsеs prison. And Hilding Oldйus. You know who I mean, that emaciated junkie. The one I’m about to question.’
Ewert nodded. He knew exactly who Hilding Oldйus was.
‘We know Oldйus was inside at the same time as Lang,’ Sven went on. ‘And we know they got friendly, as friendly as anyone can get with a lunatic hard man like Lang. Hilding crawled to him, produced some home-brew early on; it had been hidden in a fire extinguisher. They were nearly put in the slammer at one point when a guard caught them at it, pissed out of their heads.’
‘Right. Hilding laid on the brew and Jochum gave him protection in return.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And what was your idea?’
‘After questioning Oldйus about the washing powder, then we’ll talk about Lang. Let him help us get him.’
The music had stopped. No more Siw. Ewert looked around the room, though there wasn’t much to see. It was small and, apart from the cassette player and the tape rack, totally impersonal. Everything was regulation issue. Pale wood furniture, bits and pieces identical to the furnishings in the Inland Revenue offices on Göt Street and the National Insurance building in Gustavsberg. Impersonal or not, he spent more time in the room than anywhere else, from dawn to dusk, and later too. Quite often he didn’t go home at night, preferring to sleep on the sofa by the window. It was small in relation to his big body, but it didn’t matter. Oddly enough, he slept well here, much better than in his proper bed. Here he escaped the sleepless nights, the endless hours battling with the dark that plagued him in his own flat, where he could never find peace. Sometimes he didn’t go home for weeks on end, without understanding what kept him away.
‘Oldйus and Lang, eh? I don’t think so. They exist in parallel worlds. Oldйus is hooked on heroin. It’s all he wants. Lang is a criminal, not a junkie, even if he has pissed classified substances at Aspsеs once or twice. And that’s that. They have nothing in common, not outside.’
Sven shifted about in the visitor’s chair, then leaned back and sighed. Suddenly he seemed tired.
Ewert looked intently at his friend.
He recognised what it was: resignation, hopelessness.
He thought about Oldйus. He had no time for people like that, small-time junkies who picked holes in their noses. Life was too short and there were too many idiots.
‘OK. What the fuck. One nutter more or less. We can always ask him about Lang. Can’t do any harm.’
A shiny brand-new car crept towards the large gate in the grey wall. The kind of car that would smell of leather upholstery and pristine wooden dashboard if you opened one of the front doors.
Jochum Lang spotted it as soon as he had passed through central security and started to cross the yard. He hadn’t talked to them and hadn’t asked for a car, but he understood all the same: they would be waiting outside, that was part of the deal.
He nodded a greeting and the man at the wheel nodded in response.
The engine ticked over while Jochum gave the finger to the security camera and pissed against the concrete wall. No hurry, the car was waiting and nothing disturbed his ritual. All the time in the world to finish having a piss, show the finger again and drop his trousers down, as the gate slowly swung shut behind him. Somehow, he wasn’t really free until he’d done it, pissed on the wall, shown the guards his arse. He knew it was childish and pointless, but with his freedom came the urge to prove that none of those bastards could humiliate him any more and that, after two years and four months, he was the one who’d do the humiliating.
He walked over to the car, opened the passenger door and got in. They stared at each other in silence, without knowing why.
Slobodan looked older. At thirty-five his long hair was already going grey at the temples, he’d grown a thin moustache that was also tinged with grey, and there were new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Jochum tapped lightly on the windscreen.
‘New car. Traded up, I see.’
Slobodan looked pleased.
‘Sure thing. What do you think?’
‘Too flash.’
‘It’s not mine. It’s Mio’s.’
‘Last time you were driving one you’d just nicked. Started it up with a screwdriver. Suited you better.’
The car moved off smoothly, just light pressure on the gas.
Jochum Lang took the train ticket from his trouser pocket, tore it up and threw it out the window, shouting abuse loudly in a broad Uppsala dialect, roaring about what he thought of the prison service’s parting gifts, not fit to wipe the shit off your arse, and let the pieces blow away in the strong wind. Slobodan was talking on his mobile, which had been ringing for a while. He accelerated, leaving the gate and the high, grey wall behind them. Then, after a minute or two, the rain started up, the windscreen wipers going slowly at first, then faster.
‘I’m not picking you up because I wanted to. Mio asked me to do it.’
‘Ordered you.’
‘Whatever. He wants to see you as soon as.’
Jochum was a big man, broad-shouldered, who took up a lot of car space. Shaved head, a scar from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. Some poor sod had tried to defend himself with a razor. Jochum talked with his hands, waving them about when he was upset.
‘Look, last time I did something for him, I ended up here.’
They left the narrow prison drive and moved out on to a wider road that was quite busy already, people on the way to work.
‘You took the rap, sure. But we looked after you, and your family. Right?’
Slobodan Dragovic turned to Jochum smiling, showing off poor-quality dental work, as he answered his phone, which was ringing again. Jochum stared silently straight ahead, absently following the wipers as they spread the water over the windscreen. Right enough. A total screw-up when he’d done a cash collection and that fucking witness who should’ve known better, who talked and pointed until the court passed a sentence. He followed the paths of the raindrops, thinking that he knew all the hazards, but shit happens, that’s true enough. Mio was always close at hand, watching him with borrowed eyes and ears every morning when he woke up and looked around his cell, looking out for him, looking out, that’s what they did.