It wasn’t a very exciting story. Routine police work, see page seven. Tomorrow, another page, another policeman.
But he was smiling. The policeman in the picture was smiling, and Lydia cried with hate.
The Plain was packed with them, speed freaks who couldn’t get enough. Needed more.
Hilding made for the stairs to Drottning Street, where he usually hung out, and stood a few steps up. Easier to spot him there. He didn’t give a toss about the pigs with their telephoto lenses. Fuck them.
She was waiting by the metro entrance. Tiny chick, smallest brownie customer he knew. No more than one metre fifty tall. She wasn’t old, not even twenty and ugly with it. Big tangled hair, a greasy sweater. She must’ve been using for three or four days and now she was going off her head. Randy as hell too; all she wanted was to shoot up and fuck and shoot up and fuck. He knew her name was Mirja and she spoke with a foreign accent that made it hard to understand what she was on about and it was fucking impossible when she was really freaked out; it was like her mouth couldn’t cope any more.
‘You got it?’
His grin was mean. ‘Got what?’
‘You know. Some.’
‘What? Fucking what?’
‘A gram?’
Christ, what a slag. Speed and shagging. Hilding straightened his back, checked out the Plain. The cops were taking no notice.
‘Crystal or ordinary sulphate?’
‘Ordinary. Three hundred.’
She started rooting inside one of her shoes, near the laces, pulled out a wad of crumpled notes and handed him three.
‘Like, just ordinary.’
Mirja had been on a bender for almost a week. She hadn’t eaten, just had to have more, more, more, needed to get away from what seemed like high-voltage circuitry inside her head, thoughts that hummed and pulled her brain this way and that, making it hurt, like high-voltage shocks.
She walked away from Hilding as fast as she could, away from the Drottning Street steps, past the statue in front of the church and into the cemetery.
She heard the people she passed talking about her. Such loud voices, and it was scary, the way they knew everything, all her secrets. They talked and talked, but soon they’d stop and go away, at least for a few minutes.
Mirja was in a hurry now, sat down on the seat nearest the gate, slipped her bag from her shoulder, took out a Coke bottle half filled with water, held it in one hand and a syringe in the other. She drew the water up into the syringe and then squirted it into the plastic bag.
She was crazy for it; she had waited for so long. She didn’t notice that the contents in the bag foamed a little.
Smiling, she drew up the solution, put the needle in place and held it still for a moment.
She had done this so many times before – the tie round the arm, find a vein, pull back blood into the syringe, shoot up.
The pain was instant.
She stood up quickly, cried out but her voice didn’t carry. She tried to pull back what she had already injected. The vein had swollen up already, an almost centimetre-high ridge running from wrist to elbow.
Then the pain passed and her skin went black, as the washing powder had corroded the blood vessel.
TUESDAY 4 JUNE
Jochum Lang was not asleep. The last night was always the worst.
It was the smell. When the key turned in the lock for the last time, it always hit him: the small cells all smelt the same. It didn’t matter which prison it was, even in the police cells, the walls and the bed and the cupboard and the table and the white ceiling smelt the same.
He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a fag. Even the air pressure in the cells felt the same. That sounded plain fucking stupid and he couldn’t tell anyone, but it was the truth that every cell in every prison and every jail had the same air pressure and it wasn’t like in any other room.
He felt like belling the security desk – he always belled on the last night inside – so he went over to the metal plate with the intercom and pressed the red Call button long and hard.
Fucking screw took his time.
The red lamp went on and the central security desk replied.
‘What’s up, Lang?’
Jochum bent forwards to speak close up into the pathetic microphone.
‘I want a shower. Get this fucking smell off.’
‘Forget it. You’re still locked up in here. Like the rest.’
Jochum hated the lot of them. He had done his time, but these little shits had to show who was on top to the bitter end.
He went back to the bed, sat down and looked around the cell. He would give them ten minutes and then try again. They usually gave in after the third or fourth try, came along to open up and stood aside just enough for him to push past. With only one night left, he obviously wouldn’t want to do anything out of order, but once outside they might meet him anywhere in town, and sometimes it was wise not to have too much shared history with inmates.
He got up, walked about. A couple of paces to the window, a few more back to the metal door.
He packed as slowly as he could, cramming two years and four months into a plastic carrier bag. Two books, four packets of fags, soap and toothbrush. Radio and the pile of letters. An unopened packet of tobacco. He put the bag on the table.
He belled again. The fucker still took his time. Irritated, he put his mouth close to the microphone and growled. His breath misted the metal surround.
‘I want my clothes.’
‘Seven o’clock, mate.’
‘I’ll wake the whole fucking wing.’
‘Whatever.’
Jochum banged on the door. Someone banged in response on a door on the other side of the corridor. Then another. Quite a noise. The screw was faster this time.
‘Lang, you’re creating a disturbance.’
‘That’s right. Like I said.’
The duty officer sighed.
‘So you did. Look, I’ll have you escorted to the sacks and the desk to check your stuff out. Then back you go. You won’t get out until seven.’
The corridor was empty.
No one was up and about. The others, with years to wait behind their locked doors, had fallen quiet again. Who had any use for the dawn? He walked through the unit, along a corridor with eight cells on each side, passed the kitchen, passed the room with a billiard table and a TV corner. The screw was right in front of him, a little runt with a thin back. He could easily do him over, ten minutes after he’d finished his time – he’d done it before.
The screw unlocked the main unit door and led the way through the long underground corridors where Jochum had walked so many times before. The store was located next to the central security desk, behind the wall with CCTV monitors. Being there meant getting out. Just wandering among the hundreds of hessian sacks that smelt of the cellar, then finding the right one – opening it, trying on the clothes. Too small, they were always too small. This time he had put on seven kilos, bigger than ever. He had worked out regularly and bloody hard. He looked around. No mirrors. Rows of cardboard boxes with name tags, the belongings of the lifers who had no digs outside and kept what they owned boxed up in a storeroom at Aspsеs prison.
He had taken the Karl Lagerfeld bottle back with him. The screw hadn’t noticed or else didn’t give a fuck either way. Jochum hadn’t smelt like a free man since they stripped him on Day One. No alcoholic fluids allowed in the unit. He undressed and, standing naked in the middle of his cell, emptied the aftershave over his shaved head, its contents flowing over his shoulders and torso and dripping down over his feet and on to the floor, the powerful scent stripping off his prison coating.