Box 21 Read online

  They shook hands briefly, as was their habit.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Ewert asked.

  ‘Russian. The guy in there doesn’t speak anything else.’

  Bengt Nordwall was one of a handful in the force who could speak Russian. He went on to explain a little more.

  ‘A pimp was beating the shit out of one of his whores and she kept screaming to high heaven. When the police arrived they broke the door down and came face to face with that lowlife you can see over there.’

  Bengt pointed at a man just inside the doorway, apparently standing watch over the badly damaged door. He was in his forties, short and fat and flabby. His shiny grey suit looked expensive, but didn’t suit him and didn’t fit him either.

  ‘Then he waves his diplomatic passport at the lads and claims that the flat is Lithuanian territory and that the Swedish police have no right of entry. He won’t hand over the woman and refuses to admit our medic. Or any other doctor, except one from the Lithuanian embassy. The victim seems to be well beyond saying anything, but the other woman in there has shouted abuse at the pimp, calling him “Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp” in Russian. He doesn’t like it one bit, but for as long as we’re around, he doesn’t dare do anything except shout back at her.’

  Sven had stopped a few steps down, by the rubbish chute between floors four and five. He was just finishing a call on his mobile and waved at Ewert to catch his attention. He closed his phone, came up the remaining steps, looking at Ewert as he spoke.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to the housing association that’s responsible for this place. The flat belongs to a Hans Johansson, which fits with the board downstairs. It’s not a regular sublet.’

  Ewert Grens turned to look at the man in the shiny suit, who claimed that his diplomatic status gave him the right to beat up women, and at the same time held out a hand towards the three uniformed men behind Bengt.

  ‘One of you lot, hand over a truncheon. Right, Mr Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp, try waving your diplomatic credentials this time.’

  As he approached the door, the smartly suited man demonstrated that he intended to block the way by taking a few steps back and holding both his arms out to the side. Ewert walked on until he was close enough to ram the tip of the truncheon into a vulnerable gap in the unbuttoned jacket, which made the body standing in his way double up. The Lithuanian representative hissed something in Russian and collapsed, clutching his belly with both hands. Ewert called out to the doctor and the ambulance men on the floor below, then waved at the officers to follow him and marched on, through a long hall and an empty sitting room.

  At first he couldn’t quite take in what he saw in the next room.

  The bedspread was red and a woman was lying on it naked, with her back towards the door, but there seemed to be no difference between her body and the top of the bed, the red colours blending.

  He had not seen anyone so badly beaten for a very long time.

  The light is always the same in the Söder Hospital casualty department.

  Early morning and late, lunchtime and afternoon, evening and night, the light stays on and on.

  A young doctor, tall and thin, let his tired eyes follow the string of lamps in the corridor ceiling as he accompanied a patient trolley. He was trying to focus and listen properly to what the nurse was saying. This must be the last patient on his shift, then he could go out into the other light, the kind that changed with time.

  ‘Unconscious female, almost certainly subjected to a beating. Head injuries, a broken arm and probably internal haemorrhaging. Laboured breathing. I’ll call the trauma team and ITU.’

  The young doctor stared at her. He had had enough, didn’t want to hear any more about how people went about exterminating each other.

  ‘She needs an airway.’

  He nodded, but stayed by the woman on the trolley for a moment, just a few more seconds, on his own. It had been a long day, and for some reason he had seen more young people than usual, his own age or younger. He had mended their damaged bodies as best he could, knowing that none of them would carry on living as they had until now. They would always carry today inside them, wouldn’t be able to let go, regardless of what showed externally.

  He studied her face. Somehow she didn’t look Swedish. From somewhere not very far away, though. She was blonde and probably pretty. She reminded him of someone, but he didn’t know whom. The ambulance staff had jotted down some details and he pulled the notes out of the plastic pocket. He learned that her name was Lydia Grajauskas, or at least that was what another woman had stated, the one who was in the flat where the abuse had taken place.

  He looked at her.

  All these women.

  What had the expression on her face been while he beat her?

  What had she said?

  Green- and white-clad staff came hurrying along and sought some kind of confirmation from the doctor with the dark, exhausted eyes, indicating that they were ready to start. The patient was wheeled into the trauma room, expertly lifted on to a theatre trolley and wired up for monitoring her pulse, ECG and blood pressure. They opened her mouth to introduce a tube into her stomach and sucked away its contents. She became less human, less of a body, more statistics and graphs, it was easier then, easier to deal with.

  Had she actually said anything?

  Or screamed? What do you scream when someone is beating you?

  He, of the tired eyes, couldn’t bring himself to leave her.

  He wanted to see . . . What? He didn’t know what he wanted to see.

  One of his colleagues had now taken over and was standing about a metre away carefully moving the woman they knew was called Lydia Grajauskas, turning her light body on its side to inspect the blood-soaked, shredded skin.

  The sight upset him.

  ‘Hey, somebody! I need a hand.’

  The tired young doctor stepped forward and saw what the doctor beside him had seen.

  He counted.

  When he reached thirty he stopped.

  The stripes were red and swollen.

  He sensed the tears coming and forced himself to hold them back. It happened from time to time. The obligation to stay professional took a physical effort. Must see her as statistics, as a set of graphs. I don’t know her, I don’t know her; it didn’t do the trick, not this time. Today there had been too much of this pointlessness he couldn’t understand.

  This torn, red mess.

  He said it out loud, maybe to hear what it sounded like, maybe to inform everyone, he couldn’t be sure which.

  ‘She’s been flogged!’

  He repeated it more slowly, in a quieter voice.

  ‘She has been flogged. Multiple injuries. From the back of her neck all the way down to her behind. Her skin is . . . has been lacerated.’

  The flat was lovely, he had to admit it. High ceilings, sanded floorboards and a tall tiled stove in every room. A home like this ought to be peaceful. Ewert Grens had settled down on one of the four folding plastic chairs in the kitchen. With Sven and two technicians in tow, he had investigated all the rooms now.

  Who was the woman called Lydia Grajauskas? Who was her friend, who said her name was Alena Sljusareva? And who was the would-be Lithuanian diplomat, who said the flat was foreign territory and was known as Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp for short?

  After the beaten Grajauskas woman had been carried off on a stretcher and before the technicians turned up on the scene, the other one, Sljusareva, had disappeared. Both women were prostitutes and came from one of the Baltic states, or possibly Russia. He had come across the sort before. The story was always the same. Some guy with the gift of the gab would arrive in the village and target girls with promises of work and good money in a Scandinavian welfare state. Young and poor, the girls would bite on the bait. The moment they accepted the false passports, they were transformed from hopeful teenagers into supposedly horny female slaves. Their passports cost money, of course, and the debt was too big for them to pay off outright. It had to be recovered from their earnings. A few of
them would try to refuse, but would promptly be taught a lesson and would learn with time what a beating could mean. The girls were raped, over and over again, until they bled. With a gun pressed to their heads, they would be told to do it again and again – spread your fucking legs and do it, you’ve got to pay for your passport and the sea crossing. If you won’t fuck them, I’ll take you up the arse again! He, the persuader, who had beaten them and raped them at gunpoint, would sell them on afterwards, three thousand euros for every teenage girl shipped from east to west, who had learnt to groan with desire whenever someone penetrated her.

  Ewert sighed and looked up when Sven came into the kitchen. He was ready to report on the contents of a cupboard they had missed the first time round.

  ‘Not a damn thing there either. No personal belongings at all.’

  Several pairs of shoes, a couple of dresses and quite a few sets of bra and panties. And bottles of perfume and plastic toilet bags containing assorted make-up, a box of condoms, dildos and handcuffs. That was all. They had found nothing in the flat that couldn’t have been predicted if you started with the assumption that their life stories were all about sexual penetration.

  Impatient, Ewert flapped his arms about.

  ‘These children without faces.’

  These girls did not really exist. They had no identity, no work permit, no life of their own. They breathed, cautiously, inside a fifth-floor flat with electronic door locks in a big city which was very different from the one they had left.

  ‘Ewert, do we know how many of them we’ve got here in Stockholm?’

  ‘As many as the market demands.’

  Ewert sighed again and bent forward to finger the wallpaper. The pimp had beaten her in here and her blood had congealed on the flowered pattern. In fact blood had splashed all over the place; even the ceiling was dotted with red spots. He was angry and tired and felt like shouting, but found himself whispering instead.

  ‘She’s here illegally. She’ll need to be guarded.’

  ‘She’s being operated on now.’

  ‘I mean afterwards, in the ward.’

  ‘It will take another couple of hours, the hospital tells me. Before she’s done.’

  ‘Sven, please get a guard for her. I don’t want her to disappear.’

  Outside the house with the imposing façade the street was silent and empty.

  Ewert examined the windows in the house opposite. Nothing new there; they looked as blank and as orderly, with the same sort of curtains and flowerpots.

  He felt deeply ill at ease.

  The beaten woman, the pimp in the shiny suit and Bengt and the rest of his colleagues, waiting for nearly an hour while she lay unconscious and bleeding.

  He felt chilly and tried to shake it off, together with the bad feeling, but did not know how to get rid of something like that.

  It was half past ten in the morning. Jochum Lang served himself from the breakfast buffet in Ulriksdal Inn. Typical Yugo tactic: treat someone to something expensive and then start talking business. They had driven through the northern suburbs, heading straight for the talk that was due to start any time soon. One more piece of omelette. A cup of coffee to follow. Might as well make use of the mint-flavoured toothpicks too.

  Lang let his eyes sweep over the breakfast room, all white tablecloths and heavy silver-plated cutlery and conference delegates eating their fill. Women with red cheeks were lighting cigarettes, men sitting as close to them as they could, after pouring themselves yet another cup of coffee. He laughed at the encounters and expectations; he didn’t do things like that, never had done, had never understood the point of such a predictable game.

  ‘So what’s on your mind?’

  They hadn’t exchanged more than a word or two on the way, since Slobodan had met him at the gate of Aspsĺs prison in the shiny car and Jochum let himself be driven away, had sat in the leather passenger seat and thrown away the shreds of the standard one-way train ticket.

  Now the two of them were waiting and watching each other across the beautifully laid breakfast table in the expensive restaurant ten minutes from the centre of Stockholm.

  ‘Some business of Mio’s.’

  Jochum, with his large shaved head, sunbed tan, scarred cheek, remained stubbornly silent, just sat there taking up space.

  Slobodan leaned forward.

  ‘He’d like you to have a word with a guy who is selling our goods cut with washing powder.’

  Jochum waited. He said nothing. Not until Slobodan’s mobile phone, lying in the middle of the table, rang and he reached out for it. Then Jochum grabbed his wrist.

  ‘You’re talking to me. Do the rest of your fucking business some other time.’

  A flash of defiance in his eyes.

  Slobodan withdrew his hand, just as the ringing stopped.

  ‘Like I said, this guy sells bad shit. And one of the buyers was Mio’s niece.’

  Jochum picked up the salt cellar from the starched tablecloth waste between them, rolled it over the table, watched it go over the edge of the table and roll across the floor towards the window.

  ‘Mirja?’

  Slobodan nodded.

  ‘Mio never bothered about her before. A smack head whore.’

  Muzak flowed from wall-mounted speakers, lift music. The women with red cheeks laughed and lit fresh cigarettes, the men undid the top buttons on their shirts, tried to hide their ring fingers as best they could.

  ‘I think you know the bloke.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Look, it was cut with washing powder. And it was ours. Don’t you get it?’

  Jochum didn’t comment and leaned back in his chair. Slobodan had gone red in the face.

  ‘That little creep is ruining our street cred. The story that punters were mainlining fucking Persil will do the rounds in no time.’

  Jochum was starting to get fed up with the whole place: the conference women’s smoke, the smell of cooked breakfasts, the too-polite waitresses. He wanted to get out, out into the daylight, to another day. This posh scene might be everything that some people longed for in Aspsĺs, but it wasn’t his idea of the good life. On the contrary. The more years he spent inside, the more he resisted any kind of fancy pretence.

  ‘Get on with it. Tell me what I’m supposed to do, for fuck’s sake.’

  Slobodan responded to his impatience.

  ‘No fucker’s going to sell washing powder in our name. So, a few broken fingers. An arm, nothing more. That’ll do.’

  Their eyes met. Jochum nodded.

  The muzak piano played worn-out pop. He got up, made for the car.

  The morning had almost passed, but Stockholm’s Central Station was still yawning, still not quite awake. Some people were in transit, some were snatching a little sleep. Always room for those who struggled with loneliness. It had been raining since midnight, and the homeless had sought shelter in the massive doorways, tried to lie down on the benches in the hall that was as large as a football pitch. They had to keep moving to avoid the security guards, hiding in amongst the hurrying crowd of travellers carrying bags and suitcases and paper cups of café latte steaming under plastic lids.

  Hilding Oldéus had just woken up.

  A couple of hours’ kip in the middle of the day. He looked around.

  His body ached from the hard bench. Some sodding guard had been prodding him non-stop.

  No food, not since the morning, when one of the cops had given him a couple of custard creams at the joke hearing. Not that it made him grass on Jochum.

  He wasn’t hungry now. Not randy either.

  He was, like . . . nothing.

  It made him laugh out loud. Two old bags stared at him and he gave them the finger. He was nothing. Had to get more kit. Then he could carry on being nothing and shut them all out and have no feelings.

  He got up. He smelt of piss, his hair was greasy and matted and the wound on his nose was coated in dried blood. He was thin and filthy and twenty-eight years old, closer to the other side than ever before.

  Hilding
walked slowly towards the escalator that wasn’t working. When it rocked too much he clung to the black rubber railing. The left-luggage lockers were down a concrete corridor. The door was opposite the johns, where some cow demanded five kronor every time you needed to take a leak. Not fucking likely. Stood to reason you pissed in the metro tunnel instead.

  Olsson was tucked away at the back as usual, somewhere between boxes 120 and 150. He was asleep. One foot was bare, no sock, no shoe. The fucker could afford shoes, no problem, but who cares about fucking shoes.

  He was snoring. Hilding pulled at his arm and shook him a little.

  ‘I want some cash.’

  Olsson was still half asleep and stared vacantly at him.

  ‘You hear? I need cash. Now. You were going to settle last week.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Olsson wasn’t his real name. Hilding had no idea what it was, but he knew it wasn’t Olsson. They had been stuck in the same drug rehab place once, down in Skĺne.

  ‘Olsson, you heard. One fucking thousand, right now! Or did you take all the shit yourself?’

  Olsson sat up, yawned, stretched.

  ‘Hilding, lay off. I haven’t got any!’

  Hilding scratched the wound. The bastard didn’t have any money. Just like that cow at the Social Services. Like his sister. He’d phoned her and begged for money again, like he had a few days ago from the metro platform. Same again: she’d stuck to the same old tune, like It’s your choice, it’s your problem, don’t try to involve me.

  He started on the wound again, the crust came off and it bled quite a lot.

  ‘Got to get some cash, you fucking cunt. Get it?’

  ‘I haven’t got none. Tell you what I’ve got. Information, well worth a thousand.’

  ‘What fucking info?’

  ‘Jochum Lang is looking for you.’

  Hilding couldn’t leave the wound alone. He sighed and tried to make out that he didn’t swallow.

  ‘So what? I don’t give a shit.’

  ‘What does he want you for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Meet up? We did some time together in Aspsĺs.’