Box 21 (3 page)

 

Lydia wondered if it was his smell.

 

The smell she recognised reminded her of the men who sat with her dad in that dirty room full of weapons. She wondered if it was a good thing that she recognised it, if that meant that she was still somehow connected to what had been back then and which she longed for so much, or if it was just breaking down even more, that everything she could have had, and that was now so far away, was being forced deeper into her.

 

He didn’t speak afterwards. He had looked at her, pointed, one last time – that was all. He didn’t even turn round when he left.

 

Lydia laughed.

 

If there had been anything between her legs, she would have been aggrieved that his bodily fluids had filled it
and she would have felt him inside her even more. But she hadn’t. She was just a face.

 

She laughed as she lathered one part of her body after another with the white bar of soap until her skin was red; she rubbed hard, pressing the soap against her neck, shoulders, over her breasts, her vagina, her thighs, feet.

 

The suffocating shame.

 

She washed it away. His hands, his breath, his smell. The water was almost painfully hot, but the shame was like some horrible membrane that would not come off.

 

She sat down on the floor of the shower cubicle and began to sing the chorus of the children’s song from Klaipeda.

 

Lydia Grajauskas.

 

Lydia Grajauskas.

 

Lydia Grajauskas.

 

She loved that song. It had been theirs, hers and Vladi’s. They had sung it together loudly every morning as they walked to school through the blocks of flats in the housing estate, a syllable for each step. They sang their names loudly, over and over again.

 

‘Stop singing!’

 

Dimitri shouted at her from the hall, his mouth close to the bathroom door. She carried on. He banged the wall, shouted again for her to get out of there fucking pronto. She stayed where she was, sitting on the wet floor, but stopped singing, her voice barely carrying through the door.

 

‘Who is coming next?’

 

‘You owe me money, you bloody whore!’

 

‘I want to know who’s coming.’

 

‘Clean up your cunt! New customer.’

 

Lydia heard real anger in his voice now. She got up, dried her wet body and stood in front of the mirror that hung above the sink, put on her red lipstick, put on the nearly cream underwear in a velvet-like material that Dimitri had handed to her that morning, sent to her in advance by the customer.

 

Four Rohypnol and one Valium. She swallowed, smiled
at her reflection and washed the tablets down with half a glass of vodka.

 

She opened the bathroom door and stepped into the hall. The next customer, the second of the day – a new one, someone she’d never seen before – was already waiting on the landing. Dimitri was glaring at her from the kitchen, watching as she passed him, the last few steps before opening the front door.

 

Before opening it she made him knock once more.

 

 

 

 

 

Hilding Oldéus gave the wound on his nose a good hard scratch.

 

The sore on his nostril wouldn’t heal. It was the heroin: whenever he shot up, it itched and scratched. He’d had a sore there for years now. It was like it was burning; he had to rub, rub, his finger digging deeper, pulling at the skin.

 

He looked around.

 

A crap room at the welfare office. He hated it, but he always came back, as soon as he got out there he was, ready to smile for a handout. It had taken him one week this time. He’d been brown-nosing the screws at Aspsĺs prison. Said ‘Cheerio’ to Jochum. He’d been kissing the big boy’s arse these last few months; he needed someone to hide behind, and Jochum was built like a brick shithouse. None of the lads even thought of messing with him as long as he hung out with Lang. And Jochum had said ‘see you’ back. He only had one bleeding week left. (Hilding suddenly realised he’d be out tomorrow. A week had passed: fuck, it was tomorrow.) They’d probably never meet up again outside. Jochum had protected him for a while, but he didn’t do drugs and people who didn’t just sort of disappeared, went somewhere else.

 

Not many people waiting here.

 

A couple of gyppo birds and a fucking Finn and two bloody pensioners. What the fuck did they want?

 

Hilding scratched the sore on his nose again. They were just taking up time, a crowd of losers getting in his way.

 

It was one of those days, a day when he was all sensitive. He didn’t want to feel anything, mustn’t, and then one of the days from hell hit him, when he knew, felt, felt, felt. He needed a hit badly, had to get rid of this crappy feeling. Had to get some fucking kit. But all these bloody awful people were sitting there, in this crappy room, holding him back. It was his turn now, fuck’s sake, it was his turn.

 

‘Yes. Who’s next?’

 

That fat old cow opened her office door again.

 

He hurried over to her, his jerky movements propelling his thin body forward. Everyone could see that here was another young person, not even thirty yet, whose childish face somehow blended in with his punctured junkie skin. He was heading somewhere, but it certainly wasn’t life.

 

Hilding scratched his nose again and realised that he was sweating. It was June, but raining non-fucking-stop, so he was wearing a long raincoat. It didn’t let any air in or out. He should take it off, but couldn’t be arsed to. He sat down on the visitor’s chair in front of the bare desk and empty bookshelves. A nervous glance round the office. No one else there, no other fucker. There were normally two of them.

 

Klara Stenung settled on her side of the desk. Klara was twenty-eight, the same age as the heroin addict facing her. She had come across him before, knew who he was and where he was going. She knew the type; she’d worked as a social worker’s assistant in the suburbs for two years, and then at the Katarina-Sofia office here in the city for three years. Thin, stressed out, noisy, just out of prison. They came and went, disappeared for ten months at a time inside, but always reappeared.

 

She stood up and reached across the desk. He looked at
her hand. He looked at it, considered spitting in it, but then took it in a flaccid shake.

 

‘I need some cash.’

 

Her eyes met his; she didn’t say anything, just waited for more. He was on her books, filed away. She knew everything about him. Oldéus was just like the rest. No father, not much of a mother, a couple of older sisters who had done what they could. He was very bright, very confused, very lost. Alcohol at thirteen, cannabis at fifteen. By now, he was on the fast track. Smoked heroin, then started to inject. First prison sentence at seventeen. Now, at twenty-eight, he had been inside ten times in eleven years, mostly for burglary and a couple of times for dealing in stolen goods. He was a petty criminal, the kind who had waved a bread knife at the assistant in the late-night corner store and then hung around outside the shop for the first dealer to come along, bought some kit and mainlined in the nearest doorway and couldn’t understand it when someone in the shop pointed him out to the police when they turned up. He still didn’t get it when the police bundled him into the back seat of a patrol car and sped off towards the station.

 

‘You know the answer. No money.’

 

He twitched nervously in his chair, rocking backwards and forwards, nearly losing his balance.

 

‘But I’m just out. For fuck’s sake!’

 

She looked at him. He shouted, he scratched his nose and then the sore started to bleed.

 

‘I’m sorry. You’re not registered. As unemployed, or as a job-seeker.’

 

He got up.

 

‘You fat cunt! I’m fucking skint. Fuck’s sake. I’m hungry!’

 

‘I understand that you need money for food. But you aren’t registered so I can’t give you any money.’

 

The blood dripped from his nose on to the floor. It was flowing fast and the yellow lino was soon covered in red. He hurled abuse, of course, threatened her as well, but never
any more, it never got worse than that. He was bleeding, but didn’t fight; he didn’t have it in him and she knew it. It didn’t even occur to her to call for support.

 

He slammed his fist on the top of the bookshelf.

 

‘I don’t give a fuck about your fucking rules!’

 

‘Whatever you say. You still won’t get any money. All I can do for you is give you two days’ worth of food vouchers.’

 

A lorry rumbled past outside the window, the sound pushing its way up between the solid buildings that lined the narrow street. Hilding didn’t hear it. In fact, he heard absolutely nothing. The stupid old slag in front of him had been banging on about food vouchers. And since when could you get fucking kit with food vouchers? He stared across the desk at the fat woman, glaring at her big droopy tits and fucking pathetic necklace of big round wooden beads. He burst out laughing, then shouted and knocked over the chair, kicked it into the wall.

 

‘I don’t give a toss about your fucking tickets! I’ll have to find the fucking cash myself then! Fucking cunt!’

 

He almost ran through the door, through the crappy waiting room, past the Finn and the two gypsy slags and the old buggers. They all looked up at him, didn’t speak, sat in silence, hunched up. He shouted at them,
fucking losers
, and something else that it was impossible to make out in passing, his shrieking voice breaking up and mixing with the blood dripping from his nose, which marked a trail down the stairs, out through the main door and all the way along Östgöta Street, towards Skanstull.

 

 

 

 

 

Not much of a summer.

 

Windy, rarely above seventy degrees except the odd morning with fleeting sunshine, otherwise the rain fell steadily on the rooftops and barbecue covers.

 

Ewert Grens had held her hand for as long as she let him, but after a while she became restless, the way she did when she had laughed enough and her babbling was done and the saliva no longer dribbled down her chin. So he had hugged her, kissed her forehead and said he’d be back in a week, always in a week’s time.

 

If only you had managed to hold on just a bit longer.

 

Then he got into the car and drove back across Lidingö Bridge on his way to see Bengt Nordwall, who now lived in Eriksberg, some twenty-odd kilometres south of the city. Ewert was driving far too fast and suddenly saw himself, as he often did, behind the wheel of another kind of car. The police van he had been in charge of twenty-five years ago.

 

He had spotted Lang on the pavement, just ahead of the van; he knew that he was wanted, so he did what they had done so many times before, drove up alongside the running man while Bengt pulled the door back and Anni, who was
sitting nearest the door, grabbed hold of Lang and shouted that he was under arrest, as she was supposed to do.

 

She was sitting in that seat, nearest the door.

 

That was why Jochum Lang had been able to drag her out
.

 

Ewert blinked and swung off the road for a moment, away from the queue of stressed morning commuters. He switched off the engine and sat very still until the pictures faded from his mind. In recent years, the same thing happened every time he visited her, the memory pounding inside his head, making it hard to breathe. He stayed where he was for a while, ignoring the idiots with their horns, just waited until he was ready.

 

A quarter of an hour later he pulled up outside his friend’s home.

 

They met in the narrow suburban street, stood together and got wet while staring up at the sky.

 

Neither of them smiled very often; it could be their age, or maybe they had always been the kind who rarely smile. But the impenetrable greyness and the wind and the pouring rain were too much; you had to smile because there was nothing else you could do.

 

‘What do you think about all this, then?’

 

‘Think? That I can’t be bothered to let it get to me any more.’

 

They both shrugged and sat down on the rain-sodden cushions on the garden sofa.

 

Their friendship had begun thirty-two years earlier. They had been young back then, and the years had passed quickly; they had less than half of their lives left.

 

Ewert looked at his old friend. The only one he had really, the only person he talked to outside work, the only one he could bear to be with.

 

Bengt was still in good shape, slim, lots of hair. They were roughly the same age, but Bengt looked much younger. Maybe that was the effect of having young children. They forced you to stay young, as it were.

 

Ewert had no children and he had no hair and his body
had grown heavy. He had a limp, while Bengt walked with a light step. They were both policemen and shared past and present in the Stockholm city force. Both had been given a finite gift of time, but Ewert had used up his faster.

 

Bengt let out an exasperated sigh.

 

‘It’s so bloody wet. I can’t even get the kids out of the house any more.’

 

Ewert was never sure why the family asked him over for breakfast, whether it was because they thought it would be nice or whether it was out of duty. Maybe they felt sorry for him, so lonely, so naked outside the four walls of the police headquarters. Whenever they asked, he went and never regretted it, but still he could not help wondering.

 

‘She seemed well today. Sent her regards. At least, I’m sure she would have.’

 

‘And what about you, Ewert? Are you all right?’

 

‘Why do you ask?’

 

‘I don’t know. It’s maybe just that you look . . . heavier these days. No, more burdened. Especially when you talk about Anni.’

 

Ewert heard him say this, but didn’t reply. He looked around and observed with disinterest the suburban life that he could not understand. The small villa was actually quite nice. Very normal. Brick walls, a bit of lawn, a bunch of neatly trimmed shrubs. Sun-bleached plastic toys scattered here and there. If it hadn’t been raining, the two children would’ve been running about in the garden, playing whatever kids of that age played. Bengt had had children rather late in life, when he was nearly fifty. Lena, who was twenty years his junior, had given him another chance. Ewert had no idea what a pretty, clever young woman like Lena saw in a middle-aged policeman, but he was pleased for Bengt, of course, even if he didn’t understand.