Alena pointed at the bed, the side that was empty.
Sit down.
The room was just like hers same bed, same set of shelves and nothing else. She sat down on the rumpled sheets. Where someone else had just been. For a while Lydia stayed inside the red wallpaper, watching its swirling little velvety flowers. Then she reached out for Alenas hand, squeezed it and spoke in a near whisper.
How are you?
You know . . . as usual.
Just the same?
Yes.
They had met on the boat, so they had known each other for more than three years. Back then, they had laughed together. They were on their way. The frothing white water in their wake. Neither of them had ever been at sea before.
Lydia pulled her friends hand closer, still holding it tight, caressing it, interlocking her own fingers with her friends.
I know. I know.
Alena lay very still. Her eyes were closed.
Her body wasnt bruised, not like Lydias, at least not in the same way.
Lydia lay down beside her, and in the shared silence their minds wandered, Alenas thoughts drifting back to Janoz, and Lydias back to Lukuskele prison, to the shaven-headed men who coughed their lives away in the shabby prison hospital.
Then suddenly Alena sat up, pushed a pillow between the
small of her back and the wall and pointed at the evening paper on the floor.
Look at that, Lydia.
She let go of Alenas hand, bent down and picked it up. She didnt ask how Alena had got hold of a newspaper. She realised it was from one of the men who had been there today, one of the ones who took things with them, wanted something extra and got it. Lydia didnt have many customers who gave her things. She wanted money. Cash was all Dimitri cared for, and she liked cheating him of it. Anyone who wanted extras had to pay, a hundred kronor each time.
Open it, look at page seven.
The customers were charged five hundred kronor and she knew what five hundred times twelve per day came to. Dimitri took nearly everything; they were only allowed to keep two hundred and fifty. All the rest was taken from them for food and their room and to repay their debt. In the beginning she had said she wanted more money, but then Dimitri had sodomised her over and over, until she promised never to ask again. It was then that she had decided to keep an extra hundred when she could. Do it her own way, more for the sake of cheating Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp than for the money itself.
Some men wanted to beat her.
She let them. They paid an extra hundred and she took the blows. Most of them didnt hit her that hard; it was their way to get in the mood before sex. She took six hundred, gave Dimitri his five and kept her mouth shut. This had been going on for quite a while. She had saved quite a bit and Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp was none the wiser.
Lydia didnt speak Swedish and she certainly couldnt read it. Whatever it said in the paper was lost on her, the bold headline as much as the small print. But she saw the picture. Alena held the paper up so she could see and her eyes stopped
at the picture. Suddenly she screamed, burst into tears, ran from the room, then came back and stood there staring at the paper, hating it.
The swine!
She threw herself on the bed, close to Alenas nakedness, crying now more than screaming.
The stinking, rotten swine!
Alena waited. There was no point in talking; she had to let Lydia cry, as she herself had cried not long before.
She held her friend tight.
Ill read it for you. Alena knew Swedish quite well. Lydia couldnt understand how she could bear to learn the language.
She and Alena had been in this country for just as long as each other and met just as many men, but that wasnt the point. Lydia had decided to shut it out, never to listen, never to learn the language in which she was raped.
Do you want me to read?
Lydia did not want her to. Didnt. Didnt.
Yes.
She huddled closer to Alenas naked skin, borrowing her warmth. She was always so warm. Lydia felt frozen most of the time.
The picture was dull. It showed a middle-aged man leaning against a wall. He was tall and slim, with blond, smooth hair and a moustache. He looked pleased with himself, like someone who has just been praised. Pointing to him, Alena read out the headline, first in Swedish and then in Russian. Lydia lay still, listening, not daring to move. The article was badly written, in a rush, a drama that had been resolved early that morning, just before the paper went to print. The man leaning against the wall was a policeman who had managed to get a small-time crook, who had in a panic taken five people hostage and held them locked up in a bank vault, to enter negotiations. In the end, the hostage-taker
had been talked round by the policeman and all his captives were freed.
It wasnt 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 couldnt 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 didnt 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 wasnt old, not even twenty and ugly with it. Big tangled hair, a greasy sweater. She mustve 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 couldnt 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 hadnt 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 theyd 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 didnt 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 didnt
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 didnt 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 couldnt tell anyone, but it was the truth that every cell in every prison and every jail had the same air pressure and it wasnt 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.
Whats up, Lang?
Jochum bent forwards to speak close up into the pathetic microphone.
I want a shower. Get this fucking smell off.
Forget it. Youre 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 wouldnt 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 oclock, mate.
Ill 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, youre creating a disturbance.
Thats right. Like I said.
The duty officer sighed.
So you did. Look, Ill have you escorted to the sacks and the desk to check your stuff out. Then back you go. You wont 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 hed finished his time hed 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 Aspsĺs prison.
He had taken the Karl Lagerfeld bottle back with him. The screw hadnt noticed or else didnt give a fuck either way. Jochum hadnt 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.
Ten to seven. The screw was punctual.
The cell door opened wide. Jochum grabbed his carrier bag, spat on the floor and walked out.
All he had to do now was change into the tight clothes
he had just tried on, collect the release money, a pitiful three hundred kronor, and the one-way train ticket, tell the screw to go to hell as the gate slowly swung open, and walk out, bag in hand, giving the finger to the guard at the security camera. And turn sharp right, to the nearest stretch of wall, open his flies and piss against the concrete greyness.
The wind was blowing outside.
At the far end of the ground floor of the police headquarters, the dawn chorus was competing with Siw Malmkvist. As ever. Ewert Grens had served in the force for thirty-three years and had an office of his own for thirty. His cassette player, a present for his thirtieth birthday, had been around for almost as long. It was one of those large, lumpy things which combine a mono speaker and a tape deck. Every time he moved office he would carry it himself, cradled in his arms. Ewert only played Siw Malmkvist. A home-made rack held his collection of all her recordings, Siws entire repertoire, in different orders on different tapes.
