Lennart told himself that he must stop eyeballing that silly frump. Look at Nils instead. But Nils kept his eyes down, scribbling away, no, he was doodling. How did he take this? Did he feel uneasy? Ashamed? Lennart knew that Nils didn't care for the way he challenged Eva and had said so, asking him to leave it. Fuelling the general dislike of her just meant that they would never take any notice of the good work she often did. Admittedly.
Lennart knew that he wanted to talk to Nils about that bloody awful secret, their secret. And he waited to see if Nils would look up, just for a moment. I need your help now, Nils, look at me, what the fuck do we do next? I must tell Karin.
'Did I hear you mention something about a prison language? You said Stig Lindgren could speak it.'
Månsson, the new recruit from Malmö, sounded interested. What was the man's first name? Now he wanted to know more.
'That's right.'
'Could you explain?'
Eva was pleased that the exchange with Lennart was over, and that she had the upper hand now. She was in charge. As she turned to Månsson, she smiled in the self-satisfied way she had, which fuelled the general dislike.
'I suppose it's natural that you wouldn't know.'
This Månsson boy was new, but he had just learned something useful. Which was not to mess with her.
'Sorry. Forget it.'
'No, no. No problem. This prison-speak was used by the inmates all the time. It was a special communication, for cons only. By now it's practically extinct. Only old lags like Lindgren know it. Men who've led their lives more inside than outside the walls.'
She felt good. Lennart had jumped on her, suggesting that she was ignorant of prison life. She'd shown everyone that she knew all right. What a loser, he'd been so stupid he reckoned he could muzzle her. Must have forgotten that she got the last word every time he tried it on.
Bertolsson had managed to start the overhead and an image showed on the screen. The agenda. He looked as relieved as he felt. This meeting had been about to run off the rails, but now he was back in control. He acknowledged the ironic applause from his colleagues.
Then a phone rang. It wasn't his mobile. He had switched it off, as everyone should have done. The governor, already fed up, was close to blowing a fuse.
Lennart got up.
'Sorry. It's mine. Christ, I forgot all about it.'
A second ring. He didn't recognise the number. A third. He shouldn't answer. A fourth. He gave in.
'Oscarsson here.'
Eight people were listening in. Not that it bothered him.
'And?' He sat down. 'What the fuck are you saying?'
His voice had changed. It sounded screechy. Upset.
Nils, who knew him well, was instantly convinced that this was serious. He couldn't remember Lennart ever sounding so alarmed.
'Not him!' A cry, in that high-pitched voice. 'Not him! It can't be! You heard me, it can't be.'
His colleagues were very still. Lennart seemed close to a breakdown. He, who was always cool and collected. And now he was shaking.
'Bloody fucking hell!'
Lennart ended the call. His face was flushed, he was breathing through his mouth. His dignity had gone. The room waited.
Lennart got up, took one step back, as if to take in the whole scene.
'It was the man on the gate, that idiot Bergh. Told me we've got a runner. One of mine, on transfer to Southern General Hospital. Bernt Lund. He beat up both guards and went off in the van.'
Siw Malmqvist's winsome voice was flooding the police station at Berg Street in Stockholm. At least, the corridor at the far end of the ground floor was awash, as it was every morning. The earlier it was, the louder the voice. It came from a huge, ancient cassette player, as big as any ghetto-blaster. The old plastic hulk had run the same tapes for thirty years, three popular compilations with Siw's voice singing her songs in different combinations. This morning it was 'My Mummy is Like Her Mummy' followed by 'No Place is as Good as Good Old Skåne', A- and B-sides of the same 1968 Metronome single, with a black-and-white shot of Siw at a microphone stand, holding a broom and wearing a mini version of a cleaner's overall.
Ewert Glens had been given his music machine for his twenty-fifth birthday and brought it to the office, putting it on the bookshelf. As time went by he changed office now and then, but always carried it to its new home, cradling it in his arms. He was Detective Chief Inspector now, still always the first in and never later than half past five in the morning; that meant he had two or three hours without any prats bothering him, invading his space in person or on the phone. Round about half past seven he would lower the volume; it caused a lot of bloody moaning from the useless crew pottering about outside. Still, he would always make them whinge for a while. They fucking well wouldn't catch him turning the sound down unless someone asked first.
Grens was a large man, heavy and tired. His hair had receded to a grey, bushy ring. He moved in short, brisk bursts, due to his odd gait, a kind of limp. His stiff neck was due to a near-garrotting, a memento of leading a raid on the premises of a Lithuanian hitman. They kept Grens in hospital for quite a while afterwards.
He had been a good policeman, but didn't know if he still was. At least, he wasn't sure if he felt up to it for much longer. Did he hang on to his job because he couldn't think of anything better to do? Had he inflated the importance of policing, made too much of it to drop everything when the time came? After a few years, not one of the buggers round here would remember him. They'd recruit replacement DCIs, new lads without a history, lacking a sense of what had mattered before, who had had power back then, informally of course, and why that was.
He often thought that everyone should be taught how to debrief, from the word go, whatever job you were training for. Novices should learn that the professional ins-and-outs they came to value were worthless in the end, and that you were around in your job only for a short while. It was a small part of your life that was at stake; you were there one moment, gone the next. Look at himself. There'd been others ahead of him and did he care about them? Hell, no. He didn't.
Someone knocked on the door. Some saddo who had come to plead with him to turn down the music. Sodding bunnies.
But it was Sven, the only one in the house with some steel in him.
'Ewert?'
'Yes?'
'Big trouble.'
'What's happening?'
'Bernt Lund.'
That got to him. He raised his eyebrows and put down the paper he held.
'Bernt Lund? What's with him?'
'He's walked.'
'The fuck he has!'
'Again.'
Sven Sundkvist liked his old colleague and didn't get fazed by the old boy's sarcasm. He knew that Ewert's bitterness, his fears, came from being too close to the day when he'd be forced to stop working, the day when he would be told that thirty-five years in service amounted to no more or less than precisely thirty-five years.
At least Ewert wanted something. He believed in what he did, unlike most of the others. So, never mind his surliness, his fits of bad temper, his oddities.
'Come on, Sven. Get on with it.'
Sven gave an account of Lund's hospital transport, the whole trip from Aspsås to Southern General's casualty entrance. He described how he had used his elaborate body- belt chains to batter the two officers. Afterwards he had made off with the van. Now he was at liberty out there, probably stalking girls, children, little kids who'd just started school.
Ewert got up during this and limped restlessly about the room, waddling round his desk, manoeuvring his big body between the chair and the stand with potted plants. He stopped in front of the wastepaper bin, aimed with his good foot and kicked it hard.
'How fucking stupid can you get, letting Lund out with only two escorts? What was Oscarsson thinking about? If he only could've been arsed to call us, we'd have sent a car and then that fucking freak wouldn't have been at large!'