CELL 8 Read Online Free PDF

music too loud and too late, and who threatened to call in noise pollution officers or the police. Don’t fucking want to know people like that.
    Stuck at a complete standstill in traffic, he had been on his way to see Anni when he suddenly remembered that his visit this particular Monday had been postponed until lunch. Every Monday morning, for all these years, and then some junior nurse books her in for physio. Tired and irritated, he had pulled out of traffic, crossed the middle of the road, and driven back to park in the space that he’d just left, only to discover that it had been taken. He swore loudly and parked where he shouldn’t.
    He wasn’t expected at Kronoberg for another couple of hours and had therefore started to walk up the stairs to his apartment when he suddenly stopped on the second floor. Not there. Too big. Too empty. He hadn’t been home at all for a while. The sofa in his well-lived-in office at the far end of police headquarters was very narrow and he had difficulties fitting his large frame onto it, it was true, but he slept better there. And in fact he always had.
    So he started to walk slowly along the sidewalk. Crossed Sveavägen, down Odengatan, past the Gustav Vasa Church, then turned into Dalagatan. The same route, twenty-five minutes, no matter what time of year. Thin gray hair, a furrowed face, an obvious limp because his left leg was lame—Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens was the sort of person other people moved away from on the sidewalk, the sort of man who is heard without having to say a word.
    He was singing now.
    Once he’d passed the old alkies who sat on the benches in Vasa Park and the forlorn entrance to Sabbatsberg Hospital, he normally picked up speed. His lungs needed that time to get going properly, and he sang, loud and out of tune, not bothered by the people who turned and stared, all the way to police headquarters while the blood pumped around his ungainly body. Always Siw Malmkvist, always a song from a time that no longer existed.
    I know that I acted hastily
    Yes my words were heartless and cruel.
    This morning Siw’s version of Patti Page’s “Don’t Read the Letter,” 1961. He sang and remembered long days without loneliness, a life so far in the past that it was hard to keep track.
    Thirty-four years in the police force. He had had everything. Thirtyfour years. He had nothing.
    In the middle of Barnhus Bridge, which linked Norrmalm with Kungsholmen, he sang even louder. Over the noise of the traffic, the strong wind that always lay in wait just there, he belted it out across Stockholm, suppressing the agitation and thoughts and feelings that at times nearly tipped into bitterness.
    Is it too late to be sorry?
    Forgive me for being a fool
    He unbuttoned his coat, pulled off his scarf, let the old lyrics float freely between the cars that drove by in second gear, and the people who hunched up and hurried past on their way somewhere. Grens was just coming to the chorus when he felt an impatient vibration in the inner pocket of his jacket. Once. Twice. Three times.
    “Hello.”
    He talked loudly into the electronic void of his mobile phone. A couple of seconds, then a voice that he detested.
    “Ewert?”
    “Yes.”
    “What are you up to?”
    As if you cared, you little ass kisser. Ewert Grens loathed his boss. Just as he loathed, in principle, everyone in his workplace. It was not something he tried to hide. No one could avoid noticing. This little runt, a cocky superintendent, was too young and too self-important to even tie his own shoes.
    “What do you want?”
    He heard his boss taking a breath, bracing himself.
    “Ewert, you and I have different roles to play. Different areas of responsibility. For example, it is me who decides who is employed here. And where.”
    “That’s what you say.”
    “So I was wondering how it was that you , as I’ve just found out, have already given the vacant post in your section to someone. Someone who, by the