Clinch Read Online Free PDF

ashtray and push back my hat. I check my pocket watch. There’s no hurry.
    I sit back and put my feet up on the desk. A coin falls out of my trouser pocket and rolls like a torn-off uniform button across the floor of an officer’s cabin. I close my eyes and smile.
     
    With sixty-five kronor in my pocket and slightly aching knuckles, I close the door of Wernersson Velocipedes and stroll up Odengatan. It’s raining again, and, on the corner of Standards, a voluptuous redhead stands smoking under a parasol. She follows me with her eyes.
    I hurry my steps past the National Library. A coughing fit is tickling in my chest. As I reach the crest of the slope I can already sense the mighty dome of Vasa Church through the skeletal lime trees. I ignore the cough and jog the remaining distance.
    A vendor on the platform between the tram tracks and the lanes of traffic makes a gesture over his spruce twigs and corn sheaves. He’s had the good sense to dress himself in a thick imitation astrakhan hat and big clogs filled with straw. I shake my head.
    My run sets my heart bouncing in my chest. I post off the completed crossword for the weekly Social-Demokraten competition. I send it because they promise a prize for a correctly solved crossword, but I’ve never got the slightest whiff of cash.
    The bells of Vasa Church chime six times. Just a few years ago there was a dairy farm up here on the ridge, and one could hear the cows lowing at evening milking time. Now there’s only the persistent sound of engines, the growling horns of trucks, shrieking factory whistles and the ringing of trams.
    More and more people on their way home from work are crowding the shelter, and soon it’s about as packed as the Söder baths on Saturdays. A lady in a grey coat that almost reaches her feet shakes the water off her umbrella.
    ‘Oh, what dreadful weather!’
    ‘It’s even worse than snow.’ A bloke in a cap and a long blue shirt under his jacket squints at the rain-heavy skies. There’s soot around his eyes.
    The lady looks him up and down for a few moments. ‘That’ll come along as well, soon enough.’
    Like yesterday I take the number 3 tram to Norra Bantorget and walk the short distance to Kungsgatan. I’ve stopped by Lennartsson’s renowned shoe shop on Vasagatan, and I’m standing there gawking at the window displays when I get an unpleasantsensation in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know why. Something feels wrong, and it’s not just my wet feet.
    Two stints in Långholmen Prison for assault and years of harassment mean that I can smell goons at a good distance. All of my adult life I’ve been hounded by goons. Just wearing a blue collar is reason enough for them to tail you in the park, at public baths, even in urinals.
    I put my newly lit cigar in my mouth, shove my hands in my coat pockets and hurry towards the Kungsgatan junction. I peer round the corner.
    ‘Damn it!’
    I take my Meteor out of my mouth while I’m swearing. The area by Zetterberg’s front entrance is being guarded by two goons in uniform. In the street, a vehicle from the fire department is parked alongside a car with stretchers. In the doorway opposite stands a mixed group of gossips: men, women and little boys. I turn up the collar of my overcoat and stroll forwards.
    ‘Someone died in a fire in the night,’ says a lady in a skirt, jacket and blue cape, apparently a secretary on her way home from work, when I speak to her. ‘Someone called Zettergren.’
    I clench my fist in my pocket.
    ‘Zetterberg,’ corrects a delivery man, clearly in no hurry to get anywhere.
    ‘He lit the gas himself,’ says a grey-haired bloke with a goatee and an elegant walking stick. I think I’ve seen him before but my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. Several people in the group back him up.
    I’ve heard enough. It wouldn’t be the first time that some indebted wretch chose that way out. Quite the opposite. Nowadays, hardly a minute goes by without scores