Never Fuck Up: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

people—the building had eight stories. The sky was beginning to brighten.
    They got out.
    Thomas took the lead. In through the entrance. Ljunggren dispersed the crowd outside. Thomas heard him say, “Nothing to see here, folks.”
    Inside, the building felt super sixties. The floor was made of some kind of concrete plates. The elevator door looked like it belonged in a
Star Trek
spaceship. The small entranceway had a door out to a courtyard and a set of stairs leading down. There was a metal railing along the stair leading up to the second floor. He saw some people standing up there on the landing. A woman in a bathrobe and slippers, a man with glasses and a sweat suit, a younger kid who must be their son.
    The woman pointed down.
    “I’m so glad you’re here. He’s down there.”
    “It’d be great if you could go back inside,” Thomas said. “We’ll take care of this. I’ll be up to talk to you in a bit.”
    She seemed reassured by having done her civic duty. Maybe she was the one who’d called 911 in the first place.
    Thomas started to walk down. The stairs were narrow. There was a garbage chute with a sticker on it:
Please—help our sanitation workers—seal the bag!
    He thought about his car again. This weekend he might buy a new motor for the automatic windows.
    He checked out the lock on the cellar door. Assa Abloy from the early nineties. He should have a skeleton key that’d work, or else he’d have to ask the family he’d seen on the landing for help.
    A few seconds later the electronic skeleton key buzzed. The lock clicked. It was dark in there. He switched on his Maglite. His right hand searched for the light switch.
    Blood on the floor, on the bars over the cellar windows, on the stuff in the storage units.
    He pulled his gloves on.
    Eyed the body. A man. Dirty clothes, now also very bloody clothes. Short-sleeved shirt and corduroy pants. Covered in vomit. Boots with the laces untied. Arm at a weird angle. Thomas thought, Yet another little Kent.
    The torso was bent. Facedown.
    Thomas said, “Hello, can you hear me?”
    No reaction.
    He lifted the arm. It felt heavy. Still zero reaction.
    Pulled off his glove. Searched for a pulse—stone cold dead.
    He lifted the head. The face was totally busted—beat beyond recognition. The nose didn’t seem to exist anymore. The eyes were so swollen that you couldn’t see them. The lips looked more like spaghetti and meat sauce than like a mouth.
    But something was strange. The jaw seemed to be sunk in somehow. He put two fingers inside the mouth, felt around in there. Soft like a baby’s palate—the dead man was missing teeth. This was obviously not a junkie who’d lost consciousness by his own doing—this was a murder.
    Thomas didn’t get worked up.
    Considered placing the man in the recovery position, but left him as he was. Skipped CPR. It was pointless, anyway.
    He followed the rulebook. Alerted dispatch. Raised the radio mike to his lips, spoke in a low voice so as not to freak out the whole building. “I’ve got a homicide here. Real grisly. Gösta Ekman Road number 10. Over.”
    “Roger that. Do you need more cars? Over.”
    “Yes, send at least five. Over.”
    He heard the call go out to everyone in the Southern District.
    Dispatch got back to him: “Do you need any senior officers? Over.”
    “Yes, I think so. Who’s on tonight? Hansson? Over.”
    “That’s right. We’ll send him. Ambulance? Over.”
    “Yes please. And send a couple rolls of paper towels, too. We’ve got a lot to mop up. Over and out.”
    The next step, according to protocol: He talked to Ljunggren on the radio, asked him to make people identify themselves, gather addresses and telephone numbers for potential witness reports. Then have them wait until backup arrived with enough people to ask the usual control questions. Thomas looked around the stairwell. How’d the guy been killed? He didn’t see a weapon, but the perp’d probably taken that with him.
    What