Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [64]
Death is waiting.
Death bides its time.
Everything is about waiting, about doors thrown wide open.
The only thing we can really know is that time measures us carefully, it waits until we have finished all we are here to do, all that is written with invisible letters in the book of life.
Time.
Drops of time, trickles of time. Time scratching, carving its deep lines in your face. Time for the poison to leave your body the same second it’s taken in. We’re like black flares in a world of sudden light. The soon to be dead get on the bus, log onto their online bank, wait for a traffic light to change. Everything continues as though nothing is going to happen. The soon to die take their stuff out from the pawnbroker, try to ameliorate a bad cold.
The police station down by Slussplan, right by the canal, lies mostly in darkness. It’s that time, right between night and morning, and slowly the city wakes up, revealing all the secrets of the night. Rain mixed with snow falls heavily. The water in the canal reflects the light, traffic lights blink yellow, again and again. Down by Midhem, at one of the many twenty-four hour gas stations, a small fire ignites and spreads quickly along the back wall—a neglected area where trash has accumulated for many years. Three or four homeless people who’ve been using the area as a shelter from the wind run off, leaving the fire behind. They stumble along Lundavägen like evil-smelling ghosts, on their way toward the dense bushes right opposite Hedberg’s car dealership. And then everything is recognizable yet again, from the acrid smell of burned plastic, damp leaves, scraps from a fast food place, a worthless windbreaker. The rancid smell of urine, alcohol, rotting food. Three of the four who run from the fire will not make it through February, the month of the death god. The youngest of them will be found dead in a gateway on Zenithgatan, right next to Rörsjöskolan. Life is in motion, it happens. We have so little to fight back with. We’ve created a world that turns its back on us.
Malmø is Sweden’s third largest city.
The city is growing, in constant motion. The boundaries between Copenhagen and Malmø are growing more and more diffuse with every year that passes. Transportation is fast now—and everything can be transported. Huge sums of money change hands every day. The economy, lust, and desire itself move freely, like underwater currents. You see the ripples on the surface but never the big currents, the big fish.
Stars can just be made out in the grayness; far away a siren is heard from an emergency vehicle. Everything is within everything. Even chaos creates its own pattern, like looking through a kaleidoscope. Down in Rosengård a basement fire starts up. In the last few weeks there have been several, almost always basement fires, lit with rubbing alcohol and matches. The rental agency has emptied all the storage rooms, nothing of value has been left behind, nothing that could be ignited. Which means that they drag the trash in there themselves and light it. Why? The answer is simple: because they can.
A security company makes rounds, drives slowly through the badly designed alleys. They’ve been ordered never to stop, never to leave their car, always to call, “Patrol in danger,” at the least sign of trouble. This of course contributes to aggravating the mood, to the feeling of being out on a dangerous assignment. The divisions become sharper and sharper. The difference between them and us more and more pronounced.
Windows in the stairwells are brightly lit. The city is besieged by its inhabitants, and a ghost walks through the city, a phantom.
Then the fire in the eastern parts of the city gets going. The night worker at Statoil strikes the alarm for the fire department and within a short time the gas station and the fast food restaurant have been shut down for customers. Someone also