‘Hi,’ said the Romanian, when he caught sight of Kenneth Engvall.
‘Hi yourself, you fucking Gypsy!’ Kenneth said, as he pulled his cap down on his forehead and walked faster, intending to give the needy man a powerful kick in the throat with a boot, as if that was the primary need of the needy man.
Except it so happened that someone had tossed a circular, advertising sale-priced minced beef, on the ground into a puddle. Kenneth planted his foot on the meat (organic, country-of-origin Sweden, 109 kronor per kilo), slipped, lost his footing on the other leg, spun ninety degrees above the ground, missed the beggar, landed on his back, and hit the concrete base of the waste-bin the beggar was huddled behind to keep out of the wind. Kenneth Engvall cracked open his temple, was struck by a massive brain bleed, and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
* * *
Sweden’s perhaps most dangerous person was no more. In one blow, the Aryan Alliance had lost half its members. All that remained for the other half to do was plan a funeral.
Johnny had just returned home from such an event. The interred was an acquaintance as well as a courier of hard drugs. He was an underling of one of the eight in the cocaine cartel that was on Kenneth and Johnny’s secret kill list. Phase one in the takeover, according to Kenneth, was to infiltrate. He hadn’t had time to say what phase two would be.
But now, in any case, the underling no longer had to worry about getting smoked when the day came, for smoked he already was. It happened when he turned his back on a desperate junkie, a tiny woman, light as a feather, incapable of harming a fly.
Or not.
The courier had just informed her that there would be no replenishment of drugs unless the woman coughed up some money. Since he was sure she would be unable to cough up anything, except maybe blood, he walked off. And was extremely surprised to feel a stabbing pain in his back. The featherweight woman had had the nerve to stick him with a knife. Well, she was about to fucking …
That was as far as he got. You can’t get much further when you’ve just had your sub-clavian artery severed. Loss of consciousness occurs after five seconds, and soon thereafter permanent cardiac arrest.
Johnny’s acquaintance was buried two weeks later and consigned to the annals of eternity. The remarkable thing about the funeral wasn’t that the courier had been killed by a junkie – that sort of thing happened on occasion. No, it was the coffin. It was a shiny black-lacquered Harley Davidson coffin with the words ‘Highway to Hell’ on both sides. Johnny had never before seen anything so tasteful and dignified in a church.
* * *
Johnny Engvall was not as strategic a thinker as his older brother Kenneth, but he had a reputation almost as authentic. There’d been at least three murders over the years. A fag, a wog and a policeman who was a wog besides. The last one happened after a Nazi demonstration in downtown Stockholm. One of the uniforms came a little too close, grabbed Johnny by the arm, and started to say something.
‘Don’t touch me, you fucking pig!’ said Johnny.
‘Take it easy, dammit,’ said the cop. ‘I just want to …’
But Johnny had already taken his 1984 Colt Trooper from his inner pocket. With it, he shot the police officer in the throat from a distance of a few decimetres.
Johnny was later able to admit to himself that he had acted rashly. But no one is perfect. There was quite a hullabaloo, of course. And the cop didn’t even have an old lady or any brats at home to cry in the newspapers. He was probably a fag.
The advantage to things turning out the way they did was that ever since Johnny had enjoyed great respect in the right circles for so much more than being his brother’s brother. The disadvantage was that he would never ever find out what that blatte-fag actually wanted.
The police killing was never cleared up. None of those who could testify about what had happened wanted to risk becoming a victim of the same thing. The police investigators didn’t even get as far as an unofficial finger-pointing behind closed doors.
To shoot a cop in the throat in public, and get away with it, was something special. But little brother remained little brother: nothing could beat having done time for sawing a man in half with a chainsaw. Furthermore, Johnny hadn’t spent as much time in the United States as Kenneth had in his day. The US really built up your image.
Sweden
The corner shop had been permanently closed since their homecoming from the trade fair in Germany. Out with the old, in with the new, and away with the separating wall. The coffin store had suddenly doubled in size. Sabine put up a new sign on the door of the former corner shop: ‘Closed for ever. Buy your food elsewhere. PS Don’t forget you are mortal. Right now, ten per cent discount on coffins. Next door.’
They never got any walk-in clients from the street, but the list of orders from Sweden and Europe was extensive. Julius received praise from Sabine for his organizational skills and swiftness. In return he offered her loving words about her artistic talent and beautiful eyes.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Allan.
Sabine was in charge of deliveries. She either drove them around herself in the hearse or used DHL for the more distant corners of the world. While she was out on the road, Julius took over the role of answering machine.
‘Die with Pride AB, how may we be of service?’
‘Well, I guess we’ll find out. My name is Johnny. Do you make coffins to order?’
‘Yes, and we’re happy to personalize them. That’s our speciality.’
‘Then I need your help.’
‘Things are a bit hectic at the moment …’
‘You’ve got five days.’
‘Hectic, as I said. I don’t think …’
‘How much?’
Julius could smell cash. He had done so uninterrupted for at least sixty years. Here he had a customer on the line for whom money was no object.
‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be impossible to … We typically list our prices in euros, but we’re an international player, so to speak. Four thousand eu—’
‘I’ll give you five if you make the coffin the way I want it, no grumbling.’
‘Of course,’ Julius said, thinking he could milk the client a little more. ‘Five plus tax, that is.’
‘No, five without tax or a receipt. Or grumbling. Cash.’
The asparagus farmer already suspected that the motif was not going to be sugary-sweet. Even so, over the next few minutes, he found himself gasping repeatedly. The customer, Johnny, had only a vague idea of what he wanted on the coffin, so he listened to the supplier’s artistic opinions. After almost fifteen minutes, Julius was able to summarize what they had come up with. He certainly didn’t want any mix-ups.
‘Now let’s see … The majority of the coffin will be black. On the top we’ll paint a red swastika. You’re sure about that, then? Right. Moving on, along each side it will read, “Our blood is our honour” in red on a white background, followed by a Celtic cross. And on the ends it will say, “White power” in white, followed by the SS logo. That seems right as well? Okay. On the rest of the empty areas we’ll make sure to put flames. Have I captured this all accurately?’
‘Yes,’ said Johnny Engvall. ‘That’s totally accurate, I would say.’
‘So we’re striking the stuff about how cops and race traitors must die, and the various phrases about homosexuals and Jews?’
‘Yes. You said that would be a little too much?’
Julius tried to find words. For quite some time, all of this had been not a little too much but much too much. Yet there was something about Johnny that made you not want to say no to him. And Julius wasn’t even thinking primarily of the money.
‘Well, it’s important for the coffin to maintain a certain degree of dignity. For example, I hesitate to send a message about who should die along with the already-dead person in the coffin.’
‘I’ll take it,’ said Johnny Engvall. ‘Deliver it to the morgue I mentioned in time for the funeral on Satu
rday, okay? I’ll send the money in a bag, by taxi, right away.’
Taxi? Julius thought. But he said something more down-to-earth: ‘On Saturday? That’s an unusual choice for a funeral. Typically—’
‘Typically people listen to me and to whatever I say,’ said Johnny Engvall.
He was tired of all these questions. The funeral guests were coming all the way from America and had no time to wait for a proper burial day according to Swedish tradition.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Julius. ‘It’s fine.’
That last part wasn’t true. It wasn’t even half fine. They’d apparently attracted a Nazi for a customer. It would never do to deliver slipshod work on this order.
And Sabine didn’t.
And still, what happened happened.
Sweden
‘Your job is certainly full of variety,’ Julius stated, as he studied the three latest coffins, all ready to be delivered.
The one on the left was black with swastikas and white-power symbols. The one in the middle was yellow, red and blue in homage to Djurgården hockey. And the one on the right was pale blue with white rabbits on each of its sides, hopping in a dignified manner through a green meadow. On the lid were fluffy white clouds and the words ‘God who holds His children dear, watch over me as I sleep here.’
‘Yes,’ Sabine said, as she washed her hands. ‘Today swastikas, football and bunnies. Tomorrow Lenin awaits. Apparently the last Communist is not yet dead. Unless he was the one who just died. Can’t we go out and celebrate at a restaurant tonight?’
‘I’d love to! But what are we celebrating?’
‘Anything. You decide. That we found each other? That we’re starting to do well financially? That you haven’t had a blister in several months?’
Julius thought the best reason was that they’d found each other. ‘Shall we take the hearse or a taxi?’ he wondered.
* * *
To make a Lenin coffin, Sabine began by lacquering the entire thing in the proper shade of red. As the paint dried she began practising Lenin himself. It turned out right every time. He was easy to make: his face was the right level of angular.
‘It’s no Picasso, but it’s close,’ she said to herself, pleased.
Then she took off her painter’s smock and spiffed herself up to perform the week’s deliveries. Two coffins were going to a single morgue south of the capital, and a third to a different one just thirty kilometres away. As the money flowed in, she sent more and more of her deliveries via DHL. Once, in the early days, she had driven all the way to Sundsvall and back, but now she outsourced anything that needed to go beyond the Mälaren Valley and its immediate environs.
It was Friday, and there was just one day left to disaster.
Sweden
Dressed in a white shirt, his most attractive black leather jacket, black leather trousers and black gloves, Johnny Engvall stood outside the church to greet the funeral-goers. He had planned a small, dignified gathering. The four leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood in Los Angeles were the guests of honour. The only guests, actually. Four angry, dangerous men. Plus Johnny himself, who was also angry and dangerous.
Johnny knew that after the funeral he would be faced with troublesome questions about how the Aryan Alliance’s only member planned to take over Stockholm’s cocaine cartel and thereafter bring down the government. But the Americans had already said, ‘Take your time,’ once. If Johnny played his cards right, they might say it again. They still didn’t know about the four million euros from the secret Finnish financier. Kenneth had delayed sharing this information: he wanted to find the right way to say it. Now he no longer existed and Johnny was wondering how the right way would have sounded, coming out of Kenneth’s mouth.
To some extent the Americans weren’t needed now that the Finn had joined the righteous cause, but they lent stability to the operation. Johnny felt that, through them, he was part of a greater whole. Anything might happen if they reacted poorly to the alternative financier, including the execution of Johnny.
All in good time. Right now, it was time for a funeral.
His little brother wanted to honour Kenneth in every way. Therefore he had arranged to serve drinks to the guests as they approached the steps to the church. Kenneth had had a particular passion for Irish whiskey. It had to be a double, with four drops of water. There was a story from his California years about how a bartender in Malibu ended up with a knife through his hand after mistakenly serving Johnny’s big brother a Jim Beam Kentucky Straight Bourbon. And without any drops of water.
Back in Sweden, Kenneth had broadened his preferences a little. When it was cold enough outside, he might mix his whiskey with coffee, brown sugar and cream. That was warm, delicious and inspiring. As long as the main ingredient came from Ireland and nowhere else.
So Irish coffee it was; it seemed more ceremonial. Once the four men had gathered and warmed up, Johnny gave a short welcome speech. First he explained why they had gathered at a church, of all places. This was where Kenneth would be interred, in the family plot, just as he would have wanted it. Yes, this meant that a pastor would preside over the proceedings, but Johnny had talked to him and explained that he must not bring God and Jesus into the ceremony unless he wanted to meet them both earlier than he expected to.
‘You all know how much I loved my brother. I welcome you to step inside. And imagine how proud Kenneth is in the coffin I chose.’
A curious murmur rose from the men. A few nodded in surprise. Clearly Engvall’s little brother knew what he was doing.
Johnny placed himself strategically on the church steps to shake each man’s hand as he entered. He did what he was doing out of genuine respect for his brother, but there was an additional aspect in the background. Something Johnny hardly wanted to admit to himself.
The Americans had not yet formally identified Kenneth’s successor. Of course, there was no one but Johnny to choose, but the pronouncement had yet to take place. The other option was for the Swedish branch to be closed now that their founder was no longer with them. But it was hard to believe the American leaders had come all the way across the Atlantic just to share this information. Perhaps Johnny would be upgraded that very evening.
The Swedish branch leader-to-be was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the buzz from within the church. When he entered, the last to do so, he was met by a dreadful sight.
The four guests had not sat down in the pews. Instead they were all in a row, up by the pastor and the coffin. Two on the left, two on the right. Between the groups, Johnny had an unobstructed view of the unimaginable.
The pastor smiled at Johnny and his companions. He nodded at the coffin and agreed that it was lovely. If the gentlemen would take their seats, the ceremony could begin.
No one listened to him. Everyone was waiting for Johnny, who was walking slowly past the men and all the way to the front. He cautiously touched the coffin to confirm that what he saw was real.
And it was.
What Johnny had arranged, as a mark of honour and respect, turned out to be a pale blue coffin, not a black one. Instead of swastikas and fire, the sides of the coffin were covered with white bunnies hopping in a green meadow. The lid was decorated with fluffy white clouds and gold lettering: ‘God who holds His children dear, watch over me as I sleep here.’
‘I understand you are all moved,’ the pastor went on uncertainly. ‘Please have a seat.’
The leader of the Aryan Brotherhood broke the group’s silence. He had chosen to tattoo his swastika on his forehead instead of on his chest, like the others.
‘Not that it matters, Johnny, but what does the writing on the lid say?’
‘It says …’ said Johnny, but he couldn’t finish. ‘You don’t want to know what it says.’
Actually, out of sheer curiosity, he did. But there was no need. The bunnies were enough. And the fluffy clouds against the pale blue background.
‘I’m leaving now,’ he said.
/> And he did. Americans two, three and four followed.
The pastor was bewildered. The dead man’s brother had given him ten thousand kronor in exchange for a promise that he would neither complain about the design of the coffin nor bring up God. Why would he complain about this coffin? It was hard to imagine anything more tasteful.
Only now did Johnny wake from his mental paralysis. Were the Americans about to blame him for this?
‘Hold on, boys. Surely you don’t think …’
It was at this point that the pastor made the biggest mistake of his career thus far. He felt that the dead man’s little brother needed comforting and took a few steps forward to give him a long, tender hug.
One minute later he was so thoroughly battered that even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. Johnny beat him and beat him to make the coffin and the situation disappear. Yet the only result was that the four Americans left before Johnny could explain himself. The coffin was where it was. The pastor lay where he lay.
Little brother returned to reality. He wiped his bloody hands on his trousers as he took a fresh, pained look at the monstrosity of a coffin.
If Kenneth was in there, it was a catastrophe. If he wasn’t … then where the hell was he?
Johnny’s life as Sweden branch leader was over before it could begin. And that was that. Now he had bigger fish to fry. Like how someone had to die for what his brother had been subjected to. And how he had to figure out where on earth Kenneth was.
Oops, the pastor was moving. Johnny bent down to whisper in his ear. The bloodied man nodded. He and Johnny were in agreement that the pastor had slipped and fallen down the stairs.
Johnny left him where he was, got into his car and took out his phone. He found the number to the morgue and called it.
One Beatrice Bergh answered. Johnny introduced himself and said he wanted to know where Mrs Bergh was since he intended to come over and beat her to death.