Clinch E-Book

Martin Holmén

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

THE FIRST THRILLER IN THE STOCKHOLM TRILOGY'A dark, atmospheric, powerful thriller, the best debut novel I've read in years' Lynda La Plante'Ferociously noir... If Chandler and Hammett had really walked on the wild side, it would read like this' Val McDermidThe writing's on the wall for Harry Kvist. Once a notorious boxer, he now spends his days drinking, and his nights as an enforcer on the streets of 1930s Stockholm a city where the rich rule and the poor freeze. But one biting winter's night he's sent to collect from a debtor named Zetterberg, and when the man is found dead shortly afterwards, all eyes are on Kvist.Kvist's struggle to clear his name will lead him from the city's criminal underworld to its opulent elite. It will bring him face to face with bootleggers and whores, aristocrats and murderers, and force him to confront his own darkness. It will be the biggest fight of his life.Blending noir with gritty violence, Clinch is a visceral, compulsive thriller that packs a punch and leaves you reeling.What readers have to say about The Stockholm Trilogy'Harry Kvist is a great character... Swedish noir? Yes, please' - Goodreads reviewer'F**k me. This was amazing' - Goodreads reviewer'Scandinavian noir at its best. More please!' - Amazon reviewer'Loved it' - Amazon reviewer'I cannot wait to read the further adventures of Harry Kvist' - Amazon reviewerTHE STOCKHOLM TRILOGY CONTINUES WITH DOWN FOR THE COUNT

Leseprobe

‘Gritty, stylish Scandinavian noir from one of Sweden's hottest emerging authors’

Booklover

‘A real tour de force… a fascinating race through 1930s Stockholm’

Kate Rhodes, author of Crossbones Yard

‘Holmén has Raymond Chandler’s rare ability to evoke a character in a few deft strokes’

Lynda La Plante, Mail on Sunday Best Reads of 2016

‘A ferociously noir revelation of Stockholm between the wars’

Val McDermid, Sunday Times Crime Club

‘A fabulously classy twist on pulp fiction’

Elle Thinks

‘A tough thriller that packs a punch’

Daily Star on Sunday

‘Blending noir with gritty violence, Clinch is a visceral, compulsive thriller’

Col’s Criminal Library

‘This is noir writing at its best’

The Bookbinder’s Daughter

‘As original as it is remarkable’

Boras Tidning

‘Scandinavian Crime meets Film Noir, the crime novel of the year’

Alexander Bard

For my daughter

Contents

Title PageDedicationPart OnePart TwoAlso Available from Pushkin VertigoAbout the AuthorCopyrightAdvertisement

PART ONE

There is nothing here but hatred.

When I check my pocket watch, it’s already gone twenty past seven. I’m standing in the rain outside Zetterberg’s house, where the city’s most fashionable street confronts the back lanes. Here, in the blocks around St Clara’s church, the moneychangers, petty thieves, pimps and whores rule the night. Swindlers lie in wait among the hostels, betting shops and drinking dens for country folk arriving at Central Station, water-combed and in their Sunday best. Within an hour or two they’ve been plucked clean as dead geese.

The rain doesn’t freshen up the air, a stew of latrines, petrol and coal. Where streetlight falls on water, the tram tracks gleam like long knives in the middle of Kungsgatan. A few degrees colder and it would be snowing instead. Hoar frost has lain heavy on the telephone wires for some weeks already. I’m wearing my summer shoes with perforated uppers. My feet are already wet.

‘You can always tell a poor man by his shoes,’ I hear myself muttering, my voice hoarse from cigars and tots of schnapps in my afternoon coffee. Gently I stamp my feet on the paving stones to get some life into my toes. If Zetterberg is at home and my evening assignment goes to plan, I’ll buy myself a pair of proper winter boots. No hobnail boots of box calf leather or any other crap from the shoe co-op. I’ll have nothing less than first-class kid.

The caretaker has not yet locked the front entrance of Zetterberg’s building. Inside, the foyer has a clean-scrubbed white marble floor. A red carpet flows down the stairs like a nosebleed. I get out the letter from the inside pocket of my overcoat and angle it to catch some of the light in the street. My job this evening is about a default on a payment for a second-hand motor. This Zetterberg fellow has swindled a certain Elofsson in Ovanåker out of the full payment for his old Opel. If I can collect the outstanding two thousand one hundred kronor and send off the money within five days, I get to keep fifteen per cent. My advertisement in Landsbygdens Folk has paid for itself again. More often than not, the jobs that come in from the country are about some runaway farmer’s daughter or other. Usually I sniff the girls out in one of the cheap hotels, renting rooms by the hour in Norra Smedjegatan or a brothel in Old Town, and then I put them on a train back home. Other forms of debt settlement are almost as common. From time to time a person wants someone beaten up, and I have no qualms about that if the payment is right. A country girl is worth more than a bicycle, but less than a car or a thrashing.

I check the nameplate in the gloom. Zetterberg is at the top. I go back out and peer up at the grey-painted façade. Unless I’m mistaken, the bird has flown. Either that, or the damned bird is sleeping.

I go back in again. The elevator grille rattles forlornly. Someone has crushed a cigarette against the sixth-floor button.

The red carpet doesn’t go all the way up. I take off my fat, boldly patterned tie and carefully fold it, then put it in my overcoat pocket. Zetterberg has a double-fronted door. I bang one side of it until the frosted glass rattles. No answer. After inspecting the lock I know it wouldn’t present me with much of a problem, but if I’m waiting inside when Zetterberg comes back he’ll have a natural escape route. I thump the door again, this time much harder.

There’s a squeal of hinges behind me, then a whiff of root mash and pork sausages. I turn round. A small, thin bloke is examining me through a monocle. A few beads of sweat gleam below his receding hairline. He clears his throat.