by Anna Jansson
At the risk of running over pedestrians and bicyclists Petter observed the couple’s doings in the rearview mirror. There was no hesitation, no uncertainty as she pulled down the zipper on his pants. This was clearly not the first time. When she leaned her head down she made eye contact with Petter in the mirror and winked at him with an amused smile. This was when he missed the turnoff in the roundabout, but they didn’t seem to mind going around again.
When they got out of the car Hammar pressed a five-hundred kronor bill in Cederroth’s hand. “You’ll keep this confidential, I hope.”
“Of course!” he answered and put the bill in his pants pocket with a shrug. A tip is never a bad thing.
The rest of the night had not been as entertaining. When the ferry came in at midnight he drove an elderly woman to Faro. She was going to stay by herself in a cabin on Skar that she was renting from a distant relative. But when they got there, in the dark she was unsure which house it was. It was already almost one-thirty in the morning—not exactly a good time to knock on anyone’s door—so the woman went back to town with him and checked into a hotel in Visby. The money some people had!
She thanked him for the conversation and said it was worth every penny. Petter had a vague feeling that maybe there never was any relative on Skar. That she was paying him for the conversation and a little nocturnal sightseeing tour—an adventure for the two of them. Even so Petter had hardly said a word, only listened to the amazing tall tales and thought that he actually would have driven her for free, it had been that interesting to hear about what it was like in the past. About the new minister who took a shot right through the ear when he came to Faro and proclaimed that they ought to pay a tithe like other people in Sweden. The bullet was still in the altar painting below Judas as a warning to future ministers, the lady said.
Laughing, she also described the real eccentrics who never once in their lives left Faro. Why would you do that when you’re at the center of the world and everything else is only periphery? And about the vicar whose foot slipped off the pedal after a party and he crashed his car through the fence to Hulda’s place at the bend.
“It’s your pastor coming, dear Hulda. Just take it easy, it’s your pastor coming.” The lady was an amazing impersonator and he laughed heartily at her mimicry.
Best was the story about “Everyone’s Dad,” the man who claimed all paternity on the island so that no one would grow up without a father. That’s why everyone on Faro is related to everyone else.
After dropping off the woman, he drove a man with a cramp in his chest to the emergency room, where they were at full capacity. Petter really wanted to hear how things stood with Berit, but no one paid any attention to him, and afterward he was grateful that the man survived the ride, despite his severe chest pains. The guy should have taken an ambulance, of course, but did not want to be any trouble. Between three and four o’clock it was quiet and Petter nodded off for a while at the steering wheel. He admitted that straight out when the infectious disease specialist questioned him later in detail about the night’s events. But that was much later and for the moment Cederroth had no idea what a commotion there would be.
“Now you’ve got to drag yourself out of bed, Petter. The police are here. They want to talk with you. I’ve put the coffee on.” Sonja pulled the cover off and tugged on the shade so that the roller flew to the top and revolved an extra turn. He hated it when she did that, it always meant more work when the blind got stuck and had to be taken down and reattached. The light cut into his eyes—his whole body ached.
“If it’s about Ruben I have nothing more to say. He was dead in his bed upstairs. I don’t know any more than that.”
Police Inspector Jesper Ek sat down at the kitchen table and observed Sonja Cederroth as she moved between the pantry and the kitchen table with the cookie tins. He recognized the red, green, and yellow container, where the tins could be piled on top of one another, from his grandmother’s house. Sonja had set out crullers and nut cookies and almond tarts and goran and enormous saffron buns. Then there were mocha squares, chocolate Swiss roll with homemade butter cream icing, shortbread, and coconut bars.
“Please, don’t go to any trouble on my account,” Ek attempted, but Sonja just smiled.
“On the mainland perhaps you’re content with seven sorts of cookies, but we’re on Gotland now! We don’t skimp on the good things in life.
“It’s just too awful what happened to Ruben! You can’t believe it’s true. First he kills all his pigeons and then he eats poison mushrooms, and to top it off he invites Berit Hoas over. She can’t have done him any harm, that nice little person. What would he do that for? What a frightful mess!” Sonja turned on the kitchen faucet by using the hand towel—if anyone had touched it with dirty hands it was best to protect yourself. She was meticulous about such things.
“Sonja, that’s not correct.” Petter Cederroth had put on pants and a shirt but no socks. His back and arms ached when he tried to pull them on and finally he rolled them up into a ball and threw them at Sonja when she came in and nagged at him for the fourth time. It struck her in the small of her back, but she didn’t even notice.
Ek took out a pad and pen and noted the necessary formalities.
“Tell me now from the start what happened. So, you went to Ruben Nilsson’s house at ten o’clock in the morning. What was your business?”
Petter told about the deployment of pigeons for the competition where Ruben did not show up, and about the horrible sight in the dovecote. That he went over to the neighbor, Berit Hoas, and that then they broke a window to see what was up with Ruben when he didn’t come to the door.
“It may be as Sonja says that he took his own life, but he wasn’t the one who treated the mushrooms. It was Berit. I’ve had creamed morels at her place before and there’s never been anything wrong with them. If anyone can cook, it’s Berit Hoas.”
“You have?” said Sonja. “When did you eat at Berit’s? You never told me that, Petter. Maybe you should eat there from now on. Move there; see if I care. That was probably what you wanted before you got me around your neck. Then she didn’t want you, but maybe she’s changed her mind now?”
“Perhaps we should stick to the subject,” said Ek when he heard Sonja getting ready to continue. Without meaning to, Petter had hit her sore spot. If Sonja Cederroth had any pride in life it was what she put on the table, and she tolerated no comparisons. Petter seemed completely unmoved. Presumably this wasn’t the first time the subject had come up. He sat down at the table and leaned his head on his hands. Ek observed him. He really did not look well.
“Did Ruben Nilsson have any enemies?” Ek continued. There was really no suspicion of a crime, no external injuries on the body. The wallet, money intact, was under the victim’s pillow, but the question still had to be asked.
“No friends, and no enemies. There was a painting salesman here a few days ago, otherwise we haven’t seen any strangers.” Sonja remained standing with the coffeepot in her hand and thought about it.
“Ruben was an extremely solitary person. It was like he never let anyone get close to him. I thought about the pigeons being dead. I read in a magazine that there’s a venereal disease called chlamydia, a kind of parrot disease. If pigeons get it they can get pneumonia and die. Darned if I know how they get it,” said Sonja thoughtfully and then shuddered.
“That’s not the way it is, Sonja. When Bjorkman got pneumonia from his pigeons it was called parrot disease and it’s not a venereal disease. You’re mixing the two up. You can’t just go saying things about people when you don’t understand what they are.”
“So what are you going to do now? Who is his heir, is it the brother?” she continued in a slightly sulky tone. “Or the niece? You probably know that it’s Mikaela Nilsson, the one who’s in the Cabinet. Minister of Equality. Although I’m sure she has money anyway. It was never really clear which of the brothers was her father, Ruben or Erik.”
“We have nothin
g to do with that, Sonja.” Cederroth shook his disheveled head.
He was noticeably embarrassed on his wife’s account, but answered her anyway. “Ruben wouldn’t want Erik to be his heir, you understand that, don’t you? I’m sure he has a will hidden somewhere.”
When Ek refused a second refill and was getting ready to go, Petter Cederroth followed him to the door. Courtesy required it, but it was hard work getting up from the table. His head ached and every muscle in his body was stiff and tense. The last half hour all Petter wanted to do was go lie down again, but Sonja had set the table with everything the house had to offer. She wanted to show the police that she was no worse a housewife than the cook. In the doorway he called after Ek.
“What happens now? I mean with the funeral and that? Who takes care of that?”
“It will be whoever is the closest relative, if it doesn’t say otherwise in the will. But he can’t be buried until the investigation is done. We’ll be in touch. There’s nothing in the present situation that indicates a crime, but we’ll wait for the autopsy.”
“So he’s going to have an autopsy?” Petter drew his hand over his beard stubble. “Is it necessary to waste tax money on such things? He was old. Everyone dies of something, don’t they?”
Chapter 9
Dr. Jonathan Eriksson, infectious disease specialist at Visby General Hospital, put down the receiver and rested his head in his hands. He felt like he wanted to cry. If he had been alone he would not have resisted it. The fatigue and a steadily grinding anxiety were making him sick to his stomach. The recreation center assistant, the blonde girl from Burtrask with slightly protruding front teeth, just wanted to let him know that Nina had not brought Malte and that everyone was waiting to go on a field trip. Yes, they had tried calling home several times, but no one answered. Could they have overslept? It was very unfortunate if that was the case. Malte’s mother had promised to drive. It wouldn’t be easy to find another parent at this time of the morning. Damn it all, so little was required to set off the worry that was always there like a dull ache in his belly. The worst must not have happened. They really might just have overslept.
Jonathan logged onto the computer and picked up the digital microphone, but could not come up with the words. Several days without sleep produces a peculiar form of aphasia, you fumble for nouns and don’t remember the name of your closest co-worker. If ordinary people grasped what miserable condition their doctors were in after a weekend of being on call, they would not put their well-being in their hands with any confidence. A truck driver has to take a break after four and a half hours; a doctor can work around the clock and is still expected to be empathetic. Jonathan tried to put aside his personal worries and focus on his work for the remaining few minutes before he could leave the hospital.
A woman had died in the morning and now one hour later Jonathan was sitting with the test results up on the computer screen. He backed up and read his notes in the hope that it would help him complete the patient chart note.
“Previously healthy seventy-one-year-old woman dies 6:35 a.m. of respiratory failure, heart failure, and renal failure, most likely complications of influenza type A.” Pause again. The illness pattern had seemed like a serious sepsis with a very acute progression. White fluid-filled lungs on the X-ray. Peripheral swelling, the whole capillary system had run amok and opened up while her blood pressure plummeted. It had been necessary to give more fluid drip and the swelling had increased. The woman had been severely disoriented and anxious before unconsciousness set in and then death. They had not even had time to intubate her. No close relatives who had thought about coming, thankfully. A sister, but evidently she was in no shape to make it to the hospital. He was slightly ashamed of his reflections. But being forced to meet shaken, perhaps even accusatory family members and give them an involved, empathetic reception after almost twenty-four hours on duty felt almost impossible.
Berit Hoas was the name of the woman who had died. Her terrified gaze would haunt him a long time. He knew that. Perhaps he never should have become a doctor, it wasn’t worth the agony he felt when treatment failed and someone died. Could you have done anything differently? Thought differently? Acted more quickly? The last seven hours he had done his best to save her life.
This influenza had an unusually violent progression. To start with it had only been determined that CRP was over 100. Low leucocytes, nothing life-threatening in that. Flu-like symptoms. Effect on breathing. Headache. Then rapidly declining saturation, no urine production. Signs of heart failure. When mushroom poisoning had been dismissed at first his thoughts turned to an infection with legionella bacteria and then to ornithosis, when the woman mentioned that she had fed homing pigeons. She had been re-cultured and put on Tetracycline without effect. There were always a lot of ifs when you weren’t able to keep someone alive. If you could have made the diagnosis sooner. If she had been sent to the ICU sooner. Instead she’d died in the elevator on the way up. If … Jonathan moaned out loud when the pager sounded. He dialed the number to the switchboard and waited.
“Can you come up to the ER, Jonathan.”
“Isn’t there another doctor … Hasn’t Morgan arrived?”
“Not yet. He called. There’s something wrong with the car again. Listen … a man has come in with flu symptoms. He’s in very bad shape. Barely conscious. His wife is on the verge of a breakdown, talks about a neighbor who just died. Can you hurry? It doesn’t look good.”
Jonathan swore out loud to himself. Morgan probably forgot to fill the tank, that climber. If there was anything that got Jonathan Eriksson’s gall it was people who didn’t show up on time and didn’t keep their promises. The collaboration with his colleague Morgan Persson would have been a marvel of smoothness if it wasn’t for his poor instincts about the laws that govern the reality in which other people live. Do cars need gas? Does the phone service get shut off if you don’t pay the bill? Does food spoil?
Treatment room 9 was bathed in white fluorescent light from the ceiling fixtures. A burly man was lying on the examining table in the middle of the room. His wife got up immediately from the tall armchair where she had been sitting dangling her legs—the only available chair in the room, besides a stool—when Jonathan Eriksson stepped in through the door.
“He’s dying! Do something!” The woman’s face was tear-stained and her eyes were wild and red-rimmed. “Won’t you do something, doctor. This isn’t working. He’s going to die on me! Take a look for yourself. Petter, do you hear me? Answer! Don’t you see, doctor? He’s dying!”
“ECG not remarkable. Some tachycardia, maybe. Pulse 100. Blood pressure 90 over 60. Temp 103. Saturation 97 percent,” the nurse attending the patient reported. “Admission samples taken. Is there anything else you want?”
“I want to hear what happened first.” Jonathan shook Sonja Cederroth’s hand and sat down on the edge of the bed. The fatigue was pressing on his head. The fluorescent light cut into his eyes. If this hadn’t happened he would have been on his way home now to clear up yet another situation. Where the hell was Morgan? The woman was talking nonstop and Jonathan was almost afraid for himself when he noticed that he hadn’t been listening at all.
“Excuse me. Can you take that from the beginning again?”
“Is he going to get better? What should we do? Petter was hardly able to eat today. He didn’t even taste my dumplings, even though I served them with melted butter and green peas.”
Jonathan could feel himself getting irritated. It was impossible to think clearly with this woman buzzing about irrelevant matters the whole time.
“First I want you to tell me what happened,” he said, turning toward the patient. “How long have you had a fever?”
Sonja Cederroth answered in her spouse’s stead. “He didn’t take his temperature even though I told him to. He never wants to. You can tell if you have a fever, he always says. I think it embarrasses him that he has to put it in his bum, you understand, doctor. He’s funny that way. I h
eard from the nurse that Berit Hoas is dead. She called when we were on our way to the hospital, she’s sickly, poor thing. The nurse called, that is. That turned out wrong, excuse me. Is that right? Is she dead? Berit is almost a neighbor to us and Ruben, Ruben Nilsson. They put him in a black bag with a zipper, Petter said. And all the pigeons, can you believe that, doctor? He had over sixty pigeons. What should we do?”
“Take it slowly so I can follow along.” Jonathan placed his hand on the woman’s arm to calm her if possible and get her to be a little more coherent.
“Ruben’s pigeons are dead and Ruben and Berit are dead too. It’s like the plague. Do you understand what I’m saying, doctor? It’s like the plague! Petter is going to die. He’s barely getting any air and his heart is pounding in his chest something awful.”
“Have you been in contact with pigeons?” Jonathan asked in a new attempt to communicate with the patient.
Now Petter Cederroth looked up. He exerted himself to get out the words.
“I went up the stairs to the dovecote and saw that they were dead. Every single one. And then Ruben. He was lying stone dead in his bed.” Petter sniffled. “Our pigeons have survived.”
The thought Jonathan Eriksson had in his mind was a pure nightmare. For a period of several minutes he did not hear what the people around him were saying. The sound came and went in waves. Sonja’s perplexed face. The nurse’s hand on his shoulder. They didn’t reach him. I’m working at a soccer camp, as the cook, Berit Hoas’s voice echoed. I have to get better so I can come back after the weekend. Fifty children are counting on me. Fifty children! Jonathan backed out of the room. Excused himself. Pulled the nurse with him. Out! Away! He covered his mouth and tried to keep from breathing until they came some distance out into the corridor. There he stopped and stared at the skeleton the orthopedists use for patient instruction. Suddenly completely lacking in initiative and empty. He gasped for air.