Strange Bird (2013)

by Anna Jansson

  “We’ve gone in. Malin Berg is dead. We’re taking her body with us to Pathology. There is no sign of external violence. She had been vomiting in a bucket alongside the bed. The body is swollen.” The voice on the phone was very faint and Asa had to ask the leader of the response group to speak louder. He said that he was in an awkward spot considering the surrounding neighbors, but soon Asa could hear the rest of the message without any problem. “The neighbors don’t think she left her apartment all day Sunday. If so, that’s almost too good to be true. The people who live in the adjacent apartment are worried that infection might have spread through the ventilation system and demand to have tests taken and medicine. What do we do?”

  “Take samples from them and ask them to limit their association and stay indoors until we’ve got an answer. I’ll arrange sick leave. We’ll wait with medicine until we’ve seen whether anyone is infected.”

  “Is that wise? Shouldn’t we be open-handed with medicine in this situation?”

  “Yes, we should be, if we had that option. We don’t have medicine for prophylactic purposes. If we start that in one case we’ll have started the whole crazy carousel of who should be first in line. There would be no way to work in peace after that. I’ll explain in more detail when you’re here. Then I have a patient I want you to take to Linkoping, a young woman, a soccer coach. She’s in a bad way. I’m not sure we can help her here. It’s hard to find more respirators and the ICU rooms at Follingbo are full.”

  When Asa ended the call she felt relieved, relieved and almost euphoric that Malin Berg managed to die without seeing a single person. The thought would have been downright indecent if the circumstances were normal, she realized immediately, but in this situation it was better that one person was dead than that a hundred people had been infected.

  Chapter 17

  Camper denizen Hans Moberg woke up with a hangover, a need to pee, and a strong but vague feeling of anxiety. He was thirsty, too. With his hand on the last can of beer in the fridge he glanced at the clock. It was already eleven thirty. The pounding headache almost made him lose his breath as he bent over to pick up the imported liter bottle of 50-percent vodka from the floor, in a quick inventory of what the house had to offer. He looked in the mirror and met a bloodshot pair of eyes and a disheveled flow of wavy gray hair. His tongue was like a foreign object in his mouth and he felt like he was going to retch.

  “What are you doing now, Moby?” he said to himself in the mirror. Yesterday evening’s encounter with Cuddly Skane Girl had not turned out at all like he’d imagined. It seldom does, but this was one of the most awkward he’d experienced. He had truly exerted himself to make a pleasant impression. For weeks he had caressed her ear with poems, double entendres, compliments, allusions to impending love games and she had followed along every step of the way and let herself be captured. Sometimes she took the lead and he had no objection to that—variety is the spice of life. He had her photo on the table beside the bed so that she could creep down under the covers with him when he had the desire. The large breasts and rounded hips would make any fellow feel weak in the knees. The whole day before the encounter he had fantasized and planned in detail—and then she didn’t show up.

  Well, that was what he thought at first, before a woman who was hanging around the kiosk took hold of his arm and asked, “Are you here to meet a woman from Skane?” He couldn’t deny it.

  “Here she is!” The woman gave him a radiant smile.

  It must be a mistake! It just couldn’t be possible. The woman who called herself Cuddly Skane Girl was heavy-set and admittedly large-breasted with copper-red hair, but her face didn’t match the photo at all. What a darned swindle.

  He had decided however to make the best of the situation. His role as dying country singer was rehearsed to perfection and he could just as well act it as not.

  “You said you were sick. How bad is it really?” she asked. There was something maternal and tenderhearted about her and once he had recovered from the initial disappointment a warm embrace was better than a cold camper.

  “My sickness? It’s incurable. The disease has spread throughout my entire body, but my music will live on.”

  “So what is it, do you have cancer?” she prodded. “Shouldn’t you be in a hospital if it’s that serious?”

  The mournful expression on her face and the gentle smile were reward enough for the whole performance. It felt cozy to be the object of her concerns and worry, and to have such an obvious leading role.

  “No, the doctor didn’t think there was any point in being in the hospital since it couldn’t be cured anyway. They released me. Take each day as it comes and thank God for the days I’m able to get out of bed. My appetite is poor. Yesterday I was so weak my legs could barely hold me. But today I feel better.”

  She looked at him with such tenderness in her eyes that he was sincerely moved. Right then, at that moment, he decided that she was beautiful. Yes, beautiful.

  “What kind of sickness do you have? There’s usually treatment for most things.” Then he said it, at the same time striving for a gentle, serious expression to show that he bore his pain with equanimity: “It’s nothing contagious, my dear. I have Strabismus.”

  The cuddly girl from Skane put her hands to her face and took in air in sobbing breaths; her shoulders were shaking and he put his arm around her.

  “Don’t take it so hard; I can still enjoy life at times.” At about that point he realized his fatal mistake. The cuddly one was laughing so that she could hardly breathe, she was laughing so that the couch they were sitting on rocked. Tears were running and washed away the color from her eyelashes in black streaks across her cheeks.

  “So you’re suffering from Strabismus, are you?” she snorted so that saliva sprayed over his face. Do you even know what that is?”

  No, he had to admit that he didn’t completely have a handle on it. The doctor had not really succeeded in the pedagogical task of explaining it to him.

  “Strabismus means cross-eyed, sweetheart. I’m an optician. Bad.”

  The encounter with Cuddly Skane Girl had been cordial but brief. There isn’t a man in the world who can hold their ground against a woman who laughs out loud.

  There was coffee and a roll and “let’s be in touch.” But he suspected that neither of them would ever entertain the thought of making contact again. Right before he was getting ready to leave he asked the question that was on the tip of his tongue the whole time.

  “That wasn’t you in the picture, was it?”

  “No, that’s my little sister. No one wants to meet me if I send a picture of myself; I’m sure you understand that. They’d rather choose an airhead in a nice wrapping. It’s not fair and yet I usually win in the end. Once they’re done looking at Gunilla I’m the one they want to talk to and confide in, like a mother or a dear sister. On the Internet I can pretend to be someone else for a little while and experience what it feels like to be physically attractive. You know, there are times when I hate my little sister. That, my friend, is true sibling rivalry.

  “We’re not going to see each other again, are we? You know, every time I do this I hope there’ll be someone who might like just me, isn’t that silly? So I took the chance to meet you in reality. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Then she started crying and the whole situation became so awkward that he couldn’t get away from there fast enough.

  The first thing Hans Moberg did when he got back to his camper was open a beer. He drank it in greedy gulps while he waited to get out on the Internet and flee into new lovely fantasies. When he had sorted out the junk mail selling Viagra and penis enlargement and standby vacations there was only one e-mail of interest—it was from Sandra Hagg who had contacted him on one occasion previously.

  Extremely formal and actually fairly uninteresting. She did not want to send a photo, she was presumably ugly as sin. Although the really ugly ones can have unexpected talents, a devotion and gratitude you seldom encount
er in those who know they have a beautiful body.

  In her first email she asked questions about his company and where he got his supply of medications; now she was asking if they could meet. Could perhaps be something to try out, the evening looked pretty dreary otherwise. At the moment she had a migraine and was in bed. The key was hanging on a cord on the inside of the mail slot in the door, she wrote. The matter was urgent. Nothing she wanted to email about. It had to be discussed face to face.

  This could actually be interpreted any number of ways. What was she expecting really when she wrote that she was lying in bed, waiting for him? House call by a doctor? A burglar? A secret lover in the form of a salesman? What role should he play? Perhaps it was so monotonously simple and boring as she wrote, a business contact. Or yet another circumlocution and smoke screen for what all women wanted without seeming too easy. The whole nine yards. Well, what the hell. If she was waiting for him …

  Even though Hans Moberg had another four beers and an undetermined quantity of vodka, he disconnected his van from the camper and drove in to Signalgatan and the fashionable apartments with large glassed-in balconies facing the sea. What does it cost to live like that, he wondered. A little society bitch with a rich daddy, maybe, or did she have her own income, or even worse: a husband with income? Could get complicated. It was probably best to scope out the situation before getting too friendly.

  He had to wait almost half an hour before he was able to slip through the door at the same time as a thin, elderly man in golf attire. The man gave him a suspicious look, not fearful, more like disdainful, and then confidently took the stairs in three bounds and disappeared behind his door on the second floor. Moby continued up. On her floor a curious older woman stuck her head out and watched him. The hall smelled of scouring powder and fresh-brewed coffee. He rang the bell at Sandra Hagg’s, but not a sound was heard. He repeated the signal. She was probably sleeping, poor thing. It can’t be easy to have migraines. When he put his hand down into the mail slot he thought that maybe this was a joke. Maybe there was a Rottweiler inside only longing for a couple of fresh, fleshy fingers to bite on. He got hold of the cord and fished up the key. First he tried to undo the double knot. Why do women always have to tie a granny knot when it’s so much easier to undo a square knot. Then he gave up and put his foot against the door and pulled. There was no great resistance. He coaxed the key into the hole and turned it.

  “Hello!” No answer.

  “Hello!” He didn’t want to frighten her. If she was in bed maybe he could crawl in and hold her awhile.

  “Are you there, little darling?”

  All women are whores, deep down, although they disguise themselves as angels. Treacherous, insidious schemers they are, and in their worm-eaten brains they plan how they can entrap and injure a man. What Sandra Hagg did to him that night was unforgivable and the greatest threat he had experienced to the freedom he treasured most in life. She did not do it consciously … and perhaps that was even worse … that she could never see her mistake and ask him for forgiveness.

  Now as Hans Moberg was standing before the cracked mirror in his camper, the events of the night before no longer felt real. Her bloodshot eyes and the blue lips might just as well be a sequence from a film he had seen long ago, when the plot itself had faded and only the strongest visual impressions remained. And just like in any B-movie, he had wiped off his fingerprints from the doorpost and the mail slot with a piece of paper towel he had found in the kitchen.

  The table was set for two with napkins, flowers, and crystal glasses, and there was a good smell from some kind of casserole. Red wine was poured in a carafe for airing. She had been expecting him. Longed for and prepared this encounter. He took the wine into the bedroom. Her short, dark hair made such a clear contrast against the white sheets. Her skin so transparent and white, the slender hands with their long red nails. The body had truly been beautiful in the thin white dress, like a bride. Still warm when he touched her breasts. At that moment her cell phone rang. At first he thought about answering but changed his mind. It was a trap, clearly. The frightening thing was that he almost fell for it. It had been that close. No one could know that he had been with her. He felt afraid and panic was approaching. His hands, which had squeezed the pillow that lay beside her on the floor had perhaps left traces. He took the pillow with him and threw it in the latrine barrel at an RV rest area. No one would think of searching there. There could be no traces.

  He had a vague memory that he sat on the edge of the bed in her room and drank up the wine before the madness kicked in. Fury rushed into his veins, taking with it all reason from his brain. He smashed her TV with a chair. A vague memory from that night. There were some frightening gaps. Two children’s faces had looked down at him from the stairs. Perhaps it was reality, perhaps something that was added on from TV later in the evening? Would he dare go back there to see how bad it was? In daylight and in a semi-sober condition it would be an act of insanity. Right now he just wanted to cry and preferably go off and die. No, someone might notice him if he came back. It would be enough for the hostile man in golf pants who had stared arrogantly at him or the old lady with the permanent and the peering eyes. Would they remember him and provide a facial description? Perhaps they too were part of a bad dream? When you drink too much your sleep gets disturbed and your dreams are strangely real and frightening.

  He remembered he’d emptied the wine carafe himself. Her computer had been turned on. There was a bluish light from the screen. The dreams were complicated like female creatures that no sane person can understand.

  But first he had to check his email. It would be a day without alcohol, a day with only light beer and cola. When he drank too much, his worlds became mixed and the evil could reach him from the other side. He shouldn’t drink so much, but how else could he survive when the terror set in? There was no other relief to be had.

  Chapter 18

  When Maria Wern arrived at the police station on Wednesday morning, the fifth of July, she was told about the murder on Signalgatan by her colleague in reception. She hadn’t had a chance to listen to the morning news.

  Linda was being obstinate and didn’t want to stay home with Marianne Hartman, even though they had agreed on that. In the afternoon she was to have a play date with Sofie, who lived a little farther up the street. But as Maria was about to leave, Linda hung on her mother’s arm with both legs wrapped around her leg and screamed. She was a big girl now, almost eight, but what does that matter if you’re little inside? Marianne tried to entice her with videos and computer games and ice cream at an increasingly frantic pace.

  “You can dress up in my old clothes if you want. I have a box of old jewelry, too, don’t you think that would be fun? And makeup and long gloves like ladies have on when they go to balls and a hat with flowers. That would be fun to dress up in, wouldn't it?”

  “No, because I want my mommy. Don’t go, Mommy. Don’t gooooo … you can’t die … promise me you won’t die, Mommy. I want my mommy!”

  In desperation, Maria called Krister on his cell phone and listened to the sprightly message that he could not take the call right now, but Someone who’s waiting for something good never waits too long. It wasn’t amusing even the first time, and after the fifth try it was pure mockery. It was actually his turn to take care of the kids for fourteen days and he had barely lasted twenty-four hours in adapting his bachelor existence to Linda’s terms. Pick up the phone, you jerk!

  “You know, Linda,” Marianne’s voice was calm. “We could bake sugar cookies if you want and then you and Sofie can have them this afternoon when you’ve dressed up like elegant ladies. That sounds fun, don’t you think?”

  Very unwillingly, Linda accepted the offer, waiting just a little in case more benefits might turn up. Finally she was content with the exchange: a mother for video, ice cream, dress-up clothes, and sugar cookies. Worse transactions had been made.

  When Maria entered the station a good thirty minutes
later than she intended, she heard about the woman who had been murdered in her apartment. Hartman was already there to talk with the policemen who had been on duty during the night and the technicians who were on the scene. It took Maria another fifteen minutes to get there. She was exchanging a few words with her colleague at the cordon, to get a sense of what had happened, when Hartman approached her. His curly hair was standing up in all directions as if he’d fallen asleep with it wet and woke up in a big hurry, which might very well be the case. His voice sounded hoarse and hesitant, as if he had still not used it except to hem and haw. He cleared his throat.

  “One of the neighbors called in the alarm at midnight. There was a dreadful racket from the apartment. Practically everything in the living room and bedroom is smashed. There’s a dead woman in the bedroom. The apartment is owned by a Sandra Hagg. Previously she shared it with a Lennie Hellstrom. According to the neighbors she lives here alone. We’ll have to assume that it’s Sandra in there and … well, there’s actually nothing to suggest otherwise.”

  “Can she be identified?”

  “Well, it’s most likely her. At first glance she appears to have been strangled, according to Martenson. The medical examiner is on his way.”

  “Do we know if she has any family? Lennie, you said, is that a boyfriend? Are there others?” Maria sat down on the driver’s side in Hartman’s car when he opened the door.

  “We’ve tried to talk with the neighbors about that. Sandra Hagg seems to have a lot of visitors both during the day and evenings. No big parties, they come one by one. More women than men and always alone, says the next-door neighbor. Three years ago she and Lennie Hellstrom moved into this two-room apartment together, but for the last month he hasn’t been seen. The neighbors assume they separated but no one has asked directly. We’re trying to get in touch with him. The name is fairly uncommon. We have a couple of phone numbers for a Lennie Hellstrom on Rutegatan. Cell, work phone, and a number to a landline in the apartment we’ve located, but so far we haven’t been able to reach him. It would be good if he found out what happened before the media gets hold of this.”