by Anna Jansson
“Yes, she’s dead. What time did you speak with her? Do you remember that? What time might it have been?”
“Damn it, I wanted to go home to her. It was right after eleven last night. I’d done my rounds at Vigoris and I just wanted to see her so I called … Excuse me, I have to pee.”
Hartman looked around the sparsely furnished kitchen. A small round wine-stained pine table with two chairs. No flowers in the window, no curtains. A pile of dirty dishes—several day’s worth of plates and glasses—were heaped in the sink and on the counter. A temporary residence, not a home. Above the kitchen table was a carelessly nailed-up cork bulletin board with a light-blue wooden frame. In one corner was a reminder of a dental appointment and below that a recipe for Flying Jacob casserole fastened with May Day wreaths. There was a photo, almost completely covered by gasoline receipts. Hartman folded back the strips of paper to see better. A snapshot of a happy couple. A Lennie with somewhat lighter hair stood behind Sandra and held her, and she was looking up at him from the side and smiling. A marvelous image showing warmth and love, it couldn’t be mistaken. At one time they loved each other a lot; what happened? Lennie was taking a long time in the bathroom. Conceivably he was crying and didn’t want to show it. After ten long minutes he was back. His movements were slow and disjointed but now his gaze was present.
“Are you completely sure she was dead? Did you see it yourself?” A low-pitched plea. Say it isn’t true.
“She was dead.”
“She can’t be, she has courses in how to stop smoking. She’s teaching a class this evening and I planned to go. The first thing she did when we started seeing each other was to throw away my pack of cigarettes. You have to choose, she said. Nicotine or nooky. Men who smoke become impotent. Do you want me or your cigarettes? She was non-negotiable on that point. If I wanted to be with her, I had to stop smoking and drinking. But it was worth it as long as it lasted.” Lennie smiled a sad smile and shook his bushy black hair. His big gray-blue eyes looked very, very sad now.
“What happened then?”
“Happened?” Lennie picked at something under his thumbnail for a while and tried to find words. He leaned his face on his hands so that only his hair was visible and sighed heavily. “What happened? I still don’t understand that. We didn’t argue about money, we didn’t argue about sex, we didn’t even argue about who should do what. But she got strange. Absent. She could sit and stare out the window for an hour at nothing. Or sit and think, and when I asked what it was she said it was nothing, although I knew there was something of course. She wouldn’t let me into her thoughts anymore and of course I got worried. Started wondering whether there was someone else. She worked a lot. Extra shifts. Overtime. Had sleepovers with her girlfriends. I didn’t want to control her. She said right from the start that freedom and trust were the most important things in a relationship. Her ex checked up on her and spied on her. That was why she broke up with him, she said. Her logic was a little strange on that point. She said that as long as she was left alone she took responsibility for being faithful, but if anyone dared check up on her they took over the responsibility and then her inventiveness and creativity were almost unlimited where finding opportunities was concerned. That’s exactly what she said and maybe she said it as a joke. I don’t really know if she meant it. Or if it was the first sign that she was starting to get tired of me.”
“So what happened? Did you start checking up on her?”
“What the hell, I guess I did. I got so fucking jealous. I checked her email. It was mostly from some freelance journalist named Tobias Westberg, a fucking bore. I’ve read a couple of his articles. He writes about medicine, I don’t get half of it. A know-it-all who likes to throw out fancy words, you know the type. Do you know what he calls himself on the Internet? Mr. Logic. So fucking ridiculous. Mr. Logic! Then I checked her calendar on the web. She had scheduled him for massage. We had a hell of a fight. There are limits and I think she respected the fact that I got angry, anyway. After that, it was calm for a while until I noticed that unexplained Ts started showing up in her calendar, the one she carried in her purse. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare. And now she’s dead. Damn it. How did it happen? Strangled, you said?”
“We don’t know yet. The door was open; it wasn’t broken down. We assume she must have let someone in who then strangled her.”
“Was she raped?” Lennie’s voice betrayed him. He looked pleadingly at Hartman, as if he was capable of controlling fate.
“It’s too soon to say. It may take several days before we know. What happened after you started checking her calendar? Did she find out?”
“I started checking whether she was at work when she said she would be there. That was a few months ago. She was going to work overtime the whole weekend, she said. Between two of my inspection rounds at night I went to the ward. It seemed like she had told the truth, because her bag was in the staff room. But I was crazy with jealousy, can you understand that?”
“Yes, I think I can understand what you were thinking.”
“Well, I took her cell phone out of her bag and checked who she had called and right then she came in. Do you understand? She saw what I was doing and got furious. Then she barely spoke to me for a week. Changed passwords on the computer and did not let her cell phone or calendar out of her sight. She got stranger and stranger and didn’t say where she was going anymore when she went out in the evening. I didn’t know what the hell I should do, so finally I threatened to move. Go ahead, she said, just as indifferent as if I’d said I wanted to change channels on the TV. Go ahead.”
“And then you moved?”
“Yes, what should I have done? I could have begged and pleaded that everything would be fine, but I couldn’t. Not then, and now it’s too late.” Lennie got up and went to the refrigerator again. Opened the door and took out the last beer. “How could it get like this? I need a whiskey instead of this pissy beer.”
Hartman agreed. There are times in life when an anesthetic may be required to endure. Lennie sat down at the table again and started weeping like a child. Hartman placed his big hand on his shoulder and waited for him to finish crying. When Lennie raised his head, Hartman’s arm was stiff and his fingers were numb. He tried not to show it.
“Is it even possible to understand women?” said Lennie, and Hartman noticed that his voice had become noticeably slurred and drawling.
“Understanding women is probably something a person could devote his whole life to,” said Hartman.
They were silent for a time while mutual understanding settled over the sorrow.
“I’d like to talk to you about your night shift yesterday,” Hartman continued. He picked up his pad and borrowed a well-chewed pencil from the windowsill.
“What? You don’t think that I … that I killed Sandra? Is that what you think? Say it right out in that case.” Lennie’s voice was full of anger and the outburst Hartman had feared earlier felt imminent now.
“Do you think I would’ve come here alone if I thought you took her life, do you really think so, Lennie?” Hartman was a little ashamed of his white lie, but it worked. Lennie, who had gotten halfway out of his chair, sat down again and his eyes became gentler.
“I started at nine o’clock and went through the laboratory and the department where they manufacture computer electronics, don’t ask me what they do, I don’t understand such things. The security manager for the whole company has his office there. We call him Five-Fault Finn, because he’s a nitpicker—so fucking meticulous. He looks for mistakes as if they were rewards, he micromanages. Nobody likes him. He really wanted to be a police officer but didn’t get in. These are really sensitive things to talk about. He’s so prestige-conscious that no one can stand him. If I’d been the one to decide we never would have bought the apartment from him. He was there to pick up his cell phone that he forgot. I teased him a little about that—he never makes mistakes, never forgets anything, you know. You can ask him yours
elf and he’ll tell you that I was there. Then I continued to a warehouse that is also owned by the group and then to Vigoris Health Center—the whole facility. Walked down every single corridor. We have access cards so that it shows when you go in and out. Then I called Sandra, because I was anxious just to talk with her, but no one answered. So I don’t work for a security company. The group has its own security guards. They want to use people they can trust and they want to approve who moves around on their premises. Actually it’s strange that more big companies don’t have their own security guards. Then I did the rest of my shift with a final round at the office on Brovag and turned in my keys to the day guard. When I came home it was almost six thirty. I didn’t know about Sandra. I swear it. I didn’t know until you got here.”
Chapter 20
Jonathan Eriksson closed the door to his office, took off the damp protective mask and sat down at the computer to do the necessary patient chart notes. His shirt was sticky with sweat and his hands were shaking as he picked up the microphone and dictated the measures he had performed the past few hours. Eleven new children, all with fever, sore throat, and aching joints, had come to the sanitarium in groups during the morning from the soccer camp in Klinte School. There were no longer separate rooms for all of them. They had to share rooms, with the risks that entailed if any of the children had flu-like symptoms for reasons other than infection with bird flu virus. The parents were upset, to put it mildly, and needed time to talk. The majority of them wanted to stay with their children but it had been necessary to make a decision that in principle this could not be allowed. There was not enough protective equipment, masks and protective clothing for everyone. The supply of adequate breathing protection was starting to run low and what masks there were had to be assigned and reused by individuals. A new shipment of breathing protection could not be expected until next week; the supplier was out. Changing to regular paper mouth protection would involve a great, unnecessary risk. Naturally the children’s need to have their parents nearby had to be considered, not the other way around, and weighed against the risk of infection. That had been the decision in the personnel group.
The situation was starting to get overwhelming. Staff who were not sick were working day and night. The extra staff who should have come and relieved them yesterday had not yet arrived, as negotiations were being conducted between Social Services and the respective unions to determine whether or not it was refusal to work to turn down compulsory service when the risk of contagion was so imminent and the medical absences among the personnel continued to increase at the hospital and sanitarium. It would be preferable to have staff with experience working in an infectious disease department. Presumably they would have to abandon that ambition as soon as this evening and take the hands that were willing to help.
Jonathan could understand those who refused and wanted to negotiate; being in a contagious environment meant risking your life. There are also limits to how loyal nursing staff can be. Someone has to do it, but why me? Why just me? He had asked that question himself. Maybe it was a combination of death wish, guilt, and duty when he chose to stay in service.
The ICU at Follingbo was unable to take more patients, nor could the infectious disease department, and the pressure from the general public on the health centers threatened to cause the whole healthcare system to collapse. A man with flu symptoms and a heart attack had died that morning waiting for a doctor at his home. A woman with a burst appendix had not received care in time either and died on her way to the hospital. And in the tent that had been set up outside the hospital to check temperatures and other signs of flu, tumult had broken out when patients were refused entry to the emergency room.
The media were in search of scapegoats. Social Services would be getting heaps of reports. The doctors who were supposed to make house calls couldn’t keep up, of course, and the team of doctors that was supposed to see other patients at the health centers was hard pressed even before the flu epidemic broke out. Morgan was badly needed at the sanitarium but was forced to go to Klintehamn to calm the parents of the children who remained at the soccer camp.
What worried Jonathan Eriksson the most at the moment however was that one of the two ten-year-old boys who had arrived yesterday, Zebastian Wahlgren, was doing very poorly. Emil Wern seemed to be handling the infection better. Zebastian’s parents had been contacted and would be there at any moment. Jonathan shuddered at the thought of this conversation. Sorry, we don’t have anything to offer besides general care and encouraging words. He may need to be on a respirator and there are no more respirators on the island. The coordination of resources from the mainland is not working. For best possible care he must be transported to Linkoping. There is an available place, but they don’t have any antiviral medicine to offer either.
Letting the patients leave the island was also a risk that in the present situation they were forced to take. As Asa put it: That way we save a few more lives, but we don’t hold the barriers and risk an epidemic. But when you are standing there by the bed and see a ten-year-old boy getting worse and worse and know that the chances of his survival are greater if he leaves the island, what do you do? A slight chance, but of course you take it. His coach, Jenny Eklund, had not survived despite intensive care. There were no guarantees. But if it were your child you wouldn’t hesitate, even if it meant risking other people’s lives.
For the eleven new arrivals there was no effective medicine to give. Jonathan had explained his work situation in sharp terms to Asa Gahnstrom and she protested that the national pandemic group was doing its utmost to produce Tamivir. A medicine that had been demonstrated in tests to have effect on the bird flu that broke out in Vietnam and later in Belarus, before it died out completely and the feared pandemic did not occur. But things looked dismal. The doses that had been purchased from an Internet dealer proved to be completely worthless sugar pills with additives of cortisone and anise.
There was a knock at the door and Jonathan put his mask on again.
“Zebastian’s parents are here now.” By the voice he recognized Nurse Eva, otherwise they were very alike, she and Agneta, when they were wearing a mask. Jonathan felt a twinge of guilty conscience. He should ask how Agneta is doing. It was his confounded duty as a supervisor and friend. What could he say in consolation? Not much. And his fatigue was paralyzing. If he got out of this inferno alive he would hide from people and not talk to anyone for an eternity, sleep for days, quit being a doctor and do something different, and never, ever make decisions that concerned the lives and health of others.
“Help them with the protective clothing. I’ll call Asa and see whether they’ve gotten anywhere in the negotiations, if anything new has happened. How do they seem to be taking it?”
“Of course they’re very worried. Did you tell them that he has to be moved to get access to intensive care?”
“I said that he’s worse, not how bad it is. I’ll inform them now. I didn’t want them risking their lives in traffic to get here. It’s better to do it face-to-face and take their questions calmly.”
“I was just wondering, so I know what I can say when they ask me.” Eva disappeared again and the air thickened. Jonathan took a deep breath and felt the pressure over his ribcage; it wasn’t possible to take a deep breath. A stitch in the spleen presumably or the start of a heart attack. In the present situation it didn’t matter which—death as rest and liberator from all the misery was no longer frightening. He picked up the phone to dial the direct number to disease control officer Asa Gahnstrom but instead his associate Morgan Svenning was suddenly on the line.
“Everything is falling apart. I’m not able to hold the positions out here. The parents are demanding to pick up their children. The barricade is crowded with people who intend to help them free the children. They are extremely agitated, it feels like they might start throwing rocks or let the dogs loose on the police at any moment. They don’t understand what they are risking if the infection gets out and there isn�
�t any medicine. We’ll have to cordon off the whole damn island with the help of the military if we’re not able to keep the infection enclosed, and people are going to die like flies in their homes because there aren’t any available hospital beds. Maybe it’s time to announce that in the media now, maybe it’s time to speak plainly. Asa Gahnstrom is on her way here. The enraged crowd outside has promised through their spokesperson to wait for what she has to offer. If there isn’t anything to give the children, all hell is going to break loose. What should we do? This can’t be happening - it’s a pure nightmare.”
“I don’t know what we should do, Morgan. I really don’t know.”
“Listen, one other thing that perhaps I shouldn’t burden you with right now—but I think you ought to know anyway. My wife was out with her co-workers at a bar yesterday celebrating with a colleague who is leaving. She saw Nina. I don’t know how to say this so there won’t be a mistake, but Nina, your wife—”
“Yes, what about Nina?” Jonathan was cowering from the pain in his chest. It almost took his breath away, an explosive ache that radiated all the way out to his back. And now this too …
“Nina was drunk off her ass and was ejected because she was loud and, well, rowdy. She was arguing with other customers. I’m really sorry, Jonathan. But I thought it was only fair for you to know—”
“Thanks, Morgan. Of course you did the right thing. Nina hasn’t had an easy time of it lately. Is Asa there now? I need to talk with her.”
“No, and the line is busy when you try her cell phone. What’s she doing? She has to come soon; otherwise there’ll be a riot. I can’t take responsibility anymore. I’m trusting that you’ll pass this on to Social Services. I said that I can no longer take responsibility and you heard me.”