Third Voice

by Börjlind, Cilla

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’ he said.

  ‘Because I’m curious.’

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  Olivia looked at Alex. She liked him. She didn’t know whether it was his voice or attitude or his short dark hair, it was probably just the energy he was radiating.

  So she tried to find an acceptable answer.

  ‘Bengt Sahlmann has been murdered. It’s a tragedy for Sandra. She’s a family friend and I want to do all I can to help her find out what happened. And why.’

  ‘Are you a police officer?’

  ‘Yes and no. I’ve done my police training, but I don’t work there. The National Crime Squad is investigating Bengt’s murder.’

  ‘Why them?’

  ‘I don’t know. So why were you calling?’

  Alex started chewing on some more nicotine gum and saw that it was his last one. He had had far too many. He brushed his hand over the short stubble on his cheek. What should he say?

  ‘Maybe you don’t want to say?’ said Olivia, as though she’d seen it in his eyes. ‘Maybe it’s sensitive? Private?’

  ‘It’s private.’

  ‘OK.’

  A few seconds of silence followed. They both looked at each other. Alex averted his gaze first and looked over Olivia’s shoulder to check that there was no one sitting too close. He wanted to answer. He wanted to keep the dialogue going with this alert woman. So he leant over towards Olivia.

  ‘Bengt had got in touch a few days before and said that he had some seriously explosive material he knew I’d be interested in, as a journalist. He didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, he was going to send it to me. I was calling to ask whether it was on its way as I hadn’t received anything.’

  ‘So you don’t know what it was about?’

  ‘No. But I know that he wouldn’t call me like that unless it was serious. And he sounded stressed. I asked him whether something had happened and it had, he said, and then he ended the call.’

  ‘Maybe it had something to do with the theft at Customs and Excise.’

  ‘What theft?’

  Olivia knew that she should have kept quiet if everything had been as normal. But things weren’t normal. Nothing had been normal since Tom Stilton had divulged the truth about her murdered mother. Now everything was abnormal and Olivia didn’t really know what she was doing. Right now she was having a semi-private conversation with a journalist she didn’t know.

  Things hadn’t gone very well last time she did that.

  Well, that’s how life was sometimes, she thought, and told him about the disappeared stash of drugs at Customs and Excise and Bengt Sahlmann’s internal inquiry. She didn’t know that much, hardly anything.

  But of course Alex became more and more interested.

  ‘How large was the stash that disappeared?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And I thought it was about something completely different.’

  ‘What? I thought you didn’t know what kind of material he was talking about.’

  ‘No, if I’d known I wouldn’t have said it. I only have assumptions.’

  ‘About?’

  Alex understood that she’d disclosed something she probably shouldn’t have, about Customs and Excise, so he did the same, because he liked her too.

  Her energy in particular.

  And moreover, his intuition told him that this contact would come in useful in the future.

  ‘Bengt recently had a violent outburst at a party, well, more of a dinner. There were a few friends from school and he got quite drunk and suddenly started talking about his father’s death, in a nursing home, and made loads of accusations and claimed that he’d still be alive today if he’d received proper care. It was really awkward, so we put him in a taxi.’

  ‘And you thought he wanted to give you information about that?’

  ‘It just struck me, considering how upset he was. But that thing about the drugs sounds more solid.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’

  Suddenly it was time for Alex to leave – he’d been waiting for the press conference with Jimmie Åkesson. A couple of Sweden Democrats had gone around the city centre beating people up with iron bars. Alex excused himself. Olivia got up, took off her grey hat, shook her long hair, wrote down her mobile number on a pad and left. Alex watched her go.

  That’s the third time I’ve heard about Bengt’s father’s death, Olivia thought to herself on the way down. From three different people. He must have been extremely upset about it. She got out her mobile and called Sandra. She answered quickly.

  ‘Hi. Have you found the computer?’

  ‘No, sorry, but I’m sure the police are busy looking for it. How are you?’

  ‘So-so. I’m not sleeping well.’

  ‘You know you can call me any time if you can’t sleep.’

  ‘Yes. Are you calling about something in particular?’

  ‘I’m just calling. I’m thinking of you, all the time.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But there is something I was wondering. What was the name of your grandfather’s nursing home?’

  ‘Silvergården, in Nacka. Why?’

  ‘I’m just curious. It sounds like your father was pretty upset after your grandfather died.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Yes. And? Olivia felt that she was messing this up.

  ‘So, how is it living at Charlotte’s?’ she said, changing the subject.

  ‘Fine, I suppose… she said we could move home to Rotebro if I wanted, but I don’t. Maybe later…’

  ‘Yes, the most important thing is that you do whatever feels best for you.’

  ‘That’s what Charlotte says too. Sorry, can we speak tomorrow? A school friend just arrived.’

  ‘Sure! Call me when’s good for you.’

  ‘Thanks, I will.’

  Olivia ended the call and felt pretty crap. She’d only been ringing to obtain information, not to see how Sandra was feeling. But she did want to know. We’ll talk for longer tomorrow, she thought, and headed towards the glass doors at the entrance. As she looked out she saw people hunched over, trying to make their way through the icy wind and rain.

  Horrid.

  She put on her knitted hat and stepped outside into the storm.

  She took the car out to Nacka.

  Thus far she’d used the missing laptop and her relationship with the orphaned Sandra as the reasons for her actions. She could do that a while longer, without ‘trampling’ on Mette’s investigation. The meeting with Alex Popovic had fired her up.

  She turned off the motorway and skidded on the corner. The roads were soaked in icy rain and she still had her summer tyres. Time to change those, she thought, and headed towards Jarlaberg.

  The nursing home lay at the end of the road, a modern, grey, two-storey building. She parked near the entrance and hoped that she wouldn’t need any door codes to get in.

  She didn’t.

  She pushed the glass doors open and walked into a deserted entrance hall. There was no one there, except a small white cat brushing against the wall. A cat? She passed through another glass door, which didn’t shut in time to prevent the cat from squeezing through. Shit! Should she take it out again? She couldn’t – it had already gone. Was it normal for cats to be in nursing homes? She walked through a short corridor towards yet another glass door. There was still no one to be seen. She pushed the next door open and stepped into a larger corridor with an empty reception to the right. A stark fluorescent light reflected off the white walls, almost dazzling her. She carried on in and was struck by the silence, as though it was sound-proofed. Her own footsteps were hardly audible. She walked a few more metres. Then a strange feeling came over her and she turned her head. There was a man sitting on a wooden chair, in a corner, just behind her. He was wearing grey flannel pyjamas. There was not a hair on his head and his skin was covered in bluish-black spots. His skeletal hands were holding onto the armrests. He sat completely st
ill, his eyes fixed on Olivia. She suppressed her initial shock reaction and approached him.

  ‘Hello, my name is Olivia. Do you know where the staff are?’

  The man just sat there, completely still. In fact, his face was entirely motionless, his body frozen. Olivia had seen human statues in both Barcelona and Mexico City, people standing as though they were made of stone, for hours on end, only moving their eyes. This man wasn’t even moving his eyes. Was he even breathing?

  Olivia turned away and walked on through the deserted corridor. When she’d almost reached the end, she turned around. The fossil in the chair still hadn’t moved. Olivia turned the corner into another bright corridor, just as empty as the other one. She passed a number of doors, many of them with a key in the door. She stood still in the middle of the corridor. This was ridiculous. Surely there had to be someone here?

  ‘Hello?!’

  She heard her own voice bounce along the walls a couple of times before it faded away. And then it was silent again.

  Then she heard the scream, an unpleasant drawn-out scream, like a howling fox in the night. It came from one of the rooms further down. Olivia walked towards it. The door was ajar, so she carefully pushed it open. The room was dark, the blinds were drawn. She saw a woman inside squatting on the floor. The woman was wearing a white coat. Had she been the one screaming? Olivia stepped into the room. The woman looked straight up at her.

  ‘Is the ambulance here?’

  ‘I don’t know. What’s happened?’

  Olivia took another step forward and then she saw a second woman, a very old woman in a white robe. She was lying on the floor. Blood was running from a cut on her forehead. Her legs were moving up and down as though she had cramp. Her hands were thrashing about in the air. The woman in the white coat took hold of her hand and tried to keep her arm still.

  ‘There’s help on its way, Hilda, soon…’

  The woman let out another scream, this time much longer and more piercing.

  ‘I’m here now, Claire is here… everything will be all right in a moment.’

  The old woman, Hilda, started lashing out with her other arm, her body arching like a bow on the floor. The woman in the white coat looked up at Olivia.

  ‘Please help me!’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Take the other hand.’

  Olivia sank down onto the floor and took hold of Hilda’s other hand. She felt how strong the old woman was, Olivia could hardly hold her flailing arm. Suddenly Hilda turned her body on the side and pulled her head up from the floor. Her eyes were staring straight up at the ceiling, her whole body was screaming, without a sound. Claire tried to stroke her forehead.

  ‘Is there no one else here?’ Olivia said.

  ‘No, not in this ward. I’ve called the ambulance and the doctor.’

  But there wasn’t much point. Olivia and Claire both realised that life would flow out of Hilda long before that. They held the woman’s hands in the dark and saw her frail body slowly stop fighting, her breathing slowly wane and her head bend down to the floor. Seconds later Olivia felt the old woman’s hand clasp her own so hard that she felt like screaming and then it went limp.

  Hilda was dead.

  Olivia sat down on the floor with her back to the bed. Claire had felt for a pulse and noted the time and a few other details. Then she gently brushed the old woman’s eyelids shut and neatened her hair, pulled out a cloth from her pocket and wiped away the blood on Hilda’s face.

  ‘She probably cut her forehead when she fell out of bed,’ she said quietly.

  Olivia nodded. She was shaken. It was the first time she’d seen a person die. A person whose hand she held at the moment of death, a complete stranger. She looked around the room, the walls were bare. There was a framed photograph on a shelf next to the bed.

  Of a dog.

  That was all.

  ‘Could you help me?’

  Claire had got up and stood behind Hilda’s head.

  ‘Take hold of her calves,’ she said.

  They were going to lift Hilda up onto the bed. Olivia held her legs and Claire held her under her shoulders. Olivia prepared to lift a human body and was shocked. The body hardly weighed anything at all, it was like lifting a white robe, as though death had taken away all her weight. Carefully they placed Hilda on the bed.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Claire.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the dead woman. Olivia could see how incredibly moved she was. Filled with sadness, her hand became moist as she wiped her eyes. Olivia sat down in an armchair. The silence was different in here. It had been frightening out there, not in here.

  ‘It’s just hopeless…’

  Claire spoke down to the frail body, not looking at Olivia. Her voice was controlled, but resigned, as though she was confirming a recurring tragedy. Olivia sat in silence. She felt there was more to come.

  ‘We struggle on until we reach breaking point, and this still happens. Over and over again. We don’t have time to be where we need to be, we don’t have time to do what we know we should, it’s just hopeless…’

  Claire turned to Olivia.

  ‘I came in to see her a couple of hours ago, and then she was just lying in her bed as normal, breathing, and I talked to her a bit and told her that I had to go and check on a couple of other rooms and deal with the food and work on some supply orders. She was to press the emergency button if she needed anything. But she didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She couldn’t reach it. It had slid down behind the edge of the bed. If I’d popped in earlier I’d have seen it, but I had all that other stuff to do and I’m on my own here today. What could I do?’

  Olivia didn’t have an answer. She didn’t work here. But she understood that Claire was shaken by what had happened and that she needed to talk about it.

  ‘What do you mean by “over and over again”?’ she said. ‘Has this happened to you before?’

  ‘Several times, unfortunately.’

  Claire looked at Olivia.

  ‘Thanks for your help, by the way. My name is Claire Tingman.’

  ‘Olivia Rivera. I’m a friend of the Sahlmann family. Torsten Sahlmann died here a while ago, am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His son Bengt was very upset about his death.’

  ‘I know. And with reason.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Torsten had a stroke during the night, and the person on night duty was busy with other stuff and she wasn’t able to keep an eye on things properly, so he wasn’t found until the morning and by that time it was too late.’

  ‘So he could have been saved if they’d found him earlier?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like Hilda?’

  ‘I don’t know. But this kind of thing happens all the time. A couple of weeks ago we had a diabetic woman who didn’t get her insulin on time – it wasn’t recorded in the notes when the support staff took over. She almost died too.’

  ‘But that’s terrible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why is it like this, then?’

  Olivia saw that Claire was hesitating.

  ‘Because we’re constantly short staffed,’ she said. ‘Because half of us are underqualified. Because of the need to make savings everywhere. Because there’s no proper planning, no one knows what anyone else is doing, everyone needs to be everywhere. Several of the elderly people have got terrible bedsores and last summer we found fly larvae in a sore on an old man’s back. It was disgusting.’

  Claire turned her head away slightly, as though the memory of it was still troubling her.

  ‘I’m always almost in tears when I go home at the end of my shift,’ she said. ‘It’s like they don’t get that it’s human beings we’re dealing with here, as though it was some kind of final storage place for people who are going to die.’

  ‘“They”?’
/>
  ‘The people running the home. It’s only about cutting costs and making money. And about…’

  Claire stopped abruptly. There was a clacking sound of hard heels in the corridor.

  ‘You probably ought to leave now.’

  Olivia stood up. She met a woman with short blonde hair in the doorway. She was dressed in a stiff beige coat and was on her way into the room. She was startled. Olivia walked past her out into the corridor. The woman walked into the room and pulled the door shut. Olivia heard muffled voices inside. A couple of minutes later, the door opened and the woman came out again. She took a couple of steps towards Olivia and reached out her hand.

  ‘Hi. Rakel Welin.’

  ‘Olivia Rivera. Who are you?’

  ‘I am the director of Silvergården. Do you have family here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve just helped one of your employees with a dying woman in there. Apparently there’s no one else here.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to ask you to leave now.’

  ‘Why?’

  Rakel Welin was rather taken aback.

  ‘Because this is a private nursing home. We can’t have unauthorised persons running around here.’

  ‘I’m a friend of the Sahlmann family.’

  ‘They no longer have a relative here.’

  The women looked at each other. Welin gestured towards the exit. Olivia didn’t move.

  ‘How do I get in touch with the company running Silvergården?’ she said.

  ‘Are you going to leave or do I have to call the police?’

  ‘And why would you do that? Because I saw what happened in there?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with outsiders.’

  ‘Except that you let an old woman, who could have been saved, die.’

  ‘Are you going to leave?’

  ‘Are you trying to cover up what happened?’

  Rakel Welin looked at Olivia and got out a mobile. Olivia turned around and walked towards the door. Halfway there she stopped. Claire was standing in the doorway behind Welin. Their eyes met. Olivia went out through the glass door. Just before it slammed shut, the white cat scurried out after her.

  It had probably caught sight of Rakel Welin.

  She gripped the steering wheel. The roads were slippery, but more than that, she was extremely upset. The windscreen wipers were flapping to and fro all the way home – she hadn’t even realised it wasn’t raining.