KARIN WAHLBERG
DEATH OF A CARPET DEALER
This book is part of Stockholm Text’s Scandinavian Crime series. To find more titles in the series, make sure to regularly visit http://stockholmtext.com.
Stockholm Text
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© 2012 Karin Wahlberg
Translation: Neil Betteridge
Editing: Deborah Halverson
Cover: Dorian Mabb & Simon Svéd
ISBN e-book: 978-91-87173-14-1
ISBN print book: 978-91-87173-21-9
CHAPTER 1
CARL-IVAR OLSSON SAT on deck, thoroughly enjoying himself. It was Saturday afternoon and the boat’s motors were throbbing soothingly and lulling him into an agreeable state of calm. The fresh air was also doing its bit.
Well, there’s fresh and there’s fresh, of course, he corrected himself quickly. The atmosphere over a city of Istanbul’s size was perhaps not the most salubrious. Around ten million people in one chaotic throng, exhaust fumes and a thin ozone layer to boot, and your handkerchief spattered with black when you blew your nose. It couldn’t be doing anyone any good at all.
But anyway, what did he care? He liked it here. Part of his soul had taken root in Istanbul.
And he understood perfectly what had happened. As if by some kind of reflex, he had internalized his wife’s thoughts and comments and made then his own, as if she were sitting there beside him. As so easily happened when two people spent their lives together, they rubbed off on each other, for better or worse.
He didn’t actually want to let his wife in at that moment, but he was forced to remind himself to call her that evening to tell her he’d have to stay for a few more days. Tuesday was the offer he’d made her when she flew back to Sweden the day before, but even then he’d already made his mind up to stay until the following Saturday. Another whole week.
Although he couldn’t make himself tell her straight out. She’d have glared at him and demanded an explanation without even opening her mouth. It was naturally easier to call her and tell her a little cursorily about an old, close friend from Syria who had just happened to turn up in Istanbul. She’d be busy with whatever she was up to at home and say something along the lines of, “Do as you like, Carl-Ivar. Just as long as you get home in one piece…” She probably wouldn’t even sound put out. Possibly a hint of weary resignation in her voice, as to a child begging for candy.
She should have seen through him by now. But on the other hand – people see what they want to see.
Yeah, well, they weren’t kids any more either, neither he nor Birgitta. Life has to be enjoyed for as long as it lasts, he thought gloomily as a sea breeze tickled his nose.
He was on the wrong side of sixty-five. He loved life. A lot. He had a lot to look forward to. He had to make sure to live life as wisely as possible and to watch out for that pot in his belly.
He suddenly felt that sidelong look from his wife again, and his dander rose. Her censorious gaze that had landed at the bottom of his bowl of creamy white yogurt at the hotel breakfast table. Mild and tasty, but too fatty here in Turkey. That’s what the eyes had told him, he could read her mind with ease. The black olives and sun-dried tomatoes had, however, won her approval. He always made little piles on his pate, and she said nothing. Not about the cucumber sticks, feta cheese, and honey, either. Or the butter for that matter. Maybe she hadn’t seen it.
But the bread was too flimsy, not fibrous enough. She’d gotten so upset that she tossed out a comment to whoever cared to listen: “Do you really not have any wholemeal bread in this place?”
That little word really had clung to him and disturbed him even now as he sat in peace and quiet on the ferry, stupidly enough. He should know better than to let her always-knows-best attitude eat away at him. As it was, he’d taken a sesame seed bun, poured himself a black coffee, and sat down at a brown varnished table for four. They’d eaten in silence. Her teeth clopped together, even though they weren’t false.
As for Carl-Ivar, he adored these morning meals in Turkey.
The memory elicited a little cough as he sat there with the waves in front of him. As if in the end he wanted to cough away the image of his wife. But the irritation had already left something torn inside him.
Our lives persecute us, he thought philosophically as they were overtaken by a smaller, faster ferry. They’re called sea buses here in Istanbul. The steely green water frothed richly along the hull and whipped up a half-fusty smell of seawater. The traffic on the Marmara Sea was lively, with a continual shoal of boats crisscrossing their way to their destinations.
He scratched his neck with an index finger under his shirt collar and shifted his position, feeling all the while the soft bag against his body on the bench beside him.
He’d positioned himself so that no one could come between him and the bag. On the other side were the lashed-down lifeboats. When his hand left his collar it brushed quickly and almost imperceptibly over the front left side of his coat. He just wanted to make sure that the contents of his inside pocket were still there, which of course they were.
He then remained motionless until he had regained his self-control and could once again cope with the pleasure of passive sensuality. He had many nice things to get up to in his thoughts.
They were on their way to the Eminönü quayside in the heart of Istanbul. The ferry was traveling at a steady speed and made the slightest of yaws as he watched the waves. His thoughts whirled to a stop, ending up like dispersed leaves clinging stubbornly to their twigs despite the ravages of the autumn storms, until finally they too let go, dancing slowly to the ground. Fell to become leaf mold. Nature’s eternal cycle, he thought dreamily.
Music pounded from a ferry that was just coming toward them. He started. Alas, that was the end of that pleasant drowsiness.
Instead, his wife, stupidly enough, popped up again. Perhaps it was a way for him to process things, as they said nowadays. To rearrange the soul, to stand to account, so that he could at last be free.
There was nothing really wrong with Birgitta, she was a capable and industrious person. He took it back. He heard for himself how this is exactly what he did. He took it back by defending her, thereby defending himself and his own frustration. And his own bad conscience.
He knew what he was up to, alright. He was someone who often spent time doing penance. If he was to show generosity toward her convictions, he could hope that she did the same. By being fair rather than black-and-white or judgmental in thought, he cleared his conscience. From experience he knew that this would make it easier for him to keep his wife at a distance. But without being cruel. He was not a cruel person. He refused to see himself as such, but as a person who radiated respect and honesty, generally speaking.
But without being too critical he could, in spite of everything, note that for the past few years quite a lot of their life together had revolved around what was good and healthy. What riled him especially was her passion for what was not wholesome. The unhealthy had taken on its own lure in her life. Something to nail herself down with, to condemn, like his youthful fornicating and boozing.
But one could, of course, wonder why he put so much time into getting himself into a lather about his wife’s private mortal fears. She meant well, of course, with her exercise and low fat and fewer carbs. She wanted him to live as long as possible, too. The two of them, the rest of their lives on the same perch, like two old budgies. Should one die, the other would soon topple off to join it.
He gave a chuckle. Say what you will, a healthy lifestyle was a rather innocent occupation on the whole.
But now she wasn’t here.
The
sun, which had been slowly edging its way down, was still hot. His cheeks burned. He peered out over piercing reflections on the water. He could just possibly make out the Prince Islands on the horizon, since he knew their location. He then followed the coastline on the Asiatic side, until it dissolved and vanished into a steely green heat haze.
He sat there with a longing that already ached, which was undoubtedly why his thoughts headed off in the wrong direction – toward his wife. But he’d sort it out, After all, he had another few days to himself in Istanbul. A whole week, to be more accurate.
He was now on the way to dispersing the heavy clouds that had piled up in his life. It would cost him dearly, but it was worth it.
That would have to do for the time being. He’d have to work something out later.
The herd of American tourists that had been sitting beside him bleating loudly got up and went inside. At once his body settled down into an even deeper torpor. He was sitting comfortably, despite his being on a hard wooden bench. A reconciliatory mildness touched him. He succumbed to doziness again, a dreamlike tranquility that had his head bobbing to and fro before finally tipping backwards. His eyelids shut, his jaw fell open.
The boat glided onward. The clucking of the waves against the hull and the monotonous shrieks of the gulls lay now beyond the corporeal.
A heavy shadow had just fallen across carpet dealer Olsson.
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS A SATURDAY MORNING in May and Oskarshamn wallowed in white spring light. But the wind’s tail was cool, and the air hadn’t yet had time to warm up. Veronika Lundborg had found a sheltered spot on a bench in the middle of Flanaden, the only pedestrian street of the town center, and not a very long one at that. She sat leaning comfortably back with her legs splayed to make room for her belly, which swelled, huge and heavy. She was counting on sitting there a good long while in peace and quiet. Claes and Klara were off buying sandals. Klara had pleaded that only Daddy deal with this important purchase.
Kids, she thought.
The girl had, of course, worked out that her father was more compliant than she. With gentle eyes she’d watched them as they went their way, Klara skipping ahead and Claes looking down at their daughter, no doubt saying something funny while squeezing her hand a little tighter.
Veronika glowed inside before this trusting bonding between father and daughter, which was so strong as to be visible from the outside. Enjoy it! she told herself. The past winter had otherwise been a nightmare.
But that was then. She was no Doctor Death. She smiled crookedly at the thought. How easily pure madness could be elevated to truth. And in the small town world, mud quickly sticks to leave an indelible stain. She could hear them now: “You know, her, that doctor who killed that patient. Though I bet it was the husband, that corporate bigwig, and his lover, you know that pretty, young…”
But you had to be famous for something!
Cecilia, she thought then. The other tragedy. A day didn’t go by without her thinking of Cecilia. The thoughts came in little portions. The anxiety that nagged, but also the relief that it had gone as well as it had. In spite of everything. But naturally she wished everything to be exactly as it was before. Almost wasn’t enough.
She shut her eyes and bent her face upwards. The sun’s rays rested gently on her skin and her features softened. She unbuttoned the neck of her ample top and laid a hand over the stove in her stomach. She could feel shifting, listless movements, mostly on the right-hand side. Soon her belly would be gone. She was neither scared nor particularly worried, just normally apprehensive. And curious, of course. The Caesarean was planned, everything under control, but major events should not pass without trace. A great strain came and went like holiday jitters, or the tingling harbinger of love.
Her last child, incontrovertibly so. She wasn’t going to be like Sarah in Genesis, Abraham’s wife who fell pregnant at a very old age. At least a hundred.
Just then she heard her cell phone vibrate. And so at last, the call she’d been waiting for and on one level hoping she’d be spared. She didn’t even sigh when she fished the phone out of the tight trouser pocket and looked at the display. Yep, Cecilia.
Her throat suddenly burned, she cleared it and swallowed and pressed the phone against her ear, looking down at the pavement in order to concentrate better.
“Hi, sweetheart!” she said cheerfully.
“What are you up to?” wondered Cecilia tonelessly.
“Sitting on Flanaden, thinking of you,” said Veronika, truthfully. “How about you?”
There was silence at the other end. Veronika regretted the question; why ask her daughter when she knew the answer only too well? But what could she say?
“Nothing special,” answered Cecilia.
No, exactly. Nothing special. That was why she called. She called up just to pass the time in that uneventful and virtually desolate life that was hers since the tragic head injury. How long would it last? Forever, maybe? For life – it sounded awful.
Less than a year had passed since Cecilia was brutally knocked down one early dawn by a stranger in one of the more peaceable quarters of Lund. She’d probably been lying there a good while before a passerby had found her. That man Veronika had often silently thanked. She’d also, of course, thanked him in real life. He grew embarrassed, though moved, about saving the young woman, and equally tearful over their actually thanking him. You can’t take being thanked for granted these days, he said.
All in all, there was a lot about Cecilia to be thankful for: that it didn’t happen in the middle of the woods, that it was hours rather than days that she had lain defenselessly, that it had been August and the night relatively mild and not mid-winter with a bitterly cold, damp wind cutting through marrow and bone, like down in Skåne. Cecilia was rushed to the neurosurgical clinic at University Hospital in Lund. The best care imaginable just around the corner. Another stroke of luck. But nonetheless, things were as they were.
But why strike someone in the head, of all places?
To lay the victim out, naturally. To be sure that the injury is lasting, should the violence not be fatal.
The scarring on the scalp was no longer visible, her hair had regrown, blonde and thick, but they were just trifles in the bigger picture. What remained in all its pitiableness was that little difference, that which everyone who knew Cecilia before the accident found a tiny but nonetheless unfamiliar feature of her previously so complex and “normal” personality. We’re like seismographs, thought Veronika. Detecting the slightest tremor in the earth’s crust.
Brain injuries took time to heal, often years. Those two pallid hemispheres encased within a fragile skull were a source of fascination. No one who worked with the human body could think otherwise of this comparatively soft mass comprising densely packed nerve cells surrounded by connective tissue.
Have patience! she’d told herself, as she’d said thousands of times to her patients. The body needs time to heal. It was rarely as simple as replacing a nut or a screw.
Her phone grew hot against her ear. Eagerly, she furnished her daughter with assorted suggestions for how she could pass the day. Take a walk, try to read a book, go and buy a tasty treat and make some tea or coffee.
Cecilia breathed apathetically into her phone. Said effectively nothing at all. Just gave off some little passive whimpers.
“Maybe you could try going to the movies or watching a DVD?” said Veronika, unrelenting in her efforts to pepper her with suggestions.
“Naa… Can’t be bothered.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just too much.”
“But can’t you call one of your friends?” Veronika managed at last.
Cecilia’s lethargic breathing down the line.
“Like who?” she said, finally.
Jesus Christ! Had everyone given up on her? Cecilia had been such a popular girl!
And this raised a bitter question, one that Veronika had been putting off for a long time: Wha
t if these friends never came back? Seeing her child live like a recluse pained her. Deviant, odd, alone.
No!
But even an odd life was a life worth living, she thought then. Things weren’t that bad, after all! And who has the right to judge? Humans are made to adapt, she’d seen it so many times – without breasts, colon, hair, or an arm or leg. Still, the thought was an unpleasant one.
Now she was making small talk. She could hear herself. Words, words, words. Sorting things and cheering up with a cheerful, steady voice. It somehow made things easier. She was doing what she was good at, even professional. But she should lower her voice. Soften, quieten down. My darling baby.
But when she aired her plans to move Cecilia to Oskarshamn so that she could support her more actively, her daughter had protested. She didn’t want to, which was a blessing in a way. A momentary sign of recovery twinkled crystal clear.
And anyway, much could still happen, they’d said at the rehab clinic in Orup. The frontal lobes that controlled the ability to fine-tune social interaction were still developing well into the late twenties. Much of the personality was located there, too. It sounded comforting. Cecilia was only twenty-four.
When they hung up, Veronika was just as dispirited as she always was after talking to Cecilia. She stared vacantly ahead.
After a while, she pulled herself together and called Claes to ask if she should come and find them, but they were in the toy shop and hadn’t even made it to the shoes, so he saw no reason for her to get up.
Kids! thought Veronika again.
“Make the best of it and take it easy, for Pete’s sake,” said Claes. “It might be your last chance for years. I promise…”
So she bought an ice cream from the cart beside her, sat down again, and bit pleasurably into the thick chocolate coating, splintering it into large chunks that she deftly caught with the tip of her tongue. Concealing itself underneath was creamy vanilla ice cream, rich and filling. The ice cream was simply too big, the calories would settle on completely the wrong places, especially now when she was less mobile. Then again, no one was making her eat the whole thing. But she was only human!
Death of a Carpet Dealer Page 1