Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  His pained relationship with blood and mangled bodies was otherwise nothing to discuss. It was no secret at the police station; his facial expression usually betrayed him.

  “And you a professional cop. Jeez, what a wimp!”

  Yes, he’d had to learn to live with comments like that. Or rise above them, as one said nowadays. And it wasn’t a problem at all, now that he was a little longer in the tooth and a man of certain rank. He’d felt enough shame in his time. Now enough’s enough!

  They’d come within a hair’s breadth last time, he’d never forget that. The blood that suddenly started flowing thickly out of Veronika, someone in the room who pressed an alarm button, a horribly ringing sound filling the room and the door being flung open as a doctor rushed in to stand quietly by the bed to survey the situation. Red seconds ticked away in the agony of decision. Then she nodded curtly to the midwife, whose eyes took on a hunted look. Hands grabbed hold of the end of the bed and rolled Veronika away. And left him standing alone. Minutes passed, as cold as burnished steel and as long as infinity.

  Until finally they came and fetched him. The green-clad. Led him to his execution. He, wearing the same green scrubs and a ridiculous light blue disposable shower cap. Walked to the room adjacent to the operating room, already the embodiment of calamity, and cautiously nosing the Inconceivable Grief.

  And there she was, lying on the heated nursing table. Lovely and rosy, she searched tentatively with her newly awakened eyes, dark in their little slits, for something to latch them onto. And found his. It was love at first sight. The warm, soft baby in his arms. The eyes. His daughter.

  Can such luck strike twice?

  It had to!

  He sped up, getting annoyed that Veronika couldn’t walk any faster. She was pigeon-stepping her way along. Jesus Christ! He yanked whenever she came to a halt. Klara sat in the crook of his other arm, not making a peep. She clutched the bag containing the newly purchased sandals in her little fists, an unadulterated joy that had been far too short-lived for the three-year-old soul.

  “They’re probably just pre-term contractions,” whimpered Veronika. “They’ll pass soon.”

  “Like hell they will!” said Claes. “We’re going to Kalmar!”

  She nodded and he removed his hand from his wife while they lurched past the newsstand. He took out his cell phone and hoped that Janne Lundin and Mona could take pity on Klara. Otherwise she’d have to go along, too.

  As the phone rang, he opened the car doors. Klara, who still hadn’t let go of her bag of shoes, climbed into the rear child’s seat herself and all he had to do was buckle her in. At last Mona answered. She was out of breath, having just come through the door after walking the dog.

  “What are you up to today?” he asked.

  “I’ve got people coming for coffee at three,” she said.

  Fuck, he thought to himself.

  “Was there anything you wanted?” she wondered.

  So he told her.

  “Dear me, of course I can still take Klara!”

  A weight fell from his shoulders.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Absolutely sure.”

  He slammed the car door shut and started the engine.

  “There are always decent people somewhere, we shouldn’t forget that,” said Veronika.

  “I actually find women like Mona who say ‘dear me’ a bit of a turn-on,” he said. Veronika managed to smile and stoke his cheek before having to concentrate on her next contraction.

  The Lundins lived just around the corner on Köpmannagatan. Mona was out on the sidewalk and waved. Klara was conveyed into her arms, still without making a peep. She knew Mona and Janne well and was even a bit spoiled by them. But she didn’t wave when her parents drove away. She just stared after them.

  They sat in silence as Claes turned out onto the E22.

  “You can’t go around thinking you can plan everything,” Veronika eventually said, pulling at the seatbelt that lay tight and irritating over her belly, while bracing herself with her other hand against the dashboard when the contractions came.

  They passed the exit to Påskallavik. She was still in control of the situation, Veronika maintained. Claes gave her the phone then squeezed the steering wheel tightly.

  “Can’t you call maternity in Kalmar when you’re not contracting and warn them? I don’t want to take my eyes off the road.”

  She did as he said and he could hear them ask her how frequently the contractions were coming, how long they lasted, and if her water had broken. It hadn’t. Veronika hung up.

  “They’re ready,” she said.

  “I’d have taken you there, anyway,” he said, steel-faced as they approached Mönsterås. There were dawdlers on the road, typical Saturday shoppers.

  “I’m soaked through,” said Veronika suddenly. They were just by the exit to Timmernabben.

  The leather upholstery! he thought. A totally despicable, materialistic thought. At least he didn’t voice it. Veronika was thinking likewise, apparently.

  “It can be cleaned,” she said coolly and fished a magazine out of her bag, folded it, and slid it under herself.

  Her stomach had calmed down a little, she announced. The lull before the storm, he thought. And he was right. As they drove into Rockneby, it started up again and Claes started to wonder about what he might have to do. Taxi drivers managed it, normal married and unmarried other halves had managed it for generations in remote villages where the nearest maternity hospital was far away. He thought of his father. “You should set up your life so that you’re always ready to cope on your own.” He’d preached that so often that Claes no longer heard what he said.

  However, a little of that spirit had presumably soaked into him, whether he’d wanted it to or not. He’d never been attracted to physical challenges as had his father, who’d been a lithe and fit man drawn to hardship, to long mountain hikes with heavy packsacks in crap weather. But what good did his father’s good physique do once the cancer had dug its claws into him? And he hadn’t been an old man, a mere fifty or so.

  Claes had naturally endured the same schooling as his father, that had been inescapable, but as he grew up he’d opted out of the worst of the hardships. He’d wanted to become a policeman, and found good use for his physique during the entrance tests.

  And now he thought he’d find good use for his optimistic disposition. Everything will be alright. Pretty much. If it wasn’t for the blood. But even that he’d deal with. Nothing’s impossible, he convinced himself.

  “It’ll be alright, don’t worry,” he said aloud.

  Veronika didn’t reply right away.

  “In one way or another I guess it will,” she managed once the pain had subsided.

  They reached Lindsal. Not far to go. Veronika called maternity again. Groaned that they’d just passed the entrance to town. The person on the other end asked questions again. Lots of questions. Claes wished he could answer for her, help her along. She answered as obediently as she could and then hung up, placed both hands on the dashboard and let out a long, loud bellow the likes of which he’d never heard before. At least not from her throat.

  By now they’d arrived at the exit to the bridge over to Öland and were heading toward the southern approach to Kalmar. The one marked with a red cross on a white background. Toward the hospital.

  CHAPTER 6

  ILYAS BANK SAT IN A HEATED room at the police station, which was located on a narrow, crowded street close to the Spice Bazaar. He’d been driven there, otherwise he would never have found it. The streets were like the tunnels of an anthill.

  He was trying to tell himself to relax, but wasn’t making a very good job of it. He was drumming his thumbs on his thigh where he sat, opposite an empty desk with a wooden top and steel legs and an impressive computer enthroned in one corner. He was waiting for the police to come and take his statement. And that was making him nervous.

  All that mattered was that they didn’t think he
had anything to do with it. He wasn’t a killer. The money… he thought. He regretted hiding it. What if he went down for murder because of it?

  Although right now he was mainly grateful that this wasn’t happening at home but in a city where he was virtually unknown. Curious glances had licked his neck both at the ferry terminal and outside the police station. How could anyone know that he was a mere witness? That he wasn’t the murderer? That he wasn’t any kind of criminal? That he had a conscience as white as snow? Well, almost.…

  Please don’t let them find the money! Why was he so stupid as to take the envelope?

  He didn’t like having to wait. The police officer had wandered off into the corridor to get something. She was taking her time. Ilyas wondered if it was some kind of trick to make him feel insecure and soften him up. His stomach cramped. He was only meant to give a witness’s statement – that’s what she said, the officer that is, they’d assigned a female cop to him – but obviously they had to treat everyone as a suspect until the opposite was proved.

  She was called Merve something, he’d managed to read from her door. What a place to be a police officer; he fantasized and felt pangs of envy.

  He was in an unfamiliar part of the city, somewhere in Eminönü. It was a tourist area and dead in the evenings except in the restaurants. The classic sights were here, and many hotels, of course. The moment he’d arrived in Istanbul his sister had shown him around.

  Most famous was the Topkapi Palace, which he could see every day from the ferry. The palace was situated high up on Seraglio Point, where the Bosporus and Marmara Sea meet. The lines into it were always so long, and the entry fee so high that he and his sister skipped it. He knew that a wealthy sultan had chosen the site and built upon it with great extravagance and that there was a large harem there, which although admittedly out of use still fired his fantasy.

  His chain of thought was broken by the door swinging open as the policewoman entered and sat across the desk from him in front of the humming computer. Hot on her heels came a man dressed in civilian attire with a tray containing two glasses of tea, which he set down before walking out again.

  Ilyas tried hard not to stare at the police officer. She was of indeterminable age, somewhere between thirty and forty, perhaps. She had a pretty, curved nose, he noted, since he saw her mostly in profile. It was the computer that aroused her interest, not him. She was no doubt waiting to pull up the right document on the screen. Her nails were long and shiny, and rested on the keys while she stared into the monitor, whose light reflected against her cheekbones. She was wearing a freshly ironed light blue uniform blouse with dark pants, and had her thick black hair gathered at the neck.

  His nerves hadn’t yet settled, but now he had no time to regret his ruse with the money. He straightened his back and gratefully dropped a sugar cube into his tea, stirring it slowly with the spoon while trying to shed his cloak of shame. Still, the policewoman had made no effort to smile. But the almond eyes were friendly.

  It could have been worse – as he persistently tried to convince himself. He wasn’t in the hands of the notoriously hardboiled military police. The methods they used were no joke, that much everyone knew.

  He sipped his tea. It tasted good and moistened his throat, which was as arid as the desert. The policewoman had made some progress and had started to key in his personal details, which he rattled off breathlessly: parents’ names, place of birth, current address, cell phone number. There was no end to what they wanted to know. The questions came naturally and without pause, so he understood that she’d done this before. He was fascinated by her fingers, which danced over the keyboard.

  Suddenly she turned away from the screen to look him in the eyes for the first time. For far too long, it felt.

  “Ilyas,” she said in a deep voice, and delivered an insufferably pregnant pause. “I know that what happened on the ferry was a nasty experience for you, but would you like to go through it all again just one more time? Take your time.”

  She prepared herself for his torrent of narrative by placing her fingers over the keys. He was thrown by the informality of her address, which made him at once embarrassed and nervous.

  “Where shall I begin?”

  He’ll have to watch his tongue. Everything was whirling around his mind in one big jumble, his heart was thumping, his head buzzing.

  “Start from when you discovered the man,” she offered amicably.

  At that moment, a color cascade of red blood and light-blue cotton flashed in front of his eyes and he could hear the wretched screeching and cawing of the gulls. Even now, he knew that these avian cries would pursue him for many years to come.

  But he talked, and it went fine. She wrote, but didn’t actually ask anything about the blood and that made it easier for him to continue.

  He gradually started to settle down, as his voice stabilized and his tongue loosened. Yet he could feel how beads of sweat were forming on his scalp. The room had heated up during the day, and there were still many hours to go before the merciful cool of the evening. He looked up at the ceiling. The large fan rotating above his head was all but useless.

  Ilyas didn’t dare glance at the time, but a good while had passed since he heard the call to afternoon prayer echo over the quarter from the loudspeakers high up in the nearest minaret. It had, in other words, past five o’clock.

  Istanbul was densely packed with mosques, very large ones and very small ones, and most very old. He still reacted to the metallic sound of the muezzin’s voice, which was not as warmly inviting as the imam’s soft tones that descended softly from the minaret in his home village.

  As he talked and tried to answer her seemingly arbitrary questions, he stared at the emblem on her blouse breast. It was a little higher up than her bust, which was lucky, as she wouldn’t have to suspect him of sitting staring at her tits. Which, incidentally, were ample, he’d been quick to note.

  How cool to get to wear a uniform with that emblem on it, he thought. He’d check out the possibilities of his joining the force later.

  His stomach started grumbling and rumbling. The tension and the discomfort had upset his belly. She heard it, of course – only the stone deaf could have missed it – and cast him a quick glance.

  He felt as mortified as a dog and even more determined to get out of there as quickly as he could, and so began to babble with increasing speed while she miraculously kept up until the plasticky clicks of the keys resembled the backing track of a rap song.

  When he was done, there was a moment or two’s silence before she read aloud from the screen, pausing to ask one or two brief questions and writing in the amendments. He could tell by her dialect that she was probably from Istanbul. Now she was ready, and read out what she’d written one last time.

  “Is this right?”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod.

  “So you’d never seen the man that you found dead before?” she repeated with her eye fixed on him.

  He shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “But we get new passengers all the time.”

  “I realize that there are a great many people on the ferry. And you can’t be sure where the man came aboard?”

  “All I can think is that it was at one of the midway stops, in Yeniköy, maybe.”

  She turned and studied that map that hung on the wall behind her.

  “On the European side, that is,” explained Ilyas.

  “I know,” she said and continued to examine the map, as if to fix the point with her eyes. “There are some beautiful yalis there,” she said dreamily, dropping for a second her formal air.

  Ilyas nodded. The lavish multi-story villas that the wealthy once had built, often out of wood, were situated along the water’s edge and were a delight to see from the approaching ferry. They evoked dreams of another world. Another life.

  “You seem to have a pair of eyes on you,” she said, smiling. “Do you remember if the man, in that case, was alone when he climbed on board?”


  Ilyas felt flattered, naturally, and tried to squeeze his memory harder.

  “He wasn’t the only one to get on there, so I guess I didn’t think too much about it. It doesn’t often happen that only one passenger comes aboard. But he… him… that dead guy, I mean, he bought some tea after a while, by which time he was already sitting there by the railing… well, where I later found him. On the port side… And there was a crowd of Americans there, too, as I’ve already mentioned.”

  “So you can’t say for sure if he was with someone?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you notice anything during the trip that you think might be worth telling us? Something that happened or a person that you particularly noticed – anything?”

  He searched his memory, but no, he couldn’t think of anything.

  “Did you see if the man had a bag of some kind?” she continued.

  He stared at her desktop. “No,” he said, and sounded honest. “At least he didn’t have a bag when I found him… when he was dead, I mean… but I don’t know if he had one before that.”

  “If we’re really lucky, someone’s taken a photo from the boat and caught him in the frame. We can find out more that way,” she said, and it sounded like a piece of information, but Ilyas felt his stomach tighten again. “He didn’t have anything in his pockets that you happened to see?” she asked as if to no one in particular, rolling her head as if to ease some tension in her neck.

  “No,” he replied with a rapidity that made her stop and face him with her arms folded across her chest.

  Ilyas felt his stomach knotting itself with a frenzy of cramps that almost made him pale with pain.