Death of a Carpet Dealer
Page 9
Eventually, he would wake with a grinding nausea every morning, day in and day out. He recalled how he struggled with his breakfast. How Annelie would sit watching him from across the table with worried eyes.
But he couldn’t be talked into doing something about it. He wasn’t ready for that, despite never managing breakfast and vomiting after the morning coffee at the clinic. If, that is, he made it anywhere near a cafeteria.
Believing that he could change the extrinsic conditions at the capital’s main hospital was pure idiocy.
“You’ve just got to grin and bear it,” he was told. “Those who can’t stand the heat don’t hang around.”
He blinked and looked at his watch. Five minutes had passed, almost. But now he had neither the will nor the energy to call up the old biddy on the toilet. Well, she only had herself to blame, he’d given her a chance. She’d have to wait till tomorrow.
He stood up and left the ward.
Five minutes later, Christoffer Daun was making his way down through the hospital two steps at a time. Jeans and short-sleeved shirt. His private self.
He almost collided with Ronny Alexandersson, who was on his way up.
“Good night!” Ronny called after him as Daun continued down.
Ronny was Christoffer’s guru. He looked up to him. It was Ronny who’d taught him alternative rules of life when he first arrived at the clinic in Oskarshamn and was worried about how he’d cope with the job.
“Don’t worry about coping,” said Ronny without a hint of critical undertone. “Self-pity takes up too much space. Just get working and we’ll take things as they come. There’s room for all sorts here.”
Afterwards, Christoffer found that he was right.
“Here we work to live, not live to work,” said Ronny a while later. “It’s a choice you make.”
Ronnyisms was what Christoffer called these words of wisdom. There came more, and he collected them in the small green notepad that he always carried with him in the spacious pocket of his doctor’s coat. For Ronny had much to give, his knowledge seemed inexhaustible. He wasn’t the type to go strutting around. He just was.
The ground floor was full of morning activity, as people streamed in through the main entrance. Christoffer slowed down and directed his gaze onto the steps so as not to have to meet people’s eyes and greet them. Besides, there was someone he wanted to avoid, and he’d managed so far.
Hunger wrung his stomach as he was greeted by the aroma of coffee from the cafeteria, but he passed through the glass doors at the same time as radiology consultant Göran Bladh passed in. At least he wasn’t swaying, even if his gait was a little bow-legged, Christoffer noted. But Bladh’s visage was extremely bright red and he was late. He’d probably been on a bender the entire weekend and had had trouble dragging himself out of bed.
The air that ricocheted off him was chilly, and he should have been wearing his coat, but it was in the car.
He rummaged around for his car keys in the outer pocket of his packsack, unlocked the red Passat and plonked himself down behind the wheel.
Just as he was about to start the engine he spotted a slip of red paper flapping under the windshield wiper.
“Crap!” he said half aloud to himself and climbed out far enough to snatch up the note. He sank back behind the wheel, tossed the piece of paper onto the passenger seat, then turned, at last, the ignition key.
The note was a half-sheet of paper, and out of sheer defiance he refused to read what was on it. He’d made it this far. But she was craftier!
But when he threw the car into reverse and was about to pull out from his parking spot, he couldn’t help casting a quick glance at the text. Easy-to-read print with soft curves that suggested care, tenderness even. A hand that until recently could make him weak at the knees now only inspired aversion. A sense of cloying. He wanted out. The duplicity depressed him. It was complicated.
And yet it was hard to avoid the thrill. It so easily fired him up. It was life. And the woman who put the note there knew that only too well.
He scrunched the note up into a tight little ball and threw it crossly onto the floor by the passenger seat. And regretted it immediately. It couldn’t lie around there, for God’s sake!
But by then he was already on his way out of his parking place and couldn’t reach that far down with his hand while driving. The Santa-red paper ball rolled up and down as the car swung out onto route 37.
I mustn’t forget to pick it up and throw it away before I get home, he said to himself as he drove westward.
As he passed the town boundary, the clouds started to build up, but the spring light was still strong enough for him to put his sunglasses on. The road was almost empty.
The car knew the way. Soon it would turn toward Kristdala at the Århult junction and continue northward on a minor road.
It had never been his intention to settle in Småland, the plan had been to stay in Stockholm after his specialist training. He was a Stockholmer, after all, of course that was what he’d do! What would a city boy do out in the wilds of Småland? Pick blueberries and stare at cows?
The property that he and Annelie had already bought out in the sticks in Bråbo, bought because they’d both fallen for it, they’d intended to keep as a summer retreat. A red-painted two-story cottage with the obligatory white corners, a barn, a henhouse – sans hens – and a wonky outhouse that seemed to be praying to the gods not to be demolished.
Something like that.
“If it was at least Kalmar,” his mother had sighed.
She was passionate about the pretty medieval town fifty miles to the south, which even boasted a magnificent castle. It was a town steeped in history. Kalmar was just that little bit more classy.
“Oskarshamn, Christoffer dear! What do you want to be going there for?”
Quite. What was he going there for?
The birches in their groves were just coming into leaf. He and Annelie lived in one of Sweden’s largest uninterrupted stretches of cultivated countryside. It was so beautiful that he thought about it every day, regardless of season, as he drove the fifteen miles to work. Today, too, in spite of his feeling tired and irritated.
He saw stone walls and natural log fences and small lots. Bråbygden was no longer a depopulated area. The permanent residents were growing in number, and there were Germans and Dutch here who liked to take care of their property. The houses were a radiant white and the glazed verandas shiny and new.
The last leg of the journey was uphill. The villages, which consisted largely of a collection of farms, were high up. They lived in Bråbo. And there was Äshult, Kärrhult, Bjälebo, Fallebo, Applekulla, and Krokshult, plus a handful of other villages with equally wholesome names.
Their neighbor was repairing his fence, he saw from afar. The old boy had been at it for days. His son, who was called Lars and nudging sixty, would probably be lending a hand. There was something about that man, not just the fact that an accident – which very few people actually knew the details of but still liked to speculate about – had left him with one leg shorter than the other. Lars kept himself to himself, but was kind-hearted, as Annelie said. They were distant relatives, Annelie and the neighbors.
Christoffer parked in the courtyard outside the barn and, opening the car door, was met by fresh, soil-steeped air and birdsong. A car drove past on the road, probably the neighbor who lived further down toward Bäljebo giving the kids a lift to preschool.
Kids, he thought. Would things have been different had they had kids?
There was no point checking the mailbox, the postman wouldn’t have come yet and Annelie had no doubt already gone to get the newspaper.
As he walked toward the kitchen door, his eyes traveled to the slope behind the house. The fairies were still dancing in the dale, and now the sun was starting to burst its way through white fluffs of cloud that had started to form in an azure sky.
He gave a little smile, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
She was busy stacking the dishwasher. She was pretty, his Annelie. He knew, of course, that she was pretty, but hadn’t registered it for a while. A heart-shaped face, blonde bangs and soft shoulder-length hair. She’d always been curvy and moaned constantly about not being rake thin, but he liked the fact that she had shoulders, boobs, and a butt.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said giving him a fleeting stroke of the cheek. “How was your night?”
“The same,” he answered thickly and half absently, wondering whether to make some oatmeal in the microwave or to have cereal instead.
It’d have to be the cereal. He opened the fridge and shook the carton of milk. It’d do. But no coffee, however tempting it smelled. He wouldn’t get to sleep. And not being able to sleep was hell on earth.
“Then I’ll take the car,” she said. “I called the garage, and they said they won’t be ready with mine till tomorrow. Call me if there’s something you want me to pick up.”
Right, of course! Her car was at the garage. She was helping her uncle out in his shop in Oskarshamn now that she was out of work. She’d never got a permanent teaching post in Oskarshamn. In Stockholm, there was lots of substitute work, even for longer periods than normal, lasting whole terms.
“Are the keys in it?” she asked from the doorway.
“Er… yeah.”
He heard her footsteps on the gravel, the car door slam, and the engine start and drone as she drove out onto the road.
The sun had now broken through fully. He wolfed down his cereal. The morning light was shining brightly over the courtyard. It was really a day for him to be outside. Digging, planting, pruning. It always felt such a waste to sleep away a radiantly beautiful day.
He planned to go for a long leisurely jog once he’d had a few hours’ sleep. He usually found it difficult to get the body going at any kind of pace the day after night duty.
The house was liberatingly quiet. He mostly thumbed through the paper, unable to focus on the text. His tension eased, his muscles softened, and doziness came creeping. This lethargy that was so agreeable.
Less than five minutes later he was in bed. Annelie hadn’t made the bed, knowing that he’d snuggle down as soon as he got home. He lay naked on the cool sheet. A window was on its hook and he’d pulled down the dark blinds that he’d hung up when he’d started to develop insomnia.
The spring sun had a tendency to slip through where it could, especially through the gaps down the side, so he turned over and pulled the comforter across his face.
Just as his body was starting to drift away and his mind to doze off, the red paper ball came rolling back. Like a warning signal that seared the inside of his eyelids.
Fuck! He’d forgotten to pick it up from the floor of the car!
His heart started to race. He leapt out of bed and stood naked on the pine floorboards, his teeth rattling as the first panic attack flooded through his body.
CHAPTER 12
I HAVE TWO DAUGHTERS who are my flesh and blood.
Claes Claesson didn’t say it loud, but he thought it. He was lying outstretched on the sofa with little Cannon Ball on his chest.
And then there’s Cecilia, too, he thought, because he couldn’t just ignore her. She wasn’t his flesh and blood, but she was his all the same.
His newest daughter lay on him like a frog with her round cheek pressed against his chest. He’d put on a faded, soft cotton top. Relaxed, they lay there, he and Nora, two days old, with legs and arms still spindly. They’d soon fill out and get those lovely folds. Now she was sleeping the innocent sleep of the newborn, giving the occasional jerk; she whimpered, fell silent, and went back to sleep.
Klara had wanted her mom to drop her off at preschool, needing Veronika to herself for a while. “My mommy,” she said, taking Veronika by the hand and leading her away. She could have stayed at home, but she was dying to tell her playmates about her new sister. Now that one of her parents was expected to be at home each day, the rules limited her preschool time to three hours, between eight and eleven, and that was probably more generous that elsewhere in the world. Women in Sweden who wanted to stay working dared to have babies without the fear of ending up at the kitchen sink.
But she wasn’t allowed to stay over lunch; eating at preschool was apparently regarded as lacking pedagogical value, according to the rules.
The newspaper lay spread out over his legs and he picked it up and started reading it over Nora’s little body. The house was strangely quiet. He skimmed through half an article about a man who’d adeptly plundered a company and was now living in Latin America.
His eyes grew at once heavy, for it had been a tough night, and he let them fall, dropping the paper onto the floor and descending one level of consciousness. He could hear birdsong, too, a whole orchestra that squeezed its way in through the opening in the veranda door. The blackbird was the loudest. Later in the season, the lark would start to warble. He would hear it now that they’d moved out to the tranquil housing estates in Kolberga. When he lived more centrally, birdsong was not something he was particularly fond of.
Nora whimpered. He raised his level of awareness a notch and laid a hand over her head. She fell silent.
His leave from work felt good. He’d called Louise Jasinski already yesterday, Sunday. She congratulated him and didn’t even sigh at the prospect of having to shuffle the schedule around a week earlier. Unforeseen things happened all the time, that’s just how things were. He’d also called and told his sister Gunilla, but not his brother.
Veronika and he really were two very lucky people to have first had Klara and then another one! There’d been no guarantee that they could’ve had children, having met so late in life.
He’d have to go and see his mother in the home and give her the news about Nora, he thought. He wanted to, even though she’d just stare blankly at him. Perhaps frown, as if deep down, as something was moving after all; dull and sluggish to be sure, but still an indication that she’d understood that she’d got another grandchild. And that it was he who’d gratified his demanding mother with it. He still had his primitive need to win her support and approval. It was something he could smile at these days.
Life had been good to him these past years. He could see himself when he was hung up on the crazy notion that the neurotic was exciting. The women in his life had made it a quagmire. Capriciousness and the veiled and dark sides had a magnetic pull, and life was rarely tedious. But at the same time, the constant swings between fighting and reconciling wore him down. Gastric pain gnawed at him, his sleep was periodically shallow, and he was constantly tired. But he thought that was what it was meant to be like.
The women in his life had all been strong, but in different ways. Veronika, who was certainly strong, was reasonable with it. Just think how wrong he’d been, and for all that time! How stupid can you get?
Veronika called and wondered if Nora was holding up. If all was well she’d get a bit of shopping done. Nora was sleeping like a little piglet, he said.
Five minutes later, Louise Jasinski called, and he could tell at once that she wasn’t interested in hearing about if he’d filled in his application for leave.
A murdered carpet dealer! Would he mind traveling to Istanbul?
You’ve pushed your luck too far, was his spontaneous thought. At the same time, he began to wonder whether it was the same dealer he’d given his handed-down rug to for repair. Was he dead? That’d be terrible!
And a very brutal death it had been, too. Sheer butchery, in fact, and it had occurred last Saturday, just before four o’clock on a ferry in Istanbul as it came in to dock. According to the Turkish documents, there’d been fresh blood from his belly when they found him, and they assumed he’d been murdered just before the p
assengers were due to disembark. His Swedish driver’s license was in his wallet, but a relative was still needed to go there and confirm his identity.
“It was one of the crew that found him, the report don’t say exactly where, but I guess a ferry’s got lots of places to hide a body in,” said Louise. “There’s no suspect, or a murder weapon, which was probably a knife, but all the killer had to do, I suppose, was chuck whatever it was into the sea,” she continued.
Claesson could see the bloody mess in front of him. The associations also brought up images of bustling crowds, traffic noise, and gangs. Easy to make a getaway, in other words.
He’d been away before, but only to Europe. Istanbul was right on the border. Searches and investigations, as well as autopsies, were always conducted in the country where the crime had been committed, that was crime-school ABC. The same went for trials, if things ever went to court. When the foreign country requested help from the victim’s own country, it was always on their terms. Things didn’t always go smoothly, that he knew from before. The world had many a tender toe.
Louise read from the document she’d received from Interpol in Stockholm. He could see her now, her head slightly jutted forwards and tilted in affected humility. And then bang, a sudden broad smile and the sparkle-eyes on full power.
“I mean, Istanbul, Claesson. I don’t want to go myself. Please don’t ask me why,” she said in a mild, pleading tone, and he figured it might have had something to do with her new man. “That’s just the way it is. And I know that you’ve got a newborn baby at home, but you won’t have to be away for more than a few days. We have to plan carefully to make sure things go as well as they can…”
Peter Berg was tied up as preliminary investigator on another case that he couldn’t drop, and Janne Lundin felt that his language skills weren’t up to scratch – he was referring to his English. Erika Ljung was working in Malmö trying her hand at a reassignment. That Martin Lerde wasn’t dry enough behind the ears was patently obvious, and his name hadn’t even been mentioned, even if he probably thought he was the best man for the job, she added bitingly.