Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  A streak of something like jealousy shot through her.

  CHAPTER 14

  CLAESSON HAD JUST PASSED the police reception desk and received a big hug from Nina.

  Always a man of habit, he ran up the stairs and opened the glass door to the CID section. The sofas in the little waiting room immediately off the corridor were empty. The time was five past twelve and people were at lunch. For his part, he’d wolfed down some milk and muesli before leaving home by bike.

  He could hear someone talking on the phone; the voice came from Louise Jasinski’s room, two doors down from his. Both their rooms were facing Slottsgatan. Lovely, big rooms they were, and right in the center of town. They were very privileged.

  Just as he was stepping into his office, Benny Grahn appeared in the corridor.

  “What you doin’ here,” Benny said with a teasing smile. “Shouldn’t you be at home changin’ diapers?”

  “A little job’s come up,” Claesson said. “Turkey.”

  Benny nodded. He knew. “Soow anyrord…” he then said in his thickest regional dialect, scratching his scalp, “… heard that the lass shot out as if from a cannon. An’ that you almost had to get the first aid kit and rubber gloves from the car an’ play at bein’ midwife?”

  “Yeah…” Claesson chuckled. “We’ve seriously thought about calling her CB, for Cannon Ball.”

  “Though maybe it’s not quite your thing,” Benny pointed out. “What with the blood an’ all…”

  Louise Jasinski had heard their voices and came out of her room.

  “I’m glad you’ve agreed to go,” she said first, referring to the Istanbul investigation. “Janne’s made sure that everyone knows it was an emergency,” she continued, this time meaning the birth. “It’s hard to believe, when everything had been so carefully planned and all.”

  Janne Lundin had, of course, elaborated a little on the story.

  “I guess I’ve never been such a danger to other road users,” he said. He enjoyed telling the tale. “You can imagine all the Saturday shoppers crawling along outside Mönsterås. So, sure, I thought a number of times… or rather, the whole time, that I’d have to get out and deliver the baby myself there by the side of the road. Veronika’s contractions were coming constantly by this time, and she was resisting out of sheer will power… So once we’d got there and she ended up on a gurney and they were taking her into the elevator, it was as if someone had pulled out the plug. She groaned ‘It’s coming’ and so the midwife had to deliver it on the run. So you could say that she was born to the cheers of the crowd, our Nora.”

  Claesson had been on a constant high since last Saturday. There was no reason for him to restrain his joy.

  “Özen will be here soon, he’s out on a routine call. We’ll meet in your room,” said Louise. She went back into her office to fetch the paper they’d printed out from Istanbul. She handed it to him: “In the meantime you can cast an eye over this.”

  He went into his office and opened the window. It was stuffy in there, and he sank down beside his desk and read. Nothing new here; Louise had gone over most of it on the phone.

  The head of investigations in Istanbul was called Fuat Karaoğlu, however the hell that was pronounced. Holding the pen, or rather pressing the keys, for the report had been one Merve Turpan. Was that a man or a woman?

  When he’d read the congenially disposed report – they were inviting them down, for Pete’s sake – enough times that he pretty much knew it by heart, he turned to his computer. While it booted up and ran through all the security software, he started, a little absent-mindedly, to tear open his mail. He then got down to answering some emails and deleting others.

  He noticed that his hands were fidgety and wanted to keep active, and that he felt it was pointless to sit there waiting, wasting away time that he really should be spending at home. So he shuffled a few documents and stacked them in a pile that he really would have to polish off very soon. Maybe I could take some back with me, he thought, procrastinatingly. Parental leave had hit him straight on.

  But no, he changed his mind. He wouldn’t lug home jobs that he’d only have to lug back undone. Had he been ten, fifteen years younger, possibly. Back then he was hungry and hunted like a man possessed, and always believed he had to be one step ahead. Which proved to be completely right in some situations, but completely wrong in others.

  The original plan had been that he’d take out his ten days of parental leave after the birth, and the longer leave when Veronika started work around Christmas time. This time, he looked forward, with a degree of wariness, to it. The last time, with Klara, he’d initially been restless, felt alienated from society and life, and unable to identify with the role of stroller pusher. But once he’d relaxed and realized that he had to plan his days, a break from the rat race was just what he needed. The greatest discovery was finding how dispensable he was at work. This should have dented his ego, but to his surprise it didn’t. On the contrary, it gave him a sense of freedom. If he wasn’t there, there were others to fill his place.

  Apart from just now, evidently!

  He checked the time. Half an hour had passed. Hopefully, Ludvigsson and Jönsson would make it back in time from the widow’s house for him to hear what she’d had to say, before he and Özen headed off to the carpet shop. They hadn’t notified the woman who apparently looked after it while the carpet dealer was abroad, as they were keen to announce the death face-to-face to gauge her reaction.

  Istanbul! He’d have to go to the bookstore to buy a travel guide on Turkey, and Istanbul in particular.

  He got himself a cup of coffee from the coffee machine for want of anything better to do. The weekend had been relatively calm, he found out by hanging around the lunchroom. The usual stuff: fights, domestics, assaults, and some petty theft, including a break-in at an all-night store in Blomstermåla.

  Then he heard the door out to the stairs open and shut, and shortly afterwards Mustafa Özen appeared. He was in uniform, the job he’d been on had required it.

  “Come in,” said Claesson, gesturing to a chair across the desk from him.

  Özen looked uncomfortable. Claesson realized that he had to show a bit of initiative. He picked up the phone and called Louise.

  “Jasinski is booking a flight for you and me, you know that, I take it?”

  “Yes.” His forehead was glistening, perhaps from the pressure of sitting in front of Chief Inspector Claesson.

  “Good. You can go and get into your civvies later and perhaps get a bite to eat?”

  “I grabbed a burger on the way in.”

  “Good. Have you been to Istanbul before?”

  “Yes, many times.”

  “Are you from there?”

  “No, I come from central Turkey.”

  “OK. If you and I really get our skates on here at home, we’ll be leaving on Wednesday. And today’s Monday. That’ll mean a certain amount of planning.”

  Louise entered the room and stood with her back against a bookshelf. She listened.

  “Your main job is to be a cultural and linguistic link between us and the Turks.”

  “I’d thought as much.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll get cracking as soon as you’re changed.”

  “OK,” said Özen and started to rise from his chair.

  “What do you know about Oriental carpets?” said Claesson.

  Özen swallowed.

  “Not much, if I’m honest,” he said.

  OK, then, thought Claesson. They were both about to learn a lot about carpets.

  CHAPTER 15

  CLAESSON AND ÖZEN FOUND themselves crossing Lilla Torget Square five minutes later. They had no trouble locating the carpet shop on the corner a short way down Frejagatan. A sign in the door announced that the shop was open. The little handwritten card seemed a little old-fashioned at a time when everyone was designing their own signs on the computer in some charming yet sometimes overdone way, but it looked nice.
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  They ascended the short flight of steps and stepped inside. A relatively young woman in a pair of blue jeans and a tight white top with narrow red stripes, summer-fresh in Claesson’s opinion, stood at a table, or counter or whatever you called it. She was out of place in a carpet shop, but he could be wrong, he thought as he introduced himself and Özen, noticing that her throat immediately began to blush a violent red and her eyes flit about anxiously.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Carl-Ivar Olsson has been found dead in Istanbul,” he said, and she collapsed over the table in a kind of dry weeping.

  They stood in silence watching her for a minute or perhaps two – a long time when you’re waiting – to give her time to recover a little. Meanwhile, Claesson’s gaze swept over the walls. He saw nothing but carpets: blood red, ruddy, bluish, green toned, dark claret, and all richly patterned. Could these innocent floor coverings be a reason for murder? He found that hard to believe, but he recalled his brother’s craving for the little threadbare rug that he’d happened to inherit from his parents when their mother moved out and that Veronika had brought in here for repair. Some carpets could, of course, be more valuable than others. But how much? Özen wasn’t going to be much help, not knowing, by his own admission, a thing about carpets. He’d have to read up on them himself.

  The woman introduced herself as Annelie Daun, with what Claesson would describe as a firm handshake despite the slenderness of the hand. She seemed very coherent, given what she’d just learned. Sufficiently sad, but still alert and on the ball. Özen noted down her personal details and kept the notebook open.

  While Annelie Daun answered Claesson’s questions as best she could, he noted the odd local or two walking slowly past on the street. People were curious. Had the news already spread? It was a mystery how it happened sometimes, but happen it did and quickly. Perhaps the local radio had already found out.

  “I can’t believe that Carl-Ivar’s been killed so brutally. Who’d ever have thought of murdering him of all people? It must have been a case of mistaken identity!” she said firmly.

  “Can you describe your relationship with him, apart from you being his employee? How long have you known him?”

  “He’s my uncle and he’s always been incredibly kind to me. You could almost say that Carl-Ivar and Birgitta have been more like parents than my real ones. I’ve never met my dad.”

  There was some digging to do here, Claesson could tell – but not right now, given their hurry. They could always question her about details later.

  “So if I’ve understood you right, Carl-Ivar Olsson was always good to you?”

  “Oh, yes! There can’t be anyone who doesn’t like him. Apart from the one who’s… who’s done this terrible…”

  They found out that she was a teacher, that she’d mostly done substitute work, and that they’d previously lived in Stockholm, she and her husband, who worked at the hospital. He was a doctor. She hadn’t really enjoyed working with children in such a temporary way, and Carl-Ivar had rescued her by asking if she could help out in his shop a few hours now and then.

  “What about his own children?”

  She shook her head. “They’ve never been interested in carpets. They’ve got so much other stuff on their plates and they don’t even live here. Lotta’s in Stockholm and Johan’s in Kalmar. I wasn’t that interested in carpets either once, but I’m learning…” A pleased look flickered over her face. “Carl-Ivar was a good carpet mentor, you could say,” she said, and her eyes glossed over, but she held back the tears.

  “The carpets become your friends. It sounds weird, but that’s how it is. This is, after all, Carl-Ivar’s life work,” she continued forlornly.

  Carpets as friends!

  Sure, thought Claesson, who’d heard worse expressions of loneliness. For lonely she must be, in her soul at least, he could feel it. He’d seen her wedding and engagement rings. He must be a boring husband. They’d run a check on her as soon as they got back to the police station.

  No, she’d not noticed anything special about the shop or Carl-Ivar Olsson before he went to Turkey, she told them. Carl-Ivar was the same as normal, she wanted to add. He’d been off to a carpet conference or whatever it was for a few days. It was a meeting of some kind, at least; she wasn’t so in on what was going on.

  “You can ask the carpet dealer in Kalmar, he went down with him. And they had their wives with them, but I guess Birgitta’s already told you that.”

  He said nothing. He had no reason to say what they did or didn’t know. But right now he didn’t have a clue what the wife had said.

  Claesson informed Annelie Daun that they would like to have a look at the books and files that were in the shop, and that they might want to check telephone records as well.

  “Do what you have to,” she said wanly. “I promise to help you as much as I can.”

  There was a windowless room at the bottom of the spiral staircase, along with a bathroom and a little desk – where Olsson usually sat, apparently. The normal office equipment was there, too: computer, printer, phone, fax. They didn’t find any address books: Olsson had probably taken them with him, the shop assistant called down. Özen, who’d been at Claesson’s side like a calm shadow, had started to idly flip through a set of folders, which they’d already called and asked a colleague to drive over and collect. The file closest to the desk contained receipts and invoices. He picked up another, the back of which was worn and the red textile grimy from use, and skimmed through it. Claesson looked at the rugs and carpets on the floor. They weren’t lying straight on the cement but on wooden pallets. There weren’t that many, he thought, wondering how anyone could make a living as a dealer of quality carpets in little Oskarshamn. Some rag rugs stood rolled up against the wall.

  Özen turned to Claesson and flashed him a broad but silent smile as he took out a sheet of paper. Claesson grew curious and, edging closer, saw a black and white photo of a shabby old rug. He looked inquiringly at Özen.

  “Nothing, it’s only that the rug comes from Cappadocia,” Mustafa Özen said barely audibly. “From where my family comes from in central Turkey, or central Anatolia, as it’s also called. Most of Turkey is actually a huge peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Some people say Asia Minor,” he continued, as if he’d been quiet for so long that he needed to open his mouth.

  Just as Özen went to replace the folder, Claesson stopped him. There had to be a reason why this very page should appear as soon as Özen opened the folder. There was something else written by hand in front of the word Cappadocia. He also noted that the paper was a little soiled and dog-eared, as if it had been repeatedly taken out and put back.

  Ayvali it said. Özen said that he thought that it was a place, a small town, or rather village, in Cappadocia; he wasn’t entirely sure but promised, of course, to find out.

  Claesson asked the women, who’d stayed upstairs in the shop, to come down. “That’s a fragment of an ancient Anatolian pile rug,” she said.

  “Pile rug?” asked Claesson.

  “Yes, a kind that’s knotted rather than flat woven… like this,” she said, showing them a blood-red item with a rhomboidal pattern that lay on top of the pile on the floor. “You can imagine that animal skins had inspired nomads to knot carpets in this way in their tents a very, very long time ago.” She ran her hand over the pile as if petting a horse, with long, harmonious strokes. “That,” she then said, pointing at the picture, “is a preserved fragment of a rug from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, I think Carl-Ivar said.”

  Claesson stared at the rug with its unevenly ragged edging; half of it seemed to be missing. The moths had clearly found something to feast on. Fourteenth century, he thought. To think that rugs that old had survived. You could still see its patterning, even though the photograph was in black and white and hardly did the rug justice.

  “Is there any demand for a rug like this?” he wondered. “It’s in pretty bad condition.”

>   “Sure there is. There’s massive interest in really ancient fragments. They’re sold at international auctions or through carpet dealers who’ve struck lucky,” said Annelie Daun, her face turning thoughtful. “Perhaps not a huge amount of people,” she said, changing her mind. “But some collectors are very rich. They can do almost anything to get their hands on a rare specimen.”

  She heard what she’d said and snapped her mouth shut.

  Collectors were a very interesting breed, thought Claesson. Not all were fanatical, but some of them were prepared to go to any lengths to get hold of that special something. A document, a stump, a coin, a weapon, a potsherd, or a carpet fragment. He’d come across it before. The older and rarer, the better and more valuable.

  Claesson said to Annelie Daun that he wanted to take the page with him and promised to arrange a copy for the shop. No problem, she said. The computer was also going to be requisitioned. He couldn’t determine if it was an emailed picture or if it had been downloaded from the net – any name had been cut away, he noticed. If it had come by email, if must be possible to get hold of the sender. He’d leave that to the computer guys. It would be a slow process, and he’d probably have time to go all the way to Turkey and come home again before they were done.

  They thanked Annelie and left. On their way back to the police station, Claesson asked a bit more about the place where the rug in the picture had originated from.

  “We’d spend our summers in Cappadocia when I was a kid. My parents are from there. The terrain’s very special, very beautiful… Maybe you’ve seen the tourist pictures of tall, slender rocky outcrops… which… ?” Özen grinned and formed an erect male member with his hands. “You can stay in a cave hotel and ride in a balloon. It’s very popular with the tourists. There’s lots to see there, really old underground cities and cliff churches and cave dwellings.”

  He liked telling people about Turkey, it was obvious from his voice. In the way that people tend to like taking about places that move them in one way or another.