Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  “What do you want?” she screamed and hoped that Christoffer would hear her.

  The man placed a hand over her mouth and held her in an iron grip. She couldn’t even move, let alone call for help.

  “Now I want you to tell me nice and calmly where I can find that valuable rug that you got hidden somewhere. Is that understood? And then I’ll leave you and you’ll forget all about this. If you scream again, you’re dead.” He removed his hand, probably so that she’d be able to answer.

  She stared at him. He had her pushed up against the pantry door, and the handle was digging painfully into her back. Saying she hadn’t got the foggiest idea what the hell he was talking about would just make things worse, that much she realized. He was crazy. A psycho. His eyes were hard and she was losing all sensation in her arms. And even if she’d been able to answer him, she couldn’t have made a sound, paralyzed as she was with panic.

  There was a sharp swish as his hand came so hard across her face that she thought her jaw had been dislocated. Blood spurted from her mouth.

  “I ain’t got all the time in the world! Now, out with it!”

  “I don’t know,” she said weakly as, readying herself, she rammed her knee into his crotch, and hoped that he’d jack-knife forwards.

  But he dodged. She saw his face redden and distort with rage.

  “What the fuck are you playing at, bitch?” he growled, shoving her up against the pantry door with a hand squeezing her throat. He pressed her head back and tightened his grip.

  She looked into his eyes, like burnished steel. Noticed his gloves. He was wearing black leather gloves. His body was so close to hers that she could smell him. Or rather the smell of sweat and too much aftershave. She was powerless. Where was Christoffer?

  “I ain’t letting you go till you tell me where it is! And don’t fuck with me!”

  She opened her mouth like a baby bird and tried to squeeze out of her throat that he had the wrong person, that she had nothing to do with rugs, that it had to be Annelie he wanted.

  But it was too much, the words log-jammed and became a gurgle as he squeezed her throat tighter. He was not letting up. She wanted to vomit, and her body convulsed uncontrollably. He was pressing his thumbs into the soft spaces either side of her larynx, and it felt as if her head was going to come off.

  “The fucking rug! Now! Hear me?”

  Frothing mouth, an implacable wrath, she realized somewhere. There was a rushing in her ears and she saw red then black and gasped for air. She was finding it hard to stay upright. Couldn’t answer him. Not even with a lie. Tried to pry his fingers away from her throat, but he wouldn’t let go. He was squeezing harder, almost like he was enjoying it, and she saw a faint smile flicker across his lips. Then she saw nothing more, just felt how she slowly left the floor, not knowing if she was falling or flying.

  CHAPTER 32

  VERONIKA AND KLARA were singing in the car while Nora slept, freshly fed and fastened into the passenger seat. The sun stood relatively high even though it was evening. Her breasts were tender under her seatbelt. She sung, knowing that she wasn’t much good at holding a tune. But Klara was happy and tra-la’d along cheerfully with her. Now she could hold a tune, their Klara, little though she was. How could she who sang so badly have such a nightingale for a child?

  Veronika took the main route to Bråbo, it was quickest, and planned to turn down onto the narrow road to Applekulla, which was so pretty. So varied, with its fields, pastures, and forests and a winding road. Sheep and lambs and cows had been put out to pasture. The fields had been plowed in thick, glossy furrows. The spruces had been cut back here to let in more light, like in the old days, while the deciduous trees were left untouched. Fresh, delicate greenery on the treetops. They’d continued the tradition of trimming the trees here. The leafy twiglets were fodder for the animals, at least they were once upon a time. Veronika had learned all this from Else-Britt, or rather from Else-Britt’s husband, Gösta.

  The deciduous forest was Stone Age land, Gösta had said. Oak, elm, linden, beech, maple. Veronika tried to picture the different leaves, but her knowledge of the various species was a little shaky. She wanted to learn. As if nature divulged its secrets once you could name what you saw.

  Anyway, the spruces came relatively late, roughly a thousand years ago, she now knew. This stately tree that so many associated with the county was just a newcomer, relatively speaking. Completely different plants and flowers populated the terrain where the spruce didn’t spread, where the light reached all the way down. The leaves that then fell and rotted also provided extra nourishment.

  Pastures and meadows. They sounded so beautiful and primal, but they were a lot of hard work.

  The Swedish meadows, the ones that were left and maintained, were one of the most species-rich places in the world, Gösta said. A floral larder. The fields were still cut here, and the hay was allowed to lie and shed its seeds before it was raked together and dried into winter feed.

  The old saying “the meadow is the mother of the field” came into her head. The hay of the meadows gave the cattle fodder for the winter so that they could survive to produce plenty of manure for the fields, which yielded rich harvests in return. One of nature’s many cycles.

  She approached Bråbo, the El Dorado of slant-pole fences. Nowhere else were there so many of this kind of traditional wooden enclosure. The delightfully graying stakes blended beautifully into the pastures and over the hills, dividing the landscape into patchworks of little fields.

  She slowed down and swung into the village. People were out in their gardens. Some waved, others nodded, a few were preoccupied. She knew that Christoffer Daun lived around here and wondered which house it was.

  Just as the thought popped into her mind, she saw him step out of a house. He came out through a door in the gable end, a classic kitchen entrance. She slowed down even more, and made ready to give him a wave. But he bent his steps toward the barn with his eyes on Applekulla.

  He lived in an old well-proportioned wooden house, Falun red in color, naturally, and two stories tall. It was set back a little from the road, and behind it lay the valley, over which he must have an unrestricted view from the back of the house. She noticed at once that the corners were glowing white, just like the timbered veranda. Newly painted, nice and well-maintained. It looked idyllic, actually.

  A luxuriant lilac bush stood a little way from the corner of the house. Oddly, someone was moving there behind it. A large, burly man stepped out and rounded the corner, perhaps to enter by the kitchen door? Christoffer probably had help looking after the property, maybe Poles, she thought. It would take a lot to maintain this rural idyll, time that was hard to scrape together when you worked long days.

  A little further on she had to swerve to avoid a dark green Saab that stood carelessly parked on the bank of the ditch between two plots of land.

  Then she turned left toward Applekulla.

  CHAPTER 33

  ANNELIE DAUN PEELED OFF the brown paper shades from the windows before shutting up for the night. She should have removed the shades earlier; they didn’t look very nice. The sunlight had actually left the street hours ago, but she chalked up the oversight to her having been too busy.

  Rushed off her feet, she thought contentedly.

  She’d sold two prayer mats, first a densely woven Persian kashan, highly patterned and brightly colored – blue, red, and a little beige – and then a Turkish from Konya, which was lighter in yellow, brown, and a muted red.

  For a while they were all there in the shop, four customers and her, and the mood was everything but funereal, even though all of the visitors had expressed their condolences.

  Anyway, satisfied customers were an honor. It pleased her to see them leave the shop proud and happy and with rolled-up rugs under their arms.

  The day had been a good one in another way, too.

  Besides two sold rugs in one and the same day – that was no bad statistic – she now had a new mi
ssion in life. She’d worked it out herself. Her eagerness to get away had gradually turned into restlessness. Not long left!

  She adjusted the carpets that were piled up in the corner and finished off by stroking her hand along the soft pile of a beautiful bakhtiari with its trees of life, flowers, and shrubs divided into fields. She couldn’t help stroking carpets. Instead of stroking a dog, she thought. Or stroking Christoffer’s hair.

  She shook her head thoughtfully. Why does life have to be so complicated?

  A red piece of paper flashed into her eyes. She let it flutter by, having promised herself not to lose her self-control. To say nothing. To act like she didn’t know. What an effect that would have!

  Business had been booming in the past few days, and she recovered a little of her flattened self-esteem because of it. On the other hand, it was frightening that death could be so good for trade. A murdered carpet dealer was the best thing to happen to the shop in a long time. It was a very depressing insight.

  Another depressing thought was that she’d lost a rug.

  She bit her lower lip. It was actually worrying, and she didn’t want to think about it. Not now when everything was going so well.

  The piece of paper with the name and phone number on it was still on the table, but she was so reluctant to call and confess what had happened that she hadn’t done it.

  What would the customer think? It was a colleague of Christoffer’s, no less.

  Rumors spread fast, and that worried her more given her new secret plan – that maybe she could try to succeed Carl-Ivar. If she could sort out parts of his stock somehow. Perhaps take out a salary?

  The stolen item was an antique sivas, seriously threadbare, the pile of the prayer niche all rubbed away from all the foreheads that had been pressed against it toward Mecca. Who wanted it? But then when that heavily pregnant colleague of Christoffer’s who seemed so pleasant brought in the rug for repair both she and Carl-Ivar had fallen for it. But how many more people could have known about it? In Oskarshamn, of all places? Or was someone just winding her up? Was it some prank?

  It would have been if the repairer in Stockholm had taken it back, but it was beyond all reason to send a rug away after repair only to steal it again. He was also propriety itself, she knew that. She’d call him tomorrow. The customer would also have to wait until she felt ready to call and say what had happened.

  The rug was not totally worthless, but wouldn’t fetch much of a price on the open market. But a drug addict, say, who needed a quick fix wouldn’t know that. But would you take a rug? Maybe you take what you can get your hands on.

  She’d heard of the rug trick, of course. You mostly saw it in the cities, but mischief often spread like the plague over the country. She’d read about the gangs in the papers. They’d call and tell someone that they’d won a rug, and then drive to the person’s house. And while the prize was being shown to the baffled mark in his hallway, an accomplice would sneak in and snatch what he could: jewelry, money, whatever wasn’t tied down and easily snatched. They usually targeted elderly or gullible people who hadn’t the heart to drive the intruders away. Perhaps the victims thought that their memory had failed them, that they really had bought a raffle ticket and forgotten all about it. And owning up to a poor memory wasn’t always the first thing an old person wanted to do.

  She should call the police. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that, either.

  She turned the “closed” sign around, opened the door, and stepped out onto the stone step.

  She had two hours, she noted. That’d be enough. She’d been invited over to Gabriella Eklund’s at seven. Gabriella was her oldest and best friend, and lived on Mysingsö in a fancy new house with lots of glass in all directions, in particular toward the sea and Blå Jungfrun, the myth-shrouded island that protruded like a dome on the edge of the Oskarshamn archipelago.

  Looking back at her friendship with Gabbi, she considered it one of life’s little strokes of luck. She could have ended up with, or chosen, or however it was during the primary school years, a waste of a friend, straying here and drifting there. Out on the ragged edges of society. She’d been pretty vulnerable as a kid, and still was to some extent, living as she did with an indelible stamp of inferiority on her soul.

  Gabbi was good, not the kind to drag others down into the shit with her. She could be a bit whiney at times, when Annelie would be the one doing the cheering up. But otherwise Gabbi was a happy soul who’d had something as uncommon, to Annelie’s mind, as a harmonic childhood. Gabbi’s parents had always been good to her. Birgitta and Carl-Ivar had also been kind. There’d been something laid-back about them, for the most part, even though there was nothing exactly laid-back about their children.

  Possibly Johan, but certainly not Lotta, she thought, her lips pressed. Annelie had never really been able to tolerate her, not even before she got together with Magnus and then married him.

  Gabbi was the only one of Annelie’s friends who had some knowledge of her domestic circumstances. And Gabbi had kept quiet about things, and not told anyone. She in fact spoke very little about Annelie’s mother unless Annelie brought her up herself. Possibly asked how she was. Implying: Is she still alive?

  That was probably why they were friends, thought Annelie, who was looking forward to the evening. Besides, Mysingsö was in the right direction, she thought, and stuck her hand into her thin jacket pocket to check if the key ring was really still there. Although she knew it was.

  The keys she’d found by pure chance. Or perhaps, for once in her life, she’d just been lucky.

  It was the opposite with the red paper ball that sometimes forced its way into her mind. The uphill struggle. Which actually wasn’t new to her. She thought at times that she was injured. She’d put up with it as a child, and she could still put up with quite a lot. That’s why she hadn’t just taken off. Not yet. And because deep inside she was terrified.

  Of what?

  She knew. Of breaking up. She so dearly wanted things to go back to what they were, when Christoffer would blow away the hair from her sweating face as she straddled him and say that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. She’d never been the best thing that had ever happened to anyone before.

  She’d always been in the way, or clumsy or not quick enough. She would put up with almost anything to be the best that had ever happened to someone again. Like before, when she’d belonged to him and he to her for real and not just through some marriage certificate. Like two souls that were intimately close, each caring for the other. Devotion and tenderness. She’d rarely felt naked and alone then. They’d had each other. Mutual belonging was such a wonderful feeling, and once experienced, that yearning never went away.

  It wasn’t far. She took out her sunglasses, unlocked her little pea-green fiat with her remote key, threw her bag on the passenger seat, and backed out.

  On the floor behind her was a bottle of red wine in its purple plastic bag that she was going to give Gabbi, sans bag, naturally. She’d learned the rules of decorum over the years.

  It was some time ago that she’d started to suspect that Carl-Ivar had had an extra storeroom, or at least a place he went to now and then, and that wasn’t in his house. He’d sometimes turn up at the shop with some precious articles that she was sure he didn’t keep at home. She was more than familiar with Birgitta and Carl-Ivar’s house, had been there thousands of times during her childhood and had never come across locked doors that concealed secret storerooms. The house wasn’t that big. And anyway, most of the stuff was kept in the shop basement.

  But not everything. Evidently!

  As she made her way down toward Skeppsbron, she realized that Carl-Ivar must have tried to make sure that she was out of the way when extracting the key ring from the bottom of the camel bag.

  The bag, or rather sack, had been his private hiding place and was probably safer than carrying the keys on him or keeping them at home. There wasn’t much that escaped Birgit
ta. She was a methodical woman. Not assertively inquisitive but observant.

  Annelie had never cornered Carl-Ivar to ask if he had a storeroom other than the one in the basement of the carpet shop. There’d been no reason to be pushy, and he’d never shown a willingness to talk about it.

  The camel bag had hung collecting dust from the banister that led down to the basement for as long as Annelie had worked at the shop. It was striped and woven from coarse wool, almost horsehair, and decorated with tufts. Made to withstand sun, rain, and sandstorms. It had been draped there, seemingly empty and sunken, for ornamental purposes, she’d assumed, and to lend the shop a pleasant Oriental atmosphere: date palms, figs, succulent raisins, strong coffee, and hot tea. Along with the carpets on the floor and walls and the hookah and the little smoking table that Carl-Ivar had placed there after one of his many trips, you could be seduced into believing that you were, for a moment, in some far-away land.

  But she’d caught him once, although without realizing it. Not then. But now she did.

  She’d been out, as usual, to buy the buns for their coffee from Nilsson’s, and realized that if she continued to do so, she’d soon be more rolling than walking. Cinnamon buns, sugared pastries, vanilla whirls, jam doughnuts. At least one a day – not the kind ready-packed in plastic bags either. Carl-Ivar considered that abominable when there was an excellent bakery just around the corner. Birgitta would’ve hit the roof had she known what he nibbled on during the day, she who was so careful about their diet.

  That day the rain had started to pour, so she dashed, bag in hand, back to the carpet shop. She pulled open the oak door and whirled in like an autumn leaf. Carl-Ivar was on his way up from the basement, and giving a start, looked up at her in surprise and perhaps alarm.

  A moment later everything was back to normal. They drank coffee and enjoyed their icing-coated vanilla whirls.