Of course it hadn’t been her that had alarmed him. It was more like she’d caught him red-handed. But it wasn’t until now that she realized doing what.
It was just when she’d sold the Turkish prayer mat from Konya and was unrolling some paper to pack it in that she happened to back up against the bag, knocking it onto the floor. The clinking sound it gave off betrayed the presence of something metal inside, but only faintly. She was probably the only one who heard it.
She let the bag lie where it was and once the customer had gone she picked it up and reached down into it with her arm. At the bottom she found a key ring holding three keys. Nothing else.
She’d then sat with the key ring in her hand, racking her brains. What were the keys for? The policemen who’d been there looking for reasons for Carl-Ivar’s murder had apparently had as little mind as she did to look there.
She recognized one of the keys immediately. It didn’t have a normal head, but was more rectangular, and such a key was all too familiar to her. She even had a similar one herself at home, on a hook inside the kitchen door. In case of emergencies. That Carl-Ivar had a duplicate wasn’t strange at all.
But what about the other two? To an attic or a cellar? She didn’t recognize them at all.
There was only one thing to do. Try them out!
She was approaching the roundabout by the railway station and could see the Gotland ferry terminal up to her left. She turned left at the station, which was as deserted as its platforms. The trains had stopped going several years ago, yet another sign that the town had decided to sink even further into obscurity. It was a little sad, she thought, continuing along Verkstadsgatan past the ferry terminal, crossing Grönlandsgatan, and driving into Gröndal, an old area of pretty wooden houses on tall stone plinths that nestled in a verdant lushness.
As she turned down Nitaregatan and finally into Filaregatan, the buildings started to change character. The old wharf lay right behind with its tall cranes and large, gloomy workshops with tin roofs. Once upon a time, it was mainly dockers and shipbuilders who lived here. Not any more.
Filaregatan was a short stump of a road. A light-blue inflatable paddling pool lay crumpled up and grimy on a lawn that hadn’t yet come to life. Dark clouds suddenly piled up in the north, adding to her melancholy.
That’s just the way it was. Gloom always smothered her when she came here. She had a love-hate thing with the place. Dilapidated, run down, gray, but home nonetheless. At least it had been. She could still feel the weird sense of security that greeted her whenever she’d step through the door. Walls that sheltered her from wind and rain, heat rising from burbling radiators.
If she’d only been able to drop the hysterical worry about the state her mother would be in when she came home from school. Or whether she’d have men back and refuse to let Annelie in while she did “all that” with them for a little loose change or a bottle of cheap vodka.
Sometimes her mother would have knocked together something that resembled dinner, fried sausage and macaroni and a lake of ketchup on the plate. They’d have a laugh then. But most of the time she didn’t have the energy. Or the money. Not for food, anyway.
Annelie learned to boil eggs before she could read. She’d never been that interested in cooking later in life and throughout her school years had been grateful for school dinners, piling generous helpings onto her plate every day to the amazement of her friends. In fact she thought that anyone who complained about the food was quite frankly an idiot.
“Such poverty,” she heard one of her teachers say once, making her want to die of shame out there in the corridor, even though she knew that the teacher was speaking from kindness.
She’d started to smell without realizing it. Whenever she thought about how she stank, and had done so for years, perhaps even as a baby, she’d blush inside. She reeked not only of cigarette smoke and kitchen odors, but of unwashed clothes that were seldom changed and that she’d even grown out of. Dirt or filth, it didn’t matter what you called it. Not smelling nice as a child was unforgivable.
It was only in her late teens that she took control of her body and made sure to shower.
She wanted to avoid parking right outside the house. She noticed a space between the houses opposite and tucked her car in there in the hope that it would be less conspicuous.
The gray plastering had cracked and started to flake in places. It was so obvious to her now when she wasn’t here so often. She stared down onto the asphalt as if she was looking for something as she approached the front door. It had been newly painted in brown, and sliced glossy and new through all the decrepitude, as if this little gesture of recalcitrance wanted to say that the building hadn’t given up completely.
Six apartments joined by a stairwell. The smell wasn’t as penetrating as when she grew up. Fewer cooking odors. Either oven fans were more efficient, or people were warming up fast food in their microwaves. The smell of cigarette smoke only began to dominate when she reached the second floor. She stepped carefully, creeping up the stairs and hoping that no one would appear and catch her. She could hear noise behind the familiar door where the name K Olsson was spelled out in white plastic letters on a blue nameplate. She drew up and held her breath for a few seconds as she waited for the noise to stop.
Her mother was drunk, as usual, she thought, and continued on up and past the next floor.
Then came the attic.
Up here it was always dry and warm, at least when the sun heated the roof tiles. She could already smell a kind of clean mustiness.
She didn’t bother to turn the hall light on and stood in the dark as she inserted one key at a time. “Please, please,” she prayed quietly when she only had one left, the key with the triangular head that resembled the one that fit the door of her mother’s apartment and that she’d saved until last so as not to lose hope.
The key fit this door, too.
She turned it, pressed the handle, and nudged the door open with her shoulder. She stood just over the threshold to accustom her eyes while making sure that she was alone.
And then she turned on the light, which was just as yellow and dim as it had always been.
She started to creep along the storage compartments, each separated from the other by a metal grating. In her mother’s compartment hung clothes in protective plastic wrappings. Was she really this neat and tidy after all? The boxes were coated in a visible layer of dust, and she could see her own figure skates dangling from a hook. So this is where they were! She’d missed them on one occasion, but hadn’t wanted to go home to her mother’s place to search for them as she wouldn’t have been able to cope with having her in her face. So she bought a new pair, but they were hard and uncomfortable, as if her feet insisted on hating them.
A small gable window let in a meager glow of daylight. Some of the storage compartments were in a terrible state of chaos. The door to one of them stood open. On the floor were a stained mattress and a sleeping bag. A little cubbyhole partly hidden by large moving boxes. Her heart thumped. Someone was sleeping up here!
She spun around as if someone was standing behind her, watching her. Some empty beer cans and a squashed milk carton, plus a scattering of cigarette butts lay there, too. She bent down and picked up the carton, then walked over to the light and read the date. From last year. She gave a sigh of relief. The den had perhaps been abandoned.
The homeless lived dangerously, and he or she might not even be alive any more. Her own mother, who presumably was sitting chain-smoking two floors down, could have been one of them. But she’d survived. She had her own apartment, and quite a neat one, too, at the odd times when she was in good form and off the daily booze.
Annelie had never thought about how she got it together. Surely the welfare department wouldn’t pay the rent year in year out? Sweden wasn’t like that any longer. In certain respects, alcoholics, the unemployed, and the mentally ill had to manage as best they could without society’s helping hand. The Salvation Army,
welfare workers, the church. There was still benevolence around. And rich people who liked to donate. Charity. Non-profit organizations were proliferating. She herself had never forked out a krona for her mother’s rent. She’d sometimes shoved a few hundreds into her mother’s hands when she’d been completely broke and had pleaded and nagged with sufficient importunity to finally break Annelie’s resolve.
For the rest, she’d had enough of her mother’s manipulative ways. The entreating, syrup-sticky, maudlin tones: “Anneling, sweetie-pie, remember all that I’ve done for you. Don’t be so ungrateful!” Most of the time Annelie responded by walking straight out the door.
Just as she unlocked the padlock to the storage compartment with one of the two smaller keys, she caught sight of the gray blanket. It was covering something in the far corner that looked like a large traveling chest. She held up the key ring.
Even before the heavy padlock clicked, she knew for certain who it was that had paid her mother’s rent all these years.
CHAPTER 34
VERONIKA AND ELSE-BRITT EK stood by the white-painted enclosure fence. Klara was sitting dumb with delight on the pony’s back while one of Else-Britt’s sons led them slowly around.
The sky was turning purple over the treetops to the left, the evening light was mild but still ember warm. The tranquility made her heart trot along almost imperceptibly behind her ribcage.
Veronika brushed her breasts with her forearm. They were tender, but she was proud at their fullness. Although, she knew that they’d gently tire, become empty, and hang a little forlornly once she’d stopped breastfeeding.
Klara stared at her mom from under her riding hat. Veronika flashed her a broad smile. Her daughter barely managed to smile back, not having the simultaneous capacity to do a combination of such difficult things as remain in the saddle, return a smile, and enjoy the fun.
“Just look at you,” called Veronika. She saw a splinter of pride shimmer in the corner of her daughter’s eyes above her little round cheeks.
Else-Britt had invited them to sleep over. Veronika hadn’t made up her mind, but they probably would. She wanted to remain here in the peace and quiet. To not leave. And anyway, there was nothing to hurry back home for.
Sirens wailed shrilly over the neighborhood.
Veronika and Else-Britt looked at each other with eyebrows raised.
And then they nodded.
“Well, there goes the company car,” said Veronika.
“I think they’re coming up from Bråbovägen,” said Else-Britt.
“Where Christoffer Daun lives, I noticed. He was walking across his garden as I drove by.”
Else-Britt nodded. She knew, of course.
“It was weird, but there was a man standing there behind a lilac bush. It was almost like he was hiding, but then he came out… A Pole helping him with the house probably,” said Veronika.
“So you’re sure it wasn’t a woman?” asked Else-Britt.
Veronika shook her head.
“I’ve heard he’s having an affair with Tina Rosenkvist,” said Else-Britt. “She and her family don’t live so many houses away. And Daun certainly knows how to get himself into a mess. He’s probably the most unreliable man you could imagine being married to. But who are we to judge, eh?”
And no more was said. Nora started to whine in her stroller. It was feeding time.
CHAPTER 35
FRESIA GABRIELSSON WAS ON NIGHTS.
She chugged along the short corridor of the A&E unit and slumped down into her office chair. She liked to rest her legs. She wasn’t exactly lightweight, and generally made sure not to stand when she didn’t have to. The hours at the operating table were more than enough. The night ahead of her was long, and she was prepared for it in her supportive socks of pure white cotton.
It would probably have been best if she lost thirty pounds or so. At least. She thought these thoughts every single day. But thinking them didn’t help in the slightest, of that she was all too aware.
Later, in some vague future when life was calmer, she’d do something about it. A conscious diet would be one trial too many as things looked now, what with her job and kids and a somewhat unengaged husband. Perhaps if she was slimmer she’d even manage to attract the occasional eye. A little glitter and glamour would’ve been nice, rather than just living with the feeling of being everyone’s mom, or some sort of drawer to chuck odd socks in.
She picked up the phone. She could really have called from the desk that formed the heart of the unit, but she wanted to talk in private. One of the nurses had all but commanded her with a look from a superior height to use her own phone when she was on call. That irritated her.
But getting worked up just sucked energy. The nurse, who was called Gunnel, had a tendency to get strident when stressed, and didn’t shy from barking out orders even though it wasn’t her place to do so.
She had the piece of paper with Ronny Alexandersson’s home number on it in her pocket, and dialed the number. It just so happened that she actually wanted Ronny there with her. Although on very different grounds than the purely medicinal. And in a way she understood that Gunnel was stressed, for she had good reason to.
Attempted strangulation!
Admittedly, it could have been worse, and after all, the patient was still alive.
But the hubbub around the central desk was caused by the fact that the victim was their own Rosie from ward six.
She heard Ronny panting down the line. He’d just come in through the door.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, without a quibble or stalling for time.
Oh, how Fresia liked him! Happy was the woman who had him as a husband.
“There’s no real hurry,” she said. “The paramedics have just called. They said that she’s breathing fine and there’s nothing to worry about. More than anything, Tina’s naturally very shaken. They said they’d be here in fifteen. They’re driving from Bråbo but you know what it’s like, it could take half an hour, perhaps longer. They’re driving off-siren.”
“But I’m coming right away really so I can get the job done and go back home to spend time with my family,” he said.
His voice actually sounded a little happy, she thought, her lips curling in calm desire. Ronny often talked about his family, and did so with affection. A wife and four children that were more than just a backdrop to his medical career.
She returned to the emergency room to suture a fleshy gash in the forehead of a man who’d walked into a door, or so he claimed. She didn’t give a fig what had happened, it still needed stitching.
She thought about her own emotionally tone-deaf technician at the nuclear plant. He was who he was, and things could’ve been much worse. He was good to have around. In some situations, anyway.
She drew some anesthetic from the glass bottle that the assistant nurse was holding upside-down for her.
Few things were as attractive as commitment and intimacy. Sigh.
She injected the one-percent Carbocain adrenalin solution into the gash and waited. The man on the stretcher said nothing under his green, sterile sheet, which the assistant nurse had placed over his face with its hole exposing the wounded area. He was putting on a brave face. He was probably more scared than he was prepared to let on.
“I’ll head out. You’ll manage fine on your own,” said the assistant nurse in a commendatory tone.
Fresia stared at her, and before she had time to open her mouth the nurse was gone.
But her praise tasted bitter. Her assistant had just popped out for a smoke, of that she was certain. Grabbed the opportunity just because it was her, Fresia, mother of three and a doctor who was accustomed to getting things done. If she’d been Christoffer Daun, there’s no way the assistant would’ve left! No way would she have walked out on the golden boy. Always the red carpet for him.
Fresia chocked back her bitterness. It couldn’t be much fun being in Christoffer Daun’s shoes right now.… His sins coming back to b
ite him, perhaps?
Everyone at the clinic knew. Everyone who had eyes to see. Infidelity was rarely invisible, even if the love-struck fools involved were conceited enough to believe it.
Was it Christoffer or her husband that had attacked Rosie? This was a question that would be chewed over thoroughly until they knew the truth, of that she was certain.
Fresia placed the jaws of the needle driver around the bent needle and drew it from its package with the thread following it like a tail. She made the first stitch. The anesthetic had kicked in.
According to protocol, a forensic medical examination always took its time. That was the real reason she’d decided to call Ronny. And that it was Tina Rosenkvist, of course. They’d be collecting as much evidence from her body as they could, evidence that would then hopefully stand up in court.
Fresia had a year left before becoming a specialist, and this was the first time she’d had a case that would have such inevitable legal consequences. It would mean testifying in court to the nature and possible cause of the wounds, and that was nothing you subjected yourself to just like that.
Ronny was also one of the doctors who’d been selected and trained for writing certificates of medical evidence. In the past, all doctors had done it, but the National Board of Forensic Medicine had tightened up their competence requirements. Certificates were ideally to be written by a medico-legal expert, but the closest institute of forensic medicine was in Linköping and it went without saying that they couldn’t handle every certificate from such a huge district.
The man under the sheet was still not reacting. She sewed on in silence. Placed single sutures, knotted and cut the thread herself. It was a neat job. The edges of the wound happened to be well-defined.
The door he’d walked into must have been sharp!
“Alright, you’re done,” she said, removing the green sheet.
The man smiled, relieved.
“You did a good job. Delicate lady’s hands.”
Death of a Carpet Dealer Page 22