Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  She was longing for a shower and wished that she didn’t have such human needs, as it would’ve made her life so much easier. The note was burning a hole in her pocket. She already had plans to go to the new swimming pool and pay the entry fee and then just stand under a hot shower for a very, very long time before heading into the sauna. There, she would sit contentedly for a few hours. Cleanse herself inside and out.

  And then maybe she’d be able to start afresh. Go to the job center and the benefits office and ask who could help her “start over.”

  She missed Softie. Why did he have to go running out into the road? That woolly coat to bury her face in. So soft and warm. And those eyes, the eyes that said to her that she was the most important person in his little canine life.

  Andreas said that Softie had fleas. She was deaf in that ear.

  No, she’d be damned if she was going to share it with him, she decided. The money was hers.

  They ambled slowly away to the harbor and up all the steps to Besväret, which lay on the cliff top. It was hard going. She was panting.

  All the pretty houses were sleeping when they tramped past with backpacks and cases and plastic bags and all the other stuff they dragged about with them. She had to rest and catch her breath.

  She looked askance at the idyll between breaths. She could hear the birds. The narrow cobblestone paved Besvärsgatan with its little wooden houses was the loveliest place in all of Oskarshamn, she thought. She would’ve liked to have lived here if she’d been born into a different life.

  Weren’t the lilacs coming into bloom?

  “Shit, imagine living here,” she couldn’t help saying at last.

  Andreas didn’t even manage a grunt. They trudged off slowly toward Östra Torggatan.

  When they were almost there, they came to a halt. Two legs were sticking out from behind a trash can.

  “Who the fuck would go and lie down outside Shalom?” said Andreas.

  They went over to inspect the human debris that lay spread-eagled on the cobblestones by their feet. Behind them was the café. The one that the Christians ran and that was called Shalom, but it was of course closed. It wasn’t even four o’clock.

  “Is he alive?” asked Nilla with repugnance in her voice and bent forwards. “He’s all blue. Look.”

  Andreas squatted down, but instead of feeling for a pulse or determining if the body was warm or if it was breathing, he rummaged through his pockets.

  “Someone’s already gotten to him. Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Suddenly the man started to cough. They waited until he fell silent again. Andreas looked at the rolled-up rug that he was resting his head on. Then he grabbed hold of it and snatched it away so that the head landed heavily against the cobbles.

  “Poor guy!” said Nilla while Andreas tried to wipe a patch of blood from off the back of the rug. The man had probably fallen over and hit himself during the night, as his hair looked matted with blood. “What do you want that for? Come on, let’s put it back.”

  Andreas didn’t answer. He put the rug under his arm and dragged Nilla with him off toward the park.

  “This’ll be perfect,” he said when they’d passed the Post Hotel.

  “For what?” Nilla said dubiously. Lugging around unnecessary stuff wasn’t her thing. They had enough to carry as it was.

  “Might think of something,” he grinned. “You never heard of the rug trick?”

  She hadn’t.

  He didn’t unroll the rug until they’d walked some way into the park. He stared in disappointment at the warn nap.

  “Though fuck knows if it’ll work with a piece of shit like this. Just our fucking luck it’s not in better shape… Though I guess that’s why they threw the bastard out,” he said with a shrug. “But, hey, it’s worth a try.”

  The dashboard clock said 06:25. The police car crawled along. Conny Larsson yawned wide enough for a truck to pass through.

  “Damn if it ain’t been a slow night! Over soon, though, eh?”

  He drummed his fingers against his thigh. Jessika Granlund said nothing. She was too tired to even open her mouth.

  They’d just been out to the navy hut that someone had tried to torch. An observant neighbor had called to report some kids who were “up to no good,” but the kids were of course nowhere to be seen when the police car eventually arrived.

  They were driving along from Kråkerumsbacken. Lilla Torget Square was stone dead. Jessika drove at an even pace past the intersection with Besvärsgatan.

  “Hey, look, is that a body lying there?” she said, braking. She backed up a few yards and turned into the street.

  They climbed out. A pair of legs was sticking out from behind two large trash cans that stood at the edge of the garden opposite Café Shalom.

  “Turn on a light!” said Conny when he saw who it was.

  “We should’ve helped him get home,” said Jessica in a whine.

  “Well, he ain’t dead, at least.”

  Jessika called an ambulance. Once it had driven off-siren to the hospital, a journey of less than ten minutes, they realized that it was time to inform his family.

  Conny Larsson and Jessika Granlund had just rung Kajsa Bladh’s doorbell. They weren’t divorced, she and Göran, but lived apart, Kajsa Bladh informed them.

  She called intensive care and was told that she was welcome there in an hour. They thought he’d had a heart attack and collapsed. Perhaps even a mild stroke.

  “The nurse said there was quite a bit of ethyl in his blood, too,” the wife told them. “I might as well be up front about it, it’ll only come out, anyway, but he was a drinker. I was the one to move out. I couldn’t take it, but…” tears welled up,“… but in my heart of hearts I thought he’d sort himself out. Unrealistic, I know, but… I love the man, in spite of everything.”

  “It’s so tragic,” she added in the next breath, “that he was just lying there.”

  Conny avoided Jessika’s eyes. She’ll screw up too one of these days, Miss Goody Fucking Two Shoes, he thought.

  But they said nothing, neither Conny nor Jessika, but just remained sitting silently on the sofa like two pet cats. Until Conny gestured with his eyebrows. It was time to go.

  And they said nothing on the way down the stairs, either.

  Their shift was over.

  CHAPTER 40

  CLAES CLAESSON’S EYES shot open as he lay in his Istanbul hotel bed. He’d been jolted awake by a strange bellowing outside.

  He turned on the bedside lamp. It was still only five o’clock, so he turned it off again and let his head sink back into the pillow. By which time he’d identified the noise as a human voice, reeling something off.

  My God, he thought, is that what muezzins sound like?

  He shut his eyes and after a while found it rather quaint. A wake-up call at dawn summoning the faithful to pray to Allah. It fitted in here, but he was glad not to have this particular alarm clock at home. Live and let live, as his father had once taught him. He turned over onto his other side, pressed one ear against the pillow, laid his arm over the other, and went back to sleep.

  When his cell phone’s alarm went off at half past six with its discreet metallic ringing, he was fairly well-rested. He sat up in his bed. The rain was clattering against roofs and gushing down drainpipes.

  Great! He’d brought neither raincoat nor umbrella.

  He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, and while his razor methodically scraped over his chin, he continued to mull theological questions. Where did mankind get its need for religion? This was no trifling subject to grapple with early in the morning with a semi-alert, recently surfaced brain, but his mind continued to churn away.

  You had to differentiate between religion and tradition, many people said. He didn’t agree. The agents of a faith got away with things too easily, regardless of confession, he thought. They relied on books that could hardly be considered recent. Some of their content was generally relevant, but much wasn’t.
More Stone Age, in fact. They ought to do what’s right and make sure that tradition, to some extent at least, followed society’s striving for democracy and equality. What was religion good for, anyway? A pale surrogate for the human longing for unconditional love, someone once said, he couldn’t recall who, but it stuck in his mind because he thought there was something in it. The same fundamental love that a mother gives her child. Like a kind of infatuation, but eternal.

  Gotte often talked of the need for security and belonging. “Don’t forget we’re social beings,” he’d preach, and of course he was right. Much misery was caused by abused souls and deep loneliness. He and his colleagues saw the result of that in their day-to-day work.

  It was still pouring outside. Claesson got dressed and went down to breakfast, where he met a somewhat pale Mustafa Özen.

  “Sleep badly?”

  “No, no,” said Özen lamely as he dribbled golden honey over a piece of bread.

  Claesson wolfed down some of the delicious yogurt, which was no doubt full of fat, but he couldn’t be bothered to care.

  “I tried to sum up yesterday’s meeting and get it down on the computer,” said Özen then. “Might as well do it now before we get muddled up. Or forget. And that took some time.”

  “Essay writing, in other words,” said Claesson.

  “You could say that,” grinned Özen.

  Literary skills in the force were a little hit and miss, Claesson knew that. Although what was in the reports was important and had to be able to stand up in court, many felt uncomfortable expressing themselves in writing. It wasn’t because you were top of the class in Swedish that you applied to the academy. He didn’t know about Özen, though. Some people had natural talent and would have no trouble writing thick books or scientific papers. Peter Berg was one of them. As was their technician Benny Grahn, who was an elegant writer and could usually throw something together, even with a little zest if the occasion called for it. He was the one who wrote the speeches when it was someone’s birthday, and they always contained just the right amount of cruelty and were absolutely hilarious.

  “You can read through it later,” said Özen.

  Claesson nodded. He had some feta, black olives, and a bun in front of him. And a cup of black coffee.

  “Lucky they have coffee,” he said.

  A morning without coffee was a disappointment.

  A while later they were jumping into the police car that had been driven to the front of the hotel. They only needed to trot a few steps in the downpour.

  Merve Turpan was already inside. They were to go to the Arkadia Hotel. She had been assigned to join the Swedes on the case of the dead carpet dealer, with Fuat Karaoğlu’s consent. There was no reason to sit through a morning meeting first, she said.

  “Well, there’s no point hanging around,” said Claesson.

  Merve was out of uniform, wearing trendy jeans and a brick-red top. The windshield wipers were working frenetically. The streets glistened, and people kept themselves indoors.

  Outside the Arkadia stood a taxi with its trunk open, and a young man was packing in suitcases with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other. They dashed in through the foyer. There was a short line in front of the desk; they’d had the misfortune to arrive at check-out time. Merve stood at one end of the desk and caught the attention of a man in a suit. He looked more than a little piqued as he stood up and walked toward her. But Merve just smiled and showed him her badge and told him her business, at least that’s what Claesson assumed she was doing. But the man looked no less vexed for that, even as he nodded and ushered her into the back offices. Claesson and Özen followed her.

  They spoke for a while in Turkish.

  “All the hotel guests are registered on the computer,” Özen translated. “They promise to give us all the names.”

  “Ask if he can find out who was working at the desk when Olsson checked out. According to his wife, he must have done so after she left, but she took off pretty early in the morning by taxi to Atatürk airport.”

  Merve and Özen sprang into action. They made sure to get printouts of the hotel guest lists and a time when Carl-Ivar Olsson had checked out and left the hotel: half past ten. The man at the reception desk that day was the same man who was trying to work his way through all the guests checking out now.

  Claesson was given some tea. He was charmed by the little tea glasses that stood on a small tray, each with a spoon and a lump of sugar. He’d be returning home a proper tea drinker.

  At last the man at the counter was free. He looked at the photo of Mr. Olsson and shook his head.

  No, he didn’t recognize him. Claesson could understand that. Olsson had an undeniably nondescript appearance, at least for an elderly Swedish gentleman. Or northern European, for that matter. There were probably many like him who visited Istanbul – retirees who could afford such recreation.

  They took the sheaf of paper containing the names of the hotel guests staying there at the time in question, and returned to the police car.

  The wind picked up, scattering people into shops and restaurants. The wipers flicked even faster over the windscreen, the rubber squealing from the friction. The uniformed officer behind the wheel was the embodiment of composure. Özen began to skim through the lists.

  “There are some Swedish names here. An entire group, it would seem, because they checked out together the day after Olsson. That’s to say, the Saturday,” he added in Swedish and looked at Claesson.

  “The same day he was killed.”

  “Yes. They’d left the hotel by nine-fifteen.”

  “Then I wonder if they all flew home or on to another country. We’ll ask Sweden to contact them and check with the airlines if they went home. Can you get on that?”

  “Sure.”

  The Grand Bazaar stretched over several quarters, Claesson was informed by Merve, who had also discovered which of the myriad gateways they were to go in through. It was in the east.

  “It’s something of an experience to go to the Grand Bazaar if you’ve never been there before,” she said. “It’s got everything. Shops, cafés, restaurants, banks, post offices, a little police station, and even a mosque. But we don’t have time for all that now. Not far from there is the Spice Bazaar, but we won’t be going there, either.”

  Five minutes later, the car pulled up illegally in front of a medieval gateway, right in the middle of a crowd that was milling around in an indescribable chaos out on the rain-soaked street.

  They jumped out and dashed for cover in the bazaar area. Özen had been there before, but Claesson hadn’t and he was impressed. The entire area was covered over, blue and white mosaics decorated the walls, and the shops stood wall to wall, like a colorful cavalcade of silk, wool, glass, and polished stones. An ancient shopping center indeed, and so much more pleasant than the monotonous developments that seemed to be popping up like mushrooms in the outskirts of most Swedish towns.

  Merve took command, and led them along a street, turning into a narrower passageway and past a diminutive, curious-looking building, the “Oriental Kiosk,” that lay in the middle of their path. A few paces further on they turned into an alleyway, exiting onto a small square under an open sky. This was Zincirli Hani, a famous square containing trading houses and a famous carpet dealership that had been operating there for years. The rain was striking the pavement with such force that it splashed upwards. Merve run-walked along the pink wall of a house, past a number of barred, green wooden doors to a large door further away that stood open. A sign above it announced that they’d arrived at Şişko Oman’s and that here they could find TAPIS – KILIMS – CARPETS.

  A proper carpet shop, in other words. And not just any old shop, realized Claesson once he was standing in the middle of the building with its open floor – carpet-covered, of course – and its walls clad with rugs. This was the fifth generation of carpet dealers to occupy the property, they learned from the newspaper cuttings taped up on a door inside. Accord
ing to the carpet dealer in Kalmar, this was an extremely professional business.

  A young, slightly astonished man greeted them when they’d burst in, rain dripping from their clothes. He’d bowed and immediately taken out his cell phone to call his father, or was it his uncle, who knew carpet dealer Olsson from Sweden very well.

  While they were waiting, they sat themselves down on colorful cushions and drank tea, served, again, in tulip-shaped glasses. The friendly young man bowed again and said he was sorry to hear what had happened to carpet dealer Olsson. He knitted his heavy eyebrows and looked nothing short of disconsolate.

  A distinguished gentleman with thick gray hair and bright eyes appeared. He was deeply moved to hear that carpet dealer Olsson had met his end. And in such a macabre way! He needed a few moments to recover himself. He found it particularly disturbing that it had happened in his own city of Istanbul, too.

  “All I can say by way of consolation is that I know for certain that Olsson loved our city very much. But to die here…” He shook his head and looked even more miserable.

  No more needs to be said, thought Claesson.

  The man, like his younger relative, spoke a very easy-to-understand English.

  Claesson drew a breath.

  “When did you last meet Carl-Ivar Olsson?” he wondered.

  “Let me see,” said the man, stroking his beardless chin. He had a sharply chiseled face and was probably much older than he looked. He turned to the younger carpet dealer and said something in Turkish. Merve and Özen both listened, but all he was doing was asking for help with days and dates. They worked out that it had been two days before Carl-Ivar Olsson’s tragic death that he’d visited his Turkish friend.