Seagulls screaming outside the window. Otherwise silence.
“Do you know?” asked her mother, studying her daughter’s face.
“Maybe.”
Her mother nodded, as if she already knew the answer.
“But don’t tell Birgitta, promise me that. It’s not always so easy to tell the truth. This’ll have to be just between you, me, and Carl-Ivar,” she said, winking in that sly way that put Annelie on her guard.
It’s not easy telling lies, either, she thought.
It had got damp and chilly out. Annelie jumped into her car and left Filaregatan. She called Christoffer from the road and told him that the pains had subsided and that her mother was sleeping soundly.
“In that case it was probably an attack of gallstones,” he said, sounding untroubled.
“Thanks for the help,” she said.
“Are you headed home now?”
“Yes.”
She’d slept in the shop one night and at Gabbi’s, but it was tiring being on the move, so she’d moved back home and had taken the bed in the guest room. It was actually quite OK. The walls were papered in a cute pattern of dainty little flowers that she’d chosen herself, and she’d hung up white curtains through which the sunlight filtered so beautifully.
“So I’ll see you tomorrow when I’m off,” he said, and sounded like he was looking forward to it.
Breakfast together. Coffee, tea, and toast. Why not?
She parked the car in the driveway at home. The red Passat wasn’t there; it was in the hospital parking lot.
At least there’d be no red letter slipped under the windshield wiper this evening, she thought. If there was, she’d have to assume it was a ghost. Or that she was in hiding, this Tina Rosenkvist. Maybe she was in hiding from Pär.
What a crazy time.
You knew so little about what people can get caught up in. She couldn’t be dead, could she? thought Annelie, stepping out of the car, her body aching with fatigue. The stillness enveloped her in a way that surprised her. Fields and meadows greeted her and the gnawing tension ebbed away. This was why she lived out here, she thought. In the Garden of Eden. And the serpent had already paid a visit. She didn’t need to worry any longer.
She really should be on her guard, after all she was wearing an alarm and all, but somehow it was as if she just didn’t have the energy. Or perhaps the will. Or rather refused to believe that some thug would turn up wanting to get some information out of her, or, even worse, attack her. Not now. It wasn’t the right time. It would be like plunging straight into a wasps’ nest. The police were involved now, and everyone was just waiting for him to strike again.
Tina had nothing to do with carpets, she was sure of it. She was convinced that her disappearance was down to an unstable and slightly psychotic husband, but that was a thought she kept to herself. It would make people suspect she was jealous.
And she was, too, but her blackness had nothing to do with anyone else. She handled it in her own way. With silence, and that worked. And when it came to Pär Rosenkvist, local opinion was pretty undivided. There was something about him that made most people a little scared.
She didn’t go into the house, but down toward the slope at the back of the garden. The grass lay cut in the meadow. Yellow irises brightened up the river bank and the buttercups glowed against the gray stone fence, even though they were starting to close their petals for the evening.
It was still light. Water gushed forth in the brook, brown but clear, so that the stones on the bed looked like soft lumps of clay. A pair of flycatchers flew busily in and out of their nesting box.
She dropped down onto a rock. Everything that had happened just didn’t really move her that deeply. Not now. It was so divinely beautiful that she couldn’t help but feel consoled.
Maybe things would sort themselves out. Between her and Christoffer. And perhaps she’d be able to carry on working as a carpet dealer, “for real.”
She got up, went into the house, and poured herself a glass of wine.
“Cheers!” she said to herself, lifting her glass in salute.
CHAPTER 55
IT WAS GETTING CLOSE TO eight o’clock on the evening. Birgitta Olsson had mechanically hung up the laundry and tidied the kitchen. Now she was sitting watching the news on TV. She should really go out and put the garden tools back in the shed but she couldn’t be bothered. The hedge clippers, the rake, the pruners, and the lawn edger – the one with the short handle and that was brand new and sharp-bladed and nice to handle – were lying in the hallway in their long, narrow basket, which she’d placed on a wooden stall by the wall to keep it out of the way and to stop mud getting everywhere. It was unlike her to be sloppy with the tidying like this, but it was as if she just couldn’t be bothered since Carl-Ivar’s death.
She was sitting in Johan’s old room in front of the portable television. Her powers of concentration were not at their peak. But then the news wasn’t that remarkable, and her thoughts were mainly occupied by the day’s event, that Chief Inspector Claesson, Veronika’s husband, had stopped by. Not when Sven was with her, though, luckily enough.
The woman on the quayside. And Carl-Ivar.
The picture had stuck in her mind when she’d seen it that first time, in Istanbul, even though she hadn’t let on when she had Claesson in front of her. Carl-Ivar looked so unusually relaxed. Like when he was younger.
The telephone rang. It was by her side, and she turned the volume down on the TV and answered.
It was Chief Inspector Claesson again, wondering if he could ask a question that he’d forgotten earlier.
“Do you recall if that man who called and asked for Carl-Ivar spoke with an accent? The one who claimed to be Lennart Ahl?”
“Yes… He could’ve been from around Västervik,” she answered. “Or Vimmerby. Or further north.”
“And where do you end up then?” he asked as if hosting a quiz show.
“In Östergötland,” she answered obediently. “Maybe he was from Norrköping.”
The Chief Inspector sounded very pleased.
“Was there anything else?”
No, nothing else. She switched off the TV and went to pack her bag. She was due on night duty at nine.
She would’ve been able to get a longer period of sick leave, the diagnosis would no doubt have been crisis reaction, or she’d have been table to take vacation time, at least up until the funeral next week. In a way, she was still numb, but she expected this paralysis would hang around for a long time. She wasn’t so much in shock that she couldn’t concentrate on her job. Body and soul wanted to return to normalcy, were being drawn back toward living their life again, as far as this was possible, during the time that her grief over losing Carl-Ivar was claiming its due.
But most of all, she just wanted to get away. The house was so silent and depressing, and seeing Sven take off for the golf course with his Nettan now when the evenings were still light wasn’t making things easier. Suddenly it was just the two of them that mattered, and then he didn’t have eyes for her any more.
She didn’t take her bike today, as she usually did. It was quite far to pedal and she didn’t have it in her to be alert the whole time, even if the weather had made another u-turn and was balmy and pleasant again.
The vegetation was less delicate and had started to mature, she noticed through the windshield. It was indescribably beautiful.
Once she’d parked and walked into the entrance hall, she spotted the notice. It was stuck on the wall by the information desk straight ahead for everyone to see. She walked closer to it and studied the photograph carefully. It was like a movie. Her anxiety rose.
The police needed help finding this woman, the note informed her. Rosie looked out at her from it. It was a good photo. Tina was smiling kindly, and looked her normal self. Like a flitting butterfly.
That had now flown away.
Once she’d changed and was at her station, she felt happy to be back. Here she was
, sitting waiting for the change of shift report, as she’d done since time began. She was wearing her white dress. She was a nurse, not a grieving widow, at least not only that. She’d already tired of that role.
Anne-Sofie came in like a warm breeze and gave her a hug. How nice that they were on night duty together, she thought. She hadn’t called to check which assistant nurse she’d be working with. They also changed the rotation quite often, so you just had to take who you got, and Sofa was a diamond.
“Do you know who the night doctor is?”
“Nah.”
Birgitta picked up the schedule.
“It says that it’s Daun.”
Sofa rolled her eyes. At that moment, Birgitta felt a powerful sense of déjà vu. The only one missing was Rosie, with her bustling in to report out in her slightly disorganized way. Otherwise, it was exactly the same team who’d been on night duty the last time she worked before finding out that Carl-Ivar was dead. So much had happened since then. As if years had gone by.
“Do they know who did it?” asked Sofa cautiously.
“No, not yet, I’m trying to get used to the idea that they won’t ever find his murderer,” she said.
She’d also have to get used to expressing her plight in plain words. She couldn’t quite make herself say, “My husband’s been murdered.” Rather: “My husband was tragically murdered.” But not even that sounded good.
What do you say?
You avoid saying anything, maybe. People rarely ask about sensitive matters, so it could work. The funeral director had managed that feat with such discretion that she’d hardly noticed.
It was then time for the report, which was followed by several hours of routine. It was an unusually quiet night, with almost too little to do. They grew lethargic, and had lots of time to chat. They couldn’t just keep turning the patients in their beds the whole night, they needed to be left in peace to sleep.
They got their meal ready at around midnight. It was still a little light outside. Everyone loves the light, except those who suffered from spring depression, and they chatted about that as a warm-up. And then they plunged straight into the sea of minor tragedies. They started with Göran Bladh, who was still in intensive care, Sofa said. He was on the road to recovery, but they didn’t know how he’d pull through, whether he’d just be a vegetable. Time would tell.
They knew how it could be, and chose to cheer each other up with all the cases they could remember where the patient had miraculously fared much better than anyone would have first thought. There were the opposite cases, too. But they were so fond of Bladh that they wanted the best for him.
“Maybe he’ll quit the bottle after this,” said Sofa. “Realize that he’s been given another chance.”
So thus far they hadn’t mentioned Carl-Ivar. Sofa was sensitive and realized that Birgitta had no need to unload. There wasn’t that much to say, either. The papers had covered most of it.
“It must be worse not knowing where your own are,” said Sofa. So now it was time to discuss their own Rosie. It was the kind of thing people said, but it didn’t matter, thought Birgitta. It was never easy to know what was worse, and she wanted to avoid all kinds of comparisons. But people liked grading things. Making top ten lists over tragedies. The worst tragedy wins.
They chewed over the subject for a while.
“There are those who disappear and never come back. Their relatives don’t know if they’re alive or dead. And then it turns out they’ve moved to other side of the globe,” said Sofa.
They agreed that that didn’t seem Rosie’s style.
“You don’t just abandon your kids,” said Birgitta.
Just as they were about to discuss what everyone already knew, that Rosie had had an affair with… he suddenly appeared. As if conjured up by magic.
Christoffer Daun blinked quickly and looked almost abashed. Had he overheard them?
“Hi,” he said. “You alright? I’m just doing a final round before I go to bed. It seems pretty quiet.”
This was something new he’d started doing, Birgitta thought. The other doctors usually did the rounds before going to bed, but never him.
It was probably after what had happened. Though Sofa said, once his footsteps had echoed away off down the corridor, that there had obviously been more wrong with that woman who’d died at home. A blood vessel in her head had burst, and no one could do anything about that.
That was lucky for Daun, thought Birgitta. He who’s already up to his neck in so much other trouble.
The night passed. When Birgitta jumped into her car, chilled to the bone and deliciously ravenous, she was remarkably at peace. That some things didn’t change was liberating.
She slammed the car door shut in her driveway at a quarter to eight just as Sven and Nettan stumbled out of their house.
Sven became flustered and went to get the car out of the garage and pack away the golf bags.
“If you don’t get there in time when the weather’s nice like this, you have to wait forever for your turn to tee off,” chirped Agneta. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? The early bird and all that!”
As cheerfully upbeat as always. Agneta’s piqué top was pink and Sven’s orange. Both were wearing checkered cotton slacks.
“Come on, Nettan!” he called from the car.
Of course. Agneta Bromse was off on Wednesdays. Sven never came over to her on Wednesdays.
Birgitta walked inside without looking in Sven’s direction. She was aching all over with tiredness. She didn’t even have the energy to be bitter.
She made a cup of tea. Got a bit slack and toasted a couple of slices of white, rather than the wholegrain. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but now when Carl-Ivar wasn’t alive… Pah! She just felt like something hot, that’s all, and since she had a sliced loaf in the freezer for him and his taste for continental breakfasts, it was just a case of popping a couple of slices into the toaster. It’d be a waste to throw it away.
Later, she found her head sinking softly into her pillow. Heavy work, heavy sleep, she thought, and dropped straight off to sleep for the first time since Carl-Ivar’s death.
CHAPTER 56
THE TELEPHONE RANG just as Birgitta Olsson was getting her suitcase ready to go and visit her parents in Bråbo. She let it ring until it stopped. Her mother had baked a sponge cake, she said when they agreed that she should pay them a visit. She enticed her with something tasty, just like in the old days. Something freshly baked for their afternoon coffee.
Birgitta tossed in her toiletry bag and a change of underwear, in case she decided to stay over. Her old room under the ceiling was calling her. A yearning for the old and habitual. To snuggle down and have her body relax in a bed that her torso and limbs recognized from before. It was a physical memory, which strangely the body still had. And the comforting sounds coming from her parents puttering around downstairs.
Her mother had started to fret about the funeral, Birgitta could tell from her constant anxious questions and felt instinctively that she had to go and reassure her parents that she wasn’t going to have a breakdown.
“That you were widowed first is just not the right order of things,” said her mother. And her father had guffawed, though neither coarsely nor jovially. He could have said that it was terrible or tragic, but those words to too big to fit in his mouth. Rather this, thought Birgitta. Or he might have darkened and withdrawn. People’s reactions were unpredictable. “The order in which people die is beknownst only to him up there,” he said, pointing with a finger into the air.
References to the Great Man in the Sky were otherwise a rarity in her childhood home. Age and their own imminent death made the soul softer and more tender, she supposed.
On the other hand, Carl-Ivar was to have a church funeral, of that there was no doubt. After all, it was in the Christian tradition that they both had their roots. Civil funerals were becoming popular, and times were changing, but the alternative grated now that Carl-Ivar had died in t
hat graceless way. There was a need to neutralize the appalling and macabre, as far as this was possible, with the familiar. She and he up there in his heaven needed this stability, she reasoned.
The phone rang again just as she’d put her coat on. Stubbornly and irritatingly, the signals implored her to pick up.
It was Annelie Daun.
Her mood sank. She just didn’t want to talk to Annelie. To discuss the carpet shop. She wanted to run away from it, and had already planned for Johan and Lotta to be there when it was time. But preferably not Magnus, as he got so businesslike, delving into details.
“I’d like to come by now if it’s OK,” said Annelie Daun.
Birgitta looked at her watch, it was almost 1:30.
“It’s not really possible, I’m afraid. I’m just rushing out…I’m actually standing here with my coat on.”
“Isn’t it anything you can put off?” persisted Annelie. “I want to talk to you now. In private, if possible.”
Dear me! She’d certainly made up her mind. As if she’d psyched herself up. It sounded worrying.
“But can’t we meet in Bråbo? I’m just off to my parents’… and you live just across the road and can easily pop over.”
But Annelie didn’t want to. And she wanted to go to Holmhällevägen, preferably at once.
For some reason, Birgitta didn’t ask why. She just sensed it wouldn’t have been a good idea. Her hand was trembling slightly as she hung up.
And then she picked up the receiver again and called her parents to say that she’d have to go over tomorrow instead. Something had come up that she couldn’t get out of.
“Not bad news I hope,” said her mother anxiously.
“No, no,” she promised.
Then she sat down on the sitting room sofa and waited. Could it be the rug that Annelie wanted to meet her about? The one that that detective asked her about twice by now? Lotta had also been circling the matter.
Death of a Carpet Dealer Page 37