Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  He and Özen hadn’t been that downhearted when they drove out of Stockholm. Özen had sat behind the wheel, while Claesson directed him to Norrtull and then up onto the E4 southbound.

  When they reached Södertälje, Louise called. Yes, Karl-Magnus Öberg had a company registered in his name: Ö&L.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Did you also know that he runs it with his wife?”

  No, that he hadn’t managed to find out. There were, after all, only two of them in this strange transnational investigation. But OK, that explained the L. Lotta. And it was actually quite clever: ÖL, the letters made, the Swedish word for beer.

  “To cut a long story short, they’re almost bankrupt,” continued Louise. “Revenues small and debts big. The debtor collectors are knocking on the door.”

  “And a six-figure rug would be a great help?”

  “Probably, but there’s a lot that has to be paid before he can get around to selling it on the world market, get my drift?” she said. “I’ve actually been wondering if Öberg was maybe blackmailing his father-in-law.”

  Claesson’s thoughts came to a standstill.

  “How do you mean?”

  “That maybe he had some kind of hold on him, perhaps something to do with Istanbul. We think that Öberg went there, right? Anyway, everything points to that.”

  “I’ll think it over,” said Claesson, and then let Özen in on Louise’s theory.

  “It’s got something to do with that woman on the quayside, I bet,” said Özen.

  Quite. They hadn’t forgotten the woman on the quayside.

  They’d haul in Magnus Öberg, sooner or later. There was a point to not getting worked up; it wasn’t as if they were dealing with a serial killer. Slow and steady.

  So, the funeral next, he thought and started to plan in his mind how they’d place Ilyas Bank. Maybe in one of the pews so Magnus Öberg could feel what it was like to have someone breathing down his neck. No, he thought with a change of mind, it’d be better to have Ilyas sitting in a car outside with Özen so that he could point Magnus Öberg out unobserved.

  He broke off his train of thought and dragged himself up from out of the low bed and walked downstairs to find Veronika on the sofa. She was sleeping with Nora against the backrest.

  He touched her arm gently.

  “Don’t you think you might as well go up and get to bed?”

  She stared with newly woken dopiness. “Yes.”

  He went into the kitchen, took a beer from the fridge, and then stood looking out over the darkening garden.

  The photographs were lying scattered over the kitchen table. Hours had gone by but they hadn’t bothered to switch on the kitchen light. Two candles in the window glowed with erect, steady flames.

  Birgitta Olsson blew her nose for the umpteenth time in succession. Annelie had put some tea on. A hot drink was comforting. The late rays of sunshine poked wearily through the foliage. It was half past eight and time had ceased to exist.

  “I’ve always known about it really, in a way,” said Birgitta Olsson. “For all these years I’ve felt that Carl-Ivar was living a life of his own… but I suppose I was never brave enough to find out the truth. I was just too much of a coward to corner him. Or maybe it just never mattered that much,” she added with a shrug. “We’ve lived our lives with each other, he and I and the children, as well as we could. And we’ve done OK.”

  She cried again. Tears of despair. She looked down at the photo.

  “And I suppose they have, too…lived their lives…that dark-haired woman and the girl. The daughter, Carl-Ivar’s daughter. It’s just so hard to grasp.”

  Only thirty minutes ago Annelie had regretted her ploy, but not any longer. So her conscience was clear. Otherwise, it was always the messenger who got shot.

  “We didn’t have a bad life together, Carl-Ivar and I,” Birgitta repeated.

  Annelie sat memorizing the story that she’d found the file hidden in the carpet shop. It hadn’t been that difficult to manipulate this lie into a truth, it was just to juggle the locality a little. She’d then hidden away the file and taken it home to Bråbo so that police wouldn’t find it when they turned the carpet shop upside down, she’d explained to Birgitta. She wanted to protect Carl-Ivar. He’d been like a father to her. Almost.

  “Do you know,” said Birgitta, whose voice had recovered a smidgen of energy. “There was always something elusive about Carl-Ivar, like a shadow that followed him… And funnily enough I always find an air of mystery attractive,” she said with a wry smile.

  “I suppose it was that that drew me to him for all those years. That there was something else there, something I couldn’t really put my finger on. Do you know what I mean?”

  Annelie nodded.

  CHAPTER 58

  IT WAS THURSDAY and the time was three minutes past eight. Özen and Claesson were sitting in front of the TV screen with the others. The Kalmar district was just holding forth.

  They were mainly presenting just minor events. Routine stuff. Tina Rosenkvist continued to be conspicuous by her absence, as did Patrik Lindström. Norrköping hadn’t gotten in touch.

  The previous day, Rogge and the other canine officers had been out again. New areas, new uprooted trees to sniff under. They didn’t know what to think. Was Tina alive or not? Had she just run off? If she had, she’d done so without leaving a trace, which was hard. No withdrawals on her bank card. No air or train tickets purchased, unless she’d paid in cash, which wasn’t that common these days.

  “It seems pretty bleak,” said Rogge. “Still, I really want to believe that she’s alive and has somehow just run off. She’s got good reason to keep well away from that man she’s married to, that’s for sure. But the idea of her lying in some woods somewhere…”

  “I know,” said Louise.

  When the subject had been exhausted, Claesson reported on the current situation with the carpet dealer. They still had a suspect, but they’d have to lie low until the funeral. Patrik Lindström was wanted primarily for the grievous attack on Tina Rosenkvist, but it was connected to Olsson’s death somehow, that was for sure. The common denominator appeared to be a missing and very valuable rug.

  “A jewel in the carpet world that no one’s seen hide nor hair of,” he said in closing.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot nicer than your beat-up old rag, at least,” said Conny Larsson.

  “Don’t be so sure,” countered Claesson. “It’s not even in one piece, but pretty moth-eaten along the sides if the photograph’s anything to go by.”

  Whether Tina Rosenkvist’s mysterious disappearance was anything to do with the missing rug was, on the other hand, dubious.

  “I agree with Rogge,” said Conny. “Her old man’s beaten the crap out of her.”

  “But it’s just depressing we can’t find her,” said Peter Berg, who was on the case with Martin Lerde.

  They had their work cut out for them, in other words.

  Claesson went up to his office. The sun was sending oblique rays over the clinic across the road. Özen came in after a while and announced triumphantly that Patrik Lindström really had spent the night at the Marine Hotel. Yet another part of the puzzle in place. He then dropped the passport photo of Lindström onto Claesson’s desk. They’d already decided to confront their best and only witness, Annelie Daun in the carpet shop, with it.

  “Can you try to get hold of her and ask her to come here, today if possible?” said Claesson.

  Özen nodded and left. Claesson got down to opening his mail, but was interrupted immediately by Louise Jasinski, who came in to introduce a charming woman, robustly built, pushing sixty he guessed, who knew everything there was to be known about rugs and carpets.

  Louise was a rock, he thought, and gave the woman a quick run-through of what they wanted her to do, which was to value the carpets and rugs in Olsson’s shop.

  “It will only be an approximation, of course,” she pointed out. “The prices
depend on who the buyer is, at least when it comes to auction sales. But I can see if there are any rarities there, naturally.”

  He showed her the photocopy of the fifteenth-century rug fragment.

  “Where does this come from?”

  “As far as we know it was found in a mosque in central Anatolia,” he said, sounding like a real authority on Turkey.

  “Really?” She sounded reverential.

  “The area’s called Cappadocia, I believe,” said Claesson and told her what the carpet dealer in the Grand Bazaar had said.

  “This is indeed a rare item, of course,” she confirmed. “But one would have to examine the fragment properly to be able to give a true valuation…and the price, you know, is always dependent on whether there are sufficiently solvent buyers. The value of a rug of this kind is, of course, high, if it is as well-preserved as the photograph would suggest, but, as I said, you never know until you have it in front of you. I have not actually seen one like this on the open market for a very long time. But at a rough estimate, I would say it was in the six-figure bracket without a shadow of a doubt.”

  Claesson sat the woman in the visitor’s chair. He asked Özen to take the portraits and to come with him, and then dialed the number to the carpet shop. Annelie Daun answered.

  “I hope it’s OK if we stop by in a while,” he said.

  “What? Yes, of course, you’re welcome. May I ask what it’s about?”

  “We have with us a carpet expert from Stockholm who we’ve asked to value the shop’s stock.”

  Annelie Daun probably stiffened, he could tell by her silence down the line.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said paternally.

  He and Özen then accompanied the visiting carpet expert to Olsson’s shop.

  “I read about that horrid murder in the newspapers,” she said while they walked unhurriedly past the large concrete block that housed the town’s two newspapers, and then the newly built house with the tower overlooking Besvärsgatan.

  “Terrible. Carpet dealers do not usually belong to the murder victim category,” she said. They crossed Östra Torggatan and then passed by the windows of the bookshop.

  Who does? wondered Claesson, but he understood what she meant.

  The market was in full swing as they crossed Lilla Torget Square and stalls of brightly colored flowers, fresh baby vegetables, and eggs from free-range hens.

  “This seems like a lovely little shop,” said the expert before they stepped inside.

  Annelie Daun was standing waiting by the table. The women greeted each other with a smile. There was a crackle of static there, thought Claesson. One of those rare occasions when you see two people who’ve never met really click at first sight. Two similar-minded people, despite the slight guardedness, or rather humility, in Annelie Daun’s body language. It was the older woman who was the authority here, of that there could be no doubt.

  It was not without a certain ardor and perhaps even pride that Annelie Daun then showed the expert around the shop and the downstairs storeroom.

  Claesson and Özen waited until she came back upstairs.

  “We’d like to show you some pictures,” said Claesson and laid the solemn-looking faces on the table one at a time.

  Patrik Lindström was number two. She identified him almost at once.

  “It was him, definitely,” she said with certainty.

  They left the carpet expert in the shop and walked back to the police station. Claesson took up the latest reports and sat down to read them while his brain was reasonably alert. He always slowed down toward the afternoon. He wanted to recap, to remind himself of what had happened.

  The telephone rang, and his train of thought was broken. It was Nina in reception.

  “A woman by the name of Birgitta Olsson is here wondering if you can see her.”

  Yes! He hurried down and escorted her to his office.

  “How can I be of help?” he asked once they’d seated themselves.

  She hoisted up a black cloth bag with the logo of a gym on the side, took out a cardboard file, and laid it on his desk, right on top of all his own opened files and stapled together reports, which he hastily moved out of the way.

  “To give us more room,” he said.

  She said nothing. And her face revealed nothing either as she pushed the file over to his side of the desk, which was now empty. She just nodded. He lifted his hands from his lap, removed the long-since perished rubber band, its elasticity a distant memory, and opened the file. His eyebrows rose.

  This is it! he thought.

  “What does M & MS mean?” asked Veronika over the evening dinner at the kitchen table.

  “What do you think?”

  Cooked food was on the table: gnocchi with pesto, mozzarella, and rocket salad.

  “Murder and manslaughter,” she said.

  He nodded. He knew that she’d sat in his office breastfeeding Nora.

  “It’s in that file that I keep all the documents on the deaths that I’m still waiting for the autopsy reports on and different bits and bobs from the pathologist. Police deaths are there too, suicide, for example.”

  Klara poured out her mug of milk, and a white waterfall ran down from the edge of the table, dripping down onto his newly washed jeans.

  Crap! he thought, but said nothing; he just got up, walked over to the sink, snatched up a dishcloth, and thought that he’d not get any peace and quiet until he was seventy.

  CHAPTER 59

  IT WAS LIBERATING to bike to work on the Monday, Claesson couldn’t help but think. A weekend in the shelter of his family had slipped by and it hadn’t been only nice and relaxing, but also, in fact, quite strenuous at times. “Well, what did you expect?” Veronika would have said if she could hear his thoughts. He’d get glorious solitude later in life.

  What’s more, they’d clashed in a blazing argument on the Saturday. There was bound to be some sort of emotional discharge sooner or later, he’d realized. Rarely could you just keep on pushing boundaries and trying people’s goodwill forever. And as usual, it was a triviality that lit the fuse.

  Crayfish tails.

  It had been Veronika’s idea to invite Janne and Mona Lundin over for dinner that Saturday, as he’d reminded her calmly and matter-of-factly when she started to howl and launch into him. As a thank you for helping them out with Klara while they sped off to the maternity ward, she’d said. And, of course, because they liked the Lundins.

  And he had nothing against that. Not really. But it was just a little over the top, he thought, even though he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t realize that Veronika possibly needed to step outside the baby-bubble for a while and have some adult conversation with someone other than him. Of course he understood that! But she didn’t say so. She said nothing about her really wanting to have guests for dinner herself. Instead, she said that they should obey some kind of rule of etiquette, and he thought rules of etiquette they could forget. Especially when it came to the Lundins, who weren’t the type to read the small print in the code of propriety. He was the one working, he was up at nights with Nora, and, quite simply, he was tired.

  They discussed this fairly soberly, and he finally gave in. The Lundins were coming over.

  And so the crayfish tails. He’d forgotten to buy them when he was at the store.

  That did it.

  The starter that Veronika had chosen and was going to prepare in accordance with the recipe was based on this very ingredient. And say what you will about her cooking skills, she did not belong to that division of chefs who could easily conjure up something else by digging into the fridge and the freezer and improvising. Her self-confidence was stable in many situations, but not in the kitchen. “And I’m not ashamed of it,” she’d say with more or less contrived self-assurance.

  Nursing and running around after Klara and sleepless nights had, of course, whittled away at her patience. He, a man filled with a large measure of bad conscience – he’d been in Istanbu
l instead of on paternity leave, and was now up to his ears in work – could think of nothing other than offering to pop out to buy some crayfish tails an hour before the guests were due to arrive. Constructive and thoughtful.

  But it was too late. They wouldn’t have time, she said. What with the house in a mess, too. Mouth pursed, she stamped her heels hard against the floor as she scuttled around tidying up the sitting room with Nora wailing over her shoulder. A martyr. He kept out of her way. And that, of course, was wrong. But he hated to plead, even more so as the white-hot wrath seething within her was really quite scary. The wrath that he never managed to penetrate but that had to either dissipate of its own accord or gradually settle, and that could take time. And time was exactly what they didn’t have.

  The silent threat of a grim mother with a hard, unapproachable face upset Klara, as it was not something she was used to. She cried and ran away to hide. But once Mona and Janne were standing in the hallway, she came crawling out in her best dress with dust balls clinging to the hem. She was allowed to sit up with them for a while. He and Veronika could breathe out. It was over.

  Janne and Mona. It was strange, but some people seemed made for pouring oil on troubled waters. Mona’s cheerful, uncritical demeanor, and Janne’s thoughtful manner. Klara climbed up onto Mona’s lap and Mona read her a story. The food arrived, without a starter, without crayfish tails. A storm that blew itself out.

  That he then drank too many beers with his colleague Janne and sat talking shop in the kitchen while the women occupied the sitting room, and then stumbled drunkenly into bed and failed to hear the children during the night, were all things that wouldn’t score him any more points.

  But Veronika was magnanimous enough not to bring it up the next day. In return he took the girls on a long Sunday walk so that she could have an afternoon nap.

  His colleagues had spent the entire weekend looking for Tina Rosenkvist, but had taken their search down a notch. Still no sign of a witness or of the slightest clue that could lead them to her, dead or alive.