The No. 2 Global Detective

by Toby Clements

  When he arrived at his father’s house it was almost seven o’clock in the evening and it had been dark for eight hours. His stepmother greeted him at the door with a rice dish and a slight bow. His father was in the sauna, she said, painting the parrot. When she had first said this, Colander had thought it was a euphemism for something far darker, but that in fact was what his father was doing.

  Inspector Colander’s father only ever painted interiors of his sauna, but they were so lavishly detailed that one could see the grain of wood of each plank and in this way they differed subtly. Another difference was that in some there was a parrot while in others there was none. To be completely honest, Burt Colander did not know the significance of the parrot. He was not completely sure his father did either.

  ‘I will not disturb him,’ said Colander.

  ‘Okay,’ said the woman from MyThaiBride.org.

  ‘Is he all right? I worry about him.’

  ‘Yeh yeh,’ she said. ‘Same same but different.’

  Colander drove home. We are not always alone, he thought, for the first time in many years. It is possible to find consolation. It might be with a parrot. Or it might be with an Ingmar Bergman double bill. Or it might be with a young Thai girl.

  Before he drove home, Colander removed the scatter cushions on the back seat of the car and dabbed at his armpits. Then he returned the cushions to the car and set off. As he drove, he had an idea. It was a desperate gamble, but it might just work. He picked the phone up again and rang Tord Torddsson. Tord Tordsson could not believe what the inspector asked him to do but, once Colander explained his plan, he agreed to do it nonetheless.

  The press conference was called for eight o’clock that evening – in time for the late editions – and it was to be held in the conference room. It may be too late, thought Colander, but it was worth one last desperate try. He spent the next hour rehearsing his answers, trying to imagine every conceivable question. The journalists – a man from the Ynstead Examiner and another from the Sjöbo Chronicle – sat and took notes in their pads of paper as Inspector Colander explained the developments in the case so far. When he had finished, there was silence for a while, except for a reedy buzzing snore from the nose of the man from the Sjöbo Chronicle.

  He had time for only one question afterwards and it came from the man from the Ynstead Examiner.

  ‘Yes,’ said Colander, pointing at the man with his hand up. ‘You.’

  ‘So you cannot find a copy of The Hour of the Wolf on video and you would like any member of the public who might be able to help to get in touch with the Ynstead police station? Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Colander. From the back of the room Tordsson gave him a nod of approval. It was a desperate gamble, but time was very tight. If they could not find the film, what then?

  Colander called the press conference to a close.

  ‘Okay, that’s it. A full lid.’

  After the press conference Colander collected his car and then went home. He slept soundly that night and was only woken by the telephone trilling damply from the sitting room.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, standing naked by the window. Even in the cold air he could tell that his problems with erectile dysfunction seemed to be clearing themselves up of their own accord.

  The voice on the other end said something in English. Inspector Colander listened and then agreed that he would drive to the airport in Stockholm to collect the two foreigners. He had to be back in time for the Film Club. He thought perhaps that he had been premature in his thoughts about his erectile dysfunction.

  The meeting began promptly at ten and, as soon as he saw the faces gathered around the table, Colander knew that the breakthrough they had all been hoping for had not occurred. No one had found a copy of the film. They had only a very few hours before they were due to show it and Colander was still trying to think desperately of a way in which he might discover a copy.

  He picked up Lemm Lemmingsson on the way to the airport and, as they drove towards Stockholm on the E22, Lemmingson asked Inspector Colander about the two foreigners whom they were going to collect. Colander saw that Lemmingsson had brought a gun with him.

  ‘The man from England is from my old College,’ he explained. ‘He is a Lecturer in Transgression and Pathology.’

  ‘Why is he coming to Sweden? Why is he coming here to Ynstead?’

  ‘He is here because he wants to buy a duvet.’

  ‘A duvet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  A silence followed. Inspector Colander concentrated on the road. They passed the turn-offs to Kristianstad and Karlskrona and then Västervik before Lemmingsson spoke again.

  ‘And what about the other foreigner?’

  ‘The other foreigner is a private detective from Botswana.’

  ‘Botswana?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. What does he want?’

  ‘Also to buy a duvet.’

  The car reached the turn-offs for Norrköping and then Nyköping before Lemmingsson asked if there was much call for duvets in Botswana.

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said Colander. ‘I am as much in the dark about Botswana as you are.’

  ‘Perhaps we can ask him when we see him?’

  ‘That is a good idea,’ agreed Colander. Lemmigsson was coming along as a police officer, he thought.

  At the airport, the policemen went through security channels and met the two foreigners straight from the jet. They were easy to spot. The man was wearing a beige safari suit and a hunting hat while the other, who transpired to be a woman, and who was extremely large and black, was wearing a dress made from a vast amount of gaudy red material that looked as if it might have been bought at a street market. They had obviously not had time to pack properly.

  The police officer from Ynstead identified himself to the foreigners.

  Inspector Colander recalled Delicious Ontoaste instantly. It had been long ago, some time in a past with which he was by now only distantly familiar, but she had been such a well-thought-of character that she was not easily forgotten. She seemed to remember him as well.

  ‘Oh Rra! I know you! You were at Cuff College in Oxford, weren’t you? What is your name again? Fred Sieve? Something like that.’

  The detective from Ynstead introduced himself afresh. He was startled by the abundance of the woman. While at College he had spent many hours in a small café drinking tea and feeling homesick, but he had always been aware of the thin black girl who had spent most of her time weeping in the bathroom and who would buttonhole people to talk about her father and a man called Sir Seretse Kharma, of whom no one had ever heard. Colander recalled that she had failed many of her exams, but had surprised them all with a paper that circumvented the Holmesian Dictum. Colander could remember that her theory was not that the elimination of the impossible led to the discovery of the solution, however impossible that might seem, but that if a man looked bad, he probably was. It had been startling in its simplicity and had scored a pass.

  And now here she was, standing in Stockholm Airport, larger than life, smelling of cocoa butter and carrying an airline blanket under her arm. Already the customs officers were buzzing towards her.

  Tom Hurst, meanwhile, looked thunderstruck. He kept looking between one and the other. He had not known that they were acquainted with one another.

  Introductions were made. Lemmingsson kept a continuous smile on his face. Being from Ynstead, he had never seen a black lady before, let alone met one, let alone touched one. He smelled his hand after he had shaken hers. It smelled pleasant.

  Inspector Colander checked his watch. They were running late. Leaving Lemmingsson to stare at Mma Ontoaste, he took the man from England aside.

  ‘We have to get back to Ynstead in time for the Ingmar Bergman Film Club meeting at four o’clock. In the meantime I have to check the headlines of the Ynstead Examiner and the Sjöbo Chronicle.’

  ‘But we need to get to an IKEA before they
close,’ Tom Hurst said.

  ‘It will have to wait until tomorrow, I am afraid. This is an emergency.’

  Tom Hurst nodded.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But listen. You have to tell me how you know Mma Ontoaste.’

  ‘We were at College together. Didn’t the Dean tell you? The Class of ’74. Terry Jacks’s song “Seasons in the Sun” was number one in the United Kingdom.’

  ‘I see,’ mumbled Tom, deep in thought, stepping back as Colander found a copy of the Ynstead Examiner and began translating the headline for him. A herring had been found by a child out walking his dog by the harbour. The fish showed signs of horrific violence to its person – its guts had been removed and its body cavity cleaned completely – so that the paper was calling for a police investigation.

  Inspector Colander swore. Not only would that take up more police time – and they were working flat out now – but it also meant that the story of the missing video and the police appeal for information as to its whereabouts only made it to page five.

  The Sjöbo Chronicle led with a story about the ongoing campaign to have the limb of a pine tree that had grown over a public right of way removed. It was seen as a health hazard and yet the council had done nothing about it for almost two days now.

  Colander had to accept that his latest efforts had been in vain.

  All four of them piled into the car; Colander drove with Mma Ontoaste in the front seat next to him. She was slightly taken aback by the ordinary choice of car until Colander explained that he normally drove a sledge pulled by reindeer but that the snows6 had failed them this year. At that Mma Ontoaste was impressed.

  Tom Hurst and Lemm Lemmingsson sat in the back. Hurst was relieved. On the flight to London and then on to Stockholm, he had had to sit in economy next to Mma Ontoaste. The African lady had overflowed her own seat and bulged into his, so that, by the end of the flight, he had lost all feeling in his left side.

  As they drove back down the E22, Lemmingsson then mentioned to his superior that he had, as suggested, brought his notes from the meeting the day before, as he had been asked to do. Colander was surprised. Normally this sort of detail was left hanging.

  ‘There was something Lemmingsson said or did not say at a meeting the other day that made me think of something,’ explained Colander.

  As Lemmingsson read his notes through, repeating the details of the case so far, both the foreigners began to grasp the complexity of the investigation.

  ‘There!’ said Tom Hurst in the back, just as Lemmingsson got to the bit after Tord Tordsson had told the meeting that the foreigners would not be allowed to watch the Ingmar Bergman film and Lemmingsson suggested that they ought to be allowed to watch if the film were not an Ingmar Bergman film.

  ‘If you don’t watch an Ingmar Bergman film, then we can watch with you, can’t we? And, since you don’t have an Ingmar Berman film to watch, we might just as well get another film. Then we could watch that with you.’

  Colander glanced at Mma Ontoaste. She was a beautiful woman he thought, with dark shiny skin and eyes that seemed to twinkle brownly.

  ‘Hang on, Lemmingsson,’ said Colander. ‘Please go back a second and read that bit again.’

  Lemmingsson started again. When he had repeated the exchange, Colander held his hand up.

  ‘We could get another video and show that instead of the Ingmar Bergman film,’ he said. ‘Then Mma Ontoaste and the detective from England could join us.’

  There was a slight pause before the others in the car agreed with him. By the time they reached Ynstead, it had stopped raining and the rest of the passengers were in agreement with Inspector Colander and his plan. One or two details needed clearing up but it was about now that Colander began thinking ahead. How could he somehow claim that it was all a team effort and that he had nothing to do with the solution while also making sure that everybody knew he had been the key? He had managed it in all his other cases, but this one looked as if it might be trickier.

  Meanwhile his eye kept meeting that of Mma Ontoaste. She was certainly not quite as he recalled her from his days at College, but she was nevertheless an attractive woman and, despite her clothes, he could see that she was very shapely.

  ‘I am wondering, too, Rra, if there is not somewhere we can go to buy some different clothes. We left in such a hurry, you see? And I am just wearing this old thing.’

  Colander glanced at the dress Mma Ontoaste was holding between her sizeable fingers. She had pulled it up to show him and accidentally she had exposed her knees. They were fine and brown and round with no trace of the pale skin that came from kneeling and washing floors.

  Colander thought for a minute. It was true. Neither of the two foreigners could realistically be expected to discover anything dressed in the manner in which they were. He glanced at his watch again.

  ‘There is an outfitters in Ynstead,’ suggested Lemmingsson. ‘In Hamngatan. Next to the video shop. We can go there and still be in time for the Film Club.’

  As Colander parked the blue Peugeot the sun came out.

  ‘Oh Rra, this is very pretty,’ said Mma Ontoaste, looking about at the views along the cobbled street down to the enclosed harbour and the sliver of golden sand.

  ‘Cobbled streets and well-tended houses. Everybody so considerate and kind.’

  Colander did not see it like that, of course. For every cobbled street lined with neat whitewashed cottages that Mma Ontaoste saw, Colander saw a dismal alley separating opium dens, child brothels and illegal S & M dungeons, but he said nothing. Instead he led them across the cobbled street to the outfitters. He entrusted Lemmingsson with the trip to the video shop.

  ‘You know what to do?’

  Lemmingsson nodded.

  ‘And do not forget to keep in touch. I will be on my mobile. I want you to ring every two minutes with an update. I will show Mma Ontoaste and this Lecturer from England what to buy and then I will come over to help.’

  Again Lemmingsson nodded.

  ‘Good luck.’

  Lemmingsson walked quickly up the street, keeping to the shadows, making certain no one followed him, to where the video shop was by now open again. They had their plan worked out and, barring any unforeseen events, they hoped that, if they stuck to it, it would transpire to be a success.

  Colander, Mma Ontoaste and Tom Hurst entered the shop. It was a traditional outfitter and five minutes later they emerged dressed in traditional Swedish clothes. Mma Ontoaste wore a classic reindeer leather cap from Bulan and an elegant reindeer waistcoat over her Skjaeveland sweater (strictly Norwegian, but she did not seem to mind very much) of red and blue and white above a long purple velvet skirt. On her feet she had a pair of Båstad clogs, which clonked nosily on the cobbles. It is hard to convey how stupid she looks, thought Colander, but there was something about her.

  ‘Oh Rra, I will never get used to these.’

  Tom Hurst wore a summer cap of similar reindeer leather and the same sort of waistcoat and jumper, but a pair of thick worsted fisherman’s trousers and on his feet a pair of blacksmith’s clogs from Skånetoffeln. It surprised even Colander how quickly they blended in with the other 16,000 people who lived in Ynstead.

  Meanwhile Lemmingsson had returned from the video shop with a video of Braveheart, a film made in 1995, directed by and starring Mel Gibson.

  ‘Should it not be Mel Gibsson?’ asked Lemmingsson when he read the credits.

  ‘He does not look very Swedish, though,’ said Colander. ‘But then he does not look very Scotch either, which is what he is supposed to be.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘In this film at least.’

  Another long pause.

  ‘It was the only film left in the shop,’ he explained with a shrug of his shoulders.

  Colander glanced at his watch. It was half past four already and the Film Club was due to begin at five o’clock. Ordinarily, it would be time for some hair-raising driving, but the police station was only roun
d the corner so a sedate walk would see them taking their seats at the correct time.

  As they walked up towards the police station, Colander began to grasp that the investigation was over. He had failed to find a copy of The Hour of the Wolf. He had failed to have a high-speed car chase. He had failed to wallow around in his tracksuit in the dark with a gun he did not know how to use. He had failed to have everyone in the police station work harder than they knew they could.

  So why did he feel so happy?

  Was it because he was walking next to Mma Ontoaste, the most striking woman with the most singular intelligence he had met since that strange Latvian woman whom none of his readers really believed existed? She had sounded like the sort of thing a boarding-school boy, unfamiliar with women, might make up, now that he thought about it.

  The impact the two foreigners made on the Ingmar Bergman Film Club is hard to exaggerate and, when Colander looked back on those few hours that followed, he would come to think of them as among the most unusual of his entire career as a police officer.

  To begin with there was silence. When Colander pushed open the door and led in Mma Ontoaste and, to a lesser degree Tom Hurst, Toff Toffsson, back on duty in reception, stared at them in open-mouthed astonishment. Then he pressed some kind of buzzer that alerted all the other police officers who up until that point had been waiting in the conference room where they met every Friday for the Ingmar Bergman Film Club. One by one they trooped out and stood in reception, making a semicircle round the two foreigners.

  Mma Ontoaste tapped her clogs uncertainly and rolled her eyes. Her snakebite was suddenly aching. She wondered if an aching snakebite meant the proximity of danger. That would be a good thing for a detective to have, surely, she thought. Tom Hurst checked the pocket of his reindeer leather waistcoat for the IKEA ticket. He glanced at Mma Ontoaste nervously.

  It was Tord Tordsson who spoke first.

  ‘Hello and welcome to Ynstead Police Station. I trust you had a pleasant journey?’

  There was deflation all round.

  ‘Oh Rra, it was the most wonderful journey, and to be met at the end by this handsome Swedish police officer was beyond my wildest dreams!’