Blue Blue Eyes: Crime Novel

by Helena Anderson

  ”What a place.” Nikki smiled and saw how Patrik’s eyes were reflected in the glow of the lamp.

  ”Mm, there’s something special about this restaurant. The food is supposed to be superb.”

  ”I’m really hungry and it will be wonderful to have some authentic Cypriot meze”, Nikki answered.

  ”By the way, I need to see my accountant tomorrow morning at ten. I hope it’s OK for you to be by yourself for a couple of hours?” Patrik well intentionally blinked with his long light eyelashes while he thought of the letter. The letter which had appeared at his office some months ago. The content had shocked him and he knew every single line by heart.

  ”Hello, my name is Anna Fransson. I’ve just found out that I have a father. A father whom I thought was dead while growing up. Twenty-eight years later my mother chooses to tell me the truth about you….”

  Patrik had been so frightened he almost jumped out of his skin the first time he read the letter and then he had hidden it in the hope that it would go away by itself. A couple of days later he had read the letter over and over again until he knew it by heart. Naturally without mentioning it to anybody until he knew how to deal with the unpleasant situation. First of all he had to find out if it was at all true. That was one of Patrik’s plans while being in Cyprus. Anna had mentioned in the letter that she was working as a guide in Ayia Napa and Patrik had the intention of finding her without Nikki knowing about it. But what on earth would Linn say if it was true? And the kids? How would they receive a new big sister? Patrik buried the thought of his potential daughter and gave a start when he heard Nikki’s voice again.

  ”There is something bothering you.” Nikki leaned over the table and stroked his arm.

  ”Ah, it’s cool”, he answered and moved his gaze to the flickering flame.

  ”Sure?”

  ”But stop scrutinizing me like that, everything is cool”, Patrik assured in a tone which was a tiny bit too sharp.

  ”OK, I believe you”, Nikki said and leaned back in the chair. ”For me on the other hand it feels like shit that my sister’s been raped. Do you know what the worst thing is? That I’m not physically there with her. ”

  ”At least you’ve been talking to her several times during the day. And she knows you care.”

  Nikki struck out her hands with resignation and then took her glass.

  ”Sure, and I’m bloody pleased she’s alive. We had some cases the other week-end that turned out completely different. How can it be a pleasure to drug a girl, just to grab the power and rape her? What kind of sick bastard is that?”

  Patrik shrugged helplessly and then smiled when he saw a number of waiters approaching their table with trays filled with delicacies.

  ”Imagine Hogstrom giving you free time for a few days and with such short notice, it’s not like her.” Patrik changed the topic on purpose and happily put a piece of stifadon in his mouth. He wound one of his legs around Nikki’s under the table and rolled his eyes when he felt the flavours marrying each-other. Cinnamon, garlic, tomato, vinegar and the most tender lamb ever.

  ”It’s not strange at all”, Nikki countered. ”Hogstrom wanted me off the investigation”. She fidgeted, a little embarrassed, and continued with a friendlier tone of voice. ”Looking back I actually deserved being suspended, my first suspension ever.”

  Patrik looked closely at Nikki and noticed how she was suffering. ”But was it really a suspension? Didn’t she just give you some free days?”

  Nikki thought about it. Twisted and turned it all, as bad experience had taught her to do. ”No, I see it as a suspension.”

  ”But…don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ll see it will work itself out. ”

  ”Anyway, it fits perfectly since you had to go to Cyprus. What could be better than a change of scenery?” Nikki tried smiling but it seemed more like a forced grimace. ”Thanks once again for letting me tag along, but…” Nikki never finished the sentence but put her fringe behind her ear again and took a sip of the cooling champagne.

  ”What do you mean with but? Don’t you want to be here, or what?” Patrik frowned and put down his cutlery on the plate.

  Nikki looked into the candle’s flame and all of sudden she looked troubled. Her face was shadowed with the bad conscience she always had when thinking of her childhood friend. Linn had no idea that Nikki was having an affair with Patrik. At least she thought so. For over a year she had been meeting him in secret. It all started with an innocent flirt at Patrik and Linn’s in Marstrand. Linn had a glass too much and gone to bed before the others. Nikki had worn a white, low-cut lace dress going well with her tanned skin and Patrik had carefully flirted with her, given her quiet compliments during the evening which nobody else could hear. Of course Nikki had always found Patrik attractive, but she had never imagined the barbecue to lead to this, or herself capable of it. Nikki was definitely not proud of having an affair with her best friend’s husband and she had planned to end it several times. But one meeting led to another and after a while, without knowing it, she was stuck. And while she herself had been enjoying the secret meetings, Linn had gone ever deeper into the wine bottles.

  ”You know what”, Nikki whispered seriously. ”You and I….” She hesitantly put her hand over Patrik’s and felt ridiculously false. How the hell could I accept this trip? Am I really so stupid? Obviously she grimaced while slowly shaking her head at her fatal mistake. ”This trip…I have to admit that it was a mistake on my side... I am sorry….I should have told you before but Cyprus sounded so tempting and fitted so perfectly that…” Nikki’s words were hanging in the air while she mustered up more courage to finish her sentence. ”I want us to end it. You have Linn and your children to consider and I don’t want to be the other woman any longer, even though it’s been perfect for me up to now. But no more…”

  ”Eh, what?” Patrik thought he had made a mistake and stared in surprise at Nikki. ”Over?”

  Nikki hesitated a moment. ”I can’t have a bad conscience for Linn any more. I still want her in my life, as you can understand, she is my bloody best friend, or at least she was…” Nikki took another sip of the bubbly drink and hoped it would help her relax. ”In addition I’ll never find the love of my life if I have you.” Her heart felt like breaking but Nikki knew she could push that out by working. She took a deep breath to stay calm and then put an olive in her mouth.

  Patrik wiped himself with the linen napkin before clapping his hands together and leaning over the table. ”You really mean that it’s over?” His cheeks went red and he got really angry. ”How the hell did you have the guts to follow me here when you knew your intentions?”

  Nikki didn’t know what to reply but felt deeply ashamed. She didn’t know if it had been pure selfishness on her side to escape the workplace or if it was to have some last wonderful memories with Patrik. She actually didn’t know but Nikki could really understand his uneasy feeling.

  ”I am sorry. I wanted us to spend a few days together without having to do it in secret as always. I am sorry.” Nikki got up so suddenly that her chair turned over. The waiter quickly arrived and put it back in its place but she went to Patrik and crouched in front of him. ”You have to view it from my side as well. You have it all already. I’ve been single for many years with Axel and Gustav. I don’t want it to be this way anymore. I am 46 years old and haven’t dared let a single man into my life since Stefan. It’s about time I changed this pattern now.”

  Patrik didn’t want to understand. He thought that he had found the perfect solution. ”When we land at Landvetter and I’ve dropped you off at the Aveny, we’ll not meet anymore?”

  ”Of course we’ll meet, but under different circumstances. What we’ve had has been wonderful but I need to go forward. Turn the tables. How would you have enjoyed being the other man?” Nikki stood up and returned to her seat on wobbly legs. She emptied her glass and felt how tired she wa
s. The alcohol was affecting her more than she wished.

  ”I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it in that way.” With pressed lips Patrik grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard. They were both quiet for a while before Nikki continued:

  ”You should concentrate all your energy on Linn. She has to get the care she needs. At least for the sake of the kids. And for her of course, or rather for both of you.”

  ”Thanks a lot for giving me a bad conscience” Patrik spat and fixed his gaze on the star-filled heaven.

  1975

  The brothers, eight and ten years old respectively, looked at each-other with surprise and looked worriedly at their mother.

  ”But how will you get into the boat when we go fishing?” The younger brother wrinkled his freckled nose and looked like a living question mark.

  ”Boys, you’ll have to go fishing with Daddy from now on.” The brothers looked at each-other with open mouths.

  ”So you mean you’ll never go fishing again?”

  The mother sadly shook her head and tied her scarf to hide the thin hair.

  ”Daddy will go with you instead. Come on now, let me have a rest and then I’ll prepare you some rhubarb compote. ”

  It was the summer of 1975 when everything changed. The boys had to experience living with a mother who got more and more pain in her joints. She tried her best to keep it up in the presence of the boys but the kids were not stupid, they could figure it out and first and foremost they could see how she was hurting. But it wasn’t only the mother changing, something happened with the boys’ father as well. His look became deeper and the colour of his soul went black. The evil eye came to life during this summer.

  The little brother pretended to be sleeping when the father stealthily came into the boys’ room on the second floor that star-filled night in June. The first time he didn’t understand what was happening and nicely waited for his turn in the bed. To be on your own with Daddy, could it get any better? The little eight-year old longingly had been thinking. Then little brothers chin had been shaking as he was lying there in his narrow, hard bed, alone and scared of the dark.

  He didn’t understand why his stomach was like a hard knot and why his chest felt like lead. He didn’t quite know either what the father was doing with his big brother in the nights, but he had heard the sound. The moaning painful howls which were dampened by a sock in his mouth. Little brother closed his ears with his hands but the painful cries for help from his big brother were echoing in all of his thin body and head. He had even tried putting a pillow on either side of his head and hum loudly. It helped for a while before his memory had brought back the painful sounds from the white barn. The horrible thing always took place during the night. There was darkness and ghosts and then there was Daddy.

  It was this summer that Daddy stopped sitting with the boys on his lap in the evenings to tell them stories from his childhood. And it was this summer that Big brother learned what pain and fear is all about. A ten-year-old little boy who was not allowed to remain a boy.

  Wednesday June 5th

  It was still unusually hot to be the beginning of June. The sun was beating high up on the clear blue sky and a lot of people stayed inside in their air-conditioned houses or found some shade outside. The chief of Police, Carlos García Rodríguez, quickly swallowed the last piece of creamy chocolate croissant before entering the outdated police station in Coral Bay. He burped loudly at the same time as tucking the tight, light blue uniform shirt inside his trousers. With his thumbs inside the waistband he continued on to the cramped kitchen and greeted his co-workers gathered in front of the coffee machine.

  ”Katerina, could you get some nice coffee and cakes for us in the conference room. We’ll start the morning’s meeting in a few minutes.” Carlos twisted his bushy moustache between his thumb and index finger at the same time holding out his cup for Katerina to fill it with coffee.

  Katerina, the office’s factotum, was annoyed as usual and went to her desk by the entrance to get her purple, plastic handbag. Carlos watched her as she walked across the street on her way to the local family-owned bakery and noticed how unsteadily she wobbled on her high heels. Before opening the door to his locked office he turned around and shouted:

  ”Sam and Daphne, meeting in the conference room in two minutes’.”

  He pulled out the last drawer in the worn-out dark stained desk, lifted the package with chocolate croissants and picked up the brown, exclusive leather wallet which he had taken from the murder victim. He left the bank cards but put the six 50-euro notes in his own money clip. The chief frowned and studied the picture on the pink driver’s license.

  ”Let’s see if we can capture your murderer, Sten Arvidsson. Sorry for taking your money but you don’t need it now that you’re dead, do you?” Carlos left some euro in the coin compartment just for the sake of it, took off his plastic gloves and went with short, loud steps to the conference room where Daphne and Sam were waiting. With a superior attitude Carlos started updating them both:

  ”As you know, yesterday morning a hunter found a man’s body in the nature reserve of Akamas. I am still waiting for the autopsy report and the report from the Technical department. I did go back to the location, though, yesterday before it got dark and you probably were at home with your families. I found this.” Carlos showed them the brown wallet which he had put in an evidence bag and continued:

  ”We now know who the dead person is.” Carlos smiled triumphantly. ”He is Swedish, his name is Sten Arvidsson and he’s 63 years old. According to a conversation with the Swedish Embassy in Nicosia yesterday I found out that he’s from Gothenburg, Sweden. Before I went home yesterday I faxed a copy of his driver’s license to the police in Gothenburg and told them that we’d found him dead on this island.” Carlos stretched proudly. He waited for applauds but of course there were none. The silence in the room was complete and Daphne and Sam were looking at their boss incredulously.

  ”That’s strange”, Sam, breaking the silence, finally said. ”Daphne and I also went back to the site yesterday around dusk since I also needed to see it. To make it all clear we stayed there for a few hours, and where exactly were you?”

  Carlos made a face and felt his cheeks getting hot. His face red he turned for his mug. The white photo mug was a birthday present from the rest in the station. They had had a dozen mugs made with a picture of the station cat, The Panther. The funny thing with the gift was that the print was only visible when the mug was filled with something hot. In addition, everybody had had their name engraved, which had solved the eternal question about the washing up.

  Carlos sank into the chair, coffee mug in his hand, like a child just getting caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. The silence spread in the room and Sam and Daphne were waiting for their boss to get through the embarrassing situation. The next minute Carlos remembered what he could complain about.

  ”I need the report from the Technical Department. Could you call your cousin and ask what she’s actually doing? Maria has had the whole bloody night to complete it.”

  Daphne knew better than answering back. Ignoring the chief hit harder than confronting him so she just sat there wiggling on the chair looking calm. On the other hand she noted Sam’s bad mood and wondered what was bothering him. Daphne liked Sam who was her age and the station’s biker, a cool guy with a long black pony-tail. Among them all he was the only one who had tattoos and she thought that the skull on his left, muscular upper arm was the coolest. Strangers thought that Sam Dendias looked dangerous with his bulging muscles and 194 centimetres but looks were deceiving, he was sweet like a teddy bear.

  ”Daphne?” Carlos gave her a long look and was just getting started with a new attack when he was interrupted by Katerina’s squeaky voice.

  ”The preliminary autopsy report has arrived.”

  Katerina wobbled on her stiletto heels and gave the seal
ed envelope to the chief.

  ”OK, get out now. Can’t you see we are working”.

  The tension was rising and a collective silence spread in the room while Carlos got lost in the report. He noticed that the report had been written in a clinical and concise style-with a lack of any emotions.

  ”OK”, the chief said smugly, as if he had written the autopsy report himself. ”Sten Arvidsson died from suffocation but we could almost guess that from seeing his body filled with concrete. He had also been seriously abused, his right hand was missing the little finger and the other four fingers were broken. His toe nails were pulled out, but the worst thing probably was that Sten Arvidsson was alive when his eyes were removed as well as when the perpetrator made him swallow the concrete. The body is full of a number of burns, probably caused by a cigarette looking object. Neo writes that the victim was murdered four days ago, which would mean Saturday, it being June 1st.

  ”Poor bastard.” Sam made a face when he studied the different photographs of the dead person and then passed them on to Daphne.

  ”Yes, it makes you wonder what he has done to warrant this sadistic treatment. Sten has been tortured apart from being filled with concrete, and the question is why? Who would do this to him? It’s bloody barbaric. The perp must have been really upset with him, otherwise he wouldn’t have looked like this.” Daphne studied the photographs carefully and felt slightly nauseous. How could somebody be this evil? She put the pictures on the conference table and poured a drink from the thermos. The photo of The Panther appeared on her mug at the same time as she heard a loud meow in the corridor.

  ”I completely agree with you, this is no common murder. It looks like the Mafia might be part of it or a really disturbed person; we have to find the murderer as soon as possible.” Sam brushed his hair back and helped himself to one of the cakes that Katerina had put on the table.