Going Loco

by Lynne Truss

  The dumpy duty nurse looked at him as if he were speaking Urdu. The order of some of the consonants made sense, but the vowels had been picked at random by a chimpanzee. It was a bit like reading someone else’s shorthand. ‘I mist sew Oongrud Johinssin,’ was what it sounded like. ‘Oy hyve cim oll the whoa fram Inglound.’

  ‘Do you speak English?’ asked the nurse, at last.

  ‘Of course,’ said Stefan.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘What is your name, please?’

  ‘Stefan Johansson.’

  ‘Stefan Johansson?’ She wrote the name down and underlined it.

  Stefan had second thoughts.

  ‘I mean George Colwan. C-O-L-W-A-N.’

  She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘George Colwan?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her pen was poised for crossing out. ‘Not Stefan Johansson?’

  ‘That’s right. That’s somebody else. He’s dead.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  This nurse’s English was irritatingly good, Stefan decided. She could do all sorts of intonations just by repeating everything he said.

  ‘Will you wait, please?’ she said, and dialled an internal number. ‘Hej!’ she said into the phone, in the brisk salute he remembered from his twenty years in Sweden, and then began to speak too quickly for him to understand.

  He had never quite got used to ‘Hej!’, he recalled. When he did business in Sweden, he preferred to say, ‘Hello, how are you, sit down.’ But the Swedes said, ‘Hej!’ and that was it. It was funny how it all came back. Arriving by boat from Copenhagen this evening, he’d gone straight to a shop to buy a map and had found himself in an automatic ‘Hej! Hej!’ exchange with the youthful shopkeeper. It was only when the man carried on in Swedish, commenting lengthily on his choice of map, that Stefan admitted his Swedish wasn’t so good any more. ‘No problem,’ confessed the youth in English. ‘It was yust bullshit.’

  ‘Do you know Ingrid? Is she – all right?’ Stefan asked the nurse, when she had finished with the phone. It was weird that, here in Sweden, he didn’t need to pretend to be Swedish any more.

  ‘Yes, Ingrid is well. She is not my patient, of course, because she is my friend. I have known Ingrid thirty years. She worked here, you know, during the years of her marriage.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘When she was suspended on suspicion of stealing cotton swabs and Petri dishes and scalpels and bandages, I spoke up for her. We were like sisters. Ingrid and Birgit! I knew her husband Stefan very, very well.’

  Stefan tried not to look too closely, but there was something rather odd about this Birgit. For one thing, she was cubic in shape, and seemed to shrink in height the more he looked at her. For another, her top lip kept twitching. ‘Really?’

  ‘Ingrid is as sane as you or I. Yust upset by Stefan’s murder, as who would not?’

  ‘I see. Murder? I see.’

  ‘All those stories about Stefan’s experiments were made up.’

  ‘Good. Yes.’

  ‘So,’ she said, with an emphatic exhalation. ‘Will you wait in here, please?’

  Stefan was puzzled, but followed the nurse along a corridor. She opened the door to a small room, ushered him inside, then locked it.

  ‘Do you know how unhappy Ingrid is?’ she said, through a glass panel in the door. ‘She is so unhappy. And you know who she blames? You! Lucky George! You set fire to her husband! You threw her on floor! You get blood on her Carl Larsson reproduction! Your luck yust ran out, Lucky George!’

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled, through the glass panel in the door. But the only person who heard him just said, ‘Hej!’ back again.

  At which point, Stefan saw the inexplicable sight of Leon – from Jago’s dinner party – barge past Birgit and through a swing-door, carrying a cup of coffee.

  Back at the sports hall, Tanner was having a few difficulties writing his 400 words. Because, just when he’d settled on a rather good line about Sidewinders being sidelined, just when his account of the match had reached the important 350-word mark, with ten minutes to deadline, Jericho Jones stopped the match and announced his retirement from world sport. His son had been expelled from school in Cincinnati on suspicion of dope dealing, and it was time to stop bouncing a ball. He apologized to the miffed Meerkats. He apologized to his millions of fans. He recalled the words of his first coach, ‘Strut’ Schwarz, to the effect that ‘No man is in Ireland.’ And then he led his astounded team back to the dressing room.

  As all around him reporters grabbed phones and started shouting, Tanner wondered what his precise responsibility was here. ‘They won’t need me to write about this, will they?’ he asked a chap from the Guardian, who had been helpful up till now.

  ‘Get me the news desk,’ snapped the chap.

  Tanner looked at the 350 words he had already accumulated, and felt a bit sick. Rewriting the whole thing in ten minutes was out of the question. Whereas if he continued at the current rate, and changed nothing, he could just make it. Much as he enjoyed sport, much as he admired Jericho Jones for his splendid eloquence, he was horrified by the reaction of his colleagues. Was this really so important? Surely only time would tell? ‘News will pick it up,’ he told himself. ‘If it’s important, News will do it.’

  He was right, of course; but also wrong. Unfortunately, if there was one thing that defined Tanner, it was his refusal to be part of any mass brute reflex. So, disdainful of his colleagues who yelled urgent things like ‘What’s the son’s name?’ to each other, and ‘Who fought the battle of Jericho? Was it Cain or Abel?’ while tapping their keyboards at indecent speed, Tanner took it easy. Insouciance above all; that was the aim. A sense of perspective. Thus it was that his last fifty words mentioned that Jericho Jones had sadly marred this excellent game with a sensational and inappropriate retirement speech which, on mature reflection, did not deserve the oxygen of publicity.

  Tanner signed the story in Leon’s name and filed it. He shut Leon’s computer, packed his bag and left the building, fighting his way between newsmen waving bits of paper, and dodging the lighting cameramen who waited outside shouting, ‘He’s got to come out this way!’ and ‘Someone said he had a car at the back!’ and ‘This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Malmö!’

  Tanner shook his head at such depressing evidence of pack mentality, hitched his skirt a bit, and set off to walk northwards, through the Möllevångstorget, back to the hotel.

  Jago’s taxi driver was in heaven. Already the fare was two thousand kronor. Apart from disliking the peremptory way the driver had greeted him with ‘Hej!’, Jago was pretty comfortable, too. Because this was the way to do journalism, in his opinion. Get the taxi driver from the airport to tell you everything you need to know, including facts and figures. This driver was either the best bluffer in the world, or really knew the exact number of bars in Sweden (cf. Finland and Denmark), the exact distance to Copenhagen, and the dates of the city’s buildings and statues. By contrast, back in England, Jago recalled that his airport driver had told him with similar confidence that English was spoken by everyone in the world until the eighteenth century, when the French came along.

  ‘So this is the place, huh?’ said Jago, peering from the cab at a dilapidated front door with ‘8B’ above it. The windows were dirty. Old snow adhered to the doorstep. ‘The real Stefan guy died here?’

  ‘No one lives since,’ said the driver. ‘Even the rats left, they say. It was terrible story, yuh? Mad scientist chopping people to bits? Mister Yekkle, yuh? Dr Hyde.’

  ‘Any idea he might have produced clones? That was his work, wasn’t it? You know the word clone?’

  ‘Clones, yuh. Dolly Sheep. We Swedes read more newspapers than any peoples in Europe.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Oh yeah. We top list also with coffee consuming, eating frozen food. We are yust third in reading books and owning telephones.’

  ‘And killing yourselves.’

  ‘No, this is not true,’ said t
he driver, solemnly. ‘We are eleventh only in world at killing ourselves. We are statistically very happy peoples.’

  ‘How much do I owe you now?’

  ‘Three thousand.’

  ‘I understand why you’re happy.’

  The driver didn’t laugh, but put the car in gear.

  ‘You’re wrong, though,’ said Jago.

  ‘No, no. I check all this. Eleventh only.’

  ‘No, I mean you’re wrong that there’s nobody living here.’ Jago gestured to 8B. ‘There’s a light on.’

  The driver pursed his lips. ‘No, no. Not possible. We go now?’

  ‘Yes, there is. Look. Sort of a glow.’

  The driver looked. Jago stepped out of the cab and peered in at the window. Not only was there a faint light inside, but there was movement, too. The front door flapped open.

  ‘So,’ called the driver, whose manner had changed. ‘That’s enough fun, yuh? Now I think we get out of here.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Jago.

  ‘Get in, please. In.’

  ‘Look, pal—’ he began.

  At which point the driver slammed the Volvo in gear and drove off, leaving Jago outside 8B without his luggage, listening to the howling of the wind.

  Leon had done extremely well in infiltrating the hospital. In fact, he had done too well. The cup of coffee trick had worked wonderfully, and he had ignored all calls of ‘Hej!’. Eight sets of swing doors had succumbed to his mighty shoulders, including the last one, which was clearly marked in Swedish, ‘EMERGENCY EXIT TO CAR PARK’. He barged through this final set into the cold night air, hearing the doors swing back into place with a nasty click before he realized what had happened. Damn. He had gone through that hospital like a dose of salts, and right out the other side.

  His phone rang. It was the office.

  ‘Hi!’ he said, quite pleased. He stomped his feet and sipped the coffee. ‘Good job I brought this,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Leon?’

  ‘Hey!’ said Leon, glad to hear the familiar voice of his boss in London. He didn’t usually get calls about minor events in Europe that were only worth 400 words. But, on the other hand, he was good on basketball. His favourite sportsman was Jericho Jones, and he’d written some decent stuff about him today – about how he was still at the top of his form, and would be splendid presidential material. ‘So how’s the piece? Should I have rung yet for queries?’

  ‘Queries?’ yelled his boss. ‘Queries about this shit?’

  ‘What?’ Leon was confused. He had left Tanner with about 300 words already written. How could the boy have messed up so badly?

  ‘What are you playing at, Leon?’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t tell me I said anal again.’

  ‘Very funny. You’re fired.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I haven’t got time for this, Leon. I’ve covered up for you long enough. You’ve been losing your grip for weeks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop saying “What”.’

  ‘What?’

  And then the phone went dead.

  Leon sat down on an old box and sipped his coffee. Meeting Maggie had not been too good for him, he had to admit. A lot of things seemed to have backfired since then. Take today, for instance. One minute he was a well-liked Effort man on a mission. The next he was jobless in a foreign delivery bay where he might conceivably freeze to death. Funny how life takes turns of that sort. Getting back into the hospital and locating Ingrid Johansson seemed a pretty remote possibility right now.

  ‘They never called my stuff shit before,’ he reflected aloud. But he had little time to dwell further on the mystery before alarm bells and sirens began to ring and wah-wah within the building, and lights to flash on the wall. A shower of dust and grit landed on his hat. Looking up, he dimly saw a dark figure with a rope, abseiling down the sheer wall towards him at considerable speed. It was Ingrid Johansson. She had escaped.

  ‘Tanner!’

  It was the editor of the Effort, phoning from London.

  ‘Uncle Jack!’ said Tanner. ‘How are you?’

  Back in London, the editor shut his office door. ‘Where are you, Tanner? Someone said you were in Malmö. Is that possible, in our hour of need?’

  ‘I am. Although I can’t think why. It’s freezing, and I’ve just been looking at the most hideous statue I think I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Look, this is a long shot. Just say no, if you like. Do you know anything about basketball? The thing is, there’s a huge story about Jericho somebody. Our man completely let us down – Sport are fuming, they’ve sacked him. I said I’d help. What can you do?’

  Tanner bit his lip. It was terrible when ambition wrestled with honesty like this. ‘You mean I can save the day, Uncle?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  As the man who had imperilled the day in the first place, Tanner was playing things exceptionally cool.

  ‘How long can I have?’

  ‘Three hours maximum. Good boy. Is Jago Ripley there?’

  Confused, Tanner looked around. What a strange question. ‘No. As I said, I’m in Malmö.’

  ‘When you see him, tell him I’d like a word. Between you and me, Tanner, he’s upset the Church of England.’

  Replacing his phone in his skirt pocket, Tanner felt so good suddenly that he felt like dancing. It was a shame about Leon, but on the other hand, for someone who clearly had no connections at board level, Leon had done pretty well for himself over the years. It amazed Tanner that ill-connected people bothered to try in most professions when it was so obvious they wouldn’t succeed.

  ‘Tanner!’ he heard, through the noise of the wind. He stopped and looked around. Sounded like Ripley. But where?

  ‘Over here!’

  Tanner scanned the empty street of three-storey red-brick tenements, and saw nobody. And then he jumped in the air. Because Jago was inside an apartment, peering out of the dirty window, a faint glimmer in the room behind, as if from a candle. In the light from the street lamp, his face looked pale, almost green. Perhaps he had found a seaweed-therapy place.

  ‘Why aren’t you at the hospital?’ Jago yelled, his words muffled by the glass.

  ‘Going tomorrow.’

  ‘I told you to go today.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  Not surprisingly, Jago was finding it hard to impress his authority on Tanner. ‘This is the house where it all happened!’ he yelled. ‘You’d better come in. We may find something. Jesus, I’m freezing my balls off. I’ve got to get something on Stefan.’

  Outside, Tanner was clearly dithering.

  ‘I said, come in! It’s not housebreaking. The door was open.’

  Tanner thought about his big chance, writing a lead story for the editor, and weighed it briefly against helping Jago with his stupid clone theory. ‘Actually, rather not, if it’s all the same.’

  And then, from Jago’s perspective, something very unpleasant happened to Tanner’s face. His look of boyish superiority dissolved, to be replaced by a look of terror. ‘Aaaagh!’ he yelled, pointing directly at the executive features editor of the Effort.

  ‘What?’ said Jago.

  ‘Aaaagh!’ screamed Tanner, somewhat louder. And before Jago could turn round to see what Tanner was screaming at, he’d been lightly bludgeoned from behind by an old, charred Carl Larsson reproduction.

  An alarm at the hospital. People in white coats running around. Through his window, Stefan couldn’t hear much but he could see Birgit, in tears, confessing something to a man in uniform. She raised an arm and pointed towards him, and a porter ran to unlock the door. ‘Ingrid Johansson has escaped,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ said Stefan, with feeling.

  ‘That’s the man,’ said Birgit. ‘He killed Ingrid’s husband. I told her he was here, and she went – she went—’

  ‘Loco?’ suggested Stefan.

  ‘No,’ said Birgit, with dignity. ‘She went out of the window.’

>   ‘Men did this to her!’ she wailed. ‘Men are to blame!’

  Everyone looked at her. No one could dispute the passion of her opinion, but the logic was lost on those who knew Ingrid.

  ‘Where’s she gone, Birgit? Where do you think?’

  ‘To the apartment. In the Möllevången. I am sure.’

  Stefan staggered. ‘The apartment is still there?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, and put his head in his hands.

  ‘Aaargh,’ said Leon, as Ingrid landed on top of him. Her rope had been a bit short, and she had fallen with some force, knocking him flat. However, with typical selflessness, he quickly righted himself and staggered to her aid. She was curled up, moaning. The alarm bells were still ringing, and the lights flashing, and both had instinctively scuttled into the shadows.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he shouted.

  ‘My ankle, my ankle.’

  It was odd being dropped on in this way, and Leon didn’t really know the etiquette. ‘I’m sorry,’ he yelled. Like most English people, he was only comfortable when things were his fault, somehow. He had broken her fall and saved her life. Naturally, he should feel responsible. He helped her to her feet. ‘Can you walk on it?’

  ‘No!’ She squealed with pain. ‘Oh, I am so cold! So cold! And so unhappy! This noise!’

  Leon looked at her for a second or two – a shivering small Swedish woman with frizzy hair and pyjamas – and found he was taking his coat off for her.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  ‘Your yacket?’ she said, her eyes wide.

  ‘You said you were cold,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ll be OK.’ He patted her hair a bit and tried to think straight. Who was she? Even to someone as trusting as Leon, it was clear from her flimsy ward clothes and novel method of evacuating the building that she was not Director of Operations.

  ‘Are you a mad person?’ he yelled, as she buttoned his enormous coat. ‘Are you Ingrid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They heard footsteps inside the building, heading towards Leon’s swing door. In a minute, if they did nothing, they would be caught.