Hard Cheese

by Ulf Durling

  Nylander dropped into my visitor’s chair. He is a thickly-built old man with a very small brain, but decent enough. I’ve gone with Kerstin to see him a couple of times. To begin with, he looked sheepish, since he probably realized he’d made a fool of himself with those stupid amateur detective activities of him and his friends.

  He said that he’d treated Crona for many years. No results have ever been observed and the devil knows what the treatment actually consisted of; the laying on of hands, I expect.

  I pointed out that Nilsson had probably died as the result of a self-inflicted accident, but we were interested to hear what state he’d been in when Crona had left him. He had a lot to tell us, no doubt.

  Nylander lit a cigarette and looked at me over his spectacles.

  ‘Is he intoxicated?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s capable of talking.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘We want you to find out whether he’s really suffering from memory loss and whether he in that case can use it to avoid giving evidence.’

  He stared hard at the glowing tip of the cigarette and flicked the ash off absent-mindedly into the wastebasket.

  ‘How did Nilsson die?’

  ‘We don’t know. The post-mortem was performed yesterday, but the protocol hasn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘Was there blood on the towel?’

  ‘No, it was red wine.’

  ‘I see, so Crona didn’t cut himself?’

  He didn’t wait for my reply but stamped off through the door.

  There I sat looking through the window. Dark rain clouds had gathered in the sky during the afternoon and it was only a matter of time before it came down heavily. There were a few documents on the table. I flipped them over three or four times, but they all looked the same: uninteresting. After a while I remembered that Magnus’s bike had been left in the forest and, because of that, I told Gustavsson off. What had he been thinking? He would have to pick it up next day, this time with his own packed lunch. At last I succeeded in getting down to work methodically, but I didn’t feel better for all that.

  We called out for some food and a waitress from Rådhusbaren came over with a basket. None of us said anything while we ate.

  Nothing could be heard from the nearby bathroom. Time passed slowly.

  After an hour the doctor came out. He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We’re all done. It went quite well. The delirium is not a topic anymore.’

  ‘Has his memory returned?’

  ‘It seems Crona suffers from an amnesia, a loss of memory covering a couple of hours before wakening up. It occurs with alcoholics. I think it depends on some kind of brain damage. Popularly called “blackout.”’

  ‘Do you mean we won’t be able to get any more out of him?’

  ‘He has a lot to tell you. He’ll give you some valuable information. You’ll be surprised.’

  ‘But you said that he doesn’t remember anything.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said that he has a memory loss covering several hours.’

  This is a typical example of how people make fun of the police. We have to appear in a well-pressed uniform and be of service no matter what, whereas the public gives us no respect. He was trying to make a fool of me.

  ‘Ask him what he remembers from the time he woke up,’ the doctor said in an encouraging way. ‘That waking up happened long before he was at Björkstigen. It happened in Axel Nilsson’s room.’

  ‘How did you get him to talk?’

  ‘I just said that it wasn’t necessary to lie about the delirium.’

  ‘So he made up all that stuff about dogs and snakes?’

  ‘Not at all. He saw animals, but not that many.’

  The doctor looked mysterious.

  ‘How is it that he was willing to give up his cock-and-bull story about mental derangement?’

  ‘Because I told him that he’s innocent.’

  ‘How do you know? Excuse me for asking.’

  ‘Because Nilsson didn’t die of any mistreatment on the part of Crona.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘It’s in the post mortem report. You’ll see.’

  He buttoned his coat and put on his hat. He pulled his gloves on slowly and carefully walked to the door.

  ‘May I ask a question?’ he said. ‘What kind of cheese was in Nilsson’s wastebasket?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any difference, does it?’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  The doctor laughed heartily and noisily.

  ‘I think that the red wine was Chianti Ruffino.’

  ‘But you can’t say anything about the cheese?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t matter what kind of cheese it was!’

  ‘On the contrary, it could be the most important question. Let me give you a piece of good advice. Try to find out. Good afternoon.’

  We watched him through the window. When he reached the parking lot, he turned around and came back. Without knocking he opened the door and walked over to the desk.

  ‘My glasses,’ he said apologetically.

  He’d left them behind the portrait of Kerstin.

  8

  Inside the interrogation room we found a highly excited Crona. The ruddiness of his face had returned, and the swelling framing his right eye was much smaller, so that the bloodshot white of the eye peeped out. He radiated comfort, well-being and good-naturedness. This version of Crona often occurs in the town at different times around the clock. Our professional experience of him when taken into custody is usually limited to the loud-voiced, somewhat reluctant version, and a downhearted, apologetic and remorseful one after using our sleeping accommodation. We were welcomed with a smile.

  ‘Come in, gentlemen.’

  ‘There’s no reason to be particularly joyful, Crona.’

  Gustavsson’s voice was harsh.

  ‘But what the hell, Gustavsson.’

  ‘Don’t swear when the detective sergeant is present. He doesn’t like it.’

  The reproach didn’t put much of a damper on Crona.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not well, simply suffering from amnesia, difficult case.’

  I wanted to get things done and banged the lead pencil on the table-top. It was one of the government’s yellow pencils, degree of hardness No. 2, just recently equipped with a sharp point.

  ‘Now your account has to be detailed and truthful. Understood?’

  He sighed and an unmistakable scent of gin permeated the room. Gordon’s Dry Gin lingers a long time on the palate. Gustavsson sharpened his pencil discreetly and turned to an empty page in his notebook. Then he gave his cross-examination victim a laser-like stare.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Where am I supposed to begin?’

  ‘Tell me everything you remember. How was it in Bussparken that afternoon?’

  ‘It was nice. I sat there talking with a few friends. They were Olle Asp, Tinsmith and Vilhelmsson. You may know them?’

  ‘Only too well.’

  ‘We discussed some domestic policy problems, commodity taxes, the principles of price fixing and similar things. The debate was animated. Tinsmith had the pleasure of offering us a small pick-me-up and....’

  ‘Consumption of spirits within the green open spaces of the town is strictly prohibited.’

  Gustavsson never misses an opportunity to rebuke the public.

  ‘Is that so? Anyway, after that we were invited to Mr. Asp’s quarters, but I declined, for I had a prior engagement.’

  ‘Axel Nilsson?’

  ‘Yes. The day before, we had agreed on an appointment. We had met by chance outside the State Liquor Store.’

  ‘Did you know Nilsson?’

  ‘Yes, he was a close friend of mine. He had returned from abroad some time ago and now he thought of settling down in our beautiful town for the rest of his life.’

  ‘What did he tell you about himself?�
��

  ‘Almost nothing, besides his affirmation of our meeting at eight o’clock. But I don’t remember anything after I left Bussparken.’

  In a regretful way, Crona flung his hands about, leaned expectantly backwards in his chair and readily accepted a cigarette. Gustavsson had to retrieve his lighter.

  ‘I must have fallen asleep in the room. I don’t know how I got there or what happened. I was woken up just before two o’clock by a knock at the door, and there was Nilsson dead on the floor. Outside the door was someone called Ivar. He wanted to come in, but he disappeared soon enough, and in the next room there was someone who seemed to be praying. It was a horrible situation. What was I to think, with Nilsson bleeding and my pocket knife on the table? I’ve thrown it away now, too dull to be of any use at all.’

  ‘What the hell are you saying? Was Nilsson bleeding?’

  ‘Of course. His face was covered with blood. I thought I’d cut him somewhere with the knife.’

  It didn’t make any sense. Nilsson hadn’t been bleeding. He was covered in wine. There wasn’t any doubt about it.

  ‘Take us through that again. You woke up and found Nilsson dead and you thought that you were the guilty party?’

  ‘Yes. I was terrified. I had to get away, but I had to remove any evidence I’d been there, for I reckoned I was a murderer. And he really was dead, cold and stiff.’

  In that case Nilsson must have been dead for several hours, I thought.

  ‘In front of me on the table there was a bottle of red wine and a piece of cheese, which we probably had feasted on, but also a bottle of pure schnapps. I threw it out of the window into a flower bed, then I tidied up a little, picked up the knife and washed the glasses.’

  ‘… and you wiped up the red wine with a towel?’

  ‘What red wine? No, first I wiped the blood off Nilsson’s face. After that I poured red wine over him.’

  Gustavsson and I looked at each other in utter bewilderment.

  ‘But don’t you see? When I wiped blood off his face, I found that there were drops of blood on the shirt as well. The intention was that it should look as if Nilsson had been killed by a concussion of the brain when he fell and hit the back of his head against the bedstead. I thought that’s what everyone would believe if there was no blood.’

  ‘But where did the blood come from if you didn’t knife him?’

  ‘I didn’t fully understand it myself until I asked Nylander a few minutes ago. He told me that Nilsson may well have been killed by a fracture at the base of the skull, and in such a case. blood could indeed run from the brain through the nose.’

  We had never thought of that explanation. I still didn’t understand all the business about the red wine. Crona saw how puzzled I was and tried to explain.

  ‘If I’d left him with blood stains on the shirt, the police would later have looked for the origin of that blood, found out where it came from, and wondered why he didn’t also have blood in his face. That’s why I poured red wine on his face as well as on his shirt. The red wine spots concealed the real blood stains.

  ‘And the towel was …’

  ‘It was stained by the nasal discharge. Afterwards I washed it in the sink, but the blood stains didn’t really disappear, so I poured some red wine on it as well.’

  It was childishly simple. Anxiously, I wondered if Nylander had worked out that I’d lied about investigating the towel. At the same time I got a bright idea but it didn’t help much. I still felt unusually cheap, because the week had been a long failure as far as I was concerned and nothing could change my realisation of that.

  Crona had been able to reach room number 5 from the garden because Nilsson had detained Blom for a moment in the reception by asking for a plaster! Here we had the explanation of the plaster—it was never needed!

  Even if my little reconstruction didn’t restore my self-esteem, it reassured me to see that Gustavsson was still looking confused.

  In a flash, it struck me that the piece of plaster had to be somewhere. Why hadn’t we found it? I was going to turn the town upside-down to get it! The next moment, I decided not to. Why should I bother? It was probably lying somewhere in the rose bushes, making them extra untidy.

  Then I thought of another clue.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ I said. ‘You threw the bottle of schnapps through the window. Was it empty?’

  Crona looked indignant. His face became noticeably redder and he gathered himself up before he spoke.

  ‘Would I, Algot Emanuel Cronlund, have let a half-empty bottle go to waste? I take that as a personal insult. The bottle was totally empty.’

  ‘So you and Nilsson emptied it together?’

  ‘Naturally, although I admit there might still have been some nectar left in there for Nilsson after I fell asleep.’

  ‘And there was some red wine left as well?’

  ‘A drop at the bottom, yes. Not much, a few decilitres perhaps. I used the last of it for my—camouflage.’

  I wondered how sober Crona could have been after a half bottle of schnapps and an almost half-filled bottle of wine. He’d slept himself sober during four hours, of course, but he wasn’t so befuddled that he couldn’t pull himself together long enough to give the room an overhaul and perform a few cunning manoeuvres.

  ‘And there was also wine on the table?’

  ‘Absolutely! I left the bottle lying there, but I washed the glasses.’

  ‘Why did you use three glasses—was there someone else at the party?’

  ‘We were the only ones in the room when I woke up. If there had been three at the beginning, Axel must have let the third one out before I woke up. In any case, the door was locked and the key was in the keyhole. Are you suggesting that someone killed Nilsson, who then, just to be kind, rose from the dead to let his murderer out and lock the door behind him? The idea appeals to me.’

  It didn’t appeal to me.

  ‘I don’t know why we used three glasses. I had to wash all three to remove my fingerprints. I didn’t know which one I had touched. It was the same thing with Nilsson’s spectacles.

  ‘They’d fallen off and were by his side. I put them back on his nose so the stiff would look nicer, but then I realised that there was a risk my fingerprints might be on them, so I polished them and put them on the bedside table.’

  Crona looked crafty and pleased with himself. Nevertheless, he’d left his fingerprints all over the wine bottle. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that. He’d really done everything to make it seem as if Nilsson had been alone in the room.

  ‘If you made so much noise that the neighbors complained, how would anyone believe that Nilsson alone was responsible for the disturbance?’

  ‘Were we that rowdy? I’m sorry to hear that. But how could I know that when I woke up at two o’clock that morning? I didn’t remember anything. Or do you mean that Ivar knocked on the door because I’d disturbed him with my snoring?’

  Crona had been able to avoid even that pitfall. At that very moment another thought appeared, as if I had ordered it. There must have been more money than the ten-crown bills in Nilsson’s wallet. There was enough room for big notes in a billfold. I decided that Crona had stolen them and launched a frontal attack.

  ‘Crona, I want you to put your cards on the table. Confess that you stole something when you disappeared on Sunday morning!’

  The goldsmith’s reaction was immediate and very revealing. I realised I’d scored a direct hit! He reddened and chewed on his moustache.

  ‘That was bad of me, but it was there and it seemed to me that nobody needed it for the time being.’

  ‘But it didn’t belong to you.’

  ‘Who did it belong to, then?’

  ‘Are you kidding, Crona? To Nilsson of course.’

  From his expression, Crona seemed genuinely surprised.

  ‘Good God, I never suspected that. But why would he keep his bike at almost the other end of the town?’

  Gustavsson turned away and c
oughed tactfully.

  ‘I’m talking about Nilsson’s money! What did you do with it?’

  ‘I didn’t see any money.’

  A flock of birds chirped in a provocative manner outside the window. I suspect that some idiot had fed them with bread crumbs. Maybe Vivianne at the switchboard. I will take up the matter with the commissioner.

  ‘Well, Crona, what did happen, then?’

  ‘As I said, I thought that I’d been guilty of at least manslaughter under the influence of drink. That was when I made up my mind.’

  ‘You decided to escape and let us believe that it was all an accident behind locked doors?’

  ‘No, I decided, once and for all, not to touch another drop for the rest of my life.’

  This dramatic announcement failed to have its desired effect, not least because of his present state of intoxication.

  When he saw us looking doubtful he hastened to elaborate.

  ‘I admit that tonight I submitted to temptation, but that only strengthens my determination to become a sober man. Chastened and liberated, I am now standing in front of you offering my hand. Let us seal my promise!’

  He extended the said hand and Gustavsson, who loves any kind of futile gesture, clasped it with warmth. He used to stand outside the drunks’ cells in the morning, clasping our guests’ hands, just like a clergyman on the church steps after the service.

  ‘Steady now. We’re not through yet. How did you get out of the room?’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult. I walked out.’

  ‘No, it can’t have been that simple, can it? How the devil did you arrange for Nilsson to be locked up from the inside when you walked away?’

  He looked flabbergasted, his eyes wide open, even the right one.

  ‘The hell he was locked up from the inside!’

  ‘Well, he was when we arrived.’

  ‘If he was locked up, it was from the outside. I locked him up and then I ran away.’

  ‘What about the key?’

  ‘I put it in my pocket.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  He felt in his pocket. An expression of comprehension spread across his face.