“But what the hell, this is disgusting! What is this?”
2.
Malin stared down into the big woven toy basket, holding Ellen back with her left hand.
“Could it be an animal?” said Henrik. “A cat that got in?”
“It doesn’t look like cat shit,” said Malin.
She felt a vague nausea sneaking up, more or less like the presentiment of stomach flu. A big black turd had been hidden under the children’s toys. It was so disgusting she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“A dog, maybe?” said Henrik.
“I think that some sick bastard has crapped in the children’s toy basket,” she said in English, dragging Ellen another few feet away from the basket.
“What is it, Mommy? What did you say?”
She was not sure herself why she spoke English. And now it had only made Ellen even more curious.
“Knock it off, it must have been some animal that got in.”
“The only animal I know that sneaks into houses and poops in boxes are cats and this is not cat poop. Besides, cats don’t usually place a layer of toys on top when they’ve done.”
“But couldn’t one of the tenants have done this?”
She looked at Henrik. What did he mean?
“Maybe they didn’t notice anything,” he clarified, “and then they were going to clean—”
“It must have smelled,” she interrupted.
Henrik pondered this briefly, then he shrugged his shoulders and picked up the basket.
“I’ll take this down to the laundry room and try to sanitize it somehow.”
“All the toys have to be washed, too.”
“Yes, I get that,” he hissed, carrying away the toy basket.
“I didn’t mean it as a criticism,” Malin called after him.
She sighed. Good Lord. There was no reason to argue about this.
“Come,” she said to Ellen, limping away with her to the bathroom.
When Ellen had washed her hands, Malin washed Ellen’s face and took off her clothes. She got Ellen into her bathrobe and followed her back to the children’s room, where she set her down on the edge of the bed.
“Sit here while I get some bags. Don’t touch anything. We have to wash everything.”
“But the rabbit,” Ellen protested.
“It has to be washed, too. Don’t touch anything, do you understand? Sit here quietly until I come back.”
Ellen nodded.
* * *
On her way downstairs, more or less hopping on one leg, it suddenly felt wrong to leave Ellen up there. The feeling was growing stronger with every step. It was as if something strange had been there. Sure, there really had been, too, but something malevolently strange, something that left invisible traces besides the highly tangible ones in the toy basket. Perhaps she ought to have brought Ellen with her downstairs? But then Axel would have been all alone up there.
What if there was someone in the house? The thought came over her without warning, made her breathe more rapidly. She tried to force it back. Why would there be someone in the house?
Troubling thoughts. The kind of thoughts she did not usually have. Now she could not go to bed without Henrik searching through the whole house first. Malin opened the bottom kitchen drawer and quickly pulled out as many plastic bags as she could. She would have preferred to throw away all the toys that had been in any kind of contact with the poop, but that wouldn’t do, of course.
“I can do that,” Henrik called from the bathroom. “Rest your foot.”
“It’s no problem,” she called back. “It’s fine.”
She went back up. Going up was actually easier than going down. She started packing up all the things Ellen had managed to pull out and realized that she had brought way too many bags. Three was enough. Two to pack in and one to pull over her hand to avoid touching the mess. She brought Ellen with her down to the kitchen. Happened to think that she ought to have slippers on if there were more pieces of glass. She parked Ellen on a chair and limped up and got her white rabbit slippers. When she came into the laundry room with the bags, Henrik was standing at the sink scrubbing the toy container. He looked up quickly.
“Maybe they’ve rubbed their privates with the tea cups, too,” he said with a crooked smile.
“Do you have to be so disgusting? That was the last thing I needed.”
“But…”
She sank down on a chair in the kitchen and sat there stiff as a poker. She did not want to lean against the back of the chair, did not want to rest her arm on the table, and had to stop herself from reprimanding Ellen, who had set her cheek against the tabletop.
She would be forced to clean the whole house from floor to ceiling before she could feel comfortable again. She smothered a sigh and reached out a hand toward Ellen.
“Come, let’s get you to bed.”
Malin put clean sheets on for Ellen and got her into bed. She let the window stay open to the late summer night, thought of the fresh air sweeping in and cleaning up after all the strangers that had moved in their rooms, took hold of their things, talked, laughed, and swore there between their walls.
They needed the money and it seemed so simple to rent out the house. With hindsight she did not understand how they could have come up with such a completely insane idea.
She opened both windows in her and Henrik’s bedroom and took out clean sheets for the unmade bed. Before she started making the bed she shook the blankets through the window. She did her best to repress the feeling that the blankets would have to be burned along with the mattresses and the beds and it would be impossible for her to sleep tonight if they did not bring in a couple of the new beds from the guest wing.
She set aside the blankets and grabbed the pillows to air them, too. She stopped herself when she heard Henrik calling something from below.
“What? I didn’t hear you,” she called back.
She could hear for herself how irritated she sounded. She could not help it.
Instead of yelling even louder he came upstairs. He stopped in the doorway.
“Did you take down the pictures in the study?”
“What pictures?”
He looked at her, with the pillow in her arms.
“The pictures of us. In the study. Did you take them down before we left?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Malin thought for a few seconds. Not because she really needed to, but Henrik’s seriousness made her uncertain. She had removed a number of things before they left and locked them in the guest wing. But she had not taken down the family portraits that were hanging in the study.
She nodded.
The worried furrow was back between Henrik’s eyebrows.
“What is it?” she asked.
“They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, they’re not hanging on the wall, anyway.”
“Huh?”
She looked doubtfully at him.
“Someone must have taken them down. I don’t get any of this.”
Malin tossed the pillow onto the bed.
“What kind of fucking lunatics have been here? Shit and glass and … Who would do such a thing? Maybe we’re only going to discover more and more. They may have come up with just about anything.”
A cold, dark feeling passed through her. Stealing their family portraits. That was so personal, so aggressive.
Henrik sighed deeply.
“I’ll have to call the agency first thing in the morning. I’ll look through the cupboards down there, too. They may have just put them away if they had small children and forgot to put them back.”
“I doubt that…”
Malin stopped herself when she realized that she was talking much too loud. Almost shouting. She lowered her voice.
“I doubt that people who poop in other people’s toys are that considerate.”
Henrik made a face that meant that she was probably right. He went dow
n anyway to look, and Malin continued making the bed.
When she was going to get the pillowcases a paper floated out of the linen closet. Malin bent over and picked it up. As soon as she turned it over she saw that it was one of the pictures from the study. It depicted the whole family together at the beach at Norsta Auren. An old friend of Henrik’s had taken it when he visited them last summer. But where their eyes had looked toward the camera before, there were now only four pairs of holes. The light from the lamp on the nightstand shone right through.
This time Malin did not care that she screamed.
3.
The belt with the expandable baton clattered against the door as Fredrik Broman opened his locker in the basement of the police station. The changing room looked more or less like a changing room at a nice gym, with a tile floor and rows of birch veneer lockers. In Fredrik’s locker the national coat of arms glistened on the neatly hung-up uniform. In the compartment above the uniform was his peaked cap, and the compartment to the right was stuffed with jackets for various kinds of weather.
This was clothing and equipment he almost never used. The last time was when his own clothes had been completely drenched in blood and he had nothing else to change into. The blood had come from a man who tried to kill himself with a handsaw when Fredrik and Gustav Wallin were going to arrest him.
He pushed away the unpleasant memory, took out the holster and wriggled it on. He shut the locker, went up to the gun room, and took his service pistol out of the white gun cabinet with number sixty-three on the cover. He checked the gun, inserted the magazine, and put the pistol in place in the holster. He had been meticulous about target practice, but apart from that he had not had any occasion to carry a gun since he came back from sick leave.
Fredrik went straight from the gun room and out onto the enclosed courtyard on the back side of the police station. The sun made his face feel hot. In the crown of the big elm tree migratory birds were rustling around hunting for lethargic late-summer insects.
Fredrik went past two marked police cars parked in the shade of the tree, continued out through the gate, and took a step up onto the sidewalk to the right of the entry. Now he was definitely outside the domains of the police department. He was standing in public space with his service pistol in its holster. He could maintain, if anyone was possibly interested, not only that he was employed by the Visby Police Department, but that he was in service at this very moment, right there on Avagatan in the middle of Visby, a stone’s throw from the commerce of Östercentrum and another stone’s throw from the medieval World Heritage City. Admittedly he was not performing any sensible task at the moment—no one had asked him to go out and stare at Avagatan—but he was in service. Patrol duty.
Fredrik put his hands at his sides and took a couple of deep breaths. He was a policeman again.
He felt relieved, excited, and slightly nostalgic. A little proud even. His little ritual would probably seem silly to an outsider’s eyes, but for him it was important. What he was doing right now he had not been able to do yesterday. Today, Monday, was a workday. For the first time in almost two years he was a policeman, in every sense of the word.
The whole thing was over in fifteen seconds, but Fredrik was convinced that he would never forget that brief moment. He went back into the building. On his way up to his office he encountered two colleagues in the stairway. They said hello quickly and continued their conversation. He felt a vague disappointment and was forced to smile at himself. What had he expected? That everyone should stand and applaud and cheer under a big banner that said “Welcome Back, Fredrik”? His colleagues on the stairs presumably did not even know that this was his first day back on patrol duty. He had been back at work for six months now. Obviously they did not keep track of exactly what he did day by day.
He came up to the investigation department’s long corridor of white walls, birch doors, and dreary linoleum flooring. Instead of turning right to his own office he turned left. He could just as well stop by Göran Eide’s office and remind him that he had resumed patrol duty today. To be on the safe side.
On his way there Fredrik stopped by Gustav Wallin’s open door. Gustav, in a light, discreet glen plaid suit and light blue shirt, was leaning over his desk browsing through a thick bundle of papers. He did not notice him. Fredrik took a couple steps closer and said hello.
Gustav looked up from the desk. The narrow edge of beard along his jawline had been shaved with the utmost precision.
“Hey there,” he said absently.
He kept hold of one of the papers with his thumb and index finger.
Fredrik exchanged a few words with Gustav and thought that he ought to react to the coat of arms, but no, not a look. It was clear, they were surrounded by people who wore the coat of arms all day long. Why should Gustav react to it? For his colleagues it was just an ordinary day at work. Evidently even for his closest associates.
The disappointment came creeping again, and again he pushed it away. How could they know that he felt almost like the day he graduated from Police Academy? Proud, relieved, a little nervous, and above all full of expectation without any real target.
For almost two years he had brooded every day about whether everything would be like before or if he would never again get to work as a policeman.
Today he got his answer.
He left Gustav with his pile of papers and continued over to Göran’s office. He knocked and waited until he heard a stifled murmur from the other side of the door before he pushed it open.
Göran Eide, the head of the Gotland police investigation department, got up quickly when he caught sight of Fredrik. He was almost sixty and the grizzled hair on the side of his head was all he had left. A little ways down on his nose sat a pair of cheap reading glasses.
Göran rounded the desk and extended his hand.
“Welcome back,” he said with a big smile, bowing solemnly.
Fredrik thanked him. Göran made a gesture toward the blue armchair on the other side of the desk.
“Have a seat.”
Göran went back and sat down behind his desk. His comfortable office chair had an extra-high back and a small adjustable neck support; in some way it made it noticeable that he was the boss.
He took off his glasses and looked at Fredrik.
“All’s well that ends well, or what do you say?” he said with a smile.
“Yes, I’ve had worse days,” said Fredrik.
Göran laughed, but then became serious.
“Twenty-three months ago it didn’t look that promising.”
“No,” said Fredrik, moving the chair a little closer to the desk.
At last someone who understood how important this day was to him. At the same time he hoped that Göran would not get caught up in anything too long and sentimental. That was not really the relationship he had with his boss.
Strange thing about attention. First disappointment that he didn’t get any. Once he got it he wanted it over with as quickly as possible.
“If I were to be completely frank,” said Göran, “I didn’t think you would be sitting here today. I mean, not when I was up at the hospital the first time.”
He shook his head thoughtfully and looked down at the table for a moment. “Yes, you’ll have to excuse me,” he added with a new gleam in his eye.
“No, it’s no problem,” said Fredrik. “I probably didn’t believe that I would even be able to sit up again myself. And to be completely honest I didn’t even notice that you were there.”
Göran smiled. “But now you’re sitting here,” he said.
“Now I’m sitting here.”
“I’m extremely happy to have you back in the group. And I’m happy that it has worked so well, the whole apparatus with doctors, psychologists, the union, management, and … well, you know. But above all I’m happy for your sake. I know that this is what you’ve wanted the whole time.”
Fredrik was content to nod slowly but definitely, afraid of a nostalgic
quiver in his voice if he opened his mouth.
“I assume that you’re anxious to get going,” said Göran, changing his tone of voice. “To get out.”
“That’s right,” Fredrik managed to squeeze out in a steady voice.
“Okay then. I have a case for you.”
This was exactly the way Fredrik wanted to come back. From the first moment to feel that he had Göran’s full confidence. No soft start, no hesitation at the goal. He had been soft starting for six months now. That was more than enough.
“There’s a family on Fårö that—”
Göran interrupted himself, and Fredrik was startled by a fizzing sound and a strange glow right behind him. He excitedly turned around in his chair.
Two steps inside the doorway stood Gustav with a cyanide-blue princess cake on a paper plate. From the middle of the cake a sparkler crackled. In the midst of the surprise, Fredrik could not help wondering about the embers that floated down onto Göran’s linoleum floor.
Behind Gustav, Fredrik’s immediate coworkers had lined up: Sara Oskarsson, just as dark-haired as Gustav, today in a jeans shirt and black pants, was standing with a heap of coffee cups and small paper plates in her arms. Ove Gahnström was peering behind aviator eyeglass frames, holding a pump thermos pressed against his sturdy stomach. Even Lennart Svensson had shown up, although he had retired a month ago. The gray curls were slightly unrulier than usual and his dress somewhat more casual. Fredrik was very moved to see him there, which definitely was a unique feeling.
Once the sparkler had burned out, they came forward one by one to dole out congratulations along with hugs and thumps on the back. Fredrik was a little worried about the cake as Gustav balanced it with one hand and embraced him with the other.
Fredrik looked at them all and stammered out a thank you. He had a hard time finding the words.
“What is it?” said Lennart. “You didn’t get a cerebral hemorrhage from the fireworks?”
The Intruder Page 2
