The Department of Sensitive Crimes

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Ulf smiled. “Don’t condescend,” he said playfully.

  She took his reproach seriously, and was apologetic. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Erik doesn’t need our sympathy.”

  Ulf assured her that he didn’t mean to sound critical. “I’m not trying to tell you how to think about your colleagues. I’d never do that.”

  It was a curious moment, and he felt as if an unspoken boundary of intimacy had been crossed. He thought that she felt the same, as he saw her blush and turn away just as they reached the outer door of the office. He wanted to reach out and touch her arm, and he began to do so, but stopped himself, converting the movement into nothing significant—just a raising and dropping of the hand.

  * * *

  —

  The morning was taken up with a seemingly interminable section meeting, during which their immediate superior, an enthusiast for bureaucratic procedures, spent more than two hours detailing the latest procedural guidelines. Somewhere in the organisation, high in its upper reaches, were minds that churned out page after page of guidance notes, instructions, and policy statements. Most of these were filed and forgotten; seldom did they make any difference to the way in which people carried out their duties. But the procedure for procedures had to be gone through, in accordance with further procedural guidelines. Ulf sat in his chair, staring at the ceiling, while Carl, ever conscientious, feverishly scribbled notes on what their superior officer said. This pleased the speaker, who paused considerately from time to time, in order to allow Carl to catch up with the flow of his lecture, and occasionally said, “Please stop me, Mr. Holgersson, if I speak too quickly or if anything I say is not quite clear.”

  At the end of the meeting, as Ulf and Anna, and the dozen or so other officers who had sat through the ordeal, rose to their feet, the superior officer approached Carl.

  “Please forgive me,” he said. “I’m sure that people are always asking you to do this sort of thing.” He slipped a book out of his briefcase and placed it in front of Carl. “Your father’s latest book. The one on Kierkegaard. Would you mind getting it signed for my wife? She’s a huge fan.”

  For a moment Ulf pictured the huge fan—an immense woman, flowing out of her clothing—so huge as to find it difficult to walk. But that was not what huge meant here, he thought; language is not a literal business, he reminded himself. And then he thought: Kierkegaard. And that led to an image of Dr. Svensson, with his horn-rimmed spectacles, and his layman’s view that the life of a member of the Department of Sensitive Crimes was somehow more exciting than that of a psychoanalytically inclined psychotherapist.

  “Kierkegaard,” said Anna under her breath.

  Carl was gracious, as he always was, for the moment the son of the hypnotically urbane professor. “But of course. It’s no trouble. I shall be seeing him on Sunday and I’ll ask him to dedicate it to her then.”

  “She’ll be very appreciative,” said the superior officer. “She watches him whenever he’s on television. She really is a huge fan.”

  Ulf closed his eyes. He saw the professor being pursued by a group of his fans, the huge ones struggling to keep up with the thinner, more lithe fans, dropping exhausted and disappointed. He opened his eyes. Anna was looking at him, and smiling discreetly. He thought that perhaps she had been thinking the same thing, which was unlikely, but a nice thought anyway—that two people who liked one another should think the same thought at the same time.

  * * *

  —

  The Johansson School of Dance was on the ground floor of a building not far from the market. The building was slightly shabby, the stucco on its front in need of attention, the door, although once fine, now drab in appearance. The impression it gave was of faded grandeur, which Ulf thought rather suited a ballroom dancing business: lights and glitter, but underneath an inevitable tawdriness. Dance was illusion, a triumph over gravity and awkwardness, but only a temporary one. The lights would always have to be switched off, the music stopped, the movement of the dancers lapse back into stasis.

  They found a parking place for the Saab, and then Ulf and Anna rang the school’s front-door bell. Please ring, and then wait said a small sign beside the bell.

  A woman in a leotard appeared, and opened the door.

  Ulf said, “Is Mr. Johansson in?”

  As he spoke, he showed her his identity card. Anna did the same. The woman glanced at the cards and frowned. Gesturing for them to enter, she led them wordlessly along a corridor framed with pictures of ballroom dancers.

  “Your graduates?” asked Ulf.

  The woman nodded, but did not say anything. Then, at the end of the corridor, she pointed to a door in which there was a large glass panel. “This studio,” she said curtly, and then disappeared through another, unmarked door.

  They approached the door and looked through the glass. Music drifted from inside: somebody was playing the piano.

  Neither was prepared for the sight, and for a moment Ulf felt an urge to burst out laughing. Anna gave a slight gasp of astonishment. In the centre of the studio dance floor, a very small instructor was dancing with a remarkably tall woman, his hands held up into hers, as if she were pulling him up towards her. They were doing what appeared to be a waltz, and the music confirmed this. “The Blue Danube.”

  Ulf pushed at the door, and the pianist, a man, stopped playing. The instructor turned to stare at the intruders. He detached himself from his dance partner and crossed the floor to face Ulf and Anna.

  “Hampus Johansson?” said Ulf.

  Hampus looked up at Ulf. Then he looked at Anna, before shifting his gaze back to Ulf.

  “You don’t have to tell me who you are.” The voice was high-pitched, and sing-song in its tone.

  “We’re—” began Anna, only to be interrupted by Hampus.

  “I know who you are. And I know why you’re here.”

  Ulf studied the man standing before them, just over waist height. He saw the sweat stains on the tight T-shirt he was wearing. He noticed the rings on both hands—four altogether. He saw the piercing in the left ear—small, discreet, golden.

  “Malte Gustafsson,” said Ulf.

  Hampus looked down. “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” said Hampus.

  Ulf and Anna waited.

  “He laughed at me, you see.”

  Ulf frowned. “Laughed at you?”

  Hampus looked up again. Ulf saw that tears had appeared in his eyes. He wanted to reach forward and wipe them away, but that was not for a detective to do.

  “He’s seeing Ingrid,” said Hampus. “She works here. She must have let you in. She and Malte...They’re close friends.” He hesitated, his voice cracking with emotion. “They’re lovers. He came here and he watched me dancing with Violet and I saw him laughing. He was laughing at me. I hated him then.”

  “You don’t have to say anything more,” said Ulf. “Not here. You can make a statement at the station.”

  Hampus shook his head. The tears were more evident now; Anna winced.

  “You people will never understand,” Hampus continued. “You don’t know what it’s like to be stared at. Every day. Every single day. All the time. People stare at anybody who doesn’t fit in, who’s too short or too ugly or a different colour or whatever it is. They stare. But the difference with me is that you sometimes hear them laughing, as if I’m some sort of joke. You hear them. They laugh.”

  Anna shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “And it was hard,” Hampus went on. “Because Ingrid is my friend and I’ve always hoped she might love me, and she doesn’t. She doesn’t. She loves that man whose cashmere is all fake. She loves him instead.”

  “You don’t have to say anything more,” said Ulf. “You’ll need to speak to a lawyer.”

  Hampus shook his head. “A lawyer can’t save me. I’ve done a terrible thing. I
’m finished now.”

  He moved his foot and Ulf saw how his dancing shoe, a tiny patent-leather pump, like the shoe of a child, made a mark in the French chalk that covered the floor. French chalk...He had seen a reference to French chalk recently, but where?

  “You know, it may not be as serious as you think,” Ulf found himself saying.

  Anna looked at him in surprise, but he could tell that she welcomed this. What was the point of being an agent of the state’s vengeance if one could not show mercy?

  “We can charge you with minor assault,” Ulf continued. “We can cite special factors—provocation, for instance. You were undoubtedly provoked. There need not be a prison sentence, you know. I can make special recommendations to the prosecutor. He is my friend.” That was Lars, who, unknown to Ulf, lived for him.

  Hampus muttered something.

  “What did you say?” asked Anna.

  “I said: I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  She looked at him, and believed him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You think we don’t understand, but we do, you know.”

  “She’s right,” said Ulf.

  Hampus wiped at his cheek. “I suppose I have to come with you.”

  Ulf nodded. “For a while. But I’m sure you’ll be able to go home before too long.”

  “Though maybe not tonight,” said Anna.

  Chapter Four

  BIM

  Bim lived with her mother, Elvinia Sundström, a tapestry restorer. Bim was twenty and a student at the University of Malmö, where she studied human geography. She and her mother occupied a small flat with a balcony, on which in the summer they cultivated flowers and herbs: rosemary, basil, sweet william. Elvinia’s husband, Fredrik—Bim’s father—had left them when Bim was eight. He had been an officer in the Swedish navy at the time but was now believed to be running a hotel in the north of the country, with his second wife, the woman whom Elvinia believed had ruined her life by stealing her husband and depriving Bim of her father.

  “He was weak,” she said to a friend. “All men are. So I don’t blame him as much as I blame her. She knew he was married; she knew he had a young child; all she had to say to him was thanks but no thanks. Did she do that? She did not.”

  “Perhaps some women are weak too,” said the friend.

  Elvinia would have none of this. “No, they aren’t,” she said. “Women are strong.”

  At first Bim missed her father acutely and often talked of his return. “Daddy will come back soon, won’t he?” she said to her mother. “Daddy’s ship will be coming home, won’t it?”

  It was hard for Elvinia. Although at first Fredrik made an effort to stay in touch with Bim—he sent her letters and parcels—he visited infrequently and then, after a year or so, not at all. Elvinia tried to explain to Bim that her father loved her, but that it was hard for him to see them as much as he would like.

  “He’s a sailor, you see,” she said. “Sailors are usually away a lot. They live on their ships. They have cabins, with beds, and all their things in lockers. That’s how sailors live, darling. They’re always away from home. I think he’s in the Faroes now—very far away. That’s how it is.”

  “But I saw him from the bus,” said Bim. “Remember? Just a week ago. We were on the bus and we saw him walking along the street in his uniform. Remember? I banged on the window, but he didn’t hear, and the bus was going too fast anyway.”

  “That might not have been him,” said Elvinia. “Many men look the same, darling. That was probably somebody else.”

  It was a small lie; of course it had been Fredrik, and that woman, that husband-stealer from the north, that seductress, had been with him. Of course she had. It had been a small lie intended to protect a child from the brutal truths of adult selfishness. But, like many small lies, it had consequences. Telling a child that what her eyes tell her is not what’s really there is an invitation for subsequent psychological complication. But what could Elvinia do? It was all very well for people to insist that one always told children the truth—that by doing so one allowed them to come to terms with the hard face of the world—but, she wondered, did that make children any happier? Or did it simply destroy the hope, the innocence, that should be the background music of childhood? Did she want Bim to grow up thinking that her father did not love her, that he had wilfully deserted her, or should she be encouraged to believe that only the demands of being a naval officer kept him from showing the love and affection he undoubtedly felt for his family? To Elvinia, the answer was obvious: Bim should be encouraged to respect her absent father, because having a father, even one who was not there, was better than having no father at all. That was what she thought, and she believed—or persuaded herself to believe—that she had read somewhere, in a magazine perhaps, that this was the right thing to do in such circumstances. There were risks, of course, and these might have consequences later on. But everyone knew that, just as everyone knew that all our behaviour has roots in what people have done to us: the lies they have told as much as the truths.

  At least Fredrik never defaulted on Bim’s maintenance payments; Elvinia had to give him credit, albeit reluctantly, for that. She realised, though, that when Bim reached the age of eighteen the agreement sanctioned by the divorce court would come to an end. For her own security, as much as for Bim’s, she decided that she would need a career, her early marriage to Fredrik having put paid to her ambition to train as a physiotherapist. Enrolling on a university course was not an option: she had Bim to look after and she simply could not afford to pay for several years of childcare. So, looking around for an apprenticeship, preferably in a craft that would allow her to indulge her artistic interests, she eventually stumbled upon a small fabric conservation studio run by a weaver called Hanna Holm. Hanna was single-handed, both as a mother and as a conservator, and she understood the juggling of times and commitments required of a woman in Elvinia’s position. She listened sympathetically to Elvinia’s story, shaking her head at more egregious instances of Fredrik’s perfidy.

  “I thought naval officers were meant to be gentlemen,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s all changed,” said Elvinia. “The only gentleman left in this country is the King.”

  Hanna nodded, although she did not entirely agree, at least in respect of the paucity of gentlemen. The man who sold her fish was a gentleman—she was sure of that—and so was her recently retired postman, even if he was a somewhat unconventional one. She thought of the King. “Poor man,” she said. “It can’t be easy.”

  Elvinia looked thoughtful. She remembered that Carl XVI Gustaf had been nine months old when his father’s aircraft crashed near Copenhagen and had not been told about his father’s death until he was seven. If she had been keeping the truth about Fredrik from Bim, then here was an even more extreme example, although the King’s sister had not approved of this, saying publicly that a child’s questions should not be met with silence. Elvinia felt ashamed; she would have to tell Bim the truth: that her father was not out at sea, but was still there in Malmö—this was before he went to live in the north to run that so-called hotel—with his soi-disant wife. Although she was really just his lover, she thought bitterly; and he could have come to see them if he were minded to do so.

  “Well,” said Hanna, “if you want to do this, why not give it a try for a couple of months, and then you can decide? I’ll be very flexible with the hours I expect you to work.”

  They agreed, and shortly afterwards Elvinia embarked on her training. She proved good at the work, and Hanna was relieved when she said that she would like to undertake the entire apprenticeship.

  “I’ve found the thing I really want to do,” Elvinia said to Hanna. “Working with thread and wool, with fabrics...”

  “And with love,” interjected Hanna. “Love is the most important ingredient in any artistic work. You have to love the work.”r />
  “I do,” said Elvinia.

  “I can see that,” said Hanna.

  Elvinia could not have found a better-qualified teacher. Hanna had trained at the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, where she had learned the skills required of a general conservator. It was fabrics, though, that particularly interested her, and she had eventually specialised in that area. As a newly qualified conservator and restorer, she had been allowed to work on the Skog Tapestry, a late medieval tapestry that featured three enigmatic crowned figures. There had been much discussion as to who these figures were, with the possibility being raised that they were the old Norse gods, Odin, Thor, and Freyr. The identification of Odin rested on the fact that he appeared in the tapestry to have only one eye, a disability borne by Odin since he exchanged an eye for the gift of wisdom. This theory, however, was spoiled by the discovery that the reason why the figure in question only had one eye was that the stitches depicting the other one had simply fallen out. With that theory dispatched, the three figures became the Magi, although once again it was difficult to reconcile that with the fact that two of them appeared to be armed, one with an axe and another with a sword. Unless the sword was a cross...

  Hanna was ready to retire, and was happy to pass on her workshop and her clients to Elvinia. There was more than enough work, with the result that over the next few years Elvinia enjoyed a life of relative comfort and security. She and Bim got on well, and the teenage years, for so many parents a period of bickering and disagreement, were for Elvinia a time of company and harmony. By the time Bim was ready to go to university, rather than move out into a student flat, she chose to stay with her mother. Elvinia was happy to have her at home, although she secretly hoped that Bim would cultivate friends of her own, and possibly even find a boyfriend. She was worried that with her own suspicion towards males, she might have put Bim off men. She did not want that: she hoped that Bim would find a boy who, unlike her father, would stick with her and make her happy.