Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  On the other hand, they both shared the experience of seeing a dead man, and that was nothing to shrug off. Someone who’d also heard the screeching gulls, and that was almost the worst part of it all – a jolt shot through his body at the mere thought of them. It had been a shock, and one that had bound them to each other, which was both good and bad. It was nice to have someone to talk to who’d also seen it with his own eyes, you didn’t have to explain that much, to go into detail, like he had to do when he was sitting in the police station and she, that policewoman, wanted to know every little thing.

  He’d decided not to say a word about it to his sister. She’d only get worked up and call their parents and then God knows what would happen. His whole family would pounce on him, protecting him and pressing him for details. And the cousin who’d gotten him the job would turn up like a hungry dog, sitting fat and bloated in his sister’s sofa, chain-smoking cigarettes between coughing fits as he nailed him with his eyes. You haven’t gone and done something stupid, have you? he’d ask. Think about me, about your family’s reputation, he’d say. You could suck me into this, me, who got you the job in the first place! We’re honest people in our family!

  No, he hadn’t done anything stupid, he’d have to lie.

  Many years ago, back in his village, he’d dreamed about a situation like this – about being in the center of things. But it wasn’t that great now that he was in it.

  He just wanted one thing, and that was to disappear. The money, he thought. It made him both high and scared. He could go away somewhere. But there were things he’d have to work out first.

  He’d talked to someone in the consulate called Yasemin, a rather stiff, tight-lipped Turkish woman who administered the visa applications. Swedes going to Turkey needed no visa, but Turks wanting to go to Sweden had to have one. It had to do with the Schengen Treaty, she explained.

  There was no end to the papers he had to arrange. But it wasn’t impossible. He was visiting family, he told Yasemin, and was planning to be away for three weeks.

  She hardly even raised a shapely eyebrow. There were, of course, many Turks with family in Sweden, so he shouldn’t be thinking he was unique in any way, she seemed to say. She gave him the creeps. But what the hell, all he had to do was take all the forms she lay in front of him. It would take a few days to arrange everything, he realized once he was outside by the gates again.

  A passport he already had, and as luck would have it he’d brought it to Istanbul with him. Two color photos were the easiest things to check off his list. He also had to show that he had enough money to cover his visit, so he’d have to go to a bank and deposit the cash he’d need, but not too much, mind, as it would raise suspicions. Maybe he should open a new account?

  And then he’d need a printout from the family register, from Nüfus, confirming his civil status, parents, and siblings. A streetcar rattled by along Istiklal Caddesi. He waited for it to pass and then took out his cell phone and called his sister to ask her to call their mother and tell her to get one and send it to him.

  “What do you want it for?” she asked, naturally.

  “You know that I’ve always wanted to travel…”

  She breathed while her mind worked. He was building up for a long explanation, but then one of her children suddenly screamed and she had to go.

  “OK, leave it to me,” she said, and hung up.

  There was no time to lose. He went to the Tünel and bought a jeton at the desk, and climbed into the train that took him downhill under the ground. With him were a mix of tourists and locals. Sumptuous tiling clad the walls of both stations.

  He got off at Karaköy in the Galata neighborhood and exited into the sunlight. The city had awakened some hours ago, but the morning mist still shrouded the gray-green waters of the Golden Horn. With hurried steps he took off toward the Galata Bridge, rushing past all the men leaning over the railing with fishing rods in their hands. The traffic was moderate.

  He could see his own ferry coming from the Bosporus, chugging toward its berth in Eminönü. A wave of apprehension came over him. He’d be held to account. He’d have to come up with an excuse. He’d overslept, that would do, he thought. If he went over the top with overly complicated excuses it would only make people suspicious, he realized.

  When he reached the abutment on the other side, in Sultanahmet, he caught the whiff of grilled fish and realized that he hadn’t eaten anything for a while. He sauntered up to a man with red eyes standing by his broiler and bought a freshly grilled fish in newly baked white bread and an orange Fanta. He was too restless to sit down at the long tables there, so he ate as he made his way toward the SS Tirowor.

  The passengers were disembarking. He went on board full and contented, but felt eyes on him as he approached his niche. He’d avoided looking in the direction of the kiosk.

  Just as he’d gotten the water ready for the samovar, he felt a soft finger press into his back. He spun round.

  “Where have you been?” asked Ergün.

  “I overslept,” he said.

  And despite having rehearsed this line quietly to himself the whole way along Eminönü’s broad quayside, and although he knew very well that it was forgivable and even human to oversleep once in a while, he turned bright red.

  “Right,” was all that Ergün said, going back to doing what he was doing.

  Which also felt a little overly blasé.

  He then lifted the little tabletop and inserted his hand. And there at the back he could feel the notes spread out. The ones he’d left there and that not even the police’s sniffer dogs had managed to uncover.

  Actually, he didn’t know if the police had brought dogs on board. Narcotics dogs in that case, maybe? Perhaps the dead Swede had been a drug dealer. Not that he looked like one. But you never knew!

  It was all very exciting. But still mostly pretty grisly.

  CHAPTER 24

  IT WAS JUST AFTER DINNERTIME. The day crept along in restlessness. The radio was on at a low volume, and Annelie’s ears were pricked up so as not to miss the local news. Perhaps they’d say something about Carl-Ivar today, too. Maybe they had some fresh information.

  She turned it up and held her breath while the announcer’s voice informed listeners that police officers from Oskarshamn were now on their way to Istanbul. Her heart was thumping with excitement. It soon passed and she was able to breathe again.

  The tinkling of a piano then started to trickle out of the little transistor. She didn’t have time to turn the volume back down and so was bathed in the delightful tones, which set her insides quivering. It was a commercial for a world-renowned pianist, who was to give a concert in Kalmar that coming Saturday.

  She was just about to tear the brown wrapping off the rug that she’d just picked up from the post office, but the news about Carl-Ivar that had boomed out in such a dry, neutral manner, succeeded by this melting music, had made her head spin.

  She burst out crying. She sobbed, and let the rolled-up rug lean in its protective plastic sheath against the table while the tears ran. She wiped her face with the back of her hands. I just hope no one comes in right now, she thought.

  But what if they did? Everyone knew what had happened. Birgitta had told her that flowers had been pouring into the house on Holmhälleväg. Four chunky, beautiful bouquets had also turned up at the shop, sent by customers sending their condolences. She’d placed one of them on the table and the others in the windows. The rays of sunlight that fell on them made the petals gleam. Roses and lilies and sweet peas, a plump strain that must be foreign.

  It was at once beautiful and simple, and brought a delicate perfume into the shop.

  She’d put together a framed photo of Carl-Ivar and placed it in one of the windows. Christoffer had found that a bit over the top when she told him. He was surprised that she of all people would pay such emotional respect. “I mean, Carl-Ivar wasn’t royalty,” he said. “Just a common rug dealer.”

  She heard him and knew w
hat he meant, and let it go. She was doing exactly what she wanted, and didn’t even think about defending herself. She could detect a little jealousy in Christoffer. It didn’t go down well that she spent time with someone other than him. But what was he doing?

  She’d never really been the doting type, over and above when it came to him, and he knew that only too well and was content to have it that way. He interpreted it as her showing him both love and patience. But was it love? Sometimes she wondered. Did she know what real love was?

  Whatever, she did her best. Copied women she’d seen who were only too happy to talk up their men and fuss around their sons, and go hard on their daughters.

  Like her own mother. But then again, she was no normal mother.

  And as for Christoffer, well, she could tire of him, she admitted to herself, and she sent her husband a thought that was ambivalent, to say the least.

  The telephone rang.

  It had been ringing quite a lot recently. For that reason alone it was good that she was holding down the fort. Especially now that Birgitta and the children had gone to Istanbul to say their final farewells to Carl-Ivar.

  It was a woman on the other end who’d spilled red wine on her rug. There were many accidents of this kind happening all of a sudden, as people made up reasons for calling the shop, thought Annelie as she coughed quietly to clear the thickness in her throat.

  No, it wasn’t a big stain, said the woman on the phone, but how could she remove it?

  Annelie said that she could take a towel and keep dabbing a little warm water mixed with a few drops of dish soap on it. She recommended that the woman pour the soapy water into a bowl and test a piece of the carpet carefully first to make sure that the dye in the wool wouldn’t bleed.

  “It’s usually fine,” she said in her professional voice, which had regained a temporary stability.

  As she spoke, she straightened her back; it was as if the baton had been passed on. As if she’d become an extension of Carl-Ivar.

  “Then do the same thing with a towel, but this time use some water in which you’ve added a few drops of vinegar instead to help bring the color out,” she continued.

  It could just as easily have been Carl-Ivar himself giving this practical advice. She could hear how she used his words, borrowed them but strung them together in her own way.

  She cheered up at once. For the first time she saw herself seriously as Carl-Ivar Olsson’s successor.

  The woman was listening on the other end of the line. Annelie thought that she’d then hang up, but she clearly had something else to get off her chest.

  “Tell me, what about vacuuming it?” she wondered, to prolong the conversation. “A neighbor told me it’s better to beat the rug instead like you did in the old days when there were beating frames everywhere in people’s gardens.”

  Annelie advised her against beating the rug. “People are so full of ideas,” she said and they both laughed. “I’ll send you some cleaning instructions. Feel free to use a vacuum cleaner, but go with the pile, not against it. However, the wool fibers contain a natural oil called lanolin that repels dirt and makes the rugs hardwearing. But gravel and muck you want to get rid of. Dirt like that can damage the roots of the fibers if you leave it lying around.”

  No, the woman didn’t have the rug in the hallway, Annelie discovered. But there was nothing wrong with having them in the entrance hall if you looked after them properly, she felt the need to point out, and again made ready to hang up. She felt it was time.

  But the woman continued to eagerly express her great joy at owning such a lovely rug.

  “Nice to hear it,” said Annelie, beginning to feel a little frazzled. But the woman was as obdurate as ever and went on about how she’d bought the rug a year back. And in the same breath launched into a vivid description: size, colors, and pattern, pretty much as if she were talking about a dog. Breed and coat.

  Finally Annelie guessed which one she was talking about.

  “Is it by any chance a Caucasian rug with a lot of green in it that you have? Where you can clearly see that the green changes tone, that the dyes aren’t precise?” she asked eagerly.

  “That’s it! I think it’s so lovely. You can really see that it’s a work of craftsmanship and not some industrially manufactured thing…and if memory serves it’s called an abrash,” said the women, doubtlessly feeling a bit clever.

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s what the carpet dealer said,” continued the woman. “The one who died.”

  There. The line went silent.

  “It’s so tragic, isn’t it,” the woman continued in a hollow voice.

  “Yes,” said Annelie, feeling her throat suddenly thicken and her professional carpet-dealer self-crumbling away.

  “You never know how long you’ve got,” said the woman without sounding sentimental. “He was a good man, as far as I could tell. The best ones often go first.”

  That’s another way of looking at it, thought Annelie.

  They hung up and she stared vacantly out of the window.

  CHAPTER 25

  IT WAS WEDNESDAY and Christoffer Daun’s first day back at work after the weekend. He’d had Monday off after having been on night duty, and yesterday he just couldn’t drag himself in. He still felt like crap, but now at least he was at the clinic making an appearance.

  He avoided Ronny Alexandersson. Didn’t want to meet him alone. So at that morning’s X-ray rounds, he snuck away while people were still in their chairs to dress himself in the surgery ward’s locker room before everyone else: green trousers, shirt, and cap. So he popped his head into the operating room earlier than expected, much to everyone’s happy surprise.

  “Oh, terrific! Now we can get down to work more quickly,” said the OR nurse.

  The staff were busy preparing the patient, who had an inguinal hernia the size of an orange that Christoffer himself had placed on the schedule a few weeks before.

  He had the sink to himself. He put on his surgical mask and rubbed his hands and forearms under running water, dried them, sterilized himself with alcohol, and dried himself again by wafting his arms and hands in the air.

  So far, so good. He’d managed to keep out of the way and avoid anyone from his own clinic. The orthopedists were doing their thing, they had their own room down the corridor where they spent most of the time planning operations to replace the hips and knees of patients from around the whole Kalmar region.

  Christoffer had sometimes felt tempted to study to become an orthopedist. There was something Inspector Gadget about it all, what with all the specially made instruments; but there were more rudimentary tools like hammers and chisels as well. As sturdy as anything. The orthopedists in Oskarshamn had also really gotten things moving there. If you needed a new joint, a new joint you got – and quickly, was their winning concept. The tax-paying citizenry should not need to wait years, and you gained nothing by putting off the inevitable. Waiting times had been reduced to two or three months for fully examined patients. There weren’t many hospitals in Sweden that could beat that. It’s that kind of thing that gives you job satisfaction, said his colleagues down the corridor.

  He slipped into the room.

  “Hi. Alright?” said OR nurse Susanne, smiling with her eyes above her surgical mask.

  “OK.”

  His reply just popped out of him. It sounded more vapid than anything, but that didn’t matter, they accepted him as he was and didn’t try to cheer him up with jovial acclamations. Otherwise the nurses would have been only too happy to, mothering as they did their grumpy doctors as much as they did their children and husbands.

  Susanne was laying out the instruments on the assistant table, called the “ass tab,” and pumped it up to a suitable height. She had arranged the sterile instruments neatly in accordance with protocol.

  She then helped him on with his surgical gown. He sat and waited at a short distance from the wall on a rotating stainless steel stool with his hands o
n his knees – he’d already put on his sterile gloves. He sat there as if enclosed within himself.

  The patient was sedated, Susanne washed him and draped the body in a sterile covering with an opening over the incision site. Large paper sheets in light blue or green, colors that were thought to have a calming effect on the human psyche.

  He stared at the second hand on the clock as it clicked around rhythmically, soporifically. All the same, he felt tense. Daylight was flooding in through the window at one end of the room, easing the sense of claustrophobia. Many operating rooms lacked windows; it was like working in a mine, forever underground. It eventually made you feel both sluggish and gray.

  Susanne worked swiftly and rolled across the prepared ass tab, a domain over which she was lord and master. It was forbidden for him, the actual surgeon, to take instruments from it, the idea being that he should not have to take his eyes from the wound but just reach out a hand to get what he needed. Or ask for it. Susanne was a trained assistant who kept up with proceedings so that she’d know what he needed without his having to request it. He’d never forget the time when he was new and got barked at for swiping a scalpel off the table. The hag had gripped his hand, squeezing his fingers until he’d had to let go of it. He’d almost cut himself. It wasn’t his fault that the scalpels were always placed conveniently at the edge of the table for impatient fingers to grab at.

  “There you go,” said Susanne.

  He got up and went to stand beside the patient. Susanne hadn’t washed away the entire black marking, so he could see where the incision was to be made. She handed him the scalpel and he inserted it into the flesh.

  The operation was underway. A calm descended on the room.

  No one asked him why he was early. No one asked him anything at all, for that matter. His fingers worked. He plowed on.