Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  His plan was to lie low for the entire working day. But, of course, he couldn’t continue like this forever. That would be pure madness, he knew that.

  He needed time to build up the courage, he imagined. For how long and how much, he had no idea. His angst sat like an icy lump in his gut.

  He’d rambled on at home about headaches and getting flu, talking in an extremely thick, croaky voice. Annelie appeared to fall for it. Although flu rarely broke out in May. But she was used to his not always feeling his best and would care for him and say cheery things and stroke his hair away from his forehead. Like his mother had never done, like he’d always yearned for her to do.

  But Annelie hadn’t done it this time. She hadn’t even commented on his condition very much at all, in fact. As if there was something between them that had stopped. Or gone cold.

  The red ball of paper! Why wasn’t she saying anything?

  Or maybe she hadn’t seen it? If that was the case, he didn’t want to ask. Perhaps it had been blown out of the car when she’d opened the door? No, unlikely. Anyway, he’d searched for it but it hadn’t been there.

  “Bad luck. I guess you’d better stay home until you’re better,” was all she’d said without hardly glancing at him, let alone touching him. No hugs, no brief pecks on the cheek.

  There was clearly only one person going around in her head, and that was carpet dealer Olsson. You obviously have to be dead to get a little attention around here, he thought.

  He missed and at the same time didn’t miss her hand on his forehead. But he wanted things between them to be normal again. Not tense.

  And yet he was ashamed, and that, of course, distanced him even further. He had no one to blame but himself. There were rats to be smelled here, and they were all his.

  Ronny Alexandersson was not someone to talk behind people’s backs, Christoffer knew that and trusted it. Ronny had the wherewithal to be direct when it was called for, demonstrating a civil courage possessed by few. Most people just kept silent.

  But Ronny’s fairness and honesty also had a scary side. You didn’t get away with things. And this is why Christoffer Daun started and his heart began to thump when Ronny suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  “Look, we might as well get this over with,” he said.

  The operation was over and Christoffer was sitting in the booth, dictating his surgical report into a humming computer. The thought of slipping away struck him, but how would he go about it? Ronny was blocking the narrow doorway. Not that he was fat – he was more the lean greyhound type, pale of skin and red-haired, at least originally. He was now turning gray, or rather, colorless.

  So, Christoffer had no choice but to stay put. And whatever happened, he wanted to stay on good terms with Ronny Alexandersson. He also wanted to keep his job and not have to impress some other new employer.

  “I presume that you’re capable of understanding that if you’re called up when you’re on nights and a nurse asks you to come you have to go and make a medical assessment. You’re the one with the medical responsibility,” said Ronny, mercifully neutral in tone, neither supercilious nor chastising. A bully or someone with low self-esteem would have made a meal of this, thought Christoffer.

  But still he felt the heat.

  They’re only words, he made himself think as he tried to swallow. But his mouth was as dry as the Sahara desert. Words, words, words. That’s all they are, he said self-convincingly.

  But the burning, stinging sensation remained.

  “I’ve spoken to Birgitta Olsson… Her husband has just died, by the way… Maybe you’ve read about it,” said Ronny, and Christoffer nodded but said nothing about his wife having worked for him. It wasn’t the time or place. “And Birgitta claims that she’s been perfectly clear about wanting you up there,” continued Ronny. “She even noted it down in her report.”

  Christoffer nodded once more. It was best to confess. To expose his throat.

  “Birgitta’s right,” he said, and felt like a hero. A fairly crestfallen one, to be sure, but befittingly remorseful.

  It was his fault. He might as well admit it. He’d been tired and scared to death of not getting any sleep, but he let that pass. Didn’t want to reveal that he lived with the constant fear of spinning out of control. His job was one in which panic attacks were hardly de rigueur.

  “It won’t happen again,” he said in his best adult voice, sensing how the skin of his entire body grew hot under the green surgical clothes.

  Ronny watched him, his gaze steady, as if he could see right through him.

  “Tell me, how are things with you?” he said at last.

  “Apart from the flu… Well, it’s pretty much over now, so they’re fine.”

  Ronny stared at him some more and then nodded.

  “OK,” he said. “At least we’ve found that the ECG was totally normal. That’s all we know for now, the pathologist isn’t done yet. Call me if there’s something I can help you with.”

  What was he getting at? Christoffer wondered afterwards. What would I need help with? Does it show?

  Christoffer finished his dictation, the words pouring out of him. Luckily, he didn’t have to think. His concentration skills were set to zero.

  At least Ronny had had the manners not to go on about it or to point any moral fingers.

  He got changed, tearing off his green garments and tossing them into the laundry bin, and pulling on his jeans and top. He donned his white coat and walked into the ward, asking if everything was alright with his patients. And it was, on the whole, he found out.

  He ought to get down to some paperwork. Signing reports, referral replies, and lab results on the computer. The “signing bin,” as the software also called it, was full to bursting. It was a boring job. Maybe he could put it off a bit longer. Get down to it before the evening meeting on Monday, if nothing else.

  And then he saw who it was standing down the corridor looking at him. The gaze flew its entire length, landing inside him with a metallic rattle, like a coin in a piggy bank.

  He turned his head toward the staff room to avoid it.

  Shit, he thought. How can I get rid of this pull, this passionate yearning that’s like a glowing, all-engulfing fog?

  He walked into the staff room and drank a glass of water, hoping that she’d be gone when he re-emerged.

  CHAPTER 26

  CARL-IVAR HAD BEEN A DECENT chap, that was for sure.

  It was like Annelie was waiting for him to push open the door, wipe his shoes carefully on the doormat, which he’d do even if it was a nice day outside, and say “Good morning” in a loud, clear voice. And mean it: “I really hope you have a good morning!”

  Then he’d switch on the computer and go around smoothing down or just stroking his rugs and carpets. Toward the afternoon, he’d ask her to pop down to Nilsson’s and buy some buns to have with their coffee. Right now she was standing there almost waiting for it.

  And he’d mean cream-filled buns. Never unfilled and preferably with a little powdered sugar on top.

  But no companionable request for buns came.

  The room was quiet. Dead quiet.

  She shook her head and thought that probably the most important thing that Carl-Ivar had given her was not her in-depth knowledge of rugs and carpets, but the insight that one should let things take their time. He had neither caused a fuss nor moved heaven and earth for trifles, and that had been liberating for someone like her.

  She could think of no situation in which Carl-Ivar had taken up space in the way that some people tended to do. Not even on his sixtieth birthday did he claim much attention. In fact, it was more like unease that he seemed to be feeling as he sat there comfortably in the dove-blue plush sofa at home in his sitting room, wearing his best red paisley-pattern tie and a paper napkin over one knee. He’d sipped the wine and had picked with tender fingers at the delicate little titbits that Birgitta had prepared.

  Poor Birgitta, now all alone!

  Car
l-Ivar would naturally not have expected a big fuss to have been made, let alone demanded it. Satisfying people who harbored great expectations was rarely much fun, she thought. Rather, they tended to inspire scorn and antagonism, making you want to turn your back on them.

  Like her mother.

  Annelie screwed her lips together tightly.

  When she was little she’d wished that Carl-Ivar had been her dad and Birgitta her mom. The typical survival dreams of a vulnerable child.

  In her mind’s eye she’d watch how the doorbell would ring and a dependable lady in a sensible skirt from some secure place that oversaw children’s welfare would step inside to explain that a serious mix-up had been made. But she was here to put it right, the imaginary lady would say, smiling magnificently with lipstick on her teeth. As all the little more sensible ladies always had, those with influence. Unlike her mother, who mostly just drifted round in a fog of her own making.

  And then she’d move in with Birgitta and Carl-Ivar instead.

  But no ladies ever came wanting to rescue her from her mother. Nor anyone else, for that matter, not even Carl-Ivar and Birgitta. So she had to stay with her mother.

  Like a tousled polar bear cub she’d once seen in a photo, that’s how she felt. It was pressing its shivering little body up against the cozy security of its mother. But the mother bear was lying dead on the ice, a bullet in its still-warm body. Never again would she rise up to take care of her little cub.

  Her own mother was always saying that she didn’t have time for her. She had to go to work in the café or she had a headache and needed to rest, or she was sad and needed to cheer herself up with “a drop,” as she put it. Then she’d get mushy in the head, and reel around singing loudly and badly until Annelie had to help her into bed so that she wouldn’t wake the neighbors. If she hadn’t collapsed into a heap on the carpet, that is.

  Annelie thought that she should learn to give up. She wasn’t good at it. Stubbornness had embedded itself in her. She couldn’t give up neither her mother nor Christoffer.

  CHAPTER 27

  WHEN CHRISTOFFER DAUN had left the surgery ward, he went down to outpatients to empty his mailbox.

  He inserted his index finger into the last of the brown internal envelopes, and opening it found yet another referral reply which he signed and placed on the pile for archiving. He then tore open a white envelope and pulled out an ad for hypertension medicine, which went straight into the trash. He rarely prescribed those kinds of drug. Anyway, he committed the brand name to memory as part of his general education, and if he wanted to find out more he could always look it up in the drug register.

  And there, lying flat on the bottom, was a little white envelope of handmade paper with his name on it written in real ink. He picked open the envelope to remove the watermarked card. Everything had been done with the greatest care; in fact, it was almost over the top, but he was touched nonetheless.

  Someone wanted to thank him with a naively drawn rose in black Indian ink colored in with red chalk and with a green stem. The drawing was touching, as if a child had done it or a dewy-eyed teenage girl. There were two lines of writing. Two lines about what a wonderful doctor he was. Exactly what he needed on a day like this.

  He recognized the name, but couldn’t put a face to it. He’d have to look her up on the computer later. He stuffed the letter into his jeans pocket and walked to the stairs. He had a patient to discharge.

  When he’d done so he remembered the letter, so he took it out and brought up the report on the computer to find out who his admirer was. Suddenly he remembered her as if it were yesterday. What a case!

  A woman, ten years his junior, who’d gotten her coat caught in the car door as she was getting out and been dragged a few yards before her husband had the presence of mind to stop. You’d think he was both blind and deaf! The woman had had a guardian angel and avoided ending up under the rear wheel. She’d also been spared any broken bones, but she was severely bruised and had slight concussion. He remembered that she couldn’t stop crying with gratitude for their kindness, as he and a nurse stitched and dressed her wounds. She probably wasn’t used to people being nice, he thought. Many people had learned to live on a tight rein.

  Afterwards the woman said that she’d start a new life, without going into any detail about what she intended to change. He and the nurse recognized the reaction. When you’ve been given your life back after having been at death’s door, obviously you wanted to do something about your future. “Wonder how long she’s going to live with that man,” the nurse had said dryly. It was Birgitta Olsson, if memory served.

  He felt like calling the woman up to ask. But he encountered so many human destinies that his curiosity had become blunted. Despite his being a “savior type” or a real “people junkie,” as Veronika jokingly called him, he managed to stop himself.

  There was a knock at his door and he got up to open it. A fully dressed patient was standing in the corridor wondering when she could go home. He was always taken a little aback by the total transformation that occurred when the patients got out of their hospital gowns and into their regular clothes. Became themselves.

  She was dark, slim, and stylish in her modern, slightly baggy jeans and a soft pink top and matching lipstick.

  He began by giving her a few brief instructions about avoiding lifting heavy objects, ran off an e-prescription for painkillers from the computer, and filled in a form for a short period of sick leave.

  And then he turned to her.

  “Is there anything you’re wondering?”

  He sat completely still and silent and looked into her eyes. A large truck could be heard changing gear outside on Växjövägen far below them.

  “Well, this is nice,” she said, looking embarrassed. “Can I come and see you again… if something happened, I mean?”

  She broke into a blood-red flush. He smiled to ease her discomfort.

  “Of course, you have my name.”

  “If I needed to take out more sick leave…”

  “Then just call the reception desk and ask for me.”

  He was still looking into her eyes, and smiled. Not flirtatiously, though, as that would be overdoing it.

  “Are you sure it won’t come back… The hernia, I mean?”

  She didn’t want to go. He could tell. She wanted to stay with him. Score!

  “You can never be a hundred percent certain, but I wouldn’t think so. Not if you’re careful and look after yourself properly,” he said in a familiar tone.

  She smiled back but still showed no sign of wanting to get up from her chair and leave him. Not yet.

  He didn’t give off any such signals either, that he was short of time, that he was a busy person.

  His cell phone buzzed. He put his hand in his pants pocket and turned it off. He’d brought the eyes in front of him to life and he was busy enjoying it. Like a warm breeze. Like a spring day. Like it was outside. The trust that grew. The thing we all yearn for, thought Christoffer Daun, content at being able to give. Even if he didn’t always manage to receive. It was all to do with his lack of bonding as a child, said Annelie.

  Who, incidentally, was off to a birthday party at Gabbi’s tonight.

  CHAPTER 28

  ANNELIE PACED WITH slow, wavering steps back and forth on the soft carpets in the shop while her thoughts and feelings spun.

  It was nice to move around, it made her better able to control the tears. She’d had more than enough of the complicated and neurotic in her thirty-four years, she thought. She liked the still, calm waters best, definitely. Like Carl-Ivar. Solid rocks.

  Everything that Magnus wasn’t, and still she was drawn to him. He pleased her. He’d always done so, strangely enough, but there had never been any talk of their being together in a more steady relationship. She’d dreamed about it. Quite a lot, once. What Magnus dreamed about was anyone’s guess. He probably didn’t even know himself.

  But the sex worked, and she’d stopped asking h
erself why. All they had to do was touch each other and they were off, sucked into each other.

  She could feel the pleasure rise in her where she stood. She’d sometimes divert herself when she was alone by shutting her eyes and fantasizing about Magnus coming to her. It usually worked. But she couldn’t think about him when she was having sex with Christoffer. It would be as if she were completely ruining what she had with Magnus.

  Her blonde hair had tumbled down, and her face was flushed and puffy. In the mirror she looked wild. She stroked away the hair, re-clasped it with the clasp at the neck, then fluffed her bangs. She glanced quickly at the photo of Carl-Ivar in the window, and a new attack of weeping forced her to drop her arms and bury her face in her hands.

  Kind eyes, thin hair, friendly and somewhat droopy cheeks, a serious but not sullen mouth. He was wearing a striped shirt open at the neck and a burgundy V-neck cardigan. It was Birgitta who’d bought his clothes for him.

  He never betrayed his age by making himself out to be younger than he was. He certainly hadn’t been vain. More genuine and natural.

  And yet she’d always suspected that he’d been up to something.

  It had never occurred to her to interfere. She’d wanted to return some of the kindness he’d always shown her. He’d never poked his nose into her life. Not that he’d needed to, of course. He’d known about most of it. At least the important stuff, the things she was ashamed of. So she didn’t have to tell him herself; or at least could choose to remain silent.

  But he’d never asked questions.

  She thought about those phone calls that came into the shop now and then. She’d always assumed they were from other carpet dealers. From Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Turkey. But it had always been the same voice. A woman’s voice. A secretary, perhaps.

  Carl-Ivar had always asked in English if he could call back, and would leave the shop, telling Annelie that he had an errand to run.