Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  As she drew up into the driveway, the rain stopped. She picked up the bag from the pastry shop, slammed the car door shut, and entered the house. She’d hardly had time to hang up her thin summer jacket before there was a knock at the door. Not a ring. She knew who it was, opened, and sure enough there he was. Sven had turned up once before that past week, since Carl-Ivar had been found dead.

  And he now, of course, had his eye out for her.

  She let him in and didn’t ask after Agneta, or Nettan, as he called his wife. She was at work, Birgitta assumed, who didn’t want her neighbor’s wife in the house even by name. Not if it wasn’t necessary. How Sven spent his days of retirement was up to him.

  “Can I get you some coffee?”

  Yes, he’d love some, he said. She went into the kitchen and filled the filter. He placed his hands on the kitchen table, leaned forwards, and squinted out through the window. A large Volvo was passing, he announced.

  “A Cross Country, not cheap,” he said.

  She wasn’t listening. She cut up the almond ring.

  “You know what’s happened to them, right?” he asked then.

  “Who?”

  “The neighbors, the ones doing the total renovation down by the water. He died when you were in Istanbul. Too.”

  She stopped what she was doing and turned to him. There was something not right about this, she could feel it.

  “It was extraordinary, but he had a heart attack as he was sitting on his lawn mower. I suppose he couldn’t get off, and if he screamed, his wife certainly didn’t hear him,” Sven continued.

  She stared at him.

  “He was so young. No more than, what, forty? But he didn’t look after himself, I suppose. He was over-stressed… You have to make choices in life, you know.”

  He looked at her.

  “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

  She opened her mouth, but shut it again. Was she psychic, on top of everything else? She swallowed.

  “How awful,” she said lamely instead but with no intention of asking if he’d driven it into the neighbor’s pool. Sven would think she was out of her mind. And if he had, he would have said so. Incidents like that quickly spread.

  She hurriedly set the cups out in the living room, which looked out onto the back of the garden and was more private.

  The phone rang. A man’s voice told her that she’d won a rug. Her ears pricked up. Didn’t he sound a little incoherent?

  “Won? What do you mean?” She hadn’t entered a lottery or anything, but on the other hand her head had been in such a muddle recently that she had little idea of what she had and hadn’t done. And a rug? “I’ve got enough rugs,” she replied.

  But he insisted, and said he’d soon be popping by to show her some items for her to choose from.

  Oh, for Heaven’s sake, she thought. “Go on then,” she said to get rid of him, and hung up.

  “Who was that?” asked Sven.

  “Pah, it was nobody.” She couldn’t be bothered to give an account of the call; even more so to reveal her own helplessness. The fact that she wasn’t woman enough to stand up to any old person – be it her male neighbors or rug salesmen.

  The almond ring was lying cut up in thin slices, glistening invitingly in the breadbasket. She didn’t usually eat such unhealthy things, but right now it was as if everything had fallen apart, and suddenly her mastery of both temptation and bodily functions no longer gave her the same satisfaction. Compared to Carl-Ivar, she’d been a paragon of health and fitness. They’d competed with each other more than she’d been willing to realize. He, the special one, with a profound knowledge and feeling for quality and style. She, the able one, practical and healthy.

  But what did all that matter now? She bathed silently in the calm that Sven was radiating across the coffee table. She could feel his warmth even without touching him.

  Just as she was about to take a slice of almond ring the doorbell rang. She excused herself and asked Sven to wait on the sofa while she went to answer it. On the doorstep stood a man with a rolled-up rug under his arm. He entered without invitation, and a woman slipped in behind him. Something matted, registered Birgitta, without really seeing who she was.

  And then everything happened very quickly. The man, clearly – to put it bluntly – one of the great unwashed, rolled out the rug and held it out in front of him.

  A moth-eaten old prayer rug! What was going on?

  The woman, whom she’d merely glimpsed, had disappeared into the house.

  “Sven,” she called. “Get into the bedroom!”

  The man with the rug hesitated then dropped his arms, though without letting go of the edge of the rug. It was then she noticed that he was lacking a finger on his right hand and she was distracted.

  The woman jumped into the hall like a flea. She skidded to a halt, however, and stared at Birgitta Olsson.

  “Nilla?” Birgitta exclaimed and surprised herself that she’d remembered the name of the patient she’d tended to a few days ago.

  Quicker than a cat from a tub they were out again, the man without a finger and her patient Nilla.

  Birgitta rushed after them, but Sven, the coward, didn’t want to show his face. She ran down the street, as agile and light-footed as a hind, but the thieves were quicker, sprinting away with hair and clothes flapping behind them. Birgitta watched the rug roll disappear round the corner down on Strandvägen and gave up the chase.

  She walked back, slowly so as to catch her breath. And to let her anger subside.

  Sven was standing in the hall.

  “You have to call the police,” he said.

  “And say what? They won’t believe me.”

  “Nonsense.”

  But the call had already been registered by the police, who were keeping tabs on all incoming and outgoing telephone traffic – with her consent, of course. Part of their efforts to find Carl-Ivar’s killer.

  When Sven returned home an hour or so later, she wondered if he would tell Agneta what had happened.

  Probably not. For that would mean revealing his occasional secret visits. Otherwise what had happened was quite a story!

  Nilla’s haggard face dropped into her mind later as she sat in front of the old TV in Johan’s room watching the early news followed by the local news. She wanted to see if more people had fallen victim to the trickster with the rug.

  She’d left the main TV in the sitting room standing like a black, highly polished altar. Carl-Ivar was the only one who could get the thing to work. Expensive, recordable with three remotes that were to be used in a special order, otherwise nothing would happen. This special order Carl-Ivar had never noted down. She’d just have to call in somebody, perhaps Johan would take pity on her. But otherwise the old one was fine. Good enough for her, anyway.

  She pulled the angora blanket tighter round herself. There was nothing on the news about rug hustlers. Damn drugs, she thought in her next breath. They steal everything, all common sense, and leave the body an empty shell.

  Anyway, who was that guy? Her memory worked. She recalled the image of the boy she’d once nursed. That was a long time ago. Bruised and with a hunted look, he’d tried to settle down in the far too large hospital bed. Adjusting his arms and legs, trying to find the least tender part of his battered torso. Was he four or five? Then, that time?

  She remembered that she’d relieved the assistant nurse who was sitting on the edge of the bed. The lamp was shielded, the nightfall gray. The boy jerked now and then and tossed his head from side to side on his pillow, perhaps in the throes of a nightmare. They’d given him a painkiller, junior aspirin probably, since that was what they mostly used back then. It wasn’t much, but sometimes they had an unwarranted fear of powerful analgesics and just let the little children suffer instead.

  Finally he settled, his bandaged hand lying as white as snow on the pillow by his head. He was missing a finger. A pair of pincers had done their job. How could he, this man who was mea
nt to be his father?

  She’d stroked his forehead and bent down to give him a peck on the cheek. She couldn’t help herself.

  No one saw what she’d done, that she’d kissed a sleeping child who wasn’t hers. It wouldn’t have been considered appropriate. But even then she knew that the image of this little patient would stay with her for many years. Perhaps forever.

  He was grown up now. The kiss she’d given him had, of course, been in vain. Life hadn’t been kind to him.

  She breathed deeply. It just wasn’t fair!

  But who said things had to be fair?

  CHAPTER 48

  CECILIA WAS SPEAKING UNCHARACTERISTICALLY quickly. There was a distinct zip in her voice.

  Wasn’t her daughter sounding like her old self? That healthy, happy babble, a sound that she’d almost forgotten. How she’d missed it, she realized now. Veronika could feel the corners of her mouth tingle and twitch, her glee rise.

  She’d seen it thousands of times in her daily work at the hospital. How diseases and afflictions didn’t turn people into victims but fired their fighting spirit or humility over what they had left. A new spark of life. A struggle, but still. And not uncommonly in those that seemed the least likely to possess the resources.

  She was wearing her earpiece, and had the telephone in her pocket so that she could hang the washing in the basement while she talked. Nora was sleeping in her bassinet upstairs, and Klara was sitting on the old, washed-out rag rug that lay like an intestine on the concrete floor of the laundry room, sorting out clothespins.

  Cecilia had gone a couple of times to the Gerda Gym, and it had changed her life, she was saying. A physical therapist had helped her, and he was very nice, and now she’d started doing weights.

  “You know, Mom, the physical therapist thought that I’d manage the normal sessions, but not the fastest… with all the jumping and sudden changes of position and so on. Maybe I should wait a bit, he said. So that I didn’t get all discouraged for not keeping up. And I’m so out of shape. Well, unfit, at least. So I’m on weights for now, and there’s so much to look at!”

  Cecilia gave a giggle. Perhaps a tiny bit too loud, Veronika felt, but immediately brushed the thought away. Her daughter could still forget to moderate herself, and her intonation was slightly stiffer. But only very slightly, if you compared with what it was like before. Veronika wasn’t sure that other people even noticed.

  Today was, miraculously, much better. This wasn’t a gradual change but a quantum leap!

  “You don’t say,” she said affectionately.

  Her daughter meant guys, she thought, and had to stop herself before she asked too much. It would be so great if Cecilia built up enough self-confidence to find a friend.

  This fear that her children would end up alone without someone to share their lives with… Before the accident there hadn’t been the slightest trace of a thought in that direction. Cecilia’s circle of friends had always been large and closely knit. But then. The threads by which she held on to the outside world grew tenuous after the skull injury. Perhaps things would get better now.

  They hung up. Veronika and Klara emerged from the basement, and her daughter skipped off into the sitting room to the hideout that she’d built with Veronika’s help out of sofa cushions and an old blanket. Veronika walked into the kitchen and stood by the window.

  It was late afternoon, a time when lethargy slowly creeps through the body. She didn’t dare sit down out of fear that she might fall asleep. Her eyelids chafed, her arms and legs were heavy.

  A few hours in an upright position, she thought, and then she’d try to put Klara down.

  Claes had called, he was on his way home. She was already feeling the relief of being able to dump the kids onto him. He, who’d been out on an adventure in a strange and exciting country, while she’d been cooped up around here at home, tied down both day and night.

  Bitter thoughts and envy puckered her mouth. She noticed it herself. Let them. And even enjoy it.

  She felt very, very sorry for herself.

  She should have gone shopping, she realized then. Like a good, considerate housewife. Some steaks, cheese, and new potatoes to welcome him home with, but she’d been so occupied with the kids that the idea of going to the store just seemed too much for her to cope with.

  Anyway, they wouldn’t starve. Nor have to sit eating sandwiches. She’d opened the fridge and seen two packs of bacon. They had tagliatelle, and a nice chunk of parmesan, too, so they’d be fine.

  At that moment she saw a taxi pull up by the gate and Claes step out. The pink peony buds in the flower bed were heavy balls; some had even bloomed, but he probably didn’t notice.

  There’s my husband, she thought, and the fire burned in her breast. My husband, who makes me strong and happy.

  She walked into the hall to greet him. He stepped inside, and she buried her nose in his chest while he placed an arm around her neck.

  “Oh, it’s so nice to have you home.”

  Klara ran between their legs.

  They’d finished dinner: pasta with bacon bits and grated parmesan that Claes had thrown together with Klara as his eager assistant.

  Veronika was sitting at the table nursing Nora. The light outside the kitchen window was still bright, as it could be only at this time of year.

  Claes got up to clear the table.

  “I’ll do that later. You go up and read to Klara,” she said.

  The two of them disappeared upstairs, Klara skipping ahead with her father close behind. Veronika heard them going into the bathroom to clean their teeth, heard Claes answering Klara’s many questions and joking with her.

  She’d just placed Nora in the bassinet and stacked the plates in the dishwasher when there was a knock at the door. She opened it and found a man standing there. He looked wild and slovenly.

  “Yeah, right, I’m here about the rug madam was going to get to choose.”

  How absurd, she thought. Choosing a rug? And what was all that with “madam”? No one ever called her that. Not these days.

  She remembered now that some joker had called her during the day and babbled on about how she’d won a rug and that he’d come by, and that she’d said, quite firmly, that she wasn’t going to be in. She’d thought then that the misunderstanding had thus been cleared up.

  But now he was standing there with a rolled-up rug under his arm. Strangely, there was something familiar about it. Even though it was rolled up. Her clinical mind also told her that the man wasn’t a member of the town’s more honest, law-abiding citizenry. Undoubtedly a substance abuser of some kind. Probably narcotics. Though maybe he was a mental patient on poorly dosed medication.

  “Will madam not let me in so that I can show her this beautiful treasure?”

  Veronika was grasping the door handle tightly. She had absolutely no intention of letting this man in. But she dearly wanted to look at the rug.

  “Can’t you show it to me out here?”

  A woman somewhere in her twenties, so ravaged-looking that it was hard to really tell her age, appeared as if from nowhere. She’d been lurking around the corner of the house, Veronika guessed. The woman’s legs were sticks clad in tight, black jeans under a far-too-wide parka. Her hair was dead straight and hung down to her shoulders. It had not been washed today, that was for sure. Probably not yesterday, either.

  “It would be best to go indoors, you understand, madam. This is my assistant,” he persisted, but started to get nervous and jittery and kept twisting his head in all directions as if he was afraid of being spotted.

  Veronika heard the stairs behind her creak.

  And then Claes was standing in the doorway.

  “What’s all this then?”

  His voice was authoritative. Before the man had time to turn and run off, Claes had an iron grip on his arm. The woman took off up the garden path with the gravel spraying behind her.

  Claes shoved the man roughly into the hall. Klara had appeared at the bottom
of the stairs and was standing there holding the banister rods with whitening fingers.

  “Shut the door and lock it,” he commanded Veronika as he tried to manhandle his captive onto the floor.

  His opponent seemed just a milksop in an unhealthy body, thought Veronika.

  “Mommy…” whined Klara.

  Veronika picked her up and went to fetch Nora, who was still asleep in the kitchen, and took both children into the sitting room.

  She heard Claes speak in a voice she’d never heard before. Not loud, but brusque and firm.

  “Call the police,” he roared from the hall to Veronika, who picked up the phone from off the coffee table.

  “What number?” she called.

  “The emergency number,” he yelled, and she bit her lower lip. How stupid could she be?

  She found herself at the emergency switchboard, and heard a woman’s voice, calm and clear.

  Suddenly she too grew cucumber cool, and was informative yet brief. What had happened, the intruder was still there, address, town, hurry.

  Yes, of course, they’d send a car right over.

  Just as she hung up she heard a sudden crash out in the hall, and she caught up her worried daughter and sat her on her lap. She wondered what was going on out there.

  “And where have you gotten this rug from?” she heard Claes say.

  “Er, I got it from my mom.”

  “Like hell. I know you’re lying.”

  Veronika snatched up a comic from the coffee table and started to read an episode to Klara. But it was no use, the daughter had her entire anxious attention directed at the hall and the kitchen.