Death of a Carpet Dealer

by Neil Betteridge

  “Is Daddy angry?” asked Klara with childishly forced heartiness.

  Yeah, guess you could say that. Veronika stroked Klara’s hair reassuringly. Held her in her arms. “Ssh, it’s alright. Daddy’s just making sure that someone comes and takes away that man.”

  “Why? Is he naughty?”

  “Yes, he’s being naughty.”

  “But not dangerous,” said Klara firmly.

  “No, not dangerous. It’ll be just fine, you’ll see.”

  The patrol car arrived and two uniformed police officers were suddenly filling the entire hall. They knew the hustler, of course. Andreas Gustavsson was his name.

  “Boy, did you ever choose the wrong house,” joked Lennie Ludvigsson, a large, flame-haired man whose main interest in life, Veronika knew, was cooking. You could tell that by his build, too.

  “Come on, Andreas,” said the other officer, who was called Conny Larsson, a northerner whom Veronika had sat next to at a dinner party once. He sounded paternal and took the man by the arm. “It won’t do you no good resistin’, you know that… And we might as well take your rug thing, too,” Veronika heard him say. “Nora, Andreas, couldn’t you have found one in better shape?” he joked.

  “The rug is to be returned to me,” said Claes. “It’s ours.”

  An almost silent whistle could be heard through the house.

  “OK… so you’re into old rugs then, eh?” joked Conny Larsson indifferently.

  And then they left.

  CHAPTER 49

  CLAES CLIMBED OUT of the warm bed into air that was stuffy despite the window having been open all night. He needed to go to the bathroom. The time was a few minutes to seven, he noticed.

  He and Mustafa Özen had decided that they’d get some separate rest over the weekend. They had many impressions to digest after their whistle-stop trip. On Monday they’d be reporting back at the regular morning briefing on their experiences in Istanbul.

  And then they’d see which threads they would start pulling.

  He returned to the bedroom, and stood looking down at all the sleeping bodies in the wide double bed. Looked at Veronika, eyes shut like someone unconscious, her forehead relaxed and her back toward the center as if she were asking to be left in peace for just a few moments more. At Klara in her nightie with the red-hearts on it, with a sweat-glistening forehead and chubby legs on his half of the bed – she’d been kicking him during the night – and her head pressed against the small of Veronika’s back. And then at little Nora who, miraculously, had claimed her place in the family and was sleeping sweetly above her big sister’s head, behind her mother, without blanket or anything covering her tiny body. He felt her legs. They were warm.

  He went downstairs to make some coffee. The apple tree had shed its blossoms, which lay swirling on the ground. The world just couldn’t get better than this, he thought, and set the butter, bread, and cheese on the table. He then took out a delicate rose-patterned cup and saucer – a family heirloom that he thought coffee tasted the very best in – and plonked a more robust honey-yellow mug onto the table in Veronika’s place. He’d take the opportunity to take paternal leave for the entire day, he thought a mite ironically. His off-duty time had shrunk.

  He made two open-face sandwiches, sat down, poured a cup of the hot, strong coffee, and reached for the week’s harvest of old newspapers. He started with the latest, from yesterday. A woman from Bråbygden had gone missing, he read. Is that so? Well, he’d find out more tomorrow. And Veronika had been called in as a witness to an assault around there. She’d told him about it yesterday. She’d not seen the victim, whom she actually knew – a nurse from the clinic – but she’d spotted a possible suspect. Whatever that might lead to…

  He browsed on. After a while, Veronika came down.

  “Is Klara still asleep?” he asked.

  She nodded and yawned widely.

  “Nora, too. I put her in her bassinet so that Klara wouldn’t accidentally kick her out of bed.”

  Nora had changed, Claes had seen that straight away. Her contours were more even, more filled out. A week made a big difference to a little baby. But she was still recognizable. Although she’d complained when he picked her up. She’d been wallowing in her mother’s smell, had become imprinted. But he’d have to assert his rank. Reclaim it. Accustom the little one to himself, too.

  Veronika inhaled deeply, staring in a state of morning torpor at the table.

  “God, it’s so nice to have you home!” she said, and lifted her eyes to his face.

  He smiled easily. How he loved all this!

  “Coffee?”

  She nodded, sitting there in her oversized t-shirt bearing the words “One better!” He filled her mug and poured himself more, too.

  He looked down at his cup, which he had always washed up by hand. It came from his grandmother. A bourgeois home, hers had been, with silver cutlery and hand-painted china. It had almost been laughable when his mother, when she was still of sound mind that is, had insisted that he should inherit the coffee service. It suited a chief inspector, she said. He still didn’t know if she’d meant it seriously or not. None of his siblings had been interested, so he lugged the box home and stacked the delicate cups and saucers in his bachelor apartment. The set came from an esteemed Swedish porcelain factory and was representative of its time. Embroidered tablecloth, the de rigueur assortment of seven delicacies and a cake elevated above them on a dish standing atop a foot of pressed glass.

  The clock was ticking toward eleven. Countdown.

  Claesson really detested visiting his mother. Detested was such a strong and almost indecent word that he’d never let it actually cross his lips. It pained him, actually, to think in those terms.

  He hadn’t even divulged his less than respectable feelings to Veronika, but he figured she realized how that land lay, anyway.

  His mother was a thin woman who’d always taken care of her appearance, from the well-maintained coiffure to her choice of garments and jewelry. He couldn’t remember her ever wearing any brighter colors than powder blue and soft pink. Most of her clothes were gray, white or naturally toned, and always discreet, unfussy and of proper quality. During his childhood, she always wore a necklace of graduated, rose-tinted pearls, be it with sweaters or blouses.

  Klara wanted to come, too. He placed the two children almost ritually into the car, buckled them up, and drove to the Gullregnet nursing home, parked, helped Klara out of the car, and then lifted Nora in her infant carrier. She was newly fed and sleeping soundly.

  He walked in and was greeted by one of the staff, a caregiver or assistant or helper or whatever she was called, in a striped apron with flouncy shoulder wings. The middle-aged woman bent over and baby-talked to Nora, Klara watching from her under heavy brows.

  “Ester has had a nice, restful day,” she informed them.

  He nodded, and took the children into his mother’s room. The familiar shroud of light depression descended on him as it always did.

  She was sitting in an easy chair, asleep. Klara stared rigidly at her grandmother with an air of distaste. Claesson pulled over a chair and sat down beside his sleeping mother. The head with its curly gray hair, like that of a docile, open-pasture sheep, hung forward. He laid his hand on her spindly forearm and she gave a jolt, but then fell back into her slumber.

  “Mom,” he said, quite loudly.

  She lifted her head and stared at him in newly awakened confusion.

  “Heavens above, how you frightened me!” she said. “Is that you, Ulf?”

  Almost right, he thought. His little brother. Not bad!

  “No, it’s me, Claes.”

  “Oh my word, what brings you here?”

  “Mom, look, I’ve brought Klara with me,” he said, and laid an arm around his daughter. “She’s your granddaughter.”

  “Really? Where’s she from?”

  “You’ve met Klara before. She’s my daughter. Do you remember?”

  His mother stared
into space.

  “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “And this little girl’s called Nora. She’s just been born and she’s also your granddaughter.”

  He held up the child seat and was about to tell her that the girl was also called CB, but decided it would be pointless.

  His mother bent to look at the girl, who happened to stir just then and open her eyes carefully to have a proper look around.

  Her grandmother looked at her. In wonder, possibly.

  “Whose baby is that?” she asked.

  “She’s mine, too,” he said, swollen with pride, even if his mother was incapable of sharing his joy.

  “You don’t say?” she said wearily, and sank back into her high-backed, upholstered throne.

  He drove home with his two daughters. CB whined incessantly. It was feeding time.

  “Do you want to come shopping later,” he asked Klara in the back seat.

  “Yes!” she cheered.

  She loved doing the weekly shopping. It was an unexpected pleasure, but a pleasure it was.

  He drove home and relieved himself of his inconsolable daughter, and then took off with Klara to the supermarket.

  A few hours later he was back unpacking the car and carrying inside a sleeping Klara – she’d been up late the night before. As he hoisted the shopping bags onto the kitchen counter, he saw what was printed on the bags in red letters on white: ICA.

  Could it be so simple? he thought as he started stacking the goods in the fridge. Worth a try, at least.

  It was half past three when he finally got down to calling Mustafa Özen, who picked up almost immediately. Claesson reeled off a brief apology for not having called him over the weekend.

  “Have you seen if ICA has been handing out white caps with a red logo?”

  Özen was quiet for a moment.

  “I don’t actually know… but we can probably find out. I’ll do it today.”

  “That’s if you’ve got nothing else to do,” said Claesson in a tone that said that he’d like Özen to get onto it straight away.

  “I can send a picture of the cap to Merve, and she can check with the witnesses on the boat to see if they recognize it,” said Özen, and Claesson couldn’t miss how eager he sounded at the prospect of getting in touch with Istanbul.

  “Do that! By the way, are you at home?”

  “Nope. At work, actually. I’ve got a bunch of reports to write, you could say. And some other stuff to do to. So, no, I’d nothing else to do.”

  What it was like to be young! Claesson recalled. Let’s see if the guy can write, too!

  “Let me know if you find anything,” he said.

  When he was lying a few hours later on the sofa with CB on his chest watching the evening news, his phone went off out in his jacket pocket. Veronica was bathing Klara, who’d got jam rubbed into her hair. He’d served his ladies a dish no more dramatic than bacon pancakes. Klara loved them, he loved them, and Veronika thought they were pretty good, too.

  He let the phone ring. But once Veronika had come back down with a bathed and clean-smelling Klara, he asked her to take Nora and went to fetch his phone. It had been Özen.

  He shouldn’t really be disturbing his Sunday evening, he realized as he called his younger colleague.

  Özen picked up.

  “I’ve checked out Karl Öberg and Bengt-Ove Nordin, who were staying at the hotel opposite the Galata,” he said. “Neither of them is on our records. But what I’m not sure about is whether that Öberg really does call himself Karl. According to the civil records he was baptized Karl-Magnus, but then again that’s quite a mouthful.”

  “So he might have removed the Karl…” said Claesson.

  “Maybe?”

  “Magnus Öberg. In which case we have a face,” said Claesson. “Good! Then all we have to do is find a way to run a check on him. I bet it’s that valuable rug… Is the son-in-law struggling financially?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He could hear that Özen wanted him to know that there were limits to what he could reasonably have achieved.

  “But I’ve got a whole list of telephone numbers here. All the calls made to and from Olsson’s home and to his shop over the past months. Our guys have compiled a whole bunch of calls and numbers while we were away, it’s tiring to go through them all, but the cell phone number that Öberg or his firm is listed as the subscriber to, isn’t there.”

  “But what is there?”

  “His home number. Someone has made calls from his landline in Stockholm to Olsson’s home, both when he was alive and now after his death and to the carpet shop and a whole load of other places. To Annelie Daun’s cell phone, too, in fact.”

  “That could just be the mother and daughter talking to each other. It’ll be hard to prove anything,” said Claesson. “Any texting?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember that Magnus Öberg said, there at the coroner’s in Istanbul, that he’d been on business in Germany when the carpet dealer was killed?”

  “Yes, I remember that.”

  “He seemed a bit shifty even then. He was meant to give us some sort of proof that he really had been in Germany, but he hasn’t done so yet… But then that was just a few days ago, and we haven’t got round to pressing him for it. The question is whether we should take a trip to Stockholm,” Claesson said, thinking aloud. “Or perhaps wait until after the funeral? But that could be a long time coming. We can check with his widow when it’ll be.”

  “But,” said Özen then. “I have a photo here that I’d like you to look at, as my superior, before I send it to Istanbul.”

  “What photo? Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “Sure, of course, but…”

  Claesson realized that he had no choice but to leave the warmth of home and family bliss, however reluctantly.

  “I won’t be long,” he said ashamedly to Veronika before shutting the door behind him.

  He took the car, parked it in the police station’s underground lot, and climbed the stairs. The CID department was quiet and deserted, with the exception of one of the smaller rooms at the back, where the lamp of diligence glowed.

  Mustafa Özen had in all haste taken a desk for himself in Claesson’s department, having borrowed Erika Ljung’s office, which was empty during her leave of absence while she served down south in Malmö. It was tough there, as far as Claesson understood, but he still figured she wouldn’t be returning. She had her roots in one of Malmö’s immigrant districts, just like Özen, and no immediate ties with Oskarshamn or the rest of Småland County.

  He placed himself in the doorway.

  “Check this out,” said Özen, holding out a photograph.

  It was an enlarged and manipulated passport photograph showing a dark-haired young man in a white cap with ICA printed on it in large red letters.

  Claesson raised his eyebrows and looked at Özen, who seemed to be wagging his tail and waiting for a rewarding tickle behind the ear.

  And that’s just what he got.

  “Great! You can work that photo editing software?” asked Claesson.

  “Well, one does one’s best!”

  Claesson nodded as he continued to gaze at the picture.

  “Where did you get the cap from?”

  “Called ICA. They’re open on Sundays. And then I just strolled on over there to pick one up. It’s part of some promotional campaign that’s been going on for a while. It’s a golf cap, don’t you know!” he said, jamming the white cap that lay on his desk over his head.

  “You play golf?”

  “Nah. But I can imagine that the PR guys have thought along those lines. The new ICA man!”

  Claesson had no idea what the PR guys had been thinking.

  “Of course you must send the picture to Merve. Now, this instant! It means she’ll be able to talk to the two guys from the ferry tomorrow, hopefully.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Özen, smiling broadly with his eyes lowered so
as not to expose his vulnerability. Merve and Özen.

  I think I’ll keep mum about this, Claesson decided to himself. Love is a fragile thing.

  CHAPTER 50

  IT WAS MONDAY MORNING. Claesson hung up his coat in his office and turned on his computer, which would take a while to run all its security software. While he was waiting, his eyes landed on the pile of papers that lay in front of him, the product of Özen’s industry. He flipped through them. Most of what they’d done in Istanbul had been recorded, and partly translated into Swedish, at least the Turkish bits. He looked more closely at the text. It was well written.

  Out in the corridor, he bumped into a very hollow-eyed Mustafa Özen.

  “Before I forget, you write good reports,” said Claesson.

  Özen smiled shyly.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you send the photo off to Merve?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good.”

  They took the stairs down to the morning briefing. Fifteen people or so were gathered in the basement room.

  “Hello! Welcome home! How were the Turks?”

  “Like us, pretty much,” Claesson answered Janne Lundin, and felt the immediate presence of Fuat Karaoğlu and Merve. “It’s always inspiring to see something new.”

  The large TV screens were on. The different police districts in the Kalmar-Oskarshamn area were reporting on what had happened over the past 24 hours. The reports were efficient, and everyone sat watching and listening in silence.

  Then it was Oskarshamn’s turn. Peter Berg reported on a break-in at a kiosk. For the umpteenth time in a row, everyone thought, it being a popular target for thieves. It was a mystery how the owner could stand it. Then came a report on a missing woman from Bråbo, and another on a confiscated rug.

  They looked at each other in the long, narrow room. A rug! Why was Berg reporting on such a trifle as this?

  “And an ugly old bugger it is, too,” said Conny Larsson, not on screen though, but afterwards, fully aware of the identity of the rug’s rightful owner. “Andreas Gustavsson went and stole it believin’ it was worth somethin’.”