Black Lies, Red Blood: A Mystery

by Kjell Eriksson

  He looked at the tree, took a gulp of beer, then let his eyes wander around the garden.

  “It’s nice here,” he said.

  “That’s Mama’s doing. I don’t do a thing.”

  He knew that she was looking at him and he smiled, but avoided her eyes, pretending to be interested in the plants growing by the wall.

  “Bougainvillea,” he said, pointing to the one plant that he could identify.

  “What is it, Anders?”

  Now! Now or never. He gave her a quick glance.

  “I guess I’m a little tired,” he said, and was seized by the desperate thought of staying in this sweaty, dusty city, moving into the house, living with Vanessa and her mother.

  He looked at her. Their eyes met. What more can I want? He continued his train of thought, what more can a man, and a human being, demand from life? She loves me, this is an amazing country where I feel at home, and maybe I would be happy here.

  She looked searchingly at him.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  “I’m thinking about us,” he answered at last.

  It felt like he was about to start crying.

  “About us, about everything, about life.”

  She nodded with seriousness like a trembling in her face, as if now she was beginning to understand the extent of his ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm. That the simplest question in the world to answer for him was the cause of great anguish.

  “It feels a little strange,” he said. “With us and everything, I mean.”

  Make it easy for me, he thought, put me up against the wall, get furious, throw things at me, kick me out onto the street!

  But none of that happened. Instead she got up and disappeared into the house. He listened to the sound of her steps moving across the tiles and then up the stairs to the second floor. Then there was silence, only the come-on-along of the bird sounded like a stubborn admonition.

  Anders Brant wiped the sweat from his brow, reached for the bottle, but it was empty. He went to the kitchen to get another one. The refrigerator was well filled: there was salami, cheese, natural yogurt, which she knew he liked, vegetables, chicken sausage, a package with a kilo of “beef Paris,” and on the topmost shelf, in a transparent plastic container, a cake.

  He stared at the abundance, and realized that Vanessa and her mother had stocked up before his visit. With the refrigerator door still open he looked around the kitchen, and the impression of an approaching party was reinforced: plates of mango, graviola, pineapple, passion fruit, and bananas. A beautiful glass bowl was heaped with umbu, the fruit that was a specialty in the dry inland and which Vanessa liked so much. They had umbu the morning she stayed over at his pousada for the first time. She had stood looking out over the harbor area and the bay and ate, apparently relaxed, fruit after fruit. He was still lying in bed and observed her back and shoulders, her bottom and thighs. She had a way of resting more on one leg. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, an impression that was reinforced when she turned her head and gave him a smile. On her chin a few drops of fruit juice glistened.

  He took a bottle of Brahma, carefully shut the refrigerator door, and returned to the patio. Vanessa had not come back.

  He poured the beer, took a drink and waited, increasingly intoxicated. The bird couple flew back and forth to the tree. In their beaks they were transporting building materials. Occasionally their come-on-along, come-on-along sounded.

  Twenty minutes passed. He got up, wandered indecisively across the patio, but sat down again. Beer bottle number two was empty. He wanted more, even though he was really feeling the effects of the alcohol, and a minute or two later he was on his feet again, stumbled, went toward the kitchen, but changed his mind, stopped, and looked toward the stairway. Not a sound was heard in the house. Soon her mother would come home.

  Maybe he could make use of the drama from the day before, in order to retreat in a dignified way. He had not said a word about what he had witnessed. What if he now hinted that he was shocked and depressed, that he could not make any decisions in that state of mind? Then perhaps he could return to Salvador with a few vague words about meeting later, postpone the whole thing, prepare her for the inevitable.

  He thought about the most recent e-mail he had sent to Vanessa. In it he had written that they had to meet to discuss things, and let her know that he would go to Brazil, partly to visit her in Itaberaba, partly to collect material for a couple of articles.

  He thought she would understand, that his e-mail was a signal that perhaps it would be best to end the relationship. The deliberately vaguely worded message would give her a warning. He could never live with Vanessa. He realized that after he met Ann.

  It was obvious that Vanessa had drawn quite different conclusions. She had seen it as a confirmation of their relationship, that he was coming to discuss their common future, so she filled the refrigerator with delicacies and awaited his arrival.

  “Vanessa!” he called toward the upper floor, but got no response.

  He went up the stairs, looking around. To the right was a small room with a TV and a few armchairs, to the left a corridor with four doors, one of which was ajar; that was the bathroom. He listened outside the other rooms but heard nothing.

  She was sitting at a desk in her bedroom. Hanging on the wall was the poster they bought in Salvador. On the nightstand was a pile of books. The one on top was a Portuguese–Swedish dictionary.

  She was sitting very quietly, with her back to him. She must have heard him but did not turn around.

  “Vanessa, what is it?”

  She turned her head and observed him. He had expected a tear-filled face, but her expression was calm, resolute.

  “Are you still here?”

  He was shamelessly happy, but at the same time somewhat upset at her coolness.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  He wished that she would tell him to go away, but she only shook her head with a joyless smile at his childishness.

  “I have a hard time talking about…” he began, but got no further.

  “You have a hard time finding words? You, who are constantly orating?”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “Who’s forcing you?”

  He owed her a reply.

  “I wrote a letter.”

  “I don’t want your letters,” she said in a cutting tone.

  In the money belt was the letter, written the day before with great effort, before the murder of the homeless man. In the envelope there was money too. In the letter he explained that it was enough to pay for her education to become a web designer, something she had dreamed of doing for several years, that the money should be seen as a gift, nothing else.

  Now he could not bring himself to bring out the letter, and above all not the money. To her it would look like he was trying to buy himself free. The rich man with the money belt, who amused himself for a while, then tossed her a tip and went his way.

  “Okay, you don’t want anything,” he said, throwing out his arms in a gesture of resignation, but his face remained beet red, recalling her unfeigned delight at the gate and the well-stocked refrigerator.

  She looked at him with contempt and he left the room—the room where they should have made love, talked, and dreamed—and stumbled down the stairs and out of the house. On the paved path—he noticed how artfully the small black-and-white stones were set in a sensuous pattern—he almost ran into a woman. He noticed her terrified expression before he hurried on.

  “Excuse me,” he mumbled, and ran out through the gate, calmed down somewhat so as not to attract too much attention, but continued hurriedly down the street. He felt how the sweat immediately forced its way out of every pore in his body. The sweat of shame. The headache, reinforced by the beer, and now the unmerciful sun, sat like a clamp around his forehead.

  He walked toward the sun, toward the south, hoping that the bus station was in that direction, aware that he had
carried out the most reprehensible of all actions: treachery against a person who loved him and trusted him. He had never before hated himself the way he did at that moment.

  After a few blocks a feeling of relief came over him. It was done! He tapped his hand over the money belt. The letter he would tear to pieces.

  Suddenly he stopped. A feeling of ambivalence came over him. He looked around, peered along the street. Perhaps she was standing there, hoping that he would change his mind, that she might call him back, that her love had overcome the icy cold and the unconcealed contempt of a humiliated person she had shown.

  He spotted a few children at the ice cream seller’s canopied wagon, but no white dress, no Vanessa. He sensed that she and her mother were now united in a hateful, perhaps tearful, verbal thrashing of the faithless gringo.

  Tears welled up in his eyes, seized as he was by the tragic element, by his own sentimentality, but also struck by a dash of self-pity for the deeply unjust judgments that were now being pronounced and which would mark their recollection of him for all time. He had tried! He was not malicious. His intentions had been good. He thought he loved her, that they would be together.

  And how strong really was her own conviction? Hadn’t she also played a game, where hindsight had caught up with spontaneous passion? That alternative could not be overlooked. Her ice-cold contempt and immediate reaction—aloofness, no attempt to convince, no pleas, no tears—what was that a sign of?

  For a few seconds he stood there irresolutely, took a few steps, stopped again, turned around, looked, took a few steps, a ridiculous dance of self-betrayal, when deep inside he knew that there was no way back.

  Brant put up his hand and hailed a motorcycle taxi. He got a helmet from the driver and experienced a liberating sense of anonymity as he put it on. He straddled the motorcycle and was seized by the impulse to lean his head against the driver’s back, which was decorated with the name Kaka and the number eight.

  The conveyance took off over the cobbled streets. It moved quickly. Brant fumbled with his hand behind his back and took hold of a bracket.

  In ten minutes they were at the bus station and when he saw the ugly building just as a bus turned around the corner, he knew he had done the only right thing.

  On my way, he thought. Never again Itaberaba. Never again Vanessa. He paid the motorcycle driver and gave him twice what he asked for the ride. Now I can be generous, he thought bitterly.

  Although he was convinced he had made the right decision, anxiety pricked him like angry mosquitoes. Another bus came roaring, black smoke welled out of the tailpipe and the chassis rattled. He stood there in the sun. It was over 30 degrees Celsius in the shade.

  “Who am I really?” he mumbled.

  A car passed with music booming out of the open trunk. He saw women and men, playing children; he saw vendors of caju and ice cream, he heard shouts and laughter; he saw Brazil, and the ambivalence tormented his body, increasingly exhausted by the sun and the alcohol.

  “I am a piece of shit,” he continued his monologue.

  Angry and friendly honking marked buses that arrived and departed in a steady stream, stinking and rattling highway ships that careened around the building, and gear boxes clattered and scraped their bearings as they took off.

  He realized now that he was a scared gringo. A gringo who would never be anything else either. He was scared, scared of losing something, perhaps a comfortable existence, the freedom of the vagabond, perhaps also the myth of Anders Brant, world traveler, the world’s conscience, the fighter for good.

  The insight came suddenly, like an unforeseen smack to his solar plexus, and he was forced to support himself against the wall and take a deep breath.

  He leaned forward, supported his hands against his knees and vomited. A cascade of beer splattered against the stone pavement on a small square under the scorching sun of Bahia.

  Eighteen

  Finally, thought Urban Fredlund, the last building!

  Soon he would be lying on the couch, with a cup of tea on the coffee table and a double toasted ham, cheese, and pepper sauce sandwich, his specialty every Sunday morning for the past twelve years.

  Urban Fredlund did not have many pleasures in life, even less so since the woman he was living with left him ten years ago and Mirjam died a short time later. He was not sure which of the two losses he took the hardest. He had gotten Mirjam from an animal-lover and butcher, a Swede-Finn who spent his days butchering animals on a conveyor belt, and then went home to a menagerie.

  That cat was special, just like his Sunday morning specialty.

  In the C entry, the last one, he realized that this particular Sunday his specialty would have to wait.

  * * *

  5:45 A.M. A lifeless body in a stairwell in Tunabackar, female, middle-aged. Probably stone dead. Wounds on the face and back of the head. Found by a newspaper carrier. Ambulance and patrol car were on their way.

  That was what Sammy Nilsson found out when he got the call. The clock on the night stand showed 5:49. Angelika was turning restlessly by his side. Perhaps she had noticed the phone ringing, but Sammy Nilsson was sure that in a few minutes she would be sound asleep again.

  He would have to drag himself out of bed and take off. Along with Beatrice, he was on call over the weekend, which to this point had been surprisingly quiet. Now the calm was over.

  Of course he could not know who the woman was, but he could guess. He remembered the address from the board where they had written down Bosse Gränsberg’s acquaintances. But it could also be a neighbor lady or acquaintance of Ingegerd Melander or a visitor to someone else in the building. No point in speculating, he thought, while he took a quick shower. In fifteen minutes he would find out. The dead woman was not going anywhere.

  * * *

  A patrol officer was standing by the entry. He held his nose demonstratively while Sammy Nilsson parked next to an ambulance and got out of the car, but the gesture was not directed at Nilsson or detectives in general.

  “The paper carrier puked,” said the uniformed colleague, whose name Sammy recalled just at that moment.

  “Hey, Bruno!”

  His colleague nodded good-naturedly, noticeably pleased at being addressed by his first name.

  Sammy did not hurry, but instead looked around. The building was a typical 1950s construction, yellow plastered, with three entries, four floors, a gravel yard with a number of abused trees and bushes shaped into balls, overflowing bike racks, a misplaced trash room that had been added in later years, and a grilling area where a grouping of chairs had been set out.

  Could they have planned it to be any less inviting, wondered Sammy Nilsson.

  “She’s stone dead, and clearly has been awhile,” said Bruno.

  “Has the doctor arrived?”

  That was a pious hope at six o’clock on a Sunday morning.

  “We were first on the scene, besides them,” said Bruno, nodding toward the ambulance.

  “I guess I’ll go take a look,” Sammy said. “Are you the one who propped open the door?”

  “It smelled really awful.”

  “And the paper carrier?”

  “Sitting with an old lady on the second floor. Says ‘Melkersson’ on the door.”

  “Is he shook up?”

  “Yeah, you know,” Bruno replied.

  Sammy Nilsson knew.

  “And your partner?”

  “Ortman is guarding the lady.”

  Sammy turned his head and studied the directory on the wall in the stairwell. I. Melander lived on the top floor.

  At that Beatrice Andersson walked in. Nilsson was expecting his colleague.

  “Now maybe we can get a quick identification,” he said to Bruno. “Bea was here a few days ago.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “The homeless guy who was killed, you know, he had a connection here.”

  Beatrice nodded at Bruno. Sammy stepped to one side and let her in.

  “Is it her, do yo
u think?”

  They went up the stairs together. The stench of vomit became stronger and stronger.

  “The newspaper carrier,” Sammy explained.

  “What the hell had he been eating?”

  They stepped over the vomit on the third floor.

  “An apple and strawberry yogurt,” he said.

  “You’re too much!” Beatrice exclaimed.

  The woman was on the landing between the third and fourth floors. Someone had placed a kitchen towel over her head. Sammy noted the neatly embroidered monogram. Her right hand tightly clutched a trash bag. At her feet was a newspaper. Sammy read the headline on the front page: Henhouse Burned Down in Alunda.

  Ortman was standing halfway up the stairs. The pale, expressionless face testified that he had had more enjoyable assignments.

  “Okay?”

  Ortman nodded.

  Bea leaned over, lifted the blood-stained hand towel, put it back immediately, and straightened up.

  “It’s her.”

  “That sucks,” said Sammy.

  “Any curiosity seekers?”

  Ortman shook his head. Can he talk, Sammy wondered, and tested him with a question that reasonably required a somewhat more advanced reply.

  “The newspaper carrier? Where is he?”

  Ortman managed it by making a motion with his head and pointing one floor down.

  Sammy started to laugh.

  “This job really sucks!”

  Beatrice stared at him. Sammy fell silent, but burst into laughter again when he saw Ortman’s dismayed expression and bewilderment.

  “You can go ahead and switch with Bruno for a while, so you get a little fresh air,” Sammy said to Ortman. The patrol officer disappeared down the stairs.

  “And you! Do you know if Forensics is on their way?” Sammy called after him.

  “Think so,” was the answer.

  “He can talk,” said Sammy.

  “Shape up,” said Beatrice. “I’ll go up, you take the paper carrier,” she decided on the division of work. “We’ll save time that way.”

  Urban Fredlund had apparently recovered somewhat. In front of him on the table was an empty glass.