Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
Why not? they thought. Swedish and American photographers would make pilgrimages to India simply to take pictures of Western models in the right kind of sunlight.
They borrowed money and hired carpenters. Everything was going according to plan. Then came the recession.
The sensitive advertising industry took a nosedive as company after company reduced their marketing budgets. They had been forced to put on the emergency brake. In practice this meant sending home carpenters and paying back money they had already borrowed but not yet managed to spend.
And there they stood now. Of course everything had not gone to hell. It was not time to call Christie’s—yet. But Malin knew that Henrik lay awake at night. He was calculating interest rates, calculating dream scenarios and horror scenarios, calculating where the threshold of pain was. She was trying to avoid thinking about money herself.
They managed the loans thanks to the fact that Henrik took jobs on the mainland and abroad. The exact opposite of what they had imagined. Malin’s food blogging also contributed a bit. Their hope was to be able to work to get the money to finish building the guest rooms one at a time.
A couple hundred thousand left by Henrik’s mother would truly make a big difference, but Malin had more or less given up hope of ever seeing that money. They did not have the means to lose a lawsuit. Then they would definitely have to sell the house. And it seemed as if Henrik’s sisters would rather die than give up any of the inheritance.
She took the kettle from the stove and poured the boiling water into the teapot.
“There’s a Danish photographer who maybe wants to come here for a week,” said Henrik, pointing at the cell phone.
Malin nodded, not daring to hope too much.
“Fashion?”
“No, beer.”
“It might as well be porn, just so we get a little business soon.”
“Okay…”
“That was a joke.”
Malin poured tea, splashed in a little milk, and went over to Henrik with the mugs. She set them down on the table and pulled out the chair.
The pain that shot up from her foot made her yell out loud.
“What is it?” said Henrik, getting up.
His eyes worriedly sought hers.
She was standing on one leg and writhing in pain, her cheeks damp with tears.
“Malin, what is it?”
“Don’t know,” she whimpered. “My foot, something…”
She sat down slowly on the chair as Henrik came around the end of the table.
“You’re bleeding.”
She looked down. Only now did she see big, dark red drops on the gray-painted pine floor. She held up the aching foot, her leg straight out from the seat. The pain was sharp and diabolical. It hurt so much that she was scared.
Henrik crouched down in front of her and inspected her extended foot.
“It looks like a piece of glass,” he said, looking more closely. “Yes, it is. Right in the heel.”
The thought of a glass shard that had cut deeply into her foot made her moan again.
“How does it look? Is it big?”
Henrik opened his mouth.
“Or actually, I don’t want to know,” she stopped him.
He looked at her foot, then looked up at her with a deep furrow between his eyes.
“I have to pull it out.”
She instinctively pulled back her foot.
“Malin,” he said, as if to a child, and put his left hand around her ankle.
“Yes, I know,” she said with a sigh. “But be careful.”
“You have to hold still.”
She looked away and tried to relax, but it was hard. She tensed up even more when she sensed Henrik’s thumb and index finger approaching her heel. The worst was when he took hold of the piece of glass and it twisted in the wound. Presumably only just barely, but it felt as if he were driving a spear through her leg all the way up to her hip. Then a brief but lighter pain and then it was over.
Malin gasped a couple of times, feeling both liberated and fragile.
Henrik held up the piece of glass. It was perhaps two inches long and slightly bent; it seemed to come from a wineglass.
“I’ll get bandages,” he said, setting the bloody piece of glass aside on the table.
He walked quickly toward the bathroom and came back with the green plastic first aid kit. He washed off the heel and put two bandages across the wound, according to Malin’s instructions.
“It’s really big. Maybe you should go to the health center tomorrow,” he said when he was done and picking up the debris.
“Tomorrow it will be too late. If it needs stitches it has to be done tonight.”
Henrik looked at her with an expression that she assumed meant: If you want I can go over and ask Bengt and Ann-Katrin to watch the kids, then I’ll drive you to Visby.
“I don’t think they would stitch it anyway,” she said.
Henrik did not say anything, but looked noticeably relieved. Malin carefully set her foot on the floor.
“I hate those fucking tenants. I’m going to be handicapped for days.”
Henrik was about to say something when he was interrupted by Ellen’s call from upstairs.
“Mommy. Mommy, come.”
“What is it, Ellen?”
“Mommy, come, there’s poop here.”
Malin and Henrik looked at each other.
“What are you saying?” Malin called. “What do you mean, poop?”
“There’s poop here. In with the toys. Come.”
Henrik tossed aside the debris he had in his hands and went up. Malin followed his heavy steps across the floor and thought that there could be more pieces of glass. They would have to vacuum the kitchen. She heard their murmuring voices up there, then Henrik’s sudden outburst.
“But what the hell, this is disgusting! What is this?”
Malin stared down into the big woven toy basket, holding Ellen back with her left hand.
“Could it be an animal?” said Henrik. “A cat that got in?”
“It doesn’t look like cat shit,” said Malin.
She felt a vague nausea sneaking up, more or less like the presentiment of stomach flu. A big black turd had been hidden under the children’s toys. It was so disgusting she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“A dog, maybe?” said Henrik.
“I think that some sick bastard has crapped in the children’s toy basket,” she said in English, dragging Ellen another few feet away from the basket.
“What is it, Mommy? What did you say?”
She was not sure herself why she spoke English. And now it had only made Ellen even more curious.
“Knock it off, it must have been some animal that got in.”
“The only animal I know that sneaks into houses and poops in boxes are cats and this is not cat poop. Besides, cats don’t usually place a layer of toys on top when they’ve done.”
“But couldn’t one of the tenants have done this?”
She looked at Henrik. What did he mean?
“Maybe they didn’t notice anything,” he clarified, “and then they were going to clean—”
“It must have smelled,” she interrupted.
Henrik pondered this briefly, then he shrugged his shoulders and picked up the basket.
“I’ll take this down to the laundry room and try to sanitize it somehow.”
“All the toys have to be washed, too.”
“Yes, I get that,” he hissed, carrying away the toy basket.
“I didn’t mean it as a criticism,” Malin called after him.
She sighed. Good Lord. There was no reason to argue about this.
“Come,” she said to Ellen, limping away with her to the bathroom.
When Ellen had washed her hands, Malin washed Ellen’s face and took off her clothes. She got Ellen into her bathrobe and followed her back to the children’s room, where she set her down on the edge of the bed.
“Sit here while I get some bags. Don’t touch anything. We have to wash everything.”
“But the rabbit,” Ellen protested.
“It has to be washed, too. Don’t touch anything, do you understand? Sit here quietly until I come back.”
Ellen nodded.
* * *
On her way downstairs, more or less hopping on one leg, it suddenly felt wrong to leave Ellen up there. The feeling was growing stronger with every step. It was as if something strange had been there. Sure, there really had been, too, but something malevolently strange, something that left invisible traces besides the highly tangible ones in the toy basket. Perhaps she ought to have brought Ellen with her downstairs? But then Axel would have been all alone up there.
What if there was someone in the house? The thought came over her without warning, made her breathe more rapidly. She tried to force it back. Why would there be someone in the house?
Troubling thoughts. The kind of thoughts she did not usually have. Now she could not go to bed without Henrik searching through the whole house first. Malin opened the bottom kitchen drawer and quickly pulled out as many plastic bags as she could. She would have preferred to throw away all the toys that had been in any kind of contact with the poop, but that wouldn’t do, of course.
“I can do that,” Henrik called from the bathroom. “Rest your foot.”
“It’s no problem,” she called back. “It’s fine.”
She went back up. Going up was actually easier than going down. She started packing up all the things Ellen had managed to pull out and realized that she had brought way too many bags. Three was enough. Two to pack in and one to pull over her hand to avoid touching the mess. She brought Ellen with her down to the kitchen. Happened to think that she ought to have slippers on if there were more pieces of glass. She parked Ellen on a chair and limped up and got her white rabbit slippers. When she came into the laundry room with the bags, Henrik was standing at the sink scrubbing the toy container. He looked up quickly.
“Maybe they’ve rubbed their privates with the tea cups, too,” he said with a crooked smile.
“Do you have to be so disgusting? That was the last thing I needed.”
“But…”
She sank down on a chair in the kitchen and sat there stiff as a poker. She did not want to lean against the back of the chair, did not want to rest her arm on the table, and had to stop herself from reprimanding Ellen, who had set her cheek against the tabletop.
She would be forced to clean the whole house from floor to ceiling before she could feel comfortable again. She smothered a sigh and reached out a hand toward Ellen.
“Come, let’s get you to bed.”
Malin put clean sheets on for Ellen and got her into bed. She let the window stay open to the late summer night, thought of the fresh air sweeping in and cleaning up after all the strangers that had moved in their rooms, took hold of their things, talked, laughed, and swore there between their walls.
They needed the money and it seemed so simple to rent out the house. With hindsight she did not understand how they could have come up with such a completely insane idea.
She opened both windows in her and Henrik’s bedroom and took out clean sheets for the unmade bed. Before she started making the bed she shook the blankets through the window. She did her best to repress the feeling that the blankets would have to be burned along with the mattresses and the beds and it would be impossible for her to sleep tonight if they did not bring in a couple of the new beds from the guest wing.
She set aside the blankets and grabbed the pillows to air them, too. She stopped herself when she heard Henrik calling something from below.
“What? I didn’t hear you,” she called back.
She could hear for herself how irritated she sounded. She could not help it.
Instead of yelling even louder he came upstairs. He stopped in the doorway.
“Did you take down the pictures in the study?”
“What pictures?”
He looked at her, with the pillow in her arms.
“The pictures of us. In the study. Did you take them down before we left?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Malin thought for a few seconds. Not because she really needed to, but Henrik’s seriousness made her uncertain. She had removed a number of things before they left and locked them in the guest wing. But she had not taken down the family portraits that were hanging in the study.
She nodded.
The worried furrow was back between Henrik’s eyebrows.
“What is it?” she asked.
“They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, they’re not hanging on the wall, anyway.”
“Huh?”
She looked doubtfully at him.
“Someone must have taken them down. I don’t get any of this.”
Malin tossed the pillow onto the bed.
“What kind of fucking lunatics have been here? Shit and glass and … Who would do such a thing? Maybe we’re only going to discover more and more. They may have come up with just about anything.”
A cold, dark feeling passed through her. Stealing their family portraits. That was so personal, so aggressive.
Henrik sighed deeply.
“I’ll have to call the agency first thing in the morning. I’ll look through the cupboards down there, too. They may have just put them away if they had small children and forgot to put them back.”
“I doubt that…”
Malin stopped herself when she realized that she was talking much too loud. Almost shouting. She lowered her voice.
“I doubt that people who poop in other people’s toys are that considerate.”
Henrik made a face that meant that she was probably right. He went down anyway to look, and Malin continued making the bed.
When she was going to get the pillowcases a paper floated out of the linen closet. Malin bent over and picked it up. As soon as she turned it over she saw that it was one of the pictures from the study. It depicted the whole family together at the beach at Norsta Auren. An old friend of Henrik’s had taken it when he visited them last summer. But where their eyes had looked toward the camera before, there were now only four pairs of holes. The light from the lamp on the nightstand shone right through.
This time Malin did not care that she screamed.
The belt with the expandable baton clattered against the door as Fredrik Broman opened his locker in the basement of the police station. The changing room looked more or less like a changing room at a nice gym, with a tile floor and rows of birch veneer lockers. In Fredrik’s locker the national coat of arms glistened on the neatly hung-up uniform. In the compartment above the uniform was his peaked cap, and the compartment to the right was stuffed with jackets for various kinds of weather.