Night Rounds

Chapter 5

IRENE HEARD THE doorbell echo through the apartment, but no one came to the door. She hadn’t expected that anyone would. She bent down and looked through the mail slot. Her eyes met another pair of eyes, turquoise blue and wide open. She heard a sharp intake of breath and jumped back as the lid of the mail slot banged shut.

Meeeow … hiss, came from behind the closed door.

Irene giggled quietly. She looked around to make sure that no one on the floor had witnessed her smooth move. The public wouldn’t understand a police officer having a heart attack during a confrontation with a Siamese cat.

But the cat gave her an idea. There were two more doors on the ground floor of the apartment building. No one answered when she rang the bell on the door to the right. Undeterred, Irene rang the bell to the door on the left. The nameplate on it said R. BERG. Irene could hear a rustling sound on the other side before the brittle voice of an old woman called, “Who is it?”

Irene did her best to sound friendly. “I’m Inspector Irene Huss from the police.” She held her ID to the door’s peephole. Apparently the elderly lady inside was convinced, because Irene heard the rattling sound of a safety chain being pulled back and then the thud of a dead bolt. The door opened an inch. Irene leaned forward and tried to appear harmless.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Berg—”

“Miss. Miss Berg.”

“Excuse me. Miss Berg. We’ve received a call at the station about a cat howling incessantly in the apartment next door.”

The door opened, and Irene could get a better view of the apartment’s inhabitant. There wasn’t much to see. The elderly lady was less than five feet tall. Her scanty white hair was pulled together at the back into what looked like a rat’s tail. She was bent and so thin that she seemed almost transparent. Her frail hand with its blue veins quivered on the door handle, a movement that traveled through her entire body.

“It wasn’t me that called. But I’ve certainly heard that cat. It’s been going on since early this morning. Doesn’t bother me, though. I hardly ever sleep these days.”

The elderly woman’s voice was surprisingly steady and clear, but she seemed barely able to stand. Irene felt she had to hurry her questions. “What about its owner? Have you seen or heard her?”

“No. Miss Svensson is a nurse at Löwander Hospital, and I never know what her hours are,” the old lady said.

“I see. When was she home last?”

The wrinkles on the small face puckered in thought. Then she smiled, such a large smile that her dentures slipped.

“Last night.” Miss Berg paused for a minute to suck her teeth back into place. “She was home late last night. She always plays her music too loud. I’ve argued with them. The young man has just moved out, but I used to argue with him, too. We have a rule. After ten they’re supposed to turn down the music. They usually keep to the agreement.”

“Did Linda do that last night?”

“Yes, two minutes past ten, she turned the music down. Then she turned it off and left.”

“When was that?”

“About eleven-thirty.”

Irene felt worry harden in her chest, but she worked to hide it so she wouldn’t upset the old woman. “Does Linda usually go out so late?”

“Sometimes she goes out with Belker.”

“Who’s Belker?”

“The cat.”

Of course the cat.

“She takes him out in a little harness,” Miss Berg explained.

“Did she return very late last night?”

“Come to think of it, I didn’t hear her come home at all. The first thing she does when she comes through the door is to turn on the music, no matter what time it is. Sometimes the TV, too. At the same time.” Miss Berg snorted to emphasize her opinion about this noise pollution.

Irene thought about her own fourteen-year-old twin girls. She said nothing at all.

The old woman continued. “I haven’t heard any more music or anything else coming from there since she went out last night. And I didn’t hear her arrive home. I usually do.”

Irene didn’t doubt that for a minute. She was certain that something was wrong. “So nothing at all from next door.”

“No. Just the cat meowing and meowing. He’s probably hungry. Poor thing.”

Irene tactfully explained the situation to the old woman. “It’s a little worrying that Linda has not come home. I’ll have a locksmith pay a visit. We need to get inside and see to poor … Belker.”

Miss Berg nodded with enthusiasm. “You do that. Belker is a wonderful cat. He’s one of a kind, like all Siamese.”

“I’ll phone right away for the locksmith,” Irene said pleasantly as she tapped in the numbers for the emergency dispatcher.

“Dispatch. Detective Rolandsson.”

“Hi, Inspector Irene Huss here. We’ve gotten a complaint from a neighbor that a cat has been howling all day. The owner hasn’t been seen since late last night, and she also has not shown up at work today. I need to get in to check on her. Can you send a locksmith?”

“All right. Who is making the complaint?”

Irene took her phone away from her ear and whispered to Miss Berg.

“What’s your first name?”

“Ruth,” Miss Berg said hesitantly.

“Ruth Berg,” Irene spoke into the phone. She gave Rolandsson the address and clicked off.

“But I didn’t make a complaint!” Ruth Berg looked somewhat resentful.

“I know. It’s just procedure. Now everything will go faster. For Belker’s sake,” Irene added.

The old woman’s face softened at the mention of the cat’s name. “I see. Something must have happened, but don’t ask me to go on any witness stand.”

Irene reassured her that that would be highly unlikely. She jerked her thumb toward the door of Linda Svensson’s other neighbor. “Who lives there?”

“Nobody,” Ruth Berg sniffed. “Not right now. An old man lived there until he couldn’t take care of himself any longer. Finally, right after Christmas, they had to put him in a nursing home. He got filthy. Did his business anywhere he pleased, not in a toilet like normal people. Now they’ll have to renovate the whole place before they can rent it out again.”

Irene was reluctant to ask her next question. “Miss Berg, may I have your age, please?”

At first it seemed as if Ruth Berg did not intend to answer. Eventually, though, she shrugged and sighed. “Ninety-one next month. But no one’s coming here to celebrate it. I live all alone. Everyone else has passed on. Sometimes I believe that our Lord has forgotten me.” Miss Berg fell silent. Then she said, “I really can’t stand up and answer questions any longer. If you need anything else, please ring the bell again.”

Miss Berg closed her door. Irene could hear the rattling of the chain and then the thud of the bolt.

WHILE SHE WAITED for the locksmith, Irene called Löwander Hospital to check in with the superintendent. Linda Svensson still had not shown up at work. She also had not been admitted to any emergency room, Chief Inspector Andersson reassured Irene, mentioning that he’d placed those calls himself. The fact that Linda hadn’t been seen since last night worried him also.

“Please don’t tell me that another nurse has become a victim!” he said.

THE LOCKSMITH ARRIVED and easily unlocked the door, letting Irene inside. She carefully shut the door behind her so Belker couldn’t get out, then switched on the ceiling lamp in the small entry hall. The cat was nowhere to be seen. He’d obviously gone into hiding. On the right there was a tiny bathroom, directly ahead a small kitchen, and to the left of the kitchen was the entrance to a large living room with a sleeping alcove. All the rooms were tidy. The furniture was mostly from IKEA, and splashy movie and theater posters had been framed and hung on the walls. The whole impression was functional, youthful, and pleasant.

There was no trace of Linda. Irene called the chief inspector again to let him know. His only response was a deep sigh.

Irene found the litter box next to the shower stall, and it reeked. She had no idea how to take care of a cat, since she’d owned only dogs, but she expected that the sand in the box had to be changed and the cat was certain to need some food.

Resolutely, Irene searched the kitchen cabinets until she found cans of cat food. She washed the two ceramic bowls she saw on the floor and filled one with water and the other with the food. Now only the guest of honor had to be found.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Food! Belker! Come and get your food!” she called.

Her dog would have responded immediately. Before she’d finished the final syllable, Sammie would be standing right next to his bowl. The area rugs in the hallway would be scrunched together like the bellows of an accordion after his sprint to the kitchen.

Apparently cats didn’t work like dogs. Or perhaps Siamese cats didn’t let themselves be commanded. Belker did not show up. Irene decided to search the apartment, both for Belker and for any clues to Linda’s disappearance.

She searched the kitchen thoroughly. Either Linda Svensson was anorexic or she never ate at home. All Irene found was one almost-finished bag of muesli, one unopened pack of yogurt, and one tube of Kalles caviar. There were spices, half a pound of coffee, and a few tea bags on the shelf above the stove. The freezer held one opened package of fish sticks. On the other hand, she found four more cans of cat food. At least Belker’s needs were seen to, even though he didn’t seem to have the sense to come when he was served.

The tiny bathroom also held no secrets. Neither were there clues in the hall closet. In the large living room, Irene searched through the bookshelf and then the neat pine desk by the window. She sat down on the swivel chair in front of the desk and systematically went through the contents of its one drawer.

The layout of the desk drawer showed that Linda was highly organized. The tidy piles of bills, postcards, letters, and bank forms had nothing in common with Irene’s own administrative system, which was “deal with the one on top first.” At the bottom of the drawer, Irene found a new passport in the name of Linda Sophia Svensson.

None of the papers gave any clues to Linda’s whereabouts. Suddenly Irene realized why. There were no address books or telephone lists—not even a pocket calendar. She searched the room again and found none of these things. Nor were there any keys, nor a wallet. Nor Belker.

Irene’s toes struck something. When she bent down to look under the desk, she saw an old yellow caller ID box with deep claw marks in the plastic. A gray cord had been disconnected from the telephone. Obviously the caller ID box had become a plaything for a bored Belker. Irene reconnected the ID box to the phone, but it was obvious that the device was completely dead, probably broken when it fell.

Nothing else to see here. Probably time to quit. Irene turned off the light in the room and went into the hallway. As she reached up to turn off that light, she wondered where Belker had gone to hide. A second later a tiger bolt flew from the hat rack onto her head. Belker hissed with fury, and with all the strength he possessed, the Siamese cat dug his claws right in under her chin. It hurt like hell. Irene instinctively grabbed his front leg, but then a burning pain shot through her right ear as Belker buried his teeth in it.

“OH, MY DEAR. This is really not a pretty sight.”

Nurse Ellen shook her head sympathetically as she continued to clean the wound in Irene’s ear. Irene’s right arm was sore after a tetanus shot, but she hardly noticed that compared to the pain in her ear and under her chin.

Dr. Löwander walked into the room and put on his professional cheerfulness. “This will heal without a scar. You’ll need some antibiotics, but it’s too late to fill the prescription at a pharmacy. We’ll start you out with a few pills from our medicine cabinet.”

He sank down at the desk and pulled out a prescription pad from the desk drawer. Before he began to write, he rubbed his eyes and smiled sleepily at Irene.

“I’ve been up thirty-six hours, and I’m still in shock over what happened to Marianne. And now Linda can’t be found.… I’m tired to death.”

Irene noticed that Dr. Löwander was in fact a very attractive man, despite the weariness etched into deep lines around his eyes and mouth, and despite the few silver streaks in the hair by his temples and forehead. As always, unfair, Irene thought. Women go gray, men become distinguished. She made a mental note to call her hairdresser for a color and cut.

Dr. Löwander wrote some scrawls on the prescription pad and ripped off the page. With that same sleepy smile, he handed the prescription to Irene. His eyes were bloodshot from fatigue, but their green still shimmered.

Impulsively, Irene said, “Let me give you a lift home. I’ve got to get home, too, and if I stayed here, I wouldn’t be a very good advertisement for Löwander Hospital.” She gestured at her head, covered with bandages. Her protruding right ear was especially comical, packed into a compress carefully taped in place.

“Don’t worry. It will heal just fine. And yes, I’d be glad to have a ride home,” he replied.

Superintendent Andersson rolled into the door just as Sverker Löwander was rising to leave.

“Time to go home?” he asked.

Löwander nodded in response. Before he walked out the door, he turned back to Irene and said, “Could you wait just a minute? I need to change.”

The chief inspector raised an eyebrow meaningfully once Löwander had left. “So? You’re going out with the doctor?”

Why did she find herself blushing? Irene sat up straight and hoped some of the redness in her face was covered by the bandages. “I thought I could chat with him on the drive home. He’s the head doctor here, after all, and he must know a lot about his staff.”

Andersson agreed. “I interviewed him this afternoon. He says he didn’t know Marianne Svärd very well. Partly because she worked the night shift, partly because she wasn’t the chatty type. Pleasant and extremely professional about her work. And that’s all he’d say about her. On the other hand, he seemed very worried about Linda Svensson. Understandable, after the murder. He told me that Linda was a happy person and good at her job. Of course, he knows her better since she works the day shift. But to be honest with you, something tells me that Marianne’s murder and Linda’s disappearance are not related. The murder happened at the hospital. Linda was off duty then and now has disappeared from her home. We need to find the boyfriend. I called Birgitta Moberg and told her to flush him out.”

Andersson sank onto the desk chair, which groaned under his weight. He stared at Nurse Ellen’s back as she sorted pills into small red plastic holders.

“Excuse me,” Irene said politely.

Nurse Ellen turned and nodded.

“I’ve seen different nurses at this hospital all day, and I was struck by one thing. The nurses here are either very young or over fifty. Where are all the thirty- and forty-year-old ones?”

Nurse Ellen sighed deeply. “They were all laid off in the late eighties. The hospital closed an entire ward. Only we were left, but we were younger then.”

“How did Marianne Svärd, Linda Svensson, and Anna-Karin in ICU get their jobs?” Irene wondered.

“Three old nurses retired within six months of one another, so Marianne, Linda, and Anna-Karin were hired around the same time.”

“Are there more nurses retiring soon?”

“This year there will be three: Siv Persson, Greta at reception, and Margot Bergman in ICU.”

“I’ve already talked to both Margot Bergman and Greta—let me see … what was her last name?”

“Norén,” Ellen informed her.

“Right! Thanks. Neither of them seemed to know Marianne and Linda all that well. Nurse Margot thought that Marianne was a hardworking, pleasant person. And that was it.”

Ellen Karlsson gave Irene a long look before she said, “That seems reasonable. They’re pretty different in age. They wouldn’t be meeting each other on their off hours. Just at work.”

So Anna-Karin was the only other person who’d socialized with Marianne and Linda. Irene still felt that the murder and the disappearance were connected, even though her boss had a different opinion. She decided that she needed to keep a good eye on Anna-Karin. Although the young woman appeared flighty, maybe she knew more than she realized about the events of the last twenty-four hours. Or maybe there wasn’t a logical connection? So far there was no evidence that Linda Svensson had even been the victim of a crime, and Irene hoped with all her heart that she would turn up okay.

IRENE HAD TO give up her hopes of getting more information from Sverker Löwander during the drive home. First of all, he’d fallen asleep the instant he reclined the seat back. Second, he only lived two kilometers from the hospital, on Drakenbergsgatan.

As Irene swung into the driveway in front of Löwander’s home, she almost collided with a dark BMW backing out of the garage. It was one of the larger, newer models. Both drivers slammed on the brakes. The BMW’s door flew open, and a woman jumped out before the car had come to a complete stop. In three strides she’d reached Irene’s car.

“What the hell are you doing, pulling in to my driveway like that!” she yelled.

Sverker Löwander had been jarred awake. As the woman bent over to get a good look at Irene, who was already rolling down her window, his tired voice stopped them both.

“This is Inspector Huss. She was kind enough to drive me home after this hell of a day. I didn’t notice you offering to pick me up.”

Irene was startled at how quickly the woman’s face softened from twisted with rage to great beauty. It happened so fast that Irene wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.

This woman seemed slightly shorter than Irene. She had thick blond hair, cut slightly above her shoulders. In the light from the garage, Irene could see that she was deeply tanned. Since it was just the middle of February, Irene wondered if she had a private tanning bed.

“You know I can never pick you up on a Tuesday. My job ends at five, and my aerobics class starts at six-thirty. Why didn’t you just drive the Mazda home?”

Her voice was now pleasant but still had a slightly hard, metallic undertone. Irene wondered if she was hearing things. Perhaps she was just projecting her feelings onto a younger and more beautiful woman.

Löwander sighed. “I walked to work yesterday morning.” He heaved his weary body out of the car and walked through the open garage door. Irene heard a door open and close. She got out of her Volvo and reached out to shake hands.

“My name is Inspector Irene Huss.”

The woman’s hand was cool and her handshake surprisingly strong. “Carina Löwander.”

“Did you hear about what happened at the hospital?”

“Yes, Sverker called me from work this morning. But there was no time to talk.”

Carina Löwander looked at her wristwatch, cupped glass with a metallic blue face. She was making an obvious point. “Excuse me, but my class begins in fifteen minutes. And I’m the trainer,” she said with a smile.

She turned in her high heels and adjusted her fur coat before sliding gracefully into the BMW. The only thing Irene could do was get into her own car. She knew she didn’t have the same air, not with her scuffed boots, worn leather coat, and rusty Volvo. And a head covered in bandages. No competition with fur coats and tanned skin.

IRENE’S FAMILY HAD plenty of comments to make when she got home.

“What did you do to yourself?” her daughter Katarina exclaimed.

“Just because you were at a hospital, that doesn’t mean you had to go under the knife,” said Krister.

One of Krister’s jokes! Irene was in no mood, and she answered shortly, “Never get a cat.”

Their dog, Sammie, rushed up and reassured Irene of his undying devotion. As she reached down to pet his soft, wheat-colored fur, he sniffed at the bandages on her face. Dinner was late this evening, since both Irene and Krister had been working, Katarina had jujitsu after school, and Jenny had been at guitar lessons until six-thirty. It felt cozy having everyone together for once, a rarity. Irene twirled a strand of spaghetti on her fork. She’d had to choose her words carefully, explaining the day’s events to her family. She noticed that Jenny hadn’t taken any of the meat sauce for the spaghetti. Since the serving dish was next to Irene’s elbow, she passed the sauce to Jenny. Her daughter stared at the brownish red sauce with its delicious tomato aroma and shook her head.

“I’ve given up meat,” she said.

“You’re giving up meat? Why?” Irene asked.

“I am not going to eat dead animals. They have the same right to life as we do. Farming animals is pure and simple torture.”

“And so that’s why you haven’t been drinking milk lately?”

“That’s right.”

“But milk is not meat.”

“A cow’s milk is for her calf, not for humans.”

Krister’s voice shook as he exclaimed, “What kind of idiocy is this? Have you turned into one of those crazy vegetarians?”

Jenny looked him straight in the eye. “Yes.”

Silence fell over the dinner table. Katarina broke it by complaining, “She says I shouldn’t wear my new boots.”

“They’re leather! There are boots made with fabric that are warmer and better.”

“And this morning she said I shouldn’t put honey in my tea.”

“No, you shouldn’t. The honey belongs to the bees.”

The two girls stared at each other furiously. Krister’s face had darkened. He had trained as a chef and was a master of a number of foreign cuisines. In a deceptively soft voice, he asked, “So what do you intend to eat?”

“There’s lots of good food that doesn’t come from murdered and oppressed animals. Potatoes, carrots, fruit and berries, nuts and peas—and there’s even fat made from vegetables.”

Jenny spoke by rote, as if she’d memorized a list of acceptable foods. She probably had. Where did all this come from?

The family dinner had taken an alarming turn. Krister was a peaceful and pleasant person, but his great passion in life, both professionally and personally, was food. His love showed in his growing girth. Could this be considered an occupational hazard? Irene thought tenderly, He’ll be fifty in a few years. He should probably start watching his weight. She herself hated cooking and was glad to leave it all to him.

Krister’s voice was tough and short as he said, “In that case you can start cooking your own rabbit food. The rest of us will continue to eat as we always have.”

Silence settled over the dinner table once again.