First Patrol on the Scene
I—Officer Larsen—and Officer Hemström respond to the Lund home after the man who lives there fails to report to work.
The large brick house is set back from the road, and a Tesla is parked in the driveway. I enter the yard by way of an iron gate and ring the doorbell while Officer Hemström runs the license plate.
I peer through the windowpane in the door. Some coats and jackets are hanging in the foyer. There are several pairs of shoes on a low rack. I ring the doorbell several times, but there is no response.
Hemström and I walk around the house together. We get the impression that no one is home. All the lights are off and every blind is down, but I notice a gap at the bottom of one of the kitchen windows.
Officer Hemström helps me pull away a few tree branches so I can step into the flower bed, where I stretch up to peer through the window. When I shine my flashlight inside, I see a tidy kitchen. There are two drinking glasses on the counter, and a black cardigan is draped over the back of one chair.
Only when I aim the beam of light at the floor do I discover a person lying next to the table in a semi-prone position. This person’s outline is all that is visible; their face is turned away from me. I bang on the windowpane in an attempt to draw their attention, but there is no response.
Officer Hemström calls it in on the radio, reporting that we have discovered an individual but are unable to establish contact, and we receive orders to enter the house to investigate further.
I break the windowpane in the front door, which allows me to reach in and turn the lock. I enter the house with Hemström close behind. We aim the beams of our flashlights around until I find a light switch on the wall.
We continue straight ahead, through the hall and into the kitchen, and as we go we call out, alerting any occupants that we are police officers. On the floor in front of us lies a motionless woman. While Officer Hemström provides light, I examine her and quickly determine that the woman is deceased.
We make a joint decision to search the rest of the house. Officer Hemström checks the living room while I open the doors of bathrooms and closets. Nothing significant is found.
We take the stairway in the hall to the second floor. I sweep the beam of my flashlight through the second floor and find three closed doors.
Officer Hemström investigates the bathroom while I approach the first bedroom. The door is a few centimeters ajar, and I nudge it open with my foot as I aim the flashlight into the room.
The blinds are down, and all lights are off. Against the wall is a bed with a headboard. On the bed is another dead body.
In service,
Ludvig Larsen
Karla
The house is enormous. When I stand on the little path that leads to the door, the roof blocks out the whole sky. The blinds are drawn, and two black birds stare down at me from one of the windowsills. The front door is guarded on either side by a bronze lion.
It’s hard to believe that only two people live here. But that’s what Lena at the cleaning company said. And I can’t imagine there’s any reason for her to lie. Even if her eyes did start shifting oddly when she described the clients in the mansion on Linnégatan. Steven and Regina Rytter.
Before I ring the doorbell, I double-check the address on my phone. I take a deep breath as the ding-dong echoes through the house. When a man opens the door, I have to clear my throat before I manage to stammer out a few incoherent words.
“That’s right,” he says with a smile. “I heard they would be sending someone new.”
Lena at the office was right. This man really does look like a movie star.
“I’m Karla,” I say.
It seems that my attempt to erase the worst of my Norrbotten accent from my voice doesn’t succeed.
“You’re from Norrland?” says the man. He looks to be somewhere between forty and fifty.
“Yup,” I reply, not without irony—I suck in the word on an inhalation, as we do up north.
He smiles anyway, and his handshake is warm and firm.
“Steven Rytter,” he says. “I’ll show you where we keep the cleaning supplies.”
I leave my shoes on the rack and follow him through a wide hall with mirrors on the wall and a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The furniture is rustic, older; the ceilings are high, and the railing of the massive staircase is covered in beautiful flourishes that must have been carved by hand.
“What a lovely home,” I say, regretting my words immediately. I’m here to work, nothing more.
But Steven Rytter doesn’t seem to notice my comment. He opens the door to another room. Brooms, vacuums, and mops line the walls, along with rows of detergents and sprays.
“If there’s anything you can’t find, or if anything runs out, just let me know and I’ll take care of it for next time. We’re still on for Mondays and Wednesdays, right?”
I nod. Mondays and Wednesdays. Four hours each visit. Which sounded pretty darn excessive when Lena told me—like, who needs a maid twice a week? But now I realize that a house this size will take time to clean.
“Are you a university student?” Steven Rytter scrutinizes me, still with a smile on his face.
Maybe it’s silly, but suddenly my body is warm. Me, a student? It’s for real now. Guess you can tell just by looking at me.
“I’m going to study law,” I say with such pride that I almost sound smug. “This is just a side job.”
Even though I’m taking out full loans from the state, the course materials are ridiculously expensive, and apparently in recent years the Lund housing market has gone seriously bonkers. People are paying ten thousand kronor a month for a studio. It’s beyond lucky that I found a part-time job.
“What an exciting subject,” Steven Rytter says. “I actually considered the law too, but I decided on medicine in the end.”
“You’re a doctor?”
Steven Rytter nods and smiles. He does actually look like he was plucked straight out of Grey’s Anatomy.
“Feel free to help yourself,” he says, leaving me alone in the cleaning closet.
For a minute or two I’m at a loss as I face all the cleaning supplies. I pick up and examine some of the implements; there are a few I don’t even know how to use, or what they’re for. But how hard can it be? I’ve been cleaning our apartment back home since I was four.
When I haul a bucket of brushes and sponges into the hall, Steven Rytter is kneeling by the front door with a shoehorn in hand.
“Do you want me to mop all the floors?” I ask.
Some of the rooms have shiny hardwood floors that I suspect might be sensitive to moisture.
“You can do whatever you like,” says Steven Rytter, cramming his feet into his shoes. “Mop if you think it needs it.”
The other clients I’ve cleaned for this week have been awfully picky about exactly what I should do, down to the tiniest detail; some talked about their houses and apartments as though they were their babies, but Steven Rytter seems more or less indifferent. Which is nice for me, of course. Eight hours a week here will mean lots of easy money.
Steven Rytter gets up and smooths out his shirt. We make eye contact for a second, but he immediately looks away and clears his throat.
“Did the cleaning service mention anything about my wife?”
I remember Lena’s hesitant face. His wife’s name is Regina, but that’s all I remember.
“No, why?”
He heads for the staircase and gestures at me to follow him.
“She’s in bed, up there.”
That sounds odd.
I stop on the first step.
Steven Rytter turns around with his hand on the railing. His movie-star looks aren’t quite as obvious now. His head is drooping, and he has shrunken into himself a little.
“My wife is sick,” he says.
Jennica
The patio at Stortorget is swarming with the cheerful Friday happy hour crowd. What was I thinking? The chances of running into a familiar face here are basically 100 percent.
As I walk the last few steps to the restaurant, I try to spot him among the umbrellas surrounding the outdoor bar. Here’s something I’ve learned after five years on Tinder: the question isn’t if he’ll look different from his pictures, but how different he’ll be.
I’m standing on the sidewalk outside the entrance, digging through my purse for my lip gloss, when a hand lands on my arm.
“Jennica? Hi!”
He was unusually honest with his pictures.
Most forty-seven-year-olds are, like, half-bald with a doughy belly.
I’m pleasantly surprised.
“Is it okay if we sit inside? I thought that would be more relaxing.”
His smile is so confident and hard to resist.
Together we walk through the stuffy summer air of the restaurant to a table in the back, where he pulls out my chair like a real gentleman. A marked difference from the twenty-eight-year-old IT guy I was out with last weekend.
“Forgive me for saying this, but I’m so relieved.” He hangs his jacket over the back of his chair and sits down across from me. “You never know, with Tinder. So much Photoshop and who even knows what.”
“It’s so nice to hear you say so. I was thinking the same thing.”
He laughs.
“Can we make a deal?” he says, placing his large, hairy hand beside the silverware on the table. “If you feel like I’m a total dud, just get up and go to the bathroom after the appetizer. I promise never to get in touch again, or even be the least bit disappointed. Or—well, of course I would be terribly disappointed, but I promise to keep it to myself.”
“Ditto,” I say. “After the appetizer, in the middle of the meal, whenever you like. Just get up and go. No hard feelings, I promise.” A quick wink.
His hand remains on the table.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I never introduced myself. Steven.”
“Jennica.” I nod and let out a ditzy sort of giggle. “I thought you would have one of those sexy English accents.”
“I certainly can have one,” Steven says in a thick accent. “My mother is from Scotland. Dad wanted to call me Stefan, but she had a terrible time pronouncing it, so Steven it was.”
What luck.
“My parents made a similar deal. Dad wanted me to be named Jenny, but Mom voted for Annica.”
“Fantastic,” Steven says. “We’re both the result of compromise. Isn’t it great when people get along?”
I force myself to zip my lips.
I have a whole lecture on this very topic on deck in the back of my mind. About how my mother, like so many other women, always seemed to draw the short straw when it came to compromise.
I smile and hope a better opportunity will arise for that lecture.
“Well, we’ve got one thing in common, at least. It could be worse.”
Steven laughs. He browses the menu and quickly decides to order the fish.
“I’m thinking of getting the flank steak,” I say.
Steven shakes his head. “That’s a tough one. Meat should be thick and tender. Most kitchens can handle a sirloin or a tenderloin. I wouldn’t take the chance on a flank steak at this place.”
I look at him, astonished.
“It’s up to you, of course,” he continues. “But don’t sit here whining later if you have to saw your way through a tough piece of meat. I warned you,” he says with a smile.
I like this audacious character. He says what he thinks. Besides, he seems to know what he’s talking about.
“I’ll try the fish too,” I say.
Steven smiles, satisfied.
Copyright © 2021 by M. T. Edvardsson.
English language translation copyright © 2023 by Rachel Willson-Broyles
