The No. 2 Global Detective (12 page)

The detective from Ynstead introduced himself afresh. He was startled by the abundance of the woman. While at College he had spent many hours in a small café drinking tea and feeling homesick, but he had always been aware of the thin black girl who had spent most of her time weeping in the bathroom and who would buttonhole people to talk about her father and a man called Sir Seretse Kharma, of whom no one had ever heard. Colander recalled that she had failed many of her exams, but had surprised them all with a paper that circumvented the Holmesian Dictum. Colander could remember that her theory was not that the elimination of the impossible led to the discovery of the solution, however impossible that might seem, but that if a man looked bad, he probably was. It had been startling in its simplicity and had scored a pass.

And now here she was, standing in Stockholm Airport, larger than life, smelling of cocoa butter and carrying an airline blanket under her arm. Already the customs officers were buzzing towards her.

Tom Hurst, meanwhile, looked thunderstruck. He kept looking between one and the other. He had not known that they were acquainted with one another.

Introductions were made. Lemmingsson kept a continuous smile on his face. Being from Ynstead, he had never seen a black lady before, let alone met one, let alone touched one. He smelled his hand after he had shaken hers. It smelled pleasant.

Inspector Colander checked his watch. They were running late. Leaving Lemmingsson to stare at Mma Ontoaste, he took the man from England aside.

‘We have to get back to Ynstead in time for the Ingmar Bergman Film Club meeting at four o'clock. In the meantime I have to check the headlines of the
Ynstead Exami
ner and the
Sjöbo Chronicle
.'

‘But we need to get to an IKEA before they close,' Tom Hurst said.

‘It will have to wait until tomorrow, I am afraid. This is an emergency.'

Tom Hurst nodded.

‘All right,' he said. ‘But listen. You have to tell me how you know Mma Ontoaste.'

‘We were at College together. Didn't the Dean tell you? The Class of '74. Terry Jacks's song “Seasons in the Sun” was number one in the United Kingdom.'

‘I see,' mumbled Tom, deep in thought, stepping back as Colander found a copy of the
Ynstead Examiner
and began translating the headline for him. A herring had been found by a child out walking his dog by the harbour. The fish showed signs of horrific violence to its person – its guts had been removed and its body cavity cleaned completely – so that the paper was calling for a police investigation.

Inspector Colander swore. Not only would that take up more police time – and they were working flat out now – but it also meant that the story of the missing video and the police appeal for information as to its whereabouts only made it to page five.

The
Sjöbo Chronicle
led with a story about the ongoing campaign to have the limb of a pine tree that had grown over a public right of way removed. It was seen as a health hazard and yet the council had done nothing about it for almost two days now.

Colander had to accept that his latest efforts had been in vain.

All four of them piled into the car; Colander drove with Mma Ontoaste in the front seat next to him. She was slightly taken aback by the ordinary choice of car until Colander explained that he normally drove a sledge pulled by reindeer but that the snows
⁶
had failed them this year. At that Mma Ontoaste was impressed.

Tom Hurst and Lemm Lemmingsson sat in the back. Hurst was relieved. On the flight to London and then on to Stockholm, he had had to sit in economy next to Mma Ontoaste. The African lady had overflowed her own seat and bulged into his, so that, by the end of the flight, he had lost all feeling in his left side.

As they drove back down the E22, Lemmingsson then mentioned to his superior that he had, as suggested, brought his notes from the meeting the day before, as he had been asked to do. Colander was surprised. Normally this sort of detail was left hanging.

‘There was something Lemmingsson said or did not say at a meeting the other day that made me think of something,' explained Colander.

As Lemmingsson read his notes through, repeating the details of the case so far, both the foreigners began to grasp the complexity of the investigation.

‘There!' said Tom Hurst in the back, just as Lemmingsson got to the bit after Tord Tordsson had told the meeting that the foreigners would not be allowed to watch the Ingmar Bergman film and Lemmingsson suggested that they ought to be allowed to watch if the film were not an Ingmar Bergman film.

‘If you don't watch an Ingmar Bergman film, then we can watch with you, can't we? And, since you don't have an Ingmar Berman film to watch, we might just as well get another film. Then we could watch that with you.'

Colander glanced at Mma Ontoaste. She was a beautiful woman he thought, with dark shiny skin and eyes that seemed to twinkle brownly.

‘Hang on, Lemmingsson,' said Colander. ‘Please go back a second and read that bit again.'

Lemmingsson started again. When he had repeated the exchange, Colander held his hand up.

‘We could get another video and show that instead of the Ingmar Bergman film,' he said. ‘Then Mma Ontoaste and the detective from England could join us.'

There was a slight pause before the others in the car agreed with him. By the time they reached Ynstead, it had stopped raining and the rest of the passengers were in agreement with Inspector Colander and his plan. One or two details needed clearing up but it was about now that Colander began thinking ahead. How could he somehow claim that it was all a team effort and that he had nothing to do with the solution while also making sure that everybody knew he had been the key? He had managed it in all his other cases, but this one looked as if it might be trickier.

Meanwhile his eye kept meeting that of Mma Ontoaste. She was certainly not quite as he recalled her from his days at College, but she was nevertheless an attractive woman and, despite her clothes, he could see that she was very shapely.

‘I am wondering, too, Rra, if there is not somewhere we can go to buy some different clothes. We left in such a hurry, you see? And I am just wearing this old thing.'

Colander glanced at the dress Mma Ontoaste was holding between her sizeable fingers. She had pulled it up to show him and accidentally she had exposed her knees. They were fine and brown and round with no trace of the pale skin that came from kneeling and washing floors.

Colander thought for a minute. It was true. Neither of the two foreigners could realistically be expected to discover anything dressed in the manner in which they were. He glanced at his watch again.

‘There is an outfitters in Ynstead,' suggested Lemmingsson. ‘In Hamngatan. Next to the video shop. We can go there and still be in time for the Film Club.'

As Colander parked the blue Peugeot the sun came out.

‘Oh Rra, this is very pretty,' said Mma Ontoaste, looking about at the views along the cobbled street down to the enclosed harbour and the sliver of golden sand.

‘Cobbled streets and well-tended houses. Everybody so considerate and kind.'

Colander did not see it like that, of course. For every cobbled street lined with neat whitewashed cottages that Mma Ontaoste saw, Colander saw a dismal alley separating opium dens, child brothels and illegal S & M dungeons, but he said nothing. Instead he led them across the cobbled street to the outfitters. He entrusted Lemmingsson with the trip to the video shop.

‘You know what to do?'

Lemmingsson nodded.

‘And do not forget to keep in touch. I will be on my mobile. I want you to ring every two minutes with an update. I will show Mma Ontoaste and this Lecturer from England what to buy and then I will come over to help.'

Again Lemmingsson nodded.

‘Good luck.'

Lemmingsson walked quickly up the street, keeping to the shadows, making certain no one followed him, to where the video shop was by now open again. They had their plan worked out and, barring any unforeseen events, they hoped that, if they stuck to it, it would transpire to be a success.

Colander, Mma Ontoaste and Tom Hurst entered the shop. It was a traditional outfitter and five minutes later they emerged dressed in traditional Swedish clothes. Mma Ontoaste wore a classic reindeer leather cap from Bulan and an elegant reindeer waistcoat over her Skjaeveland sweater (strictly Norwegian, but she did not seem to mind very much) of red and blue and white above a long purple velvet skirt. On her feet she had a pair of BÃ¥stad clogs, which clonked nosily on the cobbles. It is hard to convey how stupid she looks, thought Colander, but there was something about her.

‘Oh Rra, I will never get used to these.'

Tom Hurst wore a summer cap of similar reindeer leather and the same sort of waistcoat and jumper, but a pair of thick worsted fisherman's trousers and on his feet a pair of blacksmith's clogs from Skånetoffeln. It surprised even Colander how quickly they blended in with the other 16,000 people who lived in Ynstead.

Meanwhile Lemmingsson had returned from the video shop with a video of
Braveheart
, a film made in 1995, directed by and starring Mel Gibson.

‘Should it not be Mel Gibsson?' asked Lemmingsson when he read the credits.

‘He does not look very Swedish, though,' said Colander. ‘But then he does not look very Scotch either, which is what he is supposed to be.'

There was a long pause.

‘In this film at least.'

Another long pause.

‘It was the only film left in the shop,' he explained with a shrug of his shoulders.

Colander glanced at his watch. It was half past four already and the Film Club was due to begin at five o'clock. Ordinarily, it would be time for some hair-raising driving, but the police station was only round the corner so a sedate walk would see them taking their seats at the correct time.

As they walked up towards the police station, Colander began to grasp that the investigation was over. He had failed to find a copy of
The Hour of the Wolf
. He had failed to have a high-speed car chase. He had failed to wallow around in his tracksuit in the dark with a gun he did not know how to use. He had failed to have everyone in the police station work harder than they knew they could.

So why did he feel so happy?

Was it because he was walking next to Mma Ontoaste, the most striking woman with the most singular intelligence he had met since that strange Latvian woman whom none of his readers really believed existed? She had sounded like the sort of thing a boarding-school boy, unfamiliar with women, might make up, now that he thought about it.

The impact the two foreigners made on the Ingmar Bergman Film Club is hard to exaggerate and, when Colander looked back on those few hours that followed, he would come to think of them as among the most unusual of his entire career as a police officer.

To begin with there was silence. When Colander pushed open the door and led in Mma Ontoaste and, to a lesser degree Tom Hurst, Toff Toffsson, back on duty in reception, stared at them in open-mouthed astonishment. Then he pressed some kind of buzzer that alerted all the other police officers who up until that point had been waiting in the conference room where they met every Friday for the Ingmar Bergman Film Club. One by one they trooped out and stood in reception, making a semicircle round the two foreigners.

Mma Ontoaste tapped her clogs uncertainly and rolled her eyes. Her snakebite was suddenly aching. She wondered if an aching snakebite meant the proximity of danger. That would be a good thing for a detective to have, surely, she thought. Tom Hurst checked the pocket of his reindeer leather waistcoat for the IKEA ticket. He glanced at Mma Ontoaste nervously.

It was Tord Tordsson who spoke first.

‘Hello and welcome to Ynstead Police Station. I trust you had a pleasant journey?'

There was deflation all round.

‘Oh Rra, it was the most wonderful journey, and to be met at the end by this handsome Swedish police officer was beyond my wildest dreams!'

The officers laughed politely and Inspector Colander blushed. Tord Tordsson turned to Toff Toffsson, fumbling in the top pocket of his uniform for his billfold. He passed him a ten-Kroner note.

‘Toffsson, take this and nip down to the shops and get in a couple of cartons of Umbongo, will you? For our lady guest.'

Mma Ontoaste thought perhaps her snakebite might ache if she were about to be offered a carton of Umbongo. This was an undeniably less useful quirk, it was true, but it would always be welcome. She quickly explained that Umbongo was from the Congo, of course, while she was from Botswana, where they ordinarily drank bush tea, except that today, after such an adventure, she was very keen to try some of the local
akvavit
or the
flaggpunsch
that she had heard so much about.

‘Wait a minute,' said one of the officers, shouldering his way to the front of the group. It was Nog Noggsson, secretary of the Ingmar Bergman Film Club, and a man who had always been against allowing anybody not from Scandinavia to do almost anything. He was a bulky man of about 60, with messy white hair, a lined handsome face and dark eyes. He was wearing an anorak.

‘We cannot allow you into the conference room to watch the film. I am sorry but there are rules.'

Lemmingsson explained the situation with the film.

‘I am still against it,' said Nogbad confrontationally. ‘This is the sort of erosion of values that has let in the far Right to our country and led directly –
directly –
to the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme.'

The police officers shifted from foot to foot and looked askance.

‘Oh, bollocks,' said one after a pause. ‘Sweden's fine. Much better than most other countries, even if we never managed to solve that case.'

‘Yeah, shut up, you windbag,' chimed in another. ‘Always going on and on about all this stuff that never happens anyway. Listening to you, anyone would think we had one of the highest crime rates in the world and all we ever did was murder one another.'