Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

But as soon as he’s turned the corner, he sees it. Maloney’s standing outside the store talking to a policeman, his face a shiny red hue, his expression gloomy and agitated. A cruiser is parked on the opposite side of the street, and a second officer leans against the vehicle talking on a cell phone; his black shoes gleam in the sunlight, and he taps one foot. The store’s front window has been smashed. Glass shards have rained on the sidewalk. A small crowd has gathered: a group of snot-nosed teenagers wearing backpacks, some older women. Annie and Peter are standing together a little ways down the street; they look like two frightened children who’re hiding, leaning or tipping toward each other. Annie’s practically on her tiptoes.

Maloney strides toward Thomas, who is frozen in place with his bicycle still on the road. Maloney’s warm, tangy breath right in his face: “It’s all smashed. Everything. I’m telling you. . even the office computer and our mugs. Our coffee mugs are smashed, the yellow one and the other one.” He stops talking and sucks air through his nose. “The one with the little duck. Your mug ! And the candlesticks — everything.” Maloney’s lost in thought. Thomas begins to laugh hysterically. “The one with the duck!” But the laughter dies in him as quickly as it’d begun. Maloney’s face is lit up with fright. The policeman signals to his colleague standing at the car and heads into the store, glass shards crunching under his feet. A car honks repeatedly. Maloney pulls Thomas onto the sidewalk. The second officer, still on his cell phone, walks past them and positions himself in the doorway.

Thomas asks, “Was anything stolen?”

Maloney looks down, wide-eyed. “I don’t know.” Then he looks up, angrily. “I just got here, for fuck’s sake, how would I know?”

They peer through the doorframe, motionless, quiet, seeing heaps of paper and cardboard. All their goods have been pulled from the shelves. The chandelier dangles crookedly as if someone tried to shoot it down. “A dog walker called the cops.” Maloney takes a deep breath. “Early this morning.” Thomas nods. Maloney throws up his arms, almost contemptuously. “They were already here when I arrived!” Thomas nods again. “But it’s a good thing they’re here, Maloney.” Maloney gives him a flustered glance, then his eyes dart every which way. The officer sweeps his hand across the countertop. “Palvino?” he says. The second officer reacts. “There’s a mark in the countertop,” says the officer inside the store. He shouts to Thomas and Maloney: “Do you know anything about this?” Thomas feels dizzy.

“We sure as fuck don’t!” Maloney says. “We don’t go around carving into our own countertop!” Palvino says, “Watch your language, please.” “Sorry,” Maloney mutters. The officer turns once again to Palvino: “It looks like a symbol of some kind. Done in a sloppy and clumsy way. Come have a look.” Palvino slinks into the semi-darkness. Thomas’s heart thumps in his chest. He gulps for air, his dizziness intense. His eyes flicker, and he’s forced to lean against the wall for support. Who carved into his countertop? Who? I’m going to faint now. But he doesn’t. The register has been broken into, coins are scattered across the floor. The officers talk quietly among themselves. Soon they come outside, and the officer who is not Palvino pulls off his latex gloves. Maloney says, “This is my partner, Thomas Lindström.” Thomas extends his hand. The officer’s handshake is brief and firm.

“Kagoshima. I’ve called for assistance.” He turns to Palvino: “Go ahead and put the tape up now.” To Maloney and Thomas, he says, “You’re not allowed inside until we’re finished. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait to tally up your losses.” He gives them a measured, friendly smile.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Maloney asks sheepishly, following his reprimand from Palvino.

“Yes, thank you. If you were having one anyway.” Palvino opens the door of the cruiser and leans across the backseat. Now it’s the pistol in his belt that captures the sunlight.

Maloney totters into the street, calling for Peter and sending him off to fetch coffee. Palvino affixes the police tape. Maloney stares at Thomas, and they shake their heads. Maloney’s eyes focus on the floor. Thomas is weirdly lost in thought, watching Annie slowly approaching as if through a kind of filter. With a quivering lower lip and vacant eyes, she whispers, “Was anything stolen?”

“We don’t know yet.”

A tear falls from her right eye. “Don’t cry, Annie,” Thomas says, putting his hand on her shoulder. And Peter arrives balancing cups of coffee and a bag of pastries under one arm. The coffee is scalding and bitter. Without a word, Palvino takes two cups and slips under the tape. Maloney’s pastry-grinding mouth is suddenly in Thomas’s face. His forehead is slick with fine pearls of sweat. “Who the fuck did this shit?” he hisses, and begins restlessly pacing the sidewalk. The sun shines directly on the store now, and the thousands of shards in the display window. Standing in the doorway, Kagoshima asks, “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

Thomas shakes his head. Kagoshima suppresses a cough. “We’ll talk to people in the neighborhood, of course, possible witnesses. There must have been a lot of noise when the window was smashed. But the man who called us heard nothing.” The coffee has apparently made Kagoshima cheerful; he’s friendlier, gentler. He smiles at Thomas. “Okay then. You might as well go home. Have you vacuumed the store in the past few days?” “Yes, there was a spring cleaning here recently, but that was Tuesday. And no, not in the past few days.”

“Then we’ll have a look to see how many hairs and fibers we can find. If there are too many, we won’t touch it.”

“Why not?” Thomas asks. The sun blinds him. Kagoshima is a dark shadow in front of him.

“Too many people go in and out of stores like this. We’re not interested in customers’ hair. That’s too sweeping, and we can’t do a full sweep.”

“Then what’ll you do now?”

Kagoshima sips his coffee. “Our colleagues from Investigations are collecting possible DNA. Shoeprints, fingerprints. Traces of blood, if there is any. I tend to doubt there will be, though. Then we’ll run it all through our database and look for a match. It usually takes a day. Getting the paperwork done typically takes at least a week.” With the back of his hand he wipes his lips. “I just need to know where you two were last night and this morning.”

“At home!” they cry, practically in unison. “We were asleep,” Maloney says. Kagoshima nods. “And when were you two last here?”

“Yesterday,” Thomas says. “I left early, before lunch. But you. .” He looks at Maloney.

“I closed at 6:00 P.M. I was the last person to leave.”

“And when was it, precisely, that you left?”

“Quarter after. Maybe close to 6:30.” Maloney brushes some sugar from his sleeve.

“We’ll be finished in about an hour,” Kagoshima says and makes as if to go back to the store. But suddenly Peter’s standing there. “Has this kind of thing happened elsewhere in this neighborhood recently?” he asks so softly that it’s almost a whisper. The others observe him, surprised.

Kagoshima: “And you are?”

“Peter Ohlsson, our apprentice,” Thomas replies.

“Aha. No. Not as far as I know. But we’ll investigate, of course.” Kagoshima nods at length, and the others stare at his round face. Then Maloney straightens himself with a jerk: “But what’s this all about? Why did they carve into our countertop?”

“It looks to me like what we call criminal mischief in the first degree. I can’t say more than that at this time.”