Note for Swedish readers: This is the English translation. You can also find the original Swedish version called Detektivbyrån Oskareli on this site.
This piece of fan fiction is based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Låt den rätte komma in. Features that have been fetched from the novel are his work, however, he is in no way responsible for the work below.
===
“Eli, I've thought of something.”
“Yes...?”
“Well, all that money, you said someone gave it to you when I believed that you had taken them from people you killed.”
“Well, I might have said that.”
“People don’t carry very much money around, do they, so you couldn’t have gotten all of it that way.”
“No, that’s true.”
“So how did you get them, then?”
Eli thought for a moment.
“You might say that I got them because I’m so good at solving puzzles.”
“Did you get paid to solve puzzles?”
“Yes. Or, well, not really...“ Eli looked a little embarrassed for a moment, then he brightened up. ”But it's really exciting to solve puzzles!”
“What do you mean?” Oscar was intrigued. ”Tell me!”
So Eli told him.
Oskar and Eli were looking for puzzle pieces, pieces that when rightly laid would lead them to what they were seeking. The pieces were fragments of information. Much were suspicions and rumours, obtained from more or less reliable sources. Others were observations that Oskar and Eli made themselves. They spent many hours over many nights in the vicinity of where outcast people tend to gather, and they listened and memorised what was said. Then they withdrew to their resting quarters and talked about what they had heard, what inferences they could draw from it, and what to search for the next night.
Life with Eli was always exciting, thought Oscar, but this was exciting in a new way, it gave yet a dimension of excitement to life.
“It's like being a in a detective story.”
“A what?”
“A detective story. Don’t you know what a detective story is?”
“No.”
Eli's knowledge of ordinary people's lives were fragmentary. He had lived in the fringes of society, and kept mostly in the shadows. His contacts with people had been mostly of a pragmatic nature, to get him protection or food. It had been a limited life. Oskar had much to bring into Eli's life, more than Eli realised that he would have. Through Oscar, Eli had gained an opening to normal human life.
“Well, it’s a story about how a detective finds out who committed a crime.”
“Yes?”
“The detective usually goes around talking to people, in order to collect clues. Then, when he has learnt enough, he works out who committed the crime, and catches the guy. That’s it.”
“Ah, I see what you mean, we’re like detectives.”
“Exactly. We're like a detective agency.“
Oscar explained about detective agencies.
“I like it, Oskareli Detective Agency, that’s us.” Eli nodded appreciatively. ”Great!”
Oskar and Eli had walked up to a man to present a proposal. Rick was threadbare and had seen better days. He had not had a home to live in for years.
“So you tell me you want to invite me to dinner. On a restaurant.”
“Exactly. You can choose whatever you want to eat and drink, and we’ll pay. But we will decide which restaurant to visit.”
“Well, and which one would that be, then?”
They mentioned the name of the restaurant. Rick looked skeptical, a bit irritated.
“Are you making fun of me? It costs a fortune just to get a glass of water there.”
“Exactly, we know that. But we’ve got money.” Eli showed that they indeed had some money, and Rick accepted this fact.
“What the hell, all right. I'm in, this would be the only chance I’d get to dinner at that kind of a restaurant in this life.”
Then something struck him. He drooped visibly.
“But they probably won’t let me in. They’ve got certain requirements at those places, you know”
“Yes, that's right, so now we’ll tidy you up. And us too, for that matter, we’re going, too.”
They began with fitting themselves out.
“We're going to a restaurant, so we need a suit for Rick here, with a tie and all.”
The second-hand shop for sure was often frequented by less affluent people, but this was probably one of the least affluent customers the shop assistant had seen in there. The kids who accompanied him did not look any better.
“We’ve got money, look.”
The shop assistant saw that this was true, and after a while returned with a suit. Eli looked critically at it, wrinkled her nose.
“No. It is too worn. And it should be dark, black or dark blue.”
The shop assistant fetched a different suit.
“No, it's the wrong size, it does not fit over his shoulders.”
“No, the pants are too long.”
“No, not that tie, it is too garish.”
The shop assistant began to look tired, but went too look again. Then, finally:
“Yes, that’s fine!”
The shop assistant turned towards the cash desk, relieved.
“Now we’ll have clothes for us, too.”
She wasn’t completely able restrain a moan.
After yet a number of laps, however, she eventually succeeded to equip all three to a level that made Eli satisfied. Then they visited a public bath, a hairdresser and a manikurist.
Rick watched himself in a shop window, noticed the change. He now not only looked well groomed, his posture had changed, too. He kept himself erect in a way he usually didn’t.
“I look damn splendiferous. I almost can’t recognise myself.”
He waved to himself in the window.
“I think it’s me, after all, the guy in the window waves back at me.”
They took a cab to the restaurant, the car stopped at the other side of the street. They waited there for a while, then The Eli nodded, and they crossed the street and stepped into the restaurant, Rick lead the way, he had an task to do at the door:
“Welcome in, both of you, to this eminent restaurant establishment.”
The three were guided to a table, but Eli was not pleased. After a brief discussion, discreetly supported by a few notes, they finally got a table Eli was happy with. Serving personnel came and went, and the food eventually was on the table. Rick dug in with a healthy appetite, but Oskar and Eli didn’t even look at their plates.
“This wasn’t the worst I've tasted, I'll say. But why don’t you eat? It is a shame, it's fucking delicious!”
They asserted that they were satisfied, that Rick should take their servings as well. He was not hard to convince, the food was the best would ever get to eat, he realised, but the size of the servings wasn’t much to brag about.
While Rick gorged himself, Oskar and Eli sat quiet and studied a group around a nearby table. The men there did not talk much, and they kept their voices low when they did say something. The guests at the tables around would not hear what they were talking about.
After Rick finally had eaten his way through the succession of dishes recommended by the waiter, they now once again stood on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.
“Thank you, Rick, for your kindness to invite us into this restaurant.”
“Invite you?” Rick was bewildered. ”You invited me, didn’t you, you paid all of it.”
“Of course, but you invited us inside, that was important to us. Thanks for that help!”
Eli and Oskar solemnly shook hands with Rick, then they turned and walked away. Rick remained standing, watching them as long as they were in sight. Then he returned to the neighbourhood where he used to stay, so close and yet so far from this restaurant.
“It was a good piece of the puzzle we got hold of at the restaurant.”
“Yes, absolutely. Now we know when, too.”
“Good thing we hear so well.”
“Not for them, I think.”
Oscar smiled knowingly. ”No, not particularly lucky for them. But for us.”
Eli happily nodded agreement, then he contemplated something for a while.
“This is how we’ll do it...”
The three men had just gotten out of their car when someone came jogging towards them. It was a child, a little girl in a pretty dress, complete with headband, knee-length stockings and all. Thereafter everything had happened so quickly that they later could not determine what they actually had seen. But the child had grabbed the bag and then set off with such a speed that no one caught up.
Most worrying was that the bag had been chained to one of the men. He was now admitted to the orthopaedic surgeon to get his badly torn hand reassembled. In one single movement, the child had grabbed hold of the bag, swung her feet up and taken brace against the carrier’s side and yanked away the bag, and then ran away. But they had not told that version to other people, they would not believe them. Instead, they had agreed on a different story. They were believed without objections, no one would voluntarily do such a thing to himself.
The men never went searching for the kid, none of them wanted to meet her again.
In a sleeping car compartment, going through the night:
“The detective agency EO has solved its first case.”
Eli had put on a serious face.
“The case of the missing bag. We have, in this compartment, the crucial clue. Detective Eriksson now will give an account of the case.”
Oskar cleared his throat.
“This case has been extremely complicated. But we can now reveal that the bag was stolen by the notorious bag-snatching duo...”