Black Seconds Part 2

'But what do you think?'

Sejer took his time before he answered. 'We don't think anything,' he said simply. 'We just keep looking.'

They continued to watch one another. Sejer's role was to confirm to Ida's father how grave the situation was. That was what he needed, that was why he kept pressing him in this way.

'I'm concerned,' Sejer said. 'I can't deny it.' His voice was steady as a rock. Sometimes he despaired at his own composure, but it was essential. He had to support Joner.

Ida's father nodded. He had got what he wanted.

'But what's going on right now?' he said, his voice taking on a sudden dull tone. 'What are you doing to find her?'

'We've mapped out the route that Ida was cycling,'

Sejer said. 'And we're looking for anyone who was in the area at the same time. We're asking them to contact us, and people have started to call. We speak to anyone who might have seen anything of interest, and everything is recorded. That applies to cars, bicycles and pedestrians. We're looking for this one vital clue which will give us a breakthrough.'

'What kind of breakthrough?' Joner stammered. He lowered his voice so that Helga would not be able to hear him. 'When a kid goes missing like that,' he continued, 'you obviously fear that some one has taken her. To use her. You know what for. 35 And later got rid of her, so she can't tell. That's what I'm scared of!' he whispered. 'And I just can't imagine what else it could be.' He buried his face in his hands. 'How many people have called? Has any one called at all?'

'Unfortunately we have had very few calls,' Sejer admitted. 'The roads were quiet when Ida went out. And we're talking about a stretch of several kilometres. However, these things take time. So far, we know that Ida was spotted at Solberg Farm. Another, less reliable sighting came from Madseberget.'

Suddenly Joner leapt up from his chair. 'For G.o.d's sake. I can't take it any more.'

Sejer tried to rein in Joner's panic by remaining calm himself. Joner slumped back into his chair.

'Helga says that Ida would never ignore the rules she's been taught,' Sejer said. 'The rules all kids need to know about strangers and not getting into cars with them. What do you think?'

Joner considered this. 'Ida's very trusting,' he said. 'She is curious and sweet. And she thinks the best of everyone. If she met someone who was nice to her, if he promised her something, well, I couldn't say for certain.' He was restless as he spoke. He kept taking off his gla.s.ses and putting them back on, unable to keep his hands still.

For a while Sejer thought about the paedophiles he had met during his time in the force. They were often nice to children to begin with, kind, inviting and friendly. They knew how to groom them, and 36 they had the ability to spot the most trusting children quickly. A bizarre skill, Sejer thought.

'So she could have gone with someone of her own accord?' he said out loud.

'I suppose so,' Joner said helplessly. 'Anything's possible. I can't answer yes or no to a question like that.'

Sejer knew that Joner was right.

Skarre spoke up. 'Is she interested in boys?' he asked cautiously.

Joner shook his head. 'She's only nine. But then again, she could be starting to take an interest in them. Even though I personally think it's a bit early.'

'How about a diary? Does she keep one?'

'You'll have to ask Helga later,' he said. 'I don't want to wake her now.'

'You and Helga,' Sejer said delicately, 'you get on well?'

Joner nodded. 'Yes, very much so!'

'She called you last night, but didn't manage to get hold of you. Where did you spend the evening?'

Joner blinked nervously. 'At work. I often switch off my mobile so I won't get disturbed.'

'You work s.h.i.+fts?' Sejer asked him.

'No. But I no longer have a family. I mean, not like I used to. So I spend most of my time working. I'm at the office a lot. From time to time I even sleep there,' he said.

'What do you do?'

'I'm in advertising. I work with text and layout. 37 The agency is called Heartbreak,' he added. 'In case you need to know.'

Skarre noted down the name and address of the agency. Joner started talking about his work. It was a welcome distraction from this terrible situation and it seemed to cheer him up. His face took on a boyish expression. He radiated the instant appeal people acquire when they love their work and are given a chance to talk about it.

'Helga's on incapacity benefit,' he said. 'Because of her migraines. So I support both her and Ida.' His face darkened because his daughter was once more at the forefront of his mind. 'Ida is very forward,' he said suddenly.

'Forward?' Sejer said. 'In what way?'

'Pushy. Eager. She's not afraid of anything. She has a great deal of self-confidence,' he said, 'and she thinks very highly of herself. It would never occur to her that she might meet someone who would want to hurt her. She's no experience of that.' Joner placed his gla.s.ses on the table. Finally he managed to leave them alone. 'Isn't there anything I can do?'

'We'll round up all the volunteers we can find and organise a search party,' Sejer said. 'It's no problem finding people for something like that. Everyone in the area knows that Ida's gone missing. It will be led by professionals and the volunteers will be told precisely how and where to look.'

'What about the river?' Joner said apprehen sively. He did not like to say it out loud.

'Of course we need to think about dragging it,'

38.Sejer said. 'However, in the first instance we need to carry out a search of the immediate area, and our people will visit every single house along the road to Laila's Kiosk as well.'

'I want to join in the search,' Joner said.

'We'll let you know later about a meeting place,'

Sejer said. 'We'll probably use the school play ground. Please look after Helga until then.'

Joner saw them out. He stayed standing on the steps watching them. Gripped the railings and leant forward. His eyes sought the horizon; Ida was out there. 'She's been gone seventeen hours,' he groaned. 'It's too late and you know it!'

He buried his head in his hands and stood there shaking. Sejer went back up to him. He grabbed Joner's arm and squeezed it hard. There was nothing else he could do. Then he returned to the car. It felt like he was turning his back on a drowning man.

A large group of volunteers had gathered in the playground of Gla.s.sverket school. A whole night had pa.s.sed and the seriousness of the situation was clear to see from every face. It was still raining, but more softly now. The search party was made up of volunteers from the Red Cross, the Home Guard, teachers and pupils from the school, people from the sports club and a range of other organisations. Plus a few people who happened to have heard the police request for volunteers. They had simply left their homes and gone out in the rain in order to 39 help. There were many young people; however, the significant majority were men and older boys. Some smaller kids had turned up but were sent home again. Emil Johannes had noticed the large gathering of people, and he parked his green threewheeler behind the bicycle shed, where he could observe them from a safe distance. No one thought of asking if he wanted to join in. Not that he wanted to anyway. He watched the dogs on leashes that a few people had brought along. If one of the dogs were to tear itself loose, he would start his threewheeler as quickly as possible and drive off. He did not like dogs.

The search party examined maps and listened to instructions from the police about how to move around the terrain. How closely together they needed to walk, how to use their eyes. The impor tance of concentrating one hundred per cent at all times. Not too much talking. One group was sent up towards the waterfall, another group ordered down to search along the banks of the river. Some were sent out across the fields, others into the woods and others again up to the ridge behind Gla.s.sverket.

Jacob Skarre gave them their final instructions.

'Remember, Ida's tiny,' he said. 'She doesn't take up much room.'

They nodded earnestly. Skarre looked at them pensively. He knew a fair bit about what they were thinking. Volunteers had multiple and often contradictory motives. Some had turned up out of 40 desperation, because they were fathers themselves and could not bear to sit idly in front of the television. Some had come looking for excitement, each one hoping that he would be the one to find Ida. They fantasised about finding her dead, about being the centre of attention; they fantasised about being the one who would find her safe and well, who would call out the good news and have everyone looking at them. Perhaps lift her up and carry her in their arms. They were also scared, as very few of them had ever seen a dead body and the vast majority were secretly convinced that Ida was dead. These lurid private thoughts troubled them, so they stood there kicking the tarmac. A few carried rucksacks containing flasks. Each and every one of them was eagle-eyed, or they thought so at any rate. Never theless, Skarre reminded them of countless searches in the past where people had walked right past the missing person several times. Anders Joner was there. As he had not lived in Gla.s.sverket for the last eight years, few people knew him and he was grateful for the anonymity it gave him. His brothers, Tore and Kristian, were there too, as was Helga's nephew, Tomme.

Everyone felt a huge sense of relief when they finally started to walk. One hundred and fifty people dissolved into smaller groups and shuffled out of the school playground. There was a low murmuring of voices. This was a bizarre experience for most of them. Staring into the ground all the time, seeing every straw, every root and twig, every 41 irregularity in the tarmac, the litter along the verges, there was so much to see. The group which had been ordered to search along the riverbanks kept looking furtively into the rapidly flowing water. They lifted up bushes and other shrubs with low-hanging branches. They searched holes and caves. And they did find things. A rusty old pram. A decaying wellington boot. There were mainly empty beer bottles along the riverbank. From time to time they would stop for a short break. One of the groups came across a small shed. It was tilting dangerously. It looked like it might collapse at any moment. A good hiding place, they thought as they stood facing the simple building. Not very far from the road, or the house where Ida lived either. Instinctively they sniffed the air. A man crouched down and crept through the opening, which consisted of a narrow gap in the dilapidated planks. He asked for a torch and was handed one. The beam flickered across the dark s.p.a.ce. His heart was beating so fast he could feel it in his temples. The rest of the group waited. Not a sound came from the inside of the shed during these long, tense seconds. Then the man's feet emerged again as he crept backwards out of the tight opening.

'Nothing but old rubbish,' he reported.

'You did lift stuff up, didn't you?' someone asked.

'She could be lying under something. Underneath planks and things like that.'

'She wasn't there,' the man replied, and rubbed his face wearily.

42.'They did say it was very easy to overlook something. Why don't we double-check?' The other man was not going to let it go.

The man who had crawled inside the damp darkness to look for the body of a dead girl and had not found her gave him a hostile look.

'Are you saying I didn't look properly?' he said.

'No, no. Don't get me wrong. I just want to be sure. We don't want to be the group that walked right past her, do we? We want to do this the right way.'

The first man nodded in agreement. The other man crept through the opening and carefully shone the torch around. He was hoping so desperately that he would find her. Fancy hoping like this, it struck him, as he knelt on the musty ground, feeling the cold seep through the knees of his trousers. Hoping that she would be lying there. Because if she was lying in there, she would have to be dead. But we don't want her to be dead. We're just being realistic. We are helping. He backed out.

'Nothing,' he said. 'Thank G.o.d.'

He exhaled deeply. The group moved on.

43.

CHAPTER 4.

w.i.l.l.y Oterhals had not been out looking for Ida. He was sitting on the floor of his garage with a book in his lap. The chill from the concrete floor crept through the seat of his trousers. Tomme was sitting on a workbench by the wall watching w.i.l.l.y. His clothes were damp after several hours of being outside in the drizzling rain. The search had yielded no results. Now he was looking at the Opel. From the bench where he was sitting he could not see the damaged wing. He could make himself believe that it had never happened, that it was all a bad dream.

'Up the ridge, was it?' w.i.l.l.y said without looking up at him.

Tomme thought about it for a while. 'It was horrible,' he said. 'Just walking around searching like that. Loads of people had turned up. They're looking everywhere. Including wells and rivers.'

'Will they be searching tomorrow?' w.i.l.l.y asked.

'They're saying they'll go on like this for days.'

He looked across to his older friend. w.i.l.l.y was quite skinny, he thought. He had a lean face with a protruding chin, and bony shoulders. His knees 44 were sharp underneath the nylon boiler suit. Now he was rubbing some dirt off his cheek with his finger, while trying to decipher the text and the ill.u.s.trations in the book about car repairs. The book was old and dog-eared. The pages were stained with oil. Some of them were torn and someone had tried to mend them with sticky tape. He studied the ill.u.s.tration of a front wing, the right-hand one, as on Tomme's Opel.

'First we need to sand it,' w.i.l.l.y said decisively.

'We need two types of sandpaper, smooth and coa.r.s.e.' He peered down at the book. 'Number 180 and number 360. The wing needs sanding down first with dry paper and then with wet. We'll need a sanding block and some filler. Rust remover. A degreasing agent. You listening to me, Tomme?'

Tomme nodded. But the truth was that he was far, far away.

w.i.l.l.y read on. 'We need to sand around the dent. It says here: "Start in the middle of the damaged area and work your way outwards in circular move ments." Find something to write on. You'll have to go out and buy the stuff we need. Once we've got the wing off.'

'I don't mind doing the shopping,' Tomme said.

'But I'm skint.'

w.i.l.l.y looked up at him. 'I'll lend you the money. You won't be going to school for ever, will you?

Sooner or later you'll start earning.' Once more he looked down at the book. 'We'll also need some more tools. I'll see if I can borrow them.'

45.He put the book aside, climbed back to his feet and went over to the car. Bent over the wing, hands on his hips. He inspected the damage with a seasoned look, his shoulders hunched like two sails billowing in the wind, keen to get started. 'Right, Tomme. Let's get going.'

Tomme heard the crackling of the nylon boiler suit and a groaning, creaking sound coming from the metal. From time to time he heard w.i.l.l.y panting and gasping. An old Opel Ascona that has been in one piece for fifteen years does not give up without a fight.

'I know a bloke down at Sh.e.l.l,' w.i.l.l.y panted.

'Bastian. He'll lend me what I need.'

w.i.l.l.y has so many contacts, Tomme thought.

'Christ, w.i.l.l.y,' he said, relieved. 'If you can fix this, I'll owe you big time.'

'Won't you just,' w.i.l.l.y smiled. His eyes lit up.

'And now it's about time that you cheered up. It'll be all right. I promise you.'

He continued to twist and bend the metal. A vein bulged on his neck. 'Ah, sod it, I need to get underneath it.' He slid under the car. His long white fingers appeared below the wheel arch.

'I don't understand it,' Tomme said. 'I just don't understand it. How it happened.' He was so upset at what had occurred. The colour rose in his face.

'Take it easy,' w.i.l.l.y rea.s.sured him. 'Like I said, it'll be all right.' Then he remembered something.

'What did your mum say?'

Tomme groaned. 'The usual. That they wouldn't 46 pay for it. That they don't like me coming here. But you know, they're mostly worried about this other thing.'

'Yeah, course. I'm seen as the kind of lowlife a nice boy like you shouldn't mix with, I've always known that.' w.i.l.l.y laughed scorn fully. 'But you're an adult now, for G.o.d's sake. It's for you to decide who you want to hang out with, isn't it?'

'Exactly, and that's what I told my mum,' Tomme lied. 'Hey, listen.' A thought had just occurred to him. 'Do you think we should check the brakes?'

'Oh, give it a rest!' w.i.l.l.y told him. 'The brakes are fine. Now give me a hand. We need to get this wing off. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's stuck. Hold this for me!'

Tomme leapt down from the bench. He was trying to pull himself together. He was relieved that w.i.l.l.y would be able to fix his car. He liked the idea of himself as w.i.l.l.y's gofer. But there were times when he felt stifled by his older, more resourceful friend. Once Tomme had finally pa.s.sed his driving test after failing his first attempt, needless to say, and putting up with being ridiculed about this in every way imaginable he felt they had achieved a kind of equality at last. He could drive himself. On top of that, it had been w.i.l.l.y who had trawled the local papers in search of a used car costing the 20,000 kroner that Tomme had managed to save up. His con firmation alone had brought in 15,000.

'An Opel is a safe bet,' w.i.l.l.y had said confidently.

'Reliable engines, especially in the older models. You can't worry about the colour. Don't even go 47 there. If you find an Opel in good condition, buy it, even if it's bright orange.'

But they had found a black one. Even the paint work was fine. Tomme was over the moon. He could not wait a minute longer. He just had to get driving.

'What about the police?' w.i.l.l.y said tentatively. 'I sup pose they're all over the place because of your cousin.'