Black Seconds Part 3

'Yes.'

'Have they talked to you?'

'Jesus, no.' Tomme was shocked. He slackened his grip for a second and w.i.l.l.y's finger got crushed.

'Concentrate, you idiot! You've got to lift it up while I'm using the screwdriver!'

Tomme held on. His knuckles were white.

'When it's something like a missing girl and stuff,'

w.i.l.l.y panted underneath the car, 'the cops just go crazy. Perhaps they've even checked out her dad. Have they?'

'Dunno,' Tomme mumbled.

'But they'll want to know about her family,' w.i.l.l.y said. 'Perhaps they'll talk to you as well.'

Tomme nodded. He felt like a robot as he listened to the flow of words coming from w.i.l.l.y. It made him feel calm and nervous at the same time.

'You being her cousin, well, that's incriminating in itself,' w.i.l.l.y said. Finally he got up. The wing was loose. 'Especially if they never find her. If they never find out the truth. Something like that brands people for generations. You know a girl was murdered out here forty years ago, don't you?'

48.Tomme shook his head.

'Well, she was. A guy raped and killed a fifteenyear-old girl. Both their families still live here. And you can tell just by looking at them.'

'Tell what?' Tomme asked. He was growing more and more nervous.

'That it's all they ever think about. And they know everyone knows who they are. That's why they can never look anyone in the eye. That kind of stuff.' He wiped a bead of snot from his upper lip.

'The mother of the guy who killed her is close to seventy now. And you can still tell who she is from miles away.'

'Well I can't,' Tomme snapped. 'I've no idea who she is.' He wanted his friend to shut up. Hated all this talk of death and destruction. The only thing he cared about was the car. Making it whole again. s.h.i.+ny and new, with unmarked paintwork, like it was before.

She knows she is pretty, Sejer thought sadly. He was holding a photo of Ida in his hand. In his mind he could hear them all, an endless chorus of aunts and uncles, neighbours and friends. What a gorgeous child. He remembered his own aunts, who used to tickle his chin as if he were a puppy or some other dumb creature. And so I was, he realised. A shy, skinny boy with legs that were too long. He kept looking at the photo. For years Ida had seen her own beauty mirrored in the eyes of others. This had made her a confident girl, a girl who was 49 accustomed to being admired, and possibly envied, too. Used to getting her own way with both her friends and her parents, though Helga came across as firm and strict, so Ida had also been given rules. She had never broken them. Who could have made her ignore her mother's warnings? What had he done to lure her away? Or had she simply been grabbed and bundled into a car?

Adorable and precocious, he thought. It was a bad combination. It made her a target. Staring into those brown eyes it was impossible not to melt. He tried to connect these three things. Warm feelings for an enchanting child, followed by physical arousal, and finally destruction. He understood the first one. He even managed to imagine fleeting moments of desire. The purity, the fragility that children embodied. So smooth, uncorrupted and tender; they smelled so good, they trembled and quivered. And purely by being an adult, you had the strength to take what you wanted. But to beat and squeeze the life out of a tiny child was beyond comprehension. The frenzied struggle as life slowly ebbed away in your hands was unimaginable. He rubbed his tired eyes, repelled by his thought experiment. He decided to ring Sara's hotel in New York. She was not in.

It was late in the evening. The town lay smouldering like a dying fire between blue-black ridges. He could go home and pour himself a gla.s.s of whisky. He would probably be able to fall asleep quite easily. The fact that he could lie down and 50 sleep while Ida was lost in the darkness, while Helga waited for her with stinging eyes, disturbed him deeply. He would rather be outside. Walk the streets with all his senses alert. Be outside because Ida was. The search parties still had nothing to report. He was startled by a knock on the door. Jacob Skarre popped his head round.

'You still here?' Sejer asked. 'What are you doing at this hour?'

'Same as you, I suppose. Hanging around.'

Skarre took a look around his boss's office. Beneath Sejer's desk lamp was a salt-dough figure. It was meant to be a police officer wearing a blue uniform and had been made by Sejer's grandchild. Skarre lifted up the figure and inspected it.

'It's starting to go mouldy,' he said. 'Did you know?'

Sejer pretended not to hear him. It would never even cross his mind to throw the figure away. True, it did look a little worse for wear, but it certainly did not smell.

'Can I smoke out of the window?' Skarre asked. He waited patiently for a reply, holding a Prince cigarette in his hand. He got a brief affirmative nod from Sejer and sat down on the windowsill. He struggled with the heavy window for a few moments.

'Like she's vanished into thin air,' he stated, blowing smoke out into the September night. 'They haven't found so much as a hair slide.'

'She had nothing to lose,' Sejer said. 'No wrist watch, no jewellery. But I'm pleased about one thing.'

51.'Really?' Skarre said glumly.

'We haven't found any bloodstained clothing. Or a child's shoe abandoned on the road, or a bicycle dumped in a ditch. I like the fact that we haven't found anything.'

'Why?' Skarre said, surprised.

'I don't know,' Sejer admitted.

'That only goes to show that he is thorough,'

Skarre said. 'It doesn't make me feel better at all.'

He inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply. 'Waiting like this is pure torture.'

'It certainly is for Anders and Helga Joner,' Sejer said drily.

Skarre fell silent. Was it a rebuke? He kept blowing smoke out of the open window, but some of it still drifted back into the darkened office. Finally he held the glowing cigarette b.u.t.t under the tap in the sink.

'Time to call it a day?'

Sejer nodded and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.

'What did you think about the press coverage?'

Skarre asked him later. They were standing in the car park outside the police station. Both of them jingling their car keys.

'Journalists are all right,' Sejer said. 'When you read what they've actually written. What I really object to is the way some editors lay everything out. They use photos and drawings to speculate and insinuate.'

Skarre remembered the pictures from the day's papers. The photos of Ida, the type of bicycle she had, 52 a yellow Nakamura, the type of tracksuit she had been wearing. And the wording: 'This is where Ida was going.' Dotted lines. A close-up of Laila's Kiosk.

'They treat it like it's a soap opera,' Sejer said. 'I hope it's a short one.'

They nodded briefly to each other and went their separate ways. Once he got home, Sejer went into the kitchen and found a bag of dog food. His dog, Kollberg, who had been lying on the floor waiting for his master, stirred gingerly. However, the sound of the dry feed rattling in his metal bowl made him stand up. He trudged wearily into the kitchen. The dog, a Leonberger, was so old he defied all statistics. He looked up at Sejer with dark, impenetrable eyes. Sejer found it hard to look back at him. He knew the dog was suffering, that he ought to be spared further pain. Soon, he thought. But not today. I'll wait till Sara comes back home. He cut himself a slice of bread and put some salami on top. Then he found a tube of mayonnaise in the fridge. He stood for a while weighing up the pros and cons. He considered mayonnaise an extravagance. He unscrewed the cap and was struck by the absurdity of his situation. Here he was squeezing mayonnaise on his sandwich in the shape of an 8 before sitting down to eat it. While Helga Joner could barely breathe.

Sejer woke up at 6 a.m. The dog lay on the floor next to his bed. He registered his master's light movements on the mattress and raised his head. A second later the alarm gave off three short beeps. 53 Sejer leaned over the edge of the bed and patted Kollberg on the head. The dog's skull was clearly outlined underneath his fur; he felt the b.u.mps of it against his palm. Then he thought of Ida. She snapped into place in his mind. He stretched out his long body in the bed and tried to peer out from behind the curtains, searching for daylight. It was no good; he had to get up to have a look. He stared out at the damp morning mist, which lay like a lid across the town. For breakfast he ate two pieces of crispbread with cheese and red pepper. Coaxed Kollberg down the stairs and walked round the block once. Let him back into the living room. It was 7.15 when he opened the door to his office with fresh newspapers tucked under his arm. 'Ida still missing' was the headline.

The first meeting of the day was about dividing up tasks. Not that there was much to divide up in the Ida Joner case. In the first instance it was a question of checking out anyone with a record. People who had finished serving their sentences, people who might have been out on leave during the relevant period, and those previously charged but never convicted. The blunt truth was that they were all waiting for someone to stumble across Ida's mutilated body so they could start the investigation properly. Her photo was pinned up on the board in the meeting room. Her smile sent a jolt of pain through them every time they pa.s.sed it, and in the midst of it all a slender hope still existed that Ida would suddenly stroll casually into her mother's house with the most incredible story to tell. 54 When the telephone rang, and it did so fre quently, everyone spun around and stared intently at whoever had answered it, feeling certain that they would be able to gauge from his reaction if it was news about Ida. The duty officer had the same hopes whenever he answered the telephone. They knew that it would happen eventually.

A new search was initiated. They were still trying to decide if they should drag the river. The problem was where to start.

Sejer drove out to Helga's house. He could see her face at the window; most likely she had heard the car. He got out slowly, very slowly on purpose so as not to raise her hopes.

'I've almost given up,' she said weakly.

'I know that it's difficult,' he said. 'But we're still looking.'

'I've always known that Ida was too good to be true.'

'Too good to be true?' Sejer said carefully. Helga's lower lip quivered. 'She was. Now I don't know what she is any more.'

She went into the living room without saying another word. Then she walked over to the window.

'Most of the time I stand here. Or I sit in her room. I don't do anything. I'm frightened that I'll forget about her,' she said anxiously. 'Frightened that she might slip away from my thoughts, frightened that I'll start to think or do something which doesn't include her.'

'No one expects you to be able to do anything now,' Sejer said.

55.He sat down on the sofa without being asked. He saw that her hair was unwashed and that she was wearing the same clothes as when he had first met her. Or perhaps she had changed back into them.

'I'd like to speak with your sister,' Sejer said.

'Ruth? She lives a few minutes away from here, at Madseberget. She'll be here later.'

'You get on well?' he asked.

'Yes,' she smiled. 'We always have done.'

'And Ida's father. Anders. He has two brothers who also live close by. Ida's uncles?'

She nodded. 'Tore and Kristian Joner. They're both married with children of their own. They live by the racecourse.'

'Do you see them often?' he wanted to know. She shook her head. 'No, I don't. Funny really. But I know that they were out looking yesterday. Both of them.'

'Have either of them been in touch with you?'

'They daren't,' she said quietly. 'They're afraid, I suppose. I don't know what they're thinking. Don't want to, either. The pictures in my own head are bad enough.' She shuddered as if some awful image had appeared at that very moment.

'But Ida knows her cousins?'

'Of course. She knows Marion and Tomme best of all. Ruth and Sverre's kids. She goes to see them often. She is fond of her aunt Ruth. She's the only aunt she's close to.'

'And your brother-in-law?' he asked. 'What does he do?'

56.'Sverre works in the oil industry and travels a lot. He's hardly ever home. Anders travels a lot too. They moan about all those nights they have to spend in hotels and how boring it is. Though I think that's actually the way they want it. Gets them off the hook when it comes to doing the day-to-day stuff.'

Sejer had no comment to make. 'Is Ida fond of her uncle Sverre?' he said quietly.

Helga was silent for a while, and slowly the significance of the question dawned on her. Then she nodded firmly. 'Yes, Sverre and Ruth are Ida's closest family, apart from Anders and me. She's been going there her whole life and she feels at home there. They're decent people.'

This was said with authority. Sejer looked around the room. There were several photos on the walls of Ida, taken a few years apart. In one of the photos she was holding a cat.

'She's very interested in animals,' he said. 'Her room is full of them. That cat there, you don't have it any more?'

An eerie calm fell upon the room. Sejer was completely unprepared for the reaction provoked by his question. Helga buckled by the window and buried her face in her hands. Then she howled out into the room in a voice that cut right through him.

'The cat belonged to Marion! It was knocked down and killed. But Ida has never had a pet of her own. Not even a mouse! I told her no. Always no!

Because I didn't want one, and now I can't begin to 57 understand how I could have been so selfish. So she's never had a kitten or a puppy or any of those other pets she wanted so desperately, none of the animals she begged and begged me to get her, but I didn't want the ha.s.sle with pets, hairs and s.h.i.+t everywhere and so on! But if only she'll come home again, she can have all the animals she wants! I promise you, I promise!'

Total silence. Helga's face was red. She started to sob loudly. 'I'm at my wits' end,' she cried. 'I'm so desperate I decided I would go buy a puppy. Because then Ida would be sure to come home again. She'd hear the puppy whimper wherever she was and rush straight home. That was my logic. What an idiot.'

'Well,' Sejer said. 'You're allowed to buy a puppy.'

She shook her head. 'I think so many strange thoughts,' she admitted. 'Utterly impossible thoughts.' She wiped her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper.

'I understand,' Sejer said softly. 'You're in a place you've never been before.'

Her eyes widened. 'Oh no! I've been here many times. This is what I've always feared. I've been preparing for this. This is what having children is like!'

'Okay,' he said, 'so you're in a place you visited in your mind. Is it different from what you imagined?'

'It's much, much worse,' she sobbed.

58.Ruth Rix had walked her daughter Marion to the school bus. Now she was watching her son Tomme as he raised the milk carton to his mouth. Then she let him have it.

'Tom Erik! I don't like you doing that and you know it.'

He put the carton down and tried to leave the kitchen.

'You need to eat something,' she ordered him.

'Not hungry,' he mumbled.

She heard him out in the hallway. He was tying the laces on his trainers. 'Don't you have study leave today?' she called out. She followed him, he was not going to get away that easily.

'Yeah?' he said, looking up at her.

'Then I'll expect you to study,' she said, thinking that this was his last, crucial year at sixth-form college.

'Just going over to w.i.l.l.y's first. We're mending the car.'

She digested this and looked at him. His face was still turned away from her. 'You're making a big deal out of this dent,' she said hesitantly. 'It's only a car, for G.o.d's sake.'

He did not answer; instead, he tightened his laces. Hard, she noticed.

'Bjrn called, he was asking after you,' she remembered. 'He's a nice boy, I think. You're still friends with him, aren't you?'

'Yes, of course,' Tomme said. 'But he doesn't know about cars. And neither does Helge.'

59.'No, no. But w.i.l.l.y is so much older than you. Surely it would better for you to be with friends of your own age?'

'I am,' he argued. 'But I need help with the car. w.i.l.l.y has a garage. And tools.' He said this without getting up. He even tied his laces into a double knot. His fingers were trembling. Ruth noticed this and felt troubled. A sudden sensation that this tender eighteen-year-old boy was someone she hardly knew. It was distressing. When he finally got up he continued to face away from her. He was fumbling among the hangers, looking for his coat.