Dreamless (15 page)

“Another thing is that the killer most likely knows a lot about music and broadsheets,” she added.

“You’re right, Gran. We’ve got some work to do here,” he replied.

But it was almost dinnertime. She was headed up to Tyholt, where she lived with her partner and two cats, while Singsaker was on his way to Møllenberg. He stood there for a moment, watching his colleague as she disappeared around the corner.

When he turned to go, he suddenly tripped and found himself lying on the sidewalk. He had landed so that he was looking at the grove of trees across the street. Only a few days ago they’d found a body there, and now he was lying on his stomach, staring at the crime scene. And what had they accomplished in the meantime? Nothing. They were nowhere near catching the person who had killed Silje Rolfsen.

Singsaker got up and brushed the snow off his coat. As he did that, he remembered that he’d left his notebook at the school. He started walking, hoping he’d be able to get inside to look for it. But the building had already been locked up for the night when he got there.

14

Winter was seeping
into the house somewhere. Elise Edvardsen followed the draft to see where it was coming from. At first she thought the front door might be ajar. It had warped in the winter cold and didn’t always close properly. In the front hall she felt the door and decided it was closed. Then she opened it and peered out into the dark. Evening had arrived.

It’s been twenty-four hours since Julie disappeared, she thought.

But the time couldn’t be measured normally. Before she awoke this morning, minutes, hours, days had passed. Now all that was gone, replaced by breaths, footsteps, creaking floorboards, glances at the door—an eternity of tense movements and anxious waiting.

She closed the door. On her way to the living room, she felt the draft again. The bathroom. It must be coming from in there. She opened the door and saw that the small window high on the wall was open, which it never was in the wintertime. Then she saw the flies. There had to be a couple dozen of them squeezed together on the sill behind the weather stripping. This spot, when the window was closed, formed a warm niche for the insects to spend the winter. At first the flies seemed lifeless. But all of a sudden one of them moved, vigorously beating its wings, almost convulsively. But it didn’t take flight; instead it merely buzzed around its half-dead fellows. Elise shuddered, not sure if it was because of the cold or the disgusting sight. She climbed up on the toilet seat and was about to close the window when she heard the song. Faint individual notes, played slowly. The pure, thin sound made her think of a music box.

Then she glimpsed a figure outside in the dark. Did she really see someone? For a few seconds the person stood perfectly still. It’s him, she thought, and she recalled the articles in the newspapers over the past few days; all of them had mentioned the music box that had been found with the woman’s body over near Ludvig Daaes Gate. He’s the one who took Julie, she thought.

Then the figure vanished among the trees, taking the music with him. She listened intently, but all that remained was a faint rustling of the wind in the trees.

I’m going crazy, she thought as she climbed down from the toilet. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m dreaming even though I’m wide-awake.

She found her husband in the hallway. He was holding a spray can.

“The window in the bathroom was open,” she told him.

“I know,” he replied. “I was cleaning the bathtub. When I opened the window, I saw that the ledge was covered with flies, so I went to get some bug spray.”

“Cleaning? Our daughter is missing and you’re washing the bathtub?” She felt the urge to slap him, but she didn’t.

“It’s better to be busy. I can’t just sit around waiting. Besides, she’s going to come back. That’s what the police said too. They think she ran away to aggravate us.”

“This is making me crazy,” she said. Then she met his glance. “Come with me.”

She took him out in the yard and led him through the deep snow until they were standing in front of the bathroom window. Near the big oak tree, they saw tracks in the snow.

“Someone has been here,” she said. “I’m not crazy, after all.”

“It was probably just some of the neighborhood kids,” he said. “They’re always coming into our yard.”

In the crusty snow they couldn’t see clear footprints, just a jumble of tracks. It was impossible to say who might have made them.

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “But what if it was him?”

“Who?”

“The man who took her. What if he’s coming after us now?”

“Nobody took her, Elise.” He said this with such conviction that she nearly believed him.

“He was playing a song,” she said. “It sounded so peaceful. Almost like a lullaby.”

“You’re tired, sweetheart. You’re just imagining things because you’re scared and worn-out. It’s cold. Let’s go back inside.”

*   *   *

All of Singsaker’s thoughts were transferred to Felicia’s shoulder, where he was resting his head. He definitely wasn’t paying attention to the movie they were watching.

“We had a dozen cases like this in Richmond every year,” said Felicia, shifting on the sofa. “I can count on one hand the times when we didn’t find the kids alive, or when they didn’t turn up on their own.”

“That’s exactly what makes it so difficult. Experience and common sense tell us to play it cool. But what if this is one of those exceptions? What if it has something to do with the homicide? And what if the old professor is involved in both cases? You should see the parents. Especially the mother. Fear and a guilty conscience combined with something else.”

“Combined with what?”

“I’m not sure. But I think it’s contagious. I feel it too.”

“Feel what? You’re being awfully vague.” Felicia had switched to English, which she did whenever he annoyed her.

“It’s just a bad feeling. Nothing specific. The thing is that I think this is one of those times when the kid isn’t going to come back. And then all hell is going to break loose, whether the two cases are related or not.”

“I know,” she said, deciding to humor him and follow his train of thought. “But let’s hope there’s no connection between the cases, because if there is, we’re dealing with a serial killer who has struck twice in an unusually short period of time. And we don’t know when he might be planning to kill Julie and start the hunt for his next victim.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

She gave him a resigned smile.

The doorbell rang. Felicia turned off the movie. Michael Winterbottom’s
The Killer Inside Me
vanished and the screen went blank.

“We weren’t really watching anyway,” she said, and went out to the hall to open the door. She came back, accompanied by Siri Holm.

Singsaker said hello and then went in the kitchen to make tea.

When he came back, the two women were having an intense conversation. Felicia looked up with a smile.

“Siri is helping me with my first job. That Norwegian emigrant that I’m looking for. It turns out he used a pseudonym.”

“What was it?”

“Jon Blund.”

“This is the same Jon Blund who wrote the broadsheet? How can you be sure he’s the same person who emigrated to the United States?” he asked.

“We’re not sure. In theory, anybody could have taken it over. For instance, maybe his son, or even someone else decided to take credit for a ballad that Jon Blund had written. The pseudonym is the only thing we have to go on. We still don’t know his real name,” Felicia said.

“I think the smart thing to do would be to follow the pseudonym,” said Siri. “My colleague mentioned that a Jon Blund was entered in a police log from the 1700s here in Trondheim. That might lead us to more answers. I’ve checked around a bit, and the log is kept at the National Archives. I’ve requested an interlibrary loan so it can be sent over to the Gunnerus.”

With that plan in place, they drank their tea. It was past eleven by the time Siri went home.

*   *   *

Odd and Felicia remained on the sofa. They looked at each other in silence.

How did I ever get her? thought Singsaker, looking at her creamy complexion beneath her dark hair. It was the sort of thing he asked himself when he was too tired to make love to her.

They talked for a while about Odd’s son, Lars, who lived in Oslo with his wife and two children. Felicia had developed a real affection for him and his wife when she met them at the christening of their youngest child. Since then, she’d been back to visit them twice on her own. And that pleased Singsaker. He felt that Felicia had brought him closer to his son than he’d ever been while married to Lars’s mother.

Felicia changed the subject.

“Did you notice anything different about Siri?”

“No, I don’t think so. She drank just as much tea as usual, didn’t she?”

“Don’t you think her stomach had gotten rather plump? And her cheeks are a little rosier than before.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Are you a policeman, or aren’t you?”

“Pregnant? Are you kidding?” he said after a brief pause. He sat up straight. A crazy thought occurred to him. An impossible thought. A terrible, ruinous thought.

“How far along do you think she is?” he asked.

“Since she’s starting to show, I’d say she has to be at least three or four months pregnant. But it can vary a lot from one woman to another.”

In his mind, he began calculating dates, back to a day in the midst of the chaotic investigation of last year’s Palimpsest murders. Singsaker had made a mistake a police officer should never make and had a secret a married man should never have to keep. In a moment of weakness, he’d had sex with his wife’s friend. Even though this occurred before Felicia became his wife, even before they’d met, way before the two women became friends. But it wasn’t that long ago. Did it make any difference when it had happened? He’d never told Felicia. By Singsaker’s count, it had happened five months ago. But was that really reassuring? They didn’t know exactly how far along Siri was. Could it be five months?

It was going to be a sleepless night.

15

Fredrik was the only one
who knew about the child she was carrying. If he hadn’t told their parents about it by now, that is. He’d gotten her pregnant, and the night before she was taken, she’d gone to break the news to him. Julie was worried what her parents would say if they found out.

What a stupid thing to worry about. There was really no point in thinking about anything at all. The real world was somewhere else, somewhere beyond her. This became especially clear whenever she fell into an exhausted sleep. Those hazy seconds before waking or sleep, before reality set in, she wasn’t fully aware of where she was; it might be anywhere. In those moments she wasn’t bound and gagged. Or lying on a hard floor. For an instant, her dreams were like a mattress of warm air beneath her. How strange. So far she hadn’t had a single dream about being tied up. His voice hadn’t managed to reach into her sleep. She had dreamed about her dog, Bismarck, but not about how he was whimpering in a dark room far away. She dreamed that she was sleeping with her head resting on his stomach, just as she’d done in those confusing middle years when she was still afraid of the dark but too old to sleep in her parents’ bed. She was surprised to find that her dreams had very little to do with the mistakes she’d made or the one wrong step that had taken her away from her world.

Some things now seemed closer, some things more distant. Her friends were far, far away, while the memory of other things was still so strong, like the bathroom at home with the Donald Duck comics next to the toilet, and the feeling of her bare toes on the warm tiled floor in the morning. Her anger had disappeared. Instead, she recalled the fine hairs on her mother’s arms and the way her mother would hesitate in the midst of a quarrel, as if she was about to stop and have a good laugh at the whole thing. These things had all come closer. As Julie lay there, she spent a long time thinking about these things: the snow creaking under her feet as she shoveled, the streets in her neighborhood, the flickering light behind the letters in her father’s eye tests, the notes that were difficult to reach. A sick thought haunted her: Was this a test? Could something good come out of this?

She stood up. It was hard to do without using her hands, but she’d developed a technique of shoving her body against the wall and slowly rising. She tugged down her sweatpants and then sat on the bucket. A little while ago he’d come in to bring her food. At first he’d threatened to kill her, but then he’d gone back upstairs. Finally he’d come back and taken off the gag. That time he hadn’t said anything about killing her if she spoke. That was the first time he’d offered her food. The sandwiches reminded her of the ones she’d made when she was ten years old. She hadn’t said anything. Not one word. Nor had she touched the food. It was important to show strength even if her stomach was practically numb with hunger. At the moment she thought this somehow gave her the upper hand.

Most worrisome was Bismarck. His whimpering had grown fainter. The fear and anger that she’d heard in his barking when they were first down here in the dark had now gone. It sounded like he had given up, like the only thing he hoped for was not to die alone.

As she sat on the bucket, she looked down at the sheets of paper he’d left with her. They were copies of an old printed booklet.

She’d read the text several times. It had to do with sleep, written in a mixture of Danish and Swedish, and it reminded her a bit of a lullaby that Bellman might have written. The man had talked to her about this tune.

“You need to learn this song,” he’d told her. “I want you to sing it for me.”

Then he’d played a tune for her on the music box. He’d played it over and over outside the door. It was a dreamlike melody, and in a strange way it seemed to belong down here. This ice-cold basement room was not the real world.

When she was done, she used the wall to get up and then slid down onto the floor again. As she waited to fall asleep, she rubbed her bound hands over the small of her back. That was as close as she could get to caressing the baby now living inside of her. She wept, wanting to sing to it. She could hear Bismarck whimpering in the distance. Death cries, she thought. Death cries, music box tunes, and a baby that she could neither hear nor feel. This was all a dream. Sooner or later she would wake up. That was the thought that prevented time from stopping altogether.