Dreamless (4 page)

Jonas Røed let the music box play the whole song, and Singsaker had to admit that it gave him goose bumps.

“Isn’t it odd that you don’t recognize the song?” he asked.

“Why do you say that?” replied Røed.

“Because this is what you work with. I’d guess you’ve listened to hundreds of music boxes, and have a keen interest in all kinds of music.”

He couldn’t help glancing again at Røed’s T-shirt.

“You’re right. But that may be the point. Perhaps whoever replaced the cylinder did it because he couldn’t find an original music box with this obscure tune. If you want to find out more about it, there are other people who know a lot more about music than I do.”

“Could you suggest a few names?”

“If this is really a lullaby, I’d talk to Professor Jan Høybråten at the Institute for Music at NTNU. He’s the foremost expert on our Nordic ballad tradition.”

Singsaker thanked Røed, who handed the music box back, giving the device an odd look as he did so. Singsaker couldn’t decipher what that look meant. Maybe Røed would have liked to keep it for a while to study it further.

*   *   *

Mona Gran turned down the volume of the music she was listening to through her earbuds. She seldom asked herself whether it was appropriate for a policewoman to be listening to death metal, and she hadn’t shared her taste in music with everyone in the department. Jensen knew about her music taste, and he used to tease her by giving her the sign of the horns. She marveled at how childish men could be. One day she had asked Jensen if he knew what that sign meant if made behind the back of an Italian.

“No clue,” he replied.

“It means his wife is being unfaithful.” Then she had stood behind his back and held up the little finger and index finger on her right hand as she laughed. After that, she lectured him about the different meanings the sign had had in history. Did he know it had once been used as protection against evil spirits, much like the way Catholics used the sign of the cross?

After that, Jensen stopped teasing her.

Singsaker, on the other hand, had no idea what sort of music she listened to. He just thought she was the nicest young woman in the department. And that actually might be true. But she couldn’t figure him out. He treated her like he was her father, and she let him, maybe even enjoyed it. She didn’t feel the need to keep her musical tastes secret; it was just something they’d never discussed. She suspected he might not even know what death metal was.

Music helped her concentrate. She needed all the help she could get, now that the real work was about to start. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and the Trondheim police still hadn’t received a report of anyone who had gone missing during the past twenty-four hours. That wasn’t necessarily significant, since it could take a while before people were actually missed. The woman they were trying to identify might have lived alone. Or maybe she was a student with few friends in town. She might have met the killer on her way home from a late-night party, and her friends might think that she was still sleeping it off in someone else’s bed. But the police couldn’t sit and wait for someone to discover that she hadn’t come home. Gro Brattberg had decided to release a description of the woman. But it wasn’t a particularly distinctive description: dark blond hair, blue eyes, average height, somewhere between twenty and thirty, attractive but without any distinguishing marks. Most likely this would bring in too many tips and a ton of extra work. But this was often what helped them solve a case. Breakthroughs in an investigation seldom came from flashes of brilliance; instead, they came from the methodical and thorough examination of a seemingly endless string of unrelated information.

While they waited for tips to come in, Gran had to consider the possibility that the victim might have come from somewhere else, or that she might have been missing for a long time.

Every year, more than a thousand people were reported missing in the various police districts in Norway. Most were young, like this victim. They usually disappeared from some kind of institution and turned up in crime-riddled areas, especially in the big cities. Only rarely was a missing person found murdered, like this woman without a throat.

Gran studied the photo that Grongstad had given her, trying to come up with key words to send to other police districts, and to use in a search of the databases. Her first search attempt was not successful. There were too many hits. She stared at the small grainy pictures of young women, wondering what had happened to all of them. None of them bore any resemblance to their corpse.

She turned her music up and leaned back in her chair. Either we get lucky and find a match soon, she thought, or else this is going to take a really long time. She stretched her back and then closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift. As she sat there, one hand had come to rest on her stomach, just below her navel. This had become a habit of hers. Maybe she was hoping that her hands had healing powers that she wasn’t aware of. She was twenty-seven years old, and several months had passed since her worst suspicions had been confirmed. They’d been trying for two years to have a baby, but she’d gotten her period each month, like clockwork. So it hadn’t been a shock to learn that something was wrong. She was the one with the problem—constricted Fallopian tubes from an infection that she never knew she had. After more attempts and tests, the doctor had reached the conclusion that it might not be impossible for her to conceive naturally, although it was very unlikely, and that she was a good candidate for IVF. Two days ago she’d received a referral to the fertility clinic at St. Olav Hospital.

Mona Gran smiled. She took out her earbuds and began making calls.

*   *   *

“Professor Høybråten?”

Singsaker cleared his throat. He’d knocked on the office door and heard someone tell him to come in. But the older gentleman hadn’t looked up when the door opened, nor when Singsaker went over to the desk where the man was sitting. He was leaning so far over that it almost looked as if he were asleep.

“Professor Høybråten?” Singsaker repeated.

Only then did the man react. He sat up straight and stared at the detective, his gaze both distant and piercing. It was obvious that he’d been deeply immersed in his own thoughts, and that he wasn’t pleased by this interruption.

“Excuse me,” he said. “How may I help you?”

Jan Høybråten was older than Singsaker. His white hair stuck out in all directions. He would have been retired if he’d been anything other than a professor.

“My name is Odd Singsaker. I’m from the police. We’re investigating a murder that was committed last night in the Rosenborg district.”

He assumed that Høybråten wouldn’t have heard about the murder, since the news had been released too late to be included in the morning edition of the paper. The professor didn’t seem like someone who got his news online, or listened to the radio while he worked.

“Yes, one of my colleagues told me about it,” he said, as if he’d read Singsaker’s mind. “But what does it have to do with me?”

Singsaker tried to determine whether it was surprise or something else he heard in the man’s voice. Annoyance? Nervousness? He wasn’t sure. An old man’s voice could be so capricious.

“I’m here to ask for your help with a specific detail of the case,” he said. “Your expert advice.”

He took out the music box and wound it up.

“This was found near the body, and we have no idea what the tune is.”

Then he let go of the key and set the mechanical device on the professor’s desk.

Høybråten listened to the melody. Halfway through he closed his eyes, looking as if he were trying hard to concentrate. When the notes finally stopped, he opened his eyes and shook his head.

“No, strangely enough, I’ve never heard it,” he said.

“And that surprises you?”

“Yes, it does. There’s something oddly familiar about the melody. But I’m positive I’ve never heard it before. A minor key in six/eight time, slow tempo. Mostly likely a lullaby. It could be a ballad by Bellman. But it’s not.”

“Bellman?”

“Yes. Carl Michael Bellman. You don’t know who he is?”

“I’ve heard his name. A Swedish composer, right?”

“The greatest of all ballad composers. He lived in Stockholm in the 1700s.”

Høybråten looked at Singsaker, his expression no longer remote. He seemed to consider whether he should launch into a lengthy lecture about the Swedish musician, but apparently he realized it would be casting pearls before swine.

“I’m giving a concert of Bellman’s ballads at the Ringve Museum next week” was all he said.

“Really? You’re going to sing?”

The professor didn’t answer for a moment, as if deciding how to respond.

“No, unfortunately, I no longer sing. I’m afraid my vocal cords aren’t what they used to be. Nodules. I’m an old man now.”

Again Singsaker sensed there were emotions behind the professor’s words that were not being conveyed by his tone of voice.

“It’s a small group of specially selected girls from the Nidaros Cathedral girls choir,” the professor went on. “I’ll be directing. Actually, I was just sitting here going over the repertoire when you came in. But to get back to the matter at hand: This is not a Bellman ballad. I have no idea who might have written it.”

“Do you think it could be a Nordic lullaby?” asked Singsaker.

“I can’t claim to be familiar with every lullaby ever written. And much of the folk music that was composed here in the north before the 1800s has been lost, quite simply because it was never written down. So it’s possible. Could you play it one more time?”

Singsaker wound up the music box again while the professor got out pencil and paper. This time he made notes as the music played. By the time the song was over, he had a sequence of notes on the page.

“I’ll do some research for you,” he said. “If I find anything, I’ll get in touch.”

Singsaker nodded and picked up the music box. As he left the office, the professor got up and went over to open the window as he fumbled for a pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Many of the employees at the university were still fighting the no-smoking regulations.

*   *   *

Singsaker got into his car, which was parked in the big lot outside the university area on Dragvoll. Parts of the city’s university were located out here in the country, near what had previously been a farm. From the parking lot there was a magnificent view of the city.

He searched his pockets for his notebook and found it at last. Then he put it on his lap and let his finger glide over the black leather cover. It was a Moleskine notebook, a welcome-back gift from his colleagues in the department, given to him last summer after his brain surgery. He’d always used this type of notebook, so it was an especially thoughtful gift. Yet it had taken him a long time to start using this one. At first he didn’t know why. But after a while he’d realized that jotting down notes now meant something different from what it had in the past. It was the same as realizing that his memory was not the same as before the operation, and it that might never be the same. That was something he had to accept. He’d become a forgetful man who could no longer get by without a notebook. But as soon as he became reconciled to this fact, his relationship to his notebook had changed. Only then did he understand what a wonderful gift it was. He’d started calling the notebook “the better half of my brain,” and he didn’t use it just for police work. He also jotted down notes about everything in his personal life that he thought was important to remember.

He turned to the last page he’d written on. He was surprised that he’d made love to Felicia twice last night. Could that be correct? He smiled and felt an urge to drive home and see her. But instead, he took a pencil stub out of his breast pocket and wrote, “
Høybråten seemed nervous. Why?
”

*   *   *

At 1:05
P.M.
the phone rang in Mona Gran’s office.

“Hi, Officer Jonas Borten here. I’m phoning from Greenland,” he said. Then he added, without a trace of humor, “The police department in the Greenland district of Oslo. I’m at work.”

“How can I help you?” asked Gran.

Borten didn’t reply for a moment, as if caught off guard by her willingness to help.

“I’m calling because I think I can help you,” he said finally.

“That sounds good. We could use some help.”

“It’s regarding the murder victim you found last night. I might have something for you.”

“Yes? What is it?” she said, trying to hide her impatience.

“We don’t have any new missing person reports that match your description, but something made me think about a case I worked on a few weeks back. I think it was the address that caught my attention. When I was a kid I lived in Bakkaunet, not far from Kuhaugen, so I know the area well. Ludvig Daaes Gate was on my way to school. And that’s one of the reasons why I remember the case. We got a missing person report about three weeks ago. A woman from Oslo. She shared an apartment with another woman, who filed the report. But after only twenty-four hours, the missing woman called her friend from the train station in Trondheim and said she was on her way to meet a former lover who had moved there. We dropped the case, but just to make sure, I did a search on this lover of hers. He lived not far from Kuhaugen, and it turned out that the purportedly missing woman had previously filed a police report charging him with domestic violence. A stabbing. I didn’t give any more thought to the matter. Just another thoughtless young woman going back to her abusive lover, and there was nothing we could do about that. But then I hear about this homicide, and it happens close to the place where her lover lives, and there’s a knife involved, and the description fits the woman, so I thought that—”

“The description also fits about ten thousand other Norwegian women of the same age,” Gran said, interrupting. “But we can’t leave any stone unturned. Do you have a photo of this woman?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I have. Of course, this could just be a shot in the dark, but that’s what happens so often. We shoot and shoot until we finally hit the mark. Give me your e-mail address, and I’ll send over the picture right now.”