The Weeping Girl (19 page)

My dear Mikael, she hissed as she fished for her mobile in her handbag. You’re in a right old mess now. A right old bloody mess!

It was 19 July, and the sun was scorching down from a cloudless sky. Detective Inspector Ewa Moreno’s holiday had just entered its second week. She was in a car park outside a remotely
situated mental hospital two kilometres away from the sea, her period had just started, and Mikael Bau’s damned Trabant refused to start.

The first liberated woman in the history of the world? Is that how she had defined her position in life’s system of coordinates just a few days ago?

Huh.

‘The world is round,’ said Henning Keeswarden, six years and five months old.

‘As round as a ball,’ said Fingal Wielki, a mere four years and nine months old, but a keen promoter of everything that seemed to be new and modern. Especially if the one who
announced it was his adorable cousin.

‘There are people on the other side,’ said young Keeswarden. ‘Do you understand that?’

Fingal nodded enthusiastically. Of course he understood.

‘If we dig a deep, deep hole down into the ground, we’ll eventually come out on the other side.’

‘On the other side,’ agreed Fingal.

‘But we have to dig really, really deep. Then all we need to do is to climb down and come out of the hole on the other side. In China, where the Chinese live.’

‘China, Chinese’ said Fingal. He wasn’t quite sure where that was, nor who the Chinese were, but didn’t want to admit it. ‘We’ll have to dig deep, deep
down!’ he said instead.

‘Let’s get going,’ said Henning. ‘We’ve got all day. I once dug a hole that very nearly came out on the other side of the world. I was nearly there – but then
I had to go in and eat. I could hear them talking down there.’

‘Talking?’

Fingal couldn’t suppress his surprise.

‘The Chinese. I was that close. I placed my ear against the bottom of the hole, and I could hear them talking quite clearly. I couldn’t understand what they said, of course –
they speak a different language, the Chinese do. Shall we dig a hole now that goes all the way through?’

‘Of course,’ said Fingal.

The cousins dug away. Fingal’s spade was red and much newer than Henning’s, which was blue and a bit worse for wear. Perhaps it had been used during the previous
China excavation, so it was understandable. But a red spade always digs faster than a blue one.

It was still only morning. They had just come down to the beach with their mothers, who were sisters and currently busy lying down on their backs and tanning their titties – it was that
kind of beach.

It was quite easy to dig. At first, at least. But soon the sand they’d dug out started to run back down into the hole. Henning said that they’d have to make the hole a bit wider at
the top.

It was rather boring to have to make the hole wider when what they really wanted to do was to dig straight down and come to the Chinese as quickly as possible. But if they wanted to get through,
they would have to put up with a few annoying little problems. And keep at it even so.

And so Henning got stuck in, and Fingal followed his example.

‘Shut up now, I’m listening and trying to hear something!’ said Henning when the hole was so deep that only his head and shoulders stuck out when he stood
upright on the bottom. That was certainly true of Fingal, at any rate, who was some ten centimetres shorter than his cousin.

‘Sh!’ said Fingal to himself, holding his index finger over his lips when Henning pressed his ear down on the wet sand.

‘Could you hear anything?’ he asked when Henning stood up again and brushed the sand out of his ear.

‘Only something very faint,’ said Henning. ‘We have quite a bit to go yet. Shall we play at slaves?’

‘Slaves? Yes, of course!’ said Fingal, who couldn’t remember just now what a slave was.

Henning clambered up out of the hole.

‘Let’s start with you as the slave and me as the slave driver. You have to do everything I say, otherwise I’ll kill you and eat you up.’

‘Okay,’ said Fingal.

‘Get digging!’ yelled Henning, threateningly. ‘Dig away, you idle slave!’

Fingal started digging again. Down and down, with sand being sprayed around left, right and centre: it was wet and quite hard going, halfway down to China.

‘Dig!’ yelled Henning again. ‘You have to say: Yes, Mister!’

‘Yesmister!’ said Fingal, digging away.

We ought to be making contact with those Chinese soon, he thought; but he daren’t break off to lie down and listen. If he did, his cousin might kill him and eat him up. That didn’t
sound very pleasant. Instead he started digging slightly to one side, where it seemed to be easier. Maybe that was the right way to China. He had the feeling it must be the case.

‘Get digging, you idle slave!’ screeched Henning.

His arms were really beginning to ache now, especially the right one that he’d broken when he was out skiing and fell on the ice six months ago. But he didn’t give up. He dug away
with the spade and stuck it into the sand wall at the side of the hole with all his strength.

A large chunk of sand fell down as he did so, but that was okay. He realized that he had got there. At last. A foot was sticking out of the sand.

A foot with all five toes and a sole with sand stuck to it. A real Chinese foot!

‘We’re there!’ he shouted. ‘Look!’

The slave driver jumped down into the hole to check. Good God! They really had dug so far down that they’d come to a Chinaman’s feet.

‘Well dug!’ he said.

The only questionable thing – which seemed to challenge the theory that the earth was round – was that the foot hadn’t appeared at the bottom of the hole. It was sticking out
from the side instead; and the leg to which the foot was attached also seemed to be sticking out sideways instead of from the bottom up.

But that was a bagatelle.

‘Let’s dig the sand away and take a look at the rest of it,’ said Henning, who had now given up his job as slave driver and was prepared to dig out that leg – and indeed
all the rest of the body, which didn’t seem to be a Chinaman after all, but the corpse of an ordinary mortal.

Which didn’t necessarily make matters any worse – although he would never admit to his cousin that he had never seen a corpse before.

But just as he dug in his blue spade and made another chunk of sand fall down into the hole, his auntie Doris appeared at the top of the hole, glowering down at them.

His auntie, Fingal’s mum.

At first she glowered.

Then she screamed.

Then his own mum appeared and she screamed as well. Both he and Fingal were lifted out of the Chinese hole and people came swarming up from all directions – bare-breasted women and women
with their breasts hidden away, men with and without sunglasses, some of them with big, flashy swimming trunks, others with tiny ones that more or less disappeared up their backsides . . . But all
of them pointing and singing from the same hymn sheet:

‘Don’t touch anything! Don’t touch anything!’ shouted a large, fat bloke, louder than anybody else, ‘There’s a body buried down there in the sand! Don’t
touch anything until the police get here!’

Henning’s mum lifted her son up, and Fingal’s did the same with hers: but there was a red and a blue spade left lying in the hole, and nobody seemed to have the slightest interest in
them.

But those feet – they’d exposed another one when Henning made his final thrust with his spade: everybody seemed to be extremely interested in them.

So, Fingal thought: it really was one of those Chinese we dug up.

‘The earth is round!’ he shouted, waving to everybody while his mum did her best to whisk him away to where their picnic hampers were waiting, filled with apples and buns and
sandwiches and juice that was both red and yellow. Oh yes, the earth is round!

22 July 1983

She didn’t register what the girl said at first. The red digits on the clock radio said 01.09; her irritation that somebody had had the cheek to ring at that time of
night was mixed with worry that something must have happened. An accident? Her parents? Her brother? Arnold or Mikaela – no, that wasn’t possible, they were both asleep in the same room
as she was.

‘I’m sorry – what did you say?’

‘I want to speak to my teacher, magister Maager.’

A pupil. She stopped worrying. A fifteen- or sixteen-year-old chit of a girl telephoning at ten past one in the morning . . .
Magister Maager?
Arnold rolled over in his bed, and the
first unmistakable coughs came from Mikaela’s cot: she was awake, and would start howling at any moment. No doubt about it. If that didn’t happen every night, it happened every other,
at least.

Some nights more than once. And without any help from the telephone. Her anger burst forth in full bloom.

‘How dare you telephone us in the middle of the night? We have a little child, and we’ve got better things to do than . . .’

She lost the thread. No response. For a moment she thought the girl must have hung up, but then she heard the sound of slightly asthmatic breathing at the other end of the line. Arnold switched
the light on and sat up. She gestured to him, telling him to see to Mikaela, and he got out of bed.

‘What do you want?’ she asked sternly.

‘I want to speak to Maager.’

‘What about?’

No reply. Mikaela started howling, and Arnold picked her up. Why the hell did he have to pick her up? she wondered. It would have been enough to stick the dummy in her mouth. Now she
wouldn’t go back to sleep for at least half an hour.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked. ‘Surely you realize that you simply can’t just ring people up at this time of night?’

‘I need to speak to him. Can you tell him to be at the viaduct a quarter of an hour from now?’

‘At the viaduct? Are you out of your mind? What are you on about, you little . . . You little . . .’

She couldn’t think of a suitable name to call her. Not without swearing, and she didn’t want to lose control altogether. Mikaela’s first shrill shriek echoed through the room.
Hell’s bells! she thought. What’s all this about?

‘Can I speak to him?’

‘No.’

‘It’s . . . It’s important.’

‘What’s it about?’

Silence again. Both from the receiver and from Mikaela, who was evidently tired and didn’t have the strength to run through her whole repertoire. She seemed to be happy enough to hang over
her father’s shoulder and whimper, thank goodness.

‘Tell him to come to the viaduct.’

‘Certainly not! Tell me who you are, and explain why you’re ringing in the middle of the night.’

Arnold came to sit on the edge of the bed, and looked enquiringly. She met his gaze, and as she did so the girl at the other end of the line decided to lay her cards on the table.

‘My name’s Winnie, I’ve had sex with him and I’m pregnant.’

It was strange that Arnold and Mikaela should be so close to her just as these words drilled their way into her consciousness. That thought struck her now, and recurred later. The fact that they
were all sitting next to each other in her half of the double bed at that very moment. The inseparable family. Extremely damned strange, in view of the fact that the chasm that had suddenly opened
up between them was so deep and so wide that she knew immediately they would never be able to bridge it. That they would never even try. No chance. She knew that immediately.

What was also strange was that she was able to think such thoughts in a mere fraction of a second. She handed him the receiver and relieved him of his daughter.

‘It’s for you.’

But she didn’t remain calm for long. Once Arnold had replaced the receiver and collapsed in a pathetic heap on the floor beside the bed, she lay Mikaela down between the
pillows and began hitting him. As hard as she could, with clenched fists. On his head and shoulders.

He didn’t react. Made no attempt to defend himself, just bowed his head slightly; and soon her arms began to ache. Mikaela woke up again but didn’t start crying. She sat up and
watched instead. With eyes open wide, and her dummy in her mouth.

Sigrid ran out of the bedroom, into the bathroom, and locked herself in. Bathed her face in cold water and tried to take control of all the frantic thoughts bombarding her brain.

Stared, first at her own face in the mirror, and then at all the familiar, trivial items beside the washbasin and on all the shelves: all the tubes and jars and tablets of soap and scissors and
toothbrushes and packets of plasters – all the things that were the most mundane features of her mundane life, but which now suddenly seemed alien and tainted with threatening and horrible
overtones that she couldn’t grasp. I’m going mad, she thought. I’m going out of my mind in this damned bathroom at this very damned moment . . . There are only seconds to go.

She dried her face with a hand towel and opened the door.

‘The viaduct, a quarter of an hour from now – is that right?’

He didn’t answer. Not a sound, neither from him nor Mikaela. Nothing but silence from the bedroom. She fished out a jumper and a pair of jeans. Her blue deck shoes. She was dressed and
ready to go within half a minute.

Goodbye.

She thought that, but didn’t say it

‘Wait.’

She didn’t wait. She opened the outside door and went out. Closed it behind her and hurried out into the street. The night air was cool and pleasant.

She could breathe.

When he left Mikaela he wasn’t sure if she was asleep. But she was in her cot with her dummy in her mouth, breathing audibly and regularly, as usual. All being well she
would be okay for an hour or so on her own.

He closed the outside door as quietly as he could. Thought about taking his bike, but decided not to. He wouldn’t be first there in any case.

It would take eight to ten minutes to walk up to the viaduct, and perhaps he needed to make the most of those minutes. Did he even want to get there first? Didn’t he need these minutes in
order to work out some kind of decision? To make up his mind what he was going to do?