The cell phone in his coat began chiming.
Arne stuffed the sandwich into his mouth, which tasted like sawdust, threw a couple of the leaves to the rabbit, and within two strides was at the desk again. Still holding the whole sandwich in his mouth, careful not to bite all the way through and lose his evening meal, he struggled to pull the phone from the lining of his coat’s outer pocket. Huakaas grunted and cursed through the bread, his irritation growing, until he managed to wrangle the phone free.
“Yes?” he barked, through a mouthful of sandwich.
“Huakaas,” Bjorn said, in his usual excited puppy-dog way. “We have a lead.”
“Uh-huh,” Arne replied, taking another bite.
“We got something. A liquor store down in Bygdøy.”
“I’m not driving all the way down there at this time of night.”
“No need, I’m waiting outside.”
Huakaas peered through the window to see Huus parked in front of the apartment. He gave an annoyingly chipper wave.
The line clicked off.
Arne grunted, and wavered on the spot. Should he go? The night’s beers swam in his belly and his vision was noticeably hazy. Huakaas glanced at the picture on the side again. At Clara. He didn’t have another photo, but whose fault was that? He wrinkled his nose in frustration.
Clara’d want you to go, he thought.
Another grumble, then he pulled his coat off the back of the chair, swallowed the last of his sandwich, and headed for the door.
Plymouth, England, 1985
Christmas was the best. Some kids claimed to love Christmas, but Rey really loved Christmas. For the rest of the year, things were never special. Perhaps a homemade cake on her birthday, if her mom could afford the ingredients. No vacation at Easter or during the summer. They lived hand-to-mouth, scraping together the money from the dole office. Most days of the week, food was scarce. Greasy fish fingers cooked in a vat of boiling oil—the deep fat fryer—and lumpy hand-mashed potatoes for tea that Rey unhappily chivvied down her throat. If there was salad cream, that helped a little. The vinegary mayonnaise-like condiment went well on a slice of bread with margarine, too.
Christmas was different.
The usually solemn council house they had moved into a few months earlier, on an ugly street with ugly people, was alive with decorations. As with everything in their home, Mom made them herself. Pictures comprised of large pieces of colored card, cut into an oval shape and painted with copies of Christmas greeting postcards hung on the wall. Rey’s favorite was a brown mouse with big friendly eyes wearing a red hat, sitting on a shiny bauble.
Then, of course, there was the tree.
Rey wandered down the narrow hall, the cheap carpet crunching underneath her tiny feet, into the living room to admire their Christmas tree. The bay window seemed to have been built solely to house it. It was perfectly sized to showcase their five-foot plastic tree, which was magically adorned in colored lights and thick, bushy red, green, and blue tinsel, all carefully arranged in neat rings around the fake branches. Behind it, the windows had been taped with black insulating tape to form smaller black squares much like an old leaded window in books by Charles Dickens. It didn’t snow in any great quantity in the coastal town of Plymouth, so her mom had used canned snow to make small white triangles in the corner of the taped squares. To Rey, it gave the illusion a winter wonderland might exist outside.
Ray stared at the tree with the living room lights off. The colored lights made the tinsel sparkle. She unfocused her eyes and let the tree become a bright sparkly mass. In the background, one of her favorite songs played: “Do they know it’s Christmas?” by Band Aid. All the different voices, all singing for the little children in Africa. Rey knew they had a harder life than she did. They had no food at all. At least Rey had grease and lumps. A lot of people had it worse than she did.
The chorus of the song began and Rey’s skin prickled. She wondered if those kids in Africa did know it was Christmas. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be as lucky as her. At Christmas, when it was her turn, Rey could choose one present she really, really wanted. If she was a good girl, and if Father Christmas was able, she might find it under the tree on Christmas day. This year was her turn. Her brother, Damien, was too little—one year old—so she could choose. She wanted something to do with He-Man, her favorite cartoon. Which toy didn’t really matter.
A sweet, familiar smell wafted from the kitchen. Mince pies. Mom’s homemade mince pies. No one else really liked them, but Rey did. So, her mom saved all year to be able to buy the fixings and other yummy Christmas food. Mince pies normally had alcohol in them, but these were special ones for Rey. The pastry was crumbly, and the pie had sugar on the lid. Inside, the raisins and sultanas were juicy and sweet. Rey’s tummy rumbled. She tottered to the kitchen in hopes they might be ready. Sometimes, Mom let her eat one before Christmas Eve.
Just inside the kitchen, Damien sat with his back to her—as naked as the day he was born—on the shiny vinyl floor. Rey studied him for a moment. Damien turned and gave her the biggest grin, his blue eyes sparkling. His whole face and both hands were covered in Sudocrem, a thick white cream used to put on his bum to stop nappy rash. He giggled, a glob of the zinc-based substance falling out. From the looks of it, he’d eaten half the pot.
Rey broke into a fit of belly laughing. Damien looked so silly.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Rey’s heart froze and her smile fell away. The familiar acrid smell of cigarettes powered into the room. Her father.
“Is he eating the ass cream?” her dad shouted, storming past her and grabbing the pot from Damien.
“I ... don’t know,” Rey stammered.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You’ve got fuckin’ eyes, don’t you?”
Rey didn’t answer, the familiar tingle in her underpants signaling she was close to wetting herself.
“Why did you let him do that?” her dad shouted.
“I ... I ... didn’t ...” Rey stammered.
“Don’t you fucking lie to me,” he barked and took a step toward her.
Rey turned and ran.
His heavy footsteps clumped behind her as he gave chase.
Rey didn’t know how or why, but she knew to duck. Her dad's fist slipped past her head, the air ruffling her hair. Rey’s sock-covered feet slipped on the vinyl and she crashed face-first onto the hard floor. An overwhelming pain blasted through her mouth and into her skull.
She couldn’t stay there on the floor.
Rey peeled herself from the sticky plastic lining and with rubbery legs sprinted for her bedroom. A crimson trail followed her up the stairs. Sitting by herself in her room, sniffing away the tears, Rey concentrated as hard as she could to control her sobbing. She ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth, which tasted like an empty fork. Something was wrong. She slid a finger between her lips and gingerly probed her throbbing gums. She winced as her fingertip contacted an open, fleshy wound, a gap where her front tooth had once been. She scanned the floor of her room, but it was nowhere to be seen.
Outside her bedroom door, there was more stomping. Dad had Damien, who was crying. Rey’s tummy felt strange. She shouldn’t have left Damien alone, but she was scared. There was the slam of a door in the next room, and a jangle in the lock. For a long time, Rey sat on her bed, wondering what she was supposed to do. Then it came. The shouting. Her mom screamed at her dad. Rey wasn’t sure where her mom had been all this time. Out perhaps?
Then there was footfall.
Her mom burst into her room, eyes filled with tears as her gaze followed the trail of blood up to where Rey sat. Her mom collapsed in front of Rey, soft hands already searching from where the blood came. The bloody gap, tooth and root ripped from the gum, wasn’t hard to miss.
With a renewed energy, Rey’s mom climbed to her feet, grabbed Rey by the wrist and dragged her from the bedroom. She headed straight for Damien’s room. The door handle rattled, but it was no use. Her d
ad had locked it. Rey’s mom became frantic. She released Rey and dashed to her own room. Banging and crashing followed. Moments later, she returned with a key.
With Damien slung under one arm, Rey’s mom grabbed Rey’s hand and dragged her as fast as she could down the burgundy carpeted stairs, around the quick two-step bend, through the hallway, past the kitchen and the living room, and out the front door. Damien’s buggy was snatched up, but with which hand Rey did not know. Her mom always seemed to have the ability to hold a thousand things in just two hands.
Soon, they were on the cracked, bleak street. No coat. No money. They were just running. Damien was in the buggy. The ugly brown thing with thin metal bars and thick, hard wheels gave no comfort when rolling over stones and cracks. Rey didn’t miss being pushed around in it.
They made it to the end of the road before he caught up.
Her dad stormed up behind them, his strides seemingly as fast as their run. He grabbed hold of the buggy. Rey’s tummy knotted again, though she knew out here—outside the house—he wouldn’t hit her or her mom. Never outside. That only ever happened in the house where people couldn’t see. Outside was safer. At least from him. For a moment, Rey considered they might be able to escape, but her dad forced control of the pushchair and headed back to the house.
Nobody stopped him.
No one came to help.
In Rey’s neighborhood, this happened every day.
Her mom glanced at her and then back to the pushchair moving away from them. Of course, she chased after Dad, pulling Rey along. What else could she do? Damien was in the buggy. On tired legs, Rey stumbled back toward their breezeblock house—the Christmas tree in the window telling sweet lies of a warm and welcoming, wholesome home inside. For the first time, it dawned on Rey that her mom needed to leave her dad. She could look after Damien. But her mum had to go. Their home wasn’t safe.
Oslo, Norway, 2016
Rey woke with a start and ran her tongue across her teeth.
Still all there.
It had taken nearly three years for her adult incisor to come through because the gum had hardened. The kids at Park Primary School had called her gummy bear the entire time, singing the damn tune to the popular kids’ cartoon over and over. Still, at least there had been an adult tooth to fill the gap. There was no way her mum could have afforded a fake tooth, and in those days the NHS was unlikely to have been much help.
The room was dark now with the streetlights off. A familiar chill of the hotel air conditioning, which always seemed to be on regardless of the ambient temperature, made her skin prickle. Rey stretched her sore limbs and rubbed her aching belly. The clock on the desk glowed 01:33 a.m.
“Fuck it,” she whispered to the walls.
Rey climbed slowly to the edge of the bed, the ordeal of which was slow and tiresome. There she sat in the gloom, her gaze focused on nothing, hands clenched in absent-minded anxiety. The small hours were dangerous. Her will seemed weaker than in the day, and old demons had a tighter grip. Her swiss-cheese mind threatened to fill in the gaps of her memory. She contemplated distracting herself by going over the final phase of the plan but knew there was little point. Every detail had been worked out, fine-tuned, and signed off on. She’d taken such an organizational approach to everything all her life. While others crammed for exams the night before, Rey was very much of the opinion that if she didn’t know it by then, she was never going to. This was the same. The last victim had been profiled, verified, and the architecture of his demise constructed. Everything was in motion. Going over it again would only make her question certain aspects and drive an unnecessary desire to change things—like a painter wanting to add an extra stroke to her masterpiece only to ruin the final product.
Rey got up and marched to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, but instead became transfixed by her own reflection. The image in the mirror didn’t feel like her. No luscious locks, no tanned skin, no bright eyes. Rey had always considered herself ugly, but studying her sickly features now, she longed for the mass of tangled hair and thick eyebrows that seemed to need plucking twice a day. She’d gotten those from Joe, but her upturned nose, dark eyes, and rabbit teeth were all her mother’s.
A stone formed in Rey’s throat.
All too often, in the precious hours insomnia stole, Rey’s mind sought out her mother. Without music, only the still of the night instructed her how to feel or what to think. And the silence always wanted her mom. Lovers had even told Rey that in her sleep she would call out for her mother. She never remembered doing it.
“Screw this,” Rey muttered.
She slipped on her jacket, pulled on her hat, then scooped up her phone, earbuds, medicine, and passport. A walk would clear her head, but she had to be prepared to be able to move at any moment.
Rey headed for the door, rode the elevator, and left through the lobby.
The night air was crisp, and while she hoped it might shock her awake and clear away sad thoughts, the cold only served to further tighten her muscles and freeze her brain into a cycle of unwanted reminiscences.
She meandered along the pavement, head down, watching one foot step in front of the other. The unusual sleet and rain in the middle of April stung her face. She sniffed away the mucous sliding from her sinuses into her nasal cavity, then fished out her earbuds and pushed them into place. Though she wanted to find a song to drown out the growing anxiety, her fingers betrayed her.
Familiar piano notes echoed in her ears followed by Don Henley's voice. That first word, the title of the song, made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. “Desperado” by The Eagles. A song covered by so many others, but it had to be this version—the original, the one her mother had given her.
Years ago, when they still spoke, Rey’s mother had said she felt Rey slipping away as if she had shut down and withdrawn from the world. Her mind focused on career, chasing things—usually men—that didn’t belong to her or she could never have. She was accused of doing this purposefully, intentionally denying herself any real connection. The lyrics of “Desperado” mirrored her mother’s words almost verbatim.
At the time, Rey wanted to refute the accusation, but she couldn’t. After all, keeping people at arm’s length was best for everyone involved. That way, they couldn’t hurt her, and she couldn’t hurt them.
Rey’s mom insisted there was a thread of hope in the song, too—talk of rainbows and a future if the cowboy would just let someone love him. Could Rey only focus on key parts? Could she concentrate on only lyrics which told of losing those moments in life that made it worth living—the highs and the lows—until there was nothing left?
For a long time, Rey had felt like she had nothing.
Until the event that had changed everything.
The song came to an end.
The resulting vacuum was deafening.
Rey pulled the phone from her pocket and opened her playlist. She scrolled and scrolled, but every track was wrong. Hearing the beginning note of twenty songs, but choosing none of them, irritated her further. Short, concentrated breaths through her nose misted the air. A bright light bounced off the phone screen, obscuring the track-listing. Infuriated, Rey looked up just as a car collided into her.
A dull wave of pain rushed through her hip and into her intestines, folding them like wet origami. She hit the unforgiving pavement hard. Of course, it occurred in a matter of seconds, but for Rey, the event played out in painful slow motion. The long screech of tires as the driver slammed on the brakes, the thud of metal against her body and her flying some ten feet backward through the air. To see the ground coming and know there was no way to brace for the impact was inexplicably annoying.
The force knocked the air from her lungs, but losing her earbuds seemed more important in this time warp. She watched them clatter across the road and wondered if she’d ever find them again. As she lay there, half on the sidewalk, half on the road, her vision darkening around the edges, a strange warm feeling radiated f
rom within. The thought of dying, of being free, was somehow comforting. Yet, as always when Rey had such thoughts, her mind seesawed from an overwhelming acceptance of death as her only release to pure panic at the prospect of the unknown beyond. Her instinct to stay alive dug in its claws and refused to let her slip away. It was both a blessing and a curse. To stay alive, only to feel pain.
A man’s voice pierced the dark fog closing in around her, punctuated by the regular flashing orange indicator lights of the offending car—though she could only see them through the lashes of her half-closed eyes.
A male voice speaking in Norwegian penetrated the fog in her head. Rey wanted to answer but her tongue would not move, and she could not seem to pass air over her vocal cords. Instead, any warmth given by the prospect of release ebbed into the night, and along with it, Rey’s consciousness slipped away.
Oslo, Norway, 2016
The liquor store had to be opened specifically for the detectives. Bjorn had pressured the owner, flashing his badge and using the fact he was on the King Kubb Killer case. Huakaas would have waited, at least until opening hours, but Bjorn was chasing his parked cars again.
Arne rubbed his head, a mild beer-soaked headache growing in his skull. “You want to tell me why I’m here in the middle of the night?”
Bjorn stepped out from behind a shelf filled with snacks and chocolates, his face bright and alert. “The residue,” he said with pride, his tone laced with just a little I told you so.
“Okay, walk me through it.”
“So, each time the killer uses a different bottle, right? He strips the bottle of all discernible features and sterilizes the inside so that no trace of the brand of alcohol can be found. This kind of throws us off, right? We never know where the bottle came from or what it contained, bar a best guess based on its shape.”
“Uh-huh,” Arne said, pulling out a cigarette.
“Not in here, please,” the shop owner said, his face pained at his having to ask.
A Time For Monsters Page 4