by Piotr Ryczko
“Shut up. And reserve a seat number beside me,” she said as she struggled to cover up her racing thoughts.
Finally, he loosened up and responded with an intense hug. But the moment she was in his arms, her eyes were drawn back to Marianne’s contorted face on her laptop.
* * *
She dug through the cupboards after something. But before she got halfway, she had already forgotten what she was looking for. As she eyed her bags, trousers, makeup, lingerie, and shoes littered all over the room, her mind churned away on what had just happened.
She had just committed Ronny, the man whom she was supposed to love, to resigning from one of the most promising careers as a general physician in the city. He had more than enough patients and a fair share of respect amongst his fellows. Things he had worked for half his life. And Ronny wasn’t just a steady workhorse, he was unrelenting, energetic and, most of all, he cared. That’s why his patients loved him.
But not until one particular night did Viola fully realise what it meant for Ronny to be a doctor. Early on, she had noticed that he slept badly. He often spoke in his sleep, tossing and turning. But this night he screamed himself awake. He was drenched in sweat and disoriented. And then he began to cry. When she held him, wrapping her arms protectively around him, he confessed how much he worried. He stressed that he might miss a life-threatening diagnosis or he might commit a fatal technical error.
At first, she thought his fear was grounded in the danger of being sued for malpractice. And she would understand that. But then she realised it stemmed from his deeply embedded core values. From the key to his profession: “First, do no harm”. This was more important to him than anything else, she had learnt. And no matter how hard he tried to distance himself in a professional manner, he still suffered. Just because he cared so much.
This had been a turning point for her internally. As she realised what kind of a man he was, an uncanny respect for him blossomed within her. And if she could name what it meant to be in love, this was it for her.
As she thought about this now, her mind struggled with the fact that after two passionate years, Ronny was now prepared to flush his career down the drain. Just for her. How valiant, romantic.
And utterly stupid.
But who was she to judge anyone? After all, she was the one with a pack of deceits. Wasn’t Ronny doing all of that based on some fairy tale she had woven around him? A piece of literary fiction based on someone loosely tied to her. But with a huge copyright disclaimer at the end of the titles. One he might not have noticed.
She wanted to shriek at herself. Slap herself hard enough so she would wake up from this bad dream called Viola Voss. But instead she just sighed, allowing herself a moment of remorse. Then she continued to search her cupboards, for something she still couldn’t remember.
And at that moment, her fingers brushed against something buried away in a wrapper. She uncovered two wooden picture frames. A golden autumn of a three-year-old boy kissing and hugging her. Despite the tangible carelessness and intimacy in them, they felt like ancient times. Way too distant to be real.
How the hell did it get there?
She had been through the apartment seven times. Or maybe even eight. This number was important. Necessary. The frequency was to make sure Markus had not only been cleansed from her past, but evaporated.
So how did this frame end up in that cupboard? Could it be Ronny who put it there? Just to test her, to see if she would go crazy? A cruel, freakish test.
Or maybe it was her mother. Did she have any keys? If she did, this would be exactly the kind of thing Anne was capable of.
Then it struck her. A touch of lucidity. There was probably no one to blame. Her mother couldn’t have been inside her apartment. She couldn’t have put that frame in the cupboard. Her partner was the most sensitive and caring person she had ever met in her life. Benign, compassionate. He would never do such a thing.
So, this left her with only one possibility.
Her worst enemy had left it there.
Herself.
And however much she pushed that away, it could be the only solution. Not only did she leave the frame there herself, but she also found it at the worst possible time. A time when Marianne’s mother suddenly turned up out of nowhere, claiming her daughter was still alive. A blogger whose pain struck more than a chord in Viola: something she had desperately attempted to push away for years.
Her history and Marianne’s past crashed in on her simultaneously. This time around, she knew she had it all under control. But how long would that last? Maybe all the more reason to find her answers.
And there was only one person who could give them to her.
Morning
When Ronny glanced back inside Viola’s room, the mess was still there. Only more pronounced.
As his eyes flitted over the chaos, doubts began to creep in on him. This ticket, the trip, it was nothing short of a revolution in his life. And he kept telling himself it was going to be a good thing. It was supposed to change things. For the better. So why did everything inside him hurt so much? Why were his feelings in such a jumbled disarray?
He knew he was making a sacrifice. Stretching himself farther than he needed to. Or maybe, was able to. And he was also aware this was a one-way road. All the groundwork he had laid into building a practice, all the clients and trust he had built up, gone in one fell swoop. He had to be crazy to even consider this. Yet here he was. Tickets ready, her yes obtained, a practice to be shut down, and his life to be irretrievably transformed.
He didn’t want to go into the details with her. The problems he had experienced along the way. The apartment he couldn’t rent out and had to sell, the favours he had to cash in with his professional peers in order not to abandon his patients with no medical care available. If he had told her the truth about what this move meant to him professionally, how much of a chance he stood at a career in Damascus, she would never agree to his proposition.
So he delivered the sugar-coated version, the one without problems, without the burnt bridges. And most of all, without the stuff that might break his future.
No. He was not the one to dish out his problems to anyone. Especially not to her. And one thing was certain, there was always some baggage left unpacked. He had stepped into this relationship with his fair share. But he had quickly decided it would be for the best to leave that out of his life with Viola.
It was Kristin, his last partner. At one point, late in their relationship, maybe just before the end, Kristin had been fighting with her tumour, something that had taken all her strength. And before he had known it, he had found himself leaving her. Or maybe he had escaped her. For reasons that had baffled him. Or rather, none that he had understood at that point. However, he had presented this to Kristin, whatever excuses he had procured, be it some vague personal problems, or a burnout at work, the simple fact was that he had abandoned her. He had left her when she had needed him the most. It had taken him the better part of a month before he had realised what he had done. He had returned to her, but it had already been too late. Not too late for her, because the tumour had turned out to be benign. But too late for them. This had been the last time they had ever spoken.
His past had shown him what happened when he failed people. And if he promised himself anything in this life, it would be to never repeat the same mistake again. This time, there would be no excuses. No matter what, he would be there for Viola.
With a heavy sigh, Ronny was about to leave when he eyed the wooden frame. He approached it, turned it over, and his eyes took in a glowing Viola. With her Markus cuddled into her.
He had never met him. If he hadn’t seen a picture at Anne’s place, he would have only been able to guess this was her son. It was a wonder it still existed in this place. She made it explicitly clear, even repeated several times that she had cleaned up the apartment. Seven or eight times, that’s what she had said.
Then there were the constant bathroom trips
. He felt it was connected to Markus, but what had happened there, what lay behind it, that remained a secret. But with time, it got harder to overlook, as her stays got longer and more frequent.
Yet, he had also learnt there was no use pushing her for the details. The last time he had done that, she had treated him to a week-long silence. She had blamed it on her period, but he knew that it was not time for it. After this incident, he didn’t want to visit that territory again. So he left this, and so much more, unspoken.
This didn’t bring them closer together. On the contrary, they drifted apart, as he felt Viola raising a wall between them. At one point, he thought about leaving her, but then he quickly corrected himself. It dawned on him this was a test. The same one he flunked with Kristin. So he stayed and fought on for them without questioning the rights and wrongs.
He eyed the Syria tickets on the table. Maybe this move would be good. A chance to get away from things, to start afresh. A way to straighten out his personal stuff. But most of all, to build a family, which he longed for so much. He never pushed her for kids, as he felt her gushing wound after Markus. And he was willing to accept that, even to disregard his own desires. As long as she was happy. Correction. As long as they were happy.
Besides, his own problems, his needs, were nothing to talk about. Especially not to her. So, yes, things would change. Despite the fact that he doubted he would ever have this woman’s heart completely, things would improve.
He put the picture frame down and approached her cupboard. Then he started to open her drawers. One by one, he started to go through them.
Chapter 4
Noon
Pål had always been rock solid. A stalwart in his profession and his community. That’s how Viola remembered him.
So, it was with an uneasy surprise that Viola greeted the man at the door, who was unshaven and stank. His eyes were sunken, his body malnourished, and his face puffed up from way too much drinking.
And now, as Viola sat on his dirty sofa, she cast an unnerving eye at his apartment. The place was trashed, dust, litter, and clothes intermingled in a perfect harmony. What the hell happened? Was Pål divorced? Where was his son, Tommy? Whatever the situation, glancing at Pål’s condition, Viola knew better than to push the matter.
He glanced at Viola’s laptop and the comment from Marianne. And soon enough, he chuckled, a moment of authenticity flashing across his face. The old mockery. Apparently, hard times didn’t erase everything.
“I don’t get it.” Pål eyed Viola. It was clear he was struggling with the piece of evidence Stine had discovered the previous day. Viola knew it, he knew it. But she had no other choice than to shrug it away, pretend she had no clue what he was talking about.
“Surely you are able to tell the difference between the substantial and the trivial?” He scolded her as if she were a child, then pointed to her laptop.
This side of him was also familiar. Being no more than eight years older, Viola could never grasp how this always gave him the right to be paternal, especially towards the opposite sex. And even more so if you gave him a reason to tear you apart, like this half-assed evidence.
Hearing his reproof, Viola breathed out in relief. Despite the demolished apartment and Pål’s sorry state, maybe there was still hope. Maybe there was someone in there. And maybe she had a chance, as long as she managed to engage him.
“You don’t get it, do you? Who she was. And what her fight was all about. No other public person did so much for childless women. And if that isn’t clear enough for you, that means women with no options.” She launched this at him, hoping the attack would scratch away some of his callousness.
But Pål just froze, then followed it with an arranged smirk, which probably was supposed to communicate his contempt.
“You are damned right. I don’t get it. And you know why? These times, they...” He was about to charge into one of his old tirades about how anything of value had deteriorated in recent times. He always started with the justice system’s recent fall, but mostly ended up with the pizza delivery guy being late. She had to shut that door. And quickly at that. Get him focused on this matter instead of self-resentment.
“No, I don’t know,” she said, cutting him off. “Listen, Pål. The supposed struggle. The supposed kidnapper’s traces. The supposed break-in. The whole goddamned kidnapping had supposed written all over it.” This was an age-old argument between them. Or at least since they met each other on this case. And it never got resolved. There were a ton of clues that motivated this kind of thinking. Inconsistencies that deserved more attention.
Marianne’s laptop was found in a river nearby, trashed and mangled beyond any recovery. Everything pointed to an assault, and was stamped as one. But two months later, after Viola hired an IT-specialist to sift through half a year’s worth of data from Marianne’s Net provider, it turned out the girl had done an extensive number of searches with keywords like ‘How to destroy a hard drive beyond repair’ and ‘How to fry a hard drive’.
And it didn’t stop there.
Not far from the laptop, several pieces of clothing were found. After a thorough DNA analysis of the torn-up pieces, the fibres were traced back to Marianne, due to some skin fragments. All in all, there were three pieces found in the vicinity of the crime scene. Parts of a glove, scraps of a winter jacket, and the remains of a wool hat. Again, everything implied a struggle spread out over a contained area.
But when Viola had gone through a mountain of Marianne’s Visa statements, she had found the winter jacket, the wool hat, and the gloves bought on the same day, two weeks prior to Marianne’s disappearance. This in itself wasn’t suspicious. But shortly thereafter, Viola had visited the H&M store where Marianne had bought her clothes. After some arduous searching, she had found the salesperson Marianne had bought these clothes from. And it had turned out Marianne had been obsessed with finding materials that would tear easily.
Then there was something much more unnerving than any other clues. Marianne’s video posts had never been about a formula. Viola always saw them as emotionally free-form, dependent on the content, and the blogger’s inner necessity to communicate.
But about a month before her disappearance, all that changed in a subtle manner. The raw emotionality was still there, unchanged, but there was something else. What struck Viola was that they all now had the same length. And what’s more, they felt... off. At first, Viola couldn’t grasp what it was. But then it slowly dawned on her. They were all choreographed. And done so with a lethal precision. Viola soon arrived at the conclusion that they had been prepared, and recorded ahead of time. Maybe in anticipation of the blogger’s disappearance.
When Viola had confronted Pål about all of this, at first, he had been eager to go down this line of investigation, but as time had gone by, and nothing concrete had turned up, everyone had grown weary, and more than prepared to put a stop to the torment of the family. Soon enough, everyone thought it best to shut the case down. And even Pål’s incessant motivation had burnt itself out. He had told her then that way too many cases had some inconsistencies, some things that never added up. She had to accept that.
What crap, Viola had thought at that time. And her attitude was no different now. If anything, she was even more convinced they had let something slip by. Correction: she had let that happen.
“I’ve appreciated your input during the case. But facts are facts. She was taken against her will in her apartment. Then poofed into air. So, let’s leave it at the poof.” He replaced the smirk with a grin.
Viola had what she called a quirk, a habit of entertaining catastrophic situations. The kind where people died a horrible death. The more torturous, the better. And there was no better situation than in moments like these, when stupidity and cruelty surfaced hand in hand from people. With a well-placed upper right hook, followed by a kick in the groin, she sent him plunging out of his seventh-floor balcony. And it gave her some much-needed relief.
It felt good.
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At least until her mind snapped back and realised he sat in front of her and still hadn’t wiped away that grin.
Viola had expected several possible outcomes from this conversation. One of them would be a simple ‘no, this one is not for me’, or simply ‘I don’t have time’. It would be a failure on her part. But she didn’t expect this. Not a man who had lost his sense of the ground floor, the stuff that mattered.
No. This wasn’t the same person who had spent countless sleepless hours with her, slouched over some meaningless scraps of evidence, never prepared to give up.
“You know what scares me the most? It’s not all the discrepancies and inconsistencies. What frightens me is that the person I thought really cared, doesn’t give a shit anymore.”
He eyed her, thought about it for a moment, then croaked his reply.
“Because I don’t... care. Especially when you bring me this... crap.”
Viola grabbed onto the only thing she had now. Her breath. She became her breath. In. Out. Damn. In these kind of situations, distancing herself was the only thing that worked. That was the theory, at least.
She had come here to shake this man’s life up. Mobilise him towards better things. But, instead, she found herself barely sitting on the edge of the sofa, shaking.
She grasped at the past and their investigation. Maybe she could appeal to his ego. She remembered clearly how much he enjoyed a simple compliment. Especially when it came down to his line of case reasoning. His mind was heavily polished from all these years of police work. Viola thought it part truth, part his ego trip. Yet, at this moment, she was prepared to sell it as his wishful thinking.
“Please. You remember your theory? I remember you checked the surrogate mother arrangements, adoptions, local and foreign fertility clinics. Maybe she disappeared because she found the right answers to her problems. And your theory. Brilliant, if you ask me.” But even before she finished, she felt herself sigh. Few liked their egos whisked as much as this man. This much she remembered clearly. She couldn’t have been more clumsy with the delivery, though. Bordering on inane.