Dark September

by Inger Wolf

  Lisa walked around to get an impression of the person who had lived there. No murder had been committed in the neatly-kept apartment, but hopefully, it would produce details of Anna Kiehl's activities, her interests, her friends. Details that would form a picture, a type of truth about the anthropologist. Lisa could see the edge of the forest outside the window, the heavy fog hanging over it. She wondered if Trokic would have brought her along if Agersund hadn't said to.

  "You live close by, don't you?" she asked.

  "Half a kilometer closer to town."

  Trokic waved in the direction. He had piercing dark-blue eyes, she noticed, not brown like she'd thought. And black hair, though in the sunlight she picked up hints of brown. He had a cowlick on one side that secretly amused her. Mornings, he almost had it tamed, but as the day wore on and he unconsciously kept running his hand through his hair, it got out of hand.

  She tried to imagine his apartment. His private life. She couldn't. Maybe he didn't have a life outside of work. Or maybe there was some sort of unspoken agreement on the force to not talk about him. It wouldn't surprise her if he had a secret or two. But at least he didn't flirt around, which she respected. A few of the single office girls at the station seemed interested, but apparently, he hadn't noticed.

  "Aren't there any photo albums?" he said. "And what about her mailbox?"

  After the techs gave her the green light, she started looking through the drawers, on the shelves, on hooks, until finally, she found two small keys that had to be either for a mailbox or a bicycle lock. It was the mailbox. She emptied out the hordes of advertisements and a book, The Chemical Zone. A yellow post-it had been stuck on the cover. "Thanks for the loan, Irene." She walked into the kitchen and casually leafed through it.

  Trokic poured himself a glass of water and handed her a piece of paper with a symbol written on it. "I found this."

  The oval with a type of cross inside had been drawn by hand with a pen.

  "What is it?" she wondered. "A religious symbol? Maybe she'd just been doodling while she talked on the phone?"

  "It's from the inside of her calendar. Which is almost unused, by the way."

  Lisa rubbed her eyes. The long train ride had been tiring. Also, the horrific murder was already wearing her down. She still saw Anna Kiehl's face when she closed her eyes, and that frightened her. Times like these gave her doubts about whether she'd chosen the right job. She wasn't able to look at people's actions like Jasper Taurup and many of her other close colleagues. For them, events were either legal or illegal, falling in under a paragraph in the law or a statistic, and evidence might or might not be sufficient to stand up in court. But to her, these events were nuances of good and evil, light and dark, and far too often they were mixed up in inscrutable patterns. And then, most of all, there were the emotions. If there wasn't enough positivity in her life, the darkness gained the upper hand. She felt it as an overwhelming exhaustion.

  "You'll be in charge of the computer when we get back in," he said. That was an order, not a question. She'd hoped to be assigned other duties, and now she felt sidetracked.

  She glanced up when she heard a scraping noise. A woman stood watching them from the doorway. Lisa couldn't tell how long she'd been there. Trokic had mentioned a woman in the apartment above, and this must be her. The tattered prima donna look seemed to fit.

  "Have you talked to the neighbors?" she asked.

  "Most of them. What do you mean?"

  "I just remembered, there was some sort of commotion over there yesterday evening." The woman pointed over to the next row of apartment buildings. "It looked like some sort of party going on. I saw a man walk out, and a moment later he was lurking around out there along the field."

  Lisa and Trokic stood up simultaneously. "Was it when Anna left?" she asked.

  "I can't remember."

  "Can you tell us exactly where the party was?"

  Chapter Ten

  His blond hair was pressed flat on one side of his head and his skin was puffy. As if he'd just woken up from a deep, sweaty sleep. Earlier that day, he'd escaped their first round of door-to-door questioning, and he clearly wished he could avoid their questions this time, too. His apartment was a mirror image of Anna Kiehl's, with his window facing hers—Lisa noticed the techs still rummaging around over there. Otherwise, the two apartments were total opposites. Beer and liquor bottles covered his living room coffee table. The place stunk of cigarettes and spilled beer, and judging from the odors and the tiny stubs in the ashtray, a few joints had also been part of the well-supplied festivities.

  He was in his late thirties, and he claimed to work for a wireless carrier. She spotted a potentially attractive man hidden behind the Sunday hangover. Trokic explained why they were there. The man seemed surprised; he probably hadn't heard the radio or watched television that evening.

  They sat down at a small, round table in the kitchen. Lisa smiled. "Was it a good party?"

  "Sort of on the wild side."

  "How many people were there?"

  "Me, my brother Tony, and one of his pals, Martin."

  "How well did you know Anna Kiehl?" Trokic said.

  "Actually, I didn't know her. I didn't know her name before you said it. But I've seen her, yeah. I mean, her apartment is right over there, and I've seen her take out the trash and on the playground with her son. I've seen her running, too."

  "Were you here all evening yesterday?"

  "Yeah, all night. Tony and Martin didn't go home until five this morning. We were inside all the time."

  His eyes darted a second, a very quick second. Lisa noticed the aquarium on the shelf a few meters away. Small turtles were paddling around eagerly. One of them watched her from a rock sticking up out of the water.

  "Did you see her yesterday?"

  He looked up at the ceiling, apparently trying to get his head working again. "Yeahhhh, I think I saw her yesterday afternoon, walking with her son. Could have been the day before yesterday. I'm not really sure, now that I think about it. But she was home yesterday evening, I know that. She was walking around over there."

  "What time was that?"

  "In the middle of the evening."

  Trokic caught Lisa's eye. "Could you be more precise?" he said.

  Obviously, this was asking a lot of the man's fried brain. "It was…wait a minute, no, it was when we started on the Irish coffee…I was doing the whipped cream. That was after the soccer match. I don't remember when it ended, but it was after the supermarket closed because we…"

  "You what?"

  "Nothing. I think the soccer match ended a quarter past eight or eight thirty."

  His eyes darted again.

  "Didn't you just say no one left the apartment?" Trokic said. "What's this about the supermarket?"

  The man lowered his head a notch. "My brother went out to buy the cream."

  "How long did that take?"

  "I don't know. He might've gone to the gas station."

  "So, it took enough time for him to drive down to the gas station and back?"

  "I can't remember."

  "Can you even remember if it was before the soccer match had ended, or maybe it was during halftime?"

  "It must've been at the end of the first half," he mumbled. "He came back during halftime."

  "So, how long was he gone, do you think?"

  "Maybe a half hour. But I didn't whip the cream until the match was over."

  "Are you sure?" Lisa said. "I mean…" She glanced over at the flooded coffee table. "You couldn't have noticed Anna Kiehl earlier, could you? When you were…how should I put it, less under the influence? You see, it doesn't fit with the information we already have. Apparently, she went out running at seven yesterday evening and never came back."

  "But I saw her." The fog in his head seemed to be lifting. "I saw someone, anyway. It was dark when I came out here, and I caught a glimpse of her before I turned on the light. After that, I couldn't see anything through the window. It was o
nly a moment…the light was pretty dim over there."

  Trokic remembered what the woman who lived above Anna Kiehl had said. Either her memory was unusually bad, or else Anna had been out running twice. Which didn't sound likely to him. "Hashish can play games with your memory, especially if you're drinking too, and if–"

  "I'm certain," the man said, not bothering to deny the part about the hashish. It would have been useless anyway unless he tried to blame his guests.

  "Okay, you're absolutely certain," Lisa said. "Do you know anyone who knew Anna?"

  "No, I've only lived here two months. I've told you everything I know. Was she really murdered?" He rubbed his arms, which were covered with goosebumps.

  "We don't know a lot yet," Lisa said, avoiding his question. "Anything you might happen to remember could help us. We'd like to speak to your guests, of course."

  "My brother doesn't have anything to do with this. All he did was go out for the cream."

  Lisa frowned. "We'll decide who to speak to. Let's have the names and addresses."

  "Hopeless," Trokic said, as they sat in the car five minutes later.

  "The woman lives in an apartment building,” Lisa said, “and half of the people living there are gone Saturday evening while the other half can't remember a thing because they were drunk."

  "He lied about them being in the apartment. One of them could have been out, a neighbor could have seen them."

  "His memory wasn't first class, no doubt about that."

  "Let's check if his brother has a record." Trokic called the dispatcher. "And if it turns out he left during the first half, it could be within the time frame of her murder. He might have seen her leave the building and followed her."

  "Let's talk to the other neighbors."

  "Already done. No one saw anything unusual, and since her apartment is the one closest to the forest, she could get in and out on the trail by the field without most people seeing her."

  Lisa glanced at her watch. A quarter past nine, and she was exhausted. What did he think they could clear up at this time of night? She noted the squashed insects on the windshield. Trokic put away his phone.

  "The brother was convicted of rape three years ago."

  "Oh, God."

  "Let's pay him a visit," Trokic said.

  "Now?"

  "Why not? Maybe you have a life, but I don't."

  For the first time, he smiled at her. He put the car in reverse.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tony hadn't been as successful as his brother, judging from the neighborhood. It was no mystery where last night's joints had come from; the old building's hallway stunk of hashish. After knocking on the door a third time, Tony's neighbor, a redheaded woman wearing smudged green makeup stuck her head out. Her eyes were swimming as if she'd had a fix a few minutes before. She spoke slowly. "Hell of a racket you're making. Don't you know what time it is? I mean, Jesus, people are trying to watch TV here."

  "We need to talk to your neighbor."

  "What's the idiot done now?"

  She slammed her door shut the moment Tony Hansen opened his.

  That the man had gone out for cream was no doubt a crime in itself. Any chance of the beard stubble, red-rimmed eyes, and dirty T-shirt facing them ever being sober enough to drive a vehicle seemed minuscule to Lisa. And after an embarrassed Tony had reluctantly let them in his cramped, stinking apartment, she noticed Trokic frowning. Briefly, he explained why they were there. Without being invited, he sat down on a rickety chair. Tony was in his late twenties, but he had the face and movements of an old man.

  "We'd like to hear where you were yesterday evening between six and midnight," Trokic began.

  "What's this all about?"

  "You know what. A young woman was found murdered not far from where you supposedly were."

  Tony blinked. "I was with my brother."

  "All evening?"

  "Yeah. We watched a soccer match."

  "I see. Did any of you leave the apartment at any time?"

  "No."

  "You're sure about that? I think you're lying. And I don't like that one bit, not this time of night."

  Tony sat down on his stained sofa and rolled a cigarette with practiced hands. His nicotine-tainted fingers shook. Lisa was left standing with her notebook in hand.

  "Yeah, I'm sure."

  "You don't remember anything about driving your brother's car to buy cream?"

  The silence was heavy. "Oh, yeah."

  "What time was that?"

  "I don't remember."

  "You couldn't have been drinking, since you drove," Trokic said. "So, your memory should be okay. Was it before, during, or after the soccer match?"

  "During. The first half."

  "And what else did you do besides buy cream?"

  "Nothing."

  "So, if we assume you bought the cream at the gas station, you should have been gone about ten minutes. Your brother says you were gone at least a half hour."

  "They were sold out. I had to drive into the 7-Eleven in town."

  Another pause. Trokic sighed and stared at a pair of worn sneakers a meter away from him. He picked one of them up, looked at the sole, and tossed it back down again. "You didn't follow a young girl into the forest?"

  "No, I sure as hell didn't. I've never hurt nobody. Not even that person I did time for."

  "We'll check that." Trokic looked around the shabby apartment. "What do you do for a living, Tony?"

  "Nothing."

  "You don't have a job?"

  “I get disability benefits. My back is ruined. It happened when I was working for the railroad. I can't get around for very long at a time anymore."

  "So, you hang around home all day and have a few drinks?"

  "You could put it that way."

  "Maybe it's not so easy getting out to meet girls in your situation?"

  "What are you getting at? Hey, I do all right, I get what I need. Just ask the neighbor. She's more than willing."

  Trokic stood up reluctantly. "We're going to check this out about the cream, and if your story doesn't hold water, we're bringing you in."

  "He's lying," Lisa said after they were out in the fresh air again.

  "Yeah, that's my impression too. Even so—"

  "No doubt about it. The question is, why? He had time to follow Anna into the forest, make a move on her, and then kill her. Shouldn't we be taking him to the station?"

  "Not now. I'm not so sure. We need to find out the timeline on all this."

  Lisa persisted. "It didn't have to take very long."

  Her boss bit his lip and fingered the marbles in his jeans. "Hmmm. It's at least ten minutes' run to where she was found. That would have taken too long. Then there's the dried flowers, where did he get them?"

  "That doesn't eliminate him. Someone else could have laid the flowers on her, as some sort of gesture. People do the weirdest things."

  "But then there's the blood. Could he have avoided getting blood on him? I doubt it. He would've had to change clothes."

  Lisa chewed on that for a moment. "But we agree that he's lying?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why would he lie?"

  "Good question. Let's check up on this. I'll send a few officers out to the gas station and 7-Eleven. If he wasn't in town, he's got a problem."

  Chapter Twelve

  The cat welcomed him home at a quarter past three in the morning. Its loud, devoted purring accompanied him as he slipped out of his coat in the back hall and kicked off his shoes, but it ended abruptly when he filled the cat's bowl up with Whiskas. Scruffy was used to the vet's best cat food, and currently, she was on a hunger strike, convinced that victory would soon be hers. From the time he found the kitten in his hedge, its fur matted and pus running out of its ears, not even old enough to be taken from its mother, it had been the boss when it came to food. Trokic always ended up paying out the nose at the nearest vet clinic to keep the peace.

  He noticed wet paw prints on th
e kitchen counter, also leaves from outside that must have gotten caught in her thick tail. He didn't bother wiping up. At the other end of the counter lay a letter from a woman he'd dated for several weeks early that summer. He'd broken it off because it had gone way too fast for him. After skimming the letter yesterday, he wasn't sure whether she expected an answer.

  He put on his latest luxury item purchase, a wireless headphone set, and listened to Audioslave. The headphones had cost a fortune; he wanted absolutely no noise to disturb his journey into a spacious, isolated sound universe at a decibel level approaching the pain threshold. They also prevented complaints from the neighbors. It was as if the world disappeared, including the dark depths into which he occasionally fell. He tossed a stack of reports on the coffee table, sat down on the sofa, and poured red wine into a coffee cup. The music and alcohol were meant to dampen the thoughts swirling in his head so he could get at least some sleep.

  He'd moved into this residential area eleven years ago after returning to Denmark from two years in Croatia. At first, he'd rented the house, thinking he would find something closer to the center of the city, but he bought it when it came up for sale a few years later. It had only one bedroom and not a lot of extra space, but after two years of sleeping on the sofa of a large Croatian family, it had felt like pure luxury. Now he couldn't imagine living any other way. The surrounding houses had all been modernized, but he'd contented himself with painting the walls. He was fine with the brown bathroom and peeling paint on the cabinets. He felt comfortable with the old dusty-green upholstered sofa, his cousin's rough, frameless abstract paintings, the wooden floor darkened with age, the bookshelf full of worn paperbacks. But it wasn't only a matter of feeling at home. Within these walls, he'd also gone through some of the most difficult times of his life. For hours, he'd sat staring at small lumps in the wallpaper with music enveloping him, easing the pain as his two years in Croatia gradually faded. In a strange way, he felt it would be wrong to move away.