by S. J. Gazan
“Oh, look, there they are,” she said, triumphantly. Søren joined her. She was right. A figure, holding a small child by the hand, had just stepped out of a low, black wooden building Mrs. Snedker informed him was Lily’s nursery school. Anna was dragging the child, who was wearing a snowsuit.
“Just time for a little more Dutch courage, my friend. Now what’s that about?” She looked outraged at Søren’s half-full glass. He put it down on the table.
“Listen,” he said. “What did you mean when you said someone had been waiting for Anna?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Snedker said. “I wouldn’t want to force you.” She emptied Søren’s glass. “Well, you see. Twice this week, a man waited for Anna on the landing. Someone she doesn’t know. Or, at any rate, she can’t figure out who it might have been.”
“When exactly was he waiting for her?”
“When? When?” she snapped. “A couple of days ago. I no longer keep track of insignificant events. Two long days ago.” She refilled their glasses, and Søren seriously considered whether alcohol might not be good for you after all. The old lady appeared strong and fearless.
“Please try to remember,” Søren asked. “Was it yesterday? Was it last week?”
“Sorry,” Mrs. Snedker said. “My memory is still on summer time.” She pursed her lips. “Talking about summer time… would you mind terribly changing the clock on my video recorder to winter time? While we wait for Anna to drag the little piglet up four flights of stairs? Look, I’ve found the instructions, but that’s where my technical expertise ends.”
Søren plodded obediently after Mrs. Snedker. She handed him a torch and a yellowing booklet. The VCR was from 1981. Søren went down on all fours and started pressing various buttons until the clock was correct.
As he got up, Mrs. Snedker said, “How funny, my memory seems to have returned. I remember it vividly. The first time the man waited was Monday afternoon and the second time was Wednesday evening.” She beamed.
“Last night?”
“No, May, ten years ago,” she teased him. “Of course it was last night! Yesterday, tenth of October.”
“Where was Anna, since he had to wait?”
“How would I know? Up to no good, I expect.”
“And Anna has no idea who he might have been?”
“No, she was convinced it was Johannes, a fellow she shares an office with at the university. Mainly because of his hair color. The man was wearing a hat, but I think some auburn hair stuck out from under it, and I told Anna that, which made her think it was Johannes. But I’m not so sure. I was busy closing my door. It could have been him, but how would I know?” Mrs. Snedker suddenly sounded hurt. “I’m not hired help here, am I?”
“What’s keeping them?” Søren said, suddenly impatient. Even with a toddler in tow they should have been home by now.
“Perhaps it wasn’t them after all?” Mrs. Snedker shrugged.
Søren gave her weary look. “Of course it was,” he said. “They must have gone somewhere else.”
“The supermarket in Falkoner Allé is probably your best bet. Another glass while you wait?”
Søren declined.
“I’ll come back and talk to you later,” he said.
Mrs. Snedker pretended to be terribly flattered. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to buy me a small white loaf?” she called out after him.
Søren spotted Anna and her daughter almost immediately. They were plodding along very slowly and had only just passed the spot where Søren had parked his car. He followed them at a distance and when they crossed Ågade and walked down Falkoner Allé, he crossed to the other side and followed them on the pavement. He couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he observed their body language. The child was walking at a snail’s pace. She kept stopping to look at things, and several times she sat down on someone’s doorstep. In one hand she held a soft toy, which she dragged along the muddy pavement. Anna seemed lethargic. Her body language told Søren she needed every ounce of her strength to stay calm. One hundred feet from the supermarket, Lily sat down in the middle of the pavement. Anna pulled her arm. The situation boiled over and Anna stomped off after yelling at Lily so loudly that Søren could almost make out the words. When Anna had almost reached the entrance, she stopped and buried her face in her hands. Lily was still sitting on the pavement, sobbing her little heart out and several passersby threw anxious looks at the toddler. Anna went back and picked Lily up. At first, the child kicked her legs in anger, but Anna whispered something in her ear and the crisis passed. For the time being, at least. Anna carried her daughter inside the supermarket, and Søren crossed the road and entered as well. He waited at the entrance where some sad-looking flowers were hoping to find a buyer and watched Anna put a coin in a shopping cart, remove Lily’s snowsuit, and ease her into the child seat. Their first stop was the bakery at the front, where they bought a snail-shaped pastry for Lily. Anna took off her jacket and beanie and briefly looked up. Søren took a step backward and when he looked out again, Anna and her cart had gone down an aisle. Her face was grimy and her hair flattened and greasy from the wool beanie.
Once they were out of sight, Søren found a basket and started doing his own shopping. He trailed them around the store, keeping a suitable distance. He could hear snippets of their conversation. Lily wanted to get down from the cart. As soon as Anna lifted her down, she ran off. Anna caught her, and Lily laughed out loud. Anna wasn’t laughing. Anna grabbed her firmly to put her back in the child seat. Lily went rigid. The two of them struggled. Søren watched them and felt an urge to pick up the child. The girl was the same size as Maja would have been, Søren imagined. Not that he knew anything about children. Lily looked huge in Anna’s arms, like a wild animal Anna couldn’t control, but Søren knew the child would be tiny in his arms. She would curl up like a mouse and fit perfectly inside his shirt pocket. Together, they could smell funny cheeses in the delicatessen or find a bicycle with training wheels and colored streamers on the handlebars while Mommy did the shopping.
“Now stop it, just stop it, Lily,” Anna screamed. “Do you understand? Or there will be no ice cream for a week, no, a whole month!”
Lily howled and Anna plunked her hard into the body of the cart and stormed off. They stopped at the vegetable section and Anna patted Lily’s cheek to make up. Lily sniffled. Anna hugged her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “All we need now are some potatoes and we’ll be done.”
“Me do it,” Lily yelled.
“No, darling,” Anna said, exhausted. Søren was very close to them now. Anna and Lily both looked dreadful. Tired, red-eyed, and run down, mother and child both. Lily got ready to throw another tantrum, so Anna lifted her out of the cart.
“Okay.” She gave in. “I’ll hold the bag and you put in the potatoes.”
“Lily help Mommy,” Lily insisted.
“Yes, darling, that’s right,” Anna said.
Lily picked up potatoes with both hands and dropped them into the bag.
“Gently,” Anna said.
“Gently,” Lily echoed.
“Gently, I said,” Anna repeated. Lily carried on. There were now ten potatoes in the bag. Lily picked up a large potato with both hands and hurled it into the bag.
“Right, that’s enough,” Anna said, and at that very moment the bag split and the potatoes rolled off in every direction.
“Oh, no,” Anna gasped. Her hands hung limply by her sides. It was all too much. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Lily started crying again.
“Come on, allow me,” Søren said. He put down his basket, which contained a strange mix of groceries. “Let me help you, please?”
Anna straightened up and gave Søren a look of disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
“Shopping,” Søren said, innocently.
Anna started picking up the potatoes. “I’m not talking to you,” she snarled, keeping her eyes on the floor. “I’m not interested in a
nything you have to say. I don’t want to hear it.” She looked up at Søren and her eyes glowed yellow.
“I’m going to pick up your potatoes,” Søren said. “And then I’m going to carry your groceries and your kid home.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” Anna snarled.
“You bet I am,” Søren said.
“Over my dead body,” Anna said, theatrically.
“Sure, if that’s how you want to do it,” Søren replied, unperturbed.
Anna glared at him, but Søren held his ground. She looked like shit. Scrawny and spotty, and Lily, in the cart, looked neglected, with tears down her cheeks, snot across her mouth, and a filthy teddy in her arms. Anna hadn’t even noticed the other shoppers staring at her and shaking their heads. A socially disadvantaged, impoverished single parent was precisely what she looked like. All that was missing were some beers and chips in her cart. But Søren was bowled over. It was madness—he didn’t even like her. Contrary and stuckup, as she was. And he had only known her four days, during which time she had grown increasingly hostile to him. But he was completely smitten.
Lily refused to walk. Anna told her she had to, but Lily had made up her mind and was sitting down on the steps of a store that was closed. “No,” she declared and stuck out her lower lip in defiance. “You have to walk,” Anna repeated. Søren was about to say something, but Anna turned to him when she sensed his lips moving.
“She has to walk. If she doesn’t, we can’t get home. I can’t carry all those bags, my books, and a child. I’m not strong enough.” She was on the brink of tears. Søren emptied his groceries into Anna’s least full bag, tied the two remaining ones together, and hung them over his shoulders like a yoke. Without asking for permission, he lifted Lily and put her on his shoulders.
“Keep your feet still, or you’ll break the eggs,” he told her.
“Okay,” Lily said, proudly.
Søren started walking and he soon heard Anna’s footsteps behind them. A gleeful Lily called out from her vantage point, “I can see all the cars in the whole world, I can see all the houses and all the boys and girls.”
Anna didn’t utter a word the whole way back, but when they reached the stairwell, she said, “Thanks for your help, I’ll take it from here.”
“Anna,” Søren said, as he let Lily down. “I’m coming upstairs with you.” He was in no mood for an argument.
Lily, now rested, started to climb the stairs. Anna faced Søren, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I know what you’ve come to tell me, and I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it!”
“Anna,” he said gently, “it’s not going to go away just because I don’t tell you, and I have to talk to you. What the hell were you doing outside Johannes’s apartment? And why did you run?”
“Mooom,” Lily called out from the first floor landing. “I’m having a pee-pee in my snowsuit.”
“Shit,” Anna exclaimed. She raced up the stairs and tried running all the way to the top with Lily. Lily laughed. Søren followed with the bags.
Mrs. Snedker was waiting for them on the fourth floor.
“Hi, Maggie,” Søren heard Anna say. “Emergency. Lily needs the bathroom.”
“Aha,” Maggie said. “Is that nice cop with you?”
Søren arrived in time to see Anna give Mrs. Snedker a baffled look, then she unlocked her front door and disappeared into the flat with Lily.
“Did you remember my bread?” Maggie asked him sternly.
“Yes, of course,” Søren replied. He untied the knots on the shopping bags and handed her a paper bag from the bakery. Anna appeared in the doorway.
“Maggie, why don’t you go back to your own apartment? I’ll come and see you later, okay?”
The old lady nodded, disappointed, and left.
“Why did you give her your bread?” Anna asked while she unpacked her shopping.
“I bought it for her.”
Anna raised her eyebrows.
“I was waiting for you. In her apartment. We saw you from the window and when you didn’t come back, Mrs. Snedker thought you must have gone shopping, so I followed you,” he confessed.
“And she asked you to get her some bread?”
Søren nodded.
“And you did?”
Søren nodded again. A tenth of a second later Søren heard Anna laugh for the first time. It didn’t last long, but it suited her.
“We’ll have dinner first,” Anna said. “Then Lily needs to have a bath, and at seven o’clock I put her to bed. You’ll have to wait. I don’t want Lily seeing me when…. You can wait in the living room.”
Søren watched her briefly. Could you do that? Postpone dealing with terrible news until a more convenient time cropped up? He went into the living room and sat down in a chair. Wasn’t that precisely what he had done, when he put the four baby pictures of Maja in a box in the basement? Pressed on as though nothing had happened? Lily peeked at him from the doorway, and he smiled at her. Anna came into the living room to fetch a bowl and glanced at him quickly.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
“I called you yesterday. Twice. Why didn’t you answer?” Søren said, ignoring her question.
“I was… out,” Anna replied swiftly and headed back to the kitchen with the bowl.
“Where?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
Søren sighed, then he wrinkled his nose.
It was the second time today he had been given the brushoff.
Chapter 11
Anna knew perfectly well she hadn’t bumped into the World’s Most Irritating Detective in the supermarket by accident. She had spotted him outside the entrance to Johannes’s stairwell, been aware he had run after her, and had seen him throw up his hands in frustration when the bus pulled out. How he had ended up in her living room doing a jigsaw puzzle with Lily while she was cooking dinner was beyond her. When the potatoes had boiled, she mashed them with angry movements and slammed the plates down on the kitchen table. She hated him! Since he had entered her life, less than a week ago, everything had started to unravel. How dare he buy a loaf of bread for Maggie; how dare he carry her daughter? She wanted him to leave her alone, and she didn’t want to hear what he had come to say. Johannes must not be dead. Tears started rolling down her cheeks. The steamy mashed potatoes were in a bowl in the sink, and suddenly she slumped forward as if she had been stabbed.
When she had composed herself, she fetched Lily from the living room.
“Dinner’s ready, Lily,” she said and shot the World’s Most Irritating Detective a look of disapproval. If he thought she would invite him to eat with them, he could think again. Once he was off duty, he would undoubtedly go home to his trophy wife with her shiny white teeth and her golden skin, and they would cuddle up on their designer sofa and he would think how lucky he was with his Pernille or his Sanne or whatever her name was, everything so picture perfect. But now, while he was still on duty, he was playing at being a social Robin Hood, watching her, poor struggling Anna, with his dark brown eyes and his healthy freckles; he might at least have the decency to leave his freckles in his locker when he arrived for work in the morning; his farm-boy freckles were an insult to criminals everywhere and to Anna in particular. How she hated him!
Later, when Lily had fallen asleep, she went to the living room and found the World’s Most Irritating Detective in a chair by the window. He was looking down at the street.
“It’s very cold and dark outside,” he remarked.
“Really!”
The World’s Most Irritating Detective slowly turned his head and looked at Anna, who had sat down on the sofa, as far away from him as possible.
“Why are you so angry?” he asked.
Anna scowled at him. The scent of Lily still lingered on her clothes; putting her to bed had been a struggle and when she had finally nodded off, Anna had sat on the floor watching her. Eventually, she had got up and left the bedroom, suddenly
pleased Søren was there, glad she wasn’t alone.
“I’m so angry I could kill someone,” she hissed, and looked first at her hands and then at him. Søren leaned forward and looked compassionately at her.
“Johannes is dead. But I imagine you’ve already figured that out. He was murdered.”
Anna stared at him blankly.
“Anna, did you kill him?” Søren said gravely.
“Yes, of course I did. Heaven forbid I should have a single friend left in the world,” she said, sounding forlorn.
“Is that a no?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s a no.” The tears started falling and she wiped them away with an irritated movement.
“What happened?” she asked. “Who did it?”
Søren shook his head as though he was deliberating what he could or couldn’t tell her, but in the end he seemed to reach a decision. Even sitting here, off duty, in the living room of a potential suspect was compromising, Anna thought, so he might as well go the whole hog.
“I don’t know,” he said. “He was killed in his apartment. That much I do know. He’s been dead about twenty-four hours, and…”
Anna’s eyes widened.
“That can’t be right,” she exclaimed, triumphantly, as if it meant Johannes couldn’t be dead after all. “I got a text message from him this morning.” She fetched her bag. “See for yourself,” she said, tossing her cell to Søren with the text message open. He studied the message for a long time and scrolled down, she noticed, probably to check the date and time the message had been received.
“What does it mean?” Anna asked.
Søren said nothing, nor did he look at her. Instead he stared into space and seemed to be pondering something. When he finally became aware of her, his eyes were somber.
“The text message is from Johannes’s killer.”
Anna was mystified.
“We haven’t been able to locate Johannes’s cell phone,” Søren continued. “It’s likely the killer took it and, to buy himself time, he probably replied to your message and any others, so no one would get suspicious.” He looked at Anna.