The Boy at the Door

by Alex Dahl

  ‘So, back to that day when Annika Lucasson approached you and propositioned you with cocaine? What did you do?’

  ‘I bought the drugs from her.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A gram.’

  ‘And when did you see her again?’

  ‘I think it was later that same week. I wanted more. I was tired of having to go up to Oslo all the time for coke. It suited me to have someone dealing locally.’

  ‘Were you afraid of being found out?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How did you manage to hide such a substantial drug addiction? Cocaine isn’t exactly cheap,’ says Camilla Stensland.

  ‘Well, in our family, Johan manages most of the common costs, like house, cars, food, etc. I work freelance, so whatever I make every month is my pocket money, so to speak.’

  ‘And this goes into a separate account?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What, besides cocaine, do you usually spend this money on?’

  ‘Clothes.’ Camilla Stensland raises an eyebrow at this, the jealous bitch.

  ‘On average, can you please confirm what kind of amounts you were paying Annika for cocaine monthly?’ I swallow hard, trying to guess how much coke would cost on the streets these days; after all, I haven’t bought any since I was at university.

  ‘I would say I might have been spending around twenty thousand kroner a month.’ I’d have to have been doing a hell of a lot of coke to roughly match the payments I’ve been making to Anni. Ellefsen whistles softly between his teeth. Johan stares at me.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘Are you serious?’ I nod and burst into tears again.

  ‘How did you withdraw this money?’

  ‘I’d do it a little at a time. A few hundred cash back every time I shopped, a thousand here and there.’

  ‘Let’s take a break there,’ says Ellefsen, adjusting his belt, squirming slightly in his seat. ‘Afterwards, I’d like for us to continue with what led to the events of October nineteenth. Please bear in mind that this is still primarily a homicide investigation, and the fact that the deceased had your DNA underneath her fingernails places you in a very serious position, Mrs Wilborg. I am, however, pleased with the progress we’ve made this morning, and feel confident you are in a position to continue this account. Can you please confirm that you are happy to proceed after the break?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ I stand up fast and move towards the door, so I don’t have to face Johan or my mother just now. Cecilia the cokehead, Cecilia the rape victim.

  ‘Bathroom?’ asks Camilla Stensland. I nod. ‘I’ll take you there,’ she says. Being a dyke, I bet that’s her favorite part of her job.

  20

  The man with the scribbled hand presses ‘record’ on the tape recorder.

  ‘Continuing the account of Cecilia Wilborg, in the presence of family members Anne-Marie Dysthe and Johan Wilborg. Cecilia, returning to your initial contact with Annika Lucasson, could you please confirm when you first became aware of Tobias being in the custody of Lucasson and Mazur?’

  ‘Oh, I never knew,’ I say. ‘I found out that they’d had him at the same time as everybody else, I suppose.’

  ‘Wait, Annika never told you that they had your son?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever see her with the child?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Do you think that Annika knew that you were Tobias’s biological mother?’ asks Camilla Stensland, narrowing her eyes as though she thinks that might help her read me better. And perhaps it does; I’m fighting off a faint touch of panic. I knew they would ask me a million questions, and though I’ve gone through my story over and over in my head, I realize now that any slight deviation from the version I’ve memorized throws me off course.

  I touch my index fingers to my temples, wincing visibly to buy some more time. ‘No. I can’t imagine she would have known that.’

  ‘It seems like a very big coincidence that Lucasson and Mazur should have removed the child from your father’s care and then turn up in Sandefjord without the intention of making contact with you.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Do you think your father had a connection to Lucasson and Mazur?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say. ‘You’d have to ask him yourself.’

  ‘We are trying to establish contact with him at the moment, Mrs Wilborg. I can assure you that we are most interested in speaking with your father at his earliest convenience. So. The boy somehow ended up in the care of Mazur and Lucasson, who for some reason showed up in Sandefjord, where you began to buy large amounts of cocaine from Lucasson. Is this correct?’ continues Ellefsen.

  Fear; gray, impenetrable, ugly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘When exactly did you learn of Tobias’s disappearance from your father’s farm?’

  ‘I never knew.’

  ‘You never knew?’ Camilla Stensland’s voice trembles with indignation as she speaks. ‘I’m sorry, but I find it extremely hard to believe that your father, who presumably had been taking care of this child for several years, did not get in contact with you when the child was taken by a pair of junkies.’

  ‘He tried to contact me about a year ago. It was just before Christmas, in fact. He called and emailed me repeatedly.’

  ‘What did he want to discuss?’

  ‘Inspector Ellefsen, I put the phone down every time he called. I deleted his emails as soon as they arrived. Then, he showed up at my house, coming towards me as I was getting in the car. This was around a week after he’d first called. I’d assumed his efforts to get in touch were to do with Christmas or something. You, know, old people get lonely and I just assumed he was trying to get an invite. I began to drive away, but he said, “I need to talk to you about the boy.”’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said...’ I pause here, for dramatic effect. They are all staring at me. I feel ill, like something is boiling in my blood. ‘I said, “That boy never existed,” and then I drove away.’ I didn’t really say that. My father got in the car with me and we drove around aimlessly for over an hour, him sobbing as he spoke of the boy going missing in the middle of the night. We tried to come up with a plan to get the boy back to Munkfors. My father would go to Poland, try to track down the kidnappers who were blackmailing him. We’d have to sort this situation between us without police involvement, that much was clear. What if they kill him? my father said, looking at me with wild eyes. Then they kill him, I said, but I hadn’t even finished speaking before my father slapped me hard across the face. And now, I need to maintain that I never knew he’d been taken at all; the truth would surely land me in much worse trouble. If I didn’t know, then the only bad thing I’ve done was having an illegitimate child and leaving him with my father.

  ‘Mrs Wilborg. You do realize that elements of your account sound quite hard to believe? Did you never, at any point, reconsider your actions with regard to Tobias? Did you never think it may be easier to come clean and face the consequences?’

  ‘Of course I did. I should have come clean as soon as I was raped.’ I burst into tears here, though the tears don’t come easily now because I’m afraid, so I rub my eyes hard and blink sadly, taking several long moments to regain my composure. ‘I was just so disoriented and out of myself. And when I realized I was pregnant, I became convinced Johan would leave me. I couldn’t bear that. I would have killed myself.’ I turn to Johan. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to bear it,’ I say, pleading with him with my eyes again, but his face is unreadable now. He has heard too many difficult ‘truths’ about his wife for one morning.

  ‘Another question, Mrs Wilborg,’ says Inspector Ellefsen. ‘I wonder why your father didn’t telephone the police if and when the child was removed from his care?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him yourself.’

  ‘Very well,’ says Ellefsen. ‘I would have thought his primary concern would be the safety of his grandchild, not an old and frankly criminal promise he’d onc
e made to his estranged daughter, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know the circumstances, do we?’ I say. ‘Like I said, I never knew. Perhaps he handed Tobias over to Lucasson and Mazur for whatever reason that made sense to him at the time. Or perhaps they were threatening him to stay silent. Or maybe he was just very afraid of getting into serious trouble for the role he’d played, and was trying to find Tobias himself.’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why your father would have handed a seven-year-old boy over to two drug addicts with an extensive criminal record?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps he didn’t know that. Maybe they befriended him and managed to pretend that they were a normal, caring couple. He is a lonely man, my father. Maybe they wanted to adopt Tobias and my father reluctantly agreed because he knew the situation was unsustainable.’

  ‘Did your father at any point express concerns to you about the fact that the situation with Tobias was unsustainable?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘When Tobias was around six months old. I made contact with my father to make sure he was going ahead with the adoption plans. He said he was horrified by my lack of remorse, and believed the boy should be kept in our family. I said that that simply wasn’t possible, and he maintained that he would raise the boy himself. I think he always believed that my maternal instinct would prove stronger than my will to preserve my marriage and family, though I don’t know how he imagined I’d solve the situation. He became bitter at how things turned out, even though they were his fault for not doing as I said. Had he turned Tobias over to the authorities as soon as I left, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘And when were you next in contact?’

  ‘When he tried to speak with me around a year ago, but, as I said, I refused to hear him out.’

  ‘May I ask,’ interjects Stensland, as if I don’t realize what they’re doing here – firing away question after question to throw me, ‘at which point exactly did you realize that the child living in your house was in fact the same child as the baby you’d left with your father all those years ago?’ I catch my mother nodding out of the corner of my eye, as though she, too, would like the answer to this question. Had I known it would be like this, I would most certainly have brought my lawyer. They advised me to bring legal counsel and I coolly informed them that that wouldn’t be necessary as I’m an innocent woman simply giving my version of events. I feel Johan’s eyes on me as well, and silently curse him for just sitting there when I’m being subjected to the third degree by this goddamned buffoon and his butch henchwoman.

  ‘I realized that Tobias was my son that day at the pool when I had a complete breakdown. Before then, when he first came to live with us, he’d occasionally give me a slow, sweet smile and that smile reminded me very much of something or someone, but I couldn’t quite put my finger to it. Nicoline once pointed out that even though Tobias has dark hair, he actually looks like her and Hermine. I laughed it off at the time, but it was something I thought about a few times after she’d said it. It was so many little things, I guess, and they all hit me at once in that moment when Tobias turned to look at me at the pool.’ This was, of course, strictly untrue. That first, devastating suspicion came when I met the receptionist from the pool in town that dreary, rainy day, when she told me the boy had been to the pool with a woman who sounded very much like Anni, my shaking hands as I texted her asking if everything was okay, the tingling feeling of vodka in my stomach as I walked home in the rain, a niggling feeling of impending disaster spreading throughout me. I knew for sure when Anni turned up at the boatyard without the boy, that’s why I did what I did to her. I still didn’t want to believe it, of course. Or maybe I knew even before then, that night we arrived at the empty house. I tried to look for proof that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t possibly be him, but in my heart I knew that it was. Then I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter who he was; soon he’d be sent off to another family anyway, a permanent family who’d take care of him forever, and nobody would ever know. The mistake I made was that somewhere along the way, I had allowed myself to love him.

  This continues for at least another hour and they ask me endless variations of the same questions; how had I communicated with Mazur and Lucasson? Setting up appointments by text message, meeting and talking in person. Thank God. Had my husband never noticed tens and thousands of kroner going missing? Nope. They’d be looking at my accounts, they said. Go right ahead, I answered. Why had I spoken up when I did? Because I had a nervous breakdown at the swimming pool, obviously. Did I have any further information that may prove of interest to the investigation? Yes. And so we continued to the night Annika Lucasson died.

  ‘Traces of your DNA were found underneath the fingernails of Lucasson. Can you offer any explanation as to how it got there?’

  ‘Yes. We had a fight.’

  ‘A fight?’ Camilla Stensland looks like she might laugh. Just because I’m rather less manly than her doesn’t mean I can’t throw a punch.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you confirm the date this took place?’

  ‘I, uh, think it must have been about two days after Tobias was left at the pool.’

  ‘So, the evening of October nineteenth.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you completely certain about this date?’

  ‘Yes, it was definitely that night. October the nineteenth. I had arranged to meet Anni.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’ Clearly nobody has taught that Stensland bitch that it’s rude to not wait your turn.

  ‘In the boatyard behind Meny. It was around ten thirty at night. Anni was late. When she finally showed up, she looked terrible. She had a big bruise at the side of her head and her lip was cracked open. She was literally shaking as she approached me, drawing repeatedly at a cigarette that had gone out. And then... I hit her.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Ellefsen. Johan’s eyes, sharper than they’ve ever been on me before.

  ‘Because she hadn’t brought what I’d asked for.’

  ‘Did you give her any money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was it you’d asked her to bring?’

  ‘Two grams of coke.’

  ‘And why hadn’t she brought it?’

  ‘I don’t know. She started trying to explain, but she seemed completely out of it. She kept mumbling “Oh God, oh God” and “You’ve got to help me.” She was such a mess. I shouldn’t have hit her, but I just completely lost it with her.’

  ‘How did you hit her?’ asks Camilla Stensland. ‘Closed-fist punch, or a slap?’

  ‘Closed-fist punch. Side of the face. She fell straight to the ground. It was almost like hitting a mirage, she already seemed half dead. Immediately I felt bad because I knew I shouldn’t have hit her. I crouched down next to her and checked that she wasn’t dead, and then she grabbed hold of me really hard, by the neck of my rain jacket. I could feel her fingernails slice into the skin on my neck and pulled her off hard. I hit her again, a hard slap across the mouth. And then...’ I pause here for a moment. I’m not sure if I should actually say what I said to Anni next, the last words she’d ever hear as it turned out. I decide to say it. ‘And then I leaned in to her ear and said, “Anni, why don’t you just go kill yourself? I mean, come on. You are such a fucking waste of skin. Please, Anni, please just kill yourself. God himself would applaud you. Come on. Tonight is the night, you fucking disgusting whore.”’ As I speak, I realize I’ve raised my voice in memory of my furious, vile voice that night. Everyone is staring at me in a stunned silence. I’m almost enjoying the attention.

  ‘Cecilia...’ says Johan, but then just stares at a spot on the wall behind Ellefsen and Stensland.

  ‘The last I ever saw of her,’ I continue, making my voice thin and remorseful, ‘was around ten minutes later. I’d left her on the ground and walked away. I stopped in between two large boats on the far side of the boatyard, by the road that leads out to Vesterøya. I could
see her from there, and watched as she slowly got up. She was crying, and the sound of her sobs rose above the rain, which was still falling heavily. As far as I could tell, we were definitely alone. She walked towards the water, hobbling and clutching her face. I did feel bad, I want to say that. Really bad. I almost called out to her and said, “Hey, Anni. Come over here and I’ll give you a hot coffee and a dry bed for the night,” but I guess I’m just not that person. I suppose at the very least I could have said I didn’t mean what I’d said to her. And I didn’t. I’ve never said anything like that to anybody before, it was completely out of character. But you must understand I was frustrated and upset that she hadn’t brought what she was supposed to, and also, I was under a lot of pressure...’

  ‘What kind of pressure?’ asks Stensland.

  ‘You know. Keeping a home. Working and taking care of the children. And the little boy had just arrived in my family.’ Paying tens of thousands of kroner every month to get a couple of junkies to shut up about your seedy past. Just the usual. ‘I have a question,’ I say.

  ‘Go on,’ says Ellefsen.

  ‘Can you tell us how Anni Lucasson died?’

  ‘The post-mortem showed that she’d suffered a couple of substantial blows to the head, but they were not the cause of death. She died from drowning.’ I nod, weakly. I guess we’re all thinking the same thing – I’d basically killed her. Me who has everything, feeling the need to encourage someone who has lost everything and more to commit suicide. I feel like adding something else, something that will make me be seen in a more positive light, but it’s a little late for that, let’s face it.

  ‘We’ll stop there for now,’ says Ellefsen. ‘You’re free to go home, but don’t leave town,’ he adds. I let out a little laugh to humor him, but realize that he’s completely serious.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asks Laila.

  ‘Fucking fabulous,’ I snap, then realize what a mistake it is to alienate her even further. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just, in the middle of all this, I miss Tobias so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I want my son back.’ Laila nods and smiles that dumb, sad smile that means ‘no’. Johan grabs me by the elbow as we leave the police station, my bewildered old mother in tow.