Inborn

by Thomas Enger

  For a moment I was afraid it might fall on my brother, that he’d fallen asleep while playing GTA during the night, and that he was still sitting in the same place. But the door just fell on an empty chair. Tobias wasn’t even in the room.

  52

  While Even was kicking down Tobias’s door, several possible scenarios raced through Susanne’s mind. Tobias had fainted. He’d somehow passed away during the night. He’d taken his own life. She had been worried sick for years, thinking that he spent way too much time on his own, that he didn’t have any friends. That he didn’t care about anything. Somehow, though, she hadn’t been prepared for this. An empty room.

  The window was shut, so he couldn’t have climbed through there. He hadn’t got up early, either, she’d been awake since quarter to three. He must have left the house some time during the night.

  But where had he gone? And why?

  Even ran downstairs, phone to his ear. Susanne went after him. She needed to hold on to the bannister to stop herself toppling over. For a moment she caught a glimpse of herself in the big entrance-hall mirror. This thin, despicable creature of a human being, face drained of colour, eyes big and round. She looked like a witch. A raving, mad witch.

  ‘Fuck, he’s not answering,’ Even muttered, as he pressed some more buttons on his phone, putting it once more to his ear. ‘Hey, Imo,’ Even said, before explaining what had happened. ‘So he’s not at your place?’

  Susanne was too far away to hear what Imo replied, but she could see Even cursing, then thinking to himself. It felt as if something, or someone, was choking her. She couldn’t breathe.

  Tobias was gone.

  Had he run away?

  Had someone asked him to come over in the middle of the night, and then…?

  Susanne closed her eyes and tried to shake the thoughts that hit her with full force.

  ‘I’m going to his school’ Even told Imo. A short beat, then he shook his head. ‘It’ll be quicker if I go by bike.’

  He said something else as well, but Susanne couldn’t tell what it was. She went back upstairs again, back into Tobias’s room. He wasn’t there this time, either. She walked back down and called his name, half expecting him to just appear, like he’d been playing a prank. She went down into the basement. Couldn’t find him in the laundry room. He wasn’t in the larder either. Not in the bathroom. Not in Even’s bedroom.

  ‘Mum,’ Even said as she came back up again, her face hot.

  She searched for Tobias in the hall, the living room; she looked out of the windows, but he wasn’t in the garden or out the front.

  ‘It’ll be alright,’ Even said behind her. ‘We’re going to find him.’

  ‘His coat,’ Susanne said and went into the hall again, to the pegs where his outdoor clothes normally hung. ‘It’s still here,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘His shoes, too. He … he must have worn his trainers. He complained about them being too small, but he … he must have taken them anyway…’

  Even took a step closer and put a firm hand on her shoulders. ‘The best thing you can do right now, Mum, is to sit down and wait by the phone. Have yourself a cup of tea or something. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve been to his school.’

  Susanne looked at him, but couldn’t focus on his eyes. She could see his mouth moving, but couldn’t make out the words it was making. Yes, he was saying something about a phone and Imo being on his way.

  ‘OK,’ she whimpered.

  ‘Call Knut,’ Even said. ‘Tell him what’s happened, and get him to come over. He can help.’

  Tears were running from her eyes, but she couldn’t make a sound.

  ‘But don’t stay too long on the phone,’ Even shouted. ‘In case I’m calling.’

  Susanne nodded, carefully at first, then more and more vigorously. Even pulled her close and gave her a hug. Then he hurried out.

  53

  NOW

  ‘Did you really think you were going to find your brother at his school?’ Ms Håkonsen asks.

  ‘Not really,’ I reply. ‘But I had to do something. School was the obvious place to look for him first.’

  She nods. ‘Do you remember what you were thinking on your way there?

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘What were you thinking about your brother’s behaviour?’

  ‘I remember thinking that maybe Tobias had run away. That maybe he thought the net was closing in on him or something.’

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘Because of the videotape. And the fact he’d been seen in the school newspaper room – the place the police said the killer had left the building that night, and the fact that he really didn’t have a good explanation as to why he was there in the first place.’

  Ms Håkonsen nods again. ‘And was your brother at his school that morning?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t.’

  ‘But you did talk to people?’

  ‘I did, yes. The other kids. Teachers. I even got one of them to help me look for him. But we couldn’t find him.’

  ‘The teacher who helped you; what was his name?’

  ‘Tom Hulsker.’

  ‘You didn’t know him from before, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘But he knew you.’

  ‘Well, yes. He knew me because of my dad.’

  ‘We’ll get back to Mr Hulsker a little later,’ Ms Håkonsen says. ‘When you couldn’t find your brother at school – what did you do?’

  ‘I called Mum. By then, she was hysterical, so I spoke to Imo instead. We agreed about what to do next.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘We were just going to go around town, looking for him. Me on my bike, Imo by car. The plan was to ask if anyone had seen him. Bus station, train station, shops he liked to hang out in, the mall … We tried to cover as much ground as we possibly could, as quickly as possible.’

  ‘But you didn’t find him.’

  I shake my head and say no.

  ‘Then what did you do.’

  I find Yngve Mork’s eyes in the audience.

  ‘We called the police.’

  54

  THEN

  Back at the house I found Mum on the sofa in the living room. Knut was sitting beside her with his hand on her forehead.

  ‘I’ve given her a little something to calm her down,’ Knut said quietly.

  I had no idea how Knut had got his hands on pills like that, but it wasn’t really important right now. Mum seemed to be relaxed. At least she wasn’t screaming and crying anymore.

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine, Mum,’ I repeated. ‘We’ll find him.’

  I thought about my original plan for the day. I was still tempted to go up to Tobias’s room and have a look through his things.

  Knut looked at me and said: ‘Could we … eh… go somewhere for a chat?’

  Knut had never asked me anything, except maybe to pass the salt during dinner.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, slightly bewildered. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen.’

  I got a lemon yoghurt from the fridge and leaned against the worktop, waiting for Knut to speak. It took a while before he finally did.

  ‘I’m worried about your mum.’ He looked at me. ‘Before you got here, before I gave her that pill, she said she couldn’t take it anymore. She was beside herself. Said that if anything happened to Tobias as well, she wouldn’t be able to deal with it.’ He stared at me with grave eyes.

  ‘Wouldn’t deal with it?’ I said. ‘What are you saying? That she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from committing suicide?’

  Knut held my gaze for a few seconds. ‘That’s how I interpreted it, yes. I think she might need some help. Professional help.’

  ‘She’s just being dramatic, Knut. You know how she gets. She’s not suicidal, she’d never do that to me – or us.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. I’m just worried about her.’

  I nodded. ‘Let’s just wait and see,’ I said forcing down the yo
ghurt. ‘Right now she’s clinging to the hope that Tobias will come back, and there’s still every chance he just might do that.’

  ‘I’ll look after her in the meantime,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should take her back to my place?’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said. It was a sensible move, as she would probably freak out even more if the police came by.

  Yngve Mork was not in uniform when he arrived. The female officer with him was, though.

  Imo, who’d arrived a short while before, went out to greet them. He showed them into the kitchen where it was warmer.

  ‘This is Therese Kyrkjebø,’ Mork said, turning to the female officer. She held out her hand for me to shake.

  Mork turned to me. ‘Still no sign of your brother?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘What can you tell us about him, Even?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘He’s a couple of years younger than me,’ I said. ‘About the same height. Shoulder-length hair, similar to mine. Brown eyes.’

  ‘Good to know, thanks,’ Mork said, as Kyrkjebø took notes. ‘But I was thinking more about his personality. What kind of person is he?’

  I looked over at Imo as I thought about what to say. I wondered if the police officers knew my brother’s reputation from Solstad. A couple of weeks before we moved back to Fredheim, a girl called Amalie had shown some interest in him. According to my brother they were going out, but Amalie saw it differently. She hadn’t been honest with him, either. It turned out that she only wanted to get close to Tobias so she could get closer to me.

  Tobias was furious when he found out. I didn’t witness it myself, but apparently he’d grabbed Amalie in the playground during break, in front of everyone. It made a lot of noise at his school, and my mother freaked out. Because Gran was dead and her house was standing empty, my mother saw it as a sign – an opportunity to get Tobias away from a school and a community that viewed him as potentially violent.

  Now I simply told the officers that my brother didn’t have great social skills, that he didn’t have a lot of friends.

  ‘What about … his relationship with girls?’

  I swallowed a couple of times, before meeting Mork’s eyes. ‘He hasn’t had any girlfriends here, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Do you know if he has any contact with girls other than at school?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said, with a shrug. ‘Tobias hasn’t been easy to talk to recently.’

  Kyrkjebø made a note of some kind. Mork waited a moment or two before he asked: ‘Even … did you know that your brother had been in touch with Mari recently?’

  I looked at him, at Kyrkjebø. At Imo.

  ‘They texted on WhatsApp.’

  ‘What about?’ I asked, before Mork had a chance to go on.

  ‘Well, it started when she asked for his help a little while ago. She wanted him to find some photos of you and your dad for the article she was going to write for the school paper.’

  I looked at them one by one again. I couldn’t understand why Mari had gone behind my back like that. Why hadn’t she just asked me?

  ‘And did he help her?’

  Mork nodded. ‘We think so. That’s certainly what it looks like from their communication.’

  So Tobias must have met up with her. To give her some pictures. I shook my head in disbelief.

  ‘He…’ Kyrkjebø glanced over at Mork before she continued. ‘We know that he went to your school on the night of the murders.’

  Presumably the whole of Fredheim knew that by now, so I don’t know why my heart started to race.

  ‘He was also in contact with her that evening.’

  This was going from bad to worse.

  ‘Or rather, he tried to contact her,’ Mork said. ‘But her phone was broken, so she didn’t answer him.’

  Broken, I thought. Shit, was that why she hadn’t answered me?

  ‘What…’ The words stuck in my throat. ‘What did he want?’ I asked.

  They didn’t reply. I looked at Imo. He seemed to be as surprised as I was. The more I thought about it, the worse things looked for Tobias.

  ‘Do you have any idea where your brother might be?’ Kyrkjebø asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any recent photographs of Tobias we could use?’

  I was so lost in my own thoughts, at first I didn’t realise she’d asked the question.

  ‘Yes…’ I said, after a pause. ‘I’m sure I do.’

  I went through my phone. Found a picture I’d taken of him when we were painting the house during the summer. He had a few paint smudges on his chin. I showed them the picture, then sent it to Mork.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. Then turned to Imo. ‘We have a search warrant for the house.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A search warrant. We need you both to leave the premises so we can go through it.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked.

  Mork looked straight at me. He didn’t need to explain. I understood perfectly. They believed my brother was involved in the murders.

  55

  Yngve couldn’t help but admire the Tollefsens’ house. Although it was somewhat run down, it had to be worth a fortune, he thought, even in a small place like Fredheim. It had so much potential, with its steep roof, its old wooden floorboards and a kitchen that was bigger than his living room. The house was so huge it could easily accommodate at least two families. On the upper floor there were bedrooms and cupboards everywhere. It was a perfect place to hide things.

  Åse would have loved this place, he thought.

  He found himself standing in front of the large mirror in the hall, when Therese came over.

  ‘I just spoke to Weedon’, she said. ‘Tobias’s phone has either been turned off or it has run out of juice. We only have its last position.’ She pointed to the floor they were standing on. ‘Here.’

  ‘So he turned off his phone before he left,’ Yngve said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Therese said. ‘We have to get hold of his phone records. See who he was in contact with last night.’

  Yngve was looking at Tobias’s picture, the one Even had sent him. Tobias looked like any other teenager – unkempt, pimply, his forehead kind of greasy. He wore a cap on his head and stared at the camera with an almost offended expression. He’d had the same look on his face when Yngve had been here and talked to him on the night of Børre Halvorsen’s murder.

  Could killers be that detached? Yngve wondered. Of course they could, he answered himself. There were sociopaths everywhere. Even kids of fifteen.

  ‘Mork?’ came a voice from upstairs.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You need to take a look at this.’

  Yngve looked at Therese for a second, then rushed up the stairs. They entered Tobias’s room to find a technician standing by the desk, holding a key chain in his hands.

  ‘I found this in one of the drawers,’ he said.

  The chain had three keys on them. Yngve heard Frode Lindgren’s voice in his head: The key chain has a blue-and-white string on it. This fit the description perfectly.

  Yngve looked at Therese. She seemed to be lost in thought for a moment.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it incredibly stupid to keep something that might connect you to the murders in your own bedroom?’

  ‘Maybe he is stupid,’ Yngve said.

  ‘I don’t understand what he’s up to. Why not take the keys with him, or at least hide them carefully? Why leave them here for us to find? Surely he would have known that we would come looking for evidence?’

  ‘He’s only fifteen,’ Yngve said. ‘Maybe he just didn’t think that far.’

  Therese disagreed. ‘What really sticks out in this case, in my opinion, is how quickly and smartly the killer acted. The way he left the school that night, for instance. Away from the CCTV cameras, onto the roof. In all probability he left with the microphone case, too, which we still h
aven’t found. If Tobias did all that … if he really is our killer … why would he be so thick-headed as to keep a victim’s keys?’

  Yngve gave that some thought.

  ‘It’s a good question,’ he said. ‘Let’s find him and ask.’

  56

  As I left the house, a terrifying thought occurred to me. What if my brother had disappeared because somebody wanted to get rid of him?

  There was a killer on the loose in Fredheim. Maybe Tobias had needed to take a walk or something after our fight last night – he often went out to get a chocolate bar or a can of drink or something. What if he met someone who wanted to hurt him or maybe even kill him?

  I went back to Tobias’s school, in the hope that he’d shown up later that morning. I knew I was clutching at straws, but I managed to see Tobias’s head teacher, a woman named Sara Anvik. At first she appeared cautious about talking to me. I guess she too had heard the rumours. When I told her we didn’t know where my brother was at the moment, her hesitation turned to worry. I didn’t tell her the police were involved.

  ‘He does spend a lot of time on his own, your brother. I’ve tried to get him to join in on a couple of things, but he doesn’t want to or say much.’

  ‘He’s not being bullied, is he?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s just very quiet.’

  On my way out, I was stopped by Tom Hulsker, the teacher I had spoken to earlier that morning.

  ‘Hello again.’ I could hear the concern in his voice. ‘Have you found your brother yet?’I shook my head. I was about to walk past him, when I thought of something else. ‘Mr Hulsker, this morning you said you knew my dad quite well.’

  He nodded. I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke from his clothes.

  ‘My girlfriend, the girl who was murdered, was writing a piece about my dad and me for the school paper. She didn’t come to see you, by any chance, for some background information?’