«Marte?»
Marte slipped the diary under her pillow, closed her eyes, and pretended she had fallen asleep with the light on. If she lay completely still without moving, maybe he would leave her alone.
«You’re home, thank God. I’ve been so scared...»
She turned slowly as if she was being dragged out of a dream. It was as if her brain was trying to discover new laws that could somehow justify that she didn’t want to talk with her father.
«I brought your boot back.»
She started.
«You walked home with only one boot?»
She squeezed her eyes shut again and felt a thin strip of compressed tears trickle out between her eyelashes.
«You haven’t lost your phone too, have you? I tried calling you.»
Marte shook her head.
«You have to tell me what happened, Marte.»
«Battery was dead,» she whispered.
«I mean you have to tell me what happened tonight. It may be decisive.»
«For what?»
Her father hesitated.
«No, I don’t really know. For everything that will happen in the future.»
«But it’s not for sure that they’ll do it again, is it?»
«What did they do, Marte?»
«Nothing.»
«It’s important that I know. You have to let me help you.»
«You can’t do anything.»
«We can report them.»
«For what?»
The fear struck her hard, made a pancake out of her heart. She turned over, buried her head in the pillow. Her father placed his hand on her back. She shook it away and curled up into a ball under the quilt.
«No!»
«What happened tonight, Marte?»
«Nothing.»
«Yes, something happened.»
«No!»
«Fine,» he said. «We can talk in the morning. Try to sleep now.»
He tried to hide it, but she knew exactly what his voice sounded like when he didn’t want to show her that he was scared too.
6
The face looking up from the snow was an unpleasant shade of white, not unlike what you might see in a rolled-back eye. The frost had drawn brocade-like roses on the blue down jacket. At first, he thought she had a clasp in her hair. A reddish tinge under the thin layer of snow, frozen solid in the sudden cold. Then he realized that it was blood. He breathed in the cold air in short gasps and noticed a tug in his lungs. The girl was lying right below a steep projection on the hill. It was four, maybe five meters up. Had she fallen?
«Pushed,» Bitte Røed said.
«What?» said Verner, wondering if she had been reading his thoughts.
«I think she was pushed. Look at the way she’s lying there. She hasn’t reached out her hands. See how the one arm is under the body, and the other is tossed out to the side? If she was alive when she fell, that is.»
«Must have been cold to walk without anything on your head last night,» said Verner.
«And she doesn’t have anything on her hands either,» said Bitte.
Her voice broke, and Verner thought that the girl must be about the same age as Julie, her daughter.
Verner Jacobsen placed a hand on his colleague’s shoulder, but Bitte Røed shook it off. He went closer to the dead girl. On the hand that was visible, the slightly curled fingers were spread and resembled a claw with violet painted nails. She was pretty, but used a little too much makeup, and she had a small, red scratch mark on her forehead. Did someone hit you? Jacobsen wondered, crouching down beside her. Her eyes were wide open. As he met the vacant, stiff gaze, the pain washed over him, pressed in under his skin, and shaded everything he was doing. I’m not being objective, he reproached himself. But no matter how hard he tried, he could only wish that suddenly, like in a Christmas miracle, she would blink. He placed two fingers on her throat.
«She’s already been declared dead,» said a sharp voice behind him. «Don’t touch her, please.»
Verner Jacobsen pulled his hand back guiltily. He stood up and looked right into the shoulder of Roar Holm-Hansen, a sizeable man Verner thought was about 158 centimeters in both height and girth.
«You haven’t met Bitte Røed,» Verner said, turning the focus to his colleague.
«Roar Holm-Hansen, pathologist,» the sturdy man said.
«Bitte Røed, uh... detective,» she said.
«What can you tell us?» Verner asked.
«She’s young,» said Roar Holm-Hansen. «And if this is the girl that the worried parents reported missing last night, she’s only fifteen. It’s too soon to say anything about the cause of death. When all the evidence is secured and the area is measured and photographed, I’ll take her in to the bench. It looks like she was beaten to death. The blood suggests that she has a crushed skull. This is a bit of a rocky slope she fell onto.»
Verner looked around. At first, he had thought the whole area was covered by a thick layer of snow, but now he discovered that right where the girl was, the ground was almost bare. An overhang served as an awning over the stone-covered hill.
«How long has she been dead?» he asked.
«I can’t give you the exact time. It’s very cold, she’s lightly clothed and probably cooled down faster than normal. I’ve taken hypoxanthine samples from the aqueous humor; that gives a more precise answer than the usual drop in temperature method.»
Roar Holm-Hansen rubbed the back of his head, so his cap tipped down on his forehead.
«I’d guess that the accident occurred sometime between ten-thirty and one o’clock in the morning. So, the question is whether she died instantly, or if she was unconscious and then froze to death.»
Accident, thought Verner Jacobsen, feeling an anchor strike bottom in him. Maybe she just stumbled and was lying there defenseless while the cold got to her. Accidents do happen, we accept that, and most will agree that nature is merciless. Crimes, on the other hand...
«I’ll be able to give a preliminary report soon after you’re finished here. You have first priority.»
Verner Jacobsen stood with his back to the girl and watched as the pathologist struggled up the hill to the road, panting heavily like the overweight person he was. The vapor from his breath surrounded him until he was out of sight. Jacobsen felt cold creeping up his back. He turned around quickly and let the flashlight glide across the dead girl. It was as if she had exhaled one last ice-cold breath that struck him on the neck.
«Nonsense. It’s just windy.»
«What did you say?»
Jacobsen looked at Bitte Røed in confusion. Had he been talking out loud?
«Nothing, nothing,» he mumbled, turning his gaze back to the corpse.
The wide-open eyes. Help me, Jacobsen thought, it’s as if she wanted to say, help me! There ought to be a law against dying with so much unlived life ahead of you. And somewhere a mother and father were waiting for her with their hearts encased in hopeful anxiety.
«What’s that?»
Bitte Røed tapped him on the arm and let the flashlight glide across the snow-covered stones, up along something which, in the darkness, could be confused with a thick tree trunk.
«An obelisk,» Verner Jacobsen said with surprise. «Funny place to put a monument, in the middle of the dark forest.»
And he knew at the same moment that no matter what the original intention was, from now on it had a new significance. He breathed through his nose and felt how his nose hairs froze to ice. A bird flew up. It rustled in the branches, and a cloud of snow fell as it took off. Then there was silence. The cold ran through him. It was as if a grave monument had already been placed. Or had someone purposefully chosen just this place to take a young life?
7
«Stop! Agnar, cut that out now! Do you hear, stop!»
The scream that followed was hollow. His mother’s voice was inside a speech bubble, like in a comic strip, and could no longer reach him. Even so he was afraid. He stood by the riverbank and wa
tched the snow change color. The water gurgled up from the ice, like blood from a wound with a cracked scab.
«Agnar!»
He covered his ears.
Agnar opened his eyes. The sheet was damp. His throat dry. His tongue was glued to his gums and he reached for the water glass that was always on the table beside the bed. His hand did not find the table. In the semidarkness he saw that there was no table. At first, he didn’t know where he was, but then he noticed the faded poster on the wall. The cover from a Donald Duck comic book. The model airplane he and his father had built was still hanging from the ceiling. In a happier time. In the past. Before Agnar started hitting.
It was quiet in the house. Agnar lay there, listening. He heard the dog padding across the floor down on the first floor. Then she started to whimper. Wouldn’t the old lady let her out? Had the old lady forgotten to turn on her hearing aid? He moaned and vomited as he tried to sit up. A yellow porridge ended up on the rag rug in front of the bed. An empty pint of cognac was on the floor.
«Hell’s bells, where did you swipe that from, Agnar boy? That wasn’t too shabby. Clever boy. Clever boy.»
He picked it up and shook it. There was a sip left at the bottom.
«Repair, restore, reverse, uh, repair...»
The whimpering on the first floor turned to loud barking. That was what had wakened him, Lilly’s barking. Not his mother calling, which he now realized had been part of a dream.
«Mama!»
His voice sounded rusty. He cleared his throat, coughed up mucous, and spit into the clump of vomit on the rag.
«Mama! Let the dog out!»
The barking stopped, and he heard Lilly come running up the stairs.
«There, there, Lilly. Nice Lilly.»
He patted and stroked the motley fur. He was startled when he discovered the dried blood on his hands. Had he been in a fistfight? Only fragments of the night before surfaced: He had been thrown out of the restaurant. A gang of teenagers on the road had laughed. A glimpse of rotating light. Rotating lights? He was unsure. But snow in his boots, he remembered. He had taken them off and emptied them several times. And dense forest, an unkind encounter with a snowbank, otherwise it was dark. And then there was something about shattered glass. Had he cut himself? It looked like he had cuts on his hand. Now he saw that his shirt was covered with brownish-red specks. Had he bled that much?
«Shall we go and find Mama then, Lilly?»
There was something soothing about talking to the dog. Lilly weakly raised her tail, then turned around quickly and disappeared downstairs.
«Well, I’ll have to let you out then,» he called. «I just have to pee first.»
He went downstairs to the first floor. It felt as if he was on the top of a skyscraper that swayed weakly and nauseatingly. God almighty, I’m going to be drunk for fourteen days, he thought, clinging to the handrail. He had to get something to eat.
Half fainting, he supported himself against the doorframe and opened the door to the kitchen.
The sight that met him made him throw up again.
First thought: Oh my God!
Second thought: Oh my God!
Suddenly he had several glimpses of the night before. He had opened the front door and recognized the smell of his childhood home, stumbled on his mother’s slippers. The picture of himself as a boy, under shattered glass. Then it was black. He had no idea how he’d made it up to his old room and laid down in the old bed. It wasn’t the first time he’d been drinking and had a blackout. It wasn’t the first time he had approached psychosis. He knew the signs. It wasn’t certain that what he saw was real.
It’s not true that everything swirls around when you’re drunk, Agnar knew. It’s more like skips on an old vinyl record. It doesn’t go around. Everything just repeats itself. He saw his mother and the blood. His mother and the blood. The blood and his mother, who was lying in the middle of the pool, beside the sink and the kitchen counter. A plate with dried food scraps. He had seen it before. How many times had he dreamed of sticking a knife in her back? See her fall. Hear her scream. And in the moment before she died, he would tell her how much he hated her. But this was no dream. What he saw was real.
8
In consultation with the crime scene investigators, Verner Jacobsen decided to have a tent set up over the deceased to prevent the snowstorm from sweeping away important evidence that they might have overlooked so far. The parents had been informed, and he felt a shameful relief at avoiding that particular task. He wouldn’t have been up to it. Not today. The twenty-seventh of November would be a dark anniversary for more than just him.
«Are you cold?» he asked his colleague.
Bitte Røed’s lips were blue and she was moving like a penguin. He didn’t know if she nodded or if she was just shaking.
«We can probably leave here soon,» he continued. «We just have to have a talk with the first unit at the scene before we leave.»
The two policemen were still standing guard by the barricade up on the road. Poor devils, Verner Jacobsen thought, shouldn’t you be relieved soon? He saw that they were trying to keep warm by stamping back and forth on the other side of the barricade tape. They were not yet surrounded by reporters armed with telephoto lenses, but that probably would not last long.
«I’d like to get some information about what you saw when you arrived at the scene,» Jacobsen said. «Who called this in? Apart from the pathologist, I’ve only seen police personnel here.»
«The ambulance was here when we arrived,» one constable explained. «The district physician came very quickly. There were two witnesses present from the start. The boy who found the girl and the man who called in. We questioned them briefly, but sent them home. They’ll make statements at the police station later today.»
«Why weren’t they brought in for interviews immediately?» Jacobsen asked sharply.
He saw the uncertainty that flared up in the eyes of the policeman who’d spoken.
«Uh, we made the assessment that it wasn’t necessary,» the shorter of the two said. He had a mouth that resembled a chicken’s beak. He puckered his lips and looked anxiously at his partner.
«Well,» the other one continued. «The doctor who was here assumed that the girl had been dead a while, and this young kid was afraid about worrying his parents, who were sitting up waiting. And the man was extremely stressed. He was searching for his daughter and couldn’t reach her. He was scared to death, of course, that something might have happened to her, too. So, we let them go after a short interview. They’ve been told to appear at the police station this morning.»
Jacobsen looked at the constables. So young, both of them. Maybe this was their first crime scene. He suddenly recalled how he, for the very first time, quivering with adrenaline, stretched barricade tape around a pasture where an old woman had been found dead, along with her cat. He remembered how with trembling hands he had taken the simple crime scene packet from the service vehicle while thoughts raced through his head as he tried to remember everything he had learned about securing evidence and taking care of witnesses. Stress primarily paralyzes the areas in the brain that normally make a person intelligent, Verner had learned. It was not because of him, he understood later, that the police had solved the case. He smiled soothingly at the young men.
«What are their names?»
The chicken beak looked relieved.
«The young boy is named Fredrik. Fredrik Paulsen,» he said, not without pride because he didn’t need to check his notes. «And the one who called in is named Kristian Skage.»
He looked at his watch.
«Perhaps you’ll be doing the interviews?» he continued.
«That will probably be your task,» Jacobsen said to Bitte Røed.
«What?» said Bitte Røed, breathing with open mouth.
Verner Jacobsen suddenly felt tired.
«Do you have any objections?» he said. «I would gladly do the interviews myself, but you know I have other things to take ca
re of today.»
He felt himself getting irritated, and had to bite his tongue out of fear of making an inappropriate comment, or even worse, starting to cry.
«Do you have any objections?» he repeated.
«The name?» said Bitte Røed. She ignored Verner Jacobsen and simply stared at the constable. «Are you sure?»
«Yes, of course I am,» the man said, who started to take a notebook from his chest pocket. He showed her what he had written.
«Fredrik Paulsen found the girl. Kristian Skage reported it. I was the one who talked with them.»
Bitte Røed could no longer feel her own body. The cold was suddenly just as sharp inside her as outside.
«Do you know them?» Jacobsen asked.
The question made her teeth chatter. She went back and forth about how much she should say. She thought about the last time she had known someone involved in a homicide investigation. That time her daughter’s boyfriend had been involved in a case where a five-year-old girl had disappeared. She remembered how upset Verner had been when he realized she had withheld information.
«He’s my boyfriend,» she said quickly.
She was unable to look him in the eye as she continued.
«Kristian Skage. He’s a journalist. We were childhood sweethearts, and now.... He lives here in Tranby.»
She knew of course that sooner or later it would come out that she was in a new relationship, but she had postponed telling her colleague. Now she realized what she had dreaded. A quick, vulnerable feature in the otherwise sharp gaze. Verner Jacobsen was not handsome. He was skinny and short, with scars like small craters on his face. Yet something or other shone through that she equated with beautiful.
«Your boyfriend?»
Verner Jacobsen pronounced the two words as if he had eaten something that made him sick.
9
Why didn’t he remember anything? Agnar Eriksen was standing in the familiar kitchen with the linoleum floor from the sixties. He felt the fear like a sharp pain in his back, right below the shoulder blades. The sight of his mother, with her chalk-white hair flowing in blood, made his stomach turn again. His stomach was empty, but he retched, bringing up the sour taste of yellow bile and brown liquor.
The Girl With No Heart Page 2