The Girl With No Heart

by Marit Reiersgaard

  «Can I check the news on your laptop?» he asked, dropping the subject of Christmas decorations.

  He put the computer on his lap and brought up the VG news site. The latest news was:

  Police Speculate in Ritual Killing

  My goodness, he thought. The fact that the girl was found by this obelisk has evidently stirred the imagination of some creative souls. Ritual killing? Really? But could there be something to that? He thought about the tagging at the base of the plinth.

  Whore I

  Was there more than one? he thought. Erna Eriksen? Could she pass for being whore number two? No, no one had tagged «II» anywhere. For all they knew, it wasn’t certain that the tagging had anything whatsoever to do with the case. But the young people, Fredrik had spray paint with him at the party. Marte’s boots had specks of the same paint. Did that mean anything at all? He scratched his head and entered «obelisk» in the search field.

  According to Wikipedia it was obviously a phallic symbol, probably used as a sundial, often called Finger of the Sun, but also used as a grave monument. Nothing came up that he didn’t already know. Not until he added «Høgdabakkene, also known as Gamle Kongevei,» to the search.

  The obelisk was located by something called Fort Gjellebekk. And this particular eight-meter-high obelisk turned out to be something quite different from a phallic symbol. It was made as a monument to mark Frederik V’s visit to the marble quarry in 1749. On the obelisk was written:

  When the mighty king and lord King Friderich the Fifth visited his kingdom of Norway for the first time and likewise on the _____ 1749 graced this marble works with his most mighty presence this obelisk is raised in eternal reminder to inform posterity of the more than fatherly care His Majesty has shown for the works’ establishment and growth.

  The king himself had reportedly been present at the unveiling, but since the date had never been engraved, there was doubt whether the king had actually been there. There was speculation that the king had been at a party in Asker the night before and gotten so intoxicated that he fell asleep in the coach. Apparently, no one had dared waken him.

  So, King Frederik the Fifth got so drunk he couldn’t take in what happened, Verner thought. Could it be as simple as history repeating itself? Agnar Eriksen stubbornly maintained that he was so drunk that he remembered almost nothing. Could he have assaulted Idunn on the road, raped her and dragged her to the precipice, and then gone home and got into a confrontation with his mother? That didn’t really make sense, he had to admit, and no traces were found of a struggle in the vicinity of where Idunn was found. But they had found something on the other side of the road, it occurred to him. In the expanded search, the canine patrol had discovered a kind of hollow in the snow, right by one of the many paths in the area. The wildlife board had ruled out that this concerned a moose or deer. It was most likely youths who had rolled around in the snow. But couldn’t it just as likely be traces of an assault?

  Or what about Fredrik, the young Fredrik, the king of the hill, the popular show-off? He had been intoxicated too. Verner Jacobsen gave the laptop back to Ingrid and yawned. The best thing he could do was sleep, but he worried about lying awake all night. Insomnia was starting to consume him from the inside. Thoughts that ought to be clear and organized were packed in wadding. It was Victor who kept him awake, and if he finally managed to fall asleep, he always encountered his son there in the darkness.

  70

  Sølvi went straight up to Idunn’s room when they came home. The policeman had finally coaxed out of her that she was the one who had called the police. It seemed like he knew before she admitted it, and she had a feeling he didn’t take her seriously. And Gustav must have found out. He had used that dark gaze when he looked at her in the car going home. The control gaze. He wishes he could forbid me from going out again, thought Sølvi. She would only be with Idunn anyway, in Idunn’s room.

  On Idunn’s desk, on one of the shelves, was her light-blue clutch purse. She picked it up, stroking the leather carefully. Soft. So soft. She opened the latch with a short snap. There was nothing in it. No money. Idunn didn’t have any money. I should have given her more, Sølvi thought, feeling the tears welling up far down in her belly. They pressed their way up toward the place where the surface was thinnest, where it would most easily burst.

  A receipt from H&M. Nail polish 39.90 kroner. The date showed that she had bought it the day she disappeared. Sølvi remembered she had commented on it before her daughter left. Violet nail polish. She thought it was vulgar and asked her where she was going, so dolled up. That was the word she had used, dolled up. My beautiful girl. And she remembered the quarrel they’d had. About the fact that she didn’t like it that Idunn was at Linnea’s house. Her mother always wore short, black leather skirts that revealed more than they should. There was something cheap and dirty about that family, and Linnea was just like her mother, dyed her hair and wiggled when she walked. Can’t you spend more time with Marte? she had suggested. Quiet, sweet Marte who never made a fuss. Linnea was a bad influence. She was right, wasn’t she? Linnea’s parents didn’t have control, and there were rumors that they went to Sweden to smuggle liquor and beer and tobacco. And I didn’t have control of you, my girl. I shouldn’t have let you go. Sølvi sniffed the little purse, sat there, and fiddled with the latch.

  «You thought it was me?»

  Gustav filled the entire doorway. His large fists hung loosely along his sides, but it occurred to her that he could easily pick her up and throw her against the wall. If he just snapped his fingers at her she would fall. Was he angry? Of course, he was angry.

  «I never said that... » she stammered, instinctively shrinking back.

  «That detective said they got an anonymous call. It was you, wasn’t it?»

  Sølvi breathed through her mouth. She could hear for herself how strained it sounded.

  «You know that’s not true and yet... do you hate me that much, Sølvi?»

  Sølvi shook her head. No. Hate? Was it hatred?

  «I’ve lost a daughter too,» Gustav continued. «Why must you make it even worse for me?»

  «You’ve lost...» Sølvi mumbled. «You had a close relationship, when you were around, mind you, but it was me, I was the one who was at home with her. Her whole childhood. I was there. Sacrificed myself, just the way you wanted it.»

  «It was your own choice.»

  «Was it?»

  «Is she more dead for you than for me, Sølvi?»

  They looked at each other from either side of a deep chasm, a crack in communication, an abyss of sorrow. Then she noticed how his face tightened, and she saw it at once in his eyes. The loss. Could it be measured?

  «Sorry.»

  She whispered.

  «Sorry,» she repeated, barely audibly, but she saw that it was too late. He had closed his eyes, taken his daughter with him into a place where she was not granted entrance.

  «But I’m her mother,» she continued with renewed pain. «Don’t you understand that I’m the one who’s lost the most?»

  She thought about all the lunches she had made. Every morning. And all the times she had taken her temperature when she had a fever. She remembered how she had forced her mouth open to get penicillin into her, while it was Gustav who had taken her on his lap afterward to console her. She was the one who tangled with her when she got older, she was the one who refused to let her use makeup, while Gustav slipped her a 100-kroner bill and drove her to the mall. I was always the one who had to make the tough decisions. «You punish those you love.» Those were Gustav’s words. And Gustav’s words were law. She followed the law. Gustav broke it.

  He had been too weak. Weak for Idunn, but never for me, Sølvi thought, feeling how she was slipping into the role of martyr. I’m the one who carried her in my body. Idunn was a part of me, inside me, born out of my body. The pain now was just like at childbirth. Only she could feel it in her body, how it exploded and made her gasp for air. Oxygen! Laughing gas! Give me s
omething! And then a hand on her back. Warm. Soothing, somehow pain-relieving.

  «Go!» she shouted. «You can’t feel my pain. I do! I feel it in my whole body. My whole body! She is sitting under my skin, I see her there every time I look in the mirror. I will live with this the rest of my life, I will carry her with me. Here!»

  Sølvi slapped herself audibly on the face before she collapsed like a bundle on the floor. She lay there completely still. Listened. Not a sound. She opened her eyes and looked right at his feet. He still had his boots on. If he kicks me in the face now, I’m sure I deserve it, she thought, closing her eyes again. She held her breath when she realized that he was crouched down beside her. It no longer mattered what he did with her. He took hold of her and raised her up, carried her out of Idunn’s room, and laid her on the bed. With surprise, she noticed that he carefully spread the coverlet around her.

  «I forgive you,» he whispered, and kissed her on the forehead.

  Thursday, December 4

  71

  Verner Jacobsen woke up to the smell of fresh-ground coffee. With surprise, he discovered that Ingrid was bustling around in the kitchen and did not seem at all affected by having had quite a bit to drink the night before. He took the cup she handed him and sat down at the kitchen table. It was snowing outside, big, light flakes that seemed in no hurry to fall to the ground, but twirled slowly around, first up and then down. Ingrid sat down across from him. She drank her coffee with irritating slurps followed by a deep gulp and an ahhh. Again and again, until the cup was empty. It took about three minutes.

  «What should we get your mother for Christmas?» she asked.

  «Well, I haven’t had time to think about that yet,» Verner said, drinking his own coffee with strikingly little sound, as if to show her that it actually was possible.

  «She probably barely realizes that Christmas is approaching,» he continued. «We can give her something edible. Candy, maybe. She likes chocolate.»

  Ingrid stared at the table top as if she was preparing herself for what she should say, and when she opened her mouth, the words limped out of her and settled between the coffee cups like small shadows.

  «I’m sorry,» she said. «I’m sorry about yesterday.»

  She was speaking so quietly that he could barely make it out, while she smoothed invisible wrinkles on the tablecloth.

  «It’s fine,» said Verner.

  He took her hand and made her look at him.

  «You know, Ingrid, when you suddenly got an adult stepson—the way you handled that impressed me.»

  He noticed that he meant that. And it’s actually pleasant for me here with Ingrid, he thought. He had to get better at reminding himself of that. But at the same time, he knew that it was the cowardly side of the truth. Ingrid poured him a refill. Verner stood up before he managed to get irritated again.

  «Will you take Lorca out?» he asked.

  «Fine,» Ingrid said with a smile. «But he probably won’t want to go out until he really has to, in this weather.»

  Verner Jacobsen, on the other hand, decided to go to work. He had slept poorly last night, too. He did not understand why it should be so difficult. It was as if he had suddenly been equipped with extra good hearing. He could have sworn he’d been wakened in the night by a pin falling to the floor in the laundry room two floors down. Perhaps a quick walk with the snow in his face would clear his brain.

  The transparent and undefined smell of snow when it was just about freezing met him as he walked down Rosenkrantzgata. Even here, mixed with exhaust from the heavily trafficked road, he could sense it. He turned onto the walking path along the river. The walk livened him up, but he was still happy when he could finally cross Ypsilon, the Y-shaped bridge, and see the police station on the other side of the river.

  Y for yielding, he thought, I ought to be more yielding. I shouldn’t go around wondering whether I ought to burn the bridge or if I have a desire to cross it. I don’t want to think about her anymore, I want to stop comparing what I’ll never get with what I actually have, he decided. But it was as if his son’s death had struck him with a double solitude. It had put him into an even more searching mode, without quite being able to put into words what he was searching for. He’d seen the same thing in Ingrid. It was as if she was on the lookout too, trying to find a better, updated edition of him. A Verner 2.0.

  As he passed the statue of Per Sivle with hat and cane outside the library, and saw that someone had placed a biscuit in the crook of the arm on the statue, she was there again. Bitte Røed would no doubt have snatched up the biscuit and put it in her mouth. He caught himself smiling.

  He arrived twenty minutes late to the morning meeting, and the smile disappeared quickly when Superintendent Thomas Lindstrand pointed out the importance of being one hundred percent present.

  «Christmas is fast approaching,» he continued. «And if there’s one thing we ought to give the parents of Idunn and the whole local community in Tranby, it’s an answer to what has happened. Does anyone have anything new in the case?»

  Ida Madsen put her hand in the air.

  «I reviewed all the cell phone traffic again yesterday,» she said. «It turns out that Idunn made a call to Linnea, not long after she left the party. Linnea had been confronted with this, but consistently maintained that nothing was said. Yesterday, I had her in for another witness interview, and she told us something else.»

  «Yes, what’s that?»

  Verner Jacobsen stared impatiently at her, as if he was trying to log directly into the information she had.

  «Linnea heard that Idunn whispered something. She thinks it was ’Marte’ or ’Marte’s.’ I’ve checked the time, and the call was ended on Wednesday evening at 21:16 hours.»

  Everyone on the investigation team straightened up, as if they collectively understood that this could be decisive.

  «And she hasn’t told this before!» said Verner Jacobsen, feeling wide awake in a flash.

  «Linnea said that she was afraid of casting suspicion on someone who perhaps was completely innocent. Someone she said was one of her best girlfriends.»

  «But what did Linnea think this might mean?» asked Verner Jacobsen. «Was anything else said?»

  «No, and Linnea didn’t want to speculate, but she hinted that what Idunn had tried to say was: ’Marte’s guilty’.»

  72

  Superintendent Thomas Lindstrand granted the team a five-minute break to get coffee. As they trickled back into the conference room, Verner Jacobsen and some of the others on the team were discussing how conceivable it was that a fifteen-year-old girl could take the life of another girl her age. Lindstrand and Heiki Stenvald were the last to return, ten minutes later.

  «Sorry about the delay,» Lindstrand said. «I got a call from the prosecutor’s office. They’re asking us to release Fredrik Paulsen, since they think there is no longer any danger of influence of witnesses or loss of evidence. And since he’s so young, there has to be substantial evidence if we want to hold him.»

  «We mustn’t lock this in one direction,» said Heiki Stenvald, interrupting the murmur that arose.

  «Keep in mind that we have several possible perpetrators. There’s Kristian Skage, and we still have Fredrik Paulsen. Even if we have to let Fredrik go, he’s still the one I would bet my money on. And what about Gustav Olsen, the father of the victim? Weren’t you going to talk with the Olsens yesterday?»

  Heiki looked inquisitively at Verner Jacobsen.

  «Yes, I brought both of them in for witness interviews yesterday evening. It turned out that it was Sølvi who was behind the anonymous tip. Obviously, we won’t rule out Gustav Olsen, but I think the accusations are grounded in the parents’ own desperation. There’s probably a few things simmering under the surface in that family, but murder is hardly one of them.»

  «Okay,» said Heiki. «Then I’ll put a parenthesis around Gustav’s name. But now we can add a new name to the list: Marte Skage. And let’s not forget Agnar Eriksen. He
’s still in custody here in the building. And this is what I mean when I say we mustn’t lock in the investigation. You see, I made a call to forensics just now during the break and asked whether they had anything new concerning either the fire or the Idunn case. It turns out that Bitte Røed has brought in a cap that is said to belong to Agnar Eriksen.»

  Thomas Lindstrand’s eyes opened wide. Verner Jacobsen saw how his jaws started to grind, as if he was chewing gum.

  «Bitte Røed also said that we would pay for an expedited analysis.»

  Verner thought he could sense the pressure that was building up under Thomas Lindstrand’s forehead and for a moment was afraid that he would explode. He considered sending Bitte a message that she should seek cover as quickly as possible, away from the police station.

  «We all know that Agnar Eriksen is bald-headed,» Heiki continued, apparently without noticing that the superintendent’s jaws were tensed.

  «Now it turns out that hairs have been found in this cap. Long, brown hairs.»

  There was silence around the table. Everyone was striving to see for themselves how this piece might fit into the puzzle. Heiki smiled calmly and took a breath before he continued.

  «I just talked with Bitte and asked where she got this cap. She said that she’d been at Finn’s place, the friend of Agnar Eriksen that is, who let him stay there a few days. Agnar left the cap behind, and Røed sent it for analysis after noticing the strands of hair. Thomas, I hope you’ll grant Bitte Røed the extra use of resources.»

  Here he put on a sheepish smile, aiming it across the table at the superintendent before he continued.

  «Røed has pretty good antennae, because the hairs turn out to belong to...»

  He paused theatrically, acted as if he was searching in some papers, before he looked at each one of them.

  «Stop kidding around, Heiki! For Pete’s sake, this isn’t a damn crime novel you’re reading out of!» Verner Jacobsen interrupted.