The lack of sleep had made him impatient and irritable.
«Get to the point!»
Heiki did not raise an eyebrow, but answered immediately.
«Idunn,» he said. «The hair belonged to Idunn Olsen.»
The calm broke as everyone gasped at the same time.
«We’ve got him!» Verner Jacobsen exclaimed.
73
The conference room quickly became a cacophony of voices. Everyone was talking at the same time until Thomas Lindstrand called for order and assigned tasks.
«We have a demanding day ahead of us,» he said. «I hope everyone is willing to work a little harder. We’re approaching a resolution, and if you step on the gas a bit more now, there will conceivably be flex time before Christmas.»
Verner had hoped he would get the pleasure of interviewing Agnar Eriksen again, but it was Heiki and Ida Madsen who got that task. He was assigned to bring in Marte. That must be wrong, he thought, and a waste of time to talk with her again. Fifteen-year-olds don’t kill each other.
They had checked photographs and talked with Idunn’s mother. All witness observations told the same story. The cap that Agnar Eriksen had called his, undoubtedly belonged to Idunn, or the girl without a heart, as Verner had unconsciously started calling her. It suddenly occurred to him that he should have informed the rest of the team about what he’d noticed about the heart necklace. He was evidently the only one who had observed that the jewelry was missing on the pictures of the victim. Verner decided that it could wait. Half the team had already disappeared, regardless. I have to remember to ask Marte about it, he thought. Girls always notice jewelry and such.
If he remembered correctly, Idunn had not been found with a cap either. The girl without a heart, cap, or mittens, it struck him, or no, not quite. She did have one mitten, on the hand that had been hidden under her body.
«He refuses to speak with us!»
Heiki Stenvald came out of the interview room closely followed by Ida Madsen, just as Verner Jacobsen and Marte Skage were on their way down the corridor lined with interview rooms. This time, Marte had a representative from Child Protective Services with her. Verner had justified that with the fact that her father was still an important witness, but the main reason was a hope of getting Marte to open up when her mother wasn’t present. He showed them into one of the rooms and went out again to get something to drink. Marte had said yes to a Coke.
«What’s going on?» Verner Jacobsen asked when he encountered his colleagues at the pop machine.
«Agnar Eriksen,» Heiki hissed. «He’s closed up like a sullen oyster. He won’t talk with anyone other than the one who interviewed him the first time he was here, he says. I have no idea who that was.»
«Bitte Røed,» said Verner. «It was Bitte Røed who interviewed him.»
«Well, isn’t that nice,» Heiki said with a sigh. «She was taken off the case. I don’t even know if she’s here. Have you seen her?»
Yes, I see her all the time, Verner Jacobsen thought, but shook his head and avoided falling for the temptation of offering to check her office. Instead he said, «If you find her, I would just let her have a talk with him. Her boyfriend has been cleared, so to be honest I don’t understand why she can’t be brought back into the investigation. Bitte Røed is capable, she’s good at getting people to open up. Use an interview room with both audio and video, let her be there alone with him, but sit and follow along. I’ll take my share of the blame if Lindstrand starts fuming.»
«Yes, Thomas himself did say that it’s results we’re after,» said Heiki, setting course for Bitte Røed’s office.
74
Agnar Eriksen smiled broadly when Bitte Røed opened the door.
«Come along, you’re going with me,» she said without returning the smile. In principle, she was happy to be back on the team, but did not like the fact that it was only because Agnar Eriksen had demanded it. And even worse that the boss didn’t know about it.
«We’re going to change rooms,» she said, showing the way down the corridor. «A nice little room for you and me, a video camera and a microphone.»
Just so he doesn’t get any ideas, Bitte Røed thought. It felt secure knowing that Heiki and Ida would be watching. Agnar was big and burly, and even though she had learned particular moves, she did not feel completely secure. This was an assailant after all, a convict, possibly a double murderer. You don’t fool around with such people.
«I need to inform you that this interview will be recorded with both audio and video,» she said. He sat down on the one chair, slouching arrogantly. A pitcher of water was on the table and she poured two glasses, pushed one toward him and picked up the other, draining it in one gulp.
Agnar Eriksen let the water glass be. It reminded him of clear vodka, but knowing that it was only tap water, he left it alone. He trusted the woman who had interviewed him the first time. She had not said that she thought he was the one who killed his mother, the way the pipsqueak with the peculiar name had. Heiki! He probably wasn’t even Norwegian. Unlike that guy, this lady seemed a bit gullible and stupid, and he was sure he could easily manipulate her. Besides, she hadn’t seemed judgmental in any way; on the contrary, she seemed sincerely interested in what he had to say. He decided to tell everything the way it was, if she was willing to listen.
«You had a cap with you when you were at Finn’s,» Bitte Røed said, deciding to get right to the point.
«Yes,» Agnar said calmly.
«You left it behind at Finn’s.»
«Yes,» Agnar answered again.
He looked happy. Bitte was surprised. He should have been worried.
«Where did you get that cap, Agnar? Because it’s not yours, is it?»
He was crestfallen and noticed that a blurry film had slid down over his eyes. How could she know it wasn’t his? Maybe she wasn’t so stupid after all? He swallowed.
«It was my mom’s,» he said. «I took it when I left her house because it was so damned cold, but now it’s the only thing that’s left of her. Can I have it back? Are you the one who has it?»
«It can’t possibly have belonged to your mother,» Bitte said sternly. She decided not to let herself be affected by his seemingly emotional look.
«And why can’t it be? I found it in the hall at Mom’s house.»
There was a sincerity in his voice that she had a hard time believing was fake.
«We have found traces that indicate that the cap belonged to the dead teenage girl,» Bitte Røed said, fixing her gaze on him.
Agnar shook his head.
«I don’t understand a bit of that,» he said, so casually that she chose to drop the subject.
«We can come back to that,» she said, shaking off the feeling that this was not as simple as they had first thought.
«Tell me a little about yourself, instead,» she said, imitating the light tone he himself had just used.
«What do you want to hear?»
«Anything at all. Your childhood. Your relationship with your mother. What happened that night you went home to her? Start wherever you want.»
He had thought through carefully what he should say and where he should begin. Eventually, it would all come down to one day. Everything he had hidden for all these years. Finally, there was someone who wanted to hear. He would begin where it hurt the most.
Bitte Røed poured more water into her own glass, picked it up with both hands and leaned back, as if she was expecting a good story.
«I’ve always liked being alone best,» Agnar began. «But I understand that for some people being an outsider is the same as death. Finn is that kind of person. He would croak if he was alone. And my mother. She didn’t know anything else. No one wanted anything to do with her. Not me either, but when I got out, I wanted to go home to give her one last chance. But either she must have said something that made me so angry that everything turned black, or else she never managed to say anything. Is it possible, do you know, since you’re such an educated p
erson and have gone to such good schools, is it possible that things can turn completely black for a person? For example, if my mother said something I didn’t like, is it possible that I could have killed her without remembering it now?»
«Agnar,» said Bitte Røed. «You’d been drinking a lot, and that in itself can produce a blackout. If you’ve experienced something traumatic besides, in some cases the brain can choose to dispose of memories. That’s not to say that they aren’t there somewhere. Maybe a good psychologist can coax them out again. In your case, with such a high concentration of alcohol in your bloodstream, I’m not so sure that’s possible. And perhaps you’d also taken medication?»
She skimmed the meager information they had access to from various institutions. He had periodically been on antipsychotic medications.
«Besides,» she continued, «with your diagnosis, alcohol may have triggered an acute psychosis. But tell me about your childhood instead; we can come back to the present, we have plenty of time.»
Bitte Røed recalled the newspaper articles she had seen about his father, who disappeared back in the eighties, when Agnar was fifteen or sixteen years old. The case was still unsolved. Perhaps the father was out there somewhere?
«Tell me about your father,» she asked.
Agnar fell silent. He sat with his gaze fixed on the past.
Agnar remembered the feeling of sitting on the cold brick floor in the basement. He was hiding far back in the laundry room, where the pipes went straight up through the ceiling to the counter up in the kitchen. A bad washer, his father had explained, putting a tin can under the pipe where there was a leak. Agnar sat and watched how every drop grew and got shiny and big, just like a tear, before it loosened and dripped down into the can. He heard the front door open and steps on their way down the stairs, hurried to turn off the light, and sat quiet as a mouse staring out into the darkness. The sound of the leaky pipe was clearer now.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
He knew that his father was standing outside. Then the door opened, and a beam of light struck him in the face. His father smiled.
«So, this is where you’re hiding?»
Agnar had been sitting silently for some time. Bitte waited. At last he looked up. The little sneer he usually had was gone.
«I can tell you about how I ended up at the institution. Do you want to hear about that?»
Bitte nodded. She gave in to the temptation and drew her legs up under her on the chair. She knew that wasn’t very professional, but it gave the whole thing less of an impression of being an interrogation. She hadn’t meant to ask too many questions; as long as he was talking, she would just listen.
«Finn and I were out in the woods a lot playing when we were little. We had a special place. Down on the floor of the woods, not too far from where we lived. A ravine. We hung out down there by the creek, built huts and played cowboys and Indians, that sort of thing. It was our secret place. We gradually developed a kind of friendship that went beyond, uh... certain boundaries.»
Bitte pictured Finn’s shamefaced look, and immediately formed an image of what direction their friendship had developed.
«I’m not gay—you mustn’t think that,» he said.
Bitte noticed how his eyes got round like two gray-green marbles when he opened them wide. He stared at her. The intensity in that glassy gaze was unpleasant.
«I have no opinion about that,» Bitte said calmly.
«Well then,» Agnar said, clearing his throat. «I’m not gay and I never have been, but I was not unfamiliar with...»
He closed his mouth and sat there with his face distorted by an obviously painful memory. Then he opened his eyes abruptly and said, «I think Finn is. Gay, that is. Or maybe it was just adolescent confusion. Who knows? Now he’s married of course and is going to have a kid and all. But then, back then. There was an episode down there in the ravine.»
Agnar became distant. It was like his whole body contracted into itself and his voice changed, as if he was physically back in his childhood. Bitte held her breath so as not to disturb. He sounded younger when he started speaking again, and she thought she could see the shadow of the little boy he had once been.
«We are sitting by the edge of the creek. It’s winter. Snow. The creek is frozen over. Even so we can hear how it’s gurgling and running. We’ve made a bench of spruce twigs and are sitting close together, sharing a pack of gum that I stole from the co-op. Finn is leaning against me, and it’s not unpleasant. I’m not scared. Finn is security. He places his mitten on my thigh, right over my knee. He doesn’t say anything. I look at him. He looks at me, and before I really know what’s happening, he’s hanging around my neck. He holds me tight, as if he thinks I want to push him away. I consider kicking him in the crotch, but I don’t do that. I sit quiet as a mouse and close my eyes. Then he kisses me. His lips taste like sorbitol.»
Agnar reached for the water glass and took a sip before he continued.
«That day it was as if the sun reached a few thin rays down into the ravine and tickled the back of my neck. I remember it so well. And it didn’t have to go so wrong. I could have pushed myself calmly back and said to Finn in an all right way that it wasn’t my thing. That he didn’t need to be embarrassed or anything like that; on the contrary, that I knew and understood more than he thought I did. But then the warm rays on the back of my neck were replaced by a cold glove. Literally.»
Agnar looked up to check that Bitte Røed was following along.
«The glove grabbed my throat, and the other glove was around Finn’s neck. ’I see, so you’re sitting here necking, my God, that’s not bad,’ I heard, and the words were followed by a breath that I recognized all too well. My father’s smile was just a crack in his face.
«I hadn’t heard him coming, and I didn’t think he knew where we usually hung out. But he probably just followed our tracks. Maybe he’d done it before, stood on the outskirts and observed us while we ran around half-naked with feathers in our hair and toy pistols stuck down in our shorts.
«My father was holding us both in an iron grip. Then he suddenly dropped us, stood in front of us with his legs spread and arms crossed. I thought he would put on a smile to downplay the whole thing. Because he wouldn’t say anything about what was our secret, I thought then, tongue-tied as I was. Finn started apologizing, and said that it was just a silly game. He was babbling about God’s judgment, and his father, and forgiveness, and please-don’t-say-anything, when my father leaned down and put his mouth on him. At first, I was in shock. Then I got mad. I saw the expression in Finn’s eyes, it looked like the kitten we drowned the year before a little further down in the creek where the water was deeper.»
Agnar held his breath. And in that moment of self-imposed oxygen deprivation he discovered that what he now was about to tell was what had given him nightmares almost every single night since it happened.
«I was fifteen, almost sixteen. Finn is two years younger,» said Agnar.
He studied his own hands as he continued. Bitte noticed that he was clenching and unclenching his fists, rhythmically, as if they had a pulse of their own.
«Finn has a bite mark on his upper lip and a drop of blood is mixed with Papa’s spit and runs down his chin. Papa looks at me. Locks me with his gaze. Then he throws Finn down on his belly on the snowdrift and starts tearing off his pants. I turn around, because I know so goddamn well what’s going to happen. Papa holds Finn’s head down in the snow, so his screams are muffled. Papa is not that big, but he is strong, and I see that there is a hollow in Finn’s back as he puts his knee there to hold him down while he undoes his own pants.
«’I’ll tell Mama,’ I shout. Dad turns around, and I realize that it has no effect. Mama won’t be able to do anything. What would she say? Go to the minister and tell that her husband raped his son? Mama is a slob, she wears old clothes and seldom bathes. Everyone knows that Mama and Papa drink. Everyone knows that they don’t count for anythin
g, but they try, they try all the time. And sometimes, when for short periods they manage to stay sober, and Mama does the cleaning job she has at the old folks’ home, then even I thought that finally we’ll count for something.
«’I’ll tell the minister,’ I say.
«Papa just looks at me. He has that look he uses to make me understand that I can’t do a thing. That I’ll never be able to do a thing. But he lets go of Finn. Finn tumbles on his side in the snow as if he’s drunk. Gets up, tries to pull up his pants. He is white. Almost blends in with the surroundings. I understand at once that he’s going to disappear. Then he throws up a bloody heap in the snow.
«Suddenly, it’s as if my father understands that he’s done something really stupid. He smiles and pats Finn on the shoulder.
«’I won’t tell anyone that you made a pass at my son, Finn. I won’t tell your father, the minister, that you’re a little homo. And you keep quiet about what happened here today... ’
«My father’s laughter is the only sound we hear. It’s as if even the creek is holding its breath; it has stopped gurgling. I cast a glance at Finn, and right then I think Finn understands. Maybe I understood it myself, for the first time. That the sort of thing my father has carried on with since I was a little kid isn’t normal, it’s forbidden.
«Before I know it, I see Finn running into my father’s face. My father doesn’t have time to react. He doesn’t expect resistance, he never got any. What happens now happens so fast that I don’t know if it’s true, or if it’s something I’ve made up.»
Agnar leaned forward and put his head in his hands.
«I’ve played this scene in my head so many times that it’s true to me, the version I like seeing best.»
His shoulders were shaking, and Bitte Røed wondered whether he was crying. She had an urge to lean over and stroke the bent back, but instead she said, «It’s like with witness interviews. When someone has told the same story a certain number of times, they have a tendency to believe that it’s true. That’s how our brains work. Maybe we should be glad it’s that way,» she added. «Otherwise the nuthouse would be full of normal people with a story that is too difficult to live with.»
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