Verner set two coffee cups on the table with a thud. He had not asked if Kristian wanted any, but he observed a nervous smile as he pushed the one cup across the table.
«You can just start when you’re ready,» said Verner Jacobsen.
«I assume that you want an explanation?»
«Yes, that’s why you’re here,» said Verner.
He forced himself to meet the man’s gaze. It was impossible to look at him without at the same time picturing Bitte Røed. He was forced nonetheless to conduct the interview in a professional manner. He could not take the chance that the recording would reveal the kinds of thoughts he was having.
«I see that you’re angry,» said Kristian. «And I know why. I know that you—»
«I’m not angry,» Verner snapped, suddenly afraid that he was already exposed.
«Yes, of course you are. Bitte told me that—»
«We’re going to talk about you now, Skage!»
Verner felt nervousness poking at his sweat glands at the mere mention of his colleague’s name.
«You’ve lost a son. Bitte told me that. I must be a monster in your eyes.»
Verner did not know what to say. One patch of his heart had reluctant sympathy for the man, and in another corner of the same confused heart a quiet joy sank in. Bitte Røed had talked about him.
«I would really like to hear what happened,» said Verner, feeling that the old professional detective was in place again.
«I wish I could go back to last Wednesday. You should only know how deeply I regret this. But I understand that it doesn’t matter. Nothing I say now can change the past. I’m guilty.»
«I want you to tell me anyway,» said Verner.
Kristian sat on the edge of the chair with his elbows on his knees and both arms around his body. He did not raise his eyes as he started talking, but Verner saw a few tears fall right into the coffee, a small plop in the dark liquid.
«If you knew how powerless a dad is... » he began. «She ruined Marte’s life. What should a father do?»
«Making yourself a murderer is probably not the best solution,» said Verner.
«I’ll tell you what was going on,» said Kristian Skage, meeting his gaze with a convincing determination. «If you want, I’ll tell you everything.»
Verner Jacobsen leaned back in the chair.
«I’m listening,» he said.
«Marte calls me from that party at Linnea’s. I was actually so happy at first, do you understand? Finally, she was invited out with her friends again. I didn’t pick up on the fact that her girlfriends were only taking her with them so they’d have someone to make a fool of. Maybe it was like that, maybe it was just that Marte let herself be bullied. We talked about it many times, that she mustn’t let herself be pulled by the nose, that she had to practice being tougher. It’s so easy to see for a grown-up. But having to go out in the world and be fifteen and live her life at a school she couldn’t escape... We’re torturing our kids, you know that?»
Kristian stood up and started pacing back and forth in the room.
«It’s worse than prison! Our kids have no choice, they have to go to that damned place every day and sit in their seats with bullies around them without any possibility of escape. They can’t change jobs like we can when someone doesn’t like your face. Do you get how hard it was to see her go out the door in the morning with her pack heavy as lead on her back. She always let her hair fall down in her face, so I wouldn’t see that she was crying. And at the same time, I couldn’t do anything other than put on the same phony tough mask every day and wave goodbye to her. She was forced to be out there in life and try to live it, and she had to do it alone.»
The sorrow was visible all over his face. His breathing was labored and irregular.
«Breathe in deeply, down into your stomach,» said Verner. «And let it out again through a little hole in your lips, slowly. Like this,» he said, showing him an example of what he meant.
Kristian did as he was told, and Verner saw how he slowly collected himself and regained some form of control.
«I was with your colleague, I’m sure you know that. We are... were...»
Kristian stopped and looked around irresolutely.
«Has she said anything?» he asked abruptly. «About me?»
Verner Jacobsen slowly shook his head. He could picture Bitte Røed at the wrap-up meeting that morning. Pale, and with no lipstick.
«She said that you were with her the night of the murder,» said Verner.
«Bitte and I had shared a bottle of wine,» Kristian continued. «I couldn’t drive when Marte called and wanted to be picked up. I was lucky and caught a bus, but when I got to Linnea’s house, she wasn’t there. There were only a couple of teenagers left. Linnea said that the police had been there. No one knew where Marte was, but they thought she’d gone home. Someone thought she’d been locked in the cellar. I searched the house, imagining the most frightful scenarios. That she was tied up, gagged and beaten, raped. I told myself that I would never find my little girl, and that even if I found her, she would no longer be Marte, but someone else. A victim of violence.
«Linnea didn’t want to say anything at all, but when I asked, I realized that it was something with Fredrik and Idunn. I know Idunn. You have no idea how many times her name has come up in cases that the PTA got involved in. It was as if she lacked empathy completely.»
Kristian’s gaze was clear and focused now. Verner had started to form an image of the man, and reluctantly he was starting to see the characteristics that Bitte Røed had fallen for. The man was a lion who defended his hunting grounds by any means, but he was not blind to the thoughts of others or as egotistical and cold-blooded as Verner had assumed at first.
«It’s so complicated,» Kristian said with sincere despair. «I’ve seen some of their conversations on Facebook. The words could just as well be taken as praise and friendly chitchat. The codes for these teenage girls are hard to interpret. They call both friends and enemies ’sweet.’ There are microscopic changes in the tone of voice that reveal whether they actually mean it or if it’s meant as intimidation. Often, it’s only the bullying victim and the bully herself who hears or reads, and understands the difference. On the Internet it’s impossible to distinguish for outsiders. It doesn’t hurt any less for the one who’s subjected to it. On the contrary! Marte got nervous, distrustful. I know that in the beginning she checked and searched on every form of social media to see if someone had posted things about her. Today you can exist, in the form of images, videos, and comments, you can be harassed and intimidated without you even knowing it. But you feel it, obviously. Because it buzzes around, it’s everywhere, just like annoying gnats in the summer. You don’t see them, but you notice that they sting. Marte was starting to lose herself. I was afraid that one day she wouldn’t be able to bear it anymore. Something happened at the party. I know something happened. I felt it when I came into that house, that something had happened. Linnea was evasive and scared.»
Verner Jacobsen thought about the heart, the piece of jewelry that Idunn had around her neck with the images of Marte, spray-painted with angry, black letters right across her stomach. He would not say anything about it, for now. In court it would come out in the defense, but for the time being he would be spared the details.
Kristian was crying openly now.
«I had come to a point where I would have done anything at all to rescue her. I went to catch up with Marte, when I understood she’d gone home alone. The fact that she hadn’t waited until I arrived was enough for me to know that something bad had happened to her.»
He seemed to shrink into his own body. Verner Jacobsen let him have some time. Kristian continued with clenched teeth.
«Then I see her. Idunn. She is walking ahead of me on the snow-covered gravel path. Swinging her hips. Her hair is sticking out from under the light-blue cap and sways back and forth on her back.
«She casts a glance behind her.
«I walk fa
ster. She walks faster.
«I start running. She runs.
«She has something in her hand. It’s too dark to see what she’s carrying. Her bag, maybe. I catch up with her as she approaches a clearing in the forest. I grab her arm. She turns around abruptly, her face close to mine. I hold her tight without saying anything. She is scared now. She should be scared. I want her to be scared. Then I see what she has in her hand. Marte’s boot.
«’Why do you have that?’ I say, pointing.
«She doesn’t answer my question. Instead she hurls accusations at me, threatens me.
«Then I understand. Idunn has taken the boot from Marte. Marte is walking outside in the cold. With one boot.
«I understand that Idunn is in the process of destroying my kid. I understand that I must do something, and a voice, just as clear as if it were real, makes me suddenly take hold of her thin neck. I pull her off the path, to where the darkness is denser. It’s not difficult, I’m stronger than her. And suddenly...
«The body goes limp.
«What happened?
«I don’t let her go.
«What happened?
«A sharp, stinging pain explodes when it occurs to me that what just happened can’t be undone again. The saliva disappears from my mouth and makes my tongue dry and metallic. My hands are shaking.
«Is she moving?
«Am I the one who is moving her?»
Kristian Skage holds both hands in front of him with the palms up and sits there staring at them.
«Then I pushed her.»
95
Verner Jacobsen had not dared move out of fear of interrupting his story.
«But this was a young girl... » Verner Jacobsen began.
«That a fifteen-year-old girl can provoke such strong hatred is almost impossible to fathom, I understand that,» said Kristian. «But she did, by the way she was, her provocative behavior.»
«Is it conceivable that Idunn went after Marte to give her boot back?»
Kristian looked uncertain for a moment, but his gaze hardened just as quickly.
«Never!» he said. «I know her. You deserve a lesson, I remember thinking, you are a self-absorbed person who is going to create so much misery in the future. I am forced to frighten you into reason, teach you how to behave, that it’s not okay to go around destroying other people’s lives. I don’t know how I did it. I remember that I put my hands around her throat and squeezed a little quickly. She collapsed at once, maybe she fainted from fear, what do I know, but I got so damned scared and pulled her even further away from the path out of fear that someone would come. I wasn’t thinking clearly. When we were at the precipice, I just did it. Pushed her over. Maybe she died from the fall. Maybe she froze to death, I don’t know.»
«You suffocated her,» said Verner.
Kristian Skage rubbed his hands against his trouser legs as if to rid himself of that information.
«She threatened me,» he said. «She said she was going to report me, and who would they believe, more or less. She said it this way: You’re the PTA president, everyone knows that the worst abusers are ministers and politicians, people in leadership positions. Nice case for the newspapers. And then she laughed. She laughed!»
«So, you strangled her and pushed her over a cliff. What happened then?» Verner Jacobsen asked. «Did you meet anyone else?»
He was thinking about Agnar Eriksen, who had been in the area. Agnar, who didn’t remember killing his mother, but for the time being there was no physical evidence that he had done that. A witness observation could nail him to the crime. It would be nice to look forward to Christmas with two solved cases, Verner thought.
«I stood there a moment,» said Kristian. «I no longer remember why. Maybe I was in a state of shock. But in all my confusion I probably tried to see if there were any tracks I should cover. There was a light snowfall in the air, and I hoped that more would fall in the course of the night. I found Idunn’s cap, it was lying by the ledge. But then, when I raised my eyes after picking up the cap, she was standing there on the other side of the obelisk staring right at me.»
«Who?»
«It was pretty dark, and she was standing some distance away. At first, I thought she couldn’t have seen anything, but she stood there like a statue and just stared. And the dog barked, tugged at the leash toward me. Toward Idunn. I turned around and pretended to leave, but I hid by the edge of the forest when I was out of her sight. Lay down flat under a spruce tree with low branches.»
The hollow, Verner Jacobsen thought. It wasn’t just Agnar who had been lying drunk in the bushes. He thought about King Frederik, who had been so drunk that he didn’t recall that he had been present when the obelisk was unveiled.
«Tell me what happened,» he asked, swallowing the compulsion to play brilliant detective, because a sequence of events was about to be laid out.
«Were you discovered?»
«No,» Kristian replied. «But I saw from the way she moved that she’d seen what I’d done. She could surely give the police a description, it would just be a matter of time. Maybe she recognized me, most everyone in Lier knows who I am. I was only able to think about Marte. What it would be like for Marte if I couldn’t be there and defend her any longer. That’s what a dad should do, isn’t it? Defend his child by any means.
«So, I followed her without her seeing me. All the way home. She didn’t lock the door and I slipped into the hall. I saw her pick up the receiver of the phone that was on the kitchen counter and start to dial a number.
«It happened so fast. The cutting board and knife were lying there. I could simply reach my arm out and take it. And I did. Took the bread knife. Stabbed her until she could no longer betray me.»
Kristian collapsed, despondent, but nonetheless not without a certain kind of relief. Verner Jacobsen had seen it before, the liberation a person feels when they can finally let go of the lie.
«But there is one thing I don’t understand,» Verner Jacobsen said. He had guessed correctly that it was Kristian who, out of fear of being exposed, had killed Erna Eriksen.
«Why did you go back to the scene?»
«The boot,» said Kristian.
«The boot?»
«Marte’s boot that Idunn had in her hand. I realized that it must be back on the path where I first pulled Idunn out to the edge. I thought, if someone found it, they would think it was Marte.»
Kristian’s face was gray. It is possible to age ten years in a week, it struck Verner Jacobsen, and at the same time he wondered how he himself appeared.
«So, you went back to find the boot,» he concluded. «And in the meantime, Fredrik had found Idunn?»
«Yes.»
«There must have been a lot of blood in Erna Eriksen’s kitchen. What about your clothes?»
«I had a black jacket on. I actually have no idea if there was blood on it. But I threw it in with the laundry the next day, to be on the safe side.»
He shuddered.
«I took the knife with me,» he said. «I thought that if you didn’t find the murder weapon, it would complicate the investigation process.»
Verner nodded.
«So, what did you do with it? It still hasn’t been found.»
«I had it inside my jacket until I got home. I washed it. The next day I bought one of those big family-size packages of cookie dough at the grocery store. I packed the dough around the knife, put the cover on and put the whole box in the freezer. I intended to throw it in the big trash container when enough time had passed.»
«Fredrik said in an interview that you never touched Idunn before you called the emergency number. He wasn’t lying, I understand,» Verner Jacobsen observed.
«No, I was afraid to bend down because of the knife. I called for an ambulance, and I actually thought it would work out. Especially since the house burned later, because it occurred to me afterward that I’d left Idunn’s cap behind in that house. Lucky for me.»
«We found the cap,» Verner said softly.
He saw the confusion on his face, but didn’t have the energy to explain how that could be. Instead he said, «Do you think it would have been lucky if we’d imprisoned the wrong person for your crimes?»
Kristian turned pale. He did not reply, just shook his head faintly before he whispered, «I just wanted to rescue my kid.»
96
«I should have seen through him, good Lord, am I really such a bad judge of character?»
Bitte Røed plopped down on the chair next to the desk in Verner Jacobsen’s office.
«You were in love,» Verner said gently. «That easily distorts ordinarily sound judgment.»
Was, thought Bitte, he takes it for granted that it’s over. Is it over? Am I no longer in love? Can you choose not to be?
«All the same,» she continued, trying to swallow the sorrow that had settled like a damp rag across her chest. «I should have seen some sign, but he was so full of concern. He loved his daughter.»
And he loved me, she thought, but she didn’t say that out loud.
«Bitte, he did it for just that reason, out of love. He thought he was protecting her. He was just a desperate father who wanted to protect his daughter by any means.»
«That I can understand,» said Bitte. «But that he killed the old lady...»
«Bitte,» said Verner, and stopped just as quickly when he saw that she was about to start crying. Because what should he say? What could he say? That the sins of the father always affect the child one way or another. He suddenly remembered parts of the text that had been carved into the obelisk. Something about fatherly concern. The fatherly concern of a man who wanted to protect his child by any means was now ironically the reason that another father was left with a bottomless sorrow. And it’s funny, he thought, how solving one murder can lead to solving another. In this case, actually three, it struck him, as he recalled the bones that were found in Erna Eriksen’s freezer.
The Girl With No Heart Page 29