Black Seconds (15 page)

"But you're so short-sighted," Skarre objected.

They each sat down to a pile of letters. The box remained on the windowsill with the lid open. For a moment they looked at one another, embarrassed at what they were about to do. Letters from one young girl to another were not meant for their eyes. Sejer had read diaries; he had leafed through private photo albums and watched home videos. Been in children's rooms and adult bedrooms. It always felt like a transgression. Even though their intentions were good, even though their aim was to find Ida, it still did not feel right. They both felt they were intruding. Then they began to read. Skarre's living room was silent, except for the rustling of paper. Christine from Hamburg used several types of stationery. The sheets were decorated with birds and flowers. Sometimes the letters had been colored in, red or blue. Some were decorated with stickers: horses and dogs, moons and stars.

"We'll just have to guess at Ida's letters," Skarre said. They had been reading for a long time. They were both moved. "Do you speak German?" Sejer wanted to know. "My German is excellent," Skarre said proudly. "How about Holthemann?"

Skarre mentally assessed the abilities of his department head. "I don't think so. However, Christine is nine years old. That means her parents are in their thirties or forties. They probably speak English."

"We'll call them," Sejer said. "Would you please take care of that, Jacob?"

Sejer's timid request made Skarre smile. Sejer understood English perfectly well, but he preferred not to speak it. He struggled with the pronunciation.

"
Aber doch. Selbstverständlich!
" Skarre exclaimed. Sejer rolled his eyes.

They read on. The tone of Christine's letters was polite and charming; she was probably very like Ida, conscientious and fond of her school.

"Given that the bird speaks," Skarre said, "it's got to be a budgie. Or a parrot."

"Or a raven," Sejer said. "Ravens are quite good at mimicry. There was something else," he remembered. He placed the pile of letters on the coffee table. "Laila from the kiosk."

"Yes," Skarre said. "I thought about that. We only have Laila's word that Ida never got there. We took that as gospel. Because she's a woman. That makes us biased."

Sejer looked at him in surprise.

"So I ran a check on her," Skarre said casually, as if it were the most natural thing to do. "Laila Heggen's been in trouble with the tax office on more than one occasion. Her books are in a bit of a state," he laughed. "She was born in '68, single, no children, and has owned the kiosk for four years now. Before that, she worked for the Child Protection Agency in Oslo. In an administrative capacity," he added. "Not with clients." Sejer was impressed.

"Who leaves a job with the Child Protection Agency to run a candy store?" he pondered.

"Laila Heggen," Skarre said. "And I want to know why." "You're quick off the mark, Jacob," Sejer said with admiration. "I've had a good teacher," Skarre replied. A short pause ensued.

"Did you bring some tobacco?" Skarre asked.

Sejer shook his head. "I never carry tobacco. Why do you ask?"

"I've got a bottle of Famous Grouse."

Sejer considered the offer while staring out of the window into the distance. He thought, one whiskey won't hurt. I can leave the car till the morning. I can walk home. Just this one time.

"No, I don't smoke Prince," he replied as Skarre held out his packet of cigarettes. "But I would like a whiskey."

Skarre leapt up immediately. He was glad that his boss had said yes for once. As a rule Sejer tended not to be very sociable. Skarre was pleased that they could sit together in the darkness, thinking. His admiration for Sejer knew no bounds. There were even times he felt downright chosen to be working with him. The inspector had simply taken him under his wing. Encouraged him and given him responsibilities. It was a gesture he took great care to be worthy of.

"What is it with girls?" Sejer said. "They correspond for a whole year and everything's about animals? They've barely mentioned any people. Just rabbits, horses, and dogs."

"She writes about a reptile, too," Skarre said, walking across the room to get two glasses. "An iguana named Iggy Pop. That's quite witty, I think."

"Is it because they think so little of people?" Sejer raised his voice because Skarre was further away.

"It's a girl thing," Skarre said. "Girls like fussing. They like caring for someone and feeling useful. Boys are into other things. Boys like stuff they can control. Like cars. Planning the design, constructing it, assembling it, influencing it and manipulating it. Girls have different values; they invest in caring for someone. And they're less afraid of failure."

He fetched the whiskey bottle from the cabinet. It was three-quarters full.

"Since when do you drink whiskey?" Sejer asked.

"Since I met you."

Sejer took his whiskey. He raised the glass to his nose. Skarre took out a Prince cigarette from the packet and lit up. Sejer reached for the box on the windowsill to replace the letters. By chance he happened to glance at the bottom of it. There was something there, something soft and light.

"A feather," he said, holding it up in wonder. "A red feather."

Skarre stared at the feather that Sejer was holding in his hand. A beautiful feather, ten centimeters long. "That doesn't belong to a budgie," he stated. "Something bigger. A parrot. Macaws are red. Perhaps it's from a macaw?"

"She hasn't shown it to Helga," Sejer said, wondering. "Why not?"

Skarre met his eyes across the coffee table. "I would have done so when I was nine. If I'd had a feather like that. I would have even shown off a crow's feather," he declared.

"So would I," Sejer said. "I'll check with Helga just to be sure. But this feather seems to be a secret."

Skarre gave Sejer an envelope. Carefully he put the feather in it and placed it in his inside pocket. Later on he walked briskly through the streets, exhilarated by this new discovery. Then he had to smile once again. A red feather. Something so minor. Kids collect all sorts of stuff. They're closer to the ground, he thought, and they notice much more than we do. He saw his own shadow beneath the street light; it grew to the size of a monster, then shrank to the size of a dwarf. Over and over, from lamppost to lamppost. Tomorrow it'll be ten days, he thought. Tomorrow Helga Joner's nightmare will have lasted two hundred and forty hours. She lies in bed, waiting. She stares out of the window, waiting. The telephone sits on the coffee table, an ardent hope one moment, a black and hostile object the next.

***

Ida was not waiting for anything. Her tiny body was wrapped in a white duvet. Just as Sejer opened the door to his apartment on the thirteenth floor, a car stopped a few kilometers out of town and the driver placed a bundle by the roadside. It was very noticeable against the dry, withering grass. It was just waiting for the dawn.

It was 7:00
A.M.
Sejer was standing by the window in his living room, looking down at the car park. He had just knotted his tie and was pushing the knot upward toward his collar. Suddenly his telephone rang.

"We've found her," he heard. It was Skarre's voice. Professional and firm. "She's wrapped in a duvet."

"Where?" Sejer said. At that moment something inside him wilted. He had been preparing for this, but he must have been secretly hoping after all, because now he felt a great sadness.

"By Lysejordet. Drive out to the Spinning Mill. Follow the road inward some four to five hundred meters. That's where we are."

***

Despite the huge gathering of people, the crime scene was very quiet. Everyone moved around noiselessly, everything was measured and focused. Everyone's voice was subdued.

Sejer closed his car door. Softly he walked the last few meters.

"Who called us?" he asked, looking at Jacob Skarre.

"A truck driver. He was passing. Then he stopped and reversed. He says himself he's got no clue as to what made him do that." He pointed across the road. "He's over there, having a cigarette."

Sejer stopped at the tiny bundle. Everyone made way for him. He thought, this is what we have been waiting for. Now it is here. He knelt in the grass. The small white parcel had been carefully opened at one end. Ida's face was visible in the opening. Her eyes were closed. The skin on her cheeks was very pale. At first glance he saw no sign of injuries or cuts. No red bruises, no cranial fractures, no blood anywhere, no evidence of damage. But something was wrong. He felt perplexed. This child has not been dead for ten days, he thought. A day, perhaps, or two. A technician found a craft knife in his bag and cut through the brown tape that secured the bundle. Then he unwrapped the duvet. Sejer shook his head in disbelief. Her clothes, he thought, looking around, where are the clothes she was wearing? Her sweatsuit and her sneakers. Ida lay there on the duvet wearing a white nightie. She was barefoot. He got up again. A strange sensation came over him. I've never seen anything like this, he thought. Never in all my life. He looked around Lysejordet. It was an isolated spot. Not a single house as far as the eye could see. No one would have seen anything. Whoever had brought her here had done so under the cover of darkness. She had been placed, not thrown, it struck him; she was lying flat on her back. He was deeply moved by the sight of the little girl in her nightie. The whole scene was like something out of a fairy tale. He thought of Helga Joner and was relieved that it would be possible for her to see her dead daughter. She was almost as lovely now as she had always been. So far they had no idea about what her body might reveal. He knelt down again. She had a tiny little mouth. It was drained of color now, but on the photos it was dark red, like a cherry. Her eyelids had swelled up over the sunken eyeballs. There were no marks on her face, but the blood had started to form minute red dots on her hands. Her hair, which was thick and curly in the photos, was lank and lifeless. But apart from that ... almost like a doll, marblelike and delicate.

"The body has been frozen," said Snorrason, the pathologist. He had got up to stretch his back. "In fact, she is only partly thawed."

Sejer raised his eyebrows.

"In other words, she could have been dead for ten days. She just doesn't look like it."

"Why would he freeze her?" Sejer wondered, looking at Jacob Skarre. This was exactly what he had suggested, that the killer might not have been in a hurry, but could have kept her somewhere in his house.

"To gain time, possibly. Perhaps he lost his nerve. I don't know," Snorrason said.

"Gain time. For what? He hasn't attempted to hide her. She was lying right by the side of the road. He wanted us to find her."

Sejer noticed something in the grass and bent down to pick it up. It was tiny and white as snow. "Down?" he speculated and looked at Skarre. "From the duvet?"

Skarre frowned. He rubbed a corner of the duvet between his fingers. "Possibly," he said reluctantly. "However, I don't think this duvet is filled with down. It's a cheap synthetic one from IKEA, the kind you can machine wash and tumble dry." He had located the washing instructions and was pointing to them.

Sejer searched the grass. He found several tiny white feathers. They were mostly sticking to the duvet, but some had attached themselves to the nightie. When he tried to catch them they flew off like dandelion seeds.

He called out to the photographer. "Photograph her nightie," he said. "Make sure you get the neck opening with the red edging and the lace on the sleeves. Take pictures of the duvet. Get a close-up of the pattern. Look out for more down." He gestured with his hand. "Be careful with the duvet. Do not shake it or disturb it in any way. Any particles found on it could be important."

Then he pulled Skarre aside and walked a few meters across the damp grass. He kept the white duvet in the far corner of his eye. He surveyed the horizon, taking in every ridge and treetop. A low, earnest murmur could be heard from the large crowd of people working on the crime scene.

Then more cars arrived. The press was descending.

"When does it start getting dark in the evening these days?" Sejer asked. "Around eight-thirty?"

"Thereabouts," Skarre said. "It gets light at seven. So between eight-thirty last night and seven o'clock this morning, a car drove along this road. It would have taken only a few seconds to move her from the car to the roadside."

"Everything is so neat," Sejer said. "The nightie. The duvet. The way she's lying. Why did he do that?"

"Don't know," Skarre said.

"Perhaps he's read too many crime novels," Sejer said. "All we need now is to find a poem under her nightie."

"You're saying we can eliminate young men from the investigation?" Skarre asked.

"I would think so. This is the work of a more mature person. A teenage boy wouldn't have arranged her like this."

"There's something feminine about it."

"I agree," Sejer said. "I hate IKEA," he added. "They make everything in such vast quantities, we'll never be able to trace it."

"We have to pin our hopes on the nightie. It looks expensive."

"How can you tell?" Sejer was impressed.

"It's old-fashioned," Skarre declared. "Girls today wear nighties with Winnie-the-Pooh or something like that. This looks like it came from another era."

"Who buys nighties from another era?" Sejer was thinking out loud.

"People from another era, perhaps? Old people," Skarre said. "Old?"

Sejer frowned. They looked at the crowd once more. "I hope he's made a mistake," he said. "Nobody gets everything right." "This doesn't look rushed," Skarre said.

"I agree," Sejer said. "We'll have to wait for forensics."

He went back to Snorrason. The pathologist was working quietly and methodically. His face was inscrutable.

"What do you think about the down?" Sejer asked.

"It's strange," the pathologist said. "The feathers stick to the duvet and yet they float away once they're loosened. Some stuck to her hair, too."

"You found anything else?"