Black Seconds (18 page)

‘Three, I think.’

‘That’s not many.’

‘That’s not how I make my money. I make my money selling animal feed, guinea pigs, goldfish and rabbits. That’s what people want. It’s a pity, because they have such a short life span. If you buy a parrot, you have it for life.’

Skarre smiled in disbelief. ‘They live that long?’

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‘Up to fifty years. There are stories about some parrots living till a hundred and twenty,’ he laughed. ‘That’s probably not true, but my point is that it’s a lifelong commitment. And thus worth six thousand kroner. Why do you want to know so much about parrots?’ he said suddenly, unable to suppress his curiosity any longer.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ Skarre said. ‘Someone who owns a parrot. It’s a reasonable assumption that he lives in this area, and if he does he could have bought his parrot from you.’

‘That makes sense,’ Bjerke said.

‘What kind of person buys a parrot?’ Skarre said.

‘Can you tell me that? Do they have something in common?’

‘I doubt it. Parrots are for adults. However, it’s usually the kids who drag the adults in here in the first place. People don’t realise how difficult parrots are to handle. When they get them home they’re disappointed when they discover they can’t take the bird out of the cage and stroke it. This is not exactly a pet,’ he said. ‘Some people even get so fed up they return them.’

‘Do you allow that?’ Skarre was surprised.

‘Obviously. If the parrot’s not really wanted, I’d rather take it back.’ He opened the door to the cage and lifted out the grey parrot. It perched on his hand, completely still. Its feathers quivered.

‘An African Grey,’ he said, rapt. ‘A female. Five months old. Personally I prefer the males. They grow bigger, their tail feathers have a more intense 184

colour and their beaks are more impressive. But they are more difficult to tame than the females. On rare occasions you come across very aggressive males. They’re no good for breeding and so their value is reduced. They kill the female instantly instead of mating with her.’ He giggled, as if he found the thought of this somehow entertaining.

‘But if I’m selling one of those, I always warn the customer about it. The problem is that when people have had the bird for a while they lose interest. They start ignoring it and later try to soothe their guilty conscience by buying another bird to keep the first one company. The result can be a bloodbath.’ He smiled, and started stroking the bird’s head.

‘Why doesn’t it fly?’ Skarre wondered.

‘It can’t. Its wings have been clipped.’

Skarre instantly lost some of his respect for the shop owner.

Bjerke explained. ‘Just while it’s here. The feathers grow all the time and they will grow back.’

‘Oh, I’m glad,’ Skarre said, relieved. He pulled the red feather out of his pocket and held it up in front of Bjerke’s eyes.

‘This one,’ he said. ‘What do you think it is?’

Bjerke returned the bird to its cage and took the feather from Skarre with two fingers. ‘I believe this feather comes from an African Grey,’ he said. ‘A tail feather. Probably a large bird.’

‘Do you know when you last sold one of those?’

Skarre asked.

‘Ah . . .’ he hesitated. ‘It’s been a long time. I don’t 185

actually remember. People prefer parakeets. They’re more colourful.’

‘Have you named all the birds?’ Skarre asked. Bjerke shook his head. ‘The gold-crested ones are called Castor and Pollux. None of the others have names. People want to name their own pets, so there’s no point in me doing it.’

Skarre understood. ‘Would you keep an eye out for people who buy supplies for their parrots?’ he asked. ‘Question them a bit, show a little interest?

Especially when it comes to the name of their bird?

I’m looking for one called Henry.’

Sejer was getting nowhere with the piles of paper on his desk. He had stared himself blind at all the reports, searching high and low for something they might have missed. He had tried to find a clue or a link, tried to form an idea of the crime. What type of crime are we actually dealing with? he wondered. There’s something bizarre about this whole case. Something unknown. This is different from any of my previous cases.

He left the office and got into his car. Drove steadily down Drammensveien and thirty-five minutes later parked outside the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

‘You just won’t take no for an answer, will you?’

Snorrason said. ‘Ah well, you’d better come in anyway. Sit down.’ He spoke to Sejer the way you would speak to a child who will not stop pestering you. Then he switched off his reading light and spun his chair around to face him. ‘As I’ve already told 186

you,’ he began, ‘Ida died from internal bleeding. She was subjected to a blow from something extremely heavy or she was struck violently, we don’t know which. Yet she could have been alive for some time afterwards.’

‘Any idea how long?’

‘An hour or two perhaps.’

Sejer took off his jacket and sat down. ‘I need more details, please. What caused the internal bleeding, and why did she die from it?’

Snorrason folded his hands in his lap. ‘She sustained multiple rib fractures. One of her lungs has been perforated and her liver ruptured. As a result she started bleeding from her liver into the abdominal cavity. Eventually her blood pressure started to drop. The body of a girl of that size contains approximately two and a half litres of blood. Once one litre has seeped into her stomach she’ll be close to death. Slowly she’ll start to lose consciousness. If her blood pressure falls below forty or fifty, she’s dead.’

‘Would she have been in any pain?’ Sejer asked. He was thinking of Helga Joner.

‘With a perforated lung? Absolutely. It cuts like a knife whenever she inhales. She’ll have been queasy and felt very ill. She would have been pale, nauseous and thirsty.’ Snorrason’s face showed no emotion while he spoke. It was almost as if he was giving a lecture and as long as he stayed within his area of expertise it was easier for him to keep his feelings out of it.

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‘It could have been a collision,’ he continued.

‘The headlight of a motorcycle, for example, would have been the right height for her chest. However, there is one problem with this theory.’

‘Which is?’ Sejer said.

‘Let’s start by imagining that it was a car,’

Snorrason said. ‘If Ida was walking along the road and was knocked down by a car, it would have hit her lower legs first. They would have been broken. If she was knocked down from behind, her head would have hit the tarmac or the bonnet if she was facing the car. And if she’d been knocked down while riding her bicycle, then the bicycle would have been damaged. And it isn’t. It almost seems as if she were lying down when she received these injuries. And this points more towards some sort of assault, such as blows or kicks. In which case she never put up her hands in self-defence. There are no cuts or other injuries to them. And if she was kicked, her attacker must have been barefoot. Shoes would have left marks. However, he’s clever. He changed her clothes. Her own clothes would have given us more clues.’

‘So you think that’s why she was found in the nightie? The nightie itself is of less significance, the point being that it was a clean item of clothing, no traces?’ Sejer said.

‘Don’t you?’ Snorrason asked him. He reached out for a blue thermos flask and poured coffee into a mug. Sejer declined.

‘He could just as well have put her naked inside 188

the duvet. There’s something sentimental about this,’ Sejer contemplated. ‘Something feminine.’

‘She was very neatly wrapped,’ Snorrason said.

‘We don’t normally find them like that. But nothing about this case is normal.’

‘Was she assaulted in any other way?’

‘I haven’t found any evidence to suggest it. But you can do a great deal to a child that leaves no physical traces. Incidentally, the duvet has been patched up,’ he said. ‘Someone’s mended it, very meticulously.’

‘Someone who can sew,’ Sejer said. ‘Another feminine aspect.’

‘The patch is made from a piece of plain fabric, which could be a sheet,’ Snorrason said. ‘However, there wasn’t a single drop of blood to be found, not on Ida or the nightie or the duvet.’

‘What about the tape used to wrap her?’ Sejer asked.

‘Ordinary brown parcel tape, found in every household.’

‘And her stomach contents? What did they tell you?’

‘That she hadn’t eaten for several hours. The nightie,’ he carried on, ‘you haven’t made any progress with it?’

‘We’re still working on it. A female officer thinks it wasn’t bought in a chain store. So we’ll check lingerie shops.’

‘There can’t be that many of those.’

‘Five in our town alone. Those five shops have 189

twelve staff in total. That will be a fun job for Jacob Skarre,’ Sejer said. ‘By the time he’s done, he’ll know his way around every single lingerie shop in southern Norway.’

‘Well, he’s single, isn’t he?’ Snorrason laughed.

‘Perhaps he might learn something. Underwear is practically a science these days.’ He smiled. ‘Did you know that much of what women wear now is a by-product of space-age technology?’

‘No,’ Sejer said. ‘I know nothing about such things.’ He had got up again and started putting on his jacket.

Snorrason drained his coffee mug in one gulp and pushed it aside. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘So what are you thinking right now?’

‘Right now I’m thinking of this,’ Sejer said. ‘A huge percentage of people killed in this country are killed by someone they know.’

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Tomme heard the doorbell ring downstairs. He rushed down to open the door. The sight of the unknown man on the doorstep made him nervous straight away.

‘Konrad Sejer. Police.’

Tomme tried to pull himself together. ‘My parents are at the hospital,’ he said quickly. ‘Visiting my aunt Helga.’

Sejer nodded. There was something fearful and jumpy about the young man. This roused his curiosity.

Tomme stayed in the doorway. He was seriously regretting opening the door.

‘I presume you’re Ida Joner’s cousin?’ Sejer asked. Tomme nodded. ‘I was just going out,’ he

declared, looking at his wristwatch as if he was in a rush.

This urgency puzzled Sejer. It was as if the ground was burning beneath the young man’s feet. ‘Spare me a few minutes, please,’ he asked on impulse.

‘After all, you knew Ida well.’

Of course, Tomme thought, I’m her cousin. They 191

always suspect uncles and cousins. He stepped back into the hallway. Sejer followed him.

‘I’m so very sorry about your cousin,’ he began. They were in the living room. It did not occur to Tomme to ask Sejer to sit down. So they remained standing, looking at one another.

‘Thank you,’ Tomme said. He looked outside for his parents’ Volvo. If only they would come home now and rescue him from this agonising situation. He could find no words to talk about Ida and everything that had happened recently.

‘There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you,’

Sejer remembered. ‘It’s about your car accident.’

When he mentioned the car, Tomme grew

nervous once more. Sejer picked up on it. He did not know why Tomme was reacting like this. He assumed the boy might have been driving under the influence. That had to be the reason he had turned so pale.

‘You bashed your car,’ Sejer said, ‘and it happened on the roundabout by the bridge. September first. The day Ida went missing.’

‘What about it?’ Tomme said.

‘Your car received a dent and some damage to the paintwork. One of our officers found traces of paint on a crash barrier by the bridge that may have come from your car.’

Tomme had had his back to him all this time. Now, however, he turned around.

‘In other words, there is every reason to believe that the damage happened in exactly the way you 192

described,’ Sejer said. ‘Never theless, I would like to know more details about the incident. Exactly how it happened. You have stated that you were forced off the road, to the right, by another car?’

Tomme nodded. ‘Some guy entered the round about the same time as me. But he was in the wrong lane and going too fast. I had the choice between hitting him on the left or swerving to the right and hitting the crash barrier.’

‘But you didn’t report the other driver or give a statement to the police?’

‘He drove off,’ Tomme said quickly. ‘I didn’t get the chance.’

‘Did he?’ Sejer said. ‘What make of car was he driving?’

Tomme thought. ‘Now what was it? A dark blue car, fairly large. An Audi or a BMW, perhaps.’

‘Why do you think he drove off?’

‘Dunno. Perhaps he’d been drinking.’

‘Had you been drinking?’

‘No, no! I never drink and drive.’

‘Did he actually hit your car?’

‘No.’

‘Have you done anything to find him?’

‘How would I?’

‘What about witnesses, Tomme? Someone must have seen it.’

‘Guess so.’

‘But no one stopped?’

‘No.’

Sejer allowed the room to fall silent. He kept 193

looking at Tomme. ‘Do you often go out driving late at night for no particular reason?’

‘Do I need a reason?’ Tomme said warily.

‘You look nervous, Tomme,’ Sejer said. ‘It makes me wonder why.’

‘I’m not nervous,’ he said quickly.

‘Oh, you are,’ Sejer said. ‘You’re pale and nervous. You’ve no reason to be if it’s simply the case that a bad driver on a roundabout forced you off the road, only to speed off without taking responsibility. You ought to be furious.’

‘And so I am!’ Tomme burst out.

‘Not really,’ Sejer said. ‘You’re upset.’

‘The Opel has already been fixed,’ the boy said abruptly. ‘It’s as good as new.’

‘That didn’t take you long,’ Sejer said. ‘Straight from the roundabout and into Willy’s garage.’ He smiled. ‘Did he do it as a favour?’

‘Yes.’ Tomme nodded.

‘He must be a very good friend,’ Sejer said slowly. Tomme hesitated. His explanation was beginning to falter. It was not a very plausible story. He had not thought it through in his mind, and now it was all starting to sound rather unlikely.