Black Seconds (22 page)

‘Do you own a bird?’ he asked curiously.

She was startled. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Never owned a bird. Why would I want one of those?’

‘Many people have caged birds,’ he said. ‘I’m asking because it’s relevant to the case.’

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‘I see,’ she said. She sat by the table looking tense, staring fixedly out of the window. ‘No, I don’t keep birds. Please, help yourself, take a good look around. Why would I want to keep birds,’ she went on. ‘It’s too much mess. Seeds and feathers all over the place. I can do without that, thank you very much.’

Sejer thought about what she had just said. About seeds and feathers all over the place. She sounded as if she knew a great deal about what keeping a bird involved. Had she already got rid of it?

‘Perhaps you know someone who keeps a bird?’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘People my age don’t keep that type of pet. A friend of mine’s got a cat. Her whole house stinks of it. It’s for the company, I suppose, but personally I don’t need that. I don’t spend my days sitting in here staring out of the window like a lot of people I know.’

‘That’s good,’ he said. He started folding the nightie, but deliberately made a mess of it. She was watching him out of the corner of her eye.

‘So you don’t recognise this nightie?’ he asked once more.

‘Absolutely not,’ she claimed. ‘What would I want with it?’

‘You might have bought it for someone else,’ he suggested.

She did not answer and used all her strength to maintain her rigid posture by the table, as if a change of position would give her away.

‘But it’s pretty, don’t you think?’ Sejer smiled, 226

putting it back in the carrier bag. Then he tied the handles into a knot. ‘We can agree that whoever bought it had an eye for beauty as well as quality. Well, that’s what one of our female officers said.’

He smiled.

‘Absolutely,’ she said quickly.

‘Expensive, too. Four hundred kroner,’ lied Sejer.

‘Oh,’ said Elsa Mork. ‘I would have thought it was more.’

Sejer got up from the table. ‘Please forgive me for disturbing you,’ he said. ‘I realise you don’t have children of that age. It’s a size fourteen years. But it might have been for a granddaughter. I have an eleven-year-old grandchild,’ he added.

She relaxed somewhat and smiled. ‘Well, I do have a son, but he’s over fifty,’ she said. ‘And he’ll never have kids.’

She wanted to bite her tongue. Sejer pretended nothing had happened. The fact that she had a son meant nothing in itself. But she had seemed alarmed by the admission. As though mentioning her son would give Sejer cause for thoughts he had not been thinking so far. He left the green kitchen quietly. He did not want to frighten her by asking her for the name of her son. And anyway, it would be easy for him to discover. She followed him out.

‘Just a small thing,’ he remembered. ‘Do you own a dark coat?’

Elsa Mork smiled her ironic smile once more.

‘Every woman over seventy owns a dark coat,’ she said.

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‘With a fur collar?’ he asked.

She squirmed in the doorway. ‘Well, it’s some sort of fur collar,’ she muttered. ‘Not sure what it is. It’s an old coat.’

He nodded; he understood.

‘But I still don’t know why you came here,’ she said in sudden despair; she had to put words to her confusion, she could no longer control herself.

‘Because you look like the woman in the artist’s impression,’ he said.

‘But you’ve never met me before. Someone must have called you!’ The latter came out as a cry of indignation.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Someone did call. I’m going to visit the next person on my list now. Or rather the next woman. That’s what I do. Door-to-door enquiries.’

He walked the few steps to his car and looked at her once more. ‘Thank you for your time,’ he said, bowing again. Her eyes flickered slightly. She realised it was finally over. She was free to go back into her kitchen, where she could sit by the window and wait. Sejer was back in his seat. He opened the paper once again and looked at the artist’s impression. He knew she was standing behind her curtain, watching him.

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Emil Johannes’ throat was getting sore. He had been standing by the waterfall, grunting, for a long time. The roar from the water, which he needed before he had the courage to start, also made it difficult to hear if he was successful at making a sound or not. If he had managed individual words, or an ‘o’ or an ‘a’.

Now he was back in his house. He went to the mirror in his bathroom and pursed his lips. There was no waterfall here, but he could turn on the cold tap and lean towards the mirror. How would he ever explain it? Suddenly he had so much to say. He had never needed to speak, never needed to explain himself to anyone. Fancy standing by the waterfall shouting, he thought, and blushed. A grown man behaving like that. Despondently he stared down into the sink, where the slightly discoloured water had stained the porcelain. There was rust in the pipes, but his incapacity benefit would not stretch to having them replaced with new copper ones. Not that he cared. Only his mother cared. She gathered together all his whites 229

and washed them in her own machine. Otherwise you’ll end up with tea-coloured bed linen in a few weeks, she nagged. Emil wasn’t in the least interested in the colour of his bed linen. He didn’t think such things mattered. His mother would turn up with citric acid and tell him to add it to the water when he washed up. It’ll make the water clear, she explained. But he couldn’t make out how to use the powder. And he couldn’t see that his plates had changed colour.

He stared stiffly at himself in the mirror. He didn’t usually do that; he avoided looking at himself. Nor did he look properly at other people when he drove around on his three-wheeler, or wandered around the shelves in the shops. However, he liked watching television. Liked being able to stare at people without them knowing it. He could laugh at them, or threaten them with his fists, and there was nothing they could do about it. Sometimes he pulled terrible faces, and occasionally he would stick his tongue out at them. How ever, they were inside a box and could not get at him; they would not care what he did, and they would never ask him questions. Still, they were good company. He watched a lot of television. Political debates. Agitated people calling out and gesturing, people who got excited and flushed and heated, who banged the table with their fists and flung out their arms like squabbling children. He liked that. Through the splashing from the tap he suddenly heard the telephone ringing. He made an

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involuntary movement with his head and let it ring. It rang eight times, then it stopped. From experience he knew that it would soon start to ring again. It was his mother. She would not give up.

He turned off the water and went out into the living room. Threw a hostile glance at the tele phone, which was the old-fashioned type with a rotary dial. The bird instantly tripped along its perch and tilted its head. Perhaps food was about to appear between the bars. Emil felt caught between a rock and a hard place. He wished his mother would leave him alone and stay away from him. At the same time he knew he needed her. There were things he was incapable of sorting out. Once, his power had been cut off. He had no light, no television. Yet still he had sat in front of the television all night, watching his own silhouette. That had been a really boring evening, Emil thought. His mother had had to call the electricity company on his behalf. He thought it was good that she talked, that she dealt with things and got them fixed. The telephone rang again. He waited a long time. Instinctively he turned his back to the telephone as he answered it. A rejection she would not be able to see.

‘Emil?’ He could hear that her voice sounded very strained. ‘Have you seen today’s paper?’

Emil looked across the room to where the

newspapers lay untouched on the table. ‘No,’ he replied truthfully.

There was total silence at the other end of the telephone. Emil realised that this did not happen 231

very often. It intrigued him enormously. It also made him feel scared. There was something ominous about his mother’s voice, normally she sounded so self-assured.

‘Well, just leave them then. It’s almost too much to bear,’ she groaned, and Emil heard how impotent her voice sounded. He realised for the first time that his mother was frightened. He had hardly ever experienced that. Not since he was a boy.

‘The police were here,’ she whispered. ‘Have they been to see you?’

He shook his head in terror. At the same time he looked out on to the drive. There was nothing to see.

‘No,’ he said.

‘I’m scared they might turn up,’ she said. ‘If they come knocking, then don’t let them in!’

‘No,’ he said.

‘If they stop you on the road, shake your head and drive on. Just be yourself,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t try to explain anything; you won’t succeed, so it’s best if you keep quiet like you always do. They’ll give up when they realise what you’re like. Just roll your eyes or stare at the ground, but don’t let them in the house. And for God’s sake don’t sign anything!’

‘No,’ he said.

‘If they turn up, you must call me. It might be best if I come over right now. They’ve just been here. If I’m with you when they turn up, I can speak for you. You won’t be able to handle this on your own; we 232

both know that. We just have to keep them at bay as best we can. And this time you’ll do as I say, Emil. I hope you realise how serious this is. I don’t know how much allowance they’ll make for you, but I wouldn’t automatically assume that they’ll let you get off more lightly than others.’ Her voice was close to breaking.

Emil poked at a scratch in the table with his fingernail. Oh, he always got off more lightly than others. He simply refused to answer. Then they gave up. They always gave up. No one ever had the patience.

‘Dear Lord,’ he heard her voice down the

telephone, ‘this will be the death of me. You know I’m strong, but this is getting to me, even to me. What’s going to become of you, Emil?’ She sighed deeply.

Emil often got fed up with his mother’s

complaints, but what he was hearing now was worse than ever.

‘Have you thought about what all this is doing to me?’ she said. ‘I’m seventy-three years old, Emil!

Have you thought about that?’

‘No,’ he said. To be honest he had no idea how old she was. She had always been the same, he thought. He wanted her to hang up, so that everything would be quiet.

‘So,’ his mother said with another deep sigh,

‘don’t talk to anyone. And don’t sign anything. Do you hear me? And don’t you dare cross me!’

‘No,’ he said.

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He hung up. Went over to the kitchen table and found some old brown wrapping paper in a drawer. There was a pencil on the windowsill. Slowly he wrote his name in large, clear letters. There it was in all its glory. Emil Johannes Mork.

He looked towards the window. His face took on a defiant expression, like that of a child who insists on showing you something, who will not be thwarted. I can explain it all, he thought. The sun was shining outside. SUN. He wrote that down. Some words were easy. He wrote FOOD

because he felt hungry. Other words were harder. He thought of the word ‘misunderstanding’, but had to give up. Whereas the word DEAD was easier. After a few minutes he scrunched up the paper. He stood for a long time squeezing it, compressing it into a tiny hard ball. Then he pulled himself together and went into the living room. First he opened the door to the cage. Then he held the ball of paper out to the bird. The bird instantly lifted its claw and snatched it. It began tearing the paper into shreds with its beak. Sharp ripping noises could be heard as the paper fell to the bottom of the cage in fine strips.

Emil opened the newspaper. He turned the pages slowly, then froze as he saw the artist’s impression. Oh no, he thought, shudder ing. The drawing was horrible because it resembled his mother and yet at the same time it did not. He worked his way through the text. Many of the words were too complicated for him, but he understood the gist of 234

it. He let the newspaper fall and rubbed his head nervously. This is all going wrong, he thought. They don’t under stand anything.

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Tomme arrived home at Madseberget. He opened the door to the hall and put his bag down. Immediately he heard his mother’s footsteps. A second later she was standing there giving him a searching look. She wanted to know how his trip had gone. The kind of things mothers always wanted to know. They think they’ve got a right, Tomme thought. Have they?

He peeled off his jacket, the ticking inside his head continuing all the time. I could tell it like it is, he thought, I could spin round and scream it right in her face. That something truly awful has happened. Something she wouldn’t believe. Whereupon every thing would explode inside both him and his mother. He did not do so. He chose the ticking. Heard his own voice saying it had been a nice trip. The words came easily and he was amazed to hear his own account of the weekend in Copenhagen, which included the weather, which had been windy, the tasty sandwiches they had eaten at the café, and their tiny cabin. Then he went to the bathroom. He desperately needed to clean his teeth.

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Ruth looked after him for a long time. She did think he seemed pale and drawn, but boys will be boys, she thought. Bjørn, the friend he had gone with, was a very sensible boy, she was sure of that. Tomme was still in the bathroom. She thought he might have fallen asleep in there, on the heated floor, like Marion used to when she was little. He was taking a long time. It was very quiet.

‘You haven’t fallen asleep, have you?’ she called through the door. He coughed briefly and she heard the sound of the taps being turned on.

‘Oh, no,’ he replied.

She retired to the kitchen. He’s practically a grown-up, she thought. Why should I expect him to report back to me whenever he’s been away from home? They had to try to get back to some sort of normality. However, Ida’s death had upset the whole family. There was strain and tension everywhere, she felt. And wasn’t he strangely pale?