Black Seconds (27 page)

Sejer waited. He could see the war being waged; he had seen it many times before and it was so easy to recognise.

‘You’ve stated that the last time you saw Willy Oterhals was when he disappeared down the steps to the underground at Egertorg,’ he said. ‘Is that correct?’

Tomme could not hold it together any longer. He had been pretending for so long, holding on to so many lies, his stomach was aching, his intestines were contracting and tightening as if held in a vice. He thought, I can’t handle this pain, I just want to rest. He started to talk. Instantly the cramps began to ease up. It was like they were draining into an overflow.

‘That’s not entirely true,’ he whispered, and for the first time he looked up at Sejer. His admission made Ruth pale.

‘When was the last time?’ Sejer said. He was not menacing, just firm and clear.

‘On the ferry,’ Tomme said in a subdued voice. He was quiet and took a moment to think. He could sense the outline of his mother from the corner of his eye, she was blurred, but he recognised her fear.

281

‘The return trip,’ Sejer said. ‘The last evening. Tell me about it.’

‘We just hung out in the bar,’ Tomme said.

‘How drunk would you say you were?’

Tomme thought for a while. ‘Willy was quite drunk. I was fairly sober. Three beers,’ he explained. ‘And I drank them slowly.’

‘What might the time have been when you left the bar?’

‘Not sure. Midnight perhaps.’

‘Did you go straight down to your cabin?’

Tomme was in trouble now. Had anyone seen them? He knew that the ferry had CCTV cameras mounted everywhere. How much of the truth was it possible for him to tell without landing himself in hot water? He looked shiftily at Sejer.

‘Well, we did go for a walk on deck,’ he said feebly. He tried to come across as desperate, which was easy given that this was exactly how he was feeling. Deeply desperate. And scared, obviously, at everything that can happen without you even wanting it to. Ruth did not dare move. Something dreadful occurred to her. It was a remarkable coincidence that Willy had gone missing, she realised. The fact that he was an adult and should be able to take care of himself did not make it any better. He was missing. His mother had called the police. And Tomme was white as a sheet.

‘Was it your suggestion?’

‘No. Willy wanted some fresh air,’ Tomme said.

‘And I suppose I did too.’

282

Sejer nodded. ‘There was a strong gale during the crossing,’ he said. ‘Being out there at night must have been spectacular.’

‘It was. I had to cling to anything I could find. The deck was wet and slippery. And it was bloody freezing. We were freezing our arses off.’ He spoke in a firmer voice now because he was telling the truth and he remembered it so vividly.

‘Did you fall out over something?’

He hesitated and considered this. ‘In a way. Yes.’

‘What was it?’

‘Willy wanted me to do him a favour. But I said no.’

‘What kind of favour are we talking about?’

Tomme felt his mother’s eyes on him. ‘Well, you know. He wanted us to swap bags. So that I would be carrying the drugs through customs.’

Ruth let the air out of her lungs. Her eyes were glued to her son.

‘You’re saying that you knew Willy was dealing drugs, but that you were never a part of it? What made Willy ask you after all this time?’

‘He felt I owed him a favour,’ Tomme said.

‘Did you?’

‘He fixed the Opel. For free.’

‘He was asking a lot in return in my view. What do you think?’

‘Same as you. So I said no. And he didn’t like it.’

‘Go on,’ Sejer said.

Tomme did not dare look at his mother. He thought of all the pills they had flushed down the 283

toilet. She was scared that he was about to reveal this, but he did not want to implicate his mother. Instead he focused on the different sounds and images whirling around in his mind. It had to be possible to shape them into a plausible story.

‘Willy had brought a pint with him,’ he said. ‘Up on deck. He started messing about with the glass in his hand. Even though it was bloody windy and he slipped several times and kept having to find something to hold on to, to stop himself from falling over. I was sitting on a crate watching him. I was freezing. All I wanted to do was go downstairs to get some sleep, but he carried on, climbing up ropes, balancing on stuff. He was making an idiot of himself. Finally he started climbing up on to the railings. He went up so high that his knees were resting against the top bar. He dropped his glass,’

Tomme recollected. He recalled the gawping expression on Willy’s face as the glass slipped out of his hand and disappeared into the depths. Ruth bit her lip. It was as if she had guessed what was coming next.

‘And what about you?’ Sejer said.

‘I was just watching him,’ Tomme said. ‘Several times I called out to him that he ought to come down, that it was dangerous. He just laughed. I was cold and wet and I just wanted to go inside, but I couldn’t leave without Willy. But when he’s drunk, he only does what he wants to, it’s no use talking to him. I huddled up on the crate and tried to keep warm. And I was regretting going on the trip,’ he 284

admitted. ‘It was nothing but getting drunk and getting into trouble. I should have stayed at home. So I got up and said, I’m off to bed now. Please yourself, Willy hollered,’ Tomme said, exhausted now. ‘So I gave up and went down to the cabin.’

Sejer listened attentively to Tomme’s

explanation. At the same time he noticed that a dark shadow had crept into the living room. Marion, he thought. Tomme’s sister. It did not seem as if Ruth had noticed her. Is anyone looking after her? he thought, trying to catch her eye. She avoided his look.

‘So what did you do?’ he asked, urging Tomme on.

‘Went to bed,’ he replied. ‘We had just the one keycard, so I lay awake waiting for the knock on the door. But it never came. I must have fallen asleep after a while. When I woke up in the morning he wasn’t there. I just freaked out completely, I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went ashore on my own,’ he whispered.

‘What you’re saying,’ Sejer spoke clearly, ‘is that you woke up alone in the cabin and could not find your friend Willy. But you never told the crew?’

‘No.’ Tomme winced.

‘This you have to explain to me,’ Sejer said brusquely.

‘That’s what’s so complicated,’ Tomme said miserably. ‘I got so confused. I looked for him everywhere. Thought that perhaps he was playing a trick on me, that he’d found somewhere else to sleep 285

on the ferry, with a woman or something, but I never saw him. And then the crowd just swept me along to the gangway. I kept expecting him to turn up and call out for me. But I heard nothing. He’d just vanished. Later it became so hard to explain,’

he stuttered, ‘so I made up the story about the underground. That we said goodbye there. But it was only because I didn’t understand any of it. And because I thought it was really bad not to have an explanation at all.’

Ruth, who had been standing up until that point, now had to support herself against a chair.

‘Grow up, Tomme,’ Sejer commanded. ‘If the last time you saw Willy was when he was raving around the deck in a gale-force wind, heavily intoxicated, then that’s serious. Now look at me and answer my question. Do you think he fell overboard?’

Tomme clapped his hand over his mouth. His eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets. The ticking continued, but it was fainter now.

‘That’s what I’m so afraid of!’ he whimpered.

‘It is hard for me to understand why you didn’t call for help,’ Sejer admitted. ‘I’m trying to under stand it, but it’s hard.’

‘I’m not really myself at the moment,’ Tomme said, ‘with everything that’s happened in my family, with Ida and all that. It just all got too much.’

‘So Willy’s mother called here asking where he was. And still you said nothing?’

‘But it was already too late,’ Tomme groaned.

‘And I haven’t done anything wrong. I just didn’t 286

want to get involved. I do feel a kind of guilt,’ he went on. ‘I shouldn’t have left him. I can understand it if his mum wants to blame me. But I couldn’t make him go back down to the cabin with me.’

‘Mmm,’ Sejer said gravely. ‘I’m thinking

something quite different myself.’

Tomme looked up quickly. Something in Sejer’s voice disturbed him.

‘Willy was travelling with a bag,’ Sejer stated. ‘A black nylon bag with a white Puma logo on the side. The one he wanted you to take through customs for him. What did you do with it?’

Tomme blinked in terror. ‘Nothing,’ he said, flustered.

‘If Willy had fallen overboard while drunk, his bag would still be in the cabin. You left nothing behind. I’ve just now telephoned the ferry company to check. All lost property is carefully logged, and no black nylon bag was found in the cabin that Willy booked. So my question is: did someone throw the bag the same way as Willy went? And why?’

Tomme no longer wanted to answer. Privately he thought he had been cooperative. There was a greater degree of calm inside him. Not total calm, but it did feel like he was being allowed a break.

‘Version one,’ Sejer said firmly. ‘You go ashore together. Willy disappears by the underground at Egertorg. Version two. You leave him on the deck. He is completely drunk and stumbling around; you can’t make him come downstairs with you, so you 287

give up and go to bed. Next morning he’s not there. I’ll be coming back to talk to you later,’ Sejer said.

‘In the meantime, you can prepare the third and final version.’

288

The days passed. Oterhals did not turn up and was listed in the newspapers as missing. In contrast to Ida, he received very little coverage. A young man missing following a ferry trip to Denmark did not arouse anyone’s curiosity. Readers would make up their own minds as to what might have happened to him and turn to the next page. Sejer continued questioning Elsa Mork. As usual she sat with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap.

‘We’ve asked for a professional assessment of your son,’ Sejer said. ‘It will probably be a while. However, in the meantime I need to ask you. You’re the one who knows Emil best. How much education has he had?’

Elsa thought about this for a long time. She could not object to Sejer’s methods. He was most professional. She had not expected it and it made her more defensive. Still, it was good to talk to someone who wanted to listen. Talking about Emil was a new experience for her. She had hidden him away and hardly ever mentioned him to anyone. She offered only monosyllabic replies to the sewing 289

circle whenever someone asked after him. She almost pretended he did not exist. But he did. And now she was finally talking about him. And because she had to talk about him, she also saw him clearly.

‘He was in primary school well into Year Two. Then they moved him to a special needs class. There he just sat on his own doing nothing. He did talk, but only a little. As time went by the words got fewer and fewer. He was able to write some hopeless-looking letters, or he would draw, but very clumsily. Usually he would just sit there chewing his pencil. Often when he came home from school his mouth was all black. It seemed as if he was scared of letters and numbers. But he liked playing,’ she recalled. ‘With toy figures. Or cars and building bricks. Then he’d cheer up.’

‘Did he ever sit an IQ test?’

‘They tried several times. But he pushed

everything away, paper, pictures, whatever they put in front of him.’

‘So when it comes to his intellectual capacity, we can only guess? No one really knows for sure?’ he asked.

‘He always refused to cooperate. We have never had an accurate diagnosis of his condition. One doctor used the expression “extremely introverted”. That doesn’t help us. Once Emil had grown up, I limited myself to taking care of his house. Besides, he was never going to let me get close to him. And now I don’t have the strength to try any more,’ she 290

said in a tired voice. ‘He’s fifty-two years old. If I haven’t managed it by now, I never will.’

‘What about his birth?’ Sejer wanted to know.

‘Was it a normal delivery?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Nothing to be learned from that. But God knows it took a long time. He was a big baby,’ she said, looking down at the table, her cheeks slightly flushed because she was discussing this with a strange man.

‘If I ask you what would make Emil genuinely happy, or truly interested, or for that matter really angry, what would you say?’

She squirmed in her chair. It was a good chair, but she knew she would be sitting in it for a long time.

‘I’m not really sure,’ she said. ‘He’s always the same. On the rare occasion he shows feelings, it’s irritation. Or defiance. I don’t suppose he’s ever happy,’ she con fessed. ‘After all, is there anything to be happy about?’

She looked up at Sejer, hoping for a bit of sympathy. Sejer got up from his chair and started wandering around the room. Partly because he felt the need to and partly out of con

sideration for Elsa, who

needed some space. An opportunity to lose herself a little in her own thoughts. He knew she was watching him as he walked around, that right now she was furtively studying his back. Perhaps she was assessing his clothes, a charcoal-grey shirt with a black tie, and trousers in a lighter shade of grey with knife-edge creases.

‘What about women?’ he asked after a pause. ‘Is Emil interested in women?’

291

The thought of it nearly made her laugh, but she controlled herself. ‘We never discuss such things,’

she said. ‘I don’t know what he gets up to when I’m not there, but I have never found magazines or any other things that might suggest it. How would he ever get a woman? I’ve told him over and over that he can forget about that, and he knows it too.’ She shook her head in resignation. ‘Not even the most desperate creature in the world would take on Emil.’

What an incredibly merciless verdict, Sejer thought, but did not say so. ‘Have you ever considered the possibility that he might be talking when he’s on his own?’ he asked. ‘That he can do more than he reveals?’