Dreamless (24 page)

He went into Anna’s room and kissed her on the forehead.

“Isn’t it cold in here?” he whispered, more to himself since he didn’t want to wake her when she was sleeping so soundly. They no longer slept in the same room. She kept the temperature much too low for him. She slept with the window open all winter long and refused to turn up the heat. Suddenly, he had an impish impulse. He tiptoed over to the heater and turned it up full blast. Maybe he was being childish, but it was freezing in here, damn it! He left the window open.

Then he left the house. Outside he shoveled the driveway. He was meticulous about tossing all the snow up onto the big pile that he’d made in the yard behind the garage.

After the job was done, he drove back to the house in town.

To her.

27

Siri Holm woke up alone
in the small basement room. She raised her head and looked around at the mess. This was Gunnar Berg’s den far from home. She touched the lump on the back of her head and thought back to the previous evening.

She had regained consciousness a few minutes after hitting her head on the table. Gunnar leaned over her, holding a glass of water. He’d already splashed some of it on her face.

“You slipped on a tube of caviar,” he explained. “It split open and it was really slippery. I tried to catch you. Maybe I should have warned you about the mess. It’s only at work and at home that I’m the world’s neatest man. This place is my dark secret. When I’m here, I don’t have time to clean up.”

“What on earth are you working on here?”

“I’m building a studio,” he said. “I have some friends who play folk music, and I promised to build a real studio for them so they can record their songs. I studied electronics before I switched to history. It’s a long-term project. I bought an old mixing console, which I’m trying to repair.”

She now realized how much she’d misjudged him. He wasn’t the awful stick-in-the-mud she’d always thought he was. She knew instantly that from now on she would like him. The old Siri, the one who wasn’t pregnant, would have tried to seduce him. But lately, she’d put those sorts of ideas aside.

Instead, they’d sat and talked about ballads and Felicia’s genealogy search and the fact that it seemed to have a lot to do with the two cases that had shocked the city. Finally Siri had asked him about the police log. Gunnar didn’t know much about it, but that was when he’d made a suggestion. It was an excellent suggestion, and she’d been even more impressed by him. He’d brought his laptop along, so they had access to all the databases they needed.

They’d sat up half the night in that gloriously messy basement room of his, the partially built music studio. They’d eaten caviar sandwiches as they searched through the library’s secrets. After she had fallen asleep on a threadbare couch, he’d gone home. So when she woke up, she had the place to herself. And she knew instantly what she had to do, so she took out her phone.

*   *   *

Singsaker was sitting in his car, trying to convince himself that the three shots of aquavit he’d had early that morning must have worn off long ago, so he could safely drive home. Then his phone rang.

“Hi, it’s Siri.” To his great surprise, he was happy to hear her voice. He didn’t know what it was about Siri Holm, but it was impossible to stay mad at her.

“Hi,” he replied.

“I’ve been trying to call Felicia,” she said. “Her cell has been switched off for ages. It’s not like her. But right now you’re the one I want to talk to.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.” He kept his tone curt, not sure he could handle anything else at the moment.

Then she told him about the missing police log.

He thought it fit the pattern.

“He steals historical sources connected to this Jon Blund, and at the same time he pretends to be a figure from Bellman’s ballad universe. But we already knew that. In fact, we’re more convinced than ever that Grälmakar Löfberg is our perpetrator,” Singsaker said. He had an urge to tell Siri that he’d just received a tip about who this man might be, and now he was sitting in the car, about to pay him a visit.

“But that’s exactly why I’m calling you. I know who Grälmakar Löfberg is,” she said.

Singsaker tightened his grip on the phone.

“What did you say?”

“I found him.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“We just found out.”

“We?”

“Yes. My colleague and I were up researching all night.”

“Explain.”

“I was thinking that we really only knew two things about this Löfberg guy. First, that he’s obsessed with Jon Blund. And second, that he seems to have free access to borrow books.”

“Actually, he prefers to steal them.”

“Right. Or he neglects to return them.”

There were times when Singsaker felt like his brain was functioning better than ever before. This was one of those moments.

“He’s borrowed other books, is that it?”

“What I’m telling you now, I’m technically not allowed to say. The laws about confidentiality, and all that.”

“Don’t tell me that librarians have those rules too,” he joked, hoping it didn’t sound like he was flirting.

“I’ve gone through all the lender files. Looking for books that weren’t returned, and then filtering by various topics like the eighteenth century, ballads, Bellman, Jon Blund, and music boxes. Only one person has received overdue notices and letters demanding replacement fees for books within more than one of these subject areas.”

“And who’s that?”

“His name is Jonas Røed. I Googled him.”

She told Singsaker a little about what she’d found out about Røed, who worked at the Ringve Museum. Significant factual details, although Google could tell them little about the man’s mental state.

“Siri, you’re amazing,” he said, forgetting everything else. She was one of a kind, quite simply the sharpest knife in the drawer. It was impossible not to love her, at least a little bit.

He didn’t tell her he’d already heard the same name from Jan Høybråten, or that he knew who Røed was, or that he’d actually spoken to the man when he’d had the music box appraised early on in the investigation.

Høybråten had told the police that he’d been at Ringve right after the letter was found, before it was sent on to the Gunnerus Library, and he happened to see Røed put the letter in his pocket. Unfortunately for Høybråten and the present investigation, during the previous year Røed, for his part, had seen the professor get a little too intimate with a girl after choir practice in Ringve. That was enough to make him keep his mouth shut.

But all Singsaker said to Siri Holm was, “Thanks.”

“I do my best, you know,” she said. “But there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s going on with Felicia?”

“Let’s talk about this later, okay?” he said, wondering what he would say if he tried to tell the truth.

28

Singsaker then called
the Ringve Museum and was told that Jonas Røed had been on sick leave ever since Singsaker had gone out there, just after the murder. He asked for the man’s address, which turned out to be in Heimdal. He wasn’t pleased to hear where Røed lived, because the police had been working the assumption that the perpetrator lived somewhere near the murder scene. Yet Singsaker still had little doubt that Røed was their man. In addition to the reports from Høybråten and Siri Holm, there was the fact that they knew they were looking for a killer who had a good knowledge of music and music boxes. Singsaker sat in his car for a few minutes, pondering his conversation with Røed at Ringve. He played me, Singsaker thought. If Røed was the murderer, he might be insane, but he could probably also be extremely calculating and seem rational.

He punched in Brattberg’s number and relayed his conversation with Siri and about the museum in Ringve.

“Does this Jonas Røed have gray or possibly red hair?” asked Brattberg.

“Red. Why?”

“Grongstad is here in the office with me. He says that the lab has analyzed the strand of hair found on the music box. It was in the process of turning gray, but there was enough pigment left that they could determine the original hair color. It was red. So that’s a match with Røed. It may have been a single strand of gray in an otherwise-red head of hair, just as Grongstad mentioned. Go out to Heimdal right away. But you need to take someone with you,” she told him.

“I’m down here in the garage,” he said.

“Then I’ll send Gran down,” she said. “And see to it that you have a patrol car meet you out there. We don’t want to take any chances. If Røed is our guy, we know what he’s capable of.”

Singsaker agreed. He ended the call and popped a lozenge in his mouth.

Then he leaned his head back and waited for Gran to join him.

*   *   *

Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary about the small single-family house not far from the center of Heimdal. In fact, the property looked better maintained than many of the other yards on the street. That was probably due to the extensive shoveling that had been done to remove the snow. The driveway and the path up to the front door had both been meticulously cleared.

Singsaker followed Gran, who opened the gate. Both were in plainclothes. Gran had brought her service weapon, concealed under her down jacket. Two uniformed officers from the Heimdal police station had arrived in their own vehicle. One of them got out of the car and walked closely behind the two homicide detectives. They went up to the door and rang the bell. Singsaker studied the nameplate, which looked homemade—a weathered piece of driftwood with hand-drawn letters. It said
JONAS AND ANNA
. He looked at the writing and guessed that Anna must be the artist. The letters had a feminine air about them, filled with hopes and ambitions for a good home. The colors had faded, which meant the nameplate had probably been painted years ago.

No one came to the door.

Gran rang the bell again, while Singsaker considered their next move. He went back to the sidewalk, surveying the house. It wasn’t very big; in fact, it was one of the smallest on the street. Yet the surrounding property was a good size, coming to an abrupt halt at the steep slope behind the house where all the snow had been piled in a huge heap. The house looked as if it could use a fresh coat of paint. He concluded that either Røed was a real neat freak or the couple had no children. There were no snowmen, push sleds, or snow-covered trampolines in the yard, nor any traces of kids having played in the snow in the areas that hadn’t been shoveled. Røed was in his thirties, the age to get his first gray hairs, but also the age for having children. But at the moment, Singsaker was relieved to think that the man might not have any.

“Are you looking for Røed?” a voice someone suddenly said from behind him.

Singsaker turned around as he stuck another lozenge in his mouth. He saw a man of retirement age holding the leash of a little dog. Some sort of terrier was Singsaker’s guess. He’d had an Irish soft-coated wheaten terrier early in his first marriage, a shaggy creature that they could never leave home alone because it would bark incessantly, tormenting their neighbor. Singsaker wasn’t really a dog person, but he could recognize a terrier. He could also recognize a nosy neighbor when he saw one. As a detective, he had learned to set great value on the latter breed.

“Do you know the Røeds?” asked Singsaker.

“We’re not friends, if that’s what you mean. But I live there.”

The man pointed at the house next door. It was almost twice the size of Røed’s.

“It’s impossible not to notice a thing or two when you live so close.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” said Singsaker.

“We don’t see much of them,” said the man, casting a pensive glance at the house. “The wife is on sick leave and hasn’t come outside in weeks. He leaves for town every morning.”

“But I thought he was on sick leave too.”

“Not as far as I know. He seems really involved in his museum job. He’s not the type that’s easy to get to know. But he sure can talk about music and musical instruments.”

“What about his wife?”

“She’s totally different. Much more social. Always willing to stop for a chat. At least she used to. But she hasn’t seemed very happy the past few years.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. She stopped coming over for coffee like she used to before. And she doesn’t smile anymore when we say hello. Things like that. And she started wearing sunglasses all the time,” the neighbor explained.

“Do you know why she’s on sick leave?”

“I’ve only talked to Jonas about it. I’m not really sure. He says it’s her back. But what do I know? In some ways he seems perfectly harmless. A little like what we used to call a you know what, if you get my drift.”

“What about his wife? Shouldn’t she be at home if she’s on sick leave?”

“Probably. But as I mentioned, we haven’t seen her in a while. She could have moved away, for all we know.”

“I see,” said Singsaker, so deep in thought that he accidentally swallowed the lozenge whole.

“Has he done something illegal?” asked the elderly man all of a sudden. He stared at the police car, then shifted his gaze to Gran and the uniformed officer who were now coming toward them.

“No,” said Singsaker.

“You’re not here to turn off the electricity or anything like that, are you?”

“No, that’s not exactly the job of the police,” said Singsaker, wishing they were here for something as simple as that.

“He’ll show up in the evening. But he usually gets home quite late,” said the old man. Then he gently tugged on his dog’s leash and continued down the street. His shoes squeaked as they pierced the hard-crusted snow that covered the sidewalk.

“No sign of life,” said Gran, who was now standing next to Singsaker.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean nobody’s home,” he said and headed back to the yard.

This time he diverged from the well-shoveled path that led to the front door. He plowed his way through the snowdrifts along the facade of the house. By the time he came to the first window, he’d sunk so deep into the snow that he had to stand on tiptoe in order to peer inside. By doing that he was able to gain the extra inch he needed to see through the window into what turned out to be the living room.