Dreamless (25 page)

Empty and also extremely tidy.

Without much hope, Singsaker now moved on to the next window. Because of the slope of the property, at this point the foundation of the house was visible above the snow, and the window was higher up. Singsaker could see only that it was covered from the inside, possibly by a shade, and that the window was open slightly.

He stood there, rubbing the scar on his forehead from the surgery. The window was the type that swung outward. He reached up, grabbing the edge with his fingertips, and then tried to open it more. As he suspected, it had a brace that prevented it from opening any wider. With a sigh of resignation he let go and was just about to rejoin Gran. But then he caught sight of the flies.

“Shit!” he muttered. “In the middle of winter?”

A number of torpid flies had practically rolled out of the crack in the window. They made a few hopeless attempts to fly, but most of them tumbled down into the snow and lay there, looking like black snowflakes.

Singsaker bent down and picked one up by its wing. It was dead. Surprised, he flicked it away.

Again he reached up toward the window ledge and grabbed hold with both hands. Using all his strength, he managed to pull himself up so he could look inside. Only then did he see that the window was not covered with a shade, as he’d thought. It was covered with flies.

The entire inside of the window was swarming with a black layer of crawling and buzzing insects. In disbelief he pressed his face to the open crack. That was when he noticed the stench. And it was something he’d smelled before. The stink of death was one of his least favorite things about his job.

“We’re going in,” he said when he got back to the front door. He ordered the Heimdal police officer to get the necessary equipment from the cruiser.

The man came back with an ax.

Gran got out her gun and took up position on one side of the door. Singsaker stood on the other side while the Heimdal officer delivered two blows to the door to smash it open. Pulse quickening, Singsaker followed Gran into the house. The smell hit them as soon as they entered, the stench of a body that might have been there for days. The odor filled the whole house.

In that terrible pervasive smell, the tidy living room seemed grotesque. Now Singsaker noticed that this room was also filled with flies, buzzing languidly everywhere. He knew that the room with the partially open window was right next to this one.

They inspected the other rooms in the house first. The only thing that seemed unusual was the collection of half-empty bottles of sleeping pills in the bathroom.

After securing the rest of the house, the only room left was the one with the flies. Singsaker asked Gran to hand him her gun, a 9mm Heckler & Koch P30. Then he grabbed the door handle, opened the door, and went inside.

The air was black with flies. They swarmed at him the instant he opened the door. He was quickly covered with flies. They settled on his clothes and on his face. He wanted desperately to swat them away, but he couldn’t let go of the gun, which he held out in front of him, gripping it with both hands. With each step he took into the room, the smell got worse.

Finally he found himself standing at the end of a bed, and then he saw her through the cloud of flies. She was lying on top of the duvet, fully clothed, and he caught a glimpse of the floral print of her summer dress underneath all the insects. Her face was already starting to decompose. Her hair was gathered in two thick braids that were draped over her shoulders.

Recently plaited, he thought. Someone had braided her hair after she died.

He gasped for air, but as a result, he inhaled a few of the flies. He turned on his heel and ran out, slamming the door behind him. He rushed to the kitchen and spat the flies into the sink.

Gran followed him, stopping in the doorway.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” Singsaker asked when he noticed her.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen flies like that, not in the middle of winter.”

“What about the body? Did you look inside the room? She must have been there at least a week.”

“At least we know now that Røed isn’t here,” said Gran.”

“Right. So where is he?”

Singsaker turned again and spat what looked like insect wings into the sink. Then he phoned Brattberg to give her his report.

“Leave the Heimdal officers there,” she said. “I’ll send out Grongstad and his team.”

“Didn’t Grongstad study biology in college?” asked Singsaker. An idea had occurred to him.

“I think so. Why?”

“There’s something I want to ask him.”

Singsaker ended the call and then phoned the crime-scene tech.

“Do you know anything about flies?” he asked when Grongstad picked up.

“Not a lot. What do you want to know?”

“I thought they died in the wintertime.”

“Not necessarily. Well, a lot of flies die from the cold, but plenty of them survive the winter in a semitorpid state in warm places, like cracks in a window, or the hollow of a tree.”

“Do they ever pile up in huge swarms?” asked Singsaker.

“Maybe you’re thinking of attic flies,” Grongstad replied. “In rare instances they hibernate in large numbers. In the fall, the flies crawl into unheated rooms in cabins or houses. They’ll settle in big holes in the wall or in cracks and crevices, especially in attics, hence the name. When warm weather returns, or if the space is heated in the winter, the flies emerge. When that happens, they’re very lethargic and have a hard time flying. They mostly creep around. In extreme cases, they can fill up a whole room. I’ve even heard stories about people who have been suffocated by attic flies, but I don’t know whether there’s any truth to that. When the flies wake up, they seek out light and often gather around windows. Attic flies also have a tendency to show up in the same houses year after year. There’s no real explanation for the phenomenon. Why do you ask?”

“I’ll explain later,” said Singsaker and ended the call.

He followed Mona Gran out of the house, filling her in on what Grongstad had said. On their way to the car he turned around and cast one last glance at the small house standing in all that snow, and at the carefully shoveled driveway. He turned on the radio the minute they got into the car. Right now, he needed music. He had no desire to talk. He was thinking about Felicia and how she, at least, hadn’t been inside that house.

As they drove toward town, his cell rang.

It was Lars, his son who lived in Oslo. Feeling guilty, Singsaker let it go to voice mail. Then he thought about how he might become a father again. He hadn’t done a very good job of it the first time around. So how was he going to handle it now?

*   *   *

The storage room she was now sitting in had no window and no bucket to pee in. It had nothing but two walls made of brick and two walls made of boards. The solid door was locked and wouldn’t budge. It was almost pitch-black, and she could hardly see her own hands in front of her.

Maybe he hadn’t tied her up this time because he knew that it would be impossible for her to escape. After he’d taken Bismarck away, he’d come in once to bring her something to drink, but she hadn’t seen him since. Now and then she could hear him moving about upstairs, but for long periods he didn’t seem to be in the house at all.

Once when she was sure that he was out, she’d tried screaming for help, hoping that her voice might reach through the foundation and out to the street. But she knew it was pointless. Her words bounced back to her as if they’d been pulverized against the brick wall.

What scared her most was that he no longer played the music box for her. Only now she did realize what solace it had given her, hearing that delicate melody. Each time she heard it, she felt like a veil of unreality was being spread over the whole situation. Part of her understood that it was a mistake to think that way, that she was just allowing herself to be taken in by the sick fantasies of the red-haired lunatic, and when that happened, she was feeling what he wanted her to feel. But she couldn’t help it. She missed the tune. And it scared her to death that it had disappeared. What could that mean? Had he given up on her? Was he just waiting for the right time to beat her to death and slit her throat, as he’d apparently done to that other woman?

A few times, when she was positive that he wouldn’t hear her, she had sung the song to herself. She’d had more than enough time to learn both the melody and the lyrics. Once, right after she’d sung the song, she had dozed off and dreamed of Bismarck.

Otherwise, she never slept.

And she imagined that the child inside her didn’t either. They had landed in hell, and that was a place where no one ever slept.

PART IV

29

Trondheim, 1767

June nights in Trondheim
never got as dark as the haunting thoughts that ran through Nils Bayer’s mind. Aching after a long day on horseback, he dragged his enormous body the short distance from his lodgings to the hospital. On this summer night the bluish gray light seemed as heavy as it did in the middle of winter. His flask, which he’d filled in Ringve with wine simmered with sage, was already empty. Which was a shame, because the captain had assured Bayer that the drink would do wonders for his digestion, his state of mind, and his memory. He hadn’t noticed any improvement in the first two, and the latter was not something he needed any help with—unfortunately.

Officer Torp had given him a detailed report. Yesterday two guards had transported the cadaver from the beach to the hospital. There the pastor of the hospital chapel had arranged for a simple coffin for the troubadour, and a sexton had prepared the body for burial. Then it had been placed in a room in the cellar. This morning the sexton had arrived to nail down the lid of the coffin, only to discover that the corpse was gone.

Nils Bayer met the pastor outside the huge wooden hospital building. The parish pastor was an educated Laplander who, in addition to being a cleric, was also an adjunct at the Seminarium Lapponicum. This was a school established to train missionaries, men who were dispatched to tame the free savages of northern Norway and turn them into devout Christians. With men like the hospital pastor in the lead, the heathens were to be drawn into the fold of the pious in the Lapps’ own language. Apparently the pastor was still working on a catechism in this incomprehensible language

The parish pastor was a civilized man. He greeted Bayer, addressing him by his full name and title.

“One of the lunatics must be behind this,” he said. “They live in the room above the cellar, where the coffin was placed. I can’t even begin to imagine the monstrous treatment one of those demented idiots might have inflicted upon the cadaver. That poor troubadour’s body may have been desecrated most atrociously. Oh, what a gruesome thought!”

The police chief looked at the pastor, whose face had paled beneath his dark hair.

“Isn’t it true, Reverend, that the door to the lunatics’ quarters is locked every evening from the outside with a most robust lock? A lock, I am told, that was imported from Germany and is said to be even stronger than the one used on the city gate at night.”

“Yes, that’s true. We use such a lock not only in the evening but also for most of the day. The town is right to protect itself from the insane.”

“No doubt. But was this lock not in use last night for some reason?”

“Of course it was. No lock is used more diligently than this one. Of that I can assure you.”

“And there was no sign that this lock on the door to the lunatics’ quarters had been broken during the course of the night?”

“No, none at all.”

“And the windows to this so-called loony bin are secured with bars?”

“The room has no windows. Only a slot in the wall up near the ceiling to let in a little light. But there are bars on both the inside and outside of the slot.”

“I see. Could you then explain to me, Reverend, how one of these lunatics could have exited his quarters, gone down to the cellar, and stolen the body? And if he did manage to do this, where would he have taken it?”

“As you no doubt know, Chief, we have our own guard here.”

“Yes, I know that. Mikkel Hanssen,” said Bayer.

He knew this particular guard better by the name “Falling Down Mikkel.” The man had a low tolerance for liquor, which made him unsteady on his feet after only a few glasses. This didn’t mean he was any less keen on drinking than any other Trondheimer. Bayer enjoyed having a drink with him at the tavern, and until the man lost his footing and had to stagger home at an early hour, Falling Down Mikkel was always good company. This weakness of his had the advantage that he never got drunk enough to end up in a brawl, and Bayer had never had to arrest him. And in his opinion, that alone was a good enough testament to the man’s character.

“I wouldn’t want you to think we don’t trust him completely. But what if he had a slight lapse in judgment? Even the most hard-hearted of us can occasionally feel pity for the lunatics and forget about the forces that underlie their insanity,” said the parish pastor somberly.

“So your theory is as follows, Reverend,” said Bayer, trying not to laugh. “Mikkel, the guard, allowed one or more of the lunatics out in the night so that they could steal the cadaver in the cellar and possibly take it with them back to their quarters or to some other dark cranny in our city. And there they did unspeakable things. And then?”

“I grant you that it may seem unlikely. But the idea that anyone in their right mind would make off with a dead body seems even less credible. Don’t you agree?”

“I assume that no one has gone in to count the lunatics?”

“What do you mean?”

“If they’re all in their quarters, then we can set your theory aside, Reverend, and focus on other possibilities.”

“We wanted to wait to open the door to the lunatics’ quarters until you were present in person, so we haven’t counted them, no. But what if we’re right? What if the body is in there? The mere sight of it would make me wish I were blind. The very thought! What a gruesome notion!”