Black Seconds

by Karin Fossum

  Everyone felt a huge sense of relief when they finally started to walk. One hundred and fifty people dissolved into smaller groups and shuffled out of the school playground. There was a low murmuring of voices. This was a bizarre experience for most of them. Staring into the ground all the time, seeing every straw, every root and twig, every irregularity in the asphalt, the litter along the roadsides, there was so much to see. The group that had been ordered to search along the riverbanks kept looking furtively into the rapidly flowing water. They lifted up bushes and other shrubs with low-hanging branches. They searched holes and caves. And they did find things. A rusty old pram. A decaying rain boot. Along the banks of the river there were mainly empty beer bottles. From time to time the search party would stop for a short break. One of the groups came across a small shed. It was tilting dangerously. It looked as if it might collapse at any moment. A good hiding place, they thought as they stood facing the simple building. Not very far from the road, or the house where Ida lived, either. Instinctively they sniffed the air. A man crouched down and crept through the opening, which consisted of a narrow gap in the dilapidated planks. He asked for a flashlight and was handed one. The beam flickered across the dark space. His heart was beating so fast he could feel it in his temples. The rest of the group waited. Not a sound came from the inside of the shed during these long, tense seconds. Then the man's feet emerged again as he crept backward out of the tight opening.

  "Nothing but old garbage," he reported.

  "You did lift stuff up, didn't you?" someone asked. "She could be lying under something. Underneath planks and things like that."

  "She wasn't there," the man replied and rubbed his face wearily.

  "They did say it was very easy to overlook something. Why don't we double-check?" The other man was not going to let it go.

  The man who had crawled inside the damp darkness to look for the body of a dead girl and had not found her gave him a hostile look.

  "Are you saying I didn't look properly?" he said.

  "No, no. Don't get me wrong. I just want to be sure. We don't want to be the group that walked right past her, do we? We want to do this the right way."

  The first man nodded in agreement. The other man crept through the opening and carefully shone the flashlight around. He was hoping so desperately that he would find her. Imagine hoping like this, it struck him, as he knelt on the musty ground, feeling the cold seep through the knees of his trousers. Hoping that she would be lying there. Because if she was lying in there, she would have to be dead. But we don't want her to be dead. We're just being realistic. We are helping. He backed out.

  "Nothing," he said. "Thank God."

  He exhaled loudly. The group moved on.

  CHAPTER 4

  Willy Oterhals had not been out looking for Ida. He was sitting on the floor of his garage with a book in his lap. The chill from the concrete floor crept through the seat of his trousers. Tomme was sitting on a workbench by the wall, watching Willy. His clothes were damp after several hours of being outside in the drizzling rain. The search had yielded no results. Now he was looking at the Opel. From the bench where he was sitting he could not see the damaged fender. He could make himself believe that it had never happened, that it was all a bad dream.

  "Up the ridge, was it?" Willy said without looking up at him.

  Tomme thought about it for a while. "It was horrible," he said. "Just walking around searching like that. Loads of people had turned up. They're looking everywhere. Including wells and rivers."

  "Will they be searching tomorrow?" Willy asked.

  "They're saying they'll go on like this for days."

  He looked across to his older friend. Willy was quite skinny, he thought. He had a lean face with a protruding chin, and bony shoulders. His knees were sharp underneath the nylon coverall. Now he was rubbing some dirt off his cheek with his finger, while trying to decipher the text and illustrations in the book about car repairs. The book was old and dog-eared. The pages were stained with oil. Some of them were torn and someone had tried to fix them with sticky tape. He studied the illustration of a fender, the right-hand one, as on Tomme's Opel.

  "First we need to sand it," Willy said decisively. "We need two types of sandpaper, smooth and coarse." He peered down at the book. "Number 180 and number 360. The fender needs sanding down first with dry paper and then with wet. We'll need a sanding block and some filler. Rust remover. A degreasing agent. You listening to me, Tomme?"

  Tomme nodded. But the truth was that he was far, far away.

  Willy read on. "We need to sand around the dent. It says here: 'Start in the middle of the damaged area and work your way outward in circular movements.' Find something to write on. You'll have to go out and buy the stuff we need. Once we've got the fender off."

  "I don't mind doing the shopping," Tomme said. "But I'm broke."

  Willy looked up at him. "I'll lend you the money. You won't be going to school forever, will you? Sooner or later you'll start earning." Once more he looked down at the book. "We'll also need some more tools. I'll see if I can borrow them."

  He put the book aside, climbed back onto his feet and went over to the car. Bent over the fender, hands on his hips. He inspected the damage with a seasoned look, his shoulders hunched like two sails billowing in the wind, anxious to get started. "Right, Tomme. Let's get going."

  Tomme heard the crackling of the nylon coverall and a groaning, creaking sound coming from the metal. From time to time he heard Willy panting and gasping. An old Opel Ascona that has been in one piece for fifteen years does not give up without a fight.

  "I know a guy down at Shell," Willy panted. "Bastian. He'll lend me what I need."

  Willy has so many contacts, Tomme thought. "Christ, Willy," he said, relieved. "If you can fix this, I'll owe you big-time."

  "No kidding," Willy smiled. His eyes lit up. "And now it's about time that you cheered up. It'll be all right. I promise you."

  He continued to twist and bend the metal. A vein bulged on his neck. "Ah, screw it, I need to get underneath it." He slid under the car. His long white fingers appeared below the wheel arch.

  "I don't understand it," Tomme said. "I just don't understand it. How it happened." He was so upset at what had occurred. The color rose in his face.

  "Take it easy," Willy reassured him. "Like I said, it'll be all right." Then he remembered something. "What did your mom say?"

  Tomme groaned. "The usual. That they wouldn't pay for it. That they don't like me coming here. But you know, they're mostly worried about this other thing."

  "Yeah, of course. I'm seen as the kind of lowlife a nice boy like you shouldn't mix with, I've always known that." Willy laughed scornfully. "But you're an adult now, for God's sake. It's for you to decide who you want to hang out with, isn't it?"

  "Exactly, and that's what I told my mom," Tomme lied. "Hey, listen." A thought had just occurred to him. "Do you think we should check the brakes?"

  "Oh, give it a rest!" Willy told him. "The brakes are fine. Now give me a hand. We need to get this fender off. The bastard's stuck. Hold this for me!"

  Tomme leapt down from the bench. He was trying to pull himself together. He was relieved that Willy would be able to fix his car. He liked the idea of himself as Willy's gofer. But there were times when he felt stifled by his older, more resourceful friend. Once Tomme had finally passed his driving test—after failing his first attempt, needless to say, and putting up with being ridiculed about this in every way imaginable—he felt they had achieved a kind of equality at last. He could drive himself. On top of that, it had been Willy who had trawled the local papers in search of a used car costing the 20,000 kroner that Tomme had managed to save up. His confirmation alone had brought in 15,000.

  "An Opel is a safe bet," Willy had said confidently. "Reliable engines, especially in the older models. You can't worry about the color. Don't even go there. If you find an Opel in good condition, buy it, even if it's bright orange."

 
But they had found a black one. Even the paintwork was fine. Tomme was over the moon. He could not wait a minute longer. He just had to get driving.

  "What about the police?" Willy said tentatively. "I suppose they're all over the place because of your cousin."

  "Yes."

  "Have they talked to you?"

  "Jesus, no." Tomme was shocked. He slackened his grip for a second and Willy's finger got crushed.

  "Concentrate, you idiot! You've got to lift it up while I'm using the screwdriver!"

  Tomme held on. His knuckles were white.

  "When it's something like a missing girl and stuff," Willy panted underneath the car, "the cops just go crazy. Perhaps they've even checked out her dad. Have they?"

  "Don't know," Tomme mumbled.

  "But they'll want to know about her family," Willy said. "Perhaps they'll talk to you as well."

  Tomme nodded. He felt like a robot as he listened to the flow of words coming from Willy. It made him feel calm and nervous at the same time.

  "You being her cousin, well, that's incriminating in itself," Willy said. Finally he got up. The fender was loose. "Especially if they never find her. If they never find out the truth. Something like that brands people for generations. You know a girl was murdered out here forty years ago, don't you?" Tomme shook his head.

  "Well, she was. A guy raped and killed a fifteen-year-old girl. Both their families still live here. And you can tell just by looking at them."

  "Tell what?" Tomme asked. He was growing more and more nervous.

  "That it's all they ever think about. And they know everyone knows who they are. That's why they can never look anyone in the eye. That kind of stuff." He wiped a bead of snot from his upper lip. "The mother of the guy who killed her is close to seventy now. And you can still tell who she is from miles away."

  "Well, I can't," Tomme snapped. "I've no idea who she is." He wanted his friend to shut up. Hated all this talk of death and destruction. The only thing he cared about was the car. Making it whole again. Shiny and new, with unmarked paintwork, like it was before.

  ***

  She knows she is pretty, Sejer thought sadly. He was holding a photo of Ida in his hand. In his mind he could hear them all, an endless chorus of aunts and uncles, neighbors and friends. What a gorgeous child. He remembered his own aunts, who used to tickle his chin as if he were a puppy or some other dumb creature. And so I was, he realized. A shy, skinny boy with legs that were too long. He kept looking at the photo. For years Ida had seen her own beauty mirrored in the eyes of others. This had made her a confident girl, a girl who was accustomed to being admired, and possibly envied, too. Used to getting her own way with both her friends and her parents, though Helga came across as firm and strict, so Ida had also been given rules. She had never broken them. Who could have made her ignore her mother's warnings? What had he done to lure her away? Or had she simply been grabbed and bundled into a car?

  Adorable and precocious, he thought. It was a bad combination. It made her a target. Staring into those brown eyes it was impossible not to melt. He tried to connect these three things. Warm feelings for an enchanting child, followed by physical arousal, and finally destruction. He understood the first one. He even managed to imagine fleeting moments of desire. The purity, the fragility that children embodied. So smooth, uncorrupted, and tender; they smelled so good, they trembled and quivered. And purely by being an adult, you had the strength to take what you wanted. But to beat and squeeze the life out of a tiny child was beyond comprehension. The frenzied struggle as life slowly ebbed away in your hands was unimaginable. He rubbed his tired eyes, repelled by his thought experiment. He decided to call Sara's hotel in New York. She was not in.

  It was late in the evening. The town lay smoldering like a dying fire between blue-black ridges. He could go home and pour himself a glass of whiskey. He would probably be able to fall asleep quite easily. The fact that he could lie down and sleep while Ida was lost in the darkness, while Helga waited for her with stinging eyes, disturbed him deeply. He would rather be outside. Walk the streets with all his senses alert. Be outside because Ida was. The search parties still had nothing to report.

  He was startled by a knock on the door. Jacob Skarre popped his head around it.

  "You still here?" Sejer asked. "What are you doing at this hour?"

  "Same as you, I suppose. Hanging around."

  Skarre took a look around his boss's office. Beneath Sejer's desk lamp was a Play-Doh figure. It was meant to be a police officer wearing a blue uniform and had been made by Sejer's grandchild. Skarre lifted the figure and inspected it.

  "It's starting to go moldy," he said. "Did you know?"

  Sejer pretended not to hear him. It would never even cross his mind to throw the figure away. True, it did look a little worse for the wear, but it certainly did not smell.

  "Can I smoke out of the window?" Skarre asked.

  He waited patiently for a reply, holding a Prince cigarette in his hand. He got a brief affirmative nod from Sejer and sat down on the windowsill. He struggled with the heavy window for a few moments.

  "Like she's vanished into thin air," he stated, blowing smoke out into the September night. "They haven't found so much as a hair slide."

  "She had nothing to lose," Sejer said. "No wristwatch, no jewelry. But I'm pleased about one thing." "Really?" Skarre said glumly.

  "We haven't found any bloodstained clothing. Or a child's shoe abandoned on the road, or a bicycle dumped in a ditch. I like the fact that we haven't found anything."

  "Why?" Skarre said, surprised.

  "I don't know," Sejer admitted.

  "That only goes to show that he is thorough," Skarre said. "It doesn't make me feel better at all." He inhaled the cigarette smoke deeply. "Waiting like this is pure torture."

  "It certainly is for Anders and Helga Joner," Sejer said drily.

  Skarre fell silent. Was it a rebuke? He kept blowing smoke out of the open window, but some of it still drifted back into the darkened office. Finally he held the glowing cigarette butt under the tap in the sink.

  "Time to call it a day?"

  Sejer nodded and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.

  "What did you think about the press coverage?" Skarre asked him later. They were standing in the parking lot outside the police station. Both of them jingling their car keys.

  "Journalists are all right," Sejer said. "When you read what they've actually written. What I really object to is the way some editors lay everything out. They use photos and drawings to speculate and insinuate."

  Skarre remembered the pictures from the day's papers. The photos of Ida, the type of bicycle she had, a yellow Nakamura, the type of sweatsuit she had been wearing. And the wording: "This is where Ida was going." Dotted lines. A close-up of Laila's Kiosk.

  "They treat it like it's a soap opera," Sejer said. "I hope it's a short one."

  They nodded briefly to each other and went their separate ways. Once he got home, Sejer went into the kitchen and found a bag of dog food. His dog, Kollberg, who had been lying on the floor waiting for his master, stirred gingerly. However, the sound of the dry feed rattling in his metal bowl made him stand up. He trudged wearily into the kitchen. The dog, a Leonberger, was so old he defied all statistics. He looked up at Sejer with dark, impenetrable eyes. Sejer found it hard to look back at him. He knew the dog was suffering, that he ought to be spared further pain. Soon, he thought. But not today. I'll wait till Sara comes back home. He cut himself a slice of bread and put some salami on top. Then he found a tube of mayonnaise in the fridge. He stood for a while weighing up the pros and cons. He considered mayonnaise an extravagance. He unscrewed the cap and was struck by the absurdity of his situation. Here he was squeezing mayonnaise on his sandwich in the shape of an 8 before sitting down to eat it. While Helga Joner could barely breathe.

  ***

  Sejer woke up at 6:00 A.M. The dog was lying on the floor next to his bed. He registered his mast
er's light movements on the mattress and raised his head. A second later the alarm gave off three short beeps. Sejer leaned over the edge of the bed and patted Kollberg on the head. The dog's skull was clearly outlined underneath his fur; he felt the bumps of it against his palm. Then he thought of Ida. She snapped into place in his mind. He stretched out his long body in the bed and tried to peer out from behind the curtains, searching for daylight. It was no good; he had to get up to have a look. He stared out at the damp morning mist, which lay like a lid across the town. For breakfast he ate two pieces of crispbread with cheese and red pepper. Coaxed Kollberg down the stairs and walked round the block once. Let him back into the living room. It was 7:15 when he opened the door to his office with fresh newspapers tucked under his arm. IDA STILL MISSING was the headline.

  The first meeting of the day was about dividing up tasks. Not that there was much to divide up in the Ida Joner case. In the first stage it was a question of checking out anyone with a record. People who had finished serving their sentences, people who might have been out on leave during the relevant period, and those previously charged but never convicted. The blunt truth was that they were all waiting for someone to stumble across Ida's mutilated body so they could start the investigation properly. Her photo was pinned up on the board in the meeting room. Her smile sent a jolt of pain through them every time they passed it, and in the midst of it all a slender hope still existed that Ida would suddenly stroll casually into her mother's house with the most incredible story to tell.