Black Seconds

by Karin Fossum

  When the telephone rang, and it did so frequently, everyone spun around and stared intently at whoever had answered it, feeling certain that they would be able to gauge from his reaction if it was news about Ida. The duty officer had the same hopes whenever he answered the telephone. They knew that it would happen eventually.

  A new search was initiated. They were still trying to decide if they should drag the river. The problem was where to start.

  Sejer drove out to Helga's house. He could see her face at the window; most likely she had heard the car. He got out slowly, very slowly on purpose so as not to raise her hopes.

  "I've almost given up," she said weakly.

  "I know that it's difficult," he said. "But we're still looking."

  "I've always known that Ida was too good to be true."

  "Too good to be true?" Sejer said carefully.

  Helga's lower lip quivered. "She was. Now I don't know what she is anymore."

  She went into the living room without saying another word. Then she walked over to the window. "Most of the time I stand here. Or I sit in her room. I don't do anything. I'm frightened that I'll forget about her," she said anxiously. "Frightened that she might slip away from my thoughts, frightened that I'll start to think or do something that doesn't include her."

  "No one expects you to be able to do anything now," Sejer said.

  He sat down on the sofa without being asked. He saw that her hair was unwashed and that she was wearing the same clothes as when he had first met her. Or perhaps she had changed back into them.

  "I'd like to speak with your sister," Sejer said.

  "Ruth? She lives a few minutes away from here, at Madseberget. She'll be here later."

  "You get on well?" he asked.

  "Yes," she smiled. "We always have."

  "And Ida's father. Anders. He has two brothers who also live close by. Ida's uncles?"

  She nodded. "Tore and Kristian Joner. They're both married, with children of their own. They live by the racetrack."

  "Do you see them often?" he wanted to know.

  She shook her head. "No, I don't. Funny really. But I know that they were out looking yesterday. Both of them."

  "Has either of them been in touch with you?"

  "They don't dare," she said quietly. "They're afraid, I suppose. I don't know what they're thinking. Don't want to, either. The pictures in my own head are bad enough." She shuddered as if some awful image had appeared at that very moment.

  "But Ida knows her cousins?"

  "Of course. She knows Marion and Tomme best of all. Ruth and Sverre's kids. She goes to see them often. She is fond of her aunt Ruth. She's the only aunt she's close to."

  "And your brother-in-law?" he asked. "What does he do?"

  "Sverre works in the oil industry and travels a lot. He's hardly ever home. Anders travels a lot too. They moan about all those nights they have to spend in hotels and how boring it is. Though I think that's actually the way they want it. Gets them off the hook when it comes to doing the day-to-day stuff."

  Sejer had no comment to make. "Is Ida fond of her uncle Sverre?" he said quietly.

  Helga was silent for a while, and slowly the significance of the question dawned on her. Then she nodded firmly. "Yes, Sverre and Ruth are Ida's closest family, apart from Anders and me. She's been going there her whole life and she feels at home there. They're decent people."

  This was said with authority. Sejer looked around the room. There were several photos of Ida on the walls, taken a few years apart. In one of the photos she was holding a cat.

  "She's very interested in animals," he said. "Her room is full of them. That cat there, you don't have it any more?"

  An eerie calm fell upon the room. Sejer was completely unprepared for the reaction provoked by his question. Helga buckled by the window and buried her face in her hands. Then she howled out into the room in a voice that cut right through him.

  "The cat belonged to Marion! It was run over and killed. But Ida has never had a pet of her own. Not even a mouse! I told her no. Always no! Because I didn't want one, and now I can't begin to understand how I could have been so selfish. So she's never had a kitten or a puppy or any of those other pets she wanted so desperately, none of the animals she begged me and begged me to get her, but I didn't want the hassle with pets, hairs and shit everywhere and so on! But if only she'll come home again, she can have all the animals she wants! I promise you, I promise!"

  Total silence. Helga's face was red. She started to sob loudly. "I'm at my wits' end," she cried. "I'm so desperate I decided I would go buy a puppy. Because then Ida would be sure to come home again. She'd hear the puppy whimper wherever she was and rush straight home. That was my logic. What an idiot."

  "Well," Sejer said. "You're allowed to buy a puppy."

  She shook her head. "I think so many strange thoughts," she admitted. "Utterly impossible thoughts." She wiped her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater.

  "I understand," Sejer said softly. "You're in a place you've never been before."

  Her eyes widened. "Oh no! I've been here many times. This is what I've always feared. I've been preparing for this. This is what having children is like!"

  "Okay," he said, "so you're in a place you visited in your mind. Is it different from what you imagined?"

  "It's much, much worse," she sobbed.

  ***

  Ruth Rix had walked her daughter Marion to the school bus. Now she was watching her son Tomme as he raised the milk carton to his mouth. Then she let him have it.

  "Tom Erik! I don't like you doing that and you know it."

  He put the carton down and tried to leave the kitchen.

  "You need to eat something," she ordered him.

  "Not hungry," he mumbled. She heard him out in the hallway. He was tying the laces on his sneakers. "Don't you have study leave today?" she called out. She followed him, he was not going to get away that easily.

  "Yeah?" he said, looking up at her.

  "Then I'll expect you to study," she said, thinking that this was his last, crucial year at sixth-form college.

  "Just going over to Willy's first. We're fixing the car."

  She digested this and looked at him. His face was still turned away from her. "You're making a big deal out of this dent," she said hesitantly. "It's only a car, for God's sake."

  He did not answer; instead, he tightened his laces. Hard, she noticed.

  "Bjørn called, he was asking about you," she remembered. "He's a nice boy, I think. You're still friends with him, aren't you?"

  "Yes, of course," Tomme said. "But he doesn't know about cars. And neither does Helge."

  "No, no. But Willy is so much older than you. Surely it would be better for you to be with friends of your own age?"

  "I am," he argued. "But I need help with the car. Willy has a garage. And tools." He said this without getting up. He even tied his laces into a double knot. His fingers were trembling. Ruth noticed this and felt troubled. A sudden sensation that this tender eighteen-year-old boy was someone she hardly knew. It was distressing. When he finally got up he continued to face away from her. He was fumbling among the hangers, looking for his coat.

  "Tomme," she said, this time more affectionately. "I know it's a pain about the car. But Ida's gone missing. She might even be dead. I can't bear it that you get so upset about a dent in the car. It upsets me because it's wrong!"

  Her outburst made him feel ill at ease. He wanted to get out of the door, but she grabbed his arm and forced him to turn around. She was astonished to see a tear in his eye.

  "Tomme," she said, frightened. "What is it?"

  He wiped his cheek quickly. "Oh, lots of things," he said. "This business with Ida. It's not that I'm not thinking about it. They're out looking for her today, but I don't know if I can handle going with them."

  "You thought it was that awful?" Ruth whispered.

  Tomme nodded. "Every time you lift a branch, your heart skips a beat," he said.
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  Then he was gone. She stood in the hallway listening to him leave. His footsteps were rapid, as if he was running. Ruth slumped against the wall. Everything is horrible, she thought. We won't survive this.

  CHAPTER 5

  Emil Johannes was on the road on his three-wheeler as usual. The weather was milder and the green paintwork gleamed in the September sun. People he passed turned to stare at his vehicle. It was very unusual and odd-looking. On his back he carried an old gray backpack. The expression on his face was closed and distant, and he was unable to relax. He had a lot on his mind. He kept a steady speed, just below forty. The flaps on his leather cap were down and the strings knotted underneath his chin. The truck body was empty and the black tarpaulin was rolled up like a sausage and tied with string. Emil was going shopping. He always shopped at the Joker, because it was a small local shop and he knew where everything was kept. Not that he was incapable of looking until he found what he wanted. But this was easier. It was always the same girl at the checkout. She had got used to the fact that he never spoke, and she never embarrassed him. He liked that everything was the same. And it meant that he avoided the traffic in town.

  Emil lived at the end of Brenneriveien. Past the racetrack and up toward the ridge, in a bungalow with a kitchen, a living room, and one bedroom. The house had a basement. He did not have a bathroom, but a nice toilet with a sink and a mirror. The house was clean and fairly tidy. Not because Emil was tidy, but because his seventy-three-year-old mother turned up every week to clean it. Emil's appearance was a little disturbing and depended on the mood he was in. What people saw was a heavy, broad, and slow man who could not speak. A man who would turn away if anyone stared at him, who would walk off immediately if anyone spoke to him. Still, he took an interest in people, especially when he could watch them from a safe distance.

  There was a lot of gossip about Emil's speech. Some thought that he was quite simply mute. Others that he had stopped speaking in protest at some dreadful trauma he had been subjected to in his childhood. From time to time the rumors flared up. There was talk of a fire in which his father and a multitude of siblings had perished while Emil and his mother, barefoot in the snow, listened to their terrified screams. The truth was that Emil was an only child. Others claimed that he could talk the hind legs off a donkey if only he wanted to. But he did not want to. He just wanted to be left in peace. No one ever wondered what thoughts and dreams might exist inside his enormous head. Most people assumed that not much went on in there. They could not have been more wrong. Emil thought of many strange things, and every thought was an image. Sometimes they were still; at other times they would roll slowly like a film in his mind, or flash rapidly like lightning. Every time he parked outside the Joker he saw a row of cards spread out in a fan with the joker at the top. Sometimes the joker might wink at him or laugh scornfully. That would startle Emil and make him angry. When he entered the shop and smelled the bread, he visualized his mother's hands kneading dough. No one could knead dough like Emil's mother. It was bashed and thumped, but ultimately her sweaty, plump hands handled it lovingly. When he thought of his mother he recalled her smell and remembered something she had once said or a phrase she was fond of using. Her voice, sharp like a carving knife, the plastic smell of new playing cards, the dough: all this took up so much space. There was so much happening in his brain that there was no room for contact with others. He perceived any approach as an intrusion. He preferred the images. He could handle those.

  It was his mother who took care of him, who made sure he had clean clothes and a clean home. Emil accepted that his mother came to his house, but at times she irritated him. She never stopped talking. He could hear her words and he understood them, but he felt that most of them were superfluous. The noise they made rolled toward him like waves and reminded him of the sound of heavy surf. When she started her torrential flow of words he closed up and looked stubborn. Not that this made her stop. She told him off, corrected him, ordered him about and made demands on him, but underneath it all she was very fond of him, and the truth was that she worried about him. She was scared that he might have an argument with someone, scared that he would frighten people with his appearance. He was never going to fit in and she had accepted that. She was also afraid that cruel people might want to harm him or force him into situations he could not control, because she knew the great forces hidden beneath his closed exterior. She had only seen it happen once. She had seen Emil go berserk in an insane and almost frenzied rage. It was a nightmare she managed to suppress most of the time, but it made itself known anyway, sometimes, in her dreams. Then she would wake up, drenched in sweat, terrified at the memory, at herself and her son. She was obsessed by the thought of what might happen if he were to become frightened again. Or if someone attacked him. At times her fear manifested itself as nagging.

  "Do you have to go around wearing that stupid old cap?" she would say. "Surely you could get yourself a new one? It would look so much better. I know you think your three-wheeler is the bee's knees, but you do realize that people stop and stare at you, don't you? Most people make do with two-wheeled motorcycles. It's not like there's anything wrong with your balance, either."

  She put on a martyred expression that was lost on her son. Afterward she sank down in shame because she had tormented him, but she just could not help herself.

  Emil parked the three-wheeler outside the Joker and went in. For a while he padded around the shelves on his wide splayed feet. He wore thick boots whether it was summer or winter. They were so worn that he could stick his feet into them without untying the laces. He carried the red shopping basket on one arm; he never did enough shopping to get a cart. Today he was buying coffee, milk and cream, a loaf of bread, and some soft cheese. When he got to the checkout he added three newspapers. The checkout assistant noticed the papers. Emil had the local paper delivered and did not normally buy the national ones. However, he had started doing so in the past few days. But then again, so had most people, she thought. Ida Joner's disappearance had affected everyone who came there to do their shopping. Everyone had their own views about what had happened, and the shop provided an opportunity to air them. She was keying in the prices when Emil remembered something important. He shuffled back toward the shelves and returned with a bag of unshelled peanuts. The checkout assistant frowned at the sight of them: she could not imagine why anyone would want to buy peanuts that had not been shelled, roasted, and salted. Emil always bought un-shelled peanuts. He was particularly sullen today, she thought. He never spoke to her, but he normally allowed himself plenty of time, as though the business of shopping was an important one, a ritual he enjoyed. This time he paid as fast as he could, his fingers trembling a little as he searched for change in his wallet. He stuffed his shopping into the old backpack. Then he left without touching his cap as a good-bye. The door slammed behind him. She could see him through the window as he mounted his three-wheeler. How offhand he seemed today, she thought, and immediately wondered how she could think that, given that he had never exchanged a single word with her.

  Emil started the engine. Once more he kept a steady pace, and headed for the racetrack. As he approached Laila's Kiosk he spotted a police car and a couple of officers. Emil tightened like a coil. Clenched the handlebars and stared deliberately right ahead of him. One of the officers looked up and noticed the strange vehicle. Emil had never had any contact with the police, but he had a profound respect for anyone who wore a uniform. Besides, the condition of his vehicle was such that he really ought to have it serviced, but his only income was his disability benefit and he could not afford it. He often thought that sooner or later someone would turn up with a pair of pliers and remove the license plates. Fortunately, the police were otherwise engaged. They were looking for this girl, Ida. He knew that and concentrated deeply so as not to distract them. He drove past them still staring rigidly ahead of him, but he sensed that he was being watched. Then he turned right. A few minutes later he took a left an
d reached Brenneriveien 12, where he lived. He parked and covered the vehicle with the black tarpaulin. His garage was full of junk; there was no longer any room for the three-wheeler.

  He entered the house. In the kitchen he stopped and listened. Alert like a cat. He put down his backpack on the table and took out his shopping. Opened the bag of peanuts and emptied a few into the palm of his hand. Softly he went into the living room. The door to the bedroom was ajar. He kicked it shut and stood for a while breathing heavily. The peanuts grew moist in his clenched fist. Finally he went over to the window. Emil kept a birdcage in which a gray parrot the size of a pigeon sat on a perch. It began singing a pretty, low tune to earn the peanuts. Emil stuck his fingers through the bars and dropped the nuts into the feeding tray. Immediately the bird ducked, grabbed a nut with its claw and sank its beak into it. A dry, cracking sound was heard as the nut split. At that moment the telephone rang.

  It was his mother.

  "Well," she said. "The thing is that I'm busy tomorrow and the day after, so we'd better do the cleaning today."

  Emil began chewing. But his mouth was empty and he had nothing to chew on.

  "I can't stay long," she went on. "I've got my sewing circle at Tulla's tonight and I missed the last one, so I really want to go this evening. I'll start the washing machine for you and then you'll have to hang up the clothes yourself. You can manage that, can't you? Just make sure you reshape them before you hang them on the line, otherwise they get crumpled. And we both know you're not very good at ironing. I'm just about to wash my own floors, so I'll be with you in about an hour."

  "No," Emil said, frightened.

  He regarded his mother as a cleaning machine, and now she would want access to every corner of his house. He visualized splashing water, foaming soap and his mother's face slowly turning red. He recalled the strong smell of Ajax, the upset when the furniture was moved from its usual place, fresh air coming in from the windows, which she insisted on opening, the nasty draught, the unfamiliar smell of freshly washed bed linen. He imagined—