Don't Look Back

by Karin Fossum

  "I like that," said Holland softly, "'return to ashes'."

  "It's true, isn't it? Some people want to be spread to the winds. Unfortunately, that's illegal in this country; we have very strict laws regarding the matter. According to law, each body must be placed in consecrated ground."

  "Not a bad idea," Holland said, clearing his throat. "But it's so strange with all the images that go through your mind. When you try to imagine what it's like. If you're buried in the ground, your body decays. And that doesn't sound very nice. But then there's the idea of burning."

  Decay or burning, he thought. What choice should he make for Annie?

  He paused for a moment, feeling as though his knees were about to buckle, but then he was able to continue, encouraged by the patience of the other man.

  "There's something about burning that makes me think of- well, you know – of Hell. And when I picture my girl..."

  He stopped abruptly, slowly turning red. The other man stood motionless for a long time, and then finally gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, "You have to make a decision for ... your daughter? Is that right?"

  Holland bowed his head.

  "I think you should take this very seriously. It's like having a double responsibility. It's not easy, no, it's not." He shook his lean face from side to side. "And you should take your time. But if you decide on cremation, you'll have to sign a statement that she never uttered a word of objection. Unless she's under 18, that is, then you can make the decision for her."

  "She's 15," he said.

  The superintendent closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he started walking again. "Come with me to the chapel," he said. "I'll show you an urn."

  He led Holland down some stairs. An invisible hand had been placed over them, shutting out the rest of the world. They leaned towards each other, the superintendent to lend support, Holland to receive warmth. Downstairs the walls were rough and whitewashed. At the bottom stood a red-and-white floral arrangement, and a suffering Christ stared down at them from the cross on the wall. Eddie pulled himself together. He sensed that his cheeks had regained their colour, and he felt more at ease.

  The urns stood on shelves along the walls. The superintendent lifted one down and handed it to Holland. "Go ahead and hold it. Nice, isn't it?"

  He touched the urn and tried to envision what had been his daughter, that he was holding her in his arms. The urn looked like metal, but he knew that it was a biodegradable material, and it felt warm in his hands.

  "So now I've told you what happens. That's all there is to it, I haven't left anything out."

  Eddie Holland ran his fingers over the gold-coloured urn. It did feel good in his hand, with a solid weight to it.

  "The urn is porous so that air from the earth can get in and speed up the process. The urn will disappear too. There's something mysterious and grand about the fact that everything disappears, don't you think?"

  He smiled with reverence. "And we will too. Even this building, and the paved road outside. But all the same," he said, taking a firm grip on Eddie's arm, "I still like to believe that there's something greater in store for us. Something different and exciting. Why shouldn't there be?"

  Holland looked at him, almost in surprise.

  "On the outside we put a label with her name on it," he said in conclusion.

  Holland nodded. Realised that he was still on his feet. Time would go on passing, minute after minute. Now he had felt a small part of the pain, moved a little bit down the path, with Annie. Imagined the flames, and the roar of the oven.

  "It should say Annie," he said. "Annie Sofie Holland."

  When he came home, Ada was bending over the sink, listlessly washing some muddy red potatoes. Six potatoes. Two each. Not eight, like she was used to. It looked so paltry. Her face was still set in pain, it had set rigid the second she bent over the gurney at the hospital and the doctor drew back the sheet. Afterwards the expression remained like a mask that she couldn't move.

  "Where have you been?" she asked tonelessly.

  "I've been thinking about it," Holland said. "And I think we should have Annie cremated."

  She dropped the potato and stared at him. "Cremated?"

  "I've been thinking about it," he said. "The fact that someone... assaulted her. And left a mark on her. I want it gone!"

  He leaned heavily against the counter and gave her an imploring look. It was rare for him to ask for anything.

  "What kind of mark?" she asked as if she hardly cared, picking up the potato again. "We can't have Annie cremated."

  "You just need time to get used to the idea," he said, a little louder than before. "It's a beautiful custom."

  "We can't have Annie cremated," she repeated, as she continued to scrub. "They called from the prosecutor's office. They said we couldn't have her cremated."

  "But why not?" he cried, wringing his hands.

  "In case they need to bring her up again. When they find the man who did it."

  CHAPTER 7

  Bardy Snorrason stuck a hand under the steel handle and pulled Annie out of the wall. The drawer slid almost soundlessly on well-oiled runners. He didn't associate the body of the young girl with his own life or mortality, or the mortality of his daughters. He didn't do that any more. He had a good appetite and he slept well at night. And because he handled the misfortune and deaths of others with the utmost respect, he figured that those who came after him would do the same with his own body when that day arrived. Nothing in his 30 years as a medical examiner had given him cause to think otherwise.

  It took him two hours to go through all the points. The picture gradually took on familiar signs as he worked. The lungs were speckled like a bird's egg, and reddish-yellow foam could be pressed out of the incisions. There was plenty of blood in the brain and stripe-shaped haemorrhages in the throat and breast muscles, which indicated that she had gasped violently for air. He read his notes into a Dictaphone: brief, terse, barely comprehensible observations that could be interpreted only by the initiated, and sometimes not at all. Later his assistant would translate them into precise terminology for the written report.

  After he'd been through everything he put the top of the skull back in place, pulled the skin over it, rinsed the body thoroughly, and filled the empty chest cavity with crumpled newspaper. Then he sewed the body back up. He was very hungry. He needed to have some food before he could start on the next one, and he had four open sandwiches with Jubel salami and a thermos of coffee waiting for him in the canteen.

  He caught sight of someone through the translucent glass in the door. The person stopped and stood motionless for a moment, as if wanting to turn around. Snorrason pulled off his gloves and smiled. There weren't many people of such a towering height.

  Sejer had to duck a little as he came in. He cast an indifferent glance at the trolley, where Annie was now wrapped in a sheet. He had pulled on the mandatory plastic coverings over his shoes, which were baggy and pastel-coloured and looked quite comical.

  "I've just finished," Snorrason said. "She's over there."

  Now Sejer gave the body on the trolley a look of greater interest.

  "So I'm in luck."

  "That's questionable."

  The doctor began washing his hands and arms from the elbow down, scrubbing his skin and fingernails with a stiff brush for several minutes and finishing by rinsing them for an equal amount of time. Then he dried off, using paper towels from a holder on the wall, pulled out a chair and slid it towards the chief inspector.

  "There wasn't much to discover here."

  "Don't destroy all my hopes straight away. Surely there must be something?"

  Snorrason pushed aside his hunger pangs and sat down.

  "It's not my job to determine the value of what we find. But usually we do find something. She seems so untouched."

  "Presumably he was a strong, healthy individual. He had the benefit of complete surprise. And he removed her clothing afterwards."

  "Presumably.
But she wasn't assaulted. She's not a virgin, but she wasn't sexually assaulted, or mistreated in any other way. She drowned, plain and simple. Her clothes were taken off, nice and easy after her death, all the buttons are in place on her shirt, none of the seams are ripped. Maybe he wanted to interfere with her, but was scared off by something. Or maybe he lost his nerve, or his virility; it could have been anything."

  "Or maybe he just wanted us to believe that he's a sex offender."

  "Why would he want to do that?"

  "To hide his real motive. And that could mean there's something behind all this that could be traced, that it wasn't an impulsive act by a disturbed individual. And besides, she must have gone with him willingly. She must have known him, or he must have made an impression on her. And from what I understand, it wasn't easy to make an impression on Annie Holland."

  He opened a button in his jacket and leaned over the counter.

  "Go ahead. Tell me what you found."

  "A 15-year-old girl," Snorrason said, intoning like a minister, "height 174 centimetres, weight 65 kilos, minimum of fat; for the most part the fat had been converted into muscle due to hard exercise. Perhaps too hard for a girl of 15. They should take things a little easy at that age, but that's probably not so simple once they've started. So, a lot of muscle, more than many boys of the same age. Her lung capacity was excellent, which would indicate that it took a long time for her to lose consciousness."

  Sejer looked down at the worn linoleum and noticed that the pattern was similar to the one in his bathroom.

  "How long does it actually take?" he asked. "How long does it take for an adult to drown?"

  "Anywhere from two to ten minutes, depending on the physical condition. If she was in as good a condition as I think, it most likely took closer to ten."

  Up to ten minutes, Sejer thought. Multiply that by 60, and that makes 600 seconds. Think of all he could do in ten minutes. Take a shower. Eat a meal.

  "Her lungs are enlarged. If she reacted as most people would, she first took a couple of deep breaths as she went under, what we call 'respiration de surprise'. Then she pressed her lips together until she lost consciousness, and after that a limited amount of water forced its way into her lungs. In the brain and bone marrow I found the presence of diatoms, a type of silica algae; not much, it's true, but that lake wasn't very polluted. The cause of death was drowning.

  "She had no scars from any operations, no deformities, no signs of malnutrition, no tattoos, no skin blemishes of any kind. She had her natural hair colour, her fingernails were unpolished and clipped short, there were no particulates of interest except for mud. Very nice teeth. A single ceramic filling in a lower molar.

  "No traces of alcohol or other chemicals in her blood. No marks from injections. Ate a good meal that day, bread and milk. No irregularities in the brain. She has never been pregnant. And," he sighed suddenly and fixed his gaze on Sejer, "she never would have been."

  "What? Why not?"

  "She had a large tumour in her left ovary that had started spreading to her liver. Malignant."

  Sejer sat there and stared at him. "Are you saying that she was seriously ill?"

  "Yes. Are you saying that you didn't know?"

  "Her parents didn't know either." He shook his head in disbelief. "Otherwise they would have said something, wouldn't they? Is it possible that she could not have known herself?"

  "Well, you'll need to find out if she had a doctor, and whether it was known. But she would have felt pain in her abdomen, at least during menstruation. She trained hard. Perhaps she had so many endorphins circulating in her body that the pain was masked. But the truth is, she was done for. I doubt they could have saved her. Liver cancer is virulent."

  He nodded towards the gurney where Annie's head and feet were clearly outlined under the sheet. "She would have been dead in a matter of months."

  The news made Sejer completely lose track of why he was there. It took him a minute to collect himself.

  "Should I tell them? Her parents?"

  "You'll have to make that decision yourself. But they're going to want to know what I have discovered."

  "It'll be like losing her all over again."

  "Yes, it will."

  "They're going to blame themselves for not knowing."

  "Probably."

  "What about her clothes?"

  "Soaked through with muddy water, except for the anorak, which I sent over to you. But she had a belt with a brass buckle."

  "Yes?"

  "A big buckle shaped like a half-moon with an eye and a mouth. The lab found fingerprints on it. Two different ones. One of them was Annie's."

  Sejer narrowed his eyes. "And the other?"

  "Unfortunately, it's not complete; it's not much to go on."

  "Damn," Sejer said.

  "The owner of that print clearly has something to do with all this. But it should be useful in eliminating people. That's something, isn't it?"

  "What about the mark on her neck? Can you tell if he was right-handed?"

  "No, I can't. But since Annie was in such good shape, he couldn't have been a weakling. There must have been a struggle. Strange that she's so unmarked."

  Sejer stood up, "Well, she's not untouched any more."

  "Oh yes, she is! You can have a look for yourself. This is an art, and I'm not sloppy about it."

  "When can I get this in writing?"

  "I'll let you know, and you can send over that young officer with the curls. And what about you? Have you found a lead?"

  "No," he said. "Not a thing. I can't see any reason in the world why anyone would kill Annie Holland."

  Maybe Annie had chosen the title of a song and made that her password – maybe that flute tune she liked so much, "Annie's Song".

  Halvor brooded as he sat in front of the screen. The door to the living room stood open in case his grandmother called. She didn't have much of a voice left, and it took a great effort for her to get up from her armchair when her arthritis was bad. He leaned his chin on his hands and stared at the screen. "Access denied. Password required." He was actually hungry, but like so much else right now, that had to take low priority.

  At Headquarters Sejer sat reading a thick stack of pages covered with text and stapled at one corner. The initials BCH, standing for Bjerkeli Children's Home, kept popping up. Halvor's childhood made for depressing reading. His mother spent most of her time in bed, whimpering and fragile, with frayed nerves and an ever-growing armoury of sedatives in reach. She couldn't bear bright lights or loud noises. The children weren't allowed to scream or shout. Halvor had certainly been through the wringer, Sejer thought. Impressive that he could hold down a steady job and take care of his grandmother on top of everything else.

  Halvor typed various song titles into the blank field as they occurred to him. "Access denied" kept appearing, rather like a fly that you think you've killed but keeps on buzzing around. He'd been through all the numeric codes he could think of, all the relevant birth-dates and even the serial number on her bicycle which he'd found on the extra key he kept for her in a jar. She had a DBS Intruder bike and insisted that he keep one of the keys at his house. Which reminded him that he should give it back to Eddie, and at the same time he typed "Intruder" on the screen.