Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  We drive on to Saint-Lizier, but when we get there the ice-cream shop is closed. We get out of the car and press our noses to the window, trying to see the delicious ice creams in the plastic boxes behind the counter.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Maman, and she looks so sad, I think she might cry. ‘I know another place we can try.’

  We drive again, through empty grey streets where the snow has turned to slush. There’s a gas station at the edge of the town, with flashing neon signs. Inside, there’s a freezer with a choice of Magnum Classic or Magnum Almond.

  ‘Fabulous,’ says Maman. ‘Choose which ones you want, girls.’

  She goes around the little shop and finds some things she needs, and in the end she buys quite a few things, so the young man behind the counter has to come and help her put it all in the car. Josie and I bite into the delicious hard chocolate shell and watch him load some cans of gasoline, a long piece of rope and a metal wrench into the car.

  *

  At home, the man shows me and Josie how to make a little chicken from twigs and cotton wool. He gives us Belgian chocolate from his jacket pockets and says, ‘The Belgians suck at most things, but, oh man, can they make chocolate.’ He tells stories about when he was young and traveled around the Baltic Sea on a big sailing boat for naughty boys who got kicked out of school. He drinks wine and stares at Maman when we have dinner – a whole roasted goose from a farm nearby. Maman and the man drink more wine and Maman laughs almost every time the man speaks. I’m glad they’re friends again. I was so afraid this morning.

  When it’s time for bed, Maman helps the man to sit down in front of the fireplace in the library, Kimmi on his lap and more wine in his hand, and then she takes us up to bed.

  ‘We want a sleepover in the tent!’ says Josie.

  ‘Okay,’ says Maman. ‘But, listen, I need you to stay up here no matter what, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘No matter what. Do you understand?’

  We nod.

  ‘Goodnight, my sweethearts. I love you so.’

  I’m almost asleep when Josie says, ‘Lulu-Rose, wake up!’

  ‘I’m awake.’

  ‘Let’s go downstairs.’

  ‘We can’t. Maman said.’

  ‘Let’s do it anyway. I think Mikko is Maman’s boyfriend. Did you notice how much she laughed at everything he said?’

  ‘Antoine is Maman’s boyfriend.’

  ‘No, she said he’s not.’

  ‘But he is,’ I say. I want him to be. He’s kind and he has lots of dogs. ‘Maman hates Mikko. She was only pretending.’ It’s only when I say it out loud that I know that this is true.

  ‘No, she loves him. Let’s go spy on them – we’ll see them kissing!’ Josie smacks her lips and makes kissing sounds and we both laugh, but I’m afraid.

  We stop on the landing and listen. The house is quiet. We creep slowly down the stairs, holding hands in the dark. We get closer to the library and now we can hear the flames crackling in the fireplace, Maman laughing softly, and some music. When we get to the sitting room, we can see into the library, and we see Maman taking the wine glass from the man and putting it on the table. She holds her hand strangely in front of his mouth for a moment, then she gets on top of him and kisses his mouth. Josie was right. We stuff our hands into our mouths and sneak slowly back out of the room and up the stairs. Back in the tent, we fall asleep holding hands.

  *

  Moving orange lights, strange clunking sounds. I’m confused and it takes me a bit of time to work out where I am. I’m in the tent and someone is nudging me. It’s Josie. The night before comes back to me in little bits. The stories the man told, the adults laughing, us spying, Maman kissing him.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, her face glowing orange in the weird light.

  She takes my hand and pulls me up and we go down the hallway into my room. It’s dark, but because of the strange light coming from outside I can see us in the mirrored doors of the giant wardrobe. We look the same, in our long white nightdresses and with our long dark hair braided exactly the same.

  When we get to the window, Josie turns back around quickly and presses her finger to her lips. Then she beckons for me to stand like she is standing, pressed up against the wall next to the window.

  ‘We can see everything from here,’ she says, and I stare out the window, but I can’t be sure what I’m seeing.

  Next to the barn opposite there’s a giant fire burning. So that’s where the moving orange light is coming from. It looks like an enormous bonfire or maybe even a small building burning. A shape is moving to one side of the fire, and at first I don’t realize that it’s a person. Then it stops and walks around the fire, towards us, and I see that it’s not an ‘it’ but Maman. I look from the window to Josie, but she is staring at Maman outside, throwing water onto the flames from a square black can. She should be using a hose or something – I don’t think she can put the fire out with that can. The flames aren’t getting smaller at all, instead, every time she throws water at the fire, it bursts into even bigger flames, reaching for her.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I whisper.

  Josie shrugs.

  After a long while, Maman gives up trying to put the fire out and stands with her back to us, watching it burn, massive flames eating into the black sky.

  46

  Elisa

  It’s late when we finally land at Torp after a bumpy return flight. My mind feels foggy and sore, like any kind of thinking could hurt me. Perhaps that isn’t so strange, considering I have been up most of the night several nights in a row and have worked back to back for weeks. I no longer switch flight mode off on my phone the instant we touch down like I used to, my finger flicking the little button in my pocket while we were still screeching down the runway, engines loudly reversing. I need a few more moments of quiet before I have to speak with anyone. It’s a long time since I expected news of Lucia every minute of every day. I’ve learned to expect nothing but this unbearable blank silence.

  I open the aircraft door once the plane has come to a standstill at Gate 24, but as the electric stairs are lowered to the ground I catch sight of a familiar face, and then another. It’s Gaute Svendsen and Kristine Hermansen, the first two police officers Fredrik and I met at Sandefjord station that awful October night. We haven’t seen them in months. Lucia’s case is now mostly handled by Kripos in Oslo, as well as Scotland Yard and Interpol. Svendsen and Hermansen are sitting in an airport shuttle car at the bottom of the stairs, and behind them sits Haakon Kjeller and Fredrik, whose face is pale and blank.

  This is it. She’s dead.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I whisper to my colleague and I race down the stairs.

  ‘Elisa, sorry to turn up like this,’ says Kristine Hermansen. ‘Please don’t be too alarmed. There’s been an important development—’

  ‘Have you found her?’ My voice rings out, shrill, above the plane’s cooling engines.

  ‘Not yet,’ says Gaute as the shuttle car heads for the end of the terminal building. We’re bundled into another car, a big black police BMW with opaque windows. It sets off before the doors are even fully shut, and we’re ushered through a checkpoint at the edge of the airport area I wasn’t even aware existed.

  ‘We received an anonymous tipoff yesterday evening about an address in the Ardennes in eastern Belgium. The caller said that Lucia was there. Belgian police were on it immediately, and it turned out the house belongs to a man called Feodor Batz, who is known to police for several previous offenses. Among other things, he’s had convictions for trafficking and is a member of the Vicodius network, which, as you know, also has links to Mikko Eilaanen and Heiki Vilkainen. The gendarmes searched the house early this morning. Batz was arrested and is now in custody in Liège.’

  ‘And Lucia?’ I screech, panting. They have to tell me, before I pass out with anxiety. ‘Where’s Lucia?’ I stare frantically at Fredrik
, who’s not said a word yet but is gripping my hand fiercely. ‘What was this man arrested for?’

  ‘It would seem Lucia was held at this house.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ I can hardly get the words out, my heart is thumping so hard. ‘How do you know? Where is she now?’

  ‘Elisa…’ Kjeller speaks deliberately slowly, as though he’s talking to a child. ‘There’s something you need to know. We’ve found forensic evidence of Lucia at the house. We’re going to be sharing this information at a press conference today at 8.30, and I suspect there will be a media frenzy at this new development. But I want you to know that—’

  ‘Wait!’ I interrupt. ‘What do you mean by “forensic evidence”?’

  ‘Bloodstains were found. We’ve just had the results back and they match Lucia’s DNA. We’ve also found DNA traces that match Mikko Eilaanen.’

  ‘Now, it’s very important, Mrs Blix,’ interjects Kristine Hermansen, ‘that you remain focused on a positive outcome here.’

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing happens. It feels as though my organs are shutting down, my vision is fading, my heart is withering in my chest. She’s dead, is what they’re saying. ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘Oh God. Please… No.’

  ‘Elisa,’ says Gaute, ‘the bloodstains are undergoing full screening at present and we should know more very soon. From what the Belgian force said, we have the impression that it was an insignificant amount of blood, so it is absolutely not indicative of… of… anything at this time. There was significantly more forensic material from Eilaanen, and a preliminary theory we’ll be looking into is that he was killed by Batz and that Lucia has been moved to a new location, possibly by Heiki Vilkainen, who is believed to have been in the Ardennes region recently. It could well be that the caller was trying to make it look like Lucia is dead because they know we’re onto them.’

  47

  Selma

  She groggily opens her eyes but doesn’t immediately recognize her surroundings. She’s been so used to waking on the sofa, still holding a PlayStation console, or on her bed on top of the covers, Medusa’s back pressed against her face. A shaft of light is shining straight in her face through a gap in the curtain. She sits up and the last ten days come back to her in flashes: her father driving her back from Oslo to her childhood home, here, in Drammen; hours spent aimlessly scrolling through Instagram and sleeping. She feels faintly annoyed with her father for meddling in her life like this, but she also knows that it isn’t a great life she’s been living since she was let go from Dagsposten.

  She can smell coffee from the kitchen and her stomach growls. She picks Medusa up off the bed and carries her down the corridor.

  ‘Morning.’ Her father looks up from where he sits reading a newspaper, several others scattered on the table around him.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, flicking the switch on the kettle.

  ‘What are you doing today then?’ asks her father.

  ‘Going back up to bed.’

  He nods absentmindedly, his eyes scanning the front pages. ‘Selma, have you seen the news?’

  ‘No? I just woke up, Dad.’

  ‘There seems to be a major development in the Lucia Blix case.’

  ‘What?’ Selma reaches across her father and picks up VG.

  Lucia is there, her familiar face smiling sweetly from the front page: ‘Lucia Blix Very Likely DEAD, Says Crime Professor’ reads the headline. She grabs Dagsposten, which also has Lucia on the front page. ‘Lucia Blix’s BLOOD Found in Belgian “Hell-Hole”’; and Aftenposten – ‘Man Arrested in Belgium for Possible Connection to Lucia Blix’.

  She pulls her phone from her pocket and scrolls through some other news sites. The Blix case dominates all the headlines.

  Eilaanen Believed Dead, Lucia Blix Unaccounted For

  Vicodius Network Busted in Belgium!

  Caller Said Lucia Blix Has Been KILLED

  Lucia: Did She DIE Here?

  Blix Parents Faced with Tragic New Evidence

  Selma’s heart picks up its pace as she scans through several articles. The blood found in Belgium has been established as Lucia’s and Mikko Eilaanen’s, though police won’t divulge whether it’s recent. The police confirm that the ground-breaking discovery was made after a house raid in the early hours of yesterday, following a tipoff from an anonymous source.

  Selma wonders what Elisa and Fredrik Blix are doing in this exact moment, how they can even begin to deal with this terrible new information. ‘We’ll never give up hope,’ says a spokesperson for the Blix couple, according to NRK.no.

  She feels a pulsating excitement building in her gut, mixed with a cold dread. First the blood; will it be a body next?

  Back in her bedroom, she opens her laptop and scrolls through the most recent articles. Two months ago Scotland Yard began to assist the Norwegian police in the investigation as they have amassed potentially relevant material in the ongoing search for Madeleine McCann, Operation Grange. Nothing has come of this to date. Hans Gundersen spoke at a press conference on 7 March, updating Norwegian and international media on the case. ‘It is our continued belief that Lucia Blix remains alive,’ he said. ‘We are currently following several new leads in cooperation with Scotland Yard.’

  On 19 October, six months ago, on the one-year anniversary of Lucia’s abduction, Elisa and Fredrik Blix gave a short interview to NRK, the national broadcasting corporation. Selma pores over the images of the bereaved parents, who look as though they’ve aged ten years, not one, since Lucia was taken. Fredrik holds a previously unseen picture of Lucia in his hands, a private photo of the little girl standing in front of a fireplace, wearing a stripy pink woolen suit, the kind Norwegian children wear underneath their snowsuits, a half-eaten raisin bun clutched in her fist. Her face is glowing with health, youth and exertion – she looks as though she’s just come in from skiing.

  Selma watches the interview clip over and over: the mother looking imploringly into the camera, saying, ‘Please… Please… Please…’, the little girl smiling innocently at the camera. Then something happens – something Selma has both consciously and unconsciously avoided for a long time. It’s as though she is able to step into the photograph with the little girl. She can hear the crackle of the firewood burning in the hearth behind the child, she can feel its warmth against the back of her thighs. She can see the outline of the person taking the picture, their face obliterated by the bright burst of the flash. She can smell the sausages cooking on the stove in the primitive galley kitchen next door and taste the aftertaste of cardamom and yeast from the raisin bun in Lucia’s hand. She can see the little boy, Lyder, spinning around on the floor over by the rocking chair in pursuit of a toy train, one yellow-socked foot caught in the corner of the photo. For a long while, Selma moves around the scene in her mind. When she opens her eyes again, she feels weak and depleted like she always does after expending so much energy on building these mental images. But she also feels the stirrings of something in her gut: a desire to return to her life, and to work. To the Blix case.

  *

  In the afternoon, Selma is sitting at the kitchen table fully dressed when her father returns from work. She’s even put mascara and eyeliner on, and her father does an exaggerated double-take when he sees her. He looks impressed, then alarmed, remembering that his only child is basically a deadbeat now.

  ‘Selma… what’s going on? You look… like yourself again.’

  ‘I was wondering if you could drive me to the station. I’d like to go back to Oslo.’

  ‘But… why? I thought you were going to stay for another few days?’

  ‘I’ve realized that you were right, Dad. I need to get my life back on track. I’m going to start boxing again. And see if I can get going with some freelance stuff.’

  ‘Well, that’s great news!’ Alf’s face is glowing with pride and excitement, and Selma feels moved, realizing how worried he must have been for her. ‘Do you have anything in mind, writing-wise?’

  ‘Yes.
I want to return to the Blix case.’

  ‘Oh.’ His expression instantly darkens at the mention of the Blix case. Selma knows he blames that case for her breakdown following her departure from Dagsposten.

  ‘I want to look at it from a different angle. From the inside.’

  ‘From the inside.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Selma. That case… I don’t think they’ll ever solve it. She’s dead, poor kid. It seems pretty obvious.’

  ‘How is that obvious?’

  ‘They found her blood, Selma.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her dead. The fact is, someone knows something. And that person phoned in a tipoff to the police, which is interesting on so many levels. Why tell the police that she was killed in Belgium? And why now? That person wanted the police to know that Lucia was there. And that Eilaanen is dead.’

  ‘Possibly. Sounds like the Vicodius network has an inside leak.’

  ‘Sounds like a decoy to me. Like pointing out one thing to divert attention from something else that’s happening, perhaps fairly obviously.’

  ‘Selma, that’s all speculation…’

  ‘Someone knows something. And they’re talking. We just need to listen.’

  ‘But she’s been gone, what, eighteen months now? Think about what that kid will have been through…’ Her father shakes his head sadly.

  ‘We don’t know anything about that, Dad. It’s all speculation. And even if you’re right, do you think that little girl will have given up on herself, on hope?’

  ‘Well, maybe not, but—’

  ‘The survival instinct is stronger than anything else. She’ll be hoping and believing still, I’m sure of it, no matter what. That little girl is strong.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do. I can see it in her eyes.’

  Her father nods thoughtfully. He knows how perceptive and sensitive his daughter is, and when she senses something about someone, she is generally spot on. ‘I guess I’m just worried about you, Selma. That case almost broke you…’