by Jo Nesbo
Skarre chewed his lower lip. “He’s a damn good detective. That’s enough for me.”
“You like him?” Bratt asked.
Skarre grinned. He turned and looked straight into her eyes.
“Like, dislike,” he said. “I don’t think I could say one or the other.”
He pushed back his chair, put his feet on the desk, stretched and gave a semi-yawn. “What are you working on so late at night?”
It was an attempt to gain the upper hand. After all, she was only a low-ranking detective. And new.
But Katrine Bratt just smiled as if he had said something funny, walked out the door and was gone.
Disappeared. Speaking of which. Skarre cursed, sat up in the chair and went back to his computer.
Harry woke up and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. How long had he been asleep? He turned and looked at the clock on his bedside table. A quarter to four. The dinner had been an ordeal. He watched Rakel’s mouth speaking, drinking wine, chewing meat and devouring him as she told him about how she and Mathias were going to Botswana for a couple of years; the government had a good setup there to fight HIV but was short of doctors. She asked whether he was seeing anyone. And he answered that he had seen his childhood pals Øystein and Tresko. The former was an alcoholic, taxi-driving computer freak; the latter an alcoholic gambler who would have been the world poker champion if he had been as good at maintaining his own poker face as he was at reading others’. He even began to tell her about Tresko’s fatal defeat in the world championships in Las Vegas before he realized he had told her before. And it wasn’t true that he had seen them. He hadn’t seen anyone.
He noticed the waiter pouring booze into the glasses on the adjacent table and for one crazy moment he thought about tearing the bottle out of his hands and putting it to his mouth. Instead he agreed to take Oleg to a concert the boy had begged Rakel to let him see. Slipknot. Harry had omitted telling her what kind of band she was letting loose on her son, since he fancied seeing Slipknot himself. Even though bands with the obligatory death rattle, satanic symbols and speeded-up bass drum usually made him laugh, Slipknot was in fact interesting.
Harry threw off the duvet now and went into the kitchen, let the water from the tap run cold, cupped his hands and drank. He had always thought water tasted better like that, drunk from his own hands, off his own skin. Then he suddenly let the water run into the sink again and stared at the black wall. Had he seen anything? Something moving? No, not a thing, just movement itself, like the invisible waves underwater that caress the sea grass. Over dead fibers, fingers so thin that they can’t be seen, spores that rise at the smallest movement of air and settle in new areas and begin to eat and suck. Harry switched on the radio in the sitting room. It had been decided. George W. Bush had been given another term in the White House.
Harry went back to bed and pulled the duvet over his head.
Jonas was awoken by a sound and lifted the duvet off his face. At least he thought it had been a sound. A crunching sound, like sticky snow underfoot in the silence between the houses on a Sunday morning. He must have been dreaming. But sleep would not return even when he closed his eyes. Instead fragments of the dream came back to him. Dad had been standing motionless and silent in front of him with a reflection in his glasses that lent them an impenetrable, icelike surface.
It must have been a nightmare, because Jonas was scared. He opened his eyes again and saw that the chimes hanging from the ceiling were moving. Then he jumped out of bed, opened the door and ran across the corridor. By the stairs to the ground floor he managed to stop himself, looking down into the darkness, then didn’t pause again until he was in front of his parents’ bedroom and pressing down the handle with infinite caution. Then he remembered that his dad was away, and he would wake his mom whatever he did. He slipped inside. A white square of moonlight extended across the floor to the undisturbed double bed. The numbers on the digital alarm clock were lit up: 1:11. For a moment Jonas stood there, bewildered.
Then he went out into the corridor. He walked toward the staircase. The darkness of the stairs lay there waiting for him, like a vast open void. Not a sound could be heard from down below.
“Mommy!”
He regretted shouting the moment he heard his own terror in the brief, harsh echo. For now it knew, too. The darkness.
There was no answer.
Jonas swallowed. Then he began to tiptoe down the stairs.
On the third step down he felt something wet under his feet. The same on the sixth. And the eighth. As if someone had been walking with wet shoes. Or wet feet.
In the living room the light was on, but there was no Mommy. He went to the window to look at the Bendiksens’ house. Mommy occasionally went over to see Ebba. But all the windows were dark.
He walked into the kitchen and over to the telephone, successfully keeping his thoughts at bay, not letting the darkness in. He dialed his mother’s mobile phone number. And was jubilant to hear her soft voice. But it was a message asking him to leave his name and wishing him a nice day.
And it wasn’t day, it was night.
On the porch he stuffed his feet into a pair of his father’s large shoes, put on a padded jacket over his pajamas and went outside. Mom had said the snow would be gone by tomorrow, but it was still cold, and a light wind whispered and mumbled in the oak tree by the gate. It was no more than a hundred yards to the Bendiksens’ house, and fortunately there were two streetlamps on the way. She had to be there. He glanced to the left and to the right to make sure there was no one who could stop him. Then he caught sight of the snowman. It stood there as before, immovable, facing the house, bathed in the cold moonlight. Yet there was something different about it, something almost human, something familiar. Jonas looked at the Bendiksens’ house. He decided to run. But he didn’t. Instead he stood feeling the tentative, ice-cold wind go right through him. He turned slowly back to the snowman. Now he realized what it was that had made the snowman so familiar. It was wearing a scarf. A pink scarf. The scarf Jonas had given his mother for Christmas.
4
DAY 2
The Disappearance
By the middle of the day the snow had melted in Oslo city center. But in Hoff there were still patches on lawns on both sides of the road as Harry Hole and Katrine Bratt drove along. On the radio Michael Stipe was singing about a sinking feeling, about what was bringing it on, knowing that something had gone wrong and about the boy in the well. In the middle of a quiet estate on an even quieter street Harry pointed to a shiny silver Toyota Corolla parked by the fence.
“Skarre’s car. Park behind him.”
The house was large and yellow. Too big for a family of three, Harry thought as they walked up the gravel path. Everything around them dripped and sighed. On the lawn stood a snowman with a slight list and poor future prospects.
Skarre opened the door. Harry bent down to study the lock.
“No signs of a break-in anywhere,” Skarre said.
He led them into the living room, where a boy was sitting on the floor with his back to them watching a cartoon channel on TV. A woman got up off the sofa, shook hands with Harry and introduced herself as Ebba Bendiksen, a neighbor.
“Birte has never done this type of thing before,” she said. “Not as long as I’ve known her, anyway.”
“And how long’s that?” Harry asked, looking around. In front of the TV were large pieces of heavy leather furniture and an octagonal coffee table of darkened glass. The tubular steel chairs around the dining table were light and elegant, the type Rakel liked. Two paintings hung on the walls, both portraits of bank-manager-like men staring down at him with solemn authority. Beside them, modernist abstract art of the kind that had succeeded in becoming unmodern and so very modern again.
“Ten years,” said Ebba Bendiksen. “We moved into our house across the road the day Jonas was born.” She nodded toward the boy, who was still motionless, staring at careering birds and exploding coyotes.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“The boy rang the bell at about a quarter past one,” Skarre said, looking down at his notes. “Police were phoned at one-thirty.”
“My husband and I went back with Jonas and searched the house first,” Ebba Bendiksen explained.
“Where did you look?” Harry asked.
“In the cellar. In the bathrooms. In the garage. Everywhere. It’s very odd that anyone would do a runner like that.”
“Do a runner?”
“Disappear. Vanish. The policeman I spoke to on the phone asked if we could take care of Jonas, and said we should call everyone Birte knew and who she might be staying with. And then wait until early today to find out if Birte had gone to work. In eight out of ten cases, he explained, the missing person reappeared after a few hours. We tried to get hold of Filip—”
“The husband,” Skarre interjected. “He was in Bergen lecturing. He’s a professor of something or other.”
“Physics.” Ebba Bendiksen smiled. “However, his mobile phone was switched off. And we didn’t know the name of the hotel where he was staying.”
“He was contacted in Bergen this morning,” Skarre said. “He should be here soon.”
“Yes, thank God,” Ebba said. “So when we called Birte’s workplace this morning and she hadn’t turned up at the customary time, we called you back.”
Skarre nodded in confirmation. Harry signaled that Skarre could continue his conversation with Ebba Bendiksen, went over to the TV and sat down on the floor beside the boy. On the screen, a coyote was lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite.
“Hello, Jonas. My name’s Harry. Did the other policeman tell you that things like this almost always turn out fine? People disappear and then they turn up of their own accord?”
The boy shook his head.
“But they do,” Harry said. “If you had to guess, where do you think your mother would be now?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know where she is.”
“I know you don’t know, Jonas. None of us does right now. But what’s the first place that would occur to you if she wasn’t here or at work? Don’t think about whether it’s likely or not.”
The boy didn’t answer, just stared at the coyote desperately trying to throw away the stick of dynamite that had got stuck to his hand.
“Is there a cabin or something like that where you go?”
Jonas shook his head.
“A special place where she likes to go if she wants to be on her own?”
“She doesn’t want to be on her own,” Jonas said. “She wants to be with me.”
“Just with you?”
The boy turned and looked at Harry. Jonas had brown eyes, like Oleg. And in the brown Harry saw the horror he had been expecting and the anger he had not.
“Why did they go?” the boy asked. “The ones who come back?”
Same eyes, Harry thought. Same questions. The important ones.
“For all sorts of reasons,” Harry said. “Some got lost. There are various ways of getting lost. And some only needed a break and went off to get some peace.”
The front door slammed and Harry saw the boy start.
At that moment the dynamite exploded in the coyote’s hand, and behind them the living-room door opened.
“Hello,” a voice said. Sharp and controlled at the same time. “What’s the latest?”
Harry turned in time to see a man of around fifty wearing a suit stride toward the coffee table and pick up the remote control. The next moment the TV picture imploded to a white dot as the set hissed in protest.
“You know what I’ve said about watching TV during the day, Jonas,” he said with a resigned tone, as if to tell the others in the room what a hopeless job raising children was nowadays.
Harry stood up and introduced himself, Magnus Skarre and Katrine Bratt, who until now had merely stood by the door observing.
“Filip Becker,” the man said, pushing his glasses although they were already high up his nose. Harry tried to catch his eye, to form the crucial first impression of a potential suspect, should it ever come to that. But his eyes were hidden behind the reflection from his glasses.
“I’ve spent my time calling everyone who might conceivably have been in contact, but no one knows anything,” Filip Becker said. “What do you know?”
“Nothing,” said Harry. “But the first thing you can do to help us is to find out if any suitcases or clothes are missing, so that we can formulate a theory.” Harry studied Becker before continuing. “As to whether this disappearance is spontaneous or planned.”
Becker returned Harry’s searching gaze before nodding and going upstairs.
Harry crouched down beside Jonas, who was still staring at the black TV screen.
“So you like roadrunners, do you?” Harry asked.
The boy shook his head mutely.
“Why not?”
Jonas’s whisper was barely audible: “I feel sorry for Wile E. Coyote.”
Five minutes later Becker came back down and said that nothing was missing, neither travel bags nor clothing, apart from what she was wearing when he left, plus her coat, boots and a scarf.
“Mm.” Harry scratched his unshaven chin and glanced across at Ebba Bendiksen. “Can you and I go into the kitchen, Herr Becker?”
Becker led the way, and Harry signaled to Katrine to join them. In the kitchen the professor immediately began to spoon coffee into a filter and pour water into the machine. Katrine stood by the door while Harry went over to the window and looked out. The snowman’s head had sunk between its shoulders.
“When did you leave last night and which flight did you take to Bergen?” Harry asked.
“I left at around nine-thirty,” Becker said without hesitation. “The plane took off at eleven-oh-five.”
“Did you have any contact with Birte after leaving home?”
“No.”
“What do you think could have happened?”
“I have no idea, Inspector. I really don’t.”
“Mm.” Harry glanced out into the street. Since they had been there, he hadn’t heard a single car pass. A really quiet neighborhood. The peace and quiet alone probably cost half a million in this area of town. “What sort of marriage do you and your wife have?”
Harry heard Filip Becker stop what he was doing, and he added, “I have to ask because spouses do sometimes simply get up and leave.”
Filip Becker cleared his throat. “I can assure you that my wife and I have a perfectly good marriage.”
“Have you considered that she may be having an affair, unbeknownst to you?”
“That’s out of the question.”
“ ‘Out of the question’ is pretty strong, Herr Becker. And extramarital relationships are pretty common.”
Filip Becker gave a weak smile. “I’m not naïve, Inspector. Birte’s an attractive woman and a good deal younger than I. And she comes from a relatively liberal family, it has to be said. But she’s not the type. And I have a relatively good perspective on her activities, if I may put it like that.”
The coffee machine rumbled ominously as Harry opened his mouth to pursue the point. He changed his mind.
“Have you noticed any mood changes in your wife?”
“Birte is not depressed, Inspector. She has not gone into the forest and hanged herself or thrown herself into the lake. She’s out there somewhere, and she’s alive. I’ve read that people disappear all the time, and then they turn up again with a natural and fairly banal explanation. Isn’t that so?”
Harry nodded slowly. “Would you mind if I had a look around the house?”
“Why’s that?”
There was a brusqueness to Filip Becker’s question that made Harry think he was a man who was used to being in control. To being kept informed. And that argued against his wife having left without a word. Which, for that matter, Harry had already excluded in his
mind. Well-adjusted, healthy mothers do not abandon ten-year-old sons in the middle of the night. And then there was all the rest. Usually they used minimal resources at such an early stage of a missing-persons case, unless there were indications that suggested something criminal or dramatic. It was “all the rest” that had made him drive up to Hoff himself.
“Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it,” Harry answered. “It’s a methodology.”
He caught Becker’s eyes behind the glasses now. They were, unlike his son’s, light blue and shone with an intense, clear gleam.
“By all means,” Becker said. “Go ahead.”
The bedroom was chilly, aroma-free and tidy. On the double bed was a crocheted quilt. On one bedside table a photograph of an elderly woman. The similarity led Harry to assume this side of the bed was Filip Becker’s. On the other bedside table was a photograph of Jonas. There was a faint scent of perfume in the wardrobe containing ladies’ clothing. Harry checked that the corners of the clothes hangers hung with equal distance from one another, as they would if they had been allowed to hang undisturbed for a while. Black dresses with slits, short sweaters with pink motifs and glitter. At the bottom of the wardrobe there was a drawer section. He pulled out the top drawer. Underwear. Black and red. Next drawer. Garter belts and stockings. Third drawer. Jewelry placed in holes in bright red felt. He noticed a large gaudy ring with precious stones that glittered and sparkled. Everything here was a bit Vegas. There were no empty gaps in the felt.
The bedroom had a door leading into a newly decorated bathroom with a steam shower and two steel washstands.
In Jonas’s room, Harry sat down on a small chair by a small desk. On the desk there was a calculator with a series of advanced mathematical functions. It looked new and unused. Above the desk there was a poster with a picture of seven dolphins inside a wave and a calendar for the whole year. Several of the dates were circled and had tiny reminders added. Harry noted birthdays for Mommy and Grandpa, vacation in Denmark, dentist at ten o’clock and two July dates with DOCTOR above. But Harry didn’t see any football matches, trips to the movies or birthday parties. He caught sight of a pink scarf lying on the bed. A color no boy of Jonas’s age would be seen dead wearing. Harry lifted the scarf. It was damp, but he could still smell the distinctive fragrance of skin, hair and feminine perfume. The same perfume as in the wardrobe.
