Whore, that was what she was. There was no longer any doubt. There was no longer any way out of this. It was all her fault.
I see that you are scared.
If she had never existed, she would have avoided being here now. Then everyone would have avoided being here.
82
At the police station, the rest of the team, those who weren’t at the funeral, were in the conference room, studying the pictures from the crime scene. Thomas Lindstrand cleared his throat.
«Verner Jacobsen is out sick, and that’s too bad, because he’s the one who has the best overview of all the details in the case, but I’ll try to summarize where we stand now, as we enter the ninth day of the investigation. Heiki, you were present at a reconstruction that was done yesterday evening, can you tell us about it?»
Heiki nodded to the small group and brought the report up on the computer screen. He connected to the projector so that everyone could follow along with the video.
Total silence descended as the first images showed a deserted forest road with no streetlights. They could barely make out the figure that was moving at the far edge of the picture. The girl. She came walking toward the camera. It was Ida Madsen who had taken the role of victim, and for a moment she truly seemed just as young and vulnerable as a teenage girl. Blue down jacket, white mittens, jeans, long hair hanging loose down over her shoulders, no cap, fashionable boots.
«We assume that the girl came walking in this direction,» said Heiki. «She came from Linnea’s house, and here she is approaching the place where the crime occurred.»
Although there were no street lights on that stretch, there was a light-yellow tinge to the air, a sulfurous light.
«There are greenhouses in Lier that cause this special light effect, I’ve been told,» said Heiki. «It spreads when there’s low cloud cover. We were lucky that the weather conditions were more or less the same last night as the night the crime occurred. That special light means the forest is not as dark as when the weather is clear, but as you see, it’s still difficult to see details.»
Ida Madsen, alias Idunn Olsen, stopped and stood in the middle of the path for a long time.
«We don’t know what happened in these minutes,» said Heiki.
«Maybe someone came after her. Maybe she met someone. A car may have come, even if we haven’t found traces that indicate that. Someone may have come from the area down here.»
He pointed.
«From the obelisk. We don’t know how she ended up there.»
The image shifted. They were now down in the area where the body was found. Ida Madsen was lying on her back with one arm under her. Fredrik came walking toward her on the path that turned toward the obelisk.
«We see here how Fredrik is approaching the victim. According to his testimony, he knelt down by the girl. Then he calls out because he sees someone moving up on the path.»
The images showed Kristian running toward the scene. He took out his cell phone and made a call while he checked the girl’s pulse.
«And this is where the witness statements no longer correspond,» Heiki continued. «Fredrik maintains that Kristian stood a short distance away and called the emergency number. Kristian himself says that he checked the girl’s pulse.»
«How did the witnesses seem during the reconstruction?» Lindstrand asked, turning his gaze toward Ida Madsen, whom he knew had followed along carefully from the victim’s angle.
«Both were very upset and uncomfortable, naturally,» she said. «Fredrik was the one who was most uncertain. He changed his testimony twice. At first, he maintained that he had come from here,» she said, indicating on a map of the area.
«Then he changed his mind and said that he had followed this path here,» she continued, pointing at one of the other paths that led to the scene.
«There is a network of paths in the area,» Heiki interjected. «We’ve compared the testimony with the material we have available, but it’s impossible to reconstruct the course of events that way. What we know is that both witnesses were under the influence of alcohol, which obviously may have contributed to poor recollection, or that what they think they remember is wrong. To be sure, Fredrik had been drinking a good deal more than Kristian, according to what he himself reports, but since no breathalyzer test was taken that night, it’s impossible to say to what extent they were affected.»
«And how does Agnar Eriksen come into the picture?» Thomas Lindstrand asked. «We don’t see him.»
Heidi shrugged his shoulders.
«He was willing to take part in the reconstruction, but since he was drunk as a skunk, there wasn’t much he could remember other than that he was walking along this road at some point or other. He thinks he remembers that he went off the path someplace. We find that this may agree with footprints secured. It may indicate that he waded into the forest and laid down under a spruce. Of course, he may have encountered Idunn earlier. Since he had her cap, it’s probable, but he still denies having seen her. We won’t get any further there. According to Bitte Røed, he talks openly about his past, and he has admitted setting fire to his mother’s house. He almost seems ready to confess that he killed his mother too, but the problem is that he doesn’t remember that.»
Just then the door flew open and a young man from the IT department was standing there with a laptop under his arm.
«Are you interested in a new development?»
He went purposefully toward the projector and connected to it without asking permission. An image filled the large screen. Everyone held their breath.
A bare stomach. The head was not included in the image, but it was evident that this was a flat, young girl’s stomach. Black paint had been sprayed across it. Right on the skin. Big letters.
WHORE.
They stared at the image.
«Who is that?» Thomas Lindstrand asked.
«We don’t know, but the image was deleted from Idunn Olsen’s tablet.»
83
Verner Jacobsen heard the phone ring. He was lying on the couch, under a blanket that he had knit himself a few years ago, staring at a TV program about outer space. He had no idea what it was about. A vacuum had formed inside him, an empty space similar to hunger. He didn’t know if he could bear to answer.
«You have three missed calls,» Ingrid said, suddenly standing in front of him with the phone in her hand. «Should I just turn it off?»
«No, give it to me,» Verner said, easing up into a sitting position.
Thomas Lindstrand had called him three times and sent him two messages.
«I have to go to work.»
He was off the couch, the rumpled blanket left behind.
Ingrid looked at him, with distress.
«You know,» she said. «You’re going to make sure I have to go to another funeral before too long.»
Verner did not reply, but walked past her up the stairs to the second floor to change clothes. She was standing in the same spot when he came down again.
«You have so much nervous energy. We should hook you up to the power grid and save on our electric bills. Verner, you really should take it a little easy. We should go up to see your mother again, and we should...»
Everything we should do, Verner thought. A familiar pain in his abdomen. The breath that stopped right below the ribs. That is where it sits, he thought, the longing for something else. It sits there gnawing at my insides.
«New clues have shown up in the Idunn case. Sorry,» he said, but heard for himself that there was no apology in his voice, just a form of relief. «I’m not made to lie on the couch and think, Ingrid. I have to be on the move, or else I drown. I won’t be late.»
«No, you probably won’t be,» she said.
He heard how she was bleeding inside. I don’t mean to hurt you, Ingrid, he thought, but was unable to say that out loud.
Verner Jacobsen breathed easier as soon as he stepped inside the door of the police station. Here the thoughts about everything that was happening in his ow
n life had to give way to things that happened in other people’s. It felt good. He met Thomas Lindstrand in the corridor.
«Good to see you, Verner! I’m truly sorry to bother you when you’re in the middle of all this with your son, but we need you and—»
«It’s fine,» Verner interrupted him. He neglected to mention that his mother was sick. If he didn’t talk about it, he didn’t need to relate to it.
Thomas Lindstrand looked relieved and hurried on down the corridor. Verner stood there for a moment without being able to decide what he should do. He realized that he was right outside Bitte Røed’s office. He knocked twice briskly with the knuckle of his index finger and went in without waiting for an answer.
«Hi! Thanks for finding the hearse thief,» he said in a voice that was much lighter than he had expected.
«It was more like it was the thief who found me,» she said, laughing.
Her smile sent a soft pain through his body. Her red lips glistened. Like fresh blood, it struck him, and he found himself wondering why things always reminded him of death and destruction.
«Agnar Eriksen was just telling me how he’d got away from Tranby that morning,» she continued. «So, you can see that it was a fortunate side effect of the interview. Have you read the reports? That Agnar killed his father?»
«I took in the main points. Are you going to have another interview with him today?»
Bitte Røed nodded.
«It’s nice to be able to contribute, but it’s a little ironic that it’s thanks to him that I’m back on the case.»
«I’m glad you’re back. And you have a good starting point. Almost all traces lead in the direction of Agnar. If you get a confession from him, we can start concentrating on Christmas.»
Verner stood there without really knowing what else he wanted from her. The thought of Christmas suddenly struck him. Without Victor. Maybe without his mother. He and Ingrid were facing a quiet holiday in any event.
«What is it?»
Bitte looked worriedly at him.
«My mother is sick,» it came out of him, and he suddenly felt how empty that sounded. His gaze suddenly fell on the picture she had on the desk. They’ll be celebrating Christmas together, he thought. Bitte and the photogenic Kristian Skage. Newly in love and crazy. I never would have had a chance against that, he thought, touching his face automatically. Felt the rough skin from old acne craters. It was as if he was punctured.
Bitte stood up, and before he managed to ward it off, she had put her arms around him. She squeezed closer to him, and he felt how his body betrayed him.
«No, I have to get going,» he said, pushing her back. «Marte, Fredrik, and Linnea all have to be interviewed again in the course of the day. Some pictures have turned up on Idunn’s tablet and...»
He backed out.
«It’s fine,» he mumbled. «It’s going just fine.»
He tumbled into his own office and stood there gasping for breath in front of the window. He saw how the steam from his breath settled on the windowpane and blurred the building on the other side of the street. Focus! he wrote with one finger in the mist in the moment before it evaporated.
84
Marte entered the room with short, cautious steps, like someone testing the water on a cold summer day. She was unable to conceal her discomfort. The same woman from Child Protective Services accompanied her.
«Just sit down,» said Verner Jacobsen, pointing at the empty chairs. «You needn’t be afraid, Marte, but you do understand that we have to ask you again about what happened the night of Thursday, November 27?»
He struggled to keep the thought of his mother at a distance, and knew that was why he probably seemed a little brusque.
«Previously, you said that you went home alone that evening, and that you did not meet anyone on the way. Is that true?»
Marte was sitting on the edge of the chair.
«Did you walk home alone that evening?»
«Yes,» Marte answered without looking at him.
«You are aware that it is a punishable offense not to tell the truth in a witness interview?»
«But I did walk home alone.»
«Marte,» Verner began, making his voice as gentle as he could. «Did you know that we have found your footprints at the scene?»
This was taking a chance. The sock tracks were almost impossible to identify. But her father had said that she walked home with only one boot. Marte looked up, her whole young face filled with terror. He heard that her breathing was jagged, air coming out in unpredictable hiccoughs. It reminded him involuntarily of his mother. She got up from the chair and shouted, «You’re fucking crazy! You believe I killed Idunn!»
The woman from CPS got her to sit down again.
«I don’t believe anything,» said Verner.
Marte stared at the wall behind him.
«You should know...» she said slowly, as if she was tasting every word and found them nauseating before she spit them out. «I have actually dreamed about that many times lately, but you understand, dreams can never become reality. Since you’re so old, you ought to know that. I’ve understood that already. No matter what you dream of, it turns out wrong. Everything ends up a nightmare, regardless. My God! What do you want me to say? Yes, I killed her, I killed her! I killed her!»
Verner was pressed back in his chair by her outburst. Had he just heard a confession?
«Can we take it a little easy now, maybe?» said the woman from Child Protective Services.
Verner was unsure which one of them she was reprimanding.
«Marte,» he said in a controlled way. «Sit down. You have just said that you are the one who killed her, are you aware of what that means?»
«Don’t you get sarcasm?»
Marte sank down on the chair again.
«Was that sarcasm?»
«Obviously,» she muttered.
There was silence for a long time. An uncomfortable silence, but Marte scraped polish off her thumbnail and showed no sign of wanting to say anything on her own initiative.
«Where did you lose your boot?» Verner asked.
«I didn’t lose it,» said Marte, casting a hurried and surprised glance at him. «I threw it at Idunn’s head.»
85
In the adjacent interview room, Ida Madsen and Marius Moe were sitting with Fredrik Paulsen. Ida had pictures with her that were found on Idunn’s tablet. They were typical guy pictures. Taken by someone who wanted to humiliate, Ida thought.
«Do you recognize these pictures, Fredrik?»
She turned the screen toward him while keeping a sharp eye on the young face to pick up on any subtle changes.
Fredrik stared at the pictures, concentrated on sitting stock still. Yet he suspected that they had already noticed—that he knew.
«Are you the one who took these pictures?» Ida asked.
Fredrik shook his head while he tried to sort his thoughts. How in the hell had those pictures ended up on the police computer? He’d seen that Idunn had saved the images on the memory stick before she deleted everything from her tablet.
«Look at the pictures, Fredrik.»
The policewoman’s light but insistent voice forced him to stare at the screen. He did not want to look. The soft stomach. The hard lines. Her arm was barely visible in the image, but he could see the white stripes across the skin. She didn’t want to talk about that. He assumed that it had the same short-term relief as when he pinched the thin skin over his ribs, but he did not understand how she dared to cut so deep.
«What do you know about this picture?»
The voice brought him back to the police station and reality, but he would not say anything. He would not say anything about Marte. He had made a promise to himself not to betray her.
It was quiet in the room. Uncomfortably quiet.
«Fredrik,» Marius said, leaning toward him. «If you know something about who this is, where the picture was taken, and what is really going on here, I want you to tell me now. If you
don’t say anything, you will end up behind thick walls and reinforced glass. We can offer fixed routines for letting you in and out, a separate room with no Internet access, and four meals a day that you help prepare yourself. Does that sound enticing, Fredrik?»
Fredrik felt himself turning pale. He had no problem understanding what the man meant. No Internet? He swallowed. That was a dreadful thought.
«You have previously said that you had a can of spray paint with you at the party, but that you weren’t the one who used it. We’ve done a search at your house. A similar can of paint was found, with your fingerprints on it. It’s probably the same paint that was used on the obelisk. Now when a picture shows up of a girl’s stomach that is also tagged in the same way, we find it not just interesting, we find it suspicious. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?»
Fredrik nodded slowly without meeting anyone’s gaze. If he wanted to have any chance of getting away, he would have to say something.
«That can...»
«Yes...?»
«I had it with me when I left the party, and I was just going to fix something.»
He wondered how little he could get away with. He glanced up and met the eyes of the detectives for a moment. They sat quietly and expectantly.
«It wasn’t me who tagged first,» he said. «I was just going to add to something that was already there.»
«Where? And what was there first?»
«It said ’whore’... on the obelisk.»
«And who wrote that?»
He hesitated, biting his lip before he continued.
«It wasn’t that night. She sprayed it before.»
«Who is she, Fredrik?»
He hesitated at first, but then he took a deep breath and said, «Idunn.»
«Idunn wrote ’whore’ on the obelisk?»
«Yes, but there was a whole gang of us. That’s where we go to drink, and it was just a joke, you know that, don’t you?»
«You drink by the obelisk?»
«There’s nowhere else to go, so when we can’t be at Linnea’s, we go there.»
«But why did she write what she did? Who was meant to be called a whore, Fredrik?»
The Girl With No Heart Page 25
