Authors: Jorgen Brekke
“Did you argue last night?” asked Singsaker.
“I guess I was a little harsh. And she was in a bad mood when she left the house. But you don’t think that’s why, do you? Did she run away from home to punish us? That wouldn’t be like her. She’s impulsive, but she doesn’t stay mad for long.”
“Is she usually the one who takes the dog out for a walk?” Gran interjected.
“Yes. She loves that dog. Every day she sits and sings to the dog as she pets him. He’s her dog, and she’s the one who walks him.”
Singsaker got up to stretch his legs. The invigorated feeling he’d had after the morning swim was now gone.
“We’ll need the full name, address, and phone number of this Fredrik,” he said.
“Alm. Fredrik Alm,” said Ivar as he too stood up. “I don’t think we have his phone number, and they’re not in the same class at school, but he lives on Veimester Krohgs Gate. You can probably look up his exact address.”
“Thanks. What about girlfriends? Does she have any good friends?” asked Gran as she glanced at Singsaker, who had started walking around the room.
“Yes, there are a group of girls she hangs out with. But Julie’s not the type to have one best friend. She’s friends with all of them,” explained Elise.
“We’ll need a list.” Singsaker sat down again, while Ivar went out to the kitchen. He came back after a minute with a sheet of paper.
“Here’s a list of her classmates. I’ve underlined the names of the girls she spends the most time with,” he said, handing the paper to Singsaker.
Then both officers stood up.
“We’ll be talking to some of your neighbors, as well as checking with her friends. At the moment we’re assuming that she’s staying with someone she knows. It would be a big help if you could make a list of everyone you can think of whose house she might have gone to. Relatives, friends who aren’t classmates, and the like. Let’s hope that we find her very soon.”
“So you don’t think that she’s…” Elise began hesitantly. “You don’t think this has anything to do with that case?”
“If you’re thinking about the murder near Ludvig Daaes Gate, it’s too early to say anything about that,” replied Singsaker. “There’s nothing to indicate that there’s a connection. The victim in that case was a stranger in town, and a good deal older than Julie. You should know that with most cases like this, the missing person shows up relatively quickly.”
“I heard that a music box was found near the victim. How horrible. I hope you’ll do everything to rule out the possibility that … that such a monster has taken our Julie.”
“Of course,” said Singsaker, hiding his annoyance that the detail of the music box had already been leaked to the public. “Don’t worry. There’s very little chance of any sort of connection,” he added.
Something prevented Singsaker from feeling as optimistic as he tried to sound. He had no idea whether he had reassured the parents or not.
“We need a photograph of her. With a neutral expression, where she’s not smiling,” he told them now.
Ivar Edvardsen found one in a kitchen drawer.
The photo was of Julie standing in the yard outside. There was no snow on the ground, and yellow leaves covered the trees behind her. At her feet sat a Saint Bernard. Her expression was serious but self-confident, and she looked older than sixteen. She had shoulder-length dark blond hair and brown eyes. Her skin was tan after a nice summer. Singsaker put the picture in his coat pocket.
Then he and Gran thanked the Edvardsens for their time and stepped out into the swirling snow.
* * *
“And this was supposed to be my day off,” said Singsaker as they walked along Markvegen.
“Yep,” said Gran. “And I had a doctor’s appointment.”
“Doctor? Nothing serious, I hope,” said Singsaker, immediately regretting saying that. He usually didn’t broach personal topics with the younger officers. But somehow it was little different with Mona Gran.
“Nothing serious, healthwise,” she told him. “But my partner and I are trying to have a baby. And it seems like nature may need a little help.”
Singsaker felt himself blushing. He wondered if this was what separated young people from those of his generation—this willingness to talk about intimate matters.
“It was no problem changing my appointment. And I know why they called us in today. Don’t you?”
Singsaker nodded.
“There’s something going on here. I can see a sixteen-year-old running away from a mother like that. But what I can’t figure out is the dog. Why take the dog along if you’re going to run away?”
Gran stopped and looked at him. They had almost reached the intersection of Ludvig Daaes Gate, and they could see the crime scene from where they were standing.
“I think we should talk to the boyfriend and the girls she hangs out with ASAP. Do you think we could get them out of class?” she asked.
“If we’re discreet about it,” said Singsaker, glancing in the direction of Rosenborg School. “No need to make a big deal. But we do have to have a little chat with all of them. What if I go over to the school and quietly make inquiries while you start knocking on doors in the neighborhood?”
Mona Gran nodded.
“I’ll call Brattberg too. I think we should send out a more detailed description. The bus companies and the train service should be notified, with special attention paid to Oslo. That’s usually where they end up, if they don’t go stay with people they know,” she said.
Singsaker gave her an approving look. He liked her decisiveness. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was promoted to chief inspector before he retired from the force.
“She may have left Trondheim, but we’re not going to find that girl hanging out with the junkies in Oslo,” he said. He almost thought that it was too bad. If they found Julie Edvardsen with nothing more than a few tracks in her arm, they’d be lucky.
“What do you think about the father?” asked Gran. “Didn’t he seem strangely unemotional?”
“He wasn’t unaffected,” replied Singsaker. “I’ve seen this so many times. Repressing emotion. It’s not an uncommon reaction to dramatic events. It’s his way of coming to grips with what’s happened. He’s probably convinced that she’s going to come home at any moment, as long as no concrete evidence turns up to tell him otherwise.”
“So there’s no reason to suspect him?”
“Suspect him of what? But you know how it is. As long as we don’t have a suspect, everyone is a suspect,” said Singsaker.
Then they headed off in different directions. Singsaker felt the opposite of Gran; he felt ancient.
* * *
Julie Edvardsen was young. She’d never thought about dying. Not until now.
She lay on the floor in a locked basement storeroom, breathing hard in the raw air. Her forehead ached, and she could tell that she had a bruise there, even though her hands weren’t free to touch it. He’d finally left the light on, so she could study the room. The floor was covered with patches of brown and dark red. The splotches on one wall were the same color, all the way up to the window, which was covered with newspaper. The sight made her feel sick to her stomach. She felt like giving up. At the same time, she knew that was the last thing she should do.
Slowly, as if over a bad Internet connection, the events that had brought her here lurched through her mind.
She had known something bad was going to happen the moment she set the shopping bag on the chair in the hall and turned around to look at him. Suddenly she didn’t recognize him. Or maybe she saw him for what he truly was. The apologetic, even helpless expression that she’d seen in his eyes was gone. What she saw was madness. A look that seemed to come from another world.
“I want you to sing for me,” he’d told her.
Then he slowly removed the sling from his right arm as she stood there in shock, and watched. His arm was not injured. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for such a ploy. How naïve could she be?
Under the sling he was holding something that looked like a black handle. She recognized the weapon from movies she’d seen. It was a stun gun, and she knew that one jolt could knock her out. Suddenly he pulled off his ring finger and little finger, and he stood there, holding the gun with three fingers.
Prostheses, she thought.
He casually tossed them to the floor and shifted the stun gun to his left hand.
“They just get in the way when there’s work to do,” he said. “But you have to admit they look quite real. Anyone who doesn’t know me would never notice them. And there aren’t many people who know me well.” He laughed. “I’m like a magician,” he went on. “The trick is to keep the left hand moving, so as to divert attention from the right.”
Then he fixed his eyes on her, took a few steps forward, and swung the gun toward her. But he’d underestimated her reflexes. Julie Edvardsen had been a goalie for the Rapp handball club since she was seven, so she was used to reacting quickly. A small step back and a lightning-fast bending of her knees were enough for him to miss, and his arm passed over her shoulder. She grabbed hold and, panic-stricken, bit his upper arm, puncturing both his shirtsleeve and skin. She tasted blood. He howled as she rammed her knee into his diaphragm. He dropped to his knees, and at that instant she ran past him, heading for the door.
But she wasn’t fast enough. His hand with the three fingers grabbed her ankle, and she fell against the door. Her head banged against the threshold and everything went black. Somewhere in the darkness she sensed a strong odor of sweat, and she thought she heard a voice humming a tune.
When she regained consciousness, she was lying here, on the ice-cold basement floor, bound and gagged. Julie swore at herself. How could she have been so stupid? He wasn’t a stranger. He was somebody she knew. But she still should have known. Shouldn’t she?
Trondheim, 1767
“
I
am quite convinced
that he has been impaled.
Horribile dictu.
”
“In other words, the venerable chief physician of the city agrees with my assessment. The young gentleman in front of us was killed in a highly irregular fashion.”
Chief of Police Nils Bayer looked at the gaunt, pale doctor who had helped him turn the body onto its side so they could see the back. He saw the beads of sweat on the doctor’s brow, underneath the new gray wig, which he’d had sent from the royal capital in Denmark only a few weeks ago. A wig like that must be hot in the summer, thought Bayer. He himself only used flour to powder his own hair, which he then tied at the nape of his neck. The Creator had been generous, giving him this much hair. It was at least as voluminous and robust as his enormous belly and his powers of perception.
Bayer thought it said a good deal about Dr. Fredrici that he chose to don his wig when they were the only two present. He shifted his gaze to the corpse. Visible between the shoulder blades was a small circular exit wound.
“I also find it highly implausible that he could have carried out this ungodly act on himself,” said the doctor. “Some object struck him with deadly force in the midsection and then forced its way out, at least partially, through his back. The blow must have been delivered from below, possibly by someone who was either shorter or stood in a lower position.”
“Not necessarily. The weapon could also have been thrust into him using an underhand blow by someone of the same height. Don’t you agree?” said Bayer. “What sort of object do you think we’re dealing with here, Dr. Fredrici?”
“That is precisely what troubles me. An ordinary lance or spear is out of the question. The injuries to the abdomen are too extensive for that. Perhaps we’re talking about a large sword and only the very tip penetrated through the back, at the same time as it caused major wounds in front.”
The two men again turned the corpse on its back. Crooking both his index fingers, the doctor pulled open the stomach wound and studied the entrails.
“Both the colon and ventriculus have been damaged. The weapon then continued upward, missing the
vertebrae thoracicae,
and then making a small hole in the cutis of the back. All this indicates a one-armed thrust from below. But in that case, I fear that a murderer is walking around the city with hugely powerful arms.”
“What about all the blood in the stomach? And yet the back is clean. How can you explain that?”
“It tells us that the deceased most likely bled to death while lying on his stomach.”
“Ergo, he was lying in a different position from the one than when we found him,” said Bayer, pleased to have confirmed the observation that he’d already made.
“Yes, that ought to be our conclusion.”
“What about his fingers? Can they tell us anything about this
cadavre silencieux
?”
“Nothing more than that they are still in the process of stiffening. Rigor mortis has set in but has not yet reached its peak, which usually occurs after twelve hours.”
“So the corpse is relatively fresh, as I thought. But take a closer look at the fingers,” said Bayer, lifting the fingertips of first one hand, then the other of the corpse. “Can you see that the fingernails are longer on the right hand, while they’re cut short on the left? And on his left hand, the skin of the fingertips seems abnormally rough. Yet his hands have no scars or injuries. This man did not engage in manual labor. What do you think calluses on only one hand might signify?”
“In truth, I have no idea. But something tells me that you have a theory.”
“In all modesty, I have to admit that a tiny suspicion has been aroused in my otherwise-simple brain,” replied Bayer.
At this point the gaunt physician straightened up and glanced down at the police officer, who was still holding up the hands of the corpse.
“My distinguished chief of police, protector of the city and enforcer of the law, we both know that such modesty is ill-suited to a man of your background, nor is it genuine. Kindly tell me what is on your mind,” said the doctor.
Nils Bayer was a bit offended to be so directly castigated. “As I see it, our cadaver was a musician. He played some sort of stringed instrument, using the fingertips of his left hand to press down the strings as he strummed them with the longer fingernails on his right hand.”