Authors: Jorgen Brekke
But now he stared gloomily at the headlines.
WHERE WAS SHE
? it asked in big letters above a photo of Silje Rolfsen. The article launched right in. It also had a quote from Singsaker.
“We’re working with several different theories,” he said. “That she was kidnapped by the killer is only one of the ideas we’re looking at.” For a change, Taneski had accurately cited what Singsaker had said. But that wasn’t the whole truth. In fact, so far they didn’t have a single plausible theory as to where Silje Rolfsen had been the weeks before she was killed. The idea that she might have been kidnapped by the unidentified perpetrator was the only angle that seemed credible. Over the past few days, their investigative efforts had almost definitely ruled out the likelihood that Silje had met Jonny Olin in Trondheim. But it had been verified that she’d bought a train ticket online from Oslo to Trondheim on the morning of January 3. Cell phone records had shown that she had used her cell twice at the train station that same evening. The police had traced these calls to her roommate in Oslo and to Olin, although the latter had not gone through, since Olin had been out of town with his boyfriend at the time. This had been confirmed by the boyfriend, as well as by records from the E-ZPass checkpoints to and from the coastal town. The police had also ascertained that Silje had not returned to her apartment in Oslo or visited any friends or family members. But most disturbing of all was the fact that after making those two calls from the train station in Trondheim, she had not used her phone again. The last purchase on her Visa card was for twenty-one Norwegian kroner on the Trondheim train on the same day she was reported missing. Neither her cell phone nor her wallet had been found on her body, or anywhere in the vicinity of the crime scene.
In Singsaker’s opinion, there was only one scenario that seemed reasonable.
When she couldn’t get in touch with Jonny Olin, whom she was planning to surprise with a visit, she must have started walking toward where he lived. Somewhere along the way she had met the unidentified perpetrator. Maybe she had mentioned that she was a stranger in town, which might have made her an easy mark. He must have enticed her to go home with him, maybe by offering to let her wait there until she could get in touch with her ex-boyfriend. Then he had held her hostage until he killed her three weeks later. That seemed like a plausible course of events, based on the facts of the case. But the question was, Why? What was the motive? The only thing this scenario told them about the killer—and this was something they could actually make use of in their investigation—was that he most likely lived somewhere close by. And that was actually very useful. It was always a relief to rule out what was every homicide detective’s worst nightmare: a murderer who was an outsider, a random killer who just happened to be in the area. The section between the center of town and Skyåsvegen contained the highest density of apartment buildings and rental houses in all of Trondheim, other than Moholt, which was populated by university students. Plenty of students, welfare recipients, single-parent families, and divorced individuals lived in the blocks of apartment buildings in the Møllenberg district. They were constantly moving in or out, and not all of the residents were actually registered at the address where they lived. The well-established, highly educated people with an equally high mortgage lived in the area above Stadsingeniør Dahls Gate, toward Kuhaugen. But this part of town also contained a lot of lofts and basement apartments. This area was known for its many rental units, few of them with approved building permits, and all of them with a great deal of turnover. So even though the police had a vague idea of where the killer might live, it didn’t help much in narrowing down the suspect pool.
Singsaker’s lunch arrived, so he put down the newspaper and tried to think of something else. And he almost succeeded, once he’d downed his first glass of Red Aalborg aquavit. He realized it did him good to go ice bathing one day a week. He felt a tingling in his skin, which was now warm, and he felt a deep sense of relaxation. He was just about to take his first bite of herring in mustard sauce on a piece of rye bread when his cell rang. It was Jensen.
They hadn’t said anything else when they parted company half an hour ago, so a phone call could mean only one thing: Something had happened. Something that was going to ruin Singsaker’s day off.
“Having a nice lunch?” asked Jensen, sounding ominously cheerful.
“Until now,” replied Singsaker, swallowing a small bite of herring.
“I’m afraid we could use a little help from you after all.”
“I see. Does this have anything to do with the case?”
“No,” said Jensen, pausing. “At least I hope not. A girl is missing.”
“Missing?”
“Yes. Sixteen years old, in the tenth grade at the Rosenborg School. She disappeared quite suddenly from her home last night. Her parents went to bed early, and they haven’t seen her since she took the dog out for his evening walk.”
“I don’t know, Thorvald. It sounds pretty routine. Teenage rebellion. You know how it is.”
“Yeah. Normally I’d agree with you, but there are a few things that don’t add up. Plus, we have to take into consideration where she lives.”
“And where’s that?”
“On Markvegen.”
“Oh shit,” said Singsaker. “That’s awfully close to Bernhard Getz’ Gate.”
“That’s why Brattberg wants to make it a priority. She wants you to go over there with Gran and have a talk with the girl’s parents. You haven’t got other plans, have you?”
“Of course I do,” replied Singsaker with a sigh. “I’ll be there as soon as I finish eating.” And he ended the call.
Then he took his notebook out of his pocket. He placed it on the table next to his plate and wrote optimistically, “Routine case with Gran. Teenage girl on the roam.” Then he crossed his fingers.
* * *
One thing bothered Grälmakar Löfberg:
Silje Rolfsen had sung for him. But only after it was all over had sleep finally come to him, and with it that strange, inexplicable dream with the giants in the sky. As if the blows and kicks had given him what he was hoping for, and not the song.
But no, not even the blows and kicks had given him what he longed for: to sleep each night, to dream, a slumber that would never end.
As he feared, he hadn’t slept since the night he’d carried her motionless body out to the woods, cut her throat, and dug out her larynx. It had been liberating. But the effect had been so temporary, and all he’d won was a brief dream that he didn’t understand. He hadn’t found his way back to the world where his innermost madness and yearning were freed, where his hopes, passions, and forbidden thoughts could unfold each night, the world of dreams.
He couldn’t say when something inside him had rebelled, when the raw emotions that belong to sleep had begun to force their way into the eternal waking hours. It had happened surreptitiously, slowly, like in his worst nightmare. Now he could barely make it through the nights anymore, with the warm duvet that tried to suffocate him. The dark in the room that had no substance but was filled with shadows that mocked him, and the gray nuances that disturbed his sleep as much as sunlight did. He could no longer stand the nights. The days were even worse.
But at last there was another opportunity for him to achieve some peace. This time he’d chosen the right girl. The lullaby was going to work. It had to work.
“
You know, old man,
you ought to be ashamed! Cecilia Lind is only a child. Pure as a blossom, shy as a doe. I’ll be seventeen soon, said Cecilia Lind.”
With a sigh, Siri Holm turned off the song by the lusty Swedish singer, took out her earbuds, and put her phone back in the pocket of her green pants.
She’d had her first sexual experience just after she’d turned nineteen. Maybe that was why she’d become so enthusiastic about the art of love. Over the past four years she’d had about fifty sexual partners. She hadn’t been especially particular about who she went to bed with. For her, they were all good—old or young, ugly or handsome. She’d always been an explorer, and she saw no reason to change that. As with everything she did, the objective was to gain as much insight as possible. It had never occurred to her to look for a suitable husband. A quick calculation told her that she’d had an average of one partner per menstrual period, But she’d never been regular enough, either in terms of her period or her sexual adventures, for the arithmetic to add up perfectly. The important thing was that she’d had only one partner after her last period, which was about four months ago. So she knew who the father was of the child now growing inside of her.
But even though Siri had never been very particular about her sexual partners, there were actually a few men she could never imagine going to bed with. One of them was Gunnar Berg. He was a historian who worked as a librarian at the Gunnerus Library, and he was seated behind the office door that she knocked on now. He had no sense of humor whatsoever, but he did know a lot about broadsheets.
“Come in!”
His voice sounded like an out-of-tune fiddle in the hands of a child.
She opened the door with reluctance. It was depressing, being in the same room with someone who never laughed.
“Hi, Gunnar. Could you do me a favor?”
“That depends what it is.” Berg looked up from the title page of a book. Apparently he’d been immersed in a difficult classification problem.
“I’m looking for a specific broadsheet,” she said.
That caught his attention. His expression actually showed some measure of interest.
“A broadsheet?”
“Yes, I could try to find it myself, but I thought it’d be faster if I asked for your help. Especially since, as I understand it, you’re the one who did all the cataloging, scanning, and digitizing of the library’s broadsheets.”
“That’s right. It was quite a job. And now it looks as if we’re going to have to do the whole thing over again.”
“Oh, really?” said Siri, feigning ignorance about the impending conversion project.
“Yes, we’ve put all the broadsheets up on the Internet, but it’s a Flash-based system called eRez. And it can’t be read on any Apple devices. It is also unreliable. It’s going to be a hell of a job to convert everything into open-source code, but it’ll be worth it.”
She looked at his somber expression, well aware of how much he was looking forward to doing the job itself and also being able to bitch about it. Then she handed him the broadsheet that Felicia had given her. He studied it for a long time before responding.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“Let’s just say that somebody sent it from the States.”
He continued to study the printout.
“Precisely. That makes sense. But I don’t think it’s the same as the one we had.”
“What are you talking about? And what do you mean by ‘had’?”
“This broadsheet, or another version of it, was stolen from the library a year ago. Before we had a chance to scan it.”
“Really?”
She wondered if this might be significant for Felicia, but she decided it mostly just meant that the assignment was going to be harder to solve.
“So we don’t have it here? Either on paper or in the computer?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Do you at least remember anything in particular about this broadsheet?”
“I most certainly do,” he said in a pompous tone. “This is a lullaby. If I remember correctly, this is the fourth verse. The song is called ‘The Golden Peace,’ and the subtitle is ‘Dreams Re-create the World Each Night.’ The funny thing about this ballad is that it partially refers to itself. The title page boasts that the ballad can make anyone fall asleep. You only have to hear it once, and you’ll sleep soundly and have sweet dreams every single night forever after. Not bad, huh? The verse you’re holding is about how the song can even make a criminal fall asleep after committing a crime. But the last verse is my favorite. It’s about how the troubadour himself falls asleep while he’s singing, and thus forgets all his sorrows. This was without a doubt one of the best broadsheets we had in our collection.
“And if you ask me, we have the best collection in Norway. Trondheim was the printing capital of Norway in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And Winding’s was the foremost print shop in town.”
“Do you recall who wrote this?” she asked.
“It was written under a pseudonym, which was customary at the time. Many of the composers were anonymous; very few songs can actually be attributed to known historical figures. We think that many of the anonymous ballads were written by well-known cultural figures who didn’t wish to have their names associated with what was considered a low form of expression, even though they did benefit from the lucrative income that often came in from these.”
“So the real author might be a well-known historical figure?”
“Theoretically, yes. But there isn’t reason to believe that here, considering the pseudonym that was used. I think it was used only once, for this particular ballad.”
“And what’s the name?”
“Jon Blund.”
“Jon Blund? The lead character in those movies from the 1960s? Those bedtime stories for kids?”
“Maybe. But Jon Blund has roots in Norwegian folklore, especially with short bedtime stories meant to lull children to sleep. In Danish, he’s called ‘Ole Lukøje,’ which means ‘Ole Shut-eye,’ while in English he’s known as ‘the Sandman.’ The name Jon Blund appeared around 1710 in a text by the Swedish poet Johan Runius. One of the most exciting things about the lullaby you’ve got here is that it’s the first time that the name Jon Blund was used in a Norwegian text. It also shows up, of all places, in a police report from the same period. And as it happens, the report is from Trondheim. Later, Jon Blund is mentioned in the fairy tale ‘An Old-Fashioned Christmas Eve’ by Asbjørnsen and Moe. In that story the phrase ‘At any moment Jon Blund would arrive’ was synonymous with ‘They would soon fall asleep.’ In the old days
sleep
was often used in an allegorical sense to mean death, and so Jon Blund was sometimes associated with more sinister figures, like the Grim Reaper.”