Winter was seeping into the house somewhere. Elise Edvardsen followed the draft to see where it was coming from. At first she thought the front door might be ajar. It had warped in the winter cold and didn’t always close properly. In the front hall she felt the door and decided it was closed. Then she opened it and peered out into the dark. Evening had arrived.
It’s been twenty-four hours since Julie disappeared, she thought.
But the time couldn’t be measured normally. Before she awoke this morning, minutes, hours, days had passed. Now all that was gone, replaced by breaths, footsteps, creaking floorboards, glances at the door—an eternity of tense movements and anxious waiting.
She closed the door. On her way to the living room, she felt the draft again. The bathroom. It must be coming from in there. She opened the door and saw that the small window high on the wall was open, which it never was in the wintertime. Then she saw the flies. There had to be a couple dozen of them squeezed together on the sill behind the weather stripping. This spot, when the window was closed, formed a warm niche for the insects to spend the winter. At first the flies seemed lifeless. But all of a sudden one of them moved, vigorously beating its wings, almost convulsively. But it didn’t take flight; instead it merely buzzed around its half-dead fellows. Elise shuddered, not sure if it was because of the cold or the disgusting sight. She climbed up on the toilet seat and was about to close the window when she heard the song. Faint individual notes, played slowly. The pure, thin sound made her think of a music box.
Then she glimpsed a figure outside in the dark. Did she really see someone? For a few seconds the person stood perfectly still. It’s him, she thought, and she recalled the articles in the newspapers over the past few days; all of them had mentioned the music box that had been found with the woman’s body over near Ludvig Daaes Gate. He’s the one who took Julie, she thought.
Then the figure vanished among the trees, taking the music with him. She listened intently, but all that remained was a faint rustling of the wind in the trees.
I’m going crazy, she thought as she climbed down from the toilet. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m dreaming even though I’m wide-awake.
She found her husband in the hallway. He was holding a spray can.
“The window in the bathroom was open,” she told him.
“I know,” he replied. “I was cleaning the bathtub. When I opened the window, I saw that the ledge was covered with flies, so I went to get some bug spray.”
“Cleaning? Our daughter is missing and you’re washing the bathtub?” She felt the urge to slap him, but she didn’t.
“It’s better to be busy. I can’t just sit around waiting. Besides, she’s going to come back. That’s what the police said too. They think she ran away to aggravate us.”
“This is making me crazy,” she said. Then she met his glance. “Come with me.”
She took him out in the yard and led him through the deep snow until they were standing in front of the bathroom window. Near the big oak tree, they saw tracks in the snow.
“Someone has been here,” she said. “I’m not crazy, after all.”
“It was probably just some of the neighborhood kids,” he said. “They’re always coming into our yard.”
In the crusty snow they couldn’t see clear footprints, just a jumble of tracks. It was impossible to say who might have made them.
“I guess you’re right,” she said. “But what if it was him?”
“Who?”
“The man who took her. What if he’s coming after us now?”
“Nobody took her, Elise.” He said this with such conviction that she nearly believed him.
“He was playing a song,” she said. “It sounded so peaceful. Almost like a lullaby.”
“You’re tired, sweetheart. You’re just imagining things because you’re scared and worn-out. It’s cold. Let’s go back inside.”
All of Singsaker’s thoughts were transferred to Felicia’s shoulder, where he was resting his head. He definitely wasn’t paying attention to the movie they were watching.
“We had a dozen cases like this in Richmond every year,” said Felicia, shifting on the sofa. “I can count on one hand the times when we didn’t find the kids alive, or when they didn’t turn up on their own.”
“That’s exactly what makes it so difficult. Experience and common sense tell us to play it cool. But what if this is one of those exceptions? What if it has something to do with the homicide? And what if the old professor is involved in both cases? You should see the parents. Especially the mother. Fear and a guilty conscience combined with something else.”
“Combined with what?”
“I’m not sure. But I think it’s contagious. I feel it too.”
“Feel what? You’re being awfully vague.” Felicia had switched to English, which she did whenever he annoyed her.
“It’s just a bad feeling. Nothing specific. The thing is that I think this is one of those times when the kid isn’t going to come back. And then all hell is going to break loose, whether the two cases are related or not.”
“I know,” she said, deciding to humor him and follow his train of thought. “But let’s hope there’s no connection between the cases, because if there is, we’re dealing with a serial killer who has struck twice in an unusually short period of time. And we don’t know when he might be planning to kill Julie and start the hunt for his next victim.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
She gave him a resigned smile.
The doorbell rang. Felicia turned off the movie. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me vanished and the screen went blank.
“We weren’t really watching anyway,” she said, and went out to the hall to open the door. She came back, accompanied by Siri Holm.
Singsaker said hello and then went in the kitchen to make tea.
When he came back, the two women were having an intense conversation. Felicia looked up with a smile.
“Siri is helping me with my first job. That Norwegian emigrant that I’m looking for. It turns out he used a pseudonym.”
“What was it?”
“Jon Blund.”
“This is the same Jon Blund who wrote the broadsheet? How can you be sure he’s the same person who emigrated to the United States?” he asked.
“We’re not sure. In theory, anybody could have taken it over. For instance, maybe his son, or even someone else decided to take credit for a ballad that Jon Blund had written. The pseudonym is the only thing we have to go on. We still don’t know his real name,” Felicia said.
“I think the smart thing to do would be to follow the pseudonym,” said Siri. “My colleague mentioned that a Jon Blund was entered in a police log from the 1700s here in Trondheim. That might lead us to more answers. I’ve checked around a bit, and the log is kept at the National Archives. I’ve requested an interlibrary loan so it can be sent over to the Gunnerus.”
With that plan in place, they drank their tea. It was past eleven by the time Siri went home.
Odd and Felicia remained on the sofa. They looked at each other in silence.
How did I ever get her? thought Singsaker, looking at her creamy complexion beneath her dark hair. It was the sort of thing he asked himself when he was too tired to make love to her.
They talked for a while about Odd’s son, Lars, who lived in Oslo with his wife and two children. Felicia had developed a real affection for him and his wife when she met them at the christening of their youngest child. Since then, she’d been back to visit them twice on her own. And that pleased Singsaker. He felt that Felicia had brought him closer to his son than he’d ever been while married to Lars’s mother.
Felicia changed the subject.
“Did you notice anything different about Siri?”
“No, I don’t think so. She drank just as much tea as usual, didn’t she?”
“Don’t you think her stomach had gotten rather plump? And her cheeks are a little rosier than before.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Are you a policeman, or aren’t you?”
“Pregnant? Are you kidding?” he said after a brief pause. He sat up straight. A crazy thought occurred to him. An impossible thought. A terrible, ruinous thought.
“How far along do you think she is?” he asked.
“Since she’s starting to show, I’d say she has to be at least three or four months pregnant. But it can vary a lot from one woman to another.”
In his mind, he began calculating dates, back to a day in the midst of the chaotic investigation of last year’s Palimpsest murders. Singsaker had made a mistake a police officer should never make and had a secret a married man should never have to keep. In a moment of weakness, he’d had sex with his wife’s friend. Even though this occurred before Felicia became his wife, even before they’d met, way before the two women became friends. But it wasn’t that long ago. Did it make any difference when it had happened? He’d never told Felicia. By Singsaker’s count, it had happened five months ago. But was that really reassuring? They didn’t know exactly how far along Siri was. Could it be five months?
It was going to be a sleepless night.