Singsaker then called the Ringve Museum and was told that Jonas Røed had been on sick leave ever since Singsaker had gone out there, just after the murder. He asked for the man’s address, which turned out to be in Heimdal. He wasn’t pleased to hear where Røed lived, because the police had been working the assumption that the perpetrator lived somewhere near the murder scene. Yet Singsaker still had little doubt that Røed was their man. In addition to the reports from Høybråten and Siri Holm, there was the fact that they knew they were looking for a killer who had a good knowledge of music and music boxes. Singsaker sat in his car for a few minutes, pondering his conversation with Røed at Ringve. He played me, Singsaker thought. If Røed was the murderer, he might be insane, but he could probably also be extremely calculating and seem rational.
He punched in Brattberg’s number and relayed his conversation with Siri and about the museum in Ringve.
“Does this Jonas Røed have gray or possibly red hair?” asked Brattberg.
“Red. Why?”
“Grongstad is here in the office with me. He says that the lab has analyzed the strand of hair found on the music box. It was in the process of turning gray, but there was enough pigment left that they could determine the original hair color. It was red. So that’s a match with Røed. It may have been a single strand of gray in an otherwise-red head of hair, just as Grongstad mentioned. Go out to Heimdal right away. But you need to take someone with you,” she told him.
“I’m down here in the garage,” he said.
“Then I’ll send Gran down,” she said. “And see to it that you have a patrol car meet you out there. We don’t want to take any chances. If Røed is our guy, we know what he’s capable of.”
Singsaker agreed. He ended the call and popped a lozenge in his mouth.
Then he leaned his head back and waited for Gran to join him.
Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary about the small single-family house not far from the center of Heimdal. In fact, the property looked better maintained than many of the other yards on the street. That was probably due to the extensive shoveling that had been done to remove the snow. The driveway and the path up to the front door had both been meticulously cleared.
Singsaker followed Gran, who opened the gate. Both were in plainclothes. Gran had brought her service weapon, concealed under her down jacket. Two uniformed officers from the Heimdal police station had arrived in their own vehicle. One of them got out of the car and walked closely behind the two homicide detectives. They went up to the door and rang the bell. Singsaker studied the nameplate, which looked homemade—a weathered piece of driftwood with hand-drawn letters. It said JONAS AND ANNA. He looked at the writing and guessed that Anna must be the artist. The letters had a feminine air about them, filled with hopes and ambitions for a good home. The colors had faded, which meant the nameplate had probably been painted years ago.
No one came to the door.
Gran rang the bell again, while Singsaker considered their next move. He went back to the sidewalk, surveying the house. It wasn’t very big; in fact, it was one of the smallest on the street. Yet the surrounding property was a good size, coming to an abrupt halt at the steep slope behind the house where all the snow had been piled in a huge heap. The house looked as if it could use a fresh coat of paint. He concluded that either Røed was a real neat freak or the couple had no children. There were no snowmen, push sleds, or snow-covered trampolines in the yard, nor any traces of kids having played in the snow in the areas that hadn’t been shoveled. Røed was in his thirties, the age to get his first gray hairs, but also the age for having children. But at the moment, Singsaker was relieved to think that the man might not have any.
“Are you looking for Røed?” a voice someone suddenly said from behind him.
Singsaker turned around as he stuck another lozenge in his mouth. He saw a man of retirement age holding the leash of a little dog. Some sort of terrier was Singsaker’s guess. He’d had an Irish soft-coated wheaten terrier early in his first marriage, a shaggy creature that they could never leave home alone because it would bark incessantly, tormenting their neighbor. Singsaker wasn’t really a dog person, but he could recognize a terrier. He could also recognize a nosy neighbor when he saw one. As a detective, he had learned to set great value on the latter breed.
“Do you know the Røeds?” asked Singsaker.
“We’re not friends, if that’s what you mean. But I live there.”
The man pointed at the house next door. It was almost twice the size of Røed’s.
“It’s impossible not to notice a thing or two when you live so close.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” said Singsaker.
“We don’t see much of them,” said the man, casting a pensive glance at the house. “The wife is on sick leave and hasn’t come outside in weeks. He leaves for town every morning.”
“But I thought he was on sick leave too.”
“Not as far as I know. He seems really involved in his museum job. He’s not the type that’s easy to get to know. But he sure can talk about music and musical instruments.”
“What about his wife?”
“She’s totally different. Much more social. Always willing to stop for a chat. At least she used to. But she hasn’t seemed very happy the past few years.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know. She stopped coming over for coffee like she used to before. And she doesn’t smile anymore when we say hello. Things like that. And she started wearing sunglasses all the time,” the neighbor explained.
“Do you know why she’s on sick leave?”
“I’ve only talked to Jonas about it. I’m not really sure. He says it’s her back. But what do I know? In some ways he seems perfectly harmless. A little like what we used to call a you know what, if you get my drift.”
“What about his wife? Shouldn’t she be at home if she’s on sick leave?”
“Probably. But as I mentioned, we haven’t seen her in a while. She could have moved away, for all we know.”
“I see,” said Singsaker, so deep in thought that he accidentally swallowed the lozenge whole.
“Has he done something illegal?” asked the elderly man all of a sudden. He stared at the police car, then shifted his gaze to Gran and the uniformed officer who were now coming toward them.
“No,” said Singsaker.
“You’re not here to turn off the electricity or anything like that, are you?”
“No, that’s not exactly the job of the police,” said Singsaker, wishing they were here for something as simple as that.
“He’ll show up in the evening. But he usually gets home quite late,” said the old man. Then he gently tugged on his dog’s leash and continued down the street. His shoes squeaked as they pierced the hard-crusted snow that covered the sidewalk.
“No sign of life,” said Gran, who was now standing next to Singsaker.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean nobody’s home,” he said and headed back to the yard.
This time he diverged from the well-shoveled path that led to the front door. He plowed his way through the snowdrifts along the facade of the house. By the time he came to the first window, he’d sunk so deep into the snow that he had to stand on tiptoe in order to peer inside. By doing that he was able to gain the extra inch he needed to see through the window into what turned out to be the living room.
Empty and also extremely tidy.
Without much hope, Singsaker now moved on to the next window. Because of the slope of the property, at this point the foundation of the house was visible above the snow, and the window was higher up. Singsaker could see only that it was covered from the inside, possibly by a shade, and that the window was open slightly.
He stood there, rubbing the scar on his forehead from the surgery. The window was the type that swung outward. He reached up, grabbing the edge with his fingertips, and then tried to open it more. As he suspected, it had a brace that prevented it from opening any wider. With a sigh of resignation he let go and was just about to rejoin Gran. But then he caught sight of the flies.
“Shit!” he muttered. “In the middle of winter?”
A number of torpid flies had practically rolled out of the crack in the window. They made a few hopeless attempts to fly, but most of them tumbled down into the snow and lay there, looking like black snowflakes.
Singsaker bent down and picked one up by its wing. It was dead. Surprised, he flicked it away.
Again he reached up toward the window ledge and grabbed hold with both hands. Using all his strength, he managed to pull himself up so he could look inside. Only then did he see that the window was not covered with a shade, as he’d thought. It was covered with flies.
The entire inside of the window was swarming with a black layer of crawling and buzzing insects. In disbelief he pressed his face to the open crack. That was when he noticed the stench. And it was something he’d smelled before. The stink of death was one of his least favorite things about his job.
“We’re going in,” he said when he got back to the front door. He ordered the Heimdal police officer to get the necessary equipment from the cruiser.
The man came back with an ax.
Gran got out her gun and took up position on one side of the door. Singsaker stood on the other side while the Heimdal officer delivered two blows to the door to smash it open. Pulse quickening, Singsaker followed Gran into the house. The smell hit them as soon as they entered, the stench of a body that might have been there for days. The odor filled the whole house.
In that terrible pervasive smell, the tidy living room seemed grotesque. Now Singsaker noticed that this room was also filled with flies, buzzing languidly everywhere. He knew that the room with the partially open window was right next to this one.
They inspected the other rooms in the house first. The only thing that seemed unusual was the collection of half-empty bottles of sleeping pills in the bathroom.
After securing the rest of the house, the only room left was the one with the flies. Singsaker asked Gran to hand him her gun, a 9mm Heckler & Koch P30. Then he grabbed the door handle, opened the door, and went inside.
The air was black with flies. They swarmed at him the instant he opened the door. He was quickly covered with flies. They settled on his clothes and on his face. He wanted desperately to swat them away, but he couldn’t let go of the gun, which he held out in front of him, gripping it with both hands. With each step he took into the room, the smell got worse.
Finally he found himself standing at the end of a bed, and then he saw her through the cloud of flies. She was lying on top of the duvet, fully clothed, and he caught a glimpse of the floral print of her summer dress underneath all the insects. Her face was already starting to decompose. Her hair was gathered in two thick braids that were draped over her shoulders.
Recently plaited, he thought. Someone had braided her hair after she died.
He gasped for air, but as a result, he inhaled a few of the flies. He turned on his heel and ran out, slamming the door behind him. He rushed to the kitchen and spat the flies into the sink.
Gran followed him, stopping in the doorway.
“Have you ever seen anything like that?” Singsaker asked when he noticed her.
“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen flies like that, not in the middle of winter.”
“What about the body? Did you look inside the room? She must have been there at least a week.”
“At least we know now that Røed isn’t here,” said Gran.”
“Right. So where is he?”
Singsaker turned again and spat what looked like insect wings into the sink. Then he phoned Brattberg to give her his report.
“Leave the Heimdal officers there,” she said. “I’ll send out Grongstad and his team.”
“Didn’t Grongstad study biology in college?” asked Singsaker. An idea had occurred to him.
“I think so. Why?”
“There’s something I want to ask him.”
Singsaker ended the call and then phoned the crime-scene tech.
“Do you know anything about flies?” he asked when Grongstad picked up.
“Not a lot. What do you want to know?”
“I thought they died in the wintertime.”
“Not necessarily. Well, a lot of flies die from the cold, but plenty of them survive the winter in a semitorpid state in warm places, like cracks in a window, or the hollow of a tree.”
“Do they ever pile up in huge swarms?” asked Singsaker.
“Maybe you’re thinking of attic flies,” Grongstad replied. “In rare instances they hibernate in large numbers. In the fall, the flies crawl into unheated rooms in cabins or houses. They’ll settle in big holes in the wall or in cracks and crevices, especially in attics, hence the name. When warm weather returns, or if the space is heated in the winter, the flies emerge. When that happens, they’re very lethargic and have a hard time flying. They mostly creep around. In extreme cases, they can fill up a whole room. I’ve even heard stories about people who have been suffocated by attic flies, but I don’t know whether there’s any truth to that. When the flies wake up, they seek out light and often gather around windows. Attic flies also have a tendency to show up in the same houses year after year. There’s no real explanation for the phenomenon. Why do you ask?”
“I’ll explain later,” said Singsaker and ended the call.
He followed Mona Gran out of the house, filling her in on what Grongstad had said. On their way to the car he turned around and cast one last glance at the small house standing in all that snow, and at the carefully shoveled driveway. He turned on the radio the minute they got into the car. Right now, he needed music. He had no desire to talk. He was thinking about Felicia and how she, at least, hadn’t been inside that house.
As they drove toward town, his cell rang.
It was Lars, his son who lived in Oslo. Feeling guilty, Singsaker let it go to voice mail. Then he thought about how he might become a father again. He hadn’t done a very good job of it the first time around. So how was he going to handle it now?
The storage room she was now sitting in had no window and no bucket to pee in. It had nothing but two walls made of brick and two walls made of boards. The solid door was locked and wouldn’t budge. It was almost pitch-black, and she could hardly see her own hands in front of her.
Maybe he hadn’t tied her up this time because he knew that it would be impossible for her to escape. After he’d taken Bismarck away, he’d come in once to bring her something to drink, but she hadn’t seen him since. Now and then she could hear him moving about upstairs, but for long periods he didn’t seem to be in the house at all.
Once when she was sure that he was out, she’d tried screaming for help, hoping that her voice might reach through the foundation and out to the street. But she knew it was pointless. Her words bounced back to her as if they’d been pulverized against the brick wall.
What scared her most was that he no longer played the music box for her. Only now she did realize what solace it had given her, hearing that delicate melody. Each time she heard it, she felt like a veil of unreality was being spread over the whole situation. Part of her understood that it was a mistake to think that way, that she was just allowing herself to be taken in by the sick fantasies of the red-haired lunatic, and when that happened, she was feeling what he wanted her to feel. But she couldn’t help it. She missed the tune. And it scared her to death that it had disappeared. What could that mean? Had he given up on her? Was he just waiting for the right time to beat her to death and slit her throat, as he’d apparently done to that other woman?
A few times, when she was positive that he wouldn’t hear her, she had sung the song to herself. She’d had more than enough time to learn both the melody and the lyrics. Once, right after she’d sung the song, she had dozed off and dreamed of Bismarck.
Otherwise, she never slept.
And she imagined that the child inside her didn’t either. They had landed in hell, and that was a place where no one ever slept.