The ax was pointing at him. He reached for the handle. How was he going to make her sing now? He wiped the blood on his pants. Some of it he rubbed on his hair. Jonas Røed stood there, pale and red-haired, with blood all over his face. He was thinking. He was thinking the whole time.
Someone would come soon. He knew that. That was why he had to hurry with what he needed to do.
The fly was buzzing angrily now. Slamming against the wall of his skull. Then falling, dazed, back inside his head somewhere, only to start buzzing around again.
Singsaker’s car skidded as he turned, but still he stomped on the gas pedal. It had stopped snowing, and the temperature had dropped. The plows hadn’t yet made it through all the streets in the suburban neighborhood, and the snow was loosely packed under his tires. The car suddenly lost its grip on the road and went into a sharp skid. Desperately he yanked on the steering wheel, but instead of getting the car back on track, he drove it too far in the other direction, and the vehicle slid into a fence two houses away from Røed’s property. The car broke through the fence, sending the planks of wood flying everywhere. Then it slid down a small slope and came to a halt in the snow in the middle of somebody’s yard. The headlights lit up the snow in front of the bumper, and Singsaker could hear the front wheels polishing the snow crystals underneath into shiny lumps of ice.
Feeling dazed, he turned off the engine and climbed out to stagger through the snow. He was heading for the road when someone came out of the house behind him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouted a furious voice.
Singsaker turned to face the man, who had come out in his slippers. He recognized the neighbor that he’d talked to earlier in the day. Standing behind the man was the little terrier, barking excitedly. Apparently the only thing big about the dog was his bark.
Singsaker held up his ID.
“Police,” he said so brusquely that the man stopped. “Of course you’ll be compensated for the damage. Now I suggest that you get back inside your house, lock the door, and stay there.”
The man stared at Singsaker, who was standing out there in the snow with his gray hair sticking out all over, melted snow dripping down his face. He glowered at the man, who turned around and did as he was told.
Taking long strides, Singsaker made his way out of the yard and over toward Røed’s house.
Once there, he jogged over to the garage, where he saw an old red Saab. Røed’s car. It wasn’t locked.
He opened a door. The interior was very neat. A crocheted blanket covered the backseat. Anna Røed’s handiwork, he guessed. Singsaker shuddered at the thought that Julie Edvardsen, her hands and feet bound, might have lain on this blanket that had once been so lovingly created. He thought of the stink of urine in the basement at Bernhard Getz’ Gate.
It’s a strange form of concern this guy shows, Singsaker thought angrily.
Then he jogged over to the house. He looked around, then stopped to listen. No sign that backup was on its way. That was odd. Gran was supposed to have phoned in the alarm. Why hadn’t anyone else arrived?
With a premonition of dread, he opened the door, which still showed the damage it had sustained when the officer had used an ax to open it earlier that day. That was why it no longer closed properly.
Then he went inside.
The distinct smell still hung in the air. He moved cautiously. If Røed was here, Singsaker at least wanted to have the element of surprise on his side.
Slowly, he pushed on the door to the living room. It opened with a creak that he hadn’t expected.
But Røed was not who he found inside. Mona Gran was sitting on a sofa with her back to him. With an ax embedded in the back of her skull.
He took three steps closer.
Over the shoulder of his dead colleague, he could see that she was holding her cell phone in her hand, as if still trying to tap in the number to headquarters.
Singsaker fell to his knees. The whole room felt as if it were spinning, as if it had come loose from the rest of the world, released from the pull of gravity to swirl alone in a universe without mercy.
A jumble of scattered fragments rushed through his mind, bits and pieces of conversations he’d had with Gran at the beginning of this investigation. He remembered her telling him about the doctor’s appointment she’d had, and her attempts to get pregnant with her boyfriend. Only days later, her life and all her dreams had come to an end here, on this sofa.
Everything had ended here.
In an hour, one of his poor colleagues would be standing outside in the snow as Mona Gran’s boyfriend opened the door. And this colleague would know that his presence there was about to destroy the man’s life.
Singsaker stood up, feeling faint, and left the house. Out on the front steps, which were now covered with new snow, he again fell to his knees, without thinking about how vulnerable this made him to another attack from Røed.
He stayed there as he tapped in Brattberg’s number.
“He’s here. He’s out here in Heimdal, and he killed Mona.” That was all Singsaker managed to say.
It occurred to him that this was the first time he’d ever used only her first name.
Brattberg was shocked. She wanted Singsaker to tell her more. Wanted him to explain. He couldn’t just say that a colleague was dead without any other explanation.
He simply replied, “Come right away.”
Then he lay down, and everything inside him went black.
There was no police car parked outside. He’d had the ax in the garage, and it had felt natural to take it along.
The cracking sound it made as it struck the back of her head had sent him in unexpected directions. He’d gone back out to Julie, and when she’d seen the blood on his hands, she’d given him that half-dead look that he’d seen in Anna’s eyes and his mother’s. As if he were evil through and through. Then she’d closed her eyes and stopped shaking. How was he going to get her to sing for him now?
Then he went back and saw the policeman go inside. It was one of the two officers from his childhood. The one who had come out to Ringve and talked to him. The one who had almost seen through him. Now he watched the policeman from the crack in the bedroom door. The man knelt down, as if the dead policewoman were some sort of altar. Then he just stood up and left.
When the officer was gone, Røed cautiously entered the living room and pulled the ax out of the dead woman’s head, which made a sinister sucking sound. Then he paused, wondering whether he’d ever sleep again.
He wiped the blade of the ax on the sofa and left the room.
Singsaker rubbed snow on his face in an attempt to pull himself together. He was consumed with rage. He got up and stamped his feet. He wanted to go back to get the ax and look for Røed. Instead, he started pounding on the walls of the house with his bare fists. He hammered on the walls next to the front door. But this did more damage to his hand than to the house. His knuckles began to bleed, and drops of blood fell on the white snow. That was when he noticed it.
A trail of blood led away from the door and around the corner of the house. It wasn’t his blood. He switched on the flashlight on his cell phone and followed the trail. From the house it continued in an uneven line toward the yard behind the garage. At that point the thoughts he’d had during his icy swim came back to him. Something about the shoveled snow. There was something striking about the two heaps of snow that Røed had made at both houses.
Singsaker moved slowly now, trying not to make the slightest sound as he moved through the deep snow. When he reached the back of the snow heap, which was a good distance down the slope behind the garage, he saw it. An opening had been dug into it, and this opening led down a dark passageway. He leaned down to shine the light inside. That was when he heard the creak of the snow behind him. He turned abruptly and saw the ax coming toward him.
Julie Edvardsen blinked her eyes, exhausted. A short time ago she’d felt completely frozen as he dragged her over here from the car, pulling her by the hair. But that feeling had begun to fade. The cold was slowly losing its grip, to be replaced by an almost pleasant sensation of numbness, and with it an overwhelming urge to sleep. Again her eyes started to close.
But I mustn’t fall asleep, she thought. I mustn’t, because then he’ll take me. He’ll put the knife to my throat or he’ll kick me to death, the way he did with Bismarck.
All of a sudden she regretted not eating any of the food he’d brought her. It would have given her the strength to stay awake. Now her body temperature was dropping, and she was starving. But she had to fight back.
Then she heard sounds outside. Someone was walking through the snow.
He’s coming back, she thought. Now I have to sing for him. I have to sing or this time he’ll kill me. She tried to gather her strength. Tried to see if she had any energy left. When Julie was little, her mother had always liked telling her stories about people in crisis who discovered they had strength they never knew they possessed. But she didn’t know whether that was true of her; maybe it only happened in stories. Then she started thinking again.
Who am I? What am I fighting for?
Again she heard sounds outside.
Someone was fighting. She heard deep, grunting male voices and heavy breathing. Then suddenly a scream, from some violent pain. And a laugh.
She knew that laughter. It belonged to him. But somebody else was out there too. And that gave her hope.
The other, unknown person screamed again. Then she heard a sound that reminded her of when he’d kicked Bismarck in the basement. A gasp from the unknown man, and then silence. She shut her eyes and stayed still, listening. A lifeless body was dragged inside the snow cave next to her. She heard something being tied up, tight.
Still she refused to look.
Only when he had crawled back outside did she dare open her eyes.
She was staring at a lifeless shadow. It was too dark for her to get a good look at him, but she felt a strange closeness to this man who might have been trying to rescue them—her and the baby. And she thought that if she ended up dying in here, she was glad that at least she wasn’t alone.
Then he came back.
“So? Are you going to sing?” he asked, his voice strangely gentle as he pointed at her with something that could be a knife.
She stared at him. Felt how tired she was. She had decided to sing for him now. She was hoping this was her chance to escape. Maybe she could even save this man who was lying beside her in the dark.
And so she surprised herself when she said weakly, “No.”
Not until she uttered that word did she understand why. If I sing, she thought, he’ll kill us anyway. But if I refuse, I’m not sure what he’ll do. Not knowing was a form of hope.
She could feel him looking at her in the dark. She remembered those sad eyes that she’d seen outside his house on Ludvig Daaes Gate; it was his gaze that had lured her into this nightmare.
Then he started singing.
He didn’t hit the right notes, but that just made his song all the more bewitching, rawer and more heartrending, as if it contained all of his insanity. He sang the whole ballad, right to the very end. He sang about dreams, about the cruelty of the world and the great liberating slumber, and when he was finished, she was so tired that she didn’t think she could keep her eyes open much longer.
In the dark, she couldn’t tell what was happening. She heard him move his arms very quickly a couple of times. Then came the lonesome sound of something breaking. After that he fell down next to her and lay still.
In the distance she heard the sound of sirens.