I put my finger on the buzzer beside his name. I hear his voice immediately afterwards through the crackly intercom. The sight of the wire-mesh glass in the entrance door. It seems familiar. The motion of the door as I push it open. The smell in the stairwell. As though we have already slept together.
I leave wet marks on the linoleum-covered stairs. He lives on the third floor. The windows on each landing are on the latch, probably due to how muggy it is out, the insides of the panes are misted up and I notice the smell of wet earth from the lawn in the back garden. The wind brings the rain in gusts, the treetops bend, the undersides of the leaves turning towards the sky.
He is standing in the doorway waiting. A long body dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. His upper arms are smooth, I want to run my tongue over them, or, I do not feel the difference between my tongue and the flats of my hands, do not know if I want my tongue or my palms to suck him in.
Hi, he says, hi, and bows slightly, he bows to me and steps aside, invites me in, places his hand on my back as I pass, an inclusive gesture. The hallway smells of lilac and coffee. The kitchen door is open and I can see a candle and two cups on the table. I ask if he has company, but he does not, only you, he says.
I remove my shoes, I must have got wet, I say, it’s really bucketing down.
He asks if I would like to borrow a jumper and I nod, yes please, I say, gladly, and I wonder if he thinks I am pretty, or does not think about it at all, I wonder how I look, I wish my gaze could speak for me.
I stand watching him from behind as he walks down the hall and opens a door at the far end. His left hip gives slightly with each step he takes, I think it is beautiful, but maybe it is due to a slight misalignment in his back, that long, slender back. I wonder why he is so thin, I suspect you can see his hipbones protrude when he is naked. A slightly rounded stomach, I can imagine, a narrow strip of hair going from his privates up to his navel, I can feel my hand on his stomach, between his hipbones.
The door closes almost completely behind him, I hear the click of a switch, see a stream of light in the chink of the doorway, the bedroom most likely, and he is now standing in front of his wardrobe looking through the shelves for a jumper for me.
The jumper is blue and soft. He looks down over my body as he hands it to me, blushes and says he probably does not have any trousers that would fit. I look at his mouth and think how it has been like that since he was born, and all the same we have not known about each other until now.
I go into the bathroom to change. The tiles are warm beneath my feet. I see no signs of a woman, no trace of more than one person. The glass on the sink has one toothbrush in it and the deodorant in the mirror cabinet smells of man. The same smell as the blue jumper. I am soaked to the skin and take everything off, including my bra, before pulling on the jumper. I leave my blouse to dry on the grey and white floor tiles. There is a dark blue toilet bag on top of the washing machine, which is on a cycle, everything is neat and tidy in the room. The basin is clean and the soap is new, it is black, slightly translucent, some sort of natural soap, ecological.
If only this could begin. If only it were possible.
A heavy blue dressing gown hangs from a hook on the door. I wonder if the days and nights have been lonely, if he has put on the dressing gown and walked to the kitchen with heavy steps? Has he sat face down on folded arms crying into its soft material? Has he felt sad and looked out the window, uncomprehendingly, as children do not comprehend when they feel unloved? Or am I the one who has done that, yes, it is me, who has lived so many years in the belly of unhappiness, curled up, sloshing around in lethargy, shapelessness and self-pity. Not him. Or, what do I know, precious little. When I come into the kitchen he puts his arms around me and holds me. It lasts for maybe a minute. We breathe evenly.
Lars Erik fetches the coffee cups and switches on the TV. We come straight into extended coverage of a news item, just as the newsreader says they are going over to their colleague on the scene. The picture changes and we see a reporter standing with a microphone in front of the gates to a house. It seems so familiar, I think confusedly, am I not actually well aware of where this is? Perhaps thoughts are always slower on the uptake than senses, or is it just the camera lens rendering my house unfamiliar? Because of course it is my house and I understood that immediately: the gate, gateposts, trees along the drive, the many windows, the front door; it is home.
That’s my place! I cry.
Shush, Lars Erik says, hang on, they’re saying something.
I see all the policemen being filmed in the garden. They are moving so slowly, I think, and it seems oddly pointless, I can see no meaning to their movements.
They have pinpointed someone’s location in the house and the police are aware of their identity but cannot give any more information at the present time, the reporter says. This is repeated in the studio before the news presenter asks the same questions again, and the reporter gives similar answers, only in different words.
It’s the man in the baseball cap, I say, it’s him, I’m sure!
Lars Erik looks at me but does not say anything and that is not so strange. He does not know any more about the man in the cap than what I have told him and that was not much. Perhaps he thinks he is a figment of my imagination and that I am not all there, perhaps he is just going along with everything I say.
Oh God, this pressure inside!
Emilie. When he took her. Long and thin. Soft. Only a child. I picture her. She does not understand. Her eyes. Straining to understand. Frightened. She used to hum when she was out walking. Took photos of herself with her mobile. Or of the trees, the dog. When she saw me she lit up. I was someone she could talk to. She always had something she wanted to discuss. How dogs thought. Why the leaves of some trees ‘piddled’, as she put it, dripped sticky goo onto the tarmac, onto her hair. Why I was always at home. What she would do with my garden if she were me.
I do not think she is alive.
It is over.
The parents.
Jesus.
He must have broken in after I left. By way of the veranda door, I guess. It was not locked in any case. I turned the key and left it open before going out to sit in the police car, I could not face any more. I was completely exhausted. The house could not protect me. He could just enter. I was never going back anyway.
I do not understand how the TV stations found out about the police operation so quickly. It must have been the neighbours. Some of them telephoned. They have stood out in their gardens, behind windows, out on the road and filmed what was happening with mobile phones and then sent the film clips off to the news desks. Not that it bothers me, as long as someone puts things right they can do what they want, as long as I am spared doing it.
Lift this from on top of me!
The cameras zoom in on the garden, showing Dad’s unsightly stacks, the police have taken them apart, placed things all over the grass. Plastic drums, a washing machine, car tyres, planks, corrugated sheeting. Georg’s old kicksledge. We often used it on days with snowfall. Started up at the Montessori school and went downhill, kicked across the tramlines, past the house and down to Slemdal. How he laughed.
They film the darkened windows and one of the cameras catches movement, something pale, a face. Look, I shout, and the reporter shouts as well. The cameraman must break into a run because the picture shakes, but we see that the police react, looking first towards the house, before running quickly away, as simultaneously we hear shots. He’s shooting, the reporter shouts and the camera shakes again, filming suddenly the tops of the pine trees in the garden, black sky, I recognise the crunching of the gravel in the drive, we hear breathing and swearing and rain trickles across the camera lens, the TV screen.
Nobody is injured, but we aren’t allowed to stay here, the reporter shouts, his voice mingling with the shouts of the police in the background: move back, we need everyone to move back.
The presenters in the studio do not appear to know they are on air. They are not looking towards the camera and their expressions show concern, their features slack. A panel of experts composed of a psychiatrist, an expert on criminal violence and a police investigator begin discussing among themselves, they sip water from their glasses, look pale. The camera gradually zooms in on one of the presenters. She must have been given an update, I do not know how, maybe on a screen we cannot see. She tries to gather herself, searches for words to smooth things over, frame the situation, render it safe and understandable, but she makes several slips of the tongue.
A man has taken up residence in the house of a previous suspect in the case, she says, pardon me, has taken refuge in the residence of a previous, no, excuse me, sorry, the residence in question belongs to an individual with the status of witness. The individual concerned is under police protection and is not currently at home. We do not know if there are any others in the house.
Then a summing up of the case, using past footage. Of the house. My face. A search party moving in a line. Emilie’s face.
Lars Erik switches off the TV. It’s not certain he has Emilie with him, he says, placing the remote control on the table.
I look at his hand and think how soon it will be touching me, and I must be sick in the head to entertain that thought right now. But it is not thought. It is everything at once, I am being thrown back and forth, am in all places at all times, it is chaos. I need to make this stop, I think, but the next moment my body is filled with anticipation, tingling all over because I know something is going to happen. Even though I do not know what, it will come, yes, it has happened already, something with Lars Erik and me. Sweet and good. The next moment I see Emilie and the dog, how they walk down the road, on dry tarmac, they have turned the familiar corner and are approaching my house. I feel the dog’s fur under my hand and perceive the scent of Emilie’s hair as she crouches down beside me. At the same time I breathe in the smell of the garden after rain and picture Granny as she walked across the floor of her apartment, slightly bow-legged and unsteady, slow-moving. And I see Dad. He is driving the car with Granny sitting beside him, I am in the back seat, Dad jams on the brakes, we are not driving very fast but we all lurch forward, and Granny turns to him and says, Fuck, Finn. And then they laugh. I see the empty garden, dense and dark, and become so sad I nearly fall, because I recognise this darkness, it pulls downward and downward, like a plumb, or it is rooted.
Isn’t there anything we can do? I ask.
His type, Lars Erik says, they don’t go far. He uses places nearby to build his sick fantasies around, I’m sure of it. To provide them with, like, a charge. She’s probably hidden close by. In the woods maybe, but not far in.
I see the man in the baseball cap in my mind’s eye, and nod, because that is exactly what I would imagine he is like.
Residential areas, gardens, there weren’t many places to search, Lars Erik continues, and we combed that area, along the train line too. But, of course, that was several days ago.
There are also spinneys and thicket in the area, I say, behind Slemdal School, for instance, and if you follow Stasjonsveien you come to Holmendammen lake and the patch of woodland by the kindergarten, the stream, the trail leading further up.
Sure, but there’re always people there, hikers, kids, people walking their dogs, difficult to hide someone, don’t you think?
I have put my blouse back on, it is synthetic and dries quickly. The material is white and smooth, my nipples protrude beneath when I am cold, becoming stiff, but I am not cold now, it is warm in the apartment, they stiffen all the same, and they ought not to, not now we are talking about where Emilie could be.
I don’t know, I say, I just have the feeling you’re right, that she isn’t far away but somewhere in or around Slemdal.
Then that’s where we’ll go, he says. Don’t you think that would be best? That we search?
I nod, and put his blue jumper on over the blouse.
We walk to Majorstua station. It is raining heavily and umbrellas are useless in the strong wind. The water runs down our faces and our clothes are soon soaked through and cold against the skin. I sit close beside Lars Erik on the underground on the way up. The damp material of our jeans warms up where our thighs are touching.
Going to search feels like the right thing to do, I say, hoping with that I can choose a good version of myself, that the will to act is the way to go, because that is how I want to be: strong-willed and able to act. Together with Lars Erik.
He nods but does not say anything and straight away I realise I should not have either. We cannot sit here talking loudly about Emilie where anyone could hear. And it is not me I should be thinking of but her, she is only a child and needs to go home now, whether she is alive or dead. Yet my self-contemplation continues: I must have a hole in my personality, I think, where compassion leaks out and Lars Erik has probably noticed it by now, he must have heard it in my tone of voice, what a paltry person I am, my humanity is a skin to be shed. Now all of me is visible, exposed.
But Lars Erik takes my hand as we stand up to get off at Slemdal. As though we were a couple. That must be what it looks like as we walk closely along the platform in the rain. If people only knew how it all was.
We cross the train line and take a left onto Stasjonsveien. A police car passes, followed by an ambulance, but neither are sounding the sirens or going at speed. They drive up Gulleråsveien, probably on the way to my house.
We’ll take a look around the school grounds, Lars Erik suggests, she went here after all. He must have had his eye on the school. Watched all the children. Picked her out. I just don’t understand what it’s got to do with you.
I didn’t tell the police, I say. But she stopped to talk to me a few times. With the dog. I didn’t dare mention it. I mean, they suspected me.
You should have told them all the same. Better than keeping quiet.
We walk past the bronze statue of the wild boar on the way into the school playground, the one I used to pat when I was a child.
My dad went to this school too, I say.
What did you say? Lars Erik asks, glancing at his watch, he is pale.
Nothing, I reply.
It makes no difference to Emilie.
We both catch sight of something white lying against the wall of the lean-to at the same time. Lars Erik immediately breaks into a run, reaching it before I do.
A sheet or tablecloth covers the face and body, the arms lying right out to either side, it is easy to see that the hands and fingers belong to a girl, that they may be those of a twelve-year-old. We see the contours of a head, shoulders, hips and knees. The bloodstain that has soaked into the material between the hipbones.
Is she supposed to be laid out like a cross, is that it? Does that mean something, is it some sort of message, something I should understand? My brain struggles but everything comes to a halt at the boundaries: the dead body, the tarmac, the grass, sky, cars passing on Risalleen. There is no other meaning.
Jesus. Mum.
How will I manage this?
Just be glad it is not Tuva or Georg lying there, you be glad, I whisper to myself, be glad, be glad.
Lars Erik is on his knees. What is he doing, is he crawling? Yes, he is moving towards the white sheet on all fours, but is it happening quickly or slowly?
There is something about my knees too, the ground is coming closer.
Her hands sticking out. Lars Erik crouches beside her. He places two fingers on the inside of the closest wrist. The muscles in his back move beneath the wet shirt.
No pulse, he says, but you can be mistaken, it may be so weak that I can’t feel it. He lifts the sheet away from her face. She is blue, or yellow, I can hardly tell, maybe both, it looks as though she is smiling, the corners of her mouth are turned up, the skin has puckered, stiffened. There’s no doubt really, Lars Erik says, but still feels for a pulse before replacing the sheet.
Don’t look at her any more now, it’s not necessary to see everything all the time.
He takes me under the elbow and leads me a few steps away, the white sheet disappears from my field of vision and at first my salivary glands begin to work, then vomit fills my mouth, it streams out, I bend over, place my hand on the wall of the mini football pitch and let it flow, it drips onto the ground and I cry. Lars Erik cries too.
It’s not good for you to see too much either, I say, but that’s different, he replies. It’s my duty, I’m in the Red Cross. I’m in the Red Cross, he repeats, and that protects me, so that I can protect you. You’re not supposed to be alone, you see, it’s no good being one person, when you’re faced with something like this.
It goes black, and I lurch forward, the ground coming to meet me as I call out something, try to call out. When I come round I am lying with my head in Lars Erik’s lap and he is holding his mobile to his ear, I hear him say yes, hear that he is talking to someone. Yes, he says again, we’re at the school playground.
It’s under control, he says to me, putting the mobile down on the ground beside him. They’re on their way.
Yes, I say, I can hear the sirens.
It’s the police, he says. I’ve called them. The ambulance. The police. They’re coming to take care of things. To look after all this. Tidy up, drive her away, wash everything down, speak to the journalists. Get the formalities in order. That’s why they’re here. It can be too much for one person.
But we can’t go yet, I say, don’t go, we can’t leave her here alone.
No, we’re not going anywhere, Lars Erik says, we’re here now.