Black Seconds (5 page)

desperation, because they were fathers themselves and could not bear to sit idly in front of the television. Some had come looking for excitement, each one hoping that he would be the one to find Ida. They fantasised about finding her dead, about being the centre of attention; they fantasised about being the one who would find her safe and well, who would call out the good news and have everyone looking at them. Perhaps lift her up and carry her in their arms. They were also scared, as very few of them had ever seen a dead body and the vast majority were secretly convinced that Ida was dead. These lurid private thoughts troubled them, so they stood there kicking the tarmac. A few carried rucksacks containing flasks. Each and every one of them was eagle-eyed, or they thought so at any rate. Never

theless, Skarre reminded them of

countless searches in the past where people had walked right past the missing person several times. Anders Joner was there. As he had not lived in Glassverket for the last eight years, few people knew him and he was grateful for the anonymity it gave him. His brothers, Tore and Kristian, were there too, as was Helga’s nephew, Tomme.

Everyone felt a huge sense of relief when they finally started to walk. One hundred and fifty people dissolved into smaller groups and shuffled out of the school playground. There was a low murmuring of voices. This was a bizarre experience for most of them. Staring into the ground all the time, seeing every straw, every root and twig, every 41

irregularity in the tarmac, the litter along the verges, there was so much to see. The group which had been ordered to search along the riverbanks kept looking furtively into the rapidly flowing water. They lifted up bushes and other shrubs with low-hanging branches. They searched holes and caves. And they did find things. A rusty old pram. A decaying wellington boot. There were mainly empty beer bottles along the riverbank. From time to time they would stop for a short break. One of the groups came across a small shed. It was tilting dangerously. It looked like it might collapse at any moment. A good hiding place, they thought as they stood facing the simple building. Not very far from the road, or the house where Ida lived either. Instinctively they sniffed the air. A man crouched down and crept through the opening, which consisted of a narrow gap in the dilapidated planks. He asked for a torch and was handed one. The beam flickered across the dark space. His heart was beating so fast he could feel it in his temples. The rest of the group waited. Not a sound came from the inside of the shed during these long, tense seconds. Then the man’s feet emerged again as he crept backwards out of the tight opening.

‘Nothing but old rubbish,’ he reported.

‘You did lift stuff up, didn’t you?’ someone asked.

‘She could be lying under something. Underneath planks and things like that.’

‘She wasn’t there,’ the man replied, and rubbed his face wearily.

42

‘They did say it was very easy to overlook something. Why don’t we double-check?’ The other man was not going to let it go.

The man who had crawled inside the damp

darkness to look for the body of a dead girl and had not found her gave him a hostile look.

‘Are you saying I didn’t look properly?’ he said.

‘No, no. Don’t get me wrong. I just want to be sure. We don’t want to be the group that walked right past her, do we? We want to do this the right way.’

The first man nodded in agreement. The other man crept through the opening and carefully shone the torch around. He was hoping so desperately that he would find her. Fancy hoping like this, it struck him, as he knelt on the musty ground, feeling the cold seep through the knees of his trousers. Hoping that she would be lying there. Because if she was lying in there, she would have to be dead. But we don’t want her to be dead. We’re just being realistic. We are helping. He backed out.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Thank God.’

He exhaled deeply. The group moved on.

43

Willy Oterhals had not been out looking for Ida. He was sitting on the floor of his garage with a book in his lap. The chill from the concrete floor crept through the seat of his trousers. Tomme was sitting on a workbench by the wall watching Willy. His clothes were damp after several hours of being outside in the drizzling rain. The search had yielded no results. Now he was looking at the Opel. From the bench where he was sitting he could not see the damaged wing. He could make himself believe that it had never happened, that it was all a bad dream.

‘Up the ridge, was it?’ Willy said without looking up at him.

Tomme thought about it for a while. ‘It was horrible,’ he said. ‘Just walking around searching like that. Loads of people had turned up. They’re looking everywhere. Including wells and rivers.’

‘Will they be searching tomorrow?’ Willy asked.

‘They’re saying they’ll go on like this for days.’

He looked across to his older friend. Willy was quite skinny, he thought. He had a lean face with a protruding chin, and bony shoulders. His knees 44

were sharp underneath the nylon boiler suit. Now he was rubbing some dirt off his cheek with his finger, while trying to decipher the text and the illustrations in the book about car repairs. The book was old and dog-eared. The pages were stained with oil. Some of them were torn and someone had tried to mend them with sticky tape. He studied the illustration of a front wing, the right-hand one, as on Tomme’s Opel.

‘First we need to sand it,’ Willy said decisively.

‘We need two types of sandpaper, smooth and coarse.’ He peered down at the book. ‘Number 180

and number 360. The wing needs sanding down first with dry paper and then with wet. We’ll need a sanding block and some filler. Rust remover. A degreasing agent. You listening to me, Tomme?’

Tomme nodded. But the truth was that he was far, far away.

Willy read on. ‘We need to sand around the dent. It says here: “Start in the middle of the damaged area and work your way outwards in circular move ments.” Find something to write on. You’ll have to go out and buy the stuff we need. Once we’ve got the wing off.’

‘I don’t mind doing the shopping,’ Tomme said.

‘But I’m skint.’

Willy looked up at him. ‘I’ll lend you the money. You won’t be going to school for ever, will you?

Sooner or later you’ll start earning.’ Once more he looked down at the book. ‘We’ll also need some more tools. I’ll see if I can borrow them.’

45

He put the book aside, climbed back to his feet and went over to the car. Bent over the wing, hands on his hips. He inspected the damage with a seasoned look, his shoulders hunched like two sails billowing in the wind, keen to get started. ‘Right, Tomme. Let’s get going.’

Tomme heard the crackling of the nylon boiler suit and a groaning, creaking sound coming from the metal. From time to time he heard Willy panting and gasping. An old Opel Ascona that has been in one piece for fifteen years does not give up without a fight.

‘I know a bloke down at Shell,’ Willy panted.

‘Bastian. He’ll lend me what I need.’

Willy has so many contacts, Tomme thought.

‘Christ, Willy,’ he said, relieved. ‘If you can fix this, I’ll owe you big time.’

‘Won’t you just,’ Willy smiled. His eyes lit up.

‘And now it’s about time that you cheered up. It’ll be all right. I promise you.’

He continued to twist and bend the metal. A vein bulged on his neck. ‘Ah, sod it, I need to get underneath it.’ He slid under the car. His long white fingers appeared below the wheel arch.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Tomme said. ‘I just don’t understand it. How it happened.’ He was so upset at what had occurred. The colour rose in his face.

‘Take it easy,’ Willy reassured him. ‘Like I said, it’ll be all right.’ Then he remembered something.

‘What did your mum say?’

Tomme groaned. ‘The usual. That they wouldn’t 46

pay for it. That they don’t like me coming here. But you know, they’re mostly worried about this other thing.’

‘Yeah, course. I’m seen as the kind of lowlife a nice boy like you shouldn’t mix with, I’ve always known that.’ Willy laughed scorn fully. ‘But you’re an adult now, for God’s sake. It’s for you to decide who you want to hang out with, isn’t it?’

‘Exactly, and that’s what I told my mum,’ Tomme lied. ‘Hey, listen.’ A thought had just occurred to him. ‘Do you think we should check the brakes?’

‘Oh, give it a rest!’ Willy told him. ‘The brakes are fine. Now give me a hand. We need to get this wing off. The bastard’s stuck. Hold this for me!’

Tomme leapt down from the bench. He was

trying to pull himself together. He was relieved that Willy would be able to fix his car. He liked the idea of himself as Willy’s gofer. But there were times when he felt stifled by his older, more resourceful friend. Once Tomme had finally passed his driving test – after failing his first attempt, needless to say, and putting up with being ridiculed about this in every way imaginable – he felt they had achieved a kind of equality at last. He could drive himself. On top of that, it had been Willy who had trawled the local papers in search of a used car costing the 20,000 kroner that Tomme had managed to save up. His con firmation alone had brought in 15,000.

‘An Opel is a safe bet,’ Willy had said confidently.

‘Reliable engines, especially in the older models. You can’t worry about the colour. Don’t even go 47

there. If you find an Opel in good condition, buy it, even if it’s bright orange.’

But they had found a black one. Even the paint work was fine. Tomme was over the moon. He could not wait a minute longer. He just had to get driving.

‘What about the police?’ Willy said tentatively. ‘I sup pose they’re all over the place because of your cousin.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have they talked to you?’

‘Jesus, no.’ Tomme was shocked. He slackened his grip for a second and Willy’s finger got crushed.

‘Concentrate, you idiot! You’ve got to lift it up while I’m using the screwdriver!’

Tomme held on. His knuckles were white.

‘When it’s something like a missing girl and stuff,’

Willy panted underneath the car, ‘the cops just go crazy. Perhaps they’ve even checked out her dad. Have they?’

‘Dunno,’ Tomme mumbled.

‘But they’ll want to know about her family,’ Willy said. ‘Perhaps they’ll talk to you as well.’

Tomme nodded. He felt like a robot as he listened to the flow of words coming from Willy. It made him feel calm and nervous at the same time.

‘You being her cousin, well, that’s incriminating in itself,’ Willy said. Finally he got up. The wing was loose. ‘Especially if they never find her. If they never find out the truth. Something like that brands people for generations. You know a girl was murdered out here forty years ago, don’t you?’

48

Tomme shook his head.

‘Well, she was. A guy raped and killed a fifteenyear-old girl. Both their families still live here. And you can tell just by looking at them.’

‘Tell what?’ Tomme asked. He was growing more and more nervous.

‘That it’s all they ever think about. And they know everyone knows who they are. That’s why they can never look anyone in the eye. That kind of stuff.’ He wiped a bead of snot from his upper lip.

‘The mother of the guy who killed her is close to seventy now. And you can still tell who she is from miles away.’

‘Well I can’t,’ Tomme snapped. ‘I’ve no idea who she is.’ He wanted his friend to shut up. Hated all this talk of death and destruction. The only thing he cared about was the car. Making it whole again. Shiny and new, with unmarked paintwork, like it was before.

She knows she is pretty, Sejer thought sadly. He was holding a photo of Ida in his hand. In his mind he could hear them all, an endless chorus of aunts and uncles, neighbours and friends. What a gorgeous child. He remembered his own aunts, who used to tickle his chin as if he were a puppy or some other dumb creature. And so I was, he realised. A shy, skinny boy with legs that were too long. He kept looking at the photo. For years Ida had seen her own beauty mirrored in the eyes of others. This had made her a confident girl, a girl who was 49

accustomed to being admired, and possibly envied, too. Used to getting her own way with both her friends and her parents, though Helga came across as firm and strict, so Ida had also been given rules. She had never broken them. Who could have made her ignore her mother’s warnings? What had he done to lure her away? Or had she simply been grabbed and bundled into a car?

Adorable and precocious, he thought. It was a bad combination. It made her a target. Staring into those brown eyes it was impossible not to melt. He tried to connect these three things. Warm feelings for an enchanting child, followed by physical arousal, and finally destruction. He understood the first one. He even managed to imagine fleeting moments of desire. The purity, the fragility that children embodied. So smooth, uncorrupted and tender; they smelled so good, they trembled and quivered. And purely by being an adult, you had the strength to take what you wanted. But to beat and squeeze the life out of a tiny child was beyond comprehension. The frenzied struggle as life slowly ebbed away in your hands was unimaginable. He rubbed his tired eyes, repelled by his thought experiment. He decided to ring Sara’s hotel in New York. She was not in.

It was late in the evening. The town lay

smouldering like a dying fire between blue-black ridges. He could go home and pour himself a glass of whisky. He would probably be able to fall asleep quite easily. The fact that he could lie down and 50

sleep while Ida was lost in the darkness, while Helga waited for her with stinging eyes, disturbed him deeply. He would rather be outside. Walk the streets with all his senses alert. Be outside because Ida was. The search parties still had nothing to report. He was startled by a knock on the door. Jacob Skarre popped his head round.

‘You still here?’ Sejer asked. ‘What are you doing at this hour?’

‘Same as you, I suppose. Hanging around.’

Skarre took a look around his boss’s office. Beneath Sejer’s desk lamp was a salt-dough figure. It was meant to be a police officer wearing a blue uniform and had been made by Sejer’s grandchild. Skarre lifted up the figure and inspected it.