Dreamless (14 page)

She fixed her eyes on him as they shook hands. Then she sat down without seeming the least bit nervous.

“What’s happened to Julie?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. She didn’t come home last night.”

“Really?”

“I’m afraid so. That’s why we need to talk to everyone she knows and ask a few questions.”

“Sure.”

Nadia Torp suddenly looked much too small for that cardigan she was wearing.

“When did you last see Julie?”

“At choir practice on Friday.”

“You weren’t at the party on Saturday night?”

“Wasn’t invited.”

“But you sing in the choir with Julie?”

“Yes. We’re both in the Nidaros Cathedral girls choir.”

Singsaker made a note in his book.

“You can move your notebook back to your side of the table,” she told him. “I know what it says underneath it.”

Singsaker gave her an embarrassed look and moved his notebook closer.

“That’s not a very nice thing for someone to write,” he said.

“Maybe it’s true,” she said.

He blushed, wondering if he should respond, or just ignore it. He chose the latter.

“So you have choir practice every Friday?”

“No, we actually practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But this was an extra practice session at Ringve for some of us who were selected to participate in the concert on the weekend.”

Singsaker paused to think and then looked back through his notebook.

“The concert at Ringve,” he said. “Bellman, right? Isn’t it Professor Høybråten who’s going to direct?”

Nadia nodded. And Singsaker thought he glimpsed something in her eyes that he wanted to know more about.

“So Julie was also selected for this concert?”

“Are you kidding? She’s better than any of us. Nobody has a voice like hers. You should hear her sing. She was Høybråten’s first choice, of course.”

“Is Julie good at anything else, besides singing?”

“Julie is good at everything—school, handball. Everything.”

“Is she well liked?”

“Yeah, strangely enough.”

“Why is that strange?”

“Some people get jealous of people like Julie who are good at so many things. But she never brags or pretends she’s better than anyone.”

“What’s her favorite thing to do?”

“Singing. She’s good at everything else, but she loves to sing. She’s always singing, even during handball games. She’s really looking forward to the concert this weekend.”

Singsaker paused for a moment. He couldn’t put the other case entirely out of his mind. He thought about the music box and the vocal cords that the killer had removed. If there actually was a connection, then it had to do with singing.

“Jan Høybråten—is he a good choir director?”

“He’s good at a lot of things,” replied Nadia caustically.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” she said, perhaps realizing that he wouldn’t believe her.

“Is he a good teacher?”

“That too. Or, well … I don’t know.”

“What is it you don’t know?”

“A teacher doesn’t do things like that.”

“A teacher doesn’t do what?” Singsaker was breathing calmly. The feeling he had at this moment was the same as when he went hunting with Jensen. This was how he felt when they finally had circled around the prey and were ready to shoot. It was really the only thing he liked about those hunting trips.

“Forget it,” she said now.

“Forget what?”

“What I said. I don’t like him. That’s all. I think he’s disgusting.”

“Disgusting?”

“Yeah, you know. He’s old. What do I know?”

“Has he done something to you, Nadia?” asked Singsaker, looking at her without blinking. At the same time he could sense that the prey was about to disappear into the underbrush.

“Aren’t you here to ask me about Julie?” she said.

It was too late. If there’d been something important in this conversation, it was gone now, vanished somewhere behind Nadia Torp’s expression. She was less confident and open than when they’d started talking. And she was right: He had diverged from the topic at hand.

“Do you know of anyone Julie might be staying with?” he asked.

“No,” she said sullenly.

“No one she happened to mention, relatives she likes, or friends only a few of you might know about?”

“I don’t really know her that well,” said Nadia Torp.

*   *   *

Odd Singsaker felt bad about letting her go back to her class. She had been skirting around something. She had wanted to confide something to him. Should he have pressured her more? Or maybe she told me enough, he thought. He phoned Mona Gran.

“How’s it going?” he asked when his colleague picked up.

“I started on the other side of Stadsingeniør Dahls Gate,” she told him. “Haven’t found out much. What about you? How’d it go at the school?”

“I couldn’t get much out of Fredrik Alm. But that’s probably because of his age. He seems harmless enough.”

“The harmless ones are usually the most dangerous. You know that.”

“True enough, but I seriously doubt that he had anything to do with this. He seemed just as bewildered as we are.”

“What about her girlfriends?”

When he told Mona about Nadia Torp, he omitted certain details. Then he ended the call and stuffed his cell back in his pocket as he turned on his heel and left the school.

Outside, he paused to look across Festningsgata at the defensive tower of Kristiansten Fortress. The white cube stood there like a hard drive filled with secrets; the arrow slits were like data ports that had stopped functioning long ago. Inside the edifice was stored everything that had ever happened in Trondheim since it was built in the 1700s. He tore himself away from his reveries to turn his attention back to the case. Again he got out his cell phone and looked up the number for the music institute.

The secretary told Singsaker that Høybråten had the day off to do research. On those occasions he usually worked at home. She gave him the professor’s cell number and his address, which was in the Singsaker area.

Singsaker put away his phone and plodded off in the direction of the part of town that happened to share his last name.

*   *   *

Jan Høybråten, professor of music theory at the Institute of Music at NTNU closed up the manuals, put them away in the desk of his home office, and sighed heavily. He was an old man, but he worked out every day, and he still felt youthful and strong. He devoted one day a week to his own research. Lately, he’d been working on a pet project, translating the poetry of Lars Wivallius from seventeenth-century Swedish into Norwegian. These poems, which had once been set to music, were considered some of the earliest examples of Swedish ballads. But in those days the musical score was rarely included in printed collections or on broadsheets, and so the melodies had been lost, while the lyrics had lived on as poems. No one would ever know how these tunes sounded in the pubs of the 1600s. But Høybråten felt that he got closer to the melodies by translating the texts.

When the doorbell rang, he was deeply immersed in a ballad called “Wivallju Dream.” Annoyed, he called to his wife, asking her to answer the door.

*   *   *

Odd Singsaker was breathing hard. After Felicia had learned that the name of one of the sections of Trondheim was the same as his surname, she’d started calling his genitals Lower Singsaker, which she said in Norwegian with her thick American accent. But Upper Singsaker was the very steep part of town where Professor Høybråten happened to live.

Singsaker pressed the doorbell and heard a low buzzing through the oak door. He stood outside the large walled house and looked at the view. He could see the fortress and Rosenborg School and almost all the way to the crime scene. He thought to himself that Julie Edvardsen must be down there somewhere. And that thought made him impatient. Then he heard movement inside the house, and Høybråten’s wife opened the door. She was wearing expensive-looking clothes, but they didn’t make her look any younger. Nor did her obvious dye job.

Singsaker showed her his ID and explained that he wanted to speak to her husband, so she stepped aside to let him enter.

“He’s in his office, working.”

She didn’t need to say anything more. Her tone of voice conveyed quite clearly that her husband did not like to be disturbed.

*   *   *

“Odd Singsaker. What a surprise,” said Høybråten when the inspector opened the door and entered the room without knocking. But the professor’s voice revealed more irritation than surprise. “What brings you here?”

“I wanted to find out if you’d learned anything more about that ballad,” Singsaker told him. He sat down on a leather chair that looked comfortable but wasn’t. But he stayed where he was, his back to the window.

“Didn’t I say I’d contact you if I found out anything?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that nagging people is part of my job,” said Singsaker.

“I really have nothing to tell you.”

“That’s too bad. We seem to have reached a stalemate with this case.” Singsaker searched his pants pockets, then the pockets of his coat, which he hadn’t taken off, but he couldn’t find his notebook. He must have left it at the school.

“Maybe he wrote it himself,” Høybråten suggested impatiently, running his hand through his hair.

“That did occur to us. Are you sure there’s nothing else you could tell me about the song?”

“No, I already said that.”

“All right,” said Singsaker, making a move to get up. “By the way, there’s one more thing I wanted to ask you about, now that I’m here. This concert at Ringve that you mentioned last time … It’s this weekend, right?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“Julie Edvardsen,” said Singsaker. He let her name hover in the air for a few seconds while he studied Høybråten’s expression. And he thought he saw something there. A trace of the same uncertainty that he’d noticed when they’d last met in the professor’s office. “She’s supposed to sing, isn’t she?”

“That’s right. But I don’t see what this has to do with anything. Aren’t you investigating a murder?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid that a police officer frequently has to handle more than one case at a time. There’s always a lot going on in a town like Trondheim. And Julie Edvardsen has disappeared. She took her dog for a walk last night and hasn’t been seen since.”

Høybråten stared at him for a moment.

“What are you saying?” he finally asked.

“Julie Edvardsen has been reported missing. She’s your best pupil, isn’t she?”

It looked like Høybråten was again carefully choosing his words before he spoke.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Julie sings because she loves singing. She’s the sort of singer every choir director dreams of. Sensitive and receptive. But I don’t know the girls well, not personally. When we get together, our focus is always on the music. Julie was made to sing Bellman, and Bellman’s music was made for her. She has the same bittersweet humor about her that can be found in Bellman’s lyrics. But I don’t know if that’s of any help to you. What do you think happened?”

Singsaker pretended not to hear the question.

“So you say that you don’t know them personally? Is that true of all the girls?”

“Of course. What are you getting at?” said Høybråten, glancing out the window at the bare branches of the maples and the wintry weather.

“I just had a talk with a few of the girls,” said Singsaker.

“What did they say?”

“What do you think they said?”

“I have no idea. This conversation is over. If you’re going to accuse me of anything, I want to know what the charges are first. And the next time we talk, I’ll have a lawyer at my side.”

Well, well, Professor Høybråten
, thought Singsaker.
That doesn’t sound like something an innocent man would say
.

All of a sudden he felt terribly tired. The truth was that there was no basis for charging the professor with anything, and Singsaker suspected that Høybråten was well aware of this fact.

There was nothing more he could do except thank the professor for his time and leave.

*   *   *

He phoned Mona Gran on his way back. She was almost done with her canvassing, so they agreed to meet on Bernhard Getz’ Gate. Singsaker caught sight of Gran through the snow as he arrived at the designated meeting place.

“Some weather, huh?” she said cheerfully.

Singsaker fixed his eyes on her uniform jacket.

“What have got so far?”

She had very little to report. She hadn’t found anyone who had seen Julie and her dog the previous evening, nor did anyone have any clue where she might have gone. Those who knew her at all described her as a sensible girl who would never do anything stupid. Gran had also talked to Brattberg on the phone. Their boss said that all attempts to track down the girl at the homes of relatives and friends had been fruitless. Gran had then recited a list of all the addresses where no one was home, and they both decided that it would be necessary to knock on more doors later in the evening.

Then Singsaker told Gran about his conversation with Nadia Torp and his visit with Høybråten.

“You know what this could mean, don’t you?” she said eagerly.

“It could mean that Høybråten knows more about the tune on the music box than he’s willing to admit,” he replied carefully. “But most likely it just means that he’s a dirty old man.”

“No matter what, we now have a possible suspect in the case,” said Gran. “He might not be involved at all, but at least he’s a lead we can follow up on. We can bring him in for questioning, check his alibi, and interview the other girls in the choir. All those things that we’re good at. This means there’s some movement in the case, Singsaker.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he replied, sounding distracted.

“But it doesn’t add up. For one thing, there’s the matter of his age,” Gran went on. “Could a man of seventy beat up a woman the way the perp did to Silje Rolfsen?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” said Singsaker. “There’s nothing wrong with Høybråten’s physical condition. And in general we tend to underestimate elderly people. Silje Rolfsen was a petite young woman, and Høybråten is definitely much stronger than she was.”