When the Devil Holds the Candle (27 page)

"No! Dear God, no!"

His shout slammed against the walls, reverberating around the room. He lurched back, throwing out his arms to find some kind of support. His eyes reached the dark corners, saw a workbench, an old bicycle, a bin for potatoes.
Potatoes,
he thought. Everything was so strange.
Get the fuck out of here!
Then a door slammed. Someone walked across the floor overhead, taking swift steps. He glanced at the light and caught sight of the first door he had come through. Without stopping to think, he dashed out, closed the door carefully behind him, then squeezed into a corner. He waited. She had come back. She was insane! He imagined her creeping down the stairs with an axe. A chair scraped overhead. Zipp stared at the door. If she opened the trapdoor, she would see the light. He had to escape without making any noise, get out the same way he had come, through the window. But he couldn't reach it. What about the sled against the wall? He could stand on that, claw his way out and run. Call the police. The woman was off her head, she had to
be locked up. Suddenly he heard new sounds, creaking wood, jangling chains, footsteps on the stairs. She would see the light was on. Zipp thought,
I'll strike first.
He looked around for something to use as a weapon. A bottle would do. There were bottles lined up on the shelves, filled with juice and wine. He crept over to them, shifting his weight with care from his heel to the ball of his foot. He took a bottle from the shelf and got a good grip on its neck, then he stationed himself at the door and stood there, with the bottle in his shaking hand. He was trembling so violently, his teeth began to chatter.
Come on, God damn it, I'm going to knock your fucking head off!
He heard the footsteps again, then silence. What was she doing now? Wondering about the light? Horrible shuffling footsteps moved across the cement. He pressed his body against the cold wall and stared at the narrow opening in the doorway. Slowly, it opened wider. He took a deep breath and raised the bottle just as her head appeared in the doorway.

In a flash he saw the heavy jaw and deep-set eyes. Then he slammed the bottle down onto the side of her head. Her knees gave way and her back struck the heavy door. She fell forward, right against his chest. Zipp screamed like a wild animal and leaped back. She fell to the floor, landing on her stomach. Her forehead rested on his sneaker, and he had to yank it away. Her head hit the floor with a little thud. He was amazed that the bottle hadn't broken. He stared at her for one wild moment, then dropped the bottle, which finally broke: he recognized the smell of sour wine spreading through the cellar room. Her heavy body filled the doorway. He tried to step over her, but his foot touched her back and he nearly toppled over. He staggered, regained his balance, and ran out past the tarpaulin, and reached the stairs. He heard his own rasping breath and knew by the sound of it that a terrible thing had happened. The body under the plastic had been smashed to a pulp. Inside him a voice shrieked:
Your fault! Your fault!
The trapdoor stood open
and a light was on in the kitchen. He scrambled up the steps and stood looking around the blue room. He went back to the opening and looked down. The cadaver under the plastic seemed to gape up at him. He grabbed the trapdoor and let it fall.
It's over,
he thought. Sounding like a gunshot, the trapdoor slammed shut.
It's over. Destroyed, smashed to pulp, unrecognizable.
But that yellow shirt! Then he stormed out.

Sejer could think only of a dead tree. The woman was still upright, but all her strength had gone. It didn't matter to her whether or not he caught a couple of miserable purse snatchers. Her baby was dead. For more than three decades she had lived without the child—how attached could she be to a child she had known for only four months?
Until death do us part,
he thought. He also thought about the phenomenon of time and how it was able to make things pass, to make things fade, if nothing else. He let her stand there in silence. In the meantime, he remembered what the doctor had said, that an autopsy would be performed on the boy. That in all probability his fall from the stroller had had nothing to do with his death. It was just a tragic, frightening coincidence. But it wouldn't do any good to tell that to the mother now. She had made up her mind: two young men had killed the most precious thing she possessed. Not that she was thinking about them. She wasn't thinking about anything; she was just letting time run listlessly along. Now and then she would blink; her eyelids would droop and then, with what looked like great difficulty, they would open wide.

"Won't you sit down?"

She dropped onto a chair. Her beige coat no longer looked like a piece of clothing, but rather like a big sheet of canvas that someone had draped across her shoulders.

"Tell me everything you can remember about what they looked like," he said.

"I can't remember anything," she replied. Her voice was flat. Maybe she had taken some kind of medication; maybe a kind-hearted doctor hadn't been able to stand seeing her pain.

"Yes, you can," he told her. "It's possible to recall bits and pieces if you concentrate."

Concentrate? The word made her raise her head and look at him in disbelief. She barely had the strength to keep herself sitting upright on the chair.

"Why should I help you?" she asked, her voice faint.

"Because we're talking about two men who need to understand the gravity of what they did. We won't be able to prove that they're responsible for your son's death, but it will give them an almighty shock. And perhaps prevent them from doing any such thing again."

"I don't care about that." Once more she raised her head to look at him. "And you don't even believe what you're saying. If they kill a baby every week from now on—I still don't care."

He searched for something to say that might rouse her. "Maybe you don't care right now," he said, "but what about a year from now? Then you'll start to worry because you didn't do anything. You'll worry at the thought that they're still going around as if nothing had happened."

She gave a tired laugh. Sejer got up and walked to the window, as he often did. Rain was streaming down the pane. So unaffected, so untouched. And that prompted the thought that something would remain untouched after everything else had vanished. And would keep running, floating on the wind, pounding against the rocks, salty and hard.

"But you're here," he said, turning round. "So I have to think that you might be able to help. Why else did you come? I had given up hope, and we have lost a lot of time."

His words made her look at him; she was more alert now.

"Well, no," she stammered. "I was hoping for an explanation. There's always an explanation, isn't there?"

An explanation? As if he had one. Instead he shook his head. "You can help me," he said softly, "even though I can't help you. And for that reason, it was a little awkward to ask you to come here. But if we cannot—with your help—resolve the matter, you may end up regretting it, and by then it will also be harder to remember things."

"One of them wore a cap." The words slipped out quietly, reluctantly.

"A cap?" he said. "Let me guess. It was probably red."

He saw a glimpse of a smile as she said, "No, it was blue. With white letters. And a little white cross. Do you hear me? A white cross!"

He could feel that something had broken the ice. For the first time, she relaxed.

"They were driving a small green car. One was tall and thin, with long legs. He wore a yellow shirt. I couldn't see his hair because it was hidden under the cap. He was very good-looking. He had light eyes, blue or green. He was wearing trousers with wide legs. I remember noticing that when he ran to the car, they flapped around his ankles. And he had black shoes."

Sejer sat there agog. She had given the description with great confidence: That was how he looked.

"And the other one?" he asked. At the same time a clock began ticking in his mind.

"The other was shorter and more compact. Blond hair, tight jeans, running shoes. He tried to stop the stroller," she added. "But he didn't reach it in time."

Something sounded so familiar. What was it about everything she had said? Something was niggling at him, ticking in the background, saying,
Here, here it is: for heaven's sake, can't you see it!

"Their age?" he whispered, as he struggled to decipher the peculiar signals buzzing in his mind. He thought: If I take too deep a breath, it will escape. So he sat there for a long time, hardly breathing.

"Maybe eighteen, maybe twenty."

He wrote down key words, and began to feel satisfaction as the dots and lines, which had been whirling unpleasantly before his eyes for so long, started to form a pattern. Clear, distinct, almost beautiful. He felt warm inside: this was what he loved.

"Can you tell me anything more about the car?"

He strained to keep his voice calm; it wasn't easy.

"I don't know much about cars," she murmured. "They all look alike to me."

"But it was a small car?"

"Yes. A small, oldish car."

He scribbled more notes. "This neighborhood isn't very big. We'll find them," he added, "I'm positive we will."

"I'm sure that will make you happy," she said, smiling.

For a few seconds she hadn't been thinking about the dead child, and now she felt the first pang of guilt, at the discovery that she could forget him, even for a few moments. What a betrayal!

"They're performing the autopsy now," she said bitterly. "And when they've finished, I won't have anything to say about it. What if they're wrong?"

"You mean as far as the cause of death is concerned? They're specialists," he said. "You can depend on them."

"People make mistakes all the time," she said. "I shouldn't have let go of the handle."

"You were being assaulted," he said forcefully.

"No," she said. "They stole my handbag, that's all. An old handbag, a thing of no importance. Four hundred kroner. And then I let go of the handle. Even though we were near the shore. I don't understand it."

"Why didn't you report it right away?"

He didn't like asking the question, but it seemed to ask itself.

"It was such an insignificant business. I was worried about the boy, that's all. Because he kept crying. Besides," she said, looking up at him, "what would you have been able to do? File a report? Until such time as you could have dropped the case for lack of evidence?"

"Perhaps," he admitted. "But society is going to fall apart if we stop reporting crime. You shouldn't worry about how much work we have, you should always speak up if something happens. And the more reports we receive, the greater likelihood we'll have increased resources. In fact, you have a responsibility to report an incident like that one."

She uttered a sound that might have been a laugh: he couldn't tell.

"I'm not laughing at you," she said. "I'm laughing at everything else. We can't do anything about the fact that we're here in this world. But why do we stay?"

She stood up. She didn't have a handbag. Her arms moved nervously, as if they were searching for the handle of the stroller. At the door, she turned.

"Do you know what the worst thing is?"

He shook his head.

"He didn't have a name."

She started down the corridor, then turned round one last time. "I was never able to make up my mind. This is my punishment."

The elevator doors closed behind her. He went into his office and slammed the door. Finally! Two men, one blond, one dark, in a green car. Zipp and Andreas.

Two officers came to pick up Sivert Skorpe. His mother stood in the doorway, regarding them with growing concern. "He always comes home at night," she insisted. So they drove
around town looking for him. Sejer told them to notify him the second Zipp was found. Then he went home, stopping at the Shell station to put gas in the car. He bought a CD at the till: Sarah Brightman. The traffic was at its peak, a steady roar that he hardly heard. As he drove, he went over his day's work: decisions he had made on the handling of various incidents, some major, some minor. Others, in his place, might feel that the worst had happened. Things got to him, but at the same time he could deal with them, file them away. Was he made differently from other people? Plenty of people could not have handled the job he had. All he'd had to put up with on the path to becoming chief inspector. Drunkenness and brawls, vomit all over his uniform. People with no willpower or strength or opportunities. And, worse still, occasionally people with no scruples, no remorse, and no fear. Although he was confident that he had held on to most of his humanity, he knew he was also capable of closing it off. Able to put it behind him, as Robert had said. To sit down and eat, maybe sleep for half an hour on the sofa. He could usually sleep soundly through the night, though sometimes the itching on his elbows or his knees disturbed him. But his eczema had got better. When Sejer reached home and Kollberg had finished greeting him, he caught sight of Sara. She wore only an undershirt and panties, and her hair was disheveled, her cheeks red.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Yoga," she said, smiling. "I was doing some yoga exercises."

"Without any clothes on?"

She laughed as she pointed out how hard it was to do a headstand with a skirt falling over your head. He could surely see that. "You should learn some of the postures. I could help you."

"I don't have any ambition to stand on my head," he said.

"Are you afraid of acquiring a new perspective?"

He shrugged. Wasn't it too late for that? He was too old.

"Did anything exciting happen?" she asked, as she pulled on a skirt and blouse. He didn't want to stare at her while she got dressed, so he went into the kitchen and turned on the oven. She came padding after him, barefoot.

"No," he said quietly. "Not what you'd call exciting."

Something about his voice made her uneasy.

"Robert," he said. "He's no longer alive."

"Anita's boyfriend?"

"They found him in his cell."