Гарри Алекзандер: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 781 & 782, September/October 2006

“Oh my God.” Evan grabbed the doorknob and yanked at it as the roaring beyond grew. The door was locked. “Mother? Tang? Open this door!” He threw himself against it, and then again, the noise of the fire drowning out his shouts.

The left-hand window shattered and fell soundlessly: Evan flinched away and then tried to climb through the broken window. Jake and I dragged at him to pull him away. The old dry walls flared like chaparral, the timbers shrieked and roared as they fell. The heat drove us all back.

Six weeks later Jake and I flew north again for the memorial service at the mission. Afterwards we walked with Evan across the sun-dappled plaza under a tender blue sky scattered with cloudlets.

“I want to tell you what happened with Sochi,” Evan said. It wasn’t necessary, I started to say, but he stopped me with a look. “Please?”

She was supposed to come to him last thing that night so they could talk; he waited with his door ajar. He heard her say goodnight to Tang and he shut his door, waiting. “Then I heard her out there talking to somebody. But after that — nothing.” He looked at me and then away. “It was my mother. So then I figured my mother had managed to buy her off, and Sochi just went on to bed. God! If only I’d...”

“Stop it,” Jake said. “It’s done.”

“Tang must’ve heard them together, too,” Evan said, “and jumped to his own conclusions.” A gust of wind ruffled our hair and pulled at our jackets, and my eyes stung. I figured Sochi had actually known about Evan’s condition, and wanted his child anyway. I figured Tang would have told her.

“Funny.” Evan smiled behind his dark glasses. “Mother made me promise I’d never kill myself. And now I’m the only one left.” He raised both bandaged hands to the big old sycamores just starting to push out their bitter green buds. “Beautiful day, isn’t it? Come on, I’ll buy you guys coffee.”

Copyright © 2006 Jean Femling

The disused underground railway station lies within the great circle that makes up the city’s center. It is many years since any suburban train stopped here. Now they rush past with their human load, rows of anonymous faces, deathly pale in the glare of the harsh neon light. The clattering of the wheels on the rail, steel upon steel, creates a deafening echo between the dirty grey concrete walls. Down here it’s like some great, gloomy burial vault. But the corpses have long since been transformed to a dense, stinking dust. On the wall are the words “DOWN WITH FRANCO” painted in writing that once had the radical red tinge of current interest.

A clammy, biting November cold pervades this dreary hole. Nonetheless, here I stand — Jorunn Vindmo — and shiver in abject solitude. It’s past one in the morning. The last trains have gone. I’m not waiting on anyone. I came here because something drew me here. I close my eyes, and for some seconds I hear the resonance of that terrifying scream from a young girl in fear of her life. I open my eyes again and see only the cold grey walls, and hear nothing but a charged stillness.

It is ten years to the very hour that Lilly Meinert’s murder happened. A murder that only I know the truth of. The killer disappeared long ago. But still I don’t go to the police with what I know. How could I ever be in a position to denounce Kjell Bakk, with whom I have been intimately linked for so many years, and whom I still think of with that mixture of deep affection and frenzied hatred? At one point we studied economics together at high school. It was a platonic relationship between us but an emotionally profound one nonetheless. His was a strange and tragic fate, but his imprint is still with me. Now and then he pitches up like a shadow in my dreams, a small dark-haired lad with restless motions; a boy with plenty of common sense but problems concentrating because of the conflicts that were always raging inside him.

Lilly Meinert was in the class below us, doing social studies. She was the type of girl everyone knew about, although, because of her natural modesty, perhaps she would not have wanted it that way. Clichés such as “beautiful, charming, and charismatic” are not enough to capture her. I have never met a livelier human being. It was as if she had a small nuclear power station inside her — how else to explain the continual radiation that put such light into her big green eyes and such warmth into her graceful smile? Hers was a flashing, artistic intelligence, with a compelling talent for singing, dance, and drama. I often used to ask myself how it was that some individuals were gifted with everything by Nature. Besides, Lilly was an only child with well-educated and hard-working parents who did everything to make life easy for her.

Most of the boys in school were in love with Lilly Meinert. To display interest in her was a sort of necessity, a social demand, even where natural emotions for her were absent. She had just as great an appeal as the most beautiful movie stars of the time. Kjell Bakk could no more remain unmoved than could the other boys, despite the fearsome consequences it would have for them both.

But for Lilly there was only one boy — Stein Vangsvik. He was her male counterpart. And once more I have to wonder at Fate’s random and strange apportionment of intellectual and artistic talents, charm and physical attributes. Stein Vangsvik was tall and well-built, with open, clean-cut features and blond curling hair. Of course he distinguished himself in sports. In addition, he was a brilliant pupil, firmly resolved to study economics. He was in my class, and of course he was elected School Captain.

Lilly and Stein. They were a catchword in those days. “Legendary” is the word used of this beautiful couple when old schoolmates gather. Lilly’s fate evokes in us a profound fear of the evil that will exist as long as there are humankind. Lilly and Stein. What could they have achieved together if she had been allowed to live? Their future together was such a matter of course.

Other love affairs at school paled in comparison with that of Lilly and Stein. That’s what happens when young people have idols they are seeking to emulate. Copies are never more than anemic imitations of the genuine article. We dressed like Lilly and Stein, we pursued the same interests, and we were willing to suppress our true selves to become like them. And of course I was madly in love with Stein Vangsvik; I dreamt he kissed me, made love to me, and afterwards lay in my arms as I caressed his blond curls. But in reality, to him I was completely invisible. He didn’t even know that I existed. He only had eyes for Lilly. They fueled and fortified one another in a way that seemed to give them a double dose of energy and lust for life. Strangely enough, there was not a trace of superiority about them; they were easy to get along with and slow to find fault.

Then the terrible thing happened, on that bleak November evening ten years ago. Lilly and Stein had been to the late-night cinema. Lilly lived closer to the city center and she got off the train at exactly the station where I now stand. Even then the decision had been taken to close the station and the process of decline was under way. No one was more preoccupied with Lilly and Stein than Kjell Bakk, and he knew when and to which cinema they were going that night. He was waiting down here, hidden behind a projecting brick wall in the corner closest to the stairs. He had his ghastly plans ready. If she got off the train alone, and this was likely, he would kill her down here. If other passengers got off, then he would follow her and carry out the killing in a bleak passage she went through on her walk home. As it turned out, Lilly was surprisingly unafraid, despite the fact that the “Plastic Sack Killer” had committed his crimes only six months previously. Mind you, it was in another part of the city, but fear had spread out over the whole of the capital and even throughout that entire region of the country. But Lilly wasn’t afraid.