Thomas Enger - Scarred

Sometimes, when they opened the cabin early in the spring, the hares would come unusually close to them. They hadn’t yet remembered to be wary of people after a long, lonely winter. Once she was sunning herself, wrapped up warm in a rug, when a hare hopped straight past her. It stopped only a few metres away. And it stood there, for a long time, just staring at her. While Trine stared back.

Now all she can see is the sea. An endless horizon, heaven and water united far, far in the distance without a clear dividing line, where one merges into the other. The spray rises behind the rocks of Svartskjær and Måkeskjær. Eider ducks dive under the surface of the water.

Trine goes back inside the cabin to get her mobile phone and brings it out with her to Tissetoppen where mobile coverage is usually better. There are no new text messages from Katarina Hatlem. Her core staff probably haven’t held their morning meeting yet, Trine thinks, while she wonders how long her friend with the curly red hair will manage to hold out. Trine is well aware that the press office is snapping at Katarina’s heels, even though Katarina wouldn’t admit to it when they spoke last night. And they are not the only ones. Trine dare not even think about what people must be saying about her in her department, across the whole Labour Party and in the Prime Minister’s office.

A large ship appears behind the rocks and slides past Rakke towards the foamy crests that are waiting for it. Trine turns towards the wind. The fast, blue colossus slices neatly through the white horses without rocking while her own little boat is listing and taking in water.

Further down the uneven hillside the hare peeks out from behind a bush. It stands still for a few seconds and sniffs before it runs off to hide from its enemies. And she thinks how easy it would be just to disappear out here among the rocks, the crags and the knolls, something she has been fantasising about in the last twenty-four hours. She could go for a walk along the coastal path and then just…

Trine closes her eyes and imagines it. And realises that she isn’t scared of the pain or of the darkness. The door is open. All she has to do is go in.

The investigation team return to their activities straight after the morning briefing. The information about the missing school photo is a welcome development in the case and much of their work now revolves around it. They contact the three schools where Erna Pedersen taught. Ultimately that could mean hundreds of photographs, thousands of pupils, but at least it’s a place to start. They have also requested pupil registers starting from 1972 and up to 1993 when she retired.

Other officers are busy searching the care home for a stone troll with a dent. There is a remote possibility that the troll might still have fingerprints or contain other forensic evidence that justifies expending resources on it. Meanwhile, they continue interviewing everyone who was at the care home at the time when Erna Pedersen was killed. Bjarne is responsible for interviewing the five people from the Volunteer Service.

Bjarne can’t imagine that he could ever do what they do and visit people who are lonely but complete strangers. Accompany them to the doctor or the hairdresser. He wouldn’t know what to say to them. What little time he has outside of work is spent on family and exercise. Quite simply, there isn’t room for anything else.

He reads the first name on the list, Markus Gjerløw, and runs it through the criminal records register. No hits. So he rings Gjerløw’s number and waits for a reply. The ring tone is interrupted by a bright voice saying ‘hello’.

Bjarne introduces himself and explains the reason for his call.

‘Yes, I wondered when you would get to me,’ Gjerløw responds with a voice laden with haughty contempt. Bjarne suppresses a sudden rage and coughs into the palm of his hand instead.

‘I’m trying to find out what happened at the care home on Sunday afternoon. Do you remember when the volunteers arrived and when they left?’

‘I don’t know when the others arrived, but I got there between three and three thirty, I think. And I guess I was there until around five o’clock. I didn’t check what time it was when we left.’

Bjarne makes a note of the times.

‘You said when we left. Did you all leave the care home at the same time?’

‘Yes, I think so. I wouldn’t know if anyone stayed behind as we didn’t share the lift down. It isn’t big enough for all five of us.’

Bjarne nods and gets a flashback to Sandland and him in the narrow space, a little too close for her comfort zone, too far apart for his. The silence that follows gives way to an impatience that prompts him to ask: ‘Have you been to these singalongs before?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Did anything last Sunday strike you as a little unusual?’

Gjerløw falls silent.

‘Well, I’m not really—’

‘Did anyone behave differently, a patient, a staff member or… or anyone else?’

‘Not that I recall.’

Bjarne lifts his pen from the paper while he thinks.

‘How well do you know the other volunteers?’

Gjerløw sighs again.

‘I only know Remi. I don’t know what it’s like with the rest, if they know each other.’

Bjarne nods to himself and looks down at his notepad. Depressingly few notes.

‘What made you volunteer in the first place?’ he asks.

Gjerløw doesn’t reply immediately.

‘Helping others is a good thing to do,’ he says eventually. ‘Making a positive difference to someone’s day. You ought to try it sometime.’

The words smart like an unexpected slap to the face. Bjarne is lost for an answer.

‘Was there anything else?’ Gjerløw asks. ‘I’m about to go out.’

‘No,’ Bjarne says. ‘Thanks for your help.’

Bjarne spends the next hour calling the other four names on the list from the Volunteer Service, but none of them can add a single new detail. All of them confirm that they left the care home around the same time as they normally do.

Bjarne shakes his head while he tries to sum up the case for himself. First Erna Pedersen is strangled in her own room, then her eyes are pierced with her own knitting needles; the killer proceeds to smash a picture of her son’s family, which was on the wall, and takes with him a school photo from the crime scene without anyone seeing or hearing anything.

The only thing he can think of that could have distracted an entire floor in a care home is the Volunteer Service’s singalong that afternoon. Someone could have stolen away from the entertainment, gone to Erna Pedersen’s room, killed her and then returned to the singalong. It need not have taken more than a couple of minutes and no one would have noticed. Pedersen wouldn’t have been capable of making very much noise and her room was quite a distance from the TV lounge where the singalong was taking place. And it’s fairly easy to hide a framed school photo. All you need is a bag or jacket with big pockets.

But what was the point of mutilating her eyes? And what about the missing picture? Was Pedersen meant to look at it before she was killed?

His train of thought is interrupted by Ella Sandland knocking on his door and popping her head round.

‘I’ve just had a call from Forensics,’ she says, sounding agitated. ‘They’ve found a fingerprint on the knitting needles that doesn’t belong to Erna Pedersen.’

Bjarne looks up at her.

‘Okay? So who does it belong to?’

A layer of grey clouds hangs across Jessheim and refuses to let in the sun, but Emilie Blomvik doesn’t even notice it when she drops off Sebastian at nursery, just in time for him to join in the trip to the Raknehaugen burial mound. Inside his Lightning McQueen bag are two packed lunches, a clear blue plastic bottle of tap water and a green apple. She sends him inside with whispered instructions to have lots of fun today because that’s exactly what she intends.