Thomas Enger - Scarred

Do something, yes. But what?

Fortunately Sebastian is still playing in his room, bashing away at his hammer board toy. He turns over the board and starts whacking the other side. It is a game that usually sends him to sleep. She hopes he is starting to feel sleepy now.

‘Remi,’ she says with warmth in her voice. ‘Why don’t you sit down for a moment?’

Emilie can’t gesture to him because her hands are tied behind her back. So instead she makes a come-hither movement with her head. Remi looks at her.

‘Do you remember when we used to skive off school and spend the whole day at home just watching movies?’

Emilie attempts to produce a smile she knows usually has an effect on men.

‘I can’t remember how many sweets we ate. I feel almost sick just thinking about it.’

Mattis stares at her, but Emilie ignores him. She sees that the memories start to come back to Remi. The time when they were good together. Life was fun. It was quite a wild time as well, she remembers. A lot happened.

‘We could be like that… again, you know that, don’t you?’

She has barely spoken the words before he snorts with derision.

‘What is it you want from me, Remi? What can I do to make all this go away?’

He lifts his head and looks at her.

‘I want you to say that you’re sorry,’ he says. ‘I want you to look at me and tell me you’re sorry for ruining my life.’

Emilie nods softly, before she realises what he has just said.

‘Me? I ruined your—’

‘Yes, you. You, Johanne, that vicious old—’

Remi bites his lip.

Emilie doesn’t say anything immediately, but she realises that she can’t stop herself.

‘Remi,’ she says. ‘What happened between us. It was a hundred years ago.’

Her voice is calm even though she is seething on the inside.

‘You’re not seriously telling me that you’re still upset about what happened back then?’

Remi makes no reply.

‘I was eighteen years old, Remi. Eighteen! Dear God, we were just kids. We did crazy stuff all the time.’

‘ You did crazy stuff all the time.’

‘Yes, okay, but so what? We’re allowed to make mistakes when we’re young.’

‘Right and who cares if anyone gets hurt while we make our mistakes? Anything goes as long as you’re having fun?’

Emilie doesn’t respond immediately.

‘Remi, everyone has done things they regret. If I had the chance to live my life all over again there are many things I would do differently, and if that’s what you want me to say, then yes, I’m sorry for what happened between us. So here goes: I’m really sorry I hurt you. I apologise. Okay? Now can we please get on with our lives?’

‘I can tell from your voice that you don’t mean it.’

Emilie rolls her eyes, but Remi just sends her an icy glare.

‘Okay,’ Emilie says with a sigh. ‘Fine. But don’t come back later and say that I didn’t apologise.’

‘It’s too late now, anyway.’

The next moment the phone rings. Remi looks at it for a long time before he presses a button and puts it to his ear. But he says nothing. Emilie presumes it’s the police trying to talk him down.

But Emilie’s intuition tells her that talking won’t help; only action will do. And there is something in Remi’s eyes that terrifies the life out of her. There is no hope left in them. Only hatred.

You have to do something , she thinks.

Trine is given a telephone and a headset, which she puts on and exhales.

‘I’m ready,’ she says and looks at the hostage negotiator who nods back in return.

‘We need to go inside the truck,’ she says. ‘You can’t stand out here and make yourself a target. This is a man who clearly wants attention, and you—’

‘I get it,’ Trine interrupts her.

They step inside the mobile incident truck. Trine is given a chair, an A4 pad and pen. The negotiator sits down next to her.

Trine has read the police contingency plan for situations like this, so she knows that every action suggested and executed will be logged. Everything she says will be subject to close scrutiny afterwards.

‘Remember, I’m with you all the way,’ the negotiator says. ‘Look at me and any notes I write down for you while you talk to him. Be calm. Self-assured. Controlled. Don’t let him know that you’re nervous.’

‘Is it that obvious?’ Trine says and laughs quickly.

‘I’m always nervous in situations like these,’ the negotiator says. ‘It usually brings out the best in me. And one more thing: use his first name, Remi. It might make him feel that you know each other. And, if you can, refer to the hostages by their first names. It’ll make it harder for him to hurt them.’

Trine nods and closes her eyes in an attempt to focus her thoughts. What if this goes belly up as well? What kind of legacy will she leave behind? She can see the demands. APOLOGISE! the front pages will clamour. Again.

Trine’s chest is pounding. Her pulse is 190. Adrenaline. A feeling she normally loves, but this is nothing like a high. She closes her eyes for a moment. Then she rings the number.

Remi looks at the phone vibrating on the worktop in the kitchen. The police have stopped ringing Emilie’s phone. And started calling his.

It means they know who he is now. They must also have discovered what he has done. But how could they? Where did he screw up?

Once more he reviews the murder of Erna Pedersen in his mind. She didn’t remember him the first time he rolled her wheelchair back from the singalong in the TV lounge, not until he showed her pictures from the year he was in and reminded her about the fractions.

Remi had never been much good at maths. One day, she ordered him up to the blackboard, told him to reduce a fraction she had written. And he stood there, staring at the confusion of numbers without understanding anything at all. Later, he suspected that had been her intention all along, make him go up there so they could all have a good laugh at his expense, the whole class. What she did afterwards, as the volume of her voice rose, certainly caused some of his fellow pupils to snicker. She ordered him to crawl under one of the desks in the front row and screamed while she hit the desk with her cane, ‘This is a fraction. And you can’t have a nothing under a fraction!’

Another time she had turned up with three large bars of chocolate and told them that if every single pupil in the class could work out an equation she had taught them, they could have the chocolate. As expected Remi failed and, surprise, surprise, she made a big point out of stressing how he had ruined it for everyone. Then there was the way she always looked at him. Her scornful laughter.

When he held up the school photo to her and pointed himself out, she showed signs of recognition, but she said nothing. And he felt the urge, right there and then, to extinguish the light in the eyes he had hated ever since his school days, but he couldn’t do it. Too many people had seen him wheel her in. Markus was waiting for him. So he left the school photo on the wall in the hope that she would remember what she had done. Perhaps she would say sorry next time.

But no. What he saw instead were traces of the same contempt she had treated him with at school. And though he had planned it, he didn’t actually understand what had happened until after he had killed her. He had also destroyed the trophy on her wall, the photograph of her son’s family displayed like a prize for successful mothering. Then he took the school photo with him and sneaked back into the TV lounge, took up position right behind Markus and sang along with ‘Thine Be the Glory, Risen Conquering Son’.