On a magnetic strip beside the sink hang an assortment of utensils from IKEA, and fine cutlery from Japan and Germany. There are American appliances from Kitchenware. There is a bowl full of fresh apples, pears, lemons, and limes that will soon rot.
There is a
This apartment is much bigger than the one upstairs. Maybe one hundred and twenty square metres or more. There’s a master bedroom to her right, and between that doorway and the refrigerator is a short staircase leading down to where the old man stays and to the closet where they found the urine stain.
She opens the folder now and takes out the photos. She walks to the spots where each was taken, and compares what she sees with what the camera saw only last night. She wonders whether anything is out of place, and what someone might have been doing here.
Sigrid goes into the bathroom and pokes around. It contains finer cosmetics than upstairs, subtle fragrances, loofahs. In the cabinet under the sink are ‘marital aids’, and Sigrid closes the cabinet respectfully, though perhaps a bit enviously.
There are a few novels from people she has not heard of: Philip Roth, James Salter, Mark Helprin, Richard Ford. There are copies of a periodical called
There is nothing odd here, but there are many things she does not understand. These three people have crafted some existence that is not natural to any one of them.
The effort, and even the result, is admirable.
In the mirror above the sink she sees the shower curtain. It is closed.
Turning, she takes out her nightstick. The curtain has moved since she came into the room.
Her backup should be on the way. The police station is not far.
Sigrid takes her flashlight from her belt and, rather than push the curtain away, she steps back to the bathroom door, switches off the light, and then shines the flashlight at the white ceiling above the bathtub, illuminating the white curtain.
There are no shadows cast. There is no one inside.
Switching the light back on, she now moves the shower curtain to the side, just to be sure, finds it empty, and then leaves the bathroom, switching off the light behind her.
The living room has been carefully preserved by her detectives. There is evidence of a struggle everywhere. The fragments of fragile objects are clustered closer to the spot of the murder. The woman’s final moments were spent suffocating and with a knife in her chest, lying over the back of the coffee table in front of the sofa. Her blood has dripped down the sides, and soaked into the white floorboards.
He had the leverage here. Once she was on her back, he pressed his knee on her. The hatred was personal and remorseless.
The downstairs room is less a cellar than another room to the apartment. The building itself accommodates the slight drop in the land that explains the odd floor plan.
The room is orderly. The bed is made. On a red chair there is a black suit, a white shirt, and a grey tie, as though waiting to be filled with a mourner. She opens the wooden dresser. There are a few sweaters, trousers, and pieces of underwear.
On the nightstand by his bed there is a lamp, and at its base is an antique silver picture-frame. It folds on tiny hinges. In its left side is a black-and-white picture, taken maybe fifty years ago of a woman who was almost Sigrid’s age. She had dark hair and the sorts of eyes that women only had in the 1950s. She is petite, and is sitting on a stone wall with one leg up. A white sneaker rests on top of a park bench below her along the wall, and she’s laughing. It looks like autumn. It is probably his wife — the one who died back in America and prompted his move here.
On the right is a young man, probably a teenager. He is slender, and has the same eyes as the woman. This one is a colour photograph and is slightly out of focus. It may have been taken quickly or with a cheap camera, like a Polaroid Land camera or even an old Minox. His arms and legs are crossed as he leans against a 1968 Mustang. It is baby blue, and he is smiling as though he designed and built it himself.
The only other item on the night table is a jacket patch placed carefully against the base of the lamp opposite the photos. It is drab green with a thin, red trim, and looks worn. It is the motto of the US Marine Corps.
‘Where the hell have you gone to, Mr Horowitz?’ Sigrid says aloud to herself. ‘Why are you missing and what are you doing?’
Just before leaving Sheldon’s room, Sigrid drops to one knee and looks under the bed. And, for the first time, something seems off.
There is a large pink jewellery box with a silver lock on the front. The midday light reflects off the floor, and she sees it easily.
She reaches under and pulls it out.
Staying on one knee, she fiddles with the latch. It doesn’t open. With her Leatherman knife she could easily pry it off and open the box, but that — for the moment — isn’t the point.
Sigrid looks again at the woman in the picture frame — at her white sneaker, her fine wristwatch, her white collar tipping out of a V-neck sweater. She has a wide smile. Her universe is full of possibilities. It must have been taken in the late 1950s. Sheldon was back from Korea. Her son was probably about five or six then. She had her figure and her grace. The bad things in her life hadn’t happened yet.
Would this box belong to her?
Sigrid takes out a small black notepad and flips quickly to the interview with Rhea and Lars. She flips a few more times.
There. Her husband was a watch repairman and antique salesman.
She looks again at the pink box.
And then it occurs to her what she’d forgotten to do upstairs. She’d forgotten to look for a match to the key that Senka died with in her pocket.
Had all the officers forgotten to do that? If they had, she’d raise hell at the office.
If the match to that key was here in the apartment where she was murdered, it means she must have brought it down. It could have been stored here, but that would have meant Sigrid had been lied to and that Senka, Rhea, and Lars did all know each other. This does not seem likely. More likely is that Senka brought it here before she was killed. She hid it. The killer wanted it. It is part of the reason for her death. She protected herself and its contents. She fought to the death as her boy hid in the closet across from it.
Whatever is in it must be important.
This is Sigrid’s very last thought before a hard object strikes her on the head and she collapses to the ground.
Chapter 14
Kadri holds the huge D-battery Maglite in his hand and looks down at the woman cop he has just bludgeoned. He doesn’t like hitting women — though it doesn’t especially bother him, either — and she certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve it personally. But he needed that box, and he was pretty certain that asking her for it wouldn’t have done the trick.
‘You should have checked the closet,’ he says to her in English. ‘You check the shower, but not the closet. Who would stand in a shower? Everyone gets killed in a shower. Don’t you go to the movies?
