and didn’t really know what happened next, but it was a long, long time until anyone saw Torill again.
“You’re not my daddy,” whispered Emilie. “My daddy is named Tonnes. You don’t even look like him.”
The man looked at her. His eyes were scary, even though he had quite a nice face. He must be crazy.
Pettersen in the green block was crazy in a different way from Torill. Mommy used to say that Torill wouldn’t hurt a fly, but it was different with Pettersen in the green block. Emilie thought it wasn’t quite true to say that Torill wouldn’t hurt a fly when she actually wanted to roast her own children on a fire. But Pettersen was worse, all the same. He had been to prison for messing around with young children. Emilie knew what messing around meant. Auntie Beate had told her.
“I’m sure we’ll be friends one day,” said the man, and grabbed the Barbie doll. “Were you pleased to get this?”
Emilie didn’t answer. It was difficult to breathe in here. Maybe she had used up all the air; something was pressing on her chest and she was dizzy all the time. People need oxygen. When you breathe you use up the oxygen so the air becomes empty and useless, in a way. That’s what Auntie Beate had explained to her. That was why it was so horrible to hide under a duvet. After a while you just had to lift up a corner to get some oxygen. Even if it was a big room, she had been there a long time. It felt like years. She lifted her face and gasped for air.
The crazy man smiled. He obviously had no problem breathing. Maybe it was just her; maybe she was going to die. Maybe the man had poisoned her because he wanted to mess around with her afterwards. Emilie gasped desperately for air.
“Have you got asthma?” asked the man.
“No,” gasped Emilie.
“Try lying down.”
“No!”
If only she could relax and think about something completely different from the man with the scary eyes, then maybe she could breathe.
But she couldn’t think about anything else.
She closed her eyes and leaned back, her upper back propped against the wall. There were no more thoughts. Nothing. Daddy had probably given up looking for her.
“Go to sleep.”
The man left. Emilie locked her fingers around the stiff Barbie doll. She would rather have had a teddy bear, even if she was too old for that, too.
Now that she was on her own again, she could at least breathe.
The man had not messed around with her. Emilie pulled up the duvet and eventually fell asleep.
Tonnes Selbu was alone at last. It was as if he no longer had his own life. As if nothing was his anymore, not even time. The house was constantly full of people, neighbors, friends, Beate, his parents. The police. They obviously thought that it was easier for him to talk to them here at home, whereas in fact it would be a relief to go to the police station, an escape. He wasn’t even allowed to go to the store. Beate and Grete’s old friends did everything. Yesterday his mother-in-law had even run a bath for him. He had lowered himself into the scalding hot water and half expected some woman or other to appear out of nowhere to wash his back. Scrub him. He lay in the water until it was tepid. Then Beate shouted for him. She eventually banged on the door, worried.
He had lost control of his own time.
Now he was alone. They wouldn’t leave him in peace, the others. He had gotten very angry in the end. A great rage had forced everyone out the door. It felt good because it reminded him that he still existed.
He put his hand on the door handle.
Emilie’s room.
He hadn’t been in since that first afternoon, when the child disappeared and he turned her room upside down trying to find a clue, a trace, a code that might tell him Emilie was only joking. She had gone too far, of course, but it was all just an attempt to fool him, frighten him a bit so that they could have an extra-special evening, safe in the knowledge that Emilie would never actually disappear. He emptied her drawers. Her books landed on the floor, her clothes in a pile in the hall outside. He even pulled off the sheets and tore a poster of Disneyland down from the wall. It was no mystery, no rebus; there was neither answer nor clue. Nothing to be solved. Emilie was gone and he called the police.
The cold metal burned against the palm of his hand. He heard his own heart hammering in his eardrums, as if he didn’t really know what he would find behind the familiar door with Emilie’s name on it, spelled out in wooden letters; the M had fallen off half a year ago and he read E-ilie, E-ilie. Tomorrow he would buy a new M.
Beate had tidied up the room. When he eventually went in, he saw that everything was back in place. The books were standing neatly on the shelves, according to color, the way Emilie wanted. Even her bookbag, which the police had seized, was back in place, on the floor beside the desk.
The police thought it was his fault.
But they weren’t accusing him of anything. In the first few days, he’d felt a bit like a psychiatric patient on the one hand, whom everyone treated with kid gloves, and on the other like a criminal who everyone suspected. It was as if they were constantly frightened that he’d take his own life and therefore watched him with almost suffocating care. At the same time there was something about the way they looked at him; a sharp edge to the questions they asked.
Then the little boy disappeared.
And they changed their tune, the police. It was as if they finally understood that his despair was genuine.
Then they found the little boy.
When two of the policemen came to tell him that the boy was dead, he felt like he was being given an exam. As if, unless he answered exactly what they wanted and the expression on his face was suitable for such an occasion, it would be his fault that Kim Sande Oksoy had been killed. Such an occasion?
They had asked him to make a list of everyone he had ever known or met. He was to start with his family and closest friends. Then the more peripheral people, good and not so good friends, ex-girlfriends and one-night stands, colleagues and colleagues’ wives. It was impossible.
“This is impossible,” he’d said, throwing up his hands. He had gone as far back as secondary school and couldn’t remember the names of more than four school friends. “Is it really necessary?”
The policewoman had been patient.
“We’ve asked Kim’s parents to do the same,” she said in a calm voice. “Then we can compare. See if you have any mutual acquaintances. Or if you ever had. It’s not only necessary, it’s very important. We think that these cases are connected, so it is important to find a common link between the families.”
Tonnes Selbu ran his hand over Emilie’s bed, over the letters she had written in felt-tip pen on the blond wood when she was learning the alphabet. He wanted to bury his face in her pajamas. It was impossible. He couldn’t bear to smell her.
He wanted to lie down in Emilie’s bed. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get up either. He ached all over. Maybe he should ring Beate after all. Maybe someone should come, someone to fill the empty space around him.
Tonnes Selbu stayed sitting on the edge of his daughter’s bed. He prayed, intensely and continuously. Not to God-he was an unfamiliar figure he only used in the fairy tales he told to Emilie. Instead, he prayed to his dead wife. He hadn’t looked after Emilie well enough, as he had promised Grete, in the hours before she died.
FIFTEEN
A man approached the row house. The red and white tape that the police had put up had not been removed yet, but had loosened here and there. The night wind made the tired plastic wheeze at the man who slowly climbed over the fence and hid in the bushes. He seemed to know what he wanted to do, but wasn’t quite sure if he dared to. If anyone had seen him, the first thing they would have remarked on was his clothes. He was wearing a thick, turtleneck sweater under a down jacket. He had a big hat on his head, with earflaps and a peak that hung down over his eyes. The boots would have been more appropriate for a soldier fighting a winter war, enormous
