– Someone’s taken the ring, Ragnhild Bjerke said quietly, as though she were talking to herself.
Jennifer thought it curious that this was what Mailin’s mother had noticed especially. – It must have been very special, she said.
It took a few moments for her visitor to respond.
– She never took it off. Mailin was named after my mother. When she was eighteen, she inherited her wedding ring.
– Then there must have been an inscription on it.
Ragnhild Bjerke nodded almost imperceptibly. – Your Aage, and the date of the wedding. No one could have done a thing like this just for a ring.
Jennifer didn’t reply.
– I thought something would happen, Ragnhild Bjerke went on. The voice was still a monotone, hollow. – I thought I would realise that she’s gone. Her gaze was stiff too, but beneath lurked something that might have been panic. – I don’t understand. I feel nothing.
Jennifer could have told her a lot about that. Told her of the conversations she had had with the bereaved down through the years. Now and then she had thought of herself as the ferryman who carried the dead person’s relatives over the river, and then rowed them back again. She could have told her how common it was to be overwhelmed by feelings it was impossible to control. That it was normal, too, for a person to cocoon themselves and feel nothing but emptiness. But standing there she couldn’t bring herself to say any of this. Something she hadn’t felt the faintest breath of for a long time now surged through her, the strong desire for a daughter. A recognition of the fact that she would never have one was like the palest echo of the grief that hovered around the dead woman’s mother.
– Liss trusts you, said Ragnhild Bjerke.
Jennifer felt that inevitable flush tinge her cheeks. – She’s a fine girl.
Ragnhild Bjerke looked out across the car park. – She’s withdrawn so far from me. In a way, I lost her first. Many years ago.
– Surely it’s not too late to change things.
Without moving her gaze, Ragnhild Bjerke shook her head. – I’ve tried everything. She’s never really felt any connection to me. Always been a daddy’s girl.
– But she hasn’t seen her father for years?
– Not since she was six. Ragnhild Bjerke swallowed a couple of times. – She blames me for his leaving. She thinks I was the one who drove him away.
– Isn’t this something you could talk to her about now, now that she’s grown up?
Jennifer could guess how like the mother the eldest daughter had been. Liss, on the other hand, she could find no trace of in Ragnhild Bjerke’s face or body.
– Maybe it was wrong of me not to tell her the truth. Mailin was told, after all, but Liss… She’s always been so fragile. I was probably afraid it would break her.
Jennifer struggled to divorce her own curiosity from her visitor’s need to tell the story. – Did something happen between you and your husband? she asked cautiously.
– Happen? Something was happening all the time. He was a painter. All that mattered to him was success… That’s a little unfair. He cared about the girls, in his way. Liss especially. As long as they didn’t get in the way of his work. He had a studio in town, but often used a room down in the basement when he was at home. That was okay, because in those days there was a lot of travelling involved in my job.
Jennifer knew that Ragnhild Bjerke worked for one of the big publishing houses.
– I was away a lot promoting books, especially in the autumn. Often spent nights away.
– Why did he leave you?
Jennifer heard that her question was too private and was about to apologise when Ragnhild Bjerke said:
– He had a very high opinion of his own talent. Was convinced he was a great artist and that nothing must stand in his way. It meant he could allow himself to live any way he liked.
Jennifer didn’t find the answer particularly illuminating but didn’t pursue it.
– For years after he left, he wandered around without settling down anywhere. Suddenly we heard he had a big exhibition in Amsterdam. There were things about him on TV and in the newspapers. Everybody was talking about how this was the big breakthrough. Then it all went quiet again, and nothing came of it. It never did with him. Now he’s in Montreal. He met a young woman who lives there. But he’s been away travelling for several months. They can’t get in touch with him. He still doesn’t know that Mailin is…
Jennifer tried to imagine what it would be like to move so far away from one’s children.
– Canada is quite a long way away, she said, encouraging her visitor to say more.
Ragnhild Bjerke continued to stare at a point far beyond the window. – That’s not the reason he hasn’t seen the girls for so many years. He didn’t even get in touch when he was living in Copenhagen. He chose to live without them. But I think also there was a kind of compulsion involved.
She took out a handkerchief, held it to her nose as though about to sneeze, but took it away again without anything happening.
– He was a tormented man. Not when we first met, not when the children were very small. It started after a few years. Of course I knew his mother had a serious mental illness, and I got worried about him. Tried to get him to see a doctor, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He began staying up all night. Wandering restlessly about the house. Or standing talking to himself by the window.
– Hallucinations?
– I don’t think so. It was as though he was sleeping with his eyes open. Afterwards he couldn’t remember me talking to him.
She took a little tube of lip salve from her handbag and ran it across her dry lips.
– And he had the most dreadful nightmares. Once I found him in Mailin’s bedroom, standing by her bed and screaming. Finally I managed to get through to him. He was shaking, completely beside himself. ‘I didn’t kill them,’ he was shouting. I got him out of there before he woke her up. ‘You haven’t killed anyone, Lasse,’ I kept telling him. ‘I dreamed it,’ he sobbed, ‘and I can’t wake up.’ ‘What did you dream?’ ‘The girls,’ he murmured, ‘I dreamed I cut them up and ate their little bodies.’
She closed her eyes. Jennifer couldn’t think of anything to say. The conversation had taken a direction she had no idea how to deal with. Roar had mentioned several times that the police were trying to get in touch with this father. What she was hearing now, in all confidence, was something that would interest the investigators. She ought to have interrupted and asked for permission to pass this information on.
– I called his doctor the next day, Ragnhild Bjerke continued before Jennifer could make up her mind. – But Lasse refused to go and see him. A couple of weeks later he moved out. He didn’t say goodbye. Not to me. Not to Mailin. But Liss had some idea that he had been there and spoken to her.
She closed her handbag, sat with it on her lap.
– Can you understand why I never told this to Liss? She worshipped her father. Can you understand why it was better for her to blame me for his disappearance and to make me an object of hatred?
Jennifer didn’t know how to respond to that.
– You said you were away a lot, she said instead. – Are you afraid he might have…
Ragnhild Bjerke opened her eyes wide. – He can’t have done… I mean, it was just a nightmare. She shook her head for a long time, slowly. – I would have known. Mailin never hinted at anything of the kind… She tells me everything… always did…
Jennifer suddenly felt helpless and regretted having let things go so far. – Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee?
– A glass of water, perhaps.
With the glass on the table in front of her, Ragnhild Bjerke said: – I know why Liss came here. It’s good to talk to you.
Again Jennifer felt herself flush. – Liss doesn’t trust the police, she said.