She shook her head. “Nope, William was always very open about everything. There were only three things he really cared about. Tilde first, then me, then his job.” She smiled, as if everything about the man were unassailable. “But what were you thinking about, exactly?”
“Open about everything, you say?” Carl knew of no one but Assad who could toss a sentence into the air so vivid that it remained suspended long after a conversation had come to an end. “Would that include the most intimate of matters? Sex fantasies and such?”
She stifled a laugh, presumably because in terms of the world she lived in, she knew William Stark’s sexual desires to be as normal and predictable as could be. “How do you mean, fantasies? What’s wrong with fantasies? Don’t you have any of your own?”
Assad’s smile was perhaps a mite too overbearing in light of the sentence that followed. “Indeed I do, but not about young boys and girls.”
Malene Kristoffersen was shocked. She sucked her lower lip in and her face drained of color quicker than Carl had ever seen. She grasped the hem of her skirt, wringing the material so hard they could hear the stitching split. Though momentarily stunned, she shook her head like a metronome. The words she was looking for were on their way.
They came slowly and deliberately, like small, measured punches. “Are you telling me that William is suspected of being a pedophile? Is that what you’re saying, you little shit? Is it? Answer me! I want to hear the word from your own filthy mouth, do you hear me?”
The way Assad tipped his head and turned the other cheek was almost biblical. But things could develop fast.
“Let me say it, then,” said Carl. “Have you ever had the slightest suspicion that William might have pedophile tendencies? Have you ever seen him staring at children or spending too much time at the computer late at night?”
The tears in her eyes could have come from anger, but they did not. Everything about her body language suggested otherwise. She shook her head slowly. “William was a completely normal man.” She swallowed a couple of times to stifle her urge to cry. “And yes, he did sit up late at the computer, but it was his work. Don’t you think a woman like me knows how to uncover the inner workings of her husband-or of a computer, for that matter?”
“External hard drives are quite small these days, easy to hide away in a pocket. Did he use them?”
She shook her head. “Why did you come here, anyway? Don’t you think it’s bad enough not knowing what’s happened to William?” She was about to say more but turned her head away with a pained expression. Swallowing was no longer sufficient to stave off her crying. It was the kind of situation that revealed a person’s true age. Her skin seemed almost to become transparent. Then she took a deep breath and turned to face them again. “No, he didn’t have any external hard drives, he wasn’t good when it came to technology or electronics. In fact, William was as analog you could imagine. Real world, with both feet on the ground. That’s how he was. Understand?”
Carl nodded to Assad, who pulled a photo out of his pocket.
“Do you know this boy? I realize it’s hard to see his face, but perhaps you can recognize his clothes or something else about him?” he asked, showing her the still from the CCTV footage of Marco.
She frowned but said nothing while Assad described him in more detail, adding that the boy had been seen outside Stark’s house. “Don’t you think it strange for a boy of that age to be so interested in William, especially after such a long time?”
“Yes, of course I find it strange. But there could be any number of reasons, not just…”
Assad turned the screws. “The boy can’t have been very old when William went missing.”
She understood what he was getting at, and her claws were already extended. Carl gave Assad a prudent nudge with his elbow before taking over.
“The question is what relationship this boy, who must have been no more than twelve or thirteen at the time, could have to William. Can you suggest anything?”
“My suggestion is that you keep your mouths shut with such disgusting allegations, do you hear me? William was not a pedophile, he…”
She stopped, as if someone had switched her off, at the sound of padded feet in the hall.
All three of them looked toward the door as a sleepy, blonde-haired girl with angular eyebrows came into the room.
Carl tried to smile as Malene raised her hand in a motherly greeting, hoping her daughter hadn’t heard what had been said, but the expression on Tilde’s face was unambiguous.
“Are you OK now, darling?” Malene asked.
The girl ignored her. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice acidic.
Assad got up first. “We are from the police, Tilde. My name is-”
“Have you found William?”
They shook their heads.
“In that case I think you should go.”
Her mother tried to explain, but Tilde had already passed judgment.
“You two are a couple of idiots. William wasn’t like that at all. Or perhaps you knew him better than us?”
Neither of them answered. What could they say to a child like her, who had screamed out her loss on every billboard in the city?
The girl clutched her abdomen and her hands trembled. Malene made to get up, but Tilde gave her a look that clearly demonstrated just what kind of person they were dealing with. Here was a girl who knew all about pain. The body’s internal knife stab, the torments of the soul, and the realization that the future had not much else to offer. And yet she did not flee from the room and leave the grown-ups with all the accusations. She stood her ground, though everything inside her clamored for her to give up. She stood her ground and looked them each in the eye. “William was my father. I loved him, he was always there for me, even when I was really ill. Ask anyone I know and they’ll tell you he never did me or any of my friends any harm whatsoever.” She looked down at the floor. “And I miss him so very much. Now just tell me why you’re here; I’m not angry anymore. Have you found him?”
“I’m afraid not, Tilde. But we think there’s someone who knows what happened to him.” Carl showed her the photo of the boy. “He was at Bellahøj police station yesterday with your poster. And he had this with him.”
He nodded to Assad, who produced a clear bag containing the African necklace from his pocket, placing it carefully on the coffee table in front of her.
Tilde blinked, as though the repeated opening and shutting of her eyelids could keep the world at bay and reveal to her some new path forward. She remained so long in this apparent state of paralysis that Malene got to her feet and put her arms round her without the girl noticing. All she saw was the necklace.
Carl looked at Assad, who avoided his gaze. They all knew what Tilde was going through now. A person who had never felt what it was like to suddenly be overwhelmed by the realization of having lost a loved one had either never known loss or had never truly lived. Here at this particular moment were four people, each with his or her own way of dealing with that feeling, and Assad’s was definitely not the easiest.
“Where did he get it from, do you know?” she eventually whispered.
“We don’t know the answer to that, Tilde. We don’t know who this boy is, or where we can find him. We were hoping that you might be able to help us.”
She leaned toward the photo and shook her head.
“Is he the one you think William did those things with?”
“We don’t think anything at all, Tilde. We’re policemen. Our job is to solve mysteries, and right now we’re working on what happened to William. It was this that set us off. Have a look.”
Carl unrolled the poster in front of her. Her lips trembled as her eyes darted from the necklace on the table to its image on the poster.