‘What did you think?’
‘Call the station and ask them to get out there.’
‘I told you, I didn’t have a search warrant. What did you think?’
‘You had reasonable grounds for suspicion. The smell of the corpse.’
‘There’s no corpse smell in here.’
‘No? He’s been dead five days at least, probably a good while longer.’
‘He’s frozen. He’s been refrigerated here in some kind of freezer. Bob, tell me, you thought what? What is it you know?’
‘I know it wasn’t Tomás Gomez who killed that person in the chair.’
‘How?’
‘Because the man in the chair is Tomás Gomez. Better known as Lobo. I have to do something here now, Kay, I’ll call you back later.’
‘Bob!’
But Bob Oz had already hung up. Kay’s whole body was shivering with cold now, and she knew it would be a while before she could get the heat back in her body. A long while. It wasn’t the flayed, frozen body that had caused her to freak out the way she did and drop the iron bar. It was the animal with yellow eyes in his lap. The stuffed cat.
Bob slipped the phone back into his coat pocket and stepped out of the car. It was strangely quiet, no one around. Did he wish right now that he was carrying a gun? The answer to that was straightforward. Yes he did.
Bob approached the house slowly, keeping his eyes on the windows. The silence was broken by the sound of a mower starting up somewhere. A ceramic nameplate hung by the door, clearly the work of a child, probably made in a handiwork class at school. Here, it said, live Sam, Anna, Monica and Mike Lunde. The same four names Bob had found on the net in the reports of the McDeath killings in 1986. Only the father survived. One report had printed a photo of the family, formally posing in smart clothing, obviously professionally taken at a photographer’s studio. Bob thought Mike Lunde looked happy in the picture. Happy, young and naive. One hand rested on the shoulder of his daughter Anna, sitting in front of him. Her long fair hair reached all the way down to the wheelchair, and her smile was radiant.
The mower stopped.
Bob pressed the doorbell. Heard it ring inside the house. Pressed again. Heard the ringing inside but no sound of approaching footsteps. He thought about the body Kay had described. Things were starting to fall into place now. Bob rang a third time. Then he walked round the house to the back, cupped his hands against the glass of the porch door and peered inside. Just then the mower started up again.
In the semi-darkness he saw a tidy room with furniture. It was slightly old-fashioned and conservative, as he had halfway expected. There was an open-plan kitchen with a worktop. A large painting of the family hung above the fireplace. It looked as though the painter had used the same photograph as the one in the report on the net. Bob’s eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dark and he now saw that what he had at first taken to be an ordinary chair, standing with its back to him on the far side of the room, was actually a wheelchair. There was someone sitting in it. The sun caught the glossy fair hair hanging down over the back of the wheelchair. Bob called out a ‘Hello!’ but the person in the wheelchair didn’t react. Thinking the shout might have been lost in the noise from the mower Bob knocked on the window. Still no reaction. The person sat there, quite motionless. Maybe she was just sleeping. He tried the porch door. It wasn’t locked.
Bob pushed the door open. The penetrating, insistent engine noise of the mower entered the room with him. Still the figure in the wheelchair didn’t move. Bob walked over to her. Swallowed. Recalled Mike’s words. My job is to freeze memories, preserve them in solid form. But there’s something unhealthy about that.
Hysterical violins sounded through his head as he reached out a hand and placed it on the shoulder of the person in the wheelchair. The figure slowly rotated and then — as in the movie — came the scream. The mouth of the figure, a woman, was open. That was where the scream came from. She pulled out the earbuds she was wearing, jerking so hard that the lead came out of the cell phone in her lap and fell to the floor. Bob heard the low buzzing of classical music.
‘Oh my God, you gave me such a fright!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Who are you?’
45
Portrait, October 2016
‘I’m sorry, I did ring the bell,’ said Bob to the woman in the wheelchair. ‘Bob Oz. I’m a friend of Mike’s. Is he in?’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, panting for breath, one hand flat against her chest. ‘Just give me a moment to recover. I’m afraid you’ve missed Mike, he just left.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘To work. A customer is coming in to pick up a Labrador he’s been working on.’
Bob nodded, studying her. She looked to be in her fifties, and her clothes were conservative and almost old-fashioned, in the same way Mike’s were.
‘I believe I’ve seen a picture of you somewhere,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you...?’
‘Emily Lunde,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Mike’s sister.’
He shook her hand. ‘Of course. You’re a taxidermist too, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Just visiting?’
She looked up at him in surprise. ‘No. I live here.’
‘I see. Have you lived here long?’
‘Quite a long time yes. Ever since...’ She nodded at the family portrait above the fireplace.
‘Ah yes,’ said Bob. ‘The tragedy.’
‘Yes. A cup of tea or coffee?’ She smiled. She seemed like someone who smiled easily. And laughed. ‘It’ll only take a minute,’ she said as he looked at his watch. ‘I like company, I admit it, it’s easy to get that way out here. You could always ring Mike.’
‘I’ll do that after the tea,’ said Bob.
She gave a contented nod and wheeled over to the kitchen worktop while Bob studied the portrait.
‘Multiple sclerosis,’ Emily called as she filled the kettle.
‘What?’
‘You’re wondering why Mike’s daughter and I are both in wheelchairs. Grandma also had MS.’
‘I see. So it runs in the family?’
‘To some degree yes. Our family was unlucky.’
Bob looked at the faces in the portrait. He saw no trace of doubt in any of them. They believed the future was bright. That all of them would live long and happy lives.
‘So you’re the one who stays at home and makes kjøttkaker in brown sauce?’ He said it in broken Norwegian and Emily laughed again.
‘Our mother taught us that, yes. What is it you want to see Mike about?’
Bob thought about what to say. ‘Just to pick up something he said I could borrow.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A rifle.’
‘Ah. Well, he took that with him. Maybe he misunderstood and thought you were going to meet him at the store?’
‘Maybe,’ said Bob. He saw no trace of suspicion in her open face. Perhaps that was why he felt a pang of conscience. ‘Where does he keep it?’
‘The rifle? In his room.’
‘Mind if I take a look? I want to make sure he remembered the bullets.’
‘Bullets?’
‘He forgot last time.’
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m never in his room, I live down here.’ She pointed through the open door to a corridor where Bob saw a staircase. ‘Second door on your left.’
‘Thank you.’
Bob walked into the corridor and took the stairs in four or five long strides.
Pushed open the door. The room was white, clean and tidy. The bed was made, the drapes parted. There was a TV on the wall. In spite of the items of personal property lying about — a cell phone on the chest of drawers, a hanger with a pair of faded jeans and a hoodie on the closet door — something about the room gave Bob the feeling that it was abandoned, and that the person who lived there wouldn’t be coming back. Just like that apartment in Jordan where Tomás Gomez had lived.