Wolf Hour

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.

An apartment that seemed to know others would arrive there looking for answers.

On the bed, on top of the pillow, lay a brown face mask with holes for the eyes and mouth. In fact it was a complete head covering, including a full head of hair. On the blanket was a pair of thin brown gloves. They lay like the hands of a person lying in the bed would have laid.

Bob picked up the mask and looked at it more closely. Shuddered as he recognised the face with the scar on the cheek. At the back the skin was cut away low on the neck and up to the crown of the head, and there was a lace woven through perforations in the skin to make it easy to take on and off.

He ran his fingertips over the gloves of human skin and across the tattooed five-pointed star. He thought of Tomás Gomez’s fingerprints they had found at the crime scenes. On the handle of the restroom. It was all beginning to make sense now. Mike Lunde hadn’t escaped up through the ventilation shaft at the shopping mall, he had simply taken off the hoodie, the Gomez mask and the Gomez gloves. Probably put them in a bag which he hid under his jacket. Dismantled the rifle to make room for it too in the bag. With practice, the routine wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes. After that he’d pulled down the fan, tossed one of Gomez’s insulin syringes into the ventilation shaft and then strolled out of the restroom like a quite ordinary white man out shopping, walking straight past Kay and the SWAT team. It was a trick he could repeat time after time without ever getting caught. Bob’ s gaze fell on a paper bag in front of the closet. It was from a well-known toy store, he recognised the logo — a boy wearing a mushroom for a hat. There was a branch right next to the restroom at Track Plaza. He looked inside. Lifted the scrunched-up sheet of gift wrapping. Out fell a pair of sunglasses, the same type as they’d seen Gomez wearing in the video recordings.

Bob looked at the cell phone. It was turned off. A police voice expert would be able to confirm that the recording of the alleged Tomás Gomez who called Mike Lunde was in reality Mike Lunde himself, standing in a phone booth and calling his own cell. That that explained why the breathing seemed to sound as if it was turning itself on and off.

Bob walked into the bathroom. Clean and tidy here too. He opened the door of the cupboard above the sink. The usual bathroom stuff. Several packs of brown contact lenses from different manufacturers. Of course. Have to get the eyes right.

On the bottom shelf Bob saw a familiar-looking tray of pills. Pink. Bob picked it up and read the long and unpronounceable name of the antidepressants. He read the doctor’s signature and the date. The tray should have been empty, and when Bob counted the number of pills left he concluded that Mike Lunde must have stopped taking them and that, coincidentally, he must have done so at about the same time as he stopped taking his own pills.

He walked back into the corridor, down the stairs and stopped in the doorway of the living room.

‘Find the bullets?’ asked Emily as she poured tea.

‘No,’ said Bob. ‘He took them with him. Did he say anywhere else he might be going, apart from the store?’

‘No. Where would that be?’

‘Yes, where would that be?’ Bob looked at the steaming hot tea on the counter in front of him. ‘So did he say what he was going to be doing today?’

‘Only that he would be unveiling his masterpiece. He’s been looking forward to that.’

Bob swallowed. ‘You know what, Emily? I see Mike left his cell phone in his room and I really need to get hold of him, so that tea is going to have to wait until another day.’

She looked up at him, smiling and rather surprised. ‘Of course, Bob. Any time.’

Bob ran out to his car, the sound of the mower screeching in his ears, his pulse hammering like a speeded-up watch.