Death By Water by Torkil Damhaug Page B

Leaned the cycle up against the railings and pulled out her phone.
    – It’s me. Liss.
    A sound at the other end. At first she didn’t understand what it was.
    Her mother was crying. Liss had never heard her crying before. She could disconnect now. Knew all she needed to know. That something had happened to Mailin. That something had changed, that things would never be the same again. And deep down, inside all the haziness she didn’t dare to touch, something like relief.
    – How long has she been missing? she heard herself ask.
    From the disjointed answer she gathered that it was almost twenty-four hours. That fitted with what Mailin’s partner had said.
    – What are we going to do, Liss?
    Her mother never asked questions like that. At least she never asked her. She was the one who answered them. Told people what was to be done. Always clear headed. Always a step ahead, prepared down to the last detail. Now here she was not even able to speak properly, just repeating the same words over and over again, what are we going to do? what are we going to do?
    – I’ll call you later, Liss said, and ended the conversation. It hadn’t been a conversation, but a hole opening up in broad daylight.
     
    She came back to her senses at the sound of a car horn tooting. She cycled along Marnixstraat, the traffic denser now. It was colder; her breath billowed out in a frosty cloud in front of her. She dived into it, out again.
    Passing a Jamin shop, she stopped and went in. Avoid speaking to anyone, just get what she needed. No thoughts, following a pattern she had worked out but not used for a while. Bought ice cream. A litre and a half. Pure vanilla. No bits of nut or chocolate. Grabbed a Pepsi Max and a plastic spoon. It was getting dark. She’d been riding round. Been to Vondelpark. Didn’t know what had become of the day. Knew only that it was the end of something. And the start of something else. She bowled along Marnixkade with the Pepsi and the ice cream in a bag. Suddenly she found herself by the flat she had shared with Rikke. An obscure notion to go up and see her, get her to find Zako and trick him into saying what had happened. Find out if he knew anything about Mailin going missing. But Rikke wouldn’t be able to manage a job like that.
    She passed the asphalt playground where some boys were playing basketball in the dark. They shouted out to her. How about a ride, then? She carried on out to the point, to the little park with the bench, sank down beneath the pale light of the lamp. She’d sat there many times before. The bench was coated with a layer of ice. The cold seeped up from the ground and into her back. It helped, to be freezing. The frost slowed down her thoughts. She could focus on the metallic jangling that reached her ears every time a car rattled across the joint on the bridge on the far side of the canal. She could let her gaze follow the distant trains that passed on their way to and from Centraal Station.
    The picture came again. Mailin in the pale blue pyjamas. She turns and locks the door. Creeping into bed, putting her arms around her. There’s a sound too, it’s part of the picture. Footsteps stopping outside. The latch on the door moving. Knocking that gets louder and louder, becomes beating, and Mailin holding her close and tight. Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you, Liss.
    Abruptly she pulled the box out of the bag, broke open the lid. The ice cream was so hard the spoon snapped. She hacked away at it with the handle, gobbled down the pieces that she worked loose. The cold spread to her stomach too. She got out her lighter and moved it back and forth under the base. Soon she was able to dig out larger chunks of the vanilla-sweet mass. Hungry even as she was eating. It only took a few minutes to get the whole lot down. She squeezed the sides of the empty carton and squashed it into a rubbish bin on the other side of the gravel path. Ducked into the bushes and emptied herself. The