LITMIR.BIZ

       52

       sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning

      Kennet Sträng stops and listens before slowly moving over to the staircase. He points his pistol at the floor, holding it close to his body. Daylight comes into the passageway from the kitchen. Simone follows her father, thinking that the murdered family’s house reminds her of the house where she and Erik lived when Benjamin was little.

      There is a creaking sound from somewhere, the floor or deep inside the walls.

      “Is it Josef?” whispers Simone.

      The torch, house plans, and crowbar she balances are heavy and awkward. Her hands feel numb.

      The house is completely silent now. The creaking and the muted banging have stopped.

      Kennet jerks his head at her. He wants them to go down into the cellar. Every muscle in her body is telling her it’s a mistake, but she nods.

      According to the plans, the best area for a hiding place is definitely the cellar. Kennet marked the drawings with a pen, showing how the wall of the section that houses the old boiler could be extended, creating a virtually invisible room. The other space Kennet marked on the plans was the innermost attic.

      The cellar entrance is next to the staircase leading upstairs; it’s a narrow opening in the wall, with no door. There are still small hinges on the wall where a child safety gate had been attached. The iron steps leading down into the cellar look almost home-made; the welds are large and untidy, and the steps are covered in thick grey felt.

      When Kennet clicks the light switch, nothing happens; he tries again, but the bulb has blown.

      “Stay here,” he says, in a low voice.

      Simone feels a stab of pure terror. A heavy, dusty smell that makes her think of the stifling air inside a highway tunnel surges up from below.

      “Give me the torch,” he says, holding out his hand.

      Slowly Simone passes it over to her father. He smiles, takes the torch, switches it on, and sets off cautiously down the steps.

      “Hello?” Kennet calls gruffly. “Josef? I need to speak to you.”

      Not a sound comes from the cellar. Not a clatter, not a breath.

      Simone clutches the crowbar and waits.

      The beam of the torch illuminates little more than the walls and the ceiling of the staircase. The dense darkness below is untouched. Kennet continues down the stairs, the beam picking out individual objects: a white plastic bag, the reflector strip on an old buggy, the glass of a framed movie poster.

      “I think I can help you,” calls Kennet, more quietly this time.

      He reaches the bottom, sweeping the torch around to make sure no one is rushing out of a hiding place. The slanting beam moves across the floor and walls, jumping over objects close by and casting sloping, swinging shadows. Kennet begins again, searching the room calmly and systematically with the shaft of light.

      Simone sets off down the steps, the metal construction clanging dully beneath her feet.

      “There’s no one here,” says Kennet matter-of-factly.

      “So what did we hear, then? It was definitely something,” she says.

      Daylight seeps in through a dirty window just below the ceiling. Their eyes are growing accustomed to the dim light. The cellar is full of bicycles of various sizes, a buggy, sledges, skis, and a bread machine, Christmas decorations, rolls of wallpaper, and a stepladder spattered with white paint. On a box someone has written in a thick black felt-tip pen, Josef’s comics.

      A tapping noise comes from the ceiling, and Simone looks over at the stairs and then at her father. He doesn’t seem to hear the sound. He walks slowly toward a door at the far end of the room. Simone bumps into a rocking horse. Kennet opens the door and glances into a utility room containing a battered washing machine and dryer and an old-fashioned wringer. Next to a geothermal pump, a grubby curtain hangs in front of a large cupboard.

      “Nobody here,” he says, turning to Simone.

      She looks at him, seeing the grubby curtain behind him at the same time. It is completely motionless yet at the same time somehow alive.

      “Simone?”

      There is a damp mark on the fabric, a small oval, as if made by a mouth.

      “Open up the plans,” says Kennet.

      It seems to Simone that the damp oval suddenly caves inwards. “Dad,” she whispers.

      “What?” he replies, leaning against the door post as he puts his pistol back in his shoulder holster and scratches his head.

      There is a sudden creaking noise. She wheels and sees that the rocking horse is still moving.

      “What is it, Sixan?”

      Kennet takes the plans from her and lays them on a rolled-up mattress; he shines the torch on the drawing and turns it around. He looks up, glances back at the plans, and goes over to a brick wall where an old dismantled bunk bed stands beside a wardrobe containing bright yellow life jackets. A chisel, various saws, and clamps hang from hooks on a precisely marked tool board. The space next to the hammer is empty; there’s an outline for a big axe, but the axe itself is gone.

      Kennet measures the wall and the ceiling with his eyes, leans over, and taps on the wall behind the bed.

      “What is it?” asks Simone.

      “This wall must be at least ten years old.”

      “Is there anything behind it?”

      “Yes, quite a big space,” he replies.

      “How do you get in?”

      Kennet shines the light on the wall again, then on the floor next to the dismantled bed. Shadows slide around the cellar.

      “Shine

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