Hell Fire by Karin Fossum Read Free Book Online Page B

cinnamon roll; it was fresh and soft. He was glued to the screen, where Tore had boarded a plane for Lahore with a dark-skinned teenager named Susann. They were going to look for the girl’s mother.
    Every time Eddie saw someone, either on the road or at the store—or simply on television—his imagination ran wild. He could see that they had their own smell and taste, and he could feel their resonance, like an instrument. Or he would match them to an animal or a fruit or vegetable. He had always loved to play this game. He made a snap decision and never changed his mind. Their neighbor Ansgar, for example, was a sneaky hyena. Knut Nærum, whom he saw on television every Friday, was a chirpy little meerkat. And the old lady in the house next door, Irene, who had Parkinson’s, reminded him of jelly-like
lutefisk
because of the way she wobbled. His mom sounded like an alto saxophone, and he himself was a beautiful, sonorous bassoon. Almost no one could master the bassoon. But Mass, who was also a woodwind, always managed to get him to make a sound.
    But now, Tracker Tore.
Tore was a turnip. Or a half-baked baguette.
    â€œDo you think they’ll find Susann’s mother?” he asked, bright with anticipation.
    â€œOf course,” Mass replied, “otherwise they wouldn’t have made the program. But what’s the point, really? She’s got such lovely parents in Norway. I’m sure she’s much better off here than she would have been in Pakistan.”
    Eddie didn’t agree at all. “But she’s not the same color as us. Of course she wants to see where she comes from; that kind of thing is important.”
    â€œBut things will just get more complicated with two sets of parents,” Mass continued. “I mean, who should she listen to? Maybe they won’t even want to see her; after all, there must be a reason she was adopted.”
    â€œMaybe they didn’t want to give her away,” Eddie said. “Maybe she was taken from them.”
    â€œIn that case, her mother isn’t a good mother,” Mass retorted. “If she let them take away her child. And there’s no reason to get in touch with a bad mother.”
    The plane landed in Lahore, and Tore and Susann and a television crew found a taxi to take them through the hot streets. The sheer volume of traffic and noise and people and heat took their breath away. It seemed inconceivable to Eddie and Mass that they would be able to find Susann’s mother at all in the chaos. But Tracker Tore knew what he was doing; he’d done his research. Susann’s parents in Norway had given him the address of the children’s home where she had been left sixteen years ago. When she was but a baby with no name.
    They were met at the children’s home by a friendly woman with a scarf over her head. She showed them into an office, where she opened a large book and started to read in good English.
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜Seventeenth of August, 1989,’ ” she read. “ ‘A woman came in with a baby wrapped in a blanket. The baby had more or less just been born, and she didn’t even have a name, so we christened her Adelina. The woman had had four children and given them all up for adoption. We know nothing about the father.’ ”
    â€œBut why?” they asked. “Why did she give them away?”
    The principal of the children’s home closed the big book and put her hands down on it, as though she wanted the secret to be kept there. Now that it was out in the open, she hoped that it would lead to some good, but she doubted it. Adelina, who had been given the name Susann in Norway, was a thin and beautiful girl in expensive clothes. She had been fortunate; she had everything a child could wish for. The principal looked into her nearly black eyes, wide open with anticipation, and felt a weight on her heart.
    â€œYour mother was as poor as a church