Where Roses Never Die Read Free Page B

were a couple of cars parked. There was nothing else to see.
    Then she began to get seriously worried. She ran back into the yard, went to the first house on the left and rang the bell. The husband, Tor Fylling, came to the door. He was on his own. His wife and children hadgone to town. He hadn’t seen Mette. ‘She must be at Else and Eivind’s place,’ he added. ‘Try there.’
    She nodded and hurried over to the neighbours’ house. She rang the bell several times, but no one answered. ‘It turned out later that the family had been away for the whole weekend, in their cabin on Holsnøy.’
    She ran past the next house. They didn’t have any children. Now there was only one house left, wall to wall with their own. ‘I said to myself – why hadn’t I gone there first? They had Janne, who was the same age as Mette.’
    But when the mother opened the door she had Janne in her arms. She listened to Maja with alarm. ‘Mette? No. Yes, I saw her half an hour ago, from the window, she was sitting outside and playing. But … can’t you find her?’
    Maja’s neighbour, Randi Hagenberg, became more and more agitated with every question she asked. ‘Have you looked in the garages?’
    ‘No. I didn’t think of that.’
    ‘Let’s look now then. I’ll come with you!’ She called to her husband: ‘Nils, can you take Janne?’
    Together, they dashed over to the garages, which faced Solstøvegen, east of the five houses. One garage door was open. It belonged to the family who had gone to town. They went inside and scoured the area, but Mette was nowhere to be seen. The other four garage doors were locked. They tried all four handles, but none of them budged.
    Now Maja Misvær could feel panic seizing her. Without thinking she ran twenty to thirty metres down the road in one direction, shouting her daughter’s name, stopped to listen, and when she heard nothing, turned round and ran in the opposite direction and repeated the action. ‘All at once I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel my pulse up here, in my throat, and I could hear blood rushing through my body like a … like an echo in my eardrums.’
    ‘We’ve got to phone the police,’ Randi Hagenberg said.
    ‘Yes,’ Maja answered as tears flickered in front of her eyes, so suddenly that her vision was affected and she almost lost her balance. She took a few quick steps to the side and supported herself on the fence.
    ‘But when I looked at the sandpit again … it was then I realised. There was her teddy bear, abandoned in the sand, and, deep down, I knew … she took it everywhere. She would never have left it behind!’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No…’
    While they waited for the police they ran around the district, calling Mette’s name. Many of the other neighbours came out and assisted with the search. Some went to talk to people on the estate, but no one had seen a little girl.
    Someone had contacted Mette’s father, Truls Misvær, who was at a football training session with the older of their two children, six-yearold Håkon. He drove back home as fast as he could. Soon he had joined the others in their increasingly larger circles around the hilly area, looking for the missing girl.
    When the police arrived they immediately set up an organised search and radioed information to their colleagues. Not long afterwards the story was on the news: Small girl missing from her home in Solstøvegen in Nordås.
    The police drew a blank. Tiny Mette Misvær was never found.
    The investigation escalated over the first few days. From being a straightforward missing-person case it was quickly upgraded to a potential crime. With none of the enquiries bearing fruit and Mette still missing the day after, the system went into overdrive.
    All the neighbours were summoned to interviews. None of them had observed anything at all, except for Randi Hagenberg, who was able to confirm that she had seen Mette sitting and playing in the sandpit immediately before