Death By Water

1

Wednesday 24 December

JENNIFER PLÅTERUD STRUGGLED across the grass. The hill was coated with a layer of fresh snow some fifteen or twenty centimetres thick. It was Christmas Eve, approaching two o’clock, and still it hadn’t been cleared away. Trym, the elder of the boys, was on shovelling duty that day. The last thing she did before going out to shop was call up to his room and remind him of the fact. Now she was furious as she went over in her mind how she would confront him, firmly, but short and effective, so as not to ruin the Christmas mood. Trym was the phlegmatic type. It wasn’t something he got from her; on the contrary, he was exactly like his father. Only a touch worse. A characteristic like that was probably more strongly reinforced through the succeeding generations, she shuddered. The phlegm had accumulated in her husband’s family over the centuries, she had long ago realised. Now and then with an undercurrent of melancholy. As a pathologist Jennifer demanded the highest standards of scientific accuracy, and she was always dismissive of facile conclusions in the field of genetics, neurobiology and anything else that had to do with it. But when it came to psychology, to which she had a contemptuous attitude, she was oddly enough a sworn upholder of the ancient teaching about the four bodily fluids: depending which of these we have in the greatest abundance, one of four characteristics will be predominant. She herself was decidedly sanguine, but with a touch of the choleric, she had to admit. The fact that she had fallen for a man with quite the opposite characteristics – a brooding and silent bear from the other side of the world – and allowed herself to be transported to his much too cold and much too dark homeland only showed that opposites attract, another idea she sometimes advanced, with as little scientific basis as when applying it to the psychology of human beings.

In the hallway she put down her bags of shopping and pulled off her boots, which were made of antelope hide and had stiletto heels, and then called out to her oldest boy. She got no answer, not surprisingly, since the bass notes from his amplifier were making the ceiling above her shake. She was about to run upstairs to deliver the necessary rebuke when her mobile rang. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket.

– Flatland here.

The moment she heard that grey voice, she knew she had to be off. At the institute they had discussed who should be on duty over the Christmas weekend, and she had volunteered. As a rule, things were quiet on days like this; the odd call maybe, questions that could be dealt with over the phone. But Flatland was an experienced technician who never called about trivial matters.

Passing the crossing at Skedsmo on the slushy motorway, she took a quick look at her watch and assessed her chances of getting back in time for Christmas dinner at six o’clock. Missing the tidying up and the decorating was nothing to get upset about. And Ivar was cooking the rib of pork, the sausages and the sauerkraut. He was a keen and competent cook, and she would never get the hang of that Norwegian Christmas food anyway. She had introduced a few Australian traditions to the family. Stockings filled with small presents hung on the boys’ beds on Christmas morning. And in the afternoon, they would eat turkey and Yorkshire pudding, followed by mince pies with brandy butter.

She would even miss the traditional lighting of candles on her father-in-law’s grave, and the rice pudding at her mother-in-law’s that the boys, a few hours before their own Christmas meal, had to gorge themselves on in order to find the hidden almond. And then there was all the mulled wine, and as many ginger biscuits as they could get down while subjected to Grandma’s alternating cries of encouragement and admonishment. Ivar’s brothers and sisters and their children would also be there, and sitting there in the car Jennifer felt a relief that she would be getting out of it all.

Karihaugen appeared through the haze. She turned on the radio. Located a station she didn’t have to listen to. Eight days earlier, she had been unfaithful. It had happened so unexpectedly that she had to shut her eyes tightly every time she thought of it. Not from shame, but surprise. A man whom she had not remotely suspected she was attracted to. And maybe she wasn’t either, neither before nor after it happened. But he had turned her on in a way no one else had in years. Not since Sean. But that was different. She had been in love with Sean. More than that: unhappily and incurably obsessed from the moment he placed a hand on her shoulder in the lab. When he went back to Dublin, she would have gone with him unhesitatingly if he had suggested it. Of course she would have hesitated. But it might have ended with her leaving the boys and the farm and this wintry land… Sean was a scar that evoked a delicious pain when touched, and what had happened eight days earlier was fortunately nothing like that. Just frantically and crudely exciting. It began and ended there. Possible it might happen again, though not necessarily with him, but it might well force itself to the surface once again. That reminder of the part of herself that kept everything else going.

She parked in the drive outside Oslo police station and called Flatland. A few minutes later his silver-grey Audi emerged from the gates. She sat beside him in a front seat that was draped in thick plastic. The man seemed to worry more about dirtying his car than anything else.

– Good job it’s you that’s on duty, he said, and she didn’t doubt that he meant it. He was in his fifties, hardly more than ten years older than her, but greying and as scrawny as an old dingo.

– What’s the news? she asked as he swung down Grønlandsleiret.

– We may have found the woman who’s been missing for over a week.

– The psychologist?

– We’re pretty sure it is.

– And since you want me along, I assume she’s in no condition to give an account of herself.

He glanced across at her without answering.

– Where are we going?

– Down to Hurum. A disused factory.

Jennifer sighed.

– Not more than an hour’s drive, Flatland added in his usual monotone.

– Who found her?

– A patrol from the sheriff’s office down there.

– And what were they doing in a disused factory on Christmas Eve?

The technician looked over his shoulder before gliding on to the E18.

– We got a tip-off. The woman’s partner and her sister turned up at the crime response unit with her mobile phone. Claimed it arrived in the post. There was a video on it.

He changed lanes and accelerated down into Festning Tunnel. – Someone videoed the missing woman. A factory tower was shown in the film. From the postmark on the package, we were able to locate the place within an hour.

– Videoed her and sent it to her partner? Jennifer exclaimed. – So we’re talking about premeditated murder?

– I’m not prepared to commit myself on that.

Jennifer had worked with Flatland many times before. He was the type who never said more than was strictly necessary. She glanced round the inside of the car. It wasn’t just her seat; the others were covered in the same thick protective plastic. The man is more than a touch compulsive, she thought. Definitely an advantage in a job like his.

On the roof of the factory there was still a large sign bearing the name Icosand. At the gate was another: Stop at red signal. It had to be years since that broken light had given any signal at all. A tall woman in uniform waved them in.

Two quick-response vehicles and an unmarked car were parked by the factory tower. The policewoman approached them when they stopped. Clearly she knew who they were and identified herself by name, rank and where she was stationed.

– We’ve cordoned off the whole area, she told them. – And we’re using the lower entrance. She pointed to the largest of the buildings, a concrete block four storeys tall. – That’s the one least likely to have been used by the perpetrators.

Each carrying their own case, they headed off towards the furthest end of the building, a rusty door that was stuck open and refused to be closed behind them. Inside, it was dark. Flatland took a long-handled torch out of his case. They found a staircase, followed it up to the second floor, as the constable had told them, and turned into a corridor. Several of the windows were broken, the glass lay in piles along one of the walls.

They emerged on to a gallery in a hall illuminated by two powerful lights. In the middle of the pool of light lay a naked body, propped against a concrete pillar. Two figures in white moved about down there, and a third was bent over a camera pointed at the floor.

Flatland pulled out protective overalls, hoods and shoe covers. Jennifer was still wearing her high-heeled antelope leather boots, and the shoe covers didn’t fit very well. She found a couple of unused hair bands in her pocket, and that helped them stay on.

They clambered down a rusting metal conduit, Flatland went first, making sure it was safe for her.

– We’ve made our entry point there, the technician with the camera said, pointing.

Jennifer stood a couple of metres away from the unclothed body. The head was held up by a strap around the neck, fastened to a hook in the concrete pillar. A line of blood ran from the hairline and down over one cheek, but otherwise she looked unharmed. The eyes were half open.

– When was she found?

– According to the sheriff, they entered the building at about one thirty; that’s to say almost two hours ago.

The technician’s breath misted as he spoke. The temperature inside the hall was no higher than it was outside.

– Has a local doctor been here to verify death? Jennifer asked.

– The people who found her didn’t think it was necessary. There’s no doubt that what we have here is a death.

Jennifer frowned. The body lying there was probably suffering from severe exposure; great care must be taken to ensure that death really had occurred. She approached the body directly. Only then did she notice the pool of dried blood the woman was partially lying in. It was mixed with something of a lighter consistency. She leaned forward and shone her torch on the back of the head. Beneath the caked and bloody hair there was a gaping half-moon-shaped hole. A greyish substance had seeped out of it and down the neck.

– Agreed, she commented between gritted teeth. – Not much room for doubt there.

All the same, she pulled her stethoscope out of her case. Listened to the heart and lungs, careful not to touch the strands of hair that lay between two accretions of blood around the navel and obviously did not come from the woman herself. Having ascertained that there was no sign of a pulse or respiratory sounds, she dug out a penlight to take a closer look at the pupils. Squatted there for a long time studying the woman’s eyes. They were badly damaged, the membranes covered in blood, as though jabbed with a pointed object. One eye was almost completely ripped to pieces.

Having completed her examination, she withdrew to a corner of the hall to dictate her notes. Flatland came ambling over. Stood waiting until she was finished.

– Well? he said, offering her a liquorice pastille.

– The woman is dead, Jennifer confirmed.

Flatland grinned mirthlessly. – You’re usually a little more forthcoming than that.

– I know. She grinned back at him. – And since this is Christmas Eve, I’ll give you everything I have, and a bit more too.

The edge of a pouch of snuff appeared under his lip. She realised that what she had said might be open to misinterpretation and hoped he wouldn’t immediately make a certain kind of joke. Under different circumstances she would have had no objection. Fortunately, Flatland wasn’t the type to get carried away.

– Not much marbling, she hurriedly added, – nor blistering of the skin. As you know, those are early signs of decay, but at low temperatures the appearance is delayed.

– What you’re saying is that she’s been here for some time.

Here or somewhere else equally cold for several days. Maybe as long as a week. The temperature in the rectum and the vagina is two degrees, and the lividity on the stomach and in the groin is lighter than usual.

– Cause of death?

– You want a provisional answer? The markings on the neck show that the strap has been pulled tight.

– Choked?

– Yes, but not necessarily to death. She may have been alive when the skull was crushed.

Flatland pushed the snuff bag back into place with the tip of his tongue.

– On the floor at the back by the wall there’s an area with a lot of bloodstaining.

Jennifer peered over at the dark corner he was pointing to. – In other words, she was dragged from over there and hung from this pillar by the neck. In addition, her eyes are, as you can see, covered in marks from being jabbed by some sharp object. Didn’t you say they looked to be damaged in the video on her mobile?

Flatland gave a quick nod of assent.

– Before she was choked and had her skull crushed, Jennifer concluded, – she could have been sitting here in the freezing cold staring blindly out in front of her.

2

Thursday 25 December

THE SKY ABOVE Oslo was filled with orange and gold-grey wrinkles, but over the hills in the north it was still almost black. Jennifer Plåterud glanced at her wristwatch as she let herself in to the Pathological Institute. The time was 8.15. Even before the finding of the body, the case had attracted a lot of media attention, and now things were about to get a hundred times worse. She couldn’t bear lagging behind, had to deliver her results before people began asking for them. And yet there was another reason why she had chosen to go to work even before the Devil had put his boots on.

She hung her coat up in the cloakroom, found a clean outfit and pulled on the trousers, shirt, coat, hat and mask. Three minutes later, she was opening the door to the autopsy room. Going through that door was a signal: take off one way of thinking and feeling about the world, and put on another.

But on that particular morning she remained standing in the darkness inside. Images from the factory the afternoon before had pursued her all through Christmas Eve, forcing their way in through the light sleep she fell into now and then. Christmas dinner had been postponed for almost two hours, but no one expressed any annoyance when she took her place at the table without the slightest indication of what she had just been doing, and she didn’t think it showed on her either. For twenty-five years, more than half her life, she had practised medicine, the last fifteen of them mainly on dead bodies; it had become routine a long time ago. But arriving at that crime scene, stopping in the gallery of that factory and seeing the naked young woman lying there in the sharp light…

At the table, she had managed to look as if she ate with a hearty appetite, and afterwards things took their usual course. The boys pretended that they no longer looked forward to opening their presents, hid their expectations behind slow yawns, punching away on their mobile phones and generally giving the impression that there were a thousand other things more important. As for Ivar, he was a picture of pride as he served out the rib and sausages, and enjoyed himself even more afterwards as he sat down with a glass of cognac and starting handing out the packages arranged under the tree, reading out the tos and froms, usually with some comment about what could possibly be hidden inside that lovely wrapping paper – maybe a collapsible bike, or I’m guessing this is a fire engine – and astonished delight when he unwrapped her present to him, a pullover he had himself tried on in H&M few days earlier. She didn’t begrudge him his childlike joy in Christmas.

With an almost inaudible sigh, she closed off the stream of thoughts, switched on the light in the autopsy room and went to work.

After a quick lunch, she hurried over to her office and wrote a preliminary post-mortem report. Reading through it afterwards, she found herself mentally searching for something that was not to be found in the succession of strictly descriptive terminological sentences. She couldn’t shake off the thought that there was something she ought to have seen. Twenty-nine-year-old woman, she summarised. Fair-haired, regular features. She didn’t know much about the dead woman, no more than what she had already read in the newspapers. A psychologist, almost completed her PhD despite her young age. Jennifer struggled to abstract something that wasn’t connected to her appearance or what she already knew about her. Choked, she repeated to herself, and beaten to death; the eyes…

Suddenly she knew what it was. She picked up her phone and opened the call list.

To begin with, Jennifer’s characterisation of human types on the Hippocratic model was not seriously meant. Naturally she had never believed that it really was the four bodily fluids that determined a person’s temperament and character, but it amused her to assert that this theory, with its origins several centuries before the birth of Christ, was every bit as scientific as the Freudian waffle that certain psychiatrists continued to promote twenty centuries after that same birth. In time, however, she had come to believe that Hippocrates’ categorisation, as developed by Galen and by doctors of the Renaissance period, accorded strikingly well with the people she had come across in her life. Almost unnoticed, the irony that had accompanied her interest in the theory had faded away, until a time came when she had to confess to herself that she believed in it almost without reservation. People’s inner worlds could be arranged in such a way as to give her the illusion of comprehending the incomprehensible. And over the years, her categorisations grew more and more sophisticated. She came to believe that a person’s temperament and character did not necessarily derive from one of these four categories alone. For example, she regarded herself as first and foremost sanguine, a bon vivant who didn’t easily let things get her down; but she had to admit that she was also much under the sway of the choleric. Mercurial anger could at any moment descend on her like a sly dog, even on days when she couldn’t explain it away as a result of hormonal fluctuations. It was reassuring then to think of it as the accumulation of bile, no matter how metaphorically meant.

Detective Chief Inspector Hans Magnus Viken from the Department of Violent Crimes was another choleric, she had soon realised. She didn’t yet know whether this was combined with the melancholic, which would be typically Norwegian, or with the phlegmatic, which would actually be equally typically Norwegian. When he telephoned her at about two o’clock, she knew at once what he wanted.

Viken was not the kind of detective to rely on reports. He had to carry out the investigation himself. In and of itself this was a good quality, but she wasn’t altogether sure she liked him looking over her shoulder in the autopsy room. She had to admit he had a certain talent, even if the so-called ‘bear murders’ the year before had done fairly serious damage to his reputation. But he wasn’t the only one to have to give an account of himself in the wake of that investigation. The section head involved had to find something else to do, and several others had handed in their resignations. Viken, however, wasn’t the type to let something like that get to him. He’d hung on and survived, and would probably stay with the department until they had to carry him out, thought Jennifer. He even had the guts to apply for the post of section leader that fell vacant as a result of that infamous case. She liked that kind of obstinacy, every bit as much as she disliked his know-all attitude.

He arrived at 3.10, opened wide the door of the room and strode in, a disposable cap balanced on his head. He probably wants it to look like a mitre, she had time to think before she noticed who he had brought along with him. She swore silently. Viken was one thing. She knew more or less where she had him. And for a choleric he kept his temper under good control. On top of that he was susceptible to flattery, which made it easy to disarm him. As for the man who appeared in the doorway behind him, she did not want him there under any circumstances. He was much younger than the detective chief inspector. Younger than her, too. Much too young. Not much past thirty-five. She felt herself blushing. She hadn’t seen him since the Christmas party. Not since the night after the Christmas party, to be more precise. He’d sent her a couple of text messages, even including one on Christmas Eve. Mostly she wanted to forget the whole thing. And not forget the whole thing. But she had to avoid letting Roar Horvath get too close to her. At least at work.

– I saw your preliminary report, Jenny, said Viken jovially.

When in the world did he start calling me that? she wondered as she returned his smile, and gave Roar Horvath a quick nod. He responded with a wink. That was okay; it showed that he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. Evidently he wanted to carry on in the same vein that she had found so charming at the Christmas do. Concentration, she said to herself, and then repeated it a couple of times.

– Cause of death confirmed? Viken wanted to know.

– We’ve got three, possibly four causes, each of which individually would have been fatal, she began, pointing with her scalpel at the throat, which was open in two places. – The belt that was tied around her throat has occluded both the arteries and veins, since the face is pale and not swollen. What’s more, the groove made by the belt is horizontal, which indicates that she was strangled before she was hung up in the position in which she was found. She lifted a flap of the skin on the neck to one side. – Here you can see fractures in both the thyroid cartilage and the lingual bone. That shows how much force was used to tighten the belt.

The two officers bent to examine the gaping throat. Jennifer picked up a pair of tweezers and indicated the damaged areas she had described.

– Beneath the skin there are three linear accumulations of blood, which appear to come from the belt, and then this deeper groove.

– Which means?

– It might indicate that she was strangled several times. The perpetrator appears to have loosened the belt and then tightened it again, a little harder each time.

– A macabre form of entertainment, Viken observed. – And yet you say that strangulation was not necessarily the cause of death?

Jennifer lifted up the dead woman’s head. – She was hit four or five times, laterally, from above.

– These look like injuries I’ve seen from being hit with a hammer, Roar Horvath volunteered.

Jennifer shook her head. – This was done with something bigger and heavier.

– A stone? Viken suggested.

– Possibly, but in that case one with a flat and finely chiselled surface. Possibly attached to a handle. Jennifer pointed. – Note these linked, rather circular fracture lines in the occipital bone. A fairly large and evenly bowed fragment has been impressed into the surface of the brain, causing severe contusion and massive loss of blood. It means we can say with some degree of certainty that she was alive when these blows were delivered. We’ll be opening the skull later today. What we expect to see then is that the power of these blows has shaken the whole brain backwards and forwards. The victim was obviously lying on the floor with the right temple facing downwards. We can see the scrape marks here on the base of the scalp.

– So that’s why you presume that something with a handle was used. Viken lowered his head slightly, a habit when drawing a conclusion that Jennifer had previously noticed. – And the third possible cause of death?

She took two steps to the side. – Numerous punctiform haemorrhages in the bowel mucosa, she said, pointing with her scalpel into the open belly. – Something similar here. She moved her scalpel to the thoracic cavity and scraped at a membrane surrounding the lung. – The blood is also unusually pale red, which we often find in cases of death from hypothermia. The question is whether the other wounds killed her, or whether she managed to freeze to death. The temperature in that factory was obviously well below freezing.

She straightened up and fastened her gaze on Viken.

– Additionally you can see these two marks in the neck, which must be from a hypodermic. She had heroin in her blood, but it was not given intravenously, and there are no other needle marks on her body.

– Ergo the heroin was used to sedate her or keep her passive, said Viken.

Jennifer raised one of the body’s hands. – There is superficial scratching here, which might indicate that she was handcuffed before she was found. She described a circle round each wrist. – Note also the tips of the right thumb and forefinger.

– Oil? Horvath asked.

– It turns out to be soot. But nothing was found in the vicinity that was either burnt or sooted. She laid the dead arm back on the table. – And then of course there are the eyes, as you can see from the report.

She raised both eyelids. The exposed eyeballs were almost black from the coagulated blood that had gathered there. Viken bent forward, and she handed him a magnifying glass and a torch. While he was standing there examining the punctured eyes, she glanced over at Roar Horvath. He was wearing a suitably serious expression for the occasion, and she was glad to see this sign that he was adult enough not to start flirting there and then. He didn’t look particularly stylish, in his green lab coat and with the paper hat pulled down over his ears. It made his face seem rounder, the nose stick out more. But he had that dimple in his chin – it was, as she had noticed before he put on the face mask, even more prominent in the light from the ceiling – and he was so entertaining, had made her laugh out loud more than once at the Christmas party, and even more afterwards. And he was by no means the worst lover she had ever gone to bed with; far from it. She hadn’t taken him for an Adonis that evening either, since she had been stone-cold sober from the moment she arrived to the moment she left, as she had to confess to herself with both pride and shame. That was why she had offered to drive him home, since he lived on the same side of town. Or at least, not in the completely opposite direction, as it turned out. Concentration, Jennifer, she warned herself again. You’re at work now.

– To sum up, I conclude that Mailin Bjerke died from such extensive trauma to the brain that the medulla oblongata was severed, which led to the cessation of the respiratory and circulatory functions. Prior to this she had been repeatedly choked, but the evidence indicates that she did not die of this. As you know, in cases involving this kind of asphyxiation, it can take up to five minutes for death to occur. At the time of her death she was almost certainly severely hypothermic, but this in itself is not the likely cause of death. As for the presence of heroin in the blood, the concentration was so low that the effect of it must have worn off several hours before she died.

Viken handed the torch and the magnifying glass to Roar Horvath. – Stabbed with a pointed object, he observed as his younger colleague leaned over to examine the damage to the eyes. – Repeatedly. But with something rather less sharp than the needle of a hypodermic. To what purpose?

– Prevent the victim from seeing, Horvath offered.

– Much easier, surely, simply to blindfold her.

Jennifer said: – I have some information that might be worth taking a closer look at.

As ever, Viken had that openly scrutinising look in his eyes, which he made no attempt to disguise. Probably something that’s bound to happen when you’ve worked as a detective for decades, she thought. Roar Horvath straightened up and looked at her as well. It didn’t bother her. She had long since accepted that she didn’t have the figure of a twenty year old. She consoled herself with the thought that there were a surprising number of advantages to having passed forty, and felt the heat begin to prickle in her cheeks. Which was not one of them. Not even when she was a little girl had she blushed as much as she had started doing recently.

– Five years ago, a nineteen-year-old girl was killed in Bergen, she began. – She was found in the woods about twenty kilometres south of the town. The case was never solved.

– Everybody remembers that, Viken said, immediately impatient. – We live, thank God, in a country in which murders aren’t forgotten in three days.

She wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but chose to ignore the interruption.

– The girl was found tied to a tree. She was handcuffed, and had frozen to death.

– That much we gathered, grunted Viken. – Even if they gave an exemplary demonstration on that occasion of how not to share the details of the case with others.

– What struck me as I examined Mailin Bjerke, Jennifer went on, – was the damage inflicted on the eyes. The girl in Bergen had something similar.

– And how on earth did you find that out?

She explained. The seminar she had attended at Gades Pathological Institute in Bergen a few months after the girl was found. A colleague whom she knew well had spoken about the case over a drink in the hotel bar one evening. Confidentially, naturally.

– I took the liberty of calling my colleague earlier today.

She paused. Could feel Viken’s irritation rising.

– He was struck by the similarities with what I described, she continued. – The eyelids in both cases were not damaged. The person who did this must have forced them open and stabbed the eyeballs directly with a nail or some other sharp object. But one of the wounds is bigger. I examined it, and it appears to have been done by something like a screw with a fairly large distance between the threads. It was screwed directly through the cornea. She let that sink in. – In addition, both victims were found in remote places.

Initially Viken said nothing. Then he said, rather irritably: – You’re divulging important information to someone who is not directly involved in our case.

Jennifer’s anger flared up. – I can assure you that it will go no further, she said as calmly as she could. She realised she had been expecting some recognition of the value of what she had done. – Well, I’ve spent enough time on this, she concluded. – If you think it is interesting enough, you can get in touch.

– Of course, said Viken tartly. – Everything is of interest.

– It looks as if Mailin Bjerke was drugged, Roar Horvath interposed in a conciliatory tone. – What about the girl in Bergen?

Jennifer permitted herself a small smile as she met his gaze. – There I am afraid I must disappoint you. She was totally clean.

He nodded thoughtfully, as though to demonstrate that at least he thought her information was interesting.

3

Friday 26 December

THEY SAT IN the vestibule. The middle-aged man was the first to catch sight of Jennifer and get to his feet. He wore a cord jacket under his overcoat, had round glasses and a grey beard. The other visitor, a woman with reddish hair, sat with her back turned.

The grey-bearded man held out his hand and introduced himself. – Tage Turén Bjerke.

She heard at once that he was Swedish. His palm was moist and his lips trembled.

– Are you the deceased’s father?

He shook his head. – I’m married to her mother. She was in no condition to come here today.

Jennifer turned to the other visitor, who had now also got to her feet. The young woman was tall and unusually slim, but her eyes were what attracted the attention. They were large and green, or perhaps hazel, and there was something about the gaze that made it hard to look away. Beautiful women had always fascinated Jennifer. She subscribed to three or four fashion magazines, partly to keep herself up to date on matters of clothing and make-up, mostly to browse through the pictures of stylised feminine beauty. She had been prepared for something else that morning. She’d worked out what she was going to say, how she would accompany the bereaved to the chapel, even how she would draw aside the sheet covering the dead woman’s body, and how much of it she should expose. But the sight of the young woman’s face momentarily disorientated her. Not only the eyes, but the bow of the mouth and the curve of the forehead under the auburn hair.

– Liss Bjerke. I’m Mailin Bjerke’s sister.

The hand the woman held out was cold and dry, the skin like marble. Jennifer explained who she was and recovered the thread of the ritual she had prepared. She walked ahead of them, stopping when she reached the door to the chapel.

– I know what a strain it must be to come here.

The young woman nodded almost imperceptibly. The grey-bearded man was shaking even more.

Jennifer opened the door. The bier with the dead body on it stood in the middle of the room, beneath the light from the ceiling lamp. She stood beside it, waved them over. The grey-bearded man remained in the doorway as though frozen, apparently unable to move. But the young woman crossed the floor. When she stopped by the bier, Jennifer waited a few seconds before lifting the sheet and drawing it slowly down to the chest. At that moment she felt relieved that it had been possible to hide the worst injuries to the body lying there. The mortuary assistant had wrapped a towel around the head, hiding all the crushed areas, and washed the hair; it had been matted with dried blood and matter that had oozed out from inside the skull. Jennifer was able to show the sister a face that the brutal death had not rendered physically repulsive; nothing crushed, no skin cut into pieces or melted. Scant comfort, she thought, but a comfort to me at least.

Suddenly the young woman bent down, took hold of her dead sister’s hands, pressed her cheek against her own. A tremor passed through her back, two or three times, as she murmured her sister’s name. She said something else, something whispered that Jennifer didn’t catch as she had withdrawn a few paces and half turned away. For a long time the young woman stood there with her cheek pressed to the dead woman’s. So long that Jennifer began to think she might have to give some kind of sign. Before that happened, however, the visitor straightened up. Still looking at the body, she asked:

– What’s the matter with her eyes?

The voice was unexpectedly firm and clear. Jennifer looked down at the dead woman’s face. It had not been possible to close the eyelids completely; beneath them, the rim of the destroyed membranes was still visible.

She said: – There are signs of damage to both the deceased’s eyes.

The woman turned towards her. The gaze was veiled, the effect now even stronger.

– What kind of damage?

– From a pointed object.

– Was she blind when she died?

– It’s hard to tell. It’s possible she could still see, at least light.

Suddenly the young woman lifted the hand she was holding.

– Where is her ring? Did you take it off?

Jennifer had noticed the marks of a ring on the fourth finger of the left hand.

– She wasn’t wearing one when we found her. What did it look like?

– A wedding ring, the dead woman’s sister answered. – From our grandmother. She bit her lower lip. – What did she die of?

– We still can’t say with absolute certainty, replied Jennifer. – Probably head wounds. But it looks as if she was already in a hypothermic state when death occurred. It may have made the pain less.

The grounds for making the claim were not convincing, but it felt good to say it.

– Could still see light, Liss Bjerke repeated to herself. She had not let go of her dead sister’s hand. – You were freezing, Mailin.

4

Saturday 27 December

ROAR HORVATH CLIMBED the three icy steps gingerly and rang on the doorbell. They hadn’t arranged anything in advance. There was a chance the trip would be wasted, but Detective Chief Inspector Viken insisted that it was worth a try. In cases that were particularly special, he made a point of popping up unexpectedly and surprising the person they wanted to interview. Sometimes they learnt something that would not otherwise have emerged in the interview.

There was the sound of footsteps from within and the door glided open, not suddenly, not slowly. The man standing there was above average height, dark, with longish hair and carefully trimmed sideburns. The face had a wintry pallor; the features were regular. The good-looking young-guy type, thought Roar Horvath. He introduced himself and showed his ID. The young man glanced at it and his immediate response appeared to be one of relief rather than suspicion.

– I’m Viljam Vogt-Nielsen. I’m sure you already know that.

– We made a presumption, said Roar Horvath, and introduced Viken.

The two investigators followed him along a hallway and down a flight of stairs into a room with large windows facing out on to a patch of garden in which an Argentinian barbecue and a tool shed could be seen. A few bushes were partially covered in snow. The room wasn’t large, but the ceiling was unusually high. There was an open fireplace in one corner. On the wall behind the sofa hung an enormous painting that looked very dull to Roar Horvath, though he had never thought of himself as a connoisseur of modern art.

– Nice place, he observed.

– The people who own it are architects, Viljam Vogt-Nielsen informed him. – We’re renting it for a year.

Roar Horvath sat down in the sofa. – You’ve already made a statement to the crime response unit, he said. – But then it was about a missing person. We’re investigating a murder now.

Viljam Vogt-Nielsen did not respond. He slipped into the chair nearest the stairs and gazed out of the window. It gave Roar Horvath a chance to get a closer look at him. He had interrogated a number of people who had later been found guilty of murder. He’d seen bad liars and good actors. Many people were capable of manufacturing a carefully crafted first impression, but if they were playing a part, then sooner or later something would always emerge that didn’t quite fit. He glanced over at Viken, who was sitting in the easy chair at the end of the table. They had arranged beforehand that Roar Horvath would lead the interview and Viken would observe. From the start, Viken had made it clear that he was perfectly happy to be working with Roar. It seemed as though, for some reason or other, he had decided he wanted to guide this newcomer to the department through his first period with them. And over the last year, Roar had learnt things about investigating cases of serious violence that he would never have learnt had he stayed in his old job at Romerike police station.

– As you will appreciate, we have to go through the sequence of events all over again, he said. – Not just with you, but with everyone involved.

He added this in the hope of getting Viljam Vogt-Nielsen to relax: someone who felt he was the object of suspicion would be careful about what he said, whereas someone who felt he was being looked after was more liable to slip up.

– Of course, Viljam Vogt-Nielsen answered. – We can go over it as many times as you feel is necessary.

There was no sign of tension in his voice, no discontinuity between what he said and the way he said it. Despair? Grief? Any trace of shock? Again Roar Horvath let his gaze wander over the pale face. If this young man was acting, he certainly wasn’t overdoing it.

– Let’s take it from the point at which you saw Mailin Bjerke for the last time.

An idea seemed to strike Viljam Vogt-Nielsen. – Coffee? he asked.

Roar Horvath said no thanks, Viken remained silent, and the young man sank back into his chair. – I saw her on the day before she disappeared, that’s to say, Wednesday the tenth. It was nearly five o’clock… quarter to five, he corrected himself. – She was standing outside on the steps, rucksack on her back. We hugged each other. Then I closed the door. That was the last… A tiny break in the voice, a few seconds’ silence and then he carried on. – She was going to the cabin. Often used to go out there to work. It’s such a lovely place. Quiet and peaceful. No stress, can’t even get a signal on your mobile.

– What were you talking about just before she left? Roar Horvath wanted to know.

Viljam Vogt-Nielsen thought about it; it was evident the crime response unit hadn’t asked him this.

– What was going to happen the next day. The programme she was due to appear on, Taboo. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

The detective sergeant nodded briefly, not wishing to interrupt.

– We’d talked about it a lot over the preceding few days. Mailin is not exactly a fan of Berger’s. I asked whether she was worried that her appearing on it might give him some kind of academic respectability, but she had a very particular reason for wanting to go on the show.

Roar had noticed a similar assertion in the statement made to the crime response unit.

– Can you be any more precise about what that reason might have been?

– She had been told something about Berger. I think it was a former patient who approached her. Mailin was quite excited about it. It sounded as if Berger had once at some point sexually assaulted a child.

– Can you give us a name?

Viljam Vogt-Nielsen shook his head. – She is very strict about observing confidentiality, and that even applied to me, obviously.

– But you think she intended to reveal this on his live TV show?

– Mailin wasn’t specific about exactly what she intended to do. But she was determined to strip away that absurd clown’s mask of his. Berger was in for a shock.

– Clown’s mask, was that the phrase she used?

– That absurd clown’s mask. She’d already met Berger a couple of times, before the information about his past emerged. She said she was going to get in touch with him before the broadcast and give him a chance to cancel it.

Roar Horvath wasn’t taking any notes. He trusted his memory, which he thought was very precise.

– And that was the last thing you talked about?

Viljam rubbed a finger back and forth over his forehead, as though struggling to remember something.

– She said she had to call in at the post office. Put some cash into her account.

– Cash?

– Some of her patients paid her by the hour. She put it aside and deposited it once a week.

The nearest post office was the one up by Carl Berners Place. Roar glanced at his watch. They should make it before closing time.

– What did you do after she left on that Wednesday?

– Sat here and read for a lot of the afternoon. Went down to the gym just before eight thirty. I play indoor bandy with a few mates. I was back home by about eleven. Just caught the evening news broadcast.

– And the next day?

– Lecture in the morning. Sat in the library afterwards. I called in here at about three, before I left for work.

– Work?

– Justice Bus, he explained. – I try to help out there as much as I can.

Roar made a mental note. Well-spoken young man with a social conscience.

– Had Mailin been here when you called in on Thursday?

– Don’t think so. She would have left her rucksack, or her computer. But I got a couple of text messages from her.

He showed him his mobile. Only now did Roar take out his notebook and write down the exact times.

– We’d arranged to meet at her parents’. I was going to watch Taboo there, and Mailin was going to come back there later.

– In other words, you were at work the whole evening on Thursday the eleventh?

– From three thirty to eight thirty. Then Tage picked me up, her stepfather. He works at the university.

– And you were on the Justice Bus with other students the whole time?

– Popped out to Deli de Luca on Karl Johan to get something to eat. Ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour, ask the others. Aside from that, I was there until Tage arrived. We drove out to Lørenskog, called in at Menu on the way and did some shopping. He slumped a little in his chair. – I called at once, as soon as she didn’t show up on the programme. Her phone was switched off. It looked as if he was reluctant to say any more.

– And then what happened?

Viljam Vogt-Nielsen pushed his hair back with both hands. – We drove into town, Tage and I. Checked to see if she’d gone home. We went up to the TV studio. Tried to get a word with that Berger guy, but he’d apparently already left. I called round, everyone I could think of. No one knew anything. I even tried to get in touch with Mailin’s sister, in Amsterdam… Tage persuaded me to go back home with him. Ragnhild went into a panic, and he had to look after her while I carried on ringing round. Early next morning Tage and I went out to the cabin by Morr Water. Searched all around there. Of course, we knew that she’d left there, but we had to do something. At about twelve, we reported it to the police, and then drove back out to Lørenskog again. Only then did it begin to really dawn on me…

Roar Horvath didn’t offer any expressions of comfort; sat observing him, waiting. For the first time, Viken spoke: – How did you know that she had left the cabin?

Viljam turned to him, momentarily surprised; perhaps he’d forgotten that the chief inspector was there too.

– You said you knew she wasn’t there any more, Viken repeated. – How could you know that?

Viljam blinked several times. – Her car… it wasn’t in the parking space. Tage found it in town later, a block down from where she rents the office.

Roar Horvath started the engine as Viken got in.

– Nothing particularly striking at first glance, he remarked.

Viken said nothing.

– At least it should be easy to check if what he says is true, Roar claimed. – We’d best have a word with the other people on the Justice Bus. And the staff at Deli de Luca.

– When did she disappear? Viken suddenly asked.

Roar inched the car out of its narrow parking space. – The parking ticket shows that the car was parked in Welhavens Street at four minutes past five on that Thursday.

– That’s the car, but when did the woman who owns it disappear?

It didn’t look as if the snowploughs had been down the narrow street for the past week. – It’s not improbable that she went to her office after she left the cabin, Roar insisted as he manoeuvred past the rear of a badly parked taxi. – We’ll have to see what the people she shares the office with say.

As he swung down into the much broader Gøteborg Street he added: – At least it looks as if the partner can account for all his movements.

Viken said: – In principle there isn’t an alibi in the world that can’t be torn apart. Not a single one. Even if someone can prove they were at an audience with the king at the time in question, that doesn’t necessarily let them off the hook in a case like this.

5

Sunday 28 December

JUST AS THE elk stew appeared on the table, the three-note alert sounded on Jennifer’s phone announcing an incoming message. Twice more the cheery notes sang out from her handbag, which she had hung over the arm of her chair.

Ivar nudged her. – And you’re the one who isn’t on duty this evening, he growled, but after living together for twenty years, he was used to the fact that she was more or less never completely free.

Jennifer excused herself to her hostess, her sister-in-law, and went out into the next room. The fire was on in there; the Christmas tree had been pulled out into the middle of the floor. Outside, the snow had hung on despite the mild weather and lay across the garden and the field beyond in a soggy carpet. It smelled good in Ivar’s sister’s house. Always freshly washed, always tidy. Just so, as she used to say herself. Important to have everything just so.

Jennifer had been hoping that Roar Horvath wouldn’t send any more messages, but when she saw it was from him, she had to admit that she’d also hoped the opposite. She listened to the talk in the dining room, how she always had to be ready at a moment’s notice, how vital her work was. Soon they would get on to the case they knew she was working on, the woman found dead in a disused factory in Hurum. Fancy a cup of coffee? she read on the display.

A roll after the office Christmas party was one thing. The statistics were on her side there. Most people could manage that. Bump up against each other by the buffet, like the random collision of two billiards balls, then a dance, then a quick kiss good night in the car, and the kiss so to speak trips and loses its footing, and ends up in a bed that was fortunately very solidly constructed. After something like that, it was still possible to be around each other almost as though nothing had happened. But to meet again, outside the office, that was taking it too far. Another meeting wouldn’t just happen, it would have to be arranged, and with that a completely new set of rules would come into play. Accommodations and transgressions would follow. Judgements concerning the right degree of involvement, plausible excuses for being away from home, dealing with guilt, and all the rest of it. Above all the pattern of everyday life would be disturbed, the ground beneath her feet less secure. It had taken her six months to regain her self-composure after Sean left. Roar Horvath was hardly the type she could fall in love with, and from that perspective he made a better choice as a lover. Moreover, he was ten years her junior, divorced less than a year previously, and had a daughter to look after every other weekend.

She felt like a coffee. She felt like meeting him. The night she drove him home after the Christmas party he had lifted her up almost before she was through the front door and carried her into the bedroom while continuing their conversation, and that spontaneous lifting seemed like the most natural thing in the world. He went on making her laugh as he removed her clothing piece by piece before undressing himself in two quick movements that left him standing naked and proud in front of her, enjoying the way she looked at him… and this time too, he kissed her in the hall, even before she had taken off her coat, and she was just as unprepared for it, noticing that he had already drunk the coffee he had invited her to join him in, and eaten something salty, possibly smoked, drunk beer too, but his kiss was so passionate that the thought of smoked salmon, the most curious of all Norwegian dishes, disappeared as quickly as it had appeared; he put his hand up her skirt, pulled down her panties, lifted her up, opened his flies and removed his trousers smoothly, entered her with a jolt, she tried to suppress the scream but screamed anyway, not that she noticed it, and when she came and was hanging from his neck like a dishcloth, he didn’t let her go, but turned one of her legs around and carried her into the bedroom as he had done before. She had already got used to it.

By the time the promised cup of coffee finally appeared on the table, over an hour had passed since her arrival. With her legs still trembling, and a throbbing tenderness between them, she sank on to one of the chairs by the kitchen table. It obviously hadn’t occurred to him to sit in the living room, from which there was a view of the block next door, and that was fine by her; she’d had a quick look and established that the furnishing had been done by a recently divorced man in his thirties. She preferred the kitchen.

– And there I was thinking that coffee was just an excuse to have sex, she sighed as she inhaled from the steaming cup.

– Other way round, he said with that teasing smile she had to admit she liked a lot. – I knew you would never come here and drink coffee with me unless there was a chance of sex.

She tasted it, controlled the urge to turn up her nose.

– You surely didn’t get a woman to leave a family gathering at Christmas and drive over twenty miles for coffee like this.

– I wanted to talk to you too, he said and put his hand over hers, and for a moment it seemed to her that he really meant it. It made her happy as much as it bothered her. She didn’t want to have to spoil the good atmosphere between them with a lot of rules and regulations. But he was thirty-four and old enough to take it on the chin, despite that air of boyishness.

Fortunately he went on: – A chat over a cup of coffee is fine, but when I saw you standing there in the hall, I just got carried away.

– Do you often get whims like that? she asked, and tried to put on a concerned face.

– It’s been a while since last time.

– Yes, I noticed.

– Ditto.

He opened a bottle of beer. – I wondered what it would be like to talk to you without having a dead body next to us.

She took a few swigs and handed the bottle back. – Are you talking about Viken? she wondered, not wanting to get into any joking about the young woman they’d had lying between them on the autopsy table two days previously.

He laughed, but left it at that.

– Lot of action up at your place right now, she said after a while.

Roar glanced out of the window. – Never known anything like it since the Orderud murders.

Then you should have been there last autumn, said Jennifer, – when all that business with the bear murders was going on. Funny that Viken didn’t go in the general clear-out after that.

Abruptly Roar looked uncomfortable.

– There’s a shortage of people with his experience, he objected. – He’s probably the best investigator I’ve worked with.

Jennifer had heard this from others too, despite what had happened the year before.

– Some people thought they might go for him as the new section head, Roar said.

– That would have been impossible, she asserted.

– Maybe so. But the appointment they did make… Roar blew air between his compressed lips. – I’ve got nothing against Sigge Helgarsson. I know him from before, we worked together in Romerike. He got a boss’s job there too and it went okay. But head of Violent Crimes in Oslo is something different. The guy’s not much older than me. He isn’t Norwegian. And he and Viken aren’t exactly the best of friends, and that’s putting it mildly.

– Well they can hardly confer with Viken every time they make an appointment, said Jennifer. When Roar didn’t respond, she realised he didn’t want to talk about the detective chief inspector any more. – How far have you got with this latest case? she asked, moving the conversation on to another track.

– We’re fumbling away out there in the mist, Roar yawned. – Gradually the visibility will improve, I expect. We need another tactician or two. At the moment there’s still only the four of us. And you can imagine the amount of material there is to go through.

– Then it’s about priorities, she said, thinking about something quite specific.

Roar emptied the bottle of beer and fetched another from the fridge. – Of course we have to start with the ones who are closest. The man she lived with has been interviewed three times.

– Have you got anything on him?

– He seems to have a fairly good alibi.

– No better than fairly good?

– In cases of murder there is not a single alibi that cannot be torn to shreds, declared Roar. – That’s the rule we have to go by. Even if someone can prove they were at an audience with the king at the time, that doesn’t necessarily let them off the hook in a case like this.

– And definitely not if it’s the king who’s been murdered, Jennifer observed.

Roar gave a quick smile. – In the great majority of cases of this kind, what lies behind is usually something involving lovers, people who live together or are married, close family.

– Statistics aren’t much help in individual cases, Jennifer objected.

– Of course not. But topping the list of suspects is always going to be the husband or partner. The way the investigation proceeds determines whether or not they drop down the list, or even out of it entirely.

– Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that Viken thinks that way, she said acidly.

– It doesn’t mean we’re fixated, Roar assured her. – Everyone close to her is being interviewed as a potential perpetrator, that goes without saying. The stepfather, her mother, and the father, who apparently lives in Canada. Then after that we look at her colleagues at work and her patients…

Suddenly he fell silent.

– You’re not sure how much you can tell me, Jennifer volunteered.

He thought about it. – Well, you are part of the investigation, in a way.

– In a way? How far do you think you’ll get if we don’t do our job down at the path lab?

He conceded that she had a point.

– It appears that Mailin Bjerke had a meeting arranged at her office with Berger a few hours before they were due in the Taboo studio that Thursday, he told her. – Apparently he turned up, but she wasn’t there. We know from her phone that she sent him a text at about five thirty. She called him but got no answer just after seven, and then sent him another message.

– Wasn’t that around the time when she went missing?

Roar went over it in his mind. – Actually the last sighting of her was the day before, after she left home. She called in at the post office on Carl Berners Place.

– And you are sure about that?

– The man who was working there was quite certain about it. He remembered in detail what she did when she was there. She used a computer, printed out a few things from the internet, put a small deposit in her account and left. Directly afterwards she came back in again, bought a padded envelope and sent a package. According to the person serving, she suddenly seemed frightened. He’s absolutely certain of all this, but where the package was addressed to he has no idea.

– She was afraid because of this package?

– We don’t know anything about that. It’s quite common for witnesses to dramatise things, especially once they know a murder is involved.

Jennifer said, out of the blue: – I mentioned a case to you. The girl who was killed five years ago in Bergen.

– We talked about it at our morning briefing yesterday, Roar said with a nod.

– And?

– And what?

Jennifer furrowed her brows. – What are you going to do about it?

Roar seemed surprised by her harsh tone of voice. Maybe it dawned on him that this was what she had been heading the conversation towards.

– Obviously we’ll take a look at that case. But we can’t do everything at once.

Jennifer became agitated. – The girl in Bergen was found naked in a remote part of the woods. She had been tied up, but there were no signs of sexual assault. It was in November, and she froze to death. She had been repeatedly stabbed through the eyes with a pointed object. Think about the circumstances in our case and tell me why our top priority isn’t to look for a connection here.

Roar raised both hands. – Don’t hit me, he said in a weedy voice.

Jennifer felt her irritation drain away. – That’s exactly what you need, she said severely. – A right good spanking. On your barest arse.

– Okay, said Roar as he got to his feet, – but it will have to be in the bedroom. I don’t want the neighbours involved in this.

6

Monday 29 December

EMPTY STREETS. IT’S night. He hasn’t eaten. Not since early this morning. It’s getting colder. He should’ve put a jacket on. Didn’t find it in the rush. He sprints down Wergelandsveien. Runs himself warm. A clock strikes down in the city. He counts three strokes. Empty streets. He’s started running again. Every night for the last couple of weeks. He heads round the corner, down Pilestredet, towards the mouth of the Ibsen Tunnel. Tunnels set their own deadlines; he has to get out of them again before a car passes him from behind. Try Festning Tunnel too, that’s longer. And Ekeberg Tunnel. Formerly he ran on fast tracks. Lots of people watching. He had an acceleration down the final straight no one else could match. Could stay well at the back and wait. Coming out of the final bend, he changed gear and left them standing. They didn’t know where he’d come from. Another planet, he called out to them. Not Mars or Venus, but a planet in another galaxy.

He’d always run. Felt calmer when he was running than when he was standing or sitting down. Still not too late to start putting his name down for races. Comeback man. He’d come back before. They didn’t believe in him any more. He’d had so many chances, they said. First of all that stuff they called care. The world of athletics was big hearted about anyone who came off the rails. Don’t push kids out into the cold when what they need is warmth. But then he got caught a couple more times. Coke and pepper. They were even prepared to overlook that. He was done with it, he said, but didn’t mean it. He signed a new contract. Got another chance on condition he went for treatment. No wonder they cared about him. No one had his acceleration, not even Vebjørn Rodal when he was at his peak. I could’ve taken him, he grinned as he ran. I would’ve beaten Rodal in Atlanta, he shouted. If it had been twelve years later. Or sixteen. Rodal was too slow. Too much dead Trøndelag meat there. As for him, he was born with that acceleration. Had it in his blood, in his fibres, in the atoms of his blood.

As he was approaching the exit to the tunnel, a car approached, a taxi. He gave it what he had left, the taxi sounded its horn, he gave it the finger and went up a gear, left it for dead and skipped up on to the narrow pavement. He ran straight across the roundabout and carried on up Schweigaards Street. A long, flat open stretch there. The road was slippery, but he had perfect balance and could adjust in a fraction of a second. His breath was warm and tasted of iron. He owed too much. Thirty grand, according to Karam. It couldn’t be that much. But no point in arguing with Karam. The guy said he hadn’t been selling enough. Taking too much off the top himself. This is business. Thirty grand before Wednesday or you won’t be able to run any more, not even crawl. Karam knows him well enough to know what the worst thing is. It’s not to be floating out somewhere in the fjord with the mackerel stripping the flesh off you until there’s only bone left. Worst of all is to be chained to a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Never run again. Not even crawl. Karam had sketched it out for him. It’s not the fucking mackerel that eat at you as you’re sitting there, but what’s crawling around inside you.

Mailin Bjerke was the first who had never demanded anything. That was why he couldn’t face going to see her. Just a couple of times and then he dropped out. Because of that look in her eye and the way she sat there listening to him and demanding nothing. It made him desperate. Had nothing to say. Could have stood up and taken that computer of hers and chucked it at the wall. Or lifted her up out of her chair and put her down on the desk and watched her eyes turn black. Scared of me at last, finally seeing a part of what you don’t know the first thing about. How could you control anything of what goes chasing around inside of me. But she didn’t give up. Wanted him to come back. Comeback man.

At times he believed in her. That she really might be able to help him. That it would help to talk. He should keep coming, she insisted, and she did all she could to make new appointments for him. If he didn’t turn up anyway, all he had to do was send a text. They could make another appointment, at a time that suited him better. For her, any time was all right, even at short notice. He made appointments and missed them, never sent a message, but she didn’t give up. She was naïve. Believed that all her talk could stop what it was that ravaged him inside. The same thing that made him run, that made him do drugs. She claimed to understand the connections between things. To understand why all he ever thought about was the next snort or the next pill. That those were the thoughts that enabled him to keep going. And the running. She suggested medication. No monkey dope and stuff that turns people into fat, slobbering idiots, but something new that would reduce the craving. But even if she had understood, it wouldn’t help him much now. Mailin is dead, he shouted as he accelerated past the last block before Galgeberg.

Mailin was dead, and someone else he’d never seen before had turned up at her office, tall and thin with a strange look in her eyes. Another patient, definitely, he could always tell; someone strung out like him. But then she started following him, showed up at the station in Oslo, and then again up at Sinsen, wanting to ask him questions. Went for him and tried to choke him.

He would have to find out who she was. Knew the right person to ask. The only person he could trust now.

7

JENNIFER HAD BEEN working with Professor Olav Korn for over ten years now. And yet still she hadn’t managed to locate him in her system of Hippocratic categorisations. Korn radiated a calm that was infectious. She might have been inclined to call him a phlegmatic, but he was a highly efficient worker who dispensed with tasks quickly, from pathologists’ reports to budget proposals. He had done research on sudden and unexplained infant deaths, on the effects of alcohol and drug abuse during pregnancy, as well as in a number of other fields. He published articles in the most important Norwegian and international scientific journals, and was an active voice in public debates on matters like biotechnology and ethics. And even though he spoke at seminars and conferences all over the world, to the staff at the Pathological Institute he remained their very present and involved leader. Had it not been for Korn, Jennifer would not have remained at the institute as long as she had; indeed, she might never even have become an expert on forensic medicine. She was glad that his retirement was still some years in the future, in spite of the fact that on several occasions he had hinted that she would be a very suitable candidate to succeed him as head of the department.

Korn was on the phone when she entered his office, but he gestured for her to sit down. She observed him surreptitiously as he brought the conversation to a close. He was sixty-two, and in terms of his individual features probably looked it, but there was something about his eyes, his repertoire of facial gestures and the way he moved that suggested a younger man. He had a rich head of iron-grey hair, was clean shaven, his eyebrows weren’t bushy and there were no balls of hair emerging from his nostrils and ears, as had begun to be the case with Ivar. All in all Korn took good care of his appearance without seeming the least bit vain about it. Jennifer had always been attracted to men older than herself.

He replaced the receiver and turned towards her.

– It’s about the woman who was found down in Hurum, she said.

– I hear Viken has been given the case, he nodded, perhaps hinting at a couple of earlier occasions on which she had come to him for advice on how best to handle cooperation with the detective chief inspector.

– That’s fine by me, said Jennifer. – I don’t have any trouble with him now. But of course he doesn’t like me getting involved in the investigation.

Korn raised his eyebrows. – And do you?

She sighed. – He appeared in the middle of the autopsy, and I tried to pass along a piece of information that might be very important.

She told him her thoughts on the similarity with the case in Bergen.

– Those people down in Grønland should be very thankful it was you who volunteered for work over Christmas, Korn observed. – Not everyone would have spent Christmas morning in our basement unless they had to. And as for what you’ve just told me, they ought to be pulling out all the stops to find out whether or not there might be a connection.

She took the compliment with a smile. He was one of the few people who could praise her and not have her looking for some ulterior motive.

– I’ve asked myself if there’s anything more I can do. I’ve talked it over on the telephone with a colleague at the Gades Institute, and he thinks it’s interesting too. But of course he can’t send over any of their material.

– Of course not.

She said what she had come to say to him: – What if I were to go there? Take the pictures from here. Do a comparison of the forensic evidence. Get something more to show to Viken and his people.

Korn didn’t look in the least surprised. He mulled the suggestion over for a few moments before replying.

– I’ve always appreciated the fact that you show so much initiative, Jennifer. And that you are not the least bit afraid of trespassing on someone else’s territory.

She could feel herself blushing. With only Korn present, it didn’t matter that much.

– I remember the case in Bergen very well, he said, his gaze moving to follow something or other through the window, probably to spare her even more embarrassment. – You say the eyes were mutilated? In the same way?

He had spent fifteen years more than her working as a forensic expert, yet it seemed as though all that proximity with death actually made him more and more solicitous of the well-being of the living.

He leaned over the desk. – I don’t think it’s a good idea to go to Bergen. But I’ll call the department of Violent Crimes and have a word with the head down there. This has to be about priorities.

Jennifer had a mental picture of Viken being carpeted by Sigge Helgarsson, the section head who just a short while ago had been his junior and whom Viken, by all accounts, had regularly used as a whipping boy. She felt a malicious pleasure bubbling up in her and was unable to resist indulging it.

– What was her name again, the girl in Bergen? Korn asked, the telephone already in his hand.

– Richter, she answered. Ylva Richter.

8

Tuesday 30 December

ROAR HORVATH RANG on one of the bells down in the yard, the one with T. Gabrielsen written next to it. She didn’t answer immediately, and he had time to start feeling annoyed. He was on time, but people in her line of business were not renowned for their concern for other people’s ideas of punctuality.

Finally there was a buzzing from the lock. The staircase inside was musty and twisted, the whole building looking ripe for renovation. As he reached the landing on the first floor, a woman with a round face poked her head out.

– Wait just a moment in there, she said, pointing to a door. – I’ll be finished in about half a minute.

Roar let himself into a kitchen that perhaps also functioned as a common room. On a table directly behind the door was a hotplate, with a coffee machine next to it. A tiny fridge was slotted in below the window facing the back yard, a stand with a flipover leaning up against it. The cupboard on the wall contained a packet of coffee filters, a few cups and glasses, a large bag of salt and a curious little plastic container with a long spout. In the corner, between the fridge and the wall, stood a grey-lacquered filing cabinet. It had three drawers, all of which were locked. On the flipover, arrows had been drawn in blue felt tip between words written in black: dilemma, self-development, defence. He flipped back through it. From the handwriting, it was clear that more than one person had used it as an aid to explanations.

Over ten minutes went by before Torunn Gabrielsen appeared again. She started making coffee without offering any apology for the delay, and left it up to her visitor to decide whether he wanted to stand or sit.

She could be about his own age, thought Roar, although she seemed older. He couldn’t decide if her hair was longish, or shortish. She was neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark. The face was pale and rather lumpy, and the eyes a touch red around the rims. She wasn’t wearing glasses, but he saw the traces of them across the bridge of her nose, and she squinted when she looked up at him. If he had to assess her as a woman, he would, if he was feeling diplomatic about it, have said that she wasn’t his type. Not exactly vivacious, either, he thought, or maybe she was just tired. Alert now, Roar, he warned himself as he felt his dislike beginning to get the upper hand.

– It’s very convenient for us to meet here, he said. – It gives me the chance to see Mailin Bjerke’s office at the same time.

– Is this the last place where she was before she went missing?

– That we don’t know yet, said Roar.

– But I gather she had an appointment here, that she called in after she’d been to her cabin. And her car was parked outside, further up the street.

He realised she was a woman who would rather ask questions than answer them.

– Did you see the car when you left here?

She shook her head firmly. – I walked the other way, down towards Holbergs Place.

– And the time then was?

– Around half three. My tram goes at twenty to. I explained this when I was down talking to the crime response unit.

– You’ll have to forgive us if you get asked the same questions more than once, he said evenly, glancing over at the coffee machine, which had started to bubble. – So you didn’t see her that day at all?

– The day before was the last time I saw Mailin. She popped in to leave a message. That was at three o’clock. She was on her way out to the cabin.

This concurred with what Viljam Vogt-Nielsen had told them. Roar sat down. The back of the rickety wooden chair slid out of its joints and it felt as if the whole thing would collapse if he so much as moved a finger.

– What was the message about?

Torunn Gabrielsen sat down too.

– A patient, she said, appearing to study the content of her coffee cup. – There’s a limit to the information I can give you about that.

Roar could see the way things were heading. Countless cases dragged on or were never even solved on account of this damned professional secrecy, which in reality was just an excuse for doing nothing and had precious little to do with the protection of individual rights. So it was a surprise when Torunn Gabrielsen continued:

– It was about a patient who used to come and go. He could appear suddenly without any warning and usually didn’t turn up when he had an appointment. Mailin asked me to let her know if he’d been there.

– Even though your office is on the floor below?

– I take breaks, or when I’m doing paperwork I leave the corridor door open.

She stood up and fetched the coffee jug and two cups. There was an inscription on Roar’s: Today is your day. It had no handle and the rim was chipped.

– Do you know of anyone who might want to harm Mailin Bjerke?

Torunn Gabrielsen took a mouthful of coffee and held it for a long time before swallowing. Funny way to drink coffee, thought Roar. He didn’t expect a reply to his question. Again he was taken by surprise.

– Are we talking about someone who might want to, or someone who was actually capable of it?

– Both, he said hopefully.

Another swig of coffee, more pondering as she swilled her mouth with it.

– Mailin was someone it was easy to like. But she was also very upfront and never afraid to say exactly what she thought.

– Meaning?

– That she could be really quite… direct. Sometimes people felt hurt. A lot of people can’t take it when things are said straight out, without a lot of padding and packaging.

Roar waited for more and didn’t interrupt.

– But mostly this is about patients. As I’m sure you know, Mailin worked with people who had been the victims of abuse. Several of them turned into abusers themselves.

– Anyone in particular you have in mind? he asked, fishing.

– Actually, yes.

She poured herself more coffee. – A couple of years ago Mailin had a patient who… I’m not quite sure what happened. I think he threatened her.

– You say he.

– It was a man. Mailin didn’t say much about it. But she had to terminate the treatment. It wasn’t her way to give up, quite the contrary, she could be amazingly stubborn with hopeless cases.

– But this time she was threatened.

– I don’t know that’s what he did, but that was my impression. It must have been serious, because Mailin seemed very upset.

– When was this?

Torunn Gabrielsen looked to be thinking it over. – Autumn two years ago. Directly after Pål got his office here.

– Did you meet this patient?

He took the fact that she didn’t reply as an encouragement and went on. – Since he wasn’t your patient, I’m guessing you’re at liberty to say who it was.

She let out a sigh. – I never met him. I think he came in the evenings. And Mailin never said what his name was. He was here just a few times, before she terminated. After that, I heard nothing more about it.

Roar persisted. – Autumn two years ago. August? September?

– Pål came here in September. It was straight after that.

– All the patients are presumably registered with social security?

– Not many. Mailin wasn’t part of the reimbursement scheme. Most of her patients were people who’d fallen outside the net completely.

Roar took a note. At that moment, the door slid open. The man standing there was wearing a T-shirt and cord trousers; he was unshaven and his hair was unkempt. For an instant, Roar assumed he was a patient.

– Sorry, said the new arrival on seeing the officer. – Didn’t know you were still at it.

– Quite all right, Roar assured him as soon as he realised who this was. – You are Pål Øvreby?

– Correct, said the other and held out his hand.

Roar noticed that he spoke with an accent; it sounded American, despite the very Norwegian name.

– You’ve already given us a statement about Thursday the eleventh of December, he said. – But just to avoid any misunderstandings I’d like to ask you a few of the questions again.

– Sure, he replied in English.

– You were working here most of the afternoon?

– I am definitely not a morning person. Late but strong.

– How long were you here on that particular day?

– Left here at about five, Pål Øvreby replied without thinking.

– Can you be more exact? Two minutes to, or two minutes past?

– Why have we never installed a time clock here? he chuckled to Torunn Gabrielsen.

– And you didn’t see any sign of Mailin Bjerke either before you left? Roar went on, ignoring the psychologist’s slightly flippant tone.

– Neither saw nor heard.

– Would you have done? Heard her?

Øvreby chewed it over for a moment. – Depends on what she was doing in there. He chuckled again. – But her car was just up the road. I passed it on my way.

– That’s what you told the crime response unit. And you are still quite sure it was hers?

– White, Japanese, a little dent on the passenger-side door. If you ask me enough times, I’ll probably start to doubt it.

– The parking ticket on Mailin’s car was stamped four minutes past five, Roar informed him. – Pretty much the exact time you passed. Would you have seen her if she was sitting in the car?

– From a distance of one metre? I should imagine so.

Roar quickly considered the possibilities that opened up if Øvreby was telling the truth.

– The ticket is from the machine on Hegdehaugs Way, he observed. – Less than fifty metres from Welhavens Street. Might she have been standing there paying as you walked by?

Pål Øvreby looked to be thinking this over. There was still the faint trace of a smile around his mouth.

– As far as I recall, I didn’t look that way. Besides, it was quite dark. In other words, yes, it is possible.

– Where did you go?

He wrinkled his nose. – Does that have any bearing on the case?

Roar nodded his head, back and forth, twice. – Everything has a bearing on the case.

– Everything and nothing, Øvreby remarked, whatever he meant by that. – Well, I took a little drive. I do that sometimes after a stressful day at the office.

– Was that day particularly stressful?

– Not more so than most of the others. I took the car and drove out to Høvikodden. Usually go walking there, with Lara.

Roar looked at him quizzically.

– My dog. What did you think?

Roar didn’t feel like telling him what he might have thought. – When did you get home?

– About nine, wasn’t it?

Øvreby glanced over at Torunn Gabrielsen. She didn’t answer.

– Actually, there was a lot of noise just as I was about to leave the office.

– Noise?

– Sounded like someone hammering like crazy on the street door. When I got down, there was no one there. I guess I forgot about that when I last spoke to you.

Roar picked up his notebook and wrote something. Not because he wouldn’t remember it, but because it often made a distinct impression on witnesses if what they were saying was written down.

– You’ve spent some time abroad? he asked without looking up.

– Correct. Chicago, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two.

Roar wondered in passing why some people just soaked up new dialects and accents while others stubbornly held on to what they grew up with. A good question for a psychologist.

– I hear you offer a very special type of treatment, he said.

– Who told you that?

– Sorry, professional confidentiality, Roar said as he struggled vainly to hide a grin. – Vegetarian therapy, is that it?

– Vegetotherapy, Øvreby grinned back at him.

– Tell me about that.

– It’s a little hard to explain in simple terms. It’s body-orientated, you might say. Freeing up the armour we surround ourselves with. If you can free the energy tied up in the tension in the muscles, you can free up your psychological tensions too.

– Are we talking about massage here?

Øvreby yawned. – Much more powerful than that. I can send you a link with more about it.

– Thank you, said Roar, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. He stood up. – I’d like to see Mailin Bjerke’s office. Do either of you have the keys?

9

TORUNN WAS SITTING with her mobile in her hand and was about to call Dahlstrøm when Pål came bursting into the office without knocking.

– Well that went pretty well, he said as he slumped down into a chair. – No dogs buried and none dug up either.

He often tossed off some phrase like that in an effort to seem interesting. Suddenly, and for no special reason, she was furious with him. No special reason other than the thousand she already had, that she had been living with for years.

– I’m working, she said quietly, and carried on making entries in the journal she was updating.

Pål ignored her. – They don’t exactly send us the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, he went on, taking out a toothpick, which he prodded between two of his teeth and left there. – Or is that exactly what they do? Imagine if the guy that was just here is the best they can come up with. Pretty soon I’ll be joining the choir that’s always calling out for more resources for the police.

She gave up the attempt to work and turned towards him. – If you only knew how tired people are of your attempt to control the whole world with your pathetic arrogance, I think the shame just might kill you.

He sat bolt upright. Ended up chuckling. – Well I’ll be, my precious. That time of the month, is it? Or even later? I don’t keep up with it any more.

His response made her anger slip away. She felt sorry for him.

– Pål, I know things aren’t easy for you at the moment.

It didn’t sound good, she could hear that herself, even before he flared up.

– Then maybe you should make an appointment for me, he growled. – Most of your patients drop out anyway, so there ought to be room for me.

She shook her head wearily. – I don’t think it’s any good.

He calmed down. – Not even with the sort of treatment you offer? he said, trying to make a joke.

– I mean us, she said.

She hadn’t intended to bring it up now. Not in the middle of all this business with Mailin.

– What about us?

He forced her to say it. – I want you to move out.

He pulled out the toothpick, looked at it, began pushing it in and out between the teeth of his upper jaw.

– At last something other than gibberish, he said. – I’ve been thinking about it for so bloody long I’d almost forgotten.

– We can talk about it once we’ve got some distance to this business with Mailin.

– I want to talk about it now, he hissed. – This very moment. You don’t just toss out something like that and then leave.

– All right, then, she said, a little more feebly.

– For starters, where will Oda live?

– Oda? I don’t even want to discuss that.

Again that chuckle.

– Because you think it’s all a done deal, he said without raising his voice. – If it comes to a court case, there’s a thing or two I’ll have to tell them, you do know that?

Looking at him, she could see that he thought he was already beginning to get the upper hand. – No, I don’t know that. Certainly not.

He leaned well back in his chair. – Twice I’ve driven Oda to Casualty. Once with a broken arm. Once with burns on her chest. Do you think they’re complete morons down there? Don’t you think someone might have started putting two and two together?

She sat there, her mouth half open, waiting for him to start laughing. Yet another of his nasty, macabre jokes. And when that didn’t happen, she had to hit back.

– You’ll never get me to say that you were out with Lara when Mailin disappeared, understand? It was me who took Lara for a walk that evening. You didn’t come home until after eleven. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself hauled up to the police station and charged with giving false information, and while you’re there, you can submit your application for custody of Oda at the same time.

That hurt. He pulled out the toothpick, broke it into small pieces and showered them on to the tabletop.

– You don’t think I have anything to do with what happened to Mailin.

– You have no idea what I think, Pål. First you tell me exactly what you were doing that evening, and then I’ll tell you what I do and don’t think.

He pulled out his wry smile. She knew he felt he was charming when he smiled like that, sheepish and self-confident at the same time. Once upon a time she’d felt the same way about it; now it just looked like an empty pout. He practised a therapy that was supposed to help people who had wrapped their own bodies in armour, while he himself was progressively disappearing behind a shell. She had struggled to get inside it. Now the thought of what was in there disgusted her.

– You don’t want to know, he said. – You don’t want to know where I was.

She played her final card, the one she had been saving for last.

– Mailin found out what you were doing here in the evenings.

– Oh yeah, he said stiffly.

– She asked me if I knew about it.

– Really? And what did you say?

– I told her I knew all about what went on inside your office. That was the day before she went missing. That was the last thing I heard her say, that she was going to call in at your office to talk to you about it.

Torunn presumed that Tormod Dahlstrøm still had her number on his call list. So he would see that it was her who was ringing. He could answer, or at least call back. If he didn’t, it would confirm that she meant nothing to him.

Then his voice was there. – Tormod, he said, and she couldn’t go on sitting in the chair, she had to get up and pace the room. The thought of having him as her supervisor again now that Mailin was no longer there would have been too grotesque, and she didn’t think it.

– Hi, Tormod, she said weakly. – It’s Torunn.

She let the two names float together for a moment.

– I saw it was you, he said, and seemed relieved. – I’ve been meaning to call you.

She realised that he meant it. But also why he had been thinking of her.

– It’s just too awful, she said. – It’s unreal, I can’t get myself to believe it.

It was true. And yet it sounded hollow. She had many reasons for calling. This was the only one she could talk about. – I’ve been wondering about something Mailin said to me. I need to hear what you think.

She paused, and he didn’t interrupt. She had never had a better supervisor, and was only too aware of how stupid she had been to give him up. She’d let anger rule her, pretended to herself that she could hurt him like that. And maybe, in spite of it all, he had been hurt.

– A couple of years ago, Mailin had a patient she didn’t want to continue with. She terminated the treatment abruptly. She wasn’t the type to give up when the going got rough. But back then she seemed really afraid.

– Did she go into any detail about what happened? Dahlstrøm asked.

– She had just taken him on. It was in the early days of her PhD, and she was considering making him a part of it. I’m pretty sure he threatened her.

– Any idea who this patient might have been?

– I never met him. And Mailin never mentioned a name. I’ve no idea if he was recommended by a doctor. Social services might know, I’m sure I can find out roughly when he was here. Maybe she talked to you about it.

She knew that it would take a lot for him to reveal anything of what was said in his sessions as Mailin’s supervisor.

– I think I know what you’re referring to, he said. – It was something that happened several years ago, and Mailin didn’t think she needed supervision to talk about it. That might mean she didn’t think the episode was quite as serious as the impression you got of it. Quite a number of the people she was treating are unstable and quick tempered.

– The police were here today. They want access to her filing cabinet. I don’t think they’ll find anything there. It’s almost empty. Things connected with her thesis, but no names. I don’t know where she kept that kind of thing.

Dahlstrøm was silent for a few moments. Then he said: – I have a list of the patients who were involved in her study. I’ll get in touch and urge each one of them to contact the police.

Torunn felt that she could hardly trust her voice any more. – I should have said something about this before, she managed to say.

– You did what you could, Torunn. It’s easy to reproach yourself. We just have to help each other the best we can.

His comforting words were too much for her. She let him hear that she was crying before closing the conversation, without mentioning any of the things that she most needed to talk to him about.

10

ROAR HORVATH SPENT an hour preparing himself. He scrolled through hundreds of documents on the internet, printed out a few articles, including one from an obscure website calling itself baalzebub.com. Elijah Frelsøi – Berger’s real name – grew up in Oslo. A pupil at Kampen school, and then on to Hersleb. After secondary school he studied theology. His family were members of the Pentecostal church. Frelsøi broke with them at the age of eighteen and took his mother’s name, Bergersen. Active in the circles around the anarchist publication Street Paper. At the same time a member of several punk rock bands, and started one of his own, Hell’s Razors, later Baalzebub, who kept going until the end of the eighties. After that, he worked as a solo artist under the name Berger. Had several hits in the nineties. Lyrics dealing with desire and faith, low key and often acoustic. At the same time wrote several shows, appeared in them himself, and over time developed a format in which he sang his own songs interspersed with a pure stand-up comedy routine. Typically this involved sharp attacks on the powerful in Norwegian society and, in due course, the powerless as well. Early in the 2000s, Berger was given his own show on NRK, but it was taken off air after just three broadcasts, officially because of poor viewing figures. He did a season as a stand-up-rock satirist on TV2. Contract not renewed despite the fact that it was the show people talked about. Early this autumn, he suddenly reappeared again, brought in from the cold by the newly established Channel Six. In the course of a few months, well before Mailin Bjerke went missing, Berger’s TV show Taboo made the front pages of the tabloids more than ten times: Berger defends drug use in athletes… Berger attacks ‘feminist fannies’… Berger eats marzipan pig in shape of Muhammad… Berger a heroin user… Berger a paedophile?

Roar recalled that one of his best friends, a journalist on Romerikes Blad, had interviewed the infamous TV talk-show host. He left a message on his voicemail before heading down into the garage and taking out a service car.

He was passing Slotts Park when his friend called back.

– Dan-Levi here, you called me.

Roar fiddled with the hands-free and almost didn’t see the tram that turned down Henrik Ibsen’s Street.

– I’m guessing you didn’t call me to say that you’re still into swearing and various other forms of sinful behaviour, he heard from the other end.

Dan-Levi Jakobsen had been Roar’s best friend from primary school onwards. As the oldest son of a pastor in the Pentecostal church, he was condemned to an outsider’s existence, especially during the secondary school years. Roar probably exaggerated his own sense of being different that came from the fact that he was half Hungarian. Later he came to realise that every single pupil at Kjellervolla school felt like an outsider in those days. Most of them managed to hide it, but the pastor’s son Dan-Levi never had a chance, and nor did Roar, with his surname. To make up for it, they cultivated a fellowship based on their own version of ‘I’m black and I’m proud’. Deep down, the fear of being like everyone else was probably greater than the fear of being rejected.

– Dan-Levi, I called you for two reasons. In the first place, it’s getting on for three years since we last went out for a drink.

In actual fact it had been something like three months. Roar was using irony to try to put his old friend on the defensive. Dan-Levi was a father of four and still unassailably married to his teenage sweetheart, Sara. That she had originally been Roar’s girlfriend, and the first with whom he went further than a bit of necking in the back row of the cinema, was one of the few things they never joked about.

– I’m ready when you are, señor, his friend parried. – You’re the one who’s let himself get stuck in that swamp of a so-called capital city.

– You’re right. I get homesick just thinking about the smell of the river Nitelva.

After moving from Lillestrøm eighteen months ago, leaving behind the wreck of a marriage and a heap of friends all wondering which of the two exes they should stay in touch with, Roar took every opportunity to trash the place. It had conned its way into being called a town. The town centre was a cross between a dump and a permanent building site. The football team was nothing but a gang of grouchy old peasants, und so weiter. None of it was particularly seriously meant, but it felt liberating to say it.

– That was the first thing, said Dan-Levi after they’d agreed to meet at Klimt on New Year’s Day. – What was the other thing?

– I’m wondering about an interview you did a few years back. But you must promise that this is strictly between us.

Dan-Levi swore. Roar couldn’t actually see him cross his heart and hope to die, but his old journalist buddy was someone he trusted, and he’d been very helpful to Roar during his years at Romerike police station. In return, Roar had given Dan-Levi tip-offs that brought the local paper a number of scoops.

– I’m on my way to interview Berger, said Roar. – Give me a bit of gen on the guy.

– Are you suggesting there might be some connection between Berger and this woman they found down in Hurum? Dan-Levi exclaimed.

– No comment, said Roar in English. – I’m the one asking the questions here. I want everything you know about him. Weak points, what to look out for, und so weiter. I’m asking because you interviewed the guy. And because Berger has deep roots in the Pentecostal movement. Once a Pentacostalist, always a Pentacostalist. I’m sure you know people who can talk about his childhood among the speakers in tongues.

– You want to get hold of someone who can tell you whether the guy had psychopathic tendencies even as a child? What’s in it for me?

– A beer. Maybe two.

A few moments’ silence.

– I’ll try and dig up something by Thursday, said Dan-Levi finally. – But here’s a tip to be going on with: don’t reveal anything about yourself when you talk to him. When I turned up for the interview, I’d hardly finished introducing myself before he started asking me about the Pentecostal movement. He claimed that my name was the giveaway. After that, he was the one grilling me, not the other way around, not for a moment.

11

BERGER LIVED AN apartment in Løvenskiolds Street. The registered owner was someone called Odd Løkkemo, Roar had discovered, and when the door was opened by a man with a reddish-grey rim of hair around his head, he showed his ID and said: – Might you be Odd Løkkemo.

– Might be, the man responded testily. His eyes were red rimmed, as though he had just been crying.

Roar informed him that he had an appointment to see Berger. The man who might have been Løkkemo turned his head. – Elijah, he shouted. – Visitor for you.

The feminine voice and the way he sashayed down the hallway and into a room were enough to persuade Roar that he shared more than just a kitchen with the TV celebrity.

No one emerged to greet him, and rather than just stand there pathetically waiting in the entrance, Roar stepped inside and opened the first door he came to. It led to a bathroom. It looked to have been newly decorated, with tiled walls in the style of the old Roman baths and a large jacuzzi in one corner. Still no sign of life out in the hallway. Roar opened one of the cupboards. Towels and face cloths on shelves. In the next one he found tubes and bottles of pills, most of them prescribed for E. Berger. Co-codamol, he noted. Temgesic. A few morphine tablets. He made a note of the name of the prescribing doctor. Not that he thought he might get something out of him, but it might be interesting to find out if this was someone who was casual about prescribing opiates.

He opened several doors in the corridor, found the kitchen and what looked like a library. The fourth door opened on to an enormous room. A man sat at a desk with his back to the door, bending motionless over a computer keyboard. He didn’t react, not even when Roar tried to attract his attention by a noisy clearing of the throat. Not until he closed the door heavily behind him did the man turn round, as though suddenly waking up. His eyes slid up towards his visitor. The long hair was obviously dyed and looked anything but natural against the wrinkled pale yellow skin of the face. Roar noticed that the man’s pupils were the size of pinpoints, though the light in the room was not particularly bright.

– The police? Was that today? Berger exclaimed on seeing his ID.

His surprise seemed genuine, despite the fact that it was less than two hours since they had spoken on the phone. Roar had asked him to come down to his office for an interview, and Berger had replied that he had no intention of setting foot inside Oslo police station.

– What did you say your name was? Horvath, yes, that was it. You rang. Hungarian?

Roar remembered what Dan-Levi had said about how Berger took control as soon as he saw an opening. He contented himself with a non-committal nod and said:

– As you know, there are certain questions we’d like to have answers to.

– But of course, said Berger in a slurred, nasal voice. – Of course, of course. He indicated a straight-backed chair by the wall. – So sorry I can’t offer you anything, Horvath, but you see my butler has the afternoon off today.

Roar smiled briefly at this silly joke.

– What was all this about again? Berger snuffled. – Help me out here. Was it something to do with my last show?

On the phone Roar had explained exactly what the interview was about, but he would not let himself be irritated by the game the television clown was trying to play. Though the snuffling and the pupils might suggest that his memory really was switched off. What the hell is this guy on? he thought. Definitely not any kind of upper. He’d looked at a couple of episodes of Taboo, including one that had a piece about heroin. Surely the guy hadn’t taken a hit just before he was due to talk to the police?

– Mailin Bjerke, he said evenly.

– Of course, groaned Berger. – Tragic business. Tragic. Tragic. He made a face. – What is my situation here? Am I a suspect, Horvath? Is that why you’ve come, to get a confession?

– Do you have anything to confess?

Berger moved his head backwards, as though to laugh. All that came out was a thin, whinnying sound. Roar thought about taking him in.

– If I were to confess everything on my conscience, Horvath, I’m telling you, you’d have a real party. He gestured with his hand, his elbow slipped off the rest and his body slumped to one side.

– You are being interviewed as a witness, Roar explained. – You had an appointment with Mailin Bjerke on Thursday the eleventh of December, in the evening. She sent you a message. The last one she sent.

Berger leaned forward, rubbed his doughy cheeks briskly with both hands.

– Message, did I get a message? He put a hand into the pocket of his worn jacket, pulled out a mobile phone. – Message on Thursday the eleventh of December? He searched for a while. – Correct, Horvath. What you guys know. Delayed a few minutes. Entry code is 1982. Door to waiting room on first floor is open. Important we talk. M. Bjerke.

– Did you wait in the waiting room?

– What else do you do in a waiting room? Berger sniggered. – Yes, Mister Constable. I was there. But it didn’t please the lady to turn up. I had to be at the studio. Told everyone Miss Bjerke was going to be part of the programme. But she didn’t turn up there either.

– Perhaps you understand why, Roar observed. – How long did you wait? Five minutes? Ten?

Berger sat staring up at the high stuccoed ceiling.

– I don’t walk around with a stopwatch. But I was up at Nydalen before eight thirty.

– Was there anyone else in that waiting room?

– Not a soul. The lights were off when I got there. Didn’t hear anyone, see anyone, smell anyone. Berger straightened up and his voice was a little clearer now. – Had a cigarette, found a urinal down the corridor, used it, carefully, left it as clean as I found it, and absented myself.

– And you met no one?

– You know that better than me, Mr Horvath. I’m assuming you are in complete control of the situation.

– We are, Roar assured him. – No one, as far as we know, saw you coming or going in Welhavens Street. No one but you has any idea where you were before ten past nine. When you arrive, out of breath and almost thirty minutes later than usual, and rush into the make-up department to be readied for the broadcast.

Berger closed his eyes and rested his head in one hand.

– There, you see, he said, sounding as if he was on the verge of sleep. – You know all this, so why are you asking me?

– We want to know how it is you could take two hours to get from Mailin Bjerke’s office in Welhavens Street up to Nydalen on an evening when traffic was normal.

Berger slid even lower down in his chair. – I leave that to you to find out, Horvath. Shouldn’t be too hard for an averagely well-equipped constable. I’m talking strictly about intelligence here, you understand.

He waved his hand. – Sorry I can’t see you to the door. And that my butler is off.

Roar stood up and took a step towards him. – I haven’t finished with you, Berger. Next time, be in good enough shape to talk properly. If you aren’t, I’ll see to it that you spend a day or two in our cells before the interview. Preferably with another junkie for company.

He knew it wasn’t particularly smart to say something like that. It felt good.

12

WHEN ODD LØKKEMO heard the policeman leaving the apartment, he sat up in bed. His migraine was ebbing away. He knew how to deal with it, knew exactly what he could do and what had to be avoided. On the first day of the attack he was more or less a dead man. First a tingling over one half of his body, double vision, colours dancing against the white wall. Then the sudden lameness. One corner of his mouth drooping, loss of feeling in half the face, unable to move his arm, and his foot dangling and trailing if he tried to lift his leg. And then the pain breaking over him in waves one metre high. Two days in a dark room with the curtains closed. Vomiting in a bucket, crawling along the floor to get to the toilet.

During the days Odd had been lying in the dark feeling like a victim of torture, Elijah had had a visitor. Not a friend of them both, otherwise the person would have popped in to the bedroom to see how things were. Almost certainly an admirer. The music he heard coming from Elijah’s study suggested as much. A young man, he imagined, knowing that women no longer roused anything but memories in his partner.

A few hours previously, when Odd could finally face getting up, he’d found Elijah naked on the kitchen table. He noticed at once: Elijah had had sex. Always that same dreamy look on his face, like a lovesick kid. Fucking hell, he’d thought, but managed not to say anything. The slightest sign of a quarrel and his migraine would flare up again… It had actually started a couple of weeks earlier, when Odd was in Lillehammer. On the day he came back, Elijah had that look on his face, that vacant smile, that smell of young lust. He acted secretive, kept dropping hints. He knew how much it hurt; Odd had realised a long time ago that that was the reason he did it. Elijah loved to make him jealous. Not because he needed to show who had the power, but because he never tired of feeling that someone was jealous because of him. In general he liked to arouse feelings in people that they had no control over themselves. It made them more interesting, in his view. Even a relentless bore like you, Odd, becomes exciting when that delightfully immature anger surfaces. Or he might say something along the lines of: I absolutely love you, Odd, when you get in a rage and try to control it, when you show the dangerous and unknown sides of yourself. Apart from that, you are predictable to the point of absurdity. And yet still Elijah stuck with him. Or perhaps that was precisely why. Even he needed something predictable in his life. He’d be helpless without you, thought Odd. Now more than ever, after what happened… For a while Elijah had tried to keep it to himself, but Odd had found out in the end. Come across a letter he should never have seen. He might be predictable, but he had this talent for finding things out about Elijah; he knew more about him than anyone else ever had. He consoled himself with this thought, cultivated it and nurtured it every day.

In the front room, Elijah Berger lay in the wing chair. His head was bent backwards and his mouth was half open. His breathing was heavy and uneven.

Odd put a hand on his forehead. – How are you?

Berger opened one eye. – Would you tidy up, he groaned with a nod in the direction of the desk.

Odd went over and pulled out the top drawer. In it lay a tourniquet and a syringe with a milky residue mixed with a thin trail of blood in the bottom.

– Kindly warn me the next time we have a visit from the police.

– I did, Odd said.

Berger waved him away. He lay there a while longer, staring at the ceiling. Then he sat up straight. – Migraine gone now? he asked in a friendly way.

Odd stood beside him again, stroked his hair. – Thank you for caring, Elijah.

A short grunt emerged from Berger’s throat. – Need the place to myself for a while tonight, he said. – Can you go out somewhere?

Odd withdrew his hand and slumped down by the table. He could get angry now. Tell it like it was. That he was the one who owned the flat. That Elijah lived there because he, Odd, allowed him to do so. That Elijah could find himself somewhere else to entertain his fuck-friends. He could have used that very phrase. He could have shouted out that he hated him. But stuff like that had no effect on Elijah. Even less than before, after what had happened. It was no good telling it like it was, because Elijah wasn’t living there because he had to. He was living there because Odd wanted him to live there, in his apartment and nowhere else. Because he wanted him there beside him. Because he wanted him to be just exactly as he was.

– How can I help you if you reject me?

Berger looked at him for a long time. His gaze opened and for a moment was devoid of mockery. Then he laid his hand on Odd’s, in the way Odd had been longing for.

– The sign of deepest friendship, Odd, is that you help your friend to bury a body in the ground.

– No, Odd protested. He stood up and sat on the armrest next to him. It wasn’t the first time over the past few weeks that Elijah had said exactly the same thing, and this time he had his answer prepared. – The sign of friendship is that you help him dig up bodies.

Berger sank back into the chair without saying anything else and resumed his staring at the ceiling.

Help him, thought Odd. That was what he ought to do, help him through this. Not think about afterwards. There is no afterwards.

13

Wednesday 31 December

IN THE LIFT on the way down from the seventh floor of the Oslo police headquarters, Roar Horvath thought about the interview he was about to conduct. As usual, he had set himself certain goals regarding what it was he wanted clarified. It was, naturally, crucial that his agenda was flexible and didn’t get in the way of something else important that might crop up along the way. He had spent the morning going through a pile of transcriptions of the interviews once more. He had looked at the report written by another member of the investigative team about the murdered woman’s background, and in a separate addendum made a number of comments of his own. Now he ran through in his head the most important questions he wanted to ask Mailin Bjerke’s sister.

As he emerged from the lift, he caught sight of her. She was standing a few metres away from the reception desk, in the middle of the floor. When he held out his hand and introduced himself, he abruptly felt completely unprepared. He had to make an effort to keep eye contact with her. Realised afterwards that he hadn’t heard her answer. He had interviewed a lot of young women, some ugly, some beautiful, most of them somewhere in between. He should be professional enough to remain unaffected by such concerns. He took a hold of himself as he turned and walked ahead of her. Alert, Roar, he warned himself. Level five alert.

– My condolences, he managed to say as they stood in the narrow lift. She was almost as tall as him. The hair somewhere between red and brown. And eyes that looked green in the sharp electric light.

She lowered her eyes without answering.

– This must be a terrible time for the closest relatives.

Roar considered himself above average when it came to speaking to people in difficult situations. Right now he felt like an elephant.

He closed the office door behind her and caught a whiff of perfume. Alert, Roar, he reminded himself irritably. Level eight. Ten was maximum on the scale of how much it was reasonable to expect him to control himself.

She was dressed in ordinary clothing, he noted once he had taken his seat behind the desk. An all-weather jacket that looked much too big. Green woollen pullover underneath it. Black trousers, not especially tight fitting, high-heeled boots. It looked as though she was wearing almost no make-up. Her hands were narrow, the fingers long and thin, the nails well manicured. He repeated the description to himself in silence; it improved his grip of the situation.

– We’ve been trying to get hold of you for several days, he began. – No one knew exactly where you were.

– Who is no one? she asked. The voice was calm and quite deep.

– Your parents. They haven’t seen you since Christmas Eve.

He had been surprised that she had not been with her family in the shock and distress of the first few days.

– When did you last see your sister? he asked.

– In the summer, Liss Bjerke answered, looking straight at him. He was used to her look by now.

– Was your relationship perhaps not particularly close?

Liss Bjerke smoothed her suede gloves along her thigh. – What makes you think that?

– Well, I… Relationships between sisters probably aren’t all the same closeness.

– Have you got any brothers or sisters? she asked.

The interview had been going on for just a couple of minutes and already things were headed in a completely different direction to the one he had planned; but instead of brushing her question aside, he answered her:

– One sister and one brother.

– And you’re the oldest?

– Good guess, he smiled.

– Mailin is the person in the world who means most to me, she said suddenly. – I didn’t see much of her after I moved to Amsterdam, but the relationship between us was as close as always.

– I understand, Roar commented, though he didn’t have any particularly good reason to say something like that. – It must have been terribly…

– To the best of my knowledge you’re neither a priest nor a psychologist, Liss Bjerke interrupted him sharply. – I’m here to answer questions that might help you find out what’s happened.

Alert now, Roar, he thought yet again, and turned towards his computer. He opened the list of questions he’d made and took them from the top down. Things went more smoothly now. He got a clear picture of the contact between the sisters over the last few months. They’d spoken on the telephone at least once a week. In addition to a steady stream of text messages. Liss Bjerke showed him some of them, and that deep, calm tone had returned to her voice. Roar knew, however, that he would have to watch his step.

The last message from her sister was sent on the afternoon of Thursday 11 December. On my way from the cabin. Always think of you when I’m out there. Keep Midsummer’s Day free next year. Call you tomorrow.

– What’s this about Midsummer’s Day? Roar asked.

Liss Bjerke appeared to think about it for a moment before replying: – She was going to get married.

Roar typed something. – Who to?

– Don’t tell me you don’t know who her partner is, said Liss Bjerke impatiently. – You’ve interviewed him at least three times. The irritation was back in her voice.

– Right, so that’s Viljam Vogt-Nielsen, nodded Roar.

– Mailin wasn’t the type to live with one person and make plans to marry someone else, Liss added, and Roar had to admit that she was right. He was already getting used to these sudden changes of mood in her. She was a bit temperamental, he thought; women who looked like that often were. He started asking her what she was doing in Amsterdam, but it quickly became apparent that she had no wish to talk about herself. At least not with him.

– Did you know Viljam Vogt-Nielsen previously? he asked instead.

She gave him a sceptical look, or maybe it was condescending, as though she was about to ridicule that question too, but she answered:

– I met him for the first time just after I came home. That’s more than two weeks ago.

Before he could say anything else, she said: – You want to know what I think of him, right? If I think he could have done this to Mailin.

– And do you think so?

– Even though he was at my parents’ when she went missing? Even though he and Mailin got on well together?

Her cheeks had grown slightly flushed. The way she defends her sister’s boyfriend, he thought. Check to make sure they never met before.

There was a knock on the door and Viken popped his head in. When he saw Liss Bjerke, he stepped inside. He was well dressed as usual: dark blue blazer and white shirt. He might have passed for some famous old crooner. He stood observing her for a few seconds.

– Viken, Detective Chief Inspector. He squeezed her hand. – My condolences, he added.

– Thank you, she said.

He carried on with a few well-chosen words, the kind of things a priest might have said, thought Roar, although Viken wasn’t subject to the same kind of censure as he had been. On the contrary, to judge by Liss Bjerke’s face, she accepted the detective chief inspector’s expressions of sympathy.

– It’s lucky you’re here, Viken went on. – I got a reply to this business of the mobile phone just a couple of minutes ago.

She looked up at him enquiringly. – Mailin’s mobile phone?

– Exactly. We’ve had an expert going over the videos. We’re very interested in trying to find out what she’s actually saying.

– It wasn’t very clear, said Liss Bjerke, suddenly keen. – And I couldn’t bring myself to play it again.

– I understand that. Viken had at once found the tone Roar had been struggling to find for almost half an hour. – And it’s not certain it would have helped you to hear it several times either. Our experts have played it over and over again, but they’re still not a hundred per cent sure.

He produced a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, unfolded it, spread it out. – It’s particularly important for us to hear what you think it is, since the video ends with Mailin calling out your name. But let me ask you one thing first. It is of crucial importance for the investigation that none of this gets out.

Liss Bjerke leaned forward, began twining a lock of hair around her index finger. – I’ll keep it to myself.

– Good. It sounds as if Mailin says four or five words. Sand, oar – maybe or – and then fare, end, she, before she calls out Liss. Did you get that?

Liss repeated: – Sand, oar, maybe or, fare, end, she, and then Liss.

– Exactly, said Viken. – Does that mean anything to you?

He sat on the edge of the table and waited, not putting any pressure on her.

After about half a minute she said: – Can I have a bit more time?

– Of course, Liss. Take all the time you need.

Roar worked away on the keyboard. He couldn’t remember having heard Viken address a witness by their first name before.

The detective chief inspector handed her a card. – I want you to ring me if you come up with anything. Whenever it might be, do you promise me that? Even if it’s the dead of night.

She looked at the card, sat there a while fingering it. – Have you found out any more about the guy who was in her office? she asked.

Viken’s bushy eyebrows curved together above his nose. – What do you mean?

– I rang you twice and told you about a guy sneaking round in Mailin’s office the first time I went there. He ripped a page out of her diary with her appointments for the day she disappeared.

Viken looked at Roar. This visitor had been mentioned in a memorandum from the crime response unit, but nothing about any appointments book. Roar wrinkled his brow to show that this was news to him too.

– I don’t think they completely understood what you were getting at, he said tactfully. – Tell me what you saw.

Liss Bjerke gave him an exasperated look, thinking perhaps it was his fault that they’d screwed up at the crime response unit. He pretended not to notice and began to transcribe her account, word for word.

– And the initials were J. H.? he said, double-checking. – And you saw this man at Central Station a few days later?

– And at a party, in a flat in Sinsen.

– What’s the name of the person who owns this flat?

Liss Bjerke’s fingers were now no longer twining one of the reddish locks of hair but a chain she had hanging around her neck.

– I can find that out.

– Who did you go to this party with? Viken wanted to know.

She gave the names of some girlfriends and a couple of professional footballers. Roar had the strong impression she was sifting through the information before she handed it on to them, and it gave him some idea of the sort of thing that had been going on in the Sinsen apartment.

– So you live in Amsterdam, Viken remarked once they had made a record of what Liss Bjerke had to tell them, or was prepared to tell them. – A lovely city.

She glanced over at him. – Does that have anything to do with the case?

Viken spread his hands wide. – Everything has to do with everything. What do you do over there?

She sat up straight in her chair, crossed one leg over the other. – Study design.

Viken said: – I’ve also heard it rumoured you’re a model.

Roar saw how her eyes widened.

– Is this part of the interview?

– Not exactly. But every witness has more to tell us than they themselves realise.

– What the fuck do you mean by that? She jumped to her feet. – I’m here so that you can find out what happened to my sister, what sort of sick bastard it was who tortured and killed her. What I do has no connection with the case at all.

For a few moments she stood there looking at a point somewhere between the two policemen. Then she turned on her heel, let herself out and was gone before they had a chance to say anything. On the floor beside the chair lay Viken’s card, squashed into a ball.

Viken was still there when Roar returned after a vain attempt to get the witness to come back and finish the interview. He was standing by the desk reading through what Roar had typed in.

– That’s one genuinely unstable young lady, Roar remarked. – The same thing happened when I asked her about Amsterdam. She clammed up completely.

Viken thought about it. – Don’t forget what she’s been through, he said forgivingly. – You’ll have to get her back in here so she can sign your witness statement. And we need her to help us find out about this guy sneaking around in the office.

Roar sat behind the desk and opened another memo. – One of her psychologist colleagues said that Mailin Bjerke might have been threatened by a patient. We need to find out if this has any connection with what her sister told us.

The detective chief inspector was on his way out, turned in the doorway. – I almost forgot what it was I really came in here to tell you.

He pulled the door closed. – The Boss in his wisdom has decided to break off his Christmas holiday and honour us with his presence, he said with a phoney formality.

Viken enjoyed calling the section’s acting head Sigge Helgarsson ‘the Boss’. It was no secret that the relationship between them was a trifle strained.

– You remember I’m sure that Plåterud suggested there might be a connection with the Ylva Richter case over in Bergen.

Roar had certainly not forgotten that morning in the autopsy room. He confined himself to a nod.

– Well now the lady has got Professor Korn to get in touch with our own boss. The result of this delightful bit of meddling is that Helgarsson wants us to check out this Bergen business before we do anything else.

– All right then, Roar responded neutrally.

– Oh there’ll be some fun here all right when the whole show is run from the Riks Hospital. The Boss obviously thinks it’s quite in order, so he’s been here and said his bit and now he’s gone again, and that means we’ve got to spread ourselves even thinner. Which means a trip to Bergen for you, Roar, you lucky bastard.

Viken flicked away something or other that had landed on his lapel.

– Cow, he added testily, without making it clear who he was referring to.

14

LISS PUT THE notebook aside and looked around the café. The waiter misunderstood and was there in a flash, undressing her with his eyes. He still smelled bad.

– More coffee?

She’d been drinking coffee all day, but nodded, mostly to get rid of him. His trousers were tight fitting and his bum was small and muscular. She didn’t like men to have such narrow hips. Suddenly she recalled the policeman, the older one, the short one with the aquiline nose and the bushy eyebrows. For a moment there in the office she’d been on the point of revealing what had happened in Amsterdam.

She opened the notebook again. Could she manage to tell herself another story, one in which Zako and Rikke had become lovers? He’s moved from Bloemstraat and into her place on Marnixkaade.

Still not possible to write that story.

What happened to the ring, Mailin? she scribbled down.

Her grandmother on Mother’s side wrote books about women’s lives. She was famous and meant a lot to a lot of people. A pioneer, Ragnhild used to call her. When she died, Mailin was the one who inherited her wedding ring. A sign of the legacy to be carried forward.

Did he take it off you before he beat you to death?

Without her noticing, the waiter was there again, touched her shoulder as he put the coffee down.

– This one’s free. New Year’s present.

She was about to protest. Didn’t want to accept anything from this man, even if it was New Year’s Eve… There were already sounds out in the streets, the odd rocket shooting up in the dark grey afternoon light. She couldn’t bear the thought of being around people who were celebrating, toasting each other and shouting. She should be out of town, somewhere far away when the old year came to a close.

If you go any closer to grief it will swallow you up. Is that what you want? Never come out into the light again?

Didn’t know where that came from. Didn’t know why she was writing stuff down in this book at all. Had never been much interested in words, but now there they were.

Mailin’s book. Writing to you, Mailin. Only thing I can do now. What would you have done?

She flipped back to the page on which she had written the words the police had asked her about:

Sand, oar/or, fare, end, she.

Read them slowly, over and over again. Sand and oar had something to do with the cabin. One summer Mailin had found a rotting oar that drifted ashore on their beach. They had invented a story to go with it. A man rowing out there. The boat capsizes. He drowns but doesn’t die. Rows and rows with one oar on Morr Water by night. One day he’ll turn up on our beach. He’s come to fetch this oar. If he doesn’t find it, he’ll take us instead. They lay there telling each other this story in the evenings, listening out for the man in the boat.

Can you hear someone rowing out there, Mailin?

Mailin gets out of bed, crosses to the open window. The night is pale grey.

I hear it. He’s rowing in the night. He’s getting nearer.

Liss hides her head under the pillow. Mailin gets into her bed, puts her arms around her.

If he comes, he can take me. I’ll never let him lay a finger on you, Liss.

Fare, end, she. In the car, she continued to think about the words. Feren, she suddenly said out loud. The lake they often skied across. Instead of she, could Mailin have been saying ski? All the ski trips they had taken across the lakes. Feren was one of the biggest, halfway to Flateby. And back through the woods after dark. This whole swathe of forest was theirs. Has Mailin given me a message about a skiing trip we once made? Then it might have something to do with a specific winter holiday. Or an Easter holiday. Up until Mailin finished at secondary school and went to university, they’d spent most of their holidays out there, just the two of them. Mailin had boyfriends, but never took any of them there. Not until she met Pål Øvreby. The first who was allowed to visit the cabin. She’d been a student for six months. Liss didn’t like Pål. Straight away he acted as though he owned the place. Bossed them around: who was to fetch the water, who fetch the wood. Before, these things had just taken care of themselves. Liss liked to keep things moving, get up first and make sure there was water in the buckets and wood in the fireplace. Now there were objections, arguments. And Pål Øvreby tried to persuade them that he owned Mailin, too.

That winter holiday was Liss’s last year at middle school. There were only the three of them there. She went out to the shed one morning. Sat on the toilet. Hadn’t bothered to hook the door closed. Heard footsteps outside. It wasn’t Mailin. She dried herself and stood up to pull on her trousers. The door opened wide. Pål didn’t say sorry; just stood there, staring at her. She couldn’t get the tight trousers up. He didn’t retreat, he stepped inside. Stood right up close to her. Put his hand between her legs. You’re so fucking gorgeous. She was freezing cold and couldn’t move. She felt his finger inside her. Liss, he murmured, bending down to kiss her. His mouth smelled of tobacco and mouldy cheese, or was the smell coming from the toilet? That was what freed her feet; she whirled round and threw herself against the door.

Why had she never told her sister? If she found out what Pål was like, Mailin would be hurt. That it might hurt her even more if she carried on seeing him was something Liss couldn’t even bear to think about. Not long afterwards Mailin finished with him anyway, so there was no longer any need to tell her.

Someone’s been here. The thought struck her as she climbed over the hilltop and slid down towards the panel fence. Stood there a few moments thinking about it. The curtain, she decided. She had drawn the living-room curtain on this side wall too, always did that before leaving the cabin. Now it was open. She stalked around the corner, to the veranda, unhooked the key from under the gutter, let herself in. No sign of a break-in. Everything looked untouched. Apart from that curtain. Could she be wrong about that? Or had Tage been here? Viljam? Her mother? That was out of the question – her mother hadn’t left the house since Christmas Eve.

Liss inspected all the rooms, didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Took another circuit of the cabin and out to the toilet. Poked her head into that smell of stale dung. Mostly the family’s dung, collected and broken down over the decades. The reek of something like chlorine when she raised the toilet seat. Dead flies in the window. Maybe some of them not quite dead. Lying there all through the winter waiting for it to be warm enough outside for them to return to life. If Mailin wasn’t dead either… if she were deep-frozen and could be thawed out. Slowly moving her lips, opening her eyes. They were destroyed. She would never be able to see with them. Who is out there who doesn’t want Mailin to see any more?

She got up, tossed the lid back over the opening, suddenly furious, the same fury that had frozen her to the floor that time ten years ago. Now she swung the door open and howled up into the trees and at the hill behind the cabin.

It was almost dark when she took the water buckets and made her way down to the rock. The ice was probably safer now than when she was there before Christmas; the open channel as always followed the line of the current from the stream and on outwards, Morr Water’s black winter eye staring up at her. She bent forward, switched on the torch and shone it on to the gap. The light broke through the clear cold water and disappeared in the depths.

Sand and oar. She cleared her way to the boathouse door. The boat lay there, belly upwards. It needed tarring. She smelled it. Water and rot. Hanging up under the roof, fishing rods and the obsolete remains of the old wooden skis people once used, long before she was born. Both oars were up there. She lifted them down, turned them over, shone the torch beam along the length of them, studied every centimetre of the wood, every cut, every crack. Nothing different from the way she remembered it. Feren and ski.

She lay on the sofa. The smell of fir and winter dust. Silence. No sound but the sound of her thoughts. Mailin’s voice: Shall I wax your skis for you, Liss? Easter weekend, a couple of months after the winter holidays when Pål came out. Mother’s comment: She always waxes her own skis. But on this morning Liss was lying on the sofa. A few minutes earlier she’d been bent double behind the toilet shed, because no one must see her vomiting, no one must know she felt nauseous the whole time. Mailin was the only one she told. Not that Mother would have condemned her; she never condemned people. But she would have wanted to know how it had happened, why Liss hadn’t taken precautions, and who was responsible. Her skis were waxed and ready. Mailin stood waiting for her. She didn’t get up to the cabin much any more. Went up into the Nordmarka forest with student friends, or studied for her exams. Maybe it would be the last holiday they had there together, Liss had thought. She felt nauseous. Afraid. She feared this thing inside her body; it would grow, emerge, turn her into something else. And Mailin couldn’t be told either who she’d been with. She couldn’t understand why Liss wouldn’t say, but in the end gave up trying to find out.

It was dark outside. Liss took out the notebook.

Mailin: We’ll take the track across Feren today. Shall I wax your skis, Liss?

What if you’d found out what had happened before that Easter, Mailin? You would have hated me.

She hunched up, felt that she would soon fall asleep. Out here she always felt dog tired in the evenings. Slept deeply and soundly, as though her restlessness spread on the wind and was sucked up by the trees, until all that remained in her body was a faint murmuring. She reached out a hand, turned down the paraffin lamp on the table; the two logs in the fireplace could just burn up. She abandoned the thought of washing and brushing her teeth and getting into bed. Sank down into sleep. Could sleep here all winter, was the last thought she was aware of, not emerge until spring. Stand down on the beach and see Mailin come rowing to shore. Her back to the land. Rowing and rowing. Turn round, Mailin, so I can see that it’s you. She turns. It isn’t Mailin. It’s Grandma, her father’s mother. Wearing a black dress, her red hair like a veil flowing down her back…

Liss starts restlessly as she lies there. Someone has entered the room. She tries to wake up. What’s happened to my eyes? I can’t see properly. The old woman doesn’t move, stands in front of the fireplace staring at her. She’s wearing a sort of uniform, with a long green coat over it. A towel tied around her forehead, drenched in blood.

What do you want? Where is Mailin?

Her own shout awoke her. She saw the outlines of a face outside the living-room window. – You are not afraid, Liss, she murmured. – You’re never afraid any more. She got to her feet. The shape outside disappeared. She stumbled out into the kitchen. Had to pee. Put her hands into the bucket and rubbed her face hard with the icy water. Took the lamp out into the darkness. It was still snowing, harder now. On the veranda outside the living-room window she saw footprints. She shone the lamp on them. Boots, bigger than hers, from the door and over to the window, from there to the corner. She went back inside, put on the head lamp, threw on the enormous all-weather jacket she still hadn’t returned to its owner. From the corner she tracked the footprints over towards the outside toilet, where they disappeared into the trees beyond.

It snowed for the rest of the night. She didn’t sleep. Locked the door. Lay with her eyes open in the dark. Placed an empty wine bottle next to the sofa. Didn’t know what she intended to do with it. Smash it, use it to stab with maybe. – I am not afraid, she repeated. – I am not afraid any more. Everything that’s happened to Mailin, I could stand it too.

In the end she must have dropped off, because suddenly the grey light of dawn was outside. She got up, went outside to pee. No footprints on the veranda now. Snowed over. Should have taken a photo of them, she thought. But who would she show it to? Wouldn’t be talking to the police any more, she had decided.

She made fires in the woodstove and the open fireplace. Boiled water, sprinkled in the coffee powder. Wrapped a blanket around herself, lit a cigarette, sat by the window and watched the day arrive. Nowhere she had to be. At the same time, a feeling that there was something she had to do before it was too late. She took out the notebook.

Footprints in the snow. Winter boots. Several sizes bigger than mine.

Dream: Mailin rowing towards land, turns, it isn’t Mailin. Grandma standing in the room. Wants to tell me something.

She sucked the last drags from the cigarette, felt the burning deep down in her chest. Needed to eat. Eat and puke. Nothing suitable for that to eat here. Needed to inhale something that would make her strong, invincible, furious, if only for a half-hour. Didn’t have that here either.

I’ll never leave here again.

You can’t stay here, Liss.

I don’t have anywhere else.

You can’t hide yourself away. The world is wherever you are.

She glanced over at the sofa where she’d spent the night. One of the cushions had fallen on to the floor. She picked it up, noticed as she did so that the zip fastener on the cover was half open. Inside was a sheet of paper. Scrunched up into a ball. She smoothed it out. A story from VG’s online edition dated 21 November 2003, but the printout was from 10 December 2008, the day before Mailin’s disappearance.

Missing girl (19) found dead outside Bergen was the headline.

15

Thursday 1 January 2009

IT WAS NOWHERE near crowded at Klimt that evening, but a couple of regulars were nursing beers at the bar, and at one table New Year was still being celebrated. Roar Horvath swapped a few pleasantries with the lads behind the bar; one of them he hadn’t seen since they played in the back four together for LSK juniors, but he’d gathered that Roar was working on the murder of the woman who was supposed to be on Taboo. Roar could only respond with his most ironic No comment, and in return got a pat on the shoulder and a Cheers anyway. Almost before he knew what was going on, the first beer had come and gone. Going out in Lillestrøm was a homecoming after all.

Dan-Levi appeared in the doorway that led down to the toilets. At first Roar thought he’d had his dark hair cut, but then realised his old friend had tied it in a ponytail that hung down his back. Not exactly the latest style for men, but then Dan-Levi would never abandon his long tresses; he called them his freak flag, after one of his favourite songs.

They sat in a corner where they could talk undisturbed. As usual Dan-Levi wanted to hear about Roar’s bachelor life. Roar admitted he had something going and hoped that would be enough to satisfy his friend’s curiosity. No such luck, as it turned out. Dan-Levi looked as though he’d hooked an enormous trout on the end of his fishing rod and started to reel it in.

– Not a policewoman, is it? Then the outlook isn’t good.

It was hardly a scientifically based conclusion, but it was smart and aimed at eliciting further hard facts.

– Both yes and no, Roar conceded. – In a sense.

He didn’t want to break with the joking way they’d always had with each other, and the openness it allowed them. This openness had been good for them both. Around the time of the divorce, Dan-Levi had always been there for him, inviting him out for an evening in town, or to go fishing up in the Østmarka forest. As well as something they both referred to as their annual hunting trip, though it was a few years now since the last time. Dan-Levi wasn’t completely hopeless with a fishing rod, but he would never make any kind of hunter. The best he’d managed that autumn when Roar got divorced was a couple of hares that turned out to be, on closer inspection, pet rabbits that some idiot of a farmer up in Nes had allowed to run about freely. It was a story Roar never tired of reminding his friend about. After a while he contented himself with just holding two slightly bent fingers up in the air to make his point. The gesture seemed to have no effect at all on Dan-Levi’s masculine pride. He’d even written a little sidebar about the episode for Romerikes Blad, in which he exaggerated his own clumsiness and claimed to have nearly hit one of the farmer’s cows into the bargain – but a big one, with horns almost the size of a moose.

– In a sense what? he went on now with a journalist’s persistence. – She surely can’t both be a policewoman and not be a policewoman?

Roar gave him a couple of clues, almost let slip the story about the Christmas party to which some of the forensic people, for reasons that had nothing to do with him, had been invited. He stressed that there was absolutely no question of a relationship. That this lady was too old for him, as well as too smart and too married.

Dan-Levi smacked his lips in satisfaction. – Mother fixation, he suggested, but by now Roar had had enough and headed off to buy another round of beers.

– Now what about Berger? he wanted to know when he returned. – Have you for once put your investigative talents to any useful purpose?

Dan-Levi swigged at his beer, the froth settling on his moustache and his little goatee. – In a sense, as you like to put it. He waited until he saw his friend’s weary smile before continuing. – I spoke to a former elder of the Pentecostal church, a friend of my dad’s. He knows the Frelsøi family well and has followed Berger’s career.

He took another drink of beer, was in no rush.

– And?

– You want to hear what he said, or what he didn’t say?

– Let’s have it.

– Okay. Berger’s father was a pastor in the Pentecostal church.

– As was your father.

Dan-Levi made a face. – We’re talking about two very different kinds of father here. One who followed the New Testament on how to bring up children, and one who followed the Old. Whom you love also punish, und so weiter. Frelsøi senior was apparently the type who would have dragged his son up the nearest mountain without a moment’s hesitation and cut his throat if he thought God demanded such a sacrifice. The elder wouldn’t go into detail, but I gathered from him that the Bergersen Frelsøi family had been the subject of considerable concern in the community, and don’t forget this is the Pentecostal movement nineteen-fifty-something we’re talking about here.

– Violence? Abuse?

Dan-Levi considered the question. – My source won’t name any names, not even of those who are dead. Most of all them. If you approach the community as an investigator, you’re going to get the door slammed in your face. But that’s what it was like in those days. Everything should be sorted out internally, and nothing got done. It ended in the worst possible way, without anybody at all getting involved. It’s incredible what some people can do after a literal reading of the Bible. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Und so weiter.

Roar put his glass down on the table with a bang. – What you just said then, about eyes, is that what it says in the Bible?

– Yes indeed. Matthew chapter 5, verses 29 and 30.

Dan-Levi came from a family in which biblical texts weren’t followed to the letter. Roar had always liked being at his house; his parents were warm hearted and generous, and Dan-Levi’s father was much less strict than his own, who had arrived from Hungary an eighteen-year-old refugee with nothing more than two bare hands and a will of steel. But Dan-Levi had been obliged to learn the Bible by heart, and Roar suspected that he was putting the next generation through the same school.

His mobile phone rang. He saw who it was and took the call on the pavement outside.

– Take it easy, I’m not going to invite myself over to your place this evening.

Roar had to laugh, surprised at how happy it made him to hear that voice with its crisp Australian accent. When he’d found himself sitting next to her at the Christmas party, he had at first assumed Jennifer Plåterud was American, but when he hinted as much, she was greatly offended and assured him that she was a good deal less American than he was.

– Pity, I’d’ve enjoyed a visit, Roar responded now. – That’s to say, I’ve got Emily and I’m staying the night at my mother’s. Probably not a brilliant idea to meet there.

Jennifer’s laughter was a touch strained, he thought. Maybe being introduced to his family in this way was a bit much, even in jest.

– I’m calling from the office, she said.

– Cripes, do you always work this late?

– Often. There’s always plenty to do.

Her capacity for work was dizzying. She was superior to him there as well, not that she made an issue of it.

– I just got a call from Liss Bjerke.

– What? You mean she called you?

– It sounds as if she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with you, or anyone else from the station. I wasn’t able to find out why. She could well be in a state of shock, I imagine.

Roar chose not to say anything about what had happened at the interview the day before.

– What did she want?

Jennifer hesitated. – She has information she’d rather give to me than any of you. She said she had more faith in someone who was a doctor.

– What kind of information?

– I believe it has something to do with a document she’s found. She wouldn’t say over the phone. We agreed that she would come out here early tomorrow morning. Naturally I did all I could to persuade her to go to you, but she refuses.

Viken was always stressing that those he worked with could call him at any time; he was always available. It had struck Roar how little he knew about him. Viken didn’t wear a ring, and never spoke about a family. In fact he never spoke about himself at all.

As he punched in the number to inform him of what Jennifer had told him, Roar felt like a bright young lad rushing home with important news.

The detective chief inspector said: – Why did she call you?

– Who, Plåterud? Roar could hear how stupid his own question sounded.

– Why did she ring you? Viken repeated.

Roar looked around. The main street in Lillestrøm was deserted. – Don’t know.

He moved quickly on to what he’d found out about Berger’s background, thinking it would appeal to Viken’s taste for the psychological.

At the other end the DCI listened in silence. Then he said: – We’d better bring him in. I’ll take care of it.

– By the way, I’ve been in touch with the Montreal Community Police Department this evening, he added.

Roar had offered to handle the job of tracing Mailin Bjerke’s father, but Viken was determined to do it himself.

– They still haven’t found him?

It sounded as if the inspector was sipping away at something or other. Probably coffee, because as Roar knew, he was a teetotaller.

– It appears that he’s away travelling, but no one knows where or for how long. They’ve been to his home on the outskirts of Montreal several times, talked with neighbours and friends.

– An artist, isn’t he? Roar grinned. – Meaning he comes and goes as he pleases.

Viken let the observation pass.

– They’ve sent out an internal be-on-the-lookout, he said. – It’s up to us if they make it public. We’ll wait, for the time being.

– Almost worse than being a journalist, Dan-Levi sighed as Roar returned to the table. – Always on the job.

– How do you know it was a work call?

Dan-Levi thought about it. – It could of course have been the lady, he suggested. – The doctor lady.

Roar glanced over his shoulder. – If this gets out, Dan, I wouldn’t think twice about committing murder. Not for one second.

– Ooops, his friend said teasingly. – And here was me thinking of going home and doing a feature on people who left Lillestrøm and now live la dolce vita in the capital. I guess it’ll have to be something on the Beckhams instead. Imagine this scenario: David decides to end his career as a right-winger for LSK. He sends wicked Vicky on ahead to check out the night life in the city of Lillestrøm.

Roar declined to be distracted. He repeated his threat, illustrating with a sweep of the finger where the throat would be cut. – Halal.

Dan-Levi raised both arms and bowed his neck.

– Do you watch Taboo? he asked abruptly.

Roar had to confess that he did. – Particularly now that it’s work related.

– Viewing figures are bound to reach a million on Tuesday, said Dan-Levi. – Did you see what it said in VG yesterday about the last programme Berger’s going to make?

Roar had hardly had time to open a newspaper the last few days.

– The headline was Death in the studio. The hype is insane. They all expect him to top everything else he’s ever done before.

Roar wrinkled his nose. – Didn’t think you Pentecostals sat around on your sofas entertaining yourself with blasphemy, pure and simple.

– That’s precisely the point, Dan-Levi exclaimed. – If Berger had been a simple atheist, he’d be ignored. But the guy stands there and insists that he believes in a God.

– You mean Baal-something-or-other?

– Beelzebub. Atheism doesn’t provoke anyone, but a celebrity who openly admits to worshipping the lord of the flies, the God of the Philistines, he’ll get all the Christian condemnation he could wish for.

– Smart bastard, murmured Roar.

16

LISS LET HERSELF into the house in Lang Street. Imagined what Mailin did when she came home. Put her boots on the rack in the hallway, wandered into the kitchen, a glance at the washing-up piled and waiting in the sink. They took it in turn to keep the kitchen tidy, Viljam had told her. If it was Mailin’s day, she’d get going straight away. She’d always be sure to get the dull stuff out of the way before it got out of control. Afterwards perhaps she’d sit down at the kitchen table. Did she listen for the sound of a door opening? Did she long to hear the sound of his voice from the hallway?

After doing the washing-up, Liss had a smoke out on the steps in the cold winter evening before snuggling up in a corner of the sofa with a blanket over her. She looked out; in the dark she could just about make out the patch of garden with the barbecue and tool shed. She’d put the notebook on the table; now she picked it up.

What I know about what happened to you:

10 December. 16.45: you leave the house. To the post office, then on to Morr Water. 20.09: text to Viljam.

11 December. Time?: leave the cabin. 15.48: text to Liss. 16.10: text to Viljam. 17.00: appointment with JH. 17.04: park the car in Welhavens Street. 17.30: text to Berger. 18.11: text to Viljam. 19.00: appointment with Berger. 19.03: call Berger, no answer. 19.05: text to Berger: you’ve been held up (according to Berger you never turned up). 20.30: due to be at Channel Six, you didn’t show up.

12 December. 05.35: videos made of you. Imprisoned, naked. The eyes.

24 December. Package with your mobile phone arrives, posted the day before in Tofte.

She read through it all again. Without thinking, she wrote:

Ask him about death by water.

She looked at the Post-it note she had taken from Mailin’s noticeboard in the office.

Who were you going to ask, Mailin?

The Phoenician. Dead for fourteen days. Something about the crying of seagulls. And a whirlpool. I’ve killed too.

She sat there looking at that last sentence. Read it to herself, felt her lips move but didn’t hear the words.

Something’s going to happen, Liss. You can’t control it.

She got up, crossed to the window, opened it and felt the cold grey air against her face. Everywhere the sounds of the city. You’re in the middle of the world, but no one knows who you are, or what you’ve done. She pulled on her jacket, shut the front door behind her, pressed on down Lang Street. Had to buy some smokes. And get something down her. She’d decided on ice cream, but the first shop she came to was closed. It was a relief more than a frustration, because she needed to walk. Far. Then eat. A lot. Then puke. Then go to bed. Sleep, long.

She turned down into Sofienberg Park, didn’t notice the figure that stopped on the corner of Gøteborg Street and stared after her for a few seconds before following between the trees. For the first time since Mailin’s body had been found, an image of Zako appeared in her mind. Lying on the sofa. Was he sleeping? Could she hang on to that idea? That Zako had woken again in that flat in Bloemstraat, gone out to the bathroom, taken a shower and then headed into town. That he was with Rikke right now, that he didn’t need Liss any more and could leave her in peace. When she heard footsteps in the snow behind her, she sensed they had something to do with her. The sensation became a thought: something will grab hold of me, tear me away from here, away from everything that stops me forgetting what I’ve done… There was a kind of hope in it, and the grip around her arm became a confirmation of the promise. She didn’t resist, allowed herself to be dragged away from the path, into the shadow of a bare tree. He wasn’t much taller than her, but his large fists pressed her up against the tree trunk, and she knew that if she went on standing there like that without resisting, it would happen again, the light pulling away and burning into everything around her. And if she didn’t resist, she would disappear, and none of what happened in this park on this evening would be anything to do with her any more.

– Stop following me, he hissed. The mouth smelt of overripe bananas. In the dark, she saw the outlines of Zako’s face, the high cheekbones and the pointed chin.

– I’ll stop now, she murmured, and suddenly it dawned on her who it was. He’d grabbed her by the throat in that stairwell in Sinsen. He knew something about what had happened to Mailin. I am not afraid, she forced herself to think. No matter what he does to me, I’m not afraid any more.

– You were sneaking about in Mailin’s office, she managed to say.

He bent even closer. – I didn’t take anything.

She struggled to control her voice. – What were you doing there?

– I told you, he barked. – Had an appointment. Looked through a couple of drawers. Found nothing.

– You tore a page out of her appointments book.

The grip on her arm relaxed. – Mailin was OK, he said. – There’s not many try to help. Enough that pretend to. I don’t want to get mixed up in anything. What I don’t like is you following me about.

– It’s coincidence, she assured him. – Every time I’ve met you. But I have to find out what happened that day.

He released her. – What day are you talking about?

– That Thursday, the eleventh of December. Mailin went to her office to keep that appointment with you. She parked her car right outside. Then she disappeared. No one saw any sign of her.

He pulled away a step. – That can’t be right.

– What… can’t be right?

He glanced around. – She gave classes at the School of Sports Sciences. I got a lift with her into town a couple of times. I remember her car well.

He turned towards her again. – Other people besides me must have seen it that day.

He stared down into her face. It was still possible for anything to happen in that park. Liss saw Mailin’s chalk-white face in front of her, the half-closed eyes filled with dried blood.

– Doesn’t anyone understand anything? he muttered.

– Understand what? she was about to say. But abruptly he turned and walked away. She recovered, headed over towards the footpath to follow him.

– If you saw something… she called out. – You must say what it was.

He speeded up, began to run and disappeared into the darkness.

She turned off the light in the room, settled down into the sofa again. Could still taste the vanilla in her mouth. The traces of acid in her gullet and down her throat. Cold in her stomach, cold inside, shrivelled.

Sound of a door. Then Viljam’s voice: – Are you home, Liss?

Home? She slept a few nights there, for want of anywhere else she could stand to be. It was his suggestion. He’d given her Mailin’s spare key. Had it made Mailin happy when he came home and she heard that voice? Maybe there was something she wanted to tell him that would make him put his arms around her.

– Sitting here in the dark?

She sat up, picked up her lighter and lit the candle on the table.

– Mailin liked sitting like that too, he said as he sank down into a chair. – Candlelight in the room.

– I like it here.

– It’s a nice house, he nodded. – Peaceful. Mailin and I… He stood up suddenly. – I meant what I said yesterday. If you want to stay here a few more days. You know she would have liked it.

A funny thing to say, but it was true, she realised. A lot of what he said was true. He grieved in the same way she did. That was why she could stand being there.

He disappeared up the steps, out to the kitchen. – Thanks for doing the washing-up.

– Of course, she said. – My turn, wasn’t it?

She imagined him smiling at what she said; it almost made her smile too. For a moment it felt good to be sitting there. Viljam kept his distance. Not completely absent, but let her alone. Had enough stuff of his own to deal with. He and Mailin had been lovers for more than two years. He missed her, but not in the way she missed her. Mailin would become a memory for him, light with a great darkness around it. Then he’d get over it and find someone else. Liss would never get over it.

She went out to him in the kitchen. He was standing by the window, looking out on to the lit street.

– An old friend of yours was here earlier today, he said.

She looked quizzically at him.

– At least he said he was a friend. Looked pretty spaced out.

She had a thought. – Dark curly hair, scar on his forehead? Wearing a reefer jacket?

– Correct. First he asked for you, where you were and when you were coming back, then suddenly he wanted to know if Mailin lived here.

– He’s no friend of mine.

She told him about Mailin’s patient, how she’d come across him several times, how he’d followed her into the park.

– And only now are the police beginning to take an interest in this guy?

She didn’t answer, was thinking of something else. – Mailin had a Post-it note hanging in her office. It had death by water written on it. Do you know where that comes from?

– Death by water? He seemed to be thinking about the question. Then he shook his head. – Sounds like a typical Mailin thing, whatever it is. It’s the kind of stuff she was interested in.

17

Friday 2 January

LISS HAD ARRANGED a meeting with Jennifer Plåterud at the Pathology Institute at ten, but it was closer to 11.30 by the time she announced her arrival at the front desk. She’d taken three sleeping pills the evening before and woken to a hangover forty minutes earlier.

– Sorry, I overslept, she apologised when Jennifer Plåterud came to greet her.

She was smaller than Liss remembered from that morning she’d gone with Tage to do the identification. Couldn’t be much above one metre fifty, because even with the high-heeled sandals she was wearing, she was still half a head shorter than Liss. She was heavily made up but obviously knew what she was doing. The blue eyes were made more prominent and the mouth seemed bigger than it was. Beneath her open doctor’s coat she was wearing a cornflower-blue suit, and a string of what looked like real pearls around her neck.

– That’s okay, she said. – I haven’t been sitting in my office twiddling my thumbs.

Liss had forgotten that she spoke with an accent. It sounded American, as did her first name. Preferable to being Norwegian, anyway.

Her office was fairly large, with a window facing on to the square outside. On the desk was a photo of a man her own age. He stood there in oilskins holding an enormous fish up to the camera. Another photo showed two teenage boys on some steps, one sitting, the other standing.

– Yes, this is where I live, said Jennifer Plåterud. – You know what, I found an article about you on the net. It was originally in Dagbladet’s magazine. I didn’t know you were about to start a career as a model.

She switched on the coffee machine in the corner. – Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been checking up on you, a colleague mentioned it to me.

The reassurance was superfluous. There was something about this doctor’s manner that didn’t arouse Liss’s suspicions.

– That article was just hype, she said dismissively. – I’ve done a few jobs, nothing big. Doubt it’ll ever amount to anything more. Amsterdam isn’t exactly the centre of the world when it comes to stuff like that.

– But there’s no need to stay there, Jennifer exclaimed. – A young woman like you could be a big hit in Paris or Milan or New York. What the good photographers are looking for isn’t just yet more glamour, but the unusual. I mean… She blushed beneath the make-up.

– Want to be my agent? Liss asked, and made the doctor laugh. Her laughter was surprisingly deep and ringing.

It was clear from the way she spoke that she was really interested in the fashion business, and from the collections and photographers she mentioned it was obvious she knew what she was talking about.

She interrupted herself: – But you didn’t come here to swap tips about clothes and make-up, Liss. I’ll call you Liss, and you can call me Jennifer.

The friendliness in the suggestion seemed genuinely spontaneous, and Liss felt there was no need for her to be on the alert. She was offered biscuits from a tin; she hadn’t eaten since the day before and broke off a piece. It had a sweet coconut taste and a rather stodgy consistency.

– Home-made, Jennifer said as she ate one herself. – Can’t buy these in Norway so I have to make them myself. Or actually, it’s my husband that does.

– You’re American?

– Absolutely not, she protested. – I’m from Canberra.

Liss thought about it; maybe it was somewhere in Canada. – So then you’re from…

– That’s right, Jennifer interrupted helpfully. – The capital city of Australia.

Liss took the proffered cup of coffee. – So how did you end up here? She noticed with a slight reluctance how she had been led into this rather too informal conversational tone.

– You know what, Liss, that’s a question I ask myself too. Every single day when I get up and look out across the fields where we live. Jennifer, what the bloody hell are you doing here?

She dunked a wedge of biscuit into her coffee.

– Of course, in a few years’ time the children’ll be big enough to manage on their own. She glanced over at the photo of the two boys. – I’ve got plans to grow old under warmer skies than these.

– And your husband, is that what he wants too?

– Can’t imagine that for a moment, Jennifer replied, surprisingly definite. – He’s inherited a farm out in Sorum. That’s where we live. Not that he’s going to run it as a working farm, but he’s put roots down there. Can’t budge him an inch. But now tell me what it is you’ve found out.

Liss rummaged through her handbag. – I’m sure it’s not really anything important…

She described the trip out to the cabin, unfolded the sheet of paper she had found inside the cushion cover, put it on the table. Jennifer picked it up. Her face changed, her pupils expanded, Liss noticed, and again she flushed from the neck upwards. When she’d finished reading, she stood up and crossed to her desk, opened a drawer, closed it again without taking anything from it.

– So it is important, Liss commented.

Jennifer blinked a few times, regained her composure.

– Not necessarily, she said. – But this was printed out on Wednesday the tenth of December. In other words, Mailin must have taken it out to the cabin with her. That in itself is significant.

She sat down again. – What was that about prints in the snow on New Year’s Eve? Could they have been there before you arrived?

Liss dismissed the possibility. She’d seen no sign of tracks when she arrived. Moreover, it had snowed that evening.

– There’s something else, too, she added.

Jennifer leaned forward. Her gaze didn’t move for an instant as Liss described her encounter with the patient in Mailin’s office, and what he’d said in the park the previous evening.

– I urge you in the strongest possible terms to talk to the police about this, Liss.

– You can pass it on to them.

– I am not a detective.

Liss pinched her lower lip. – I won’t be going back there again. Won’t be talking to either that idiot with the foreign name or that smarmy boss of his. I’ve never trusted the police. Never had any reason to.

Jennifer didn’t protest. Didn’t try to convince her she was wrong. Didn’t try to get her to say things she didn’t want to say.

– I don’t think that guy sneaking about in her office could have done that to Mailin… killed her. But he knows something. I think he saw her just before she went missing. I’m going to find out who he is.

Jennifer sat up straight in her chair. – That is not your job, she said firmly.

– The police have had weeks now. What have they found out?

– That’s exactly why you’ve got to help them, Liss. What’s more, you might be putting yourself in danger if you get involved like that.

Liss got to her feet. – I’m not afraid, she said. – I’m never afraid any more.

18

THE SKY WAS like blue glass as Roar Horvath got off the plane at Flesland. The grass between the runways was glazed with rime, and the mountaintops on the horizon carried a sprinkling of white. He’d been in Bergen once before, a couple of spring days a few years earlier. On that occasion too there was the same bright, cloudless sky and sharp light. It was almost enough to start him doubting the city’s reputation for rain.

In the arrivals hall he looked around for the sergeant who was supposed to be meeting him. Her name was Nina Jebsen and he had met her briefly the year before. She’d left the Violent Crimes section in Oslo just a couple of weeks after he started there himself. He seemed to remember her as dark and a bit chubby, and didn’t spot her at first. The woman who came towards him, hand outstretched, was slim and blondeish, with highlights in her shoulder-length hair.

– Nice to see you again, she said, probably noticing his uncertainty. – No luggage?

Finally it dawned on Roar that the woman standing in front of him was Nina Jebsen.

– Well I don’t need two suits when I’m not even going to be spending the night here.

– That depends on how vain you are. She glanced at his jeans jacket.

– This is a real hush-hush business, she continued once they were inside the car. Her Bergen accent seemed broader than Roar remembered. – My boss won’t let me mention your visit to anyone else in the department. Is the National Security Service involved in this too?

He grinned at her little joke, liked the tone she was setting. – Pity for us you didn’t want to stay in Oslo, he said, and heard how it sounded a bit more personal than he had intended.

She shrugged her shoulders. – Once a Bergener, always a Bergener.

He knew there was more to it than that. She had worked closely with Viken on the so-called bear murders case, and chosen to move on afterwards. According to the rumours Roar had heard, it was because she couldn’t go on working with the detective chief inspector, who, for his part, had apparently been very keen to hang on to her. Roar dismissed these thoughts; he hadn’t come to Bergen to poke around in old departmental rubbish.

– Were you working here when the Ylva Richter case broke? he asked.

She shook her head. – I’d just arrived in Oslo. And they were good at stopping any leaks. Even now, a lot of what was found is still not widely known about.

– Good work, Roar responded. – Especially bearing in mind the intense media interest.

– Maybe it’ll have its rewards now. If it turns out there are connections to the case you’re working on.

He said nothing. Viken seemed unconvinced that there was a connection. He was still furious with Jennifer for the way she’d gone behind his back. Roar had to concede that he was uneasy at the thought of his special connection with the pathology department being discovered, but it was worth it; he felt alive. He’d met a few women after his divorce. In the early days, a lot of pent-up excitement got released in town. A brief reminder of the life he had lived ten or fifteen years earlier. But his hunting instincts had become dulled. He’d read somewhere that men produced fewer hormones after they became fathers. Nature’s way of ensuring they didn’t disappear until the offspring had been provided with food and shelter. He smelled the perfume of the sergeant sitting beside him in the car, glanced over at her, quickly taking in the breasts, and the thighs beneath the smooth jeggings. If his instincts had become dulled, they were in the process of waking up again. That’s a healthy sign, Roar, he told himself. Keep those interests healthy.

Nina Jebsen drove steadily, never exceeding two kilometres above the speed limit.

He leaned back in the seat. – From what I know about the Ylva Richter case so far, it’s worth the price of the air fare at least. And it’s so bloody lovely here.

With a glance up at the peaks surrounding the town he added: – And not a single drop of rain.

– Pretty soon the weather’s going to be just as bad wherever we live, she answered. – In town here the architects have started designing buildings for a sea level two metres above what it is today.

To avoid people asking questions, Nina Jebsen didn’t introduce him to anyone. Roar was led up to the third floor of the Bergen police headquarters and into a tiny office that was remarkably similar to his own.

Nina Jebsen closed the door behind them. – I’m working on three or four cases. No one knows that this isn’t an interview in connection with one of those.

– Am I a witness or a suspect?

– Hard to say. She handed him a folder. – A summary of the Ylva Richter case. I suggest you read that first.

Three quarters of an hour later, he’d got the main outline. Ylva Richter, then nineteen years old, grew up in Fana, south of the city. Father a business lawyer, mother a textile artist. Two younger siblings. No reports of any problems in the family. Clean sheet for both parents, nothing except a number of convictions for speeding for the father. Ylva had finished at secondary school that year, marks were good; she’d started at business college but was still living at home. Active member of the swimming club, some success in the national championships at junior level. Apparently a popular girl, always surrounded by friends. Some boyfriends at secondary school but for the time being unattached. The circles she moved in could be described as constructive and healthy though inevitably with some use of recreational drugs. No one in her crowd with a criminal record. One boy treated for a psychological problem but not regarded as unstable.

On the evening of Friday 15 November 2003, Ylva Richter took the bus from the bus station in the centre of Bergen after spending an evening in town with some girlfriends. She had her own car but wasn’t using it that evening as she knew she would be drinking alcohol. Last seen by the bus driver who dropped her off at the stop nearest her home. The time was then 00.30. Other passengers confirmed this. She did not arrive home and the police were contacted at two o’clock, after the father had gone down to the bus stop to look for his daughter. A patrol car was sent but the full-scale alarm not sounded till the following morning.

Five days later they found her in a wood about twenty kilometres north-east of where she lived, handcuffed, gagged and tied to a tree. She was naked. Her clothes were found later under a pile of heather some distance away. Marks from a heavy blunt object on the temple on one side of the head, a stone possibly, but the blows were not fatal. Probably done before she was dragged into a car. There followed an extensive account of the damage done to her eyes, which had been repeatedly penetrated with a pointed object, possibly a screw. She did not appear to have been sexually assaulted. The conclusion was that she had frozen to death.

The investigation had been extremely thorough. Over five hundred interviews with witnesses. Nina Jebsen had gathered together the most important ones. Parents, siblings, friends, bus driver, passengers. According to one girlfriend, Ylva described an odd experience she had on the way to the bar where they were to meet. Somebody had approached her in Torgalmenningen Square and offered her a tin opener or corkscrew. It was one of the many unexplained details in the case, and Roar was sufficiently struck by it to flip back to the description of the damage done to the eyes. All registered sex and violent offenders who were thought potentially interesting were interviewed, and a couple were given the formal status of suspects; in the case of one of them, an arrest was considered but then dropped. Naturally the case was not shelved, but the chances of solving it were considered minimal to non-existent.

While Roar read, Nina Jebsen had logged on to her computer and punched away rapidly at the keyboard. Once he was finished and laid the folder back on her desk, she wound things up, closed the document and turned towards him. Before she could ask him what he thought, he said:

– Let’s talk to the parents first, then discuss things afterwards.

The Richter family house lay in an affluent suburb just south of the city. The man who opened the door and introduced himself as Richard Richter was of medium height with thin grey hair that was smoothed back with gel or hair cream. He smelled slightly of alcohol, Roar noted, as he and Nina Jebsen were admitted to the living room.

Anne Sofie Richter entered carrying a tray with a coffee pot and cups. She was slender and suntanned, with her hair dyed dark. She put the cups out for them, seemed alert, her movements quick.

Roar was well prepared. As they sat down, he said: – Apologies if any old wounds are ripped open here. We would much prefer not to have to put you through this again.

Richard Richter remained standing at the foot of the table. – Horvath, wasn’t it? Let me tell you, Horvath, that the wounds have never healed, if that is what you are talking about. Just yesterday I found myself recalling the last conversation I had with her. I drove her into town that night. She turned and looked at me with that smile that was like no other smile; she said see you, thanks a lot, and that was the last I ever saw of my daughter.

He fell silent for a few moments.

– The rest is what happens in our imagination, he continued, struggling to control his voice. – We’ve got off the bus with her, walked from the crossroads where you turned off and up the hill. We’ve imagined the car there waiting, because we’re certain about that, someone must have been waiting for her, and we have driven with her in the car out to the place in which she was found.

Roar glanced over at the wife. She sat there smiling like a doll, just as she had done ever since they arrived. Occasionally she nodded as her husband spoke for them both.

– I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this is something we go through every day. So your coming here and asking questions is not going to open anything at all, because nothing ever closed.

Again Richard Richter fell silent. Roar said:

– You will understand, of course, that I haven’t made the trip from Oslo without good reason. But we need to avoid raising any false hopes of getting answers to the many questions you still have. There may be a connection to another case we’re working on, and we want to know as much as possible about the very thorough groundwork our colleagues in Bergen have already done in investigating what happened to Ylva.

He hadn’t intended to use her name, but now it was done, and neither parent seemed to react. There was no reaction either to his words of praise for the work done by the Bergen police.

– No stone must be left unturned. All of them, and not just once, but many times.

A cough from Richard Richter seemed to suggest that he had had enough of the speech-making.

– It’s about the woman who was found, isn’t it? In that factory.

Roar breathed out slowly. – I wish I could discuss things with you freely and openly, but in the interests of the investigation…

– Didn’t she freeze too? Anne Sofie Richter wanted to know. Her voice was light and wondering, as though she’d stopped during a walk in the forest, curious to know what kind of a bird it was sitting in the tree and singing such an unusual song.

Nina Jebsen, who had been sitting listening in silence on the sofa, now said: – We’re grateful that people like you exist who are willing to take the trouble to help us. As I said on the telephone, it’s very important that you don’t talk to anyone about this. Not even friends and neighbours. So far no journalist, neither newspaper nor TV nor magazine, knows that we are looking at this case again.

Richard Richter interrupted: – If that pack turns up at the door again, there’s no telling what I might do.

He was still standing at the foot of the table, coffee cup in one hand, the other in his pocket. Roar could see how the fist opened and closed through the cloth of his suit trousers.

– You have been asked this before, Roar said, – but I would like you to think about it again. Did anything ever happen in Ylva’s crowd that really took you by surprise?

He could hear that the question was much too wide ranging and tried again: – Could we ask you to make a list of the things she was involved in, let’s say over the last two years before that fateful night?

Richard Richter let out a groan, but his wife said, still with that same doll-like smile hovering about her mouth: – That’s perfectly possible. I’ve kept all her school diaries from secondary school. She always made a note of appointments and the things she did. The police already know a lot of this, but as far back as two years?

– Swimming outings, camping trips, school holiday trips, Roar nodded. – Also with the family. In other words, a pretty extensive job.

As they stood out in the hallway saying thanks for the coffee, Anne Sofie Richter turned and disappeared through a doorway. A few moments later, she was back again.

– I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of Ylva, she said, addressing Roar. – Including the kind taken after they found her.

He didn’t reply.

– This is from the spring of that year, when she graduated from secondary school. I want you to see it, because this is what she was like, our daughter.

She handed him a framed photograph. He recognised her from other photos. The brown hair falling in waves from beneath the red student cap, regular features, brown eyes, full lips. Pretty girl, he was about to say, but managed not to. As he handed it back, he saw a vague resemblance to the mother, as though a last vestige of the young girl was still visible, stiffened, in the doll-like face.

– Thank you very much, he said as he shook her hand.

Out in the car, he had an idea. – Do you have time to drive to where the body was found?

Nina looked over at him. – Do you have time?

There were still four hours before his plane took off. He didn’t know why he’d asked her.

– I’m guessing you’re not expecting to find any tracks. After five years, I mean.

He gave a brief laugh. – You never know what’s going to happen when the supersleuths from Oslo turn up.

She smiled too. – Pity for you I know that crowd so well that I’m not about to prostrate myself in admiration.

He liked the teasing tone. If his trip hadn’t been a day return, he would have invited her out for a beer. He glanced at her hands on the steering wheel. Several rings, all with stones.

– Did you have problems with Viken? he risked asking her. – Was that why you left?

He could feel he was inviting the kind of intimacy there was no real grounds for after just the few hours in which they’d known each other, but she said: – It was something else. I know a lot of people find him difficult. It was never a problem for me. I would almost say I liked him.

Roar believed her. Among those who didn’t avoid him like the plague, Viken was much admired. He realised that her reason for moving on had something to do with the bear murders, but chose not to press the matter.

She was following the GPS signal and turned off the main road as directed.

– Of course I don’t know the exact spot. She drove on between the fields until they came to the forest at the end. – According to the report, it should be just about here somewhere.

As they parked, the sun slid down behind the mountains in the south-west. The sky took on a deep blue sheen, darker but still as clear as it had been earlier in the day. They found a track with footprints in the soft woodland earth. Roar went first. Abruptly he came to a halt. Behind some clumps of heather, next to a tree growing beside a rocky overhang, he saw a few objects. He hurried through the bracken. There was a lamp there with a thick white candle inside. It wasn’t burning, but might have done so recently, because beside it was a bouquet of flowers, and, in a vase, five roses that were still fresh.

– Looks like we found it, Nina Jebsen remarked as she joined him. They remained there for a few moments, looking at the scene. Roar suddenly experienced a flash of memory of what it felt like to stand by the grave of someone missed. In that instant he was convinced there was a connection between the two murder cases. As though the place itself was telling him as much: the trees, the path winding on, but above all these flowers and this lamp. He knew there wasn’t a shred of common sense in this kind of intuitive stuff, that it was distracting rather than useful. Alert now, Roar, he told himself. Full alert, level five steady. And by the time a couple of hours later he called Viken from the airport, he had assembled a handful of rational arguments that he felt ought to be enough to convince the detective chief inspector of the need to continue liaising with the Bergen force. The damage to the eyes and the fact that the girl had been hit on the head with a stone were just two of them.

But before he could voice even a single argument, Viken barked out: – I’m just about to send an email with some material to the police in Bergen. Have you got time to read it before you leave?

Roar told him where he was, and that the plane to Oslo was about to board.

Viken swore. – Then we might have to make another trip. We’ve got a new link to Ylva Richter.

He explained what Liss Bjerke had found inside the sofa cover at the family’s cabin.

– When you get back, I’ll tell you who she chose to give the information to, he rasped.

Roar had no intention of letting him know that he had already guessed who it was.

19

Saturday 3 January

LISS PULLED OUT the Marlboro packet. Almost empty. She needed something else, too. Tampons. Something to drink.

She wandered into an open Bunnpris. Glanced at her phone. Message from Rikke. And one from the footballer, the one who was called, of all things, Jomar. She still had his jacket.

Rikke wrote: Z’s father asked about you at the funeral – gave him your address in Norway – forgot to tell you last time – hope that’s okay.

It’s not okay, she fumed, maybe even said it out loud. It’s not okay for Zako’s father to have my address. What does he want it for? She chased the thought away. Imagined squeezing it out of herself; watched it fly away on a raven’s wings into the cold Oslo night. The way she got rid of thoughts when she was a teenager. Didn’t work quite as well now.

Jomar’s message: Call me. Must talk to you.

Standing there at the freezer counter in Bunnpris, it felt good to know that he still wanted to meet her. Suddenly she called his number. He didn’t sound surprised to hear her voice; seemed almost to take it for granted. It irritated her so much she nearly ended the call, but then controlled herself. Didn’t want to seem childish or unpredictable. All the things she really was.

– What have you got to tell me that’s so important? Did you win a football match? She was satisfied with her tone of voice. Just the right amount of sarcasm in it.

– Football? Don’t try to talk shop with me. You’ll find out what it is when we meet.

– Are we going to meet?

– Yes.

– Who said so?

– You did.

– Let’s stick to the truth.

Afterwards she scolded herself for being so agreeable. She paid for the three things she had come in for and then went back out into the street.

Liss sat at the coffee table, directly opposite him.

– Sorry, she said, forgetting to maintain the sarcastic tone. She didn’t really know what she was sorry about either. Maybe that she was twenty minutes late. Or that she’d run off with his jacket and not replied to any of his messages.

Jomar Vindheim gave her a teasing smile. – Quite okay. Doesn’t matter what you’re apologising for, Liss, it’s quite okay by me whatever.

– Your jacket, she said, putting the plastic bag down beside his chair. – I didn’t mean to nick it.

– I’ve reported you for theft, he said in a serious voice. – But I only had a very vague description, so it didn’t help much. Now I’ve got the chance to get a clearer look at you.

She wasn’t on his wavelength. He seemed to notice.

– Seriously, Liss, I’m the one who should be apologising. All this business with your sister…

– All this business? She’d found her way back to sarcasm again, but let it go. He was probably just trying to be considerate.

– I understand why you haven’t answered any of my messages.

– Do you, she said.

– You’ve got other things to think about besides an old jacket, Liss.

It sounded as if he enjoyed repeatedly saying her name. Did he imagine that using it like that would bring them closer together?

– I actually did wear it, she told him. – Almost every day.

He grinned. – You could have stuck a pole inside that jacket and used it as a tent.

She looked at him. The slanting eyes were a surprisingly light blue colour. He wasn’t handsome; there was something crude and disproportionate about his features, as though he was still passing through puberty and things hadn’t found their rightful shape. A row of pimples arced across his forehead. Clearly all this was something not only teenage girls found attractive, but for example Therese too. Not to mention Catrine, but then she was always on the lookout for sex.

– Maybe you’d like to keep it?

She turned up her nose. – If I had a place to live, I could have hung it up on the wall, with your autograph on it.

This time he laughed and didn’t bother with a comeback. He had an irritatingly white and regular set of teeth, and seemed sure of himself. He was a top-flight footballer and bound to be earning in excess of a million a year for playing around with a ball. And he certainly had other women besides Therese hanging around him. But from the moment he walked across to their table at the Café Mono, Liss was the one he had been concentrating on. And after she passed out at his place that night and then ran off with his jacket, he’d sent her four or five messages.

Just then she remembered something else from the evening they met.

– You know him, she exclaimed.

He looked at her in surprise.

– You know that guy who grabbed me by the throat. I saw you talking to him just before. When he was standing in the doorway dealing dope.

He took a swig of Coke.

– Why didn’t you say so before? she persisted.

The slanting eyes narrowed even more. – Did you ask me?

She hadn’t. He could have no way of knowing why she was looking for the guy.

– I don’t give a shit if he’s your dealer, or whatever else you do. I just want to know who he is.

– Dealer? You think I’m into stuff like that? I know him from the sports academy.

– Oh yeah, right.

– It’s true, Jomar assured her. – He was a student there a few years ago. Started at the same time as me.

– What’s his name?

– Jim Harris. He had a real talent as a middle-distance runner. Great at the four hundred, even better at the eight hundred. Could have been a top athlete if only his head wasn’t so screwed.

– Screwed what way?

– He can never finish anything. Makes a mess of everything. Ends up on the slide. To begin with he had people round him to help get him back on his feet, but they’ve all given up now.

– He was a patient of Mailin’s.

– Was he?

She described the encounter in Mailin’s office.

Jomar said: – If Jimbo found the office door open, then he probably went in there to see if there was any loose cash lying about in the drawers. He owes money to every dealer in town. That’s why he’s started dealing himself. I tried to help him for a while. Lent him money. Let him sleep it off at my place.

– I’m convinced he was after something else, said Liss.

– What makes you think that?

She told him what had happened the evening he came across her in the park.

– Ah, shit. Jomar’s face took on a strange expression.

– Did you know about that?

He shook his head. – Of course not. But Jimbo rang me a few days ago. He said he’d seen you at that party in Sinsen and wanted to know if I knew you. I was stupid enough to tell him you were the sister of that… I don’t think he had any intention of harming you. He’s not like that.

– Didn’t you realise it was him who grabbed me by the throat down in the stairwell?

Again Jomar swore. – I asked you to tell me what had happened.

She ignored him. – When he was holding me there in the park, something suddenly occurred to him. He ran off. Jim Harris, was that his name? Those were the initials in Mailin’s appointments book. He must have seen Mailin that afternoon. Perhaps someone was with her. You understand what this means? This guy saw what happened… Where can I get hold of him?

– You don’t want to be wandering about in the kinds of places where he hangs out, Jomar warned her.

She sat there looking down at the table. – I want you to help, she said suddenly.

In the days following the discovery of Mailin’s body, she could face almost nothing. Thought as little as possible. Now she was seized by a need to do something, anything. In a rush she began telling him everything she had found out. Showed him the times from Mailin’s call list. Told him about the videos.

– Mailin was filmed the morning after she went missing. Liss flipped through her notebook. – Those video clips were dated Friday the twelfth at 05.35.

It helped her to be speaking about all these details, as though for a brief moment they were no longer about Mailin but someone else altogether.

He listened without interrupting. She didn’t know him. But he was outside it all, had never met Mailin, and for that reason it was possible to share it with him. Even what had happened at the cabin, the footprints in the snow, the printout she’d found in the sofa cushion.

Afterwards she looked across at him. Reluctantly she began to understand why Therese had been so angry with her. She liked his looks, but even more she liked how relaxed and almost modest he seemed. She hadn’t intended to stay, just to hand the jacket back and offer some kind of apology. Now she’d been sitting there for almost an hour.

She stood up. – I must have a ciggy.

– I’ll come out with you, he said.

She blew smoke out in the direction of the light above the doorway and studied the way the lead-blue formations gathered and then at once dissolved.

– When can I see you again? Jomar wanted to know.

She felt his look like prickling on her skin. Didn’t mind at all that he never seemed to tire of looking at her. Just couldn’t face all the explanations she would have to give. Why she couldn’t meet him. Why she wasn’t interested. Why she was who she was. Why she could never again face the thought of being with someone. Felt a sudden longing to be at the cabin. Sitting by the window looking down towards Morr Water in the dusk. The darkness gathering around her, thicker and thicker. The silence.

20

Sunday 4 January

IT WAS CLOSE to one a.m. when she heard Viljam. He was moving about in the kitchen, then flushing the toilet and running the tap in the bathroom. This was how Mailin had lain at night. Hearing her boyfriend come home. Waiting for the footsteps on the staircase, for him to open the door, crawl in under the duvet, body close up to her. Didn’t need to have her, or speak. Just lie there and sleep like that. Feel his arms around her in her sleep…

They’re sitting in the boat. Mailin’s rowing. She’s wearing a large grey coat. Her hair is grey too and hangs down her back in long strings. The wind lifts them. Not the wind, because the wisps of hair move by themselves. Long white worms that cover her whole head and eat it. They’ve suctioned themselves to her head, and Liss can’t seem to raise her hand to pull them away. But Mailin doesn’t seem bothered in the least; she rows for land, in towards the tiny beach. They’re going to pick something up there. But they don’t get any closer to the man standing and waiting, because one oar is missing, and the boat goes round in circles. Don’t look behind you, Mailin, I mustn’t see your face. But Mailin doesn’t hear and turns towards her.

Liss woke to a scream. She felt it inside herself, didn’t know if it had come from her. Feren, she. She twisted round, picked up her phone. It was twenty to two. She opened her address list, found the name, pressed call.

– Dahlstrøm.

She could hear from his voice that he had been pulled up out of deep sleep. Imagined the bedroom he was lying in. Wife beside him in bed, awake too, half irritated, half anxious. Liss knew that Tormod Dahlstrøm had got married for a second time a few years earlier. His second wife was a writer and almost twenty years younger than him.

– Sorry for waking you, stupid of me.

– Is that you, Liss? He didn’t sound surprised. Probably used to being called at night. Patients who were in trouble. Someone who needed to hear his voice just to make it through until the next morning.

– Sorry, she repeated.

– For what?

– It’s the middle of the night.

He breathed in and out a few times. – Did you wake me up to say sorry for waking me up?

Even now he was able to joke with her.

– I had a dream, she said. – About Mailin.

He made a sound that might have been a half-quelled yawn.

– When I was at your place, on Christmas Eve… we talked about her research, into abuse. That psychologist she was so interested in. He was Hungarian, wasn’t he?

– That’s right. Ferenczi. He was a psychiatrist.

– Is that the way you say his name? she went on. – Feren-she?

– Roughly, yes.

– What are his other names?

– First name, you mean? Sándor. His name is Sándor Ferenczi.

Liss had got out of bed and was now standing naked on the cold floor. She walked over to the window, pulled open the curtain and looked out into the brown night sky above Rodeløkka. Sand-oar Feren-she, she murmured to herself, without even noticing that she had ended the call.

The time was approaching 2.30 as she punched in the code on the gate in Welhavens Street. She remembered that Jennifer Plåterud had said she could call her any time at all, even at night. Liss thought about it, but decided not to. She let herself in, didn’t turn on the light in the stairwell. The smell of damp grew stronger with each floor she climbed, she noticed. In the room used as a waiting room the curtains were closed. It was pitch dark and she didn’t know where the light switch was. She fumbled her way along to Mailin’s office door, opened it. No longer Mailin’s office. Someone else would be using it, as soon as her things were cleared out.

She closed the door behind her, turned on the light. Someone had been there, the police maybe, several of the folders lay on the desk. She started looking through the bookshelves, found the Sándor Ferenczi book she had seen the first time she was there, Selected Writings was the title. She pulled it out and began to leaf through it. Here and there Mailin had made underlinings in the text, along with small notes and comments in the margins. The corner of one page was turned over. Liss opened it to Chapter 33: ‘Confusion of tongues between Adults and the Child. The language of Tenderness and of Passion.’ There was something written in red at the foot of the page. Liss recognised Mailin’s hand: ‘Death by water – Jacket’s language.’

At that same instant, the lights went out. She heard a sound out in the waiting room. A door opening. She jumped up. For a few seconds the neon light strip in the ceiling pulsed with a grey glimmer, then twice in quick succession, before going out completely. You’re not afraid, Liss Bjerke, a voice shouted inside her. You’re never afraid any more. She groped her way across the floor, put her ear to the door. Heard nothing. Or perhaps a faint scraping sound. She laid a hand on the doorknob. It moved. It took two seconds for her to realise that someone was entering from the other side. She jumped back, pressed herself against the wall. The door slid open. She could make out a figure in the darkness. A torch was switched on, the beam swept around the room and stopped on her face.

– Liss Bjerke… The name sounded from the darkness in front of her and at the same time inside her. As though it had left her and was now speaking to her from the doorway behind the torch beam. But the voice wasn’t hers, it was light and slightly hoarse, and still had that American accent that was once so exciting but now seemed fake and showy.

– What are you doing here, she said.

She heard his low laughter.

– You’ve always been such a cheeky little minx, Liss. Breaking into people’s property in the middle of the night and then asking them what they are doing there.

Pål Øvreby came a step closer. – Okay, I’ll explain. Sometimes when I have an evening out and it gets late, instead of taking a taxi home I come here and get a few hours’ sleep at the office. As you discovered a long time ago, I rent here. Five thousand two hundred and fifty every fucking month. So now I’ve answered your question, please tell me what you are doing here.

She couldn’t see his face properly, but could smell him. Tobacco and beer, and clothes that hadn’t been properly dried after washing. The smell forced its way into her and took the lid off containers with things she had hidden away. They were full of little animals. Now they began to crawl around inside her, from her head and all the way down her body.

– This is Mailin’s office. No one can stop me from coming here. She tried to sound angry. If her voice sounded angry, she might manage to feel anger.

– You came to me before, Liss, you didn’t suppose I’d forgotten? It wouldn’t surprise me if you knew that I was sleeping in the office at the moment. My home life is shot to pieces.

He was standing right up close to her.

– And it’s partly because of you, Liss Bjerke, he whispered. – It has a lot more to do with you than you realise.

He put his hand under her chin, lifted it, as if she was a child refusing to look him in the eye. – We had a good time together, Liss. You don’t expect me to have forgotten that, do you?

He let his finger glide around her ear, the back of her neck, pulled her towards him.

She grabbed the torch from his hand, shone it into his face.

– Do you suppose, Pål Øvreby, that I’m afraid to kill? she hissed, and heard how her own voice sounded like a steel string. – If you touch me one more time, you will never feel safe again, not for one second. I’ll kill you the instant you fall asleep.

He dropped his hand. She drove the torch into his stomach, slipped around him, out into the waiting room and down the steps. He didn’t follow.

21

JENNIFER PLÅTERUD SAT shivering with cold in the Bingfoss Hall. Over five years and she still hadn’t quite understood what you could and couldn’t do in handball, but it didn’t matter that much. She celebrated when her younger son Sigurd’s team scored, and agreed with the views of the parents who seemed to understand what was going on. She liked the sport, although not enough to bother to learn all the rules. It made the boys tough to go banging into each other and get knocked about. They were pushed to the ground and had to get up again without moaning. Very different from football, which Trym, her older boy, had played. There they learned to lie there writhing about as soon as anyone touched them. It looked as if getting knocked about a bit was all part of handball, and Sigurd was anyway a tougher lad than his big brother. The toughness was something he’d inherited from his mother, but in Trym, who was two years older, she recognised his father’s laziness and evasiveness, and a bit more too.

During the break she went outside and took out her phone. For the second time in the course of the last twenty-four hours she called Detective Chief Inspector Viken, enjoying the suppressed irritation in his voice once she’d told him what the call was about.

– And you’re still doing everything you can to persuade Liss Bjerke to come to us directly with her information, he said sourly.

– I’m not going to answer that, she replied. – It’s not my fault if she has zero confidence in you.

How on earth did you manage to handle her so clumsily? she felt like adding, but didn’t want to get into an open quarrel with the DCI.

– Isn’t it better if she gets in touch with me rather than keeps what she knows to herself? she said instead.

In the final analysis Viken probably agreed that she had a point. – It sounds as though she might have managed to work out what her sister is saying in that video, he continued in a more composed tone. – Had you ever heard of this Ferenczi?

Jennifer couldn’t suppress a little laugh. No specialist branch of medicine was more remote to her than psychiatry, which she associated with waffle, a lack of method, and absolutely no demand for results. But she’d googled Sándor Ferenczi in the morning after Liss’s call and got over 112,000 hits.

– He’s written a lot about children who have been abused, she informed him. – According to Liss, her sister was using his theories in her PhD studies. If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion, it would be to take a closer look at that thesis. Mailin Bjerke interviewed and apparently treated young men who had been the subject of abuse.

Midway through the second half of the game, Roar Horvath called. For some reason or other she knew it would be him even before she looked at the display.

– Just a moment, she said, and made her way out towards the exit.

– Need to talk to you, Jenny, he said, and standing out in the cold grey mist drifting up from the River Glomma, she felt herself blushing. – I was in Bergen yesterday. Was going to call you but it was past midnight by the time I got home.

If it was just about this trip to Bergen, he could have rung someone else.

– You don’t need fancy excuses if you want to meet me, she said with a glance at her watch. She could be in Manglerud in a couple of hours, but then had a sudden thought that was immediately very hard to resist. Ivar was at an agricultural conference with his brother-in-law for the weekend, and she’d be able to farm the two boys out with friends for the night.

She sat, leaning back in the kitchen chair and drinking beer, watching as Roar whisked egg and milk, fried bacon, seasoned and chopped tomatoes and cucumber. She’d borrowed one of his shirts;it was the size of a maternity smock and she could pull her knees up under it.

– Have you heard anyone say your name in English? she said, interrupting his account of the trip to Bergen.

He moved the frying pan off the heat. – Sure, whenever I’ve been in England they’ve always got a big laugh out of calling me Shout.

– Rory’s good, Jennifer said. – Maybe that’s what I should call you. Or do you have a middle name?

He hesitated a moment. – Mihaly.

– Mihaly Horvath? That’s about as un-Norwegian as you can get.

He poked his head into the fridge and took out a few packets of ready-chopped cured meat. – Mihaly was my old man’s name. Roar was the best my mother could come up with. She didn’t want me getting bullied at school because people thought I was a gypsy kid or something.

– So your middle name never got used?

He began spooning scrambled egg on to a dish. – My old man sometimes called me Miska.

– That’s cute. I’ve been imaging this remote and very strict father. But he wasn’t?

Roar gave a slight smile. – He came to Norway when he was eighteen years old. His parents were vanished by the Stalinists. He didn’t know anyone here, had to start from scratch. With nothing but his own two hands and a will of steel, as my mother used to say when she wanted to boast about him.

Jennifer emptied her beer glass. – My two boys have got middle names too. I actually wanted to name the elder after my father, but for once my husband put his foot down. No child should have to start at Sørum primary school with a handle like Trym Donald.

– The wise person gives way, Roar grinned as he set the plates on the kitchen table. She still hadn’t been into his living room, and that was fine by her.

– What does Viken think? she wanted to know once he’d lit candles and seated himself opposite her.

– About you trying to take over the investigation?

She snorted.

– We should have picked up on the connection with the Ylva Richter case straight away, he conceded.

She drank more beer and tried to hide how much the admission pleased her, how pleasantly numb she felt, how good it was to sit here and have him serving an evening meal to her.

– Actually, I have a question for the pathologist.

– Don’t worry about intruding on her free time, she encouraged him. – That’s the way it is in this business. Always on the job.

– Could the damage done to Mailin Bjerke’s eyes have been inflicted with a corkscrew?

He looked at her without the trace of a smile on his face, but still it took her a couple of seconds to realise he was being serious. And in that same moment she realised it was a clever idea.

– We’ve considered different types of screws and implements, she said, thinking aloud. – With a screw it would be hard to generate enough force… A corkscrew is a distinct possibility. What gave you that idea?

– Something that occurred to me when I was looking through the documents relating to the Ylva Richter case. One of a number of links… We’ve got to do absolutely everything we can to keep this whole association secret for the time being. Not just on account of the investigation, you can imagine the sort of hell that would break loose for her family if the connection leaked out.

Jennifer had no difficulty with that.

– I managed to persuade Liss that the printout she found has nothing to do with what happened to Mailin, she said. – I don’t think she’ll make the connection. And Ylva Richter’s name wasn’t actually mentioned in that particular article.

– Let’s hope you’re right, said Roar. He wrinkled his brow. – We’ve sent pictures of some of those involved in the case over to Bergen, he revealed. – One of the officers we’re liaising with there has shown them to the parents.

– But no joy, I gather from your expression. Do you have anything at all that might point the finger at the man she was living with?

– Nothing so far. He’s never lived in Bergen, but of course he might have gone there on the odd occasion.

– And still Viljam Vogt-Nielsen is number one on Viken’s list?

Roar carried on chewing as he answered. – Viken is concerned that we don’t overlook the psychology behind the murder of Mailin Bjerke. This business of the eyes being lacerated is a message we have to try to interpret. And the sheer rage behind those blows to the head. It points to someone in a close personal relationship to his victim.

He swallowed his food down with half a glass of beer. – And why was her mobile phone sent in the post?

– Maybe someone out there wants to play some kind of game with you, Jennifer hazarded.

Roar made a face that showed he was sceptical about her idea. – It can’t be ruled out, but we’re more inclined to think it shows a perverted sense of concern for his victim. He’s killed her, but he doesn’t want her to lie and rot there.

The furrows in his brow deepened and suddenly looked like three seagulls in flight, one with a large wingspan, flanked by two smaller ones.

– Whatever, we must keep concentrating on those closest to her. Her partner, of course, but also the stepfather. We’re trying to get in touch with the biological father, too. Apparently he hasn’t seen his family in over twenty years. He lives in Canada, but no one knows his whereabouts at the moment.

Jennifer had no difficulty in recognising Viken’s thought processes in what Roar was saying. She’d heard the detective chief inspector talking often enough about signals and signatures and hidden messages in the way a crime had been committed. Her own view of psychological profiling was that it was an American fad. About as scientific as trying to follow a scent.

– The sense of smell is a pretty useful tool, she observed. – Especially for dogs. When Roar looked at her quizzically she added: – It isn’t necessarily successful each time Mr Viken gets going on the human psyche.

Roar piled more scrambled egg on to his bread. He didn’t answer.

– And talking about psychology, she went on, – what about Mailin Bjerke’s patients? She presumably had a very close relationship to them as well. And you’ve hinted that one of them may have threatened her.

Roar looked thoughtful. She guessed he was wondering whether he’d already told her too much. She had to smile at the thought of what Viken would have said if he knew that she was sitting in the kitchen of one of his trusted associates with nothing on but a man’s shirt. She remembered her panties were lying somewhere in the bedroom, or out in the hallway.

– One of the other members of the team is trying to find out about Mailin Bjerke’s patients over the past few years, said Roar as he pushed his plate away. – Not easy, because only a few of them are registered with the social services. As regards those who were involved in her research, we may be able to get help from her supervisor, Tormod Dahlstrøm.

– Was Dahlstrøm her supervisor? Jennifer was impressed. Even she had followed his television series on the psychological element involved in cultural conflicts.

She chewed the remains of the cold meat, still ravenously hungry, she noticed. – What about this Jim Harris? Liss is convinced he saw something. Maybe he was the one who threatened Mailin that time so that she was afraid to carry on the treatment. He seems a distinctly dubious character.

– We’re trying to get in touch with the guy, Roar told her. – Turns out it’s not that easy. We might have to put something out via the media.

– It’s got to be worth that at least. Mailin had an appointment with him at around the time she disappeared.

Roar shook his head. – We still can’t say for certain that she was anywhere near her office that day.

– Even though the car was parked outside? You know roughly when she left the cabin, and you’ve got the time on the parking ticket.

– She might have been in several other places. We don’t have either witness observations or an electronic trail.

Jennifer thought it over.

– What about the toll roads? she suggested. – Every vehicle that enters the city gets registered somewhere or other.

Roar grunted. – We’ve checked, of course. Mailin Bjerke paid by phone. The car was photographed on its way through the toll, but the company deletes the pictures after a couple of days.

Jennifer couldn’t resist it. – So in other words, you were a little bit slow on the uptake. She added, jokingly: – For once.

The attempt to tease him seemed to have no effect, though the three seagulls on his forehead were almost gone now.

– There are limits to what you can manage to cover in the first few days in a missing persons case, was all he would say. – And the car had been found a long time before.

He gave her what was left of the scrambled egg.

– Do I look that hungry? she wanted to know.

– The evening is still young, it’s not even eleven yet. He laid his hand over hers. – And I want you to be able to keep going all the way into the early hours of the morning.

With a sigh that was considerably less than a vociferous protest, she gave him to understand that she might be persuaded to spend the night in a bachelor apartment in Manglerud.

22

Tuesday 6 January

WHEN THE KNOCK came on the office door, Jennifer jumped to her feet and opened it. The woman standing out in the corridor was considerably taller than her. She might be in her fifties, the hair dark but the eyebrows not dyed, revealing that she had probably been a blonde.

– Ragnhild Bjerke, the other woman responded once Jennifer had introduced herself. – A pleasure.

The voice sounded stiff and flat, and the phrase hardly reflected what was going through the woman’s mind as she stood there. Jennifer held the door open for her, but she stayed where she was.

– If you don’t mind, I would rather see her at once.

Jennifer could well understand that Mailin Bjerke’s mother didn’t want to postpone what she had made up her mind to go through with. On the way down the corridor she said:

– It isn’t unusual for relatives to be unsure whether or not they want to see the body.

She glanced over at her visitor. Ragnhild Bjerke’s face was as stiff as her voice and showed no expression.

– I wasn’t able to think about it before, she said. – Haven’t been able to think at all, actually. Tage, my husband, suggested that he and Liss go that morning, Christmas morning. I didn’t understand the significance of it. But now I must see her.

– Most people feel glad afterwards, Jennifer agreed.

The mortuary assistant was waiting by the chapel. His name was Leif, and Jennifer had asked him to handle the preparation of the body. He’d worked at the institute for twenty-five years and knew all the tricks of the trade when it came to making a body look as good as possible. After admitting them and folding back the sheet that covered the bier, he withdrew soundlessly. Hesitantly Ragnhild Bjerke approached. For almost ten minutes she stood looking down at her dead daughter, who lay there with hands folded across her chest and her ruined eyes shut. Then Jennifer broke the silence, moving a couple of steps closer. The click of the high heels on the floor startled Ragnhild Bjerke, as though bringing her out of a trance. She turned and wandered back out of the door again.

They sat at the small round table in Jennifer’s office. Not a word had been said on the way back from the chapel. The visitor’s face was as expressionless as when she had arrived.

– The ring, she murmured at last.

Jennifer recalled that Liss had noticed the same thing, the gold ring Mailin always wore. – It wasn’t there when we found her, she confirmed.

– Someone’s taken the ring, Ragnhild Bjerke said quietly, as though she were talking to herself.

Jennifer thought it curious that this was what Mailin’s mother had noticed especially. – It must have been very special, she said.

It took a few moments for her visitor to respond.

– She never took it off. Mailin was named after my mother. When she was eighteen, she inherited her wedding ring.

– Then there must have been an inscription on it.

Ragnhild Bjerke nodded almost imperceptibly. – Your Aage, and the date of the wedding. No one could have done a thing like this just for a ring.

Jennifer didn’t reply.

– I thought something would happen, Ragnhild Bjerke went on. The voice was still a monotone, hollow. – I thought I would realise that she’s gone. Her gaze was stiff too, but beneath lurked something that might have been panic. – I don’t understand. I feel nothing.

Jennifer could have told her a lot about that. Told her of the conversations she had had with the bereaved down through the years. Now and then she had thought of herself as the ferryman who carried the dead person’s relatives over the river, and then rowed them back again. She could have told her how common it was to be overwhelmed by feelings it was impossible to control. That it was normal, too, for a person to cocoon themselves and feel nothing but emptiness. But standing there she couldn’t bring herself to say any of this. Something she hadn’t felt the faintest breath of for a long time now surged through her, the strong desire for a daughter. A recognition of the fact that she would never have one was like the palest echo of the grief that hovered around the dead woman’s mother.

– Liss trusts you, said Ragnhild Bjerke.

Jennifer felt that inevitable flush tinge her cheeks. – She’s a fine girl.

Ragnhild Bjerke looked out across the car park. – She’s withdrawn so far from me. In a way, I lost her first. Many years ago.

– Surely it’s not too late to change things.

Without moving her gaze, Ragnhild Bjerke shook her head. – I’ve tried everything. She’s never really felt any connection to me. Always been a daddy’s girl.

– But she hasn’t seen her father for years?

– Not since she was six. Ragnhild Bjerke swallowed a couple of times. – She blames me for his leaving. She thinks I was the one who drove him away.

– Isn’t this something you could talk to her about now, now that she’s grown up?

Jennifer could guess how like the mother the eldest daughter had been. Liss, on the other hand, she could find no trace of in Ragnhild Bjerke’s face or body.

– Maybe it was wrong of me not to tell her the truth. Mailin was told, after all, but Liss… She’s always been so fragile. I was probably afraid it would break her.

Jennifer struggled to divorce her own curiosity from her visitor’s need to tell the story. – Did something happen between you and your husband? she asked cautiously.

– Happen? Something was happening all the time. He was a painter. All that mattered to him was success… That’s a little unfair. He cared about the girls, in his way. Liss especially. As long as they didn’t get in the way of his work. He had a studio in town, but often used a room down in the basement when he was at home. That was okay, because in those days there was a lot of travelling involved in my job.

Jennifer knew that Ragnhild Bjerke worked for one of the big publishing houses.

– I was away a lot promoting books, especially in the autumn. Often spent nights away.

– Why did he leave you?

Jennifer heard that her question was too private and was about to apologise when Ragnhild Bjerke said:

– He had a very high opinion of his own talent. Was convinced he was a great artist and that nothing must stand in his way. It meant he could allow himself to live any way he liked.

Jennifer didn’t find the answer particularly illuminating but didn’t pursue it.

– For years after he left, he wandered around without settling down anywhere. Suddenly we heard he had a big exhibition in Amsterdam. There were things about him on TV and in the newspapers. Everybody was talking about how this was the big breakthrough. Then it all went quiet again, and nothing came of it. It never did with him. Now he’s in Montreal. He met a young woman who lives there. But he’s been away travelling for several months. They can’t get in touch with him. He still doesn’t know that Mailin is…

Jennifer tried to imagine what it would be like to move so far away from one’s children.

– Canada is quite a long way away, she said, encouraging her visitor to say more.

Ragnhild Bjerke continued to stare at a point far beyond the window. – That’s not the reason he hasn’t seen the girls for so many years. He didn’t even get in touch when he was living in Copenhagen. He chose to live without them. But I think also there was a kind of compulsion involved.

She took out a handkerchief, held it to her nose as though about to sneeze, but took it away again without anything happening.

– He was a tormented man. Not when we first met, not when the children were very small. It started after a few years. Of course I knew his mother had a serious mental illness, and I got worried about him. Tried to get him to see a doctor, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He began staying up all night. Wandering restlessly about the house. Or standing talking to himself by the window.

– Hallucinations?

– I don’t think so. It was as though he was sleeping with his eyes open. Afterwards he couldn’t remember me talking to him.

She took a little tube of lip salve from her handbag and ran it across her dry lips.

– And he had the most dreadful nightmares. Once I found him in Mailin’s bedroom, standing by her bed and screaming. Finally I managed to get through to him. He was shaking, completely beside himself. ‘I didn’t kill them,’ he was shouting. I got him out of there before he woke her up. ‘You haven’t killed anyone, Lasse,’ I kept telling him. ‘I dreamed it,’ he sobbed, ‘and I can’t wake up.’ ‘What did you dream?’ ‘The girls,’ he murmured, ‘I dreamed I cut them up and ate their little bodies.’

She closed her eyes. Jennifer couldn’t think of anything to say. The conversation had taken a direction she had no idea how to deal with. Roar had mentioned several times that the police were trying to get in touch with this father. What she was hearing now, in all confidence, was something that would interest the investigators. She ought to have interrupted and asked for permission to pass this information on.

– I called his doctor the next day, Ragnhild Bjerke continued before Jennifer could make up her mind. – But Lasse refused to go and see him. A couple of weeks later he moved out. He didn’t say goodbye. Not to me. Not to Mailin. But Liss had some idea that he had been there and spoken to her.

She closed her handbag, sat with it on her lap.

– Can you understand why I never told this to Liss? She worshipped her father. Can you understand why it was better for her to blame me for his disappearance and to make me an object of hatred?

Jennifer didn’t know how to respond to that.

– You said you were away a lot, she said instead. – Are you afraid he might have…

Ragnhild Bjerke opened her eyes wide. – He can’t have done… I mean, it was just a nightmare. She shook her head for a long time, slowly. – I would have known. Mailin never hinted at anything of the kind… She tells me everything… always did…

Jennifer suddenly felt helpless and regretted having let things go so far. – Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee?

– A glass of water, perhaps.

With the glass on the table in front of her, Ragnhild Bjerke said: – I know why Liss came here. It’s good to talk to you.

Again Jennifer felt herself flush. – Liss doesn’t trust the police, she said.

– She never has done. Not since she kept getting arrested going on all those innocent demonstrations. And I don’t know, I really don’t, it isn’t easy to sit through those interrogations. Being pressed about the slightest detail. As though they suspected you were the one who’d done something terrible to Mailin. Can you imagine what that’s like, to feel yourself suspected of murdering your own daughter?

Jennifer heard something happening in the woman’s voice and was waiting for it to surface again, but when Ragnhild Bjerke continued, it was still in that same toneless pitch.

– And Tage? He’s the most trustworthy person in the world. He came to us and he was the father the girls had been missing and needed so much. He’s never had any thanks for it. Even I haven’t been good enough at telling him how grateful we ought to be. And then came all these questions about where was he when Mailin went missing, and when did he get back home. And I start thinking how I called him at the office several times that evening. He was supposed to be picking up Viljam, and I wanted to remind him to buy something to eat. He’s always available on the telephone when he works late like that, but on that particular evening…

– You couldn’t get hold of him.

– He said later there was some problem with the phone lines at the institute. But then you get all these questions, and suddenly this doubt is there, it worms its way inwards, and you can’t face trying to think it all through.

– Did you tell the police about the telephone?

She didn’t answer. Again Jennifer thought about asking for her permission to pass the information on, but when she looked into Ragnhild Bjerke’s eyes, she dropped the idea. Certain stones should be left unturned, she decided. Later maybe, if it turned out to be important, but for the time being this woman should be left in peace.

Under the circumstances, even the pleasure of calling DCI Viken with several bits of information his own people hadn’t got hold of was muted.

23

Wednesday 7 January, night

JIM HARRIS CAME running down from Fagerborg, crossed Suhms Street and carried on down Sorgenfri Street. No cars around, he had the whole road to himself. He could run faster a few years earlier, but he still wasn’t far off. Had made up his mind now. No one believed in him any more, no one expected anything. He could hit back from below. Run his way out of it. Pay this debt, then back to the sports academy and set up some training sessions. Not a personal trainer, not yet, no one who mattered would have anything to do with him. But things would turn around. First pay off the thirty thousand. Karam had been asking about him. Repeated the threat to make a cripple of him. The only thing Jim was afraid of. End up in a wheelchair. He’d sent Karam a message. Before the week was over, he’d have his thirty thousand.

He turned into Bogstadveien. The asphalt was slippier there, but he accelerated as he headed on down the road. He’d show them, all those who’d turned their backs on him. Those who’d trodden him down into the shit. Mailin Bjerke was the only one who had never given up on him. But she made him so mad. She was actually pretty ruthless. Found the weak spot and then twisted. All the same, he’d gone there that Thursday. For the first time, she wasn’t there when he arrived. Hadn’t left a message or anything. The office windows dark. He was furious, kicking and kicking at the main gate. Walked a couple of times around the block. Her car was fucking well there, the Hyundai with the dent in the front bumper. Not hard to recognise. But it was only when he was about to turn the corner, and glanced round, that he saw what happened…

And now she was dead. He’d read about it in the papers a few days later. And yet he went back again. As though she would still be sitting there in her office promising to do all she could to help him. The door had been open, and he’d looked in. Opened a few drawers. Old habit. People left all sorts of stuff lying about. Her appointments diary was on the table; he looked up the day when he should have had his. There were his initials: 17.00 JH. No one else due to see her that day. Below was written BERGER – Channel Six, Nydalen, 8 o’clock. And a message he didn’t understand. Something about a jacket. He’d ripped out that page. Often wondered why he did things like that. Maybe to avoid getting dragged into anything.

So that girl who suddenly appeared was her sister. Not that you would have guessed. As unlike Mailin as you could get. A nervous, weird girl. Like something out a fairy tale. The Brothers Grimm, he recalled, that book he’d had lying under his bed all those years when he was a kid. This sister wanted something from him, kept showing up all the time. Obviously after him. That was why he stopped her in the park. She said something there that made him understand what he had seen in Welhavens Street that Thursday. At least understand enough to take a chance and lay out some bait. A stroke of luck. Because there was one person at least who had more reason to be nervous than him.

Jim had made up his mind not to ask for more than thirty thousand the first time. Then five or ten. Then raise it gradually. Could be a nice little earner on the side. He wasn’t scared of Karam any more. He ran. Going to run his way out of it. Round the roundabout behind the National, down Munkedams Way. Not slippy here. Good grip for the shoes. He was pleased with them. Grabbed them from a store in the Storo shopping mall. The alarm went off, but the security guard who could catch up with him hadn’t been born yet. The shoes were as lightweight as the best he’d had from Nike, but the soles were better.

He didn’t slow down until he reached the fjord. Could have kept on running the rest of the night. Getting close to his form from 2003, his best season, when he crushed the junior record for the four hundred flat, and the eight hundred. Eight hundred is the best. The others are done for by the time he starts his sprint, merciless, inhuman, impossible to respond to.

All the restaurants and shops on the fjord side had shut hours ago. Not a soul in sight along Aker Brygge. Should maybe have insisted on Egertorget. You got people there, even in the middle of the night. But the person he was going to meet insisted that no one should see them together. Jim knew that from now on he would be the one setting the conditions, so he’d gone along with the suggested meeting place on this occasion.

He stopped by the flaming torch that stood outermost on the quay. The Eternal Peace Flame. Peered down one of the alleyways. A couple of boats moored on the canal. Started walking along, keeping to the edge of the quay, towards the sculptures in the water. He checked his mobile phone: 1.35. The person he was supposed to meet should have been here by now.

Something rattled down on the boat deck on his left, metal on metal, a box or a weight or something falling. He turned and peered down into the half-darkness. In the same instant he realised that the sound had something to do with him, with the meeting he’d arranged, with what he’d seen that Thursday outside Mailin’s office, with the thirty thousand he was going to get, but he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. Something hit him in the neck, boring its way inward from the side, and suddenly everything was clear around him and as bright as midday. He stood, frozen in this light, as his mouth was blasted open by what came gushing out of him.

24

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Liss was woken by a magpie screeching outside her window. She got up and closed it, but was too wide awake to sleep any more. She sat on the edge of her bed for a while, bare feet on the cold floor. Couldn’t remember what she’d dreamed, but still something lingered, as if someone had been pecking and plucking away at her thoughts, helping themselves to the best bits and leaving small holes behind.

She pulled on trousers and a top, padded out into the corridor. Heard Viljam busy down below, and once she was finished on the loo went downstairs to join him. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading Aftenposten with a cup of coffee. Again the thought that he grieved in the same way she did, something silent, something he wanted to be alone with. She felt an urge to stroke his hair. It won’t pass, Viljam. Just keep going anyway.

– Have you thought of how similar your name is to hers?

He looked up and gave her a quick smile. – Mailin noticed it, it hadn’t occurred to me. It’s almost hers backwards

Mailin must have noticed the other thing too, the similarity to their father. Not so much the individual features. Something in the eyes. A way of moving the hands. The timbre of the voice. The sorts of things Liss believed she remembered.

He folded up the newspaper and put it on the windowsill. – How long are you going to stay in Norway?

She didn’t know if she’d be going back to Amsterdam. Mailin had called her brave. Maybe it was the thought of Mailin being somewhere in the world that made her brave.

– I’ll see after the funeral. She poured herself a mug of coffee. The mug was white with a large red M on it. – My mother still hasn’t heard whether she can be cremated. That’s what Mailin would have wanted. The police haven’t decided yet whether they’ll allow us to.

Mailin’s dead body lying in the ground? Sudden thought: she mustn’t get cold. We must wrap her in something warm. Blankets, or a duvet.

– Have you been in touch with any of your friends here? Viljam asked, obviously wanting to talk about something else.

– I had one night out. Just before Christmas.

She told him about the evening out with Catrine. The party she went to. Mentioned the footballer, although not the fact that she’d seen him again.

– What did you say his name was?

She had avoided using his name. He didn’t belong in a conversation between them. She turned the coffee mug round and round. – Jomar something or other.

– Plays for Lyn? Jomar Vindheim?

– Something like that, she said, exaggerating her tone of indifference. – Have you met him?

– No, but anybody with the slightest interest in football knows his name. He’s played for the national team. Even Mailin knew who he was.

– Mailin? She never had a clue about football.

Viljam shrugged. – There was a picture of him on the front page of the sports section. ‘Isn’t that Jomar Vindheim?’ she said. Apparently she’d bumped into him somewhere or other.

To Liss it didn’t add up. Twice she’d met Jomar. He hadn’t said a word about knowing Mailin.

Viljam got up suddenly, went out into the corridor. She heard him open a drawer in the chest. When he came back, he had a letter in his hand. Not for me,she prayed inwardly.

– Tage called in yesterday. Wanted to know how things were going. And deliver this.

He put it down in front of her. It had been sent to her mother’s address in Lørenskog. The envelope was creamy yellow, the paper thick, the handwriting in ink, elegant and neat. There were Dutch stamps on it, and it was postmarked Amsterdam. On the back, the sender’s name in printed capitals, A. K. El Hachem. She sat looking at it for some time, waiting for the reaction she knew would come. It took five seconds, maybe longer. In this brief interlude she had time to think, Zako’s surname, and damn you, Rikke before her body took over. She excused herself, managed to get up the stairs and into the bathroom. Stuck her finger down her throat, but her stomach was empty. She stood stooped over, spitting down into the curve of the porcelain as the water formed a whirlpool around the outlet.

In her room she stood by the window, the letter in her hand. The magpie on the roof outside was at it again. Throw it away without opening it, it chattered. That’d make things even worse, she thought. Lie awake every night wondering what was in it. Wait for someone in uniform to come and pull the duvet off her and drag her out to a waiting car. A man wearing a grey overcoat sitting in the back seat. Wouters, that’s his name, and she will never be able to forget it.

The writing paper was the same creamy yellow as the envelope, the heading a curling monogram formed with the initials AKH. Dear Miss Liss Bjerke. Zako had occasionally called her Miss Lizzie, she remembered, usually when he was about to say something sarcastic. A. K. El Hachem was not sarcastic. He was Zako’s father. He hoped that it wasn’t inconvenient of him to approach her in this way. He had heard that she had recently lost her sister, and expressed his deepest sympathies. He realised that this was the reason she had been unable to attend Zako’s funeral. She skimmed through these and several other extended formal courtesies, as convoluted as the monogram. She searched for a reason why she should now be standing here with this letter in her hand. Had to read more closely to find out. A few words about losing those closest to one, as had happened to them both. Zako was A. K. El Hachem’s only son – Liss had always thought he had a younger brother; they had always been close, even if in recent years Zako had started leading a life his father could not approve of. Until the unthinkable happened, he had, however, entertained hopes that this son of his would return to the course laid out for him, become a partner in his father’s firm, and later take over and carry on the hard work of four generations before him. For none among those who knew him could have any doubt that Zako was a young man of remarkable talents.

And now the father approached his reason for writing the letter. In conversations with his son over the past year, it had become apparent that something unusual had happened in his life. It concerned a woman. Zako had never had any trouble attracting women, it was a curse as well as a gift, but this young woman was, he had revealed to his father, not just one of many, but the only one. And the father had seen the change in his son. He had grown less hot headed, more thoughtful, more interested in planning for a secure future, more concerned for the well-being of his parents and sisters; in a word, the maturing of a self-centred young man that only a woman could effect, the thing his father had been waiting for with growing impatience as time went by, although never quite losing his faith that it would happen. There could be no doubt that this woman, that is, Miss Bjerke, had been sent to his son from a better world; the scales had fallen from Zako’s eyes, and his life was about to take a turn in the direction his father, in the depth of his heart, had always longed to see it take.

A. K. El Hachem was writing to her to express his deepest gratitude that his son had known this time together with her, this reminder that life was good when one was open to what was good. In the darkest hours following his son’s death, the knowledge that he had experienced something like this was an enormous comfort to him as a father, and to the whole of the family, and they had talked a lot about this Norwegian woman who had brought new light into their son’s life. In conclusion, A. K. El Hachem expressed his deepest hope that at some point he would have the opportunity to meet her, whether in Nimes, where the family lived for most of the year, in Amsterdam, or in her own country up there in the far north.

25

THIS TIME IT was Berger himself who opened the door when Liss arrived. He took her jacket and hung it up for her.

– Did you give your butler the evening off? she said casually, and Berger confirmed that he had indeed done so.

– A couple of times a year he has a weekend off. He has his aged mother to visit, that kind of thing.

In the living room, music was coming from speakers she couldn’t see. Indian drumming, it sounded like, with a kind of accordion and a man with a light, hoarse voice forcing curious sounds from his throat at a ferocious pace, up and down strange musical scales.

– Sufi music, Berger informed her. It meant absolutely nothing to her.

The smell in the room also had an Oriental origin. He picked up a smoking pipe from an ashtray and offered it to her. She declined. Hash made her distant and slow; her thoughts went off in directions she didn’t like, became dense and nightmarish.

Berger slipped down on to the sofa, put his long legs on the table and puffed away.

– I hope you don’t mind my taking my afternoon medicine, he said. – You who live in Amsterdam are probably used to this kind of thing.

– You asked me to come, she interrupted. No more than an hour had passed since she received his text as she was wandering around in the park at Tøyen trying to collect her thoughts.

– I did ask you to come, Liss, he nodded inside his cloud of cannabis smoke.

She waited.

– I liked Mailin, he said. – She was a fine girl. Preoccupied with her principles, but nevertheless fine.

– She had an appointment with you. That evening she disappeared.

– We talked about that last time.

– But now she’s been found. If this has anything at all to do with you… She didn’t know what to say, tried to calm down. – You don’t seem in the slightest surprised. You seem cold and unaffected.

He shook his head firmly. – You’re wrong, Liss. Death doesn’t surprise me any longer, but I am not devoid of feelings. She deserved to live for somewhat longer.

She listened out for any kind of ambiguity in what he was saying.

– Death walks alongside us all the time, and you can choose to look another way. That will be the essence of my next show. Naturally it will be the last Taboo in the series. Beyond death, there isn’t much more to talk about.

– Are you a junkie? she asked suddenly.

He half slumped in the sofa. Was wearing a sort of silky kimono. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he was naked beneath it.

– You can’t be in paradise all the time, Liss, that’s what the junkies don’t understand. You have to control it. You need a will of iron to balance on that particular razor’s edge.

– And paradise, that’s when you get a fix?

He showed his tiny white teeth. Lying slumped there like that, grinning, unshaven, his hair sticking up, he looked like a pirate chief out of some children’s book.

– Try it, Liss. That is all I can say. You must try it. Or not. It’s impossible to talk about it. It is how God reveals himself to us, giving us a ticket to a grandstand from where we can sneak a glance into the most complete perfection. Like wrapping a warm blanket around yourself, not around your body, but around your thoughts. Your soul, if you prefer. Within all is perfect peace. You desire nothing more than to be exactly where you are. No artist, no mystic has ever managed to describe the sensation. It is beyond words.

She tried to recall what it was she had thought of saying to him. He distracted her the whole time, and she couldn’t seem to stop him.

– Can you live in such a way that death will be something to relish? he asked her. – Prepare yourself to turn it into your life’s climax? Imagine you’re having sex and achieve orgasm at the precise moment of your dying, disappearing in a movement that never ends. That is what my last programme will be about. But not in the way people might expect. You must never do what they expect, always be a nose in front.

He took a last drag from his pipe and put it back in the ashtray.

– How do you imagine you will die, Liss?

She couldn’t bring herself to answer.

– Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it. I can see by looking at you that you’re preoccupied with death.

Should she share her innermost thoughts with this semi-naked and wholly uninhibited priest? Tell him about the marsh by Morr Water. It would be like taking him out there, like having him there beside her when she lay down and looked up between the trees as the blanket of snow spread itself across her. She pulled herself together, but again he was there before her.

– There’s something about you, Liss. You’re from another place. You make me think of an angel of death. Do you know the effect you have on other people?

She sat up straighter. His eyes were growing distant now, as though he was looking deep inside himself.

– What did you talk to Mailin about?

Berger put his head back. The dressing gown slid to one side, and it occurred to Liss that he was about to expose himself to her.

– We spoke always of passion. She was interested in it. Passionately so.

– The passion of the adult, Liss corrected him. – In his encounter with the child.

– That too. Your sister was of the opinion that the recipe for a good life lies in in controlling the passions.

– While you believe they should be liberated.

He gave a hollow laugh. – Not liberated. Liberate yourself on them. Let them withdraw all the power from you. Would you really exchange fifty years of boredom for the intense pleasures of a year, or a minute?

– You sound like an evangelist.

– You’re right, I’m more of a priest now than I ever was when I stood at the altar and delivered sermons from the Bible. I proselytise because I enjoy the staring and the contempt, but also the curiosity, the desire to allow oneself to be tempted. Where does that desire come from, Liss? Why have you come back here again?

– You asked me to come. I need to know what happened that evening Mailin went missing.

He picked up a remote control, turned off the music. – Did I tell you last time that I knew your father?

She sat there open mouthed.

– It was in the seventies, long before you were even thought of. We hung out with the same crowd. I was a lapsed priest; he was an artist with more ambition than talent.

He seemed to be thinking about something before he added: – I suspect that was Mailin’s real reason for coming here. And why she said yes to the chance to appear on Taboo. She wanted to know what I could tell her about this father of yours who left you.

– I don’t believe you.

Berger shrugged. – You can believe whatever you like.

– When… was the last time you saw him?

– Mailin asked me the same question, Berger sighed. – I met him in Amsterdam about ten or twelve years ago. It was when he had an exhibition there.

The pipe had gone out; he picked it up anyway and puffed away on it. It emitted a gurgling sound.

– I’m sure he thought he would make his name in the international art market. But he wasn’t intended for great things. Deep down inside he knew that himself.

She sat stiffly on the edge of her chair, unable to take her eyes off him.

– But then he rang me not too long ago. He’d heard that Mailin was going to appear on Taboo. I think he’s kept track of you two all along, from somewhere out there.

– You’re making stories up to get me interested, she yelled at him. – That’s what you did to Mailin, too. Enticed her here.

He sat up, leaned across the table towards her.

– You still believe that I am the one responsible for her death?

She couldn’t say anything.

– You think I met her at the office, drugged her, carried her out to the car, locked her in the boot and drove her out to a disused factory. Undressed her and played with her until I got bored, killed her and then left.

– Stop it!

A spasm jerked across his face. – Why should I stop when this is what you came here to hear?

She stood up, suddenly unsteady. – I don’t know why I came here.

He stood up too, rounded the table. Towering in front of her. She was forced to inhale the smell of his naked body, the male sweat, the unwashed hair, all kinds of bodily fluids, and the whiff of his guts from his mouth as he bent down towards her. Then something happened to his eyes, the gaze widened, and he began to shake. Suddenly he grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her close to him, held her tightly.

– I know what happened, Liss, he muttered, his voice thick. – I liked her, I told you. She didn’t deserve to die like that.

He squeezed harder. Liss feels the soft swell of the pot belly and the large sex hanging down below it. She knows what’s going to happen next. The light is sucked away and burns itself into everything around her, opens up a room in which she can hide away. And just then the doorbell rang. The grip was relaxed, she pulled herself free, grabbed her jacket, ran out into the corridor, struggled with the lock.

There was no one outside. She slammed the door shut behind her, raced down the stairs and out into the street. Not until she reached Kirke Way did she stop running. She turned, but knew he would not follow her.

Her phone rang. She saw the name on the display. Still she took the call.

– What’s the matter? asked Jomar Vindheim.

She muttered a few disjointed words, something about Berger.

– I’ll pick you up, he insisted. – I’m in the neighbourhood.

She protested but was relieved when he ignored her.

26

– YOU NEED A cup of coffee, he said as she sat beside him in the car a few minutes later.

Coffee was the last thing she needed. She wanted to ask him to drive her to the flat in Lang Street so she could get into her room and be alone. – I can’t face the thought of a coffee bar, she said.

– Then I’ve got a better suggestion, he claimed. – After all, you’ve been to my place before. You know you’ll get out of there with your life and your honour intact. Even your senses.

– Senses? she exclaimed, not sure where he was going with this.

– What were you doing at Berger’s? he said to change the subject as he accelerated through the junction at Majorstua. – Your sister?

She didn’t answer. He passed through another junction, this time on amber, before saying: – You think Berger has something to do with it?

– I don’t know, Jomar.

A weird name, she thought, it sounded strange when she said it. She decided to trust him, described what had happened at Berger’s flat, but avoided mentioning anything about Berger’s claiming to know her father.

– Did he threaten you? Christ, Liss, you should make a formal complaint.

She could still feel those fists squeezing her into that enormous, soft body… It never did any good reporting something like that. But what he said as he was holding her, that was something the police ought to know about. I know what happened. Ring Jennifer, she thought.

– I don’t think he meant to make a threat. There was something or other he wanted to tell me. Weak of me to chicken out.

– Is it chickening out to get out of the way of a guy as unstable as that? Jomar smacked his lips. – Not such a brilliant idea to go there in the first place. Next time I’ll come with you.

She tried to summon a smile. – Probably smart. Rumour has it that he’s very partial to young lads, especially really good-looking ones…

She broke off, noticed that he was looking at her.

His flat seemed brighter than the last time she was there. And tidy, considering it belonged to a young man with a lot of time and money on his hands. Or maybe he had a housekeeper. A door in the hallway was ajar, and through it she caught a glimpse of a tall bedhead with wrought-iron ornamentation, and a punch ball hanging from the ceiling. The furniture in the living room certainly wasn’t from IKEA. The sofa and the chairs looked like Jasper Morrison, but she avoided asking Jomar Vindheim if he was interested in interior design. Along one wall were shelves containing CDs and DVDs. She waited until he disappeared out into the kitchen to make coffee before looking at his collection. Rap mostly, and that was closer to the sort of impression she had of him. Action films and PlayStation games. The Da Vinci Code and a few other books. She took one of these down, Atonement, which she had read herself. Was standing with it in her hands when he came back in.

– You read this kind of thing? she blurted out, aware as she said it that it sounded decidedly patronising.

– Shocked? He handed her a cup of coffee.

– Didn’t think most footballers could read, she said, trying to smooth things over with a more obvious irony.

He opened the curtains. The flat was on the ninth floor, and the Oslo sky hung outside the window like a crude grey canvas.

– A girl I met gave it to me, he confessed as he slipped down on to the sofa. – She insisted that I read it.

– I see, Liss responded, picturing a little football groupie who tried to attract his attention with the aid of someone else’s talent. – And did you?

– Yep. Good stuff. Especially that you never really know if they survived the war or not. In the film, it was much too obvious.

She raised her eyebrows, exaggerating her own surprise. – So you like that kind of open ending?

– Worked well there anyway, he replied, ignoring her sarcastic tone. – The girl I got it from is actually a friend of yours.

It dawned on Liss that this friend had to be Therese, who had called her a bitch.

– Can I smoke, or do you want me to walk down the nine floors?

She could have managed to wait, asked mostly as a provocation, because suddenly she felt irritated. Not with him, if the truth be known, but he was there, he’d invited her back to his place, he kept popping up all over the place, sent her messages and didn’t give up even though she had made it clear she wasn’t interested.

– Sure, he said, got up and fetched a bowl. – Use this as an ashtray.

It was white with a drawing of a little Asian girl on it; her eyes were suggested by two lines, and she was holding up a poppy.

– Anyway, I have a balcony.

He opened the door and accompanied her out into the chilly afternoon, even went back and fetched a jacket for her. She recognised it and had to smile.

– What I liked best about that book, he said after he’d lit her cigarette for her, – is that it reminded me of my grandfather.

– Oh yeah. Was he falsely accused of rape and ended up a war hero? Suddenly she remembered something. – You met Mailin.

For a few seconds his face grew a shade darker. – That’s right in a way. Briefly.

– Why didn’t you mention it?

He shrugged. – Haven’t really had the chance to have a proper talk with you. Not yet.

She ignored the invitation. – Where did you meet her?

– At the sports school. She ran a course there, about abuse in the world of athletics. It was a couple of years ago. I talked to her afterwards. I liked her.

His response did nothing to quell her irritation. She finished her cigarette and squashed it out against the head of the Chinese girl.

– Your sister was well liked by everybody. It’s just too fucking awful. If there’s anything I can do, Liss…

Stop talking about it, she thought, but didn’t say it. Stop following me around, she thought, but she didn’t say that either.

Back in the living room, she sank down into the sofa. It was so comfortable to sit in. She didn’t want to leave yet, but she couldn’t stay.

Jomar said: – I hope Jimbo’s stopped bothering you.

She blew out her breath with a low whistling sound. – I’m not scared of him. If he was going to do anything to me, he would have done it in the park that night.

He didn’t move his gaze when she looked over at him.

– I think you ought to learn how to look after yourself a bit better, Liss.

27

THE TIME WAS 6.42 when Viken called. Roar Horvath picked up the remote and muted the sound on the TV.

– A body was found in the fjord by Aker Brygge this morning, said the detective chief inspector with no preamble.

– Saw that on the net, Roar replied. – Relevant for us?

– Jim Harris. Skewered through the throat with a sharp object. Probably a screwdriver. The carotid artery completely severed. Dead before he was dumped in the water.

Roar was on his feet, standing in the middle of the room. – When?

– Last night. Masses of blood on the quayside, right next to Tjuvholmen. Must have happened there.

– Witnesses?

– Four or five seagulls. None of them willing to say anything.

Roar glanced at the TV screen, a repeat of a La Liga match. – The guy had a drug debt.

– This isn’t drug related, Viken asserted, and Roar too had immediately seen that it didn’t fit the pattern.

The detective chief inspector’s voice took on an unpleasant undertone as he continued: – Plåterud has been kind enough to let us have a résumé each time she’s had a conversation with Liss Bjerke. It’s time we resumed control of the interviewing of central witnesses. What’s your opinion?

– Oh absolutely, Roar coughed. Jennifer had called him not more than half an hour ago, she was coming out to see him later that evening. – It isn’t Plåterud’s job to carry out interviews, he agreed, and cleared his throat again. – I’ll get in touch with her.

– Get in touch with who?

– Liss Bjerke.

– I’ve done that ages ago. Have you checked her out against the PNC database?

– No, Roar had to confess. Liss Bjerke had been in Amsterdam when her sister went missing, and it was hard to see how she could be involved. All the same, he should have checked her against the list of offenders. It was a question of the reliability of an important witness.

– I thought not, Viken observed. – The girl has eight cases outstanding against her.

– Christ.

– Assaulting the police in the course of illegal demonstrations. Hauled in a number of times.

Roar thought about it and swallowed. – Then we’ve got a very good excuse for bringing her in.

Viken said: – We’ll keep it in reserve in case we need it. It looks as though I’m going to be able to get her to come in more or less voluntarily. She demands to speak to a female investigator.

– Are we going to let ourselves be dictated to by a stroppy girl?

Viken snorted at the other end. – This is all about one thing.

– Of course, Roar noted. – Results.

He turned off the TV and made his way out into the hallway, took his shoes out of the box room.

– I’ve got your memo about Pål Øvreby here in front of me, Viken continued.

Roar had done a thorough job on it. The day after he had interviewed the psychologist who shared the waiting room with Mailin Bjerke, he had called back and asked a series of control questions. The guy insisted that he had not seen hide nor hair of Mailin on Thursday 11 December. On one point, however, he did change his statement. On thinking about it, he recalled that he had stopped as he passed her car parked on Welhavens Street. He bent down to see if Mailin was inside, apparently because there was something he wanted to ask her. What it was he had long since forgotten. Roar had wanted to know if there was a parking ticket in the window, but the psychologist was unable to help him there.

– Any new information? he asked now.

– I received a letter this afternoon, the detective chief inspector grunted. – I’ve put a copy on your desk. You’d better take a look at it next time you’re down here.

– Is it about Øvreby?

– You might say that. A tip-off that the guy is involved big-time in a social security scam. Anonymous sender.

Roar got his other shoe on.

– Apparently something that’s been going on a long time, Viken added. – The letter concludes as follows: Mailin Bjerke knew what was taking place in the office next door.

28

Thursday 8 January

RoAR SWUNG INTO the Oslo police station garage at 7.15. As he turned off the engine, his phone rang.

– Awake already? said Jennifer, obviously trying to sound surprised. – And here’s me ringing to wake you up.

– Been up for hours, he shot back at her. – Showered, eaten, done some work. Even though I had female company until well past midnight. Just couldn’t get her to leave.

– Oh that’s too bad. And she probably forgot to pull the blanket over you before she left.

He could see her smiling, the face breaking up into tiny wrinkles.

– By the way, I’ve just been talking to Viken, she said. – I told him about a test finding that’s come in that might interest you too.

She always sounded like a proud little girl when she had something important to relate.

– Are you calling to tease me, or are you actually going to tell me what it is?

She laughed. – I’m sure you’ll hear it from the man himself, she said. – But then I felt like talking to you. Two birds with one stone. It’s about the hairs we found on Mailin Bjerke. We sent them to a specialist lab in Austria.

Seconds ticked by in silence.

– Would you please get to the point, Jenny? I’ve got a ton of documents to get through before the morning briefing.

– The good news is that they’ve managed to get some DNA from them, even though the roots are missing.

– Not bad. You’ll be sending us a profile?

– And then there’s the bad news. All we’ve got is mitochondrial DNA.

– Meaning what?

– If we’re lucky, we might find a DNA type that occurs in a relatively small minority of the population.

A female member of the team hurried past Roar’s car and waved to him.

Jennifer said: – Anything new about Mailin Bjerke’s father?

– You mean the stepfather?

– The biological father. The one neither of them has seen for the past twenty years.

– We’re still trying to get hold of him in Canada, Roar confided. – For a number of reasons. Why do you ask?

– Ragnhild Bjerke came to my office yesterday.

– She did? Why didn’t you tell us before?

Jennifer hesitated. – It was a sort of medical consultation. I’m not really sure how much I can reveal. There’s something about this father, but…

There was a knock on the car window. Viken was standing outside. Roar jumped, broke the connection and tossed the phone on to the passenger seat. He wound down the window.

– Meeting’s put back until ten, the detective chief inspector informed him, and then peered quizzically at him.

A few ancient images suddenly flashed through Roar’s mind: his father bursting in through the bedroom door, shouting at him to get out of bed. Standing there naked, with Sara cowering under the duvet. Ordered straight into the shower, while she was sent home.

He didn’t take in everything Viken said, something about him being on his way to Aker Brygge to take a look at the crime scene there with someone from the forensics unit.

– We’ve had some provisional results from those hair samples, Viken went on.

– So I heard.

The detective chief inspector’s eyebrows wriggled into each other. – You heard already? From whom?

Roar could have beaten his head against the steering wheel. Or started the engine and driven off. He controlled himself and managed to reply. – Called Flatland. On a completely unrelated matter as it happens.

He picked up his mobile and shoulder bag and opened the car door. – At best we’re talking about a fairly uncommon type of DNA.

He climbed out of the car, stood a good half a head taller than Viken.

– Have you seen VG? The detective chief inspector pulled a newspaper from his inside pocket, spread it open on the roof of the car.

Roar read: Berger to reveal killer tonight on Taboo? – Well I fucking never.

– My sentiments exactly, said Viken. – Since my interview with him yesterday evening, our friend has used his time well.

He pointed to something underlined with a pen: Berger has been interviewed three times because he had an appointment with Mailin Bjerke on the evening she went missing. He is not especially impressed by the efforts of the police in the case. ‘The gang of detectives they’ve got working on this case makes the police station look like a sheltered workplace. They’re obsessed with trivialities and fail to pick up on the most obvious connections.’ ‘Are you saying that you have information that is important to the case?’ Berger laughs heartily. ‘If I did then naturally I wouldn’t let VG have it. I’ve got my own audience to think about.’ Berger refuses to say anything definite about his inside knowledge of the case, but he drops a heavy hint that he will be revealing what he knows in this evening’s edition of Taboo on Channel Six. The subject of which is? Precisely – death.

Roar shook his head. – Surely we can’t sit around waiting for a TV show. He’s playing with us.

Viken shoved the newspaper back into his coat pocket. – The guy is due on TV in a few hours’ time. Doesn’t he have an audience of seven hundred thousand? Nine hundred thousand? If we bring him in yet again without having anything new, what do you think that’ll do to his viewing figures?

It wasn’t necessary for Roar to answer. – What did you get out of the interview yesterday?

– Berger claims he walked from Welhavens Street up to the studio at Nydalen.

– In that case it should be easy to find witnesses. The man is not exactly invisible.

– He says he went by the footpath along Aker river and took plenty of time. Apparently he had received a piece of news earlier that day he needed to think about.

– And that was?

– Nothing that’s any of our business, according to him.

29

ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH the therapy session, the door was slung wide open. Pål stood there glaring furiously at her. His eyes were red rimmed, his face grimy and unshaven. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for several days.

– Need to talk to you.

Torunn smiled apologetically at the young girl sitting in the chair opposite her. To Pål she said: – I’ll be finished in half an hour. Roughly. I’ll come up to your office.

– I need to talk to you now.

She could hear that he was exerting himself not to shout. – So sorry, she said to the patient as she stood up. – I’ll be right back.

Out in the waiting room, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along. She tried to free herself.

– Don’t you touch me, she said as coolly as she could.

He let go of her and led the way into the common room. She closed the door behind them, knew she would have to counter his anger with an anger of her own that was even greater.

– What do you mean by barging in when I’m sitting there with a patient? I’ve had enough of this crap of yours.

He took a step towards her. – Are you trying to destroy me? he hissed.

– I couldn’t be bothered to waste my time. You’re doing fine by yourself.

– Have you snitched on me so that you’ll get custody of Oda?

She’d been thinking about what to say when this came up. But his anger was unexpectedly strong.

– No idea what you’re talking about, she said dismissively. – What do you mean by snitched?

He looked her over, scowling. Somewhere in his eyes she saw a hint of doubt.

– Are you trying to say you don’t know anything about it? he growled.

– Know anything about what? Would you please tell me what on earth you’re talking about.

He straightened up, looked towards the door. – I’ve been talking to the police all morning.

– Interviewed?

She could hear how persuasive her surprise sounded.

– If you’re lying to me… he began, but then had to start again. – If I find out it was you who went to the police…

She could see that he was serious. She had known him for eight years. They had lived together for four of them. She had long ago realised how weak he was, and let him know that she knew. But he was in a corner now. He was about to lose everything, and she saw a new side of him. She didn’t doubt that he could turn dangerous if the pressure got any higher.

– Sit down, she said decisively. He slumped into a chair. – Just give me a couple of minutes to finish with this patient.

After getting rid of the young girl by saying something serious had happened, Torunn remained standing at the window. During every second that had passed since receiving the letter from Pål’s solicitor, she had felt this intense hate towards him. He had made good his threat and started a process aimed at getting custody of Oda. She had understood that he was preparing to go the whole way, have her suitability as a parent evaluated by an expert, and use all Oda’s small accidents against her. Dig up dirt that wasn’t there. It was stupid of him. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to win the war he had started. And she was tactically a great deal smarter than he was.

When she returned to the common room, he was still sitting there, motionless and staring at the table. She had considered rebuking him for having interrupted a session with a patient but saw now that it wasn’t necessary. She sat down on the other side of the table and leaned towards him.

– If you want my help, first you have to tell me.

He glanced up at her. The look in his eyes was very different now. Reminded her of something that had been there during the early days, and for a second she felt pity for him. It surprised her, because the hatred was still there, boiling inside her.

– Someone has reported me for social security fraud, he said, and from the meekness in his voice she could tell he had already completely abandoned any notion that she was involved.

– I told you that this business with the social security statements is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, she said to him, more comforting than accusing.

– I did it to give a few poor buggers a chance, you know that.

Did she know that? To begin with he had been helping some immigrants who had no money. She’d turned a blind eye to it, bought his argument that these people were on the very bottom rung of society’s ladder and deserving of a few crumbs of the country’s vast excess of wealth; that they didn’t have the slightest hope of getting these crumbs in any other way. Helping them to a disability allowance that strictly speaking they weren’t entitled to was, he argued, a sort of political act, a form of civil disobedience. But gradually he’d started receiving kickbacks, and before long he had more money than he’d ever dreamed of, and the economic advantages began to overshadow the political aspect completely. Time and again she had warned him, but it was as though he was addicted to the game and couldn’t stop. It was only a question of time before the whole thing would be discovered. In the first instance by those closest, like Mailin.

– I can help you, Pål. You know I’m always there for you.

She got carried away by the compassion in her own voice and stroked his arm. Suddenly he lifted her hand and pressed it against his eyes, and his shoulders began to shake.

She stood up and walked round the table. – Now, Pål, she comforted him, – of course I’ll help you. But we have to make peace with each other, you do understand?

It looked as though he might be nodding.

– And one other thing. You must tell me where you were on the evening Mailin went missing.

30

THE DOORBELL HAD rung three times. Liss sat on the sofa looking out on to the patch of garden with the stone-built barbecue and the tool shed sticking up out of the snow like a tombstone. She didn’t intend to see who it was. No one knew she was living there, almost no one. She didn’t feel the need to talk to any of Viljam’s friends. Nor anyone else. But when it rang for a fourth time, she got to her feet and padded up the stairs and out into the hallway.

It was for her.

– You might as well open up now. I’m not the type to give up.

She had realised this. All the same, inadvertently, she had let slip where she was living at the moment. She should have been firmer with Jomar Vindheim, the footballer, as she continued to call him in her thoughts. No chance, she should have told him, neither in heaven nor in hell, of there being anything between us. Even in her thoughts between us sounded like a chord played on an out-of-tune piano. All the same, she had to admit that she liked how he wasn’t easily put off.

She stood in the doorway and did nothing that might be taken as an invitation to him to step inside.

– Have you checked the net?

She hadn’t. She’d slept in as long as possible. And then moved about the house as slowly as she could. Put off eating, even put off smoking.

– Not seen the newspapers or listened to the radio?

Something in his voice set alarm bells ringing.

– Best if I come in, he urged, and she could hardly stop him from slipping by her.

– If you’ve come here to tell me something, then say what it is.

– Jimbo’s dead, he said. – Jim Harris.

They sat in the kitchen. She turned the cup round and round in her hands. It was empty; she’d forgotten to put the coffee on.

– Have you spoken to the police? Jomar asked. – Told them everything you told me?

– Last night. I was interviewed there. When did he die?

– Night before last. He was stabbed to death on Aker Brygge.

The policewoman who interviewed her had returned over and over again to this business with Jim Harris and his behaviour in the park. Several times she had asked Liss where she was the night before last, but never said a word about Harris being dead.

– Might it have been something else? she asked quietly. – Something that had nothing to do with Mailin?

Jomar rested his head in his hands. – Jim had drug debts. He owed money to people in the B-Gang. He told me so himself.

He rubbed himself so hard across the forehead that a broad red stripe appeared on the skin. – I tried to help him, but I should have done more. He came up to my place the other week and asked for a loan of thirty thousand. I could have managed it, but I’d already made it clear to him that I wasn’t going to lend him any more money. It would only drag him deeper down into the dirt.

– Need a smoke, she said and got up.

Water was dripping from a crack in the guttering. She huddled back below the porch. Jomar stayed on the stairway, one step down. She sneaked a glance at his face. The slightly slanting eyes were coloured by the grey light, but there was something reassuring about them. That impression was reinforced by the mouth, though the lips were quite narrow. Suddenly a memory of that night at Zako’s returned to her. Not of the lifeless body on the sofa, but something or other about the pictures on his mobile phone. She couldn’t quite get what it was… The letter from Zako’s father was still lying on the floor underneath her bed upstairs. If what he had written had been full of bitter recriminations, she might have been able to throw it away. But that gratitude of his was unendurable.

– Before Christmas something happened in Amsterdam, she suddenly blurted out. – Someone I knew died. I mean, more than just someone I knew.

He looked directly into her eyes. – Your boyfriend.

– In a way. I’ve been avoiding it. What happened to Mailin…

She filled her lungs with smoke, let it slowly ooze out again.

– Yesterday I got a letter from his father. And it brought it all back.

Jomar reached out for the Marlboro packet she’d balanced on the railings. – Can I take one?

– Not if it’s going to ruin your career as a footballer.

She heard how silly her response was, and her need to talk was suddenly gone.

He lit up. – What were you going to say about the guy who died in Amsterdam?

– I’d prefer to hear about your grandfather, she said quickly.

– My grandfather?

She glanced over at him. – When I was at your place you mentioned him.

– You mean when we were talking about that novel?

She nodded. – I need to think about something else. What was it about Atonement that reminded you of your grandfather?

He inhaled deeply a couple of times. – The stuff about the two who were meant for each other.

Liss half turned away. She had a response on the tip of her tongue but let it stay there.

– My grandfather was a fisherman, said Jomar. – He grew up in Florø. The day he turned twenty-two, he was delivering a catch to Bergen. He told me how he had a few hours free and spent the time wandering around Torgalmenningen. In one of the stalls a woman was selling clothes. This was during the war. He went over to her, and at that moment he knew she was going to be his wife.

– What about your grandmother? Liss said acidly. – Didn’t she have a say in the matter?

– She gradually came to understand.

Liss had to admit she liked the story. She liked the way he told it, that he dared to do so without resorting to irony.

– And your parents, was that as romantic?

– That’s another story altogether. Jomar fell silent.

– Are you never afraid of going insane? she asked out of nowhere.

He thought about it. – I don’t think so. Very few footballers go insane, for some reason or other.

He flipped his cigarette down into the street, climbed up the last step and underneath the porch where she was standing. Don’t do it, she thought as he lifted his hand and stroked her cold cheek.

Outside it had grown dark. Liss lay in bed listening to the magpie that never stopped hopping round on the roof and pecking at the tiles. She glided inward to a state between sleep and waking. The room changed, became a different room, one that she once lay in and slept in. She tries to wake up. Then Mailin is standing there, in her yellow pyjamas.

She forced herself to sit up, turned on the light, hit herself on the head with her palms.

– I’ll call him, she muttered, fumbling for her mobile in her bag.

– Hi, Liss, said Tormod Dahlstrøm.

– I’m sorry, she said.

– For what?

She didn’t know what to say.

– Waking you up in the middle of the night at the weekend.

He must have understood that she wasn’t calling to apologise yet again but said nothing, gave her time. She started by explaining how she had realised that the words Mailin was saying on the video were the name of this Hungarian psychiatrist.

– Sándor Ferenczi? Dahlstrøm exclaimed. – Strange that she should be saying that. I assume you’ve contacted the police.

Liss described both her interviews. That she had walked out during the first one.

– Something’s happening to me.

– Happening?

She took the plunge. – It used to happen a lot before. It’s a kind of attack. I don’t know whether I can describe it. The room around me suddenly becomes different, unreal. The light moves away, as though I’m not there, but at the same time everything is much more intense… Are you busy? Shall I call another time?

He reassured her that he had plenty of time.

– After I went to Amsterdam, it went away. No one there knew me. But then it began happening again. Just before Mailin went missing.

It was at the Café Alto, when Zako showed her the photograph. Tell him about it, Liss. Everything that happened. He can tell you what you should do.

At the last moment she changed her mind.

– Berger knew our father, she said quickly. – I think that’s why Mailin kept going to meet him.

She told him what Berger had said about their father.

– Mailin once mentioned to me that she hadn’t seen him for many years, Dahlstrøm observed. – Do you remember him?

Liss took a deep breath. – I remember almost nothing from my childhood. Isn’t that abnormal?

– There are great variations between how much we all remember.

– But to me it’s as though it’s been deleted, edited out. And then without warning something pops up.

Suddenly she began talking about the bedroom in Lørenskog. Mailin standing there in the dark, locking the door and creeping into bed beside her. The hammering on the door.

– Did she mention any of this to you?

– No, said Dahlstrøm. – We didn’t discuss our own possible traumas. I gathered that Mailin, like most of us, carried some kind of burden, and I did recommend that she go into therapy herself. She hadn’t got round to it, not yet.

He paused a moment before he said: – Tell me this about the bedroom again, in as much detail as you can.

Liss closed her eyes. Brought it back again. Mailin in the blue pyjamas, that could also be yellow, maybe several different episodes fused into one. Mailin with her arms around her. I’ll look after you, Liss. Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you.

– She said something else… Something about Mother.

Liss switched off the light, listened into the darkness. Somewhere out there Mailin’s voice came back to her: Don’t tell anyone about this, Liss. Not even Mum. She won’t be able to take it if she finds out.

31

ODD LØKKEMO TURNED in to the petrol station at Kløfta. The gauge was only just down into the red, the reserve tank capacious, eight litres at least, and it was less than forty kilometres home. But the mere thought of running out along the E6 in the January dark was enough to make him shiver. Walking along an icy hard shoulder for several kilometres with an empty petrol can in his hand. The likelihood of it happening wasn’t great, he argued, but then the consequences of it doing so were all the greater. He’d been turning these thoughts over in his mind ever since Minnesund.

He checked his mobile before getting out. No messages. He’d sent two to Elijah announcing that he was on his way. At the very least he deserved a reply. Though never explicitly stated, there was a tacit agreement that he keep out of the way until he received a message that it was okay to come home. It was always like that on days when Elijah was due at the studio in the evening. He had to have the whole house to himself. Couldn’t stand the sight of anyone, especially not Odd. After the broadcast, things changed completely. Then he was like a complaining child who could never get enough attention and Odd was the most important thing in the world to him.

But it was probably not only on account of this evening’s Taboo that Elijah wanted him out of the house that afternoon. Odd was certain he was expecting a visitor. The same visitor who had been there so often over the past few weeks. Once they had shared secrets like this, but now Elijah had become more and more cranky about them and wanted to keep them all to himself.

Odd pushed the button to pay at the counter. Didn’t like using the credit card pumps. Often the receipt was missing, and that left him standing there not knowing how much had been withdrawn from his account. At last a vibration in his pocket. He almost hung the diesel pistol back in its cradle at once but overcame the impulse and continued to follow the rolling display, how many litres, how many kroner, the figures creeping slowly up towards a full tank, sixty litres, so slowly that the pump was clearly faulty; all the same, he forced himself to wait for the click inside the pistol, and even then he first washed the diesel smell off his hands in the shabby toilet, which had no paper towels, and toilet roll strewn across the floor all the way over to the washbasin, and picked up copies of VG and Dagbladet and a packet of salt pastilles, and paid the teenage girl, who didn’t look at him once – overlooked, invisible; when did that happen, Odd, when did people stop even looking at you? Only then did he pull out the phone and read the message from Elijah. Sat there staring at it. Don’t come for another hour and a half. He fought against a desire to call him. Rage at him that he had no right to stop him coming home whenever he wanted. It was just as much his home. It was his apartment… No, he would never sink to the depths of reminding Elijah who it was who owned the apartment. Last time he tried it, a few years back, Elijah moved out, and he had to beg him to come back again.

Odd switched on the coupé light, flipped through Dagbladet. He didn’t want to sit there with the engine idling and it soon grew cold inside the car. He strolled over to the café and took a seat at the window. Looked at VG, which he had already read. He’d been out and bought a copy that morning along with some croissants, and burst in on Elijah with it, sat on the edge of his bed and woken him up by shouting the headlines at him: Berger to reveal killer tonight on Taboo?

Odd was used to the way Elijah attracted publicity. The Taboo series was the most successful thing he had ever done. Not artistically, of course, but in commercial terms. Elijah had always been prepared to do anything at all to create publicity around his name. But using Mailin Bjerke as bait for an audience hungry for sensation, surely that was going too far, even for him? Elijah wouldn’t hear a word of it. This is not bait. This is the real thing. Even you, Odd, who think you know everything that’s going on, even you’ll get a shock.

He refused to say any more.

The time was 7.20 when Odd turned down Løvenskiolds Street. Cruising round the block in search of a parking space, he passed Elijah’s car in Odins Street and noted that Elijah hadn’t used it this evening either. Must have been at least a week since he’d last driven it, a relief bearing in mind the state he was in these days. They’d discussed selling the BMW. Make do with Odd’s Peugeot. It means something when two people have one car, thought Odd. Especially at a time like this.

He let himself in. Peered into the hallway. The smell of fresh bread made him feel happy. He’d prepared the dough this morning before going out, leaving Elijah to put it in the oven. The fact that he’d remembered to do it even on a day like this was heartening. In the bathroom, water was trickling from one of the bath taps. He went in and turned it, not that it made any difference. Stood there a moment, listening. It was not often this quiet in the apartment. In some ways it was good to come home to silence. It showed a kind of respect, like the way Elijah had warned him and asked him to stay out of the way. So he didn’t surprise him with one of his young lovers. A necessity of life was Elijah’s usual excuse. What about me? Odd had asked not long ago. Your job isn’t to keep me alive, Odd, but to make sure I die with at least a minimum of dignity. Then he’d laughed, the way he always did when things threatened to get serious.

Odd opened the door into the living room. Elijah was sitting in his office chair in the flickering light of the screen saver from his computer, his head thrown backwards. The rest of the room was in darkness. The thin Japanese silk dressing gown had slid open, revealing his chest and his naked lower half. Odd sighed as he thought how he would have to call the studio and inform them that there wouldn’t be any show this evening after all. Felt relief at the realisation that this time Elijah had gone too far, raising expectations he couldn’t meet. It was going to be embarrassing and humiliating.

He crossed the floor and bent to stroke Elijah on the cheek. Only then did he notice the wide-open eyes, the gaze fixed not on him but on infinite emptiness.

32

IT HAD STARTED to rain by the time Roar Horvath parked his car further up Odins Street, and when he turned the corner, it struck him like a whip. He turned up the fur collar of his leather jacket.

The area in front of the entrance was cordoned off. A crowd of people thronged around the warning tape. A couple of TV cameras were present, journalists, but most of them were just curiosity-seekers who had heard the news of Berger’s death. It had been broadcast at 21.30, as his show was about to start. As Roar stepped over the tape, someone shouted: could he say anything about the cause of death? It wasn’t part of his job to talk to the press. and he carried on towards the door without turning round.

Five or six forensic specialists were at work up in the apartment. He was handed a pair of plastic shoe covers and shown the narrow channel in the corridor he could use to walk along. There were people working in every room he passed.

He looked into the living room. Berger was seated in the same office chair as he had been in when Roar had arrived to interview him nine days earlier. The chair had been pulled out into the room and turned round. On the desktop computer a screen saver displayed movement inside a stellar cluster that ended in an explosion before the whole thing started all over again. In front of the computer, just out of Berger’s reach, a tourniquet and a hypodermic syringe lay in a silver bowl. Inside the syringe was the residue of a milky white liquid and something that looked like blood. Berger was wearing a kimono. It was open – the belt lay next to the chair – and he was naked beneath it, his body collapsed like a sack containing some doughy substance, his organ hanging over the lip of the chair. It occurred to Roar that maybe it would be Jennifer who had to bend over this corpse and open it.

In the kitchen, he found Viken talking to the man who had let Roar in when he was there before. His name was Odd Løkkemo, Berger’s live-in partner and the owner of the flat. Roar nodded, indicating that he remembered him, but Løkkemo didn’t notice him.

– Let me just check I’ve got all this, said Viken. – You had been to Hamar to visit your sister and you got here a few minutes before seven thirty.

He turned his head, interrupting himself: – Horvath, can you get someone from the patrol to go and locate Berger’s car. It’s a BMW X3. Metallic black. It’s parked somewhere around the block here. He handed Roar a piece of paper with the registration number on. – Tell them to cordon off the area round the car. Forensics will fetch it as soon as one of them is free.

Roar went out into the corridor and left the apartment, following the channel shown to him. He hadn’t spoken to Viken since the encounter in the garage that morning. He’d had to think quickly to explain where he’d got his information from. Something in the detective chief inspector’s tone in the kitchen suggested to him that he had been exposed. – Alert, please, Roar, he muttered to himself. Level seven.

He passed the message about the car on to a constable who was standing by the outside door. Just then Jennifer appeared, stepping over the tape. She was wearing white overalls that looked a couple of sizes too big. He held the door for her.

– What have you got for me today? she said in a formal way and walked on by without waiting for an answer.

Once the street door had closed behind them Roar replied: – TV celebrity dead in his own home.

– Anyone watching TV tonight knows that.

Roar added: – Found an hour and a half ago with a used syringe next to him. Looks like heroin.

He followed her up the stairs. She was wearing the same perfume as usual, but had obviously given herself a double dose. He had never liked it, he realised.

Up in the kitchen, Viken had finished with Løkkemo. Jennifer put her head in, briefly greeted the detective chief superintendent before turning to Roar. He was looking the other way.

– I’ve checked with Hamar, said Viken, who seemed rather abrupt. – It looks as if it checks out, he did spend the day there. We’ll talk to him again tomorrow. I asked him to book in at a hotel for the night. He won’t get much peace here.

– He won’t get much out there either, Roar observed with a nod in the direction of the outer door. – The crocodiles are waiting to be fed.

Viken made a face. – Bon appétit.

Løkkemo’s skinny, bent figure slipped by them out into the corridor; they heard the click of the front door.

– Accident or suicide, Roar offered provisionally.

– Or someone was here and lent him a helping hand, Viken interrupted. – According to Løkkemo, Berger had someone here all afternoon. He showed me a text that appears to confirm that. Received a couple of hours before he arrived back.

In the car on the way over, Roar had managed to call Nydalen. – Berger sent his producer an email half an hour before he was found, he offered. – He asked to have a statement read out on TV.

He fished out his notebook and read the quote: – I have left and do not expect to return. Regret is futile, forgiveness meaningless. The end is the end. Afterwards – nothing.

– Is that all? Viken didn’t seem as interested as Roar had hoped.

– The same message was mailed to Dagbladet, VG, Aftenposten and NRK. It might be read as a sort of confession. I mean, he was planning to make this revelation live on TV.

– And you think this mail is what he was referring to? Viken growled. – The man lived and breathed publicity, and then he goes and kills himself and ends these Taboo shows with a tame fart of an email read out by someone else? He shook his head. – The people in charge of the programme tonight must have known what it was going to contain.

– Not a lot of joy there, Roar answered. – A couple of guests had been invited, but Berger was going to be running the show. He liked to improvise, didn’t want others deciding too much in advance. But the producer maintains that the guy was going to talk about his own death.

Viken stood up. – Anyone trying to persuade me that what we have here is the suicide of a repentant killer is going to have a pretty tough time of it, he said firmly. – You’d better go and talk to the neighbours, here and in the houses on either side. If Berger did have a visitor, one of them might have seen someone arriving or leaving.

He was on his way out when he seemed to change his mind and pulled the door closed. – One other thing, he said, looking directly at Roar. – It’s none of my business what you get up to when you’re not at work.

Roar glanced across at him, held his gaze.

– Who you shag is your own private business. But as long as we’re working as a team, we need to be able to trust each other. I’m sure you understand.

Roar could have pretended not to have any idea what Viken was talking about. But suddenly he felt an anger he hadn’t felt for a long time. And if he opened his mouth, there was a chance it would explode right in the detective chief inspector’s face. He decided to say nothing.

– When you say something to me about who you’ve been talking to, where you got your information from and so on, it has to fit with the facts. If that isn’t something I can take for granted, then it’s no use.

Viken left, closing the door behind him and leaving Roar to wonder just what it was that would be no use.

The neighbours weren’t much help. The elderly woman on the floor above had let her cat out and thought she might have heard a door slam. That would have been about 7.30, which fitted with when Odd Løkkemo said he came back home. Not surprisingly, most of those living in the same house on Løvenskiolds Street had plenty to say on the subject of Berger. Enough opinions there to enthuse the editor of the letters column in Aftenposten, but nothing of any value to the investigation.

By about 10.30, Roar was finished. He avoided going back to Berger’s apartment again, didn’t want to meet Jennifer, who would almost certainly still be working there. On his way to the car he came across a couple of forensic staff working on a black BMW that he knew had to be Berger’s.

He crossed the road. – Started already?

– A preliminary look. We’ll be taking it in for a thorough examination.

– Any titbits for a hungry investigator?

A slight grin. – What do you expect? A loaded gun? A bloodstained knife?

Roar grinned back, standing there in the rain, the memory of Viken’s outburst still fresh in his memory.

The forensics guy opened the boot. – We did find something. Don’t know how interesting it is.

He pulled away the felt mat covering the floor. There was a small object next to the seat back. Roar took out his torch and switched it on. Saw that it was a ring.

The forensics guy offered him a pair of plastic gloves. Once he’d got them on, Roar bent inside and picked it up, holding it in the light. It was a gold wedding ring, with an inscription.

– 30-5-51, he read. – Your Aage.

33

Friday 9 January

JENNIFER PLÅTERUD HAD lost count of the number of autopsies she’d carried out over the years. For several reasons she was certain that the one she was on her way to now would be one she would remember. She had finished her external examination of the body the evening before and taken the necessary blood samples, collected hairs from the head and body, sperm residue, saliva, and matter beneath the fingernails. She had called Leif and agreed on where the opening incisions should be made. Her assistant was a trusty old workhorse who always did what was asked of him, and when Jennifer switched on the light in the autopsy room at 7.14, she noted that the body cavities had been opened. The precise cut of a bonesaw had removed the skull cap, leaving the brain exposed.

She spent the first few minutes making a plan of work. Then she fetched pus bowls, test tubes and extra probes. The trainee arrived at 8.10. She was a single mother who needed a job with no exhausting night shifts, and her interest in forensic science was hardly passionate. Fortunately she was good with her hands and had a talent for finer surgery, which went some way towards making up for her lack of enthusiasm. But she also had a tendency to chatter, and with a poorly concealed pleasure at once remarked how dreadful it was that the enormous yellowing body that filled the steel table in front of them belonged to the man she had seen so many times on television that autumn.

– Does this body belong to anyone now? Jennifer responded with a touch of contempt. She couldn’t endure small talk while opening a body. The trainee took the hint and kept as quiet as she could.

Over the next few hours the two women worked in intense and deep concentration on the dissection of Elijah Berger’s body. The brain was detached from the medulla oblongata and removed and the surface closely examined without anything of note being found. As expected after the external examination there were no signs of trauma, no abnormalities in the blood vessels. Jennifer decided that it should be preserved in formaldehyde for further tests.

At about ten, Korn popped in. He had just got back from a long journey that same morning, and even though he had the weekend off, he’d driven directly from the airport to the institute after he’d heard the morning news bulletin.

Jennifer briefed him: no obvious signs of damage to the inner organs, findings thus far consistent with the cause of death that had been her first assumption: an overdose of heroin.

– I’ll be here for the rest of the day, Korn assured her. – The front desk is getting so many calls from the media, someone has to deal with them.

Jennifer was more than happy to have him around. Not that she had anything against talking to journalists. The problem was that she couldn’t say anything about what she knew, or what she thought. She bent down once more over the swollen belly and followed the blood vessels leading into the liver – it was as distended and fatty as one would expect in someone who cultivated an image as a substance abuser – to the place on the underside of it where she would make her cut to detach it. Just at the point where she put the tip of the scalpel, she discovered a swelling. It was as large as a golf ball, with a lumpy surface.

She took a break at a couple of minutes past eleven. Tried to get in touch with Viken to let him have a preliminary report. He had switched to voicemail. At the same moment her own phone rang. The number was unrecognised, and she didn’t have time to take the call but did so anyway.

– This is Ragnhild Bjerke… Mailin’s mother.

Jennifer was surprised she thought it necessary to add that information just a few days after her hour-long visit to the office.

– Of course, she said.

– I’ve seen the news. Ragnhild Bjerke was silent for a moment. – Is it true what they’re saying? That he might have killed her?

Jennifer breathed out heavily. – Well of course that’s something the investigators will have to…

– Do you believe it was him?

Ragnhild Bjerke’s voice was as toneless as before, but the fear lying just beneath it was even more noticeable over the phone.

– I wish I could give you an answer, but I have no grounds for making any assumptions about that. Jennifer felt the same helplessness as when they had spoken together last time. – I am sorry, she added.

– It was a relief to see you on Tuesday, Ragnhild Bjerke continued.

– You’re welcome to come back, Jennifer said. – Any time, if you think it’ll help.

– I’ve been thinking over what you asked me about.

Jennifer did a quick scan of their conversation. – Oh? she said, but with no idea what Ragnhild Bjerke was talking about.

– I lay awake thinking about it all that night. Of course I was worried at the time, when I had to spend nights away from home. Lasse drank. Later on I realised he must have been on drugs as well. He was more unstable than I gave you the impression of. He had these really huge mood swings. But he was so fond of the girls, I could never bring myself to believe that…

Jennifer looked at her watch. She still had a lot of work left to do, but she couldn’t end the call.

– Mailin never mentioned anything. But then I never asked straight out. And when I think back, perhaps she did say something after all. Once she wanted me to put a safety lock on their doors. One like she’d seen in a film on TV. Why didn’t I react to that and get her to tell me what she meant? And every time I had to spend the night away, she would behave in a funny way, despairing, but she never said anything, never cried, never protested. Thinking back on it now, I don’t understand how I could have left them alone like that. Trusted Lasse like I did. He’d been having those nightmares for a long time.

She fell silent.

– I don’t think you should blame yourself, said Jennifer. – You’re suffering enough as it is.

– Did I tell you that he knew Berger?

Jennifer didn’t know anything about that.

– They were hanging around with the same crowd at the time I met Lasse. Those were wild parties. But then that kind of thing is exciting when you’re a teenager and you’ve met an artist with a boundless faith in his own talent.

After the call, Jennifer tried Viken again, but still no luck. She decided to call Roar. It would give him the chance to invite her round on her way home that evening.

– Stuck in traffic, he groaned, sounding annoyed. – First off I sleep in big-time, then I get caught up in an accident at the Teisen junction. Should have been at a team meeting five minutes ago.

– Then you’ll probably get a ticking-off from Dad, she teased, though she had gathered that he was in no mood for jokes.

– It’s wild, he complained. – Reminds me of the Orderud case.

– We’ve been getting it here too, she consoled him. – If we didn’t have security guards, they would probably have broken into the autopsy room.

For an instant she imagined a horde of bellowing journalists pushing her up against the wall, and photographers sticking their cameras down into the belly of the half-autopsied corpse.

She sighed and suddenly felt a powerful need to talk about something else to him. Nevertheless she said: – Want to hear something from the autopsy? Berger had pancreatic cancer.

She heard an expulsion of breath at the other end. – Well that wasn’t what killed him.

– Of course not. The first results from the blood tests confirm the theory of a heroin overdose.

– But you’re saying he had a fatal condition?

– Exactly. I contacted Ullevål Hospital, spoke to the consultant who was treating him. The tumour was discovered more than six months ago. The hospital gave him three months, and in any event no more than six.

– Did Berger know this? Roar grunted.

– They were completely open about it with him. He’d accepted it, according to the doctor I spoke to.

– So he was waiting to die all the time he made those programmes? Wasn’t he receiving treatment?

– Only painkillers. And he was also treating himself, as you know. He actually expressed a preference for heroin over morphine.

As she ended the call, there was a knock on the office door. A young woman she recognised as a technician at the trace analysis unit put her head round.

– Something here we’d like you to look at, she said, waving a document.

Jennifer took it, unfolded it and sat studying it. After a while she raised her head to the technician, who was still standing there, and peered thoughtfully at her. She had asked about something or other, but Jennifer didn’t hear what it was. She took the receiver off the cradle, and the young woman, realising she wasn’t going to get an answer, disappeared, closing the door behind her.

34

FIVE MINUTES HAD passed since Roar hung up when Jennifer called again. There was still no movement in the queue of traffic, a few hundred metres from Teisen.

– Wish there was some way I could help you, she chirruped.

– Then send a helicopter.

She laughed, sounded as if she were in a good mood.

– I just got a test result delivered to my desk.

He had tried to explain to her that she mustn’t use him as a channel of information; it had already caused him enough trouble as things were. Before he could repeat his warning, she said: – The hairs we found on Mailin Bjerke turn out to be a quite rare form of mitochondrial DNA. It belongs to just one in ten of the population of Norway.

– Berger?

– He has the same variant.

Roar pressed his horn as a motorcyclist threading his way through the queue bumped into a side mirror with his elbow. When he’d finished swearing, he announced in an exasperated tone: – Jenny, you need to tell this to the head of the investigative team, not me.

– I’ve called Viken three times, he’s in a meeting and not answering.

The meeting I should’ve been at, Roar groaned to himself. It occurred to him he ought to hang up and make sure he heard the rest of what Jennifer had to say from Viken. But he couldn’t resist: – Of course that doesn’t make it anything like definite that the hairs come from Berger.

Jennifer confirmed this. – And one other thing, she went on.

The traffic seemed to be freeing up a little. Roar slid forward thirty metres before again coming to a halt.

– Another thing? He could hear how irritable he sounded. – Sorry, Jenny, I’m a bit stressed out here.

– That’s no wonder. You’re for the big stick when you eventually get there, Mihaly Horvath.

He didn’t like her using that name. – Let’s hear it.

– Liss Bjerke called last night.

– Again?

– She still insists she’ll only talk to me.

– Even though we got a female officer to carry out the interview, exactly as she wanted?

The inside lane began to creep forward and Roar swung over into it.

– Berger and her father were old drinking buddies, Jennifer told him.

– They were?

– Liss was at Berger’s on Wednesday. – He tried to put his arms around her and then muttered something about knowing what had happened to Mailin.

– And what was it that he knew?

– She didn’t find out. He was so stoned that she preferred to get out of the place.

Roar moved back into the outer lane. Jennifer had more news. This time about Mailin Bjerke’s mother. Something about how this poor harassed woman was most bothered about the missing wedding ring. And that they should check whether the phone lines were down in parts of Blindern on the evening Mailin went missing.

– Jenny, we don’t know that it was the evening of the eleventh she went missing, because we don’t have any witnesses who saw her that day.

Suddenly he gave a start. – What was that about the ring?

At one of the team’s first morning briefing sessions in December they had heard about a ring that had been removed from Mailin Bjerke’s finger. One of the others was supposed to have checked it out, but Roar had heard no more about it.

– If Mailin Bjerke wore a wedding ring, he said once Jenny had finished explaining, – there was presumably an engraving on it?

Just asking the question felt like casting a line into a lake in which there were hardly any fish at all. When he got the bite, he jumped:

– Your Aage, said Jennifer, and then gave him the date of the wedding.

He was through the junction at Teisen and the end of the queue was in sight when his phone rang yet again. He picked it up and read the display before tapping the answer button: – I’m stuck in a traffic jam, I slept in and haven’t eaten yet, I’m eighteen minutes late for an important meeting, I’ve got complications left, right and centre, so if this is bad news, please leave a message on my voicemail. Or preferably someone else’s voicemail.

– Nice to talk to you too, Dan-Levi replied. – You who always wanted to be where it was happening. Anybody that’s heard the news over the last twenty-four hours knows that you are in clover right now.

Finally the queue of cars started breaking up.

– I’ve given some thought to what you were asking me about at Klimt, his friend went on.

– Did I ask about something?

– About if thy eye offend thee, und so weiter. I’ve unearthed quite a bit of stuff about Berger. Baalzebub, for example. According to the Old Testament, it was the prophet Elijah who exposed that lord of the flies as an impotent god. Our Elijah, alias Berger, urges us in an interview to start worshipping these false gods again. Allow me to quote: I am not godless, but I must worship a god whom I can leave behind here, one I don’t run the risk of meeting on the other side.

– Does this story have a point, Roar groaned. Finally he was able to accelerate past the damaged car that stood pressed up against the crash barrier, its front smashed in.

– Be patient, Roar Horvath, and thou shalt see. Berger was obsessed by the idea of being a prophet. Not to preach the coming of the Messiah, but to rid us all of any belief in salvation. That is, an anti-prophet, in contrast to the Elijah he was named after. I’ve been looking at some of the lyrics he wrote when he was lead singer with his group Baalzebub. Interested?

– Cough it up.

– In the song ‘Revenge’, Berger tells a story from the Bible in which Elijah, God’s prophet, assembled the prophets of the false god Baal on Mount Carmel. Elijah challenged them to show that their god could make fire. When they couldn’t do it, he got God to perform the miracle. So people saw the difference between the true and the fraudulent, and Elijah took Baal’s prophets to a river and had them killed there, four hundred of them, in God’s name. According to Berger’s lyrics, Baal’s prophets return from hell and tear out Elijah’s eyes.

Roar gave a weary grunt, but Dan-Levi had no intention of stopping yet.

– In another song, ‘The Hell of the New Age’, he describes how he journeys to hell and releases billions of criminals, killers, child abusers and blasphemers and instead fills up the place with priests, lawyers, teachers and psychologists, all those who spread lies about the world we live in. And that is just the lyric we actually hear. Remember, the songs could be filled with hidden messages, sung so fast that we only pick them up subconsciously.

Roar thought this over. – Strong stuff, Dan-Levi, but I doubt whether the Old Testament and a few punk rock lyrics from the 1980s would stand up as evidence in the Oslo district courthouse.

He let Dan-Levi carry on for a while on the subject of biblical motives for murder. It seemed to lower his stress levels a bit. His friend was a good storyteller, and in Roar’s opinion he would have gone a lot further in life as a preacher or a courtroom lawyer than as a journalist.

– Say hello to Sara, he said before he finally ended the call. He felt a quick jolt of surprise afterwards; it was a long time since he had sent a greeting to his teenage love.

The meeting room was full when Roar let himself in some forty minutes late. He had to stand with his back against the wall next to the door. In addition to Viken, the five other main investigators were there, and several people from the forensics department. Even section leader Sigge Helgarsson had decided to attend. Roar consoled himself with the thought that he had hardly ever been late for a meeting before and so could expect to be cut some slack. As his father used to say: ‘Once is nothing, twice is a habit.’

Viken was holding forth on the subject of psychological profiling. Apparently these theories stemmed from a period he had spent working in England, and on several occasions he had given Roar examples of how knowledge of a perpetrator’s psychology could prove decisive in solving complex murder cases. Not many others in the department shared his interest, Roar had realised. Viken was in frequent touch with some retired psychologist in Manchester, supposedly a leading expert in the field, though neither his bosses nor his colleagues seemed particularly impressed by the fact.

– The psychological profile of Mailin Bjerke’s killer is strikingly similar to that in the Ylva Richter case, the detective chief inspector was saying.

He stood up, picked up a felt marker pen and made some notes on the board. – It appears that Ylva Richter was killed by someone who already knew her. Someone of about her own age, with a roughly similar background. He probably didn’t plan the murder but approached her in the first instance for some other reason, perhaps hoping for sexual contact. Things got out of control, possibly because he was rejected.

– What about the eyes?

– Punishment. Sadistic aggression. There may also be a symbolic element involved.

He glanced around the room, ignoring the new arrival. – The perpetrator will have undergone certain changes after the murder. If he was local, then he probably moved away, at least for a while. New surroundings, job, school. As for his background, it is not unlikely that he has himself been the victim of serious violence or sexual assault.

– And therein lies the motive? asked Sigge Helgarsson.

The section leader was just a few years older than Roar, a pale, thin Icelander who looked as if he suffered from chronic lack of sleep. According to Viken, he was having trouble combining the duties of leadership with family life.

The detective chief inspector nodded slowly a couple of times as though he had been waiting for the question and was glad someone had finally asked it. – The motive behind a murder such as this is always complex. Let’s recapitulate: Mailin Bjerke hides away a printout concerning the Ylva Richter case. Immediately afterwards, she is murdered. Jim Harris might have seen something that had to do with the abduction or the murder. Berger goes public in VG and implies that he knows what happened to Mailin. Before he can reveal what this is, he too has gone to the great beyond. Naturally we can’t rule out the possibility that these events are unconnected, but there is a much greater possibility that what we’re dealing with here is a person who has killed four times, possibly even more than that.

Roar struggled to control an impulse to interrupt. He had long wanted to be in a position like this, be the one who came up with the decisive bit of information, the kind of thing that could turn a case around and lead to a breakthrough. I’ve spoken to Jennifer Plåterud… He could imagine Viken’s reaction when he gave the source of his information, and for once it was enough to quell his ambition to be the smartest kid in the class. But he couldn’t resist the temptation to at least say something.

– We do know that Mailin Bjerke had certain information about Berger, that she’d talked about revealing this live on Taboo.

Everyone turned to look at him. Viken said: – Before you arrived, we managed to discuss the possibility that Berger took his own life, or that he took an accidental overdose. We’ve also looked at the possibility that he felt threatened by something Mailin Bjerke knew about him. In other words, that a man who made a living out of having a bad reputation might suddenly get cold feet because one more corpse was added to the pile. But if you have something interesting to add to the point, Horvath, then we’re dying to hear it.

If not, then please shut up, Roar concluded in his thoughts, regretting profoundly that he hadn’t put a sock in it. He’d had less than four hours’ sleep and knew that his critical faculties were suffering. But with the eyes of the whole gathering on him he decided to go ahead anyway and say something.

– Elijah Frelsøi, aka Berger, was named after the prophet Elijah, he began, and realised immediately that he had started down a ski jump that was way too steep. – The guy was completely obsessed by prophesies… and he apparently believed we should worship false gods, like Baalzebub for example, also known as the lord of the flies.

Roar felt like a ski-jumper who had made his effort too early and got caught in a crosswind and what’s more had forgotten to fasten his boots on. Attempting to land feet first, he reeled off something about the prophet Elijah killing the four hundred false prophets, and how these four hundred, in Berger’s version of the story, came back and tore out the prophet’s eyes. He also made a quick reference to the gospel of Matthew, or was it Mark: if thy eye offend thee, tear it out. Dan-Levi’s exegesis might possibly have had a speck of interest in it, but in Roar’s version that speck was impossible to find. He stood there knowing where the ring found in Berger’s car came from, about the DNA match and Berger’s possible attempt to tell the dead woman’s sister that he knew what had happened. Very shortly the whole gathering would know this too, but not from him. He held three aces, or at least two aces and a jack, and all he could show was a two of clubs, and no one, least of all himself, had any idea what they could do with it.

– Thank you, Horvath, Viken said, interrupting. – All that’s missing here is that the descendants of Jesus Christ turn up in Oslo pursued by a six-foot-six albino contract killer. As it happens, not unlike Berger.

The laughter that ensued was the best thing Roar could have hoped for. The kind of laughter that dissolved the tension when things got a bit too fraught in a difficult case. And Viken seemed more than happy to have had just such an opportunity handed to him on a platter. Even Flatland’s stony face cracked up. A couple of minutes later, when the meeting ended, the bony, angular technician gave Roar a nudge in the ribs on the way out.

– From now on I’m going to call you da Vinci, he announced, turning away, no doubt so that he could savour his grin alone.

35

Monday 12 January

ROAR PARKED JUST beyond the church. There was still another half-hour before the funeral was due to start, but already the crowds were packed outside the church door. Women in muted colours, men in shades of dark grey and black. He had used the occasion as an opportunity to buy himself a new suit. It was charcoal grey, with a thin white stripe. He walked down between the graves and stopped at the edge of the crowd of people.

A few minutes later, Viken showed up. He caught sight of Roar, standing there fiddling with his phone, looking as if he was texting.

– Well there you see, he said measuredly as Roar walked across to him, and it wasn’t immediately clear what he meant. It was the first time the two of them had been alone together since the conversation in Berger’s kitchen. It had occurred several times to Roar to visit the detective chief inspector in his office and explain why he had lied about his source that morning in the garage, but the mere thought of talking to Viken about Jennifer Plåterud was enough to put him off the idea. Anyway, the feeling that he had anything to confess was in itself ridiculous He pulled himself together, called for a full alert and reminded himself that he was thirty-four years old, not sixteen.

Just then she arrived. He made a face and looked the other way, heard the sound of her stilettos on the asphalt. He ought to have known Jennifer would turn up. For some reason or other she’d got close to both Liss Bjerke and her mother. When he turned, she was standing there, a quick blink of the eyes that was possibly intended to express surprise at the sight of him wearing a suit. Roar was familiar with her views on the lack of style of Norwegian men. As for Viken, well, he was probably an exception; he would have been voted best-dressed detective chief inspector on the force if any such competition existed.

– Working lunch? Jennifer said quietly.

– For us, not for you, the detective chief inspector responded.

Roar looked at her with a gaze that revealed absolutely nothing. Had he known he would end up trapped between Jennifer and Viken, he would have found some excuse to give the funeral a miss. The evening before, she had called and hinted that she might be able to pop round and see him. He told her that Emily was staying with him, that he had to get up long before the sun to get his daughter off to kindergarten in the morning, and that he was on his way to bed already. Jennifer took the hint.

Roar had been to Lørenskog church a number of times before, most recently when his nephew was christened there a couple of years previously. The church was from the twelfth century, a simple lime-washed building with south-facing windows and glass that filtered the light, coloured it and dropped it at an angle down into the nave, which was now packed with mourners.

They managed to squeeze in on the second row from the back. Crowds of people stood at the rear by the door and out in the porch, some unable to get in at all. The nave was decorated with more floral tributes then Roar Horvath could ever remember having seen at a funeral before. The white coffin was covered, as were the altar and the whole of the aisle.

He felt the pressure from Jennifer’s thigh. She was sitting between him and Viken. The detective chief inspector’s gaze swept around the nave. Not for one moment had he thought the case was solved. Roar had expected that finding the ring would make him change direction, but when they went through the latest information on Friday afternoon, Viken had declined to be impressed. He pointed out that Berger received a steady stream of visitors, and that the TV celebrity had been almost continually stoned over the past few weeks. That someone might have planted Mailin Bjerke’s ring in his car was not only conceivable, it was downright probable according to him. That this same person could have got hold of a tuft of hair from Berger’s flat and placed it at the scene of the crime was equally likely.

– A touch far-fetched perhaps, section head Helgarsson had objected at the afternoon briefing.

– Far-fetched? Viken expostulated. – That someone might wish to divert suspicion, or for some reason be looking for a way to take revenge on the man? He wasn’t exactly loved by one and all.

Helgarsson had attended the meeting with a view to finding out how many officers he could transfer from the Mailin case to other duties. At the press conference immediately prior to the meeting, he had been careless enough to express the view that they now had evidence that undoubtedly implicated the late Berger with the murder of Mailin Bjerke. This was of course self-evident; no one could seriously doubt that Berger had something or other to do with the crime. For the newspapers, however, what Helgarsson said was more or less the same as announcing that the case had been solved. And if that later turned out not to be so, then no desk editor was going to lose any sleep over it. Helgarsson’s statement was more than enough reason for them to use the whole front page to announce that Berger was presumed to be the killer.

It didn’t worry Viken, it would give them peace to work in for a while, but within the department he argued fiercely against the talk-show host being the man they had been looking for. He used the same arguments as he had on the Friday, before the latest information became available, and it might have been the case that he appeared more certain in his views than he really was as a way of preventing resources being taken off the case. Whichever it was, Helgarsson didn’t gamble on opposing him, but he did make it clear that they had only a limited amount of time at their disposal before he would be looking at the question again.

Roar leaned a little to one side in order to study those sitting on the front pew. Some of them he was able to recognise from behind. The stepfather closest to the aisle. After Jennifer had called him when he was stuck in traffic near Teisen, Roar had contacted Oslo University. No one there knew anything about problems with the telephone lines on 11 December.

Next to the stepfather was a woman with a thick neck and stooped shoulders. Mailin’s mother, Roar guessed. Next to her again he noted Liss’s long reddish hair, and then Viljam Vogt-Nielsen, sitting motionless with head bowed. He appeared to have done all he could to assist in the inquiry without being overly enthusiastic about it. To Roar he seemed genuinely crushed by the loss of the woman he’d lived with, and he had alibis for most of the relevant times they were interested in. But it was obvious that Viken was by no means finished with him.

Judging by his speech, the priest had known Mailin for a good many years. He described her as the personification of goodness: warm, considerate of others, not least those who wandered the darkest roads. One of those wanderers had threatened her, thought Roar. Perhaps more than one. The work of making a list of her patients hadn’t got far. Mailin’s supervisor had been able to help them sort out which of the young men had ended up participating in her study. One had died of an overdose; another had been admitted to the spinal unit at Sunnaas Hospital after a traffic accident a year earlier. The other five had got in touch with the police on the advice of the supervisor, and it didn’t look as though any of them could be connected to the murder. But the social security office had records for only a few of her remaining patients. Mailin’s computer, with all her journal notes, had never materialised, and no backup had been located either. With the permission of the chief county medical officer, they had eventually gained access to the filing cabinet she shared with her colleagues in Welhavens Street. It contained a few drafts for her doctoral thesis, but no journals.

As it happened, Mailin’s two psychologist colleagues were sitting a couple of rows in front of Roar, over by the wall. He’d noticed them on the way into the church, hand in hand. Initially Torunn Gabrielsen had lied in order to give her partner an alibi for the evening of 11 December. Facing accusations of an extensive benefits fraud, Pål Øvreby had finally changed his story, though the prostitute he claimed to have spent several hours with had still not been traced. He had given them a first name, a hotel room in Skipper Street and, for some unknown reason, the girl’s age. She was apparently at least seventeen.

The coffin was raised and carried down the central aisle. At the front was Viljam, with Mailin’s stepfather on the other side. Behind them three young men, almost certainly relatives, held the other handles. They had still not heard from the biological father, despite making extensive efforts to get in touch with him.

Roar recognised the last of the pallbearers as Mailin’s supervisor, because Tormod Dahlstrøm was one of those media psychiatrists who had an opinion on everything from marital breakdowns to the catastrophe in Darfur. Behind the coffin Liss and her mother walked side by side, Liss almost a head taller. She was looking at the floor in front of her. Then others gradually joined the procession. Elderly people, children, adults. Roar recognised a couple of faces from Lillestrøm and, well back in the escort, a very promising top-flight footballer. It struck him that Mailin Bjerke was the type who brought all kinds of people together, and though he had never met her, he could feel the grief in the church streaming through him.

Outside, the sun was making tiny fractures in the cloud cover. The coffin was placed in the back of the hearse. Several hundred people were gathered in silence around it. Closest was the stepfather, standing with his arms around Mailin’s mother, Liss a metre away from them with Viljam. In a tree nearby, a bird that Roar identified as a great tit began to sing. It was pretending spring had already come.

As the hearse started to move away, the mother pulled herself free and ran after it. Roar heard her shout something that must have been her daughter’s name. She caught up with the hearse and it stopped. She tried to open the rear door. The stepfather and a couple of others arrived and took her by the arm, but she held on tight to the handle. Her shouted cry had turned into a long-drawn-out wordless scream. It reminded Roar of Emily, waking up alone in the dark.

They stood there with their arms round Ragnhild Bjerke for a long time before she released her hold on the car, and it continued on its slow journey out through the gates and down the old main road.

I’M STILL SITTING in the room you just left. The dust has settled back-down on the living-room floor, but outside the wind is rising. All the things I would have told you if you hadn’t run out of here. But you had no reason to stay. Maybe you were afraid of me too, of what I might do to you. You owe me nothing. But I must finish writing this, not because I need to confess, but because this story needs to be told.

After I stopped Jo that evening he was about to walk out into the waves, I took him away from the beach with me. His parents were drunk all the time and completely irresponsible. He had no one to care for him. I took him back to my apartment. He was freezing and I made him take a shower. Aren’t you going to shower too? he asked. He was twelve years old, Liss, and I know he bore no responsibility for what happened.

Afterwards I got him to tell his story. There had been an incident with this girl, the one called Ylva, and something to do with a cat. He was mad about this Ylva, and furious because she’d gone off with another boy. I spoke to him about it for a long time. I promised to help him. Sooner or later, Ylva would be his, I had to swear it. When he left my apartment later that night, I felt certain that he wouldn’t make another attempt to drown himself. And that became a turning point for me. That he should survive. Not just that particular holiday trip, but afterwards too. So I had to see him again, I knew it that morning when I saw him boarding the bus for the return flight to Oslo…

Naturally that wasn’t the only reason. I wandered through this waste land, still felt parched. It was thirst that drove me to see him again. It was forbidden. But it saved me. A few drops of water are all I need, I said to myself, and Jo needed it as much. He was happy when we were together. But he never forgot what I had said to him about the girl he met in Crete. He was always reminding me of my promise, that I would show him how to get her, teach him what he needed to know. Ylva was the princess and Jo the prince who would steal her heart away. Even though he was about fourteen years old by now, the game went on. In the same way as the pact was a game. It’s the kind of thing you can say to a child: rather die than tell someone else the secrets we share. We sealed this secret and holy pact with blood from small cuts made on the palms of our hands. And his childish enthusiasm made me feel once again a touch of forgotten joy; it was these drops that reminded me there is water out there somewhere in that waste land through which I wandered.

Did I fail to understand how damaged he was? Not even when he told me how he could turn into someone else, a person who stood in a dark cellar hitting out wildly with a sledgehammer. Did I not understand that these games with which we amused ourselves were, for him, something very much more than games? That they became the stories around which his life revolved, that they kept everything in motion? Did I not even understand years later, when I saw the reports of a young woman found dead outside Bergen? Did I not react when I saw her name?