Death By Water

1

Friday 16 January

VILJAM GOT BACK at about two. Liss sat in the living room looking out the window, the notebook in her lap. She heard him tidying up in the fridge, squashing empty plastic bags in under the sink. Then his footsteps across the floor and down the stairs.

– I’m making a stew. Are you eating here today?

She shrugged. – The footballer has asked me out.

– Isn’t it about time you started using his name? Viljam asked with a little smile, it caused her to look for the sort of feeling Mailin must have felt when she saw him smile like that. Something intense, joy or sadness.

He put a piece of paper on the table beside her. – Maybe he’ll just give up if you carry on pretending you don’t give a shit about him.

She picked up the paper, a notification that a parcel had arrived for her from Amsterdam. Don’t go and collect it, she heard herself think. Since the funeral, she had almost managed to keep what had happened that night in Bloemstraat out of her thoughts. But it didn’t take more than a package in the post for it all to come back to her. She had thrown away the letter from Zako’s father, though she could still remember word for word some of the things written in it. You’ve got to tidy things up, Liss. That’s what Mailin would have said. Tidy up and move on. Had Mailin been there, she could have told her where to move on to.

– Is it the post office up on Carl Berners Place? she asked.

– Correct. I can pick it up for you if you like. Have to get some exercise before I go off to work.

He stood leaning against the banisters, maybe expecting her to say something more.

– Viljam, I’ve been sleeping here almost every night since Christmas. It wasn’t the plan.

He straightened up, looked at her. – It helps having you here. Would have been even more awful without you.

She almost gave in to an urge to get up and hug him. Get as close to Mailin as she could.

He popped back in again half an hour later and handed her an A4-size package. She left it lying on the kitchen worktop, drifted out on to the steps and lit a cigarette. Consumed it slowly as she watched the darkness settle over the rooftops. Wondered whether to throw the package away unopened. I’ll never go back there again, she thought. Must send Rikke a message, tell her to stop forwarding mail. Ask her to give my clothes away to the Salvation Army. The DVDs and the armchair she can keep.

The package contained two letters from the school, a late payment reminder and a couple of other bills. And a reply from a modelling agency. Wim had promised to try to get something organised with them. For once he might not have been bluffing. She tore the letter to pieces without reading it and dug down to a package at the bottom of the pile. On the outside of it her name had been written with a blue magic marker. She recognised Mailin’s small, sloping handwriting. The padded envelope was postmarked 10 December, the day before she went missing. Liss struggled to open it, her hand was shaking and she couldn’t get her fingers under the flap, had to fetch a knife from the drawer.

There was a CD case inside. A small note was attached to it: I said on the phone that everything was all right, but it isn’t. Look after this CD carefully for me. Will explain later. Trust you, Liss. Big hug. Mailin.

By the time she got up from the kitchen table, it was dark. She hurried up the stairs and into Viljam and Mailin’s room. She switched on the computer on the table by the window, stood there pinching her lower lip hard as she waited for it to boot up.

There were two documents on the CD: Liss opened the first, entitled Patient Example 8: Jo and Jacket. It ran to several pages and was in the form of an interview.

Therapist: Last time you were talking about a holiday trip to Crete. You were twelve years old. Something happened there, something that made an impression on you.

Patient: It was that girl. Her and her family were in the apartment next door. She liked me. Wanted us to get together. She wanted me to do all sorts of things.

T: What things?

(Long pause)

P: For example that about the cat. Wanted me to torture a cat. It only had one eye, and I felt sorry for it, but Ylva wanted us to catch it and torture it.

T: She made you do things you didn’t really want to do?

P: (nods) And when I said stop, we mustn’t do this, she got the others to gang up on me.

T: What about the grown-ups, didn’t they notice what was going on?

P: They were only interested in themselves. Apart from one.

T: The one you mentioned last time, the one you called Jacket?

P: He was the one who wanted me to call him Jacket. That’s what they called him when he was my age. His father ran a clothes shop. Gents’ outfitters was what he called it. He didn’t want me to call him anything else. Later on, of course, I found out what his real name was. Maybe I already knew it that first time. I mean, I’d seen his picture in the papers.

T: He was well known?

(Pause)

P: Jacket read something to me. A poem in English. Which he translated. About a Phoenician lying drowned at the bottom of the sea. Handsome young man, strong and muscular. Now all that was left was a few bones. ‘Death by Water’ it was called. Later on we read it together.

T: You had many conversations with him?

P: He kept showing up. Seemed to be there when I needed him. Don’t you believe me? Think I’m making this up?

T: I believe you.

P: I was very low. Had made up my mind to disappear. Walked out on to the beach in the dark. Took off my clothes and was on my way out to the water. Was going to swim far out until I couldn’t swim any more… Then he appeared out of the shadows. Been sitting in a chair, looking out. It was as if he’d been waiting for me. ‘Hey, Joe,’ he said, like in that Jimi Hendrix record, that was what he used to say when he saw me. Without me having told anyone, he knew what I was going to do. He made me think about other things. Took me up to his room. We sat there talking most of the night.

(Pause)

T: Did anything else happen?

P: Such as?

T: Last time you hinted that something had happened between you and this man, something…

P (angry): It’s not like you think. Jacket saved me. I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair now if it hadn’t been for him. You’re trying to get me to say that he abused me.

T: I want you to say what happened in your own words, not mine.

(Pause)

P: It was cold. He let me shower in his room. Afterwards he towelled me dry. Put me in the bed… Lay beside me. Kept me warm.

T: You felt that he was looking after you.

P: More than that. When I got back to Norway…

(Pause)

T: You met him again in Norway.

P: He showed up one day, that same autumn. Outside school. We went for a long drive. Stopped and walked along the beach. He liked me. Everything I said and did was okay.

T: And after that?

P: I met him again. Went to his house, spent a whole weekend there. Several times, as it happens.

T: And your parents, did they know about this?

P: This was between Jacket and me. We made a pact. It was holy. What we did together was nobody’s business but ours. He helped me in all sorts of ways.

T: What did he help you with?

(Pause)

P: For example he showed me what to do with Ylva next time I met her.

T: Ylva? The girl you met in Crete?

P: I don’t want to talk about that any more.

Liss read the rest of what was presumably the transcript from a therapy session. It was so detailed it might have been recorded on tape and then transcribed. She opened the second document. It was called En route and consisted of commentaries on a whole series of conversations. She scrolled down through it. Beneath a heading Patient Example 8 Mailin had added:

Therapy concluded after fourth session. Obviously cannot be used in the study. Delete interview or keep it anyway?

Her phone rang. Liss saw that it was Jomar. She’d promised to get in touch before six, she recalled, and now it was half past.

– I’ve booked a table, he said secretively, – and I’m not telling you where.

She was still deep in Mailin’s world of thought. Reading through the document, she had heard her sister’s voice asking the patient questions. Mailin cared about him and wanted to help, but she hadn’t pressured him.

– We have to be there by eight.

– Okay, Liss answered, pulling herself together. – Do I have to wear an evening gown?

She heard him laugh at the other end. – Well they do have one star in the Michelin catalogue, but they’re not that fussy about attire. He added: – As you know, I have a jacket you can borrow. It’s so big you don’t need to have anything on underneath it.

Liss ejected the CD from the computer, put it back in its case, and opened her notebook.

The name of the eighth patient is Jo.

She thought for a few moments before continuing:

Dahlstrøm said you ended up with seven patients in your study, but in the draft outline I found in the office you wrote that there were eight young men. Didn’t Dahlstrøm say something about patients who had themselves become abusers were not to be part of it?

Mailin could have kept the CD in a safe place if she was afraid the information might end up in the wrong hands.

Why did you send it to me? What do you want me to do, Mailin?

Again she read the note taped to the CD case: Trust you, Liss.

You were due to meet Berger before Taboo was broadcast. You heard that he had committed offences. Does that have anything to do with the CD? Is Berger the person known as Jacket?

Did you talk to him about Father?

She had to show the CD to someone. Did Jennifer have a duty of confidentiality, or did she have to tell the police everything she found out? Liss visualised her handing the CD over to the detective chief inspector she had met that day at the police station… Trust you, Liss. Mailin trusted her. And why should the police be told about her patients now the investigation was over?

She put the CD back inside the envelope, took it up into the room she was borrowing, wedged it under the mattress. Made up her mind to talk to Dahlstrøm about it all. Visit him at his home again, maybe even do it tomorrow. He would know what she ought to do with this CD, if it was the right thing to hand it over to the police. And she had another reason for wanting to see him. Was already walking around discussing it with him in her thoughts.

She wandered back into Mailin’s room, opened the wardrobe in search of something to wear. Found a lacy blouse she would never have chosen herself in a shop. Lace suited Mailin, but not her. But tonight this was exactly the blouse she wanted to wear. And underwear Mailin had maybe been saving for a special occasion, because the price tag hadn’t even been removed. It was black and smooth and transparent. She put it on and looked at herself in the mirror beside the bed. The fasteners for the bra were at the front for easy opening, but of course it was too large, and she unfastened it and let it slip to the floor.

It was a long time since she had felt the thrill of seeing herself in a mirror wearing nothing but a string. Knowing that someone else would be seeing her standing like that in a few hours’ time… Berger’s voice: I know what happened, Liss. The words came tumbling through her and she had to sit down. The day after the funeral, Jennifer had rung. Liss asked her if it was true what the papers were saying, that Berger had killed Mailin. And not only her, but Jim Harris, who had seen something that day. Jennifer couldn’t tell her what they had found, but Liss gathered that the police now had evidence.

She couldn’t rid herself of the thought of that last visit to Berger, the smell of him as he squeezed himself against her. In the notebook she wrote: I will find your grave. Every night I will go there and push the stone over and trample down everything that grows there.

2

LISS WAS DRESSED, had put on her makeup and was on her way out when she received a text message. She froze halfway down the steps. The name of the sender was like an ill omen, and she didn’t breathe normally again until she had read it through.

Judith van Ravens sent her condolences. She had been reading the papers and thinking a lot about Liss and how she must be feeling, she wrote, though Liss didn’t find that particularly credible. A relief that the crime had now been solved, she went on. She was about to travel back to the Netherlands and wanted to get rid of the pictures she had kept. She was sending them now to Liss, so that she could decide whether to delete them or use them in some way. If necessary, Judith van Ravens was still prepared to make a statement to the police, she claimed, even though what she had to say had no bearing on the case.

Liss had her finger on the delete button, but changed her mind. Maybe these were the last pictures to be taken of Mailin. And even though they would perhaps remind her of the person who had asked to have them taken, she felt she had to keep them.

She opened the file, stood in front of the mirror in the hallway as the pictures were downloaded, slowly combing out her still-wet hair. It was the first time for several days, and each time the brush stuck, she had to tug so hard it sent shock waves across her scalp.

The figure of Mailin appeared on the screen as she exited the main entrance on Welhavens Street. Liss scrolled down to one of the close-ups, taken at a tram stop. Her sister was standing gazing upwards somewhere over the rooftops, as if she was looking for the source of the light. Liss had seen these pictures once before, on Zako’s mobile. She had a thought. Not so much a thought, more like a rush through the head. She scrolled back to the picture of Mailin in the gateway. On the next picture a figure appeared behind her; on the one after, he was standing beside her on the pavement. Liss’s arm sank down. In the mirror she saw her own eyes, the pupils so huge she could have disappeared into them.

Sometime later, he rang again. She was still sitting on the floor of the hallway. The ringing sound woke her from her trance.

– Has something happened?

– Yes, she said.

– When are you coming? I’ve been waiting three quarters of an hour.

– I’m not coming.

She didn’t feel the slightest trace of disappointment. He had said he had met Mailin only briefly. He had lied to her. People told lies almost all the time. Herself too, when necessary. Jomar Vindheim was no worse and no better than anyone else.

– You were at Mailin’s office. Two weeks or so before she went missing.

He didn’t answer.

– You’ve been there several times. You knew her.

If he’d spoken now, she could have ended the call and switched off her phone. But his silence provoked her. She could feel how the anger took possession of her, alarming because she didn’t know where it came from. She started calling him things she had no reason to. Accused him of being wicked, calculating, and stupid enough to think he could fool her. The whole thing took off and she lost control completely. Everything that had been bottled up, that she hadn’t realised she had suppressed. Somewhere deep in her thoughts, remote from the rage that swept over her in ever larger waves, was a hope that he would hang up so that he wouldn’t have to stand there and have all this shit pouring over him. But he didn’t hang up.

It petered out, like cramp after a physical effort. Presently she was able to compartmentalise her anger, divide it up into portions small enough to be choked back. Finally she sat there, trembling on some kind of brink, the first feeling to come to her would overwhelm her totally, whether it was the anger flaring up again, or the grief that would take hold of her. Only this time it would never let go again.

– I’m sorry, said Jomar.

The first thing that came to her was laughter. Started in her stomach and throat, then took possession of her whole body. There was no mirth in it. Just another expression of what raged inside her. She saw herself lying there in the hallway, skirt in a twist around her waist, her crotch showing behind some flimsy material, the make-up that must be running across the vacant gaze.

– It was stupid of me, he said, trying again, having heard the result of his previous effort. – I can explain.

And that was a quote too. Maybe it wasn’t possible to say anything that wasn’t a quote, she thought as she lay there.

– You don’t need to explain.

He ignored her. – I didn’t mean to lie to you, but you never asked, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. Maybe it was embarrassing. And once I hadn’t said anything the first time, it became impossible to talk about it later.

He sounded genuinely sorry. Enough for her to let him finish what he was saying.

– I had a few appointments with her a couple of years ago, when she gave those lectures at the sports academy. Things weren’t too good for me. Some family stuff. I saw her about four or five times. She helped me, I…

– Get to the point, if there is one.

– When we finished that time, we agreed that I could get in touch later if I needed to. And a couple of months ago I found I needed someone to talk to. I went there twice. Was due to go a third time but then all this happened.

– I’ve got to hang up, she said.

– Are you coming here?

– No.

– Then we can go to my place instead, I’ll fix us something to eat.

The suggestion prodded at her smouldering anger. – It won’t work, she said as calmly as she could.

– What won’t work?

– You and me.

He was silent. Then he said:

– I want you to know what happened to me after I met you. Can we meet to talk about that?

She got up from the floor. – I have to go away for a few days. Get out of town.

– Tonight? The cabin you mentioned?

She didn’t answer.

– Can we meet when you get back?

She hung up.

3

HEAVY, WET SNOW had been falling all day. The motorway was slippery and Liss had to force herself to keep her speed down even though there was very little traffic. Driving slowly made her restless, and she clipped a headset on, connected her iPod and clicked forward to some electronica she used to like. After a couple of minutes the music got on her nerves and she tossed the player on to the passenger seat.

She had created an image of Jomar Vindheim. Fooled herself into thinking he was someone who spoke his mind and kept his word. Someone who was always straight with her. Who didn’t lie. Who wasn’t like her.

She turned off the E6. The road up into the forest was even more treacherous; she had to choose second gear on the hills, but she didn’t mind driving slowly now. The calm of the cabin at Morr Water was already reaching out to her. Fields and copses slid by in the dark, snow-clad, still… The fact that Jomar had known Mailin and been her patient changed how she thought of him. She could have found out more about what he was hiding, got things under control. Or she could have said even worse things to him on the phone, made sure that he couldn’t stand the thought of ever seeing her again. She could have told him she had killed someone.

The snowploughs had cleared the forest track from the parking place at Bysetermosan up to Vangen. But when she came to the turn-off for the summer path, she had to get out her snowshoes. The snow that had fallen during the day was drier and lighter than down in town, and beneath it was a layer of crusty snow. She began making her way into the forest. Stopped and listened. Mailin would have a grave where Liss could light candles and leave roses in a jar. But here was where she would come to feel close to her sister.

She had to use a snowshoe to brush the snow away from the outhouse door. Got out a spade, dug a path to the veranda and cleared the cabin door. It was good to feel the sweat running down her back. Good to do the things that had to be done whenever she was at the cabin. Get the stove and the open fire going, tread a path down to the water, drop the bucket into the channel in the ice below the rock. Once she’d returned with the water, she undressed and ran outside again naked, rubbed herself with snow, lay down on the ice-cold blanket, rolled around a few times, lay there on her back until she felt numb and the pain of the cold was beginning to spread from her legs and up into her back.

Afterwards she rubbed herself hard with a terry towel until patches of red appeared on her pale skin, spent a few minutes jumping and dancing around on the living-room floor before sinking down into the chair in front of the open fire. Sat there for some time, looking into the flames.

You were the one who taught me that, Mailin, how to make warmth inside your own body. Not wait for someone else to come along and make it for you.

There were a few blank pages still left in the notebook.

Everything I’ve written here is addressed to you.

Again she had the strange thought that somehow or other her sister was able to read it. As though the little notebook were the threshold to the place where Mailin was. In minute detail she began to describe the night in Bloemstraat. Everything that had happened. Everything she’d done.

When she was finished, she fetched the bottle of red wine she’d shoved into her rucksack and took two wine glasses from the cupboard. It was only after she’d looked through the kitchen drawer that she realised the corkscrew was missing. She’d noticed it was gone that evening before Christmas, but had forgotten to bring along a new one.

It wasn’t like Mailin to remove things from the cabin. At the foot of the second-last page of the book she wrote:

Remember, corkscrew is missing.

She carried the paraffin lamp over to the bookshelf to find a book. Choose one she’d already read, one she could fall asleep to before reaching page five. The row of books bulged slightly in the middle, Mailin was usually careful to adjust the spines so that they stood in a straight line. She had a way of going round the cabin and making minor adjustments to things. Getting Liss to tidy away things she’d just thrown aside, arranging the little glass figurines on the mantelpiece in a symmetrical pattern. Mailin liked to create order but didn’t let herself get irritated by other people’s chaos.

Liss pulled out a crime novel she had yawned her way through at some point in the past, tossed it on to the sofa and put both hands against the spines of the books to push them into line. They didn’t move. Determined to carry out this small correction in Mailin’s own spirit, she removed the six or seven books that were sticking out. Something lay at the back, blocking them. One of the books had obviously fallen down. It was unbound and not very thick. Liss took hold of the cover and fished it out, held it up in the light of the paraffin lamp from the table.

Sándor Ferenczi, she read. The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi.

4

ROAR HORVATH PUT his foot down in the overtaking lane. Between the lanes, a ridge left by a snowplough threatened to pull the car sideways. He dropped his speed and regained control of the wheel.

The news was over and he switched to the CD player. There was an old Pink Floyd album on the desk and he turned it up full volume. It was Friday evening and he had been at the office since early that morning. The last few nights he had slept very badly. At work he had been going through every single interview with witnesses in the Mailin case for a second time. He felt like a marathon runner who crosses the line and is then ordered to run it all over again. He had counted on following up the work done in Bergen and getting in touch with Mailin Bjerke’s closest relatives again. That he had instead been put to the task of reading documents seemed like a demotion rather than anything else. He was tempted to ask Viken straight out if there was any connection with the little deception he’d been guilty of that morning in the garage.

His mobile rang. Roar turned off the music and fumbled for his hands-free, then remembered he’d left it lying on his office desk. He clamped the phone against his ear with his shoulder.

– Hello, this is Anne Sofie.

He quickly scanned the list of women he was on first-name terms with but found no Anne Sofie. Ylva Richter’s mother wasn’t on that list, but he was quickly able to identify who he was talking to from the polished Bergen accent.

He said that it was nice to hear her voice again, something it hadn’t seemed natural to say to her husband when he had spoken to him earlier in the week. He had been checking to see if there was a possible connection with Berger, asked if their daughter had ever spoken of the celebrity or been especially interested in his music.

– Thank you, likewise, Anne Sofie Richter replied, and the dolly-sweet voice conjured up an image of her face in his mind. As though covered in wax; that was the impression he’d had when he visited them.

– My husband and I have talked a lot about what you called him about last Monday. We can’t remember that Ylva was ever interested in that television person.

Roar adjusted the mobile, which had slipped out of position. – Did she own any of his records?

– Not that we know of.

Anne Sofie Richter was silent for a few moments before continuing. – I did send you that list of the activities Ylva was involved in at school and in her spare time.

– We’re very grateful for that, Roar assured her. – We’ve certainly found it useful, in some ways.

– But did you find anything there?

He was negotiating a narrow bend in the Store Ringvei; the road was slippery and a Nor-Cargo trailer laid itself up tight against his side. Had he been with the traffic police, he would probably have stopped the guy and given him a hefty fine. On the other hand, he wasn’t driving strictly by the book himself either, not with his back hunched and holding a mobile phone between his ear and his shoulder.

– I’m afraid I can’t comment on that at the moment.

– There’s one other thing I remembered.

He was entering the tunnel at Bryn and didn’t hear so well.

– I don’t think it’s of any importance… he made out before he had to drop his speed to get daylight between himself and the trailer.

– Importance?

She carried on talking. The sound from the Nor-Cargo monster echoing along the tunnel walls was like a brass band from hell.

– Everything is important, he yelled to Anne Sofie Richter. – Just one moment. He dropped the phone and took the turn-off directly after the tunnel, pulled into a layby and switched on his warning light.

– Everything is important, he repeated. – I’d like to hear what you have to say.

It took a couple of seconds for her voice to return at the other end.

– Something happened once. It was so long ago I didn’t write it down on the list I sent you.

– How long ago?

– In the late summer of 1996. Or early autumn. We were on a week’s holiday in Greece.

Roar grabbed a pen and an envelope from the glove compartment.

– How do you spell that? So that’s Ma-kri-gialos. On Crete. What happened?

– One evening when we went back to our apartment after a meal out, we found a kitten. Someone had hung it on a rope that was tied to our door. One side of its head was completely crushed. And then the eyes… It was unpleasant, the boys were small. We didn’t sleep very well after that. My husband reported it, but you know, the police down there weren’t exactly…

Dead cat, Roar had noted. Hanging from the door.

– Of course I realise this can’t have any connection with what happened later, but you did mention holidays and so on and unpleasant experiences.

– What did you say about the eyes?

– It was my husband who saw it, I couldn’t bear to look at the poor creature. But apparently both eyes were cut to pieces.

Roar started tapping his pen against the envelope. – Now tell me everything you remember about that episode. Absolutely everything.

– I’ve just told you all there was.

– What about Ylva?

– She was furious. We had a cat of our own in those days. And then she said something…

When Anne Sofie Richter didn’t say any more, Roar urged her to continue: – Then she said something?

– It was something about one of the boys there. Someone her own age. She thought he was odd and did all she could to avoid him. I don’t know what it was about, but as soon as she heard about that cat, Ylva said she knew who had done it. We asked her about it, and that’s when she said this about that boy. But it was just something she believed, she hadn’t seen or heard anything. He was in the apartment next to ours. A terrible family that got drunk and made scenes and left the kids to fend for themselves. I’ve never seen anything worse, not anywhere…

– Can you remember the boy’s name?

– It was something short, like Roy or Bo.

– And the family, can you remember anything more about them?

She couldn’t, and he assured her that it wasn’t surprising after more than twelve years.

– But I spoke to my husband and he thought he might remember. You know how it is, when people stand out from the crowd in that sort of way, some kind of nasty association attaches itself to the family name. We tend to remember them better than other people.

There was no more room on the envelope. Roar found a parking ticket in the door pocket and scribbled down suggestions for the surname Ylva Richter’s father had offered. For almost half a minute after the end of the conversation he sat staring at one of them in particular. Then he picked up his mobile again and began a directory search.

5

A WIND HAD got up. Liss had been sitting for a long time staring into the fire. An hour, maybe more. The fire had gone out, but it was so warm in the little room that she didn’t feel the need to put on more logs.

The embers changed all the time, a brilliant orange that gave way to black, then glowed up again. A picture appeared, she didn’t know if it was a memory. They’re sitting like this in front of the fire, Mailin and her, one on each knee. There’s a little man standing between the logs. It was her father’s voice. A gnome? Yes, a tiny little humpy-backed one. He keeps puffing and blowing on the embers, because once they go out, he’ll be gone for ever.

She picked up the wine bottle again, tried to force the cork down into the neck. Gave up and went out into the kitchen, climbed up on a chair and found a couple of miniatures at the back of the top cupboard. One was vodka, the other egg liqueur, half full. She had never liked vodka but transferred the tiny amount into a glass. The taste was nauseating, but it felt good as it etched its way down her throat and into her stomach. Afterwards she dug her bag of food out of the rucksack. A packet of crispbread, an apple; she couldn’t stand anything on the crispbread. Leaned against the kitchen surface and ate, washed it down with the rest of the vodka. Listened to the sound of the rye as it broke and was crushed between her teeth, and the wind that periodically tried to make its way down the chimney.

Suddenly she began to doubt what it was she had actually found in the book hidden at the back of the shelf. She fetched it and settled down once again in the chair in front of the fireplace. On the back cover were a few lines about the author. Sándor Ferenczi had struggled against professional hypocrisy. Then something about him being sensitive and self-critical. Liss flipped through it for the fourth or fifth time. No underlining or notes in the margin. It looked almost as if the book was a recent purchase. Mailin had brought it with her to read here.

She came to that page somewhere near the middle in which a few letters had been written in the space below the print. She lifted the lamp and again studied the sloped handwriting: Ylva and Jo. The letters were smudged, probably written with charcoal from the fire. Suddenly she had an image of her sister’s dead body in the Chapel of Rest at the Riks Hospital. The pale, waxy skin, the wrinkled hands, the thumb and index finger of the right hand blackened with soot. That was what had happened: Mailin had been sitting in this same seat that day, just before she was murdered. She’d picked up a piece of charcoal from the fireplace… Liss turned the page. There was the rest of what her sister had scrawled: Ylva Richter and Johannes Viljam Vogt-N.

With a sharp blow she smashed the neck of the wine bottle against the rim of the sink. Sacrificing one of her T-shirts, she stretched it over the jug and filtered the wine through it, the tiny splinters of glass catching in the burgundy stain. She drained the first glass in one. Took the second back to the fireside with her, picked up the notebook.

Is Viljam’s full name Johannes Viljam?

Ylva and Jo.

She recalled that the name Ylva was mentioned in the interview with the eighth patient.

Is Viljam the person you call Jo in the CD?

Then Viljam must have been your patient. Why has he never said anything about that?

Ylva Richter.

The name seemed familiar to her, but she couldn’t think why. Was it something she’d read? Or someone Mailin knew?

Why did you write her name in the book you brought with you? Why did you have to write it in charcoal and hide it on the bookcase? Why was the name of the author of this book the last thing you said as you lay there in that factory? Why did you have to leave in such a rush you didn’t have time to clear out the fireplace? Why did you go to meet Berger, Mailin? You must have known it was dangerous. You’re not like me, you’re always careful about where you go.

She sat for a while, staring at the gnome fighting to stay alive in the embers.

Was Viljam your patient before you became a couple?

Searches for help. Is met with passion. But you were going to marry him.

Ask Viljam about that.

Was he the eighth patient? Was that what you were going to reveal on Taboo that evening? Jo and Jacket?

If Jacket was Berger and Viljam was Jo… Viljam looks for tenderness and protection. Exploited by a bastard. Damn that Berger. He’s with the Devil now.

Abruptly she stood up, so angry she couldn’t sit still any more.

Who is Ylva Richter? Is she someone Viljam’s been seeing?

She took out her mobile. For once she wished she could pick up a signal there. Not to call the police, that could wait. This was something she had to ask Viljam about. Get some answers about what was going on here. Mailin had helped Viljam. Because she couldn’t have just used him. Mailin was goodness itself. Liss drained the rest of the wine glass. The thought of that goodness awoke something in her too, something similar. She made up her mind: she would speak to Viljam at once, this evening. Find out if this was true about him and Mailin. Walk up Kringlesåsen and pick up a signal there and call him. Stand up there in the dark and tell him what she’d found out. That she knew how much pain he had suffered.

She shrugged on a jacket and pulled down the snowshoes from the shelf above the door. She had killed a human being. But she felt Mailin’s goodness in her. Stronger than all the bad things Liss had done.

6

ROAR PUT THE bowl with the remainder of yesterday’s tomato soup into the microwave. He found two hard-boiled eggs in the fridge. He peeled one and ate it. For a second he thought of ringing Viken immediately but dropped the idea for the time being. If the phone call he was waiting for gave him the answer he expected, then he would have an ace up his sleeve, and one that he had come by on his own. The embarrassment of the briefing the previous week was still fresh in his mind. This time he would make sure he played his cards right.

The microwave pinged; he took out the bowl, cut up the other egg and dropped the pieces into it. For some reason, the sight of the white boats bobbing in the grainy orange soup made him think of something that had been bothering him for several weeks now. He had promised his mother he would call in and drive her out to the cemetery, help her get rid of the burnt-out remains of the Christmas Eve memorial candles and generally tidy up around the grave. She was more than fit enough to do it by herself, but it was obviously important to her that they do the job together.

His phone rang. He swallowed down a half-chewed slice of egg before answering.

– This is Arne Vogt-Nielsen here. I’ve checked that thing you asked me to.

– Great, said Roar encouragingly as he picked up his pen and notebook and pushed the piping-hot soup to one side.

– You asked about a holiday in Greece. Autumn of 1996. That’s correct, I did take the family to Crete that year. Usually we went to Cyprus, a couple of times Turkey. The kids enjoyed it best there, in Alanya, and a hell of a good hotel.

Roar wasn’t interested in Turkish seaside resorts. – Whereabouts in Crete?

– Place called Makrigialos. Not too bad, but a hell of a drive in from the airport, you know how it is, fifty degrees inside the bus, all those winding roads, with the kids all whining and the mums all grumpy from being up since the crack of dawn…

He made a smacking noise with his lips at the other end.

– And this was in September 1996?

– Check, departure on the seventh, back on the fourteenth according to the receipt from my following year’s tax return.

Roar resisted the temptation to ask why this trip had shown up on the man’s income tax form.

– Can you remember if anything special happened on that holiday? He was in a hurry now and added: – Something about a cat?

– Christ, yeah. You don’t forget something like that. We head off a few thousand kilometres for a nice family week away from home and end up with the world’s most difficult neighbours.

In vain Roar tried to interrupt the tirade that followed on the subject of people from Bergen who thought they owned the place wherever they happened to be.

– The bloke being a lawyer didn’t make matters any better. I had to take him down three or four pegs. He came bursting in on us demanding to know if it was Jo who had killed that cat and hung it on their door. I kicked him out. The next day I asked Jo about it, and he said he thought it was that idiot’s daughter who had done it and was trying to pin the blame on him.

Again he made a sound with his lips as though he were sucking on a boiled sweet.

– But now tell me what it is you’re really after. Because obviously you’re not ringing about a cat that got killed in Crete. You’re with the Oslo police, isn’t that what you said? Or did I get that wrong? Did you say you were with the RSPCA?

Suddenly Roar wondered whether he had misunderstood. – You said Jo? We are talking about your son Viljam, aren’t we?

– That’s right. We’ve always called him Jo. He’s named Johannes Viljam after me. My name’s Arne Johannes.

– But now he calls himself Viljam.

A few strangled cries came from the other end, which Roar did not immediately identify as the sound of Vogt-Nielsen laughing.

– That lad’s always been a one-off. When he became a teenager he decided he was going to call me Arne. He got this idea that I wasn’t his real father. Some kids play the most fantastic games. Of course, he didn’t really mean it. But when he left home after finishing secondary school, he insisted on being addressed as Viljam. Claimed he wouldn’t even answer people who still called him Jo.

– So he left home early?

– That’s right. Autumn 2003. After he left school, he messed about round here for quite a while before he settled down. I mean, he couldn’t spend the rest of his life lying in bed, so I took him in hand, got him moving, made sure he got his driving licence and helped him get himself a car. Then I sent him off to look for places to study. He’s always been a bright lad, and his school-leaving certificate was bloody brilliant, give him his due.

– He travelled about, you say… Was he in Bergen?

– He might have been. He wanted to study somewhere far away from home. It was best for everybody, it seemed to us. Finally he ended up in Oslo studying law. But now you tell me what this is all about, otherwise this conversation is over.

Viken got into the passenger seat. – The emergency response unit will be ready in five minutes. We’ll follow them.

– Armed? Roar asked.

– We’re talking about someone who’s killed three or possibly four times.

Roar drove out through the gates of Oslo police station and drew up alongside the pavement.

– You doubted the partner’s explanation from the very start, he said, not averse to confirming that Viken had got it right all along.

The detective chief inspector accepted the veiled praise without visible response. – Can we be sure the father won’t call him? he wanted to know.

– I repeated it to him three times, Roar replied as he turned off the engine. – I’m certain he understood. What’s more, he hasn’t had any contact with Viljam for a long time.

– In other words, not exactly the best of father-son relationships.

– Probably not. It seems that for a number of years before leaving home, Viljam denied that Vogt-Nielsen was his real father.

Viken glanced across at Roar. – When did he move out?

– Just before Christmas 2003. The family lives in Tønsberg. Viljam was going to study in Oslo.

– Ergo he left directly after Ylva Richter was murdered.

Sleet began falling again. The wind wafted the wet flakes against the windscreen and Roar turned on the wipers. Viken repeated what the psychological profiling had said about Ylva Richter’s killer: someone her own age from a similar sort of background, a person who made changes in his life after committing the act.

– I questioned the father closely about the time when Ylva was murdered, said Roar. – He remembered that Viljam got his driving licence that autumn. He was given money towards a car and spent a lot of time driving round in it.

– To among other places Bergen, Viken observed with a glance at his watch. – We’ve got five men with us. This is not some holed-up shooter we’re going to arrest. But if the man gets cornered, then anything might happen.

– He might have a weapon.

– I’m guessing he doesn’t. But that’s enough guessing.

As two cars came flying through the gates, Roar started his engine. Passing through Grønland he said: – You’re right about making changes. Not only did he leave home and want nothing more to do with his family, he changed his name too.

Viken turned towards him. – But it is still Vogt-Nielsen?

Roar explained how Viljam had refused to answer to the name of Jo after he moved away.

– Exactly, Viken exclaimed, as if this was what he had been expecting to hear. – He changes his name too immediately after killing Ylva. Anything else on the family?

Roar repeated what Anne Sofie Richter had told him about them.

– The father seemed very keen to let me know that Viljam has two younger siblings who still live at home and who are doing very well indeed. It sounds as though the mother is in a nursing home.

– Really? She can’t be all that old.

– I didn’t have time to get any more detail.

– Of course not. You’ve used the time well, Roar. A solid day’s work. Top marks.

He grinned at his own irony, but Roar noticed how pleased he was. He wrenched the wheel down hard as a cyclist came skidding down off the slippery pavement.

– Bloody hell, he shouted. – If people really want to kill themselves, then leave me out of it.

– Berger’s part in all this is very unclear, said Viken, sounding as though he hadn’t even noticed the near-accident.

Roar accelerated and went through a red light to keep pace with the two squad cars.

– Maybe his own version is the correct one, he suggested. – Could be Mailin wanted to talk to him about some of the practical details of the programme.

– And the connection between Berger and Viljam Vogt-Nielsen?

– Viljam wanted it to look as though Berger was the killer. He goes to see him, takes away a few strands of hair and plants the wedding ring in his car.

– To do all that, he must have known him pretty well.

– Either that or he began the relationship with Berger after he’d killed Mailin.

Roar thought his own arguments were convincing. – Once Berger realised what was going on, he didn’t have enough to go to the police with, so he decided to reveal the killer’s name live on air.

Viken looked to be weighing this up. – If there’s anything else there, we’re going to need Viljam Vogt-Nielsen’s help in digging it up.

The two squad cars parked one on each side of the house. Roar pulled up on to the kerb a little further up the narrow road. They could just make out the shapes of officers splitting up as they surrounded the building. The clock on the dashboard said 11.16. A minute later, Roar heard Viken receive a message on his headset.

– They’re going in, he said in a low voice.

Two of the uniformed figures were on their way up the steps. They disappeared into the house.

– The door was unlocked, Viken observed.

That means arrest, thought Roar. It wasn’t too unlikely that the inspector would want him present at the interrogation. Viken was known to be particularly good at getting confessions.

At 11.32, the door was thrown open wide.

– We’re on, said Viken as he stepped out into the driving snow.

– Have they got him? Roar asked when he caught up with him.

Viken put a hand over his headset, listened. – No one home. Call the father again. Get him to tell you whether he warned his son after all.

As Roar entered the hallway, Viken was coming down the stairs. – The lights are on all over the house. The computer, and the coffee machine. And as you heard, the door was unlocked. What did the father say?

– He swore he hasn’t been in touch with Viljam.

Viken carried on down into the living room, checked the French windows. – Locked from the inside. If we can believe the father, it looks as though Vogt-Nielsen has just popped out on an errand. There’s not much chance anyone else could have warned him.

He stood there looking out at the patch of garden.

– We’ll check that tool shed straight away.

– He’s hardly likely to have hidden anything in there, Roar objected. – The guy’s not stupid.

Viken dropped his head very slightly. – I want to see what tools we don’t find in the shed. If there’s anything the owner of the house can tell us is missing. A sledgehammer, for example.

7

THE LAST OF the embers in the fireplace had gone out. The little gnome is gone forever, thought Liss. Maybe she said it as well, quietly, to herself. She checked the empty jug she had filtered the red wine into. The vodka too was gone. Even the half-bottle of egg liqueur. She needed more to drink. Needed to disappear into something, because she was still not tired… Could see nothing through the window of the room, but the wind had gained in strength – she could hear it in the chimney, it had started howling down to her – and she could feel that it was still snowing. Again the thought that it wouldn’t stop snowing, that the whole cabin would get snowed up. That she wouldn’t be found until they dug a way in. Or come spring, when it all melted. She would still be sitting in this same chair in front of the fire, in the same position. Her heart frozen, all the currents flowing through her body stilled, her thoughts stopped in mid-motion.

She picked up the notebook again. Viljam needed you, Mailin. You wanted to make everything right again. That’s why you were with him. You crossed a boundary. You shouldn’t have done that. But you did it to help him.

Viljam had seemed relieved when she rang.

He’s glad that I know what happened with Jacket. Viljam had you, Mailin. Johannes Viljam. Now he has no one. But how can I ever help anyone? I’ve killed a person. That’s who I am.

Suddenly she got up, took down the album of old photographs, turned to the portrait of her grandmother. Elisabeth, that was her name. The eyes in the black-and-white picture were more intense than her own. She might have been anything between forty and fifty when it was taken. Had travelled twice as far as Liss into this impossible life.

Elisabeth got stuck. Tried to pull herself free. Never managed it. Elisabeth became Liss. Someone has to carry the darknesson, Mailin. You’ve always shed light all around you. I spread darkness. Everything I touch freezes.

She had to pee, tottered out unsteadily in her boots, pulled a jacket over her shoulders. Didn’t bother taking the torch. Could find her way around here blindfolded. The wind buffeted her as she rounded the corner. Tiny grains of ice that jabbed at her eyes and forced her to keep them closed. They melted against her skin and ran down her cheeks. She heard something, listened out. As though the wind had gone off with her steps and now threw the sounds of them back at her. She carried on, high-stepping through the deep snow, unhooked the latch on the outside toilet, fumbled her way to the closet, lifted the lid and sat down on the cold surface. The wet blast raced through the toilet, penetrating deep inside her.

Afterwards she stood still again for a long time, listening. The wind and that sound that wasn’t wind, approaching from somewhere close by. Not my footsteps in the snow, she thought. These footsteps are coming from behind. Two arms locked around her. It was as though she had been expecting it. She jerked in an attempt to free herself. One of the arms let go. At that instant, pain flaring down her throat. Like being bitten by a snake. It burnt, and the warmth spread out into her shoulder and chest.

– Stand still, he whispered in her ear. – Stand still and it’ll be all right.

She lay slumped on her back on the sofa. Imagined how the snow had forced its way into the room. She wasn’t cold. The blanket of snow wrapped around her was warm.

He was standing in the centre of the room, his back turned; must have put more wood on the fire because it was burning again. Without moving her leaden head, she followed his outline with her eyes. From the waist and up to the hair that hung dark and wet on the shoulders.

She managed to open her mouth, tried to find out what she had to do for her lips to shape sounds, things that could turn into words.

– What… have you done to me.

The echo of her words came rolling back at her. He didn’t turn round.

– A shot. It’ll do you good. You’ll feel good.

Viljam, she tried to say, Johannes Viljam, Jo. We’ll have a good time. Together.

She opened her eyes as far as she was able. Cold now. Dark in the room. Just a few glowing embers left in the fireplace. Couldn’t see him but knew he was there. Heard the sound of his breathing.

Her hands held fast in some way. Fastened together. She was lying in a corner of the sofa, naked. Her mouth felt swollen.

– Viljam.

She heard a noise from over by the table. That was where he was sitting. Still wearing his outdoor jacket, she could make out, the hood pulled down over the head now.

– I’m cold, she managed to say.

– It’s better to be cold. Things don’t hurt as much then. The cold is an anaesthetic.

The tone of his voice was different. Not different, but something that had been faintly present in it before was stronger now.

– Why did you give me that shot?

He turned towards her. – I like being together best this way. Calm and easy.

He tossed something on to the mantelpiece.

– I see from your call list that you haven’t rung anybody but me this evening. We’ve got plenty of time.

– Can you take off these handcuffs?

He made a clucking sound with his tongue. – This is the way it is now, he said, and sounded saddened. – You’d best get used to it. The way Mailin had to.

She closed her eyes. Still she managed to keep the thought at bay. The thought that it wasn’t Berger who had killed Mailin.

– You called me that morning. After she went missing. I could hear how upset you were.

He stood up, crossed the floor and stopped in front of her. She could just make out the lines of his jaw, the shadowed eye sockets.

– She shouldn’t have gone prying into that business with Ylva.

Liss twisted round. – Ylva? Is that someone you’re having a relationship with?

He shrugged his shoulders. – Used to have.

– Did Mailin find out?

– Yes, she did.

He stepped towards the fireplace, turned an almost unburnt log over and made it flare up again.

– There was an article about an unsolved murder in one of the magazines she subscribed to. It was only when she read about it that she began to see the connection. Before she was due to come out here that day, she sat searching on the net. Logged off when she heard me come home. Deleted the history. But I was able to restore it while she was in the bathroom. A load of old stuff about Ylva. She was reading it behind my back.

Liss struggled to compose her slowly drifting thoughts, couldn’t relate them to what Viljam was standing there and saying.

– It had been more than two years since I’d said anything about Ylva. That was during the first sessions in the office in Welhavens Street. And she still had her notes from those days on the CD, even though she’d promised to delete them. Delete everything that was said about Jacket.

Finally Liss got it: the printout she had found inside the sofa cover. The girl in Bergen was Ylva. There was something about her in the newspapers years ago. She’d been murdered.

– You were at work the day Mailin went missing, she whispered, because it still seemed possible that these thoughts did not belong together. – And then at home with my mother and Tage.

He came closer again.

– That’s what you think. What everyone thinks. But when she was supposed to be coming out here, the day before, she went to the post office to deposit some money. I followed. Waited for her in the car. She could have run off when she saw me there, but she got in. She had a whole pile of printouts about Ylva and what happened that time in Bergen in her bag. I’d interrupted her when I came home, and now she’d been to the post office and continued searching on the net. That’s why I came out here with her. I was with her when she was in pain.

– Was it here? Liss managed to say.

– Was what here?

– That you stabbed her in the eyes with a syringe.

– Not a syringe. The corkscrew. I had to screw it in.

He bent over her, his eyes just about visible. Liss’s body felt too heavy for her to move.

– Is that what you’re going to do to me?

He didn’t answer.

– Don’t you want me to see you?

– Shut up, he said, startling her. That new tone in his voice was darker now, pushing the familiar one away. She tried to put together something to say. Something that could stop what was about to happen, make it change direction.

– But Mailin left here again. She didn’t go missing until the next evening.

He laughed briefly. She didn’t see it, but she could hear the muted clucking sounds.

– Think it over while I make a quick trip to the shed. It wouldn’t surprise me if you worked it out. You know, you’re not all that slow. Just a shame you never learned how to use it.

She heard him open the outside door.

Is that when you wrote it in the book, Mailin, while he was out in the shed? You managed to get over to the fireplace and pick up a piece of charcoal. Maybe you couldn’t even see.

The stuff he’d injected her with came surging back, retreated, surged inwards again. Each time she became more and more sleepy. Let yourself flow on these waves, don’t want anything any more. I’ll look after you. An image appears in the darkness, Mailin naked and bound. She’s bleeding from the eyes. It mustn’t happen to you, Liss.

She rocked over on her side, got to her feet. The chair was still next to the kitchen cupboard. With one foot she managed to push it over towards the work surface, climbed up on to it. Wriggled upright back first. Turned so that the window latch caught under the handcuffs and then gave a jerk. The latch snapped off. She couldn’t reach as high as the upper latch with her hands. She stretched up, bit round it and snapped like a fish taking bait. Pulled it halfway open. Another bite and it was loose and she flipped it free with her tongue.

The window was frozen. She pressed her full weight against it, but it didn’t move. She leaned back and butted as hard as she could and it flew open.

She didn’t feel the coldness of the snow on her bare feet. Not the outhouse, Liss! You’ve got to take the other direction, away from the cabin. She ran from the veranda, part of the way down towards the lake, hid behind a tree, climbed again, up in the direction of the cliff, the wind blew the fresh snow away there, the hill would be firmer underfoot, if she could get up there, she could run. She dragged herself over a snowdrift, fell and couldn’t break her fall. Something ran down into her eyes; she rubbed her face in the snow, darkening it where she rubbed. Sank down and crawled on. Maybe what she was hearing were footsteps in the snow. She lay still without moving, listening into the wind. Then she crawled on, another metre up the slope, then another, rolled up over the edge and on to the top of the cliff.

He stood leaning against the pine trunk in front of her. Tutted in mock sadness when she tried to get to her feet.

– Oh Liss. I did try to tell you.

He bent down to her. An axe in his hand. – You’re not going anywhere without me, he whispered. – Not until I say so.

8

SHE WAS SWEPT into the warm doze as though by a tidal wave. That was where she heard the voice. It was no longer Mailin’s. It was her father who had made his way through the snowdrift to tell her something.

This place is yours, Liss. Yours and Mailin’s.

But it’s you who owns the cabin.

He stands by the window looking out.

From now on, you two are the owners. I have to go away.

Odd way to say it. Not like when he’s going to Berlin or Amsterdam. Be gone a few weeks and come back home with presents for her.

He sits on the edge of the bed. Strokes her hair. He doesn’t usually do that. Usually stares at her for a long time with a strange smile. But he never touches her.

Why do you have to go away?

He says nothing for a long time. Finally shakes his head slowly.

You’re the one I’ll miss, Liss. We’re the same, you and I. Nothing anyone can do about it.

Viljam had lit the paraffin lamp. He had put the axe down on the edge of the fireplace and was standing there reading her notebook. Everything she’d written to Mailin. She couldn’t bear to think about what he had done to her. Only that he had let her grow cold. Liss was cold too, huddled up in a corner of the sofa. She wasn’t angry with him. He’d given her another shot. The good pain was tightly packed around her.

– Jacket stopped you when you were going to swim out and die, she tried to say. Could feel her voice full of thick sauce. – He saved you.

Viljam didn’t look up from the notebook, turned over a few pages, seemed engrossed in what she had written.

– You needed someone to hold you. But he used you.

Abruptly he tossed the book aside and loomed over her. – Where do you get that from?

She couldn’t lift her hands to defend herself.

– Did she send you anything else? Have you got more CDs? If you’ve hidden anything, then…

It took a few seconds for her to understand what he was talking about.

– There was only one. The one I told you about when I called.

He straightened up again.

– Why didn’t you want anyone to know about Jacket? she groaned. – He was the one who did things to you. You were innocent.

– You understand fuck-all, so don’t talk about it.

He laughed. As suddenly, he was serious again.

– He took a helluva chance letting me come to him. He could have lost everything, ended up in jail, been stoned, ostracised, strung up. Do you understand? He took that chance so that I could be with him. How many are there who care so much that they’ll risk everything just to be with some fucking kid?

– I understand that, she murmured.

He picked up the notebook again, sat in the chair by the fireplace and carried on reading.

She pulled herself up from the sofa, struggled across the floor and into the light from the paraffin lamp. Stood naked in front of him, hands cuffed behind her back so tightly that the pain flashed from her wrists down into her fingertips.

– You killed someone, he said without looking up.

First time she’d heard someone else say those words. But as things stood, it meant nothing at all.

– Everything written there is true, she heard herself reply.

– And now you’re going to offer to keep your mouth shut if I let you walk out of here.

The thought hadn’t occurred to her.

– I can’t let you go, he said. – I came out last time you were here. Had to find out if you knew anything. I could let you go then, but not now. I won’t fool you into believing that. I’ll be honest with you. You’ll never leave here again.

He tossed the notebook into the fire. – Do you realise that?

Liss saw the way a tiny flame began to wrap itself around the red plush cover.

– It wasn’t because of that business with Ylva that I couldn’t let Mailin live, he said tonelessly. – Jo and Jacket swore an oath. Death before anyone else knew about them.

Alongside the burning notebook Liss saw the remains of a book cover. Sándor Ferenczi, she read. The inside was a roll of flaking ash.

– Mailin found out about it, she murmured.

– She never gave up, Viljam interjected. – Kept asking and asking who Jacket was.

Liss tried to hold on to some of the thoughts that were seeping away into the distance, somewhere far from the room she was in, far from the smoke from the fireplace, from the dust and the cold wooden walls, all the smells that would remain behind after her and Mailin, after her father, who once stood by her bed and said he was going away, after his mother, who had sought refuge here before the world came and brought her in.

– Mailin realised that Jacket was Berger.

Viljam looked at her for a few moments. – That’s what happened, he answered.

– He was going to expose you on Taboo. He was going to break the pact.

Viljam shook his head. – I was at Berger’s house every day after Mailin… went missing. Finally he realised what had happened to her. He even wanted to talk about that in front of the camera. He was certain he had me where he wanted me. I got him to believe that I would appear on his programme and confess. We sat and planned it together. Shock TV. He looked forward to it like a kid. Pity to have to deprive him of that enjoyment.

The high she was on was utterly unlike anything Liss had ever experienced before. – You’re fucked up, Viljam, she snuffled. – You’re a fucked-up piece of shit.

Distantly she realised that this was what he had been waiting for, that she would make him angry. He leapt up, forced her down on to the chair by her hair. At the corner of the fireplace was a coil of rope, he twisted it around her waist, tightened it across her breasts and knotted it behind the back of the chair. He made a noose out of the loose end and put it over her head.

– You’re no different from any of them, he growled. – Won’t be missing you.

She started to cough. – Mailin did everything she could to help you, she managed to say. – Mailin looked after you.

He snorted. – She tricked me into talking. And while I was talking, she sat there stroking me. Stripped me naked. Had me in her office.

– You’re lying. Mailin would never have done that.

He tightened the rope around her neck. – Maybe your sister wasn’t quite the saint you think she was.

– But she lived with you, Liss choked. – You were going to get married.

His eyes widened and darkened. Keep Midsummer’s Day free, she heard somewhere inside herself. It was him, Viljam, who had sent that message from Mailin’s phone.

She forced herself to say the one thing she knew she mustn’t say:

– She was going to leave you.

He gave a jerk on the rope, it cut into the skin of her neck. Then she felt her head growing, the room filling with a reddish smoke.

– She was supposed to love everything about me, he hissed, – no matter what I’d done. No matter what they’d done to me. But she lied. I have never been able to stand people lying to me. Do you understand? When someone starts to lie, it’s over.

Suddenly he took the tension off the rope. The air etched its way down into her chest. – Have you understood now? Have you seen enough?

Patches of red pulsating inside fog. Then they grew paler, and things cleared again. She could see he was holding something in his hand, a needle for a hypodermic syringe. He pulled it out of its sheath. She felt him place the needle against her cheek, make a careful scratch, draw it up in the direction of her right eye.

– Have you seen enough? he asked again.

She tried to turn her head to one side. He tightened the noose. The red-flecked fog came whirling back.

She opened her mouth. – Viljam… Jo.

It sounded like a prayer, but it didn’t come from her. The voice was dark and hoarse.

– Now it’s Jo, he howled. – Sweet Jo and all the rest of it.

He lowered the needle and drove it into her nipple. The pain was even sharper; it travelled on through the breast and released something in her back like the tendrils of a jellyfish spreading and burning through her whole body.

– You’re a nice boy, Jo. You’re so nice, so nice. There’s nothing you can’t do to me. Not one fucking thing. Because that’s the way you think, you too. You think I don’t know you, Liss Bjerke? You think Mailin didn’t tell me everything worth knowing about you? The rest being rubbish.

He drew out the needle, moved his hand to her forehead and placed a finger on her eyelid, pulled it up. She was totally awake now, straining as hard as she could to move her head. He grabbed hold of her hair and held her in an iron grip. She felt the cold tip touch against the eyeball. Like an insect landing there with its great sting ready. A couple of pricks, and then a membrane breached. A different pain, this one. It tore her open, and there was nowhere for her to hide. Her eye ran over, the light from the lamp changed colour, things turned black, and from this blackness an arc of rainbow colours spun.

– I’ll show you the place, she shrieked.

He bent down close to her face. – What place?

– Down by the lake.

He pulled the needle out again; fluid ran down her cheek.

– Not the other, she pleaded. – Not yet. Not until I’ve shown you the place.

– The one you wrote about in the notebook? Where you’re going to lie down in the snow and look up through the trees and freeze to death?

She tried to nod. – It isn’t far away.

He placed the needle against her eyelid. Then he withdrew it, untied the rope, pulled her up by the hair and shoved her across the floor.

– Show me, he hissed, grabbing the axe from the fireplace. – Show me the place where you want to die.

She walked in front of him, barefoot and naked. The wind was blowing straight off Morr Water, stinging against her breasts and thighs. His footsteps in the snow a few metres behind her. You’re afraid, Liss. Mailin’s voice is gone now; it’s her father talking to her. At last you’re afraid. I am afraid. You don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. She put her head back. Through her one eye she could just make out a strip of something grey in the darkness between the trees. That strip is all that’s left. And the sound of the wind. That was what I wanted that time you left, to lie down in the snow, feel the cold wrap itself around me and dissolve me. You’re the one I’ll miss, Liss. We’re the same, you and I.

She turned to face the tall, slender figure. The face came out of the grey, pressed right up against hers.

– Can I sit on that rock up there for a moment? Look out across the water. Just a few minutes.

He grunted. She could no longer feel her feet. The cold had eaten its way up her legs, as far as the knees. She slipped on the icy rock.

– Help me, she pleaded.

He climbed up beside her, squatted down, took hold under her arms and lifted her up. For a moment they were standing close to each other. She looked up into his face. The eyes weren’t angry any more. They were filled with something else.

– Poor Liss, he whispered.

She dived forward suddenly, butted him with all the strength that was left in her frozen body. He wavered, standing on the edge and flapping with his arms, dropped the axe and tried to hold on to her smooth shoulder. One second, two seconds. Then he tumbled backwards. She heard something hitting the jutting rock, and a splash as he slithered down into the open channel in the ice.

She slid down the track on her backside, got to her feet. Thought she heard him calling, didn’t turn round. It’s the wind calling. She began scrambling through the deep snow. Not to the cabin. He’ll find you there. She ran past the shed. You will not die, Liss. She crawled along the slope until she found the place where it wasn’t so steep. Snaked her way upwards. The snow kept pulling her down, but she didn’t want to disappear into it any more. It was tougher up on the top. She tried to run, between the trees. Stopped behind a thick spruce. Then she heard footsteps, squatted down below the lowest branch. That whisper in her ear: Liss, you’re not going anywhere without me. She slumped against the trunk, pressing her cheek to the rough bark.

A little later, a minute maybe, or perhaps ten: she stood up again. Peered out from under the branches. She knew these trees. They showed her the way to go. It was her forest, not his.

She stumbled over the snowdrift and down on to the road. Wanted to put her feet down beneath her, but they weren’t hers any more. She tried crawling along on her stomach, hands still locked behind her back. She managed a few metres before her whole body shrivelled. She curled into a ball, drew her legs up under her.

In the distance, the sound of an engine. She turned her head, enough to see the light dancing between the trees. They’ve come to fetch you, Liss. This is where you were going.