Medusa

1

Monday 24 September

THE WOMAN SAT motionless with her back to the window. Her arms hung straight down. Her pale grey face seemed frozen. She was dressed in green trousers and blouse, with a jacket the same colour loose over her shoulders. Her cheekbones were high and prominent and her eyes still greeny blue, but now the iris was narrowing inside a milky white rim. Outside, the wind lifted a bare birch branch behind her head.

Suddenly she glided her tongue over her teeth before opening her mouth and fixing her gaze on her visitor.

– I’ve been waiting all day, she said. – About time someone from the police could be bothered to turn up.

She stood up, tottered across the floor on her high-heeled sandals and checked that the door was closed behind him, came tripping back and sat down in the other chair, the one next to the writing desk. In flashes she still had that energetic way of moving, and she brushed a lock of her perm from her forehead with a gesture he knew well.

– The reason I have asked you to come… She interrupted herself, again went across the floor, opened the door and peered into the corridor outside.

– I don’t trust anyone in this place, she declared, closing it with a bang that was perhaps intended to underline what she said. Back in the brown leather chair, she smoothed her trousers over her knees.

– I’ve been waiting all day, she said again, now in a despairing voice. – I’ve got a missing person to report. The police must do something soon.

Her visitor was a man in his forties. He was wearing a hand-made suit, with a pale grey shirt underneath it. It was open at the neck, not that this made him look any the less well dressed.

– I came as quickly as I could, he said, and cast a glance at the clock.

– It’s about my husband, the woman went on. – He didn’t come home last night.

– I see, the visitor answered, and sat on the side of the bed, directly opposite her.

– He’s very particular always to let me know. But I haven’t heard a thing from him. Now I think something terrible has happened.

She moistened her dry upper lip with her tongue and smiled bravely.

– Do you know what the worst thing is?

The visitor passed his hand across her shortish hair, obviously recently cut. He knew what was coming.

– The worst thing is… The woman groaned as she opened her eyes wide, as though afraid.

– Have you had enough to drink today? the visitor interjected with what seemed like genuine concern. – I think you’re thirsty.

She didn’t seem to hear what he said.

– The Gestapo, she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. – I don’t think my husband will come back again ever.

The visitor remained sitting with his mother for almost three quarters of an hour. He poured her orange juice from a carton on the bedside table and she emptied two glasses. Having expressed her fear, she was finished with it this time around and opened a copy of Allers. It had been there on the table the last time he’d visited, a week earlier, and all the weeks before that. She didn’t say another word, as though she was completely engrossed by this single page she happened to have opened the magazine at. Now and then she looked over in his direction, her gaze diffuse, a slight smile playing about her mouth; she seemed to have descended once again into that remote calm that spread through her more deeply with every passing week, killing off everything else. He’d remembered to buy Dagbladet on the way and now leafed through it. When there was a knock on the door and the nurse came in with her medication – a man with greying hair, possibly a Tamil – he quickly got to his feet and gave his mother a hug.

– I’ll come back again soon, he promised.

– Judas, she hissed, her eyes transformed into glowing embers.

He swallowed his surprise, struggled not to laugh. She raised the half-full glass of juice, looked as though she were about to throw it in his direction.

– No, Astrid, the nurse scolded and took the glass from her.

She stood up and shook her fist.

– Brede is evil, she shouted. – It wasn’t the Gestapo, it was Brede who shot.

The nurse got her down in her chair again. She continued to gesture with her arms.

– Twins, that’s one too many kids, that is. But you wouldn’t have a clue what I’m taking about, a Negro like you.

The visitor glanced at the nurse and shook his head apologetically. The nurse opened the dosage box.

– Negroes are from Africa, he said with a broad smile and handed her the juice glass.

She swallowed one of the tablets.

– Because you are Brede, aren’t you? she said, peering in confusion at the visitor.

– No, Mother, I’m not Brede. I’m Axel.

He knocked on the charge nurse’s door and entered the office. When she saw that it was him, she swung her chair round from the computer desk and gestured with her hand towards the sofa.

– Sit yourself down a moment.

She was in her thirties, tall and athletic, with a face that he found attractive.

– Mother seems much more disturbed these days.

The charge nurse gave a quick nod.

– She’s been talking a lot about the war recently. Of course everyone here knows who Torstein Glenne was, but is there anything in all this about the Gestapo?

Axel pointed to the plastic plate of Maryland cookies on the table.

– Mind awfully if I take one? I missed lunch today.

He said no thanks to offers of coffee and blackcurrant juice, and was amused by the nurse’s further attempts to make up for her initial lack of hospitality.

– It is true that the Gestapo were after my father, he confirmed as he munched away. – He managed to cross the border into Sweden at the last moment. But Mother knew nothing about it at the time. It was fourteen years before she met him. She was four years old.

The charge nurse struggled to fasten her smooth hair at the neck in a hair band.

– It’s tremendously useful to know things like that. She’s always very uneasy whenever there’s anything about war on the TV. Recently we’ve had to switch off when the news comes on. By the way, who is Brede?

Axel Glenne brushed the biscuit crumbs from his lapels.

– Brede?

– Yes. Suddenly Astrid has started saying lots of things about this Brede. That he isn’t to come here, that she doesn’t want to see him any more and God knows what else. She actually gets quite worked up about it. When she’s really in a state we have to give her a Murelax. Of course we don’t know if this Brede really exists, so it isn’t easy for the nurses to know what to say.

– Brede was her son.

The charge nurse’s eyebrows shot up under her fringe.

– You have a brother? I had no idea. There’s never been anyone else but you come to visit. And sometimes your wife, and the children.

– It’s been more than twenty-five years since Mother last saw him, said Axel.

He stood up and rested his hand on the doorknob to indicate that the conversation was over.

2

FROM THE BACK seat of the taxi he called Bie again. She still didn’t answer and he sent her a text saying he would be late. It was Monday, football practice and violin lesson. Bie was going out this evening, but she’d have time to drive to the violin lesson first. Picking up afterwards was his responsibility.

The ship’s bell had already started ringing as the taxi turned into Aker Brygge. He had a few notes in his card-holder and paid cash, didn’t have time to wait for the receipt, scrambled aboard just as the barrier was about to be lowered. He wouldn’t be home until close on 6.30; Tom would have to go to practice by himself, if he could be bothered. He felt a twinge of guilt and send him a message too.

He knew a lot of the other passengers, perhaps even most of them. But this particular evening he made his way quickly through the salon and settled out on deck. It was warm for late September. A thin, creamy layer coated the sky above the fjord, the evening sun still visible behind it. He heard the echo of a voice in his thoughts: his mother calling him Judas. His mother thinking he was Brede, and being angry with him.

A group of men in dark suits were gathered around the peace torch at the end of the quay. One of them raised a hand as the ferry glided past, and from where Axel Glenne stood by the railings aft, it looked as though he were putting it into the flame.

The house was empty when he got home. Only now did he remember it was half-term holiday. On the kitchen worktop was a note from Bie. Marlen is spending the night at Natasha’s. Tom will be home before ten. Spaghetti in the microwave. Be back late. B. Alongside she’d drawn a little heart, from which something red dripped. A tear maybe; it was definitely not blood she had in mind.

He sat down at the kitchen table, listened to the silence in this house in which he had grown up. He still got that feeling when he was alone here, a sudden urge to do something naughty. When he was a child, it might be to go poking around in the kitchen cupboard, or in the drawer of his father’s bedside table, where there was always a magazine with pictures of nude women, or else to go up into the loft and do the most forbidden thing of all: take one of Colonel Glenne’s pistols from the drawer in the box room where his uniforms still hung… Actually, Brede was the only one who dared do that.

After the spaghetti, he wandered out on to the terrace. The sun had set behind the hills above Asker. There was a touch of cold in the air; it was clear and sharp to breathe in. Bie hadn’t replied to his message and he didn’t know where she was, and this thought was calming: that she lived her own life and he didn’t need to know what she was doing at every moment.

He sat down with his back to the empty house. It was full of their presence; he felt it even more strongly than usual. It was as though Bie were padding about in there, whispering to her orchids, or else was curled up on the sofa with a book. Tom sat playing in his room, the guitar plugged in to the little amplifier, and down in the basement Marlen was holding a meeting with Natasha and the other members of her club. Daniel was there too, even though it was now almost two months since he’d left for New York to study.

Axel was forty-three. He had always had the feeling of being on a journey. Was this his destination, this terrace with its view across the fjord to the distant hills on the other side, this presence of other people who were not there but who would presently enter the house and call to him, and when he answered they would find him out here, and he would hear in their voices that they were glad he was home? He would ask Marlen to show him her maths test, and when she asked him how he thought she had done, he would say, Well, I expect you got over half of them right, andshe would nod and keep her lips pressed together and try to hold out as long as she could before telling him her result. And when she couldn’t contain herself any more and was forced to tell him, he would shout out, What are you saying? I just can’t believe it, so that she would have to run off and fetch her satchel and get the book out and open it for him, and he would shake his head in disbelief and ask how on earth she had managed it. And Tom would lounge in the door opening, Hey, Dad,and wonder why he hadn’t been home to drive him to football practice so that he wouldn’t have to cycle, but wasn’t so bothered that he wouldn’t ask him to come to his room and listen to a new riff with him, singing along in his hoarse adolescent voice.

He went inside and fetched a bottle of cognac and a glass. It was an unusually fine cognac, bought on a trip abroad. He’d been waiting for a special occasion to open it, and decided now that this sharp autumn evening, this Monday evening on the terrace, with the sky still high above the fjord, was precisely the right moment. He left the bottle standing, gathering the evening light to it. Sat and watched the boats down on the fjord, a container ship on its way towards the city, a few sailing boats. The psychiatric hospital was in a bay on the other side. He’d worked there about ten or twelve years ago; he needed the subsidiary training to complete his course as a specialist. A few years before that, he’d visited the place. Quite by chance, he’d heard that Brede was a patient there. It was not long after 17 May, National Day, he remembered. There were still a few leafy braided wreaths hanging on the doors with ribbons in red, white and blue. It was two days before his father’s funeral, and that was why he had gone there, to try to persuade his brother to attend. The nurse who opened the door to him stood there gaping: Jesus, has Brede got a brother? And came back again a few minutes later: Sorry, he doesn’t want any visitors.

Axel opened the bottle and poured cognac into the large tulip-shaped glass. The smell of corrosive caramel now mingled with the faint scents coming from Bie’s rose garden. He’d never told Bie that he had tried to contact Brede before his father’s funeral. Brede was part of a world he couldn’t talk about to her. They’d been married now for twenty-something years. She still occasionally told him she loved him. It had always embarrassed him. He wasn’t afraid to express his feelings, but he had never managed to believe she meant it. Bie admired him. She admired everyone who was strong, and ended up despising them when they turned out not to be after all. She felt as if they’d tricked her. It was the certainty that he would never disappoint her in this way that made her whisper these I love yous.

He raised the glass and let the evening light run out of it. As he was about to put it to his lips, his mobile phone rang. On the display he read the number of a colleague from work, and immediately he knew what it was about, because his colleague was on duty that evening. He smiled to himself at the sudden thought of downing the cognac in one so that he would be unable to cover for whoever was sick.

Instead he put the glass down and took the call.

3

ANITA ELVESTRAND CHANGED channels. She’d seen the film several times before but looked forward to catching the ending one more time. There was still a while to go, so she muted the sound, reached out for the chocolate on the table and broke off a row. Enough is enough, she decided, and wrapped the paper around what remained of the bar. She put two pieces in her mouth and tried to chew slowly, washed them down with a swig of red wine. She lifted the box of wine; it was still quite heavy, but she mustn’t drink any more this evening. It was five past eleven. In less than nine hours she had to pick up Victoria. They were going to the dentist’s together. If they smelt the wine on her, they would use it against her.

There was a knock on the door. Must be Miriam. No one else knocked on her door. Anita got up from her easy chair and walked out into the corridor. Miriam stood outside smiling, and no other smile could make Anita feel relieved in quite the same way. Apart from Victoria’s, of course.

– I saw the light was on, Miriam said apologetically, as though that were necessary. She was wearing a denim jacket and a short skirt. A white blouse with a lace collar.

Anita opened the door wide.

– Would you like a glass of wine? she said, positioning herself on the threshold of the room, moving back just a tiny bit to let Miriam pass. Pass so close that Miriam’s shoulder brushed one of her breasts and she could inhale the lovely smells from her hair and the skin beneath the clothes. A hint of smoke, too; Miriam had been somewhere where people were smoking, because she didn’t smoke herself.

– A small one perhaps. I can’t stay long. I have to be up early tomorrow.

– So do I. I have to take Victoria to the dentist.

Miriam watched her as she sat down. When something surprised Miriam, her thin eyebrows shot up and stayed there quivering for a moment before sinking down again. Anita couldn’t take her eyes off her face. Miriam’s eyes were almond shaped and dark, her thick dark brown hair gathered in braids at the temples and fastened at the back with a hair grip.

– You’re allowed to take her to the dentist? Just a half-glass for me, please.

Anita filled it three quarters and her own to the top.

– In a fortnight’s time she might be staying the night with me.

– How wonderful, Miriam beamed. Anita felt herself on the verge of tears but controlled herself. – Are you watching Sleepless in Seattle?

– I’ve seen it enough times, rasped Anita and turned it off.

– I like that film, said Miriam. – I like films where they get each other in the end. When you already know from the beginning, no matter how hopeless it seems.

Anita was about to make some sarcastic comment about getting each other but desisted. Miriam was ten years younger than her. She studied medicine and was terribly bright. There was something about her eyes; she always seemed interested in what Anita was saying, no matter how stupid Anita thought she was being herself. At the same time there was something girlish about her that was reinforced by the slight accent she spoke with, and Anita felt a desire to sit down next to her on the sofa and put her arms around her and hold her tight…

Miriam had had trouble with a difficult relationship, Anita knew that. Someone she was trying to finish with. Someone she felt so sorry for that for a long time she couldn’t do it. That had been several years ago, at least before she moved into the upstairs apartment. Since then there had been no one, Anita was almost certain of that, though she could hardly understand why.

On the windowsill she found an Aretha Franklin CD and put ‘Chain of Fools’ on. She drank half her wine and felt it prickle in her chest. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Miriam what she did about getting someone to sleep with, but it was okay to ask if she missed having a boyfriend.

Miriam sipped at her own wine, put it down and leaned back in the sofa, knees slightly apart.

– Imagine if there’s a certain someone out there who was just meant exactly for you, she answered with a smile, – only he’s married and has a family.

– You’re not thinking of getting involved with an impossible,are you?

That was how Anita referred to anyone in the category of ‘family man’. Not too hard to get hold of, a lot more difficult to digest.

Miriam had to laugh.

– No, I haven’t…

She sat there looking out of the window.

– But what?

Anita realised she was being too intrusive; she mustn’t push Miriam, mustn’t use her up. She mustn’t forget that Miriam was more of a helper than a friend. But she couldn’t contain herself.

– You don’t have to tell me, she said in a slightly hurt tone.

Miriam seemed to change her mind.

– Tomorrow I’m starting at a clinic in Bogstadveien.

– Sounds very exciting, Anita responded, a touch disappointed.

– I’ve met the doctor who’s going to be my supervisor several times already. He gave us some lectures in the summer. I talked to him in the breaks. And after the lectures too.

– That’s what I like to hear. Anita snuffled and wiped a drop of red wine from her lower lip. – And is he the one-and-onlysomewhere out there?

Miriam looked up at the ceiling.

– And he’s the one you’ve got as your supervisor? That just has to be fate.

– I’ve helped things along as well. I swapped places with another of the students to get into the clinic. But you heard what I said. He’s married and has three children. At least.

Anita burst out laughing. It was a long time since she could remember laughing like that.

– This calls for a celebration.

It was quarter to twelve. She wanted to fetch the latest photos she’d taken of Victoria and show them to Miriam, sit close beside her on the sofa and inhale the smell of her hair as she leafed through the album. She picked up the box of wine and was going to pour more wine but Miriam held a hand over her glass and stood up.

At the front door, Anita put an arm around her and gave her a hug. Miriam’s cheek was almost as soft as Victoria’s, and she felt an almost irresistible urge to put her lips to it and beg her to stay. Miriam extricated herself gently.

Anita stood there watching her as she disappeared up the stairs to her attic apartment. Miriam was an easy person to get to know. But at the same time Anita didn’t know her. She seemed to be always happy, but there was something else there too, as though she was grieving over something. Grief was something Anita knew a lot about. So much so that she could sense it in others, even when it was hidden.

4

THE FIRST FEWhours on duty were quiet. Axel Glenne treated a few sore throats, stitched a few cuts, lanced a boil. After midnight he made a round of calls. Got an eighty-two year old with pneumonia admitted after an argument with a junior doctor, some kid whose voice had only just broken. A three year old with a rash and a temperature was also admitted. A woman who sat under her kitchen table howling and refusing to come out unless she was given Valium quietened down immediately when he told her she could have it her way.

At two twenty, Axel was sitting in the back of an ambulance that had been called out. He pushed aside the thoughts of what he had been dealing with earlier in the night and tried to piece together the few bits of information he’d been given to form a picture of what awaited him: a car that had left the road, possible serious injuries, perhaps even worse than that… Suddenly the image of his mother appeared, getting up from her chair, shouting angrily into his face, calling him Brede. He closed his eyes, heard his father’s voice: Brede puts himself on the outside. But you, Axel, you’ll be someone who always pays his dues. Brede truanted from school when he felt like it. He stole from their father’s wallet. Not just small change, notes. He started a fire in a field that the fire brigade had to come and put out. Axel went along with him part of the way, but pulled out when things started to have consequences. His twin brother got punished. It had no effect on him.

Resistance fighter, war hero, high court judge: the honoured and much-decorated Colonel Glenne had a son who brought shame on his name. Axel’s duty was to redress the balance. Show the world that the problem was not with the family. He soon discovered how easy it was, as though borne forward by invisible hands. His parents, of course, but also teachers, trainers, then later supervisors and examiners, all seemed to share the same assumption: that Axel Glenne should be helped; he was a winner. He hadn’t even had to fight for Bie. He met her at a student party. She was there with her boyfriend but spent the time talking to Axel out in the kitchen. For some reason or other she wanted to interview him for the student newspaper. When he was about to leave, she asked for his address.

The rear wheels of the car were up on the side of the road. One of the rear lights was still working. It struck Axel that it was encouraging to see it in position; perhaps it hadn’t been going that fast. But as soon as the ambulance came to a halt and the scene was illuminated, he saw that the roof was squashed. He jumped out immediately, surgical bag in one hand, torch in the other.

– It must have flipped over.

The ambulance driver, a man named Martin, agreed. Sven, his partner, added: – At least once.

Three or four figures were standing further down the roadside in front of a parked car, its engine still running.

– Are you the people who rang?

– It was me, answered one of them, an elderly man with a woollen hat pulled down over his ears. – We drove past and saw it like that. There’s someone inside. We couldn’t get the door open.

Martin had clambered down into the ditch and was shining his torch into the car.

– One person trapped behind the wheel, he shouted up to Axel.

– Can we get inside without assistance?

Martin tugged at the door handle.

– Try the other one.

Axel jumped down and tried it. The car wasn’t as badly damaged on this side, but the door was locked.

– The front windscreen is more or less gone, he shouted to Martin, and climbed up on to the bonnet. From the engine compartment beneath him came a hissing sound.

– We’ve got to cut the wires.

He shone the beam inside. A figure was slumped over the steering wheel. Axel reached through the shattered windscreen and took hold of the jacket at the shoulder, shook it.

– Can your hear me?

No answer. He smelled alcohol. Not windscreen washer or something from the engine, but liquor.

– Hello, can you hear me?

A faint groan. Axel twisted over to one side and managed to get a finger on the driver’s throat.

– Pulse is normal, he shouted to Martin, who was still on the other side. – About ninety, he added.

– Any chance we can get him out?

– The roof is squashed behind the door, we can’t get in. The fire brigade should be here any minute.

He shone his torch on the figure behind the wheel, a young man, he could tell by the sideburns. He had a cut on the side of the throat that was bleeding, but it wasn’t deep. The smell of alcohol was coming from him.

– He’s breathing easily enough. I don’t want to touch that neck until I have to.

A rumbling sound from the man behind the wheel.

– Are you awake? called Axel. – Can you hear me?

Again the same sound, concluding with a groan.

– I’m a doctor. We’ll soon have you out of there. Were you alone?

The man muttered something.

– We’ll help you, Axel said soothingly. – It’s going to be okay.

Suddenly the driver croaked: – Lise…

– Were you alone in the car? Axel asked again.

– Lise, shouted the man and tried to raise his head from the wheel.

– Stay calm.

– Lise!

Axel climbed off the bonnet. Sven appeared behind him with a pair of wire-cutters.

– I’m thinking we’d better kill that engine.

– Great. He’s almost conscious, but keep a close eye on him. I’ll check to see if there might have been a passenger with him.

– Doesn’t look like it.

Axel scrambled up on to the road. He could hear sirens in the distance.

– Move your car over to the side! he shouted to a woman who had just stopped. – The fire engine needs to get right up here.

He shone his torch across the dry asphalt. Shards of glass, skid marks. The car had been approaching from the north, from Tangen, not from Dal as he had first thought. He trotted up the side of the road, some way past the last car in the backed-up traffic. A lump of rock was sticking out, and when he shone the light on it, he saw that it was covered with glass and streaks of paint.

He followed the other roadside ditch back towards the crashed vehicle. Ten metres on from the stone he found her. She was lying on her back; she looked relaxed. A young girl. The face pale and unmarked. But the eyes were awash with a thick pale red froth. Not until he bent over to feel for a pulse on her throat did he realise that most of the back of her head was missing.

The helicopter arrived ten minutes later, at a quarter to three. They checked his findings with him. The girl had been killed instantaneously. The driver’s thorax was unstable and there was probably internal bleeding. They took him with them. Axel was left standing there, a purse in his hand. It had been found beneath one of the seats. White leather trimmed with fur, two pockets for notes, one for cards. He removed one of the cards, examined it by the interior light of the ambulance. He recognised the name. She was a year older than Tom. Her big sister had been in Daniel’s class. Axel had sat on the PTA with her mother.

He turned to the inspector, handed him the card.

– She’s from round here, he told him. – They live down in Flaskebekk. The mother’s name is Ingrid Brodahl, when you call…

The policeman trudged towards his car. His shoulders were sunken and he had a slight limp in one leg.

– Hang on, Axel called after him. – I’m driving back through Tangen. I’ll talk to them myself.

5

Tuesday 25 September

THE BOAT THUDDED into the quayside and several of the passengers who were already standing up toppled into each other. Axel woke with a start and looked at his watch: 7.25. He waited until the exit queue had thinned out before getting unsteadily to his feet, crossing the deck and stepping on to the quay. In the early hours he’d managed an hour, perhaps an hour and a half of sleep. It might have done him good to walk to the office, but he gave in to exhaustion and got into a taxi. Closed his eyes and at once fell into a light sleep. Images from the night flickered across his mind. The car with its rear end up on the road. The girl lying in the ditch more than fifty metres away. Ringing the bell. The light going on in the hallway. The grimy face in the door opening: Lise’s father. Axel had met him a few times over the years; he was an engineer, he recalled, repaired ship’s engines and was away from home a lot. But today he was home and peering out on to the dark stoop and he still didn’t know what kind of messenger he had opened the door to.

Axel looked up and registered that they were just passing Dronning Park. The driver glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. She had heavy bags under her eyes and wore a perfume that smelled like mould.

– Tough start to the day, she said vaguely, not specifying whether she was referring to her own or her passenger’s day.

He grunted something or other and closed his eyes again to avoid any further encouragement. Another nine hours and his work day would be over. He would make it through. He’d had his own practice for twelve years. It was like playing the piano. Sometimes he had to improvise, but most of it he knew off by heart, no matter how tired he was. He’d lost count of the number of days he’d worked through with no sleep the night before. He could handle it. But on this morning it was something other than tiredness. Lise’s face. Unscathed at first glance, looking almost as though she were sleeping. Like Marlen’s face when he crept in in the dark and bent over her. Then shining the light, seeing the eyes… Her father had sat bent over on the sofa, staring at the table as Axel explained why he had come. Suddenly he jumped to his feet. Ingrid, should I wake her? Yes, Axel thought, it would be best to wake her. And directly afterwards the scream from the floor above that rose and swelled and filled the whole house and would not end. Ingrid Brodahl, whom he knew from parent-teacher evenings and had talked about school breakfasts with, and celebrations for National Day on 17 May, came rushing down the stairs in her pyjamas. She was still howling, and at that instant Axel regretted having gone there.

The taxi braked suddenly and he was thrown towards the front seat. The figure that had by the narrowest of margins avoided being tossed up on to the bonnet of the car skipped on across the road. The driver opened her window and gave the man an earful. From the pavement he turned and glared at her.

– Stop! shouted Axel as the driver started to accelerate through the traffic lights.

– What do you mean? she protested.

– Pull in to the side. Wait here.

He swung the door open, hurried back to the crossing. He saw him making his way down Sporveisgata.

– Brede! he shouted.

The man didn’t turn round. Axel started to run. The other man speeded up. There was less than thirty metres between them when he disappeared between two buildings. Axel reached the corner, ran into an empty courtyard. Stood there panting. Calm down, he warned himself. You’ve had one helluva night. No more now. Just get through it.

6

FOUR PATIENTS WERE sitting in the waiting room when he arrived, half an hour after he was due to see the first of them. He popped his head into the office. Rita was on the phone but put the call on hold and turned to him.

– So you’re alive, she exclaimed in the singing tones of her home town in the far north.

– Hard to say, he sighed. – How does it look?

– Alas, no cancellations, you’re too popular for that.

She got up, swayed over to where the coffee was simmering, poured a large mug and handed it to him.

– I’ve told people we’re going to be delayed. And I asked Inger Beate to take a couple of your patients before lunch if we’re still running late. She gave him a sympathetic maternal pat. – Don’t worry, Axel, we’ll get you through the day all right.

– What would I do without you? he said, smiling gratefully.

They weren’t just empty words. Rita looked after everything. She was firm when she had to be, friendly when she could be. Already he was dreading her going on holiday.

– And don’t forget the student, she chirruped.

– Damn, was that today?

Axel had once again agreed to take on a medical student in the practice. He liked being a supervisor, but on this particular morning his patience would probably not extend to pedagogic tribulations.

– I’ve told her she can use Ola’s room; that’s going to be vacant the whole time she’s here.

– She? Wasn’t it a male student?

– Apparently they arranged a swap. I left you a note about it yesterday.

He took a swig of coffee. Given the shape he was in, he would have preferred it if it had been a young man.

– Ask her to come in… No, give me five minutes and then ask her.

He slumped down into the chair, turned on his computer, stretched the skin of his face as far back as he could. He hadn’t seen Brede for twenty years. Didn’t even know if he was still alive. It had been weeks, maybe even months, since he’d last thought about him, not until his mother’s outburst the day before. It couldn’t have been Brede he saw. He’d chased after a guy who looked like him along Sporveisgata… He realised how exhausted he was. Maybe he should drop the duty-doctor stuff for a while. They didn’t need the money.

The hard disk creaked and whirred and struggled to get going. When the computer’s ready then I’ll be ready too, he thought. He stuffed the need to sleep into a cupboard, locked the door and threw away the key: I am no longer tired. There was a knock on the door. Damn, he’d forgotten already about the student. He jumped up, slapped his cheeks a few times. It’s show time, he said to himself in the mirror and called for her to come in.

She shut the door behind her. Her hand was narrow and warm. Miriam was the name. He didn’t catch the surname.

– I’ve met you before, she said.

He frowned.

– Just before the summer holidays. You gave lectures on cancer in general medicine. I spoke to you in several of the breaks.

– That’s right, he said. He’d lectured on the importance of being alert, not missing that one among all those who visited the doctor for some trifle or other who was actually seriously ill. – That’s right. Now let’s see the first patient. You can be a fly on the wall.

He didn’t like the expression and wrinkled his nose.

– And in due course, naturally, you’ll be working on your own.

He skipped the lunch break but managed to catch up with his appointments; no one had to wait more than half an hour. In the afternoon he had time to discuss some of the cases with the student. He was beyond tiredness by this time and just about running on empty. But he knew there was enough there for him to make it through the rest of the day. Fortunately the student turned out to be calm and relaxed. She was also very knowledgeable, and she asked good questions. She even knew a couple of things about leukaemia that he hadn’t caught up with yet, though he was careful not to let her know.

By quarter to four he was ready for the last patient. She’d been given an immediate emergency appointment. He read what Rita had written. Cecilie Davidsen. Anxious woman with lump in her breast.

He clicked into her notes. She’d been a patient of his for three years but had only been to the clinic once before, when she had flu and needed a sick note. She was forty-six years old, an air hostess; two grown children and an eight-year-old daughter.

– A woman who doesn’t go to the doctor about nothing, he said to the student. – All the more reason to be on the alert.

Cecilie Davidsen was tall and slender, her hair cut short with bleached strips. Axel recalled her at once. She removed her glove, offered him her hand and looked at him with a little smile, as though apologising for bothering him unnecessarily. But somewhere in that look he could see how uneasy she was feeling.

He asked her all the relevant questions, about breastfeeding and menstruation and when she had first noticed something in her breast.

– Let’s just have a look, shall we.

She unbuttoned her blouse. He had deliberately not asked her where she had felt the lump so that he could find it for himself. It was on the right-hand side, directly beneath the nipple. It was the size of an almond, irregular in shape and resistant to movement.

– Do you mind if the student feels it?

Though it wasn’t hot in the room, Cecilie Davidsen was sweating under the arms.

– Nine times out of ten, lumps in the breast are not malignant, Axel told her as the student carried out her examination. She had clearly done it before, moving her hands slowly and systematically. – But of course we must take every precaution.

– Mammography?

– As soon as practically possible. Something like this needs to be dealt with as quickly as we can.

After the patient had left, he turned to the student.

– Anything to worry about there?

She thought for a moment.

– It didn’t seem like it to me, but it was a sizeable lump.

– As a doctor you should always assume the worst, he lectured. – But it isn’t necessary to come out and say the worst. Not until you definitely know something.

He rubbed his chin.

– I didn’t like it. And she had three enlarged lymph glands in her armpit.

He punched out a few lines on the keyboard, printed out a reference to a specialist.

– This’ll go in the post today. And I’ll call the hospital as well. She’ll have been seen before the week is out, I can promise you that.

He glanced at his watch.

– I have to make the four-thirty boat. Tomorrow you can see a couple of patients without me being there.

He usually waited until the second week before suggesting this, but the student – Miriam, was that her name? – seemed to be ready now to see cases on her own. He was rarely wrong in his judgement on this particular matter.

– I’ve got a car, she said. – If you like, I can drive you there.

He looked at her in surprise.

– Well that’s very kind of you. It sounds as if you know where I’m going.

She looked down.

– You said the boat… so maybe you live on Nesodden. Or something like that.

She drove with the same calmness as he heard in her voice. Not a single jolt when she changed gear, and he sank back in the seat and closed his eyes. It was as though she expected nothing of him. As though it were not the least bit embarrassing that he couldn’t face the thought of talking.

– You’re worn out.

Only now did he register what it was he’d been hearing all day: that she spoke with a slight accent. Eastern European maybe. He didn’t ask, wanted to know as little as possible about her.

– I had to cover for someone last night, he explained. – It wasn’t my turn, but they were in a jam. Something happened, there was an accident…

Suddenly he found himself describing it. Lise’s face, as though she were lying asleep in the ditch. Her mother, who held on to his arm as he was about to leave and wouldn’t let him go.

– She was just a year older than the younger of my boys. He knew her.

The bell on the quay sounded.

– That idiot jammed behind the steering wheel stinking of booze, he exclaimed suddenly. – I could’ve killed him.

– Your boat, she said.

He didn’t move. There wasn’t a drop left in his tank. He looked out into the greyness that thickened over the fjord.

– Got things to do?

Without turning, he noticed that she shook her head.

7

Wednesday 26 September

SOLVEIG LUNDWALL PUSHEDthe half-full shopping trolley in the direction of the frozen goods counter. It was a long way, at least a hundred metres. Rows of kitchen paper and toilet paper to pass. Cat food, dog food. Then the dried food. Porridge oats, muesli, cornflakes, Frosties, Cheerios. She picked up a packet of Honey Corn along the way. When she was little they had Honey Corn every Friday, after dinner. Milk. She must have enough milk. They drank so much milk at home. Four mouths that just drank and drank. A tube of caviar spread maybe, but they already had some. Mackerel in tomato sauce. She had written a list. It was at home somewhere. A man in a grey anorak wearing a cap appeared on her right and swung in front of her. Halted abruptly with his trolley sideways. She wanted to pick up speed and charge into it, stopped herself at the last moment.

– Oh, sorry, he smirked, pretending to be polite, and wheeled his trolley to one side.

She smiled back, as friendly as she could manage. It was stiff, she must have looked pretty strange, but she managed to get past the wrinkled and nicotined face. At the end of the row she reached the milk.

– I must buy enough milk, she muttered. Five litres of semi-skimmed, five litres of skimmed. Ten litres? Back home they drank and drank, you couldn’t get them to stop. Per Olav the most, even though Dr Glenne had told him he should drink less milk. Per Olav listened to Dr Glenne. But he loved milk, got up in the middle of the night to drink it. She could see him in her mind’s eye, standing there swigging drinking yoghurt straight from the carton. His moustache afterwards, clogged with the stuff. It was better for him than sweet milk, Dr Glenne had said. And Per Olav listened to what Dr Glenne said. Solveig nevercalled him Dr Glenne. Axel when she thought of him, but she never said it so Per Olav could hear her. Glenne, she might say, but not Axel.

The man in the grey anorak appeared by the cheese counter, approaching. He was going to speak to her. Say something that was supposed to be funny. She jerked her trolley the other way, set off full speed in the direction of the crates of mineral water. Wanted to get some Diet Coke but couldn’t stop now. Beer. Per Olav had asked her to buy some for dinner because they were having fish, and she grabbed a couple of bottles without noticing what they were. Per Olav wasn’t particular. Was it fish today? She was the one who had said so. We’ll be having fish for dinner today, she’d announced to Per Olav, standing in the doorway; the kids had already gone out. Fine by me, he’d answered. Fish was fine by Per Olav. She was the one who couldn’t stand it. The smell. Worst of all when preparing it. Cutting through the slimy skin and the greyish flesh with the thin streaks of blood, and the brown stuff that ran out of the backbone. Ask for it ready filleted. They didn’t have a fish counter at Rema. She’d passed the frozen fish counter. If she turned round, the old man in the grey jacket would be there waiting, stinking of roll-up cigarettes and wanting to chat.

She hurried on towards the checkout. She must have bread. None left in the freezer. She’d written it at the top of the list, in capital letters, with an exclamation mark. Enough for supper and packed lunches. This morning she’d had to send them off with crispbread. It softened inside the wrapping and the kids wouldn’t eat it. Came home hungry. And the teachers would be whispering and gossiping about her, that she didn’t give them enough food. She grabbed a sack of cat food, two big sacks. They had no cat. The trolley was loaded to the brim. Four people queuing at the checkout. The other tills were closed. She swung into the next row, parked the loaded trolley in front of the sweet shelves. There was a smell of chocolate. Jelly babies and liquorice allsorts. She looked the other way as she slipped through the gated checkout, out into the light.

The tunnel walls whizzed by. There were dark shadows around the reflections in the window. She couldn’t see the eyes, but knew the gaze was evil. She turned and looked quickly behind her. The carriage was nearly empty. Just two kids playing truant and a woman in a headscarf with a pram. Must be a Kurd; one of the mothers in the nursery school wore a headscarf just like that, she was a Kurd.

Solveig Lundwall read the poem on the poster next to the door. If you turn round, you’re looking forward,it said. She didn’t want to read any more. There was a little box of pastilles in her pocket. There was a note there too, the shopping list. Bread in capital letters with an exclamation mark. After she’d read it, she couldn’t sit still; she dropped it as though she’d burnt herself on it, stood up and hurried to the back of the carriage, sat with her back to the others. There was a newspaper there. Housing market explodes. She turned the pages. Shot down in broad daylight. Yes, because daylight is broad. He who has eyes to see, let him see. Killed in car crash. She stared at the girl’s picture. She had long blond hair and big eyes and a mouth with a pained smile. It was holy. – What is it, little angel? Solveig murmured. On the next page she read: Do you need help? She turned to the evil face in the window. Yes, Solveig, you need help now. And once she’d realised that, she felt calm. It felt so good she had to laugh. The tears ran until she could taste the salt at the corners of her mouth, but she wasn’t crying; she felt the calmness spreading through her chest.

– Thank you, Lord Jesus, she whispered. – Thank you, Lord, for seeing me. Though I wander upon dark ways.

She got off at the Storting. Her jacket was left behind on the seat. She wasn’t cold. She wanted to feel light, unencumbered. She stood on the escalator and was raised up into the light. The sky was bright and shining, and from where she was standing, she felt as though the steps would carry her up above the street and over the rooftops.

In Bogstadveien, she stood in front of the clinic door and waited. The tram passed on its way down the road. She stood there a long time before another one came. Solveig, you need help, she told herself again. But it didn’t work any more. There was a surging in her chest, but it wasn’t calm, more like a jolting. She started making her way up towards Majorstua. There’s a fishmonger’s there, Solveig; buy five fish and ask to have them filleted. A man on the other side of the road walked by, looking at her. He looked like Pastor Brandberg at the Pentecostal church. Pastor Brandberg is dead, Solveig. She speeded up. The man on the other side of the road did the same. He was wearing a long leather coat, with his hair pulled back and fastened in a ponytail. Pastor Brandberg had baptised her. She remembered his face as she was pulled up out of the water, his eyes as he blessed her. Pastor Brandberg always helped them. He was the one they took her to the first time she got sick. She crossed the road and stood in front of him.

– Can you help me? she asked.

He hurried on without answering, the grey ponytail swaying from side to side on his neck.

She stopped at the pedestrian crossing, held on to the railings. It had started again, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it. If a car hit her, the driver would feel bad. But not if it was a bus. It was a bus driver’s job to drive around all over town; anything could happen to them. They were protected. The Lord was with bus drivers. They were the instruments of the Lord. Though they wandered upon dark ways. Next time a red bus comes by, you let go, Solveig. She looked up at the sky above Majorstuehuset. The clouds were in sudden motion, pulled apart from each other as though by some mighty hand; the light was unbearably bright. She lowered her gaze. And there, on the steps to the Underground station, enveloped in a blinding white light, stood a man. He had a beard, and his hair was unkempt, his jacket was ragged. The face was turned towards her, and she saw that it was Axel Glenne. And He shall return, though they shall not know Him. - But I know him, she murmured. It’s not going to happen, not yet. Again the calm surged through her chest, swelling inside her until she trembled in pure joy.

She let go of the railings, turned her back to the bristling stream of cars and started walking back down Bogstadveien.

8

AT 12.15, AXEL GLENNE finished with his last patient before lunch. He made a few notes in the journal, closed it and clicked his computer into hibernation mode.

– Time we had something to eat, he said to Miriam without looking at her. There hadn’t been a moment’s let-up all morning, and he had barely managed to pass on the odd bit of advice to her in among all the consultations. After what had happened the day before, he felt a bit embarrassed about seeing her today. But she seemed to think it was the most natural thing in the world for the two of them to have sat in her car talking for more than half an hour.

He let her into the break room before him. It was a tight squeeze, though only Rita and Inger Beate were already sitting there. They squashed themselves in around the circular table. Rita’s niece had been to see her and Rita had brought along home-made waffles. Inger Beate wanted to discuss a patient with him and brought out a pile of reports from lab tests. She gave him a rundown of the details as she devoured an egg salad, washing it down with coffee. The patient complained of itching, and had lost weight, but otherwise felt fine.

– Before I have a go, let’s hear what the student has to say, said Axel, chewing.

Inger Beate Garberg had a strong, bony face with grey hair that hung in waves around her shoulders. She looked at the clock, annoyed, only five minutes of the lunch break left.

Miriam said, – Did you ask if he experiences any discomfort when he drinks alcohol?

Inger Beate glanced over at Axel. He helped himself from the plate of waffles and gave a cautious smile in return. A loaded question there from the student, Inger Beate.

– Of course I asked him that.

– And what was the patient’s reply?

– He was vague, she grunted as she closed up the plastic carton containing the rest of her salad. – I’d better ask him again.

It hadn’t occurred to her, Axel noted, but he didn’t confront her with it. Inger Beate had only recently returned after working for two years among Aids victims in Botswana. She was still struggling to return to everyday life back at home, the parade of patients most of whom were perfectly well and yet still complained over the slightest thing. But she was a good colleague, and it would have been no pleasure to catch her out, still less to let a student do so. He knew that she would now take a closer look at the patient to see if there were any other signs of lymphatic cancer. That was what he suspected, after having looked at the lab reports.

– More waffles? Rita said, offering the plate around.

Axel patted his stomach, indicating that he’d had enough.

– I’ll take the student with me on my rounds, he said, – in the certain knowledge that you’ll hold the fort back here, Rita.

– Don’t you worry about that. Actually there’s a guy who tried to make an appointment for today. He said he’s applied to have you as his family doctor but the papers haven’t arrived yet.

– You did tell me we were fully booked today?

– He wondered about tomorrow afternoon instead, and I just mentioned that you always went out on your bike on Thursday afternoons. Was that stupid of me?

Axel furrowed his brow.

– It’s none of the patients’ business what I get up to in my spare time. Is it so urgent?

– He thought so, but he wouldn’t say why.

Back in his office, Axel went over the contents of his doctor’s bag with Miriam. Just as he was closing it, Rita called from the front desk.

– Solveig Lundwall is here.

– She doesn’t have an appointment today.

– I don’t know about that. But she won’t go until she’s talked to you.

– Tell her I’ll call her this afternoon.

He heard Rita saying something at the other end of the phone. Then loud shouting.

– Can you hear that? She’s screaming and carrying on.

– All right, send her in.

Moments later the door was flung wide open.

– Sit down, Solveig.

She remained standing and scowled at Miriam.

– We’ve got a student working in the practice with us. Is it all right if she stays here while we talk?

Solveig Lundwall shook her head vigorously, and Axel motioned to Miriam to leave the room. The moment they were alone Solveig exclaimed:

– It won’t do, Axel.

He was taken aback to hear her use his first name.

– What won’t do?

She was sitting on the edge of her chair, ready to flare up again.

– She shouldn’t be here, she snorted, scowling towards the door.

– You mean the student?

Solveig didn’t respond. Axel leant towards her.

– Tell me why you came here, Solveig.

– The whore, she muttered. – The whore of Babylon. She shouldn’t be here. I have this against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel.

Axel had known Solveig for many years; he knew all about her. When she started using biblical turns of phrase, it meant she was about to have another episode.

– I’ll help you, Solveig.

– I don’t have enough milk, she complained. – They drink and drink and it’s never enough. I fill up all the time, it just runs away.

He didn’t respond to this. Suddenly her face changed. The despair seeped away and she gave him an agitated look.

– I saw you just now.

He couldn’t hide his surprise.

– Majorstuehuset. You were standing at the top of the steps, against the light. Glenne in the forest. You were dressed as a beggar and had a beard, but it was your face and eyes. You were Jesus. Yes, it was you, you were Jesus, Axel Glenne, and you saved me. Had you not shown yourself, I would not have come back.

For a moment he sat there staring at her, unable to say a word.

– In Majorstua? he finally managed to blurt out.

– I saw the picture of that girl in the papers. She can’t have been more than sixteen years old. She’s watching over me. Something terrible is going to happen, Axel. They have as king over them the angel of the abyss. People are going to die. Pastor Brandberg turns his back and will not see. You are the only one who can prevent it.

He regained his self-possession. She trusted him. She’d come to see him on previous occasions when she was about to collapse. When she talked about death in this way, she was in danger. Twice before she had tried to take her own life.

– I’ll call the hospital, he said.

An hour later, he walked Miriam down to the yard, where he had his own parking place.

– What will happen to that last patient of yours? she wanted to know.

He swung out into Bogstadveien, up in the direction of Majorstua.

– Solveig Lundwall? She won’t spend too long in hospital. It’s usually just a matter of a few weeks.

He stopped for a red light, glanced over towards Majorstuehuset. People were moving up and down the steps, in and out of the Underground station. The person Solveig Lundwall had seen there might have been the creation of her own confused mind. But the description fitted the man he’d chased after himself the day before. The thought of parking the car, going in there and looking…

– Solveig is a very capable nursery-school teacher, he said. – She has three children of her own, and I’ve never had any doubt that she’s a good mother to them. Now and then she has psychotic episodes, or goes completely nuts, as she calls it. It’s probably three or four years since the last time.

– She evidently trusts you.

– Fortunately. Things nearly went very wrong last time.

– She didn’t take all that kindly to me. I think she wanted you all to herself.

He changed lanes and speeded up.

– She’s created this ideal image of me. She thought she saw me today by Majorstuehuset. I looked like Jesus.

Miriam didn’t laugh, and he was about to go on. About to tell her that he had a twin brother. He glanced over at her. She was in her mid-twenties. At least fifteen years younger than him. But there was this calm about her. And something in her look that made it possible to tell her things. Suddenly he felt an urge to reach out a hand, touch her hair. He turned away and concentrated on his driving.

The students usually liked the home visits. They reminded them of the old idea of the family doctor. Visiting people in their own homes. Sitting at the bedside of an old lady with breathing difficulties. Don’t be in a hurry to admit her, first try an increased dose of diuretic. Or a five year old with fever and a rash on the chest; the mother wailing into the receiver that she daren’t take him to the surgery, the doctor had to come and see him immediately. The boy started bawling as soon as he saw the doctor’s bag, and Axel had to blow into his plastic glove and make a balloon out of it, draw a mouth, nose and ears on it with a ballpoint pen. In a little while the tears stopped and Axel was able to peer into the child’s ears and throat and shine a light in his eyes without protest; he even let Miriam look into his eyes as well. He assured the mother that the rash and the fever were the fourth disease of childhood, and that half of the other children at the nursery school were undoubtedly suffering from the same thing. But he let her have his mobile number and said she could call him if she was still worried. When they left, the boy was sitting up playing with the glove balloon and wanting to show Axel a fire engine that he’d hidden under the sofa.

It was approaching 4.30 by the time the round was finished. Axel pulled into a bus bay in Majorstua.

– I’ll see you on Monday then, Miriam said, but she carried on sitting in the car.

– Not tomorrow?

– I’m taking the day off tomorrow. And on Fridays we have lectures.

He indicated and pulled back out into Kirkeveien.

– You said you live in Rodeløkka, isn’t that right? I might as well drop you off there.

As they waited for the lights to change by Ullevål hospital, he thought about Solveig Lundwall. She was lying in a bare room somewhere in there, almost certainly sleeping, because to help her in the battle against the angel of the abyss that was raging inside her they had probably given her a massive dose of sedative. Something terrible is going to happen, Axel. People are going to die.

– I have a brother, he said abruptly as he swung into Helgesens gate. – A twin brother. I haven’t seen him in more than twenty years.

Miriam said nothing, but he could feel how she was looking at him.

– I think I probably thought he was dead. Because in a way he has been… It might have been him Solveig saw in the street today.

– You can stop here, said Miriam. – I live up there. She pointed to one of the old brick buildings. – Third floor. The attic.

He put the car in neutral, pulled on the handbrake.

– Maybe… she began. There was a hint of greenish yellow in her brown eyes. – Would you like a cup of coffee?

He wanted to go with her up into the attic apartment. Sit down in her living room. Feel the calmness that surrounded here. Tell her something or other, he didn’t know what. Some people listen, he thought, others wait for the chance to speak. She’s a listener.

– If only I could, he said.

Her eyes opened wider.

– Sorry, I didn’t mean to…

He laid his hand on her arm. Let the explanations remain unvoiced. Not a word about Marlen’s riding lesson, or that he’d promised to put the rice on to boil.

– Nothing to apologise for, Miriam. He noted that this was the first time he had used her name. – I’ll be happy to drink coffee with you another day. Unless you withdraw the invitation.

Outside the car, she turned and smiled quickly.

– I won’t do that, she said, and pushed the door shut.

9

Thursday 27 September

AXEL NEVER MADE appointments at the clinic after lunch on Thursdays. With the last one out the door at 12.45, he changed into his cycling gear in the cloakroom and fetched his bike from a storeroom in the cellar. It had been washed and the chain cleaned and oiled after the last ride. Usually he cycled up to Sognsvann and rode on into the surrounding forest, but today he took the bike on the Underground with him up to Frognerseter.

By the time he reached the forest chapel at Nordmarka, it had clouded over. An elderly couple were sitting on a bench by the wall with a flask and a packed lunch. Both were wearing worn anoraks, the man in a peaked blue skiing cap. Axel said hello, unleashing in response a cascade of observations about the weather, the silence in the forest, how to keep your health. He said no thanks to an offer of coffee and a chocolate biscuit, but stood around chatting for a while. The old couple gave him a feeling of having as much time as he could want. The man put down the thermos and laid his hand over his wife’s. She had clear grey eyes and laughed with a chuckling sound, like a little stream. Him and Bie sitting like that thirty years from now, he tried to think, but couldn’t quite manage it.

He jumped back on to his bike and peered northwards. The clouds were massing. He’d intended to go all the way to Kikut, but he wasn’t dressed for rain. Another cyclist came riding up the hill. He was wearing sunglasses and nodded in greeting as he sped by. He was at least ten years younger than Axel, in shiny cycling shorts and a skin-tight top, and for an instant Axel was tempted to get after him and make a race of it, but he dismissed the thought.

On a whim, near Blankvann, he wheeled the bike off the track, locked it and began jogging along a narrow path. Not so fast that he couldn’t savour the forest around him. Listen to Skamndros, he’s singing,Marlen used to exclaim every time they passed a brook in the forest. He was the one who had told her about the Greek river god, and Marlen remembered everything that was said to her. He stopped by a small tarn. One summer, many years ago, he’d brought Bie up here. It was before Marlen was born. They’d bathed. Later, he had lain her down in the heather. She’d complained about the twigs sticking into her, but he’d made her forget about that. Afterwards she called him Pan, and said how dangerous it was to go out into the forest with him. It was less than a year before Marlen’s birth, because Bie always claimed that she had been conceived that time in the heather.

He pulled off his cycling vest and plunged into the tarn. Convinced himself that the water was warm for the time of year. He dived under and swam as far as he could. He and Brede had always competed to see who could stay underwater the longest. He’d held out once for almost three minutes. It was on the beach at Oksval. Brede stayed down longer. Four minutes. That was when Axel got scared. He started shouting, waving his arms. Someone ran to fetch the grown-ups. They found Brede over by the jetty, managed to drag him ashore, pumped the water out of him, blew life back into him. Afterwards he could remember nothing; everything just vanished, he said. Several times that summer the brightness in Brede’s eyes would suddenly be gone, and for a few seconds at a time he couldn’t answer, couldn’t hear. Afterwards he would shake his head in confusion, a look of fear on his face. Someone should have realised what was the matter with him, but no one asked. That was the same summer as the thing with Balder, when Brede was sent away.

Axel dried himself off with his cycling jacket, threw his clothes on and carried on running to get his body warmth back. He came across a little trail that led off the path and in behind a thicket. Boot prints in the wet ground heading into the trees. Disappearing by a mossy hillock. He climbed up, hopped down on the other side. Almost fell into a pile of branches. He caught a glimpse of black plastic underneath. A boulder had been placed in front of what looked like an opening. He rolled it to one side, pulled away the plastic and peered inside. Light seeped down through the spruce branches that formed the roof of a small shelter, perhaps two metres in length. On a cardboard box that had once held bananas were a paraffin lamp and two candles waxed on to flat stones. Beside the box he glimpsed a bag and some empty bottles. He couldn’t resist and crept further in. The bag contained bread, stale but not mouldy. The bottles smelt of cheap alcohol. In one corner were a rolled-up sleeping bag and two woollen blankets. A book had been tucked beneath them. As he was wriggling out backwards, he pulled it out and looked at it in the grey light of day. It was no more than a pamphlet: Dhammapada was the title. A Buddhist text, according to the back cover. The pages were yellowed and stained. Here and there a sentence had been underlined, at one point in red: He who in his youth has not lived in harmony with himself, and who has not gathered life’s real treasures, in later years is like the long-legged old herons that stand sadly by a marshy swamp without fish.

A movement across his neck, like a breath of wind. He turned, feeling unease at having invaded someone else’s life, whoever it might be that was living here. He put the book back where he’d found it, climbed back up the hillock and ran on as hard as he could along the track, felt the warmth creeping back into his body.

Not until he had unlocked his bike and was wheeling it back down to the path did he notice that the rear tyre was flat. He checked the valve. It seemed in order. He got out the pump. When he squeezed the tyre a couple of minutes later, it was still flat.

Approaching Ullevålseter, he saw a woman coming towards him, striding energetically along with walking poles in each hand. There was something familiar about the little figure and the determined face, and Axel greeted her as she passed.

She stopped.

– Is that you? she said.

He tried to remember where he’d seen her before.

– So you’re out keeping fit? She looked at the bicycle. – And you’ve had a puncture.

He recognised the voice. Must have spoken to her on the phone.

– Looks like it, he agreed.

– Sorry I can’t help you, she said.

– No, why would you be carrying a puncture repair kit around with you?

She laughed.

– Ask at Ullevålseter, maybe they have something there.

He was about to move on.

– Actually, I was going to ring you, she said. – Funny meeting you of all people. A referral you sent in the other day. An elderly man with problems after a back operation.

The physiotherapist. She was the physiotherapist at the clinic in Majorstua. Any moment now and he’d recall her name. Bie used to go to her.

– I doubt if I can help him much when he’s in such pain. But we can talk about it later.

He didn’t protest. Rain had begun drizzling from the low cloud, and soon it would be dark. It wasn’t every woman who would head off into the forest in the dark, he thought. Bie didn’t like walking in the forest alone even in daylight.

– Safe journey home, she chirruped, furrowing her brow sympathetically as she pointed with her stick at the punctured tyre.

10

Friday 28 September

THE EVENING HAD turned cold, but Axel remained sitting on the terrace with the living-room door ajar behind him. He’d made a fire and put on a pullover. It was now past eleven and he had just gone in to Marlen, who had woken up and called for him. She’d been dreaming that the dead twin had been following her. Before going to bed, she’d come out to see him on the terrace. They’d sat for a while looking at the night sky together, and Axel had told her about the Ethiopian queen Cassiopeia. When she refused to go to bed until he told her one more story, he’d shown her the Twins, Castor and Pollux. He’d told her how strong and brave they were. No one could best Castor when it came to riding and taming horses, nor Pollux in a bare-fist fight. But most of all they were famed for being true to each other. They loved each other more than any other brothers loved, and nothing could part them. Nothing except death. Because the sad thing was that Pollux was the son of the god Zeus and immortal, while Castor was the son of an earthly king. But weren’t they twins? Marlen protested. They couldn’t have different fathers, could they? In the world of fairy tales such things are possible, Axel smiled. When Castor was killed in a fight, he had to go to the underworld. Pollux begged Zeus to make him mortal too, so that he too could go down to the kingdom of the dead and be with his beloved brother. But not even Zeus could arrange that. If you’re immortal, you’re immortal. Then he had an idea, and he fixed things so that the brothers could be together after all. Every other day Pollux could go to the realm of the dead and meet his twin brother, and the other days they could be together up in the sky.

Axel had told the boys the same story, but neither of them had had nightmares afterwards. Before Marlen could get back to sleep, he had to drive the dead twin away. He tucked the duvet tightly around her into a cocoon, and assured her that nobody could get at her now. On top of that, Mikk the mountain lion and Geiki the goat were standing guard around the bed. It all worked, and he heard no more from her.

Before returning to his chair on the terrace Axel had popped downstairs to have a few words with Tom. He stopped outside the door and listened to the reedy voice within. He felt as though he knew the song now, even though he’d only heard it in snatches. When Marlen was going to sleep, Tom had to turn off his amplifier, and his voice sounded even more frail against the almost inaudible chords from the guitar.

Axel had gone back upstairs without knocking. Taken the bottle of cognac and a glass out into the dark with him. Moments later Tom appeared in the doorway asking if he could spend the night at his friend Findus’s house, the lad he was going to start a band with. Axel reluctantly agreed. It was better than him sitting on his own in his bedroom all evening. After dinner he’d been on the point of suggesting they might do something together, but he’d waited too long and then it was too late. Daniel was getting to be more and more like a friend the older he got, he thought. Axel could talk about most things with him, and recognised himself in much of what his elder son said. And Marlen could always make him laugh with her strange notions. But there was something about Tom that made him hesitate to approach too close. He didn’t know what it was, only that it made him feel shy and clumsy.

He poured himself a glass and sat there inhaling the scent of the golden liquid. He’d bought the bottle on the plane back from Cyprus. They’d spent their Easter holiday there, the last holiday before Daniel moved away from home. Axel had dreaded it. And the sharp white sun and the turquoise sea had heightened his feeling of tristesse. The bus driver who drove them out to the airport was called Andreas. Axel had conversed with him during one of the outings they’d gone on. They were both about the same age. The driver had small eyes and a nose that had been broken and grown back crooked. He watched Bie as she climbed aboard in the short white frock that clung to her thighs and was almost translucent, and Marlen, Tom and Daniel as they followed her into the bus. As Axel passed him, bringing up the rear, he exclaimed: You must be a very happy man. He laughed, exposing brown gums. And when Axel sat down in the back of the bus, and Bie pinched his thigh and whispered in his ear that she fancied him, and he put his arm around her and looked at the desolate yellow land gliding by outside, he thought: I must be a very happy man.

The fire had gone out. He poured himself another glass, studied the dying embers as they slowly paled. He thought: I will go up to Miriam’s. I’ll sit there in her attic apartment in Rodeløkka. Sit there and not do anything but drink the coffee she makes, and talk to her.

He was on his way to the bathroom when he heard a car down in the driveway. He looked out and saw a taxi at the gate. The time was 2.15. Sound of the door being unlocked, Bie’s bunch of keys chinking against the glass top of the chest of drawers.

He undressed and stood in his boxers, glanced at himself in the mirror. He still looked like he kept himself in shape, though the line down to the ridge of the hips had acquired a tiny undulation. A few moments later she came into the bathroom and stood behind him.

– Are you still up?

He looked at her in the mirror.

– Unless I’m sleepwalking.

Her hair was unkempt and her eyes were bleary, though the make-up hadn’t run. She was wearing a dark green tight-fitting satin dress, with shoulder straps and a plunging neckline. There was a hint of green in her eyeshadow too. When she was made up like that, accentuating the slightly slanting eyes and the high cheekbones, she might be taken for five years younger. Maybe more.

He turned, inhaling. The perfume he usually bought her, the way it smelt hours later, mingling with the smell of her sweat and of other people’s cigarettes. A second, foreign perfume was mixed in with the smell of Shalimar; something a man would wear. He could follow the thought, conjure up images of who she’d been sitting with, dancing with. He took her by the arm and pulled her towards him.

– Christ, she murmured as he started to kiss her. – You’re hot for it.

Closer and closer it came, the smell of the strange, the thing he didn’t know about, that turned her into something other than the person he knew. Her tongue tasted of wine, but vodka too, or gin. It was not often she could be persuaded to drink spirits, and when he lifted her skirt and took hold of her naked buttocks, she groaned and began to pull at his boxer shorts.

He lifted her up on to the rim of the basin, pulled off the translucent string.

– Axel, she scolded him. – Not here, the kids might wake up.

But that was exactly what she wanted, for him to take her right there and then, sitting on the cold porcelain basin, only half undressed, protesting against the damage to her dress when he pulled the shoulder straps down and fastened his mouth to one of her breasts, raised her lower body and pushed himself inside her.

When she came, she swallowed back the sounds. It ended up a long-drawn-out rattle, unlike anything he’d ever heard from her before. He didn’t come. When it was over for her, he carried her out of the bathroom.

– Wait, she groaned. – At least let me pee.

He got into bed. Through the open door he heard her flush the toilet, wash her hands, open the cupboard, almost certainly to remove her contact lenses. Then she came padding into him, naked, and closed the door behind her.

– Can’t a poor girl get even a few hours’ sleep? she complained.

He pulled her down and turned her round. – Oh Axel, she moaned, the way he was used to hearing her. He bent her body at the hips and entered her from behind, lying there without moving, like an insect.

– Tell me where you’ve been, he whispered as he began to move slowly inside her.

– What is it with you, Axel? she groaned.

– Tell me what you did tonight.

– Lotta and Maren. We ate at Theatrecaféen. Then we went on to Smuget.

– Did you meet anyone?

She twisted her body.

– A whole crowd, she sighed.

– Did you dance?

– Of course.

– With lots of men?

– One especially. A policeman.

He withdrew, then entered her again, quicker and harder.

– He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Must have been ten years younger than me. Yes, like that, harder. Oh fuck, yes.

She didn’t usually swear; it moved his excitement up another notch. He couldn’t face asking any more questions about the policeman, whether they went on anywhere else afterwards, but he could see them in his mind’s eye as she put her arm around his neck and pressed up close against him. He surrendered, pushing her down into the mattress, forcing himself up tight against her buttocks. As he came, a face appeared far away inside the darkness. It came closer, veiled in green, looking in at him through an open car door.

11

Saturday 29 September

AXEL WOKE AT six o’clock. He wasn’t on duty this weekend and could lie in as long as he liked. But he felt himself well rested and swung his feet on to the floor. A few minutes later he was running through the copse, towards the farm lane. It was still only dawn light, the outlines of things flowing into each other. But he could tell that it was going to be a clear autumn day.

By 7.30, he had laid the breakfast table and was sitting fresh from the shower in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, with coffee, orange juice and the Aftenposten. He read it back to front, quickly through the sport, lingering over the financial pages. The price of oil was down, in general bad news for those with their money in unit trusts. All the same, as long as there was war and terrorism in the Middle East, prices would stay high. He had some money invested, but not enough to create a dilemma for him. He glanced through the news. Man threatened with a knife in Rosenkranz gate, woman missing in the Nordmarka, electricity prices on the way down after all the rain in the early autumn. He heard someone slipping into the toilet, saw bare feet padding out into the hallway. Marlen popped her head in.

– You sleepyhead, he chided her as he put the newspaper aside. – It’s the middle of the day.

She stood there bleary eyed, in a red nightie with a crocodile across the front.

– You’re always bragging about how early you get up.

He laughed.

– You want egg and bread, or muesli?

She poked out her lip, sat down and gave the question some thought.

– Egg, she decided.

He buttered her a slice of bread with a squeeze of caviar, then turned to her and conjured an egg from her ear.

She pulled a face and stared out of the window, the trees still hidden behind the grey morning mist.

– Get out the wrong side of the bed today?

She turned to him with an exasperated sigh.

– Dad, everyone has the right to be in a bad mood in the morning. For half an hour. At least.

– Quite agree, he conceded. – That is a human right.

– Which came first, the chicken or the egg? she asked.

– The egg?

– Wrong. Because God doesn’t lay eggs.

Axel peered into Tom’s room and discovered that his son had come home last night after all. He could just make out his shape as he lay under the duvet, his breathing heavy, his face turned towards the wall. There was a close, confined atmosphere there, and the smell of smoke. Axel picked up a shirt that had been tossed over the back of a chair, sniffed at it. He’d seen several of the kids Tom hung out with sitting on the grass behind the centre smoking, but Tom denied that he would ever do anything like that. Axel opened the window, stood a while beside the bed, decided to let the boy sleep on for a while.

Instead, he let himself into the loft. Been putting off for far too long clearing up all the things that had just been tossed in there. He sorted out the sports gear the kids had grown out of, and the clothes he didn’t use any more. Suits and shirts that he thought were okay himself, but that Bie had condemned as old fashioned and refused to let him wear. Over the years the Salvation Army had done pretty well out of Bie’s aesthetics.

In the furthest corner of the loft, behind the empty suitcases and the drums full of winter clothing, was an old mahogany cupboard. The key hung from a hook on the ceiling. For the first time in years, he opened it. The two upper drawers contained the few things he had kept after his father’s death. A peaked hat. Military paraphernalia. Two pistols: a Spanish one that had been used in the civil war, and a Luger taken when the Germans were disarmed in the final days before the surrender. There was a box containing letters sent to Torstein Glenne by friends being held in the prison camp at Grini. He’d read them all to Axel. Sometimes to Brede as well, but mostly to Axel, to teach him that freedom has its price. The maps were in the same box.

On summer evenings, when Colonel Glenne had been sitting long enough in front of the terrace fire with his whisky and his pretzels, he would sometimes allow himself to be persuaded to go up and fetch the maps with all the secret routes inscribed on them. I probably shouldn’t be showing you these, boys, he’d growl, though twenty-five years had passed since the German surrender. I might let slip things I’ve promised on pain of death never to reveal. And then without further ado he would describe the various hiding places along the Swedish border. Here was where they had hidden out after their actions. After they’d blown factories to smithereens, cut vital telephone wires, helped refugees over the border: Jewish children, Resistance members who had been betrayed, even those occasional oddballs who just panicked and wanted to get out even though the Germans weren’t after them.

His father had marked the maps: a cross for each meeting point, dotted lines for the escape routes, circles for the hiding places and communication centres. Afterwards Axel and Brede would play refugees and border guides, and especially Resistance fighters engaging in mortally dangerous sabotage operations. They sank the Blücher in the waters off Drøbak, and drove the Bismarck and the Tirpitz into narrow and treacherous fjords. Above all they blew up the heavy water plant in Vemork. At the very last moment they managed to light the fuse, just before Hitler had finally made his atom bomb; all that was needed was just a few litres of that water, and the Glenne brothers had ruined everything for him. Hitler was furious. He developed an obsessive hatred of them and sent his most dangerous SS men to Norway to capture them. The twins fled to the forest and hid out in the cabins their father had told them about. They sneaked from one to another, dog patrols on their heels, hearing the barking and the shouting of the commandos in German, the most gruesome of all languages. But if one of them was captured, the other would get away, because both had sworn to die rather than inform on his brother.

These games would get Brede so worked up that he could lie awake all night. Sometimes he would even wake Axel to swear the pact all over again: You will never betray me. I will never betray you.

Even when they weren’t playing, Axel knew he had to look after his brother. That no one else would do it. Every time Brede did something terrible, their parents talked about how they couldn’t have him in the house any longer. Axel thought of these as threats meant to get Brede to pull himself together; he never dreamt they might actually mean it. Brede couldn’t pull himself together. One week after Balder was shot, they sent him away.

He was sitting on the sofa with Marlen playing Buzz! Jungle when Bie appeared. She stood in the door and watched them. It was 11.30. Axel was still in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, Marlen in her nightie.

– So this is where you are.

– Don’t interrupt, Mum, can’t you see we’re working?

– I see, is that what you’re doing?

– Don’t you know that playing for children is the same thing as working is for grown-ups?

– Yes, I guess it is. But what about Daddy? He isn’t a child, is he, or at least not completely.

– Daddy has a day off. I’m the only one that’s working.

Bie stood behind them and followed the game on the TV screen for a while. Then she bent down and put her arms round them, both of them, hugging one against each of her cheeks. Axel put his hand behind her and let it slip up under her dressing gown; she was still naked underneath.

– You’re a fine one, she whispered in his ear.

– Stop whispering, Marlen protested.

– I only said to your daddy that he’s, er, very fine.

– You’re putting him off, she complained. – See, he just lost a life.

– Serves him right. Bie gave up and disappeared into the kitchen. Shortly afterwards she called out:

– Have you read the paper, Axel?

– Sort of.

She was holding it in front of her as she came back into the room again.

– Did you see this about the woman missing in the Nordmarka?

He continued laying waste with the Buzz! control.

– Did you see who it is? she asked. – Hilde Paulsen, my physio.

Only now did he react, jumping to his feet, crossing to her. With narrowed eyes he read the story she was pointing to.

He called the police station, explained what it was about. A woman with a strong Stavanger accent came on the line. Her voice was also unusually loud.

– At what time of the day did you meet her?

Axel thought it over. He’d been up at Blankvann around 4.30. With the puncture it took him perhaps twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, to get down to Ullevålseter. He hadn’t checked the time again until he was at Sognsvann, when he noticed it was 6.15.

– And how did she seem? I mean, her mood.

Axel held the receiver well away from his ear.

– Nothing special. Just the usual good mood.

He knew what the policewoman was angling for, but he found it hard to believe that Hilde Paulsen’s disappearance had anything to do with her state of mind. A woman in a tracksuit, with walking poles. She’d stopped to discuss a patient with him. An old man with back pain was what was on her mind at that particular juncture. Not suicide.

12

Monday 1 October

RITA POURED COFFEE for them.

– She was going for a walk in the Nordmarka, she said as she sliced the macaroon cake she’d baked over the weekend. – And since then there’s been no sign of her.

Every Friday, and some Mondays, Rita served up a treat for lunch. On more than one occasion Inger Beate had taken Axel aside and asked how they could talk to her about it without hurting her feelings, because they couldn’t sit there forever stuffing themselves with cake. Axel had a good laugh at her worries and said it was up to each individual how to deal with that particular dilemma.

– Do any of you know who she is?

– Should we? asked Inger Beate, her mouth full of salad. Axel knew there was a case she wanted to discuss with him, but she wouldn’t bring it up as long as the student was sitting there. He’d have to call in and talk to her later in the day.

– You know her, both of you.

Inger Beate glanced over at Axel; he was looking the other way.

– About time you told us, Rita, she said, irritated.

– Hilde Paulsen, that physio from Majorstua.

– Really! exclaimed Inger Beate.

Rita held up the plate of macaroon cake and looked from one to the other.

– The police think she’s been murdered.

Axel turned abruptly to her.

– How do you know that?

– A friend of mine. Her daughter’s a journalist, works for VG. They know all that kind of thing there. The police seem to think that Hilde Paulsen met someone while she was out walking, or else someone was waiting for her up in the forest.

She shivered as she said it and nearly dropped the cake plate on to the table.

About four o’clock, Miriam knocked on Axel’s door.

– I’ve written up the journal notes.

He didn’t look up.

– The woman who was knocked down from behind, she reminded him. – Question of whiplash.

– I’ll have a look at it before I leave.

She didn’t move.

– You seem very preoccupied today.

He brushed the hair away from his forehead. Only now did he raise his eyes and look at her.

– Come in and sit down, he said finally.

She closed the door behind her.

– I’m sorry if you… he began. – What we were talking about on Wednesday.

Her eyes were bigger than he had remembered them, or was it just the make-up that created that effect. She was wearing a T-shirt under her doctor’s coat with big glitter-coated lettering across the chest.

– Is that some secret message on your top? he said, smiling.

She blushed and pulled the coat closed.

– Got it from a friend on my birthday. I didn’t have anything else clean.

– Let me see, he said.

Reluctantly she opened her coat. His gaze moved across the twisting letters.

– M-i-r-i-a-m, he read. – Today’s a good day, Miriam. For a cup of coffee, I mean.

Sitting in the back of the taxi he said:

– You’re right, I do have a lot on my mind today.

He leaned back into the soft seat.

– That missing woman. I met her the day she disappeared. Maybe I’m the last person to see her alive.

He didn’t say any more about it. Not until he was seated on the sofa in her apartment. Beyond the living room was a kitchenette, and in one corner an alcove where he presumed her bed was. While she laid out the cups and saucers, he told her about the meeting with the missing woman up in the Oslomarka. For some reason or other he repeated their conversation verbatim, as far as he could recall it, as well as the thought that had occurred to him: that not all women would dare walk alone in the forest in the evening. After that, he told her about the rest of his day.

Miriam served coffee from a cafetière. He took a sip. Blue Java, if he had to guess.

– This is good coffee. And I reckon I’m a connoisseur.

She was clearly preoccupied with what he had just been telling her.

– Before you met her, she said as she slipped into a chair on the other side of the table, – you took a swim in a tarn deep in the forest, and then you found that shelter made of spruce branches.

– I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Miriam.

– There’s nothing to be worried about.

It was as though every little thing interested her. It gave everything he said a slightly different meaning than he gave it himself. At the same instant he thought about taking her up there. To the tarn and the twig shelter. He liked the thought of walking in the forest with her. He was about to say this, but restrained himself. Instead began talking about the life he would soon be going home to. Riding lessons, football practice, family dinners. Marlen and Tom, Daniel who had gone to New York to study, and Bie, who was a journalist on a fashion magazine she’d once edited. He told her all this to release the tension that had been building in him, and he could feel that it helped.

– You’re the type of person people open up to, Miriam. Tell you what, if you were in the police, you’d get plenty of confessions.

She looked up through the skylight.

– It’s always been like that. The stories I hear live on inside me. They can knock me out of my stride for a long time after.

– How is that going to affect your work as a doctor? You can’t let things get to you. If you do, you’ve no chance.

She blew on to her cup and took a sip.

– I’ll have to learn to live with it. Learn how to erect barriers. I think I’m getting better.

– At any rate, I’ll spare you the rest of my story, he said, putting down his cup and standing up.

He stopped next to the chair she was sitting in. She looked up. Her face was shadowed in the grey light falling from the window above. That yellowy green he’d noticed in her eyes earlier wasn’t visible now. For the first time he sensed that there was something else there, beneath her calm. Had probably noticed it already when she arrived in the morning. He hadn’t asked her a single question about her life. It was a matter of avoiding any openings that might turn her into something more than a young student he was in touch with for a few autumn weeks before disappearing from his life for good. He could feel he was almost back in control again and was determined not to let it go this time. All the same, he asked her:

– Has something happened?

She looked away.

– I’ve got a confession to make, Axel, she answered after a pause. – It was no accident that I got my practical at your clinic. I swapped with someone else. When you lectured us before the summer, I came to see you in the breaks every day. I thought about you afterwards. I was stupid enough to suppose you were thinking about me too. But when I came into your office that first day, you didn’t even remember me.

– What did you want from me? he asked.

– I had to talk to you again.

– Talk?

He touched her shoulder. She leaned in towards him.

– I think that’s what I wanted.

Her lower lip protruded slightly. He bent down and kissed it.

– I have to go now.

He pulled her up out of the chair. The trousers she was wearing were made of some smooth stuff and were tight across her hips. His hand slid down across the waistband. She stretched up and pressed her lips against his neck.

– This mustn’t happen, Miriam.

– All right then, she murmured, – it mustn’t happen.

13

FATHER RAYMOND STAYED behind in church after evening prayers. He had to take confession and left the candles burning. The time he sat there waiting and listening in that large space eased his mind. He could approach silence. The sounds of the traffic outside barely penetrated the walls. Then the main door opened. He recognised the figure walking up the central aisle at once.

– Good evening, he said, jocularly formal. – What a pleasant surprise.

The young woman took his outstretched hand.

– I won’t take too much of your time, Father Raymond.

He brushed this away.

– Dear Miriam, if you only knew what a pleasure it is to see you. It’s been months.

He escorted her to a small room next to the sacristy, offered her a seat on the bench beside the door, and sat on a chair opposite her.

– I think of you so often, he said. – Just very recently, in fact.

He remembered at once that it was the day before, in the morning, as he was on his way to the office. He’d thought of her as he was putting the key into the door. He thought of her because she had appeared in his dream the previous night. He didn’t tell her this. Instead he asked her how her studies were going. Miriam answered vaguely, and that surprised him, because usually she would respond to such a question in a very detailed manner.

He crossed his legs and sat back, observing her. Her face was what fascinated him most. The sight of a pretty face had always had a stimulating effect on him. Like a good wine, or a well-turned piece of prose. But there was something about Miriam’s face. It reminded him of a thought he often returned to. Something by a philosopher who, oddly enough, came from her native country, and whose work he had studied for years: The trace of Him in the Other’s face.

– I’ve met someone, she said.

He nodded once or twice, sustaining his silence long enough for her to have no choice but to go on.

– A man.

That much he had gathered. Very slightly he began rocking back and forth in his chair, as though this movement would enable him to put aside everything else that was on his mind and direct his full attention towards her.

– You say this as though it were a problem.

Gone was that slight feeling of dissatisfaction that had taken hold of him earlier in the evening. In its place he felt a quiet joy spreading through him. She was troubled in some way. She had come to him. On another occasion, some time ago now, she had visited him in order to talk about a man. She wanted to end it, but felt sorry for the man and didn’t want to cause him any more hurt.

– Have you known him a long time… this new one? Father Raymond asked discreetly.

– A week ago tomorrow.

He opened his mouth to say something.

– I know it doesn’t sound like long, she added quickly. – But it’s as though I’ve always known him. I can’t explain it.

– You are good at explaining, the priest said encouragingly.

She gave him a long look.

– We can’t go on meeting… He’s seventeen years older than me.

– I see.

– He’s married with three children. Now I’ve said it. If you want me to leave, I’ll understand.

A smile flitted across Father Raymond’s lips.

– I don’t believe you can have such a low opinion of me.

She told him more. And yet he still had the feeling she was holding something back. She was troubled, seemed almost afraid, but he didn’t push her. When she fell silent, he asked:

– Can people find happiness together knowing that their happiness is built on the destruction of the lives of others?

– I don’t think so, Father.

He cleared his throat.

– How involved are you?

– I spoke to him when he lectured us before the holidays. I thought about him all summer. I thought it would pass if I met him again, but it only got worse.

– So you’re not being… the priest began. – He isn’t pressuring you in any way?

– I’m the one who’s chased after him, she answered firmly. – I planned it all out beforehand.

Father Raymond had known her for the six years she had lived in Oslo. Even since her first visit to him he had had a soft spot for her, but in a way he felt this was permissible. The weakness was a reminder, an opening back to the man he had once been; in sacrificing the passion that had dominated him formerly, he had rediscovered it at a new level, one where it was ruled not by compulsion but by joy.

– I’ll never forget how you helped me that other time, she said suddenly. – It was those conversations with you that gave me the strength to break away from that relationship. It would have destroyed me.

– All I did was pull a few loose ends together for you, he demurred. He didn’t want to dwell on this; what she had come to talk to him about now was more important. And, he had to admit to himself, his curiosity was piqued.

– And how far has this relationship gone?

– I haven’t been with him in that sense. He kissed me. Then he left.

Father Raymond leaned in towards her.

– There are two questions I want you to consider before you leave here. In the first place, what does he want from you?

When she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer, he asked her to tell him what she knew about the man. Afterwards he summarised her reply.

– The picture you paint is of an attractive man, sympathetic and capable, one who does a lot for others. He was a wife and children, and a twin brother whom he hasn’t seen for many years. You still haven’t answered my question, Miriam, but don’t forget it. My second question is the more important: What do you want from him?

– I want to be with him, she answered without a moment’s hesitation. – In every conceivable way.

Father Raymond lowered his gaze. She went on:

– Only my thoughts tell me it’s wrong. Everything else in me wants it. I’ll lose everything and be left with nothing. And when I think about it, it’s a relief. But he’ll never leave his family for my sake. He isn’t like that.

– Are you sure that isn’t precisely why you want to be with him? Because he is not free to imprison you? Might this be an attempt to gain control of something painful, Miriam?

She looked as though she was thinking over the question but could find no answer. He knew the grief she had been carrying since she was a little girl. But now he was approaching the limits of what he could understand. I know people better than I know men and women, he thought once again.

– I do know something about what you’ve been through, Miriam. Don’t exclude the possibility that I can help you this time too.

The question she was wrestling with had an unambiguous answer. She knew what the right thing to do was, and she had not come to him to hear him say it. He thought he saw in her something of what he himself had once struggled with. And yet she was better equipped to deal with the world than he had been. Or was he judging her wrongly? The way she connected so strongly with others, and connected others so strongly to herself, was that really all to the good? He thought he could see her so clearly. But maybe the shadow was deeper than he realised. Was there something there he didn’t want to know about? He had met people who carried around with them a chasm of grief, seen how it trapped and held them like a passion. And how, perhaps even without wanting to, they could turn others into prisoners along with them.

He made her promise to come back. It was all he could do. He could see clearly now how afraid she was. The last thing he wanted to do was turn her away by seeming prejudiced, he thought as he accompanied her back through the church.

As he stood at the altar and watched her walking down the central aisle, he remembered what it was he had dreamt about her last night. He turned at once and went back into the sacristy.

14

Tuesday 2 October

AXEL ATE LUNCH in his office and tried to work. He had a pile of documents to get through. A couple of social security forms and four references that had to be sent out in the course of the day. He sat there with the documents and his unopened lunch box on the desk in front of him. Miriam was sick. At least that was what she’d told Rita on the phone. At first he was relieved. It wasn’t the first time one of his students had shown a more than professional interest in him. Usually he didn’t mind. On the odd occasion he’d been careless enough to encourage it, but he had never before allowed it to develop. Miriam was going to be absent for the remainder of the week. The need to call her crept up on him. He sat with his mobile phone in his hand, put it down again. He should never have touched her. It would not happen again.

He managed only one of the social security forms during his lunch break, and as soon as he was finished with the day’s last patient, he put the phone on voicemail and set about the rest of the documents, as well as test results from the last four days. He made a note of the ones requiring further attention. Mostly trifles and probably false readings. Some possibly serious. And one that he sat studying in his hand. Cecilie Davidsen, the results of the biopsy test on that lump in her breast. Findings consistent with invasive glandular carcinoma stage III. Multiple mitosis, severely atypical and glandular metastasis. It was less than a week since the patient had come to see him. He had realised at once that the tumour was malignant and that same week had arranged for a mammography. Being on friendly terms with the right people helped, as did a reputation as a good general practitioner.

He opened her notes and found her number, picked up the phone. A child’s voice at the other end.

– Is your mother there? he asked.

– Who are you?

– I’m… I have a message for her.

The child called for its mother; a little girl, he could tell, about Marlen’s age. He replaced the receiver.

In the taxi, the image of Miriam again. She had a tiny freckle on her chin, directly below her ear. And another one just like it on the side of her neck. When she was listening, her eyebrows would rise quickly and quiver a few times before sinking again. He glanced at his watch, not sure whether he would have time to see his mother in the nursing home before catching the boat. You must always pay your dues, Axel. For his father, there was only one real sin here in life. Judge Torstein Glenne had come across so many people who had stolen, betrayed, killed. The only real sin is to lie. Everything else can be forgiven as long as you own up and make amends. When you lie, that’s when you’re really done for. It puts you on the outside. That is what Brede seems incapable of understanding.

Axel asked the driver to wait, opened the gate into the garden. The Davidsens had a big garden, with apple trees and a raspberry hedge, and something that looked like clematis covering the whole of the front of the house. He rang the doorbell and heard a dog barking and someone calling inside, then the door was opened and a girl was standing there. She had a thin braid on each side of her head and a small, red, turned-up nose, and he realised this must the girl who had answered the phone twenty minutes earlier. She was holding a cocker spaniel by its collar, not much more than a puppy.

– I’d like to talk to your mother.

She looked at him and seemed afraid. The dog too; it pulled free and ran off.

– You’re the person who rang, she said, not releasing him from her gaze.

He nodded.

– You hung up. When Mummy came, there was no one there.

– It was better to come here and talk to her, he said.

Just then Cecilie Davidsen appeared behind her daughter. She was wearing glasses; her hair was browner than last time and combed forward at the temples. It was the fashion, but it didn’t suit her. In her hand she was holding a book, an arithmetic primer for nursery school he noted. When she recognised him, her pupils widened and her face seemed to collapse.

– Is it you … was it you that rang?

He felt clumsy and helpless, and only now realised what a mistake it had been to come in person, bringing this news into her home.

– I’ve got a visit to make in the neighbourhood. I thought I might just as well call in.

She held the door open for him. All the colour had drained from her face. The girl put her arms around her waist and buried her face in her pullover.

The messenger, thought Axel Glenne as he stepped over the threshold of the large villa in Vindern carrying the results of a test done on a tissue sample full of cells multiplying out of control and spreading death around them. There was a smell of dinner in the hallway, stronger in the living room. Meat and melted cheese, rice perhaps. He waited until the girl had been sent to her room with the puppy and the arithmetic book and a biscuit in her hand.

– It’s about your tissue sample, he said, though he could see that the woman sitting opposite him knew exactly why he had come.

15

Thursday 4 October

MARLEN’S FRIENDS HAD been invited for six o’clock. Axel had to drop his bicycle ride; he’d promised to get home early and arrange things. An hour before the party, he went and picked up the fizzy drinks and the pizza. The night before, Bie had baked a chocolate cake, buns, tea cakes and made a jelly. She was on an assignment in Stockholm and wouldn’t be back until the celebrations were over. She was happy enough to be missing all the racket and grateful to Axel for standing in. He’d asked Tom to help with the preparations, and his son had grunted something that might have been a yes, but a few moments later Axel had seen the back of his black leather jacket disappearing through the garden gate.

While he laid the table with the paper tablecloth and the paper plates and blew up the balloons, Marlen sat underneath playing with the present he had given her that morning. She wanted a dog, or at least a cat. She couldn’t have either because she was allergic. A pig was rejected for the same reason, though from a medicinal point of view, the reasoning was doubtful. So he’d bought her a tortoise. It was good for everybody. It didn’t moult, didn’t need to go walks every hour of the day and night, was easy to feed and didn’t need contraceptive pills or vaccinations, didn’t pee on the carpets, and obeyed house rules without making a fuss. Marlen at once announced that it was her best friend. After a few trial baptisms she finally named it Cassiopeia, after another tortoise in a book Axel had read to her, and with that the creature also had its own constellation up in the night sky. Weeks ago Marlen had decided that all the birthday guests should come dressed as some kind of animal. She was going to go as Cassiopeia’s big sister, to which end Axel had fastened a brown plastic bowl to her back and pushed all her long hair inside a woollen hat. Now she was lying beneath the table babbling away in tortoise language and waiting for the first guests to arrive.

With the pizza in the oven, Axel sent the twelve little girls in their animal shapes down into the basement, where they could dance to the flashing of disco lights. He went to fetch his mobile phone to see if Bie had been delayed. There was one message. It was from Miriam. He stood out in the hallway, unsure whether or not he should open it. Three days had passed since he had gone up to her flat. He had kissed her. For the rest of that day she had rustled around inside him. Her voice, the smell of her. When she didn’t turn up at the office the following day, he had several times picked up his mobile to call her or send a message. But he’d forced himself not to do anything, and it was as though her hold on him was released. Today he had hardly thought about her at all. He had relinquished control and then regained it.

Miriam had written: I’m better now. See you Monday. The message was accompanied by a smiley. He knew nothing about her. He didn’t want to know. Had made a point of not asking anything that might have led to her talking about herself. Whom she was seeing. Where she was from. Family, friends, former lovers. He had everything to lose.

The alarm from the oven told him that the pizza was ready. He had had fantasies about Miriam. Almost without realising it. Only now did he recognise that in his mind he had started to turn her into something she almost certainly wasn’t. Was that why he had been able to go up to the attic flat with her? Was that why it would be possible to see her again? He knew it would happen. Afterwards he would let her go.

Axel had been responsible for most of his sons’ birthday parties over the years. Compared to them, girls’ birthdays were straightforward enough. Nobody threw slices of pizza around. No one squeezed tomato ketchup across the table. No one put a straw into the ear of the child sitting beside him and blew it full of fizzy lemonade. He could pad about filling glasses for a throng of pink rabbits. There were a few cats too, a couple of ponies, a ladybird and a lugubrious donkey. Natasha, Marlen’s best friend, was a lion, apparently, the crown of Afro hair pushed up into a mane and every question answered with an ominous growling. But she laughed until her eyes rolled back in her head when she saw how frightened Axel was, and reassured him that she was really very nice, as long as she got enough pizza.

– My grandad was nearly killed by the Germans, Marlen boasted. – Isn’t that so, Daddy?

– That’s true enough.

Marlen picked up Cassiopeia and kissed it on the shell.

– Tell about the time Grandad had to escape to Sweden, she said.

Axel declined, didn’t want to invite Colonel Glenne to this particular party. He’d hidden bags of sweets in various places around the house and drawn pirate maps with hidden messages showing where they were. But Marlen wouldn’t give up.

– Then tell us about Castor and Pollux, she insisted. – The one who had to go into the underworld to visit his dead brother.

She got the support of the other animals for her demand, and Axel saw that there was nothing for it but to tell the story. Even as a child he had always liked to tell stories. If he managed to make them exciting enough, he would have his mother’s attention. Astrid Glenne would look at him with her big blue eyes wide open and sit down and listen until he had finished. He considered it particularly successful if he managed to frighten her. When his stories were about Frankenstein and vampires and werewolves, she would be genuinely afraid and hold her hands out in front of her as though she didn’t want to hear any more, though more was exactly what she did want. And when he conjured up a picture of Count Dracula sneaking into the bedroom of a half-naked woman, shadowless and driven on by his insatiable lust for blood, then Axel had his mother in the palm of his hand. The more afraid she was, the closer she was to him.

He didn’t try to frighten the little girls in their animal costumes with the story of the twins, but wove in new, dramatic episodes that came to him as he was going along. They sat there spellbound. The little one in the donkey outfit, the only one of Marlen’s friends whose name he couldn’t recall, had black wrinkles painted on her forehead and cheeks and looked like an old lady. Something about her wide eyes made him think of the daughter of the patient he had visited earlier. That feeling of being a messenger of death invading their home in Vindern hit him again. And with it came the thought of Miriam: return her message. Call her. Go there. He had to talk to her.

– You’ll find Castor and Pollux if you look up into the night sky, he concluded. – Not too far away from the Ethiopian queen, Cassiopeia.

– Did everyone know Cassiopeia was a queen? shouted Marlen. – We’re going out to see if we can find her.

She raced across the room and opened the terrace door with the other animals in tow. Axel followed. The night had cleared, and much of the sky was visible. He pointed out the Twins to them, and Cassiopeia.

– But right next to them is a star you must never look at.

He said no more, and all the girls turned to him.

– What star is that? asked Natasha.

– Its name is Algol; it’s in the constellation Perseus, he said. – That’s the name the Arabs gave it. It means the spirit that eats corpses.

None of the girls said anything; they stood staring up into the dark.

– Sometimes Algol is bright and clear, other times you can hardly see it; it changes all the time. Actually… Axel lowered his voice – actually it’s Medusa’s evil eye we can see up there. It’s winking at us. But you don’t want to hear any more about that…

This was greeted by a chorus of complaints, and Marlen threatened to beat him up if he didn’t continue.

– All right then, he said with a heavy sigh. – You leave me with no choice.

He told them about Perseus, the son of the gods who was sent to the land of the Gorgons to capture the terrifying Medusa. He described the monster in minute detail, the snapping snakes that were her hair, the poisonous sulphur gas she breathed out. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he told them the most terrible detail of all: the eyes that were so ugly that anyone who looked into them was turned to stone. A kind of shiver passed through the flock of girls in fancy dress, and that sad little donkey, the one who reminded him of Cecilie Davidsen’s daughter, bit her lip and looked as though she was on the verge of tears. Fortunately Axel was able to tell them how Perseus, with the aid of a mirror, managed to cut the monster’s head off and squash it down into a sack. The girls sighed with relief.

– The story doesn’t end there, he announced. – But I’ll spare you the rest.

A new wave of protests, and reluctantly he had to continue the tale of Perseus’s triumphs.

– Wherever he went, he took with him the sack with the monster’s head inside, and whenever he encountered any wicked enemies, he would pull it out. It was a terrible weapon, because anyone who met the Medusa’s gaze, even after she was dead, was turned to stone. And that’s the way things are still: no one who looks into the eyes of the Medusa lives to tell the tale.

The girls all glanced at each other. No one said anything.

– Perseus was proclaimed a superhero and he got his own constellation in the sky, Axel said in conclusion. – And in his hand he’s holding the head of the Medusa with her evil eye. But of course, I can’t show you that.

Bie was seated at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine when he came down from the loft.

– I’ve been down with Marlen, she said. – She’s still awake.

Axel gave a broad smile.

– She’s probably not come back down to earth again after the party. But I swear I didn’t give them coffee. Not even Coke.

Bie looked at him.

– Marlen said, This is the best birthday party in my whole life, imitating her daughter’s common-sense delivery, making Axel laugh. – Not to say the best day of my life.

– Fortunately she says that every time, said Axel and sat down.

Bie poured him a glass of wine.

– You’ve always been good at playing. Unlike me. She’s lucky, Axel. She couldn’t have wished for a better father.

He looked up at the ceiling. He experienced a sudden and almost irresistible urge to tell her about Miriam. About being in her flat. At that moment, Marlen called out.

– You stay there, said Bie and stood up. As she passed him, she stroked his hair, then leaned over and kissed his ear.

It was 10.30. Tom was still not home. Axel had sent him a text but got no answer, and it struck him that it was his son he should have spent the evening with. Taken him to the cinema, or a coffee bar.

Bie came back up.

– She wants to talk to you. No one else will do. She just won’t give up.

Marlen lay with her head beneath the duvet. He pretended he couldn’t find her, felt around on the bed until he came across a foot, which he tickled under the toes.

– Can’t you sleep? he asked as she emerged.

– I daren’t.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

– What are you afraid of?

– That monster, she whispered. – Medusa. I’m never going to look up into the sky again.

Marlen had a tendency to overdramatise things, but he could hear now that she was genuinely afraid. He’d been too successful in bringing the story of Perseus alive; he hoped her classmates weren’t all lying awake in bed too.

– All this about Medusa is just a fairy tale, Marlen. I’ll tell you why that star winks at us. Actually there are two stars there. When the weaker one passes in front of the strong one, the light gets cut off.

He demonstrated with his hands how the two stars orbited around each other.

– After a few days, the strong one appears again, and from down here it looks like it’s flaring up. The two stars make us believe they are one and the same.

He had to repeat the explanation several times to convince Marlen that it wasn’t an evil eye up there looking down at the earth and winking. Eventually she calmed down and went to sleep. The myth of Medusa had released her from its hold.

IT IS THE sixth of October. Not when you hear this but now when I’m speaking to you, it is the sixth of October. I’ve killed today. I think about it and it makes me feel calm. Then I think of how I’m saying this into the Dictaphone so that you’ll hear it and I feel a thrill of expectation. You’ll be lying here where I’m sitting now and hearing my voice saying this. You can’t move and you can’t interrupt me. For the first time you realise it’s going to happen to you too.

I didn’t plan to kill. Not even when I saw her walking along the forest path towards me. It was nine days ago. I stopped and talked to her. She liked to talk. In the end I had to tell her to shut up. She went rigid and stared at me. Suddenly she turned and began to run back along the track. Then I knew she would die. I caught up with her and grabbed hold of that skinny neck. She started screaming. I was angry as fuck and I closed her shrieking mug. But it wasn’t going to happen just yet. She had to know about it for a while first. Same way you’ll know about it. I dragged her in among the trees. Had to tape her mouth shut. Tape her hands that kept trying to scratch my face. Found somewhere to tie her up to wait until I could come back and fetch her. It took a couple of hours and by then she was all screamed out. She’d messed herself like a baby in nappies. Didn’t weigh much more either, stinking old bag.

I couldn’t face taking her clothes off the way I’d planned. But I like to change plans. The best plans are the ones that just come along. Like the way I’m sitting here talking to you. I don’t know how it’ll be. Nor what’ll happen to you. All sorts of eventualities can crop up and get in the way. As I’m recording this, you still don’t know that this whole thing is about you. You’ve done everything you can to forget. But we are joined together. That’s what you were trying to say that time you told me about the twins that no one could part. No matter how much you have let me die in your thoughts. You said once that everyone has his own animal. You read that somewhere and wanted me to think about it. We were sitting in the classroom then too, but we weren’t alone there. It was just before the lesson began. And when I couldn’t think of anything, you said a bear, that was my animal.