Medusa

16

Sunday 7 October

DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR Hans Magnus Viken was standing high above the gully. He’d been there for several minutes. Below him the crime scene was bathed in light from the two large lamps the technicians had rigged up.

He had still not been down there. Not because he dreaded getting a closer look at the deceased, but because first impressions were important. He raised his eyes and looked into the darkness between the pine trees. The actual location in which a body was found always had something to tell. It was usually not possible to describe exactly what it was at first, but it might be useful later, perhaps even crucial. He referred to this to himself as intuition, but called it a gut feeling in conversation with colleagues. He was convinced that this power to think intuitively was what distinguished an unusually skilled detective from one who was merely competent.

Viken remained standing up there another couple of minutes before climbing down and nodding to the three guys in white coveralls who had completed the first round of examinations of the body and were now searching the surrounding forest floor.

One look at the dead person was enough. The DI was certain this was the missing woman. She was wearing walking gear, Gore-Tex jacket and trousers in some rough fabric. The jacket had been pulled up over the back. She lay with her legs curled under her, in a foetal position. He bent closer, switched on his torch. A gaping wound ran across one side of her neck and up on to her face. It looked almost like deep claw marks, five furrows in the same direction. When he carefully lifted up part of the ripped jacket, a second, similar gash appeared, diagonally down across the back. He peered towards the top of the gorge, where he’d just been standing. A fall on to the stones at the bottom could cause a lot of damage. But these gashes were different. It looked like something done by an animal. Ten days had passed since the woman had been reported missing; she must have been lying there exposed to the elements, and a natural target for scavengers.

One of the technicians shouted. He was standing doubled over at the end of the gorge, where it emerged on to a slope. The others joined him. Viken heard them talking loudly together and climbed closer.

– Found something?

One of them, a raw-boned, grey-haired man he’d known since police college days, beckoned to him.

– Better come and see this for yourself.

Viken shone his torch beam on to the ground, where the moss had been scratched up. Shone it further away; in several places there were similar marks on the forest floor. On a muddy patch of ground distinct tracks were visible. They looked like claw marks.

– Shit, Viken muttered. – They don’t exactly look like a dog’s prints.

He straightened up.

– How much longer do you need here?

The grey-haired man measured the gully with his gaze.

– Five, six hours to begin with.

Viken thought it over. It was now 8.45. It looked highly unlikely that this was a case for his Violent Crimes section. He had come up here on his own initiative when he heard about the discovery. He was well aware of the fact that not everybody in the Crime Response Unit would be equally pleased at his presence, but having seen the dead woman, he was confident that it had been time well spent. He had seen body parts fished up from the sea. He had entered flats in which corpses had lain rotting and putrefied in the summer heat for weeks. He had seen them disfigured with Sami knives, shot at close range with shotguns. But he had never seen anything resembling these gashes. Carefully he picked his way down the slope, shining the torch on the ground in front of him. A few metres further down he came across two new tracks.

He climbed up above the gully again, pulled the plastic coverings off his shoes and removed a cloth from his pocket. Even when working in terrain like this, he disliked seeing muddy spots on them. Afterwards he stood looking down at the brightly lit scene with the white-clad figures crawling around as they examined the ground around the body. He pulled out his mobile phone, called a number from the address book. A sergeant in the section had at one time been a member of the Hunting and Fishing Regulations committee in the area he came from, somewhere away up in darkest Hedmark. The type of guy who devoted two weeks of his holiday to elk hunting every time autumn came around.

– Hi, Arve, he said when his call was answered. – I know this is a holiday weekend for you, but there’s something I want you to see. Are you in town? Good, how quickly can you make it up to Ullevålseter?

Viken stood on the grass with a cup of hot coffee in his hands. The people at Ullevålseter were more than accommodating. The café had closed several hours ago, but they’d offered him something to eat as well. He said coffee was fine, even though his stomach was acid and complaining. In the distance he heard the sound of an engine, and a couple of minutes later a small, light car came up the slope. Sergeant Arve Norbakk, the man he was waiting for, usually drove a big four-by-four, and Viken immediately had a pretty good idea of what was happening.

His hunch turned out to be right. A blond woman he recognised at once jumped out of the passenger door even before the car had come to a halt.

– Well let me tell you, Fredvold, said Viken. – VG are usually on the scene long before I’ve even got my shoes on. I’ve been here for hours now and not seen hide nor hair of a journalist. No wonder the tabloids are struggling.

The woman was in her thirties, with a jutting lower jaw, and was about a head taller than the detective chief inspector. She wore a leather jacket and boots with heels that gave her another couple of centimetres on him. Tall women always made him feel uneasy.

– Well we’ll see about that, she answered. – But finding you here is good news.

Viken grimaced.

– It isn’t murder every time I show my face, you know that perfectly well. Did you get permission to drive up here?

– I didn’t reckon on meeting any traffic wardens in the middle of the forest, the journalist smiled. Cute as a pike, Viken thought.

A fat little man with an enormous photographer’s bag over one shoulder squeezed his way out of the car. The detective chief inspector hadn’t seen him before, and when the man approached, clearly intending to shake hands, he turned his back on him, trudged back into the café and refilled his cup. An hour had passed since he’d called Norbakk. He wanted to finish up here and get back down into town as quickly as possible.

Kaja Fredvold and the photographer followed him inside.

– Are you still serving coffee? the journalist exclaimed happily when she saw the steaming pot standing on the counter.

She helped herself and walked over to the table where Viken was now sitting.

– Is the body you’ve found Hilde Paulsen?

– Looks pretty much like it.

– What happened to her?

Viken drummed on the edge of the table.

– She’s lying in a gully, been lying there for a week and a half. Fell, I expect.

– Where?

– Not too far away. Couple of kilometres.

– But this area has been thoroughly combed for days. Dogs and helicopters and an army of volunteers.

– Give us a day or two, Fredvold.

– Us? You mean Violent Crimes?

Viken heard a car outside and stood up.

– Don’t try it on. That’s all you’re getting for now.

They drove up the forest road in Norbakk’s SUV, the journalist following them in the little Japanese car.

– Let’s hope they get stuck, said Viken.

Arve Norbakk chuckled. He was not much more than thirty, at least twenty years younger than his colleague. He’d joined straight from college and been in the section for eighteen months. Viken, who every semester led a course in investigatory tactics for the students, had personally recommended him to the head of the section. The gut feeling that stood him in such good stead as a detective was every bit as useful when it came to assessing a colleague’s personality and qualities. It enabled him to make quick judgements of their weaknesses and strengths, and he had not been mistaken in his opinion of Norbakk. The sergeant might not have been all that quick, but he was thorough and dependable, and smart enough when given the time. And he was someone who thought about what he was going to say before saying it, not the type to shoot his mouth off about anything and everything. The section had enough chattering magpies – an issue on which Viken’s tolerance was severely limited.

– You could have forbidden them to drive on any further, Norbakk suggested.

Viken fumbled out a paper hanky and blew into it. Not because he had a cold, but because the smell of the corpse he had been bending over still seemed to be in his nostrils.

– They would have been up there whatever. You know, when the mongrels pick up the scent of blood… Apropos mongrels, it was a dog that found the body. A few hundred metres off the track.

Norbakk glanced over at him.

– They’ve had search lines going across this area several times.

– I know. Our people with tracker dogs, and the army and the Red Cross, with hundreds of volunteers trawling every square inch. No one finds a damned shit. But a retired dentist out walking with his Gordon setter comes across it straight away.

A few minutes later they were stepping over the crime-scene tapes and climbing down into the gully. Norbakk took a quick look at the body.

– Fucking hell, he muttered, and looked up at the top of the gully.

– What do you make of these?

Viken pointed to the deep scratch marks on the back and neck.

– Can’t be the result of a fall, Norbakk said. – Must be an animal.

Viken glowered at the journalist and the photographer, who were leaning over the tape and following their every movement. Then he shone his torch on the marks in the moss.

– Bloody hell, Norbakk exclaimed.

– There’s a couple more here. We’ll need to get the experts on this, but I wanted you to see it first.

Viken shone the torch on the muddy area at the end of the gully.

– What’s your guess, Arve?

– Guess? It’s a stone-cold certainty.

The three technicians had arrived back by this time. Sergeant Arve Norbakk studied the ground for a little while longer before he raised his gaze and looked from one to another.

– Bear, he said.

17

Monday 8 October

VIKEN WAS IN excellent spirits but for obvious reasons contained himself.

– Are you trying to say that this is not our case? asked Nina Jebsen in her laid-back Bergen drawl. – That this is something for the Hunting and Fishing Regulations people?

Viken rested his gaze on her face. He’d only worked with her a couple of times before. She was in her early thirties, the type most men would undoubtedly have described as pretty, he thought. Meaning a face that was feminine and symmetrical and all that. Not very exciting, perhaps, but she definitely had a woman’s body, something the light grey suit with the short cinched jacket did nothing to hide. She just needed to lose about five or six kilos, he said to himself, not for the first time. But all things considered it was best for her to be the way she was. He didn’t want any babe working next to him, not on the job; that would be bound to cause trouble.

Seen from that perspective, working with the head of the Violent Crimes section, Detective Superintendent Agnes Finckenhagen, was a pretty straightforward business. She was a bag of bones about his own age, with a crooked nose and thin lips. Nina Jebsen’s question had been directed at her. Now Finckenhagen’s mouth narrowed even further. Viken had long ago worked out that this was a sign she was trying to appear authoritative.

– We’ve had a wildlife expert up there, she said. – He confirms what we already suspected. She flashed a quick smile at Arve Norbakk, who was sitting directly opposite her round the table. – That is, that the murdered woman, Hilde Sofie Paulsen, has injuries consistent with those inflicted by a bear.

Viken adopted a look of relaxed inscrutability as Finckenhagen spoke. The case had been well handled, and she had praised him before the meeting. Taking Arve Norbakk up to the scene had been a smart move. The sergeant had experience with attaching radio transmitters to bears and was as qualified as any expert to identify the wounds on the deceased and the tracks found nearby. From the moment the body had been found they had been in control of the situation, and they had been firm in dealing with the press. Viken had discreetly reminded Finckenhagen that he was the one who had recommended Norbakk when he applied to join their section and that, probably as a result of this, he had been given the job ahead of people with a longer record of service.

– If it was an animal that did this, then surely we can take responsibility for tracking it down, suggested Inspector Sigmundur Helgarsson with a grin in Norbakk’s direction. – There’s others can hunt here besides Arve.

– Excellent idea, Sigge, Viken responded tonelessly. – I imagine you grew up hunting polar bears.

– Do they have polar bears in Iceland? Nina Jebsen wanted to know.

Finckenhagen raised both hands.

– Let’s drop the macho stuff, shall we. This is a deeply tragic case, it’s a very special case, and it’s going to be headline stuff all week. We don’t yet have a cause of death, but as of this moment there’s been no talk of transferring the case formally. Let’s hope it goes to the Crime Response Unit and not us.

Viken wasn’t all that convinced she really meant what she said. For some reason or other she had already been interviewed in VG and Dagbladet, and she had an appointment with TV2 later in the day. The uniform she was wearing had been freshly ironed, and if she’d had time she would probably have spent the morning at the hairdresser’s having something done about those wisps. None of the higher-ups have any doubt about my qualities as a leader, he thought. Not just on the technical side, but also in dealing with people. Finckenhagen had got the senior post for which they’d both applied for a very different reason. He gave her a disarming smile. Enjoy it while you can, Slinkenhagen.

Arve Norbakk sat up straighter in his chair. His eyes were brown below the fair fringe. They were quite large and round and gave the impression of someone mild and cautious, but Viken knew the sergeant could be tough enough. He’d noticed how Nina Jebsen, and Finckenhagen too for that matter, changed whenever Arve was around. They moved in another way, their voices went up a touch. He didn’t object to it at all.

– I’m certain this isn’t a matter for Hunting and Fishing, said Norbakk.

– Are you? asked Finckenhagen. – How so?

He looked to be thinking before he continued.

– Those tracks up there, they were reasonably fresh.

– You don’t say, Hawkeye? Helgarsson grinned.

– Cut it out, Sigge, warned Viken. – Let Arve finish what he’s saying.

– Paulsen has been missing for a week and a half, Norbakk noted. – But the tracks we found aren’t as old as that.

– In other words, said Viken, who had already discussed this with Norbakk, – it looks like we aren’t done with this case after all.

He went on:

– We’ve got to keep our eyes on the doughnut and not the hole. And anyway, how many of us here really believe there’s a killer bear wandering around up there in the marka?

Finckenhagen blinked a few times.

– Let’s wait until we have the pathologist’s report, she said.

Viken didn’t smirk. He knew she always used phrases like that when she didn’t have anything sensible to say.

18

STILL ANOTHER THREE quarters of an hour before the office opened. Axel Glenne usually managed to get a lot of work done in the time before the patients arrived. Go through the mail, finish off the referrals. He turned on the computer. While he waited for it to load up, he looked again at Aftenposten. MISSING WOMAN FOUND DEAD was the front-page headline. Tragic accident, it said underneath. Body lay in forest for ten days.

He put the paper aside. Opened a letter from the surgical department with an appointment for Cecilie Davidsen’s operation. They’d been quick; he hadn’t needed to send them a reminder. Given what they’d found, there was no time to lose. He remembered that he’d dreamt about her. He’d opened the door of a house he recognised. The villa in Vindern. He hadn’t rung, just gone right in. It was dark inside, but he heard sounds coming from the floor above, a woman groaning. I shouldn’t be here: the thought flashed through him as he started to climb the stairs. Someone was following him; he sensed a shadow but couldn’t turn round.

He looked through his list of patients again. Had to be finished by four. He hadn’t visited his mother last week. Hadn’t been back since she got him mixed up with Brede.

He found an updated article on whiplash injuries in the online edition of The Lancet. He wanted to give Miriam the best possible advice regarding the case she was handling. If she even showed up today… Was he hoping she would still be off sick? So he wouldn’t have to say anything about the visit to her flat the Monday before? Wouldn’t have to joke about it. Or apologise. Maybe that was why she’d stayed away all week.

At 7.40, he heard Rita let herself into the office. A few moments later, he went in.

– New week, new possibilities, she said, without conviction.

– You heard the news, he said.

She nodded.

– It’s the most awful thing I ever heard. Imagine that, Axel, a bear.

His eyebrows shot up.

– A bear?

– Didn’t you hear? she exclaimed, holding up VG. Half the front page was covered with the words: TORN APART BY BEAR IN NORDMARKA. There was an indistinct photograph, white-clad figures stooped over a body on the ground.

– It’s just the kind of thing VG writes, Rita. It’s not possible. Not in the Nordmarka.

– I suggest you read the whole thing. The police say there’s no doubt.

He flipped through the ten pages devoted to the case.

– I met her up there. Just before she disappeared.

– My God! Why didn’t you mention it before?

He peered out into the waiting room, where the first patient had taken a seat, a retired officer who had known his father.

– There’s been so much going on, Rita.

He heard Miriam talking to Rita outside reception. Shortly afterwards, she came along the corridor, past his door, and opened the door to Ola’s office. Axel opened the retired lieutenant colonel’s notes. Checked the lab tests. His haemoglobin concentration had fallen since the last time it was tested. He heard Miriam’s steps approaching again. He looked at some of the patient’s other results. There was a knock on the door, which was ajar. He cleared his throat, but before he managed to say anything, she was standing there. He scrolled down to the bottom of the document and looked at the last readings before glancing up. Beneath her coat, she was wearing the top with her name on it.

– Dirty linen basket still full, then? he said, adding, before he had time to wince at his own comment: – So you’re feeling better?

She crossed the floor and stood in front of him.

– A bit hoarse, but yes, fine.

He stood up. – Miriam, he said, and put his arm around her. She moved in close to him. He stroked her hair, laid his face against her neck and inhaled. The smell reminded him of something he had forgotten.

The telephone rang. He reached across the table without letting go of her hand.

– Are you ready for your first patient? asked Rita, obviously as a way of reminding him that he was already ten minutes late.

– Send him in. Did you tell him that we have a student here?

– Yes, yes. Another thing, Axel, VG just called. I said you were busy.

– VG? What did they want?

– A journalist… Fredvold, she wanted to talk to you. I said she could try again at lunchtime.

Axel felt suddenly annoyed.

– Listen, Rita, I don’t have time to talk to VG.

– Okay then, she said, surprised. – What do you want me to say?

– Tell them I’ll be busy all day. It’s the truth, after all.

19

– THIS IS THE closest you get to knowing what it feels like to be a surgeon, said Detective Chief Inspector Viken after he and his sergeant, Arve Norbakk, had pulled on the disposable green capes, with hoods in an almost matching green, and the blue plastic shoe coverings. – And it’s plenty close enough for me. I’ve never yet met one doctor you could trust.

– Right now you look more like a chef, chuckled Norbakk as they entered the sharp light of the mortuary room in the basement of the Rikshospital.

Viken didn’t like delay, and he’d taken the trip up to the Institute of Pathology without Finckenhagen knowing anything about it.

– I know it’s not long till dinner, he said, wrinkling his nose, – but surely the smell down here doesn’t remind you of food?

Two people were already in the room, bent over a steel table. One was a tiny woman in her forties with a heavily made-up doll-like face. Viken knew her well, had worked with Jennifer Plåterud many times. He had quickly discovered that her mind and her tongue were equally sharp and he treated her with a respect that very few others of his acquaintance enjoyed. Viken knew a lot about most of the people he worked with. In his head he kept a catalogue of useful information regarding them, some of which he had even written down. He had tried on several occasions to worm out of Jennifer just what it was that had brought her to Norway. Surely her real reason for leaving Canberra and travelling to the other side of the globe couldn’t be that she’d met some farmer from Romerike, the guy she later married? But when it came to her private life Jennifer was a sphinx, and Viken still hadn’t got to the bottom of that particular question.

The other person standing there was a man of medium height wearing glasses, with a well-trimmed beard. Viken had never seen him before.

– Frederik Ovesen, the bearded man said, introducing himself with a cough. – Assistant professor at the Zoological Institute.

– Ovesen is their leading expert on beasts of prey, Jennifer announced in perfect Norwegian but with a broad Australian accent. Despite the fact that she was wearing stilettoes under her shoe coverings, she had to stretch to reach across the width of the steel table she was working at.

– How far have you got? asked Viken, with a glance at the body he had last seen in the forest a few kilometres beyond Ullevålseter. The ribcage had been opened up and the heart and both lungs taken out.

– The preliminary autopsy will be ready by tomorrow, Jennifer promised, and Viken couldn’t off-hand recall a single time she hadn’t kept her word.

– Time of death?

The pathologist pulled on her plastic gloves.

– Four to five days ago. Six at the most.

Viken’s eyes narrowed.

– So a week after she went missing. We can only guess what she was doing up there in the marka all that time. Does she look as if she spent four or five days sleeping rough in the forest?

– Not really, Jennifer replied. – But I wouldn’t exclude it either. Another thing is that we found large quantities of plaster under her fingernails. Some on the clothes, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it certainly doesn’t come from the forest floor.

– Any signs of sexual assault?

– Doesn’t look like it.

Norbakk said:

– I’ve seen a lot of animals killed by bears. There’s no mistaking these gashes across the neck and the back.

Ovesen coughed again.

– I agree. I’ve never seen a human being who’s been attacked, but we do have some archival material. I would say a fully grown adult bear.

– How certain can you be? Viken persisted.

Ovesen opened his mouth, coughed a couple more times; already these glottal eruptions had started to annoy the detective chief inspector.

– We’ll send the photos to Edmonton University in Canada, said the zoologist. – They’ve got documentation there they can use for comparison.

– Would a bear not have ripped open her stomach? Viken wondered.

Ovesen shook his head.

– We humans are not natural prey for a bear. It might gash us, bite, but it’s extremely rare that it would attack in order to eat us. Unless we’re talking about a seriously undernourished animal.

– Don’t rule out that it might help itself to a dead person, said Norbakk. – Old Bruin’s a scavenger, after all. And not a particularly fussy one.

– You’re right there, said the zoologist. – It might have started gnawing away at the body and been disturbed. Alarmed by something, for example.

Jennifer Plåterud interrupted:

– I can tell you that the deceased was still alive when these wounds were made. There was the hint of a smile about her mouth as she said this.

– So not a scavenger, then, said Norbakk firmly. – But the tracks up there looked fresh enough.

Again the zoologist backed him up.

– Not more than a day or two old. And remember too that it was raining five days ago.

Viken glanced at Norbakk, delighted to have the sergeant along. What do we need experts for, he thought with a grin, when we find all the answers ourselves?

– The preliminary conclusion then will be that all the visible injuries were inflicted by a bear, he announced, looking at Jennifer Plåterud across the partially autopsied body on the table.

– Not that one, Chief Inspector, she said, and pointed with a scalpel.

The smile spread across her face, revealing fine lines that were otherwise hidden by the make-up. She made Viken think of a child that had been working away inside its nose and come up with an enormous bogey. He leant over the body. Four small red pricks were clearly visible on the upper left arm. Jennifer held a magnifying glass to them.

– Injection marks, suggested Norbakk.

– That would be my opinion too, said the pathologist. – There are more of them here. She moved the magnifying glass to two areas on the inside of the thigh. – Moreover, she added, – note the red circles around the wrists.

Viken examined them closely.

– Tape marks?

– I’d guarantee it. There are traces of adhesive on the skin. And the same here. She made a circling motion around the dead woman’s mouth.

Four hours after he had left the pathology lab, Viken got a call from Jennifer Plåterud.

– We’ve got the results of the blood tests, she informed him

Viken grabbed a pen and flipped to an empty page in his notebook. The pathologist wouldn’t have taken the trouble to ring unless she had something interesting for him.

– We found large quantities of a substance called thiopental in the blood.

He noted this down.

– What sort of substance is it?

– A so-called barbiturate. It’s used in operations and should only be kept in hospitals and by medical suppliers. Some also in veterinary practices.

– Effects?

– A very effective anaesthetic. An overdose can bring on pulmonary and cardiac arrest.

Viken leaned back in his chair. He savoured the fact that earlier in the day Finckenhagen had been so certain that this wasn’t a case for the Violent Crimes. He started thinking about who he wanted in his team to continue the investigation.

20

Tuesday 9 October

SIGNY BRUSETER PULLED up outside the house on Reinkollen and parked next to the car that was already there. She turned off the engine, abruptly terminating the news broadcast. But letting herself into the house, it felt as though the newsreader’s voice was still talking inside her head about what had happened in the forest. Signy had slept badly that night. It was her second day in the new job.

Mette Martin, who was social educator for the three homes that lay round the little clearing, met her in the corridor. Signy was pleased to see her, because Mette Martin was such a self-assured person. Signy hadn’t had a job for the past year and eleven months. Throughout the interview she had been convinced that she would never get the job of assistant. Mostly it felt like a relief. But Mette Martin thought that the experience of her years in the nursery made her interesting, and that the transition to looking after the mentally handicapped shouldn’t be too great. She had called the very next day – to Signy’s alarm – and asked when she could begin.

– All quiet here at the moment, said Mette Martin now. – Tora’s asleep, and Oswald’s sitting in his room. The night shift took care of the morning cleaning. You’ll be on your own with them until lunch, then Åse Berit will be here, and there’ll be two of you for the rest of the day.

Signy hung up her coat and sat down on the sofa.

– Oswald has to have his medication at nine o’clock, said Mette Martin. – But don’t put the radio on. He gets so upset with all this talk about a killer bear being on the loose.

– He’s not the only one, exclaimed Signy. – Have you ever heard anything like it? Killed by a bear, a grown woman. And just a few kilometres from Karl Johan and the palace.

– Dreadful, agreed Mette Martin. – Hard to believe, actually.

After she’d left, Signy knocked on Tora’s door and went in. They were very particular about that here, always knock on the door, even though Tora couldn’t answer and probably had no idea what all the banging was about. Mette Martin had stressed that it was important to show respect for the residents regardless, and Signy approved of her saying that. Tora hadn’t exactly been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Mette Martin said. She had a congenital defect that meant that her brain hadn’t developed as it should have done. Remarkable that she was alive at all. Her mother was a drug addict and continued to inject herself even while she was carrying Tora, so it was probably connected with that. In all the time she had been living at Reinkollen, Tora had never had a single visitor. Not a soul beyond these walls cared whether she lived or died. Life hadn’t always been easy for Signy either, but when she saw this person whom she dressed and looked after, she felt she had a lot to be thankful for.

When Tora was seated in her chair, freshly washed and groomed, Signy wheeled her out into the corridor and stopped in front of the mirror.

– We care about you here, Tora, she crooned.

Tora moved her jaw as though she was laughing, and made noises down in her throat. Mette Martin had said this meant she was happy, and Signy smiled and stroked her hair, suddenly feeling happy too.

Soon she’d have to see to Oswald. All night she’d been uneasy at the thought of being alone with him. Oswald had Down’s syndrome and was nearly thirty years old. Some additional hormonal abnormality meant that he’d ended up a hefty six foot three, broad as a barn door but with a three year old in his head, the main difference being that Oswald didn’t have as much language. On several occasions Mette Martin had assured her that he was as gentle as a lamb and had never caused trouble for anyone.

Signy summoned up her courage and opened his door.

– Hi, Oswald, how about coming into the dining room for a bite to eat?

He grunted and stood up so suddenly that she took two steps backward.

– Hold hands, he said, and took hold of hers.

Åse Berit Nytorpet was a big, stocky woman in her sixties with pinched lips and grey hair bunched in a topknot. She arrived at twelve o’clock exactly, took a pair of shaggy slippers from a plastic bag and slid her feet into them.

– Floor in here gets bloody freezing, she said as she waddled into the room.

After giving Tora her bath, the two assistants were able to sit down for a breather.

– Miserable to live here and never even get a visitor, Signy said with a sideways glance at Tora.

Åse Berit snorted.

– Her mother’s been on the street for years. You don’t expect someone like that to care, do you? But her father’s supposed to be a celebrity.

– Really? exclaimed Signy. – D’you know who…?

Åse Berit shrugged her shoulders.

– There are rumours.

Clearly she didn’t want to say any more about these rumours. Maybe she was saving them for later. Instead she turned on the radio, but as the time for the news approached Signy had to remind her that Mette Martin had asked them to be sure not to leave it on.

– It’s that woman who was killed, she said, lowering her voice. – Mette Martin says Oswald goes completely nuts when he hears about it.

Åse Berit turned the radio off.

– Let them have a taste of it, these city people, she said, pursing her lips. – They’ve made their own bed, now let them lie in it. Maybe now they’ll understand what it’s like having wild animals snuffling round the walls of your house. So at least some good might come of it.

Signy didn’t respond. She couldn’t think of any way that what had happened might be good at all. The dead woman was just a few years older than she was herself.

– You should’ve heard what my old man said when he heard the news yesterday, Åse Berit went on. – Just the year before last we had four pregnant ewes got ripped to pieces. Think it does any good to complain? Oh no, poor old Bruin the Bear has to be left well enough alone, don’t you know. Her voice had begun to shake. – Don’t touch the wild animals. But people like us who are trying to live off keeping sheep, we’re the ones that pay the price.

She pointed demonstratively at her forehead and shook her head.

– Let me tell you something, Signy. She lowered her voice. – When people get angry enough, they can do things they oughtn’t to have done.

Signy gaped at her.

– You don’t think anyone from round here is involved in it?

Åse Berit pursed her lips and made a zipping motion across them with two fingers. But shortly afterwards she was off again.

– If you only knew how angry some people can be. Things have been brewing for a long time up on the farms around us. Year after year we’ve had to put up with this. Now things might change. If we’re going to have bears, they can roam around wherever they like, and not just up here. We’ll soon see how long they put up with that.

Suddenly Oswald appeared in the door opening. His lower jaw jutted so profoundly that he drooled from the corners of his mouth.

– Oswald catch bear.

He thumped himself on the chest, and the bitterness in Åse Berit’s face dissolved and faded away.

– Yes, you could, Oswald, big and strong as you are.

Turning to Signy she said: – He’s a lovely lad, is Oswald. But he has his black moments. Best to leave him alone then. It’s to do with the way he was brought up.

– What do you mean? Signy wanted to know.

– He didn’t have an easy time of it, poor soul, Åse Berit confided. – Not until he was taken into care. Oswald’s father was a nasty piece of work, right from the word go. And you can trust me, because I went to primary school with him. You would never catch me getting mixed up with someone like that. There’s others’ll tell you the same thing.

She tossed her head.

– He ended up with some city girl that turned up out here. But then she found someone else and off she went and left him to look after the kids, and the whole thing just went to pieces. He lost the farm, had it sold out from underneath his feet. He took the kids with him and moved out into the woods, to a cabin they owned up there. Left them to run wild while he sat drinking down in Holtet with another boozer and drank away what little bit of brains he had left.

– But wouldn’t Oswald have got lost in the woods?

– No, because listen to what his father did. He partitioned off the cellar under the cabin with a wire fence, and he used to lock Oswald in there before he went away.

Signy’s eyes opened wide. Bad enough hearing about Tora and her drug addict mother, but this was even worse.

– It’s not true, is it? Locked up in the cellar? Like a beast?

– That’s why we shouldn’t get in his way when he has these moods. We just don’t know what’s going on in the heads of people like that. Do we, Oswald?

Oswald gave a bright smile and continued to beat his chest.

– Oswald catch bear.

21

Thursday 11 October

THE SEAT NEAREST the door in the half-full underground carriage was vacant and Axel was able to lean his cycle up next to him. The weather had cleared, the temperature had risen, and even with the slight damp in the air it felt like summer. Like a gift to those longing for the sun, and a reminder for climate pessimists.

He cycled in the forest every Thursday, switching to skis in the winter months. It was a breathing space in the middle of the week he always looked forward to. But today would be a little different from his usual day off. He avoided thinking about it, took a copy of Dagbladet from his rucksack and by the time they reached his station had glanced through it. The bear case continued to dominate the front pages. A couple of days ago it was reported that all witnesses were going to be interviewed again, but so far he had heard nothing. The head of the Violent Crimes section of the Oslo police, Finckenhagen her name was, had made a statement to the press. The case was being given top priority, she told reporters, without making it clear whether or not the police believed a bear was on the loose in the immediate vicinity of the capital. But there was nothing urging people to avoid walking in the marka alone.

Lower down the page there was a fact box. The last confirmed sighting of bears in the Nordmarka had been over fifty years ago, Axel read, although signs had been seen towards the end of the nineties. The maximum life span for a bear in the Scandinavian wilds was in the region of 25 to 30 years. A fully grown bear could reach anywhere between 150 and 280 centimetres in height and weigh between 100 and 350 kilos. Then came a few pointers about what to do when encountering a bear. Don’t try to run away from it; the animal is capable of running at 60 kilometres an hour. Turn your back and flee in panic and you’ll be taken for prey. Trees don’t make a good hiding place; young bears are excellent climbers, older bears can if they have to. Keep calm, move slowly away backwards. Don’t try to scare the bear away. Thanks for the advice, Axel grinned, and turned the page.

Interviews with members of the public, questions about whether they were afraid of bears. The paper stressed that life went on as normal in the capital. As though anyone had thought it wouldn’t, Axel sighed to himself. The journalist had spent the evening at El Coco’s in Rosencrantz’ gate, where they were advertising a section of the bar as bear-proof and had installed a sort of mesh screen across the entrance. People could order drinks from the bar with names like Pooh’s HoneyandGrizzly Killer. Axel rolled the paper up and shoved it down the side of the seat.

She was standing a little way down the platform, wearing cycling shorts and helmet, black jacket and sunglasses.

– Been waiting long? he asked.

A lot of ramblers and cyclists were milling round. They didn’t look all that scared by the headlines, or the thought of what might be awaiting them out there in the woods. He gave her a quick squeeze on the arm.

– Cool set of wheels.

She got into the saddle.

– I bought it yesterday.

He waited at the top of Blankvannsbråten. When Miriam joined him, he nodded in the direction of the edge of the forest.

– We’ll leave our bikes up there.

– Are you sure it’s safe to wander about up here? she asked.

He laughed.

– That bear’s miles away, don’t worry about that. With everything that’s been going on up here, it’s been scared halfway up to Valdres or Trøndelag by now. You know how far a brown bear can get in a week?

He took a step towards her, loosened her helmet. Her hair was gathered in two braids and fastened with a grip at the back.

– Unless, that is, there’s something else you’re afraid of, he added.

By the time they reached the tarn, it had clouded over. He took his rucksack off and put it down next to the little boat lying there with its bow pointing upwards, then took out a white cloth and spread it out, putting a thermos and two cups on it, and a package from Bruun’s bakery.

– You brought a cloth?

He gestured expansively.

– A little style, that’s all. I stole it from the examination room. It isn’t sterile, but I can guarantee it’s clean.

She laughed, and he reached out a hand and touched one of her ears, the almost invisible rim of fuzz.

– This is goodbye, he said. – That’s why I’ve invited you out to lunch.

– What do you mean?

– I’ll be away next week. Seminar.

He’d forgotten to tell her. Put it at the back of his mind.

– Inger Beate will be looking after you for the rest of your time with us.

He jumped up on to the rock, looked out across the black mirrored surface.

– Last one in is a rotten egg, he called out to her, pulling off his vest, trousers and underpants in one movement and diving in without a moment’s hesitation. The water was colder than it had been two weeks earlier. He ducked down and swam a couple of strokes underwater, spun up again and turned round. She was standing by the rock, still looking amazed.

– Don’t stand there wondering what day it is, he said to cheer her up.

– I’ve just had a sore throat.

– All the more reason. This beats an apple a day any time.

She started to pull off her tight shorts. He kept his eyes on her as she took off the rest of her clothes and remained standing there at the water’s edge in the sharp grey light. That’s not why I brought her here, he thought. But as he stood there in the cold water looking at her naked body, he knew that it would happen soon. Without realising, he had prepared himself for it. There were no barriers left to cross; he was there already. Can’t be avoided, he said to himself.

He had a little towel in his rucksack. Handed it to her as she came tripping up on to the bank with small steps. To dry himself he used his vest.

After they had eaten the baguette and drunk some coffee, he said: – You’re still shivering. We need to warm you up.

A few drops of rain showed on the cloth. He pulled her to her feet.

– Five minutes, on the double, he ordered.

He set off running ahead of her, round the tarn and up the hill, and stopped to wait for her there. The drops of rain were bigger now, heavier. She cast an anxious look up into the trees.

– We’d better find somewhere to take cover, he said and took her by the hand.

The little shelter made of spruce branches was still there on the other side of the hill. At first glance everything looked to be much as it had been on his previous visit. Only the empty bottles were gone. He couldn’t see the little book of Buddhist scriptures either.

– Is this where you live? she smiled.

He crawled inside.

– When the moon is full I sleep out in the forest, he answered and pulled her inside after him.

– Bed and everything! she exclaimed. – How did you know about this?

He held her close to him.

– Miriam, he said quietly. – I’ve tried everything. Not even cold showers help.

– Don’t help a bit, she echoed.

– I just can’t hold out any longer.

– Me neither.

He took off his jacket and vest, bunched them under her; she pulled her shorts off again, kept the little panties on. Pressed her forehead against his and looked into his eyes.

– Did you mean what you just said? That this is goodbye?

Her skin still smelled of the swampy water, mingled with sweat and damp earth and the sap from the pine branches of the roof. He pulled off her panties, noticing that he shook his head as though he were answering her. In the same instant he heard a crack from one of the branches. He twisted round and looked up. Glimpsed a shadow outside. And there, between the pine branches, an eye staring down at them. He tensed himself, pulled away from her and crawled to the entrance.

– What is it, Axel?

He saw no one, listened out among the trees. Then he stretched across the roof of the shelter. A hole had worn through the plastic between the branches; he could look down at her.

– Are you trying to scare me?

There was fear in her voice. And at that moment he saw himself standing there naked, bent over a shelter deep in the heart of the forest. Her fear acted like a signal to him and he reached his arm inside and picked up his clothes.

– It was nothing, he reassured her. – Probably just a bear or something.

It was drizzling as they walked back towards the bicycles. He took her by the hand. If anything more had happened there in the shelter, he thought, if the inevitable had taken place, then we could have been done with it. But now she’s closer to me.

– Did I tell you I had a brother? he asked suddenly.

– A twin. You thought it was him your patient saw in the street the other day.

He took a few deep breaths before making up his mind.

– I thought I saw him too. The same morning as you started at the clinic.

He stopped and turned towards her.

– In a manner of speaking Brede didn’t exist any more. But these last few weeks he’s been cropping up in my thoughts the whole time. Now he won’t disappear again. Just then, in that shelter, it was as though I saw him standing there peering down at us. I don’t want to involve you in any of this…

She moved close to him, put both arms around him.

– I want to be involved. I love everything you tell me about yourself.

He started to walk on, but didn’t let go of her.

– It must be twenty years since I last saw Brede. He’d just been thrown out of some dive in town; I happened to be passing by. He couldn’t stand upright. I offered to walk him home. Or give him money for a taxi. He lay there on the pavement glaring up at me. I want fucking nothing from you, he was screaming. One day I’ll destroy you, the same way you destroyed me.

22

CECILIE DAVIDSEN DIDN’T go home. She’d walked all the way from the hospital to Vindern. Now she kept on walking up the hill. It had turned dark. For several hours she wandered aimlessly. Ris, Slemdal, all the way up to Voksenåsen, down again to the pond at Holmendammen.

How many other doctors would have taken the trouble to knock on the door and tell her in person? Glenne was the type who cared. The fact that she was going to die mattered to him. You’re not to die, Mummy. It was nine days ago now. He’d been different from the way he was in the office down in Bogstadveien. Actually she had wanted a female doctor. Or an elderly man. Axel Glenne was younger than her. And yet once she had got used to it, she realised how lucky she had been. He helped her to relax. He was tall and strong and able to deal with anything. But that day last week, when he’d come to her house, he had seemed unsure of himself. Almost confused. He’d come because he wanted to talk to her in person, face to face. He’d come to tell her she was going to die. She had known it. From the moment she realised that the lump had grown. Still she couldn’t understand what he was doing standing at her door. Benedicte understood. Before she went to sleep that evening she had said: You’re not to die, Mummy. And instead of replying, No, darling, I’m not going to die, not for a long, long time, she had started to cry. Benedicte did all she could to comfort her, but when Henrik returned home later that evening, she just sat on the sofa, staring, unable to speak. Not daring to speak. Because once she told him, it would be real. The truth of it would dawn on her.

She had been to the hospital that afternoon. Had a long talk with a nurse. Finally the surgeon arrived, the one who was going to do her operation. Are you Cecilie Davidsen?She would so liked to have answered no, told him he was looking for someone else. But there was no way out of it. He was friendly, obviously busy and yet he didn’t hurry. But he too knew that it couldn’t end well. He didn’t say, You’re going to pull through. He said, We have to be realistic about this. We’ll do everything we can, but the result is uncertain.

He’d given her a sick note. She regretted agreeing to the idea. Going home to wait. All the thoughts with nowhere to put them. Every time she tried to drive them away, they swarmed over her. Haakon was eighteen. He would be all right. Benedicte was the one she had to think about. The rest of her childhood and all her adolescence without her mother. Would Henrik ask for a less demanding position at work? Would he find another job? Impossible to imagine. He’d ask his mother for help. She was still reasonably fit but didn’t have the energy she once had. And he would ask his sister. He would send Benedicte to live there.

The thought of Benedicte growing up with Henrik’s sister stopped her in her tracks and she had to support herself against a street lamp. Nausea welled up in her. What if Henrik found someone else? Anything would be better than having Benedicte grow up with her aunt.

She walked over to the wharf and stood there looking out over the dark water. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. She hadn’t cried since that first evening, when she sat on the edge of Benedicte’s bed and stroked her hair. Footsteps in the gravel, away somewhere. Approaching. She couldn’t face turning round.

23

Friday 12 October

RITA CALLED HIM at 3.15.

– You remember I’m leaving early today, Axel?

He’d forgotten.

– Hasn’t Cecilie Davidsen come yet?

– No, you’ve got no one waiting. The only one left now is Solveig Lundwall, three thirty.

– Davidsen didn’t call?

– Not that I know of.

Axel sat there lost in thought. Cecilie Davidsen was due to be operated on at Ullevål hospital next Wednesday. He wanted to see her one last time before she was admitted. Was it because he had called at her home that she hadn’t come? Forcing his way into her house with this news. He recalled the daughter’s frightened eyes when she opened the door to him.

He shook these thoughts off and wandered out into the corridor. Rita had gone. Inger Beate too. The waiting room was empty. He had an idea and went into Ola’s office. At this moment Ola would be at the helm of a sailing boat on his way across the Pacific. Or diving with his sons on a coral reef off the Fiji islands. Holding on tight to the shell of a giant turtle and being pulled along through the water. He’d be travelling for another six months. When Ola gave the best man’s speech at Axel’s wedding twenty-two years ago, he had said that they each had their own god, he and Axel. He made his offerings to Poseidon, while Axel followed Pan into the forests.

For the time being this was Miriam’s office. He thought he could pick up the faint scent of her, even though she hadn’t been there for two days. He was attending a seminar after the weekend, and Inger Beate would be her supervisor for the last three days of her practical placement. When they’d parted at Frognerseter the previous day, neither of them had said anything. But Axel had made up his mind that it was the last time he would see her.

He sat down at the desk. Her stethoscope was in the middle drawer, and a couple of her textbooks. He opened one of them. She’d written her name in thick blue ink. He sat a while looking at it.

– You must be a very happy man, Axel, he muttered. – You’ve been given the lot. There is no more than this.

Beneath the second book he found a stuffed A4 envelope. She’d written her name on this too with the same pen. It wasn’t sealed, and when he pulled out the flap he saw that it contained a pile of smaller envelopes. He still knew next to nothing about her, and didn’t want to know any more than that either. It was what had enabled him to keep control. It was what made it possible for him to sit there and think that he would never see her again. Let it pass, let her fade away almost to invisibility, and life could go on as before. It was Friday afternoon. He was looking forward to the weekend. Saturday was training with Tom’s football team, and Marlen’s riding lesson. In the afternoon he was planning a trip to Larkollen. Lay up the boat for the winter. Paint the veranda of the summer cabin. He’d try to get Tom to go along with him. Maybe stay overnight, just the two of them. Apart from that, there was nothing that had to be done. Except paint a few skirting boards, he suddenly remembered, and change the fan belt in Bie’s car.

He fumbled down inside the envelope, and was about to pull out the contents when he heard someone calling his name out in the corridor. He threw Miriam’s things back into the drawer.

Solveig Lundwall was standing outside the door of his office.

– Hi, Axel, she said as she saw him approaching, and he could tell straight away that she was still not well.

He let her in, asked how the time in the secure wing had been. It had been painful. She’d been strapped down.

– Really? he exclaimed.

She gave him a dark look.

– Do you think I’m lying, Axel?

– Of course not, I’m just surprised.

She sat there in front of him in her dark blue polo-neck pullover and grey skirt, face a little drawn but nicely made up. It wasn’t easy to imagine her screaming and foaming at the mouth in a restraining bed.

He checked her blood pressure and wrote out a prescription for her.

– These damn pills make me so fat, she complained. – I wish I could do without.

He could understand. Over the last year she’d put on something like ten kilos.

– Do you feel as though you’re in control again, Solveig?

– I’m afraid of going to sleep, because that’s when those thoughts come back.

– That you have to warn people about something?

– I can’t get rid of the thought that something awful is about to happen. There are so many signs.

He ran his hand across his hair.

– But the meaning of signs is dependent on how they’re interpreted, he said.

She sat there staring ahead into space.

– Last night I took the tram from Jernebanetorget. The man sitting beside me was reading VG. All that stuff about the woman eaten by a bear.

– She wasn’t exactly eaten, he reassured her.

– As I was about to get off the tram, this old lady comes over to me. I think she’s blind. Her eyes are as dull as pearls and still she’s staring directly at me, and then she says, You’ve heard it too, I can see it in your eyes, and she hands me a little piece of paper. And I get so scared, despairing too, but mostly scared. You have the power, she whispers before I manage to get off.

Axel could see the pulse beating in her throat.

– What did it say on the piece of paper?

Solveig glanced around the office before answering:

– Rev. 11:7.

He thought for a moment.

– Does it have anything to do with the Bible?

She dug her hand into her bag, drew out a small book and began to flip through it.

– The Book of Revelation.

She found the place and read:

– When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them.

– I wish old ladies like that would leave you alone, said Axel. Solveig ignored him.

– I’ve been thinking about it all night. This is a warning, Axel. A number of terrible events are about to take place, and if I, and perhaps a few others, have understood this, then I must deliver a warning. That is what the old woman wanted me to know.

She said it with conviction, and Axel realised he would have to call Ullevål hospital and voice his concern about yet another patient who had been discharged too soon. He knew he ought not to enquire any further. And yet he said:

– Last time you were here… You said you’d seen someone up by Majorstuehuset. Someone who looked like me.

She stared down at the floor. It looked as though she hadn’t understood the question, and he was glad, at once regretting that he had asked it. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him.

– He hasn’t appeared since then, Axel. But he’s coming. Once all the evil has happened, he will return. I shall warn you. You will be the first to know, before all others.

As he was about to lock up the office, the phone rang. Not many people had his direct number. Miriam was one of them. An Oslo number showed up on the display. He picked up the receiver and spoke. A male voice at the other end introduced himself as Hendrik Davidsen, clearly accentuating the d in his first name.

– My wife is a patient of yours, he explained. – She had an appointment earlier today.

– That’s right, Axel said. – Cecilie Davidsen. She never came.

– That’s the reason I’m calling. No one has seen her. Not since yesterday afternoon.

Axel sat down in the chair.

– Really? Wasn’t she supposed to be at the hospital yesterday for an examination?

– Yes. She left the hospital at quarter past four. There’s been no sign of life from her since then. She’s never done anything like this before.

Hendrik Davidsen’s voice was calm and controlled, but Axel heard the break in it as he said ‘sign of life’.

– You’ve informed the police, presumably?

– They’ve sent out a missing persons report on her. Not much else they can do. Not at the moment…

Axel chose not to ask what ‘at the moment’ might mean in a situation like this. He informed Davidsen of his wife’s condition, but he was already familiar with it. Fortunately he made no mention of Axel’s coming to the house with the results of her lab test. But he did ask how his wife had reacted to the news, and Axel was careful not to say anything that might increase his fears. There was still reason to hope that nothing untoward had happened to her. More reason to hope than believe.

24

Monday 15 October

THE COUPLE TRUDGING across the road by the entrance to Frogner swimming baths were deep into a juicy quarrel. The woman, who was small and round, with Rasta braids, stopped in the middle of the road. She wavered uncertainly on her high-heeled boots, as if she were trying to keep her balance on a pair of stilts.

– Then you can just go on your own, Jørgen, she snuffled. – I say fuck it if you’re going to be like that.

A vehicle of some kind swung out from the car park. The man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the pavement on the other side. The car swerved around them.

– Bloody hell, Jørgen. I’m not coming with you unless you get yourself thorted out.

– You want me to get thorted out? he said, mocking her lisp. He was tall, thin, with a bent neck. – You were the one got us kicked out.

– You’re so childish, she said.

He exhaled loudly.

– And where d’you think you’re going if you don’t come with me?

– What’s it got to do with you?

– Fuck, Millie, you’re nothing but a shagged-out whore. You’ve no idea how sick I am of you.

– Same to you. You don’t understand nothing. Just look at yourself.

– Look at me? What’s to look at me for?

She didn’t answer. A moment later she said:

– Okay then, but get me a taxi.

– I ain’t got no readies.

– Think I’m going to walk to Skøyen? In the middle of the night?

He belched. – Then you can sleep in the park.

She stopped in her tracks.

– I mean it, Jørgen, it’s past two o’clock.

– It ain’t that far. I’ve got a fix. After that you can sleep for the rest of the week.

She groaned, but let him guide her into the alley.

– I need to go to the toilet, she told him.

– Go ahead then.

He stopped and leaned up against a tree trunk, yelling after her as she disappeared down the slope: – You don’t need to go half a mile away just to have a piss. There’s no one around now, and even if there was, who’d stop just to get a look at your arse?

– Not having a piss, she muttered. – Big job.

– Christ, Millie, you really are fuckin’ tasty.

He stood there peering out into the darkness. For an instant it felt as though the huge tree was holding him. He pressed his cheek against the rough bark. Could just make out the high diving board over the baths at the other end of the hollow. He’d jumped from the five-metre board the summer he turned nine. Or ten. He needed a fix. Maybe he’d screw Millie afterwards. If he felt up to it. But she’d have to wash first. Christ. How many women would squat down and do a shite in Frogner Park in the middle of the night? It was always the same with Millie: if she had to do something, didn’t matter what it was, then it had to be done at once. No question of hanging on for five minutes.

Her scream was high and long drawn out. She often screamed, but never like this. His first thought was to get out of there. He couldn’t take any more bother with that woman. But something in the scream held him, made him move a step or two closer to the slope.

– What’s up? he shouted.

He could see her scrambling up the slope. He clambered down a couple of yards and held out his hand. Her jeans were round her thighs, her naked arse shining white in the darkness.

– What the fuck’s up with you, Millie? he chided her, but his voice was shaking.

She reached the top and clung on to him.

– Down there, she sobbed. – Something lying down there. I touched it.

25

IT WAS 3.30. DETECTIVE Chief Inspector Hans Magnus Viken stuffed the rest of a slice of Madeira cake into his mouth as he ran a red light in Alexander Kielland’s Place. He wasn’t hungry, but when he was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, he had to put something in his stomach to stave off the heartburn. Once it got started it would keep up all morning, sometimes even last the whole day.

As he drove, he got himself ready. Went through his thoughts systematically. What he would do once he reached the crime scene. What he would look for. He was good at that kind of thinking. Keeping a cool head when things got hectic. Because that was what was happening now, he thought as he swallowed the rest of the coffee he had bought at the service station along with the slice of cake. Things were hectic. The press was there, the officer in charge had reported. In force. What else could be expected? A corpse found in the middle of town, so to speak. Judging by the description, he thought it might be related to a missing persons report. The Crime Response Unit had rung on Thursday evening. A call had gone out for a woman who had failed to return to her home in Vindern. She was seriously ill and probably depressed. The family were afraid she might have harmed herself. On the face of it, not a criminal matter. But he had asked to be kept informed of all missing persons reports. After the find up in the marka, he wasn’t the only one on edge.

A helicopter was circling above the park. It looked like VG, or one of the TV companies. He parked as close as he could to the road. The crowd was even worse than he had imagined. The two biggest newspapers naturally, but also two camera teams, one from TV2, the other with no visible logo. He pushed his way through and stepped over the crime-scene tape stretched across the end of the car park. There were two stands there, microphones that could pick up conversations a hundred metres away.

– Is it the missing woman who’s been found? someone shouted after him.

He raised both arms in dismissal as he walked on across the muddy grass. – All in due course, he grunted over his shoulder.

The first thing that struck him as he made his way down the slippery slope and saw the white-coated technicians moving slowly in the light from the lamps was that it looked as though a scene from a film was being shot. The sight of the twisted body lying among the dead nettles at the edge of the stream, with its face in the water, as though the last thing she had tried to do was crawl there to take a drink, reinforced the impression.

Nina Jebsen came over to him, handed him a pair of blue shoe covers. She was in uniform, he noticed, and her breath smelt of tobacco. A couple of weeks ago she’d announced that she’d finally managed to give up smoking.

– Cecilie Davidsen, said Viken, more as a statement of fact than a query.

– Looks pretty much like it. Hair colour and build are a match. And the clothes still on her fit with the description we have.

– Who found her?

– A couple on their way home. Dodgy types. They’re being questioned at Majorstua.

– Any of our people there?

– Arve’s in charge. Sigge’ll be here before six o’clock.

Viken crossed to the body, shone his torch down. Parts of the back were exposed between the ragged edges of the torn jacket. A broad track consisting of five deep scratches ran from the ribs diagonally up across the neck.

– How the hell? he muttered to himself. – How the hell? His stomach started to churn. He patted his pockets, looking for an antacid, found nothing.

– They’re frighteningly similar to the scratch marks on the woman up in the Nordmarka, Nina Jebsen commented from behind him.

He straightened up and took a couple of paces back, stepped into something sticky. He shone the beam downwards. Fresh faeces covered not only the plastic overshoes but also part of the tips of his shoes. He let out a string of curses and looked around for something to clean it off with.

– The technicians have found tracks, Nina Jebsen told him.

Her voice was so studiedly calm that he turned to look at her.

– Tracks?

She pointed in the direction of one of the white coats squatting by the stream a few metres away. The next moment Viken was at his side. The track in the mud was about the length of a child’s foot, but much broader, and with clear signs of claw marks. He was no wildlife expert, but he was in no doubt that this track was like the one they had found up in the Nordmarka. He opened his mouth, but what he was about to say stuck in his throat.

The technician shone his torch along the edge of the stream.

– There are more tracks here. They seem to disappear into the water.

Viken’s stomach had turned into a burning acid bubble bath. He peered up towards the top of the slope. Heard voices up there, a car starting, someone calling. Maybe they’d picked up what was being said down here with those directional mikes. The helicopter had dropped lower and was circling like a giant bird in the dark sky. He tried to imagine the reaction when news of what he now believed to be the case became known. There would be a storm. A tidal wave. He swallowed down the jet of heartburn that pulsed all the way up into his mouth.

26

BY THE TIME Nina Jebsen had finished making out her crime-scene report, the canteen was open. She would have time to pop up there and get a sandwich and a Bonaqua before the meeting began. She took her breakfast back down to the office she shared with Sigmundur Helgarsson. As usual, something or other had delayed him, and she was pleased enough to have the room to herself for a while. She removed the sandwich wrapping, picked up one of the pieces of bread and as best she could scraped off the mayonnaise. There was some left on the lettuce, but she didn’t have time to take it to the toilet to wash it off.

As she munched away, she reread what she had typed. It was as though she only now realised what she had seen in Frogner Park the night before. She pushed the half-eaten sandwich to one side, took a few swigs of the mineral water with its sickly raspberry taste, opened Aftenposten’s net edition. Main headline: Found murdered. She knew this was just the beginning and opened VG Nett to get a better idea of what was in store. Killer bear tracks in Oslo centre. She gaped. The photograph had been taken from the helicopter and showed the crime scene by the water, the dead woman, the technicians in white, a figure that might have been herself. The press conference was going to be a lot of fun. It was due to start at ten o’clock. Agnes Finckenhagen and Viken would be there, and someone from the eighth floor, maybe the chief of police himself. Viken had made it clear that there would be no mercy for anyone found leaking information in the case. She had to smile at his phrase, like the title of some fifty-year-old Western, but there was no reason to suppose he didn’t mean what he said. Viken wasn’t as hard to get on with as some people claimed. He was like a reasonably complex machine; it was a question of finding out how it worked. She’d said something along these lines to Sigge Helgarsson one morning after he’d been hauled over the coals, but he didn’t seem to share her view. A while back Sigge had started referring to Chief Inspector H. M. Viken as His Master’s Voice, abbreviated in due course to just the Voice. Nina Jebsen thought it was a pretty appropriate nickname, but she didn’t use it herself.

– We’ve got one hour before the section leader and I have to leave, Viken announced.

Nina fidgeted with the corner of the report lying in front of her. She thought it was comical, the formal way he always referred to Agnes Finckenhagen as ‘section leader’. It was just six months ago that she’d been appointed to the post. There was not much doubt that Viken had been bypassed. A man with thirty years’ experience in the job, with a recognised talent as an investigator. When he led a team, there were not many who would cross him, and certainly not those who wished to carry on working in the section. And if you were loyal, he would take you under his wing. It was a safe place to be for a newcomer; she wasn’t the only one to have discovered that. He spoke out for them against the higher-ups; loud and clear, as he would say himself. And then they had gone and appointed an outsider as section leader. A woman ten years his junior, with little experience of crimes of violence. Viken had contented himself with the observation that it was amazing how far you could get with a few evening classes in Better Leadership at the Business Institute. Especially if you were a woman. And then he kept his mouth shut.

– Do you need to expand the group? asked Jarle Frøen, the police prosecutor who had been put in formal charge of the investigation. A joke, as long as it was Viken who was leading it. Frøen was regarded as one of the weakest of the lawyers. Maybe that was why Viken seemed so pleased to have him along, thought Nina. The lawyer was a tubby man with a pear-shaped head, along the sides of which a few reddish tufts still clung. He wasn’t much older than her but looked more like someone in his mid-forties.

Viken seemed to be weighing the pros and cons before answering.

– Let’s wait until we know what kinds of skills we’re going to need.

– The woman last night, this Davidsen, do we have a cause of death for her? asked Arve Norbakk.

Viken looked over at Nina.

– Know anything about that, Nina?

– I spoke to the woman who’s handling the case at the Pathological Institute, a Dr Finnerud…

– I think you mean Plåterud, Viken grinned.

Nina Jebsen felt herself going red.

– Correct. She’s found a number of hypodermic needle marks on the arms and legs. They also have a provisional result from the blood tests.

– And you didn’t tell us until now, Viken interrupted. – Did they find any trace of a narcotic called thiopental?

– Yes, they did.

Viken scratched his thick lower jaw. As usual he was wearing a freshly ironed white shirt. – We haven’t told anyone that was what Hilde Paulsen was given an overdose of.

He looked around the table.

– Two women killed in exactly the same way. Let us make this assertion: the perpetrator is the same. Or perpetrators.

He gave them time to digest this. Then he asked:

– What about time of death?

– According to Plåterud, Davidsen had been dead for more than ten hours but less than twenty-four before she was found.

– Less than twenty-four hours, Viken repeated thoughtfully. – I will presume the animal tracks by the water were left at the same time as the body.

He swallowed the rest of his coffee.

– Outside these walls we’re going to be as careful as fuck, pardon my French, Nina, you who are so young and unsullied.

She responded with a weary little shake of the head.

– But in here we can be as creative as we like. We damn well need to be. We know that Hilde Sofie Paulsen’s body had marks on it indicating an attack by a bear. If we leave out Spitsbergen, then it’s extremely rare for anyone to be threatened by a bear in Norway. But now we find a second victim, Cecilie Davidsen, with wounds remarkably similar to those we found on Paulsen, and animal tracks in Frogner Park that are practically identical to those we found up in the Nordmarka. Which of you supposes that a large brown bear is prowling the streets of central Oslo?

He bared his teeth. To Nina it was unclear whether he was smiling or imitating the imagined animal.

– We have to look at other possibilities here. Come on, Sigge, you grew up with polar bears as your next-door neighbours.

The Icelander gave a little laugh, though he obviously didn’t think it was particularly funny.

– It might have escaped from somewhere.

– A bear sanctuary? The nearest one is in Hallingdal; that’s over a hundred miles away. Think it took the bus?

Helgarsson rolled his eyes, but Nina saw that the corners of Agnes Finckenhagen’s mouth were twitching.

– Some people keep animals illegally, she offered.

Viken clicked his tongue a few times.

– I’ve heard of boa constrictors in bedsits, even Amazonian lizards sticking their heads up out of the next-door neighbour’s toilet bowl, but a bear in a bedroom? Any other suggestions? Arve, you know more about wildlife than the rest of us – can we rule out the possibility that there was a bear in Frogner Park, or can we not?

Arve Norbakk looked around, and to Nina it seemed his gaze rested on her a moment.

– Bears avoid people, he told them. – It’s unthinkable it might make its way down into a town. Not on its own.

– What do you mean? Could somebody have brought it here and turned it loose?

Norbakk shrugged his shoulders.

– Either that, or the victim has been moved after being ripped by bear claws.

Viken nodded.

– The plaster that was found under Hilde Paulsen’s nails might have come from a cellar. Maybe the body was taken out into the marka. But what about the tracks?

Arve Norbakk dotted his pen against a sheet of paper as though sending a signal in Morse code.

– I was wondering about that. The tracks have clearly been made by a bear’s paw, but all of them look like marks made by hind paws. So the bear must have been walking upright the entire time.

– Like a circus act, Viken observed.

Norbakk permitted himself a smile.

– A bear will rise up on to its hind legs when faced with a potential danger, he said. – It does so to get a better overview and to pick up the scent of whatever’s approaching. It can look as if it’s dancing. But if it’s going to attack or flee, it quickly gets back down on all fours. Another thing is that the pattern of movement seems odd. There are about twenty metres of tracks before they disappear into the water. But the two paws are much too close together. On top of that, there isn’t a single track further down the bank, or on the other side. So where did the animal go?

The question was still hanging in the air when the meeting broke up a couple of minutes later.

Nina scrolled down through the list of witness statements on the subject of Paulsen’s disappearance. She carefully read the account given by the man who found the body. Or rather, the man who owned the dog that found the body. Fifteen people had come forward to confirm that they had seen Paulsen in the marka on the day she disappeared. She noted the names down in her notebook. The last confirmed sighting was that made by a doctor, Axel Glenne, who had called them a few days later. She leaned back in her chair, thinking. Something had struck her. She looked out of the window, over the row of hazels and the rooftops down in Grønland. Something she’d read. Her computer had already gone into hibernation and she woke it up and scrolled through the names once again. Found the interview with Cecilie Davidsen’s husband. He had attended at Majorstua police station to give his statement. He had raised the alarm after a couple of hours when his wife had failed to return from the hospital and didn’t answer her phone. She had just been told she had cancer and would be operated on in a few days’ time. The prospects weren’t good. He was afraid she might be in shock. At last Nina found what she was looking for: Cecilie Davidsen’s doctor. He had been a great help to her, according to the husband. His name was Axel Glenne.

27

Tuesday 16 October

IT HAD BEEN snowing since early morning. A total surprise to everyone, even the meteorologists, who had forecast rain.

Signy Bruseter stood on the steps in front of her house and looked out miserably across the fields sloping down towards the village. She didn’t like the winter, it was too long already, and now here it was snowing heavily and only the middle of October. Her house lay at the end of a farm track, almost two kilometres from the main road. The farmer who did the snow-clearing for her was reliable, but suppose he was ill? Or if he couldn’t get his tractor started and had to take it in for repairs? The thought of being snowed in here at the edge of the forest made her shiver, and she bitterly regretted ever having moved up here. She pulled the shawl tighter around herself, trotted across the yard and opened the garage door. She kept her winter tyres down at the petrol station in Åmoen; she knew the owner and he was always good to her and changed them at short notice. Now it was a question of how to get to the main road and then the seven kilometres to the Esso station.

Luckily the snow was fairly light and hadn’t frozen hard yet. All the same, she drove in first gear all the way down. There was more on the news about the murders in Oslo. She couldn’t bear hearing about them but couldn’t stop herself either. No suspects as yet, they said, and interviewed a female officer. Fincken-something-or-other. We’re following up all the leads we’ve had so far, we’re encouraging anyone who thinks they might be able to help to come forward. Signy didn’t like her voice; it was brittle. Yes, we do believe it’s likely that the two cases are connected. But neither of the victims was killed by a bear. She sounded arrogant. No, absolutely not. It would be meaningless under the circumstances to demand that southern Norway be a bear-free area.

The news continued with a story about a car bomb in Iraq. Signy switched off and stared out at the white flakes that came streaming towards the windscreen. They’re not in control, she complained to herself. They’ve no idea what to do. She’d been lying awake all night. She had hardly any coffee or bread left and hadn’t had time to shop. She’d said yes to the offer of an extra shift. Mette Martin was always nice and cheerful, but she evidently expected Signy to cover whenever anyone was sick. That was the way it was when you lived on your own and had no one else to look after. These afternoon shifts were stupid; it meant she didn’t get home until about eight, too late to bother making supper. She had a bowl of spinach soup she could heat up. She’d boil a couple of eggs to have with it.

Roger Åheim, who owned the petrol station, was a man Signy wouldn’t hesitate to describe as ‘warm hearted’. It turned out he was cousin to Åse Berit Nytorpet, whom she worked with at Reinkollen. He always gave Signy a little wink. Though he wasn’t far off sixty, he was still a ladies’ man. In fact, if what she heard was true, he’d just become a father again. Now, seeing how desperate she was, he put everything else to one side to fix her wheels for her so she could get about.

A young lad Signy knew from before she moved house took over from him behind the counter. Although he couldn’t be that young, she thought; it must have been all of twenty years ago when she was his teacher at the primary school in Kongsvinger. Not that that was any kind of happy memory; he’d been a right little mischief. Smart enough when it suited him, but that wasn’t very often. He was always playing truant, hanging out with boys five or six years older than him and drinking beer. When he went to secondary school, things turned really bad. He’d been in jail apparently, and now he’d ended up here. He was probably still struggling and didn’t exactly look a picture of health with his shaven head and tattooed skull. But Signy was the kind of person who cared about people. Every now and then she called in at the petrol station, bought a few small things and had a chat with the lad.

But on this particular morning she sat on the battered sofa in the corner and nervously flipped through the newspaper as Roger Åheim jacked up the car and started work. The last murder victim had a daughter just eight years old. They’d found bear tracks everywhere, all around where she was lying.

Up here we’ve always had bears,Åse Berit Nytorpet had said a few days earlier when Signy showed her a picture of the first woman to be killed. Maybe now they’ll understand what it’s like.

But there was something else she’d said too, something Signy was still puzzling over.

Some people I know would be prepared to go pretty far to make people down there see sense. Might even drug a bear and drive it down to Oslomarka and let it out there.

– You’re surely not saying you know someone who might’ve done something like that, Signy had protested.

I’m not saying anything. What I’m saying is, it’s not out of the question that I know someone with strong views on this business.

That was what had kept Signy awake last night. On several occasions over the past week Åse Berit had hinted that she knew something about what was going on down there in Oslo. And then always that zip-fastener mime across the lips with the two fingers.

By the time Roger Åheim had got the last of the winter tyres on, Signy had made up her mind. She couldn’t keep this to herself. She had to tell someone about it.

28

A POWERFULLY BUILT fair-haired man emerged from the lift on the ground floor at police headquarters and walked over to reception.

– Detective Sergeant Norbakk, he said and held out his hand. The handshake wasn’t as firm as Axel Glenne had expected, judging by the upper-arm musculature. – Come with me, he added with a nod towards the lift door.

On the way up, Axel looked him over. The sergeant was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was probably about thirty years old, although that thick curl hanging down over his forehead perhaps made him look younger than he was.

– Probably isn’t easy for a doctor to get away from his office in the middle of the afternoon, he observed, most likely as a way of neutralising the tension that arises in a lift when two strange men are standing face to face.

– You’re right there, Axel agreed with a friendly smile, though in fact he was attending a three-day seminar on lung disease. He thought better of asking why they had requested that they meet up in person rather than deal with it over the telephone. Actually, he could understand why. The previous evening a female officer had called him and told him who the murdered woman in Frogner Park was. Afterwards he’d spent half the night lying awake, and found it hard to follow what was being said at the seminar in the morning.

They came to a halt on the seventh floor.

– We’re going over into the red zone, the sergeant told him.

Axel was led down a corridor with red-painted doors and linoleum in the same colour, with no explanation being offered for the significance of the colour-coding. Presently they came to a door that was slightly ajar. There was a nameplate on it with the sergeant’s name. His first name was Arve, Axel registered. He was shown to a chair by the window in the cramped office. It looked out across Grønland and the Plaza Hotel, with Bjørvika and the opera house just visible on the left. The desk was tidy, a pile of documents next to a computer, a couple of copies of the legal code; the shelves were crammed with folders.

– The chief inspector will be here in a moment. Coffee?

Axel nodded and Norbakk disappeared, returning with a thermos and three cups.

– Sugar? Milk?

When Axel declined he said:

– Me too, I don’t like junk in my coffee.

Just then the door opened. Axel gave a start and turned round. The man standing there was a little under medium height, wearing suit trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was thinning on top, and thick grey eyebrows formed a bridge across the powerful crooked nose.

– Viken, he said, sitting down on the chair nearest the door without offering to shake hands. – You’ve already met Norbakk.

The conversation – Axel preferred to call it that, although interview sounded reasonable enough – went on for over an hour. An unnecessarily long time. He had planned to catch the 4.30 boat. It was his turn to make dinner. Marlen had her violin lesson. And he had planned to go over Tom’s weekly homework with him, something he overlooked too often and that gave him a guilty conscience. But he was careful to give no indication of his impatience. Said what he was able to say about Cecilie Davidsen. He had never before been in the situation of being interviewed about a dead patient, and he decided to be open about her sickness. Yes, of course the diagnosis had come as a terrible shock to her. No, the prognosis had not been good. Possibly three years to live. It was the young sergeant, Norbakk, who asked about this. He looked up from the computer he was working at and observed Axel with calm, direct eyes. On those occasions when he did speak, he kept it short and his voice was relaxed, unlike the chief inspector, who sounded pressured and a little hoarse. If he had to choose which one of the two to drink a beer with, thought Axel, it would be Norbakk, no question about it. As for the other one, Viken, there was an impenetrable sullenness about him, and he seemed to exude something that filled Axel with unease. When was the last time Axel had seen Davidsen? he wanted to know. Axel gave him the date of the visit to her house. Was it usual to go to patients’ houses out of office hours? The chief inspector’s delivery was patronising and insistent, but it was the penetrating stare that irritated Axel most and brought on a sort of reluctance. He spun it out a bit, didn’t tell Viken how he’d stood outside Davidsen’s front door, how the daughter had opened up, the scared way she’d looked at him. The messenger of death, was what he had thought. Though not this death, the death he was being questioned about now.

But most of the conversation was about Hilde Paulsen rather than Cecilie Davidsen. How well had he known her? Did they work closely together? Had he had any contact with her outside work? Exactly where was it he had met her that afternoon? Had he met anyone else? Axel forced his lips into a smile. He was a good observer. He noticed things, big things, little things. But to remember every detail of a bike ride nearly three weeks ago was asking a bit much. He remembered a woman carrying a child in a back frame, three or four people out jogging. Naturally the elderly couple out at the Nordmarka chapel; he could give them a detailed description of the woman’s face if they wanted. A cyclist had raced past him, that was near the chapel too. And after meeting Hilde Paulsen, a steady stream of keep-fitters and walkers, with and without dogs, on their way to and from Ullevålseter. Approaching Sognsvann, he’d met three women in headscarves and long coats, probably Turks or Kurds. One of them limped and looked as though she had problems with her hip. Directly behind them a person he recognised from television. A former newsreader for NRK who now had his own talk show on another channel and was what you might call a celebrity. And in the car park by the lake, a cyclist with a child-trailer. It was dark by then, and he remembered thinking it was too late to be taking a child out into the forest. Why was he walking when he had the bicycle with him? He told them about the puncture in his rear tyre, then the run and the swim in the tarn. But nothing about the spruce shelter. He didn’t know why. Only that the shelter made him think of Brede. Brede had no place in this conversation.

Where were you last Thursday afternoon? the chief inspector wanted to know. When he heard the answer, he observed drily:

– Well, well, the day of your weekly bike ride. And here was me thinking you doctors worked round the clock. Were you with anyone?

Axel had come to tell them what he knew about two women who had been murdered, not to defend anything he himself might have been up to in his private life. He thought it through quickly and came to the conclusion that Miriam had no place in this conversation either.

– No, he replied, and felt himself crossing a threshold as he lied to the chief inspector. – I was alone.

29

DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR Hans Magnus Viken piled the takeaway cartons from China Dragon on to the plate and pushed it to one side as he clicked the remote control. There was a debate programme on TV2: Should dangerous animals be allowed close to people’s homes? What are the limits? The murder cases weren’t mentioned, but the programme was fuelled by the general uncertainty in the air. Viken switched to a travel channel. Pictures of a desert sunset. Looked like Morocco. He watched for a while before getting out the DVD he’d brought home from work with him. Only now did he have time to watch the whole of the Monday press conference, not just the few extracts he’d seen on NRK that same evening. It was useful to watch all TV appearances, which was why they were recorded and handed out to everyone taking part. Learning media skills was as important a part of the job as actual policing skills, they were constantly being told.

The Chief Superintendent led the conference, underlining how important the case had become. As usual he was decidedly pompous, sitting there with his dress uniform and his well-groomed hair, which Viken suspected he dyed to hide any traces of grey. He was rather like the smug chief of police in those children’s books about Cardamom Town, and some of the younger officers even referred to him by the fictional chief’s name – Bastian.

It was Finckenhagen who had asked Viken to join them. She was another one who just loved the limelight, he’d realised a long time ago. But this was so big that she obviously felt comfortable sharing it with him on this occasion. She didn’t look too bad, he had to admit as he watched her taking over after the chief’s introduction. Her summary of the case was adequate, and she dealt reasonably well with the questions. On a couple of occasions she handed them over to him. The contrast was evident. He was more concise, and more precise. The way people wanted their police to be, he thought.

The best bit of the press conference came at the end. There were Swedish and Danish journalists there, of course, but also French and Italian, and a team from German TV. No matter how many times they denied that a killer bear was on the rampage in the centre of a European capital, the case continued to attract worldwide attention. The bear prints, and the claw marks on the two dead women, were gefundenes Fressen for everyone who had news as their business, and the pictures had already been spread to all parts of the globe. After Finckenhagen had staggered her way through a couple of sentences in primitive English, Viken took over the show. About ten years earlier, he’d taken part in an exchange project and spent a year with the police force in Manchester, and he answered questions from the foreign media in fluent English. Even permitted himself a joke. Of course, people do call Oslo ‘the city of tigers’, from the days when people thought it was a dangerous place to be wandering about in at night. But let me state categorically, once and for all: there are no tigers on the prowl here. He had worked out the joke at the morning briefing, and it turned out to be a hit. Chuckles and grins from the journalists. The chief came up to him afterwards and shook his hand. Good show, Viken. A German journalist approached and asked if he could do an interview. As he sat watching the recording, Viken felt well pleased. One-nil, Finckenhagen, he noted, certain that she would have made the same observation.

He switched to NRK in time to catch the evening news. The bear murders, as they were inaccurately known, had been relegated to item number three. The same pictures from Nordmarka and Frogner Park were shown. Then an interview with the chief. Finckenhagen was being kept off stage after a bad mistake on the news the day before. She’d been naïve enough to respond to the proposal to declare southern Norway a bear-free zone. Everyone knew that the politician who had come up with the idea was an incorrigible drunkard who would do or say anything for another fifteen seconds of media fame. Finckenhagen fell for it, and people were saying the chief was not pleased with her. Two-nil, Viken nodded as he peeled a banana he’d bought from a 7-Eleven. They had a calming effect on the stomach, he’d discovered. Every bit as good as the pills his doctor prescribed for him. Despite saying there was nothing the matter with him, the guy still tried to get Viken to stuff himself full of chemicals. Your stomach is just a touch oversensitive was his idiotic diagnosis. And in an effort to be funny he added, citing a few crime novels he’d read: Don’t all detectives have upset stomachs?

There wasn’t much the chief could tell the press about the investigation, which made the packaging all the more important. They’d been good from the very beginning and so far no newspaper had commented that for such a dramatic case they seemed to have very little to go on. Was that right? They had backing all the way up the system. Top priority when it came to resources; Finckenhagen could pick and choose as she pleased. So far anyway. They had already received so many tips they had someone doing a rough sorting. And Jennifer Plåterud, the best pathologist Viken had worked with, was calling him daily, hardly able to hide her excitement at all the finds she was making on Cecilie Davidsen. She had been more deeply scratched than the first victim, not just on the back but also on her upper body and face. The same marks as of a hypodermic syringe appeared on her arms and legs. And there were no signs of sexual assault on her either.

The telephone rang. It was headquarters. A colleague from somewhere up in Hedmark wanted to get in touch with Viken. He took a note of the number and made the call. The man who answered introduced himself as Kjell Roar Storaker, sheriff in Åsnes county. Yes, Viken knew where that was, very close to the Swedish border.

– Sorry for ringing so late, it’s probably not that important.

– Don’t worry about it, Viken reassured him, without shifting his gaze from the TV screen.

– It’s about these murders… this bear business.

Viken didn’t think it was a very good idea to refer to it as the bear business, but he couldn’t come up with anything better himself.

– We’re getting so many strange calls, you know what people are like.

Viken knew only too well. They’d set up a dedicated phone line for the case. As a joke, he’d suggested they hire a psychiatrist too, since so many of the calls came from people who were clearly in need of that kind of help.

– We sort through them as best we can, the sheriff assured him. – We save you from the worst of it.

– Let’s have it, Storaker.

– We received a letter yesterday. Anonymous. The writer says that he, or she, has reason to believe that people from up here might have caught a bear, driven it down to Oslomarka and released it.

Viken turned off the TV.

– Based on what?

– Hard to say. You know, there’s a lot of talk of bears up here. Tempers can get heated very quickly. People in the countryside get angry when they feel they’re being steamrollered by politicians and so-called environmentalists, the types who tell them they’ve just got to live with predators while they’re miles away from it themselves…

– Do you see any reason to take the letter seriously? Viken interrupted him.

– Hm, there’s a name mentioned, a woman who keeps sheep, along with her husband. We’ve had a look, and he has said things to the papers in a way that… Well, we don’t think this is important. That some kind of activist group has been set up, we can’t really see that.

– Fax it down here, we’ll have a closer look at it.

Viken reached for the twelve-string guitar on its stand next to the sofa. Began playing a riff. The case was completely different from anything else he’d ever been involved in. Confusion had descended on the city. Even the journalists seemed to have given up their usual hunt for those responsible, in other words, for scapegoats. So far. The riff he was playing began more and more to resemble the opening of ‘Paint It Black’. They had been conducting interviews until late in the evening all week. There was a real danger of the wood drowning in trees. Viken was good at sifting stuff. There were a handful of witness statements that were especially interesting. The retired dentist who had found Paulsen turned out to have good powers of observation. The same could not be said of the two junkies who discovered Davidsen in Frogner Park. They couldn’t agree about the vehicle they had seen pulling out of the car park. Was it big or small? Two different answers. Light or dark? A shouting match. Viken recalled what the woman said she’d been doing down the slope by the water. He grimaced at his foot, strummed two chords, the last one in A flat major, and put the guitar away.

He went out to the kitchen to brew more coffee. Knew that he would be sitting up until late. While he waited for enough drops to drip down through the filter paper to make another cup, he called Norbakk. With no apology for the late hour, he related the conversation he had had with the sheriff up in Åsnes.

– You know what it’s like in places like that, Arve; d’you think there might be something in it?

He had expected the sergeant to burst out laughing, but he didn’t.

– I know a lot of sheep farmers who are desperate, he answered. – Åsnes, did you say? Maybe not such a bad idea to take a trip up there.

– Well then that’s settled, Viken said. He already knew who would get the job.

– While we’re on it, Arve: that doctor we interviewed today, there was something about him.

– What do you mean?

– Nothing definite. A gut feeling. We’ll have him in again in a few days’ time.

As Viken was about to end the call, Norbakk said: – By the way, I’ve found something that might be interesting.

– Out with it then, the chief inspector urged him. He had absolutely no objection to discussing the case with his younger colleague, even if it was well past midnight.

– Those tracks around the victims were definitely made by a bear’s paws. But we can’t work out how a bear would be wandering around there. He paused.

– Don’t keep me on tenterhooks, Viken complained.

– I did a search of stolen property and looked for animal-related things. On the fifth of October, that’s to say, two days before Paulsen was found, there was a break-in at a gunsmith’s in Lillestrøm. Only a few minor things were taken. But the thief did take a stuffed she-bear that was on a stand just inside the entrance.

– Give over, Arve, Viken protested. – You think we’re looking for a killer who drives around with a stuffed bear in the boot of his car?

He heard Norbakk laughing.

– You don’t need a whole bear to make a few tracks.

Viken’s jaw worked as he thought this over.

– Good to know someone’s doing his job, he said finally. – The bear prints are probably some sort of signature.

– Or they contain a message of some kind, Norbakk suggested. – The person who has done this is maybe trying to tell us something.

30

Wednesday 17 October

AFTER HAVING BEEN directed to Nytorpet Farm and established that there was no one home, Nina Jebsen again rang the Åsnes sheriff. He was very helpful and within a couple of minutes had called back with more information. He couldn’t get hold of the farm owner, but his wife worked at a home for the mentally handicapped in Reinkollen. Nina groaned inwardly. As though she was supposed to know where that was. At the morning briefing, when Viken mentioned the tip that had come in from Åsnes, she hadn’t been able to resist a few comments about the bear guerrillas and terrorism among the Hedmark farmers. Viken had responded with a wicked grin before telling her that she was going up there. An exercise in punishment, she’d thought, and swore to keep her mouth shut the next time.

For a girl from Bergen, the landscape in the east of the country could be summed up in one word: forest. And here in the border regions it seemed even thicker than elsewhere. She struggled against a sensation of being locked up inside it. No wonder people got depressed living in places like this, she sighed, without really knowing for sure whether there was any more depression here in the forest depths than there was over in the west. But where she came from, things changed all the time: the light, the smells, the moods, and your own moods with them. She even found herself missing the Bergen rain as she sped on between the rows of spruce with no view of the horizon in any direction.

The sheriff had given her detailed directions how to get to Reinkollen, but somewhere or other she’d lost the way. She blamed it on her lack of the genes necessary for negotiating a jungle like this. At a village called Åmoen, she pulled in to an Esso station to ask for help. A man who looked to be in his mid-twenties stood lounging in the doorway to a back room. His head was shaven, with a tattoo that appeared to show two crossed swords standing out against the white of his skull. He glanced at her as she approached the counter, then turned and continued to stare at what was presumably a TV screen in the other room. After drumming her fingers and coughing a few times, she lost patience.

– Closed for the day? she said in a voice that startled the young man. He sloped over and scowled at her. Once she had explained her business, he picked up a map book, tossed it on to the counter, flipped through it and pointed.

– You drove past it three kilometres back, here. You can’t miss the sign. Even the mongos and halfwits that live up there can find the way.

She stared at him in disbelief. Had to pull herself together as best she was able, but still couldn’t resist.

– I see not all the halfwits live up there, she murmured.

On her way out she heard him mention a part of her anatomy he almost certainly wished he had himself.

The woman who opened the door to the home was grey haired and slightly built, with a scraggy turkey neck. She had a stoop, and her gaze flickered between Nina and the patrol car parked outside.

– What… what is it?

– Does Åse Berit Nytorpet work here?

The woman’s jowls wobbled as she gave a slight nod. Nina showed her police ID.

– Nothing’s wrong, she added as she saw the frightened look. – I’d just like to ask a few questions.

She was led into the main room. A person of indeterminate age sat in a wheelchair by a table. She was nothing but skin and bone, and her eyes rolled back and forth. A faint sound like a meowing came from her throat.

A tall, stoutly built woman in a knitted cardigan and skirt and wearing shaggy felt slippers stood up.

– Åse Berit Nytorpet?

– That’s me, yes.

Nina again introduced herself.

– I’m here in connection with a case we hope you might be able to help us with.

The woman looked to be in her sixties. She wrinkled her brow and didn’t seem much friendlier than the woman who’d let her in.

– Is there somewhere we can talk in private? It won’t take long.

Åse Berit Nytorpet glanced over towards her companion.

– We can sit out in the kitchen, she decided. – Signy, will you see to Oswald? He could probably do with a little walk to the living room.

The stooping figure with the scrawny neck still looked terrified, and Nina repeated that it was just a few questions, a routine matter.

Out in the kitchen Åse Berit Nytorpet poured a cup of coffee and without a word put it down on the table in front of Nina, who said thank you as politely as she could and continued.

– We’re working on a case you may have heard of. The two women found dead in Oslo?

Åse Berit Nytorpet’s mouth tightened.

– I know we live out in the country, but we do manage to follow some of what’s going on.

– Of course. I didn’t mean it like that.

Nina sipped the coffee. Boiled, black as pitch.

– Good coffee, she said. – Any chance of a drop of milk in it?

She sloshed some of the brew into the sink to make room for the milk.

– There are rumours around here that someone may have captured a bear and released it in the Oslomarka.

Åse Berit Nytorpet opened her eyes wide.

– Have you come all the way out here to ask me about that?

– Why would I come just to ask you?

– Haven’t the foggiest.

– Well, we received a tip suggesting that you know something about such a plan.

Åse Berit Nytorp got up from her chair.

– I don’t believe you.

– It’s the truth, all the same.

She remained standing, scowling at the policewoman.

– That I’m supposed to have something to do with it? Who in the blazes has said that?

– We receive tips. We’re not always able to say where they come from. We have noticed that your husband made certain statements to the newspaper.

Nina took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it, a printout from Glamdålen’s web edition. Åse Berit Nytorpet took a quick look at it.

– My God, that was years ago… You don’t actually believe my old man goes about the place trapping bears and sending them off to Oslo?

– I don’t believe anything. But we have to look at every possibility, the likely as well as the unlikely. He does express the view here that someone might just release a bear down there. Maybe it’ll take something like that before they realise the seriousness of the position.

Åse Berit Nytorpet interrupted her: – Have you any idea how much work goes into looking after the sheep? It’s our life. Her eyes had darkened. – What do you think it’s like to walk out across the pastures in the morning and find dead animals all over the place? No wonder people get upset.

Nina could understand that.

– When you’ve just arrived back home with a wagonload of dead sheep, you might well say things on the spur of the moment, know what I mean?

Nina agreed that it wasn’t a crime for a person to voice their anger.

– Could I have a word with your husband? He wasn’t up at the house.

Åse Berit Nytorpet tossed her head irritably.

– He’s with my cousin, Roger Åheim.

– Where?

– At a cabin up past Rena. Won’t be back down until this evening.

Nina was careful to preserve her polite tone. She didn’t want to provoke the woman any more than was absolutely necessary.

– I’m going to give you a few dates and times, and I want you to think carefully before telling me where your husband was on those dates. As far as you’re able.

When she came back into the main room, the other woman – Signy – was standing in the doorway to one of the rooms. Abruptly she backed out. Behind her a huge creature came into view. For a moment Nina Jebsen was unsure whether or not the situation was dangerous. The giant strode into the room and stood there glaring from one to the other. Then he took a step in her direction. She jumped. He raised his fist, pounded himself on the chest.

– Oswald get bear, he shouted, spittle drooling from his twisted mouth.

Åse Berit Nytorpet padded across and took him by the hand.

– Now you sit down, Oswald, she said in a honey-sweet voice as she led him over to the sofa.

She turned to the policewoman.

– It’s about time you left. Oswald gets upset when strangers come visiting.

31

IT WAS 12.15 WHEN Axel, wearing his cycling gear, emerged from the clinic doors. He’d arranged to have an extra afternoon off that week. Felt like he needed it.

As he headed out into the yard, he heard someone calling his name. He turned. A woman almost as tall as he was, with shoulder-length blond hair, was following him.

– Axel Glenne? she repeated.

He could think of no reason to deny it. The woman said:

– Kaja Fredvold, journalist for VG.

She held out her hand, but Axel turned and took the stairs down to the basement door.

– I’ve tried to call you several times. I’m sure you know what it’s about.

– I’m on my way out.

– Off for a run? the journalist asked.

He nodded curtly, unwilling to say anything that might prolong the conversation.

– I’ve got a couple of questions for you. I’m writing an article about these murders, the bear business…

Axel knew he ought to control the irritation he felt brewing inside him. He glanced at her. She was wearing a suit jacket, jeans and boots, and seemed in no doubt at all about her perfect right to pop up anywhere she liked and ask whatever she wanted to.

– I’ve got nothing to say. Nothing of interest.

– It’s amazing what can actually be of interest, she said, giving him a conspiratorial wink, clearly making an effort to seem friendly. – As far as I can gather, you were the last person to talk to Hilde Paulsen on the day she disappeared.

– Was I?

– And Cecilie Davidsen was one of your patients. We can have a cup of coffee at The Broker. Or something to eat, if you prefer.

Axel sprang up the three steps that led to the basement and stood in front of the journalist.

– Do I look as if I’m on my way to eat lunch?

– No, she smiled. She had an underbite, he noticed. – But it needn’t take long. We can do it here if you like.

– Cecilie Davidsen had an eight-year-old daughter. Does it ever even occur to you what it must be like to lose your mother and instead get a picture of a corpse smeared all over the front pages every bloody day?

He was being unreasonable. He was saying things he should never have said. But his irritation had flared up and he could no longer contain it.

– Of course, said the journalist. – We think about these things all the time, but we have other considerations too. People have a right to know…

– Bullshit, hissed Axel.

He pulled himself together, managed to get the basement door unlocked.

– This is not necessarily the smartest way of dealing with things, he heard from behind him.

He remained standing down in the dark until he was able to breathe calmly again, still consumed by rage and with no idea where it had come from.

He abandoned the bike ride. An hour and a half later, he walked in through his own front door. Made some coffee and took it out on to the terrace. A cold wind blew up from the fjord. He pulled his jacket tight. Not the smartest way, he repeated to himself. The smartest thing would be to ring the journalist and apologise. Answer the questions politely and willingly, give her enough material for yet another big story. You’ll always do the right thing, Axel. Call Miriam. Or go over there. Apologise to her for having crossed the limits. Abused his position. Tell her they must never meet again…

It wasn’t Miriam he should be going to see, it was Brede. If it were even possible to find him. Make up for having betrayed the pact. For having shopped him. As though an apology would be enough. I want fuck all from you. They were identical twins; when they were small, it was impossible to tell them apart, until they spoke. Their mother had always said Brede’s voice was different. Brede never asked, she maintained, he demanded. That wasn’t right, Axel thought. Brede’s voice was always full of something that was never allowed to come out. That no one could respond to. Brede was sacrificed, he thought. He had to be sacrificed so that Axel might get on in life. They were one, but something had gone wrong and made them into two, and of the two of them, only one could have a life.

Could he have prevented it? If he hadn’t said anything… He was fifteen years old when Brede was sent away. Brede had given up playing at being a Resistance saboteur fleeing for the safety of the Swedish border. Now he played Nazi games with the younger kids in the neighbourhood. He was the leader. Called himself HHH: Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich all rolled into one. The kids would arrive home in the evening with swastikas painted in black tar on their chests and refuse to say what they had been up to. Not even when they were caught in the forest near Svennerud, half naked and frenzied, with Brede in the middle waving one of Colonel Glenne’s pistols about, did any of them dare to tell on him. But that wasn’t when he was sent away. It was later that summer. That’s why I’m asking you, Axel. And I’m only going to ask you once.

Axel pottered about in the kitchen. Still an hour before Bie was due home with Marlen. He opened the bread bin; there was only a crust left, and he remembered he had promised to shop on his way home. As he was about to take a look in the fridge, his mobile phone rang. He didn’t recognise the number, had no desire to talk to anybody, but steeled himself and took the call.

– Is everything all right, Axel?

He recognised Solveig Lundwall’s voice. She had only ever rung him at home once before. It was not a good sign.

– How are you? he said, trying to divert her.

– You must deal with Per Olav, she insisted. – He’s drinking even more than before. Litres of it. I know you’ve told him he should cut down, but he doesn’t listen. Just swills it down the moment he gets inside the door. The kids too, but mostly Per Olav. He’s up in the night and drinking that damn milk. In the morning it’s all gone. I can’t put up with it for much longer.

He let her carry on, and when she stopped to draw breath he interjected.

– I’ll have a word with Per Olav, Solveig. Make an appointment for him.

She was the one in urgent need of an appointment, and he was about to suggest the following day when she said: – I’ve seen him. The person you were asking about last time.

– Was I asking about someone?

– You asked if I’d seen that person who looks like you. I saw him. I followed him. No one else knows about him. But the time is near now. You know it too, Axel. The time is near.

– You followed him, you say? Axel responded, wondering whether he ought to contact the hospital straight away.

She didn’t reply for a few seconds.

– I’m calling to give you a warning, Axel Glenne.

– It’s good of you to worry about me…

– Good? This is not good. You must listen to me, not just babble on and always know best.

– I am listening, Solveig.

– Yesterday, she began. – I saw you again yesterday. On the Underground.

He hadn’t used the Underground yesterday but didn’t interrupt her.

– It was your face, your eyes, your hands. You had long hair and a beard and looked like a tramp, just like that time I saw you at Majorstuehuset. I know you do it so that no one will recognise you, Axel Glenne, not until the right time comes. But I recognised you.

– Where did you say this was?

– On the Underground.

– Which line?

– Frognerseteren. You sat looking out of the window. But it was as though you could see me reflected in the glass. It was creepy, but nice too. It was a church holiday. I meant to get off at Ris, but I couldn’t get up from my seat, had to sit there as long as you wanted me to. All the way to the terminus. You got out there and disappeared in the direction of the forest. Understand?

– No, Solveig, I don’t understand.

– Then you turned round, and I wanted to follow you, I want you to know that, but I couldn’t, not yet. And I know Cecilie Davidsen was killed because she was your patient.

She lowered her voice.

– You’re the one they’re after, Axel. They’re after you because you have Jesus in you. You’re dangerous to them.

32

HE SWUNG THE car into a parking space along Helgesens gate and turned off the engine. Leaning forward, he could see the window of the attic flat. There was a light on. He still hadn’t made the decision to actually go up there. He could turn, head back home, do the shopping on the way as he’d promised. Bie had reminded him of what they needed: bread, mince, toilet paper. The rest he would have to think of himself. Milk, he thought, recalling the conversation with Solveig Lundwall. It wasn’t a delusion, what she’d seen on the Underground. It was the interpretation that was psychotic, not the fact that she’d seen someone who looked exactly like him. Is that why you’re sitting here, Axel? he thought.

It was 4.30 when he got out of the car. It had been a week since he last saw Miriam. It took her less than ten seconds to open up after he rang the bell. He slipped inside and elbowed the door shut behind him. Without a word she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

She leaned towards him and poured him an espresso. She’d been at the gym and was still wearing the white jogging pants and the vest with Miriam written across the chest in glittering letters.

The doorbell rang. She gave a startled jump, then disappeared out into the hall, closing the door behind her. He could hear her voice out there, interrupted by another female voice, hoarser and rougher.

He got up and peered into the alcove. There was room for two in the bed, but only a single duvet. Above the bedhead a shelf with bedtime reading: a textbook on orthopaedic surgery, and a few titles in her own language. Next to them a picture of a man about Axel’s own age. He was wearing a white uniform. Looked like some kind of naval officer.

When she returned a few minutes later, he was once again seated on the sofa.

– The woman who lives under me, she explained. – She needs someone to talk to. I had to tell her I had a visitor. I’ll call in and see her tomorrow, before I go to my lecture.

– Doesn’t she have a job to go to?

Miriam was standing in front of him. He picked up the smell of her, thought how a smell could paralyse you.

– Typical doctor’s question, she said teasingly. – Do you have a job? Are you on social security?

He could have reached out his hand, let it glide down her back, down to the elastic on her trousers. It was painful to resist.

– You’re afraid of being a typical doctor, he told her.

– Anita has a doctor who doesn’t do enough to help her. He thinks of her as a case.

– Anita, that’s the neighbour?

Miriam nodded.

– She’s had it rough. Was alone with Victoria and had to work all the time just to make ends meet. Two years ago, someone from the child protection agency turned up and sat with her for a couple of hours. She had no idea what they wanted. A week later they came back and took Victoria.

– I’m sure they must have given the matter a lot of thought.

It was still possible to talk about something, about the neighbour, about anything at all. When the moment came when neither of them said anything else, that was when it would happen.

– They had no reason to do it, Miriam protested. – Someone at the nursery school claimed that Victoria never had any warm clothes on and always seemed hungry. And so off they went. Anita did used to take drugs, but she’s been clean ever since Victoria was born.

– Are you certain about that?

– Why would she lie to me?

He had nothing else to say. Took her by the arm and pulled her down on to the sofa.

– How long can you stay, Axel?

She’d taken the slides out of her hair and it flowed down her back. He lifted it to one side and pressed his nose against the nape of her neck. He couldn’t stay.

Someone bending over him, staring down into his face. He turns away. Miriam is standing on the bank of the tarn. As he walks over to put his arms around her naked body, she starts to wade out. He follows. The tarn expands until it fills the horizon. Then she dives forward and disappears beneath the water.

He woke up. What do you want from me, Miriam? It was quiet in the room. It was morning: 5.30. Daylight coming in from the ceiling window. He’d been sleeping for three and a half hours. He felt rested. He sniffed down from her shoulder to her armpit. The sweat was acrid, herb-like. She lay with her back to him, her hand still around his genitals, and when he removed it she felt for them again, as though unwilling to let go. He pulled one of her arse cheeks aside and wriggled his way in between her thighs.

– What are you doing? she murmured, half asleep, and drew her knee up under her. He had to take hold of it and lift it before he could slip inside her. Then he just lay there, not moving.

– Aren’t you asleep? he whispered in her ear as she began to move her backside against his stomach.

– Yes, she grunted. – Don’t wake me.

He put a spoonful of strawberry jam on the crispbread, took a mouthful of coffee.

– Axel, she called from the sleeping alcove. – What did you do with my vest?

He finished chewing and swallowed.

– The one with your name on in red glitter? I’ve taken it. Need something to remind me of you.

The next moment she was standing in the doorway with a towel round her.

– I mean it, I can’t find it.

He realised that he was tapping his ring against the coffee cup.

Last time I saw it, you were using it to dry yourself with. Removing any last traces of me.

– I left it on the floor in the alcove; it isn’t there any more.

– Were you going to wear it today? With all those stains?

– You idiot, she scolded him. She came over to the table, put her arms around him and slid down on to his lap. – Do you have to go?

– Soon.

She leaned back and looked into his eyes.

– Will you come back?

On his way down the crooked and uneven staircase, he stopped outside the door of the downstairs flat. Miriam had been so upset that the neighbour’s daughter wasn’t allowed to live there any more. And the memory of that led him to thoughts of his own family. He’d sent a text to Bie. Explained that he’d been asked to cover for someone in Oslo. It was something that happened now and then. OK, she’d answered. Just those two letters. He read the hand-painted ceramic nameplate on the neighbour’s door: Anita and Victoria Elvestrand live here. It struck him that it would always hang there, regardless of whether the words written on it were true or not.

Out on the pavement he stood a moment and inhaled the October air that rushed towards him, dense with cool exhaust fumes. He glanced up at Miriam’s window on the fifth floor. Up at the grey-black sky above the rooftops. It was Thursday morning. As he walked towards where his car was parked, he thought: Tonight I must talk to Bie.

THAT SOUND YOU just heard was yourself sleeping. It’s Thursday morning. The time is 6.30. I’m sitting here with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. Like any average person who’s got up early and is about to set off for work. It was no more than three hours ago that I made this recording of you. Both of you. Played it back to myself lots of times while I’ve been sitting here. You’ve probably got up too. You’re tired because you slept badly last night. Lay there muttering and tossing and turning. Your bad conscience getting to you. That would be just like you. Tons of stuff in the papers about the woman they found in Frogner Park. I can just see your face when you found out who it was. The unease that makes you curdle inside. You still don’t know what this is about. But you hear a sound in the distance and it’s beginning to dawn on you that it’s coming closer. You’re a good listener. Which makes what you did even worse. There’s no way back now. No way back for me either after what I did back then. But now I’ve done something a lot worse, so it doesn’t matter any more.

She was different from the first one. It took a while for her to get scared. She seemed indifferent when she woke up and found herself taped up. Asked what I wanted with her. I told her straight away. She didn’t believe me. Mocked me and tried to make fun of me. But when we got there and I showed her what I had in mind, then she turned into a little child, just like the first one. Emptied all her orifices. Began to scream, too. I let her carry on until she was all screamed out. Then I told her when it was going to happen so she’d know exactly how much time she had left. By the time you hear this, I’ll have told you the same thing. How many hours and minutes before it happens.

I lay beside her all through that first night. Removed her stinking clothes. Didn’t touch her. Lay there in a semi-doze. Glanced at her now and then. I’d wrapped her in a woollen blanket so she wouldn’t get cold. Gave her water too. She wouldn’t have any food. She calmed down with me lying there. Started talking. That she was ill and going to have an operation. That she had a child. An eight-year-old daughter who was afraid to sleep alone. Would I let her go so she could get home and tuck in her daughter, who was lying in bed afraid? For a while I let her believe I would. Dried round her mouth with a damp cloth and stroked her cheek. And when she realised I was lying, she began to wail again. But she wasn’t angry. I could lie with my face pressed right up against her neck. She wanted me to.

I’ve killed twice. And still it’s not your turn yet. I’ve chosen the next one. The day has been appointed. I know already how I’m going to get her to come along with me. Know where she’ll be found. You’ll find her. But not everything will be planned beforehand. I don’t like things to be too neat. Chance has to be allowed to play its part. Things can go wrong. And if I’m caught, you’ll get away.