Death Deserved

by Thomas Enger

Abelvik made a note.

  ‘And compare them with border crossings,’ Blix added before turning to face Wibe.

  ‘How’s the search for the man with the hoodie going?’

  ‘We’ve found a few surveillance cameras that may have caught him, either before or after Geia was recruited to carry out that phone stunt in the graveyard, but so far they haven’t come up with anything. We’ve got undercover cops on Geia’s coat tails to see if Hoodie Man makes contact again, but I’m not too optimistic.’

  Kovic reappeared and interrupted them.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ she said, still brandishing her phone. ‘I’ve gone through Nordstrøm’s phone traffic. The person she’s had most contact with in recent weeks is Stian Josefson.’

  ‘The journalist who wrote the book with her,’ Blix explained to the group.

  ‘It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, except I can’t get in touch with him. His phone is switched off. The call I just had was from his wife. Josefson hasn’t been home since the evening Nordstrøm disappeared. According to his wife Josefson and Nordstrøm had an appointment that evening.’

  ‘The two wine glasses,’ Wibe said, moving forwards in his seat. ‘This is starting to get interesting.’

  ‘There’s more,’ Kovic said. ‘Norway played Denmark in an inter­national football match two and a half years ago. Aftenposten ran an extensive spread on Jeppe Sørensen in the run-up to that. Guess who wrote the article?’

  Kovic turned her mobile to show them the newspaper report she had dredged up. From a distance Blix couldn’t see anything other than the headline: ‘Playmaker and Playboy’.

  ‘Stian Josefson,’ Kovic announced. ‘There are photographs in the article suggesting he visited Jeppe Sørensen’s home and interviewed him there. And there’s more: Josefson was on a business trip to Co­penhagen the night Jeppe Sørensen went missing. He returned home late on the thirtieth of September, according to his wife.’

  Gard Fosse, who hadn’t contributed anything for some time, now clapped his hands.

  ‘Excellent. Bloody brilliant!’

  ‘How did he travel on this business trip?’ Abelvik asked. ‘Car, ferry, plane?’

  Kovic smiled. ‘He was writing a story about Danish furniture, about how popular it is in Norway. His wife claims he was supposed to buy a cabinet for them, so he drove his own car.’

  ‘What make?’

  ‘A Volkswagen Tiguan. What’s interesting is that he came home empty-handed. He didn’t buy a cabinet. One of the neighbours saw a black Tiguan in front of Nordstrøm’s house. That adds up. He’s been at her house a lot while they’ve been working on the book.’

  ‘Maybe the semen in the bed is his too,’ Wibe suggested.

  Kovic gave a little shrug, as if she wasn’t clear whether this was meant as a joke.

  ‘Does his wife have any idea what has become of her husband?’ Fosse asked. ‘Now, I mean?’

  Kovic shook her head.

  Abelvik shifted in her seat. ‘If Josefson has visited Jeppe Sørensen at home in Copenhagen, it’s not implausible that he knows where the garage is situated,’ she said.

  Kovic nodded. ‘After all, they knew each other, in a sense. Sørensen would probably have been happy to chat with Josefson, if he made contact.’

  They sat around the table tossing ideas back and forth like this until Gard Fosse signalled an end to the meeting.

  ‘There’s one issue I must raise,’ he said, letting his gaze slide slowly around the room. ‘The discoveries of both the body and phone very quickly ended up in the media. News.no was first to break both stories.’

  His eyes continued to wander until they reached Blix. Blix crossed his legs under the table. He had two missed calls and one unanswered message from Emma on the phone in his pocket.

  ‘The journalist at Nordstrøm’s house, the one who reported her missing, works for them,’ Kovic interjected. ‘They’re probably fol­lowing the case closely.’

  ‘They refer to police sources,’ Fosse continued.

  ‘That’s what they always say,’ Wibe said dismissively.

  ‘I’d just like to remind you all that no one is to speak to anyone outside this investigation group about this case. Not friends, not family – not even other colleagues. And of course no one who works in the press.’

  Blix struggled to breathe normally. He tried to return Fosse’s searching look with a nonchalant expression, but wasn’t sure how successful he had been.

  26

  Calle Seeberg wasn’t happy to be outdoors. In Norway ‘outside’ was normally synonymous with ‘freezing’, and you always had to check the weather forecast before heading out for a hike, then dig out equipment, sometimes even buy new gear. To cut a long story short, there was too much palaver involved in trekking. Seeberg couldn’t remember the last time he had been out in a field or forest, or up a mountain. If it were up to him, he would stay indoors where he didn’t have far to walk to the fridge, the sofa and the remote control.

  But it wasn’t up to him anymore. His doctor had said: ‘Calle, if you want to pass the age of fifty-five, if you want to give away your daughter at her wedding someday, you have to get out and exercise. And by that I don’t mean sauntering to and from the shops or work. The best thing would be for you to start doing some running. Start small, by all means – you mustn’t give your body too much of a shock. But your lungs do need you to stub out those cigarettes – that’s the first thing you need to do. And your arteries are calling out for you to get moving. Exercise three times a week, at least. And you have to eat something other than pizza and potato crisps.’

  It was no secret to anyone who knew Seeberg well that he had smoked and drunk to excess in the course of more than three decades in the media industry. This had cost him two marriages, at least one job and – in his doctor’s opinion – perhaps fifteen years of his life. Now it was a matter of damage limitation. Of course he wanted to live. Wanted to give away his daughter, continue to work for Radio 4; wanted to take the population’s pulse by raising current topics in his morning broadcasts and play devil’s advocate to the punters who phoned in – not because he necessarily disagreed with them, but because he was keen for them to clarify their own arguments. This was a journalistic method that enraged many of his callers, but it was great radio – no one could complain about that.

  The worst aspect of feeling age creeping up on him was that he had started to become forgetful, fortunately not in an Alzheimer’s kind of way, but he often forgot what he had done with his keys and glasses, names of old friends or acquaintances, and politicians he had interviewed. Actors he had seen in films also disappeared totally from his memory banks from time to time. His doctor had told him this could also be a signal that his body needed a change.

  Change.

  Moving from one state to another.

  It was easy to say, even easy to make a start, but not so easy to carry through over a period of time. He’d succeeded in cutting down on his daily quota of cigarettes. The amount of alcohol consumed over a week was not what it used to be either, and he was also trying to eat a bit more healthily. Broccoli and other vegetables instead of deep-fried side dishes.

  However, progress was slow, and even though he’d dropped eight kilos in the past four months, it was still difficult to breathe when he walked upstairs, and running never got any easier – his legs were just as heavy, his chest just as tight. There were times when he wondered whether Grandpa Seeberg might not be the only one in the family to die of a heart attack.

  So in addition to being a talk show host on Radio 4, Calle Seeberg was engaged in change – even though every fibre of his being fought against it. Because many people knew his face, and since exercise called into question the image he’d created for himself, he confined his training sessions to the hours of darkness, so that as few people as possible would see him wearing incongruous clothes. Now, because it was autumn, he could also wrap himself up and wear caps that made him even less recognisable. Nevert
heless, he some­times encountered astonished, open-mouthed looks from people coming in the opposite direction, and was aware of how ridiculous he looked as his 105 kilos pounded the pavement. He was painfully aware that he became redder in the face than a garden gnome when he ran, and even though he kept his pace slow, the noise he produced was loud.

  The footpath along the Akerselva river was lit by streetlights spaced ten to fifteen metres apart. Calle Seeberg never ran further than the waterfall at Gjerdrums vei. This was a natural place to stop and catch his breath; the incline had been gradual all the way from Grünerløkka, and he had started to look forward to the considerably easier homeward stretch. On some late-autumn evenings, an eerie haze rose from the black water under the bridge, and in the soft lamp­light the mist seemed golden, as if someone down there was exhaling gold dust.

  One evening, Calle Seeberg stood watching this unusual sight when he heard a snap in the bushes beside the stone building nearby, where art classes were held on the upper floor. He had heard the same noise a couple of days earlier, and from the same place, too: a twig being trampled on? But no one was lurking in the shrubbery when he squinted at it; he had done the same the previous time – and spotted no one then either.

  On two occasions in the past week he’d noticed a man out jogging at the same time as him. There was nothing odd about that; many people had regular exercise routines, but this person had kept exactly the same distance from him both times – fifty metres or so behind. He’d been wearing dark training kit, and a hood pulled up over his head. The reason the man had stuck in Calle Seeberg’s mind was that he seemed to limp a little as he ran.

  Seeberg knew that celebrities often acquired stalkers. It was part of the package. A degree of attention had never bothered him, but when he started to feel something niggle in his body, an antipathy such as now, that was something else entirely.

  The man was nowhere to be seen today, and Calle Seeberg wasn’t in the habit of being scared, so he decided to follow his usual proce­dure before setting off on his journey home. But when he ran through the gloomy thicket on his way into Nydalen, beneath the unlit bridge, he could have sworn that he heard movement behind him, even through his own deafening panting.

  Another snap from among the trees, and his pulse jumped to a level that made him feel his heart beating in his chest – an intense, rhythmic hammering. And when he heard the sound of footsteps just behind him, he had to force himself not to turn around. Instead he straightened his back a little and tried to pick up speed.

  Fortunately the terrain sloped down a little at this point so it was easy to increase momentum, but of course that would apply to whoever was behind him too. He had a strong feeling he wasn’t moving fast enough. His thigh muscles began to stiffen and his chest felt like it was tied in knots. Luckily it wasn’t far to the well-lit stretch of Nydalen’s numerous brick buildings and media offices.

  When he emerged near the power station, he heard the rhythm of music – an insistent bass. It took him a minute to realise it came from the headphones on a woman who was running past him with disturbing ease, as if there was no weight in her legs at all.

  Calle Seeberg reduced his speed a little and began to breathe with less effort, annoyed at himself for having let fear get under his skin. When he wheeled around, he saw nothing but the dark brown path he had just run along, and the faint outline of trees and branches stir­ring ever so slightly in the feeble evening breeze.

  He completed the rest of his homeward journey faster than usual and turned around from time to time – but saw nothing of a limping man in a hoodie. When he reached the bridge below the Oslo Na­tional Academy of the Arts – the one with all the hearts and padlocks attached – he was relieved that it would be a few days until his next training run.

  Soon Calle Seeberg was letting himself into the lobby of his apart­ment building in Fossveien. He took the stairs up to the third floor with slow, heavy steps. He was just about to enter his apartment when he discovered that the door was ajar.

  Had he forgotten to lock it when he went out?

  Seeberg tried to cast his mind back, but he couldn’t recall whether he’d done so or not. It was something he did without giving it any thought. Gingerly, he pulled the door open. Everything was as normal in the hallway. His shoes were in their usual place.

  But – didn’t it smell slightly different in here?

  Yes, it did. He felt it tickle his nose. He was reacting to something or other, an allergic response. As if someone had brought a dog into his home.

  Hesitantly, he stepped inside.

  ‘Hello?’ he shouted, noticing at once that he’d been holding his breath for several seconds. He continued on. Stopped. Listened. A door banged somewhere in the distance. Outside, at street level, he heard the noise of hard skateboard wheels on the tarmac.

  Then all was quiet again.

  No, he could hear nothing from inside. But all the same he moved warily, not even bothering to remove his shoes. He checked the home office, where Liv Tonje usually spent the night, on the odd occasion she managed to break free after fifteen years or so in her mother’s tight bonds. He glanced into the spare bedroom, which was really more of a lumber-room now. There was no one in the kitchen. No one in the bedroom. There was no one in the bathroom either, even though the strange smell was more pungent in there.

  What was causing it?

  He decided to take an allergy pill right away, just in case. It took next to nothing for him to have a reaction. He shook out two tablets from the medicine bottle and washed them down with a quick mouthful of water from the tap, before dashing out into the hallway and shutting the front door emphatically. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. After all, he’d earned one, hadn’t he?

  27

  Two other contestants were left, in addition to Iselin. Blix let the cursor glide over their profiles. Toralf Schanke and Jonas Sakshaug. According to the popularity barometer, Sakshaug stood a good chance. A restaurant chef, he’d managed to engage viewers by sharing a number of his favourite recipes, and asked for theirs in return. The best of these might be included in a cookery book he was about to publish, he’d promised in his profile.

  Closing down the website, Blix logged into the case-management program and saw that the Nordstrøm investigation had been hidden from everyone except those actively involved in it. This was standard practice in high-profile cases.

  He took out his phone. The last message from Emma remained unanswered. She wanted him to corroborate that the body found on Hvaler was that of Jeppe Sørensen. The message was now a few hours old, and in the meantime the discovery had been officially confirmed.

  He weighed up whether or not to send her a reply, but decided to leave it. Then he deleted the entire message log, and went into his call list and deleted that too.

  Kovic was crossing the room towards him. ‘Stian Josefson is in Denmark,’ she said excitedly, waving a sheaf of papers. ‘He bought a ticket on the quayside yesterday afternoon, and took the DFDS Seaways ferry to Copenhagen at sixteen-thirty. He was spending loads on his credit card in one of the bars on-board all evening. I’ve tried to call him, but his phone’s still not turned on.’

  ‘So if he was on board the Danish ferry last night…’ Blix thought aloud.

  ‘He can’t have been on Hvaler at the same time, putting Jeppe Sørensen in Sonja Nordstrøm’s boat.’

  Blix drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘His car, though, passed the border between Sweden and Norway on the thirtieth of September, after he’d been in Denmark. It also passed Sandstuveien – the closest toll station to Nordstrøm’s house when you travel from the border – at twenty twenty-one. That’s an hour and a half before she sent her last text message that night.’

  He swore inwardly. The trail that had seemed so promising only an hour ago already looked like a dead end. ‘Is there anything else to pick up from the toll stations?’ he asked. ‘Have we collected all the registration numbers?’

&n
bsp; ‘We’re still waiting for data from Østfold,’ Kovic answered. ‘We’re checking the vehicles from the toll booths in Kongsveien and Sand­stuveien against criminal records and people from Nordstrøm’s circle, but there are loads of leased and company cars. It’s time-consuming.’

  ‘What about Wibe’s video project?’

  ‘He’s busy working his way through all the CCTV images from the area around Akerselva,’ she told him. ‘A café at the foot of Mark­veien has cameras pointing out towards Eventyrbrua. With a bit of luck he’ll find a man in a hoodie making his way down below the bridge where Geia was hanging about.’

  ‘OK,’ Blix nodded, though he didn’t have much faith this would lead to anything. ‘Thanks, I’ll follow up on Denmark.’

  Blix ferreted out the number for Lone Cramer of the Danish police.

  ‘The man who was last to see Sonja Nordstrøm alive is in Denmark now,’ he told her almost as soon as she’d picked up, and went on to give her a speedy resumé of the facts. ‘We need help to track him down.’

  ‘Send over everything you have on him,’ Cramer said. ‘Then I’ll send out an all-points warning.’

  Blix thanked her.

  ‘What do we do if we find him?’

  ‘Let me know,’ Blix said. ‘And I’ll be on the first flight.’

  28

  Usually Emma rose at quarter to six in the morning to exercise before the working day began, but with Martine visiting she could afford to allow herself another whole hour before she got up. She awoke at her normal time, but it was still a rare treat simply to lie there relaxing as she gazed at her sleeping niece. Few things in the world were more peaceful and carefree than the face of a little child in the Land of Nod.

  Just after seven o’clock Emma gave the teddy bear Martine had clutched all night a slight tug. Slowly and surely she began to let go and open her eyes.

  ‘Good morning, sweetie,’ Emma said.