Smoke Screen

by Jorn Lier Horst

  She read with increasing interest. Blix was mentioned several times. It looked as if he had had a central role in the investigation, making his actions last night even more meaningful.

  Ruth-Kristine’s sister, Britt, was cited in a number of articles as a sort of spokesperson for the family. Most of the articles included a photo of Patricia. The same photo, the one everyone recognised – taken over ten years ago, when she was only one year old – with two small teeth peeking out as she smiled at the camera. It had been taken just a few weeks before she was kidnapped.

  Emma looked up. She hadn’t eaten for about eighteen hours, and it felt as if something heavy had been boring into her chest. Every time she tried to take a deep breath, it was like something had a tight grip around her lungs. But it was slowly getting easier. Emma thought about what Anita had said, and told herself that she was tough and strong, and that no one, nothing, would break her.

  But she had to do something.

  She couldn’t just sit quietly in the flat, with Kasper’s stuff.

  She spotted a brown banana on the kitchen counter, promptly picked it up and ate it. Opening one of the cupboards, she grabbed a handful of peanuts and stood there, thinking of Ruth-Kristine, about how Blix’s rescue operation would make a good article, and that combining the two stories could make a particularly good feature. If she could bring herself to write it.

  She stood there for a long time. She would need to find someone who could tell her about Ruth-Kristine, what her life had been like in the decade since Patricia’s disappearance.

  Sat behind her laptop screen again, she looked up at Ruth-Kristine’s sister. It turned out that Britt Smeplass owned a detached house in Grefsen, on Aschehougs vei.

  If she were to get through the next few days, she would have to keep herself busy, physically and mentally. Use her head and her body.

  She poured a glass of water and drank it in one go. She could feel her body objecting, along with a growing desire to curl up under the duvet again and let the world carry on without her. But she had made her mind up. She found her cycling shoes and put them on.

  As she stepped outside, the icy arctic wind blew right through her. Her legs felt numb as she climbed onto the bike and rode off. Her arms were weak. Just holding on to the bike’s handlebars required more effort than usual. She was breathing faster and heavier than normal, as if her whole body were resisting her efforts to be active.

  A little over fifteen minutes later, she found herself standing outside a house with a garden, a garage, and a solar panel on the roof. The leaves on the apple trees were brown and were drenched from the rain, drooping down over the dull lawn, most of which was buried under the remaining snow and ice.

  There was a light on in the living room. Emma let herself in through the gate and locked her bike to the fence on the other side. The path leading up to the front door was paved. The giant trees and shrubs planted between the houses shielded them from one another.

  Emma rang the doorbell and took a step back.

  She rang the bell again and waited.

  She could hear a dog barking from inside the house, and then a voice immediately after, telling it to stop. After half a minute had gone by and no one had answered the door, she rang the bell again, knocking this time too. The growling from within was followed by another loud bark. Emma tried to look in through a window, but it was too high up.

  The sound of approaching steps. Someone opened the door slowly, and only a fraction. A woman peeked out. Emma couldn’t see her whole face.

  ‘Britt Smeplass?’ Emma enquired.

  No answer.

  ‘My name is Emma Ramm, I’m a reporter for news.no. I was wondering if I could have two minutes of your time?’

  ‘I’m not interested,’ Smeplass replied.

  She was about to close the door when Emma added quickly: ‘I just have a few questions about your sister.’

  Britt Smeplass stopped. It was the first time Emma could properly see her face, see how drained the woman looked. The only photos Emma had seen of her were from a good ten years ago. Time had taken its toll.

  ‘News.no is a newspaper,’ Emma continued. ‘Online. I assume that you’re already aware that your sister is among the injured from the incident that occurred outside City Hall last night?’

  The door opened a touch wider. Emma felt a few icy drops of rain land on her face.

  ‘May I come in?’ she asked, as gently as she could. But Britt Smeplass made no sign that she wanted to open the door any further.

  Emma looked down to see the snout of a dog pushing its way through the gap between the frame of the door and Britt Smeplass’s leg. It was black, with a large, white spot around one eye. She wondered if she should bend down to say hello – dogs were often good icebreakers. But the growling and the sight of its bared teeth convinced her to stay where she was.

  ‘I was there,’ she said instead. ‘By the harbour. A close friend of mine died. I helped rescue your sister from the water.’

  Emma had hoped that it would affect the woman in front of her in some way, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

  ‘What do you want?’ Britt Smeplass asked.

  There was venom in her voice. The dog forced its head further into the doorway, growling more ferociously.

  ‘Shut up, Eddy!’ the woman said sharply, yanking it back into the house.

  ‘I’m planning on writing an article about your sister,’ Emma tried. ‘A lot of people know who she is, but they might not know anything about her life over the last few years. I…’

  ‘Can’t you write about your friend instead?’

  Emma tried to explain that she was too close, too involved, that she needed a way to process what had happened. A project, in a way, but she could tell immediately that she had said the wrong thing.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you about Ruth Kristine,’ Britt Smeplass answered. ‘I don’t want to talk to you at all.’

  With that, she slammed the door in Emma’s face. From outside, she could hear that the dog had started to bark again.

  12

  The housing association estate where Ruth-Kristine Smeplass lived consisted of four low-rise blocks of flats and ten terraced houses. It was located on the edge of the dense forest in Åsbråten, out in the Søndre Nordstrand district, a little less than fifteen kilometres south of Oslo city centre.

  Blix spoke to Emma over the phone while Kovic contacted the chairman of the association, Mustafa Jamal Hayd, who agreed to come down and show them to the right flat. It was on the ground floor of one of the low-rise buildings.

  ‘Over there,’ Mustafa said, pointing.

  Neither he nor anyone else on the estate had a key to Ruth-Kristine’s flat. Blix was prepared to call a locksmith, but wanted to check first to see if she had left any windows open, or if there was any other way to get inside.

  ‘Wait!’ Kovic said as they approached. She held out an arm to keep the chairman back and indicated to Blix. The door was ajar.

  Blix and Kovic exchanged glances.

  ‘Stand back,’ Blix ordered Mustafa, who promptly did as he was told. Blix edged closer. Where the lock had once been, there was now a large, strangely shaped hole.

  He nudged the door open and peered around the frame, into the small porch and the hallway beyond. There was a man just inside, bent over a chest of drawers and rifling through its contents. Seeming to realise that someone had entered the hall, he turned sharply and bolted deeper into the flat.

  ‘Police!’ Blix shouted as he chased after him. Running through the flat, he just about registered the fact that there were clothes and various other items strewn everywhere, and that several pieces of furniture had been overturned. He hurtled after the intruder, and found him trying to open one of the windows.

  ‘Police!’ Blix yelled again. ‘Stop!’

  The man wasn’t listening. He heaved the window open and was just about to jump out when Blix grabbed hold of his leather jacket and dragged him back in a
nd onto the kitchen floor. He rolled the man onto his stomach and held his arms behind his back.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Blix asked, trying to catch his breath.

  ‘Please,’ the man underneath him gasped. ‘I was just…’ His breathing was fast and ragged.

  ‘You were just what?’

  ‘I was passing by,’ he mumbled into the floor. ‘The door was open, and no one was home, so I thought I could … I could see if…’

  Blix fastened the handcuffs and let go. He got up and took in the rest of the flat. There were dishes piled up on the kitchen counter. A couple of glasses with a few dregs of something or other stood next to them. Two of them looked as if they had been used as ashtrays.

  Kovic came into the kitchen. ‘I’ve called it in,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Who are you?’ he asked, turning to the man lying below him.

  No answer.

  ‘Do you know the woman who lives here?’ Kovic asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Not really.’

  The chairman appeared behind them. ‘Adel,’ he exclaimed. ‘What have you done?’

  Kovic looked down at the man on the floor. ‘Do you live here?’ she asked. ‘In this building?’

  Mustafa answered for him: ‘He lives in 8C.’

  Kovic hoisted the man up onto a chair.

  ‘Do you usually come this way then?’ she asked. ‘Down this corridor?’ she added, pointing out into the hallway.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘When was the last time? When did you last walk by here?’

  ‘Earlier today,’ he answered.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Ten o’clock, maybe.’

  ‘Was the door open then?’

  He shook his head.

  Kovic led Blix out into the corridor, away from the others.

  ‘The lock looks like it’s been melted away by something acidic, or a similar kind of substance,’ she said. ‘Something that can dissolve metal, anyway.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Blix said. ‘Who has access to something like that?’

  Kovic didn’t have an answer.

  ‘The whole flat looks like it’s been turned inside out,’ she said instead. ‘And if the door has been like that for a while, then Adel might not be the only person who’s been in here, looking for something to steal.’

  ‘But to break into a flat in that way,’ Blix said. ‘That’s advanced.’

  ‘Silent too,’ Kovic added.

  ‘And whoever’s responsible must have done it after New Year’s Eve. After Ruth-Kristine was injured in the explosion.’

  A silence settled between them.

  ‘Someone was looking for something,’ Blix concluded.

  Kovic nodded, making a sweeping gesture across the mess inside the flat.

  ‘The question is what,’ she said. ‘And why.’

  ‘And if whoever it was found what they were looking for.’

  13

  The trip to Grefsen had been unsuccessful. Everything had gone wrong – everything. She hadn’t been ready or prepared. At least the ride over to Britt Smeplass’s house had done her some good. She had moved her body, got some fresh air, had managed to push Kasper out of her mind briefly too, if only for a few moments. But he had returned. She also felt guilty about having not written a single article about the explosion. News.no was only a small news agency, so Anita was dependent on everyone contributing. Emma thought about how Kasper would have reacted if the situation had been the other way round.

  The photos she had taken last night were no longer relevant. The only thing she could use that no other journalists had, and that she felt she could bring herself to write about half a day later, was Blix, and how he had rescued Ruth-Kristine from the harbour.

  As soon as she got back home, she sent him a text:

  I’m planning on writing an article about you and the woman you rescued from the harbour. Would be nice to get a quote or two, and an update on how Patricia’s mother is doing, if you have one.

  It only took a few seconds before Blix had called her back.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked immediately.

  Emma could tell he was worried; she could hear the concern in his voice. That, and the fact that he had called her at least ten times over the last twelve hours, without her answering any of them.

  ‘Alright,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’m fine. I’m trying to get some work done. Think of something else. Right now though, I’m thinking of Ruth-Kristine Smeplass.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘I’m not sure about anything at the moment,’ Emma replied. ‘I’m just taking everything an hour, or actually a minute, at a time.’

  There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone.

  ‘How … did you find out about Ruth-Kristine?’

  Emma didn’t want to mention Irene, let slip about her assistance from the hospital. She had breached her duty of confidentiality by helping her, and that could land her in hot water.

  ‘Is it important?’ she asked instead.

  He thought about it.

  ‘No, maybe not. But we’re not releasing the names of the casualties or the injured for the time being.’

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Emma asked again, seeing where the conversation was heading and redirecting it.

  ‘Not good. The odds of her surviving are pretty low.’

  Emma took a seat on the bar stool closest to the kitchen counter and grabbed a pen and notepad.

  ‘Could the explosion have anything to do with Patricia’s disappearance?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t comment on that,’ Blix replied.

  Emma moved the phone over to her other ear. ‘You would have said no if there wasn’t,’ she said.

  Blix sighed.

  ‘I won’t quote you,’ she assured him.

  ‘No, but this is a huge investigation. And I’m not leading it either, so it’s not my responsibility to comment on the details.’

  Emma could hear that he wasn’t happy with the direction the conversation had taken. She hesitated for a moment, before changing the subject again:

  ‘You know what my first thought was? Last night?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘That someone had been inspired by the countdown murders and everything that happened last autumn, and they’d orchestrated everything so the bomb would go off at midnight. That’s why I was there in the first place,’ she explained. ‘I was convinced that something was going to happen, something similar. I mean … I hadn’t anticipated what actually happened would happen, but…’ Emma wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

  ‘I’m quite certain that this isn’t a copycat killer,’ Blix said. ‘Terrorism seems most likely. We can see if someone else crops up eventually.’

  ‘Someone other than Patricia, you mean?’

  Blix didn’t answer. Emma jotted down a few notes: 1. Terrorism. 2. Patricia.

  ‘What has she been up to?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Ruth-Kristine, what’s her life like now, ten years after Patricia was kidnapped?’

  Emma knew that there had to be a story there.

  ‘Has she had any more children, for example?’

  ‘I think she’s led quite a quiet life,’ Blix answered. ‘But I don’t know enough to answer that properly.’

  Emma felt a pang of hunger.

  ‘So, how does it feel to be a hero?’ she carried on.

  ‘I was just doing my job,’ he answered. ‘And anyway, you’re only a hero if it all goes well, and we don’t know that yet. Do you have to write about it?’

  ‘We need a positive story, with everything going on right now,’ Emma replied.

  ‘I’m not sure it will be all that positive. Ruth-Kristine is only just hanging in there.’

  ‘Then I’ll write that,’ Emma commented.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll write that you were just doing your job and that you’re worried about her. I don’t really n
eed that much anyway. I got some good photos.’

  Blix sighed and eventually agreed.

  ‘But don’t write about Patricia. Not yet. You’ll be the first to know if it turns out that there is a clear connection between the bomb and Patricia’s disappearance.’

  ‘I can live with that.’

  ‘Good. Take care of yourself. Remember that you’re allowed to feel what you’re feeling – you’re allowed to be sad.’

  ‘I am sad,’ she replied. ‘And then I get angry. At the person, or the people, responsible. If the police can’t figure out who’s behind it, I’ll figure it out.’

  Emma wasn’t sure where that thought had come from. She was surprised at its sudden appearance, the sudden anger, how determined she sounded. How motivated she was, out of nowhere.

  ‘Whatever you do,’ Blix said. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Always am,’ Emma said. ‘You know me, right?’

  ‘That’s why I said it.’

  14

  The phone rang the moment Blix sat down at his workstation. He didn’t recognise the number, but answered anyway.

  ‘Incoming call from Oslo Prison,’ a gravelly voice informed him on the other end of the phone. ‘We have an inmate here requesting to speak to you. Christer Storm Isaksen. Would you like to accept the call?’

  ‘Isaksen?’ Blix repeated in surprise.

  Christer couldn’t possibly have known that Ruth-Kristine had been injured in the explosion. The names of the casualties hadn’t even been released yet, let alone the injured. It must be a coincidence, because he was next on the list of people Blix wanted to talk to.

  ‘He says it’s urgent,’ the caller added.

  ‘Put him through,’ Blix replied.

  An automated voice alerted him to the fact that the conversation was being recorded, before the call was redirected.

  ‘It’s her!’

  He could hear Christer Storm Isaksen practically hyperventilating on the other end of the phone.